The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Bogus bureaucracy, bogus job

    Bogus bureaucracy, bogus job

    It isn’t a new thing that government is a huge establishment involving sundry roles ostensibly aimed at facilitating the vision and objectives of the head of the establishment. It gets weird, however, when people appointed to roles in government find nothing to do in such roles for which they draw tax payers’ money as salaries and are forced by conscience to quit. That was what lately happened in Kwara State.

    Islamic singer Ibraheem Abdulhameed, popularly known as Labaeka, resigned as special assistant on artiste matters to Kwara State Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq after one year and seven months on the job. He said he was quitting for “lack of clear duties and opportunities to perform (his) responsibilities” and could not keep drawing salaries while doing nothing, which he viewed as a violation of his beliefs. In his resignation letter dated September 12, 2024 and addressed to the governor, Labaeka recalled that he was on 6th January, 2023 offered the appointment that he accepted as a call to service and an opportunity to showcase his talents.

    “Regrettably, I have not been able to achieve any of these things. Aside from the fact that I don’t have a specific schedule of duty, circumstances have not availed me the opportunity to perform my responsibilities maximally,” he wrote, adding: “Since my appointment is based on public trust, I cannot continue to break that trust by taking a salary for doing nothing. As an Islamic cleric. it is against my beliefs and I haven’t been at peace with myself. So, I want my salary to be stopped immediately.”

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    The office of Governor Abdulrazaq has yet to publicly respond to the letter that Labaeka shared on his Instagram page after he must have sent it in to the governor. But the letter, on face value, speaks volumes about the operations of government bureaucracy in Kwara State and may be a reflection of government bureaucracies elsewhere in this country. An appointee drawing salaries for all of 19 months without doing any work and without a job schedule, and would have continued till Heaven knows when if he had not himself pulled the plugs! Could it be that Mr. Governor knew the job to be sinecure ab initio and offered it in mere patronage, not minding that public funds were to be committed to paying the remuneration? Or was it that Labaeka was required to engineer his own job schedule after appointment, but failed to live up to that expectation and threw the job in frustration?

    Whichever the case, it was sheer waste of public funds keeping an appointee with no job schedule in an oversized government. And you never know how many more such persons are yet out there and not having the conscience pangs that Labaeka had.

  • Ighodalo’s crass hyperbole

    Ighodalo’s crass hyperbole

    Don’t know if the Edo have any equivalent quip, but the Yoruba have a saying that a sheep that wanders with dogs will in time eat faeces. 

    That about sums up the claim by Asue Ighodalo, the defeated PDP candidate in the September 21 Edo gubernatorial election, that that election was the “worst” in Nigerian history!  Is the technocrat Ighodalo such a green horn in Nigerian politics?

    Did he ever hear of a certain fellow called “The Fixer”, the late Chief Tony Anenih, incidentally Ighodalo’s Esan political ancestor?  If he ever heard of Anenih’s satanic talents at fixing elections, he’d never have permitted himself that infernal hyperbole.

    Even before becoming former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s election fixer-in-chief, Anenih had gathered enough notoriety in the aborted 3rd Republic, by leading the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua storm-troopers to trade off Chief MKO Abiola’s June 12, 1993 presidential mandate for Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government (ING).

    Anenih was the first and only national chairman of a political party in Nigeria — the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) — to pawn his party’s win; and thereafter, declare he and his gang were beatified!  Of course, apart from the late Yar’Adua, he also worked hand-in-glove with Obasanjo, whose abiding life ethos is he cannot look good unless he makes others look bad.

    After the June 12 conspiracy ended in definitive defeat for the political military, the Army Arrangement that smuggled in Obasanjo as beneficiary-in-chief, of the same democracy he actively worked against, both Anenih and Obasanjo inherited the new 4th Republic — the one as fixer-in-chief, helping the other, as commander-in-chief. 

    Between them, they managed the outrageous 2003 and 2007 presidential elections: the one, an introduction to hell; the other electoral hell itself raw and sore, which nevertheless signalled the beginning of the end for the notorious vote-robbing PDP.

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    Indeed — need Ighodalo be told? — the off-cycle Edo election he contested and got mauled emanated from the failure of Anenih and co to steal Adams Oshiomhole’s victory in 2007.  That the one they call Oshio-Baba clawed back in court what he won fair and square at the polls started the off-cycle polls in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti, Osun (all results from the checkmated electoral heists of 2007) and later, Anambra.

    In fact, it was the returned “Edo steal” that led to the Oshiomhole whoop that he had vanquished the Edo (election-thieving) godfathers, of which Anenih was No. 1.  So, next time Ighodalo makes claims of “worst election”, he must benchmark such against the all-time rot of Anenih and co.

    Besides, the 2007 heist — which supposed “winner”, the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, was so ashamed of —  triggered the electoral reforms that birthed today’s IT guard rails.  So, no matter how bad losers paint today’s elections, they can’t be anything near the Obasanjo/Anenih era.

    That’s the thing, though.  Ighodalo’s political socialization, under Godwin Obaseki’s wing, is far from stellar — which was why Obaseki would echo Obasanjo’s do-or-die credo of 2007.  Well, his candidate “died” while Monday Okpebolo of the APC “did”. 

    It was crushing defeat anxiously waiting to happen, given how Obaseki was busy fighting everyone.

  • NAFDAC and miracle vendors

    NAFDAC and miracle vendors

    A Delta State-based cleric, Jeremiah Omoto, and his church, Christ Mercy Land Deliverance Ministries, have been vending to the public products that they claimed have miracle powers. Now they need a miracle to get out of regulatory tangle with the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), which is the body empowered by law to patent such products for consumption.

    The agency recently said it had summoned officials of the church located on Effurun-Sapele Road for questioning over sales of unregistered miracle  soap and  water to the public. NAFDAC explained that it acted following petitions it received from members of the public who raised concerns over the products that Omoto promoted to his congregation and on social media as having powers to heal barrenness. He said women would carry twins if they used the soap, allegedly claiming that both the miracle water and soap were NAFDAC-registered. That claim, according to NAFDAC, prompted members of the public to approach its offices for verification.

    In its statement, NAFDAC detailed measures it had taken to interrogate the miracle vending including its Delta officials covertly procuring the miracle water through a transaction that was duly receipted, and visiting the church to conduct regulatory assessment of its production facilities. This led to the agency sealing off a water factory with which the church had a production contract agreement without its regulatory approval. In-between, the agency added, it repeatedly invited leaders of the church for questioning but the invitations were not honoured as church officials prevaricated by filing unpleaded documents.

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    “NAFDAC wishes to inform the public that none of these products being advertised and sold are registered with NAFDAC. The public is also being advised to stop patronising any of these miracle products. NAFDAC is a scientific organisation that is guided by verifiable scientific facts before registering any product,” the Director-General of the agency, Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, said in her statement. She assured that investigation of the matter would continue and warned faith groups against production of regulated product without requisite regulatory verification.

    It isn’t that the church has been quiet. Omoto posted a statement on Facebook saying the ministry was law-abiding and guided by the Nigerian constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion, and that the miracle items were part of its religious beliefs. “We have been using certain spiritual items in the expression of our religious beliefs,” the church argued inter alia, denying that it used NAFDAC’s name to deceive the public.

    It must be because NAFDAC’s mandate centres on regulating products that it has only clamped down on the miracle water factory while yet trading narratives with the church. But instrumentality in illegality should also be a matter for regulatory interest. If it gets ascertained that the church sold unregistered miracle water and soap to the public, Omoto and his assistants should be made to answer in court.

  • Amnesty for IPOB?

    Amnesty for IPOB?

    Is Amnesty International (AI) granting amnesty to IPOB — its ultra-rogue branch, under Simon Ekpa, the Ebonyi-born, Finland-based, self-named IPOB prime minister?

    The Nigerian Army didn’t say that much in its challenge to AI, in a report The Nation published on September 16: “Army to ICC, AI: speak out against IPOB’s crime against civilians”. 

    ICC is the International Criminal Court, the global court for crimes against humanity, which the Nigerian Army somewhat accuses Ekpa’s IPOB of, with reference to its “brutal torture” of a former soldier, Corporal Toriola Adewale.

    The Army claimed IPOB forced Adewale, via a video circulating in the social media, “to deliver coerced messages to active military personnel, urging them to abdicate their constitutional responsibilities and abandon their duties.  This defenceless citizen was further compelled to falsely claim he was treated well while being held captive.”

    The Army did not state how IPOB snared Adewale, or give further proof of his “torture”. IPOB notoriety on this score though, with its mindless killing of ambushed security personnel and sundry defenceless civilians, would appear clear.  Its so-called “Biafra Liberation Army” or “Eastern Security Network” hardly pleads innocent on attacks on soft targets.  Indeed, it glorifies such crimes.

    Yet, there’s a background to the Army’s AI call-out.  AI’s rights observatory is to checkmate governments’ routine abuse of citizens in many countries, outside the rich global North.  That wasn’t ignoble, given that democracy in most of Europe and North America had developed a robust rights for the citizen. That can’t be said of many parts of Africa, South America and Asia: near- or far-East.

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    The problem though was, with time, AI had embraced toxic politics in its observatory: only governments are constant devils that must always be lashed at.  Citizens are willy-nilly angels.  

    That’s why why AI and co-ideologues saw nothing wrong with “peaceful protesters” waving Russian flags; and clearly brain-washed youths — many of them teens barely out of the minority years — torching government properties and looting private business concerns.  Again, all they saw were “peaceful protesters” who must be promptly released.  Of course, AI and co can tell that to the marines!

    It’s for this tunnel vision of rights — don’t legitimate government too have rights? — that the Army is calling out AI — and co-merchants of “rights” over IPOB.

    Does IPOB enjoy Al’s amnesty?  Is IPOB’s “peaceful rights protest” now?  Why AI’s loud quiet on IPOB’s right abuse? 

    Controversial questions, sure to rile those brainwashed by AI’s “rights” ideology.  But it’s a legitimate query if AI is serious about its credibility. 

    It’s time, therefore, AI re-calibrated its mission.  There are still too many murderous governments out there, from which citizens need protection. 

    But that protection they won’t get with AI’s present perception as loud but empty dogma tool for western countries bent on demonizing and distracting developing countries, grappling with own peculiar problems.

  • Rule of arms

    Rule of arms

    An amateur video surfaced online in recent past showing a prominent Anambra State personality in white flowing robe (agbada) walking into an event venue in Awka, the state capital, with an AK-47 rifle slung on his shoulder.

    The footage showed the red cap chief, before walking into the venue, pulling the weapon by its strap out from his vehicle after exchanging pleasantries with fellow title holders who were on hand. Some local security personnel and policemen were as well standing by, and one of them lent a hand in hanging the rifle strap on the titled man’s right shoulder and covering it up with his flowing robe as he strode into the event arena in the company with his fellow red caps, a metal staff swinging in his hand. Two rounds of ceremonial gunshots were fired into the air by someone outside of the picture frame in salutation as the title holders entered into the arena.

    The man bearing the rifle was later identified as retired Deputy Inspector-General (DIG) of Police Celestine Okoye, popularly known as Uzuakpundu n’Awka, and he was cited explaining the circumstance of his carrying the weapon at a public function. Okoye reportedly explained that the assault rifle belonged to one of the police orderlies who escorted him to the event, and who developed a running stomach along the way and was prevailed upon to hold his bowel.

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    “Immediately we got to the venue, he rushed off to one of the nearby houses to relieve himself. There was no way he could have gone to do that in somebody’s house bearing his gun, which made him leave it in the vehicle. Also, there was no way I could have left the gun inside the vehicle as we moved into the occasion,” Okoye was reported saying. “So, after waiting some while, I had to bring the rifle out from the vehicle and hold it for him as we moved into the event venue, where he came and collected it moments later,” he added. The retired police chief, who spoke in Igbo, said he wasn’t even aware he was being videoed all the while and was surprised to see the clip trending on social media and the comments it drew.

    With the notorious security situation in the Southeast, Hardball perfectly understands the context in which Okoye acted. But it remains a question whether it conduced to public safety to casually bear an assault weapon at a civic event. You could ask how much different this case was from that of an Abuja pastor, Uche Aigbe, who bore an AK-47 to illustrate a sermon in February 2023, and who has been put through the grill mill of prosecution by the courts. Sauce for goose should be sauce for gander.

  • Fake graduates on national service

    Fake graduates on national service

    Between the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and the University of Calabar (UNICAL), the blight of fake graduates is like ‘when it rains, it pours.’ Recently, the scheme disclosed that it demobilised 54 illegally mobilised corps members from the university to forestall Certificates of National Service being issued to unqualified persons. That disclosure, interestingly, was made just few days after the NYSC said it had invalidated the service certificates of 101 illegally mobilised graduates of same university who participated in the scheme between 2021 and 2023. And you never know just how many more are yet to be discovered.

    NYSC Director-General, Brigadier-General Yusha’u Ahmed, was reported saying of the 54 demobilised persons, 19 who registered online for mobilisation were blocked from service, while service certificates were withheld from four others. A statement by the scheme’s spokesperson Eddy Megwa, which reported what the Director-General said, did not clarify the status of the 31 others. It is perhaps safe for Hardball to assume they had gotten into the service year, which is mandatory for genuine graduates, but were yet to conclude when they were detected.

    The NYSC boss said the illegal service enrollees would be prosecuted, and hailed the alertness of UNICAL Vice-Chancellor, Professor Florence Obi, who raised the red flag on the illegal mobilisations. “The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calabar came here to report that she observed some names appeared on the institution’s list and they ought not to have been there. She checked the list the school gave us, and I told her that their certificates would be invalidated. I give kudos to the Vice-Chancellor,” he said, adding: “Previously, a bread seller was mobilised on the graduation list from the same institution. There are bad eggs in many places that generate matriculation numbers and courses for their candidates.”

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    Following the earlier announcement of invalidation of 101 service certificates, UNICAL Pro-Chancellor Udom Ekpoudom, a retired Deputy Inspector-General (DIG) of Police, vowed action against staff involved in mobilising fake graduates from the institution. It is important to walk that talk, because someone is obviously making hay from packing graduation lists for youth service with quacks. Gen. Ahmed himself mentioned that failure in corps members’ mobilisation process had to do with the integrity of the management of corps producing institutions. “Those responsible for imputing the data of graduates should be people of integrity,” he said.

    But it’s only that UNICAL is confronting its demon. It is by no means the only institution involved in the menace and there are countless phony graduates from other institutions, facilitated by fraudulent officials of those institutions, yet infecting the service scheme. The NYSC itself needs to audit its system, because there are reports that some corps members who do not even know the way to their respective place of assignment regularly secure clearance for their monthly allowance. It sucks.

  • Labour farce

    Labour farce

    For the Labour Party (LP), it appears war without end — except that it’s all a self-imposed farce. 

    Ab initio — and that by far pre-dated LP’s latest tryst with Peter Obi and his Obidients — LP is always driven by election-season opportunism.  Any surprise that, for the umpteenth time, it’s being blown away by a post-poll dynamite of intrigues, by co-”labourers” that had nothing in common beyond grabbing power?

    Look at the main contenders, starting with embattled chair, Julius Abure.  Smart guy!

    He kept his cool as “capitalist” Obi captured the “socialist” platform.  He was content to play figure-head chairman, as Obi and alleged gang took complete control of the LP 2003 presidential campaign fundings.  Why, to secure his own strategic goals — party chair — he even “donated” 2027 tickets to Obi (presidential) and Alex Otti (lone LP governor of Abia)!

    But now the gloves are off and Abure’s “automatic ticket” just lapsed: Obi and Otti must battle and bristle with others!  Beware of the Greek and his gifts?  Well, call it a reverse quid pro quo: if Obi and Otti can’t guarantee Abure as national chair, Abure too can’t guarantee them automatic tickets!

    Then, Otti.  Oti’s deputy was at Abure’s coronation at Nnewi, Anambra State.  What might His Excellency be thinking?  Hunting with the hounds but running with the hare — plainly hedging his bets? 

    It would appear, by midwifing a temporary LP leadership that could toss Abure into the nearby Jabi Lake, Otti seems to have decided the Abure trip was a journey to nowhere. 

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    Still, strictly: can a party’s mere candidate — though governor he may be — turn around to “pontificate” on who the party boss must be?  That might not sound so sweet from the mouth of Abure because he’s involved.  But on its own, it’s bitter kola to chew on the fundamental weakness of Nigeria’s political party system.

    Joe Ajaero?  For all his clamour to use NLC goodwill to push Peter Obi’s partisan whims, he and his NLC are now screaming outside the fence, after their tenant had effectively locked them out.  That’s the Abure magic!  Well, Abure might not be a total stranger to NLC.  Still, when it boils down to LP sweepstakes, he rather subscribes to that philosophy: “what is ours” is different from “what is mine”.

    And Peter Obi himself?  Just call it the verdict of Karma.  Again, beyond mutual opportunism, Obi shares ideologically nothing with LP — he’s as hard core capitalist hustler as LP is Aluta socialist dreamer.  Then, add Obi’s vacuous post-election denial noise.  A worthy democrat accepts defeat when he loses.  Not Obi.  More than one year after, he has instead gone on an endless post-election moonlight tales.

    For all of these, Karma could have crowned Obi’s efforts with LP confusion, placing him in its very vortex. 

    But beyond LP, Abure, Otti and Obi, it’s clear: nothing good comes out of mutual opportunism.  This LP farce is living proof!

  • Retraction by subterfuge

    Retraction by subterfuge

    It is a good thing that government is recalibrating its age policy on transition by pupils from secondary to tertiary level of education. But it should do so by honest acknowledgement of having a rethink in concession to persuasive arguments by stakeholders, which is a mark of sensitivity in leadership, and not by asserting self-infallibility while guilt-tripping everybody else.

    Education Minister of State, Dr. Yusuf Sununu, walked the pompous road of arrogated infallibility last week when he denied government ever said pupils under age 18 would be barred from writing the senior secondary school leaving certificate examinations conducted respectively by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council (NECO). Speaking in Abuja  at an event to mark the 2024 International Literacy Day (ILD) on Friday, Sununu  said the notion owed to public misconception and misinterpretation of what Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, said , which he found highly disappointing.

    What Mamman spoke about, according to Sununu,  was widespread abuse of the 6-3-3-4 system as reflected in the ages at which some pupils get into the tertiary level of education. “We have agreed that we are going to consider it as work-in-progress. The National Assembly is working and we are also working. It was shocking to say that a university in this country gave admission to children at ages 10, 11 and 12 years. This is totally wrong,” he said. “We are not saying that there are no exceptions, we know we can have talented students that have the IQ of an adult even at age 6 and 7, but these are very few. There must be a rule, and the ministry is looking at developing a guideline on how to identify a talented child, so that parents don’t say we are blocking their children’s chances,” the minister of state added.

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    And the punchline, in Sununu’s words: “Nobody said no child will write WAEC, NECO or any other examination unless at age 18. This is a misconception and misrepresentation of what we have said.” But is it, really?

    When the senior minister spoke on national television less than two weeks earlier, he said government  had only now resolved to enforce a long existing policy by which any pupil shouldn’t be less than 17 and half years before they conclude secondary education before being ready for admission to the tertiary level. “In any case, NECO and WAEC, henceforth, will not be allowing underage children to write their examinations. In other words, if somebody has not spent the requisite number of years in that particular level of study, WAEC and NECO will not allow them to write the examination,” were his exact words. So, where is the misrepresentation?

    It is noble, not humbling to stoop to pressure. Mr. Minister shouldn’t take from that.

  • Monitoring spirits

    Monitoring spirits

    To be sure, monitoring is the heart of democracy.  It’s there, touting the “people’s right to know”, that the media anchors its claim as the fourth estate of the realm, after the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.

    Still, monitoring as a healthy concept is one.  Monitoring spirits, as a sickly, cynical habit, is another.  Under the guise of the first, many media observers merrily lapse into the other.  Herein then lies the problem.

    A section of the media has of late become near-hysteric over why and how President Bola Tinubu MUST re-jig his cabinet.  Why, a few have even drawn up a list naming names of “under-performing ministers” the president must virtually hang!

    Others have been inconsolable, weeping and wailing, over the current “bloated” cabinet.  The Nigerian media, by the way, merrily relishes this cliche.  If it declares something is “bloated” then it must be “bloated”, not withstanding that “bloated” is just another buzz word the all-mighty analyst just parlayed — without much thinking — from a rival’s write-up.

    Every time things don’t seem to go well with governance — a low the Tinubu government currently experiences — the instinct is to go hay wire and call for heads to roll — such blood thirstiness!  It seems to point to that basic penchant to arrogantly make suggestions without first carefully thinking it through.

    If you sack a “non-performing” minister for a systemic challenge, how has that helped the administration?  Or you just declared the Federal Executive Council (FEC) “bloated” — bloated from whose perspective? 

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    From the president’s who has a vision and is deploying manpower to turn that vision into glorious reality?  Or of an armchair critic’s, too wrapped up in the high clouds of self-importance, to acknowledge any vision, talk less of understanding it? 

    Indeed, you can bet on two stock media reactions to any government whatsoever: first, the near-eternal clamour for “heads to roll”: are these calls earnest or are deliberately planted by job-seeking hustlers, using their colluding confederates in the media?

    Then, no government’s media team is ever good enough for some folks not to eternally pontificate, sense or nonsense.  Which explains the frenzy on the exit — temporary or permanent — of Ajuri Ngelale, the prime presidential spokesperson that just announced he was stepping aside over unnamed family health reasons.  Not a few though have bragged and barked he was sacked, in crowing and triumphant analyses.

    So, he was sacked — and so what?  How does that add value to anyone?  Just another bout of sterile reporting the media often brags about.  But again, how does that add value to governance?  Or even succour to long-suffering citizens in their leanest times?  With rabid focus on the tangential at best, is anyone surprised at falling copy sales?

    Still, with all the din, it’s clear President Bola Tinubu is too street-wise to be hustled  into taking any precipitate action on his cabinet.  Beyond the high adrenaline of hiring and firing, the media can — and must — contribute much more to good governance.

  • NYSC and late camp arrivals

    NYSC and late camp arrivals

    Participating in the mandatory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme is enormously hazardous for the average Nigerian graduate. They are plucked from their native areas of the country and posted to far-flung areas to promote cross-cultural exposure and national integration.

    Because they are alien in the areas they are posted, their first contact in those areas is the scheme’s orientation camp; meaning if they must get to the place before the camp opens, they (read: their parents/guardians) must be capable of funding interim accommodation in hotels. Meanwhile, those locations of posting are mostly not deadline friendly – requiring them travelling long hours, or days in some cases, to get there. Some have had to undertake overnight travels that have exposed them to acute dangers of insecurity and road safety hazards. For few areas that are accessible by air travel, air fares in the present socio-economy are utterly prohibitive. Even road travel under current economic realities is by no means easily affordable.

    Given these factors, ample room ideally need be made in timelines for registration by prospective corps members (PCMs) at orientation camps. But they face the extra hazard of very tight registration deadlines, failing which they could get turned back from those far-flung stations of posting. That was the reported experience of some PCMs in Niger State where dozens were turned back from the orientation camp in Paiko council area for narrowly missing camp registration deadline.

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    A video clip went viral lately showing a PCM who identified herself as Uwa Oze, saying she spent N40,000 travelling from her native Edo State to the Paiko camp but was turned back. In the clip, Oze recounted how PCMs were instructed after reporting in camp to return home, with many having travelled long distances down and out of funds to take them back home. “I was part of those who went for NYSC orientation camp, Batch B Stream II. We are part of those that were shifted to Batch C. I was later given a call-up letter. I am reporting from Niger; this is Niger. This early morning, they woke us up that we should be going back home. Some of us don’t have transport fare. They said, we should be going back home. Look at us,” she said in the clip as she showed in the background other PCMs in her situation.

    An online news outlet, The Whistler, reported contacting the spokesperson for NYSC in Niger State, Samuel Oga, who confirmed that the scheme turned back some PCMs. According to Oga, they were instructed to report between the 28th and 29th August, with registration scheduled for two days; but those being turned back arrived on the 30th or 31st and had missed the registration deadline.

    Really?!! NYSC cannot be too rigid with deadlines under prevailing circumstances.