The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Classified scandals

    Classified scandals

    For the past six months or so, a new form of scandals has grabbed the United States: classified documents luxuriating in wrong places, instead of nestling in the US National Archives.

    Now, that has proved one equal opportunity laxity, plaguing the straight-as-pin and the skewed as “k-leg”: knocked knees in conventional English.  But again, in this equal-opportunity guilt (what did Christ say: he who has not sinned let him throw the first stone?), about everyone that faced the test failed.

    Still, the character of all oozed out; and there is no prize for he who played the happy, crowing Devil!

    The trap first caught Donald Trump, he who America would forever regret “smelled” the White House.  Perhaps it was his antics of trying to sit tight after his electoral shellacking.  Perhaps that executive tomfoolery put a lot of pressure on his administration’s orderly retreat from power, as expected under American democracy.

    Whatever the cause, his instinct was to stonewall and bluff as hell, when charged with harbouring classified documents that belonged to the “people”.  He bore his fangs.  Standing on his dignity as former President, he called the state’s bluff with his combative lawyers.  The Department of Justice counter-called his bluff too — and the rest, as they say, is history.

    The Dems — as Democrats are called — and their friendly media made a meal of it all, as the latest proof of the notoriety of you-know-who, when Saintly Joe, President Joe Biden, as straight as they come, got trapped in the same warp.

    By November 2022, it got known some classified papers — far less in volume and scope, to be sure — had been found in his private office at DC.  Later searches, by own lawyers, found others in his Wilmington, Delaware home, in a wanton a place as the garage!  The papers were from his tour as Vice President under Barrack Obama.

    It was the Republicans’ turn to throw tantrums; and threaten to use new-found powers in the House of Representatives to deal with the President, hoping such would explain, if not banish, Trump’s rotten conduct from public consciousness.  The President himself and some highly placed Dems were clearly embarrassed.

    But as fate would have it, Mike Pence, former Vice President under Trump, just reported himself!  His lawyers found similar documents in his library and promptly alerted the National Archives to come take them! 

    Pence as Trump nemesis!  As he scuttled Trump’s sit-tight rascality, which peaked with the 6 January 2021 invasion of the Capitol by hoodlums that Trump misled by his brazen election lies, he just took the crow from the mouth of those Congress Republicans, ready to row!

    Even in bad cases, you could still get some decent men.  Biden and Pence, across party lines, showed their innate decency, even if their conduct was rather disappointing.  Not Trump — with his childish, surly, silly, no-retreat-no-surrender antics, even when he’s manifestly wrong.

    The lesson here is clear.  Had such happened here, some self-loathing folks would have seized the trumpet and blared: it “would never have happened in America”!  Well, thanks to Trump it did.  Thanks too, Trump has shown the so-called “Third World” has no monopoly of rotten public behaviour.

  • Suspicious operation

    Suspicious operation

    Clearly, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has a lot of explaining to do following the alleged detention of Warredi Enisuoh, the Executive Director, Operations and Technical, Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited.

    The company issued a statement saying Enisuoh “was invited by the EFCC and detained” on January 19, and “he has been in EFCC custody since then.”

    According to the company, “the commission has insisted that unless he provided a list of names who were his intelligence sources he would not be released.”

    The company had discovered an unbelievable number of oil-theft points last year after it signed a controversial N48bn-per-year pipeline surveillance contract with the federal government to check the massive oil theft in the Niger Delta. 

    The business is linked to Government Ekpemupolo, popularly called Tompolo, the former leader of the militant group, Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta. He was quoted as saying “I think we have found over 58 points that have been tapped in both Delta and Bayelsa states.”

     The identities of the thieves who built these theft points and ran them have not been revealed. Tompolo was reported saying his firm is “only providing intelligence for the security people to assist to do the work.” 

    The alleged detention of Enisuoh is counter-productive. If the company is supposed to supply intelligence to support the fight against oil thieves, the focus of the fighters should be on the thieves and not intelligence sources.

    The company claimed “efforts are being made to strangulate Tantita operations,” adding that “The EFCC’s invitation came right in the middle of an ongoing operation to unravel one of the biggest oil stealing cartels in this country.”

    These are weighty allegations. They make the EFCC look suspicious. Indeed, the company also alleged that “some powerful forces in the country are hiding behind operatives of the EFCC to use the commission to scuttle the intensified action against the theft of Nigeria’s oil resources in the country.”

    Crude oil is Nigeria’s main export, and the country is bleeding terribly from the effect of scandalous oil theft. Last October, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva was reported saying “Oil theft has denied the country of an estimated 700,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The adverse effect of this is the drop in the production of crude oil and decline in the national income.’’  It is estimated that more than $3.3bn (£2.9bn) has been lost to crude oil theft since 2021.

    The alleged detention of Enisuoh is curious. The EFCC needs to urgently clarify the situation, and douse suspicion that it is indirectly fuelling oil theft. 

  • Hammer on hatchetman

    Hammer on hatchetman

    Appointees typically work at the behest of their principals, or in line with those principals’ fancies. Not so Nasarawa State Urban Development Board (NUDB) Managing Director Mohammed Wada Yahaya. He worked with overreachingly and apparently at cross-purpose with his principal, Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Sule, and has incurred the big stick. It is left to guesswork who Yahaya was seeking to please with his service exuberance in the first place.

    The Nasarawa State Government last weekend suspended Yahaya from office for his agency’s indiscriminate destruction of campaign billboards of political parties and candidates vying for offices in the 2023 general election. A letter by Secretary to the State Government Muhammed Ubandoma-Aliyu said the environmental agency boss was being suspended for acts deemed unruly and insensitive to the mood of the season. The letter read in part: “The attention of the Nasarawa State Government has been drawn to a series of complaints regarding the indiscriminate destruction of billboards erected by politicians and their supporters for the purpose of canvassing for votes in the 2023 general elections, including the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). The action of the NUDB under your supervision was taken without recourse to permission from constituted authority and depicts insensitivity to the need to conduct the elections under an atmosphere free from acrimony and rancour.” Yahaya was further told the unwarranted destruction of billboards was “tantamount to negligence, insubordination and misconduct,” and that the state governor had consequently approved that he proceed on indefinite suspension without pay pending more thorough investigation. He was directed to hand over the agency’s affairs to the most senior director with immediate effect.

    Reports said the state government had earlier queried the environmental agency boss over rampant destruction of campaign billboards. “As an appointee of government, this is least expected of you. Your action at this time is inappropriate, knowing fully well that elections are already at hand,” the query had said.

    So, who was Yahaya trying to impress with his high hand against campaign billboards? It couldn’t have been an issue with environmental abuse, otherwise Governor Sule would not have taken strong exception to his exploits. And curiously, neither was it sheer partisan intolerance since the state government said billboards of the ruling party were also affected. It would seem Yahaya simply had no accommodation for the electoral ferment of this campaign season. Such people can’t thrive in a pluralistic society; thank heavens there’s the state governor to call him to order. There are many people with Yahaya’s mindset in other states, but we do not have the likes of Governor Sule. That is why our democracy is under siege.

  • GOAT as metaphor

    GOAT as metaphor

    Lionel Scaloni, the triumphant Argentina coach to Oatar World Cup 2022, just lapsed into the supercilious GOAT — greatest of all time — controversy:  Diego Amando Maradona was great but Leo Messi is greater.  How?

    The entire GOAT hullabaloo betrays not thinking beyond the present, having a near-contempt for the past and pretending there is no future.

    That’s what the GOAT uproar is all about: a metaphor for superciliousness and presumption by those who don’t probe deep enough yet hurry to the mountain tops to crow.

    Don’t forget, the latest GOAT started with football politics: Europe, the epicentre of global football with its near-monopoly of shaping football and allied affairs, wanted its own to rival Messi from South America.

    Messi, no doubt the footballing boss of his era, is the closest to the amoeba of football.  By its severe but beautiful harmony, you don’t really know which part of its mass would strike, when the chips are down.

    But then came Portugal’s Christiano Ronaldo — first C-Ronaldo (to distinguish him from the Brazil original, Ronaldo the Fenomeno, 1994/2002 World Cup winner); then just Ronaldo or CR-7 at the height of his reign, now back to C-Ronaldo, in his evening years of the game, looking for the last financial hurrah in Saudi Arabia.

    As a well-drilled athlete, Ronaldo had turned himself into a fearful goal machine that seemed to defy age or gravity.  But even at his zenith, he never matched the clouds, where Messi the nimble and all-round football artist, struts his stuff.

    But Europe would create its own god for commerce and Ronaldo fitted the bill, even if he and Messi are ethnic Latinos.  Enter, GOAT!  Between Messi and Ronaldo, Qatar determined the GOAT.

    Messi lifted the cup, and was the championship’s most valuable player. But Ronaldo scored a lone goal (a penalty) and dramatically dropped out of the Portugal first eleven, getting banished to the last 15 minutes or so.  Why, it’s hardly flattering that the guy that replaced Ronaldo announced his arrival with a hat trick!

    But to push the Messi-Ronaldo GOAT rivalry beyond their era is supercilious — if not outright absurd.

    But exactly that has shaped Scaloni’s reasoning that Messi is greater than Maradona. Maradona went to Napoli, hitherto an indifferent mid-table side; and made them into formidable champions.  Messi, on the other hand, won near-all his glory with Barcelona, almost always a top performer in Spain.

    It’s even more outrageous to compare Messi or Ronaldo or Maradona with Pele, the ultimate King that shattered almost all records and consecrated the No. 10 jersey as a modern football holy cloak: deserving of only the true maestros.  Even C-Ronald couldn’t dream “No. 10”, a tradition the French Kylian Mbappe appears set to continue.

    Pele’s record towered above everyone else’s — the real GOAT, every factor considered.

  • Escalating exodus

    Escalating exodus

    In the health sector, not only doctors and nurses are leaving the country as if escaping from a hopeless situation.

     “In 2022 alone, the nation lost about 906 medical laboratory scientists to human capital flight,” the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria said in a statement, on January 14, after the meeting of its national executive council in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

    The association lamented that “the human capital flight has escalated to an alarming proportion,” and blamed it on poor leadership, corruption, poor remuneration and toxic work experience. 

    Indeed, the exit figures relating to healthcare professionals in the country are disturbing. More than 9,000 medical doctors were reported to have left the country to work in the UK, Canada and America, from 2016 to 2018. Also, more than 700 medical doctors trained in Nigeria were said to have relocated to the UK from December 2021 to May 2022, a period of six months. The number of Nigeria-trained nurses registered in the UK was said to have grown from 2,790 in March 2017 to 7,256 in March 2022.

     Notably, the President of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Dr Uche Ojinmah, said at an event last October: “Nigeria-trained doctors are leaving in droves for Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. No official figures yet, but it can’t be less than 2,000 as of today.”

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    It is troubling that the authorities, who should tackle the problem, are busy doing nothing about it. There are consequences. The country’s doctor-patient ratio is alarmingly low, and is nowhere near the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) standard doctor-patient ratio of one doctor per 600 people.

    With only about four doctors available per 10,000 people in Nigeria, it is unsurprising that there are issues regarding availability of, and access to, quality primary healthcare services in the country. There is no doubt that the problem is compounded by the flight of nurses and medical laboratory scientists.

    It’s clear who is to blame for the poor working conditions that make healthcare professionals continue to leave the country for pastures new.

    Importantly, in April 2001, heads of state of African Union countries met in Abuja and pledged to set a target of allocating at least 15 percent of their annual budget to improve the health sector. It is disappointing that Nigeria has consistently failed to meet the standard of the Abuja Declaration.

    For instance, only 4.7 percent of the national budget was allocated to the health sector in 2022; and only 5.75 per cent of the total budget is allocated to the health sector in 2023.

    The exodus of healthcare professionals is detrimental to the country. The authorities should urgently deal with the contributory factors.  

  • A job-line curse?

    A job-line curse?

    American leaders seem unable to avoid getting in trouble over their handling of classified official documents. Two successive presidents, besides one-time top presidential contender and former secretary of state have at different times fallen into scandal – apparently inadvertently for two, but from premeditation on the part of one. In all, the scandals hazarded / is hazarding respective leader’s political life.

    In the thick of electioneering for the 2016 presidential contest in the United States, a slogan by supporters of Republican flagbearer Donald Trump against his Democrat counterpart and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was, ‘Put her in jail!’ Trump’s supporters were alluding to the private email server scandal in which Clinton was embroiled and for which she was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Whereas FBI spared her criminal prosecution, though rebuked her along with her aides for being “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information, Trump’s supporters were calling for her to be slammed in jail. Clinton had created a private email server for all her electronic correspondences during her four years as secretary – both work-related and personal. This was, however, against the rule of confidentiality that required her to have used an email account hosted on servers owned and managed by the US government.

    Ex-President Trump, whose supporters had wanted Clinton jailed, is at the moment being considered for criminal prosecution for making away with classified records he should have handed over at the end of his tenure early in 2021. On 8th August 2022, the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida to seize troves of classified documents he failed to turn in to the National Archives and rather appropriated as personal memorabilia. An independent special counsel was named by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)  to investigate Trump and Attorney-General Merrick Garland is reported to be strongly considering criminal charges against him; though Trump, in his typical elemental style, accuses the present administration of using the instrument of power for political witch-hunt.

    Now, incumbent President Joe Biden is himself in a mess after it was revealed that government’s secret papers from his days as vice president were discovered among his private papers at his Delaware home. Reports suggested there was no sign Biden deliberately took the materials and he’s cooperated with authorities to return them to the National Archives. But against  the backdrop of Trump’s case, he must prove he’s not just one vindictive hypocrite. Meanwhile, DoJ has appointed a special counsel on Biden’s case, just like it did with Trump’s.

    The way those leaders keep falling into the same specie of scandal, you would wonder if it’s a curse in line of the job.

  • January 6. January 8

    January 6. January 8

    Two years and two days apart, Donald Trump’s infamy has made a landfall in Brazil.

    On 6 January 2021, a Trump already shellacked at the polls, goaded his ultra-right wing supporters to launch an insurrection at the Capitol, the high shrine of American democracy, in a fond hope to foil the parliamentary certification of Electoral College votes already lost and won.

    It ended a fiasco for America, which preens as the undisputed bastion of democracy on earth.  Yet, some deluded Trump supporters mouthed a possible coup, if only the blighted commander-in-chief could manifest that in his crass body language.

    For Trump, however, it was a personal catastrophe, even if he is too gross to admit so.  He keeps digging and digging, as he vanishes into a hole, taking his beleaguered Republican Party with him.

    That is clear from GOP’s under-whelming 2022 mid-term congressional elections; and from Kevin McCarthy’s shambolic bid for House Speakership, not making the required 218 counts, even after 15 rounds of voting, spanning days.

    On 8 January 2023, Trump’s Brazilian wannabe went two steps farther.  A camped mob numbering thousands invaded the Supreme Court, the Presidential Palace and the Congress building in Brasilia, leaving an orgy of violence and arson.  For context, that’s like invading the White House, the Capitol and the Supreme Court by a mob numbering thousands!

    Even before new President Lula DaSilva’s inauguration on January 1, this mob, camped around military cantonments in Brasilia, São Paulo and other major cities, was busy goading the military to step in and change the result of an election that Bolsonaro, their candidate, lost fair and square — or in the alternative, seize power for themselves.

    Still, after much said and done, Trump remains the villain-in-chief in this fascist drama.  As Bolsonaro, he goaded his supporters to march on the Capitol on January 6, though his Brazil photocopy was far less direct and brazen.

    Still, after the deed was done, Bolsonaro condemned his supporters, decrying their violence though upholding their right to free assembly.  But even this much, Trump in his grand delusion absolutely lacks the grace to admit.

    Meanwhile, Bolsonaro, Trump’s dud copy in everything ignoble — COVID-19 denial, while thousands were dying; casting empty doubt on the democratic process, just because you know you’d be belted at the polls — is holed up in a Florida hospital.

    By that, Brazil’s former far-right president, defeated as his gross American patron saint, nestles in the same US state to where Trump has fled as executive “refugee”, after expending his political capital in his native New York.

    America had better stop pussyfooting and put Trump in his place, using the full majesty of due process.  Otherwise, it stands an epochal risk to lose its bragging right as the global high cathedral of democracy.

    First, it was DC.  Now, it’s Bralisia.  Where next will the Trump madness head and land?

  • Riots in Brazil

    Riots in Brazil

    An adage among the Yoruba literally translates: an ailment that chronically afflicts Aboyade would be readily found among all Oya worshippers. Oya in ancient Yoruba mythology was a water goddess, and Aboyade is a figurative representation of her devotees. The import of the saying is that a common cause typically produces a common effect, hence a disease that hobbles Aboyade would be generic to all Oya devotees because they must all have contracted it from the same source.

    There’s an uncanny sense in which this saying holds true for former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and former United States President Donald Trump. Riots staged in Brazil early this week by Bolsonaro’s supporters closely replicated the 6th January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters following his loss of the 2019 presidential poll. Thousands of Bolsonaro militants on Sunday, 8th January, stormed the Three Powers Plaza in Brasília, the heart of Brazilian politics in the capital housing the presidential palace, the supreme court and congress, vandalising those citadels of the three government arms. More than 3,000 also camped out in front of the army headquarters, calling for military coup to overthrow the country’s left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who took office only on 1st January. Bolsonaro lost the presidential election of last October to Silva after repeatedly questioning the efficacy of Brazil’s institutions: he accused the supreme court of bias and plied unsubstantiated claims of poll fraud – same things Trump did with the U.S. institutions including Congress for failing to upturn the win by President Joe Biden. Bolsonaro’s  supporters took his narrative wholeheartedly, like Trump’s did. Shocking video footages showed them sprinting up the ramp into the presidential offices, roaming the building’s corridors and vandalising nearby supreme court where windows had been smashed. Clips also showed fire burning inside the congress building, with furniture broken and strewn around.

    Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain whose main international ally was Trump, denied encouraging Sunday’s attack. He indeed said what happened crossed the line of democratic protest, but simultaneously took the sting from that criticism. “Peaceful demonstrations, within the law, form part of democracy. However, depredations and invasions of public buildings like those that happened (Sunday), as well as those practised by the left in 2013 and 2017, are exceptions to the rule,” he wrote on Twitter. The ex-president, who flew out of Brazil on the eve of Lula’s inauguration and is currently in Florida, stopped short of condemning the mob outright and instead hit out at Lula’s claims that he was responsible.

    So much similarity you would see there to Trump’s handling of the January 6th Capitol riots and aftermath. And that must be because they shared the same disposition to losing elections – the bad loser syndrome.

  • Unrealistic deadline

    Unrealistic deadline

    With about four months to the end of his second and final four-year term in office, President Muhammadu Buhari, who has doubled as Minister of Petroleum Resources since 2015, is still doing more talking than acting concerning the monumental sleaze in the country’s oil sector.

    As usual, he recently talked tough, directing security agencies to end crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta before he leaves office on May 29. If he couldn’t tackle the problem in more than seven years in office, can he do so within the time left?

     He gave the latest directive to troops of the Joint Task Force Operation Delta Safe, in Effurun, Delta State and Port Harcourt, Rivers State, through the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva.

    According to a statement issued by Sylva’s Senior Adviser (Media & Communications), Horatius Egua, Buhari “directed that no litre of crude oil should be stolen in the country again, especially in the South-south.” “He wants crude oil theft eliminated by May 29, 2023, as one of the legacies of his government,” the statement said.

    An unbelievable number of oil-theft points were discovered last year following the Federal Government’s controversial pipeline surveillance contract with a company, Tantita Security Services, to check the massive oil theft in the Niger Delta.  The company is linked to Government Ekpemupolo, popularly called Tompolo, the former leader of the militant group, Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta.

    Notably, Sylva, through his representative, said at an event at the Petroleum Training Institute (PTI), Effurun, Delta State, last October: “Oil theft has denied the country of an estimated 700,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The adverse effect of this is the drop in the production of crude oil and decline in the national income.’’  It is estimated that more than $3.3bn (£2.9bn) has been lost to crude oil theft since 2021.

    The Buhari administration now claims that its “renewed efforts in tackling crude oil theft” and “scaled-up security efforts” have jacked up production from about 900, 000 barrels per day to about 1.5 million barrels per day.

     A government that flaunts an anti-corruption badge was expected to cleanse the country’s oil sector. The Buhari administration has been a disappointment in this respect. Crude oil is Nigeria’s main export, and it is disturbing that the country continues to bleed terribly from the effect of scandalous sleaze in the oil sector.

    Buhari’s latest directive can be described as dramatic and his deadline unrealistic. 

  • Bauchi, hammer and collaterals

    Bauchi, hammer and collaterals

    The Bauchi Emirate Council, early last week, wielded the hammer against a former government minister and traditional title holder, Alhaji Muhammadu Bello Kirfi. It removed him as Wazirin Bauchi and a member of the emirate council. But the council only acted on express prompting of the Bauchi State Government.

    In a letter dated 3rd January, 2023, secretary to the emirate council, Alh. Shehu Mudi Muhammad, notified 83-year-old Kirfi of the sanctions that it attributed to his “disloyalty and disrespect” to Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed. The council scribe stated: “I am directed to refer to a letter received from the Ministry of Local Government Affairs…dated 30th December, 2022. The content of the said letter indicated your disloyalty and disrespect to the Executive Governor of the state and the government. It therefore directed your removal with immediate effect.”

    Kirfi was Special Duties minister in the 2000s under ex-Olusegun Obasanjo administration, having also served as minister in the 1980s under former President Shehu Shagari. It was the second time in five years that Kirfi was coming under the hammer of the emirate council, which had suspended him in March 2017 for alleged “disloyalty and unruly behaviour” under then Governor Mohammed Abubakar. Three years later, upon  intervention by incumbent Governor Bala Mohammed in consultation with stakeholders and the emirate – the Emir of Bauchi in particular – that suspension was lifted in August 2020. The governor personally visited the elder statesman in his house to present him with the letter reinstating him as Wazirin Bauchi, and he extolled his patriotism, commitment and sportsmanship, especially his efforts to protect the rights of Bauchi indigenes and Nigerians in general. Those were generous plaudits. But now, less than three years on, the octogenarian is back in the cold at the instance of his erstwhile rehabilitator.

    Barely 24 hours after Kirfi’s removal, his daughter and Commissioner of Cooperatives and SMEs Development in Bala Mohammed’s administration, Hajia Sa’adatu Bello Kirfi, threw her job.  In a letter through the Secretary to the State Government, she wrote to resign her commissionership and membership of Bauchi State Executive Council, and thanked the governor “for allowing me to serve my state under your administration.” No further explanation was offered. Almost simultaneously, the Senior Special Assistant to Governor Mohammed on Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Harsanu Guyaba, also resigned without offering reasons.

    A question that arises is what repeated “disloyalty and disrespect” by Kirfi involved. Is the senior citizen being squeezed for partisan compliance that he isn’t up to, or is it about a personal character flaw on his part? If it is lack of partisan compliance, the emirate is being used to undermine itself because the integrity of the traditional institution consists largely in political neutrality.