The Nation Newspaper

Category: Dele Agekameh

The ‘fever’ of Obama’s re-election

After months of gruelling and exhilarating campaign, the two front runners in the 2012 Presidential contest in the United States of America – Barack Obama of the Democratic Party and Mitt Romney of the Republican Party – left their fate in the hands of the electorate last Tuesday. At the end of the election, which has been described as the toughest ever in the history of the country, Obama won an overwhelming majority votes. With this, the first African-American President of the US won a second term in office as the country’s 44th President.

It has gone down as one election where political bookmakers got it wrong, opinion polls and exit polls somersaulted, and an overwhelmed media declared the polls too close to call. For many of us, it was like a battle of our lives. Days before the election, I had taken it upon myself to put regular calls through to my friends in the US in order to get-first hand information about the campaign. That was when it became obvious that the usually reliable international media could no longer be relied upon.

Not even the Sandy storm that bared its rage across the east coast of America, leaving disaster and destruction along its tempestuous route, was enough to dissuade Uzoma Nwagwu from his daily commentaries which he shared with me with ferocious interest. Uzoma is a resident of New Jersey who commutes to New York every day to fend for self and family with a paid employment at the Citi Bank Group. Before he ‘migrated’ to ‘Obama’s land’ about 20 years ago, Uzoma had had a stint with a newspaper in Nigeria. He had also been exposed to some pro-democracy activists who were at the fore-front of the clamour for civilian rule in the country in the early 1990s.

So to Uzoma, whom his numerous friends prefer to call Uzor, monitoring an all-encompassing campaign like the recent one in America was more or less a familiar terrain. He was just there anytime his phone rang to give updates. He exuded confidence and charisma each time he weighed the chances of Obama and Romney. When Obama faltered during his first televised debate with Romney, we were both gripped with fear and trepidation.

Though Romney’s rating had unexpectedly soared after that first encounter, Obama was to shore up his electoral value during the other two debates. On the eve of the election, we had to abandon every other thing and concentrated attention on how Obama would fare in the battleground and swing states. At least, we were sure of his victory in Ohio because of his auto bailout programme which resuscitated the failed auto industry. This ensured that workers in the state had their jobs for keep in the aftermath of the economic recession that plagued the US and the rest of the world in 2008. But we had concern over Florida, Iowa, Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina and others.

At a point, Uzor and I became more troubled when feelers started pouring in that many of the white voters had probably introduced racial dimension into the voting pattern in their desperate attempt to ease out ‘our candidate’ (Obama) from the White House. That evening, the Cable Network News, CNN, which has maintained a track record of accurately projecting winners of elections in US for many years, played safe and could only see a tie between Obama and Romney. That sort of increased the adrenalin flow in our bloodstream.

At 11:18 pm (Eastern Time in America), when Fox news, CNN and other news outlets still projected President Obama winner, the race to the White House wasn’t anything close. It was a decisive victory for Obama who polled 332 electoral votes, 62 votes more than the required 270 votes, against Romney‘s Republican party’s 206. Obama also swept eight out of nine swing states, with North Carolina his only battleground loss. Of the 56 presidential elections held in United states, 44 presidents in US history, incumbents have run 30 times, winning 20 times and losing 10 times.

But Obama’s second-term victory did not come as a surprise. The worsening economy set the agenda for the 2012 election. Obama made lots of grandiose promises when he was first elected President in 2008. Paul Ryan, the Republican Vice president, captured this thus: “He promised to cut the nation’s deficit in half? It doubled. He vowed to create jobs and put Americans back to work; unemployment rate grew higher than the day he took office. You have 23 million Americans struggling to find work, 15 percent of American citizens are today living in poverty”.

The facts are monumental and, definitely, the defence of Obama’s record almost made his candidacy a hard sell. All but the economy became central in the campaign. It is the Middle class that lost their jobs and could not find any. They lost their homes as they could not pay their mortgage and could no longer afford medical care for the family. No wonder the two candidates ran their campaigns focusing on the class.

Obama’s ground game of getting voters, micro targeting the much-needed audience, and ensuring they voted timely, was a deciding factor for the outcome of the election. For sure, hurricane Sandy did not blow in wind of votes for his victory rather it was the result of a carefully conceived election campaign based on changing political demography that was passionately executed.

Essentially, the grounding game strategy roared Obama’s message home directly to the target audience. He connected with the Middle class who formed the bulk of the voters. He understood that voters wanted the president they know. They believed convincingly that Obama, not Romney, understood their nightmares of college costs, insurance bills and all that. Virtually, in most of Obama’s rallies, he did not fail to seize the opportunity to remind Americans that he had been in their situation, understood and shared their values. This worked well for him as exit polls showed that voters thought far more and viewed Obama as the voice of the poor and the middle class. On the other hand, they saw Romney as the guy leaning perpetually toward the rich.

Furthermore, Latino vote was a significant block. Obama’s campaign strategists, therefore, converted to advantage, the emerging demographics and their voting influence on the outcome of the election. He succeeded in building a firewall with Hispanics, and tapped heavily on their increasing population. Hispanics became the biggest deciders of the election. For the first time, they represented 10 percent of the overall electorate. On the whole, Hispanics cast about 11 million votes in the election.

There was a good reason for this. Five months earlier, under an executive action, Obama amended the immigration policy to allow hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children to remain in the country and work without fear of deportation. That appeared to have removed the rug underneath Romney’s feet. From then on, the Republican Party candidate was all through hunted by his statement calling for illegal immigrants to “self-deport”.

Also, throughout the campaign, Romney carried the baggage of horrendous gaffes. The problem was that the Republican Party candidate couldn’t pass the credibility test. It was so bad that even many voters who were hitherto disenchanted with Obama found it unsafe to vote for Romney who was seamlessly at ease shifting grounds on his earlier adopted positions on many issues.

On the whole, Romney’s flip-flop cast aspersions on whether he could really be trusted by Americans. Obama’s strategists effectively used the question of Romney’s credibility to ask American’s who they trusted based on their antecedent. At a point in the campaign, Obama was constrained to call his rival a ‘talented salesman’ who will change his position at anytime to win. The lesson of the 2012 United States presidential election especially for Nigeria, is a topic for another day.

November 14, 2012
Oronsaye: Go home

You could mistake it for a scene in a chartbuster Nollywood movie. The only difference is that, this time around, the actors on parade are technocrats and highly revered top civil servants who have dominated Nigeria’s civil service like colossus for many years. And watching the drama as it unfolded with ‘ruptured’ attention was the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan including cabinet members, other top government officials and television-viewing public worldwide who were all dazed with amazement.

The setting of this theatre of the absurd last Friday was the Council Chamber of the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Present were three powerful committees set up by the President to look into different aspects of our national life. These are Special Task Force on Governance and Control, Refineries Special Task Force and the Petroleum Revenue Task Force. They were there to submit their reports.

Prior to that ceremony, Reuters, an international news agency, had gone to town on its website with some ‘scoops’ from the report of the Petroleum Revenue Task Force headed by the former anti-corruption czar, Nuhu Ribadu. The report was also widely circulated by several newspapers. This extensive publicity sparked off instant public debates which seriously rattled the government. As tongues continued to wag over the report, the government knew that it needed to do something quickly to stem the tide of negative commentary.

Perhaps, to save its face, the government fixed last Friday for the submission of the report in which monumental corruption has been unearthed. But rather than work, the strategy actually boomerang and created more embarrassment for the Presidency. This was underscored by the confusion and avoidable altercation that ensued between Ribadu and Steve Oronsaye, the man who rose from the ranks to become the head of service of the civil service of the federation before he retired a few years ago.

The dilemma started during Ribadu’s presentation. First, he saluted the President for his courage in setting up the three committees and expressed the hope that Jonathan would find the courage to implement the various recommendations. While focusing on his own report, Ribadu assured the President that all the issues in the report were handled with sincerity, and that if properly implemented, they would set the country free from economic bondage. This, according to him, is because the recommendations would strengthen institutions and increase government revenue. He lauded the President’s anti-corruption and reforms agenda but emphasized that more needed to be done to fight the hydra-headed monster which corruption has assumed in Nigeria, adding that carrying out such reforms requires integrity.

As soon as Ribadu moved towards to Diezani Allison-Madueke, the petroleum resources minister, to present the report, an apparently uncomfortable Oronsaye, who served as deputy chairman to the committee, raised up his hand like a schoolboy in a classroom, to signify his intention to say something. But it was after Ribadu had handed over a copy of the report to the minister, that the President recognised Oronsaye, who had then become so desperate to speak. With subdued anger, Orosanye alleged that the process leading to the production of the report was flawed. He claimed, it did not pass through due process. This jolted everybody. The position of Oronsaye was supported by Ben Oti, another member of the committee.

Though infuriated by Oronsaye and Oti’s position, Ribadu calmly said Oronsaye, “never participated even (for) one day in the deliberations of this committee”. He then added a caveat: “During the work of the committee, Oronsaye got himself appointed on the board of the NNPC. The other gentleman, Oti, became the Director of Finance of NNPC, and they decided to, more or less, bully everybody to take over. And they wanted us to write for them, but the Committee members refused.” Ribadu added,“Steve (Oronsaye) has not been in the country. He flew in this morning for him to come and do this and I think our president deserves more respect than what you have done now.”

Ribadu’s position was corroborated by Samaila Subairu, the acting secretary of the committee and Ignatius Adegunle, another member. Subairu said the report was, indeed, the product of a joint effort of all members. Like Ribadu, he accused Oronsaye of staying away from most of the committee’s meetings. On his part, Adegunle said he was of the view that the forum was not the proper place for the issues canvassed by Oronsaye.

However, what is clear from the melodrama between Ribadu and Oronsaye is that many people entrusted with sensitive national assignments have always found it difficult to separate personal emotions and self-preservation from such assignments. Or how does one explain the fact that it was during this type of assignment that Oronsaye and Oti came on the board of NNPC, a department that was under probe.

It was quite astonishing viewing the video clips especially where Oronsaye repeatedly kept on hollering “the President said you should submit, and so what!”, with all the emphasis heaped on “so what!” That statement was contemptuous of the office of the president. Whichever way it is viewed, it shows lack of reverence for that office. What Oronsaye actually meant was that Ribadu and other committee members should have ignored the President’s directive. Perhaps, it was when this dawned on him, that he made spirited efforts to explain his “so what” just immediately after he said so repeatedly.

A consummate civil servant that he is, a man who once sat at the pinnacle of the nation’s civil service rule as it relates to such an issue, Oronsaye should not, and he cannot, simply interrupt the submission of the report the way he did it. If at all he had any reservation, since he has access to either the minister or the president himself, he could have sought appointment with the president and voice out his resentment. This way, that show of shame he exhibited under television klieg lights would have been avoided. After all in the civil service, you can only communicate by writing not by engaging in reckless vituperation right in the presence of your superiors, not to talk of exhibiting such gross misdemeanor right before the President. If such a scene had enacted itself in the presence of the man who appointed Oronsaye head of service during his tenure as president, I am sure he would have dressed him down and reprimand him for his ‘bad behaviour’.

The lesson from this is that Oronsaye and his cliques who have served their fatherland for more than 30 years should now take a back seat and allow those who are more vibrant, focused and result-oriented to take the centre-stage in piloting the affairs of this nation. Nigerians can no longer be bogged down by those who prefer to operate under archaic bureaucratic redtapism.

All these appointments here and there, including even that of NNPC, which Ribadu said should have necessitated Oronsaye’s resignation from the committee in order to avoid being compromised, are no longer for spent bullets like him. Resignation would have been the most honourable thing for him to do rather than constitute a public nuisance. The same thing applies to Oti, his comrade in disgrace.

With what the whole nation witnessed last Friday, Oronsaye need not be told any longer that he seems to have over-stayed his welcome in national affairs. The only option left for him at this moment is to devote his time to his community’s affairs back in Edo State, where his wealth of experience in the public service can make a whole lot of difference. I believe there are many things waiting for attention in Oronsaye’s community – youth counselling, community development, chieftaincy matters, settling matrimonial squabble and all that. It is time for him to retire from active public life and assume a father-figure. That it is why he should go home!

November 7, 2012
A governor’s ‘suicide’ flight

It is no longer news that Danbaba Suntai, the second-term governor of Taraba State, north-east of Nigeria, was involved in an air crash last Thursday. The crash, which occurred in Yola, Adamawa State on the eve of the Muslim annual festival of Eid-el-Kabir, involved the governor who flew the private light aircraft alongside others, including three of his top aides.

A pharmacist by profession, Suntai crashed with his chopper near the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) depot, along Numan-Yola Road around 7.45 pm on the fateful day just 38 miles from the Yola Airport. The first set of people who arrived at the crash site were Fulani herdsmen. Officers and men of the Nigerian Air Force NAF’s 75 Strike Force Command in Yola later arrived at the scene of the crash and recovered the victims from the Fulani herdsmen.

Suntai is said to be a keen pilot who obtained his licence from the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, NCAT, Zaria, Kaduna State in 2010. When he had a successful solo run on an aircraft at NCAT in August 2010, he was reportedly bathed with water as a symbol of his integration into the flying club. One of the national newspapers boldly displayed this initiation photograph on the front page in its last Friday’s edition. Captioned “For the love of flying”, the photograph showed Suntai dressed in a brown trousers and purple-stripped white long-sleeved shirt with a long tie to match being poured a whole pail of water by Bin Na’Allah, a member of the House of Representatives.

In another newspaper report, stunned journalists who sighted the governor at the Zaria event asked him to comment on his first solo flight. The governor said: “I feel excited and grateful to God for the opportunity to fly my first solo flight. Personally, right from the onset in my life, I chose aviation as a career and pursued it. I was able to obtain admission to Mbrevidaila Aeronautical University in Florida, but coming from a very poor background, I could not sponsor myself in the school, so I started seeking scholarship, but I couldn’t obtain one.

“So that was how I ended up in the pharmacy profession. However, aviation has continued to bite me in my blood. And when I learnt that I could even fly at my age, I decided to come over here (NCAT, Zaria) to see the rector and inform him about my ambition and he enrolled me. And after some training, today, I was able to undergo this solo flight. So, in my blood, I have it as a passion.”

Sunta’s incurable love for aircraft and flying is so deep and passionate that he radiates it everywhere. When he became the governor of Taraba State in 2007, he met a partially completed airport in Jalingo, which was started by his predecessor in office. He immediately set about rehabilitating it at a cost estimated at about N9 billion. The construction of the airport was later abandoned following the order of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, who observed some ‘runway defects’ at the airport. Suntai’s government later announced that it would construct a new airport which will be sited on the Mambila Plateau.

Though the Jalingo airport was not good enough, the governor was said to have acquired a small aircraft during his first term and added yet another one to the fleet only last year. Even though none of them could still land at the Jalingo airport, the Suntai administration acquired a helicopter for which the governor built a heliport in Government House.

Since becoming governor, he hardly travelled by road. Most of his trips to local government councils within his state and to his village, Suntai, in Bali Council, are always undertaken through the use of chopper, which many stakeholders in the state have continuously criticized. He is said to have also built an airstrip in Suntai to accommodate his penchant for moving around in choppers.

It is all about passion, passion and passion. Here was a man whose background was so poor he could not afford aviation training to become a pilot, a career of first choice. He went into pharmacy instead. But the fire of aviation that had ignited in his mind continued to burn. It was like an everlasting glow. When he could no longer resist this, he dashed to NCAT, Zaria and poured his mind out to the rector who wholeheartedly encouraged him by enlisting him to train as a pilot. He was told that age was not a barrier since he had a passion for the profession as if all that was needed to become a pilot was to express a mere passion for it. Besides, the money that was hard to come by in yesteryear was now at his beck and call as governor.

Think about the colossal sum of money involved in building and rebuilding airports, construction of airstrips in Suntai village, construction of heliport at the Government House in Jalingo, buying of light aircraft and helicopter and so on. What picture does this portray? How much is sunk into this? How will this boost the economy of the state and increase the state’s internally generated revenue, IGR? As far as I am concerned, Taraba is one of the poorest states in the country. Although the state is blessed with abundant natural resources, a good environment and all that, harnessing the resources of the state towards optimum economic growth would be more like it, rather than this “passionate drain pipe” created by a flying enthusiast of a governor.

Now we are being called upon to offer prayers. From the wreckage of the chopper featured in some of the national newspapers at the weekend, Suntai and the other victims of the crash will need tons and tons of prayers to see them through their present predicament. All of them emerged from the wreckage with varying degrees of life-threatening injuries even though attempts were made to paint the picture as less grievous.

Remember that those who first arrived at the scene of the crash last Thursday were Fulani herdsmen who had successfully retrieved the victims from the belly of the aircraft before the arrival of the NAF rescue team. And nobody is sure whether the rescue team had any specialist in their midst or even the right medical equipment for the evacuation from the crash site. Also, it is not quite clear if all the necessary precautions for such evacuation were observed.

And whilst we are at it, maybe we should ask a few salient questions about Governor Suntai and the ill-fated chopper ride. Was he adequately trained in night vision or instrument landing which he will need to rely on for flying at night? How many hours’ flight does he have to his credit as a pilot? Who was the co-pilot with him in that aircraft?

My take is that with the distance from Jalingo to Yola, he could have possibly strayed off course, relying on radio communication for the flight until he finally sighted the airport. And of course, night had set in; in which case, he needed to rely on instruments in the aircraft to land. Anything could have gone wrong during the flight – poor knowledge, poor visibility, heavy wind on the route, absence of a co-pilot and all that.

We have even been inundated with the fact that there was a security report against the governor flying that aircraft. That warning could have been ignored. And now the consequence of that is the seemingly bad case we have on our hands. We have been asked to pray, and pray we shall. But we must pause and ask: was this accident preventable? If this is the case, it smacks more like a suicide flight!

October 31, 2012
The rains, the floods, a sinking nation

Last week, Apapa, a high-brow Lagos suburb known for its ever-buzzing business environment and busy seaports, was a spectacle of horror. The rains had pounded the city continuously from Tuesday to Friday. On that Friday, Apapa roads were overtaken by flood. The traffic was hectic as the water level was so high that only a few vehicles, should I say high-rise vehicles – jeeps and trucks – could manoeuvre the roads. Many commuters had to roll up their trousers and skirts as they ‘swam’ through the furious water running to nowhere in particular.

It is common knowledge that whenever it rains in Lagos, the traffic is shut down as gridlock is noticed almost in all axis of the city. The spectacle in Apapa has been particularly worrisome as big craters that dot the road also impede vehicular movements. Articulated vehicles which ply Apapa roads to take delivery at the ports easily get stuck in the big potholes. That, in itself, usually worsens the traffic situation.

In the last few weeks, the rains have intensified. So also is the flood that is ravaging almost half of the country. From whichever way you look at it, the country itself is sinking, not because of the floods that have wiped away many communities, but the burden of survival from all the vicissitude afflicting it. Remember fellow Nigerians who have been displaced in their thousands all over the country. Many have lost their homes, their means of livelihood, their property, their relations and even their humanness as they are cramped together in deplorable relief camps that are more or less ‘trauma camps’. Many communities have either been torn apart or balkanized into tiny islands by the floods.

If the news filtering out from the various camps across the affected areas is anything to go by, it is as if there is no respite for the victims of the flood which has continued to bare its fangs as the water level continues to rise due to heavy rains. Unfortunately, in many of the camps, rapists are on the prowl doing their own thing freely with little or no resistance from the weaker sex who are obviously the victims. After all, there has not been any reported case of women rapists in any of the camps. It is only the men who have gone ‘sex-amock’. Besides the ‘sex marauders’, the sanitary conditions of the camps are said to be very deplorable, thereby heightening the fear of imminent outbreak of epidemic.

One astonishing thing in this season of rains and flood is that the outside world is yet to look in Nigeria’s way. It is as if it has completely ignored Nigeria and abandoned Nigerians to their fate. I am not quite sure if the multi-national companies operating in the country have risen up to the occasion and provided any form of succour for the helpless victims of nature, yet, the rage of the flood has been total. Nobody is left out as both the high and mighty have fallen victim. The other day, the country home of the President was also overrun by flood. So also is the home of the Bayelsa State governor.

Since the East-West Road has been overrun by the floods and rendered impassable, a journey one hitherto makes in less than two hours now takes more than six hours. This is apart from the attendant high transport fares. For instance, a journey from Warri to Port Harcourt now takes as long as seven hours as against the previous three hours. Instead of going through Patani to Port Harcourt, vehicles now go through Onitsha and Owerri to access Port Harcourt from the axis of the International Airport. According to a recent report, “to even get to Patani, which is just 60 kilometres away from Warri, takes a good effort and money. It is a most complex transport chain as the vehicle from Warri can only get half-way to a village called Uwheru before surrendering its passengers to boat and motorbike operators who do the rest of the journey.”

The other day, I listened, with keen interest, the assurance of Akinwumi Adesina, the agriculture minister, as he dismisses the imminence of famine in the country due to the flood disaster. I am sure the minister was only being theoretical in his argument that some arrangements would be made to take care of the anticipated shortfall of harvests in the affected areas.

There is no doubt that Adesina is one of the very few ministers who stand out in the present cabinet, but his present posture over the endless flood can only end up as mere theory that will defile any practical application. Whole farmlands in many agrarian communities that are reputed to be the food baskets of the nation have been washed away and are still being washed away, yet the minister is assuring the nation that there is nothing like famine in sight. Who will believe such a story? The earlier we wake up to the reality of our present circumstance the better for the entire nation.

From all indications, Nigeria is in the trajectory of a major catastrophe with devastating consequences. Almost all the schools in the affected areas have been rendered unusable while the pupils and students are clinging to their ‘nomadic’ parents. For how long will these children be out of school? The economy of the affected areas is almost totally paralysed. Even artisans cannot go to work just like the farmers have no land to cultivate. Unfortunately, we are carrying on as a nation as if nothing precarious is happening.

Every passing day, the country is being battered on all fronts: Boko Haram, kidnappers, armed robbers and now floods. Besides, the rampant incidence of extra-judicial killings by security agents everywhere, lynching or mob attacks are also on the increase. While the commotion caused by the callous and brazen lynching of the innocent four University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT) students is yet to die down, gunmen were, again, on the rampage in the vicinity of the university last Thursday.

In the latest orgy of blood-letting, a young graduate who had just completed his national youth service, his girlfriend and an undergraduate of UNIPORT were wasted by gunmen near the campus. Reports have it that the former corps member was celebrating with his friends when the car conveying them suddenly skidded off the road and ran into a shop. Although no life was lost in the crash, a group of men suddenly appeared on the scene and opened fire on the three persons who died on the spot. Mission accomplished, the gunmen quickly bolted away from the scene, leaving eyewitnesses wandering whether it was a Hollywood movie scene or a live orchestra.

Also last Thursday, heavy explosions and gunfire shook the city of Potiskum, capital of Yobe State, to its foundation as suspected Boko Haram hoodlums clashed with security agents. The same scenario played itself out in neighbouring Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, widely regarded as the operational headquarters of Boko Haram. By the time the dust from the two-pronged attacks settled, at least, five primary schools, including an Islamic seminary, a local government secretariat and several shops and houses were completely razed by fire.

The killings in Port Harcourt and the ceaseless attacks in Potiskum and Maiduguri coincided with the alarm raised by erudite scholar and Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, last Thursday at an event elsewhere in Port Harcourt. Soyinka said that forces of darkness and retrogression are waging war against humanity in Nigeria. According to him, “if we surrender to these forces, we cease to be human beings.” But for how long will the country continue on this path to perdition before it regains consciousness? Only time will tell!

October 24, 2012
The Hajj conundrum

Going on pilgrimage is a religious obligation that every Muslim is expected to perform, at least, once in his or her lifetime if he/she has the means. For the Christians, it is Jerusalem, in Israel, that they head to every year to perform their pilgrimage. The Muslims go to Mecca and Medina to observe theirs.

But by far, it is the Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia that attracts the highest number of faithful all over the world every year. With this also comes the high publicity that is attached to the yearly ritual. Apart from the yearly pilgrimage, many Muslim faithful also visit the Holy land for Umrah or “Lesser Hajj”. However, this is done at anytime of the year without really engaging the attention or the probing eyes of journalists and other media commentators.

The popular yearly hajj, which culminates in ram-slaughtering, the Id-El- Kabir festival, is undertaken two months and a few days after the Muslim’s 30-day fasting period known as Ramadan. This yearly hajj is a very big event as so many activities are involved in it. Good enough, the Saudi Arabian government has put several measures in place to accommodate the large influx of Muslims to the country on the annual religious ritual. But in spite of all the measures put in place to ensure hitch-free hajj operations, some of the pilgrims have run into one problem or another while in the Holy Land. In most cases, the Saudi Arabian government has always risen up to the occasion by attending to any issues that may arise during the annual pilgrimage.

Surprisingly, this year’s pilgrimage by Nigerian pilgrims has attracted a huge controversy because of the forced deportation of some female pilgrims. The dust raised by the action taken by the Saudis is just about to settle with the flurry of diplomatic meetings and shuttles embarked upon by the Nigerian government, particularly the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Aminu Tambuwal, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and his team also dashed to the Kingdom on a one-day fence-mending visit. Finally, the Saudi government softened its stand on some of the pilgrims who had earlier been repatriated to Nigeria. That incident itself is the crux of this discourse.

The first thing is that, side-by-side our generally accepted Western attitudes and values that lay emphasis on the freedom of the individual adult to act according to his or her own needs and general personal desires, Islam is a different ball game, especially with regards to women. Simply put, women are generally seen as minors who require permission from their husbands or father or the adult male equivalent in the family. Generally speaking, choices for women in Islam on a lot of things simply follow a well-guarded path with little or no room for any ‘creativity’ on the part of the woman. Of course, this tradition is most jealously upheld and guarded in Islamic environments were Wahabism – a stricter, more extreme version of Islam – is practised such as you find in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Taliban-controlled-Afghanistan and a few other places, including among many Muslims in northern Nigeria.

This is where, in hajj, the issue of mahram (chaperon/guardian) comes into the picture. One thing though, it is not true that the issue of a chaperon has only just come to be recognised in hajj. It’s just that the practice has, over the decades, been bent to accommodate modern political and social nuances. In short, the practice of mahram for women on hajj has merely learned to recognise the fact that because of the peculiarity regarding the number of pilgrims of various backgrounds from even one country, it cannot be practical for every single woman going on hajj to necessarily have access to a family member who is an adult male to act as chaperon. Hence the waiver that had been in existence for Nigeria’s female pilgrims since the 1980s. Under this arrangement, the leader of the delegation (the Amir-ul Hajj) from each country is sufficient to act as the chaperon/guardian of all female pilgrims from that country.

So, what went wrong this time? Well, an exhaustive answer may only be provided by both the Saudi authorities and their Nigerian counterparts. But it is first worthy to note that even by the regulations on hajj and the chaperon/guardian issue, it is permissible for any woman who is 45 years old or older to go on hajj without a mahram. This also brings us to the issue of the category of women who have so far been denied entry into Saudi Arabia in the current controversy. It is, perhaps, not ordinary happenstance that while some older women have been granted entry with the minimum of fuss, most of the ones who have been denied entry are young women all under 34 years of age and even much younger. In the case of one contingent from Kano, it was allegedly discovered that a whole plane only had three male passengers, with all the other passengers being female.

And it certainly begets curiosity as to why a passenger plane could have such a lopsided composition of passengers. It becomes more interesting when we throw into the fray Nigeria’s history with regards to the behaviour of some members of our contingents at such gatherings of mass proportions abroad. It is a well-documented development that it is usually a hard battle preventing some members of our contingents from absconding during sports meets anywhere in the world. And unless we are bent on calling a spade by some other name, we cannot feign ignorance of such incidents often taking place with our contingents on pilgrimage whether to Jerusalem or Mecca. Even where some of these people – in this case, the women – do not abscond outright, there have been alleged cases of various unwholesome activities on their parts such as prostitution, begging and the like. And unless we insist on wallowing in self-denial, many such stories abound about our pilgrims’ conduct in Saudi Arabia.

Therefore, it might be safe to assume that in the case of the current controversy, our legacy has simply preceded us. In essence, the Saudis may have finally caught on to the antics of our people and decided to try and put a stop to it, starting, of course, with the crackdown on that (in)famous three-male-out-of-hundreds aeroplane incident from Kano.

If this is the case, then perhaps the Saudi authorities are absolved of all blame, right? Well, not quite. Firstly, it is highly implausible that the Saudis have only recently caught on to this attitude and have, even more belatedly, found a noose to throw around the problem. In addition, as a retort to a question on why more and more men are becoming adulterous around the world, a psychologist once asked: “Who do you think these men are sleeping with?” Perhaps, it is similarly legitimate for us to ask: After all other pilgrims have returned to their countries, which men then patronise the Nigerian women who often decide to stay behind and hawk their bodies for money in Saudi Arabia? What usually happens to the hordes of women who are reportedly ‘arrested’ by Saudi security forces for breaches of the social and moral rule only to be off the streets for the night or a couple of days and be back ‘doing their thing’ afterwards? Could the possible answers to these questions be the main reason the Saudis have allegedly not given any reason for their new-found brazenness in injuring their country’s diplomatic ties with Nigeria while not offering any explanation for the sudden aggressive treatment of Nigeria’s female pilgrims this year? Well, maybe, as they say in Yoruba, oro p’esije (too serious beyond response).

October 17, 2012
Independence without celebration

I could have written this piece earlier but waited to appropriately gauge the mood of Nigerians last Monday, October 1, the 52nd Independence anniversary of the country.

On the eve of that day, Ayo, a young Customs officer in Lagos had called me to wish me happy Independence Anniversary in advance. Soon after this, he added a caveat! “Sir, is it true that prices of petrol might be hiked tomorrow?” Initially, I was speechless. Then I quickly put myself together and replied: “I don’t think so. No sane person would do such a thing on Independence Day of all days.”

“But remember sir that the last fuel price hike was on New Year Day, January 1, and people are already doing panic buying”. In spite of this, I stood my ground and asked him to perish the thought. That is the extent of the mortal fear that has been etched into the sub-consciousness of the average Nigerian.

Anyway, the following day, October 1, I listened to the President’s broadcast that morning as he reeled out his achievements so far. It was reassuring though. But statistics aside, what Nigerians actually need this time is to measure the quality of their life. Has there been any improvement in the last 13 years of democratic governance? I say this because I share the admission of the President that he alone and not one man alone can change the fortunes of Nigeria.

We have passed through decades of decay, decadence, indiscipline, corruption, embezzlement of public funds and all that. That Nigeria is still standing as one nation today is probably due to the benevolence of the Almighty God. Every sector, every section, and every age bracket have contributed to the morass of underdevelopment the country has been grappling with.

Under the military interregnum, there was a common enemy, as various aspersions were cast on the military as if they were some foreign elements or strangers who had cornered the reins of power to foster a selfish agenda. We never took cognisance of the fact that, except for the head of state, military governors or military administrators of each state and a few aides, all other members of the cabinet were civilians. Even the civil service, the engine room of government, was run solely by civil servants. Not one of them was a military man.

So, if the military rulers stole money, they did not perpetrate the looting alone. They were aided or, even in many instances, goaded by the civilians in high places. It was the civilians in sensitive places who taught them how to steal and what to steal. Today, the civilian collaborators of the military are walking freely and causing problems everywhere with their ill-gotten wealth, but nobody is talking.

That brings me back to 1999. We all know what we passed through to achieve democratic governance. Many precious souls were lost in the titanic struggle to ease off the military from power. But how many of those who stood before the barrels of the guns are in power today? The political firmament is being dominated by the offspring of those who brought the country to its knees prior to the events of January and July 1966. Many of the political parties, that is, if they can be called as such, are populated by crooks and known criminals. Their agenda: to loot the public till in order to oil their selfish and extravagant lifestyles.

In the rat race to empty the treasury, strange bedfellows are now cohabiting. It is no longer “what we can offer, but what we can get”. That is the reason why there is a permanent fratricidal war going on in most of the political parties. When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. As our politicians are embroiled in an open war of attrition, it is the people and the development of the nation that bear the brunt.

No other time in Nigeria has the drums of war by ethnic nationalities been so high than today. Those who have been schemed out of the political equations in the country have resorted to championing the parochial interests of their ethnic and sectional groups. This, they intend to use, as bargaining chips for political ascendency. To achieve this, they must heat up the polity to breaking point.

While the ethnic jingoists are doing their own, others are using religion and other pretences to conceal their real intentions. Besides, all the present form of criminality – kidnapping, violent robberies, internet fraud and social media crimes – are the manifestation of a society where the craze for materialism at all costs has reached an alarming crescendo. It is like those who cannot join the politicians to loot have devised their own ‘ingenious’ means to amass wealth even if it means that blood must flow freely.

Look at Boko Haram or whatever it is called. Though the lethargic security system in the country could be blamed for not nipping this nonsense in the bud, the increasing number of new converts to the rapacious and rampaging gang is worrisome. It means some people are profiting from the entire brigandage. In a country where religious pluralism holds sway, is it not pure eccentricity to assume that a rudderless group of people could foster a particular religion or doctrine on the country?

Now, it is getting increasingly clear that the gang of marauders has the blessing and active connivance of some unscrupulous security agents, which is why their activities have been proving intractable. Yet, what is really at stake is the struggle for the control of the levers of power. All is about power, not to change or improve on the destiny of the country but to rape it ceaselessly and mercilessly.

As I write, I can imagine the life of squalor and destitution the victims of the recent flood disaster in the country are facing. Do the politicians care if they are washed away by the surging flood? As people are driven out of their places of abode, petty thieves and robbers are all over the place making away with any property they could lay their hands on. The government that should have provided the needed succour seems to have no solution to the problem. Consequently, many of the displaced Nigerians are now left entirely to the vagaries of hunger, disease and untimely death.

That is why I see this year’s independence anniversary as a contradiction of what I witnessed in the United States of America, USA, on June 4. That day was America’s Independence Anniversary.

Independence Day in America is always a huge celebration. You could smell the festivities before the D-Day. Various manufacturers and shopping outlets unleash a deluge of promos, discounts and lotteries on the public, while people scramble to arrange for barbeque all over the place. People travel far and wide for revelry.

In the afternoon of that day, I accompanied my friend to their church – a newly commissioned Redeemed Church of God at Richmond area of Houston, Texas. The place was packed full with picnickers who were all Nigerians. Apart from a cow on a barbecue, sausages, corn and every item of merriment were also in abundance. As I watched the joyous multitude, what ran through my mind was: “Here are Nigerians celebrating the independence of another country almost 7,000 kilometres away from home with such élan and excitement. Even though many of them could hardly live above subsistence level, they were sure that their conditions can only improve, not get worse like that of their fellow men back home.

The lesson from this is that we must wake up from our deep slumber, eschew all forms of unhealthy rivalries – ethnic, religious or political – bury our parochial interests and join hands to move this country forward.

October 10, 2012
Ugo Ozuah, yet another victim

Imagine this scenario: a man met a lady. Both of them got talking. One thing led to another and they both agreed to live together as husband and wife for the rest of their life. For two good years, they courted, dreamt dreams, ruminated on how they would go about their lives and finally are joined together in holy wedlock.

What follows is the reception where nice things are said about the couple. There are smiles all over, the bride and groom grinning from one corner of the mouth to another. On such a day, appetite will take a flight. The stomachs of the duo are naturally filled with joy, not food. Some dance steps follow. Gifts are exchanged. Flower bouquet is thrown at spinsters by the bride. The story of how they met, sometimes in edited version, is told.

Five days after, while people still reminisce on the beautiful wedding, the groom is gunned down by a heartless, satanic individual who put paid to a jolly life of marital bliss that was just about to begin.

The questions are: how will the wife feel? Was she married or not? Can she move on with her life? Can she revert to spinsterhood once more? Will anybody readily go for her again, given the cultural and traditional beliefs of people in this part of the world? What should she do?

I have tried to recreate what has befallen the family of Ugochukwu Ozuah and Joan, his wife, who got married on September 15. The couple’s joy was abruptly cut short five days later, when the groom was allegedly shot and killed by policemen attached to the Anthony Division, Lagos, while dropping his friend off.

The friend, Erikefe Omene, said that he still could not understand why the policemen shot the deceased. According to him, “We got into his car, a Honda CRV, and he drove out. As we approached the expressway, policemen came around. Ozuah parked the car and we both alighted so we could stop a taxi. But before he made to shut the door, one of the policemen said, ‘Who’s there? Who goes there?’, and shot Ozuah, who then fell flat on the floor. I thought the policemen might come around to shoot. So, I ran back into the estate.”

Omene said he went to the deceased’s house to inform his wife about what had happened. He said Joan and her in-laws took another car and drove back to the scene. Upon returning to the scene about 10 to 20 minutes later, he saw more policemen, including the Divisional Police Officer, standing near Ozuah, who was lying down in a pool of his own blood. The DPO said he just received a phone call that someone was shot. I then told the DPO that it was a policeman that shot my friend. The DPO then asked me to explain and I narrated the story to him. He said, ‘Are you sure it wasn’t someone in black that shot your friend?’

Omene said he remained with the DPO and reiterated what had happened but the DPO was adamant, saying the killers must have been armed robbers in police uniform. Omene added that he and the DPO then drove to the hospital where the doctor said Ozuah was dead. Omene said he was later taken to the police station where he wrote a statement, while Ozuah’s remains were deposited at the morgue.

What is baffling in this whole episode is the police insistence that it was actually armed robbers and not policemen that murdered the young man. Since the incident occurred, Ngozi Braide, the spokesperson for the Lagos State Police Command had continued to inundate the public that indeed it was some ‘unknown’ armed robbers that snuffed the life out of Ozuah.

From the behaviour of the policemen from Anthony Police Station and their DPO, who quickly came to the scene, one cannot understand the spurious attempts to cover up this heinous crime. The DPO said he responded to a call that armed robbers had shot someone. And when he got there, he did not know what to do than to stare blankly at the helpless man on the ground. He waited till Omene came back before deciding to take the dying man to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Why will the DPO ask if Omene was sure that it was a policeman that shot Ugo and not somebody in black? Ugo had money in his wallet, his car, as well as, his cell phone was intact, so what was the motive of the armed robbers? Although nobody can stay in the comfort of his home and pontificate that it was a policeman that shot Ugo, but, the storyline of the police, especially Braide, is loaded with either half truths or outright fallacy and falsehood.

That reminds me of an incident not too long ago. A driver of the Lagos State Ambulance Service, LASAMBUS, Jimoh Fasasi, reportedly died after he was allegedly brutalised by some policemen from the Surulere Police Station at Barracks Bus Stop, Lagos. Eyewitnesses said Fasasi was on his motorcycle when he was arrested by policemen on the fateful day. An argument then ensued between the two parties. One of the eyewitnesses alleged that one of the policemen hit the driver with the butt of his gun. The man fell on the ground.

“Not long after that, some LASAMBUS staff got a call. The caller was shouting that they should hurry, that Fasasi fell down after he was hit with a gun and that he was foaming. By the time they got there, he was stone dead.” Another eyewitness, in the area, said immediately the policemen realised what had happened, they fled the scene and took the motorcycle away.

In her moonlight tale, Braide, said the eyewitness’ accounts extracted by the police were different: “The eyewitnesses we talked to said after he begged and they did not listen to him, he wanted to rest under an umbrella owned by a recharge card seller there. They said he started panting and later fell. He then hit his head on the ground. Braide said the deceased’s visible head injury was because he hit his head on the ground”. That story is probably meant for the marines.

In spite of what happened, the policemen did not rush him to the hospital but left the scene with his motorcycle. It is obvious that Braide was being economical with the truth. An officer who until recently was Braide’s boss at the Special Fraud Unit, Ikoyi, Lagos, described Braide as an intelligent officer. I know that the job of a police spokesperson is very tough – daily defending the indefensible. I can only pray that she should use her intelligence positively and not to pull cotton wool over people’s eyes.

I have encountered excellent policemen who carry themselves with respect, dignity and candour. But again, there are many of them, even senior police officers, who I cannot stand. I am sure if policemen and other security agents work according to their callings, half of the insecurity problems we are now battling with in Nigeria would have been permanently solved.

However, the resolve of Mohammed Abubakar, the Inspector General of Police, IGP, to identify and fish out the killers of Ozuah is reassuring. Already, a dedicated email address and phone lines have been put at the disposal of the public to enable anybody an unfettered access to the investigating team. That is the hallmark of a God-fearing IGP who brooks no nonsense. I am not surprised though. Fasasi’s case is still pending too. It is only hoped that at the end of the day, the killers of Ozuah and Fasasi will be unmasked and brought to justice. We cannot continue to lose our citizens in this senseless manner.

October 3, 2012
Sanusi’s loss, Nigerians’ gain

After weeks of intense debate on the proposed N5000 note, the Presidency waded in last week and doused the raging inferno. The debate had placed many Nigerians, especially stakeholders in the economy, at daggers-drawn with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and its management. The tension had become so palpable that it could be cut through with a knife. At that point, it was obvious that the unexpected could happen. But it took a long time to come. And when it finally came, it was with a bang: Sanusi lost, Nigerians won.

The whole thing was ignited a few weeks back when Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the governor of the apex bank, came under klieg lights and announced that the apex bank had concluded arrangements to introduce the N5000 currency bill into the country’s financial system.

Since then, the debate over the desirability or otherwise of the introduction of the new currency had spread like a wild fire in the harmattan. In most cases the observations raised by people have not gone down well with Sanusi and his lackeys. One of this was the comment made by former President Olusegun Obasanjo at a forum in Lagos. Obasanjo had said that the introduction of the bill was capable of crippling or killing production, thereby causing hyper-inflation. Pronto, Sanusi carpeted the former President, describing him as a “bad economist.” He pointedly asked whether Obasanjo could be said to have contributed to inflation in the country by introducing the N1000 bill during his tenure as president.

Surprisingly, the position of Obasanjo was commended last week by Professor Shamusdeen Tella, a renowned economist. He insisted that the former President was right to say that the introduction of the new notes would not be in the interest of the country’s economy. Tella said the reasons given by Sanusi to conclude that Obasanjo is a “bad economist” are not in tandem with the current economic trends. He explained that the importation and fluctuation levels in the country’s currency had created huge instability in the domestic enterprise, resulting in broader inflation and, as such, “the circumstance does not warrant any higher denomination at all in the system now.”

According to Tella, “collecting higher denominations will mean that people would lose confidence in that money … All these did not happen when such denominations were introduced by Obasanjo’s regime. So Obasanjo is right. Even when he brought the N1000, people accepted it.” Tella also warned that the implication on CBN’s insistence “is that there won’t be anything called cashless economy anymore. There will be serious implication”, he said.

Also last week, the position of Tella and others before him actually got a boost when both houses of the National Assembly came down heavily on Sanusi and the CBN. They passed different resolutions asking President Goodluck Jonathan to stop the CBN from introducing the controversial N5000 note.

However, going by Sanusi’s trademark obstinacy, I doubt it if CBN has not commenced the production or even finished printing the currency and minted the new coins. Nigerians should not be surprised if this becomes an open secret tomorrow. I am saying this because there seems to be a tinge of desperation in Sanusi and his lackeys who have been trying to sell the idea to the public at every available opportunity.

The media has been awash with advertorials over the issue. And these advertorials cost a fortune to place in prime time television and major newspapers. Now, by suspending the project instead of outright cancellation, is the presidency saying that the CBN can continue to waste huge sums of money on the so-called enlightenment? The government should know that Nigerians have spoken; they don’t want the new currency and coins, and no amount of propaganda can change that mindset.

Like many people have rightly observed, the new CBN’s move is a contradiction of its cashless policy, which has not even been accepted in Lagos. People have been devising ingenious methods to circumvent the policy since it was introduced. Sanusi himself attested to this fact recently when he openly admitted that the banks were conniving with their customers to sidetrack the policy.

It is a known fact that the informal sector controls a big chunk of the volume of cash in circulation. The market men and women in Oshodi, and Oke Arin markets in Lagos; Ochanja Market in Onitsha; Fegge Market in Kano; Ariara Market in Aba; and Agenebode market in Edo State transact their businesses in Ghana-Must-Go bags stacked with naira notes. Majority of these traders are peasants and illiterates who do not have any business with the banks. Therefore, I do not see how they can embrace this cashless gambit. I think Sanusi should rather concentrate on how to strengthen the cashless policy and make it work than dissipate energy on selling the idea of N5000 note to unwilling Nigerians.

The other issue is the coins. Sanusi wants to change some lower denominations of the naira like N5, which carries the portrait of Tafawa Balewa; N10, which bears Alvan Ikoku; and N20 which spots late General Murtala Mohammed on it. These people represent many things to many people across the geo-political divides in Nigeria. The implication is that Sanusi is set to consign their memories to the graveyard of history.

Nobody should tell the CBN governor any longer that Nigerians do not like coins. Just like one of the parliamentarians observed last week, even beggars don’t collect coins from alms givers. If Sanusi is so adamant, let him try and introduce the N5000 in coin. Nobody will touch it. Our goods and services are not priced in smaller digits. When it becomes necessary, they are approximated to the next higher denomination. Think of any minute object or commodity such as oranges. It is either they are N10 or N20 each. So why does Sanusi want to devalue our currency by other means?

However, the CBN governor may have probably played the political card by proposing that three women activists of blessed memory -Olufunmilayo Ransom-Kuti, Margaret Ekpo and Gambo Sawaba – will jointly adorn the face of the N5000 note. Even at that, there would still be problems. For instance, in Sanusi’s own part of the country, women are more often relegated to the background in the scheme of things. They can neither be heard nor seen, as it were, which is why many of the men keep their women out of public eyes. The culture there is that women should naturally play second fiddle. What this boils down to is the fact that the stark illiterates in this part of the country, who are mainly traders handling high volume of cash, may not want to have anything to do with the N5000 note.

But Sanusi and his henchmen have a readymade answer for this. They have come out with the cheap propaganda that those who do not want to spend the money are free to reject it. If a person goes to cash money in the bank and the counter clerk tells him that all he has are N5000 notes, what will happen? The customer will have no other choice than to succumb.

As things are now, there is the need to do more research on the real problem bedeviling the naira. This is with a view to fashioning out an appropriate panacea to resolve it rather than the perennial introduction of higher currency and redenomination.

Besides, the usual arrogant posture with which Sanusi has dealt with such issues in the past, and which has manifested in his behaviour over the years, does not augur well for somebody in such a sensitive position. Sanusi must demonstrate civility and flexibility at all times in his conduct because it is not the man that makes the institution; it is the institution that makes the man.

September 26, 2012