The Nation Newspaper

Category: Commentaries

  • BAT @ 62: Leadership paragon trudges on

    SIR: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader”- John Quincy Adams

    I read a book by Dottie Billington with the title: Life Is an Attitude. The great book teaches how to become a better you by cultivating winning attitudes. It teaches that life is an attitude, that you have the power to grow forever better.

    Putting together what I learnt from the book and interfacing it with what I have known about Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the past 21 years, I have come to realize that being a potential and consummate leader is no tea party. It is an attitude. It is in the system, inside the blood and it is a character. It needs time, perseverance, patience and grit to cultivate.

    I have come to believe Ralph Waldo Emerson’s postulation that: “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can seriously help another without helping himself”.

    Can anybody remember Asiwaju’s strong commitment to the struggle for democracy in this country in the 90s? Can anybody remember that he and his wife were chased into exile to London throughout the time Abacha was in power? Did anybody know his personal commitment to the struggle? Did anybody know that he sold his personal belongings to continue to support the struggle for democracy during the dark days of militarism? Did anybody know that BAT and his family suffered monumental discomfort while in exile?

    Asiwaju returned from exile to become the elected Governor of Lagos State for eight years. That he became the Governor of Lagos was not by happenstance. It was a reward for his efforts to liberate this country from its darkest chapters. He laid the foundation and kick-started the transformation of Lagos State for eight years. In 2007 he got a worthy successor, Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola against all odds, against all protests, against all calculations, against all permutations and as a consequence of this Lagos has become a beauty to behold in Africa. Today Lagos has become investors’ destination and the most secured state in Nigeria. It has become Nigeria’s number one destination of choice for educated Nigerians seeking succor from economic hardship. It has opened its arms very wide and welcomed everybody.

    The biggest struggle in Nigeria today is how to free Nigeria from the choking grips of PDP and its minions; to turn Nigeria’s worsening fortune under the PDP around to make Nigerians feel the benefits of democracy. Again Asiwaju Tinubu has been in the forefront of this war. Today courtesy of BAT and his team in APC, PDP is facing the greatest challenge in history since 1999, the type never seen or known in the history of Nigeria.

    In his own words BAT says “APC will alter Nigeria’s political landscape and balance of power” BAT as the opposition leader knows when to speak, he chooses his words carefully, and he chooses the time to drop it, the venue to deliver it and the audience to pick the punch line. When he described President Jonathan’s National Conference as a wingless eagle many never clearly understood him but time will tell. Except those without deep sense of history in Nigeria, BAT understands clearly that bringing the explosive issues of a National Conference very close to 2015 Presidential elections and granting 12 million naira each to 492 delegates is a kite that cannot fly. Or did you not hear Chief Chukwuemeka Ezeife asking for the 2015 Presidential elections to be shifted forward? Did you see how religious politics is creeping into the landscape? Have you seen how President Jonathan has continued to balkanize and divide the country along religious lines when he chose to visit churches only leaving out the burning Northern part of Nigeria?

    Asiwaju Tinubu’s best is yet to be in Nigeria. He has given all back to humanity. He has great generosity of spirit, BAT can always be attractive. BAT goes with the flow all the time. BAT knows always that Growing meaning Risking. Happy Birthday!

     

    • Joe Igbokwe

    Lagos.

  • Wasted and wretched generations

    SIR: The illustrious Professor Wole Soyinka once referred to Nigerians of his time as the wasted generation. Not given to careless talk, the old wordsmith must have arrived at the conclusion after a rigorous and perhaps depressing analysis of his generation’s wasted opportunities, of what could have been but is not.

    Actually, pre- and immediate post independence generation of Nigerians could also be referred to as the lucky generation. Considering what used to obtain, one would not be wrong to say they had it so good. Even amidst their exploitation, the colonialists also endeavoured to build infrastructure. So this generation of Nigerians enjoyed relatively sound amenities. Our education system was sound and many obtained qualitative education at home, abroad or even both often at state or community expense. Even before graduation, students had well-paying jobs awaiting them. The country teemed with opportunities and possibilities.

    The pre and immediate post independence generation of Nigerians failed to take the country to the next level; they squandered opportunity to establish a world power on the African continent, to emphatically demonstrate that the African is not inferior. They to whom much was given, so woefully failed to extend similar gesture to those coming after them. They burned the bridge after crossing. Why? The answer is loosely captured by the word: irresponsibility. Of course the irresponsible man bequeaths not wealth but wretchedness to his offspring. The wasted generation begot the present wretched generation.

    Over time, the country has so degenerated that the youth now has to labour several times as hard to succeed. The education sector is in tatters. The youth goes to school only to come out hardly educated, rarely skilled. On graduation, he is never sure of securing a job. In fact he often has to wallow in unemployment for years. And when eventually he finds one, the take-home may not really take him home. Those who take the path of entrepreneurship also have to contend with decayed or non-existent infrastructure. With little or nothing to build on, the Nigerian youth could be described as most unlucky; his is the wretched generation. His plight was aptly captured by the pictures that streamed out of the various Nigerian Immigration Service examination centers on March 15.

    But is the youth condemned to wretchedness? No! No matter how unfavourable ones background is, one can still rewrite ones history. Notwithstanding the errors of past generation, the youth can still make things right by taking the right steps. But is he doing that? Unfortunately, no. Is he likely to do so in the near future? I’m not confident.

    The youth is imbued with a devastating combination. To his terrible wretchedness is added an incredible fecklessness. He seems bereft of ideals, incapable of standing up for anything. The wretched youth sings praises of his despoiler in hope of crumbs. Social media which offers an invaluable platform for constructive networking has been debased to a tool for either frivolous engagements or trading of vile abuses. The youth rarely sees beyond his nose, beyond tribe and religion. Like the slave who loves his chain, he is so much in love with these tools with which the elites divide and enslave him. Yet many were united at the various NIS examination centers by unemployment. When the man in the long dark coat visited, he neither considered religion nor ethnicity while picking his victims.

    The Nigerian youth cannot be exonerated from complicity in his woes. And judging from what is on ground, the situation seems more likely to endure and even worsen; that is unless he begins to ask relevant questions, resolves to stand up for what is right, to take his destiny in his own hands.

    •Nnoli Chidiebere

    Aba, Abia State.

     

  • Presidential Afghanistanism

    Presidential Afghanistanism, what in the name of God is that? What clap trap?

    But please, at least, hear Hardball out.

    To start with, you know of Afghanistan, an old civilisation, rich in fairy tales, but brought into recent disrepute by Taliban stone-age men, who threw up the Al-Qaeda terrorists and Osama bin Laden, who bombed the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, USA, which resulted in a long-drawn US-led anti-terror war.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    An Afghan is a citizen of Afghanistan.

    And Afghanistanism?

    It is a media term for running away from urgent news at home, to feast on often irrelevant news abroad. Call it media filibustering, and you are not entirely wrong.

    And presidential Afghanistanism?

    Ah, that is today’s gist! And you could make concrete examples of that from the foreign trips President Goodluck Jonathan makes, and local trips he refuses to make. Call them fleeing from the hot front of presidential duty and you are not entirely wrong.

    Yet, Goodluck Jonathan did not invent presidential Afghanistanism. In years gone by in the Second Republic, President Shehu Shagari took to the skies, even while the NECOM Building, the tallest building in Nigeria and corporate headquarters of the defunct Nigerian External Telecommunications Ltd (NET), was gutted. The gentle president would rather not be frazzled by the NET-generated heat.

    Even then, President Jonathan appears to have perfected the concept of retreat-by-travel (abroad) and retreat-by-non-travel (at home). It is perhaps his own unique style of maintaining his personal sanity in the midst of so much madness. But what about the American quip: if you can’t stand the heat, get the hell out of the kitchen?

    After the Abba Moro fatal job interviews that claimed the lives of 19 Nigerian job seekers, the president simply hee-hawed. Moro he would not sack or un-sack. On his fate, the president just opened and closed his mouth, and nothing came out of it.

    Of course, you must applaud this presidential focus on issues and not personalities. Pronto, he has cancelled the scandalous interview, ordered relations of the dead should be offered three jobs, in a three-jobs-for-one-death philosophy, and offered the living the opportunity to have another go at those jobs, hoping of course that the interview(s) would be far less fatal next time round.

    Not only that: the Jonathan awards also approved a job apiece for the injured in the job melee. So, do we now expect another crush from veterans of that ill-fated interview, struggling to show their wounds and scars to land another job?

    Of course, all these were too much for our dear president, who quietly pressed his retreat-by-travel (abroad) button, and took off on a jaunt to Namibia, the Vatican and Holland. It’s invaluable days of rest from the Nigerian nuthouse!

    Meanwhile at home, the rival All Progressives Congress (APC) has shouted — and is still shouting itself — hoarse on why the president must visit Yobe to condole with parents and guardians of the slain Federal Government College, Bunu Yadi, minors. But apparently APC has not studied the retreat-by-non-travel (at home) Jonathan presidential manual.

    The party should — and be soundly educated – on the latest techniques in presidential Afghanistanism.

     

  • A country battling for breath

    SIR: Has the fear of death not gripped Nigerians, especially those living in the north-eastern parts of our country? Are the killings being executed by the Fulani herdsmen and the Boko Haram group not portents of doom for Nigeria? Nigeria has not descended into war; however, people are being needlessly killed in many states of the federation.

    Insecurity of lives and property is the major problem in the country. The murderous bloody campaign of the Boko Haram has led to the deaths of thousands of Nigerians. Many have fled the troubled states. And, those displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency are begging for financial help and shelter.

    But, it is not only the Boko Haram group that is causing problem in Nigeria. The nomadic Fulani herdsmen do raid villages in Benue, Nassarawa and Taraba States on the grounds that animal rustlers are poaching their cattle. So, the Fulani cattle rearers often clash with native farm owners in the north central states of Benue, Nassarawa and Plateau. Human lives, farm produce and properties have been lost to their fights.

    What we have is an anarchic situation on our hands. Now, armed robbers and kidnappers are having a field’s day in Nigeria. They terrorize people in broad day-light, unchallenged. The rich live behind fortresses and drive in bullet-proof cars for fear of being kidnapped. Daily, we hear news of the abduction of prominent Nigerians by kidnappers.

    Lawlessness precedes war and the disintegration of a country. Do our leaders think that what happened in some Arab countries cannot be re-enacted here? Are they not aware that the huge army of the unemployed youths is a time-bomb waiting to explode? The unemployed youths can cash in on the chaotic situation in some states of the federation to cause revolution in Nigeria. Some weeks ago, about 20 young Nigerians died trying to enter the venues for the Nigerian immigration service recruitment test. It is said that over five hundred thousand people were vying for five thousand vacancies in the Nigerian Immigration Service. People with post- graduate degrees are doing menial jobs not befitting them in order to earn a living. Where is the dignity of labour? And, millions of young Nigerians are without jobs after they had completed their mandatory NYSC programmes.

    Nigeria’s myriad problems are not intractable; and, Nigeria is not irredeemable. We can still reclaim Nigeria from the jaws of ruination and disintegration, and set it on the path of political renaissance, economic prosperity, and technological advancement. The on-going national conference offers us another golden opportunity to reach consensus on many issues, which have been hindering our national development and dividing us. These agreements will serve our national interests. But, delegates to the national conference should subsume their selfish and ethnic interests under the national interests when they’re discussing national issues.

    But, can our leaders muster the political will to implement and abide by the decisions and resolutions reached at the on-going national conference?

    • Chiedu Uche Okoye

    Urouwulu-Obosi,Anambra State.

  • Cartoon

    Cartoon

  • ASUP strike: Calling on President Jonathan

    SIR: I wish to appeal to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to as matter of necessity listen to the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, who has been on strike since October 4, 2013. This strike has long term effects on our country’s political and economic development. Let these striking polytechnics teachers come back to classroom to continue with their academic programmes. As a one-time lecturer, a father and President of Nigeria, you know the importance of education to the national development and what strike does to a nation especially when it involves the education sector. Education is the driving force of other sectors. Without sound education, other sectors remain stagnant because it is through the training of manpower that available resources are effectively managed.

    Nigerian universities have not fully recovered from the effects of the recent strike that lasted for five months. Our country’s educational system has depressed so gravely, Mr President. One of the dangers of academic strike is the poor performance of the students. Any time students return from strike, most of the things they have been taught before they went on strike are often forgotten. Lecturers are not also left of this dilemma and so it will affect the country too.

    Ironically, in the 2012 World Universities Ranking, none of the Nigerian universities ranked among the first 1, 600 universities in the world. Our universities and polytechnics are not ranked among the best in the world, yet, we are not bothered about it. If we bother, why should we allow public polytechnics and universities to be closed for about five months and government doesn’t care to do anything about it? This careless attitude towards education sector has for a long time dealt a fatal blow other sectors including the political structures in this country.

    Which miracle does one expect lecturers to perform to produce sound intellectuals that would match the key sectors of our economy? If our universities and polytechnics must produce sound and competent graduates that would match key sectors of economy, education ought to be recognized as a major tool through adequate funding, good remunerations for our teachers and provision of functional and quality infrastructures.

    Why are we busy playing politics with the lives and future of youths? How can we equal other nations that have placed high premium on education and providing quality education for their children? What legacy would you leave for us to remember you with after you have left the office as president?

     

    • Yabagi Abubakar Akote,

    IBB University, Lapai-Niger State.

  • ‘Help, NNPC is sinking’

    Not surprisingly, Andrew Yakubu, Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), is not finding it funny at all that the organisation has come to represent bad news in the eyes of quite a few Nigerians. An upset Yakubu reportedly made his feelings known to journalists during dinner in Abuja and his moans were multidimensional.

    To start with, he complained with a sense of alarm, “We cannot do this business without Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), without foreign participation. Our credibility level is going down very fast. And unfortunately, it is based on perception.” He went on, “If we continue at this rate, I am going to tell you something that is very bad. I will ask all of you that if you continue to destroy our economy this way, then pray never to give birth to children because those children are coming to suffer the outcome of our terrible destructive attitudes. Because it will be difficult for anybody to invest in this country if we continue to destroy our country’s perception.”

    Biting words, but who really is messing up the country’s image? Is it those who irresponsibly make negative news, or those who faithfully report it? From the look of things, Yakubu was suggesting unprofessional self-censorship by implying that reporters should look away and keep mum when NNPC is in an alleged mess. To be specific, it is easy to link this veiled recommendation with the highly controversial allegation of missing $20 billion oil revenue by suspended Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido, the latest in a long history of corruption-related accusations against the corporation.

    No doubt, it is convenient for Yakubu to blame the organisation’s woes on “perception”, and to sell the wrong impression that so-called perception cannot be objective. Indeed, the question is whether the claimed damage to NNPC’s credibility is based on correct perception.

    Perhaps unable to reasonably disregard the possibility that public estimation of the corporation’s performance might actually be based on reality, Yakubu told the audience,” If you are talking of corruption, mention anywhere you don’t have any iota of corruption. But what they do is that, you do it, but the law will catch up with you.”

    Obviously, it is a lame argument to suggest that corruption is everywhere and, therefore, no big deal. Or isn’t that what Yakubu meant? Thank God, he was at least honest enough to acknowledge the fact that the justice system can be relied upon to deal with corruption issues in those places he referred to, where the law is usually applied with all sense of responsibility. By extension, he should also be truthful enough to accept that his country is not yet in that category.

    He was clearly speaking in a strange tongue, or being unserious, when he said, “So I would appeal that if you have any specific case, bring it out, then we will be able to correct it.” If anything had been corrected in all the years of alleged sleaze at the corporation, it is likely that Yakubu would not have had to do his latest dinner talk with journalists, or if he did, it would not have been about loss of credibility, which is not surprising in NNPC’s unflattering circumstances.

  • Govt, insurgents guilty of killing innocent Nigerians

    SIR: Few days ago, some young graduates and promising future leaders lost the battle no one has ever won in life (very early) due to their own government’s insensitivity. When it gets to a stage where the government kills its own people, such a nation is on life support.

    If the government cannot save the poor from the pool of poverty, why should they compound their problems? The government will always claim there is no money to create jobs whereas there is money to pay former governors, retired generals and professionals currently attending the national conference 12 million naira each. Imagine such money being given to people who are living in their own houses, individuals who are eating the kind of food they like at their convenient time while the poverty-stricken keeps wallowing in poverty.

    Both the insurgents and the government are killing the people. The only difference is that the insurgents are doing it directly while the government is doing it indirectly. What else can be said about this? Seven hundred thousand applicants invited for a physical exercise where only 4,000 of them will be employed in the long run? For people to think that the recruitment exercise is transparent given the rumour being peddled around that the politicians have already shared the slots?

    But whether it is a rumour or not, one thing I have learnt in this country is that for you to survive in Nigeria, your leg must be long. If your leg is not long, you must stay connected with people whose

    legs are long. If you can’t meet any of the two, you are finished.

    This is not happening only in government, it happens in private companies, schools, in fact in churches and mosques. When will the poor emerge from poverty?

    Now the government is giving the family of the victim three jobs each. That can only be a consolation. It can never heal the wounds. Ten different eyes cannot be like one’s biological eye.

    Honestly, the March 15 incident is very sad. Graduates whose parents are looking forward to seeing their greatness died suddenly. Parents expecting to reap the fruit of their labour have their hope

    dashed.

    • Idowu Esho Jamiu

    Eruwa, Oyo State.

     

  • Where corruption and insurrection go hand in hand

    Nearly every country facing an extremist insurgency is run by a kleptocratic clique. Corruption, in other words, has security implications.

    On Feb. 20, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan fired his respected central bank governor, who was trying to discover what had happened to an estimated $20 billion that disappeared from the nation’s oil revenue over an 18-month period.

    Four days later, across the country in the parched northeast, members of the Boko Haram extremist group attacked a public boarding school, shooting children in their sleep and setting school buildings afire. It was the latest in a string of massacres by the group, whose statements call for an Islamic state ruled by sharia law in Nigeria.

    Is there any connection between the president’s actions and the Boko Haram insurgency?

    Motivations for complex phenomena like insurgencies never stem from a single driver. Still, a remarkable correlation exists between severe and systemic corruption and ideological extremism. Of the bottom 11 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index — a well-known annual ranking of perceived corruption in nations around the world — eight harbor a violent extremist movement. Not one of the 11 countries identified as least corrupt does.

    In fact, nearly every country facing an extremist insurgency, from Nigeria to Afghanistan to the Philippines, is run by a kleptocratic clique. And almost every popular revolt aimed at toppling a government in recent years, from the Arab uprisings to Ukraine’s revolution, began as a protest against acute corruption.

    Corruption, in other words, has security implications.

    Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, exemplifies some of them. For months before his ouster, the central bank governor, Lamido Sanusi, had been denouncing the gap between the sales price of exported oil and the amount of money that actually reaches government coffers. Most of the missing billions are believed to have been diverted to the pockets of the president and his cronies — with the help of the oil minister, who keeps the accounts.

    As one Western official in the capital, Abuja, put it in November: “The oil minister is Jonathan’s ATM.”

    Nigeria is a textbook example of the “resource curse.” It is blessed with vast mineral and oil wealth, but government officials have diverted much of those riches to their own pockets. As a result, Nigeria’s development outcomes are hardly higher than those of its destitute West African neighbors.

    Given the widespread graft at the top, it is no surprise that corruption permeates every level of government. Police officers shake down street vendors and bus passengers; they imprison people just to release them for payment of an illegal “bail.”

    “Most of our men joined the police to make money,” concedes Muhammad Guri, commander of a police bomb squad in the northern city of Kano, the target of numerous Boko Haram attacks on police stations.

    The worst offenders, say many Nigerians, are civil servants. Oil money that does make it to government coffers is often funneled to lower-ranking officials through contract fraud.

    Layers of padding in the contracts ensure kickbacks for the civil servants involved in awarding them, as well as hefty profits for the contractors themselves. In this way, even government spending that was supposed to contribute to economic development or health or education is hijacked for personal gain.

    Many Nigerians suggest the emergence of Boko Haram was in part a reaction to this systematized corruption. The group’s moniker translates to “Western-style education is sinful.” Many Westerners assume the name to be a rejection of tolerance, critical thinking and the scientific method; the significance may be quite different.

    But in Nigeria, the entire system of schooling is part of the corrupt structure. Students pay others to take their exams. Parents pay for a place in university.

    Even in nursery school, says Esther, the mother of a 3-year-old boy, “if you give something extra to the teacher at the end of the week, she pays attention to your child. If not, your child gets cranky.”

    University spots are extremely tough for ordinary Nigerians to secure, and plum jobs in the civil service are open only to college graduates.

    Kemi Okenyodo, director of the anti-corruption advocacy group CLEEN, puts it this way: “At least initially, Boko Haram had the principle of kicking back against the corruption in the state. It wasn’t against Western education per se. Western education was seen as a tool for corruption and oppression.” Many Nigerians share this analysis.

    None of this excuses Boko Haram, which perpetrates savage attacks on ordinary people who are victims of government corruption themselves. But militant, puritanical religious views of the type espoused by the group are a common reaction to acute corruption well beyond Nigeria. The reflex is visible among disenfranchised youths across North Africa, and in Somalia, Afghanistan, Central Asia and elsewhere. And government corruption is a common theme in foundational Al Qaeda documents.

    Closer examination of the correlation between corruption and extremism, and of how severe corruption interacts with other risk factors to fuel international security challenges, could inform better policy approaches.

    Secretary of State John F. Kerry recently condemned the “unspeakable violence” of Boko Haram militants before announcing increased counter-terrorism assistance for Nigeria’s government. As so often when confronted with extremism, U.S. decision-makers have allied themselves with the corrupt government and abusive security services.

    Missing from Kerry’s statements was any criticism of the suspension of the central bank governor or of the vast official theft of oil money, a crime that affects all Nigerians and may be providing fodder for the very extremists U.S. leaders would like to help eradicate.

    • Chayes, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace contributed the piece for Los Angeles Times

  • On the Immigration tragedy

    SIR: The immigration recruitment debacle raises a lot of questions and says much about how low we have sunk as a people. First, those in leadership positions in this country (all of them without exception) love power but lack the basic knowledge of the responsibilities that go with it. In Nigeria, when a minister does what he/she is employed to do, you’ll see sycophants taking advertorials in national dailies to sing their praises to high heavens, but when the situations arise to question their competence and rationality, they blame every other person but themselves.

    And in all of this, what would Okonjo-Iweala have to say about over 600,000 jobless Nigerians pursuing 4,556 jobs until some of them met their death in an economy she is always quick to paint in bright colours?

    Now we also have a clue to why crime is on the increase: the government is taking money from jobless applicants.The conscience of those ruling us have taken leave of them. Now if that is not corruption, then that word has lost its meaning. And Jonathan has the audacity to tell the whole world that corruption in Nigeria is exagerated!

    Just some weeks ago, the President of Zimbabwe said you have to bribe your way to get anything done in Nigeria. What other proof do we need? Whither our morality? The message Jonathan is sending accross is that to get anything from government, you must first be prepared to suffer a tragedy like loosing a limb, be blinded, or sacrifice a member of your family.

    If anyone thinks Jonathan will sack Moro, that  person would be greatly disappointed because President Jonathan cannot differentiate between his ego and morality; he looks at everything through the prism of politics.

    I’m surprised Olisah Metuh has not blamed those who died for dying just to discredit the Jonathan government, after all, he just has to say something to convince his principal he is working, even if it exposes him as a man who is weak in thinking. To Jonathan, those dead are just another figure. Life goes on. It is all politics.-

    • Simon Oladapo,

    Ogbomoso.