The Nation Newspaper

Category: Letters

  • Comparing Ghana with Nigeria

    SIR: The Ghanaian who picked me in Accra, when I arrived in August for the Masquerade festival in Cape Coast, Ghana, felt I was too positive about Ghana being a better country than Nigeria in corruption index, and so he refused to offer any opinion. He kept saying, “In course of time, you will discover things for yourself.” He agreed that the intention of the former President John Jerry Rawlings was to eradicate corruption, but did not succeed in doing so. Did he say the wife aided and abetted corruption? I asked in what positive way Ghana would remember Rawlings. Answer, “He helped to stabilize the polity.” Obviously, that remains Ghana’s greatest asset.

    I cannot say the Ghanaian government is focused as such. It made T-shirts on which the President’s picture was imprinted, in promotion of football, while too many African children in the country study under trees, and have nowhere to hide when rain comes. Secondly, the government sponsored some struggling secondary school students to go and watch international football involving the Black Stars. Which of the two actions indicate focus on mass poverty in Africa? The government is mortgaging Africa’s future, to be perpetual slaves to football idolatry. Ghana and Nigeria are very close in leadership insensitivity. The Ghanaian government is said to be seeking subtle ways of sapping the people, e.g. Value Added Tax (VAT), if not through utility tariffs of electricity and water.

    Some Ghanaians are saying that the President over-favours his northern people (nepotism?) in appointments, which may spell hazard for the future stability of Ghana. Jonathan’s presidency also over-favours South-east and South-south. Some Ghanaian Christian communities are as hostile to African Traditional Religion as in some Nigerian communities. For instance, in one community where a traditional religious festival forbids drumming for five days, the Christian community created an upheaval. Does five days of no drumming affect Christian pillars or mere intolerance in place of peaceful co-existence?

    Ghana is strong in these respects: she remains basically stable and peaceful. There is minimal religious rivalry. Both the government and its opponents explain themselves on state/private radio and television. Trade union leaders defend Ghanaians’ rights, seriously. Opposition parliamentarians are highly pro-people, and don’t mind walking-out. Finally, there is stable electricity in many parts of Ghana. Honestly, many Ghanaians are unhappy that Nigeria is failing; they fear Ghana’s derailment.

     

    • Pius Oyeniran Abioje, Ph. D,

    University of Ilorin.

  • Confronting the cancer of corruption

    SIR: Corruption is like dodder, the yellow vine that wraps around trees and saps their life. Once it falls on a society it is a curse that grows from one branch to the next and then to the next until nothing remains visible, except a yellow sickness of corruption. Even such guardians of morality as religious and academic institutions become corrupt. The struggle against an evil depends on the ethical standards of a society; it is our response of dismissal or approval that matters.

    Corruption doesn’t spring up from nowhere. Corruption is planted, fed and watered. Roots in the ground, out of sight, are what hold corruption in place. Still, without a steady supply of nutrients in the form of money, greed and opportunity and without the right climate, corruption will not grow and produce more bad seeds. Nigerian’s are sickened by greed, corruption and decadency of our leaders and nothing can stop our country progress faster than a continued culture of corruption. The word favoritism, nepotism and covert corruption infect high and low places.

    Corruption is the Nigeria’s biggest enemy. The only way to get rid of it is with a full-scale assault. Anything short of that is useless. That means digging out the roots and their food sources: money, contractors on the hustle, and politicians on the take. For example, the first contact foreigners have when entering a country is with customs and immigration officers. In our airports, travelers often find themselves delayed at customs clearance until a suitable inducement (often hard currency) is forthcoming. Even our borders and ports are not left out, as officers receive bribes to speed up the checking of vehicles and containers smuggling in prohibited goods.

    The same shameful practice today is found among traffic Police, Police patrol, FRSC, VIO’s and security check points. The personnel in the government procurement departments provide information on tender to bids for a fee. Contractors bribe clerks, Personal Assistants and Secretaries to obtain information.

    The Politicians in Nigeria have turned our democracy to be a “Commercial Democracy. It’s no longer news that candidates vying for offices and positions offer bribes and gifts to delegates in exchange for votes.

    Now is the time to dig down and pry up the tendrils of corruption: those straw donors who allowed their names to be attached to campaign contributions they didn’t make; contractors who disguise their political donations and evade contribution limits by using the names of different companies that they own; and elected officials who violate laws that they have sworn to uphold. Corruption didn’t descend out of thin air. It is homegrown, and it must be killed. The government should through the National Assembly come up with the “Whistleblower Protection Act” which will give people the courage to report improper conducts in government establishments, Public awareness and anti-corruption crusades should be encouraged in schools, market squares, billboards at the airport, highways, sea ports and the government office complexes. This will in the long run help to fight and limit corruption in Nigeria, otherwise it will destroy our race, culture, religion and nation.

    • Ibrahim Muye Yahaya

    Jagbele Quarters Muye , Niger State

  • Wike’s dance of shame

    Education Minister Nyesom Wike’s press conference on ASUU was a re-enactment of military regime. No doubt, the supervising minister was frustrated and allowed anger to take a better side of him. People like this should be far away from corridors of power.

    Most unfortunate and very worrisome too, the NUC executive secretary, Professor Juius Okogie, who should know better, was part of the embarrassing and intimidating conference.

    Agreed, the ASUU strike has dragged for too long, and must be brought to an immediate end but the latest move by the government will not resolve the logjam. History has shown that such military approach will worsen the situation. Wike would have won my heart, and indeed Nigerians, if he had premised his marching order and threat on the fact that the government has signed the Nov 4, fresh agreement with ASUU.

    Instead of grandstanding, one would have expected that the quality education President Jonathan and some of his ministers are exposed to should create awareness and help them deal with the numerous problems that FG/ASUU agreement seeks to address. If I were the President, this strike would end within hours by doing the needful: guarantee the release of needed funds to capture the tenets of the agreement. The President should think less about 2015, his major distraction and divert the resources and energy reserved towards solving the immediate problems of security and education.

    Perhaps the government has not thought of the effect of the rot on our campuses and its implication on nation building. We have a system that believes and promotes dysfunctional learning. Apart from older generation and seasoned few individuals, many of the millennium lecturers in both public and private universities are products of a defective system. How and what they deliver in classes is what the system indoctrinated in them. If the trend continues, we shall soon have these millennium lecturers as professors and university administrators. One wonders what quality these ones will bring into the system. As it stands, our university education system has placed a lot of importance on academic excellence; which is mostly unattainable. Achieving a grade is the ultimate dream of any student not minding if the facility was in place for proper tutelage. Excellence in exam is what the government and parents use to gauge the learner and ultimately determine the economic failure or success of an individual. Neither the government nor the parents care to know how defective the procedure that moulded the graduates was. The culture of ‘certificate matter’s at all costs is a sad reality which has resulted in prevalence of social and political evils such as corruption, moral decadence and leadership failure.

    ASUU shares part of the blame. Many of our lecturers and professors are guilty of advancing the concept of utilitarianism in our universities. Some of them teach with the sole aim of giving grades to their students because the facilities required to augment teaching are not there. The intellectual discourses that were characteristic of our universities in the 1980 and 1990s are long gone; some of our lecturers have mastered the art of dictating notes to students as the only mode of delivery. From the federal, state to private, our universities have failed to promote scholarship in the real sense of the term. Many of our professors have become contractors and prefer executive positions to academic. Such ones have failed to serve as mentors to younger academic because they are not on their seats to offer direction and guidance.

    Honestly, so many things are wrong with our universities. We are genuinely at intellectual war! A war that will leave the universities more devastated and dysfunctional; a needless war that should be checkmated by doing the needful to save the universities and the Nigerian nation.

    •Tola Osunnuga,

    Ago-Iwoye

  • So Bamanga Tukur could soft-pedal?

    Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”, thus goes the old saying which, in itself, seems to canvass that power is sweet and so sweet that it can produce deadly consequences in the powerful.

    Yet, being powerful is not as delicate or dangerous as being power-conscious or power-drunk, which was the situation in which the PDP as a proud “largest political party in Africa” had found itself in recent times.

    Well, we all know that no political party anywhere in Africa has an influence beyond its country’s borders but PDP still found it very fashionable to attribute to itself the irrelevant countinental size as a method of celebrating its power!

    Each time the PDP chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, spoke on, or reacted to the escalation of the PDP crisis of recent, one had wondered what was befalling him or his party. He had sounded so carefree about possible peaceful, positive resolution of the crisis. One had thought that his attitude could be a result of his self-confidence in his old leadership style of firmness and ruthlessness which had served him well in the past in his career as a customs boss but one was taken aback when he was reported to have been shocked by the defection of the five PDP governors to the APC.

    Tukur was reported to have said that the five governors “went too far”! He betrayed his habitual toughness and failed to condemn or rebuke them as ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ as would befit a no-nonsense character like his.

    So the decamping of the governors could soften Tukur? If so, why was the break-away of the new PDP (nPDP) not worrisome enough to make him a good listener and strategist? One would think that the emergence of the nPDP was almost as alarming and shocking as the defection of governors but it was thereafter that Tukur and his party had decided to display most brazen impunity as if peaceful atmosphere was unimportant in politics.

    And, come to think of it, what the aggrieved nPDP members had encountered during the crisis had been the fate of the whole of the nation under the PDP all along. The nation had witnessed insensitivity to the sufferings, yearnings, pains and hopes of the governed.

    Whatever was outside the desire for and sustenance of power had hardly interested the PDP. It was a party that had been well-known for pretending to serve the people in the belief that it could always win elections with its intimidating posture, anytime, anyhow.

    Receiving the news of the defection, it must have dawned on the PDP chairman that the absolute power of the party with which it was able to do and undo was fast slipping away with the loss of a whole five governors at a go, so he sounded sober and rational for once, even if briefly!

    Thanks, you would say, to the divine wind of change that has started to blow in Nigeria.

    •Jide Oguntoye,

    Oye-Ekiti

  • Jega: Honour above everything else

    I was a student of the University of Ilorin when Dr. Attahiru Jega, as he was then known, was the President of the Academic Staff of Union of the Nigerian Universities, ASUU. His uncompromising stand against the military junta’s efforts to cow the ASUU then, was what endeared him to students in those days. I could remember the day Jega visited Unilorin then, he was carried shoulder high by enthusiastic students. He was believed to be upright, forthright and a man of integrity.

    Consequently, the appointment of Jega as INEC chairman was applauded by well meaning Nigerians. They heave a sigh of relief that with the reputation of Jega, end has come to show of shame and impunity in INEC. Although, the 2011 election was not perfect, yet it was adjudged as being fair than previous ones, upon which Jega received applause from home and abroad. However, the just concluded senatorial election and gubernatorial election in Delta and Anambra states respectively and the shenanigan that the elections were have put the much touted Jega’s integrity to test. The Abracadabra have shown that it is not yet Uhuru with INEC and Jega could not be absolved from the blame. It is a common saying that if an organization succeeds, the head should be applauded.

    Invariably, if it is the other way round, the head carries the blame. Consequently, the protest embarked upon by some Anambra women over the INEC’s complicity in the rigging of the recently conducted gubernatorial election in Anambra state and the Thursday November 28, protest embarked upon by the APC leadership in Abuja against the conduct of the same election, in spite of the opposition from the security forces, show that Nigerian would no longer condone any electoral robbery, either now or in future. It is an irony that some of the eminent people who hailed Jega upon his appointment are the same people who are calling for his head during that protest. This should serve as a signal to Jega that his reputation is on the line and he should rise up to save his name and future from disrepute and shame.

     

    •Adewuyi Adegbite.

    Apake, Ogbomoso.

  • Our politics of money

    How can there be free and fair election in a system where all processes of political power acquisition is heavily monetised? Politics in Nigeria is a huge commercial enterprise that yields the highest profit.

    Godfathers install their surrogates as governors in their ‘captured’ territories and governors in turn impose their surrogates as local government chairmen and councillors.

    It has happened and will continue to happen across parties except political office is made less attractive and service to the people is the motivation, not looting. So, e get as e be when armed robbers fight another set of armed robbers. Social Revolution is the answer.

    By Adeola Soetan, Lagos

    adeolasoetan@gmail.com

  • Tribute to Nwariaku

    Death is everywhere, always on the prowl to take mortals on the journey of no return. But Williams Shakespeare makes us to believe that the death of a prince often evokes agony, sorrow and a great sense of loss. He was right because no one loves to lose his dearest and most precious person. This is to say that the value or rather the worth of a man is best measured after his death.

    The thought of Shakespeare comes to play in the passing on to glory of Dr. MacDonald Samuel Chikwendu Nwariaku, an Engineer and a role model, and one of the world’s best intellectual icons. He lived an exemplary life as a puritan and commanded respect in every circle he worked and lived. These are great attributes that would have made him a celebrity even in the great beyond.

    Indeed, the late Nwariaku in life symbolised the best essence of human dignity and good worth in character and conduct. He was a great mind, the type of which was rare among his peers and acquaintances, just as he lived through life anchoring his ways on Spartan discipline and enviable devotion to spirituality and services to God. His death was a huge loss to those who knew him well as a fountain of love, epitome of hard work and a mind with milk of human kindness.

    A quintessential family man and lover of peace, the late renowned engineer was a transformational agent whose public and private life was completely devoted to humanity, as he applied his God-given rich intellectual knowledge and moral virtues to change the society better than he met it.

    He was a man of immense stature who bestrode the world’s engineering landscape like a colossus. The late Nwariaku hailed from Umudinkwa, Avodim, Ubakala, in Umuahia South Local Government Area of Abia State. The urbane and accomplished engineer began to edify his sojourn in life with a quest for sound education.

    He attended the famous Methodist College, Uzuakoli in Abia State and the Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha, Anambra State, from where he earned the Cambridge School Certificate in Grade 1 in 1948.

    For a stretch of 16 years, he dedicated his life to academic adventures, revolving within various world class colleges and universities, including the famous Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA, the Imperial College, London and the Kings College University of Durham, New Castle.

    A soil scientist and engineering expert per excellence, Dr Nwariaku obtained the prized DIC in Highways and Airports in 1959, after having obtained his B Sc. degree three years earlier and bagged the PhD in Applied Science in 1964.

    A patriotic Nigerian who served his fatherland with uncommon zeal and selflessness, the late Nwariaku worked severally in many areas of the public service and delivered his hubristic best in key aspects of civil engineering designs and construction, including roads, bridges, dams, airports, wharfs, water supplies and nuclear energy, whose contributions spanned the domestic and international environments.

    The late Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, FNSE, and “Distinguished Merit Award” contributed immensely to the development of national infrastructure, including involvement in the construction of the 2nd Niger Bridge, Damaturu-Yola-Ngure Road, Calabar-Ogoja-Maiduguri Road, Potiskum-Rigachukun Road and serving as Resident Engineer and a member of the Task Force that built the Imo International Airport.

    During his research days in the university, his academic pursuits were interspersed with practical trainings and researches during which he was involved in the construction of airstrips on ice, Alaska, USA; highways constructions in Copenhagen, Denmark and Saskoping, Sweden; and construction of airport on coral at Gan Island, Southern Indian Ocean, amongst others.

    In demonstration of his intellectual creativity, he added his name to the Engineering discipline literary Hall of Fame with the launch of his book ‘Principles and Practice in Road Maintenance in year 2009. The book is described by professionals as a hallmark of intellectual fecundity that is bound to inform future thoughts on road maintenance principles and practice across all climes.

    In his private life, the late humanist devoted substantial time and resources to building a family that ordinarily symbolises an ideal home, a model of moral and spiritual virtues.

    Married to Dame Julie Onum-Nwariaku, a member of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission, (ICPC), the deceased bequeathed a worthy legacy in a son and another intellectual prodigy, Prof Fiemu Nwariaku, and a grandson, Ikenna.

    His priceless works have made him a man that a country like Nigeria should not miss at this critical point of its dire needs. Though we need this fine gentle man as a people, we remain helpless because God needs him more. What else can we say than to wish him well in his passage to eternity? Adieu, our father, uncle and brother, as we wish you a blissful rest in the bosom of the Lord.

    By Folu Olamiti (FNGE)

  • Remembering late Oba Adelabu (Ewi of Ado-Ekiti)

    SIR: Wednesday October 23, marked the 25th remembrance anniversary of His Royal Highness, Oba Adeyemi Adelabu (I). He reigned as the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti between 1983 and 1987.

    Though brief, Adeyemi’s reign was quite remarkable.

    He ascended the throne at a time Ekiti needed a forefront leader and a monarch that would re-engineer the ancient town in the wake of growth and development sweeping through Nigeria then. The late Oba felt Ekiti communities could not afford to lag behind. He then used his influence to mobilize the elites and sons and daughters of Ekiti towards the growth and development of Ado-Ekiti. The fruit of such efforts was the creation of Ekiti State with Ado-Ekiti as the capital.

    In the area of traditional institution, Adelabu’s reign brought radical changes into the Obaship institution. His prowess, glamorous life and exemplary leadership style amongst the then Ondo State monarchs became notable as smaller communities in Ekiti started installing younger and educated individuals as their monarchs.

    It is still painful that the late Oba Adeyemi could not wait to enjoy the fruits of his legacies; however, the children are grateful to God and are comforted by the knowledge that their late father was not only fulfilled in death; but lived a life of notable accomplishments which we are all witnesses.

    The family also owes a lot of gratitude the late Oba’s friends and close associates for their support at all times. We shall continue to be grateful to the Executive Governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi for not forgetting the family.

    Late Oba Adeyemi Adelabu is a personality that cannot be forgotten in a hurry. He lives on and his works is what the Ekiti people and indeed Nigeria cannot ignore.

     

    • Prince George Adelabu

    Lagos

  • Our variant of politics

    SIR: Representative government or democracy is the most popular type of government in our today’s world. Military rule is viewed as an aberration.

    There are places, especially in the Middle-east, where the Islamic theocracy blends with monarchical type of government to form a type of government. But, then, the wind of democracy blowing across our world has swept away some military dictatorships. Nigeria is now a democratic nation. Our 14 years of unbroken democratic leadership is a milestone that calls for celebration, our country men having suffered under oppressive military dictatorships.

    Now, Nigerians are increasingly familiar with democratic culture. They participate in periodic elections to vote in new leaders. But, our brand or type of politics is egregious. Politics is the means by which politicians try to acquire political power legitimately. What shaped our peculiar politics are cultural factor and our moral values.

    Since 1999, when the fourth republic dawned, our manner of politicking has become set and fossilized. In the past, politicking in Nigeria had got to do with the proposition of ideas and ideologies. There were politicians who belonged to the left of the centre and there were the rightists. They would woo the voters with their parties’ manifestoes and programmes. In the first republic, Chief Obafemi Awolowo identified with democratic socialism. As a leader in the Western Region, he implemented the free education policy, which was in harmony with his party’s political ideology. Today, many prominent people of Yoruba extraction occupying exalted positions in the government owe their successes in life to Awolowo’s benefaction and socialist welfarism. NCNC had its political ideologies, too; and, its leader, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, an orator, dazzled audiences with speeches that showed his party’s economic and political leanings.

    Sadly, our type of politics is no longer issue-based. Our politicians seldom talk about issues that affect us, not to talk of offering solutions to them. When they’re compelled to appear on television for debate, the debate session will degenerate into a shouting match. One cannot make out what they’re talking about.

    In the run up to the 2013 Anambra State governorship election, one of the contestants, a debtor whose company was under receivership, gave kerosene, motorcycles, cars and monetary gifts to people so as to sway them to his political party. Giving money to people during political parties’ rallies is the in-thing and fashion now. Our politics has been bastardized and monetized. Giving money to the voters has dislodged soliciting for the people’s votes based on their parties’ manifestoes and positions on issues.

    It is our politicians’ desperation for power that informed their resort to politicking based on dishing out money to people. Clinching political power offers them unlimited access to our financial tills. Our perception of power is warped and perverted. Political leaders see their occupation of exalted political offices as an opportunity to amass wealth. Here, in Nigeria, we worship those with ill-gotten wealth, but feel contempt for the man with probity. Against this background of moral unscrupulousness, many electoral workers can compromise their moral principles and work ethics for pecuniary rewards.

    So, politicians do collude with electoral workers to perpetrate electoral fraud. Those entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining the sanctity of elections pervert the electoral processes.

    The culture of election fraud leads to the emergence of social misfits as our leaders. The ultimate sovereignty in a country resides with the people. But, election malpractice causes the subversion of the people’s political will.

    We should articulate ways of eradicating these bad characteristics that define our way of politicking.

    • Chiedu Uche Okoye

    Uruowulu-Obosi Anambra State.

  • The plight of senior citizens

    SIR:Senior citizens or pensioners are a treasure to any civilized society. They have laboured hard for many years for the development of their countries or fatherland. This group of people depends largely on gratuities and pension from their former employers.

    In some countries, businesses offer customers of a certain age a “senior discount”. The age at which these discounts are available vary between 50, 60, or 65years of age. However, in Nigeria, the “senior citizens” entitlements are sometimes embezzled and at other times unpaid. The ongoing trial of the ex Head of Service of Oyo State, Alhaja Kudirat Adeleke and 15 others for alleged N5.6 billion pension fraud, whatever the outcome, is a pathetic case study.

    Many senior citizens paradoxically are treated with satanic disregard and left to wallow in abject poverty by denying them of their legitimate gratuity and pension allowances. That I suppose is one of the reasons why the country is facing different challenges because the “elders” or “fathers” that ought to bless the nation are indirectly cursing the leaders because of neglect and insensitivity to their plights.

    It is in this regard that I implore the amiable Governor of Oyo State, Senator Abiola Ajimobi and other states of the federation to release the gratuity and backlog of pension allowances of the senior citizen immediately.

     

    • Pastor Adegbite Sunday Oloriire

    Apake, Ogbomoso.