Category: Hardball

The University of Ibadan (UI) is Nigeria’s premier university.  So, you can excuse folks in there, in rarefied premier clouds, to treat selves to premier absurdity!

Indeed, since its an age of rot and decay, it is meet that that absurdity should come with clamour for vice-chancellor — all 16 Titans, of prodigious learning and unimpeachable character, all unfazed by what appears to others as regnant absurdity.

Please don’t get it wrong: there is no crime in numbers, even if you’d wonder why 16 serious and research-soaked academics would clamour for vice-chancellor, which not a few scholar’s scholars elsewhere see as little more than an administrative distraction.

But fair is fair. Again, no crime in numbers. The more the merrier. It’s giving back to UI what UI had given to each, especially as many of the dons applying for the job are from other universities. Ex-UItes, perhaps? Great UItes! Greeeaaat!

What is not so great, however, is the ridiculous spins some of the applicants are attaching: to boost their chances; but de-market others’.

The Central Council of Ibadan Indigenes (CCII) arguably boasts the most ridiculous of these demands: that the VC must be an Ibadan indigene because no Ibadan son — or daughter — had ever been UI VC!

That is true: UI has never produced an Ibadan VC. But these indigene-dons: are they in UI because they are Ibadan natives, or because of personal excellence, earned over the years?

So, why should their Ibadan nativity now sparkle more than their academic pearls, honed over decades?  Or is UI VC the campus equivalent of the Olubadan throne?

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Of course, absurdity begets absurdity.  So, the Muslim lobby too is making a pitch: no Muslim has ever been UI VC, so it’s the Muslims’ turn!  What!  Is it then some UI papacy (if Christians have it) or some Grand Sheikh for the Ibadan Varsity Umma (if the Muslims do)?

The gender army too has dived in: no woman, no cry — it must be our turn, blessed academic ladies!  Well, in the spirit of gender equality, equity and universality in a university, maybe the gay too must stake a claim!  And the transgender?  Why not?

The present UI community needs a thorough soul-searching, if history were not to gore their generation with vicious questions!  Of course, the rot had not been sudden.

A don-zealot once led a campaign against the giant cross of the famous UI Chapel of Resurrection — lest it profaned the adjoining no less giant campus central mosque, and its crescent!  UI Saracens vs Crusaders were rearing for a millennial war of the faiths — until a compromise was procured: a screen as historic evidence of excellent university detente and holy armistice!

Then, another of the intellectual Titans that had graced the VC “throne” (God bless his soul!) proudly proclaimed himself, even at official functions, as Professor (Chief), in an ode to majestic culture: the rapture of the gown hugging the town!

Yet, the present ridiculous angling to corral the VC position, by all means necessary, is the limit of premier absurdity!  These folks had better snap out this bad dream!

It’s nothing but epochal embarrassment for those alumni and alumnae that every second bear the UI banner-without-stain, in their post-university endeavours.

Olubadan of UI!  How cute!

Hardball

It’s curious that the Senate overlooked curiosities in Alhaji Yahaya Muhammad’s curriculum vitae and cleared him for appointment as a member of the board of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).   He was among five nominees screened by the Senate Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes for the positions of secretary and members of the EFCC board.

Presenting the committee’s report, its chairman, Senator Suleiman Abdu Kwari (APC, Kaduna North), urged the Senate to confirm the nominees, saying they were thoroughly screened and found qualified for the positions.

Interestingly, Senator Hassan Hadejia (APC, Jigawa North East) drew attention to “certain discrepancies in the report that are contradictory, especially with regard to one of the nominees, Alhaji Yahaya Muhammad, on page 8.”

Hadejia said:  “The nominee, according to the record before us, started his primary school before he was born.  There is also an overlap in the sequence of his educational experience because here, he was born on 29th September, 1969 and he started his Central Primary School in 1968.”

This observation has the quality of a joke, but it is not something to laugh about.  If the information in the nominee’s CV is to be believed, he is a rarity. Indeed, he deserves a place in the Guinness Book of Records. Also, he should attract global attention to the country.  It’s unheard of for a person to start school before birth. Perhaps, Alhaji Muhammad did.

The observant senator noted other oddities in the CV. He observed that Muhammad “was in Borno Teachers College from 1975 to 1988 while simultaneously he was in the College of Administration Studies from 1980 to 1981.” The senator said:  “If these are typographical errors… maybe, we should have them corrected for the sake of our record.”

The observations were serious enough and deserved to be seriously considered by the Senate before confirming the nomination of the nominee concerned.

Curiously, the Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege, who presided over the plenary, ignored Hadejia’s observations and the Senate confirmed Muhammad’s nomination and the other nominations.  George Ekungu (Cross River State) was confirmed as secretary of the EFCC board; and Luqman Muhammed (Edo); Anumba Adaeze (Enugu); Kola Adesina (Kwara) and Yahaya Muhammad (Yobe) were confirmed as board members.

It’s unclear why the Senate failed to seek clarification concerning the oddities observed in Muhammad’s CV. The Senate displayed a lack of thoroughness in this case, and acted like a rubber stamp.

Hardball

If there is any set of people most Nigerians want instantly tackled down and eliminated, it is middlemen standing between government’s avowed developmental efforts and citizens who are supposed to benefit from those efforts but are not. These meddlers (the middlemen) just seem irrepressible and repeatedly get fingered in the misery of the people. Anyone with quick-fix ideas of what to do with them?

For about the umpteenth time, President Muhammadu Buhari last weekend blamed the activities of middlemen for exorbitant  prices that have subjected many Nigerians to a food crisis. In his broadcast to mark Nigeria’s 61st Independence anniversary, he said whereas his administration had been able to increase the nation’s food capacity, it isn’t rubbing off on the citizenry because middlemen buy up the food products to hoard for profiteering, thereby creating artificial shortages Among other measures to ease the food crisis, he said he had directed the Agriculture ministry to rehabilitate the National Food Reserve Agency and also work with security agencies, the Nigerian Commodity Exchange and the National Assembly to find a lasting solution to “the disruptive and unpatriotic hoarding activities of middlemen.”

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In recent history, the President had repeatedly blamed middlemen for prohibitive costs of food items in the country. In a stamen last July by presidential spokesperson Garba Shehu, he as well cited flooding that caused large scale destruction to farmlands and insecurity that “has produced severe and adverse effects on agriculture because farmers are prevented from accessing their farms by bandits and terrorists.” Early in September, he listed middlemen among factors responsible for soaring food prices, saying he had approved the release of 30,000 tons of maize from the national reserves to animal feed producers to ease the high cost of poultry production, while government was “engaging with food producers’ associations and groups to tackle the issue of exploitative behaviour by middlemen and other actors, which is one of the factors responsible for the high food prices being experienced.” On some other occasion, he blamed the activities of “corrupt middlemen (with many of them discovered to be foreigners) and other food traders who serve as the link between farmers and consumers found to be systematically creating an artificial scarcity so that they can sell at higher prices.” The presidential statement had expressed determination to bring the practice to a swift end, adding: “Nigerians have already suffered grave economic losses owing to the coronavirus pandemic, and the Buhari administration will do all in its power to ensure that our people do not continue to suffer additionally from high food prices.”

Well, food prices remain high and climbing still, no thanks to those infernal middlemen. So, Nigeria needs urgent deliverance from their hold. But then, they have an uncommon staying power. A cover page story by defunct Sunday Herald, on January 29, 1984, reported Buhari, then as military head of state, blaming middlemen for Nigeria’s poor economy. Shocking that nearly 40 years after, and on second coming, they remain helplessly the issue!

Hardball

It is judicial karma: Nigeria’s apex court must untie the technical knot it made of the case of Orji Uzor Kalu, two-term Abia governor and now Senate chief whip.

In December 2019, Justice Mohammed Idris (now Justice of the Court of Appeal, JCA) had jailed Senator Kalu for 12 years, for N7.1 billion fraud: fund of Abia State, when Senator Kalu was governor, between 1999 and 2007.

Jailed with him, for 10 years, was Ude Udeogu, then Abia director of Finance and Accounts.  Also convicted was SLOK, Kalu’s company.  SLOK was ordered dissolved, its assets sold and proceeds paid into the government’s coffers.

But in May 2020, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, voided the conviction.  That, nevertheless, had nothing to do with the notorious facts of the case, soundly proven.  It was rather on the technicality that Justice Idris should have handed off, the moment he became JCA.

The apex court voided the fiat that Justice Idris got from the Court of Appeal President to read his judgment, under the provision of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015.  It, however, ordered a fresh trial, apparently because that technicality had little effect on the facts of the case.

Another thing: it was an appeal by Udeogu, not by Kalu himself.  However, because the Supreme Court ordered the re-trial of Udeogu, it would appear trite that co-convicts, Kalu and SLOK, would also benefit — which the courts affirmed.

But this triteness that seems no longer trite has made a new judicial riddle — or muddle — of the case.  Kalu claimed he could no longer be re-tried, since once tried. His lawyers’ explicit joker was the Supreme Court didn’t mention Kalu for retrial — and in truth, it didn’t — for it was Udeogu’s appeal, not Kalu’s.

Justice Inyang Ekwo, of the Federal High Court in Abuja, declared, buying Kalu’s argument: “On the whole, the fact that there is no order for retrial of the applicant in the judgment of the Supreme Court, or by virtue of Section 36 (9) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, or Section 283 (2) of the ACJA, has allowed prayer two of the applicant to succeed.”

And what’s Prayer 2? That the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) can no longer prosecute Kalu; neither can any court retry him and his SLOK, so ruled the court!

Rid of frothing legalism, that judgment is as perverse as they come!  For starters, Udeogu and Kalu are co-accused in a case, which proven facts had fetched a conviction.  But by this curious legalism, Udeagu could well go to jail after retrial, and Kalu could work free — same case, same facts, same court, same country!

Besides, while Kalu reaped from the “Father Christmas” of Udeogu’s Supreme Court appeal, he is now free of the re-trial burden of same verdict?  What’s that lawyers’ cliche again: approbating and reprobating at the same time?  Geez!

Aside from the clear injustice here, is this verdict a gauge of the contempt Nigerian courts hold the rest of us “un-learned” folks, dishing out perversity sugar-coated as legal technicality?  That sugar is as bitter as gall!

If the Supreme Court had not roasted substantial justice in the profane altar of technicality, a lower court would not slap the polity with this outrage.

But the karma is in-built.  Let EFCC appeal the case.  If judgment is not done at the Court of Appeal, let the Supreme Court slay the monster it created — or re-affirm two citizens can commit the same crime, be tried and found guilty in the same case; yet, one is jailed, the other walks free!

That might well be Nigeria’s novel contribution to post-modern jurisprudence!

Hardball

It is said that some things are better left unsaid. Bayelsa State Governor Douye Diri disregarded this wisdom in his remarks during a thanksgiving service to mark the state’s 25th anniversary and the country’s 61st independence anniversary at the King of Glory Chapel, Government House, Yenagoa.

The state was created out of Rivers State by the Gen. Sani Abacha military regime on October 1, 1996.  Nigeria became an independent country on October 1, 1960. So October 1st is significant to the state and the country.

A statement by the governor’s media aide, Daniel Alabrah, quoted him as saying some things that perhaps should have been left unsaid. Diri said:  “Let me use this medium to thank one man. He may not be popular in Nigeria but to me and all of us Bayelsans, we see him as a great man, a hero. The man who by the stroke of the pen signed the creation of Bayelsa State. I am talking about the late General Sani Abacha.”

Diri is entitled to his perspective, but it is a narrow perspective indeed. It is understandable that the governor feels grateful to the man who created the state he governs. He may not have become a democratically elected governor if the state had not been created.

But he overlooked the evils of the Abacha regime, which cannot be redeemed by the creation of the state. Gen. Abacha was a military dictator whose authoritarian regime was responsible for the deaths of many pro-democracy fighters. Notably, Abacha, who ruled from 1993 to 1998, prevented the inauguration of Chief M.K.O. Abiola who won the country’s historic 1993 presidential election annulled by his predecessor, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. Abiola was detained for four years by the Abacha regime, and eventually died in detention in July 1998, a month after the dictator’s death.

Abiola is today regarded as a symbol of democracy. It is noteworthy that Diri is a beneficiary of the pro-democracy struggle by Abiola and many activists. It is ironic and a dishonour to the fighters that fought for the restoration of democracy that Diri described the anti-democratic oppressor as “a great man, a hero.”

Abacha’s evil was compounded by his kleptomania. He is believed to have stolen money to the tune of over $2 billion from the treasury. The story of his mammoth loot stashed away in banks across the globe continues 23 years after his death. He was described as “one of the most notorious kleptocrats in memory, who embezzled billions from the people of Nigeria while millions lived in poverty.”  That is Diri’s hero.

Hardball

The clamour is to fairly collect and share value-added tax (VAT). But it might well all end in value-added trouble (VAT).  Pray, which of the two VATs are you pushing?

Already, from the South West end, there are talks of a common regional stand on VAT. In other words, the imperative of an Amotekun equivalent of VAT.  As Amotekun was sold (as a South West-exclusive plank) instead of a commonsense tool (a security initiative intimate with its locale, so a win-win nationwide) VAT, in the emotion of the moment, appears going that same direction.

But after all the flurry, how’s the Amotekun doing today?  It does its best, to be sure.  But it’s definitely very far from the starry-eyed heights of its idealists and ideologues.

By the way, it was rather nice seeing the Amotekun and federal security agencies partner to spring nine victims, travelling to Lagos in a public bus, from kidnappers’ den, in the Akoko area of Ondo State.  The moral?  VAT or Amotekun, you’ll still need parallel partnerships, for either to succeed.

That brings the matter to the technical part of VAT.  Beyond the simplistic, all-size-fits-all, emotive din of “true federalism”, “fiscal federalism”, et al, some experts are insisting .

VAT is best collected by the centre, so that it doesn’t result in the other VAT — value-added trouble — in multiple taxation; since the VAT concept is both paying tax on goods you buy and charging tax on goods you sell.

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Since Nigeria is a vast market, they argue, every state collecting VAT could subject businesses to multiple VAT, as goods move from state to state.  That alone could drive up inflation.  Also, that upward spiral could be worsened by multiple VAT administrative costs, now enjoying an economy of scale in a central basket — value-added trouble!

Then, the legality of it all.  What profits a state to rush out a VAT law, only for such to be shot down by the apex court?  Lesson?  Wait for a definitive verdict from the Supreme Court, before rushing out law that may eventually prove futile.

That possibility appears not lost on Ondo Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, (by the way, an unfazed Amotekun champion), who has opted to wait for the Supreme Court’s verdict on the matter before taking any further action.

The popular press, in tribute to the giant strides of the late Gani Fawehinmi the Great, inimitable senior advocate of the masses (SAM), would roar: “Gani wins round 1!”, even if it was just an ex parte order!  But between round 1 and round 12 in a boxing bout, is quite a travel — and so it is in a judicial process.

Let’s fight the perceived injustice and inequities in value-added tax administration and sharing.  But it wouldn’t be worth anyone’s while if the ultimate gain were to be value-added trouble.

That’s why South West legislatures’ open grandstanding of a common VAT regional approach should freeze.  Law-making is too serious and too costly a process to become banalized as tool of hurried advocacy, for a fuzzy goal.

Interestingly, the police have come up with a novel reason for their failure to arrest those who abducted 37 students from Federal College of Forestry Mechanization, Afaka, in Igabi local government area of Kaduna State.

Bandits had invaded the school on March 11 and abducted the students. They demanded N500m ransom a few days after the abduction. They released the abductees in batches over 50 days following the intervention of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and controversial Islamic cleric Sheikh Ahmad Gumi.

Kaduna State Police Command Public Relations Officer ASP Mohammed Jalige was reported saying the police had arrested a suspect in connection with the abduction following a tip-off. Their moves to arrest others suspected to have been involved in the abduction failed, he said. The reason he gave for the failure of the operation is something to laugh about. He blamed the viral audio on social media concerning the arrest.

The police spokesman was quoted as saying: “One of the suspects involved in the kidnap of the 37 students mentioned some names, but because of the audio recording of the exercise that went viral, the other suspects ran away. However, the arrested suspect will soon be paraded and taken to court.”

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The suspect had been apprehended by security operatives from the Intelligence Response Team of the Police Force who stormed his residence in the Asikolaye community, in Kaduna South local government area of the state.  The suspect was said to have confessed to taking part in the kidnap of the 37 students.

Who made the audio recording that went viral? In what circumstances was the recording made? Who released the recording?  These are important questions the police spokesman didn’t clarify in his presentation.

The viral audio recording suggests that the police were unprofessional in the way they treated the suspect’s arrest. This may explain why banditry and kidnapping have escalated in the country. The police need to get serious, and make serious efforts to tackle the security crisis that allows bandits and kidnappers to operate as if the country lacks a police force.

Curiously, the police spokesman said “the other suspects ran away” as if the matter ended there. If they ran away, the police should go after them. The suspects that allegedly ran away should not be allowed to get away with kidnapping.  What will the police blame next for the outcome of their poor policing?