The Nation Newspaper

Category: Louis Odion

  • Oyegun and the Abuja disease

    Abuja disease is a peculiar affliction in Nigerian politics. It refers to the tendency of an actor with otherwise modest endowment or from humble station to transmute to a monstrous creature once he/she enters the nation’s capital and begins to frequent the power circles.

    Intoxicated by a new false sense of identity, such upstart does not consider it abominable to now point at their cradle with the proverbial left hand, mocking old benefactors, before their new friends.

    Chief Odigie Oyegun would appear the latest sufferer of this pathology. With a straight face, the National Chairman of ruling the All Progressives Congress (APC) toiled hard to deny allies who smoothed his path to office. Perhaps the most audacious of such exertions was an interview published by Vanguard where he sought to disavow a known truth: the decisive role played by both Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in his emergence in 2014.

    Specifically, the interviewer asked: “Some are alleging that you’ve not been fair to those who assisted you to emerge National Chairman of the party, especially Bola Tinubu. Is this true?”

    Hear Chief Oyegun: “Everybody assisted me to this position and I’m grateful to all of them. The only thing is my personality and integrity; I don’t joke with these two things because they’re the only currency that I’ve and I’ll defend them at any time. I don’t believe one particular person solely assisted me to this position.”

    And in what sounded more like a poor imitation of Buhari’s now famous inaugural “I belong to everybody and nobody” phrase, Oyegun added: “Some day, the story of how I became chairman of APC will be told. You will then see that everybody did assist me to become National Chairman. This means that I’m there for everybody. I don’t belong to any camp in the APC. I belong to all members of APC high and below.”

    With that, the APC chairman could, however, only be said to be deceiving himself in his desperation to impress a national following that does not exist. In the same interview, even more disturbing was his showcasing a poverty of ideas so blissfully over the reported insolvency of the party’s national secretariat. We shall return to this presently.

    Now luxuriating in the new-found glory, Oyegun must be assuming that the nameless – but nonetheless discerning – porters at Benin airport have forgotten the wilderness days of 2013 and early 2014 when they often would relieve an elderly man, regularly clad in French suit, of his little bag after rushing in from his hermitage on the sedate Reservation Road in Benin GRA to catch evening Arik Air flight to Lagos – tellingly at predictable intervals.

    Easily given away by the littleness of his luggage, no one needed further proof that his mission in Lagos could be other than political meetings, hosted by folks whose generous hospitality he now belittles.

    So, when Oyegun spoke in such imperial tone, he must also have assumed no one remembers how the Edo chapter of APC had unilaterally issued a statement endorsing his then arch rival, Chief Tom Ikimi, solely for the office in 2014, obviously to foreclose his (Oyegun’s) chances.

    Unhappy with what he considered “an anti-democratic maneuver” and “a crude attempt to close the political space”, then Governor Oshiomhole had to make a passionate appeal to the state party executive to shift ground. They were incensed that even with the convention barely few days away, Oyegun still had not thought it courteous to formally intimate them of his interest in the big job.

    Following Oshiomhole’s intervention, the Anselm Ojezua-led state exco backed down and granted Oyegun audience to make a presentation. Thereafter, the Edo APC recanted its earlier position by issuing a statement also acknowledging Oyegun and wishing both contenders good luck at the national convention ahead.

    That development would cost Oshiomhole his political relationship with Ikimi seen largely as the man to beat for his greater national visibility which he was too eager to flaunt to the point of hubris.

    If Oshiomhole ensured home anointing for Oyegun, Tinubu sold him to his allies at the national level, obviously out of a nostalgia for – and maybe over-romanticization of – their NADECO past. We are talking of the days of innocence of APC when key gladiators still related as comrades united by a shared resolve to oust Goodluck Jonathan from Aso Rock; when the atmosphere had not become poisoned by mutual suspicion and deep bitterness arising from a sense of alienation.

    Of course, it is open secret that over the years Asiwaju and Ikimi never got on well over the former’s memory of the brutal repression suffered as NADECO exile under dictator Sani Abacha in the 90s with the Oduma of Igueben serving as the voluble foreign minister.

    It is a measure of Tinubu’s blistering networking that Ikimi eventually faced stiff resistance from almost everyone who held the ace within APC then except Turaki Adamawa (ex Vice President Atiku Abubakar). Out-muscled, he had no choice than withdrawing few hours to the commencement of voting at the convention. In pulling out of APC eventually, Ikimi brought drama and a lengthy epistle dripping of bile and acid.

    Reminding the public how he had hosted several exploratory meetings that led to APC’s birth in 2014, Ikimi likened what happened to “someone taking away my pot of soup”, more or less dismissing Oyegun as a political merchandise with little or no electoral value.

    Indeed, in hindsight, Ikimi would now seem vindicated. At home, Oyegun has in the last three years been exposed as grossly impotent politically.  In the 2015 general polls, not only did the APC national chair fail to deliver his polling unit in Oredo, his ward, local government and the entire Edo South senatorial district were also lost to PDP. It was only Oshiomhole’s rally in his native Edo North that ensured APC eventually deliver 45 percent to Buhari’s victory in the historic March 28 polls.

    Even more humiliating was the outcome of the state governorship primaries in 2016. Oyegun’s anointed in the shadow polls came a distant third to Godwin Obaseki. In the September 26 governorship polls proper, Oyegun, the great national chair, failed again as PDP won his polling unit right there in Oredo, the heart of Benin City.

    Back in 2011, even as the presidential running-mate to Shekarau on the ANPP platform, Oyegun’s showing at home was no less disastrous. ANPP performed woefully across Edo. In fact, on account of the sparse number of votes recorded in Benin City, it would not be exaggeration to say no one outside Oyegun’s family members and few loyal neighbours came out to support a ticket that supposedly had “the son of the soil” as the vice presidential candidate.

    Taken together, no one is begrudging Oyegun whatever super stardom he thinks APC leadership now confers on him. But what we only expect of those whose palm kernel has been cracked by benevolent gods is simple – humility. While Oyegun now makes a fetish of self-declared “personality and integrity”, we only expect a demonstration of this very virtue in a fidelity to the facts of history, particularly when the memory is still fresh.

    Acknowledging those who provided you ladder to climb to a height will not in anyway dim your stardom. On the contrary, it confers greater nobility. Only those incurably afflicted by the Abuja disease would seek to belittle, without qualms, their key enablers of yesterday.

    On APC’s state of financial health, Oyegun also missed the point by dragging PMB’s name at all into the story of APC’s illiquidity. Contrary to his insinuation, no one is saying or expects Buhari to dip hands into public treasury to fund party’s activities. I think the issue is whether enough incentives are being created for party members or blocs to have a sense of ownership that will, in turn, ginger them into freely bringing their widow’s mite.

    How was the party able to finance itself before gaining power?

    Theoretically, a party is supposed to draw oxygen substantially from membership fees, dues and levies by those who subscribe to its charter of values.

    To be fair to Oyegun, party finance remains a sticky point even in the so-called mature democracies. In the United States, the corrosive influence of Wall Street was a big issue in the both the primaries and general polls last year. The challenge has been how to evolve institutional bulwark against kickbacks, influence peddling, embezzlement and extortion on party’s behalf.

    In the present circumstance, it is, however, debatable whether Oyegun has been able to draw on his much vaunted “personality and integrity” to provide an exemplary leadership that towers above the squalor of partisanship and therefore commands greater loyalty and trust of all and sundry. It then explains why the national secretariat appears increasingly deserted and the earth vanishing under Oyegun’s bare feet.

    Nothing illustrates graphically that loosening grip than the reported tumult in Abuja on Tuesday by state chairmen of the party. While Oyegun would typically choose to live in denial, the party’s chief spokesperson, Bolaji Abdullahi, was forthright enough to admit that the state leaders were bitter over Buhari’s “lopsided appointments” which have only succeeded in casting the government as sectional; a total negation of the promise of 2015.

    With the deafening rabble at the door, the question now is whether Oyegun, as the embodiment of the heart and soul of APC, has the courage and the gravitas to convey the message to Buhari with a view to winning back those who genuinely feel alienated. That may be a tough call for a pensioner feverishly afraid of losing his own share of the spoils of office in Abuja.

    Meanwhile, with his kinsman now appearing to totter under the weight of office in Abuja, I can see Ikimi taking another sip from his favorite cognac this moment, smiling mischievously.

     

    • By popular demand, this piece, first published in April 2017, is rerun for its prophetic relevance

     

     

  • Profiles in fortitude and courage

    For those tempted to give up on the Nigerian identity, three recent events should offer some reassurance. Though disparate in circumstances, they nonetheless collectively tell the story of tenacity in the face of denial, character under temptation and courage under peril.

    After slaying another victim last weekend in Cardiff, United Kingdom to reaffirm his invincibility in the rope square, emerging heavyweight legend Anthony Joshua was soon flanked by the governor of his native state in Nigeria, Ibikunle Amosun. In the post-fight photograph widely published by Nigerian newspapers on Sunday, we saw the Ogun helmsman posing with AJ’s golden straps with pride.

    Back in rustic Sagamu that night, it was a different sort of delirious celebration all together. Townsfolk threw spontaneous parties to toast yet another victory of the homeboy in world boxing.

    But while AJ’s sustained feats are bound to continue to sire assorted emergency fathers and relations in the times ahead, the supreme irony is that he was once rejected in the same land when he sought opportunity.

    Ahead of the preparations for the 2012 London Olympics, then little known muscular kid showed up at boxing trial in Lagos. Though he had spent most of his years in the UK, his heart was in Nigeria. He craved a chance to don the Nigerian colours.

    Perhaps because he did not present a note from a godfather or his accent did not quite sound Nigerian enough, the coach barely gave him a second look. Frustrated but determined, AJ packed his bag and returned to London where mere talent was enough to earn him a place in the British Olympic squad. Only God Knows the other AJs unable to persevere and so fell by the wayside in Nigeria.

    As fate would have it, the then twenty-two-year-old would emerge the biggest boxing revelation of the 2012 Olympics with his conquering streak that fetched him the coveted gold medal.

    Indeed, since turning professional, what has been shaping the AJ enigma is not so much the uncommon convergence of vintage George Foreman’s bull ferocity, Muhammad Ali’s smoldering charisma and Lenox Lewis’ infectious chivalry; much more compelling is the story of how he was able to reinvent himself after an early brush with the law on account of juvenile delinquent conduct. Thereafter, he chose the martial art to express his boundless energy.

    The rest, as they say, is now history.

    If AJ soared in glory, his fellow compatriot, Abraham Badru, got entombed in gore, the latest victim in the epidemic of gun violence tugging at London’s jugular, claiming staggering ten lives within twelve days.

    Yet, as a teenager years ago, the son of a sitting Nigerian lawmaker was the toast of the local community in London for rescuing a woman from rape attack. He was not obliged to weigh in. Some other faint-hearted guy would probably have ducked in the shadow and elected to view the violation of the defenseless woman as vile entertainment.

    But Badru, described as a pious man who shared his time between the field of soccer where his passion lay and the local temple where he practised his Christian faith, was no carnal voyeur.

    The randy beasts had to flee upon Badru’s brave intervention.

    For that heroic feat, the British Police festooned him with the medal of valor.

    But sadly, twenty-six-year-old Badru had no such helper last week when he himself came under attack while emerging from the car near his family’s home.

    Just the way Badru had fought off the would-be London rapists, John Ogah would wrestle to the ground with bare hands an armed robber in Italy sometime ago. Living a destitute life as illegal alien, his desperate material condition at that horrible hour could ordinarily not have obliged him to care.

    As a practising street beggar, Ogah could, in fact, have elected to stay in the sideline to observe the unfolding spectacle with some malicious pleasure, if not wish that, by some divine miracle, some crumb from the €400 loot being carted away fell mercifully into his soliciting bowl.

    But at that dire moment of temptation, Ogah showed character. He lounged forward and held by the collar the absconding masked robber armed with a gleaming meat cleaver until the police arrived.

    In the ensuing melee, Ogah, despite being the ultimate hero, did not wait to receive praise as he, fearing arrest over his undocumented status, bolted away. But he was soon tracked down through a review of the CCTV cameras.

    In appreciation, not only has the state authorities awarded him the Italian residency permit he was coveting all along, the Italian Red Cross completed the bonanza by offering him a job and a dignifying place to call home.

    Perhaps signaling Ogah’s final induction into the local hall of fame, Pope Francis at weekend baptized him alongside seven others in Rome.

    The message from the referenced stories: for every shameful report of credit-card fraudster or 419 con artist of Nigerian origin abroad, there still exist thousand others engaged in legitimate activities that buoy our national pride.

     

    Re: Gates and the Nigerian ostriches

    Gate’s advice was on point. It’s straight from his territory. I am particularly with him on the issue of population control. We’re sitting on a keg of gun powder. Despite China’s acclaimed magical leap to world’s no 2 economy, its per capital income is still below $10,000 while that of the US is approaching $50,000. Why? Population. Also, I don’t think those who defended the ERGP were wrong either. Gates could have advised economic factors in order to achieve desired goals and he would still have made his point. He’s not a politician and his point is as old as River Niger. It’s a wake up call all the same.

     

    • Olu: 08033013597

     

  • For Oshio Baba @ 65

    While paying homage to then Benin monarch, Oba Erediuwa, as new Edo governor soon after the historic Appeal Verdict of November 11, 2008, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole was greeted with a jovial but nonetheless weighty question.

    “I heard that you prefer to be addressed as Comrade Governor,” began Oba Erediuwa in his accustomed measured tone dripping humor and wit “Now that you’ve become governor, how are we going to be sure that as a career labour activist you will not carry the entire treasury of the state and be giving it to only members of the labour movement?”

    Of course, the comment threw the palace court sitting top chiefs and community leaders that day into rapturous laughter.

    When silence returned, Oshiomhole, clad in his trademark Khaki suit, replied that even though he remained beholden to the labor movement as his primary constituency, he would be governor to all residents of Edo, irrespective of class or creed.

    Eight years after that solemn pledge, whereas the ruling party and the opposition were inclined to differ on the political epitaph for Oshiomhole as his two-term tenure was ending, what still cannot be denied till date is that the veteran labour activist succeeded in enshrining a new populism in statecraft.

    I happened to be part of the administration at some point.

    Precisely 65 years old today, Oshiomhole’s life is undoubtedly a study in tenacity and a certain dare-devilry. The story of his rise from the lowly plains of rustic Iyahmo (once un-captured on Edo map, according to him in self-deprecating humour) to the lowest rung of the textile factory’s ladder in Kaduna, to the headship of the labour movement in 1999 and the Edo White House in 2008, is indeed the stuff fairy tales are made of.

    While he has his own shortcomings and contradictions like every mortal, Oshio Baba (as Oshiomohle is fondly called), as could already be inferred from his involvement with the labor over the years, is a tireless mobilizer, a compelling orator and an instinctive crusader for those left with the short end of the stick by the socio-political order.

    With government polices and programmes unapologetically driven by welfarist values and localization of developmental projects often informed by a clear bias for the hitherto “forgotten”, no one was left in doubt as to whose cause was being championed while Oshiomhole called the shots. The Government House and indeed the Governor’s Office became easily accessible to ordinary folks.

    If  Oshio Baba chose to remain unabashedly abrasive in rhetoric then, it was probably because it was the only weapon he could marshal as governor of “opposition” state against the cartel of “political godfathers” displaced by his ascendancy only to be rehabilitated and armed by ruling PDP at the federal level.

    In Edo, he undoubtedly proved it is never impossible to mobilize a people against any order, however powerful, for change.

    Happy birthday, Oshio Baba.

     

     

  • Gates and the Nigerian Ostriches

    In the last decade, billionaire Bill Gates is reputed to have funneled estimated $1.6b (Over N500b) of his own hard-earned fortune into humanitarian causes in Nigeria, especially immunization for kids against polio with a view to helping to end the nation’s shame as the world’s capital of the horrific yet preventable disease.

    Without being prompted, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would, for instance, pay off recently a $76m loan the Jonathan administration took from Japan in 2014 in the name of fighting polio with little or nothing to show for it.

    But having just returned to his Seattle home in the United States after a week-long visit to the most populous black nation, it is doubtful if today the Microsoft founder might also not have given a serious thought to the urgency of helping to avail Nigeria a different sort of inoculation – for commonsense; and for the most unlikely demographic – the political leadership.

    As usual, Gates spent the better part of his latest visit to the country attending meetings and giving talks on how to improve the living condition of the Nigerian child in the company of a fellow billionaire philanthropist, Aliko Dangote.

    Then, there was also an opportunity to briefly immerse in Nigeria’s accustomed feasting and jollification. As Dangote gave out his daughter Fatima in wedlock, Gates savored a front-row seat in the cultural extravaganza that echoed from Kano to Lagos last weekend.

    But the most unforgettable must be his rather brusque encounter with Nigeria’s officials at the highest level in Abuja. Customarily, guests are permitted a few indulgences. But such hardly include the liberty to sample the hazardous dessert of telling uncomfortable truth, especially when the host happens to be generous in not just hospitality but most flattering in the citation heralding the visitor.

    Speaking last Thursday as special guest at an extra-ordinary session of the expanded National Economic Council, however, Gates chose to break that golden rule.

    With the fervor of a fiery First Testament prophet, the American visitor spoke bitter truth to Aso Rock. A fetish had been made of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan as the new silver bullet to lift the nation from poverty. But Gates did not see any power in the talisman being flaunted.

    Rather, he only saw the lame shuffle of an ant officially mistaken for tentative step of coming prosperity. Without spending on human capital, without spending more on education, without spending much more on quality healthcare, without seeking to keep birth rate on par with the development of social infrastructure, Gates declared that a nation is doomed to poverty.

    His verdict: “The Nigerian government’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan identifies investing in the people as one of three strategic objectives.

    “But the execution priorities don’t fully reflect the people’s needs, prioritizing physical capital over human capital.

    “People without roads, ports and factories can’t flourish. And roads, ports and factories without skilled workers to build and manage them can’t sustain an economy.”

    But expressing the optimism that Nigeria can still join the league of nations with upper middle income like China, Brazil and Mexico given her abundant resources including huge population, the American billionaire stressed that such quantum leap depends on the choices the political leadership makes – namely reordering national priorities.

    Overall, Gates’ prognosis is hardly new, though. It does not require extra intelligence to know that a nation that spends more than seventy percent of its earning on recurrent subhead and consumption generally is merely seeking to perpetuate the dynasty of penury.

    What must have confounded Gates and any right-thinking particularly is the nearly rude official reaction to what should ordinarily be taken as home-truth from a man who, by personal deeds and humongous financial commitment, has demonstrated more than unconditional love for Nigeria in the past decade.

    Whereas VP Yemi Osinbajo was, as usual, unfailingly nuanced and took pains to explain  in his response that they were already aware of some of the fears expressed by Gates, not so with the voluble Kaduna governor, Nasir “The Bulldozer” El-Rufai, who seems never willing to allow any “slight” pass unavenged, however negligible. It was as if someone had waved a red flag before a raging bull again.

    Even in the face of implicating statistics, El-Rufai’s response was short of branding Gates a liar: “(I)t is not correct to say that the economic recovery and growth plan does not give primacy to human capital, it is not correct.”

    But note: the issue is not promise, but delivery.

    Sentiments expressed by his Ebonyi counterpart, David Umahi, was not markedly different. But perhaps, the real shame is that Umahi still chose to deny Gates’ truth on the same day the national media was awash with the chilling story of an Ebonyi mother, Mrs. Veronica Igwe, who allegedly gave her four-year-old daughter, Uloma, to a trader, Mrs. Josephine Nwali, in lieu of a N100 debt.

    Following a tip-off, officials of the state Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, had tracked the latter to the campus of the Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki. Lo and behold, they found little Uloma and another seven-year-old boy already deployed in street hawking.

    Of course, the likes of Uloma are conveniently never captured in the miracle fables Nigerian officials like to retail in propagation of false prosperity, counterfeit progress.

    As if on cue, some of our ministers would also suddenly switch to the defensive mode as if Gates’ critique was personal. The minister of Budget and National Planning has since flooded the airwaves with fabulous budget figures that give the impression of a commitment to raise expenditure in education and healthcare in the past three years.

    But, as they say, the devil is often in the details. Budget is mere declaration of intent to spend. It would have made more sense if we were shown proofs that funds eventually  released matched the promise. There is another undeclared truth: recurrent subhead is prioritized in the face of shortfall in expected revenue. Even when capital projects are executed at all, the costs are often mindlessly inflated, leaving the people doubly short-changed.

    Well, with abundant proof of contagious delusion in high places, maybe Gates’s vaccine for common sense may not be a bad idea after all.

     

  • Ogoni: Prison and cemetery as federal amenities

    The proclivity of the Nigerian state to deny and dehumanize the minority ethnic nationalities is again playing out in oil-rich Ogoniland, Rivers State. Following decades of environmental degradation occasioned by relentless oil exploration, Nigeria had acquiesced to a recommendation by the United Nation for a holistic rehabilitation, if only to preserve the humanity there.

    So, amid song and dance in 2016, the Federal Government flagged off the implementation of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). Then, a high-powered panel was named, though not empowered to work.

    Twenty-one months later, Ogoni people have become restive on account of the inaction. Life has continued to be miserable and aquatic vocation unthinkable.

    With an eye now obviously on the next election and the other on the vast oil still buried in Ogoni soil (the exploitation of which the oil majors are just too eager to resume), Abuja thought up a way out. Without evincing the slightest pang of conscience, Abuja now wants to give the people prison and cemetery instead.

    It sounds like a crude plagiarism of OBJ’s own playbook at a time. In response to repeated lamentations of “federal neglect” by Imo leaders at a town-hall meeting while on official visit to Owerri sometime in 2002, then President Obasanjo cynically punctured such claims, citing Owerri prisons for instance as “federal presence”.

    With a straight face, he reckoned that the only federal amenity his own native Ogun State could perhaps be said to enjoy above Imo was – wait for it – Aro Psychiatric Home. He therefore asked the now dazed audience that day (including Governor Achike Udenwa) whether they would fancy a replica in Owerri, in the spirit of equity.

    Today, the symbolism of the offer of prison and cemetery as substitute for more economically impactful amenities should not be lost on Ogoni people. It is perhaps to remind them of two stark options available. One, Abuja’s commitment to, at least, provide ample store for the remains of those broken by the scorched earth policy underlining the mindless oil exploitation. Second is the assurance of a holding facility for resident “trouble-makers” who might wish to lend themselves to temptation to disrupt the operation of the prevailing architecture of state plunder.

    Abuja’s lip service to the Ogoni clean-up has, in turn, provided a perfect excuse for the conniving Shell and other joint-venture partners to withhold the agreed $1b counterpart fund for UNEP implementation. Expectedly, Abuja would blame the inertial on cash crunch, even though oil receipt mined from Ogoniland and other blighted provinces in the Niger Delta accounts for more than 80 percent of the nation’s gross earning. But, of course, there is money to build a fancy rail that stretches from Katsina into Niger Republic and co-fund the construction of a new refinery in same Niger Republic.

    Truly, equity has a new meaning.

  • The Barbarians at Edo gate

    It was typical of punctilious Godwin Obaseki to assume that mere appeal to reason – this pious invocation of the spirit of good neighborliness – would be enough to rein in the Barbarians arriving Edo’s ancient gate.

    But as he seemed to have realized with regret at the weekend after yet another hand-wringing visitation to the grieving and the traumatized in Esanland, when gangrene  festers to a medical emergency, it is futile expecting healing from a mere therapy of analgesics, other than a genetic reengineering entirely.

    For once, the Edo governor has mustered the political courage to not only call out the murderous herders but also give the police a 7-day ultimatum to fish out the savages behind yet another slaughter of three promising young men in Ugboha including Colllins Ojierakhi, a first-year student at Ambrose Alli University.

    Even the stone-hearted would melt at the chilling details of the latest in the epidemic of heartless killings. Perhaps in deference to the continued official exhortation to “love your neighbour”, Collins and company had even conceded the right of way to the procession of cows and the shepherd to cross the lonely highway that night.

    According to reports, just as the young men made to resume their journey on Okada motorbike, Satan descended. Hot volley of bullets fired by the cowardly gunmen lurking behind the herd in the nearby bush cut Collins and company down brutally.

    After the evil deed had been done, the Police came to remove the bleeding bodies to Ubiaja mortuary, thus adding to Edo’s sorrow from mass murder, rape, plunder and pain at the hands of terror herdsmen.

    Obaseki’s new anger could be understood. There is finally proof that the herdsmen had violated a generous accommodation which only forbids them from roaming Edo land at night. By expecting obedience in the first instance, the governor stands accused of being too hopeful. You don’t expect lunatics to be reasonable or beasts to willingly submit to the customs of the civilized.

    With the communal roost thus being unwittingly stockpiled with ant-infested faggots, it was only a question of time that lizards would begin to infiltrate.

    Only a fortnight ago, one had raised the alarm on the creeping terror in Edo, dramatizing elaborately with the heart-rending example of one’s native community, Odiguetue, in which lives were lost, women raped and farmlands sacked.

    Much as the the murder of a Fulani man – or anyone for that matter – is very, very condemnable, how could that have become an alibi for Fulani gunmen to, in broad daylight, resort to self-help and levy murder and mayhem on Odiguetue community during which an Ebira man was reportedly killed and many sustained severe gunshot wounds, apart from property destroyed?

    To add insult to injury, the community’s emissaries who later went to formally lodge a complaint at the police command in Benin were made to sign an undertaking to “be of good behviour”.

    Intriguingly, few days later, the police would storm the same Odiguetue and bundle 22 men away over allegation that some Fulani herders were killed – an occurrence the community members stoutly denied knowledge of. Assuming it took place, they flatly denied such happened on their soil.

    But like a farcical play, the “suspects” would still be arraigned in court penultimate Friday anyway and it pleased the presiding judge to order their remand in prison till April!

    Unable to accept what they consider gross injustice, members of Odiguetue and Odighi communities thereafter cried to the Oba’s palace and the House of Assembly. It was not until then that the government team invited them for a chat, at the end of which a promise was made to facilitate the quick release of those being detained in prison, if only to reassure them that the government truly feels their pain and is ready to champion their interest.

    But at this writing yesterday (13 harrowing days later), that promise was yet to be redeemed. Maybe the Attorney-General is still sleeping over the file.

    In the referenced column, one had questioned the notion which officially tends to enjoin the traumatized victims to remain calm – if not to turn the other cheek, but keeps a curious silence on the lethal armada openly deployed by the aggressors, much less a warning issued against further campaign of terror by them.

    Such depth of provocation is what must have led the Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, into uttering the following words at a lecture on the same herdsmen pestilence last week: “I do not have to love my neighbor to live in peace with him. But I must demand that he obeys the protocols of co-habitation! If either of us breaks the provisions of such protocols, then there must be penalties.”

    So, to forge a united front against a common threat to the continued survival of our people in Edo communities, one had preached a bi-partisan understanding between both APC and PDP, urging a stricter code of conduct for these migrant terrorists, especially given that neighboring states are fast evolving stern regulations to safeguard the safety and liberty of their own population.

    For, from records, these marauding savages hardly ever bother to ascertain whether the would-be victim’s birthmark is APC or PDP before drawing blood. Extra-ordinary times call for extra-ordinary responses.

    The tone for such a pan-Edo solidarity would, in fact, seem already set by the very progressive Oba of Benin. Discarding the customary royal inhibitions, it is now common knowledge that Oba Ewuare II has been working longer hours, rousing traditional forces to ensure continued harmony and balance of the homeland.

    If nothing at all, one had thought these reprobates ought to be seen officially as constituting a real mortal danger to the realization of the lofty inaugural promise by Obaseki – known as the champion of free enterprise – to create 200,000 through mainly the Afro-allied industry, and treated accordingly.

    Now, even food security in Edo and Obaseki’s Agric Revolution is increasingly imperiled; people are now afraid to go to the farms. Fear stalks the land. Those with tillage cultivated from loans secured from usurer cooperative are unsure if cows would not consume their tendrils even before they mature for harvest. Just as repatriates from “Libyan slave camps” being rehabilitated at Obaseki-inspired farm settlements are also afraid if, while tilling the ridges, the AK-47 herders would not steal in from behind and bury them alive with the soil heaps.

    But in the neighboring Delta State, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa would not mince his words.

    Last weekend, he confirmed that some of the Fulani herders had even begun to carry their ritual offering past the proverbial mosque by also indulging in the abomination of forcing local farmers to pay them “tribute” before being allowed access to their farms in their supposed ancestral land!

    Already, Okowa has read the riot’s act to these neo-feudalists. Reading the governor’s body language correctly, the Delta State Police Commissioner hardly showed any hesitation before declaring that any herder caught with any gun would be treated either as a kidnapper or armed robber.

    In Ondo, Aketi has also tightened the noose.

    Of course, in Ekiti, no wayward herder would dare Ayo Fayose whose opposition to the trespass on farmlands is unapologetically militant.

    Indeed, I have been in touch with Edo Commissioner of Police, Babatunde Kokumo. By his footprints, he would seem to be working tirelessly to keep the peace in an environment where trust has been broken. Unlike the Inspector Genital – sorry, I take that back – General who would not heed the Commander-In-Chief’s ordinance to remain and keep sentinel in beleaguered Benue.

    Rather, he chose to cavort in a less dangerous location, maybe hunting for the next nubile booty in the police force to put in the family way. And if challenged, he would again defend that nothing in the police statute book forbids him from converting female underlining to wife.

    On the contrary, Kokumo has been visiting Edo communities and reaching out to leaders directly to keep the peace.

    If Kokumo appeared officious, however, we can’t say that of some other rogue cops profiteering on the misery of the traumatized.

    Among them are the ones who had raided Odiguetue for two consecutive nights and enacted scenes reminiscent of nocturnal raids last witnessed in Nazi Germany.

    They failed to realize that standing for truth or with the cheated in a conflict is not a favour but a moral duty.

     

     

  • Lagos, garbage and its profiteers 

    When this writer and the likes of Professor Pat Utomi, Sahara desert explorer Newton Jibunoh, Wasiu Ayinde Marshal (KWAM 1) and Lagbaja were named Lagos State Ambassadors for Environment in 2009, then Governor Tunde Fashola was trenchant in his expectation: deploy your individual talent and platform to help create awareness for the sustainability of the environment in a world ensnared by climate change.

    As we left the inauguration ceremony that day, I doubt if anyone of us harboured the illusion that what lay ahead was a glamour ride. I am sure most left with a sobering feeling that it was a crusade with an ambitious mission – seeking to alter behavior at the cultural realm.

    While then making allowance for some distractions – if not resistance – along the way, nothing could have prepared anyone for the recent abrupt reversal of progress thought already made with the resurgence of garbage on Lagos highways, beginning from the last Yuletide season. As giant flies and rodents feasted away, so have vultures been encircling the Lagos skyline ominously.

    The easy conjecture is to scapegoat the new waste manager, Visionscape, for this. In retrospect, it must be admitted that the meltdown would probably have been mitigated, if not totally avoided, had Visionscape phased its intervention in pilot schemes, learning and fine-tuning things along the way before scaling up.

    By the terms of the original transition arrangement, the new concessionaire was expected to concentrate on residential neighborhoods while the existing PSP operators were to manage commercial and industrial avenues. (The former accounts for 40 percent of the waste generated while the latter produces the rest.)

    But having said that, holding Visionscape solely responsible for the resurgent mountains of garbage along the highways will amount to a poor reading of the dark forces actually at play. Let it be recognized that the garbage heaps are only a manifestation of a vicious power-play going on.

    Entrenched interests are certainly up in arms against a bold attempt by the Akinwumni Ambode administration to fast-track reforms in a sector that otherwise impacts the daily existence of over 20 million residents.

    They are to be located between the PSP cartel, the nest of unscrupulous civil servants and maybe the rank of those who lost out in the bid process. (Some of the biggest names in international environmental management such as Veolia, Averda and Suez Environment had expressed interest through strategic partnerships with local partners in the tender process.)

    Of course, experience readily shows that beneficiaries of any pre-existing order are never willing to forfeit privileges or go down without a fight.

    Like sharks, the PSP operators chose to sink their fangs where it hurts most.

    Knowing the bulk of the fleet of compactors ordered by the new concessionaire were still in transit, they not only downed tools but also rushed to the court to file suits against the authorities and Visionscape. Without having a full complement of equipment needed to effectively cover Lagos at that point, it was only natural Visionscape would encounter acute operational difficulties.

    The lesson: the old structure that had served the city need not have been pulled down in one fell swoop overnight. At least, that would have afforded the powerful PSP cartel enough cool-off time.

    Authorities believe the barrage of attack is the handiwork of beneficiaries of the old order. Well, that should be expected. Only a fortnight ago, the state government had paraded a PSP operator allegedly caught willfully discharging garbage on the highway at night. Of course, the motive could only be to cast Visionscape in bad light.

    Anyone still in doubt as per the length such interests could go only needs to check and feel the ferocity of a multi-faceted smear campaign waged against Visionscape in the social media in the past two weeks and its promoters being called unprintable names. Haba!

    For instance, issue is made of the N50b investment in the undertaking. But those who think that is on the high side could not be said to be mindful of the size of Lagos population.

    Elsewhere in Ondo, another waste concessionaire, ZL Global Alliance Nigeria Limited, is shopping for N7b in funds, according to the CEO, Mrs. Abiola Bashorun. Tellingly, whereas Ondo generates 660 tonnes of waste daily with a population of less than 4 million, Lagos generates whopping 13,000 tonnes with a population of over 20 million.

    But the brickbats from the ongoing turf war aside, there can be no dispute on the clarity of Ambode’s dream and sense of urgency needed to bring same to fruition. The kernel is to have the over 13,000 tonnes of waste generated daily turned into value-creation, consistent with the vision of a smart city.

    Surely, filthy beaches and slimy waterways have no place in the megacity of the future.

    Indeed, waste management is not limited to residential neighborhoods alone. Even more daunting is the challenge of industrial waste. As more corporate citizens are born so is the risk of industrial pollution rising. A more robust regulatory and monitoring framework is surely needed to check the growing menace of unscrupulous manufacturers offloading toxic effluent into the waters indiscriminately. To say nothing about the hazards also posed by medical waste.

    Overall, the new thinking in sustainable environment management is such that integrates three key pillars: people, planet and profit. It means how we consume energy and conserve our environment impact directly on the economic health of the city which, in turn, dictate the quality of life we live.

    Of course, it has to be admitted that Lagos still lags behinds in terms of infrastructure to make this happen. The itinerant cart-pusher (Omolanke) of old was also a scavenger and a scourge. He eked a living from the garbage collected around the neighbour. And when no one was watching, he found somewhere to empty the filth amassed. The next day, the cycle was repeated.

    After the law banished the cart-pusher, PSP operators flooded the neighborhoods and the highways. Hundreds of them were licensed and paid to collect waste. Since government money was involved, the system soon got infected with some hanky-panky.

    For instance, stories are told of how the cartel in concert with some unscrupulous civil servants began to game the system mindlessly.

    Some would load big stones in their trucks and submit same for the tonnage to be weighed for payment. While Tunji Bello (now SSG) was still Environment Commissioner, that trick was foiled. Ownership of a compactor was thereafter made a pre-requisite.

    Before long, the buccaneers invented another trick: recycling. So, Operator A would, for instance, line up their fleet for official inspection and operation on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Same mostly rickety vehicles were passed on to Operator B who would bring them out on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

    In effect, whereas two such players were listed and remunerated based on combined capacities of six trucks, the truth: only half of that actually existed.

    It was in an attempt to curb such sharp practices and infuse a fresh breath of air that Ambode, soon after assuming office, decided to turn the table. So, enter Visionscape.

    Regardless of the shortcomings at take-off, there is no denying the fact that effective waste management of the future in Lagos requires a big player like Visionscape expected to leverage its international partnerships to deliver a more livable and greener habitat for us.

    Mischief-makers ought to be told in unmistakable terms to cut it. It is a clarion call for for all reasonable people to join in the efforts to better our environment.

    Visionscape is expected to also provide an engineered sanitary landfill; upgrade and manage three transfer loading stations at Oshodi, Simpson and Agege as well as upgrade and manage waste depots at Ogudu, Mushin and Tapa.

    Driving along the Lekki highway the other day, one saw the upgrading works being done on the dumpsite at the Epe end. Beyond the remodeling, the one at Olusosun in Ojota should also be made to be more functional. As a matter of fact, part of the bargain is for Visionscape to provide alternatives to the Ojota dumpsite, a perennial source of noxious fumes and pungent stench for residents of that axis.

    Having surmounted the teething problems following the receipt of more operational equipment, we can only hope the concessionaire deliver promptly on the ancillary promises in due course. It is nice to see that, in conformity with United Nation guidelines for a humane and coordinated approach, some of the cart-pushers and the scavengers on dumpsites have been recruited and trained as landfill mining teams.

    Added to that is the 30,000 Community Sanitation Workers to be recruited under the Cleaner Lagos Initiative. We also look forward to seeing the much touted strategic partnership with recycling companies in action as part of the value chain.

     

  • Re: Valentine in the age of ‘Digisexuals’

    Your article of February 14 refers. I get what you say about the robot lovers, but you also have to see it in the light of the modern era. Modern women, especially western educated women steeped in toxic feminism, have made it difficult for men of caliber to enjoy their love life. They have been conditioned to be promiscuous and also have a career. So either they become gold-diggers who are after your money but provide nothing else, or they are rabid man-haters that are willing to take you down to prove their point.

    Men can live without the emotional part. That they can get from their other relationships or an adventurous life. If they are able to satisfy their lust without being blackmailed by a jealous woman, getting diseases because their sexual partners lie or having their careers destroyed, they are more likely to go for robotic partners that can give them all the sex they want without the cash draining. It also means men no longer need to chase women and they will definitely have its effects.

    I am not condoning this change but don’t forget that for years, western society has been preaching promiscuity and we in other parts of the world have been lapping it up without considering its effects. We cannot start crying wolf now when we did not do enough to combat the destruction of our values on the altar of economic advance. We taught men and women to be promiscuous and it caused the destruction of the nuclear and extended family. Why would the products of such broken homes not come out even worse. No use crying over spilt milk and defend what you have left.

     

    • Anonymous

    In conclusion, culture tends to move in cycles: from Bondage to Spiritual Growth to Liberty to Abundance to Complacency to Apathy to Dependence back to Bondage. Our current global civilization has moved past Apathy and Dependence and is moving to Bondage. We have entered a stage of moral and economic decline that signals the end of the empire. The best we can do is pray that we are not swept over in the current.

     

     

  • From Imo to Zamfara: Monarchy trumps democracy

    From Imo to Zamfara: Monarchy trumps democracy

    A dialogue imaginatively ascribed to what would ordinarily pass as an innocuous photograph from a routine official event opens perhaps the best aperture on the festering culture of political degeneracy. (The author of the mischief that trended in the social media is understandably anonymous.)

    Face lit up with his trademark fawning smile, Rochas Okorocha is shown drawing close to President Buhari, whispering in Oriental pidgin English for green-light to “nack” (erect) the general’s statue “free of charge” in Owerri, obviously now the playground of the Owelle’s perverse theatrics.

    More in superstitious fear than any sense of modesty, Buhari would decline, thundering instead in Arewa-flavored cadence: “Shege (unprintable), you nack (Madam Johnson) Sirleaf (of Liberia) she waka, you nack (Alex) Ekweme him kpai (died), you nack(ing) (Jacob) Zuma (of South Africa) don pursue am, you think I want to retire to (the other room)?”

    In all of this, what confounds is not that Okorocha advertised a lack of scruple by, for instance, erecting at Imo taxpayer’s expense a monument to a man later crucified for monumental graft in his native South Africa. Rather, the great puzzle is why all the political elders in his party appear to oblige him with the conspiracy of silence as he slides from one sacrilege to another. What else, if not contempt for urban dwellers, would have made the proverbial bushman stroll into town in loincloth.

    Without shame, Okorocha had dragooned the cartel of “warrant” chiefs to crown visiting Zuma “The People’s Warrior”. When did public stealing become a communal virtue in Igboland?

    Yet, some of the finest political giants the Igbo have bred in history hail from Imo.

    Alas, the latest in Okorocha’s career of political infamy is the ongoing attempt to finally degrade the egalitarian castle they toiled hard to build to a monarchy in which the Owelle seeks to pass the gubernatorial baton to his son-in-law while he hands himself the senatorial staff of Orlu zone. It means his daughter is being positioned too to take over from her mum as the queen, the First Lady.

    A spoilt brat, the heir apparent had been a suckling in Okorocha’s diapers, shedding his milk teeth all the while – first as Lands and Housing Commissioner and later Chief of Staff to his doting father-in-law.

    As for the murmuring deputy governor Madumere coveting the high stool, the great king is magnanimous enough to offer to compensate him with the senatorial ticket of Owerri zone. To leave other pretenders in no doubt, he actually publicly decreed this with a ring of magisterial finality.

    Imo’s nominee in the Federal cabinet, Anthony Anwuka, the Minister of State for Education, is also Okorocha’s in-law, married to Okorocha’s second daughter.

    Since the kingdom must mirror the king’s shadow even if grotesque, not a few of the public buildings built by Okorocha ended being named after the Okorochas.

    Having groomed his younger sister as deputy Chief of Staff under his son-in-law, Okorocha recently decided not only to elevate her but also allocate her an entirely novel portfolio – Commissioner of Happiness. Not surprising, on assumption of office, one of her radical proposals to ending the social menace of prostitution is a challenge to Imo men to consider marrying more than one wife, promising government’s generous incentives to those converted.

    Grapevine has it that another sister of the king retains the exclusive franchise of supplying all food and drinks to the Government House from her fast food joint tucked somewhere in Owerri. Just as the head of one of the state-owned higher institutions is said to be the governor’s aunt.

    In short, democracy has been turned to family business in Imo. What perhaps remains now is to issue a certificate of incorporation in Okorocha’s name.

    Taken together, it is a sad commentary on Buhari’s political guardianship that democracy is being given a bad name in Imo. But who knows, maybe loquacious Okorocha will soon tell us he is only following PMB’s example by only appointing “trusted” people.

    In the north, Okorocha’s alter ego will be Abdulaziz Yari, the Zamfara potentate. Of course, just like the former, he is among the party zealots seeking to stampede Buhari into second term. But unlike the Owerri clown who has outlined an incestuous secession plan by sharing governorship and senatorial tickets among himself and family members obviously as his own bargain for backing Buhari, Yari’s personal agenda is yet unclear.

    What is however certain is that he, just like Okorocha, won’t mind an opportunity to coronate his clone to sustain the heritage of filth.

    Yari’s poverty of ideas has ensured that, even after almost seven years at the helm in Gusau, Zamfara today has more or less remained stunted, stuck at the bottom of all development indicators including education and access to healthcare. It is a measure of Yari’s toxic development model that a state with 3.8m population boasts of 23 doctors manning 24 public hospitals.

    In the security sector, while it is true that a number of northern states are infected by the contagion of AK-47 herders spiced with armed banditry, Zamfara’s own trauma is compounded by leadership sterility.

    The latest massacre of 50 no doubt bore the hallmark of bestiality. A wedding party was waylaid. The driver’s throat was slit and the gunmen wiped out with gunfire the passengers including bride-maids and traders. Not content with taking the lives in cold blood, the savages set fire on their bodies. Thereafter, they proceeded to the market and shot at everyone indiscriminately.

    But while the state floats in the blood of innocents slaughtered by marauding beasts, Yari only seems obsessed with gallivanting outside. Though he answers Zamfara Governor, it seems more appropriate to describe him as governor-in-self-exile, Abuja being his hideout.

    Yari’s Zamfara would only appear to be making phenomenal advance in the unlikely sector. In a BBC documentary aired recently, Iheoma Obibi, a sex doll merchant, appreciatively listed Zamfara as her next biggest market in Nigeria after Lagos and Abuja.

    So, the old Sharia enclave now seems condemned to stew in the truancy of a power eunuch. So much that when concerned outsiders arrived the state capital recently on a sympathy visit following another round of bloodletting, they met empty Governor’s office as Oga had jetted out again.

    When eventually he found time to lead a pack of visiting brother governors on a condolence visit to the monarch of grieving Zurmi council, Yari chose to enact a comedy of errors in the moment of tragedy. By disclosing that his administration had intelligence report of impending attack 24hours prior, he only exposed himself as accessory before the fact of a pogrom. The question: since he knew ahead, what practical steps did he make to avert it?

    Tellingly, on the day the gunmen struck, he was said to be ensconced in the luxurious comfort of Abuja.

    It is lame for Yari to explain his failing away by saying that he passed information to the relevant security agencies 24 hours before the attack. A wise governor would not have stopped there; he would also rally the communities to a red alert, apart from he being at his desk to monitor development.

    Later in Zurmi, apparently to ingratiate himself to the locals he had failed, he would parrot the populist line that killings by herdsmen has escalated under PMB: “I feel let down facing the people of this state whenever I remember the promise I made to them that when they elect President Muhammadu Buhari into power, these killings will end. But unfortunately, things are now getting worse.”

    While such confession must have helped disarm the mob outside the Emir’s palace that day who might have been tempted to stone the fumbling governor in annoyance and frustration, he alas only ended up projecting his party, APC, as not just a failure but also clueless on the challenge of securing people’s lives and property.

    Worse, after pontificating at the Emir’s palace obviously for the television cameras, Yari failed another leadership test by refusing to visit the community affected, if only to comfort the bereaved in Birani. (Maybe, he was scared the people might stone him for failing them as a leader.) Thereafter, he was said to have zoomed off to Katsina before flying to Abuja and, by some accounts, again jetting abroad.

    With characters like these, democracy is indeed imperiled.

     

  • ‘Dining’ with Kongi

    To be mentioned in the same breath as immortal Prof Wole Soyinka is, to me, enough honour, let alone having one’s writing featured in his latest book entitled, “Green Cards and Green Gods”, as well.

    My bewilderment could, therefore, only be imagined last week when I received a correspondence from the book’s publishers announcing that, on Kongi’s insistence, a generous portion of his royalty from the book will be paid to me for even my little effort in the book unveiled in December 2017.

    As a writer, material reward is never one’s primary motivations. Rather, it is more about questing for that inner peace kindled only by the consciousness of truth or the defence of its province.

    To now be compensated by the Nobel laureate on top is gratifying indeed. The cheque’s size is beside the point; much more invaluable, in my view, is the very spirit behind the gesture – the willingness to share and the sense of accountability.

    From my interaction with Kongi and learning at huge feet over the years, I can almost swear his thunderous aversion to publicity of this nature. But I’m willing to risk his wrath, if only for an opportunity to bear testimony to his uncommon generosity of not just spirit, but in material terms as well.

    Members of my generation grew up hearing stories of how Kongi quietly gave away most of the cash of the Nobel Prize in Literature he won in 1986 to the needy. And when unable to meet excessive material demands from those who have access to him even till date, he would sometimes pass on invitation to lucrative speaking engagements as another form of “donation”.

    Well, on a jovial note, having thus made full disclosure, here is earnestly hoping prospective freeloaders and scavengers milling the nation’s space won’t now suddenly consider me a goldmine or easy target of 419 schemes, even before the cheque is cashed.