The Nation Newspaper

Category: Dele Agekameh

  • Channels TV’s aborted forum

    Channels TV’s aborted forum

    Suddenly, there was the hype, then the hue and cries, and finally, a dead silence. Perhaps, the above summarises the entire story of the ‘scoop’recently brought to public attention by Channels Television, a private television station that prides itself as a force to be reckoned with in the annals of broadcasting in Nigeria. The station has much trail-blazing reporting to its credit, which has won it vast audience attention and several merit awards in the past.

    It is probably these ground-breaking successes that fired the management of the station to engage in a very recent conspicuous investigative reporting. Dubbed corporate social responsibility by no other person than John Momoh, the Chief Executive Officer of the station, the report was centred on the rot that is the Police College in Ikeja, Lagos. The report came in snippets, or what media managers will easily refer to as promos, the forerunner to the main report.

    These snippets took the form of showing the toilets, dormitory and the general hygiene of the college. From what I was able to piece together, the President’s busy schedule did not permit him a chance to stumble on any of the snippets. Somehow, his attention was drawn to it. Thereafter, he requested for the clips. When he saw them, he was said to have been enraged and livid with anger. Barely a few days after, the President had a scheduled appointment in Ivory Coast, where he was to meet his other ECOWAS brothers on the ‘war’ in Mali.

    As the plane taxied on the tarmac in Abuja before it finally took off, none of the members of the President’s entourage had the slightest inkling that the President will be heading for Lagos en route Abidjan. Even when the plane touched down in Lagos, nobody, except, perhaps, the ADC, knew the President’s final destination. By the time the President’s motorcade got to the gate of the Police College, it was discovered that an “Owambe” party was in full swing on the grounds of the 73-year-old institution. That, in essence, means that an institution for state security such as the Police College had metamorphosed into an event centre.

    That was not the first time such event was being held in the college. While it may be difficult to trace the genesis of such events, it may also be difficult to ascertain how much must have been accrued to the College or some private pockets in the past through the staging of such events in such a sensitive place. In these days of bomb blasts everywhere, I wonder why no one has thought it very risky to throw the gates open for all Dicks and Harry in the name of making money. I am sure only a pittance is usually remitted to the college purse while the bulk of it goes into the pockets of greedy officers.

    Anyway, the President was no doubt startled by what he saw. The photograph of the visit, which adorned the front pages of some of the national dailies the following day, said it all. It showed the President and some of his aides transfixed with eyes wide open, and mouth agape as he looked at the double-decker bed inside one of the dormitories without any foam on it. Even the iron bed itself had visible signs of old age or was completely disused with its rustic iron going brown all over. The President might not have visited the lavatories for fear of epidemic breakouts. It was in this sorry state that the President fired certain questions at the Commandant, who turned out to be as blank as the President’s face as he (the Commandant) could not find any suitable answer to the questions.

    Surprisingly, Momoh, Channels’ CEO, was conspicuously present during the visit. He must have been jolted to the bone marrow when the President furiously concluded that the documentary was calculated to embarrass the government. Although I did not subscribe to this line of thought, Momoh got the message.

    Last Tuesday, the appointed day for the Town’s Meeting, which had been scheduled to commence at 7p.m at the Muson Centre, Channels’ simply made a volte-face. It said that the event had been postponed. A statement issued by the station said the postponement arose from the need to get all stakeholders involved in the project. That is purely a PR gimmick. That project may never see the light of the day anymore. It is as dead as dodo!

    Now, both the Police hierarchy and the Police Ministry are surreptitiously engaged in buck-passing over the Ikeja Police College issue. Perhaps, not many people are aware that the budget of the Police Ministry is less than N500million per annum which is mostly spent on overheads. The jumbo budgets of the police are spent by the Police hierarchy. The ministry only rubber-stamps whatever contract papers forwarded to it by the Police. It is very sad that this pervasive rot at the Police College has been allowed to fester for so long without anybody, not even any Police officer, serving or retired, drawing attention to this eyesore.

    There is no gainsaying that there is a culture of conspiracy in the police. This culture permeates down the ranks and file who prefer to keep quiet even when their cherished profession is being threatened or dragged in the mud by unscrupulous elements among them. The stinking rot in the police is like a sore thumb. Anywhere you go within any of the service formations, you are confronted with gargantuan corruption. Even if you make attempt to complain or denounce this, you are most likely going to be rebuffed, that is, if you are not immediately victimized. It could as well take the form of being framed for any imaginable or unimaginable offence, which may not be backed by any relevant law in the statute book.

    Those who are conversant with police operations, viz-a-viz purchase of equipment or contract awards are aware of the shady deals that have pervaded and characterised this department for ages. In the first instance, if you take a nominal roll call of the dramatis personae or those who have held sway for several years in this department, quite a good number of them are very old hands who have manned this department since God knows when. They are the foot soldiers used by successive top brass of the police to defraud the system.

    When you go to the Police Central Stores, you will be assailed by the heaps of junks that litter the whole space in the name of equipment and or armaments. Many of them were simply dumped there and are still dumped there by the powerful cartel that is in charge. Quite a good number of them too have outlived their importance and needs, while marking time inside the junkyard that is called Police stores. The fact is that contracts for most of the supplies were awarded to girlfriends and cronies, just to siphon money.

    In most cases, the quantities of items are never supplied correctly, thereby giving room for greedy officers and criminal-minded contractors to shortchange the system. And when it comes to the list of contractors, it is another scandal on its own. The contractors cut through every strata of the society – society ladies and women, retired police and military officers, former and serving legislators- all manner of contractors whose major qualification to corner the contracts is their clout or knowing the language of the business – bribery and corruption. They get these contracts but sublet them to capable hands to execute.

    To me, it is the Police top shots who have been befuddled by corruption for many years that do not care about the type of environment the newly recruited officers are trained. What matters to them is the money going into their private pockets than any thought of welfare for their young, upcoming ones. A thorough probe of contract awards and the Police Central Stores, carried out diligently, will confirm this.

  • Booming business of pipeline vandalism

    Booming business of pipeline vandalism

    For many years, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, depots at different locations around the country have suffered severe product shortage due to the nefarious activities of vandals who destroy the pipelines feeding the facilities. This way, consumption of the product has been adversely affected due to inadequate supply. Even where they are available, they are often sold at cut-throat prices.

    Andrew Yakubu, NNPC Group Managing Director, GMD, put the number of pipeline breaches between August and early January this year at 1,498. He told newsmen in Lagos last week: “Between Atlas Cove and Mosimi depots, the NNPC recorded 181 break points; from Mosimi to Ibadan, it had 421 ruptured points; and from Mosimi to Ore, it recorded 50 vandalised points. Also between Ibadan and Ilorin, it had a total of 122 break points.”

    Yakubu, who was on a fact-finding visit to Arepo in Ogun State, the scene of constant vandalism and fires in recent times, decried the unending incidents of pipeline hacking and product theft, which, he said, were currently posing great danger to the efficient distribution and supply of petroleum products in some parts of the country. The GMD said if vandalism was left unchecked, the activities of pipeline marauders could cripple the smooth operation of the downstream sector of the industry.

    Also last week, the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company Limited, PPMC, said the economy had lost about N165 billion in the last four years to pipeline vandalism. This includes the cost of repairs and products theft. Haruna Momoh, the Managing Director of PPMC, noted that “the activities of vandals at Arepo and products theft across the country had become a recurring national embarrassment and had cost the country N165 billion between 2009 and 2012.”

    Giving an insight into the activities of the ubiquitous vandals, Momoh said: “In one case, the vandals killed one of our personnel who had gone to fix a vandalised pipeline, and buried him in an unknown grave. It took the intervention of the management of PPMC, which pleaded with the community for several days, before they could show us the grave, allowing us to exhume the body so as to give the (staff) a befitting burial.”

    Between 2010 and 2012, Momoh said, 76 fire incidents were recorded in the country. According to him, more than 87 per cent of these were as a result of the nefarious activities of vandals along PPMC’s pipeline right of way. He gave the recurring decimal of Arepo as a typical example of such incessant fire outbreaks the organization has had to grapple with. Nigeria has about 15000 kilometres of oil pipeline.

    There is no doubt that pipeline vandalism is one of the biggest challenges confronting the country today. The harassment, intimidation and perennial killings of PPMC personnel by these vandals underscore the desperation, viciousness and callousness with which this booming business is being carried out. The illegal business is also believed to have led to the death of no fewer than 6,000 people due to fire incidents that resulted from pipeline vandalism in the last five years.

    While some people blamed the fire incidents resulting from petroleum pipeline vandalism on the ruptured pipelines, the affected oil companies, in their own defence, always attributed it to the activities of pipeline vandals. Regrettably, the activities of the vandals might have led to the unplanned exit of some oil companies in the country, which in turn has a drastic effect on the economy.

    The economic downturn in the country could have made many people to seek alternative means of survival through crime and criminality. In this regard, the very lucrative oil business must have been of topmost priority for them. Pipeline vandalism, therefore, has become almost an all-comers’ game because of the seeming ‘ease’ of stealing petroleum products. Though the pipelines are buried deep inside the ground and many in swampy forests, the vandals have devised various ingenious methods to breach the pipelines. Once this is done, they divert the products for their illegal business.

    In most cases, trucks are used to load illegal products to be sold to willing buyers in the black market. The buyers could be owners of filling stations or other unscrupulous Nigerians acting as middlemen for end users. When it is not convenient to use trucks, drums or jerry cans are used, and then taken in large quantities to secret places where the buyers come to take delivery. It is in the process of siphoning these products that ‘avoidable’ fire incidents occur.

    Since the first fire incidents in Jesse, near Sapele in Delta State, on October 17, 1998, where an estimated 1,200 people died, many more people have died, particularly as a result of the activities of pipeline vandals. These people met their untimely death through sudden and devastating explosions resulting in huge infernos. Men, women, old and young, even toddlers have been roasted alive.

    What is more saddening is that, try as the government may, with constant advertisement in the media pointing to the dangers inherent in scooping fuel from burst pipelines, nobody seems to be listening or perturbed. The simple reason is that those engaged in vandalism have formed a terror gang or cartel to keep themselves in business. Those living around or close to the pipelines, could possibly be aiding and abetting this heinous crime. At worst, they could be accessories to this act of vandalism. Also, a probe of the owners of several mansions that dot these landscapes around the pipelines could lead to some startling discoveries. Most of these mansions could have been built from the proceeds of this crime.

    I have heard stories about some unscrupulous Nigerians who have built houses inside villages and settlements close to pipelines route. Such houses usually go with high walls to keep prying eyes at bay. Inside these high walls, they bring oil tankers under the cover of darkness to take fuel siphoned from burst pipelines which are then neatly stored in huge storage tanks in the houses waiting for buyers. This is why I believe that the security agents must do more of intelligence gathering in order to unmask these enemies of the nation. Perhaps, one should add that the possibility of some unscrupulous security agents acting as shield for some of these criminals cannot be totally ruled out.

    In a society where money is worshipped and where poverty is widespread, the tendency to look the other way when these crimes are being committed is always there. This is more so if would-be or potential whistle-blower is given a piece of the action to keep body and soul together. Each time pipeline vandals are paraded on network television, it is usually the foot soldiers from the dregs of the society, who run errands for the barons that get caught. The godfathers usually lie low, while their stooges are being paraded half-naked in public.

    Oil theft, generally, is a very lucrative business in Nigeria. That is why many people are involved- from Nigerians to foreigners. The other day, it was some Ghanaians that were caught with illegal crude oil on the high sea; some Russians followed; so also were some Filipinos; now some Indians have joined the ‘deal’. And the soul train continues.

    A Yoruba adage says, “It is the rat at home that informs the one outside that there is food in the house”. It is Nigerians who act as fronts for all these foreigners who are falling over themselves in their bid to plunder our oil resources.

    Don’t let us talk about the Niger Delta area where illegal oil refineries have sprung up like mushrooms. Rightly or wrongly, it is estimated that the quantity of oil stolen from Nigeria through various dubious methods might far outweigh our officially declared national output or legal sales. Bad enough, even the NNPC does not seem to have a good and reliable record of Nigeria’s total oil output and sales. All that is being fed to the public is mere apocalyptic guesswork!

  • Manko’s ‘rare’gesture

    Manko’s ‘rare’gesture

    This year’s New Year festivities did not go without some alluring side issues. One of them was the gesture extended to ‘suspects’ in police custody in Lagos. On New Year’s Day, Umar Manko, the Lagos State Commissioner for Police, ‘disarmed’ himself and put aside his uniform in order to cater for the needs of suspects in his custody. He transformed into a Father Christmas, dishing out food and drinks to suspects brought out from the cell of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, (SARS), at the Command Headquarters, Ikeja, Lagos.

    When asked for his comments on the unusual gesture from equally unusual quarters, Manko said the suspects deserved to celebrate the New Year like others. According to him, policing the society is not limited to crime prevention and control, but uniting people. He added that being a suspect should not deprive one the enjoyment of his fundamental human rights. Manko further said that the gesture would be extended to other suspects in police custody across the state, adding that Divisional Police Officers (DPOs) and Area Commanders (ACs) had been given instructions to that effect.

    In all, no fewer than 125 suspected robbers, kidnappers, arms dealers and receivers of stolen goods, among others, were hosted by Manko. Some of the suspects who spoke to reporters at the occasion thanked Manko for his gesture. This ‘social interaction’ between the police boss and the suspects was the first of its kind in the command’s history, and I doubt if this had happened anywhere before in the history of the Nigeria Police.

    Since he was posted to Lagos as Commissioner of Police, I have watched Manko’s activities on the sidelines with keen interest. In the first instance, I knew he must possess some outstanding qualities to deserve such a posting to a state regarded as the commercial capital of the country. In addition, Lagos is undoubtedly an irresistible attraction to criminals, which is why the government cannot toy with the issue of security.

    In my curiosity, I had inquired from some of his colleagues those qualities that stood him out as a person to police a state like Lagos. One of them, Leye Oyebade, Deputy Commissioner of Police who once called the shots at the state CID, Panti, Lagos and now with Zone 5 Police Headquarters in Benin, spoke glowingly about him. He described Manko as a peaceful, easygoing and hardworking police officer. In terms of policing, he said, the police boss is a tactician, a master strategist who can hold Lagos successfully when it comes to fighting crime and criminals wherever they are.

    Not quite after my ‘inquisition’, late last year, daredevil armed robbers struck on a bright Sunday afternoon. From Agege to Gbagada, Anthony to Mile Two to Surulere and almost everywhere, the rampaging armed robbers left their signature mark – sorrow, tears and blood. It was a day the hoodlums momentarily took over Lagos with little or no resistance from the police. Worst affected by the onslaught of the hoodlums were bureau de change operators who lost huge sums of money and some of their members to the melee that ensued.

    That ‘coordinated’ operation by the hoodlums jolted the police hierarchy. Mohammed Abubakar, the Inspector General of Police, who quickly dashed to Lagos to assess the situation, described his men as “sleeping on duty” on the fateful day. Manko, who later addressed the press, did not betray any emotions. Rather, he ordered all Divisional Police Officers, DPOs, in the command to be on their toes. He warned that any DPO who allowed criminals to have a field day in their areas of jurisdiction would be severely dealt with.

    But Manko did not stop there. He went about diligently to match his rhetoric with actions. Pronto, some members of the gang were apprehended. From there, the Compol spread his dragnet to many states outside Lagos. At the end, almost all the hoodlums who participated in that orgy of violence were reined in. This was followed by the police’ seizure of the cache of arms in the custody of the criminals. The way and manner their ‘armoury’, which included many dangerous weapons and even grenade launchers, was uncovered is a testimony to the job of a “master strategist”. Their chief ‘armourer’ or arms supplier was also taken in.

    From then on, the police boss had recorded streaks of success in his exploits against crime and criminality in the state. I am not saying that crime has totally been wiped out of Lagos, but the fact remains that wherever the call of duty demands, Manko has been able to rise to the occasion.

    However, this is not to say that only Manko deserves to be singled out for commendation for policing Lagos. Security, as we all know, is a collective responsibility. The Lagos State government has made it one of its topmost priorities to ensure the safety of lives and property in the state. Through the Security Trust Fund initiated by the state government, corporate bodies and other well-meaning individuals in the state have, through their collaboration, been sustaining the fund. This is probably why the security agencies in the state have been living up to expectations in recent times. Besides the police, there are other security agencies like the Army, the State Security Service, the Navy, Air Force and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, to name a few. These outfits are toiling day and night to ensure the safety of lives and property in the state. The relative peace in the state is due to the synergy between them.

    But there could be a few slips here and there. If we all live to our responsibilities in the society; if we all volunteer prompt information to the security agencies; and if we don’t engage in any cover-up, whether of our neighbour, relation or even children who may have been lured into crime and criminality, the state and the country will be a better place to live in. This is because criminals live amongst us. They are not visiting ghosts from any other planets. If we turn a blind eye, they could endanger the lives of our neighbours, our relations, our friends or acquaintances, our children and even ourselves. Criminals constitute an intolerable nuisance to the society. That is why they must be exposed and stopped in their tracks at all times.

    Back to the main gist. Manko’s New Year’s gesture is a novel development. This is because suspects in police custody all over the country are usually treated as sub-human beings. Whenever a suspect is arrested, in most cases, when he appears in public, you see a half-clad person almost stripped to the pants. The suspects look unkempt. Some are battered in the course of interrogation to the point that they give up in police custody and are buried as unknown persons.

    Therefore, what Manko has demonstrated is that we should treat the unfortunate ones in our midst with human face. If this is so, perhaps, we might soon be living witnesses to a situation where the police will refrain from extra-judicial killings of suspects; where innocent people will no longer be framed up or railroaded into jail on trumped-up charges; and where policemen will not brutalise innocent people and even suspects in the name of extracting confessions from them. No doubt, this will engender a situation where policemen will respect the fundamental human rights of all regardless of status in the society.

    Manko’s gesture is worth emulating by his colleagues all over the country, many of who are known to be ‘goalkeepers’. As goalkeepers, they grab whatever money or anything that comes their way without any inclination to give to the less privileged or even their subordinates who are usually short-changed.

     

  • Goodbye 2012, Welcome 2013

    Goodbye 2012, Welcome 2013

    Yesterday, Tuesday, January 1, marked the beginning of yet another year. This event, as usual, was heralded by pomp and ceremony all over the world. The ceremonies were rather spontaneous. This is because regardless of previous or past experiences, people are always nostalgic in welcoming a new year. And so is the joy and optimism that goes with it.

    But then wait a minute. Let us take a look at 2012 and see whether the year justified all the ceremonies and expectations that heralded it this time last year. We might just look at the good, the bad and the ugly scenes or events that characterized 2012. As I was saying earlier, there is something so special about January 1 of every year. It is a day people give thanks to God for many things. High on the agenda is the gratitude for surviving the previous year. And it does not matter if the previous year was either good or bad. Everybody will be united in looking forward to a pleasant new year.

    In Nigeria, January 1, 2012 brought sorrows, tears and even blood. That was the day Nigerians woke up to the reality that the Federal Government had removed ‘subsidy’ on petroleum products. The exercise led to astronomic hike in the cost of fuel. It rose from N68 to N140. Many people who had travelled to their villages and hamlets for the New Year festivities were stranded. Tension enveloped the entire nation.

    What followed were huge protests all over the place. In Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Square at Ojota, on the outskirts of Lagos, came alive. For days, protesters trooped there to register their displeasure over the sudden hike.

    For some people, it was fun all the way as the organizers of the protests, the Save Nigeria Group, added innovations like bringing musical bands to play, and people volunteered food that was served freely. This kept the protests alive for several days. Every day, the crowd grew in number. The more the crowd grew, the more worrisome it was for the government in Abuja. For a government that had all the time stuck to its gun, by the time it was apparent that things might snowball out of control, the Federal Executive Council scrambled to the negotiating table. By this time, the whole country was in turmoil. Lives were lost.

    It was a fidgety President that later addressed the nation, and reduced the price of petrol as well as promised the nation a number of steps to right the wrongs in the oil sector. Had it been that there were no protests or that the protests did not assume the fearful dimension it took, I am not sure the government was prepared to look into the oil sector to actually see what was going on. Though attempts have been made by the government to rubbish the protests by labeling it as the handiwork of the opposition, that protest will go down as the first well-organised civil disobedience in Nigeria.

    We are all witnesses to the subsidy probe that followed. That probe opened a can of worms in the oil sector. It was like turning up the underbelly of a bad car. A lot of earth-shaking revelations on the financial malfeasance and sleaze that have bedeviled the oil sector were unearthed. However, what is left is the will by the government to successfully prosecute those involved in the subsidy scandal. The scandal dominated the polity in the first half of 2012. Many of the so-called ‘big boys’ driving around in posh cars were unmasked as thieves.

    Take for instance the case involving the oil magnate, Femi Otedola, and Farouk Lawan who headed the subsidy probe instituted by the House of Representatives. Otedola is known to be one of the commercial hangers–on around the president. Therefore, many people believed the bribe between him and Farouk could have been stage-managed or instigated from above to rubbish the exercise. Otedola’s company was one of the companies allegedly indicted. Till date, nothing concrete has been heard over that case. Yet, in Nigeria, it is a crime to offer or receive bribe. In that case, both the giver and the receiver are culpable. Nigerians are still waiting.

    In June 2012, a major diversion was the news of the crash of Dana Aircraft on a routine journey from Abuja to Lagos. All the 150 passengers, including the crew, perished. The crash threw the entire country into grief. The Aviation industry came under the binoculars as people asked questions. Anyway, that did not prevent further crashes in the sector.

    Danbaba Suntai, the governor of Taraba State, was involved in an air crash in October 2012 while ‘personally’ flying an aircraft from Jalingo to Yola. He, along with some of his aides, were badly injured and they are still receiving medical treatment abroad. If Suntai and his aides were lucky, Sir Patrick Yakowa, former governor of Kaduna State, along with Gen. Andrew Owoye Azazi, immediate past National Security Adviser, the pilots and aides, were not so lucky. Six of them perished on December 15 in a helicopter crash in the mangrove forest of Bayelsa State.

    Nigerians had thought that that helicopter crash would complete the unfortunate events of 2012. Another tragedy, this time, on the road, occurred when the vehicle bearing Idris Wada, the governor of Kogi State, was involved in a fatal accident on Friday, December 28, 2012. The crash occurred when the governor’s Lexus Jeep suffered a tyre burst on the Ajaokuta-Lokoja Road while returning to the state capital after attending an official function. Though Wada sustained a leg fracture and other minor bruises, Idris Mohammed, his Aide-De Camp, an Assistant Superintendant of Police, died in the crash. He has since been buried in Kaduna.

    I will not want to bother my readers with the numerous terror attacks in the northern part of the country in 2012. As it seems, that has come to be a permanent feature in that part of the country with an apparently helpless government blowing hot and cold each time the terrorists strike. It is a big relief that 2012 is gone with the loads of highs and lows that confronted the nation.

    If our recent experience is anything to go by, Nigerians welcomed 2013 with mixed feelings. We surely need a new beginning this year. It is obvious that issues of the economy, security, employment, fighting, corruption and official cover-ups, to name a few, will dominate 2013 in Nigeria.

    On the political turf, though the president has confessed that his government is “slow”, Nigerians will want to see a more invigorated government that will alleviate the sufferings of the people. The first way to ensure this is for the President to tinker with his cabinet and his aides. Some of them are dead woods who have nothing to offer than to sing praises and tell the President what will make him happy at all times. When you look at the performance indices of some of the ministers and aides, you could see that they are not worth to be councillors in their local governments. They are simply bereft of ideas and the wherewithal to move this country forward at the pace it deserves.

    It is obvious that many of them have become fronts for fortune seekers and profiteers. Majority of them have become too stupendously rich to continue in their present positions. It is for this reason that the president must take a second look at those around him and his cabinet. Nigerians don’t want a slow government. What is at stake in this country today cannot be handled slowly anymore. Afterall, the resources – human, natural and capital – are there. The president only needs to see beyond the present narrow prism and confront the challenges facing the nation headlong. To do this, he must act like a tiger and not a snail!

  • Christmas, the morning after

    Christmas, the morning after

    The celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the progenitor of the Christian faith, was held worldwide yesterday. Christian faithful, in their millions, trooped to various worship centres to commemorate the day, which is obviously the biggest festival in Christendom.

    But there was a build-up to the day. All over the place, the streets were jam-packed with people – old and young – all engaged in one thing or another in preparation for the day. In Britain, not even the ravaging flood that has changed the landscape for several weeks could dissuade people from going out for the usual Christmas shopping. Elsewhere in Europe, the chilling winter was no obstacle to people who braved the odds and moved round in their winter jackets. With some of the temperature falling below 4 degree Celsius, this year’s Christmas will surely go down as one of the coldest ever.

    In Nigeria, it was celebration galore. Street carnivals were held everywhere. The popular Calabar Street Carnival midwifed by Donald Duke, former governor of Cross River State, has assumed a life of its own. So also is the Port Harcourt Carnival introduced by Governor Rotimi Amaechi.

    In many homes, churches, corporate organisations and some government houses, Christmas carols were held in anticipation of the Christmas Day celebration. In Akwa Ibom State, a 9,999-man orchestra was put together to celebrate the state’s Christmas Carol. In attendance were dignitaries, including religious leaders, foreign envoys and a host of other very important personalities.

    The period also witnessed a regime of bonanzas unleashed on the populace by various corporate bodies and other manufacturing companies who enticed their customers with mouth-watering promos. Market men and women were not left out. They all made brisk business and smiled to the banks as Christmas presented an opportunity for them to do good business and make huge profit. And the governors were not left out in all of these. Though there were no salary increases, many palliatives were approved for state government workers to celebrate the Christmas.

    In Imo State, a two-week holiday was declared for the state government workers in addition to some stipends approved for them to enable them celebrate Christmas with their families. The governor of the state, Rochas Okorocha, known widely for his unconventional style of leadership and, sometimes, erratic decisions, also approved money running into millions of naira for the security agencies in the state. His calculation was that the least paid security agent in the state would go home with at least N10,000 for Christmas. This gesture was replicated in other states of the federation in one form or another. It all borders on merriment during the Christmas as if all Christmas stands for is eating and drinking.

    Notwithstanding the avalanche of mouth-watering offers and merriment associated with the festival, various religious leaders across the country, political leaders and public office holders were quick to remind the populace of the need to embrace peace in the country. The appeals come on the heels of threat of violence which have characterised the season in the past. Last year, on Christmas Day, worshippers at St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, on the outskirts of Suleja, Niger State, were callously mowed down by a suicide bomber who had targeted the worshippers as they closed from church. It was a horrible sight as many of the worshippers died in the blast while others lost their limbs and sustained varying degree of injuries. The church building and other adjoining buildings were not spared in the orgy of destruction. The attack drew wide condemnation from people all over the world. But such condemnations were not enough to deter the bombers who still exploded their lethal wares in other parts of the country, especially in the crisis-ridden northern part of Nigeria.

    As Christmas drew near this year, residents of Madalla were gripped with fear and trepidation. Last year’s incident was obviously still fresh in their memories. This resulted in many people moving out of the area to avoid any unpleasant situation. This is the extent of the psychological torture and trauma terrorism has inflicted on the people.

    The thought of a re-enactment of the Madalla episode elsewhere in the country had stretched the security agencies in Nigeria to the limit this year. To avoid a repeat occurrence, security, therefore, took centre-stage in the affairs of the nation during the Christmas festivities. While the focus of the agencies in the North was to avert any strike by misguided extremists masquerading under the veil of religion, those in other parts of the country were battling kidnappers and armed robbers who have been on the prowl for some time now. The roads, too, were heavily monitored by officers and men of the Federal Road Safety Commission. But because of the generally deplorable situation of the roads, many people either stayed back or risked travelling on the roads. I am quite sure that the increase in traffic during this period must have also recorded its own fatalities. This is because of the nightmare travelling on Nigerian roads has become. It is no longer a pleasure but a horrendous experience moving from one part of the country to another.

    On Friday, December 21, Chukwuemeka Ekweremadu, the elder brother to Ike Ekweremadu, Deputy President of the Senate, lost his life in a road crash on the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway. Until his death, Chukwuemeka, 52, was a Director in the Enugu State Civil Service and a member, Board of Trustees, Tertiary Education Trust Fund. His sudden death on one of the nation’s appalling roads has put an abrupt end to an otherwise glorious career.

    Not even the alternative – air transportation – is safe in the country anymore. With far too many air crashes in the recent past, there is virtually no place to hide. The latest involved a naval helicopter that crashed in the mangrove forest of Bayelsa State on December 15. The crash claimed the lives of six Nigerians – former Governor Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna State and his friend, Dauda Tsoho; immediate past National Security Adviser, General Andrew Owoye Azazi (retd.) and his orderly, Warrant Officer Karmal; and the two pilots of the ill-fated aircraft, Commander Daba and Lieutenant Sowole. Daba’s wfe is said to have newly put to bed, while Sowole’s wife is pregnant. The Sowoles were married for less than two years before tragedy struck. This disaster took the shine off the Christmas celebration in the affected families.

    By and large, this year’s Christmas festival has come and gone but what remains is the lessons to be learnt from it. One of these is that Christmas is not about merriment alone. It is about humility, which Jesus epitomised in his lifetime. It is about service. It is about love and care for the less privileged in the society. It should not be misconstrued to mean extravagance or ostentatious display of ill-gotten wealth.

    And now that the carnivals and merriment are over, shall we have good governance and accountability in all facets of our national life? That is the only way this country can move forward. That is the only way we can make progress as a people. So, as we move ahead into another year, let us have a rethink. Let us devote our energy to those things that will make life meaningful to all of us. This should not be a one-sided sacrifice. It is for both the leaders and the led. Together, we must make the world worth living through our actions and utterances. Already, the Presidency is promising Nigerians an El Dorado come 2013. But that refrain is familiar. We have heard such promises over and over again, such that it has almost become meaningless to the average Nigerian. But who knows if God will hear Nigerians’ prayers for a better life in 2013? We are all waiting for that miracle.

     

  • For Azazi, funeral replaces Xmas Carol

    For Azazi, funeral replaces Xmas Carol

    For many years, he had hosted Christmas carol services at his Ikoyi, Lagos residence at least, a week preceding Christmas. It was an annual ritual with attendance drawn from far and wide – the high, the mighty and the lowly placed. Over the years, it had assumed a life of its own as everybody looked forward to the yearly event.

    Preparations were in top gear for this year’s event. My brother and friend of many years, Brigadier-General Felix Ayodele Muhammed (retd.), had been made the coordinator of this year’s event. He had had several meetings with those who will actively participate in the service – band leaders, choirs, religious groups, army chaplains and others. Last Friday, Muhammed, whom his boss of many years, the late General Andrew Owoye Azazi, prefers to call ‘Felix’, had intimated the general that he was coming over the following day, Saturday, December 15, to give him an update of the preparations so far. Azazi did not oppose this. Rather, he simply told Felix to meet with Alero, his wife of many years and finalise issues as he was billed to dash down to Bayelsa, his home state, to attend a function.

    Last Saturday afternoon, Felix made it to the residence of his former boss. He drove into the compound oblivious of the fact that something was amiss. As he entered the sitting room, hoping to meet Mrs. Azazi, an eerie silence descended on the whole environment. It was an unusual situation, but all the same, he sat down on one of the chairs waiting for the ‘madam of the house’ to surface from any part of the one-storey apartment. Just then, he started hearing some shrill cries upstairs. It was then it dawned on him that something had, indeed, gone wrong.

    By the time Felix was face to face with Azazi’s wife, the story became clearer. “Oga is dead!” Felix was transfixed and dazed. He inquired to know what had happened and how it happened. “It was a helicopter crash at Okoloba community in Tombia, Bayelsa State. Oga was returning from the community where he had attended the burial ceremony of Pa Tamunoobebara Douglas, father of Oronto Douglas, Special Adviser to the President on Research and Documentation”.

    From then on, wailings and grief took over as family members, friends and associates trooped in one after the other. Although no details of the crash emerged until later that evening, those who had contacts in Bayelsa, Rivers and in the military were able to extract some information about the crash.

    ‘Felix’ or General Muhammed, a chartered accountant, was the accounts officer to the late Azazi when Azazi was General Officer Commanding, GOC, 1 Battalion of the Army, with headquarters in Kaduna. Since then, both of them had struck a rapport that had endured till date. Besides, Alero, Azazi’s wife is also a chartered accountant.

    I had attended last year’s Christmas Carol in Azazi’s house in the company of General Muhammed and his wife. That evening, Azazi read the first out of about nine readings lined up for the day. His wife and some of his children who were present read some while other family members and close friends also took their turns. It was a night of great revelry, sobriety and thanksgiving for God’s abundant blessings during the year.

    Many known faces turned up for that event. They include Colonel Edore Obi (retd.), one-time military administrator of Bayelsa State; Donald Duke, former governor of Rivers State; business mogul Wale Babalakin; Timi Alaibe, former managing director of Niger Delta Development Commission and later Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Affairs. In attendance also were top military chiefs, both serving and retired.

    It was there I came across Rear Admiral Arogundade (retd), the naval officer whose aides reportedly brutalised a lady in Lagos after a minor traffic incident. I took time to ask him some questions on the incident. He did not appear like the ‘monster’ which was painted of him by the media at that time. He lives almost next door to the Azazis and I have met him several times after that encounter both in Lagos and Abuja.

    I first met late General Azazi in early 2005 at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Conference Centre in Abuja. It was at the launch of Iniquity in Nigerian Politics, a book authored by my brother and bosom friend, Professor Steve Azaiki. The launch had attracted heavyweights across the country and the diplomatic community. That was one book launch in which several senators were merely confined to the lobby as all the seats inside the conference hall had been taken over by dignitaries. It was like a carnival and I am yet to witness any other book launch of equal attendance of who’s who in Nigeria ever since.

    At the end of the book launch, Azazi, who was in full military uniform, had moved to the podium for a photo session with Azaiki. It was there that Azaiki introduced me to him. Azazi, who was then a brigadier-general, was at that time the boss of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, DMI. Shortly after, he was appointed GOC, 1 Mechanised Division of the Army in Kaduna. He was later made Chief of Army Staff before he was promoted Chief of Defence Staff. Although he was subsequently retired from service, but by that time, his image had loomed large all over the place.

    In the last few years, Azazi had given out some of his daughters, if not all, in marriage in very colourful ceremonies. I attended the one in late 2006 at the Church of Assumption, Falomo, Lagos. I was at the ceremony in the convoy of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who was then the governor of Bayelsa State. At that time, he had just been picked as running mate to the late Umaru Yar’Adua, who had also earlier been chosen as the standard-bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2007 presidential election.

    It was at that wedding reception that the idea of putting together a national political platform for Jonathan was conceived by me, Azaiki and Chief Ephraim Faloughi, the chairman of Sovereign Trust Insurance Company. The following day, we came up with Yar’Adua/Jonathan Committee of Friends and held the inaugural meeting at the residence of Chief Ebitimi Banigo in Victoria Island. Others in attendance at that meeting were Ben Bruce, chairman, Silverbird Group; Chief Lawson Omokhodion, former MD of All States Trust Bank and later Liberty Bank who is now into oil business, and a few others. It was the committee that first rallied support for Jonathan all over the country.

    Generally, in Azazi’s death, Jonathan has lost one of his pillars of support. In and out as National Security Adviser to the President, Azazi had always provided support for the President on security matters. Throughout his eventful career – within and outside the military – Azazi had proved to be a patriot, an officer and gentleman whose watchword was discipline in all his deeds. All the same, he was not without some human errors. One of them was that as NSA, he was too visible everywhere when he was expected to operate more incognito.

    Now, he is gone and gone forever. His funeral might as well replace this year’s Christmas Carol service, which would have been held today, Wednesday, December 19. However, it is not how far or how long one lives. It is actually how well. Adieu Andrew Owoye Azazi. May your soul rest in peace! May the souls of all others who also died in the ill-fated flight rest in perfect peace! May their families be consoled by the fact that death is an inevitable end of all human beings! Amen! We all have our entrances and exits at different times and places!

     

  • The North and Boko Haram

    The North and Boko Haram

    Violence and insecurity is not peculiar to northern Nigeria. Nigeria as a whole is at a point where perhaps its security apparatus needs a radical surgical overhaul in order to better guarantee the safety of the lives and property of the people who, in addition to coping with crippling poverty, have had to also contend with progressively worsening levels of insecurity through successive years, especially since the return to civilian rule on the eve of the 21st Century. What, however, seems to be increasingly peculiar to the north as far as violence and insecurity is concerned is the brazen terrorist toga the violence continues to don. And since mid-2009 when, starting from the then-hotbed of Bauchi State, a radical group first engaged security forces in gun battles across some states of the north, things have hardly let down. From gun duels and attacks with crude war material that group is now the infamous face of violence in Nigeria as its tactics get ever more sophisticated. That group – Boko Haram – continues to thrive in spite of consistent chest-thumping by the government that somehow the government is prevailing in the war against insecurity and violence.

    No doubt, Nigeria’s borders with other states contributes to the problem as some of the foot soldiers carrying out the violence have been found to be from some of these West African countries. Perhaps, this means that the efforts at border patrol and security measures in border towns have not been concerted enough. However, security forces may ransack compounds, and even invade and kill whole towns. This would no doubt, have its own success. Still, we would only just be scratching the surface of the issue at best because sheer, outright force does not seem like the only viable solution to the problem.

    Which is why it ought to (emphasis on “ought to”) be heartening that some people across both sides are beginning to consider dialogue in all this. But you wonder how feasible dialogue, productive dialogue in the interest of peace, is here considering the unrealistic nature of the group’s demands. If dialogue happens, that would be great. However, there are a few things that are beyond the direct control of the government that need to happen in order to have a chance of bringing about peace to the north.

    The staying power that the Boko Haram ‘brand’ continues to demonstrate in the north, especially in its two strongholds of Borno and Yobe states is, arguably attributable to the attitudes of indigenes of the two states, side-by-side the suspected membership composition of the group. There was talk across town recently especially in Yobe, that some of the recent success enjoyed by the Joint Task Force in identifying members of the group and their lairs in Damaturu and Potiskum was down to the fact that a few more people in those cities came forward to blow the whistle on suspected Boko Haram elements, leading security forces to more precise targets rather than having blanket information. This sort of ‘snitching’ is what has to happen more with Boko Haram. Such attitude to violence is one of the things that had not happened often enough in the past especially in Borno State, which has allowed the group to continue to spread its violent tentacles as though its members were aliens with superhuman ability to completely evade attention until Violence Hour strikes. In truth, however, sentiment and lineal affinity has always interfered with the people’s thinking as far as Boko Haram is concerned. As many families are inextricably tied to the group one way or another with having a deviant family member on the group’s payroll, innocent members of the public usually feel compelled to play the unwitting accessory as the family ties that bind them force them not to expose their family member as belonging to the group. But as demonstrated with the relative success of the security forces in the two Yobe towns where this attitude changed, be it for a split second, fighting the group’s brand of warfare is every peace-loving person’s responsibility.

    So, the people have to decide whether they will continue to allow their affinity towards family members who do not give a hoot about the safety and security of their innocent brethren becloud their sense of longing for peace. The people must simply wean themselves of that rather misplaced allegiance and realise that self-preservation and the preservation of innocent lives is infinitely more golden than protecting the interest of murderous, suicidal family members. They don’t have to go too far to find precedence to follow. In 2009, when a teenage Umar Farouq Abdulmuttallab attempted to blow up an American aeroplane, some attributed his behaviour to his privileged upbringing. But it turned out that his father, having watched him closely for a while, had been worried enough to alert the authorities that his son was showing extremist inclinations. In the end, although that act was not directly responsible for the botched bombing attempt, it vindicated his father and the family. It showed that not even a father could be swayed by filial ties to stand in the way of the safety and security of other people, even if his actions meant he was discrediting his own flesh and blood. Similarly, every well-meaning northerner has to accept that the safety and security of the innocent should be superintendent to their rather primordial considerations of filial protection over those whose actions directly and indirectly deepen their misery and make their own kith and kin endangered species in their own land.

    Another primordial factor that seems to be hindering the fight against violence in the north is the attitude towards religion. And by religion here, this writer means the interpretation of Islam by most northerners as against practically everything else, including contrary religious views and religions. If we chose to be naïve we can say that the Boko Haram problem is not a religious cancer. We can also elect to be simplistic and call it a sole problem of religion. Either way, we may not be doing justice to the issue. Simply, as it is today, violence in the north has a socio-religious touch to it, fuelled by political elements here and there. In the midst of this, other criminals of various ilks have exploited the situation to their own diabolical ends such that what we now have is a hydra. But this is one hydra with stronger tentacles of religion and politics – politics feeding on religious fervour to ignite an all too inflammable social canister.

    So, a good way to go is for people in the north to start looking at religion differently, stop seeing everything through the vaunted superiority of the religious compass. What if the people become less uptight and sensitive about religion? What if they start to look at religion honestly as a life journey encompassing tolerance, understand others and allowing other opinions to precede even when this may not be in their own best interest? What if religion is no longer a struggle between faiths or beliefs to them? What if they begin to see Islam as not a fragile Masonic doctrine that must be protected aggressively from others? How about they begin to see religion as a pattern of a series of interconnected faiths each with their peculiarity that might not always seem linked or pleasing to one set in the series, but then the one set does not harm the other set? I tell you what might happen: there would be less room for anyone or institution to attempt to mess with the sanity of individuals or groups by colouring everything as a religious struggle in which every man has to protect his own corner.

    That way also, the people would begin the process of extricating themselves from ‘personality-institutions’ and instead embrace ‘institutional-institutions’ and authority – learning to give their allegiance to rules, social contracts with all, as well as institutions, rather than subjecting themselves to being (mis)led by individual or group of individuals only, no matter how wealthy or ‘knowing’ the individuals may claim to be.

    But then considering the poverty level, the level of ‘unletteredness’ and the depth to which person institutions and religion has already sunk into the psyche of the people in the north, who will bell this cat?

     

  • This ‘Okada’ Country (2)

    This ‘Okada’ Country (2)

    On the economic front, as more and more companies, factories and other workplaces go into extinction, a greater percentage of the workforce, who are daily being thrown into the unemployment market, have launched themselves into the okadabusiness – a business that guarantees them instant profit and it is an all-comer’s affair. It is so because anybody can venture into the business at any time. They are emboldened because all you need is to get hold of a motorcycle and hit the road at once. There is little or no government regulations of the business except that both the rider and passenger must wear safety or crash helmet.

    There are different types of people engaged in okada business. Majority of them are disengaged labour force who have no other way to fend for themselves and their families than to be lured into the okada business to keep body and soul together. Then there are many others who are either school dropouts, who don’t want to venture into any other thing than to mount on okada so far it will provide something for the stomach.

    Yet there are others who are products of secondary schools or some tertiary institutions who have no other place or thing to do than to settle for okadaas a business. Also, you have businessmen who have ventured into okada business because it is profitable. These are investors who either bring in motorcycles in large quantities from the manufacturers abroad for sale to willing buyers or those who buy them in large quantities from local dealers and go on to assemble able bodied young boys to ride them and make returns to them.

    This last category engaged to ride okada and make returns to the owner are mostly recruited from a section of the country. In the good old days, they are ubiquitous in Ikoyi, Obalende, Victoria Island, Ikeja, Lekki, Ajah, Ogba, Agege, Ajegunle and many Lagos suburbs. Once they stay long with their ‘master’, they could move up to control some of the okada riders too. This is how cells of okada riders have multiplied and grown like mushroom all over the place.

    It is true that the business is very risky, considering the fatalities often associated with any accident on okada. It is often said that the National Orthopedic Hospital, Igbobi, Lagos, has a large ward devoted to victims of okada accidents. Even if such does not exist, it underscores the severity of injuries from okada accidents. Many able-bodied souls, men and women, children and orphans, who were either riders or their passengers, have been lost to fatal okadaaccidents. Many more have lost their limbs and legs or suffer one form of physical deficits or the other through these bikes.

    Of course, the security aspect of it is there as well. For many years, okadahas become a veritable instrument used by hoodlums to perpetrate violent crimes, particularly armed robbery. The ease with which such crimes are committed while the perpetrators vanish from crime scenes without trace using okada has also raised serious security concern. Quite often, bank customers are attacked and dispossessed of their money by armed robbers who lurk around banks and other places waiting for their prey. The statistics released by the Lagos State Police Command on the involvement of okada riders in violent crimes like robbery, kidnapping and others is staggering. It is only those who have fallen victims that can quite appreciate the enormity of danger okada constitutes to the society.

    Having said all these, it is apt to note that the population of okada riders in a state like Lagos is very high. Some say there are as many as a million okada riders in Lagos State alone. Imagine this number and the danger they pose to traffic management in the state. These are people who do not play by the rules at all. They operate like a cult group to the extent that any infringement on any okada rider usually incurs the wrath of his colleagues who easily employ violence to settle scores. This way, they constitute a big nuisance to the wellbeing of the society.

    But considering the economic importance of okada to many families, most of who are on the brink of poverty, should we throw away the baby with the bathwater? Should the authorities outlaw the business completely in its entirety? The answer is neither here nor there. There is what could be termed ‘legitimate’ okada. These are motorcycles used for transacting corporate businesses like courier services and protocol services. Some departments of security agencies still make use of motorcycles for movement, reconnaissance, intelligence gathering or for carrying messages from one point to another.

    Many private individuals also use motorcycle as their own private vehicles to take them to work and move them around. All these‘legitimate’ okada riders, as it were, are now vulnerable to harassment and arrest by security agents, especially the police and KAI brigades who seem to have abandoned every other thing to chase okada riders all over the place. This is why the Lagos State government should devise a way to accommodate this category of okada riders.

    Therefore, however good intentioned the ban may be, it surely has adverse effect on the life and existence of those who depend solely on it to feed, clothe and pay school fees of their children and wards. This is why I think, rather than a blanket ban, as it were, the Lagos State government can bring in tricycles for distribution to any willing member of the public on installment payment plan. This can be done through the unions, local governments and other groups without any discrimination either on party, ethnic, tribal or other primordial lines. The welfare and happiness of the people should be the cardinal principle of good governance.

    In addition, the state government should try as much as possible to fix the deplorable roads in the state so as to ease vehicular movements. This will encourage those who can afford it to buy vehicles for mass transportation. No doubt, there is a dearth of commuter vehicles in Lagos State.

    Similarly, strategic planners should put heads together and devise alternative means of livelihood for the masses as a way of buying them out of the dangerous okadabusiness. We cannot continue to run an Okadacountry, which we are, at the moment.

    A few months ago, this column featured a piece titled: “Lagos, a State and its cross”. In it, I categorically made allusion to the fact that Lagos deserves a special status. This is against the fact that “the state has no compensation whatsoever for its microeconomic input in the country”. This appears to be the only safety valve for the state to wriggle out of the financial burden imposed on it by its status as the commercial capital of Nigeria.

    In the face of the mounting state expenditure on a variety of programmes such as good transportation, adequate healthcare delivery system, appropriate security system, education and many others, it is obvious that the monthly federal allocation can no longer sustain the state. Not even the state’s internally generated revenue, IGR, can adequately make up for the financial requirement of the State. “The state’s IGR, though higher than what obtains in other states of the federation, cannot meet the demand of its yearly budget.

    With a projected growth rate of six percent annually, the financial requirements of the state to sustain its enormous social services to the people, is so huge… Not even the donor agencies’ funding it receives or the multilateral loans it gets can adequately provide for its shortfall. Moreover, the daily influx of people to the state from every hamlet in the country confers on it, the unenviable status of a state consistently in search of adequate funds to sustain its infrastructural needs.

     

  • This Okada Country (1)

    This Okada Country (1)

    There is a silent ‘war’ going on in Lagos at the moment. You may call it ‘Okada War’. The war was ignited recently when the Lagos State Government placed a restriction on the operation of motorcycles, particularly the ones being used for commercial purpose, popularly called okada, along certain routes in the state. The okadaoperators are saying that the restriction, which emanated from legislation by the State House of Assembly, has put them out of business. This is more so as they claimed that the 451 roads and bridges in the state along which their movement have been restricted are the most lucrative routes.

    On its part, the Lagos State Government has maintained that the government is determined to curb the rate of fatal accidents involving these okada riders, check the rampant use of okada to commit violent crimes as well as bring sanity to the Lagos chaotic traffic system. Many public enlightenment and sensitization programmes have been held by the government in its attempt to make these okada riders to see reason and comply with the law. The okada riders too have held protests and even introduced violence to their resentment of the law.

    A few weeks ago, there was tension on Lagos roads as the commercial motorcyclists took up ‘arms’ and vandalised government vehicles on sight. Mostly affected were the state’s mass transit buses, popularly called BRT. Some of them were torched, while many more had their wind screens and side glasses shattered. In the orgy of violence, the government and security agencies in the state quickly employed tact and caution to bring the situation under control. For almost a week, it was a hide-and-seek game as security agencies battle the warring okada riders to submission.

    As they say, when two elephants fight, it is the grass beneath them that suffers. But in this case, the fight was between an elephant, which is the state government, and a ‘horse’, which is the okadariders. And instead of the proverbial grasses, it was the Lagos commuters that bore the brunt of the crisis while it lasted, although the smoldering effect could take eternity to overcome.

    I have metaphorically referred to okada riders as the ‘horse’ instead of dismissing them as mere ants waging war against the elephant because of their resilience and die-hard spirit to fight any perceived ‘injustice’. For this group of people, the first thing that takes flight is their sense of reasoning. Otherwise, what particular importance or benefit will wanton destruction of public property and brigandage do to their agitation, if not to further portray them as good-for-nothing hoodlums.

    It was a pitiful sight and it is still much so to see hundreds and thousands of stranded commuters at bus stops in Lagos metropolis waiting for the few buses on the roads. In many instances, many of the commuters have always resorted to trekking to their various destinations no matter the distance. Even the few buses available, I mean both private and government vehicles, have been overwhelmed by the flood of passengers.

    Anyway, a regime of relative peace has since taken over. The new phase of the ‘struggle’ is the ongoing silent war between the okadaoperators and policemen. Perhaps, for lack of other things to do, by this I mean for lack of any gainful employment, the okada riders have been indulging in occasional forays to many of the routes where they have been banned. The incursions are done mostly in the evenings and early in the morning to avoid the prying eyes of security agents.

    The police are not relenting either. Many a time, you notice them running after these okada riders who take the risk to thread where they are not wanted. This is why I believe that most of them still do the business for lack of any other thing to do. Otherwise, when you weigh the risk involved – police brutality, extortion, confiscation of motorcycles and the rest – you may begin to wonder why people still indulge in the business. That is the never-say-die spirit of the okadariders or mafia.

    But why is this so? Lagos is the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria. It is this status that is responsible for the influx of people to the state in search of the proverbial “milk and honey” which, perhaps, may no longer flow as it used to be. That is, if at all there had been anything near that in the past. It is also a fact that Lagos is home to indigenes of all the states of the federation. What this means is that there is no state in the country that does not have a good presence of its indigenes in every nook and cranny of Lagos State. Many other people from other African countries and the diaspora have found sanctuary in Lagos.

    Though small in terms of landmass, the population of Lagos is conservatively put at an amazing 20 million people. This burgeoning population is daily in search of their daily bread. In a situation where white-collar jobs are in short supply or outright unavailable, the next easiest option appears to be okadabusiness. This situation is further fuelled by lack of adequate capital to embark on any tangible small or medium- scale business by those who are interested in trading and other commercial preoccupations.

    Therefore, over the years, okada business has become a major stake in the economy of many families both in Nigeria as a whole and Lagos in particular. A cursory peep into history could lead us to this okada age. In the 60s and the 70s, there was nothing like okada business in Nigeria. If it existed at all, it was in some neighboring countries like Republic of Benin and Togo. Then it crept into places like the old Cross River State and some other far-flung states from Lagos. Today, the whole country has been engulfed by the okada business.

    “Why okada?” you may ask. In the good old days, especially in the late 60s and early 70s, riding a motorcycle was both a social and status symbol. The one commonly used then was a brand of motorcycle called Vespa, with its tiny tires and alluring body design. Then there was Mobylette, a smaller version. And of course, there were Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki and other brands. By the mid-70s, the Yamaha brand had entered the scene with its outstanding features.

    To own a motorcycle then was regarded as a rare luxury because the cars were very few and the motorcycles had come to displace the bicycles, especially the popular brand known as Raleigh. The motorcycles became more conspicuous on the roads after the salary windfall of 1973 commonly referred to as “Udoji Awards”.Salary arrears amounting to huge sums of money were paid to workers at that time. Many bought motorcycles, some small cars, others built houses while some married additional wives. Depending on what you wanted to ride – a motorcycle, a car or even a woman – there was enough ‘free’ money to do this courtesy of the military dictatorship of General Yakubu Gowon (retd) at that time. This was a scenario that gradually snowballed into today’s harvest of okada in Nigeria.

    However, the socio-economic importance of okadacannot be easily overlooked. It has filled the vacuum of inadequate transportation in most parts of the country. Where the vehicles are in drastic short supply, okada seems to be making up for the shortfall. Similarly, where the roads have been rendered more or less impassable either for lack of maintenance or poor construction, okada has come in handy for the commuters. This is because okada don’t discriminate. It can navigate its way along bush paths or many of the pothole-infested roads all over the country. Lagos is no exception.

     

  • Aruma Oteh, Reps and Rams

    Aruma Oteh, Reps and Rams

    When people say there is monumental rot in the Nigerian system, government officials who are the kingpins of the rot are quick to dismiss it as balderdash. In spite of this, like a festering sore that has developed gangrene, you can smell the rot, feel it and see it as it walks on all fours all over the place.

    An example of this pervasive rot in the system is what is currently going on at the Security and Exchange Commission, SEC, under the watch of Aruma Oteh, the director-general, DG, of the commission. Though she had held sway as DG since 2010, Oteh probably came into national limelight in highly controversial circumstances this May. It was during the sittings of the House of Representatives’ ad-hoc committee that investigated the near-collapse of the Nigerian capital market. Oteh had caused a stir at one of the sittings when she pointedly accused Herman Hembe and Azubuogu Ifeanyi, who were then chairman and vice-chairman respectively of the House Committee on Capital Market and Institutions.

    Oteh accused Hembe of demanding a bribe of N39 million from SEC for the hearing and an additional N5 million. She also alleged that Hembe received money from the commission to enable him travel to the Dominican Republic for a conference which he neither attended nor refunded the money to the commission.

    The development led to an open verbal altercation between Oteh and Hembe, a situation which finally culminated in the suspension of the probe. A new panel headed by Ibrahim Tukur El-Sudi from Taraba State was later put together to continue with the hearing. But the matter did not end there as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, stepped in. The anti-graft agency subsequently arraigned Hembe and Ifeanyi for alleged diversion of public funds.

    Oteh’s confrontational attitude and allegation at the hearing had caused so much bad blood between her and members of the National Assembly who have since been seeking their own pound of flesh. When the two chambers resumed from their long recess in September, they, at different times, passed different resolutions asking the President to remove Oteh from office. As things stand now, there is a stalemate over the issue as the President seems not to be in a hurry to consider the National Assembly’s demand.

    Perhaps, it is in order to placate the members of the House Committee on Capital Market that the SEC DG went out of her way to buy rams for them as gift during the last Muslim festival of Id-EI-Kabir. But the members must have learnt a bitter lesson from the fate that befell the two former leaders of the Committee and, therefore, decided to excuse themselves from Oteh and her rams. Instead, they are demanding investigation into how the SEC allegedly spent millions of naira on rams. Call it “twice beaten, once shy”.

    In order not to play into Oteh’s hands this time around, the Committee went a step further by reporting the “curious offer of rams” to the leadership of the House. Even at that, the House members claimed that pressures are still being mounted on them to come and collect the rams. One of them told a newspaper recently: “You can imagine the level of waste in SEC. Is it its business to buy rams at a time many people have died as a result of the collapse of the capital market? We want the executive to look into this.”

    But Obi Adindu, the DG’s Communication Adviser, was quoted as saying that the commission did not offer the rams as bribe to House members. According to him,”the fact is that the leadership of SEC is operating a well-known zero tolerance policy for misconduct and that is why strengthening of the capital market is a key line objective of the reform agenda”. On the issue of Sallah gifts, he said, “There is an established practice in the commission in which the commission extends felicitation to well-wishers”.

    A Yoruba proverb says, “Aitete m’ole, ole m‘oloko”, literally translated as “if the owner of the farm does not make haste to apprehend the thief, the thief could apprehend the farm owner”. This, I believe, is what informed the current hoopla the House members are making to draw attention to the latest development between them and the SEC DG. The members maintained that it was an unprecedented gesture because SEC had never sent any gift to them during any festive period. According to one of them, “that, clearly to us, was attempted bribe. It was the same way the commission attempted to give us #30million and later turned against us that we demanded a bribe. This is a confirmation that the DG is desperate to remain in office.”

    From a critical analysis of this incident on both sides of the divide, Oteh must have actually goofed. What is left or what is now being done is damage control. It depends on those managing the SEC DG herself. In the first instance, she shouldn’t have become an emergency ram merchant or vendor overnight simply because she needed to win over the legislators. In the process of doing that, she has now found herself enmeshed in a deeper crisis bordering on mismanagement and total lack of discretion. She could have envisaged that the members would react this way since the memory of what happened to their colleagues -Hembe and Ifeanyi – in May this year is still quite fresh if not permanently engraved in their memory.

    It is unfortunate that Oteh has unwittingly allowed herself to be made a scapegoat. Take another look and you will discover that the members who are now hell-bent on dragging her to Golgotha are only playing to the gallery. After all, it is a common knowledge that things have a way of changing hands in the National Assembly. The members are known to devise various ingenious methods to squeeze something even out of stone, particularly in the process of carrying out their ‘oversight functions’ and all that. Also, each time they pick ‘quarrels’ with the executive arm of government, and they do so at the slightest inkling. More often than not, such quarrels usually end‘dramatically’.

    But trust image makers. Adindu said it was an established tradition in the commission to extend felicitations to well-wishers. If I may ask: who established such a tradition? If not bribe, what do you call that? What has dragging innocent rams all over the place got to do with the recovery of the capital market? Then come to think of it. How do the committee members fall under the description of ‘well-wishers’? In my own view, Oteh and her handlers should have known from the onset that the committee members are anything but well-wishers. If she earlier thought that she had them as friends, now she needn’t look far any longer for her real ‘enemies’. Again, who told Oteh that flooding the National Assembly with rams could massage the ego of the House members? It is simply one public relations move gone awry, and no amount of white-washing could exterminate the indelible stain and stench it has inflicted on her.

    By the way, why has the experience of this Harvard graduate who had spent some years abroad before coming to head SEC continue to fail her? The other day she was accused of being a bad manager by SEC management who said she hardly involved them in her policies and decisions. At that time, it almost looked like an orchestrated gang-up. It will be a disaster if nothing has changed. Certainly, holding sensitive management meetings through text messages and other electronic mails does not speak well of a Harvard graduate who spoke with raw bravado on national television the other day. Now, she is at the receiving end of her own medicine. Maybe the chickens have come home to roost. Too soon!