The Nation Newspaper

Category: Commentaries

  • The travails of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

    The travails of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

    The former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is not my favourite person and I have differences with him on many issues. I must however, commend his immense courage for speaking out and exposing the monuemental corruption in the government that he once served and that has now decided that they no longer require his services.

    Two weeks ago, he claimed that 20 billion US dollars had gone missing from the coffers of the NNPC. Today he has been suspended and relieved of his duties for exposing the rot and speaking the truth. I have little doubt that the next thing that will happen is that he will be subjected to a formal probe and the EFCC will be called in to investigate his tenure of office. They will throw everything that they have got at him including the kitchen sink simply because he refused to play ball with them and cover up their penchant for monuemental corruption and graft.

    Some of us have been there before and we know what it is like. If you speak truth to power and you take on the system be rest assured that the system will fight back and they will attempt to destroy you and all that is yours. Yet none of that matters because the only thing that is relevant is the fact that history and posterity will be kind to Sanusi on this matter based on the choices that he has made.

    He spoke out when others chose to remain silent and to compromise. Unlike others, he refused to sell his soul to the devil and to sell his heritage and birthright for a mess of pottage. Despite the significant differences that I have with this man in terms of our different outlooks to how and what Nigeria ought to be as a nation I salute him and commend him for his efforts.

    I also make bold to say that with his noble stand he has assured himself of a great place in the next dispensation and he will play a key role in the future of this country one way or the other. May God guide and protect him in all his endeavours and may he continue to speak out with courage and strength and not allow himself to be intimidated or silenced.

    Long is the road of righteousness and

    truth and it is often tarred with the

    spikes of persecution, misrepresentation and falsehood. Yet at the end of the day it is the only road that is worth taking and it is the only one that leads to lasting honour and glory.

    May that honour and glory find Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and may God reward him for putting the interests and welfare of the Nigerian people before that of the woeful and rotten administration that he once served.

    This government has once again shown that it has no shame and that it is utterly bereft of any semblance of decency or morality. A man blows the whistle and exposes the fact that 20 billion USD has been stolen and instead of commending him and promoting him he is accused of wrongdoing, criminalised, villified and suspended. It is only in Nigeria that this sort of thing can happen.

    It has happened to me and many others before and now it is happening to Sanusi. I commend his courage and his ability to stand up and speak the truth to power. No matter what the government accuses him of now and no matter what trumped-up charges or baseless allegations they may come up with against him in order to justify their actions, the Nigerian people will always be grateful to him and indebted to him for exposing the rot and filth that constitutes the very foundation of the government that he once served.

    The level of impugnity and disdain that the Jonathan administration has for the people and for probity and accountability is second to none. The message that they are sending is clear- no whistleblower is safe in this country and in this government. Their intention is to destroy all those that have the courage to stand up to them and to intimidate us all into silence but they will fail woefully.

    The more people they seek to destroy for no just cause and the more innocent men and women that they persecute for telling the truth and for exposing their monuemental corruption and incompetence, the more they shall be resisted by people. What they have done to Sanusi is disgraceful and they ought to bury their heads in shame.

    Pertinent and appropiate are Sanusi’s own words when, after he was informed about his unceremonious suspension, he responded all the way from Niger Republic by saying ‘’you can suspend an individual but you can’t suspend the truth’’. He immediately boarded the plane and headed for Nigeria knowing full well that the security agencies were waiting for him.

    The plan was to arrest him on arrival in Abuja but he cleverly diverted his chartered flight to Lagos where close friends of his, including the former Minister of FCT Mallam Nasir El Rufai, a true and loyal friend and brother if ever I knew one, was waiting for him. He managed to avoid arrest but on arrival at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos the authorities stopped him briefly and took his passport from him.

    By that single act they have served him notice of their sinister intentions. In the coming days, weeks, months and even possibly years they will seek to humiliate him, to denigrate him, to malign him and to destroy his entire future. That is their intention but I firmly believe that it is not the intention of God and consequently they will fail. Providing he continues to stand firm and strong and remains undaunted such an evil plan cannot work and will not work simply because, as the Holy Bible says, ‘’the counsel of the ungodly shall not stand’’. It also says ‘’to subvert a righteous man in his course is not allowed’’ and that ‘’many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord will deliver him of them all’’.

    No matter how long it takes and no matter what they put him through Sanusi’s innocence will speak for him before God and before the Nigerian people. It is from the fiery furnace of persecution, misrepresentation and victimisation that true heroes are born. There is a spirit that emboldens and that stirs the passion and the soul of true warriors once they are sufficiently provoked. That spirit is known as the spirit of truth and it cannot be intimidated or denied.

    I must confess that it is very clear to me that Sanusi has that spirit and is possessed by that virtue. I say this because he was intelligent enough to know that with his utterances and his explosive disclosures about the graft in the NNPC and at the Ministry of Finance he was stepping on very powerful toes, treading on very dangerous grounds and swimming in very troubled waters. Yet despite the obvious dangers he continued and he was quite unmindful and unperturbed about what the direct consequences of his actions may be in terms of his personal safety, the security of his tenure of office or his career as a public servant.

    He was prepared to stand by and

    speak the truth no matter what

    and he was prepared to pay any price no matter whose ox was gored. That is the stuff of which heroes are made and I salute his courage. How I wish that more of our people were made of such stern stuff. If President Jonathan was really interested in fighting the war against corruption he would stop using his security agencies from tormenting and harassing innocent people.

    If he wanted to suspend some of his key officials and if he really wanted truth and justice to prevail he would not have targetted an innocent whistleblower who had constituted himself into a thorn in his flesh but instead he would have suspended Mr. Andrew Yakubu, his Group MD of NNPC, Mrs. Dieazani Allison-Madueke, his alluring Minister of Petroleum Resources and Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, his Minister of Finance pending the investigation into the missing 20 billion USD. Until he does that and as long as he continues to cover them all up and treat the Nigerian people with contempt and impugnity, no right-thinking person will take him or his administration seriously. This is all the more so for the following reasons. Firstly because it is a matter of public record that the accounts of NNPC have not been audited since 2005, secondly because Mrs. Allison-Madueke and the NNPC have admitted that 3.5 billion USD was spent on kerosene subsidy without appropriation and specifically against Presidential directives and thirdly because, Okonjo-Iweala has conceeded that at least 10.5 billion USD has gone missing and she has called for a formal probe into the whole matter so that all the figures can be reconciled. How I wish that at this point she would have resigned. The Ngozi that I once knew, who was a woman of impeccable breeding and deep substance and character, would certainly have done so.

    Sadly not many of the Jonathonians are familiar with the works of William Shakespeare simply because Shakespeare is not too popular in the creeks. Yet the few amongst them that are up to the task would do well to consider the words of Julius Caeser when he said “it is the custom of the immortal gods to grant temporary prosperity and a fairly long period of impunity to those whom they plan to punish for their crimes, so that they may feel it all the more keenly as a result of the change in their fortunes”. Those amongst the President’s supporters that truly love him and that have his interest at heart would do well to explain to him the import of these deeply profound words and wise counsel from Shakespeare’s ‘’Julius Caesar’’. In doing so they may save him and his entire court of royal jesters from a whole load of misery that undoubtedly awaits them in the future. As for Sanusi Lamido Sanusi it is very clear to me that the sky is the limit for him. Whether he likes it or not his journey into the turbulent world of partisan politics has just began and I suspect strongly that he has an appointment with destiny.

    Permit me to end this contribution with the following observation. In the last few days, much has been made about the fact that I have criticised Sanusi quite often in the past and that I have openly disagreed with some of his actions as Governor of Central Bank. It has also been said that on another occassion I raised some fundamental questions about what I described as his ‘’flawed and indefensible’’ position on the oil subsidy debate in 2012, his controversial views on Boko Haram, his position on revenue allocation vis a vis north and south and his harsh and historically inaccurate assertions about the Yoruba people a number of years ago. It is true that I opposed him on those matters and that I took those positions on those issues and I stand by each and every one of them. I do not see any big deal in that. Yet, many appear to be rather surprised that I would now be one of those that is defending the very same Sanusi that I have opposed in the past.

    Those that have expressed such surprise and that see this as some kind of glaring contradiction simply do not understand me. And neither do they appreciate the complexities of national debate and the importance of being completely detached and objective when it comes to any form of intellectual or public discourse. The truth is that I do not take positions against individuals but rather on specific issues. Hence I may be your friend and defender one day and your greatest critic and detractor the very next depending on what your position is on any specific matter. That is the essence of public discourse and intellectual debate. That is it’s nature. We must not be motivated or moved by personal considerations or by our love or hate for any individual but rather by principle, morality, logic, facts and figures, justice and the rights and wrongs of the specific issues of the day. No-one is all good and no-one is all bad. And neither is anyone, including yours truly, always right.

    The fact that I have disagreed with Sanusi over the last 20 years on a number of matters including his assesment of the Yoruba people, his views about the cause of the scourge called Boko Haram, the oil subsidy issue and the ‘’National Question’’ does not mean that I ought to support the fact that he is being treated in the most deplorable way by President Goodluck Jonathan. Though he and I disagree vehemently on many things it does not mean that we are enemies for life and neither does it mean that I should relish in it and remain silent when he is being treated unjustly and when he is being persecuted, humiliated and rubbished by the Federal Government. This is all the more so when he has courageously exposed the rot in the Jonathan administration. He may have got it wrong on other matters but on this issue I make bold to say that Sanusi got it right and he did the proper thing. He deserves my support, just as he deserves the support of all right-thinking people, and he can be rest assured that he has it.

     

  • Awards in a time of cholera

    Okay, there was a scattered incidence of cholera in a few states of the federation recently which has been largely ‘managed’ by health officials of the affected states. But Hardball speaks metaphorically here deploying cholera to depict the myriads of economic, social and political ills afflicting our dear motherland today. It is not about that vicious ailment that makes your tummy run as if there is a damaged tap in it; it is about the surfeit of awards and recognitions being thrown about like confetti all over the country. And they come with large, grand ceremonies which often remind of what someone once described as the bonfire of vanities. Open newspapers, watch the television and you are likely to see such honouree tags like Corporate Titan of the year, Life-time Achievement Award; Man of the Year Award; The Best Dressed First Lady of the Year Award; The Most Amazing First Son of the Year Award. There is no configuration award merchants have not come up with (well, except the Most Excellent First Mother Award, upon which Hardball has initiated a patent action for obvious reasons).

    But the Federal Government under the auspices of the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) recently determined to blow away all other small-time award hawkers when it organised the mother of all events and awards. That came in the form of the Centenary awards which raised a staggering 100 honourees. Media houses and individual hustlers who thought they could make a nice living feeding off award ceremonies would be sulking at the muscling into their business by the federal might. It is remarkable that any award which did not come before the end of February this year may turn out to be an anticlimax and a no show as the centenary awards would have taken the shine off it.

    Indeed the centenary people were as indiscriminating as a scarlet woman the way they dished out the thing to all and sundry. As if afraid to leave out anyone, the Centenary award people cynically threw in all the good guys and all the bad guys into Nigerian cauldron. There may have been a sinister motive to make them all stew in the boiling pot; something akin to a mass burial and a mass redemption being executed with one wave of the magic wand.

    Our Centenary hackers must be the craftiest people in Nigeria’s history; rest assured that they would not be around in another 100 years to face the judgment of history, they have gotten away with historical homicide, so to speak. Not content with sitting our history on its head by seeking to paper over our colonial experience, they have also tried to muddle our current history. By Jove, every country must have her villains but the Centenarians have deprived us of ours when they honoured our coup plotters, treasury looters and grandee deviants. They have branded them as Outstanding Promoters of Unity, Patriotism and National Development. Now that every two-bit fellow who ever sat over our national treasury has been certified a hero, how come the country is so disheveled like one huge dung hill; how come there is so much cholera in the land?

     

  • The travails of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi

    The former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is not my favourite person and I have differences with him on many issues. I must however, commend his immense courage for speaking out and exposing the monuemental corruption in the government that he once served and that has now decided that they no longer require his services.

    Two weeks ago, he claimed that 20 billion US dollars had gone missing from the coffers of the NNPC. Today he has been suspended and relieved of his duties for exposing the rot and speaking the truth. I have little doubt that the next thing that will happen is that he will be subjected to a formal probe and the EFCC will be called in to investigate his tenure of office. They will throw everything that they have got at him including the kitchen sink simply because he refused to play ball with them and cover up their penchant for monuemental corruption and graft.

    Some of us have been there before and we know what it is like. If you speak truth to power and you take on the system be rest assured that the system will fight back and they will attempt to destroy you and all that is yours. Yet none of that matters because the only thing that is relevant is the fact that history and posterity will be kind to Sanusi on this matter based on the choices that he has made.

    He spoke out when others chose to remain silent and to compromise. Unlike others, he refused to sell his soul to the devil and to sell his heritage and birthright for a mess of pottage. Despite the significant differences that I have with this man in terms of our different outlooks to how and what Nigeria ought to be as a nation I salute him and commend him for his efforts.

    I also make bold to say that with his noble stand he has assured himself of a great place in the next dispensation and he will play a key role in the future of this country one way or the other. May God guide and protect him in all his endeavours and may he continue to speak out with courage and strength and not allow himself to be intimidated or silenced.

    Long is the road of righteousness and

    truth and it is often tarred with the

    spikes of persecution, misrepresentation and falsehood. Yet at the end of the day it is the only road that is worth taking and it is the only one that leads to lasting honour and glory.

    May that honour and glory find Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and may God reward him for putting the interests and welfare of the Nigerian people before that of the woeful and rotten administration that he once served.

    This government has once again shown that it has no shame and that it is utterly bereft of any semblance of decency or morality. A man blows the whistle and exposes the fact that 20 billion USD has been stolen and instead of commending him and promoting him he is accused of wrongdoing, criminalised, villified and suspended. It is only in Nigeria that this sort of thing can happen.

    It has happened to me and many others before and now it is happening to Sanusi. I commend his courage and his ability to stand up and speak the truth to power. No matter what the government accuses him of now and no matter what trumped-up charges or baseless allegations they may come up with against him in order to justify their actions, the Nigerian people will always be grateful to him and indebted to him for exposing the rot and filth that constitutes the very foundation of the government that he once served.

    The level of impugnity and disdain that the Jonathan administration has for the people and for probity and accountability is second to none. The message that they are sending is clear- no whistleblower is safe in this country and in this government. Their intention is to destroy all those that have the courage to stand up to them and to intimidate us all into silence but they will fail woefully.

    The more people they seek to destroy for no just cause and the more innocent men and women that they persecute for telling the truth and for exposing their monuemental corruption and incompetence, the more they shall be resisted by people. What they have done to Sanusi is disgraceful and they ought to bury their heads in shame.

    Pertinent and appropiate are Sanusi’s own words when, after he was informed about his unceremonious suspension, he responded all the way from Niger Republic by saying ‘’you can suspend an individual but you can’t suspend the truth’’. He immediately boarded the plane and headed for Nigeria knowing full well that the security agencies were waiting for him.

    The plan was to arrest him on arrival in Abuja but he cleverly diverted his chartered flight to Lagos where close friends of his, including the former Minister of FCT Mallam Nasir El Rufai, a true and loyal friend and brother if ever I knew one, was waiting for him. He managed to avoid arrest but on arrival at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos the authorities stopped him briefly and took his passport from him.

    By that single act they have served him notice of their sinister intentions. In the coming days, weeks, months and even possibly years they will seek to humiliate him, to denigrate him, to malign him and to destroy his entire future. That is their intention but I firmly believe that it is not the intention of God and consequently they will fail. Providing he continues to stand firm and strong and remains undaunted such an evil plan cannot work and will not work simply because, as the Holy Bible says, ‘’the counsel of the ungodly shall not stand’’. It also says ‘’to subvert a righteous man in his course is not allowed’’ and that ‘’many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord will deliver him of them all’’.

    No matter how long it takes and no matter what they put him through Sanusi’s innocence will speak for him before God and before the Nigerian people. It is from the fiery furnace of persecution, misrepresentation and victimisation that true heroes are born. There is a spirit that emboldens and that stirs the passion and the soul of true warriors once they are sufficiently provoked. That spirit is known as the spirit of truth and it cannot be intimidated or denied.

    I must confess that it is very clear to me that Sanusi has that spirit and is possessed by that virtue. I say this because he was intelligent enough to know that with his utterances and his explosive disclosures about the graft in the NNPC and at the Ministry of Finance he was stepping on very powerful toes, treading on very dangerous grounds and swimming in very troubled waters. Yet despite the obvious dangers he continued and he was quite unmindful and unperturbed about what the direct consequences of his actions may be in terms of his personal safety, the security of his tenure of office or his career as a public servant.

    He was prepared to stand by and

    speak the truth no matter what

    and he was prepared to pay any price no matter whose ox was gored. That is the stuff of which heroes are made and I salute his courage. How I wish that more of our people were made of such stern stuff. If President Jonathan was really interested in fighting the war against corruption he would stop using his security agencies from tormenting and harassing innocent people.

    If he wanted to suspend some of his key officials and if he really wanted truth and justice to prevail he would not have targetted an innocent whistleblower who had constituted himself into a thorn in his flesh but instead he would have suspended Mr. Andrew Yakubu, his Group MD of NNPC, Mrs. Dieazani Allison-Madueke, his alluring Minister of Petroleum Resources and Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, his Minister of Finance pending the investigation into the missing 20 billion USD. Until he does that and as long as he continues to cover them all up and treat the Nigerian people with contempt and impugnity, no right-thinking person will take him or his administration seriously. This is all the more so for the following reasons. Firstly because it is a matter of public record that the accounts of NNPC have not been audited since 2005, secondly because Mrs. Allison-Madueke and the NNPC have admitted that 3.5 billion USD was spent on kerosene subsidy without appropriation and specifically against Presidential directives and thirdly because, Okonjo-Iweala has conceeded that at least 10.5 billion USD has gone missing and she has called for a formal probe into the whole matter so that all the figures can be reconciled. How I wish that at this point she would have resigned. The Ngozi that I once knew, who was a woman of impeccable breeding and deep substance and character, would certainly have done so.

    Sadly not many of the Jonathonians are familiar with the works of William Shakespeare simply because Shakespeare is not too popular in the creeks. Yet the few amongst them that are up to the task would do well to consider the words of Julius Caeser when he said “it is the custom of the immortal gods to grant temporary prosperity and a fairly long period of impunity to those whom they plan to punish for their crimes, so that they may feel it all the more keenly as a result of the change in their fortunes”. Those amongst the President’s supporters that truly love him and that have his interest at heart would do well to explain to him the import of these deeply profound words and wise counsel from Shakespeare’s ‘’Julius Caesar’’. In doing so they may save him and his entire court of royal jesters from a whole load of misery that undoubtedly awaits them in the future. As for Sanusi Lamido Sanusi it is very clear to me that the sky is the limit for him. Whether he likes it or not his journey into the turbulent world of partisan politics has just began and I suspect strongly that he has an appointment with destiny.

    Permit me to end this contribution with the following observation. In the last few days, much has been made about the fact that I have criticised Sanusi quite often in the past and that I have openly disagreed with some of his actions as Governor of Central Bank. It has also been said that on another occassion I raised some fundamental questions about what I described as his ‘’flawed and indefensible’’ position on the oil subsidy debate in 2012, his controversial views on Boko Haram, his position on revenue allocation vis a vis north and south and his harsh and historically inaccurate assertions about the Yoruba people a number of years ago. It is true that I opposed him on those matters and that I took those positions on those issues and I stand by each and every one of them. I do not see any big deal in that. Yet, many appear to be rather surprised that I would now be one of those that is defending the very same Sanusi that I have opposed in the past.

    Those that have expressed such surprise and that see this as some kind of glaring contradiction simply do not understand me. And neither do they appreciate the complexities of national debate and the importance of being completely detached and objective when it comes to any form of intellectual or public discourse. The truth is that I do not take positions against individuals but rather on specific issues. Hence I may be your friend and defender one day and your greatest critic and detractor the very next depending on what your position is on any specific matter. That is the essence of public discourse and intellectual debate. That is it’s nature. We must not be motivated or moved by personal considerations or by our love or hate for any individual but rather by principle, morality, logic, facts and figures, justice and the rights and wrongs of the specific issues of the day. No-one is all good and no-one is all bad. And neither is anyone, including yours truly, always right.

    The fact that I have disagreed with

    Sanusi over the last 20 years on a

    number of matters including his assesment of the Yoruba people, his views about the cause of the scourge called Boko Haram, the oil subsidy issue and the ‘’National Question’’ does not mean that I ought to support the fact that he is being treated in the most deplorable way by President Goodluck Jonathan. Though he and I disagree vehemently on many things it does not mean that we are enemies for life and neither does it mean that I should relish in it and remain silent when he is being treated unjustly and when he is being persecuted, humiliated and rubbished by the Federal Government. This is all the more so when he has courageously exposed the rot in the Jonathan administration. He may have got it wrong on other matters but on this issue I make bold to say that Sanusi got it right and he did the proper thing. He deserves my support, just as he deserves the support of all right-thinking people, and he can be rest assured that he has it.

  • Rice crisis: The summersault

    Hurray, the Federal Government seems set to backtrack on her most calamitous rice policy. Before we begin to celebrate this likely reversal, recall that Hardball had been on this matter since last year, writing about three articles pointing out the sheer folly of it. Some back-grounding first: government wonks led by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina had woken up one morning early last year to jerk up the tariff and levy on rice importation to a total of 110 per cent. Why would a minister take such a knee-jerk action? Adesina had hoodwinked his bosses that Nigeria could be self-sufficient in rice production in a few years if tariff and levy are pushed up suddenly. Self-sufficiency is a great ideal but there was no sincere plan or strategy to actualise it.

    He made-believe that there was a revolution that had set rice fields thriving all over the country and that milling plants segued around the farm centres rolling out tonnes of home-made rice. But in reality, very little was going on. Farmers and major rice stakeholders were neither consulted nor supported. The burgeoning rice fund became the exclusive property of government; it was never accounted for, never made public and never deployed to develop local production as it was meant to.

    All that was active was the voracious increase in the levy and tariff of rice importation. The last one at a cumulative 110 per cent was the limit. Tariff in the neighbouring Togo and Benin Republic remained at 30 per cent or less thus it became impossible for genuine importers to do so through the Nigerian ports. It became highly lucrative to smuggle the commodity through our borders and that is what has been happening for the past one year. Government lost huge revenues as no rice-bearing ship came to Nigeria anymore; smugglers overwhelmed the Customs and of course compromised them thoroughly; prices of rice shot up in the Nigerian market. Some of the stakeholders and importers who had made investment in local production were in jeopardy as their backward integration efforts suffered.

    This is the point Hardball had raised on this page several times. At a recent parley with members of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said that it had become necessary to review the tariff and levy regime on rice because it had created significant challenges even though it had also led to marked increase in rice out put in the country and created significant number of jobs mostly in the northern part of the country. In her words, “it caused a significant reduction in Customs revenues and has been largely hijacked by smugglers and neighbouring countries.”

    While the minister is at it, it would be interesting to know how much has been realised from the levy and the attendant accruals into the rice development fund since inception in the 90s, who has been managing the fund and how has it been deployed? As for the marked increase in local rice production and generating significant number of jobs, Hardball can tell that they remain fallacies. As the Americans would say, there is nothing doing; we are still in the rice mire.

  • Brooding over Nigeria

    SIR: Geographically speaking, Benin and Togo are much closer to Nigeria. But Ghana and Nigeria have English as their lingua franca, haven been ruled by  Britain consequent upon the colonial partition, and so the citizens of the two countries feel much at home in each other’s territory. I otherwise testify that Africans have a lot in common in their cultures, and wherever they find themselves in Africa, they are brothers and sisters.

    When I first visited Ghana, it was for a conference in Kumasi in 2007. What caught my fancy was night travel, or what one can call 24 hours movement, as I enjoyed it in Europe and America. We arrived in Accra in the night, and went straight to a park, a very busy park, and boarded a commercial bus to Kumasi. On our way out after the conference, we left Kumasi at around 2 am or thereabout to take an early taxi to Lagos from Accra.

    Why can’t Nigerians enjoy the same thing in their own country? Night travel was safe in the past. I used to travel at night alone in my official car in the 1980s. Gradually, insecurity became rampant. The extremely wide gap between the have and the have-nots is not helping matters, and the matter is not getting better as cases of official corruption and presidential protection of embezzlers/misappropriators have been on the increase.

    Politically, Nigeria is unsettled. If the politicians are not using ethnicism, they use religion to divide and rule the land; politicization of religion and imperialism are banes of Nigeria’s peace and progress. Surprisingly, there is order in the way things are done in Ghana and that is why Nigerians in Ghana enjoy electricity and peace of mind. Nigeria needs to get better also if brain drain must be averted and if other nationals must come to our country to live.

     

    • Pius Oyeniran Abioje, Ph. D, University of Ilorin.

  • Salami treatment for Sanusi

    SIR: The February 20, 2014 removal of CBN Governor Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, four months to the end of his term of office, reminds me of how President Goodluck Jonathan unjustly dealt with the former President of the Court of Appeal, Honourable Justice Isa Ayo Salami. This recent Salami treatment of Sanusi is ill-timed and a bad omen to all anti-corruption whistleblowers. Why the haste? I am of the opinion that the suspension was aimed at scuttling the on-going National Assembly investigation into allegations levelled against NNPC by the suspended governor of CBN. It would be recalled that SLS had accused the NNPC of non remittance of huge sums of money into the federation account. The initial amount was about $49b and more recently, after some financial reconciliation between the NNPC, Ministry of Finance and CBN, the disputed sum came to about $20b. Sanusi also accused NNPC of providing subsidy on Kerosene when the administration of erstwhile President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had written a memo for this to be stopped.

    I commend SLS for coming out boldly to expose this act of impunity being committed by NNPC. Sanusi would be remembered for his many reforms of the banking sector among which is the sanitisation of the banking and the wider financial sector through the sack of some banks managing directors in August 2009; the introduction of cashless policy, the biometric registration of bank customers and the know-your-customers policy for banks.

    The reasons for the suspension given by government, should this be true, then the board of the CBN should have been dissolved alongside the suspension of the governor. This is because, Sanusi has always claimed that he has the approval of the CBN Act and the bank’s board to make all the donations made to schools and victims of terrorist attacks. Moreover, we learnt the FRCN report of June 7, 2013 that indicted SLS had found both the governor and the deputy governors culpable- why were his deputies left off the hook with one of them even being made acting governor?  By making a scapegoat of Sanusi, a lot of government officials who want to expose acts of corruption are being cowed from speaking out. The last may not have been heard about this case.

    Sanusi may have talked himself into trouble giving what many believed are unguarded statements that he made during his explosive tenure (remember the allegations he made against the National Assembly that they spend 25 percent or thereabout of the national budget, a claim NASS vehemently refuted). For me, Nigerians will remember Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as a courageous person who believes in speaking truth to power, not minding whose ox is gored. But definitely, he is someone the establishment loves to hate.

    • Jide Ojo

    Abuja

  • Cartoon

    Cartoon

  • What does Boko Haram really want?

    SIR: The nation has been thrown into mourning as Boko Haram Islamists heartlessly engaged in the killing of several innocent pupils when they attacked the Federal Government College in Buni Yadi, Yobe State. The attackers reportedly arrived at the college at about 2am when the pupils were already asleep. During the encounter, they were said to have set locked hostels on fire, before shooting and slitting the throats of those who tried to climb out of the windows while some were said to have been burnt alive in which 40 houses, hostels, classrooms and staff quarters were razed down. This national calamity and a few others that happened thereafter show that there is need to urgently

    re-appraise and curb the activities of this notorious group that kills people as if human life is nothing. This can no longer be tolerated. It has always been obvious that Boko Haram abhors orthodox Islam that preaches peace and, like similar jihadist groups everywhere, by seeking to violently overthrow the existing order by imposing Sharia rule based on its own parochial and narrow interpretation of Islam.

    Then we should ask: who are they really fighting? Is it government? Is it Western education alone, which they say is evil? Could it be politicians who do not reason their own way in view of the fact that they dictate the tune of the sound in the polity? Through this latest massacre, many people have concluded that efforts by government to bring lasting solution to the crisis have failed. Wait a minute, what does Boko Haram really want? They have never given the slightest hint that they are engaged in a crusade for economic opportunities or inclinations.

     

    Will somebody, please, tell me what is sensible or what could be the justification for the dastardly killing of secondary school children? Are they the ones preventing Boko Haram from getting better deal from the powers-that-be? An honest advice that I want to give members of Boko Haram is that Nigerians are completely tired of their prolonged and horrifying attacks on many hapless fellows that remained unprotected by their government.

    The embattled governor of Borno State, Kashim Shetima recently raised an alarm when he met with President Goodluck Jonathan after another horror attack on his state and expressed concern that  our army was less equipped and poorly motivated than the enemy they were meant to curtail. Without mincing words, anyone who has followed events in the North-East would know that the governor had actually stated the truth. Rather than see this as a wake-up call, Shetima got a bashing from Mr. President’s spokesman. Must we continue this way?

    While every form of illegality and criminality should be discouraged in their totality, I don’t believe, however, that the final solution to the menace of Boko Haram lies in the exchange of gun, I sincerely believe that genuine resolution of the impasse should be through negotiation while the deployment of more troops should not be ruled out. Therefore, the first step in this direction is to allow the two parties to have a common ground to discuss and sort out issues. Boko Haram members should drop their guns – which have not been helpful at all – and opt for the peace option because human life is too precious to be wasted.

    On a final note, all agitations by Boko Haram – whether real or speculated may not be attainable – in view of the plural nature of our society. But something has to be done urgently now by government.

     

    • Wale Kupoluyi,

    adewalekupoluyi@yahoo.co.uk.

     

     

  • Taming the menace of Boko Haram

    It is not an understatement that one of the greatest challenges confronting the nation and which the governments have been battling without any iota of achievement is the insurgency of an Islamist sect called Boko Haram. While some people believe that the insurgency is a result of social, religious, economic, and political imbroglio, the main cause of the insurgency in Nigeria still remains a closed book to the majority. This sect started as anti-government policy campaigners, vandalising government properties and killing innocent people under the pretext of being anti-western education. It claimed to be an anti-western culture, working against the modern ways of governance and trying to establish Islamic Sharia rule.

    Nigerians, especially majority of Christians and even some of the Muslims who were of the view that Boko Haram represented Islamic doctrine had challenged devout Muslims to find means of curbing the nefarious activities of the sect that is painting Islam a bad colour. Its injurious acts could even ignite another religious war in the country if not quickly nipped in the bud. However, with time, it is increasingly becoming clearer to Nigerians and the international community that Boko Haram was just a criminal gang using the name of Islam to perpetuate evil.

    The menace of the sect is rooted in the Northern part of the country especially in Borno, Bauchi and Yobe States. When the cause of the insurgency was first believed to be political, the federal government of Nigeria set up a panel to engage the sect members in a dialogue as a tactic to bring down the intensity of the insurgency. The strategy has proved to be unworkable since the sect refused to be engaged in any discussion with the government. Maybe this is because the arrangement was not well planned from the beginning by government. We are all aware that the insurgency was formed in the Northern part of the country by some unscrupulous Northerners. We do know what the sect claimed to represent at its formation – being an anti-western education, and we also know that the level of education among the people of the North is nothing to write home about. Some of the youths in the region are less or not at all exposed to western education but Arabic teachings. And they are highly submissive to their leaders. They are easily influenced by their leaders. These youths are the ones that are mostly influenced to join the sect and wreak havoc on the country. If there could be liberation of their minds from ignorance, these youths will be useful for development rather than being deployed as Boko Haram members.

    While I do not condemn the dialogue strategy by the government, I still hold the view that one best way of taming the Boko Haram insurgency in the Northern part of Nigeria, is for the government to find a way of educating the Northern youths by funding their education properly and making them be at par with their Southern counterparts. This could be achieved by opening more schools in the area. He who opens schools closes the gate of war. Give them new orientations and open their eyes to the modern world: modern governance, modern education, modern war ammunition of pen rather than sword and bombs which they are currently exposed to.

    It is glaring that military attack solution launched by the government has not achieved much since the Joint Task Force(JTF) went to the troubled states of the federation. This is because the Nigerian military is under equipped. The Boko Haram’s sophisticated weapons are more efficient than those of our military. This is why the military are often overpowered by the insurgents. And the other reason is the hypocrisy of the government and the federal government’s insincerity about the root cause of the matter.  The JTF itself has not been helping matters; it is a bundle of deceit. How many times have they claimed to have killed the leader of the insurgents? Only for Shekau to most times reappear on you-tube through which he has been dishing out fresh threat of deadly attacks either on the JTF itself or on innocent citizens. JTF too has been killing innocent people in the guise of killing Boko Haram members. If JTF has been truly killing larger number of Boko Haram members, then why do we still have them more in the battle field? Let the JTF declare its inability to subdue the insurgents and pave way for a new workable strategy.

    The April deadline to end the Boko Haram insurgency promised by the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh remains just only a month without any sign of victory in sight. Well, we shall all wait and see what Badeh will do, maybe he will eat his words or probably extend the deadline for crushing the insurgents.

    That some northern politicians who were aggrieved by President Goodluck Jonathan’s disregard for zoning arrangement, which was the vehicle that brought him to the seat of Vice President in 2007, when he contested for the presidential post in 2011 are the brain behind the Boko Haram insurgency to make the nation ungovernable for Jonathan may not be the real reason since there has not been any solid evidence to prove the authenticity of the claim. If this is the cause as claimed by some political observers, then Jonathan should in the interest of national peace apologize to those people so that the menace of the sect can be curtailed. Since Jonathan was also the product of zoning, I would suggest he tenders his apology at least to appease those he has wronged about zoning and let the country enjoy her deserved peace once again.

    It is interesting to note that because of the monstrosity of the sect’s perfidious acts, the University of Ibadan Vice Chancellor, Professor Isaac Adewole, has publicly said that the school was ready to initiate a study of the Boko Haram. I would implore the institution to embark on this quickly alongside another on new beneficial technological areas that could more benefit the nation .

    Since everybody seems to be expecting the President to make his intention known about 2015 presidential election-the major reason why the polity is seriously being over heated- the president should not think twice about dropping this ambition if this is the only condition that would allow enduring peace to return to the north and Nigeria in general.

     

    •Adebayo, a journalist lives in Lagos.

  • Suswam and Gemade: Options before PDP

    Let me state from the outset that I am not from Benue State. It therefore stands to reason that I cannot also be from Benue North-East Senatorial District, one of the three senatorial districts that make up the state, and about which seat in the Upper House of the National Assembly I am writing.  So, anybody can conveniently question my interest and locus in the political dealings in the district.

    I am involved in this enterprise for two reasons. One is my relationship with the occupants of the seat since 1999 as a reporter (both for Vanguard and THISDAY at different times) covering the activities of the Senate. Two is the great concern the scramble for the seat has generated in social and political circles in the build-up to the 2015 general elections.

    Today, as publisher of The Congresswatch magazine, I have a wider role in relation to the entire Legislature. Regardless, my interest in the Benue North-East Senatorial seat, in particular, has been deepened because of my close interactions and relationship with occupants of the seat.

    Significantly, in 2007, I struck up a friendship with Senator Joseph Akaargerger, who was then the custodian of his people’s mandate from the senatorial district. Akaargerger was and remains a sedate but highly fecund persona. A former military administrator of Katsina State and holder of a Ph.D degree in Law, he brought his brilliance to bear in his contributions to debates on the floor of the Senate. I do not want to dwell on how he emerged as candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the expense of former National Chairman of the party, Chief Barnabas Gemade, at the party’s senatorial primaries in 2007, a process that was superintended by George Akume, who was then in the saddle as governor of Benue; and how he lost the seat to Gemade in the 2011 senatorial election.

    That Gemade won the 2011 election did not come as a surprise. In fact, his victory was expected. The Nomyange U Tiv (Rising Sun of Tiv) enjoys more political prominence both locally and nationally than Akaargerger, having been a Federal Minister and National Chairman of the ruling PDP. Had it not been due to the conspiratorial alliance perfected by Akume, Gemade would not have lost to my friend, Akaargerger, at the party primaries in 2007.

    Gemade brushed aside the incident, remained in the party, gave the seat another shot in 2011 and won. Interestingly, in 2011, the incumbent Governor Gabriel Suswam was in charge of the party machinery and with his support, Gemade clinched the party ticket. Akaargerger had tried to save his senate seat by moving to the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), on which platform he contested against Gemade in the senatorial election but lost to Gemade.

    Akaargerger has since returned to the PDP.  The import of this is that there is something very unique and attractive about the PDP platform. Leaders of the party would decide one day to jump ship and, always, like prodigal children, would later return to the party. I have deliberately made reference to this tendency to decamp against the backdrop of reports linking Gemade with a plot to leave the PDP.

    I sincerely took the reports with a pinch of salt because Gemade’s political pedigree does not portray him as someone who would abandon a house he built to be a tenant in another house on account of injustice or unfairness. After all, he had suffered injustice before now when former President Olusegun Obasanjo forced him out of office as PDP national chairman. His pre-determined and controversial defeat at the 2007 senatorial primaries did not also make him to run to another party out of desperation for elective office.

    He had remained unruffled, and had decided to bide his time. This is why, when it was reported, very recently, that he was contemplating leaving the PDP if he was denied a return ticket to the Senate to represent Benue North-East Senatorial District, I found it difficult to believe. The narrative had it that Suswam is interested in the seat at the end of his eight-year tour of duty as Benue governor; whereas, Gemade is interested in seeking a second term in the Senate.

    This scenario presents a jigsaw puzzle that would require the leadership of the party, including the presidency, to unravel. Here is a governor who has been loyal to the party, seeking a senatorial ticket. Should he be told not to exercise his right to aspire to any position in the land because of the ambition of another man? And if he is not told not to run, would he not deploy everything (read state machinery) at his disposal to overrun his opponent (in this instance Gemade)?

    But when one begins to analyse the development further, one is likely to point to the fact that the governor, who is about 49 years old, has had enough of elective offices having been in the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007 and having been governor from 2007 to 2015. Attempting to proceed from there to the Senate where he is likely to spend another eight years or more would be giving too much to one man in a state where there are people who are equally good or even better than him.

    This brings me to Gemade’s re-election bid, which is being threatened by Suswam’s senate ambition. Ideally, in the democratic spirit, Suswam should be allowed to slug it out with Gemade for the party ticket. But it is common knowledge that the contest would be skewed in favour of the incumbent executive head and the outcome of the primaries would be fractious on the party.

    And I ask, is the PDP ready for more crises within its fold? Would it not be in order for the PDP and the presidency to quickly identify potential flashpoints like the Benue North East senatorial contest, wade into them with compromises that would make political actors happy? Would it not serve the interest of the party and the presidency, for instance, to prevail on Suswam, a younger Tiv man, who has had his fill of elective posts, to allow his elder brother, Gemade (65 years), to enjoy a second term in the senate? And, would it not be ideal for the party and the presidency to consider an appointive post for Suswam with an assurance that he would be sustained in office for the period of four years?

    Lest either Suswam or Gemade misunderstands my motive and interest in this matter, I am interested overall in the wellbeing of the PDP. Indeed, while I once enjoyed interactions with both Suswam and Gemade, time and events have eroded such interactions. Nonetheless, the position that I have canvassed above is, to my mind, a fair one and I hope the duo as well as the party and the presidency will give these issue and others similar to it a thought in the interest of PDP victory in the 2015 general elections.

    • Ojeifo, journalist and publisher, sent this piece from Abuja.