The Nation Newspaper

Category: Mohammed Harunna

  • Time to regulate shipping sector

    Time to regulate shipping sector

    Last Monday, the International Sea Trade and Investment Convention 2015, with the theme: “Exploring New Trade Frontiers” and expected to last three days, commenced in Lagos. One of its key participants is the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), the interim regulator of the country’s shipping activities.

    The outcome of this convention should attract the close attention of the authorities in Abuja in so far as they want their oft-stated commitment to the diversification of our economy from its overdependence on oil to be taken seriously. However, the status of the NSC as merely an interim regulator of the country’s shipping activities deserves even greater attention.

    The reason is pretty obvious; shipping, as a live-wire of the country’s economy, is probably the least regulated sector in Nigeria. Other “lucrative” sectors, such as telecommunications, broadcast, banking, insurance, pension and even the most corruption-riddled of them all, the oil sector, all of them have fairly strong regulators.

    True, service delivery to consumers in most of these sectors has been far from satisfactory. But invariably the problem has been that the leaderships of these regulators hardly gave a damn about their private interests conflicting with those of the public they are paid to defend.

    Such conflicts of interests, however, do not, and cannot, invalidate the need for strong economic regulators. For, as even the most ardent proponents of free market economies would admit in their moments of self-candour, it is dangerous to allow the market’s so-called invisible hands to operate without restrain, as we have since seen in, for example, the collapse of the free-wheeling global banking sector in 2008.

    According to experts, over 80 per cent of Nigeria’s trade in goods is by sea. The key components of this trade are the ports and their infrastructure, the ships and shipping companies, and the goods and cargoes. The auxiliary components include freight forwarding, trucking, insurance, cargo surveying, banking and information and communication technology (ICT).

    The activities of the actors in all these areas had remained unregulated since independence until last year when the NSC, which had existed since 1978, was granted the status of “Interim Regulator.” The predictable consequence of the free-for-all in this critical sector is that the cost of the shipping business in Nigeria has been among the highest in the world.

    Take demurrage for example, as a component of this cost. Whereas in Nigeria the free period for demurrage is three days, in the nearby Benin Republic it is 10, in Ivory Coast, nine, and in Ghana, 7. Take again the terminal operators’ charges between Nigeria and Benin Republic. Whereas the “acconage,” i.e.  Terminal Handling, Customs Examination and Delivery Charges, for a 20-foot container in Nigeria is about N63,000, in Benin Republic it is 24,000. The same charge for a 40-feet container is nearly N88,000 in Nigeria and 48,000 in Benin Republic.

    Little wonder then that many importers into and exporters from the country prefer the ports of our neighbours for their businesses.

    The absence of proper regulation in this sector has also contributed in large measure to the gridlock along the Lagos Logistic Ring (LLR) on Apapa-Ijora-Orile-Mile 2-Tin Can-Apapa corridor becoming worse than a nightmare. A study of this corridor has shown that between 5,000 and 7,000 trucks ply it daily. This is more than three times the actual number of between 1,500 and 2,050 that the ports and tanks in Lagos can handle.

    A strong regulator of shipping activities in the country would, of course, not be enough on its own to solve these problems of, among others, excessive shipping costs and nightmarish ports and roads congestion. For that the regulator will also have to be competent and efficient and, even more importantly,  it has to possess integrity.

    However, although a strong regulator is never enough in and of itself to make service provision in its sector efficient and cheap, it is an imperative for such service provision. As a regulator of shipping in the country with less than two years experience, the NSC probably possesses insufficient skills and equipment to do its job well. With time and enough resources this can be easily overcome.

    More importantly, however, its status as an “Interim Regulator”, i.e. a temporary regulator, gives it insufficient clout to command the respect and cooperation of the actors in the sector it needs to carry out its functions properly. The law making it a regulator may have given it precise functions but in a world where image seems to have become more important than substance, names do matter.

    Now that we will soon get a Minister of Transport, the NSC will, hopefully, get the status it needs to properly regulate shipping to and from Nigeria so that the sector can become a net revenue earner for the country rather than the big drain which it has been virtually since independence 55 years ago.

     

    Re: Hajiya Bilkisu: she was too good AND true

    Sir,

    Thank you for your thoughtful and excellent memorial on the late Hajiya Bilkisu. I am sure there is no other person to extol Bilkisu’s personality than yourself given the little, yet much, that I know about the profile of both of you. I have had the self indulgence of keeping watch over the many highly successful friends – distinguished  former students – in whom I am very well pleased and lucky and privileged to have been associated with in my early career as a university lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The late Bilkisu had been one of these blessed persons.

    Occasionally, I had run into Bilkisu at the Lagos and Abuja airports and we would not only exchange pleasantries, but also would get engaged in intellectual discourses. Bilkisu had sent to me two sets of publications of research projects in which she was involved and which I read usually with learning and fulfilment. The last of such publications was on the electoral, party and governance systems preparatory to the Fourth Republic, which was supported by a Swedish or Nordic NGO.

    These intellectual products arguably assisted the INEC in dealing with the complex and difficult Nigerian political process in the last 15 years. Objectively, not spiritually, Bilkisu’s death in the most holy pilgrimage site, location or venue of prayers is a most painful loss to the intellectual and dedicated activist community in Nigeria. She was an embodiment of goodness with a true personality. I express my heartfelt condolence to her children and close family network. May the Good Lord receive Bilkisu’s departed soul in adoration.

    Prof Sam Oyovbaire

    prof.oyovbaire@yahoo.com

     

    Sir,

    I appreciate your article on our late fellow undergraduate in the then Department of Government (now Political Science and International Studies), ABU, Zaria, 72/75. Given your close association with her as a professional colleague, I am of the considered opinion that you are in the best position to comment on her remarkable life.

    I was always excited anytime I met her in her numerous engagements, which was only (for me) as a resource person in training workshops for government functionaries and sometimes as a paper presenter in academic conferences. Hajiya usually came across as intelligent and pungent. She never criticised without offering options.

    Although a devout Muslim, she separated her religion from political discourse. As  old classmates, we were always exchanging banters. Bilkisu was reserved without being aloof. She always carried herself in words and deed with remarkable decorum. She had influence, but never threw her weight around. As Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed commented, Hajiya could not have wished for a better place to meet her Maker than in a place of supreme worship to Allah (SWT).

  • Hajiya Bilkisu: She was too good and true

    Hajiya Bilkisu: She was too good and true

    Fifteen years ago, Karl Maier, one time correspondent of the London Independent in Nigeria, wrote a rather despondent sounding book about Nigeria’s political-economy he titled “This house has fallen: Nigeria in Crisis.” For pessimists about the country’s prospects, the book was grist to the mill; its title alone, they said, was proof positive that Nigeria had no future. But, these pessimists said further, the proof against Nigeria’s viability was not just the title. The picture of doom and gloom the author painted of the country through much of the book’s 11 chapters (if you counted the Epilogue) was, they said, too accurate to refute.
    What such pessimists conveniently ignored, however, was that behind the author’s picture of doom and gloom, he was an optimist about Nigeria. “By early 2000,” Maier said in the book’s Epilogue, “there appeared to be scant reason for optimism. There were simply too many problems, too much anger, and too little time. Nigeria seemed to be approaching tropical firestorm, and there was nothing the new civilian government, however honorable its intention, could do to stop it.”
    However, barely one paragraph after these despondent words, the author changed gear and expressed optimism about Nigeria. “But,” he said, “just when despair about the future becomes overwhelming, one meets or recalls someone who restores one’s faith that Nigeria just might turn itself around after all. One such person is Bilikisu (sic) Yusuf, the tall, elegant, sometimes fiery, and highly articulate Muslim woman who is one of the prime movers in Nigeria of Transparency International, the anticorruption organization.”
    The clock of this rare and remarkable woman stopped ticking last Thursday, just two months and six days to what would have been her 63th birthday on December 2. She died along with over 700 other pilgrims to this year’s Hajj in what the Saudi authorities claim was an avoidable stampede among the pilgrims heading back to Makkah after completing the final rite of stoning of the devil. Virtually all other accounts of the tragic incident, however, suggest that the Saudis’ claim was an ill-considered attempt at blaming the victims, considering the fact that the incident resulted from a very badly timed, and therefore thoughtless, barricading of the pilgrims’ exit route just to secure the passage of a Saudi prince.
    Whatever the truth about the cause of the tragic incident, Nigeria has suffered probably its single biggest elite casualties during Hajj operation in recent times. Among them are the subject of this tribute, two justices of the Court of Appeal, one of whom, Justice Abdulkadir Jega, is a friend, a first class emir from Taraba State along with nearly half his immediate family, another friend, Professor Tijjani el-Miskeen who is a leading scholar in Islam and Arabic, a senior lawyer and a lady Associate Professor of Pharmacy, both from my home town, Bida, Niger State, and the state’s Accountant-General.
    Of all these tragic losses, however, the most personal to me was, of course, Hajiya Bilkisu’s. But more than a personal loss, she was an even greater loss to the country. This much is obvious not only from the faith Maier expressed in her as a great motivator in turning her country around. It is also obvious from her inclusion among 42 Nigerian media leaders interviewed for a two-volume book of reference on Nigerian Journalism jointly funded by the Nigerian Guild of Editors and Pan Atlantic University, Lagos, and edited by Richard O. Ikiebe of the university’s School of Media and Communication.
    In Volume Two of the book, Bilkisu gave her reason for choosing Journalism as her career. “I have,” she said, “a voracious appetite for knowledge, but knowledge is not useful if you do not share. Journalism provides me with the perfect opportunity to educate myself and share that knowledge.”
    Her voracious appetite for knowledge took her from Ansar Primary School, Kano in 1964, to the famous Government Girls College, Dala, Kano; to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, for her first degree; to University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA, for her Masters; to Moscow Institute of Journalism for a post-graduate diploma; and peaked with her attendance of the prestigious National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPPS), Kuru, Jos, for her mni (Member of the Institute) in 1994.
    Bilki, as friends call her, said she chose Journalism as a career to learn and share her knowledge. But she did more than learn and share; she practiced what she learnt because she grew up to believe one must practice what one preached if one truly wished to make a difference.
    Here again let us return to Maier’s book. In concluding the book, the author gave its very final words to Bilki. “It’s not enough,” she said, “for us to say, ‘Ah, the leadership is corrupt, government is corrupt.’ We have not internalized the message of probity, accountability and transparency. If we are going to hold people to account and really make positive change in Nigeria, we must first begin with ourselves.”
    In the 43 years I have known Bilki as a fellow undergraduate in the same department in ABU, Zaria, as editor of New Nigerian when I was its managing director, as co-founder of the rested Citizen and up until she died last week, she begun whatever she preached with herself; she lived a very modest and virtuous live and gave her all to every assignment she gave herself or was given.
    Self-imposed or given, the assignments were so numerous her friends always wondered how she found the time and energy to cope as well as she always did. Notable among these assignments were her role as two-time Amira of the FOMWAN, the Federation of Muslim Women Associations of Nigeria, arguably the most organised and effective Muslim organization in the country, her role as a pioneer road marshal along with the Nobel Literature Laureate, Wole Soyinka, her role as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations headed by Chief Emeka Anyaoku, and her role as a member of the fact-finding committee, headed by retired General Ibrahim Sabo, on the abduction of Chibok Girls by Boko Haram which provoked so much global outrage. This is not to mention her co-founding of, and active participation in, many human rights and civil society organisations and associations like Nigeria’s chapter of Transparency International under the incorruptible retired General Ishola Williams, Accountability for Maternal Newborn and Child Health in Nigeria (AMHiN), Vision Trust Foundation (VTF), and CISLAC.
    In all these, Bilki gave more than she got – unlike many a public figure who took more than they gave but were adept at polishing their public images. Consequently in death, her net worth is hardly likely to amount to much, especially for someone once married to the highest aristocracy in Kano Emirate and then remarried to a top flight banker.
    The fruits of her first marriage in 1975 to the late Muhammad Sanusi Yusuf who eventually became the Chief Judge of Kano State and died as the Madaki of Kano, the chair of the emirate’s council of kingmakers, were Nana Fatima (37), a graduate teacher at Rumfa College, Kano, and Mashood (36), a lawyer of over 10 years experience and lately a senior staff of the Jos Electricity Distribution Company.
    In marriage and in divorce Bilki and the late Madaki apparently raised the most respectful, honest and religious children any parent could wish for. Between the two of them, Nana and Mashood have given Bilki and the late Madaki four grandchildren, two boys and two girls.
    As a divorcee Bilki could hardly have found a better match than Mustapha Bintube as her second husband. Mustapha left Fidelity Bank as a well-regarded General Manager for his insistence on ethical banking and was pioneer managing director of Ja’iz Islamic Bank. While Bilki considered her duty as wife above her commitments to Journalism and civil society and human rights activities, Mustapha gave her ample time to attend to those commitments. The result was one great and happy family.
    Bilki believed in the power of prayers as a Muslim of deep faith. Not surprisingly she never tired of reminding me and my wife, whom she took under her wing from day one of our marriage in 1982, to, among other admonishings, organize regular reading of the Holy Qur’an in our house for protection. As a good Muslim, however, she also believed that the prayer that moved mountain carried a pick axe.
    So, even as she prayed constantly, she made sure she did her own bit for herself and for society at large so that God will answer her prayers. In death it is apparent that God had answered her prayers to live an exemplary life here on earth. And given the circumstance of her death in the Holy Land, chances are the Beneficent and Merciful Allah has also answered her prayers for her exertions, selfless and sincere as they were, to be rewarded in the hereafter with aljanna firdaus.
    They say when something or someone is too good it, or he, is unlikely to be true. Bilki was an exception to that rule. She was too good as a human being. But at the same time she was true.

  • A legacy of ‘twin brothers’ of Nigerian journalism

    A legacy of ‘twin brothers’ of Nigerian journalism

    THE Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, Nigeria’s official international affairs think tank, was host yesterday to one of the most important media events this year; the presentation of perhaps the most encyclopaedic book on global journalism authored by two of Nigeria’s best journalists, Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe.

    It was a happy event but at the same time sad. Happy that the labour of nearly a decade of Awoyinfa and Igwe running after some of the world’s best reporters, editors and publishers  in the world for their views on the media finally bore its fruit. And what a fruit it was!

    Sadly, however, only one of the two authors was alive to witness the event. Igwe, as we all know, was knocked down one year ago this month – September 6, to be exact – by a hit-and-run driver while jogging in his neighbourhood. The accident proved fatal from lack of prompt medical attention.

    Igwe’s painful death must have been one of the most traumatic events in Awoyinfa’s life because of the close bond of friendship that developed between the two, going back to the early years of their careers about three decades ago. So close has been their relationship that they came to be identified by their colleagues, and even those outside their profession, as the “Twin Brothers”, even though one is Yoruba and the other Igbo.

    As “Twin Brothers,” the two formed one of only two intimate friendships thrown up by Nigeria’s journalism profession that have left proud legacies in the profession, the other friendship being the older and better known “Three Musketeers” of journalism, namely Aremo Segun Osoba, former governor of Ogun State and one time managing director of Daily Times, Mr Felix Adenaike, a Daily Times alumnus and at various times the most successful managing director of Western Region’s Sketch and the independent Tribune, and the late Mr. Peter Ajayi, an alumnus of Tribune, editor of the Kwara State Herald  in its heyday, and managing director of Sketch.

    However, whereas the Musketeers left behind a legacy of sound investigative reporting and excellent writing style, the twin brothers popularised tabloid journalism and made it respectable, first as pioneer editors of the rested Weekly Concord and then as pioneer managers of Sun whose owner and publisher is Chief Orji Kalu, two-time governor of Abia State.

    As if by coincidence, one of the Musketeers, Osoba, chaired yesterday’s presentation of the twin brothers’ book. He used the occasion to touch on one of the most problematic issues in Nigerian journalism; the poor wages, at least in relative terms, of Nigerian journalists, that is when they get paid at all. A little about this presently.

    To return to the book itself, it is, as I said, perhaps the most encyclopaedic book on global journalism. Before it I can remember only one such book. This is the award winning Powers of the Press: The World’s Great Newspapers by Martin Walker, an alumnus of the London Guardian and one of the most successful British journalists, and currently Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the global news agency, United Press International.

    Walker’s 1982 book was a tour de force as an insider’s look at the workings of 12 of the world’s most influential newspapers. His selection were the UK Times, the French Le Monde, the German Die Welt, the Italian Corriere della Sera, the Soviet Union Pravda, the Egyptian Al-Ahram, the Japanese Asahi Shimbun, the American New York Times and Washington Post, the Canadian Toronto Globe & Mail, the Australian Age of Melbourne and the South African Rand Daily Mail.

    Whereas both Walker’s book and the twin brothers’ are encyclopaedic, the latter, containing interviews with reporters, editors and publishers of 50 of the world’s best media houses, is obviously more encyclopaedic. Second, whereas Walker’s is limited to newspapers, the twin brothers’ includes broadcast media and news agencies. Third, whereas Walker’s is one man’s insight into the inner workings of top flight journalism the world over, the twin brothers’ is, as the sub-title of the book says, a “Conversation with Journalism Masters on Trends and Best Practices” of the trade. In other words, their book presents the journalistic views of the masters of the profession across the world’s five continents in their own words.

    This alone makes the book a fitting legacy to the resourceful twin brothers. It should also make it a must read not only for journalists and journalism schools. It should be so for anyone with an interest in politics and economics. And this, when you think about it, is just about everyone, since we all need information even to survive. And we get that most of the time through the media.

    One little weakness of the book, as one which should be a reference for Nigerian journalism students, is that it did not include enough Nigerian journalism icons. Six such were interviewed, namely, the late Alhaji Babatunde Jose, Osoba, Thisday’s Nduka Obaigbena, the Pulitzer prize winning Dele Olojede, The News’ Bayo Onanuga and Channel TV’s John Momoh. Clearly missing from this list is an interview with Malams Adamu Ciroma and Mamman Daura, each as first, editor then managing director of New Nigerian, the most literate and arguably the most authoritative newspaper in Nigeria in the late sixties and seventies.

    In the Introduction to the book the authors claim they pioneered Nigeria’s first Saturday newspaper, the highly successful Weekend Concord. I am not so sure they are right about that if their idea is of WC as a tabloidisation of reporting. Before WC, let’s not forget there was the highly popular Lagos Weekend published on Fridays by the Daily Times of Nigeria. And after LW there was Saturday Extra, a four-page pull-out in the New Nigerian on Saturdays which reported stories from human angle and featured prominent columnists like the late Theresa Bowyer, one of the pioneer female journalists of this country.

    These, of course, do not detract from the legacy of popularising of tabloid journalism and making it respectable in Nigeria which the twin brothers have built.

    As I said earlier, the chair of the occasion and himself a journalism icon, Osoba, seized the opportunity of being in the chair to plead passionately with owners and publishers not only to pay their journalists living wages but to do so as and when due. Much of the terrible “brown envelop” syndrome which has bighted Nigerian journalism for long, he said, can be blamed on owners and publishers of mass media not paying their employees well, or worse, not even paying them at all. One can only hope that his plea will be heeded.

    Times, of course, are tough for the industry, as they are for the rest of the economy. But when reporters see their employers living it off from what they see as the proceeds of their sweat – and this seems to be the case with several owners and publishers – it sounds unrealistic to blame journalists for resorting to brown envelops, terrible as it is.

    Looking down on yesterday’s occasion from the great beyond, Igwe must be a happy man seeing the way his colleagues trooped in from all corners of the country to attend the presentation of a book he co-authored and at the same time to celebrate his life.

    I am not so sure, however, that he would be happy with the way the media, especially newspapers, online and off, have gone into frenzy, hawking speculations as facts, in their reporting of appointments by our new president, Muhammadu Buhari, into key positions in his government of “change”. At least twice now the media got the man wrong in their speculations about his appointments. Yet that has not deterred them from bandying names of prospective ministers around with a certitude that, I suspect, must be amusing to the man himself.

    Reading those stories you get a sneaky feeling that the newspapers are merely trying to force his hands  by flying kites on behalf of certain self-interested individuals, obviously forgetting the man’s self-advertised guiding principle of belonging to no one and at the same time belonging to everyone. For the newspapers it seems twice bitten means no shy at all.

    As Awoyinfa and Igwe have shown, tabloid journalism can be as respectable as serious journalism. But this is only in so far as it respects the basic rule of journalism that only opinion is free; facts must be sacred.

  • Re: trilogy about controversy on Buhari’s war against corruption

    Re: trilogy about controversy on Buhari’s war against corruption

    As I promised last week, I am dedicating this week’s column to the reactions to my trilogy of sorts on the controversy stirred by the attacks on President Muhammadu Buhari’s declared war on corruption, notably the attacks from Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah and Professor Ben Nwabueze.

    The first piece of August 19, which was the prelude to the subject, elicited 24 texts. The second of August 26 about Bishop Kukah elicited 84 texts and four emails. The third last week about Prof. Nwabueze elicited 31 texts and three emails.

    Here’s my selection of the reactions.

    On the prelude

    Sir,

    For once you wrote an article, which is unbiased. The war against corruption by President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) must go on, irrespective of who is involved. Forget about Prof. Nwabueze and his likes. Our PMB has our support. +2348033204747.

    Sir,

    You are an ethnic and a religious jingoist, in addition to being an attention seeker and a fool. +2348065296641.

    Sir,

    Corruption is a cancer that is eating up the soul of our country, and any fight against it should be encouraged. But let this fight be holistic, starting from 1999 to date. Any Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba thief should face the full weight of the law. We want an all inclusive war.

    Patrick,

    Abuja. +2347010393213.

    Sir,

    Prof. Ben Nwabueze was a minister of education under President Ibrahim Babangida, not Gen. Sani Abacha. He served as minister, while Malam Bello Dogondaji (Santurakin Sakkwato) was his minister of state.

    Nurudeen Tambaya, +2348034507641.

     

    On Kukah

    Sir,

    I don’t blame you, you are a Muslim. Look at you talking about an anointed man of God. But one thing is certain; if there was no Jonathan as president, there would not have been civilian Buhari president. Jonathan is the father of a new Nigeria, period.

    Jose Mou, Aba.  +2348165288291.

    Sir,

    Your piece made interesting reading. I want to observe, however, that contrary to expressing views in the media, Father Hassan Kukah still stands tall as an advocate of truth and a true friend of former Presidents Obasanjo and Goodluck. By his calling as a priest he will never support the perpetration of corruption in the polity, let alone attack Buhari’s anti-corruption drive as insinuated by many.

    Malbang, J.B. +2348061520950.

    Sir,

    Re -Attacks on Buhari’s war on corruption – The case of Kukah. I wish to state categorically that the war on corruption is a collective war by the majority of Nigerians. As far as we are concerned, whoever is against this war is an enemy of the masses, be you a Pastor, Bishop, an Imam, Emir, Oba, Obi, whatever. Nobody will deceive us with ethnic, religious or political colouration. As for me, I have stopped reading some newspapers or listening to some radio or TV stations that have shamelessly sold out to these corrupt politicians and rogues. They should be warned that no evil should happen to Buhari. We are solidly behind him and God Almighty will see him through in Jesus’ name.

    Jimi Omeiza Moses,

    Eruwen Road, Ikorodu, Lagos.

    +2348058589458.

    Sir,

    I commend your insightful piece on Bishop Kukah in The Nation today. But you messed it up with your paragraph 13 in which you said ‘my hunch is that he has tried to defend them essentially because they are fellow Christians…’ And yet you admitted that corruption knows no tribe or religion. When will Nigerians think outside religion and ethnicity?

    Ozolua,

    Lagos. +2348023058761.

    Sir,

    This is the best you’ve written. When JONA was stealing with illiterate gusto, KUKAH never envisaged PDP’s ouster. Now that DANIEL BUHARI has come to judgment, let all the toadies in religious garb take cover of silence or self-exile.

    Sam, Ibadan. +2348066174320.

    Sir,

    This is what happens when one leaves his duty post. The Bishop should have concentrated on his assignment to catholicise the seat of the Sokoto Caliphate. I am not sure his masters in the Vatican will be too happy about the controversy he has generated by those selfish and biased comments that have, by now, conclusively been read by most Nigerians to be meant to distract the efforts of our elected President to deliver on his WIDELY ACCEPTED campaign promise: fight against corruption.

    I would advise the Bishop to leave Abuja and return to base to do best what he is paid for. The NCP has outlived its usefulness (if ever it was). He may not know, but the mere presence of the priest-contractor, Oritsejafor, in the team completely killed whatever little credibility the team had.

    Engr. Mailadi Yusuf Abba

    mailadiyusuf@yahoo.com

    +2348030730757.

    Sir,

    You’ve diligently skinned this wolf in canonical mask. Please do the same with that bigot in academic robe. +2348054300625.

    Sir,

    Your hunch was wrong. It’s not because of their faith, but because the Bishop has lost the uncommon courage. Does his Bible teach that people should steal?

    Victor (Akure) +2348034647763.

    Sir,

    I don’t think you were able to find Bishop Kukah “guilty” of any wrong doing. Just go through your article and see the futile attempt to nail the bishop.  +2348033217721.

    Sir,

    President Buhari is not against any tribe or religion. He is addressing the most pressing problem of Nigeria – corruption.

    Dr. Mann Tolofari, Port Harcourt. +2348038749534.

    Sir,

    So your interest is to use the pages of newspapers to insult the clergy. Why is it that you don’t have respect for men of God?

    Ekene, +2347031221600.

     

    Sir,

    We all know that Mohammed Haruna is a fanatic. He should leave Kukah alone to exercise his democratic right. +2347066583610.

    Sir,

    Thanks for the magnificent piece on the Bishop. The man, like any flesh, has lost focus. He is now dancing naked in the public square. The Desmond Tutu of Nigeria (my wrong perception of him) has become the Oritsejafor of Nigeria. May God help our beloved country and the president. +2348033205272.

    Sir,

    Good article as always. However, I remember Bishop Kukah defended PMB when Nigerians wanted to lynch him on his misrepresented statement that Muslims should not vote for other religions. Which camaraderie was that?

    Musa, Keffi. +2348033202992.

    Sir,

    I read your article of August 26 with great relish. The so-called National Peace Committee is preaching peace without justice. The members have become busybodies and interlopers.

    Olu Ajayi,  Abeokuta. +2348051514428.

    Sir,

    I read your piece on Bishop Hassan Kukah and I whole heartedly agree with your take on the Bishop’s outrageous and unforgivable utterances. You neglected to mention though that he actually said that President Buhari should remember that he would one day leave office and might therefore face the same probes by his successor. I think that thinly veiled threat/blackmail was, for me, so irresponsible and truly unconscionable.

    In conclusion, our feelings on this matter diverge only in your position that the NPC should not be disbanded.  President Buhari does not need these distracting visits and unnecessary vexations to the spirit; his hands are full. Let the Peace Committee, if they insist on existing, look elsewhere, where there is conflict. Let them visit the Northeast, fish out genuinely aggrieved youths and negotiate peace, etc.

    Mrs Kechi Adogu.

    kechi.adogu@gmail.com On Nwabueze

    Sir,

    This is a masterpiece. I must confess that this is the best piece I have ever read from you in the last five years, the worst being the one you wrote on Dikko Inde, lately the Comptroller-General of Customs last year, ignorantly praising him.

    Nasiru Manga

    nasmang@gmail.com

    Sir,

    How much are you being paid and by whom to insult personalities that you cannot be a match to even if given 1000 years on this planet earth? Mind you the fight against corruption is a Nigerian project, so don’t look at it as your personal project or PMB’s. Enough is enough of your insults on our elders and leaders.

    Goodman Dan,

    Taraba State.

    +2348128062112.

    Sir,

    Thanks for making many Nigerians aware of the diabolical role of Prof Nwabueze during those trying years of 1966 and 1993 respectively. The great scholar is at present clutching his “boarding pass” to enter the plane to the Great Beyond. He should therefore start toeing the few remaining paths of nationalism still open to him.

    Amb. L. T. Bade-Afuye.

    +2347013324163.

    Sir,

    I was very outraged by the position of Ben Nwabueze; it lacked scholarship. These are the people sponsoring Radio Biafra.

    Ahmed Isa,

    Agbor.

    +2348035120188.

    Sir,

    I think Nwabueze is only afraid that with the unity of the North, the votes of the Southeast have become inconsequential in determining who becomes the president of this country. He lost his professorship long time ago. He now analyses issues like a motor park tout.

    +2348030948991.

  • Attacks on Buhari’s war against corruption – The case of Nwabueze

    Attacks on Buhari’s war against corruption – The case of Nwabueze

    Last week’s piece on Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah’s objections to President Muhammadu Buhari’s declared war on corruption during Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency, has elicited by far the largest number of reactions to this column so far this year – 84 texts and three emails in all. Out of the 84 texts, only three vehemently disagreed with my criticism of the bishop. Another six or so shared my view, but disagreed with my hunch that religion had much to do with the bishop’s position. The rest were critical of him with no caveats.

    I think the number of the readers’ reactions alone suggests that most Nigerians, regardless of religion or tribe, consider the fight against corruption the country’s topmost priority. If my guess is right, Professor Ben Nwabueze must then belong to a minority who think otherwise. For the professor, religion, specifically Islam, and not corruption, poses the greatest threat to Nigeria’s peace and progress.

    In an over 3,300-word interview in The PUNCH of August 9 he said so categorically. Asked by the newspaper if he agreed with the widespread public opinion that corruption posed the biggest challenge the country faces, he said no. Corruption, he said, was only “the second biggest.”

    The first, he said, “is the crisis arising from the religious divide. That is the first and the most terrible. After that comes corruption. All other things are subsidiaries.”

    Our Constitution, he said, contained two contradictory ideologies, one favoured by Christianity and the other by Islam. The ideology preferred by Christianity, he said, is democracy, whereas that preferred by Islam which is based on Sharia or Islamic Law “favours theocracy and other forms of dictatorial rule.”

    The conflict between these two ideologies, he said, has landed the country in the middle of a big crisis which, he said in effect, Buhari is incapable of resolving in favour of democracy because he is an agent of Islamic theocracy.

    “He,” the professor said, “has many restraints; he has many constraints. He is not a free agent. Whatever may be his personal characteristics, he is not a free agent. HE WAS CHOSEN AS THE APC’S (ALL PROGRESSIVES CONGRESS’) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE AT THE PRIMARY FOR A PURPOSE; TO TRY TO IMPLEMENT AN AGENDA. I WON’T GO ANY FURTHER. His ability, his capacity to fight corruption decisively is constrained and restrained by some factors, mostly religious.” (Emphasis mine).

    As a professor, especially of law and, for that matter, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Nwabueze should know better than reach a verdict based on conjecture rather than facts. Clearly, however, his barely disguised conclusion that Buhari was elected the presidential candidate of APC to impose an Islamic theocracy on Nigeria is without any basis in fact.

    No doubt religion is important to Nigerians as a means of identity. A survey in the country ahead of the April 21, 2007 presidential elections by the American Pew Research Centre titled “Nigeria’s Presidential Election: The Christian-Muslim Divide” suggested that the vast majority of its people regarded religion as more important for their identity than their nationality, ethnicity and continent.  Among Christians the percentage was 76 for religion as against nine for nationality, six for ethnicity and eight for the continent. For Muslims the percentages were 91, five, zero and three.

    The same survey, however, showed that both groups favoured democracy over any other form of government. Among Christians the percentage of those who said free and fair elections with a choice of at least two political parties were “somewhat or very important” was 86 as against 13 who said it was “not too or not at all important.” The percentages for Muslims were 93 and four.

    It’s been eight years and two presidential elections since Pew’s survey. However, given the enthusiasm with which Nigerians have participated in those elections, it is very clear that they have not changed their minds about their preference for democracy whatever their religion.

    That enthusiasm alone must make one wonder on what basis our learned professor reached his verdict that Nigeria faces a greater danger from our religious differences than from corruption.

    In his interview, Nwabueze at first says he would not spell out the powers constraining Buhari from fighting corruption and propelling him to impose Islamic theocracy on Nigeria. “I won’t,” he said, “go any further” in naming Buhari’s puppeteers.

    Over halfway through the interview, however, he went ahead all the same to name two. The first, he says, is “the invisible government of Nigeria” whose existence is known to only a few. The other, he says, is “a group of die-hard Islamists determined to impose Islamic (Sharia) system of government on Nigeria.”

    The first group, he claimed, is led by former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida and former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar. The group, he added, has been strengthened by former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who has since left the erstwhile ruling Peoples Democratic Party.

    He named no names in his group of “die-hard Islamists,” but elsewhere in the interview he did say Boko Haram was a manifestation of the group as the local wing of global jihadists.

    Conspiracy theories come at dozens a kobo. However, the professor’s theories of an “invisible government” led by Babangida dictating policies and programmes to President Buhari, and of the leadership of Boko Haram sect as yet another godfather of Buhari, must rank as one of the cheapest form of demagoguery. Certainly it ranks as the most laughable because it is no more than an attempt by an otherwise brilliant scholar to elevate beer-parlour gossip to the level of serious scholarship.

    Actually it is worse than laughable because even in beer parlours it would be hard to find anyone who does not know that there has really never been any love lost between Buhari and Babangida since the latter overthrew the former as head of state in August 1985 in a bloodless palace coup. In any case, if the professor’s invisible government truly existed and Babangida was its patriarch, how come he couldn’t even fulfil his proverbial wish to step back in to power since the return of democracy in 1999?

    As for General Abdulsalami being a chieftain of Nwabueze’s invisible government, anyone who has followed the man’s military career would testify to the fact that a more apolitical person is hard to find. And only the most credulous person would believe the professor’s claim that Obasanjo, with his huge ego, would play second fiddle to anyone in any group in this country.

    In his over 3,000-word, two-part essay published by The Guardian last month which he claimed to be the position of Igbo Leaders of Thought – I have my doubts about his claim because associations of people don’t go announcing their positions through longish essays – he said the group objected to Buhari limiting his probe of corruption to Jonathan’s presidency alone because that would be selective and cannot put an end to the vice.

    The professor is obviously right to say that fighting corruption under Jonathan alone is selective. However, he is wrong to argue that the fight will succeed only if it includes corruption under Jonathan’s predecessors all the way back to 1985 under Babangida.

    His assumption here is obvious; it is possible to eliminate corruption. That assumption is patently false. As long as there is human society there will be corruption. What is important, however, is to have a system that makes corruption difficult and also punishes the corrupt whenever he is found out. In Nigeria’s history, no administration has made it so easy to steal with so much impunity as Jonathan’s. Such was the impunity that he could not even rely on his men – and women – not to steal the money meant for his election victory, an impunity which resulted in an incumbent losing an election at the national level for the first time in the history of this country.

    Because it is not possible to end corruption, the fight against it must never fall into the danger of allowing perfection to be the enemy of the good. Fighting all corrupt cases simultaneously is perfect but even our professor cannot deny that starting with the most obvious case is a good start. Nor can he deny that Jonathan’s presidency holds the gold medal in the race for self-aggrandisement because, as he himself said in The PUNCH interview in question, corruption today has assumed “buccaneering” proportions.

    At 84, Professor Nwabueze should be concerned about his legacies. Some of the most notable ones among these are hardly what his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can be proud of. Among these is the Unification Decree of 1966 which he was a principal author of and which eventually led to our civil war. Another one he masterminded was the decree which established the Interim National Government under Chief Ernest Shonekan in 1993 which, in turn, paved the way for the venal dictatorship of General Sani Abacha.

    In between the two decrees he became – and continues to be – a leading advocate of Nigeria as a federation of ethnic nationalities, a most reactionary idea you can think of in a world that has since become a global village and where the wealthiest countries are melting pots of diverse creeds and cultures instead of patchworks of their constituent parts.

    Let it not, in addition, be said of him that here was a man who used his brilliance to try and scuttle the first attempt by any administration in this country to seriously fight corruption.

    Note

    I am sorry I am unable to reproduce the reactions to the last two pieces today as I promised last week due to space constraint. Next week, God willing, I’ll devote the entire column to some of the reactions.

  • Attacks on Buhari’s war on corruption – The case of Kukah

    Attacks on Buhari’s war on corruption – The case of Kukah

    The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Most Reverend Mathew Hassan Kukah, is, of course, not the only person to have apparently pooh-poohed President Muhammadu Buhari’s declaration of war on corruption. Chieftains of the erstwhile ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), notably its spokesman, Olisa Metuh, and the Governor of Ekiti State and probably the most unrelenting detractor of Buhari’s person, Ayodele Fayose, have all poured scorn on the president’s declared anti-corruption crusade. None, however, not even Professor Ben Nwabueze’s statement on behalf of a rather nondescript organisation, the Igbo Leaders of Thought, has attracted as much public opprobrium as the bishop’s.

    The bishop has been blaming the media for misrepresenting the interview he granted the media at Aso Villa after an audience the president granted members of the National Peace Committee on August 11. The NPC is led by former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, with the bishop as the coordinator.

    Kukah, according to the media, had expressed concern in his interview about the president becoming too obsessed with the fight against alleged corruption by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration at the expense of governance for which, he said, the president had been elected.

    It is unfortunate, the bishop has said in several subsequent media interviews, that his concern has been distorted to mean he was trying to defend the former president from being probed by his successor. Nothing, he has been saying, could be further from the truth.

    “We were,” he said in an interview with Sahara TV on August 16, “interested in saying that our role is not to run anybody’s errands. Our role is basically to give encouragement to our politicians on behalf of Nigerians. That we had free and fair elections and Nigerians want to see a new dawn in place.” The earlier version of the story on the bishop’s remarks at Aso Villa, had quoted him as saying his committee had been sent to President Buhari by Jonathan to plead on his behalf.

    However, it seems, at least to me, that the bishop’s attempts at clarification have only made matters worse. From all indications it is true, as he has said, that the former president never sent the committee to plead on his behalf. Indeed in all the meetings the committee has had with all the stakeholders before, during and after the last elections – stakeholders like the presidential candidates, the leadership of the political parties and of the National Assembly – there is evidence to prove that the issue of probing the former president was never even raised, never mind being discussed.

    Bishop Kukah can therefore have only himself, and not the media, to blame for the widespread impression that his committee was on the former president’s errand, the simple reason being that his negative remarks about Buhari’s war on corruption were simply gratuitous in the circumstance. He was, of course, entitled to express his view that the president’s war looks like the persecution of his predecessor. However, the timing and the venue of his remark, not to talk of the fact that he was the coordinator, indeed creator, of the committee, can only create the impression that their main mission that day was to intercede on the former president’s behalf. To make his remarks even more suspicious, some of the committee members who had attended only few or even none of its previous meetings, notably, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), were all in attendance.

    Then, of course, there were some of his rather untoward and unhelpful remarks like “Nigerians must be appreciative of what President Jonathan did…even if he stole all the money in the world” and “This is no longer a military regime and under our existing laws everybody is innocent until proven guilty,” which he made in his Channels TV interview.

    As a priest and an intellectual, Bishop Kukah knows that his role is to tell truth to power. It also requires that he tells truth to friends. Both require uncommon courage. Sadly, in recent years his courage to tell truth to power and to friends, a virtue for which he had become justly famous, seems to have largely deserted him, apparently because he has become too close with those in power.

    The most glaring evidence of this was nine years ago when, in a lengthy interview with Weekly Trust (July 22, 2006), he defended President Olusegun Obasanjo’s inglorious Third Term agenda by dismissing it as a non-issue.

    The third term, he said, was “a useless conversation, a waste of energies and I think it is nothing other than that. And it does not merit the attention.” He then went on to condemn those critical of Obasanjo’s agenda as “political eunuchs who could not do anything when General Abacha was around.” Worse, he even denied that times were hard under Obasanjo.

    “People”, he said, “keep saying to me people are dying and things are getting worse. And I say it is not true … Things are getting better and it could get even better than they are.”

    If as a Reverend Father, Kukah tried to defend power nine years ago, this time as a bishop he has tried to defend a friend who, though no longer president, remains powerful by virtue alone that he had been in government for the last 16 years. And in both instances, my hunch is that he has tried to defend them essentially because they are fellow Christians, who he sees as battling for their faith.

    As in Obasanjo’s case, Jonathan’s case too is simply indefensible. However, Jonathan’s case is far worse, even if only a fraction of the revelations of monumental corruption under his watch the public has been inundated with of recent is true.

    Bad as Jonathan’s case is, it is not really surprising that the bishop would try to defend his friend. As Dr Ebenezer Obadare, a Nigerian teaching Sociology at Kansas University, US, pointed out five years ago in an article in The Guardian (May 21, 2010), Kukah tried to canonise the man in an article in the same newspaper (May 13, 2010) and in a lecture earlier on in Calabar. Kukah’s paper was captioned “The Patience of Jonathan,” an apparent play on the president’s name and his wife’s. Obadare countered with “The impatience of Father Kukah.”

    In his article, which was less than a month after Jonathan succeeded his predecessor, following his death, Kukah argued that the man’s rise in politics “defied logic and anyone who attempts to explain it is tempting the gods.” In the earlier lecture in Calabar he had said, among other things, that “With the swearing-in of President Goodluck Jonathan, something has happened in Nigeria that may not happen again in the next 200 years.”

    Obadare’s article dismissed Kukah as engaging in unhelpful myth-making. This provoked an angry counter-reaction from Kukah in The Guardian of June 2 which, in turn, provoked a counter-reaction from Obadare in the same newspaper on June 7.

    Personally, I thought Obadare won the debate on the facts and logic of the issue. But this is besides my point in referring to the sparring between the priest and the academic, which is that five years on it is now crystal clear that Kukah was too impatient to canonise his friend as the best president Nigeria would ever have.

    Kukah’s attempt to defend Jonathan is clearly self-imposed probably to defend his position of five years ago. Whatever it is, his defence has seriously dented the image of the NCP which it deservedly earned for the good work it did in helping to bring about this year’s peaceful election.

    Penultimate Tuesday, August 18, The PUNCH published a scathing editorial on the NPC which must have resonated well with most Nigerians.  The NCP, “which has the likes of Sa’ad Abubakar, the Sultan of Sokoto; Ayo Oritsejafor, President, Christian Association of Nigeria; John Onaiyekan and Nicholas Okoh (both clergymen),” the newspaper said, “has become a distraction, a veritable platform for making excuses for tainted former public office holders.”

    As such it urged the committee be disbanded and even wondered why President Buhari had received its members in the first place.

    I do not share The PUNCH’s position that it is a useless distraction. However, its use as a camouflage by its coordinator for his personal view, which seems to have been dictated more by religious camaraderie with his friend than by fact and reason, has damaged it badly.

    Kukah, as priest and an intellectual, knows all too well that corruption, like all vices, knows no tribe or religion. Hopefully, the anger in the land from men and women of all faiths about his defence of the former president has taught him a lesson that it is wrong to use one’s reputation to defend what is patently indefensible.

    Next week, God willing, I’ll take up Professor Nwabueze’s case and publish the reactions I received over last week’s piece.

  • Attacks on Buhari’s war against corruption – A prelude

    Attacks on Buhari’s war against corruption – A prelude

    Unsurprisingly, the war against corruption to which President Muhammadu Buhari has committed himself as a top priority, is threatening to assume an ethnic and religious colouration. The two colourations are equally dangerous for Nigeria’s unity and even existence, but for now it looks like the threat of ethnic colouration is more immediate and worrisome.

    The most obvious ethnic colouration was painted last week by Professor Ben Nwabueze, the respected constitutional lawyer and once minister of education under General Sani Abacha’s regime. In a widely publicised statement of over 3,100 words entitled: “Corrupt practices: Igbo leaders’ position on probe of past governments”, he enunciated what he claimed was the view of Igbo leadership on President Muhammadu Buhari’s declared war on corruption. He followed this with an equally lengthy interview in THE PUNCH of August 9.

    The president, he said, is right to consider his fight against corruption a priority but wrong to limit himself only to the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan he took over from. To do so, he said, would be selective which, in turn, would make his war unjust, unfair and, in the end, ineffective.

    On the surface, the professor’s argument looks impartial and unassailable. But read his statement and interview in between the lines and it becomes difficult, if not impossible, not to conclude that his objection to Buhari limiting his war on corruption to Jonathan’s administration was more because it was widely regarded, rightly or wrongly, as Igbo-dominated than because of the reasons he gave.

    Next week, God willing, I’ll examine the professor’s statement to show how it is not as impartial and unassailable as it looks at first glance.

    Meantime, to the other danger, namely that of giving the president’s declared war on corruption a religious colouration. This time the man with the big brush is the Bishop of Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Most Reverend Mathew Hassan Kukah.

    Bishop Kukah has been angry with the media for what he says is their misinterpretation of his call on Buhari to avoid the danger of populist posturing against corruption at the expense of good governance. The public seems to have perceived his warning as a call on Buhari not to waste time probing the Jonathan administration. As such the bishop has come under widespread attack, especially in the social media.

    Along with the professor’s veiled attack on Buhari’s anti-corruption war, I will, next week, God willing, examine the Bishop’s call on Buhari to reconsider his stance on corruption to show how the two calls are not as impartial as they seem on the surface.

    For the rest of this piece, I’ll like to return to my view that between the two dangers of giving Buhari’s war on corruption an ethnic and religious colouration, the former is more immediate and worrisome for now.

    A little over a month ago, on July 14, to be specific, my friend, Chief Loretta Aniagolu, a prominent Enugu politician and business woman, forwarded an email to me with a link to Radio Biafra in which the station claimed, in effect, that Buhari had declared the Igbo his mortal enemies in an interview with the Hausa service of the BBC. She said she had received similar mails from abroad and was at first inclined to dismiss them until she received the last one which she was forwarding to me.

    The “former dictator” speaking today on BBC Hausa services monitored in Kaduna, Radio Biafra claimed, said he was convinced the Igbo have always voted against him because of his role in the Nigerian civil war.

    “I don’t have any regret, and as such do not owe any apology to them, in fact if there is a repeat of the civil war again, I will kill more Igbo to save the country,” the station quoted him as saying.

    Chief Aniagolu said she was forwarding the email to me just to confirm if Buhari did indeed say so, even though she found it difficult, if not impossible, to believe. “Please go through and tell me…Did he really say this?, she asked.

    Buhari could never have said such a stupid thing, and never did, as his spokesman, Malam Garba Shehu, and the Hausa Service of the BBC itself have since confirmed. But this has not stopped the radio station from carrying on with its virulent campaigns against Buhari as someone who hates the Igbo. Chances are, millions of impressionable Igbo listeners, especially those who never experienced the war, believe the station.

    A careful reading of Nwabueze’s statement about the position of Igbo leadership on Buhari’s war against corruption suggests even the more enlightened leadership are probably inclined to believe Radio Biafra, albeit more out of political expediency  than because the station was saying the truth, which, of course, it wasn’t.

    Unfortunately, image, especially in this age of the Internet, has since become more potent than substance. If, therefore, the president wants to succeed in his war against corruption – and he owes it to the millions of Nigerians who voted for him to bring about change to do so – he simply must deal with the image that his government is against any tribe or religion, false though this image is.

     

    Re-Boko Haram: the vindication of Shettima

    Sir,

    I think I disagree with your view today (August 12). Even if the war was being won by Boko Haram, Shettima shouldn’t have come in public to say such a thing. What solution did he suggest as governor? You guys, I think, are rather celebrating Boko Haram instead of condemning them.

    Awo, +2348062681413.

     

    Sir,

    Nonsense article as usual. Tribalistic and jaundiced columnist. +2348033468602.

     

    Sir,

    What a nice piece. Governor Shettima really deserves a pat on the back. +2348032766229.

     

    Sir,

    In your incisive article on the vindication of Shettima, you stopped short of the obvious conclusion i.e. the imperative of a thorough judicial prove of military spending in the last 16 years. The $9million in cash smuggled into another country still makes me weep for my country! We cannot sweep such things under the carpet!!

    Mansur Ahmed,  +2348033143403.

     

    Sir,

    Minimah’s submission is a harsh truth. If people like you had used your biro well, it would have made a difference in the fight against those criminals.  +2348036769949.

     

    Sir,

    For about a month now, Boko Haram (BH) has not struck. Is it as a result of weapons acquired by PMB? The truth is that BH has achieved the aim of most northerners and so they are winding up gradually. By December, as PMB said, there will be nothing like BH. We only wait to see how the North will solve the Chibok girls April fool.# +2348061562735.

     

    Sir,

    Truth is constant and God has vindicated Governor Shettima. However, Gen Badeh and Gen Minimah should thank their stars that President Buhari is now a committed democrat, least both will be behind bars explaining what happened to defence budgets under their watch, not to mention the humiliation and embarrassment they caused the military by announcing to the world that a former Army general and commander-in-chief of the Nigerian armed forces had no certificate, they are dammed jolly lucky fellows.

    Nyebuchi Wobo,  Port Harcourt.

    +2348057812496.

     

    Sir,

    Now that Shettima has been vindicated and the ‘arinis’ subdued, when he settles with them, I hope another group will not emerge, may be demanding that people should walk with their heads down. Maitatsine, Akaluka head hunters, etc. It is time they had pity on others and a permanent solution sought. Most of the countries in West Africa are smaller than some of our states. The yoking together of heterogeneous elements is a major problem. Please suggest something. +2348052813321.

     

    Sir,

    Re-Boko Haram: the vindication of Shettima. Irrespective of the condition of our army on the battlefield then, Shettima lacked the professional competence to make the de-motivating proclamation he did. What was his expense and military contribution when it was ‘hot’? How was the election that made him to have been re-elected made possible? It’s easier to use ordinary mouth to clear the bush meant for cultivation! Now, has boko haramism ended?

    Lanre Oseni.

    +2348033518726.

    Sir,

    It seems that the errors continue. The officer’s letter was not dated December 2004, but rather December 2014.

    Sagir Tanimu,   Department of Computer Science,

    Bayero University, Kano. +2347038946575.

     

    Read your column as I always do. The officer who wrote the former president would not have done so on 15/12/2004. Please do the necessary correction. Baba D. Hamidu, +2348023130090.

  • Boko Haram: The vindication of Shettima

    Boko Haram: The vindication of Shettima

    For the Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, February 17 last year was probably one of the most unforgettable days in his life. On that day he went to Aso Villa, Abuja, the country’s presidential residence, to brief ex-President Goodluck Jonathan about, and seek succour, from the Boko Haram insurrection in his Northeast region, which had turned his state in particular into the main theatre of the war. He briefed the president alright, but instead of succour, he suffered excoriation not only from the president himself, but also from some of the president’s men, who tried to sound angrier than their principal.

    Shettima’s offence was to have spoken truth to power when he told the Aso Villa correspondents shortly after briefing the president that our soldiers were losing the war against Boko Haram not because they lacked courage, but because they were under-armed and poorly motivated.

    “In fairness to the officers and men of the Nigerian army and the police,” he told the journalists, “they are doing their best, given the circumstance they have found themselves. But honestly Boko Haram are better armed and better motivated than our own troops.”

    The following day, Dr Doyin Okupe, a senior presidential spokesman, apparently unimpressed by Shettima’s careful choice of words, countered the governor by describing him as an “illiterate” in military matters, who wouldn’t understand the mysterious ways in which soldiers moved to defeat the enemy.

    Not to be outdone, the Minister of Information, who at the time happened to be the Acting Defence Minister, Mr. Labaran Maku, also said Shettima committed “serious indiscretion” by apparently denigrating the military. He, along with the military top hierarchy, barely stopped short of dismissing Shettima as unpatriotic.

    The boss himself was more measured in his choice of words, but he was apparently no less angry with Shettima than his men. “If we pull out the military from Borno State,” he said seemingly jokingly, “let us see if he will be able to stay in Government House.” He was never really likely to have carried out his threat. But that he issued it at all spoke volumes about how he felt about the governor.

    Shettima was not the only person to have spoken out about his concern with the effectiveness of our soldiers in fighting Boko Haram. Indeed, in doing so he merely echoed widespread public worry with the slow speed of the war against the sect. Definitely his words were less harsh than those of a military officer, whose letter to his commander-in-chief was published by Saharareporters on December 15, 2004. ”The fact about NE (North-East) operation,” the officer said, “is that we are poorly equipped, understaffed, high corruption from Army Headquarters down to battalion level. Commanders see it as opportunity to make money.”

    The Governor of Adamawa State, retired Admiral Murtala Nyako, said even worse things about the prosecution of the war. The ostensible war against Boko Haram, he said in effect at a three-day symposium in America, was “a nurtured war against the people in Northern Nigeria.” This was at a symposium on “Current Economic, Social and Security Challenges Facing Northern Nigeria” organised by US Institute of Peace between March 17 and 19, 2014.

    On his return home, the governor repeated the same accusation in an open letter to his 19 northern colleagues. He paid a price with his office when he was impeached, ostensibly for corruption, and even went on self-exile for his dear life.

    Yet, Shettima’s much more cautious criticism of the conduct of the war last year barely saved him from being declared persona non grata from Aso Villa.

    Events since July 30 when the erstwhile Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Air Marshal Alex Badeh, was pulled out of service following his recent retirement along with the other service chiefs, must have since made Shettima both happy and sad at the same time – happy that he has at last been personally vindicated and sad that his vindication is hardly a thing any sensible person should celebrate, given the prolonged suffering of Nigerians from the Boko Haram insurrection, especially those in its main theatre.

    For Shettima, personal vindication couldn’t have come better than the say-so of Air Marshal Badeh as CDS. “The last time any piece of equipment was bought for the army,” he said during an interview with Channels TV several days after his pulling out parade, “was some APCs (armoured personnel carriers) that were bought in 2006 and how many were they?” The Air Force, he said, flew “the oldest airplanes in the whole world.” He had made similar remarks in his valedictory speech during the parade.

    As if to counter Badeh’s damaging admission that the military has long suffered neglect, PR Nigeria, a controversial media consultant to some of our security services including the DSS and the military, said in a statement it issued on August 6, that in its twilight, the administration of former President Jonathan did acquire sophisticated weapons to fight Boko Haram in spite of the obstacle thrown in its path by Western nations. The weapons, PR Nigeria said, “were acquired  in the last one year after years of frustration by Western powers…We utilised some of these equipment to recover more than 22 local governments under Boko Haram terrorists and ensured that (Abubakar) Shekau (its leader) did not disrupt the 2015 elections as he had threatened.”

    However, far from debunking Badeh’s admission that the military had suffered neglect for too long, PR Nigeria only succeeded in buttressing his point. The war against Boko Haram has been on since 2009 when the military first moved against it and routed the sect from its Maiduguri stronghold. Or so we thought. For, the sect returned in 2010 with vengeance, kidnapping girls, destroying property, maiming and killing people, civilians and uniformed men alike, with greater ferocity than it did before 2009.

    By PR Nigeria’s own admission, the military was only properly equipped to fight the insurrectionists only a year ago. The excuse was that the West had refused to cooperate with Nigeria in acquiring weapons because it said it had ample evidence that the military used them indiscriminately against civilians.  PR Nigeria’s excuse is plausible. Even then it does not answer the obvious question of what happened to the tens of billions of Naira that were budgeted year in year out for the weapons and for the welfare of the security forces.

    If the authorities had regarded Shettima’s cautious criticism of the operation against Boko Haram last year as food for thought rather than cause for anger, they would probably have realised that the answer to what happened to the billions lied partly in their decision to shift the procurement of weapons from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) where it rightly belonged to the office of the National Security Agency under the favoured late General Andrew Owoye Azazi, who, as a General Officer Commanding, 1 Division, Kaduna, between January 2005 and July 2006, was implicated in, but was never charged with, the massive stealing of arms under his division and selling them to Niger Delta militants.

    The shift of the procurement of weapons from MOD to NSA was ostensibly to make it more efficient and corruption-proof. Instead it made matters far worse on both counts because the checks and balances that limited the scale of corruption at MOD were completely absent at NSA.

    If, as is obvious, corruption was part of the answer to the poor capacity of our armed forces in fighting Boko Haram, another answer came to the surface in the valedictory speech by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-General Kenneth Minimah, during his pulling out parade on August 5.

    Like Badeh along with whom he was retired, he correctly observed that the army had suffered neglect for a long time. “I was,” he said, “confronted with the decay in the service due to long periods of neglect the army had suffered.” However, like Badeh, he conveniently forgot to identify those who, for about 15 years after the civilians took over power in 1999, hardly did anything to end the self-neglect by the previous military regimes. Instead he chose, implausibly in my view, to blame some faceless people for using the insurrection to advance what he said were their sectional, tribal, religious and personal interests.

    “Because,” he said, “if we had all stood against the terrorists at the onset through public condemnation of their activities and active collaboration with the military to confront them rather than use it as a tool to advance sectional, tribal, religious and political interests, we would not have been where we are today.”

    Even without naming names it is pretty obvious that Minimah’s accusation was directed at the erstwhile opposition, which is now in power. But if the general cared for the truth, he would have been the first to admit that those in power until May – and that includes himself – were even more guilty of his charge as they tried to use everything they could to retain power.

    The lesson in all this is obvious: we cannot neglect our armed forces by stealing their budgets and expect them to stand up to an enemy of the State, while at the same time we cannot expect public support for any war against the enemy of the State if our armed forces indiscriminately attack civilians under the guise of ending the war.

  • My mid-year resolution

    My mid-year resolution

    Last week, I promised I will reproduce today, some of the responses to my column of the week before, on the lecture in Abuja last month by Nasir el-Rufa’i, the Kaduna State governor, in which he suggested that the NNPC, Nigeria’s oil conglomerate, should be scrapped. I also said I will reveal today, my mid-year resolution about the too frequent slips I’ve made in my columns in recent times, typified by the wrong date I gave for the coup that brought Major-General Muhammadu Buhari to power, as military head of state, back in December 1983.

    I made the slip in referring to a survey published by The Economist, the global London newsmagazine, on how Nigeria mismanaged its oil windfall of the early 80s. The survey, “After the ball,” was published in the magazine’s edition of May 3, 1986.

    The way our erstwhile president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, blew our most recent oil windfall, I said, reminded me of The Economist’s survey published “a few months after our soldiers overthrew the fiscally-reckless Second Republic under President Shehu Shagari and Muhammadu Buhari took over as military head of state.”

    As several readers pointed out, by May 1986, Buhari himself was no longer in power, ousted by his army chief, General Ibrahim Babangida, in a bloodless palace coup in August 1985.

    Inadvertent as the slip was, I told myself it was inexcusable and resolved that I simply have to put a stop to such slips, especially after Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, former minister of External Affairs and one of the country’s leading intellectuals, phoned to say every once in a while he referred my columns to his post-graduate students, which, in effect, he was saying I needed to put a stop to my carelessness.

    To err is human. But I’ve resolved that three more egregious slips like the last one, I’ll pack it up and turn my attention to compiling my columns, which I started in New Nigerian nearly 38 years ago, into a book.

    There are, of course, journalists/columnists who have been at it for much longer than I have, notably Dan Agbese and Dr. Olatunji Dare, who also happen to be older than me. But none comes close to me in the frequency of my errors.

    I hope and pray that I don’t have to pack it up any time soon. So help me God!

    And now to some of the responses to my piece of last week, “Aregbesola’s predicament”, and of the week before, “El-Rufa’i, PMB and our oil misfortune”.

     

    Sir,

    Your incisive article on “Aregbesola’s Predicament” failed to point out that the ongoing action by the Osun State House of Assembly is a very loud waste of time, as it is purely illegal. There is nowhere in the constitution that a serving judge or any individual outside the House of Assembly is empowered to initiate an impeachment of a governor.

    The Osun House of Assembly is setting a dangerous precedent whereby every Tom, Dick, Harry or judge who is emotionally challenged can wake up and disturb the peace of a state. Neither Justice Oloyede Folahanmi nor the Osun House of Assembly has told Nigerians the law under which they are acting. The most the State House of Assembly could have done under the circumstance was to have raised Folahanmi’s concerns on the floor of the house by way of a motion.

    Records show that this lady had raised similar dust during the tenure of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola and no one cautioned her. Now she has raised the ante. If not now, this judicial officer is a potential threat to future governors in the state because if she goes on to become its chief judge, one day, she will wake up and summarily remove an elected governor.

    Like the Americans say, “there will always be enough evidence to jail the Pope”. Justice Oloyede Folahanmi is too partisan to be a judge. It is certainly not fair to so unkindly wish away Aregbesola’s heroic interventions in education, health, infrastructure and social development.

    Segun Adedeji

    Ibadan

     

    Sir,

    Osun State had been bedevilled so much by politics of grab over the years that those involved did not want to quit the stage. They had always connived with the state civil service.

    As you rightly pointed out, Aregbesola as a human being has his own mistake(s), but it is appalling for a justice in the service of the state to raise the kind of petition raised by Justice Oloyede Folahanmi. I have tried in vain to get hold of her petition, but if what you stated is the true representation of her claim, it leaves much to be desired. How can anybody in a good frame of mind say there is nothing to show for huge debts of Aregbesola’s administration?

    As for the governor, I wonder why it took him so long to look for a way out. Is it that he is not given any allocation again after the prices of oil plummeted in the world market? If he still gets allocations though reduced, what is the extent of reduction? The governor should realise that a hungry man is an angry man. Many of the civil servants have no alternative income and not paying them is like sending them to the firing squad.

    As for the petitioner, I advise she apologise to the governor and good people of Osun State for sending a wrong signal at this point in time.

    Omo Elu posi.eluwole@springserv.com

     

    Sir,

    Aregbesola is not the only governor owing. Even oil producing states owe. l am not from Osun, but my daughter is in the state university and attests to the construction of good roads and building of schools. PDP is darkness and APC is light. That is why darkness cannot overcome light.

    Adekoya Muyiwa,

    Gbagada.

    +2348035313169.

     

    Sir,

    Are you a paid agent? First, Justice Folahanmi Oloyede is acting to character. She sued Oyinlola earlier on and if 0.00001 per cent of our educated elite emulate her, the country will move forward. The main issue, $2 billon loans and badly executed projects littering Osun State, is quite unfortunate. But what do we expect from half baked semi-literate man?

    Cardinal Wolesky,

    Sinners Redemption Assembly, Abuja.

    +2348055567777.

    Sir,

    “As and when due,” is the preferred usage, not “as at when due.” Your article on Aregbesola refers.

    Aminu,

    Minna.   +23548037042295.

     

    Sir,

    Re- ‘El-Rufa’i, PMB and our oil misfortune’ in Daily Trust, July 22, 2015. From my perspective you have said it all. The problem with our political elite and some others in the upper middle class is lack of discipline and respect for rules and laws.

    Mixed-economy is safe and flexible. Government must retain a reasonable capacity to produce. El-Rufa’i’s diagnosis is faultless. But the remedy is essentially capitalist dogma. Recent turmoil and US government bailout of a major private bank contrasts with the stability of China’s controlled capitalism.

    Ambassador Kabiru Ahmed,

    +2348033908695.

    Sir,

    I refer to the famous New Nigerian editorial published on June 29 l974, titled “Oil Money Honey or Poison” you mentioned in your column of July 22. The comments in it came to pass a long time ago. Nevertheless, Buhari government must work on the monumental plan it suggested.

    Emmanuel Olaniyan,

    +2348034683555.

    Sir,

    With respect to our oil misfortune, the oil boom of the past is becoming an oil doom, given that crude oil has made us crude, very crude.

    Eghosa  +2348033593310.

     

    Sir,

    It seems you know nil about El-Rufai. He is an opportunist, kara-da-kiyashi-daukar-marassani. He possibly, more than any single person, helped Obasanjo to enrich himself. When he is asked where are the over N500b from BPE (Bureau of Public Enterprise) sale of government companies and over N500b from sale of government properties as FCT minister, his response is people should ask Obasanjo.

    Moreover, why not make public his asset declaration? That is the dilemma. He should go quietly and enjoy his ill-gotten riches while he can and stop deceiving people. He is certainly no messiah.

    1. I. Sodangi, +2348034515166.

     

    Sir,

    I read your thought-provoking article and it is like the previous ones you wrote on privatisation years ago. The points you raised were similar to the issues discussed by Naomi Klein in her book, “Shock Doctrine”.

    Let’s remind ourselves what El-Rufa’i said in his book, “Accidental Public Servant”, about the suspicion by OBJ (President Olusegun Obasanjo) of his Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, on the privatisation exercise which El-Rufa’i headed then. It is safe to say that Nigeria began privatisation at a time inappropriate, considering the level of corruption and impunity which largely made most of the public companies comatose. Did Nigeria care to know the where-abouts of the officials who by commission, omission or design made the companies inefficient?

    This is what apologists of privatisation fail or refuse to understand. To them, our public companies must be sold by whatever means necessary. This is the misfortune of Nigeria!

     

    Kawu Bala,   kabaaz@gmail.com

     

  • Aregbesola’s predicament

    Aregbesola’s predicament

    Yesterday Justice Oloyede Folahanmi, a judge of the Osun State High Court, would have made history for the second time as the first judge to testify before a legislative committee on why she believed the governor of her state and his deputy should be impeached by the legislature (i.e. charged with an offence committed while in office) and subsequently sacked.

    The first time she made history was last month when she petitioned the House of Assembly and urged its members to investigate its governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, and his deputy, Otunba Titi Laoye-Tomori, in line with sections 128 and 129 of the constitution in order to establish the grounds for removing both from office in line with sections 188 and 189 of the constitution.

    By her petition to the House of Assembly, she has stood the procedure for impeaching an elected government official on its head in the sense that until she came along, it has never been heard of for a judicial officer to initiate impeachment proceedings. Rather the procedure invariably ended with the appointment by the legislature of a panel presided by a judge to investigate allegations against an elected government official so as to establish the grounds, if any, for removing the official.

    As things turned out, Justice Folahanmi failed to honour her scheduled appearance yesterday before a committee of the Osun State legislature to defend her charges, which were essentially against the governor, with his deputy apparently added only as a footnote. However, in failing to appear before the Ad-Hoc Committee appointed under the Deputy Speaker, Hon. Akintunde Adegboye, to investigate her petition, the judge was represented by a lawyer, Mr Lanre Ogunlesi (SAN), who asked for a new date for his client. None was fixed and all indications are that none will, because the judge may have lost the will to defend her charges.

    Her Lordship’s petition contains charges against Aregbesola that are truly grave. The governor, she had said with all the solemnity a judge can muster, is a hypocrite, a spendthrift and a thief. Some examples of the governor’s spendthrift and venal ways, she said, were “the cruel and harsh debasement of pensioners and civil servants in deliberately and maliciously withholding their salaries for months on end…”

    Another example, she said, was that “there is nothing on the ground in Osun to indicate or justify (the) huge gargantuan quantum of loan” the governor took to build infrastructure in the state. As for his hypocrisy, she said, while few people spoke against corruption especially at the centre like the governor, his own stank to high heavens. The governor, she said, was “guilty of unjustified assassination of the character of a sitting president and of moral murder.” This is an obvious reference to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, whose presidency is turning out to be the most venal by far in possibly Africa’s history.

    Her petition, she said, was nothing personal. “I declare that in presenting this petition,” she said, “I am not in any way motivated by malice, spite, pecuniary interest or promise thereof, nor am I propelled by a desire for higher office…”

    As someone who has had more than a nodding acquaintance with the politics of Osun State and who has written at least twice about Aregbesola’s record as governor, I was shocked that anyone, not to talk of a judge of a high court for who restraint is a necessary virtue, can accuse the governor of the high crimes Her Lordship mentioned in her petition.

    No doubt, Aregbesola is one of the country’s most controversial governors, not least because he was among the first governors to adopt a state flag and state anthem and, even more controversially, he was the first to declare the first day in the Muslim calendar a public holiday in his state in 2012, probably because it has the largest proportion of Muslims among the Southwest states.

    That declaration alone has since made him a marked man among non-Muslims in a state famous for producing at least two of the country’s leading Pentecostal pastors. And not even his attempt to assuage Christians hurt by building what PUNCH called a “misguided church project”, in its editorial of January 21, last year, changed the minds of some powerful opposition elements in their determination to deny him a second term in August last year.

    PUNCH was right to criticise him for planning to build a church for, in a multi-religious country like Nigeria, government has no business building churches or mosques or any place of worship, for that matter. Nor has it any business sponsoring people on pilgrimages.

    The newspaper was, however, wrong to have criticised him, as it did in 2012 for declaring the first day of the Muslim calendar a public holiday. After all, it is the constitutional prerogative of a governor to declare any symbolic day a public holiday.

    However, right or wrong, criticisms of the man over his politics of religious identity have cast him unfairly in the image of an Islamic fundamentalist. Sadly, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party in the state tried to reduce his re-election bid last year into a religious issue. Happily it failed; he won his re-election with about 392,600 votes to Senator Iyore Omisore’s 292,700 or so. And as if to rile the opposition party even more, he won the re-election in spite of its alleged attempt to use the army, police and other security services to rig the election as had happened in the neighbouring Ekiti State earlier.

    Following the elections the PDP candidate petitioned against his loss all the way to the Supreme Court – and lost all the way. However, Aregbesola’s predicament suggests that PDP and those opposed to his victory are still determined to achieve through the rear window what they have been unable to get through the front door.

    Their main weapon of choice seems to be his failure to pay the state’s civil servants and pensioners for over 10 months. Her Lordship says the governor has defaulted because he has frittered away the state’s resources. She seems to have forgotten that until the oil revenue crunch from last year, the governor paid the state’s civil servants their salaries not only as at when due. He also paid them a bonus of a 13th month each year.

    And when she said there was “nothing on the ground” to justify all the loans the man took to build infrastructure in the state, she was clearly speaking out of character of a judge since judges are not supposed to indulge in hyperbole. The fact is that no one who has been in Osun would deny that Aregbesola has turned Osogbo, the capital, and much of the state, into a giant construction site. One telling evidence of this is that Osogbo has never known any flood, much less the devastating one it was used to, since he became governor. Again, no fair-minded person can deny that he has also invested meaningfully into the future of the education of the state’s population.

    Aregbesola, of course, has had his fair share of mistakes. One of them is the purchase of helicopter, which is essentially for his personal use. Another, as far I am concerned, was his payment of 13th month salaries to civil servants when the going was good. There are possibly others more. But the fact that he has been singled out for widespread bashing over his inability to pay civil servants in his state is proof positive that his predicament is more partisan politics than anything else. After all he is only one of about 27 governors who have failed to pay their civil servants, in some cases for much longer than he has. Besides, unlike most of them, he has been honest enough to own up to his failure.

    Aregbesola should, however, accept that it’s mere cold comfort that he is not the only governor who has failed in his responsibility to his civil servants, marginal as they are as a percentage of the state’s population. As a compassionate politician, he owes at least himself to be counted among the best not the worst. He must therefore find a way out of his predicament.

    The first step is to sell the state helicopter even if it fetches little revenue. It is a symbol of self-aggrandisement he can do without. Second, he should travel out of his state far less frequently than he has. Third, he should reduce the size of his aides and cut their allowances.

    All these may not add up to much in solving his fiscal problem. But they do mean a lot as evidence that he shares the pains of ordinary folks in the sacrifice they’ve been making because hard times are here.

    Re: El-Rufa’i, PMB and our oil misfortune

    I received about a dozen texts, a couple of emails and phone calls, notably from Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, over my column last week. All but three of the texts were on my egregious mistake about the date of the coup that brought General Muhammadu Buhari as military head of state in December 1983. Space does not allow me to publish those reactions today. I’ll do so next week, God willing. And reveal my half-year resolution about what has become my “usual slips”, as one reader unkindly, but accurately, put it.