Category: Hardball

The illness of Aketi — the Governor of Ondo State, Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu — has again brought to the fore the political “legend” of spare tyre: that rather graceless reference to the office of Deputy Governor or Vice President.

It is doubtful if that reference is an exclusive Nigerian coinage.  Its universal imagery is clear enough: so long as a car’s four tyres are okay, the spare tyre is “useless”.  But encounter a puncture, and no spare tyre to the rescue, and you’d taste the might of its “useless-ness”!

The “contempt” here for “spare tyre” comes from the over-personalization of public office: what with a buzz of “eye service” hustlers, ready to thrust a dagger into mates, just to please the big boss — even if that “colleague” is the deputy governor!

But when crisis comes, such intrigues fall apart; and the government’s cohesion fractures, if not outright collapses.

Nigeria’s first fearsome experience was during the health crisis of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. 

Self-appointed presidential enforcers ensured that power transfer didn’t go to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, with many of those paper tigers correctly fearing their reckless and past rudeness to Dr. Jonathan would catch up with them; with the “spare tyre’s” ascension to legitimate power which, in any case, he was an integral part of.

A similar scenario appears playing out in Ondo State with Aketi abroad on medical leave and Deputy Governor Lucky Ayedatiwa, acting as governor. 

But with a July 2 report of The Nation suggesting a divided Ondo cabinet, Ayedatiwa would appear just only in government, but not totally in power! (to parody that Ibrahim Babangida quip, in the heat of the June 12, 1993 presidential election result annulment crisis).

Though Mrs Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, the Ondo commissioner for Information and Orientation, has poured cold water on such a division, previous spins and counter-spins from the Ondo front suggest there is no smoke without fire.

Still, this bestiality would have been averted, had civility been the norm; and Nigeria’s political institutions more deepened; and offices less personified.

Hardball prays for the safe return of Aketi.  May God nurse him to full wellness!  But as he was not the first high public holder to be indisposed, he wouldn’t be the last.  Yet, the Constitution is worked such that whatever happens to the individual, the work of state must continue.

So, let everyone seize the Ondo crisis as turning point to deepen institutions of state.  The Constitution has done its part.  Let the humans in charge evolve a culture of service and civility, built on mutual respect and grace. 

That way, even the “spare tyre” would earn the respect and honour due to that office — and his person.

Elder generations of Nigerians would remember him as a mercurial politician. Long after his tenure ended as the Information Minister in the First Republic, Chief TOS Benson was still fondly hailed by admirers in his native Yorubaland as “Adek’ilumo” (he whose arrival is noticed by all and sundry). Partly for his gift of the garb and and power dressing as socialite. 

In contemporary time, another political player that could be said to have been enjoying similar attention is perhaps Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. Largely on account of his durability over the decades. First as military head of state and later as two-term civilian President. Even as retired General in the 80s and early 90s and later as ex-President in the late 2000s and 2010s, he literally constituted himself into a thorn in the flesh of sitting leaders — whether military or civilian — by lobbing “letter bombs” at them, with a sanctimony that was both furious and magisterial. 

So legendary did OBJ become in this post-retirement vocation of busybody that he was invested with the chieftaincy of “Ebora” (deity) of Owuland in his native Abeokuta. Some fawning adulators even added a panegyrics: “Aforid’epenu” (who whose doughty spirit neutralizes potent curses). So much that most leaders would rather patronize him, not out of genuine love but fear. 

Well, for Chief Obasanjo, it appears the talisman has expired. During the Sallah holiday, Ogun State received an important visitor with “almighty” OBJ completely omitted from the programme. For the better part of Thursday, both Abeokuta and Ijebu Ode literally quaked as President Bola Ahmed Tinubu visited. Both Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo III, and the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, were full of adulation and prayers for him. At the Alake’s palace, for instance, Governor Dapo Abiodun, grabbed an opportunity to ingratiate himself to President Tinubu. 

Sadly, while all lasted, no one remembered or missed the chicken farmer in Ota. Obasanjo was probably left to munch his Sallah meat and down his favorite gourd of farm-fresh palm wine, alone. 

The striking irony: Obasanjo’s hill-top mansion in Abeokuta was one of the places Tinubu had immediately visited last year in deference while seeking support after emerging the flag-bearer of All Progressives Congress (APC). 

Obasanjo’s apparent demystification today was no doubt accelerated by his failed gamble in the last presidential polls, worsened by his shamelessly undisguised, maniacally desperate call for the “annulment” of the election results in areas where his anointed candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, lost. In other words, he wanted the rule of the game changed midstream in a desperation to rig victory for his fumbling horse in the race, anyhow. 

With that, OBJ apparently lost what remained of his credibility as a statesman after the infamy of hustling for “third term” in 2006. Such odious conduct only refreshed public memory of his similarly treacherous role in the abortion of democracy in 1993 in the twilight of the Babangida regime. 

For a narcissist who considers himself the ultimate “Baba of Nigeria”, it must indeed be painful for Obasanjo that the presidential train lumbered past his now shabby station without a courtesy stop.

You do not use affliction of leprosy to remedy scalding burns from hot oil, do you? But that is what blasphemy killers in Sokoto appear to be doing and they are getting away with it – thus far, at least.

A resident of the state capital fell victim to blasphemy killing last Sunday, barely a year after another resident did in a gory circumstance that has gone unrequited till date. Usman Buda, a butcher at Sokoto main abattoir, was killed by an irate mob for allegedly making insulting comments against the holy Prophet Muhammad. Reports said he made the blasphemous comment during an argument with another trader at the abattoir on the said day; with eyewitness sources claiming he repeated the comment when confronted by some people present, upon which irate youths attacked him. Some of Buda’s friends at the market who attempted to rescue him were as well attacked and needed to be taken for medical attention. The police, in a statement confirming the incident, said he was battered and inflicted with severe injuries by the time its personnel mobilised to the scene following a distress call. “On (police’s) arrival, the mob escaped the scene and left the victim unconscious, where he was rescued and taken to Usmanu Danfodiyo Teaching Hospital, Sokoto for treatment and was later confirmed dead,” police command spokesperson Ahmad Rufa’i, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), stated. He added that investigation was underway to bring perpetrators to book.

Read Also: Alleged blasphemy: police confirm butcher’s killing in Sokoto

It was in May, last year, that a student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Deborah Samuel, was lynched by her fellow students after being accused of blasphemy. Protests broke out when the police arrested suspects in connection with the gruesome act, but no one has yet been charged with the killing. As the protest spread, the Sokoto government had to declare a curfew to contain the situation.

Already, prospects look bleak for a hard tackle against Buda’s killers. Sokoto State Governor Ahmed Aliyu, in his reaction, vowed his administration’s resolve to deal decisively with anyone who blasphemes the Prophet. In a statement by his spokesperson, he cautioned residents against any act capable of degrading the personality of the Prophet, especially in a state like Sokoto that is Muslim-dominated. He cautioned, though, that the people need “avoid taking laws into their own hands and instead report any alleged crime or blasphemy to the appropriate quarters for necessary action.”

It was helpful that Mr. Governor acknowledged the issue as “alleged crime of blasphemy,” because that is what it is until suspects are duly reported, proven guilty and penalised under the law. Mob killing of blasphemy suspects is sheer murder, worse than blasphemy, and religious leaders should help their followers get that.

With the macabre drama from Russia, Hardball can’t just resist a pun with a smirk, on the embattled President Vladmir Putin — did Yevgeny Prigozhin’s power show of June 24 portend an eventual “put out” for Putin’s regime, in place since 2000?

There is certainly some fatal restlessness that globally plagues strongmen, at the zenith of their hubris.

Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was doing just fine — until hubris pushed him to invade and annex Kuwait.  That proved the beginning of his end.  The Americans eventually bullied poor Saddam out of power — and life.

Putin too would appear to have caught such a bug. 

On 20 February 2014, Putin invaded and annexed Crimea, in Ukraine.  On 24 February 2023 — what’s all this about invasion-happy February? —  he returned to Ukraine: to perhaps finish the job? 

In days, he dreamed, he would capture the leading lights of the Ukraine, subjugate Kyiv, the capital, take  everyone to jail in Moscow, and maybe declare Ukraine eternal Russian province.

But  a fearsome Ukraine resistance turned that colourful dream into a grim nightmare, that continues to grind Putin and his occupation army.  Now, they can’t advance.  Neither can they retreat.  They are just stuck.  No tears from here!

Unlike Saddam, however, neither America nor the entire NATO could muscle Russia and its fearsome nukes. But the longer the stalemate in Ukraine, the likelihood of a regime implosion looms.  That was the spectre of the Prigozhin mutiny of June 24.

That Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries — which by the way Putin just disclosed the Russian state funded — took over Rostov-on-Don (the command-and-control city in south Russia, coordinating the Ukraine war) without much ado, was bad enough. 

Worse: the Wagner army drove furiously towards Moscow, threatening a showdown, with nary any military challenge.  For effect, the mutineers promptly shot down some attack planes and combat choppers, a shame the Russian authorities labour — in vain — to bury!

But the most disastrous, for Putin’s Ukraine invasion, was Prigozhin blabbing to Russians that their president told blatant lies to waste Russian lives in Ukraine.

“There was nothing extraordinary happening on the eve of February 24 [2022],” the Wagner chief declared. “The ministry of Defence is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there was insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO bloc.”

Prigozhin might have turned back his column and cut a deal, thanks to Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko, friend of both Putin and Prigozhin.  But given Putin’s humiliating scramble for damage control, it would appear dicey for the strongman and his regime: waging a needless war abroad, looking over their shoulders at home.

Again, no tears from here.  If you invade another country just because you can, then don’t grumble when the illogic of brute force hits back — often at your weakest point.

As it was with Adolf Hitler, so it is with Vladimir Putin.  The 21st century should have zero tolerance for gangling outlawry that Putin is putting on in Ukriane.  He should have learnt from the tragedy of Hitler and Nazi Germany — but no.

Those who don’t learn from history are promptly consumed by history.  No tears!

For the most reckless comment on the suspension of Godwin Emefiele, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, look no farther than that of Chima Uzor, who claimed to be the Ohanaeze Ndigbo’s director of national interest matters.

“To say the least,” Uzor barked, “this suspension is without due process and the arrest, despite a court order against DSS from arresting him, is provocative; and well-meaning Nigerians must resist and ensure it does not stand.  We view the development,” he darkly warned, “as clearly part of the new administration’s scheme of ethnic cleansing of the Igbos from public offices.  This is nothing” he insisted, “but a witch-hunt directed at the Igbos for no other reason other than they dared to oppose the new administration in the last general election.”

And how about this for a roaring clincher of a final and triumphal threat: “We are therefore asking President Bola Tinubu to beware of starting his administration with actions capable of driving an already shaking nation into chaos”?

What rubbish! 

It’s good though, that Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, the Ohanaeze president-general, swiftly countermanded Uzor in a statement Iwuanyanwu personally signed; dismissing Uzor as an impostor unknown to the body, stating Ohanaeze had no office for national interest matters. Just as well!

“Ohanaeze … has no intention whatsoever to interfere with the investigations by the DSS or other security agencies of the country.  Individuals,” he reasoned, “have a right to go to court and when the court of law proves the individual innocent, and Ohanaeze is convinced that the individual is innocent, Ohanaeze will take every step necessary to assist the individual.”

Read Also: Over 50 killed, 170 houses burnt in Imo community, Ohanaeze youths allege

That is wisdom.  That is common sense.  That is due process.  Any other thing is balderdash — and that’s the sum total of Uzor’s rookie outpouring.

To start with, the release teems with ignorance: suspension of the CBN governor opposes no due process.  It’s within the president’s powers.  What the president can’t do is a summary sack: he would need two-third majority of the Senate to do that.

And mischief: does Atiku Abubakar, a prominent northerner running in the 2023 presidential election, now equate the ‘North’ “daring to oppose” the winner of that election?  What sub-clannish thinking!

But the one that rankles most is the hare-brained malice: Emefiele’s suspension as ethnic cleansing of the Igbo from public office!  Where did that mind spring — from the darkest pit of Plato’s allegory of the cave?

Lost souls, like Uzor, can’t help the Igbo — or any other people.  It’s so embarrassing that it stresses yet again a golden silence, instead of spewing plain rubbish.  It’s good the rookie has been shut down by the right quarters.

Last weekend was hellish for motorists and others who used the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, which is undergoing renovation. ”The last Thursday, rolling into the weekend gridlock was simply hectic,” the Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Transportation, Abdulhafiz Toriola, was reported saying. It was an understated admission that using the expressway could be likened to experiencing hell.

A report quoted a motorist who said: “Lagos-Ibadan Expressway traffic is now so bad that vendors cook and sell rice and beans in open plates, would wait for you to finish eating, collect plates and wash to serve the next vehicle. This is how bad the gridlock is.” It was funny, but also not funny at all.

 The reconstruction of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, considered Nigeria’s busiest and most important highway, is work in progress, and it remains to be seen when the work will be completed. The oldest expressway in the country, it is the main route to the northern, southern and eastern parts of the country.

Read Also : FG suspends work on Lagos-Ibadan expressway

 In June 2021, the then chairman of the House of Representatives committee on works, Abubakar Kabir, during an inspection of roads in Lagos and other parts of the Southwest, was reported saying the Federal Government was working towards completing the road  rehabilitation project before May 2022. 

It’s more than a year since the said targeted completion date. The renovation is still ongoing, and the users of the expressway continue to face the accompanying hardship.   

Developing Nigeria requires developing and maintaining its infrastructure, and infrastructure renewal, expansion and development is expected to boost economic development. But people should not have to suffer because this particular expressway is being renovated. When such suffering continues because the renovation is unending, the authorities have a lot of explaining to do.

 The Federal Controller of Works, Lagos, Olukorede Kesha, announced in a statement the suspension of construction activities on “this ever busy and very important highway” from June 27 to July 2. 

According to him, this is “due to the recent heavy traffic flow being experienced on the Lagos- Shagamu route in the last couple of days, the inclement weather conditions, the forthcoming Eid Kabir and the advice of the traffic management team deployed to manage traffic-related issues on the project.” He added: “This is to allow travellers easy passage during the Eid holiday and minimise the discomfort during this very important period.”

This suggests that “the discomfort” may well return to the former level after the reconstruction resumes. That is unacceptable.    

Angry members of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) last week stormed the site of Shaanxi Construction Engineering Group Corporation, a Chinese firm building the new headquarters of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Lugbe, Abuja. They were protesting alleged dehumanising conditions under which Nigerians worked for the Chinese company.

The NLC members picketed Shaanxi’s site to prevent work being done under the conditions they were protesting. Initially, the firm’s officials resisted the protesters by locking the gates to the premises against them; but the workers would not be stopped and they reportedly broke through the gates to gain entrance onto the premises and ply their grouse. Shaanxi’s management officials received the complaints of the workers’ union, but neither responded to the allegations nor commented on the protest. They also declined media enquiries. The government of China has undertaken to build the new ECOWAS secretariat as part of an aid package, and Shaanxi is the construction firm handling the project.

Read Also: Court says order restraining Labour from going on strike remains

During the protest, NLC scribe Emma Ugboaja berated alleged inhumane treatment of workers at the construction site. According to him, the Chinese company engaged workers on ad hoc basis without employment terms or welfare benefits including medicare, and it was under such conditions a driver named Augustine died. He said Augustine’s wife had migrated with her husband and family to Abuja to make a living, adding: “Now the man…has ended up six feet down, leaving his poor widow to face the vagaries of life: no pension, no gratuity, no food, no water and no explanation. Where will help come from? Every day we plead with the government to provide a minimal social security net, to no avail. That is the challenge we have!” Augustine’s widow, Ruth, in her account, alleged that her husband worked for the firm since last year under such conditions as did not allow him to return home after work. According to her, he took ill early this year and the company failed to take him to hospital and also didn’t allow him to go home for treatment. “When they eventually permitted him to go home, his condition had worsened. He had a swollen neck and looked highly malnourished,” she said, adding that she took him to Gwagwalada Teaching Hospital and later the National Hospital in Abuja where he passed away. Throughout this ordeal, said the widow, the Chinese firm spurned her pleas for assistance and rather gave her termination letter for her husband.

It is long overdue for government to interrogate and remedy rampant claims of Nigerians engaged in slave labour in their own country by foreign firms that violate the National Policy on Occupational Safety and Health.

Eko Rice, product of the Lagos rice mill, Imota, near Ikorodu — the largest rice mill in Africa, third largest in the world — just hit the Commodities Exchange market.  Its quoted entry price is N33, 000 for a 50-kilogram bag.  Its projected yearly sale is 2.5 million units.

At N33, 000 per 50 kg bag, Eko Rice makes little dent on the rice — and other foodstuffs’ — inflationary spiral.  Some imported rice brands sell below that price (many at around N28, 000 to N30, 000) — still too high.

Still, many of these brands are smuggled stuff.  Many too may yet be mere chaff, past their prime as nutritive stuff, thus constituting latent health hazards.  Nevertheless, locally planted and processed rice, with no freighting costs over the seas, should cost far less than imported ones, other things being equal.

But like LAKE rice before it (LAKE is acronym for LAgos and KEbbi: the two states that collaborated to produce that rice brand), Eko Rice is symbol of an agricultural renaissance, which the Buhari Presidency dubbed “eat what you grow and grow what you eat.”

The promise of Eko Rice is therefore great.  With other local brands, agro-powered jobs could be secure and sustainable, so long as overall security is ramped up and farmer-herder clashes are reduced to the barest minimum, aside from securing the vast farms nationwide from rampaging bandits and allied criminals.

With larger plots of land put to safe and secure rice farming and more mills set up to process paddies, agriculture-processing could open the flood gates to Nigeria’s re-industrialization, so long as routine electricity supply is greatly boosted.  

With processing replicated agriculture-wide: mango, orange, etc (into fruit juices), cashew (processed both for local consumption and export) and cassava (processed into industrial starch), the prospects of food security is not only bright, thumping unemployment could also be a thing of the past.

But back to Eko Rice.  Its market entry price is certainly no comfort for an inflation-ravaged market and for the many poor household struggling to grind out a living.  Still, it’s at worst a hard start to a very promising journey of saturating the market with local rice, at good prices that make imported rice mostly unprofitable.

That should be the target of Eko Rice and other local brands — flooding the local market and then exporting the excess for forex.

That’s the rebound economy Nigeria needs — an agriculture process-led real sector, providing mass jobs, guaranteeing food security and affordability, and banishing poverty.

At that threshold waits the ultimate “dividend of democracy”.

It was a rambling defence of the Department of State Services (DSS) by its spokesperson, Peter Afunanya. The federal security agency was, in a manner of speaking, fighting back. But its statement exposed the reality that it was a losing battle.  

“Recently, about five major newspapers called out the DSS for bashing of sorts,” the agency observed. “The papers, which used their platforms to express varied views about the modus operandi of the Service include Vanguard, Daily Trust, The Sun, Tribune and Punch.”

The DSS said: “While Vanguard’s piece on 2nd June 2023 was “Dousing the DSS/EFCC Feud,” Daily Trust, on 6th June 2023, published an editorial titled “The DSS Must Conduct Its Duties as a Secret Service.” The Sun, on 7th June, published “The Needless DSS/EFCC Fracas” while Tribune on 8th June 2023 wrote on “The EFCC/DSS Confrontation.” Similarly, on 14th June 2023, Punch featured “DSS, Others Need Radical Reforms.”

It claimed that the editorials “looked every inch planted or organised,” described them as hatchet jobs, and accused the papers of “predictable bias and patterns.”

But the facts of the matter that triggered the mentioned editorials were not in the security agency’s favour. Dramatically, the DSS had yet again demonstrated lawlessness when its agents prevented personnel of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) from entering their Lagos office on May 30.

Read Also: Gerrard applauds Aribo’s defensive quality

EFCC spokesperson Wilson Uwujaren said in a statement that its operatives arrived at their office, No. 15 Awolowo Road, Ikoyi on the morning of May 30, and were “denied entry by agents of the Department of State Services, DSS, who had barricaded the entrance with armoured personnel carriers.”

 He added that the action was “strange to the commission given that we have cohabited with the DSS in that facility for 20 years without incident.”  He also said: “By denying operatives access to their offices, the commission’s operations at its largest hub with over 500 personnel, hundreds of exhibits, and many suspects in detention” were disrupted.  

The alleged disruption affected cases scheduled for court hearings, and suspects who had been invited for questioning, he explained, noting that the incident had “wider implications for the nation’s fight against economic and financial crimes.”

It took the intervention of President Bola Tinubu to normalise the situation. Tinubu’s spokesman, Tunde Rahman, said he had directed the DSS to “immediately vacate” the office of the EFCC, after reports of the incident were brought to his attention.

It was abnormal and unacceptable that a government agency acted like a bully against another government agency. That’s what the DSS did in this case. So, what was Afunanya talking about?