The Nation Newspaper

Category: Commentaries

  • Which way Nigeria?

    To say that the polity is presently heated-up is an understatement. There is confusion everywhere and the situation is gradually getting out of hand. Selfish and unpatriotic interests have taken the place of national interest in the minds of the people steering the affairs of the country. The well-being of the people and the future of the country are now meaningless to those who should vehemently and unequivocally protect and uphold same.

    The crises rocking the nation are so numerous that it would be a needless to catalogue them here. Be that as it may, it is only an unpatriotic and inconsiderate fellow that will say all is well in the country. The situation is not entirely the fault of the people at the helm of affairs. As citizens, we share in the blame for some of our actions or inactions that have pushed the country deep into the present state. The question that readily come to mind at this point is – What should we do to right the wrongs?

    I have chosen to identify some vices for review and also draw the attention of Nigerians to their potency in undermining the sustenance of democracy.

    Prominent amongst these vices is the popular concept or practice that is presently ravaging the country’s development. That is the ‘Pull Him/Them Down Syndrome’. Politicians have adopted this weapon against perceived political opponents and the government in power. In as much as democracy allows for people to form opposition against the ruling party or government, the aim is for the electorates to have credible alternative and for the people in the opposition to act as checks on the rulers for the benefits and development of the polity.

    In view of the aforesaid, opposition to government policies and actions should be done in form of ‘constructive and objective criticism’. Political actors should learn to put the interest of the nation as paramount in all their actions and utterances. National interest should supersede religious, ethnic and political affiliations/connotations. All hands should be on deck to protect and sustain the country’s democracy. Just as political parties have their different, and in most cases conflicting manifestoes and agenda, the most important thing is the realization of the objectives which is to serve the people and move the country forward.

    If a particular policy or action of government is detrimental to the well-being of the populace or the development of the polity, it is the responsibility of the people in opposition to objectively criticize such policy or action and then proffer workable and better alternative for the government. If truly, the suggested or recommended alternative or solution is better and more meaningful, it will be open for people to see and judge. Should the government refuse to heed to better suggestions and submissions of the opposition for the fear of being termed a weak or government without clear direction, then that set of leaders would have successfully sent a message or signal to the people for revolution or imminent change in the elections to follow. This is because governance is not all about the people at the helm of affairs or party affiliations but, it is all about a common goal and objective which is the well-being of the people and betterment of the country.

    Though some actions and policies might have some negative or pressing effect on the polity in the short run, they could have lasting benefits and positives in the long run. Development is a continuous exercise and there are some developmental policies and actions which has short term pains and long term benefits. In this situation, the opposition should be objective and also take it as a challenge to explain the fundamentals and benefits to the people (by so doing, the people will be more relaxed and commit themselves to making and enduring the sacrifices) rather than feigning ignorance of the facts and blowing the short term pains beyond proportion just to give the government a bad name and make it unpopular in the eyes of the people.

    It is also pertinent to advise the government not to always perceive the opinions and criticisms of the opposition in bad light. A popular adage says ‘if we close our eyes and turn deaf ears to happenings in our surrounding with the excuse that we do not want to hear or see evil or unfriendly things or advise, by the time the good and beneficial ones will pass by, we will not also see or hear them’. In this case, our situation will be worse off. Putting it differently, government should not always perceive advice and criticisms of the opposition as misleading. The situation where aids of government functionaries see their job as countering or returning fire to well-meaning criticisms of the opposition will not bring forth positive results.

    Today, so many people have constituted themselves into political jobbers to attack perceived enemies of political office holders. They are praise singers who play to the gallery to drum up support for people in government even when it is obvious that they are derailing. To them, the leaders are always right and any opposition is seen as a crime against the state. They make inflammatory statements without being reprimanded by their principals. This development is very unfortunate and dangerous to the sustenance of our democracy. The unity of this country should not be toyed with for selfish interests. The general protests and revolutions that rocked some parts of the world lately are pointers to what unchecked utterances and outburst can cause.

    For a country to achieve greatness, the citizens should be ready to make sacrifices to sustain her unity. As it is difficult and almost impossible to break a bunch of broom, so is when the people are united in the pursuance of peace, stability and development of their country. As the saying goes, ‘United we stand and, divided we fall’.

    We should always have it at the back of our minds that a lot of sacrifices were made to achieve this democracy. Therefore, we should do everything to protect same. It will not do us any good if by our actions or inactions we allow the country to slip into a state of anarchy. A lot of people paid the ultimate price for us to get to where we are today. Generations to come will not forgive us if we misuse this opportunity and fail to consolidate as a result of our selfish and unpatriotic interest.

     

    •Oise-Oghaede, a Political Analyst, writes from Lagos

  • Auto policy and its contradictions

    Hardball knows the trick too well (now don’t ask him how); for want of a better description, let’s call it acting stupid for a ‘higher’ purpose. It is akin to the gambit trick in a game of chess: you sacrifice a smaller piece in order to capture your opponent’s bigger piece in the course of the game. But the difference here is that the star of this story, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, (MITI) is neither stupid nor making any sacrifice. In fact, he is supposed to be one of the star technocrats head-hunted from Wall Street to come help turn Nigeria’s economy around. It is, therefore, not possible that Aganga would make such elementary mistakes in policy articulation, enunciation and implementation.

    As you may have guessed, Hardball is interrogating the Automotive Industry Policy Development Plan (AIPDA), known as auto policy for short. Let us remind ourselves that the AIPDA or some variant of it is not new. Nigeria has had auto policy for ages which drove the setting up of about six auto assembly plants in the 80s. It also necessitated the establishment of the Automotive Development Fund (ADF) and the subsequent thriving of the auto component parts industry. Time was in the late 80s and early 90s when Nigeria supplied West and Central Africa the bulk of their auto batteries, light covers, glasses and other small plastic based replacement and ancillary parts.

    But all these initial strides towards achieving a self-sustaining auto sector atrophied and vanished the way of all Nigeria’s policies. Now like a strange people without history, the Federal Government through MITI, woke up one bright day last October, realised Nigeria is wasting huge sums through automobile importation and promptly dredged up a policy to build auto plants in Nigeria and effect an immediate stoppage of importation of fully built vehicles. Before you could say ‘assembly plant’, government had rolled out a vacuous policy whose main objective, apparently, is to increase tariff and levy on imported vehicles. It was done with the speed and alacrity that we do not experience from our governments anymore and that is indeed, alien to us these days.

    Setting up auto assembly plants in Nigeria is a great idea and Aganga would earn accolades on this space, if the motives are by chance altruistic but Hardball is in shock that this technocrat would embark on a major landmark policy such as this without factoring in some basic elements. We have not seen a review of the old order to determine the factors that led to its collapse; there are no assembly plants running anywhere yet; the oil sector which would yield the petrochemical base materials for vehicle components is in the doldrums; no electricity to power the envisaged automotive manufacturing clusters; no steel mills; the only tyre manufacturing firm in Nigeria migrated to Ghana long ago as a result of unfriendly business environment; no cushion or alternative mode of transit for the people in the event that vehicles become unaffordable in the face of Aganga’s crazy, new tariff and levy.

    How come then that Aganga thought of nothing else in the entire mix but tariff and levy hikes? How come what ought to come last has been put upfront? Hardball wagers that the purpose of the auto policy is a scam, a ruse to gather up billion of naira in a nebulous auto fund that is never accounted for. We wager again that Aganga does not give a damn about any assembly plants or Nigerian-built vehicles. Why is everything done post haste as if there is a (2015?) deadline to be met? This hurried auto policy is the exact scenario in the so-called rice policy in which the Agric Minister, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, hiked rice tariff and levy so high, so arbitrarily that it has become stupid for any businessman to import rice through our ports. Nigerians now consume smuggled rice while the rice fund is never applied to the development of the Nigerian rice.

    What manner of government is this?

  • Facebook patriots

    Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel- Samuel Johnson, April 1775

    Nigeria as a country is full of many patriots, good ones at that matter. Yes, they are many and in legions. But unfortunately, many are mere Facebook patriots, thanks to Mark Zuckeberg and his co-travellers. What will these patriots have done without their invention? Check out the Facebook walls of many Nigerians and you will get what I mean. We are perhaps the most ardent users of this invention, using it to vent our spleens on whoever we deem fit. Or praise-sing whoever catches our fancy, whether they deserve it or not. If you read the Facebook walls of many Nigerians and set stock by what they write and post there, this country would have been an Eldorado.

    Many pontificate and talk about the ideal country and situation. However, their pontifications and ideals end right there on Facebook. They vociferously condemn what they see as poor leadership and lack of accountability, yet in their offices and attitude to work they are lazy and unproductive. They blame the leadership of the country for every wrong and yet exhibit bad traits in their own little corner of the world. They never honour their promises no matter how little, yet blame others for the same infractions. They are right, but the other person who exhibited the same trait is hounded and condemned on their Facebook walls.

    Give such a Facebook patriot N5000 to share among five people, he takes the lion share. He doesn’t see this as a trait of stealing or cheating, yet he’ll condemn a government official who awards a contract and inflates the cost. But what is the difference between the two? If a man is untruthful with sharing N5000 among five people how can such be just and truthful in the award of billions of naira contracts? Yet such a thief would come on Facebook and cast the biggest stone at a public official for the same offence he has committed over the simple act of sharing money among five people.

    A Facebook patriot is held in a traffic snarl and he pulls out and drives furiously facing oncoming traffic. Such a traffic offender will later pounce on his keyboard and rail against leaders who blare their sirens and drive others off the highway when in traffic. If he could drive against traffic as an ordinary citizen, would he not do the same if he is in public office? Is his offence (driving against traffic) less grievous than that of the public official? No. It is the same blatant abuse.

    Who do you blame for this? Is this not one of the little breaches we perpetrate that lead to bigger abuses and make the country what it is today? Yet these Facebook patriots are major culprits and they don’t see this as part of the problems plaguing the country?

    If you are driving in your car and you finish drinking your sachet or bottled water and you throw the bottle or sachet out of your window on to the streets, do you have a moral right to blame, abuse or complain that Lagos is dirty or that Governor Fashola is not working? How is it Fashola’s fault that you couldn’t leave your trash in your car and dispose when you get home or the office? We all come on Facebook and cry over bad leadership when we are ourselves part of the problem. Why don’t we strive to show good leadership in our little corners and leave the bigger pictures to take care of themselves?

    I agree that leadership has a lot to do with it but have we ourselves shown the needed “leadership” in our little spheres? Will a man who couldn’t truthfully and justly share N5000 among five people be able to adequately share bigger resources without cornering more than half of it for himself? No. Greed has no degree; a man who shows his greed over a small portion would show the same greed over a large portion.

    To make our country great, we must be ready to walk the talk and behave and hold ourselves with the same scale we put our public officials on Facebook.

  • Abia and Orji’s social and economic life

    Abia State under the stewardship of Governor Theodore Ahamefule Orji is not developing. This is elementary to say, because of the pummelled social and economic life in the state, orchestrated by touts, charlatans in government and street urchins.

    No human society moves on when there abound shenanigans that cause discomfiture for today and future generations. These are causing Abia State to be sluggish in truly harnessing the social and economic life of the state for development.

    In a matter like this, what we have often been told is that no government develops a given state over night. Agreed. But we must also know that if Abia State government had been frontal with construction and reconstruction of the state the same way it trumpets its mirage achievements in the media, there would have been corresponding development we can see.

    In its dim-witted understanding of development, what the government claps its hand always for as development, are the relocations of Umuahia Main Market, Timber Market and the Allied and Motor Spare Parts Market, alias Mgbuka. But come to think of this, our people cannot forget in a hurry how traders in the former markets were displaced and many rendered useless, because of the exorbitant prices and levies they cannot afford as cost of renting stalls in the much-hyped markets.

    Gov. T.A Orji’s Abia State is not a safer and improved place to be, as hardship has become the preoccupation of residents, who did not bargain for the experiences they are passing through. The government tells the world that one of its developments or Legacy Projects, as persons like the disgraced and fired Ugochukwu Emezue, former Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, would coin the words and boast, is that it has been able to mange traffic gridlock in the state. Can we imagine this!

    Though, there are significant traffic-jams all over Abia State. But what actually happened why the government thinks that it has managed the situation is that many of our people have relocated to nearby states like Akwa Ibom and Rivers State, where they feel government works. Many are also relocating for greener pastures elsewhere. So, when Gov. Orji looks around on the roads and in the streets and does not see floods of vehicular movements, he beats his heart and boasts of controlling traffic-jam in Abia State.

    Odimegwu Onwumere,

    Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

  • A tale of two robbers

    These are certainly not the best of times for many Nigerians, who usually troop out en masse to vote for the people of their choice to represent them, with the expectation of delivery of dividends of democracy to their door steps, but the reverse is the case, as the dividends of democracy which many people of the country earnestly look forward to have not been forthcoming.

    Democracy has in no way changed for positive the living conditions of our people. If anything, people’s conditions are getting more deplorable with the rising cost of living. The only categories of people who have truly benefited from democracy are politicians, especially the political office holders.

    They are feeding fat on the nation, while the masses they are supposed to cater for continue to wallow in pains, hunger, and abject poverty.

    Nigeria today is under siege. The nation, particularly her masses, is whimpering under the whimsical grip of two types of robbers.

    The first category of robbers are the politicians and the political office holders. Ostensibly, because of the insensitivity, the recklessness and the corrupt practices of the political rulers, the new breed politicians would have learnt a lot of lessons.

    But not these new-breed politicians; many of them are in office today not to serve anybody but themselves; they are there to line up their pockets with public funds. The story is the same from the local government to the federal government level without putting the masses into consideration.

    The cavalier arrogance with which these people steal and share public funds is so nauseating that one desperately wishes for a change in government or even calls for a revolution to happen in this country, but not through a military coup-de-tat. All because people of this country have tensed up and want revamping, revitalisation and changes.

    In spite of the federal government’s declared war against corruption, this vice thrives most at the highest corridor of power. Imagine

    Princess Stella Oduah, Minister of Aviation, approving such exorbitant amount to buy just bullet-proof cars for herself, while millions of Nigerians are suffering and wallowing in abject poverty.

    The other category of robbers holding the nation hostage are the men of the underworld. Since the beginning of the democratic dispensation in this country, the wave of criminal activities, especially armed robbery, has been on the rise and after fourteen years of uninterrupted democratic rule, it is crystal clear that the government security apparatus can’t contain the excesses of these men of the night.

    The most astonishing part of it is that they no longer operate in the night alone. Their confidence seems to have soared so much that they can snatch a bullion van from security men in broad day light. Without addressing the gap between the rich and the poor, there will be no decrease in crime rate in this country.

    Ademola Orunbo

    Oke-Posun, Epe,

    Lagos State.

  • The Mandela gravy train

    The Mandela gravy train

    Since the death of Dr. Nelson Mandela on December 5, many tributes have been paid to his memory. Those that are of interest to me here are from three eminent Nigerians – former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida as well as Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State.

    According to Obasanjo, “Nelson Mandela modestly refused to seek re-election after his first term in office as his presidency elapsed. I still recall his pragmatic words when he said to me ‘Olu, show me a place in the world where a man of 80 years is running the affairs of his country.

    “This, to me, reflects an unequalled sense of modesty for a man who spent 27 of the prime years of his life in prison for a just cause and still kept a calm and peaceful disposition to those who took away his freedom for all those years of his life.”

    He added this clincher, “As the whole world pays tribute to Madiba, I join them in celebrating the life of a man who raised the beacon of human struggle to lofty heights of nobility and whose life is an example of what we should all aspire for. His struggle and our struggles remain the same and as we all seek for answers to deal with today’s challenges. Let us bear in mind that we all have the opportunity to act nobly in whatever position we find ourselves. When we teach our children the lessons for tomorrow, let us be reminded of the lessons Mandela gave the world.”

    My question: Did Obasanjo himself imbibe any of these?

    And now Babangida, after all the usual platitudes, he said, “The other thing that Mandela displayed which is un-African was that he stayed in power for one term and decided to leave the stage, which he thought was noble as he decided to allow the younger generations like his former Vice President, Mr. Thambo Mbeki, to take over from him. It was not easy and he was a very, very rare human being. In fact, we would not have another Nelson Mandela for the next 100 years. That is as far as I am concerned. We just have to keep on learning from some of the things he believed in and some of the things he did and copying him so that we can measure up to certain standards.”

    Do these two men have any moral ground or feel no shame in saying what they said taking into cognisance the role they have played in Nigeria’s tortuous journey?

    For me, the most ennobling comment of them all came from Fashola who said, it was ironical that Nigerians faced daily harassment in South Africa, while those who supported and enthroned apartheid got more respect in South Africa.

    He said, “Tribute to Mandela, either during his life or after his death, cannot really be too much. We are privileged to share this planet with him. But then, there are more questions than answers.

    “When you look at the part of the world where ovation is now the loudest, it was the part the pain was the most vicious. In a very cruel irony, history is being revised. The people, who collaborated with the government that enthroned apartheid at that time, are the people that are paying the biggest tribute now.

    “But I ask myself: is this not the time for deep reflection? I doubt if any African country expended as much time, as much money and as much commitment as the Nigerian government.”

    I am myself a living witness to all the atrocities of Apartheid. I participated in protests on university campuses and on the streets, calling for the end of the obnoxious system. Many students lost or nearly lost their lives fighting for the end of Apartheid and many of those who were driven out of their country came to Nigeria for refuge or to study. Now that they are independent they have turned their backs against us. So much so that not even the President of Nigeria was put on the list of leaders who spoke at the memorial service.

    Have we fallen so low? On all fronts, Fashola spoke for many of us while Obasanjo and Babangida only joined the gravy train to say something.

    God bless Fashola.

  • On health professionals and NAFDAC’s boss

    On health professionals and NAFDAC’s boss

    In recent time, some Nigerians have taken delight in churning out negative stories about the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) as a body or on the person of the Director-General, Dr. Paul Orhii. While the agency has its mechanisms to respond to such issues as raised, one is tempted to react to the spurious, ill-informed and jaundiced view of a hired writer, Sylvester Onubogu, which he titled Health professionals and NAFDAC’s boss, Orhii, published in The Nation on Sunday newspaper (December 8, 2013). Onubogu wasted a valuable page making the trite argument about the qualifications of the Director-General of NAFDAC, a medical doctor, lawyer and PhD holder in neuro-pharmacology, to head the agency, where in the last four years he has midwifed the agency’s growth and efficiency to the extent that today it is adjudged the foremost food and drug regulatory agency in Africa and one of the top 20 in the world by international bodies.

    Let me state from the outset that this write-up would not have been necessary because Orhii’s qualification to head NAFDAC and the groundbreaking record he has achieved in the agency was recognised by no less a body than the World Health Organisation (WHO), which just recently appointed Orhii the Chair of the Member State Mechanism (MSM), which is a body with such eminent members like the USA, Canada, EU countries, India, China and Brazil; a body consisting of about 193 countries committed to the fight against Spurious, Substandard, Fake, Falsely-labelled Counterfeit (SSFFC) medicines. Appointment to this exalted position involves a lot of high level meeting where candidates’ qualifications, records and achievements in their countries are thoroughly scrutinised by other medicine regulatory agencies in the world.

    It thus beggars belief that a man who has done so well in his assignment at home and who has gone further to prove his mettle at the world stage is the same person Onubogu and his faceless sponsors will want to cast aspersions on and as unqualified for the position he is holding. The big question here is who are these detractors undermining Orhii as a person and Nigeria as a nation even where Orhii is acknowledged as one of the leading lights of the transformation agenda of the Jonathan administration? It is no doubt that through the Orhii-led NAFDAC, Nigerian industries in the food and drug sectors have been well positioned by NAFDAC’s regulatory efforts to not only sell their products locally but to compete internationally through exports so as to bring back the glory days of the past where Nigeria was Africa’s major and best exporter. It is the same groundbreaking success that is being recorded in enforcement activities where Orhii has introduced cutting-edge technologies that has made it impossible for counterfeiters to escape detection and where also for the first time in the history of NAFDAC the most deterring convictions were secured by the agency, making sure that criminals caught in the act are made to serve long jail sentences that will serve as warning to others.

    This writer concentrated his attack on Orhii and the fact that he is not a member of the relevant pharmacy bodies in Nigeria. But the fact is if his argument is taken into consideration based on the provisions of the law he quoted to support his arguments, the person occupying the office of the Director-General can be 1) Food scientist 2) Medical doctor 3) Pharmacist or any of the science disciplines based on their experiences in food and drug matters. As a matter of fact, in the name NAFDAC, food is mentioned before drugs. Or is Onabolu saying that a pharmacist can double as a food technologist?

    There is simply no gainsaying the fact that NAFDAC as an agency is not an island unto itself and its structure, set up and activities are aligned with those of similar agencies performing similar roles in countries all over the world. The precedence set up by food and drug regulatory agencies in the world is experts who come from such varied disciplines like medicine, law, pharmacy, engineering, political science and various other fields are appointed to the headship of such agencies by their governments based on proven track record of achievements. More instructively, the United States Food and Drug Regulatory Agency (FDA), towards which NAFDAC is patterned has been headed by 21 Food and Drug Commissioners. Out of these 21 commissioners, 13 were medical doctors, including the current commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, MD. And at various times, a veterinarian, scientists, a lawyer and only one pharmacist has headed that body so far since its inception in 1906.

    Looking at other developed countries, the heads of the food and drugs regulatory agencies come from highly varied fields, which breakdown is as follows: Belgium, Dr. Xavier De Cuyper, graduate of Agric. Engineering; Brazil, Dr. Dirceu Bras Aparecido, specialist in Bio Pharmacognocy; Canada, Kathryn McDade, Political Science and Administration; European Commission, Dr. Andrzej Rys, Medical doctor and radiologist; European Medicine Agency, Prof. Guido Rasi, Medicine and Surgery specialist; Mexico, Mikel Arriola Penalosa, Lawyer; Netherlands, Dr. Aginus Kalis, Medical doctor; New Zealand, Dr. Stewart Jessamine, Medical doctor and general practitioner; Singapore, Dr. John Lim, Medical doctor; Switzerland, Jurg H. Schnetzer, Lawyer and graduate of business administration; UK, Dr. Ian Hudson, Physician and Paediatrician.

    So where is the argument of Onubogu and his faceless sponsors?

    Dr. Osifo writes from Benin-City, Edo State.

  • Re: Obasanjo’s letter exposes Nigerian newspapers ethical flaws

    THE attention of the management of Vintage Press, publishers of THE NATION, has been drawn to a publication in the online medium, Premium Times, about former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s letter to President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Premium Times accused some newspapers, including THE NATION, of not acknowledging it as the source of the letter.

    We do not hold brief for other papers, but we state clearly that our source was never Premium Times. We got the story of the Obasanjo letter late on Tuesday and we were ready to go late in order to run it, but we could not for many technical reasons on the part of our sources. Besides, we thought we should do some checks before running the story. We won’t name our sources because it is unprofessional to do so, despite Premium Times’ puerile attempt to dent our integrity with its reckless accusation.

    It is, indeed, strange that Premium Times should think that it has exclusive right to the source(s) of the letter. We did not get the letter from Premium Times and there was no need to say so.

    We assure our readers that we remain as credible as ever and will never compromise professional ethics.

     

    Editor.

  • OBJ: I dey cry o

    OBJ: I dey cry o

    Hardball feels like singing a dirge, a sad, melancholic dirge upon reading the rambling missive of former President Olusegun Obasanjo to his anointed son and current president, Goodluck Jonathan. But the muse fails me; it must have journeyed to a faraway country, having found no sober soil here to sprout. I want to sing, to moan about the black egg laid by the dark crow seven moons ago which has now hatched into a malevolent vulture. I want to weep about the prodigal father who sired a son who would out-prodigal him. I want to cry on behalf of the wayward father but tears fail me, my eyes having been worsted by evil sights, is stark like the night thief’s.

    Hardball wants so much to laugh as our former president was wont at his opponents when he had them by their jolly sac; when he squeezed them with sardonic mirth and he would chant, “I dey laugh o.” I want to echo his laughter with peeling ecstasy but the situation is grave. See who is on the run now; see who is afraid now and crying wolf. He says they are training snipers; what a laugh! Does a president need to train snipers to eliminate people? Are there not trained snipers all over the world waiting to be beckoned upon? Why would any respectable eliminator leave an entire training base of evidence?

    The other day when our dear Bola Ige was vaporised, no evidence whatsoever was left. Even as Baba wrote this long, ‘love’ letter to his ‘son’, he never gave us a coherent answer about our Cicero. He who dispensed wisdom from his front pocket the way his contemporaries would only dispense lucre suddenly became a fool’s tale before our eyes. Marshal Harry met a similar fate. Over a dozen others too all fell under the watch of our Baba Obasanjo; not one was explained or unraveled. In fact, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) under his leadership was described as harbouring a “nest of killers.” Haba Baba, when did political killings become the sole franchise of the Abacha era? We were all here between 1999 and 2007; while the Abacha regime had a boisterous gang. PDP’s was a clandestine, sinister machine that ‘worked’ with an especial gruesomeness. The “nest” was not content to eliminate, it picked quarrelled with the cadaver and often went on to squash and pulverise it. Don’t remind us Baba.

    Every issue Baba brooked in his long, whimsical letter, he sowed the seed and perfected the act. He cries about honour, character and keeping word: he was accused of promising to do just a term by his vice. He did not only jettison that, he tried to damage the constitution and organised a voodoo national conference in quest of a third term. He rigged elections at will and all the ones he conducted (2003 and 2007) were all a travesty in the annals of polling in Nigeria.

    He says “Corruption has reached the level of impunity” but the Jonathan administration must have learnt all the tricks from his political ‘father’. Does Haliburton ring a bell? What about Siemens and Transcorp and power contracts, to name a few out of hundreds of blatant malfeasance that defined the Obasanjo era. Impunity! What is impunity? Who disobeyed Supreme Court rulings at will? Who used state powers to stage impeachments galore across states, sometimes with a handful of legislators and sometimes from hotel rooms? Who deployed police in Anambra to lock up a governor in the toilet while the state Assembly held a mock session that impeached him?

    Every line of that ego-boosting letter is a farce; let’s just call it a PDP tale, told by idiots full of sound and fury and not just signifying nothing but denigrating Nigeria and her people. But we take solace in the fact that the PDP undertakers are finally singing their end-song.

  • How IMF deceives Nigerians

    SIR: An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission recently visited Nigeria to evaluate her economy. The mission met with “the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi; senior government officials; members of the legislature; and representatives of the private sector, with a verdict that Nigeria’s economy did very well during the year.” Given the group that the IMF mission met, no other form of verdict would have been possible. Even when you talk of “representatives of the private sector”, you have to ask: Who were those chosen representatives?

    The IMF report reads in part: “Nigeria’s economy has continued to perform strongly in 2013. Real GDP grew by 6.8 percent in the third quarter of 2013 (compared to third quarter 2012), supported by robust performances in agriculture, services, and trade.” But the next sentence reads: “Oil theft/production losses have adversely impacted export receipts and government revenues, leading to a significant drawdown from the Excess Crude Account.”

    And then in the next sentence: “Inflation declined to 7.8 percent (end-September 2013) from 12 percent at end 2012, in part owing to lower food prices and monetary policy implemented by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The exchange rate has been stable, and the banking sector is well capitalized with low levels of non-performing loans.”

    What the IMF means by “inflation” should be defined for ordinary Nigerians to confirm whether it “declined”. But a “robust performance in agriculture” in a country that is importing food items in billions of dollar? Forget the mythological “lower food prices”.

    This is IMF’s second realistic observation: “But fiscal buffers are low and a sustained high rate of growth is needed to reduce unemployment, and poverty.” The next sentence however chips-in a mixed bag: “Fiscal consolidation is progressing well, and the momentum needs to be preserved through the ongoing election cycle.” A veiled reference to money stolen for elections? The next sentence is long and windy: “Key public financial management reforms are underway, including the implementation of a Treasury Single Account (TSA) and integrated information management systems, but lower-than-budgeted oil revenues are impacting budgetary plans at federal, state, and local levels and highlighting the need for rebuilding fiscal buffers to manage oil revenue volatility.”

    The IMF and World Bank are neither straightforward nor trustworthy. World Bank and IMF are never bothered about mass poverty, so long as they control money to lend-out to “poor nations”, and they charge “low interests”. Why did the report avoid the issues of debts and infrastructure when Nigeria is in darkness and many book-readers lose their sights and are wrecked?

    No reference to corruption and misappropriation which ruin Nigeria’s economy!

    • Pius Oyeniran Abioje, Ph. D,

    University of Ilorin.