The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • PO as metaphor

    PO as metaphor

    Peter Obi is supremely proud of his intitials — PO — and his Obidients put it to devastating, if self-serving, use in the heat of electioneering.

    “A new Nigeria is POssible”, went one of the Obidients’ glorious puns, suggesting that “Yes Daddy” Peter Obi, by his glorious initials alone, would snap his fingers and a dirty Nigeria would become holy!

    Still, PO in Yoruba (pronounced as “Kpo”), means chamber pot.  No matter how the chamber pot glistens, its essence is smell and rot. 

    That is fair and legitimate metaphor for Obi’s politics, though he preens it’s otherwise.

    The latest proof was his October 11 press conference, when he launched a voyage for President Bola Tinubu’s “identity”, just as Atiku Abubakar, Obi’s co-Don Quixote, tilting at the windmills, launched a voyage to “find” Tinubu’s Chicago State University (CSU) certificate that never was lost.

    But just as the CSU registrar shut down Atiku’s “forgery” hallucination, condemning the old man to seek salvation in a “world press conference”, from which he came off as extremely bitter and irreparably damaged, a BBC report, which also dismissed any Tinubu CSU “forgery”, shut Obi up. 

    Fair but thunderous slap for a dangerous and unrepentant demagogue!  Some clearly have ears but they cannot hear!

    Read Also: BREAKING: Claim of discrepancies in my credentials fabricated by Atiku, says Tinubu

    Meanwhile, the Obi press conference was another u-turn for a man that, from his public utterances, believes in the supremacy of spin.  On impulse, he shunned bitter Atiku’s invite to join a nude public dance, to bitter music of shame and desperation.

    But the core rot in Obi — the stark chichidodo, that Ghana bird that hates faeces but savours maggots! — couldn’t really resist that dance of shame.  Pronto, he called his own press conference!

    Meanwhile, like the human chichidodo, feigning sainthood but busy savouring the sweet rot to come from Atiku’s America muck-raking, had gone to run his mouth on Arise TV over “forgeries”, all snide and hollow excitement. 

    But when the muck nailed nobody but Atiku himself, a stunned Obi fell into a funereal quiet, distanced himself from Atiku and postured he was at the Supreme Court for “justice”.  When he jerked awake from that sweet dream, it was to stage a poor photocopy of Atiku’s bitter original.

    You, of course, expect nothing different from a man that hit the polity with China stats (euphemism for blatant lies to excite and confound the ignorant), wept bitterly over an election he clearly lost, and plays delusional Pope after a brazen conversion of  Anambra state money into capital for Obi’s family business, from sacred “savings”!

    No doubt, this PO is “Kpo”, the chamber pot.  No matter how it pretends to glisten, it’s stench is penetrating.  PO is a rotten past — as Atiku — posing as a decent future.

  • A junta’s soft war

    A junta’s soft war

    Some two months after it butted into power, the military junta in Niger Republic appears to have settled in enough to not only fight for survival but also deal hard hand against opponents. Last week, the regime imposed a ban on exportation of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) to Nigeria, among other countries.

    Upon displacing President Mohamed Bazoum in a coup on 26th July, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) led by Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu had ordered the putschists to roll back or be forced out. ECOWAS imposed a slate of sanctions on the country, including Nigeria cutting off her electricity supply, and gave the junta a seven-day deadline to reinstate Bazoum or risk military compulsion. Military chiefs of countries in the regional bloc held meetings to plan for that possibility, but they eventually did not deploy into Niger owing to a concert of factors that advised sustained diplomatic engagement with the junta rather than military action. Meanwhile, the regime severed bilateral ties with countries in the vanguard of demand for Bazoum’s reinstatement, including neighbouring Nigeria.

    Now, the junta is withholding LPG exportation. In a statement, it said gas produced locally should henceforth be used in supplying the domestic market only, and where surplus exists, special authorisation must be sought to export it. That statement was against the backdrop of Nigeria having imported gas from Niger for some years, with both countries signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to that effect as recently as 2022. The signing of the agreement was done under the oversight of Nigeria’ s former Petroleum Minister of State Timipre Sylva and Foumakoye Gado, who represented Niger Republic.

    Read Also; Tinubu’s CSU certificate not forged, BBC clarifies

    At the pact signing, Sylva had said: “This is a major step forward. Niger Republic has excess products that need to be evacuated. Nigeria has the market for these products. Therefore, this is going to be a win-win relationship for both countries.” He added: “My hope is that this is going to be the beginning of deepening trade relations between Niger Republic and Nigeria.” Since that time, however, relationship between the two countries has soured owing to the military takeover.

    Sad fact, though, is that the measure by Niger may have impacted negatively on Nigerian consumers. LPG presently sells at a high of N1,200 per kilogram, up from about N700 previously amidst reports of product scarcity in the country. If the Nigerien junta’s measure in any way contributed to that scarcity, it means Nigeria hasn’t done enough to steady herself for  the bullish talk against the jackboots next door. A local axiom says you do not go hunting your father’s killers when you have not secured a firm handle on the sword of vengeance. We didn’t do that, did we? 

  • Emma the Grandiloquent

    Emma the Grandiloquent

    He answers the rather boastful name, Emma Powerful.  But on the job, he has clearly earned a fair sobriquet: Emma the Grandiloquent.  The colourful spokesperson of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is clearly catching a cruise.

    The funny thing though is that at every phase of his cruise-catching, he imposes a comic and sweeping universality that you couldn’t help but heartily laugh and even roll on the ground!

    Emma’s latest cruise is his grand announcement — any Powerful release wouldn’t be Powerful’s unless it was grand — that IPOB (read the Igbo) was ready for talks, with the Federal Government, over a “referendum” to peacefully opt out of Nigeria.

    Now, where did IPOB take a leave from its Monday sit-at-homes, to carry out a South East plebiscite, which approved its so-called exit “referendum” talks, with the federal authorities?  

    If no proof of that, might the latest then be no more than an IPOB whim (at best) or a Powerful fancy — the pun very much intended — (at worst)?

    By the way, Powerful romanticized the Monday sit-at-home, with his remarkable grandiloquence: the same zeal and zest he used to decry it, the moment sit-at-home spectacularly backfired; and IPOB itself found it had cut its nose to spite its face.

    Read Also: Biafra: We’re ready for talks on referendum, says IPOB

    Still, give it to Powerful: he is merrily inflexible on the IPOB cause — or curse.

    At the very beginning when Nnamdi Kanu was traducing everyone, Powerful was there to rally his cause.  

    Even when the tragic Ike Ekweremadu, now in a British jail for organ harvesting, was gored in Germany by IPOB cadres, Powerful was here eulogizing that savagery.

    When Kanu jumped bail and was lobbing incendiary stuff from a foreign safe haven, calling Nigeria a zoo and threatening thunder and brimstone, with IPOB’s so-called Eastern Security Network (ESN), Powerful was his cheery mouthpiece.

    When Kanu was caged, Powerful was shrillest, among zealots, to press the sit-at-home as sure blackmail tool to prise off Kanu, threatening captive co-Igbo with mortal repercussions, should they balk at the order.  When that threat sunk into equal opportunity criminality, which crested with vile Igbo-on-Igbo killings, the same Powerful washed his hands off the gargoyle that plagued the Igbo, though it all emanated from IPOB threats.

    On the so-called “referendum”, Powerful has weighed in with trademark zeal.  But what do folks call repeating the same things but expecting different results?  

    The crisis needs far more serious stuff, not comic grandiloquence.  Those who have ears, let them hear!

  • Floodgate at twilight

    Floodgate at twilight

    It is a matter of curiosity when a government that should be winding down, being in the twilight of its tenure, opens a floodgate of fresh appointments. That is what is happening with the administration of Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki, who lately inaugurated 34 Senior Special Assistants (SSAs) and 152 Special Assistants (SAs) into jobs in five of the seven local government areas of Edo South senatorial district.  The governor will be ending his second and final tenure in November 2024 and, therefore, has barely a year left in office.

    Obaseki said the aides were being appointed to defend his administration and political party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), at the grassroots. “Election is coming and politicians will throw all sorts of lies to discredit our party. Your role is to put things in the right perspective. You must counter all the lies they put out on social media. I have faith in you to do well and accomplish the goal set out for you,” he told the new appointees. The governor made no pretention that it was all about political jobbing at the pleasure of his party, and that more appointments are coming He said the appointees were selected from Ikpoba-Okha, Oredo, Ovia Southwest, Ovia Northeast and Orhionmwon council areas of Edo South; and appointees from the two other councils that make up the senatorial district – Egor and Uhunmwonde – would be announced soon as the party decide on members to be enlisted.

    Read Also: Medical doctor bags two years in jail for stealing hospital beds in A’Ibom

    If you wondered whether the myriad of appointments fitted well with the economy of Edo or whether there will be objective value addition to ordinary people of the state, the explanation you got was that they were made in “trying to foster unity and inclusiveness in our party, so that all are given the opportunity to participate.” The governor said of the qualification criteria for being an appointee: “You have to be resident in your local government. You need to be there to know what is going on, so as to help us develop the local government and state… You must promote the interest of the party. The people have decided to follow our party and it showed at the last local government election in the state.”

    Meanwhile, those appointees will inevitably be paid from Edo’s scarce resources that should’ve been used in bettering the lives of residents, especially non-partisans going about their daily lives lawfully. It is robbing those residents to use resources that ought to be applied on their wellbeing for paying political jobbers. But Obaseki only trails after Kano State Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf who has appointed hundreds of aides in his short time in office and isn’t relenting yet.

  • Hamas’ hammer blow

    Hamas’ hammer blow

    No doubt: Hamas breaching the Israel border; and bumping off soldiers completely taken by surprise, leaving a trail of 300 unarmed civilians killed on Israeli roads, and carting much more off to captivity in Gaza, is an extreme — and condemnable — act of terror.

    Hamas wouldn’t pull off such a savage act and not expect to be doubly — and fairly –dubbed irredeemable terrorists, by the United States and other western allies of Israel. 

    But where does provocation end and terrorism start? 

    Israel, for the past one year or so, has been insanely provocative of Palestinian rights, particularly desecrating the venerated Al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem, with some cabinet members always egging on some extremist but delusional Israeli settlers. 

    Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu’s government, with its ultra-right wing cabinet fanatics — never before seen in Israeli history — had gone on with a sickening air of invincibility, insulting Palestinians as if they were all vassals without a shred of human rights and approving new but provocative Israeli settlements on the West Bank — all illegal under international law.

    Read Also; I won’t let Nigerians down, CDS promises

    “If the whole world were silent,” Hamas roared, justifying its land, sea and air breach of Israel’s border defence, “we would not remain silent about the desecration of our sanctities, the attempt to desecrate Al-Aqsa, and the attacks on Al-Aqsa.” 

    That was a fair call, all things considered.

    But by launching Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood”, Hamas has drawn Israel’s “Operation Iron Swords” — an irate Israeli, reeling from hurt national pride.  Hamas — and Palestinians — should brace selves for a helluva pounding!  

    The next few days would be a virtual hell gate in Gaza!  Should Hezbollah join the fray from Lebanon, Israel’s northern border, or Islamic Jihad, rooted in Gaza but headquartered in Damascus, Syria, the Yom Kippur War of 1973 stares grimly down again!

    On 6 October 1973, Syria and Egypt raided Israel in a whirlwind surprise attack, on the Jewish Sabbath, when Israel was observing holy rest. 

    On 7 October 2023, another Sabbath, but this time with Israel celebrating the sacred festival of Simchat Torah, Hamas struck: with such audacity that shredded the very concept of any Israeli military invincibility.  Still, Hamas had better be prepared for what’s coming to it — and to Gaza.

    This attack was history repeating itself — with avoidable tragedy!

    Fifty years after Yom Kippur, Israel seems to have purged itself of moderate voices, capable of striking some hard peace with the Palestinians.  Instead, it is captive to insensate extremists.  To hang on to political power, Bibi doesn’t mind doing business with these base Jew fanatics; and playing war-hardened PM to extend his political shelve life.

    The Palestinians themselves, consumed with dramatic victimhood and cynical martyrdom, both garnished by venomous Israeli hate, are not the most reasonable too.

    Still, now more than ever, is the time to hammer out some cohabitation in geographical Palestine.  But the omens are not good — at least until Israel hammers Hamas for Bibi’s sworn “vengeance”. 

  • Plague of misfits?

    Plague of misfits?

    What’s the thing with the University of Calabar (UniCal) that it of late frequently comes in the news for reported misbehaviour by its lecturers, who ideally should be leading lights of social decency in the Ivory Tower usually expected to be above par in general ecosystem when compared with other parts of the society?

    For some weeks, the institution has been in the news for allegations of sexual harassment and assault, among others, levelled against suspended professor and former dean of UniCal Faculty of Law, Cyril Ndifon, by students of the faculty. The university management raised an inquiry panel to probe the charges against the don, which submitted its findings only last weekend. In the course of the panel’s work, however, the matter was given wider traction by an intervention – though, apparently unguardedly so – by Women Affairs Minister Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, who threatened female students claiming to have been sexually harassed with jail time if they testified against the law professor.

    Read Also: Mohbad: Police never invited me, says Primeboy

    Even before the university management panel submitted its report on the alleged sexual harassment probe, another scandal about the university broke. A video clip surfaced online showing someone suspected to be a lecturer in the institution flogging a group of students with a belt at the entrance to a classroom. UniCal Vice-Chancellor Professor Florence Obi condemned the alleged assault on students and said the reports she got indicated that the students were from the Department of Microbiology in the Faculty of Biological Sciences, and they were waiting for their practicals before the incident occurred. “Although I am currently on official function outside the state, my attention has been drawn to the said clip,” Obi said in a statement, adding: “The Acting VC, Professor Angela Oyo-Ita; Director of ServiCom, Professor Patrick Egaga; Dean of Students Affairs, Dr. Tony Enyang; and the Acting Chief Security officer of the institution, retired Capt. Austine Bisong, are already handling it.” The vice-chancellor berated the incident, describing it as “unprofessional and against the university’s rules of engagement.” She appealed to the students and general public to remain calm as justice would be done, pointing out that the investigation had already commenced.

    Whatever would make a lecturer in a university system resort to corporal punishment of students, and using a part of his own dressing, namely the belt, for that purpose is a matter for diligent psycho-analysis. What happened to the culture of elitism usually associated with the university system, and what could the lecturer have aimed to impart in a milieu where students are expected to be trained as liberal minds with intellectual freedom of conduct? Perhaps the UniCal management needs to conduct a system reorientation of the staff on the academic culture. And the earlier that is done, the better for the institution.

  • Trump’s banana republic

    Trump’s banana republic

    Donald Trump, 77, likely Republican Party nominee for president in 2024, always talks like a child.

    Republicans, in the US House of Representatives, bickering as wayward children or worse, wilful adults, voted out their Speaker, Kevin MacCarthy, on October 3.  They boast a tiny majority (221 to 212) over the House Democrats.

    It was the first time in US history that a Speaker would be ousted.  In 1900, there was an attempt to do just that but that vote was defeated. 

    McCarthy, if he doesn’t put himself up for vote again, or he does but faces defeat, will be the shortest serving US Speaker ever — 269 days. 

    Earlier, at his bruising election, the vote had had to go an unprecedented 15 rounds.  Still, he wouldn’t prevail until succumbing to office-suicide change of rules on the Republican side, which subjected him to the pleasure of Republican MAGA — make America great again — extremists.

    That ‘ruling’ MAGA minority of eight, led by Matt Gaetz, eventually played the maga — pidgin lingo for sucker — on him: they not only pooled the vote that made him Speaker; they also pulled the trigger that ousted him.  A perfect MAGA chaos!

    Welcome to Donald Trump’s emerging Banana Republic! 

    It’s being undone by the Republicans themselves — can you imagine a lunatic son setting fire to the roof of his father’s thatched hut in dry harmattan? 

    For the Republicans to fall upon own swords, the Democrats were too happy to play cynical Machiavelli — “donating” their entire votes, added to minority Republicans’, to oust poor McCarthy!  Will Uncle Sam even recognize himself again?  What high shame!

    Read Also: Trump fraud case trial begins

    Incidentally, as the macabre House drama was playing out, Trump, in a New York court docked for a civil charge of sexing up his net worth to corral illicit business for his Trump Organization, was recklessly running his mouth, traducing court officials.

    For an alleged civil infraction that took place years ago, Trump blabbed the court proceedings were an “election interfering” political game specifically designed to put his nose out of joint, while he guns for the Republican presidential nomination! 

    Election-interfering — what an irony!  A man that lost the presidential election in 2020 but brazenly lied he won — and still lying, thus gravely undermining the most sacred crux of American democracy  — stakes a laughable claim on election interference!

    But away from Trump, perhaps America’s most famous — or notorious? — man-child, McCarthy was ousted for what should, pre-Trump, have been hailed by all as nobility.

    Earlier, MacCarthy had struck a deal with President Joe Biden to pass a money law, so that America wouldn’t default on its debt obligations, thus averting a global economic crisis.  Then, a few days ago, he struck a bi-partisan bill, with the House Democrats, to avert a government shutdown. 

    The Republican MAGA anarchists would rather call both bluffs and let heavens fall — and for that twin-reason, MacCarthy must go!

    With this MAGA power chaos, and with the 2024 elections looming in the horizon, will Americans trust the party of Abe Lincoln, now hijacked by Trump and his MAGA base, with power any time soon?

    That’s for the American electorate to say.  One thing is clear, though: Trump is driving an American decline.  The folks out there had better jerk awake before it’s too late!

  • U.S. impeachment: trite or dare?

    U.S. impeachment: trite or dare?

    There’s a crassly partisan bent about United States politics that hazards the country’s two-century-old democracy. The perennial tussle between Republicans and Democrats atimes defies rational objectivity and aims purely at partisan advantage, if so at the cost trivializing institutionalised tools of accountability in American political culture like impeachment. That appears to be the case with an impeachment inquiry lately launched by Republican-controlled House of Representatives against President Joe Biden, who is a Democrat.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the impeachment probe of Biden over Republican claims that he profited from his son Hunter Biden’s business deals in places like Ukraine and China when he was vice-president. Biden served as vice-president from 2009 to 2017 under President Barack Obama, and Republicans are plying the argument that Hunter’s business deals constituted an abuse of office on his father’s part. Only that the GOP, as Republicans are known, has so far not found evidence showing that Biden Sr. made money from nor was involved in the son’s ventures. Information being pushed by the Republicans at best suggest there is a perception of conflict of interest on the part of Hunter.

    Read Also: Acquiring entrepreneurial skills for fiscal stability

    In announcing the impeachment probe, McCarthy said the “allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption” warranted further investigation by the House. But analysts find it hard to escape the feeling the Biden probe is in revenge for the double impeachment of former President Donald Trump, who is GOP patron and its likely candidate for the 2024 U.S. presidential election in which Biden is expected to seek re-election. Trump, as president from 2017 to 2021, was twice impeached by Democrats-controlled House: the first time in December 2019 for using presidential power and the prospect of military aid to try arm-twisting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to initiate a criminal probe of Biden, who at the time had emerged his opponent for the 2020 presidential poll; and the second time in January 2021 – one week before his term expired – for desperate attempts to upturn the outcome of that election which favoured Biden.

    In an interview with Megyn Kelly, a former anchor on conservative Fox News, Trump impliedly admitted that the Biden impeachment probe was spurred by revenge. “I think had they not done it to me… perhaps you wouldn’t have it being done to them. And this is going to happen with indictments too,” he said.

    It’s not that even if Biden is impeached, he will be removed from office since votes to convict him won’t reach two-thirds majority in the Democrats-controlled Senate. But he would make unflattering history as the fourth president to be impeached in American history, and the third in the bitterly polarized last quarter-century Shame! 

  • Gleam from gloom?

    Gleam from gloom?

    From the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) may have come some statistical gleam from the economic gloom — marginal increase in public power supply slashing  operational costs.

    That’s trite, to be sure: better supply from the public grid should push down cost, in this season of high diesel and petrol costs.  Still, the message is clear:only an ingrained real sector can overthrow the impunity of the dollar, which throws the local economy into a maelstrom of inflation.  Only humming manufacturing is clearest testimony to an ingrained real sector.

    From MAN statistics, in the first half of 2023, manufacturing enjoyed a marginally improved flush of electricity from the public grid.  Between January and June 2023, factory machines received 11.3 hours per day in electricity — up from 10.2 hours for January to June 2022.

    That was just a 1.1-hour improvement.  Yet, costs to fund alternative power dived from N76.70 billion to N60.47 billion — a 21.1 per cent plunge.

    That plunge — and gain — is even more impressive in statistical terms: a 1.1 hour rise in public electricity supply (1.1 per cent) led to 21.1 per cent electricity cost reduction:  marginally more than a fifth of the old cost outlay!

    Sounds magical, doesn’t it?  If such a blip in the power surge could cause electricity cost tumbling, how much more will massive power boost the real sector?

    Could that lead to some manufacturing paradise, where well-powered factory machines hum without end, warehouses choke with manufactured products, these goods being the sweat of millions of employed Nigerian youths, with inflation beaten back and the economy experiencing a long-deserved cool-off?

    Talk of an industrial paradise!  Still, we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves — except to repeat that adequate power supply holds the key to salvaging Nigerian industries (and economy).  This statistics shows the clear way to go and the government must do everything to fix the power challenge.

    But the quoted stats could be skewed to areas in the country like Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Warri, Kano, etc — established hubs; and power supply dire in other areas. 

    That means a statistical skew means little or nothing, until the positive trend can be replicated in every corner of this vast country, where folks needs constant electricity to power their lives, household or corporate.

    Nevertheless, this glimpse is very encouraging.  Contrary to the one-track, nothing-has-happened mindset of the wailing and crying ensemble, the old Buhari government gave power its best shot — five of the six months under review fell within its tenure, even when it was lame duck and things were on the slow lane.

    It’s time therefore for the new Tinubu government to drive constant power to levels never before known in Nigerian history.  With focus and determination, it’s doable.

  • Hiccups and fisticuffs over palliatives

    Hiccups and fisticuffs over palliatives

    There is only a thin line, as they say in street lingo, between ‘How are you?’ and ‘Who are you?’ One is an expression of endearment and friendship, while the other is a challenge  to hostile confrontation negating friendship. The border line is thin. And that thin line gets easily crossed, as it seems, where distribution of palliatives intended by government to cushion the hardships of citizens occasioned by the economic reforms of the present administration is involved.

    Ondo State Women Affairs and Social Development Commissioner Olubunmi Osadahun, who is presumably a stalwart of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state since she serves in an APC government, suffered a broken head recently from another chieftain of the party, namely the APC chairman in Akoko Northwest Ward 1, Olumide Awolumate, popularly known as “Cuba.” They are members of the same party family, but departure point reportedly came over the manner in which Osadahun conducted the distribution of the palliative items to vulnerable households, which apparently was to Awolumate’s dissatisfaction. The Ondo government had in the previous week flagged off the distribution of the palliatives and posted commissioners to lead the exercise in their respective local government area.

    Read Also: PDP will not exceed four years in Osun, says APC council chair

    Reports said some APC members in Akoko Northwest council area alleged that government officials shrouded the distribution of palliatives in needless secrecy. Awolumate’s specific beef with Commissioner Osadahun was said to be that she allegedly removed his name from beneficiaries of the palliatives in Arigidi. A viral video showed how the party chieftain engaged the commissioner in public fisticuffs, smashing her head with a chair and raising a table to encore he was stopped. The commissioner came off with a deep cut and a massive lump on her head, and had to be rushed to hospital for medical attention. Some youths loyal to the commissioner reportedly thereafter counterattacked the party chieftain and left him battered as well. The matter was, of course, reported to the police who have said they are pursuing their investigation. Meanwhile, State Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu expressed deep displeasure over the matter and said he would ensure the attack on his commissioner is duly requited by the law.

    But how did it come to the point that two leading officials of state were involved in a dog fight over palliatives meant to succour the less privileged? The items were not perks from which a share should have been demanded as of a right, and neither were they meant to be items for dispensing patronage and motivating cult support. But that is what results when privileged persons who should join efforts to fight for the common good fight over commoners’ goods (i.e. palliatives).