Category: Yomi Odunuga

There are clear and present signs that the much-hyped Muhammadu Buhari ‘transparency and change’ Presidency may end up a big hoax. And if that happens, it would be the biggest tragedy of Nigeria’s warped political experience. There is nothing wrong with a gentle reminder for those who care to listen that Buhari did not become Nigeria’s President by default or by a stroke of luck like some of his predecessors. He is not, in any way, an accidental leader foisted on a sleeping nation by sheer providence and neither did he sprout into the presidential seat as a result of the selfish machinations of a band of powerful godfathers. Buhari happened because the nation saw in him a vision of hope, integrity and a refreshing beginning for a country tethering in hopelessness. Buhari happened because, for the first time, a determined populace was battle ready to shove off the incumbency factor and plant a trusted leader on the saddle. Buhari happened because his script couldn’t have been written at a better than a period when the nation was bleeding from all pores, groaning under the weight of an insensate, financially reckless and abysmally clueless leadership. At that time, hurricane Sai Baba was an inevitable reality in our national life and it did come to pass.

Sadly, Nigerians are increasingly confused about who or what they actually voted for. They crave for change but what they see is ‘the same of the same’ as they put it in the local parlance. Some, in the absence of a better word, have dubbed the Buhari change train as tantamount to boarding a ‘one chance’ bus. And, if the truth must be told, the despicable shades of shenanigan that Nigerians are being treated to today in governance is far from the lofty ideals that Buhari promised us in his inaugural speech on May 29, 2015. In case he has forgotten, let me hasten to remind the President of some key nuggets in his inaugural speech before questioning his seeming inability to walk his talk some 28 months into the saddle. Did Buhari remember his vow to ensure that Nigerians do not succumb to hopelessness and defeatism with his determination to change the narrative by fixing the problems without let or favour? Did he still remember how he wowed his audience with that famous quote of being everybody’s but nobody’s friend? Surely he couldn’t have forgotten that he chastised some past leaders for behaving ‘like spoilt children breaking everything and bringing disorder to the house.” We need not remind him that he promised to devote his energy to rebuilding and reforming “the public service to become more effective and more serviceable” and ensure that they “apply themselves with integrity to stabilise the system.”

You know what? Buhari’s pontifications would be nothing but cheap talk if he does not start taking decisive action to rein in the errant charlatans that hover around him. There are some things that simply don’t make sense and those things are beginning to define the governance architecture of this administration. It is an unfortunate truth that we must bring to the attention of Mr. President before his administration self-destruct. An unsavory example of this was the leaked memo a key member of his cabinet and Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, wrote to the President, complaining about the act of sabotage and insubordination by the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru. If we had doubts that the NNPC is yet to wean itself of the moniker as the cesspool of corrosive corruption, Kachikwu’s letter simply attest to the fact that nothing has changed beyond the window-dressing and peripheral act of replacing one set of personnel with another clique with a mandate to be loyal to the government of the day. That, by the way, is not the change that would inject some semblance of integrity and stability in the system. Why, in any case, did the electorate suffered to remove the Jonathan administration from power only to embolden another set of economic plunderers and egoistical characters in power.

In his memo which has since gone viral and has thrown spanners in the good leadership poster boy image being portrayed by the government, Kachikwu fell short of accusing Buhari of condoning the arrogant, utterly disrespectful and atrocious management style of Baru. Although he did not directly trace Buhari’s seeming softness to wield the big stick against Baru to some primordial ethnic affiliation which has become a recurring decimal in the President’s appointments, the internal memo drips of such innuendoes and more. It is also instructive that Kachikwu’s reference to allegations of graft against him underscores the viciousness of the politics at play. Our people say there is no smoke without fire. If that memo were to be a normal routine in the life of an administration as the bureaucrats in the Ministry would want us to believe, then there wouldn’t have been any need to resort to reporting the slimy details of the many sins of Baru for the President’s attention. They would have been discussed at a high level meeting with the President. Unfortunately, nothing was left to our imaginations.

Hear him: “Mr. President, in over one year of Dr.  Baru’s tenure, no contract has been run through the Board. This is despite my diplomatic encouragement to Dr. Baru to do so to avoid wrongfully painting you as a President who does not allow due process to thrive in the NNPC. Given the history of malpractices and the public perception of the NNPC as having a history of non-transparency, the NNPC Tenders Board (NTB) cannot be the final clearance authority for contracts it enters into. As in many cases of things that happen in NNPC these days, I learn of transactions only through publications in the media. The question is why is it that other parastatals which I supervise as Minister of State or Chair of the Boards are able to go through these contractual and mandatory governance processes and yet NNPC is exempt from these? I know that this bravado management style runs contrary to the cleansing operations you engaged me to carry out at the inception of your administration. This is also not in consonance with your own standards of integrity.

And so, we got to learn that this bravado management style has led to the awards of contracts worth $25bn and still counting. We have also learnt that Baru told the Minister of State that he is, at best, a meddlesome interloper in the affairs of the NNPC as the substantive Minister of Petroleum Resources and President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari (GCON), was always at hand to grant approvals to all proposals tendered to him. It is not even impossible to assume that the imminent collapse of the oil sector only exist in the jaundiced imaginations of Kachikwu who confessed to being ‘blocked’ from seeing his boss even as attempts made by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to compel Baru to consult with Kachikwu before initiating contracts and appointing top personnel into key positions were rudely rebuffed. Is it not safe then to conclude that Kachikwu was just a lame duck cabinet member merely filling the quota as stipulated by the Nigerian Constitution? Is this why this exceptionally brilliant man was poached from one of the country’s leading oil firm? To be used and dumped after Buhari has taken a firm grip of the milk factory and appointed his trusted eggheads to take charge?

And what exactly is the shape and form of this bravado management style? Is that a new one in the lexicon of our economically-raped nation? No, not really. The only thing that has changed is the personality not the style. In the immediate past, we were told how a minister saddled with that responsibility, buoyed by the assured backing of her boss in Aso Rock, fleeced billions of dollars from this same NNPC. We have seen how some oil chiefs stockpile raw dollars in millions in hideouts while others invest their stolen oil money on properties scattered across the globe. With the inception of this administration, we had thought things would be done differently because the new sheriff in town was a no-nonsense and an unbiased statesman whose sole focus was to drag the nation out of the hellhole it has found itself for many years. That was what we thought but, sadly, that was not what we are getting going by the latest shocking revelations that the rot persists with a presidential approval to boot!

Disgruntled elements’ is one of the legacies left by Nigeria’s military regimes to describe an extremely wide range of critics, potential coupists and all others who are hurting or suspected of lacking the 100% loyalty that military leaders demand. Today, it is obvious that the entire architecture of the contraption called Nigeria is hurting badly. And we, the collective that goes by the name Nigerians, are the architects that have wrought this havoc on our once-beloved nation by our action and inaction. Oftentimes, because we adorn our faces with vibrant laughter, you rarely get to know the deep-seated hatred and seething anger threatening to burst in our underbellies. We live in deceit, love with uncanny deception and cuddle friendship with the slippery gait of a viper. Just take a look at us and see how we have become a country surviving on the fringes of a self-inflicted conflagration. Even the plastic laughter betrays the mutual distrust we all carry like a plague. Together, we are the pallbearers of the unmitigated sorrows that pervade our land. Nigeria is bleeding from all pores and we, the disgruntled lot, blame everyone else but ourselves. The journey to this sorry state did not start today and it is definitely not going to end by military fiat until we look ourselves in the mirror and dispassionately confront the crying truth that has made us to tread this bumpy route of a movement trapped in cycle motionlessness.

Put crudely, it is nothing but a hollow verbiage to posit that this country derives its strength from the historical realities of our diverse cultures. Well, that could have been the case in those days when the Wazobia spirit was trending. Today, evidence abounds to show that we have all become ethnic jingoists and local warlords majority of whom no longer see through the larger picture of a country united in diversity. We just can’t let go of those time-worn primordial sentiments. Nothing typifies this hypothesis than the varying shades of opinions that have emerged from the ashes of the recent move by the Federal Government to checkmate the activities of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) led by Nnamdi Kanu. To be sure, IPOB, like its variants in other geo-political zones, is a touchy topic. The common denominator, regardless of whatever grudge we may nurse against one another, is that there are genuine grounds for agitations by the various ethnic nationalities in this country. No doubt, the way the system is run now has given room for people to question the sense in staying in an abusive marriage that continues to violently trample on all the tenets that make conjugal bliss a possibility. And so, I support the fact that IPOB has raised germane questions concerning a seeming deliberate effort to punish the South East people for failing to vote massively for the ruling All Progressives Congress led by President Muhammadu Buhari. We cannot, for the sake of political correctness, shy away from this fact.  All we need to do is scratch the surface a little and the facts would nudge our conscience. And that’s if we still have any left.

Having said that, it is also important to stress that the leadership of IPOB has not only been irresponsible but it has also been utterly disrespectful if not abrasively petty in its utterances. Surely, there are finer and dignified ways of making a point without casting aspersions on people from other regions and tagging them unprintable names. In every enlightened society, freedom of speech is exercised with grey-haired wisdom and respect for the rights of others. It is definitely not a passport to spew inanity ad-infinitum. Therefore, those who try to justify certain quotes linked to the IPOB leader miss the point when they argue that it should be acceptable in a democracy. Does that then mean that democracy has inelastic ethos and rules? Could it mean that they didn’t see the need to advise the agitators to operate within the bounds of decency whilst pushing for whatever they believed in? Do they find it justifiable that tribes that make up the entity called Nigeria have been pumped with loads of acidic diatribes and vitriolic punches by a group that purports to be non-violent in its agitations? Was the deafening silence in the face of the inciting insults propelled by a genuine identification with the course of IPOB or by the simple fact of ethnic bonding?

True, Kanu said many contemptible things about Nigeria and Nigerians. He stands condemned for that. However, there are moments when he equally drew our attention to some discomfiting facts about our continuous existence as a nation—-moments when he questioned the foundations of this Lugardian contraption. What, if I may ask, makes us a nation beyond the pretext of what colonialism patched up in the 1914 amalgamation? Maybe we should start sifting the positives from the bitter words that come forth from the vocal cavity of that angry young man. He cannot possibly be all negativities without some redeeming nuances. In the real sense of it, is Nigeria not a jungle of deferred hope and a zoo of trapped dreams? For countless years, the ethnic nationalities have been enmeshed in a whirlwind of fettered aspirations with a pretentious leadership living in denial that a restructuring could just be the saving grace for a country that may erupt into violent war for secession if care is not taken. For all we know, errant Kanu might just be a warning signal for the unfathomable crisis that may befall our nation if we continue to insist on living together without doing anything to right the obvious wrongs that have burrowed a deep gulf of mutual suspicion among us.

Like many have said, a million python dance can only delay the agitation for a just and fair deal but it cannot quell it as long as things remain the same. We need to accept that we have wronged one another and would have to negotiate if this forced marriage is not leading us to a perfidious end. Making sense out of the truckloads of the bile-filled nonsense that Kanu spewed wouldn’t be that difficult if we, for once, shed the political tokenism on display from all corners and focus on the real issues. First, Kanu must understand that he was playing vile politics with his ethnocentric comments and total disregard for the sensibilities of others in the pursuit of a better deal for the Igbo nation. The Federal Government, which unleashed a cruel python dance on IPOB members, should also admit that it carried the joke to a dizzying height when it accused ‘disgruntled’ losers in the 2015 election and pilferers of the nation’s treasury of sponsoring the now-labeled terrorist IPOB. The Ohanaeze Ndigbo should also realise that it was not enough for it to shout blue murder against the alleged persecution of IPOB members when it disingenuously sat on its hands as the group went on an overdrive in its attempt to be heard. The opposition Peoples Democratic Party also resorted to silly politicking in its response. Even Senate President Bukola Saraki ought to understand that he was simply playing to the gallery with his cheap, hasty and reckless statement to wit he suggested that the government’s action was unconstitutional. It was a comic relief to hear him assuming the role of Voltron, the saviour of the universe, with his decision to ‘investigate’ what happened in the South-East. Now, that’s laughable. If the National Assembly has taken the gauntlet to genuinely address the yearnings and aspirations of the ethnic nationalities, Nigeria wouldn’t have degenerated to this level where armed conflict is becoming a scary option. But because we have a gathering of selfish charlatans adept at being politically correct in our seasons of national tragedies, Nigeria is bursting at the seams with a likely possibility of an implosion that may consume it. Or was it not this same Saraki’s National Assembly that failed to vote for devolution of power in its last outing? How then can anyone trust these guys on doing anything differently with the restructuring cry even if they have been huffing and puffing on their return from a prolonged recess earlier in the week?

You won’t see us come
In the night
With these knives
And these bloodstains on our hands·
Paint the walls
Taste the blade
On the night of long knives
Midnight we kill

— ‘Night of Long Knives’ lyrics by Machine Head Band

The ‘Night of the Long Knives’, also called Operation Hummingbird, was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of completely unexpected political extrajudicial executions against leaders of its own paramilitary wings. It ended up being used to ensure a former riff-raff’s absolute hold on power in Germany. The situation in Nigeria is not that deadly but it is increasingly obvious that the deadly intrigues preceding the 2019 elections are already creeping out gradually.

It was not by any mistake or accident that the Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha Alhassan, had to vomit all that nonsense about her principal, President Muhammadu Buhari. That plot was rehearsed and timed to be unleashed at that particular moment not only to gauge the temperament of the President (if he would be pushed to take a rash decision) but also to test his capacity to dissect the vagrants of political chicanery that abound here. To spell it out, what Alhassan did was not bravery neither was it borne out of naivety. It was, in the main. That reality would soon be clear to her when the people goading her to dance naked pull the carpets off her dancing feet. For now, she sure must be enjoying her days in the sun and the tremendous ‘support’ she has garnered from a particular section of the social media that sees her action as nothing but resilient patriotism, for daring to pee inside the pot of soup from which she serves her own meal. That she hugs the limelight after such an action does not vitiate the fact that the man she has shamelessly brought to public odium might be tactically leaving her to stew in her own pot of idiocy.

Now, what are the facts? Hajia Alhassan, a former Senator and candidate of the All Progressives Congress in the 2015 governorship election in Taraba State, lost to the Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate, Governor Darius Ishaku. It was a contest that could have gone her way going by the massive support she garnered but that was never to be. And, as was the practice in Nigeria’s politics of man-knows-man, Alhassan was compensated with a ministerial appointment after Buhari wasted six valuable months sorting out a ministerial list that has woefully failed to ignite any confidence as the best team that would actualise the change mantra. Alhassan, it must be stressed, voluntarily went through the drills of Senate screening and, like her other colleagues in the Federal Executive Council, swore to an Oath of Office and Oath of Allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria after which she was deployed to the Women Affairs Ministry to direct affairs. Since assumption of that office, I cannot recollect any key policy initiative that she has implemented neither can I point to any memo that Alhassan has taken to the FEC for ratification or approval. Even her handling of the returning Chibok school girls was, at best, shoddy. Alhassan it was who went public with the officially-kept secret that some of the girls were actually treated for bullets scars having experienced some dehumanizing conditions in the hands of their captors. This happened at a time the government was battling to give the girls some semblance of dignity by keeping those secrets from the public view.

But this is not about how the Minister has fared in discharging the responsibilities assigned to her. It is more about how she has failed in separating her political indulgences from the arduous task of governance. When she made that statement that she would not support a second term bid for The Presidency by President Buhari, she crossed the bounds of decency and decorum if not an outright show of disloyalty to the President and Commander-In-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Her declaration of blind loyalty to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar notwithstanding, Alhassan ought to know that taking us through that somewhat voyeuristic trajectory of the abiding bond between a daughter and her political godfather at this moment in time was nothing other than sheer treachery laden with political immaturity. If she was ever in doubt, she should go take another look at the Oath of Office that she swore to before she assumed office. There is a portion of that document that addresses issues of loyalty, allegiance and infantile sycophancy. And if she must know, she is definitely not the only Minister in Buhari’s cabinet that came through the influence of a political godfather. If her bonding to Atiku was that strong that it would influence her working relationship with Buhari, it would have been more honourable for her to throw in the towel instead of standing at the doorway and shoving putrid dirt in the living room.

Take a listen: “Atiku is my godfather even before I joined politics. And again, Baba Buhari did not tell us that he is going to run in 2019. Let me tell you today that if Baba said he is going to contest in 2019, I swear to Allah, I will go before him and kneel and tell him that ‘Baba I am grateful for the opportunity you gave me to serve your government as a minister but Baba just like you know I will support only Atiku because he is my godfather. If Atiku said he is going to contest. If because of what I said, I am sacked, it will not bother me because I believe in Allah that my time has elapsed that is why. Baba is not a mad man like those calling for my sack. They have been sending it and spreading that if Baba sees this I will be sacked.”

Well, Baba may not be mad but he is not stupid either. I doubt if his protracted ailment has made him that senile that he wouldn’t identify elevated insult when thrown at him. By all shades of imagination, Alhassan’s conduct and unprovoked outburst clearly breached her vow to desist from allowing “my personal interest to influence my official conduct or my official decisions” and that she would “do right to all manner of people, according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will; that I will not directly or indirectly communicate or reveal to any person any matter which shall be brought under my consideration or shall become known to me.” It is all written in black and white in the Oath of Office and I am sure she understands every bit of those words.

Point is: I doubt if anyone would have bothered if she had made that statement as a private citizen or an ex-minister in Buhari’s cabinet. Daring Buhari to sack her after her ill-will, jejune and sacrilegious statement was pushing her luck too far. If the plan was to tie Buhari’s hands in wielding the big stick, then the planners have missed the plot. In political battles like this, there are many ways to kill a bird. For all we care, Buhari may as well leave the enemies within to roast in their own stew while he pushes his agenda through other means. Alhassan could not hide her frustration that the President has maintained a dignified silence in an interview with State House Correspondent. Asked to define her relationship with the President, she fired a riposte dripping with bile: “”How will I know. I have not seen the President but I don’t think the President is a naive person.”

Dogs don’t eat dogs, right? No. That statement, if you ask me, is an overused cliché in the journalism world. The reality is that modern-day journalism practice in Nigeria has created a veritable platform for media practitioners to be at one another’s jugular when the occasion calls for such. And so, it is not uncommon to see highly-respected columnists with large following unleash their fangs against one another on the pages of newspapers when they disagree on issues. Sometimes, the discourse stretches to the dark secrets of the parties and seeming uncomfortable details that one would have thought should be kept far away from the probing eyes of the readers. We have also seen how a motley collection of media minders to politicians and money bags in our midst take their colleagues to the cleaners in paid advertorials, just in defence of their pot of soup. Sometimes you cannot help having this nauseating feeling while reading the kind of things they push to the public with the aim of diminishing the integrity of anyone that writes the hard stuffs on their principals. And that is regardless of how true the story in question may be. So, we do know that dogs do eat dogs when interests, whether pecuniary or otherwise, are involved.

What we didn’t know is that the espirit-de-corps that exist among the various security agencies is also under serious threat as officers now kick fellow officers in their damn backside without any care in the world. It is even worse when such officers are within the same security unit as the case is, in the ongoing face-off between the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris and Senator Isa Misau, a Deputy Superintendent of Police whose controversial ‘retirement’ from the Police Force has been placed under intense scrutiny by his former partners in fighting crime and criminality. Normally, when things get to a head among these privileged officers, they get settled over plates of pepper soup and assorted wines at the Officers’ Mess with backslapping interlaced with jokes. Usually, all is always ‘correct’ at the fence-mending gathering. But, this time, it appears Misau and the Police authorities are going for the broke and the hidden lies regarding the open secret shady deals being perpetrated by the rank and file are being exposed with clinical accuracy by active participants.

First, let me note here that Idris was the first chief of police that openly violated the esprit-de-corps rule when, on assumption of office, he accused his predecessor, Solomon Arase, of practically stealing over 15 cars from the Police car lot, as part of his takeaway freebies. Then, it was obvious that Idris had an unfinished business with his immediate boss who had accused him of insubordination for failing to officially respond to a query from his office. When fortune smiled on Idris, it was time to take his pound of flesh as his first media briefing focused on the many sins of Arase as a selfish, grab-anything-available devil in police uniform. On the other hand, Idris presented himself as a squeaky clean, untainted law enforcement officer who was out to right the pyramid of wrongs in a force that has earned for itself the unflattering tag as Nigeria’s most corrupt entity followed by the judiciary. In fact, Idris said he was out to effect a positive change in line with the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s change mantra. And with that vow, Idris, one had thought, settled down to the business at hand. Or so it seems.

However, it appears there is more to that façade of incorruptibility etched on Idris’ rank going by the vomit of Misau on how the Police fleece billions of naira off corporate bodies and individuals in the guise of offering security services. Misau, who is Chairman, Senate Committee on the Navy, had pointedly accused the IGP’s office of ‘cornering over N10bn monthly Internally Generated Revenue and also taking bribes to post Commissioners of Police to juicy states.” In addition, Misau disclosed that he was a victim of the totally corrupt and warped system when he was unfairly punished by the authorities for failing to meet certain extraneous demands as the Chief Security Officer to a former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and presently a serving senator. This humiliation, he claimed, led to his premature ‘resignation’ from the police which marked the beginning of a political journey that reaped him a senatorial seat. He said the exposure of the rot was borne out of a patriotic desire to see that the funds are judiciously deployed to the appropriate units instead of the current scam in which they end up in the private pockets of some senior officers including the IGP.

Now, that was a below-the-belt punch that the IGP cannot stomach. At least, not at a time the Police was trying to lie its way out of the despicable tag of the most corrupt service-driven enterprise in the public sector. It was definitely going to be a tit-for-tat battle. And so, The Police came out with its own sordid details about the capricious manipulations of Misau and how he ended up in the Red chamber as a distinguished senator. A statement signed by its spokesperson, Moshood Jimoh, said Misau was nothing but a distinguished liar, a deserter and a cheap fraud. Jimoh said the name known to the authorities was Mohammed Isa Hamman who absconded from his posting at the Niger State Police Command on September 24, 2010 and not “one Isah Hamman Misau” who now parades himself as a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Describing Misau’s retirement letter as “suspiciously forged and dubiously obtained” by greasing the palms of equally corrupt officers at the desk of the Police Service Commission on March 5, 2014 which was the date on the letter, Jimoh explained that the “extant rules under the Police Act and Regulations, the Criminal and Penal Codes, stipulating a deserter as a suspected criminal under the law are applicable to Misau.” Of course, Jimoh did not fail to remind the public that there was no scintilla of truth in Misau’s claim that the Police dubiously obtain billions of naira monthly from dealings with some select citizens, to service their personal needs.

If you view the police defence of the serious allegations of graft leveled against them by one of their own as shallow, how then would you describe Misau’s explanations for the gaping gaps in the manner he obtained his retirement letter? The excuses he gave were not only tendentious but also laden with banal inconsistencies. Rather than give a direct answer, the Bauchi State born lawmaker said he was shocked that an IGP that sought his assistance to help sought out a matter with the Senate some few weeks back could be questioning his integrity as a duly retired police officer. He equally alluded to the fact that the IGP had surreptitiously offered him some form of gratification by offering a return ticket to Morocco with hotel bookings to boot. He said he declined the offer as he couldn’t decipher the reason for Idris’ Greek Gift. He said as long as he remains in possession of an official letter from the PSC authenticating his retirement, insinuations that such a document was fraudulently obtained cannot hold water.

Already, Misau has been invited by the PSC. Without any prejudice to the outcome of the investigative panel set up to investigate the allegations brought against the senator,, the rigmarole and dribbling merely authenticate the general belief that the Police is incompetent, lousy, petty and corrosively corrupt. It is quite worrisome that, by its own admittance, the bureaucracy has become a haven for fraudulent and illicit dealings such that an officer that absconded could penetrate it and obtain a duly signed discharge letter. More troubling is the allegation made by the alleged deserter that promotions are no longer guaranteed by hard work, exemplary performance or years of service but by the offering bribes in millions to the leadership of the police. As a key player, Misau couldn’t have been lying when he said his travails began when he failed to procure land for the 40 additional names sent to him by the Police hierarchy when he was the ADC to the former FCT minister. That may not be enough reason to justify the alleged desertion; yet it is a pathetic pointer to low the force has sunk in its shameful pursuit of self-glorification.

It is, indeed, a sad commentary that the Nigeria Police sink deeper in the waters of graft, majestically treading the self-destruct lane at a time when its rating is at an all-time low. It is that bad that we are now being fed with the shameful dalliances of its fellow partners in official impunity. Didn’t the late inimitable Dr. Chuba Okadigbo speak about the unwritten code of dignity that exists among thieves? Why then are these police dogs shamelessly having a feast on the cadaver of one of its own with fiendish bitterness? Question is: Now that the daggers are out, would the Police go the whole hog? Or would the matter end up like the countless cases of injustice slaughtered at the altar of police connivance with the highest bidder for justice? By the way, our elites have proven to be adept at making us feel busy with endless new scandals while collective outrage over the previous ones fade from public sensitivity. Well, if that happens to this fresh police scandal, I doubt if it will shock us. Or will it?

We in this nation are, indeed, a bunch of jokers. And it is a shame that the business of governance and nationhood has
been turned into one huge joke that comes with a big price to pay as the world’s reference point for buffoonery in tackling matters of national importance. Nothing justifies this than the endless controversies that have broken out following the return of President Muhammadu Buhari to the country after spending 103 (three months or a whole financial quarter) on medical vacation in London. While I had upbraided those who took serious exception to the President’s reference to Nigerians as “my dear citizens” for their pettiness, I never knew that some would take the whole speech to the cleaners, calling it the worst presidential broadcast ever read by a Nigerian leader since independence in 1960. Yes, the sppech was short. But it was far from being empty. Some even said that Buhari’s utter disregard for reality that he is just a first among equals in a confederation can be gleaned from the hollowness of his pitch, the arrogance embedded in the speech and the mental vacuity emblematized in the despicable manner he ‘downgraded his fellow’ countrymen to ‘ordinary dear citizens’ as if a slave master was addressing his servants. The criticism was that trite.

To push the arguments further, some have said that the President was yet to wean himself of military mentality. They said his less than four-minute national broadcast on Monday could have been taken from the archives of the military putsches of yore in which he played a prominent role. They said, instead of showing remorse, Buhari simply barked orders and relayed the old woman’s tale of his Daura meeting with the late Biafran warlord, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu, where their two-man summit arrogantly concluded that the indivisibility of Nigeria was not negotiable. They faulted the President for accusing some social media ‘warlords’ of crossing the ‘national red lines’ by questioning the rationale behind our collective bonding in the face of the remarkable difference in our socio-political interactions. And, above all things, they heckle the President for shoving the loud calls for restructuring out of the presidential window and placing it at the doorstep of the National Assembly and the privileged conservative group of elders known as the Council of State as the “legitimate and appropriate bodies for national discourse.”

You know what? This government, no matter how well-meaning its intentions, is not only running from its shadows but also playing the ostrich like the others before it. Clearly, this is not the time to seek refuge in the five leprous fingers of a National Assembly that has proven to be incapable of addressing the issue of restructuring and realignment of a nation on the throes of a break-up. The gulf is too deep and nothing has shown that a legislative patch-up would not end up aggravating the matter. I equally doubt if the Council of State, as presently constituted, could resolve the matter going by the fact that the President is not under any obligation to implement its decisions which are merely advisory without any force of authority. It should be commonsensical that shifting the goal post at this stage of the restructuring activism is tantamount to playing with fire. There can be no better time to confront the issues more than now when all manner of characters are threatening fire and brimstone if nothing is done to redress the glaring fault lines that have been with us since the Lugardian contraption of 1914.

Yes, red lines have been crossed but it is not only on the social media. Like the President noted, people have the rights to ventilate their opinions, live peacefully with others in any part of the country without let or hindrance while we keep working on an acceptable mode of coexistence with one another. That is where it stops. If you ask me, there is something uncannily unsettling about Buhari’s assertion that “Nigeria’s unity is settled and not negotiable.” With due respect Mr. President sir, that is a white lie because present realities do not justify that prognosis of one, indivisible country. Nations don’t survive on the basis of hollow proclamations. Instead, nations thrive when equity, justice, fair play and rule of law take preeminence over and above all other things. Can we, in all honesty, rate Nigeria as a nation? Have we imbibed the fine principles and ethos of democracy that make governance easy for whosoever is in control of the levers of government?
If the President must know, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And that can only happen if the people are docile enough to sleep on their inalienable rights. There is a saying that no one builds something on nothing. Those Buhari refers to as “irresponsible elements” bent of foisting problems and violence in the country are products of the many years of bad governance. They didn’t just wake up and take umbrage against the system. They are rebels with causes even some have chosen to behave like common touts in their advocacy. Over the years, these persons have raised genuine and legitimate grievances against the state and the need to address them so that everyone would have a sense of belonging. The irony is that most of the recommendations on how best to tackle these grievances were never implemented. The white papers are either in one government office gathering dust or they get stalled at the National Assembly on the pretext that only two chambers are constitutionally empowered to legislate on such issues. We have been dancing on the same floor for as long as this democratic experiment has lasted and it has taken us to this path of increasing and disturbing violent activism from all corners of the country. By the way, those who blame it all on the Nnamdi Kanu-led IPOB or the deadly herdsmen/farmers clashes across the country miss the point. Such violent agitations had been with us for long and they persist because no one has summoned the political will to grab the bull by its horn.

The point is: Nigeria’s indivisibility cannot and should not be negotiated on the shackles of AK-47 as the President’s action tends to suggest in his speech. It is one thing to challenge the nation’s security forces to ‘crush’ all elements of dissents in the system. It is another kettle of fish to tell us the mechanism the government has put in place to engage these persons with a view to addressing their legitimate grievances. By the way, I speak not only of IPOB but all the groups that have expressed total lack of faith in the ways the affairs of this country is being handled. We cannot continue to dump the resolutions of conferences in the dustbins and expect peace to reign. The gun cannot permanently silence the agitations of a repressed, abused, raped and alienated people. That is why the drumbeats of war keep sounding in spite of the huffing and puffing by the authorities to deal with dissidents. Question is: Is this government, which has expressed its belief in restructuring, ready to walk its talk or would it shift the goal post like its predecessors?
To my mind, this matter should not be waved aside like the lethargic attention being given to the dangerous invasion of the President’s office by rodents during his absence from the country. In saner clime, no one would laugh over such sacrilege. How, in the first place did rodents (of whatever hue) find their ways into the inner crevices of the President’s office such that they inflicted damages that would now force him to work from his official residence? Does it mean that bureaucratic bottlenecks stalled efforts to keep the office in good shape before the President’s arrival? Or did the President forget to drop the keys to the office to the man charged with the responsibility of coordinating the affairs of government while he was away on medical vacation? What if the Acting President had an urgent need to check some files in that office, would he have had any access to that place? How bad was the damage and how much would it cost the taxpayers this time especially now that the expertise of the Julius Berger team would be needed to chase away the rodents?
It is shocking that The Presidency has not debunked this laughable excuse as regrettable and a slip of the tongue. In fact, it would have been better if they had told us that, due to the delicate treatment of the president’s ailment, his doctors advise that he works from home for the time being. This fallacy of rodents’ invasion is a no-brainer in a year when Aso Rock and some of the Federal Government agencies appropriated the sum of N1.91bn for clearing of sewage and fumigation. In fact, details of the budget indicated that the State House, Abuja would spend N52.83m on sewage charges and fumigation while its liaison office in Lagos would spend N10m. We are spending this heavy fund on fumigation and rodents still have the effrontery to feast on the furniture and air conditioning fittings in that place! Oh, what a country!

There is a fascinating and intriguing debate going on in the rank and file of what some have, for the absence of better words, dubbed Nigeria’s clan of rapacious elite. Interestingly, while the debaters slug it out on the podium marshaling  points to outsmart one another, the chairman of the event who doubles as the inaccurate timekeeper, Mr. Corruption (whosoever the shady character is), reclines on a chair in awe of the damaging blows these clowning pugilists claim to have inflicted on him. When you listen to the arguments being pushed forward by these persons to justify their irredeemable determination to murder corruption before it kills all of us, you cannot but wonder if corruption would not be laughing back at the folly on display with relish. While the punches and jabs fly on the pages of newspapers, the joke appears to be on us and the stupidity of having these shameless wannabes in positions of authority, gloating over what is nothing other than shadow boxing with a supposed enemy that they have passionately cuddled since the days when Nigeria came to the realisation that the endemic malaise remains the Number One stealer of our hopes, dreams and aspirations.

Some 18 years into a democratic experiment that was tailored to bring astonishing developmental strides in governance, our nation is being buffeted with the same old debate about who stole more from the collective till as against who benevolently left some manageable crumbs for the populace to feast on. That is essentially what the ruling class, spread across socio-political divides, has regaled us with in the past weeks. The template for the debate was set by former President Goodluck Jonathan who, at last Saturday’s Non-Elective Convention of the resuscitating Peoples Democratic Party, took time out to gloat not only about his economic magic wand that transformed Nigeria into Africa’s largest economy, but also fed his band of fawning supporters with fabulous tales of his near-suicidal fight with corruption.

Believe me; the Jonathan tenure is not as bad as some of us have painted it. Not at all. Yet, he cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be the poster boy for good governance in a democratic setting. Nigeria is yet to get one as the search continues. And that’s where some of us disagree with him when he was President and even now that he tends to count his glaring failures as parts of his wonderful legacies.

On the podium that day, Jonathan said so many good things that should wow the crowd. Let’s give it to him. There were moments when he deserved to exhale. These moments were aptly captured in his speech. He reminded the crowd about how his administration’s electoral reforms that changed the dynamics of elections and the outcomes in the country. The reforms, we must admit, led to the unprecedented ouster of the PDP in the 2015 general elections. It is also true that Jonathan, in spite of his shortcomings, had a reasonably sound economic team whose policies scaled down the inflationary rate to a single digit compared to today’s scary 16 per cent. His impressive performance in the agricultural sector led by the current President of the African Development Bank, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, who recently won a global award for his feat should also count for something.

Laudable as these achievements and many others listed by Jonathan were, they cannot obliterate the huge blunder his administration made in the fight against systemic corruption. For, if the truth must be told, the PDP lost the 2015 elections not to what Jonathan did but to what he failed to do as President. Like some would say of the better-forgotten years of the General Ibrahim Babangida draconian reign, it was not impossible to conclude that Jonathan democratised systemic corruption by his inaction and not-so-subtle re-classification of stealing as marginally different from corruption. What that did was to embolden those who were bent on raping our national till to become criminally minded and callous in that singular pursuit. It is also to his eternal damnation that not one single high net worth looter, either in the past or under Jonathan administration, ever had his time at the courts. Instead, hirelings and closely-knit friends of Aso Rock held the national purse captive, pillaging it with reckless gusto. The evidence of how bad things were then can be gleaned from the shocking revelations by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission that billions of dollars disappeared into private pockets especially from the Office of the National Security Adviser and the nation’s cash cow—the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Sometimes, when you read the figures, you wonder why this country has not officially been declared bankruptcy!

And what did Jonathan have to say about that? Well, he said: “Our approach to fighting corruption may not have plugged all the leaks in the system; in fact, no nation has ever been successful in eradicating the cankerworm of corruption. But we went about it in a sustainable and measurable manner by, among other measures, creating institutional tools like bank verification number (BVN), the treasury single account (TSA) designed to block leakages, as well as the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information (IPPIS), which eliminated tens of thousands of ghost workers, during our time.”

You know why corruption continues to fester in this country? It is because we have spent valuable time fighting it with hollow verbiage, selling dummies to the general populace that we are in a serious business of taming the monster. Not even the Buhari administration, with all its pretence to fighting corruption, has done a good job of it. It is not enough to keep shoving loads of ‘recovered’ dollars in millions at our faces when it is obvious that not one single soul has gone on trial or found guilty for the crime of grand larceny. As I write this, all the noise about how billions of dollars were shared to curry political favours through the office of Jonathan’s former NSA, Col. Sambo Dasuki, appears to be going the way of many others—a dead end. The courts are becoming tired of the endless legal gymnastics that continue to make meaningful trial a mirage. Meanwhile, corruption soaks all that in and grins, knowing the criminals allegedly involved in a do-or-die fight with it are a bunch of jokers.

I laugh when Jonathan thumps his chest for the ‘sustainable and measurable manner” with which his administration fought systemic corruption. If that was the case, then those measures left many leaks unplugged going by the humongous wealth that has been traced to some of his loyalists and close family members by sundry anti-graft agencies. It is the same way I laugh when The Presidency reverted to the old woman’s tale of blaming Jonathan for all the problems it is currently battling with as if power was not properly handed over to President Muhammadu Buhari some two years back at a ceremony with pomp and panache. I equally went into a reverie of wild guffaw when I reminisced over the antecedents of the Association Of Clappers at the Eagles Square venue of the PDP convention last week. It is only in this country that a gathering with a sizeable number of party chieftains with corrupt cases hanging over their necks would be threatening to take over power as if that is all that matters! But can anyone blame them when they are doubly sure that a large chunk of their partners in crime are presently running the affairs of state with a President whose state of health has grievously incapacitated him from separating the wheat from the chaff!

And then, I burst into raucous laughter when I read Madam Diezani Allison-Madueke’s well-written defence that all the billions officially linked to her by the EFCC were salaciously cooked up from the warped and fertile imaginations of the Ibrahim Magu-led anti-graft body. To her, it was all about political persecution, intimidation and media trial borne out of envy over her stellar performance in office. Chai! And so, Diezani said the $153.3m that was recently tracked and forfeited to the government was never her money. Well, that’s cool. After all, the money was ‘stolen’ from the NNPC and it has been legally ordered back to the government treasury. She also said she was never indicted by Italian prosecutors as a key beneficiary of the $1.3bn  Malabu OPL 245 oil block loot. For the records, Madam first Nigeria’s oil minister and OPEC chief said she was never the owner of the “mansion in Asokoro, Abuja, worth $18million (approx. N9billion)” and that the only country home her family built in Yenagoa was made possible by a loan she picked from a bank and that no $700m was ever found in her Abuja home. In a nutshell, she was as straight as she could be. Her sin, according to her, was working to make Nigeria great again!

 And that is it. We are back to where we left. We just keep moving in circles. The rich in this clime are never corrupt. They are just being persecuted for being rich and influential. Even when they transform overnight from struggling peasants to billionaire governors, senators and briefcase contractors, they can never be wrong. They hardly go to jail. Instead, they walk away with a slap on the wrist.

Our federal universities, like most other public institutions, have gone to the dogs. Yes, majority of them are still respected as fountains of knowledge and academic excellence – at least, going by the yardstick we set for ourselves in the education sector. But, administratively, these highly revered havens of scholarships appear to have lost grip of what it means to be fiscally responsible and accountable. The first warning shots that these tertiary institutions’ day-to-day affairs is being left in the hands of academic eggheads that are grossly deficient in character was fired by the Chairman of the Senate Ad-Hoc Committee on Misuse, Non-Remittance and Fraudulent Act of IGR by Government Agencies, Senator Solomon Adeola, some weeks back. In its findings, the committee was unsparing in labeling the administrators of these institutions as being thoroughly corrupt, fraudulent and shamelessly incompetent. I had said then that it should be a big deal if a Senate committee could come up with such damning verdict about the leadership of a sector whose responsibility is not just to impact knowledge to those we gleefully refer to as leaders of the future but also imbue them with lasting character that would define their interactions with the society.

Adeola’s declaration left much to one’s imagination. I had then ruminated on the dire implications of having citadels of learning being run on the wheels of systemic fraud. Listen to him: “The financial management of our universities is in such a parlous state with many of them like the Federal University of Technology, Minna presenting obviously fictitious documents and figures all in an attempt to exonerate themselves from non-remittances of revenue generated while completely expending all revenues generated on sometimes, frivolous expenditure heads. The type of education that these universities will be giving to the students if they are run with the Vice Chancellor not being able to recollect the number of students in his school, the number of bed spaces available and paid for by students as well as present development levy fees”. Ouch!!!

In a statement signed by his media adviser, Kayode Odunaro, the Senator noted that in brazen disregard for extant laws, an average federal university “generates about N500m per annum without remitting a dime to the Consolidated Revenue of the Federation”;  that the authorities normally “avoid declaring surplus or claim huge losses to evade remittance”; and that those that appeared before the committee had requested “to go and prepare a new account after the committee discovered serious lapses running into hundreds of millions in their accounts!” In short, what was on display war raw theft. No finesse!

Funny? Not really. Little did we know then that what Adeola said was just a tip of iceberg. At that time, not one out of the 12 federal universities’ Vice Chancellors that appeared before the committee could justify this absolute disregard for fiscal discipline, accountability and integrity. And when Adeola said the accruable IGRs were used to finance ‘frivolous expenditure heads,’ it never occurred to me that while most of these institutions lack basic facilities that would enhance academics, some of their leaders go home monthly with fat allocations as ‘furniture allowance’ and sundry other perks. Of course, we have become used to how members of the National Assembly, their partners in crime in the executive and heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies fleece our collective patrimony by appropriating heart pumping money to themselves including those that would take care of the numerous paramours and toy boys scattered across their guest houses. What we did not know is that the shining light in the academia—those that were, in the past, always ready to serve as the conscience of the nation and prick the dead conscience of these looters—have also joined the bandwagon of eminent kleptomaniacs and killers of the Nigerian dream.

If the disclosure had come from sources other than the mouth of the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, one would have dismissed such grave allegations as one of the despicable tissues of lies stacked against our hardworking academics. But Rasheed did not only accuse these administrators of monstrous and systemic malfeasance of funds kept under their watch, he said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is already on their trail and would soon be inviting them for questioning. With the connivance of bursars, Rasheed said the grand larceny was perfected. With that, he revealed that some Vice-Chancellors cream off N480,000 monthly as furniture allowance in addition to several other deductions that were not part of the details of their salaries and emoluments as contained in their letters of engagement. And so, as furniture allowance alone, these privileged teachers, opinion moulders and character shapers take home a princely sum of N5.7 million yearly.

 Speaking at a workshop on economic recovery and growth for bursars, Rasheed spent time to highlight the pitiable rot of financial indiscipline in most universities. Bursars, he said, appeared to be in a fierce contest to outsmart one another with the way they deploy their professional wizardry in entrenching waterproof financial irregularities, flouting financial regulations, sidetracking university regulations especially those dealing with federal circulars from government agencies. It is so bad that Rasheed said salaries and emoluments for vice chancellors were as varied as the number of federal universities in the country. What this means is that the entire system is in a complete mess.

 Listen to him: “There are many areas where you have to put your heads together. We have a lot of problems and you know them. If we may ask you as bursars in federal universities, what salaries do you pay your Vice-Chancellors? You will see that there may be as many salaries as there are many universities here. Many universities fail to interpret what we mean by the Furniture Allowance. Common sense tells us that the government will never allocate N5.77m as furniture allowance to the VC. Yet many bursars in many universities allow Vice Chancellors to take N480,000 monthly as furniture allowance and you know it is wrong. This is why whenever the EFCC comes, there is a crisis and the VCs and the bursars are the easy targets.”

 When you sift through Rasheed’s words, you cannot help having this feeling of the angst of a frustrated man. For a body that has been taken to the cleaners by the Senate committee for its reckless disavowal of everything that has to do with fiscal responsibility, it is not surprising that the head of the body that superintends over the activities of these universities’ administrators would be miffed at the scale of the systemic fraud and the impunity with which it was being clinically executed. How, for example, did the bursars reach a decision to grant VCs the privilege of earning N90,000 as Duty Tour Allowance when their counterparts in the Ministry of Education earn the N20,000 stipulated in the books? What do they spend monthly in running their offices? What do they take home as wardrobe allowance? How many official cars and drivers do they have at their service? What is their Basic Travelling Allowance when they go outside the country? Like some other pampered executives, do they have generator, housemaid and houseboy allowances?

 Without any prejudice to the cases of graft against some Vice Chancellors and bursars at the courts, I believe the university authorities would have to have a rethink in the ways their finances are being handled if they are keen on winning a waning public trust. Like Rasheed noted, it is practically impossible for the government to grant full autonomy to public universities when those entrusted with the funds provided by the same Federal Government waste them on frivolities. If care is not taken, the entire system might ground to a halt. Even where universities source for funds, common sense ought to dictate that that the funds should be judiciously used in the overall interest of the academic community. It, therefore, leaves a sour taste in the mouth and a putrefying stench in the nose that Vice-Chancellors have become the butt of jokes in the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly for their inability to give believable accounts on how they have taken charge of the communities entrusted in their care. It is sacrilegious that where an equally questionable National Assembly had expected some sound logic on how best to commit oneself to probity and accountability in public office, academic eggheads are being brazenly accused of defending their incompetence with forged and doctored documents. Question is: How and when did things go this awfully bad in our universities that its leadership is now in a My Mercedes Is Bigger Than Yours rat race with professional treasury looters? How?