The Nation Newspaper

Category: Mohammed Harunna

  • Between Anyim and Bala

    Between Anyim and Bala

    A little over two years ago, on July 25, 2012 to be exact, this column tried to draw the attention of President Goodluck Jonathan to one good reason why the nation’s war against corruption has never made any serious headway, namely the highly selective application of the weapons used in the war against the scourge.

    I used the word corruption then not in its narrow sense of “dishonest exploitation of power for personal again,” – in Encarta Concise English Dictionary’s phrase. I used the word in its broadest sense of the abuse of trust for whatever reason.

    I illustrated my point with four examples; (1) the huge oil subsidy scam then just unfolding in which some of the beneficiaries were members of the president’s kitchen cabinet, (2) the blatantly nepotistic appointment of the First Lady, Dame Patience, as a Permanent Secretary in the civil service of Bayelsa State, 13 years after she had retired on her own as wife of then Deputy Governor Goodluck Jonathan, (3) the highly selective application of public service rules and regulations in the appointment and retirement of senior civil servants, senior military commanders, police chiefs and those of other uniformed services, and (4) more specifically, the arbitrary extension of office given the bosses of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) and the Nigerian Intelligence Agency (NIA), Alhaji Abubakar Mohammed and Ambassador Ezekiel Olaniyi Oladeji, respectively. The two had, on account of both age and years of service, been overdue for retirement.

    A year on after my article, things seem to have taken turns only for the worse, not better. And the main reason is clearly the president’s wish, regardless of all pretences to the contrary, to contest – and win – the 2015 presidential election, come hell, come high-water. The president has obviously become a hostage to this wish.

    Among those who seem to have taken him hostage is the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), former Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim, GCON. Anyim, it seems, has been exploiting President Jonathan’s apparent desperation for another term to gain as much undue advantage for his Igbo kith and kin in the federal civil service in return for a promise of the Igbo vote. There seems, at least in the eyes of Honourable Mustapha Bala, to be an irrefutable case of the gross violation of the principles of federal character as enshrined in the constitution against Anyim.

    Five months ago, Honourable Bala, a ranking member of the House of Representatives from Kano State, gave a full page interview in LEADERSHIP WEEKEND (March 16) in which he categorically accused Anyim of abusing his office. “Yes,” he said in the course of the interview, “the office of the SGF is corrupt and unfair to the North like I have stated before. Currently, we have many DGs (Directors General) of Northern origin whose tenure renewal is in the limbo because the SGF has failed to act on them.” The federal legislator went on to name several of the parastatals in question.

    Naturally, the SGF took umbrage. Four days after Bala’s interview, he took out a full page advert addressed to the Speaker, Rt. Honourable Aminu Tambuwal, in LEADERSHIP (March 20) in which he lambasted the legislator. Bala, he insinuated, was barely out of his diapers when he served as senate president with distinction nearly ten years before. After ticking off the “kindergarten” legislator – apologies, Chief Bisi Akande, the protem APC chief who recently dismissed Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency as “kindergarten”, much, of course, to the annoyance of all the president’s men – every inch of the way, Anyim concluded his advert by “humbly” requesting the Speaker to “kindly call Hon. Mustapha Bala to order.” Bala, he said, should be told to wake up “to the fact that Nigeria is no longer run by baseless ethnic sentiments as the divisive song has become archaic.”

    With due respect to the SGF, it is not a fact that the country has seized to be run by baseless ethnic sentiments. As the distinguished former Senate president knows all too well, Nigeria’s politics is a veritable bastion of ethnic – and sectarian – sentiments. This is why our politicians ask for – and all too often get – our votes, not on the basis of their integrity, commitment and ability to deliver on their promises. They ask for, and willy-nilly, often get our votes essentially on the basis of where they come from and what god they claim to worship. Unfortunately, this ethnic and sectarian framework determines much of everything else in our society; our economics, our businesses, our bureaucracy and parastatals, name it.

    Take, for example, the parastatals over which the former Senate president and Hon. Bala have been at war. There are at least eight – Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Nomadic Education Commission, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), PTDF and lately, Customs – whose leaderships have been in limbo for nearly a year now – except for Customs – simply because the SGF can’t seem to help the presidency, as it is his job, to make up its mind whether or not to renew them.

    On the other hand, there are other parastatals like the Debt Management Office, the Security Exchange Commission and the Federal Road Safety Commission the tenures of whose bosses have been quickly renewed at the SGF’s behest. He may have good reason for the difference in his speed of handling the two sets of parastatals but it may be more than mere coincidence that the second set has his fellow Igbos and Southerners as heads.

    If Anyim rejects these comparisons as unfair what can be his explanation for the single-minded determination with which the presidency, again at his apparent behest, has pursued the executive bill seeking to reduce the experience of the director-general of the Pension Commission (PENCOM) from 20 years to 15 just to suit the current acting DG, Mrs Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, who happens to be a fellow Igbo? The young lady may be a smart lawyer, but, for crying out loud, she is a 1998 graduate and came to her position as PENCOM’s pioneer company secretary and a general manager through a less than transparent procedure; she was appointed directly by the presidency instead of by the commission’s board as should’ve been the case.

    How, again, can the SGF explain recent goings-on at the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) which suggests he is being ethnicist? The agency, which is under the Ministry of Science and Technology and has the president as its statutory chair, has nine institutes, among them two scientific equipment and development institutes, (SEDI) one in Minna, the other in Enugu. That of Enugu is headed by Professor Christian Nwajagu, the SGF’s fellow Igbo.

    At the expiration of the tenure of the agency’s DG/CEO in March last year, the minister at the time, Professor Ita Okon Bassey Ewa, advertised the post in The Guardian, PUNCH and Daily Trust. Sixty two people applied out of whom 16 were shortlisted for written tests and interviews. Seven emerged as the best, with Dr Mohammed S. Haruna, the acting DG, at the top with a score of 72.1%. Prof. Nwajagu came a distant sixth with a score of 58.1%.

    One of the things Hon. Bala accused the SGF of was that he sat on the recommendation of the minister for the appointment of Dr Haruna as substantive DG/CEO because his preference had been Prof. Nwajagu. Eventually, Dr Haruna got the job last April but it was backdated to April last year.

    Since then the professor has served out one year over his mandatory eight years as director. However, alone of his colleagues who have served for eight years, he has been given a letter to continue as director without tenure, contrary to the extant regulations.

    Not only that. There are speculations that the SGF’s office is making moves to have the SEDI under him removed from the science and technology ministry to education and made autonomous to boot.

    It all looks like in this war between the former Senate president as the SGF and our “kindergarten” legislator, the facts and the dialectics do not seem to favour the former.

     

    Feedback

    Sir, You are just an incurable northern irredentist. You praise (Lt-Gen T. Y.) Danjuma for his stupendous riches without alluding to corruption (“Another open letter to Gen Danjuma”, September 4). If it were OBJ (General Obasanjo), the phrase ‘ill-gotten’ would have been used to describe his gesture. OBJ had a cabal but Yar’Adua had ‘a so-called cabal.’ Double speak.

    Danjuma had about ten oil wells, most of which he acquired during Abacha regime. Is that a godly person and a man of principle? This, in a country where millions wallow in abject poverty? He sold one of them to a Chinese company and made a cool $2 billion. The genesis of the acrimony between them was that OBJ retrieved 3 out of the wells because he found it unfair and too much.

    We know the saintly patriots amongst us. Danjuma is not one.

    You are still pained that OBJ didn’t retain you as his spokesman when he became president. Too bad.

    Lanre. +234805363????.

     

     

  • Why Odimegwu should get the president’s boot

    Why Odimegwu should get the president’s boot

    IF ever a man stands as indisputable evidence that the garb does not necessarily make the man, Eze Festus Odimegwu, Chairman of the Nigerian Population Commission (NPC), is such evidence.

    Thirty four years ago or so, the man graduated from University of Nigeria, Nsukka on top of his class with a first class honours in Chemistry. He soon joined the Nigerian Breweries Plc and, as one would expect of a man of his brilliance, he rose through the lower rungs of the company to eventually become its managing director and chief executive officer in 1997. He left in 2006.

    In the course of his brilliant career he attended leadership and management courses in some of the best universities in the world, including London Business School, Wharton Business School and Stanford University Business School.

    It was this brilliant man that President Goodluck Jonathan saw fit to appoint as the Chairman of the NPC in June last year. A little over one year on, the man has done and said everything to prove the president could not have been more wrong in his choice.

    If, as is possible, even probable, the president was taken in by the man’s academic brilliance and apparently successful career in appointing him to the very sensitive job of Nigeria’s head-count, the president should never have been, understandable though it is.

    This is simply because in spite of the man’s brilliance and successful career he had exposed himself long before his appointment as chair of NPC as one of the most obsequious Nigerians when, in the twilight of his brewing career, he chose to become one of the arrowheads of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo’s infamous Third Term Agenda.

    So obsequious was the man in his role as a leading promoter of President Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda that it appears to have brought his otherwise brilliant career to an ignominious end when, rather than leave on his own, he seemed to have been gently shoved off for playing too much politics at the expense of his job as the boss of Nigeria’s top brewing company.

    For a man who seemed so servile to President Obasanjo, it is truly shocking that he has since turned full circle to denigrate the man over one of the few successes he managed to chalk up in his eight years as president. For, Census 2006, probably save that of 1991 conducted by the late Makama Nupe, Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa, is arguably the least controversial census ever carried out in this country since its first nationwide headcount in 1921.

    At the heart of this controversy has always been the notion that the more sparsely populated North can never be more populous than the densely populated South, as all our headcounts have always shown. So strongly held is this notion in the South that even otherwise well educated Southerners like Senator Abraham Adesanya, the late leader of Afenifere, the umbrella Yoruba cultural group, would peddle the nonsense that Northerners counted their cattle, goats and sheep among their population!

    As if to disprove the numerical superiority of the North, President Obasanjo, well ahead of the 2003 general elections, initially made the possession of a national identity card by any Nigerian 18 and above conditional for the exercise of their voting right, in clear contravention of the Constitution and contrary to the electoral law. In the end, he was forced to go back on his insistence when it became obvious that it was logistically impossible to provide every eligible Nigerian with the ID card before the elections.

    All the same the project went ahead in November 2002 and when the results were released in May 2003, it suggested an even wider margin of population between the North and the South than was the case in all the previous censuses. For example, whereas the 1991 headcount showed a ratio of 53.23% for the North against 47.77% for the South, Obasanjo’s ID card project showed the North had 54.50% of the country’s adult population as against 45.50% for the South.

    It was highly instructive that the ID card project was carried out at a time the president, his Minister of Internal Affairs, the late Chief Sunday Afolabi, the supervising minister who was a staunch Afenifere and Awoist, and Mr Deji Omotade, the late head of the Department of National Civic Registration (DNCR), were all not only Southerners. They were indeed, South-Westerners, the arrowheads of the campaign against the North’s numerical superiority vis-a-vis the South.

    In spite of this exercise many a Southerner still clung on to the apparently mistaken belief that the population of the North was fiction. One such Southerner was Chief Bode George, the Peoples Democratic Party chieftain who was jailed for corruption several years ago but who seems to have since returned to reckoning in the party. The population of the North was fiction, he told a rally organised by the Southern Leadership Forum in Enugu in December 2005, a rally which clearly had the imprimatur of Obasanjo’s presidency. They will make sure the 2006 headcount, he told the rally to a thunderous applause, exposed the fiction. “We will fix it,” he said.

    The 2006 census came and went and apparently all the Bode Georges of the world couldn’t “fix it.” The result the headcount which Mr. Samuila Danko Makama, Odimegwu’s predecessor, announced in October 2006 showed pretty much the same distribution the country had seen since before independence in 1960.

    Odimegwu, it seems, has come to his job with an open agenda to do what many with even bigger political clout than he possesses have failed to carry out. As Mr. Makama pointed out in an interview in the Daily Trust of June 27, at his very first address of the NPC staff after his appointment, Odimegwu tried to discredit all the headcounts that have been conducted in the country since Adam.

    “The most shocking aspect,” said Makama, “was that he said all previous censuses in Nigeria, a section of the country has been cheating other sections, and that I failed to correct that, and that he had come to correct that.”

    Since then the new census boss has been singing one variation or the other of this same theme of a fictitious Northern population. Like most of his regional compatriots he seems to have clung on to the ignorant, possibly merely mischievous, belief that the North is mostly a barren desert that cannot have the population it has been credited with all these decades. They simply refuse to educate themselves about the country’s geography which would have shown them that only the northern fringes of the region are semi-arid and that the vast portion of its 730,885 square kilometres, which is more than 2/3rd of Nigeria’s 923,768 square kilometres, is arable and produces most of the country’s food and livestock.

    His most recent display of ignorance about his job was his widely publicised press conference of August 20, in which he repeated his ill-considered and arrant nonsense that the 2006 census was cooked up. His evidence? The say so of one census official, Inuwa Mohammed, who he said once told an NPC meeting to review the census figures that it was all cooked up.

    Apparently it does not matter to the man that, all told, there has been no more than 370 or so petitions nation-wide against the NPC’s 2006 headcount and that more than 75% of these petitions have been thrown out by the census tribunal.

    The president cannot do worse than retain someone who has displayed so much ignorance, insensitivity and mischief as Odimegwu has, as the country’s census boss. Not only has he displayed so much ignorance, insensitivity and mischief, he goes down on record as the first census boss in the country’s history the vast majority of whose colleagues would carry out a full page newspaper advert announcing their vote of no confidence in his leadership.

    If the president wants the country to have a census in three year’s time with any chance of being acceptable at all, he should sack Odimegwu today. If nothing else, any man, no matter how brilliant, who would praise a leader to high heavens today only to turn round and crucify him tomorrow as Odimegwu has done to Obasanjo, simply because the man is no longer in power, does not deserve any responsible job, not to talk of one as sensitive and important as the headcount of a country as big as Nigeria.

     

  • Obj, IBB, Oldbreed and New

    Obj, IBB, Oldbreed and New

    For the second time in recent years, former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), has begged to differ from his “boss,” as he often likes to call General Olusegun Obasanjo (Obj), on the seemingly perennial debate about the Oldbreed political class versus the New.

    Tuesday August 13, Obasanjo, the only person to have served Nigeria as its leader in khaki (1976 to 1979) and mufti (1999 to 2007), came down heavily on the latter class of politicians like a ton of bricks. As a group they were, he said in effect, worse than useless. The occasion was the Fourth Annual Ibadan Sustainable Summit at Le Chateau, Bodija, Ibadan, where he was the guest speaker. His topic was Leadership in Africa’s Quest for Sustainable Development.

    As often happens on such occasions, what made the banner headlines the following day was not the paper the former president delivered. Rather, it was the extempore remarks he made in response to comments and questions by discussants of the paper and from the audience. The comment by Professor Mojeed Alabi, the first of the two discussants and a former Speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly, that the country’s problems stems mainly from the refusal of the Oldbreed to “step aside” – to borrow Babangida’s now famous phrase when he not-so-voluntarily left office in August 1993 – for the Newbreed apparently got old man Obasanjo’s dander up.

    The professor, he said in effect in a counterpoint, was talking so much rubbish. Many governors during his tenure were less than 50. The first Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Salisu Buhari, was even much younger, he pointed out. Yet the record of these Newbreed politicians on the whole was, he said, dismal.

    “We had some people who were under 50 years in leadership positions. One of them was James Ibori. Where is he today? One of them was Alamieyesiegha, where is he today? Lucky Igbinidion, where is he today? The youngest was the Speaker, Buhari. You can still recall what happened to him. You said Bola Tinubu is your master. What Buhari did was not any worse than what Bola Tinubu did. We got them impeached. But in this part of the world some people covered up the other man.”

    Trust the man not to leave out his deputy and eventual nemesis, Atiku Abubakar, in his list of villainous Newbreeds; the former vice-president, he found out after studying him for a year, he said, was too corrupt for him to have groomed as his possible successor.

    In short, the Newbreed, he seemed to say, should not complain anymore since they had their chance but blew it.

    This was the conclusion General Babangida, not surprisingly, found somewhat disagreeable, as a well known champion of the Newbreed even though he had had cause in recent times to express his disappointment at their record of performance in power, a complain which I once loudly thought on these pages meant he has at last broken faith with them.

    In a rejoinder to my article in question entitled “A Newbreed apart” (July 7, 2010), which was a tribute to Honourable Isa Kawu, a Newbreed member of the Niger State House of Assembly who had stood virtually alone as a thorn in the flesh of the state’s executive and has also stood almost alone as an example of a rare exception which proves the rule that, generally speaking, our politicians’ first commitment is to themselves and everyone else a distant second, Professor Sam Oyovbaire, my Political Science teacher at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in the early seventies and much later, Babangida’s minister of Information, said his principal never lost faith in the Newbreed.

    “It’s not true,” Oyovbaire said in his rejoinder, “that IBB has changed his views about the historic role and value of the ‘new breed’ segment of the political class. His well-honed critique of its disappointing performance from the Abacha era through the OBJ’s horrible legacy to date has been, as usual with the press mindset on anything IBB, badly twisted and made to hang! He believes in the potentials of the youths/new breed in the development process. Believe me on IBB’s thoughts.”

    On the occasion of his 72nd birthday last Saturday, the general seized the opportunity of an encounter with the press to re-iterate his faith in the Newbreed and disagree with his “boss” over his (the boss’s) expression of lack of faith in the competence and integrity of the Newbreed in politics.

    “I am not sure,” Babangida said during the encounter, “I read what he said neither am I sure he said so. In any case this is a matter of opinion…There are other young men who have done equally well.”

    The former military president is absolutely right to say Obasanjo is wrong to tar all Newbreed politicians with one brush. However, he too is wrong to think the role of the Oldbreed in bringing about development in society is essentially marginal simply because the future belongs to the Newbreed.

    In other words, both of them are wrong to think leadership is essentially a matter of age. It is not. The virtues of leadership have never been a preserve of any age group. There are good and bad, wise and foolish, etc, old men and women, just as there are good and bad, wise and foolish, etc, young men and women.

    Obasanjo may be right to say that right now the preponderance of Newbreed politicians have proved incompetent and corrupt but to conclude, as he seemed to have done in his counterpoint to Professor Alabi, that governance is therefore best left largely, if not solely, in the hands of the Oldbreed is to mistake correlation for causation.

    Not only does he seem to have mixed correlation and causation in his conclusion, the old man was characteristically selective in his choice of examples to buttress his condemnation of the Newbreed. Conspicuously missing from his list of villainous Newbreed politicians was his own daughter, Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello who rode into the Senate more on his coattail as president than on her own merit but whose tenure as chairman of the important Senate Committee on Health was scandal ridden.

    Even worse for the selective amnesia was his remark that the media and the leadership of a section of the country employed double standards in their treatment of the accusations against Speaker Buhari and Governor Tinubu in 1999 that they forged their university certificates. While he made sure, he said, that Buhari was impeached – itself an admission of his interference in the internal affairs of the federal legislators, something he had often denied – “in this part of the world some people covered up the other man,” meaning, of course, Tinubu.

    What the former president forgot to mention was, first, he wilfully ignored to check out information in the open that the young man might have forged not only his university certificate but also that of his age, all in his bid to impose a leadership on the House which he could easily manipulate. Second and worst of all, he conveniently forgot to mention that he quickly granted the former speaker presidential pardon after he was tried and convicted and sentenced to jail with an option of fine which he quickly paid.

    However, the one point the former president made which is hard, if not impossible, to disagree with is that development is not just about leadership alone. “If you talk about good leadership,” he said, “you should also talk about good followers.”

    The Encarta Concise English Dictionary defines leadership as “the ability to guide, direct, or influence people.” We have remained underdeveloped precisely because we all think the virtues needed to be able to guide, direct or influence others are different from those needed to be good followers. In this sense, the leader/follower dichotomy is a false one. The fact is that only a good follower can make a good leader because, leader or follower, you need a sense of equity, self-sacrifice, self-discipline, compassion, personal integrity, competence, among others, to be the good and honest person any society needs a preponderance of to make any progress.

    However, in so far as the leader/follower dichotomy exits in our minds, the burden of cultivating these virtues lies more with leaders, elected or self-imposed, than with followers. For, without enough leaders willing and able to practice the virtues of being good and honest men and women, the vicious circle between bad leadership and bad followership will never be broken.

    The problem with Nigeria is that we have engaged for far too long in a futile debate about the false dichotomy between Oldbreed and Newbreed politicians when it is pretty obvious that the answer is Good-breed.

    To that extent, the Oldbreed, Obasanjo included, must accept greater responsibility than the Newbreed for our lack of development because, by merely preaching virtues they hardly practiced, they have only succeeded in creating a Newbreed of leaders – and followers – after their own poor image.

     

  • Charity’s conversion: The scapegoating of an emir

    Charity’s conversion: The scapegoating of an emir

    In the last five years, Bida, my home town, has attracted bad press and public attention nationwide. The source of this attraction, it seems, has been the apparently well-intentioned but grossly misrepresented actions of its paramount ruler, the Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar, on the emotive issues of sex and religion.

    Five years ago, the story was about a randy 84-year-old man, Mohammed Bello Abubakar, alias Masaba, with his harem of 86 wives, some of them young enough to be his daughters and even granddaughters. The man’s lifestyle was a clear breach of the Penal Code of the old North and a violation of the norms and traditions of the Islamic society he lived in.

    One fine morning, the Etsu, as descendant of Malam Dendo, the flag bearer of Shehu Usman Danfodiyo in Nupeland during his 19th century jihad, and therefore the modern day custodian of Islam in his territory, decided to put a stop to Masaba’s impunity. Accordingly, the Etsu summoned the heretic to the palace to defend his conduct before the town’s clerics and community leaders. He couldn’t. So he was asked to choose between Islam, which he professed, and his 86 wives, since the religion forbade a man to have more than four. He accepted to choose his religion.

    Or so it seemed; on the day he was to inform the palace of his choice of the four wives he was to live with, the man simply disappeared. Next thing, he sued the palace before the state high court for the violation of his fundamental right to live as he chose. And before you could say harem all manner of human rights organisations, with the press in tow, were falling over themselves to defend the man.

    Since then the man has, for all practical purposes, become an (untouchable) media celebrity. This was five years ago.

    Nearly five years on last month the big story has been about a beautiful 25 year-old student of Federal Polytechnic, Bida, who converted to Islam in February. Charity, the daughter of a pastor of Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) – one of the country’s leading Pentecostal churches – Raymond Uzoechina, sought and eventually got the audience of the Etsu to ask for his protection from her father who she claimed could harm her because of her conversion.

    From all accounts, including that of her father, the palace did not readily oblige Aisha, her adopted Islamic name. First, the Etsu asked her if her father knew of her decision. When she said no he asked for her father’s telephone number and called him to come to Bida. He sent for him twice, first on March 1 and then the following day. “Overwhelmed by the call on March 2,” Pastor Uzoechina told the press, “I had to travel to Bida to ascertain what was wrong.”

    Predictably, the palace encounter was not a pleasant one for both parties. According to one account, the Etsu first asked the father if his daughter had ever suffered any mental problems and he said no. The Etsu then confirmed to his invitee that his daughter had converted to Islam. The pastor was then given a room to talk things over privately with his daughter. The talk did not end happily.

    Since then Pastor Uzoechina has accused the Etsu of kidnapping his daughter and forcibly converting her into Islam. Naturally the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has rallied to his support. “The Emir of Bida(meaning, of course, the Etsu Nupe),” its president, the combative Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, said last week, “ must understand that Christianity and Islam must stand side by side. So we are using this occasion to say: ‘Release our daughter to us.’”

    Interestingly but even more worryingly, it seems President Goodluck Jonathan too has weighed in on the pastor’s side; on separate occasions he had asked first the Etsu and then the Niger State governor, Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu, in not so many words, to find a way of releasing Aisha Charity to her father.

    Apparently the logic seems lost on the CAN leadership that Aisha Charity’s case is even more symbolic of fundamental human rights than that of the recent Senate’s so-called approval of marriage below 18 for girls over which it has threatened to ask its flock to take to the streets if the Senate does not reverse itself.

    Aisha Charity is 25 and is therefore more than old enough to decide things for herself. She has consistently said she converted of her own free will. Certainly, the Etsu Nupe’s invitation to Pastor Uzoechina to his palace to talk things over with his daughter is not the action of someone who is a kidnapper intent on forcing his belief on another.

    Even more certainly scapegoating him for the predicament of Aisha’s father and, by extension, that of CAN, will not solve the problem for anyone who thinks he has one with her conversion, even if it were induced.

    So far, the most sensible and sober thing anyone has said about this controversy is the eloquent piece written on it by Bitrus Gwadah, a Kaduna based senior lawyer, in last Saturday’s Weekly Trust. It is an article that anyone interested in stopping the episode from getting out of hand must go back and read.

     

    Abubakar Idris Usman: all’s well that ends well?

     

    It’s now thirteen weeks since I first wrote on May 8 about the plight of my youth corper “son” Abubakar Idris Usman, on these pages in an open letter to the Director General of the National Youth Service Corps, Brigadier-General Okorie Affiah.

    The reader will recall that he got into trouble with the NYSC authorities in Kaduna State over an article he had written in The Nation (November 22, 2012) which was critical of the facilities at the state’s orientation camp. The article, the authorities said, was sheer malice and breached the service rules against talking to the press.

    As penalty for his alleged offense he was initially denied posting for his primary assignment until he retracted the story. When he and his real father, a childhood friend, brought his predicament to my attention I rebuked him, as an uncle should, for breaching his service regulations but told him to stand by his story so long as he was sure of his facts. He said he was even though he had apologised to the authorities for the embarrassment he had caused them following his father’s and another uncle’s intervention with the authorities.

    Apart from refusing him his primary posting until he retracted his story, his camera and handset were seized. He was also threatened with a month’s extension without pay and, worst of all, he was interrogated by the State Security Service on allegation that he was Boko Haram.

    After several weeks of stalemate the local NYSC relented and posted him to a remote village in the state in March. He had barely settled down when he was reposted to Delta State. The reposting letter said this was at his own request. When, however, he pointed out that he never made any such request, he was issued another letter which said this was punishment for his alleged offence.

    At this point, I got a senior lawyer friend, Yahaya Mahmud, SAN, to intervene by sending a petition to the service Director General, and the Minister of Youth, Inuwa Abdulkadir, Esq. My friend did so gratis.

    Not long after the petition the DG, I was made to understand, instructed Kaduna to rescind the Delta posting. For weeks, Kaduna did not carry out the instructions. However, it did so finally last week after our lawyer sent a reminder.

    Penultimate Monday, Usman was called to the head office and given a letter, dated June 31, posting him to Katsina State. He has since reported there and has been posted to Government Technical College, Funtua, for his primary assignment.

    Hopefully, this is the end of an episode that needed not to have occurred at all – never mind dragging on for months – but for the thin skin of your typical government official.

     

    Re: Aregbesola’s real transformation

     

    Sir,

    We have indeed known your mindset. No non-Muslim can ever go right, and no Muslim can ever go wrong even if he is secretly – expletive deleted – your mother. Now, even if you’ve sworn never to see anything right about the president, because he is your sworn enemy, being a non-Muslim, what is the purpose of trying to drag him in the mud before commencing on praise singing on Aregbesola? Is it a gimmick to win the trust of the Yorubas? Mind you Haruna the Yorubas are very wise people. They are not fools like you and so you cannot fool them in order to win their support.

    +2347054795500

     

    Sir,

    Thanks for your article on “Aregbesola’s real Transformation’. Please advise Abia State Governor to learn from Aregbesola and stop his unpopular media campaign.

    +2348036735682

     

     

  • Aregbesola’s real ‘Transformation’

    Aregbesola’s real ‘Transformation’

    Even the most casual observer of the country cannot help but notice the huge gap between President Goodluck Jonathan’s 2011 campaign slogan of “Transformation” and the facts on the ground; in spite of his administration’s bravest efforts the country has been anything but transformed for the better. On the contrary it has, in spite of all the brave claims to the contrary by the president’s men (and women), been on a slide in almost all sectors of society; employment, education, infrastructure, health, good governance, name it.

    The gap between the presidential rhetoric and the substance of the word has so much discredited it in the public eye that even the Peoples Democratic Party would look foolish to stick with it as its slogan for the next general elections in 2015. Yet there are governors, some PDP, some in the opposition parties, who can credibly use the word to describe the impact their policies and programmes have had on their states since their ascension.

    One such governor is the State of Osun’s Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola. Since coming to power three years ago the man has provoked much gratuitous attack from PDP as the leading opposition party in his state and from some sections of the media variously for adopting a state flag and anthem, for his urban renewal programme and for declaring the first day of the current Islamic year a public holiday, among others.

    Of all the criticisms he has come under, the most reasonable-sounding are about his urban renewal programme. This has involved extensive demolition of buildings and removal of containers used as business premises by road sides. However, as any fair-minded critic would agree, such demolitions and relocations of mobile structures are inevitable; as the chef said, if you want to make omelette you must break eggs.

    And as the governor said on the occasion of his interactive session with the media only last week, urban renewal is not just about the beautification of our cities. More importantly it is also about the health and safety of their residents.

    “Those of you who think I am a Lagosian, I am not a Lagosian,” he said on that occasion. “I was born and bred in Ikare (fifty six years ago). But interestingly, when I was born there and bred there, I found out that there was nothing like what we have now. The colonial masters left a tradition that made it impossible to erect any illegal structure to occupy the frontage of any building. As it was in Ikare, so was it here…It was everywhere in the Western Region.  Then what happened to us? Why was this decline and degeneration? Was that the effect of Independence that there must be a decline? No!”

    The abandonment of proper planning for our towns and cities is obviously what has led to the kind of devastations from floods experienced in recent times and to the easy spread of epidemics occasionally.

    What is important, therefore, in trying to recreate and, of course, improve upon the safety and healthy environment of our colonial past is that no governor hides behind his urban renewal policy to illegally demolish the property of his adversaries or to refuse to pay adequate compensation for properties that have to go. So far no one – not even his worst traducers – has accused Aregbesola of either. Nor has anyone accused the man personally of inflating contracts for selfish reasons.

    One important element of his urban renewal policy is the airport he is building on the outskirts of Osogbo, the state capital. The first time I heard of it, my instinct was to dismiss it as one of those things politicians do more for their symbolism of statehood than for their economic value. Later, however, I found out this one was with a difference; it is mainly to provide West Africa with its only facility for helicopter repair and eventually also for the repair of aeroplanes. Right now, all the aircrafts operating in the country go abroad for such repair.

    One of the marks of effective governance is a leader’s ability to attract direct foreign investment to his charge. Until the last three years under Aregbesola, no governor of the state since its creation in 1991 had attracted any such new investment. Since then, however, three companies have set up shop in the state, the first, a garment company in Osogbo that will employ 3,000 workers, the second in Ilesa that will produce flat screen television, laptops, iPads and phones, and the third, and for me the most important, to produce the potentially revolutionary Opon-Imo (Yoruba for tablet of knowledge) for use not only in the state’s primary and secondary schools but also possibly elsewhere in the country.

    Of all the tools any leader can use to lift the people of his state or country out of their ignorance and poverty none has the effectiveness of this tablet of knowledge. The reason is simple and obvious; knowledge is power and countries all over the world have increasingly come to adopt and adapt the new information technology as the most effective tool for imparting knowledge.

    As a lengthy article in The Economist of June 29 pointed out, even a country as literate as America has had to resort to this new information technology to stop its slide in the international ranking in education during the past three decades from first to tenth of the educational level of those leaving high school, and from third to 13th for college students. The magazine’s earlier editorial piece on the same subject in the same edition showed how the new education technology, edtech for short, has been making a big difference in the learning curve of children and adults alike both in America and elsewhere.

    The wisdom and foresight of Aregbesola in investing much of his state’s lean resources in the new edtech lie in his focus on primary and secondary school education. As a journalism teacher at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in the last five years I can attest to the alarming semi-literacy of undergraduates in this country. The single biggest source of this problem, whose most dramatic manifestation are the scandalous rates of failure in West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) examinations, is obvious; the inexplicable abject neglect of primary and secondary education since the First Republic.

    The economics of Opon-Imo alone should recommend its use all over the country. As the governor pointed out to reporters in defence of his spending on the gadget so far, the accusation that he was being wasteful is laughable.

    “The charlatans,” he said, “bribed their way into our system, stole a document and published it. You all read it. They said we bought all the textbooks, digital textbooks for two hundred million, and that is all we spent for the over fifty-six books that are in Opon-imo. If you are good in mathematics divide 56 textbooks costing 200,000,000 from Evans by 150,000, the cost is 26 Naira. Tell us where you can buy a book for N26. Opon-Imo is a world beater!”

    My own arithmetic showed the unit price was actually N23.80. But the beauty of the tablet of knowledge is not only in its economy but in how effectively it can raise the quality of primary and secondary school education in the country the way it is already doing elsewhere in the world.

    In an article entitled “Pass the Books. Hold the Oil” in The New York Times of March 10, 2012, an article which should interest Nigerians as citizens of a major oil producing country, its columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, said when asked every so often which country was his favourite outside his own, he always mentioned Taiwan.

    “‘Taiwan? Why Taiwan?’ people ask. Very simple,” he said. “Taiwan is a barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resources to live off of — it even has to import sand and gravel from China for construction — yet it has the fourth-largest financial reserves in the world. Because rather than digging in the ground and mining whatever comes up, Taiwan has mined its 23 million people, their talent, energy and intelligence — men and women.”

    Almost alone among the country’s leaders Aregbesola seems to have appreciated the significance of mining the talent, energy and intelligence of the children of his state for its future development by massively investing in their education. The dividend of his faith in the youth as tomorrow’s leaders has already manifesting itself in the latest statistics from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics which shows the state as the first in primary school and girl-child enrolment throughout the country.

    “Steve Job,” as he said in his final words during the media interactive, “was not a super human. He only had early interactions with computers. Bill Gates is not a super human. He only had early encounter with technology. Who says our own pupils cannot? That is our vision.”

    Of course, gadgets alone cannot bring about the realisation of his lofty vision. Along with gadgets you need good teachers, something he has also been investing in. Above all, you need good leaders who teach by example. As I have cause to say on these pages not too long ago, Aregbesola, by his simplicity, humility and uprightness, among other virtues, is among this breed of leaders that are rare in the country.

    Hopefully, he can persuade the citizens of the State of Osun that he is the man to beat at next year’s governorship election in the state.

     

     

     

  • Re: al-Mustapha -now that the ‘canary’ is free

    Re: al-Mustapha -now that the ‘canary’ is free

    Bar possibly the entertaining but tragic spectacle that has been running for a while now in Rivers State in the apparent face-off between the presidency and the state’s governorship, no story has grabbed media and public attention this month like the acquittal and discharge two Fridays ago of Major Hamza al-Mustapha, the chief security officer of the late head of state, General Sani Abacha, following his nearly 15-year prosecution for complicity in the murder on June 4, 1996 of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, wife of Chief M.K.O. Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 1993 presidential elections.

    Certainly even more than the tragi-comedy playing out in Rivers, al-Mustapha’s acquittal and discharge has generated more emotion than any other story in recent times. The 53 odd texts and a few emails I received in reaction to my column last week on the subject captured the varied sentiments expressed about the judgment. The reader will find the sample of those reactions published below interesting and certainly, in the case of the longest one I received by email, quite thought provoking, not least because the writer gave himself the answer, perhaps inadvertently, to his charge that al-Mustapha’s prosecution was selective – far from being a mere “pawn in a complicated national chess game for which IBB and OBJ are the major players” al-Mustapha was the only CSO (or ADC) of a head of state in this country’s history that chose to make himself its “de facto head of state,” to use the author’s own words.

     

    Sir,

    It is trite to say that one can be viewed as a hero in some quarters and villain by others at the same time, because that is the nature of human behaviour. Al-Mustapha cannot be different – he is only human. The question is no longer that of culpability or otherwise of Mustapha in the heinous crime for which he was charged, since he has been exculpated by a court of competent jurisdiction, unless, of course, a superior court of law rules otherwise.

    What rankles is the barely concealed verdict of guilt that permeates the articles of virtually all those who have written on the subject. Whatever happened to the time-worn dictum of being innocent until proved otherwise?

    Agreed, Mustapha’s swashbuckling and devil-may-care persona, combined with a tendency for loquaciousness, can rub people the wrong way. But, does that make him a criminal? Like they say, the cloak does not make the monk, or put it more appropriately, a broken tooth does not make a thug!

    Let truth be told. Mustapha is a victim of circumstances. As de facto head of state during the Abacha regime, almost every top ranking official, whether in government or out of it, and top echelons of the private sector, kow-towed to him in order to get to Abacha. In our kind of economy where fortunes are made or lost purely from how close you are to the seat of power, one could easily understand the desperation with which some of the richest (I will not use respected) men groveled before this young major for favours.

    Therefore, by the time Abacha died it was payback time. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well, that is only true when you have not faced the wrath of a man forced to swallow his manhood in the pursuit of economic gains. They swarmed Mustapha, each with a dagger as sharp as a dragon’s tail and a cudgel fitted with spikes, demanding to cut their pound of flesh. They did not quite get their pound of flesh (death), but they got something close to it – a fifteen year detention in a maximum prison that will surely leave some psychological and physical scars.

    We must all engage in some serious soul searching before making judgment. This is why.

    Some high profile murders were committed during Babangida’s regime, with Dele Giwa’s murder as the most touching. In addition to this, he set us on the path to perdition by annulling an election won fair and square. And yet Babangida, his ADC, and CSO are all free men.

    Obasanjo’s case is worse. Political heavy weights were killed as if they were cockroaches, culminating in the murder of irrepressible Bola Ige. Not done with us yet, he imposed an invalid with a terminal illness on us, knowing full well the political repercussion. Then the coup de grace – he manoeuvred a starry-eyed, bare feet school teacher, into a position of power. Today, Obasanjo struts the political landscape like the conceited peacock that he is, insulting our sensibilities with what he calls ‘successful mistakes’. Neither his ADC nor his CSO were ever charged.

    OBJ and IBB are two peas in a pod, each trying to occupy a larger space in the pod, at the expense of the Nigerian state.

    If anyone should take the blame for Abiola’s murder, IBB should be liable for setting in motion events that culminated in Abiola’s death, even though he never physically murdered or caused Abiola’s murder. OBJ, on the other hand, should be held responsible for imposing political brigandage and economic profligacy, the type never seen before.

    These Siamese twins are the two gentlemen who need some investigating. Mustapha is just a pawn in a complicated national chess game for which IBB and OBJ are the major players.

    Manjadda Iman, Sokoto.

     

    Sir,

    Your article today is a radical departure from your usual harsh tone against the major. I do not begrudge your loyalty to Gen. Abdulsalami, but you should be objective enough. Maybe you never imagined the poor major would be released in your lifetime. Now you are writing like the coward and hypocrite that you really are. Now we know those who are really afraid of freedom for the major.

    Joseph Kolo, Minna. +2348035550445.

     

    Sir,

    Your write-up on al-Mustapha was good and unbiased. It is heartening to know you can engage the nation in such a serious discourse without ethnic or religious colouring. Your prediction on Mustapha throwing his hat into the ring sooner than later is equally apt. But will he have the space to operate as his billionaire traducers are still the ones dictating de pace of Nigeria and Africa?

    Sam Madugba, Owerri +2348037110950

     

    Sir,

    Your dislike and hatred for al-Mustapha is clear. Remember your mentor Abdulsalami cannot do any favour to you on the day of judgement.

    +2348026891730

     

    Sir,

    The piece on Al-Mustapha is thought-provoking. Nigeria is still a neo-colonial state and al-Mustapha represents a neo-colonial army. What, I think, should bother social scientists is the future of Nigeria under moribund capitalism which is based on self-interest.

    Amos Ejimonye, Kaduna +2348039727512

     

    Sir,

    The canary has suffered enough from your boss and from your pen. To you and your boss he is a villain but to us it is otherwise.

    +2348037657033

     

    Sir,

    I am a frequent reader of your Wednesday column. But I’ve never agreed more with you on any issue as I did on al-Mustapha’s release. Even if he was innocent, I hope through his imprisonment Allah has touched his heart and rid him of his widely believed heartlessness and ruthlessness.

    Mustapha +2348033037936

     

    Sir,

    That was a good piece – balanced, reportorial and advisory. al-Mustapha might have got justice courtesy the prosecution’s fumbling and bumbling. However some questions remain: will Kudirat ever get justice? Will the question of who killed Kudirat ever be answered like similar ones in the past; those of Dele Giwa, Uncle Bola Ige, Harry Marshall, et al?

    Muyiwa Makinwa, Ile-Ife. +2348058475238

     

    Sir,

    How about Jonathan/al-Mustapha ticket, come 2015?

    Zakaria Ismail, Kano.+2348037878033

     

    Sir,

    From the evidences made public right from the start linking al-Mustapha to Kudirat’s murder, not a few Nigerians had expected that he was going to be convicted at the end of which a presidential pardon or amnesty could be expediently considered. That way, anybody who is or will be in the position al-Mustapha was with Abacha regime and did what he was said to have done can be certain a day of reckoning must surely come. But to be so discharged and acquitted with impunity even with so many evidences that implicated him in the murder is no less an encouragement to his likes that may still be found in our government any day. This portents a very bad omen for the country.

    Emmanuel Egwu. +2348037921541

     

    Sir,

    Celebrating such a character is wrong. He should not be a worthy role model to any youth in the North.

    +2348036972332

     

    Sir,

    By al-Mustapha’s acquittal, it is not yet uhuru as God’s judgement will surely come.

    Omololu Joshua, Akwa-Ibom. +2348052134277

     

    Sir,

    Anybody who is not ethnically motivated knows who killed Kudirat. With our conscience we see him every passing second. The one that pulled trigger is different from the one that directed the act that drips of infamy.

    Chris Arukwe, Awka. +2348034704286

     

    Sir,

    Alhamdullilah, Haruna your master Abdulsalami yaji kunya’. Allah is great. Please help me tell him.

    Maina Bukar +2348036424319

     

    Sir,

    A worldly Judge may deliver a verdict the way he likes BUT, the evil that men do will forever live after them.

    Oni Olayinka, Ogba. +2348052324941

     

  • al-Mustapha: Now that the ‘canary’ is free

    al-Mustapha: Now that the ‘canary’ is free

    Last Friday, July 12, brought an end to one of the most celebrated and longest running murder cases in the country. On that day, Justice Rita Pemu, reading the unanimous decision of the three-woman panel of the Appeal Court sitting in Lagos, discharged and acquitted Major Hamza al-Mustapha of the charge that he conspired to murder Alhaja Kudirat Abiola in Lagos on June 4, 1996. Kudirat was the wife of Chief M. K. O. Abiola, the putative winner of the annulled 1993 presidential election.

    Predictably, the verdict has divided Nigerians right down the middle along regional, if not sectarian, lines; whereas most Northerners seemed to see the verdict as the vindication of a long persecuted hero, most South-Westerners seemed to see it as the untenable exoneration of a certified villain.

    This division was clearly reflected, on the one hand, by the hero’s welcome the major received in Kano, his adopted state – he is originally from Yobe – and, on the other hand, by the rejection of the verdict by Afenifere, the Yoruba umbrella cultural organisation and by the Gani Adams faction of the Odua Peoples Congress, the leading Yoruba militia. (It must be noted here that Dr. Fredrick Fasehun who leads the other faction, and who indeed claims to be its original founder, has not only consistently said he believed in the innocence of al-Mustapha. He has vigorously campaigned for his release from prison.)

    al-Mustapha’s plight started on October 21, 1998, when he and several other officers were arrested on suspicion that they were in illegal possession of arms, among other allegations. This was barely four months after the sudden and mysterious death in June of Head of State, General Sani Abacha, whose chief security officer he was. He was to remain in jail for nearly 15 years charged, along with others, with various crimes, including complicity in the murder of Kudirat and Chief Alfred Rewane, a chieftain of the anti-Abacha crusaders who was killed in October 1995, and of Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua who died in prison in 1997, accused of attempting to overthrow Abacha.

    The major was also charged, again along with others, with the attempted murder of Mr Alex Ibru, the late publisher of The Guardian and Abacha’s internal affairs minister, and the attempted murder of Senator Abraham Adesanya, the leader of Afenifere. In time he was also charged in 2004 with an attempt to overthrow the elected government of President Olusegun Obasanjo even while still in detention.

    If all this looked like too much to charge one man with it was mainly because the man ingeniously painted himself in the image of an officer whose only crime was to have carried out his duties to his principal to the best of his ability and in the process to have secured the integrity and security of the country.

    For one year after he was first picked up, al-Mustapha remained in detention without trial. In October 1999, five months after Obasanjo was sworn in as civilian president, he sued the government for the violation of his human rights. The courts agreed and said he should be released. The government ignored the order. Instead al-Mustapha was charged with several murders and attempted murders including, ironically, that of Senator Adesanya who, along with several Afenifere chieftains, including Chiefs Ganiyu Dawodu and Ayo Adebanjo had been charged by the Abacha regime for the murder of Kudirat!

    The clever intelligence officer that he was, al-Mustapha chose to blame his predicament not on the government that chose to prosecute him. Instead he chose to blame the government of General Abubakar Abdulsalami that first detained him. The former head of state, he said, wanted him out of circulation because the general knew he knew both Abacha and Abiola did not die naturally but were murdered and he also knew how allegedly complicit the general was in the deaths of the two, the first in June and the second the following month.

    If his choice of who to blame for his predicament and of the platform to make the allegation – the Oputa panel set up by Obasanjo in 1999 but which began its hearing in 2000 on abuses of human rights in the country since 1979 – was to create a diversion from the charges he was facing, he succeeded beyond his wildest imagination. Suddenly public attention shifted from his many alleged abuses of power, as probably the most powerful chief security officer of a head of state Nigeria has ever seen, to the alleged crimes of General Abubakar.

    One newspaper that seemed to have captured the shift in public mood was the defunct The Comet. In an editorial on December 4, 2000 aptly entitled “al-Mustapha: Let the ‘canary’ sing publicly,” following al-Mustapha testimony before Oputa, the newspaper said “Nigerians deserve to hear everything from al-Mustapha since he has himself, under oath promised to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. He should be allowed to tell his version of the events and if he incriminates anybody or groups of persons, they too should have their days at the Oputa Commission.”

    It then concluded that al-Mustapha must be given maximum protection to tell his story in public. It took the major about 12 years to retell his story in public. This was in August 2011 when himself and his co-defendant, Lateef Sofolahan, said to be an aide to Kudirat, testified before a Lagos State High Court sitting in Igbosere to their innocence in her murder. On this occasion not only did he repeat his allegation of being persecuted for what he knew, he also added a new claim that the chieftains of Afenifere had been heavily bribed into silence by General Abubakar over the death of Abiola.

    Predictably the same media that had hailed him over his accusation against General Abubakar turned completely round to condemn him as an inveterate liar.

    In between Oputa in 2000 and the Igboshere High Court, himself and his co-defendants in other murder cases, namely General Ishaya Bamaiyi, a former army chief, James Danbaba, a former commissioner of police, Colonel Jibril Bala Yakubu, a former Zamfara State military administrator and Rabo Lawal, head of the Aso Rock Villa anti-riot squad, were cleared of all the other charges. He and Sofolahan were, however, left to face the charge of murdering Kudirat. Their case was re-opened in July 2011.

    Following their August testimonies, the trial judge, Justice Mojisola Dada, adjourned the case to November for counsels to both sides to submit their written addresses after she had rejected their position that they had no case to answer. At the November hearing she fixed January 30 for judgment. On that day she found them both guilty and sentenced them to death by hanging. To rub it in even more she had very unkind words to say to each of them. al-Mustapha, she said in effect, was a ruthless enforcer for his principal who “felt obliged to silence any voice against the government of his boss” and felt he was “untouchable.” As for Sofolahan he was, she said, “a gold digger, a Judas Iscariot, who sold his master.”

    Predictably there was much rejoicing in the Southwest and much gloom in the North.

    Equally predictably al-Mustapha appealed. Last Friday, the Appeal Court overturned Justice Dada’s verdict. “There is no evidence,” Justice Pemu reading the court’s judgement said, “that the appellants conspired to murder Kudirat…There is even nothing to show that the appellants had the intention to murder the deceased.”

    The court’s grounds for overturning the Lagos State High Court’s verdicts seemed unassailable. First, the prosecution said it would bring a dozen witnesses against the accused. It brought only four. Second, the testimonies of the two key witnesses were not only contradictory, the two were to later recant their statements because they said they had been bribed and threatened at the same time to testify against the accused. Third, the bullet the prosecution claimed had been extracted from Kudirat’s head was never tendered as exhibit as the prosecution had promised.

    Predictably last Friday’s judgement saw a reversal of roles between al-Mustapha’s sympathisers and those who disliked him. It also left many questions unanswered not least of which is, so who killed Kudirat?

    We may never know the answer. However, what we do know for certain is that vindication or not, al-Mustapha will remain a hero for some and a villain for others. In between there are probably many more who don’t give a damn either way right now.

    It is the opinion of these that al-Mustapha should worry about as he begins a new life after so many years in prison. If, as he said in a BBC Hausa interview last Saturday, he has truly learnt his lesson about “how some people use the judiciary and power against the poor” – a charge he knows all too well he cannot escape as the most powerful chief security officer of a head of state this country has seen – and if, as he also said, he had come to understand his religion well, he is likely to get the sympathy of such people.

    One can only hope that he will not, like many a born-again Muslim or Christian, revert true to type as soon as he gets another opportunity to be in power- something which is not unlikely, especially in a country like ours where public memory is ever so short.

     

     

     

     

     

  • On ethics and leadership in Africa (II)

    On ethics and leadership in Africa (II)

    General Ibrahim Babangida’s SAP which has since become entrenched as the country’s unofficial directive principles of state policy – the management of our political-economy since the return of civilian rule in 1999 with its ideology of deregulation, privatisation, liberalisation, retrenchment of the public sector, removal of subsidies, etc, is SAP in all but name – may have unleashed the entrepreneurial spirit of Nigerians but by the time he left office in August 1993 it had failed to deliver the goods.

    To make matter worse, General Sani Abacha, his minister of defence whom he had left behind in the interim government he set up under Chief Ernest Sonekan, following his inexplicable annulment of the presidential election of June 12 which was widely adjudged as free and fair, overthrew Sonekan in November 1993 and brought the military fully back into power once again. Ironically, Babangida had said he had left Abacha behind to rein in the soldiers and give Sonekan’s administration some teeth.

    For the next five years Abacha ruled the country with an iron-fist and headed what arguably became the most venal administration since independence – until President Olusegun Obasanjo came along in May 1999.

    When Abacha seized power in November 1993, he promised to be “brief” but, instructively, refused to be drawn on how brief. Five years later, he seemed to have eliminated, compromised or neutralised all opposition to what became his obvious agenda of transforming himself from a military dictator into an “elected” civilian president.

    In June 1998, he died a sudden and mysterious death. He was quickly succeeded by his Chief of Defence Staff, General Abdulsalami Abubakar. Abubakar promised a quick transition to civilian rule and kept his word; in May 1999 he handed over to General Obasanjo who had been released from a life sentence for his alleged involvement in a coup attempt against Abacha after which he was “persuaded” to become the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the largest of the three parties registered by the Abubakar regime. He handily won the election.

    As a critic of every administration since 1979 when he handed over power to President Shehu Shagari following his succession of General Murtala Muhammed who was assassinated in February 1976, Nigerians came to expect much from a civilianised President Obasanjo.

    Eight years and a failed attempt to extend his tenure beyond the two term limit later, Obasanjo dashed those expectations. Worse, he seemed to have surpassed those he had criticised in the venality his administration engaged in, as has been exposed by several National Assembly investigations of many of his policies and decisions.

    In those eight years his regime collected far more revenues, mostly oil, than all the regimes before his second coming combined. Yet the country’s decayed infrastructure – roads, electricity, schools, water, etc – over which he excoriated previous regimes, got worse. Meanwhile, a few Nigerians, including himself, had become stupendously rich.

    To appreciate the size of the gap between Obasanjo’s rhetoric and his deeds one needs only examine why the “African Renaissance” the great Nelson Mandela predicted in 1994 following the collapse of Apartheid in his native South Africa has failed to take off nearly twenty years hence.

    To give this “African Renaissance” a concrete form, Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s second black president after Mandela, along with Obasanjo, Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, and Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade, initiated a New Partnership for African Development in 2001 which was supposed to engage Europe and America in a partnership that would jump-start Africa’s economic development.

    On its part, the rich world was to increase its aid to Africa and open up its borders for a more equitable trade with the continent. In return Africa was to eschew its dictatorial past and become more market-oriented.

    One of the things Africa did to prove its goodwill was to establish a Peer Review Mechanism in 2001 through which Africa leaders would subject each other to peer pressure to fight corruption and waste and tyranny on the continent. Obasanjo was a key figure in setting up the mechanism.

    Another thing the continent did in the same year was replace the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) which had degenerated into a mutual back-slapping talking shop, into African Union (AU) with a mandate to intervene in the affairs of its member states anytime the need arose. This was a critical break from OAU’s hitherto sacrosanct principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states by outsiders – a principle which allowed African leaders to treat their countries as private chattels. Again Obasanjo was a key player in this transformation.

    However, while he preached all these virtues abroad back home the man practised the opposite. For example, he set up various institutions to fight corruption and waste, but corruption only thrived because he used the institutions in a selective way to fight his perceived enemies, especially anyone who opposed his agenda of self-entrenchment, while simultaneously rewarding his supporters whatever their misdeeds.

    Again, while he preached democracy abroad, he eliminated internal democracy in his own party and tried to neutralise the opposition parties by planting fifth columnists in the ranks of their leadership to undermine their viability. Nationwide he installed what one of the many PDP party chairmen he whimsically hired and fired called “garrison democracy,” a democracy where dissent was regarded as treason.

    Tragically, Obasanjo was merely typical of the continental leaders in their attitude of preaching virtues abroad but mostly practicing vices at home.

    With such an attitude it is not surprising that Africa has remained the most backward region in the world. Obviously, if it is to have any hope of catching up with the rest of the world its leaders must learn to practice what they preach.

    Of course, this is easier said than done. For one thing, even though ethics, at least some, may be universal, they are open to interpretations. One man’s loyalty, for example, may be another’s disloyalty. Second, ethics may sometimes be in conflict with one another and one may have to choose one over another. Third, all too often we view leadership too narrowly through political prism as the man on top, whereas each one of us, as both the Qur’an and the Bible say, is a shepherd and we will have to account for our responsibilities in whatever role we play in society and at whatever level.

    All this notwithstanding, we simply have to make choices. And the mark of leadership is the ability to choose well in the most difficult times based on what is in the greatest interest of the greatest number.

    Personally given a choice among the many virtues leaders should posses, I will pick five as the most important. These are honesty, transparency, equity, justice and fairness, not necessarily in that order.

    In politics and economics, I will definitely put equity on top because inequity wastes talent and undermines social cohesion which in turn easily leads to, among other vices, the violent crimes and ethnic and religious conflicts that have bedevilled society every where on the continent.

    Inequity is when our “elected” leaders spend more money on their creature comforts than on the necessities of life in a country, like Nigeria, where more than half the population live on less than a dollar a day. Inequity, in a more concrete way, is when, for example, senior officials of a ministry spend over N2.7 billion in one year globe-trotting and the minister feels absolutely no remorse when confronted by the legislators that exercise oversight over his ministry. Instead, the minister, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, in charge of foreign affairs, would counter the legislators’ criticism by arguing that “diplomacy is all about visibility”.

    In short, unless Africa’s leaders eschew the vices of corruption, tyranny, waste, etc, and imbibe the virtues of honesty, transparency, equity, fairness, justice, etc, Africa will continue to remain the proverbial “dark continent,” literally as well as figuratively.

     

  • On ethics and leadership in Africa (I)

    On ethics and leadership in Africa (I)

    Last Thursday, June 27, a Kano based public relations company, Direct Contact Promotional Communications Ltd., made a public presentation of Kwankwasiyya, its newly published illustrated children’s bilingual biography of Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the Kano State governor. It had invited me to speak as guest of honour on the topic of leadership. The notice was short but I accepted the invitation because it provided me an opportunity to present a paper I had prepared on the topic two years ago for another occasion but which I never published. After re-reading it I thought it was even more relevant today than it was two years ago, considering the shameful spectacle of squabbling governors over the simple election of the chair of their forum alone with which they have been entertaining the public.

    In the end I could not present the paper in person because the publishers suddenly shifted the venue from Abuja to Kano. However my friend and professional colleague, Ujudud Sheriff, who was spending the week in Kano, his home state, accepted my request to stand in for me. The following is the first part of the paper:

     

    What is Ethics? One definition by the ENCARTA CONCISE ENGLISH DICTIONARY is that it is “the system of moral principles governing the appropriate conduct for an individual or group”. Another dictionary, the WEBSTER NEW TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY, defines it as “the system or code of morals of a particular philosopher, religion, group, profession, etc.”

    Ethics, in other words, is simply a set of rules about the dos and don’ts, virtues or vices, in a society. By universal consent, behaviours or actions like honesty, patience, loyalty, modesty, equity, justice, faith, etc, are virtues. Among vices are of course the opposite of all these.

    Probably the most concise articulation of these universal virtues are those famous Biblical Ten Commandments to mankind never to do certain things i.e. that Man should not kill, steal or lie, etc.

    Obviously any society in which vices outweigh virtues will not make progress. Instead it will degenerate and eventually collapse. This is pretty much obvious in the rise and fall of empires since Adam and Eve. Historically empires have collapsed more from internal decay than from external attack.

    Every society has custodians of its virtues. These, by definition, are its leaders. ENCARTA defines a leader variously as “somebody whom people follow” and as “somebody in charge of others”. WEBSTER defines a leader simply as “a person or thing that leads”.

    People acquire leadership status by virtue of their knowledge, experience, wealth or sheer personality or a combination of these. They may become leaders through the ballot box or the barrel of the gun.

    Logically any society that has a preponderance of good leaders would prosper and that which does not, won’t.

    Africa, it would seem, has had a preponderance of bad leaders at least since a little after the departure in the ‘60s of the Europeans that had colonised it for about a century. As Africa celebrated 50 years of its independence from colonial rule this year it remained the poorest region in the world and falling even further behind all the other regions.

    According to Martin Meredith, a British journalist who has written extensively on Africa, in his 2005 book The State of Africa, the continent’s average per capita income is one-third lower than that of the world’s second poorest region, South Asia. The per capital incomes of most of its countries, he says, has halved from those of 1980, or in some cases, from those of 1960. Half of its nearly 1 billion people live on less than a dollar a day. Its entire economic output is about $420 billion, which is 1.3% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product, “less than (that of) a country like Mexico,” which itself is among the poorest in the world.

    Africa, continues Meredith, is the only region where school enrolment and life expectancy are falling.

    The most glaring contrast in the development trajectory of Africa and Asia can be seen in the post-colonial histories of Nigeria, the continent’s most promising at independence, and Singapore, a tiny island state, which started out as part of Malaysia.

    With a population of at least 150 million, Nigeria is the most populous on the continent and the 10th largest in the world. It produces about 2 million barrels of oil a day, making it the fourth biggest producer in OPEC. Its arable land is one of the largest on the continent and it is also well-endowed with solid minerals that are in great demand world-wide.

    By contrast, Singapore has a population of 5 million and has no mineral resources. Its only natural endowment is its deep seaport. Fifty years ago Singapore, as part of Malaysia, was poorer than Nigeria. Its prospects looked bleak as it was forced to leave Malaysia due to ethnic and religious differences with the mainland.

    Today, Nigeria, with a Human Development Index of 46.6, according to a recent The Economist Pocket World in Figures, remains among the poorest in the world. In sharp contrast, Singapore, with an HDI of 90.2, has moved from its status as a poor Third World country to the rich First.

    The difference, it seems, has been in the leadership of the two countries. No one has put this better than Chinua Achebe, Africa’s finest novelist and essayist.

    “The trouble with Nigeria,” he said in a pamphlet of the same title he wrote over 27 years ago, “is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership”.

    In a lecture to the Nigerian chapter of Oxbridge Club he delivered at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs on March 17, 1989, former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, arguably Nigeria’s most influential leader since independence, seemed to agree completely with Achebe.

    At the time of his lecture he was already four years in office out of a tenure that eventually lasted eight years. In those eight years he changed the face of Nigeria’s political-economy, for better or worse, more than any leader before him or after.

    “I venture to suggest”, he said in the Oxbridge lecture, one of his most controversial, “that it is the nature of the competition among us, the so-called elite… which have been at the root of our national problem.”

    “Who are the elite in our national context?”, he asked rhetorically and quickly answered himself. These, he said, are “a few of us, numbering a few thousands out of a population of more than 100 million (who) find ourselves in positions of leadership and influence in the professions and academic, the armed forces, the bureaucracy, industry, agriculture and commerce, in the media houses, in the courts and councils of our traditional and political associates,”

    “You will perhaps agree,” he said, “that the worst attitude of the Nigerian elite over the last three decades or more have included factionalism, disruptive competition, extreme greed and selfishness, indolence and abandonment of the pursuit of excellence.” These vices, he said, also included indecisiveness and inconsistency in policy making occasioned by self-interest.

    Having diagnosed the crisis of leadership he said the country was suffering from, he proceeded to offer a solution which he said was indeed THE only solution.

    The Structural Adjustment Programme his administration had introduced in 1987, he said, was “the only possible answer” which should be embraced in all its ramifications by anyone who considered himself a patriot. It had its pains, he admitted, but its liberalisation and the deregulation of the economy unleashed the spirit of enterprise among Nigerians. The “good results” of SAP, he predicted, should be evident “from the middle of the next decade onwards,” i.e. 1995.

    Four years after Babangida’s prediction, The Economist published a survey on Nigeria entitled “Anybody seen a giant?” The survey, in the magazine’s edition of August 21, 1993, entered a verdict that contradicted Babangida’s prediction.

    “Nigerians” said, the survey’s author, Sophie Pedder, “are forever being told, and forever telling visitors, that they are the giants of Africa. If Africa is ever going to produce a South Korea, they say, it will happen in Nigeria. Yet each time the country has the chance to turn itself into a prosperous model for still poor Africa, it blows it.” Babangida, the author concluded in not so many words, was yet another disappointment. And whoever succeeds him from August 27 1993, she said, was unlikely to be any different.

     

  • Mercy’s personal tragedy

    Mercy’s personal tragedy

    Penultimate Tuesday must’ve been the saddest day in Mrs Mercy Lekwa’s life. That day Mama Nnenna, as we call her, lost her precious son, Lekwa Okon Emagha, aka Bobo, in a twilight shooting at a filling station in Lokoja, Kogi State, an innocent victim of possibly sibling jealousies he knew nothing about.

    My wife was the first to break the news of Bobo’s death to me and it hit me like a sledge hammer. She and Mercy had been friends from the early nineties when she helped madam run her restaurant, since closed, along Sultan Road, Kaduna.

    When her husband, Mr Okon Emagha, an aircraft engineer with the aviation pest control unit of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, died in 2001, he left her with four grown up kids to take care of. Bobo, 28, was the second and only male.

    As a widow whose civil servant husband had left little behind, she could barely make ends meet. And as if to make her life even more miserable, her in-laws took over even the small asset he’d left behind by way of a modest bungalow he had built in his village, along with the furniture; among her husband’s Igbo kin – Mr. Emagha, like herself, was from Ohafia, Abia State – in-laws, for some inexplicable reasons, seem to see nothing wrong with taking over what should be the inheritance of a widow and her children.

    Fortunately for her, Mercy was not the self-pitying lazy type. She was a good cook. She tries as best as she could to put her husband’s death behind her and work hard, using her talent, to earn enough to fend for her kids. Again fortunately for her, all of them were decent and well-behaved.

    As the man of the house, Bobo became its pillar. He did odd jobs here and there even while in school to help with the bills. He was not only hard working. He was also bright and full of initiative. Anytime anyone asked after him from her, as my wife often did, her face would light up as she told the person, “Bobo is my husband, my father, my wife, my brother, my everything!” And the girls, far from feeling sibling jealousy, adored their only brother.

    This was the Bobo who was snatched the Tuesday before last from a mother who had come to depend so much on her son. His killing was the more tragic because it came only several days before he was to resume work after completing a five-month course as one of 36 engineering staff the National Agency for Science and Engineering (NASENI), a parastatal of the Ministry of Science and Technology, had sent to Belorussia to improve their skills. Bobo had come tops in the group.

    Worse still for Mercy, the death came only a couple of hours after he had called to tell her he was coming home over the weekend to see the rest of the family before resuming work.

    His death came in the shape of a hired gun whose mission apparently was to kill the son of the owner of the petrol station in question. Bobo was a friend of the target of the alleged hired killer. His misfortune was that he was witness to the killing; obviously the alleged killer did not want to take any chances leaving any witnesses behind. With a suspect in the police net less than a week after the killings there is suspicion that Bobo’s friend was killed because he was his father’s favourite and as such was entrusted with running most of the family’s businesses.

    The killing of Bobo and his friend was clearly symptomatic of the insecurity that has become so pervasive in the land, partly because it has become all too easy for anyone so minded to acquire arms, small firearms especially.

    The story of Bobo’s employment by NANIS and the tragedy it turned into for his mother is proof positive that the problem of this country has never really been our religious, ethnic or any other differences but the way our politicians and the rest of us alike have exploited those differences for selfish reasons. The story started over forty years ago in Keffi, Nasarawa State, when his mother went to live with an uncle as a young lady. The uncle got her a teaching job in one of the town’s Native Authority primary schools.

    As a young teacher she took a special interest in three of her pupils who liked to play truant. Day in day out she would pull their ears in, metaphorically speaking, and counsel them about the virtues of knowledge. They hated her for it but she persisted as if she was their mother.

    Fast forward to 2011. As Mercy herself told it, one evening she was waiting by the roadside along Sultan Road, Kaduna, for a commercial motor-cycle to get home when a jeep that had just driven past her stopped, reversed and parked besides her. The person seated in the “owner’s corner” wound down the rear glass and spoke to her in familiar tone. He asked her if she did not recognise him. She said she didn’t, all the time thinking the man was your typical Casanova who cannot resist anything in skirts and at the same time wishing he would just drive off and leave her alone.

    Instead he alighted, walked to her side and told her the story of the three truant primary school pupils she had taken an exceptional interest in Keffi. That awoke her memory. Well, said the man, he was the most notorious of the three. The man, it turned out, was Dr. Mohammed Sani Haruna, the Director-General and Chief Executive of NANIS.

    After realising who he was, she accepted his offer of a ride in his jeep to her home to meet with the rest of the family. There, he told them how their mother was God’s instrument for what he has become.

    At the time only the girls were home. Their brother was away in Jos working with MTN as a contract staff. Like so many graduates he had found it difficult to get a job even though he had passed his Higher National Diploma in Electrical Engineering from Kaduna Polytechnic with distinction.

    When their guest made to leave, he told “Mama,” as he called her, to ask Bobo to send in his curriculum vitae to the agency which was undertaking a recruitment exercise at the time. That was how Bobo eventually got his job at NANIS, after which he was posted to the parastatal’s office in Okene, Kogi State.

    For Dr. Haruna it obviously did not matter that “Mama” was a Christian and Igbo and he was Muslim and Hausa. She had done him a good turn some 40 odd years ago and he thought he owed her to return the favour.

    Since the death of her husband in 2001, life for Mercy had not been exactly a happy one. Not only were her in-laws rather nasty in taking away the modest asset her husband left behind, she also eventually lost his official quarters in Unguwan Rimi GRA, Kaduna, which had been sold to her under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s monetisation policy even after she had made the mandatory down payment of 10 per cent. She lost the house to a fellow Christian who conspired with some of the officials in charge of implementing the policy, only for that person to sell it to a rich Alhaji. As is the case every so often, in this case money, clearly, was thicker than religion.

    Two Tuesdays ago, Bobo, as one of the few silver linings in the cloud under which she had lived for the past 12 years, was cut down in his prime. Life for Mercy must seem harsh, brutish and unfair. One can only pray that the Good Lord gives her and Bobo’s sisters the fortitude to bear his great loss.