The Nation Newspaper

Category: Yomi Odunuga

  • Ngige’s sickening resort to political escapism

    The political trajectory of one-time governor of Anambra State and Nigeria’s Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, remains a riveting stuff that still awes many political watchers. Though his reign as governor was short-lived, his tenure witnessed the most brazen assault on the country’s burgeoning democratic culture. Interestingly, his ‘abductors’ nay political godfathers then, still play less than salutary roles in the nation’s wobbly match to democratic sanity. While one is a ranking senator in the 8th Senate with a juicy committee chairmanship to boot, the other, who happens to be the chief protagonist of the Ngige abduction saga is battling tooth and nail to unseat a brother he labels an interloper on a seat that rightly belongs to him. Some odd nine or more years back, you would not blame Ngige if he had forgotten so soon that the current Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, then Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, became a major casualty of that power game. For daring to write former President Olusegun Obasanjo to halt the sickening madness in Anambra by calling those behind Ngige’s humiliation to order, Ogbeh was forced to resign as chairman of the erstwhile ‘Africa’s biggest political party’ whilst the two brothers became more emboldened to exhibit a benumbing political rascality that defies logical reasoning.

    Understanding the background of Ngige’s progress in the murky waters of Nigeria’s political landscape is an imperative in this narrative. With his experience, it is logical to expect that this should ordinarily ennoble him to work for the enthronement of credible democratic ethos in the polity. His triumph over the boisterous triumphalism of Obasanjo and the Uba brothers should inspire him to work for the people irrespective of race, tribe or religion. His emergence as a Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria after losing a critical senatorial election to Mrs Uche Ekwunife is, in itself, symbolic. Providence has always placed Ngige in good stead. The gods have always cracked his palm kernels for him. Like many others, the raging fire could have consumed him in those days of long knives when Obasanjo had a stranglehold on the soul of the PDP and the nation. Instead, he emerged stronger from the wicked taunts of those baying for his blood.

    Today, Nigige is perched on a seat with an arduous responsibility to transform thousands if not millions of lives who daily forage for fate in a pauperised economic climate. Clearly, if the change mantra of the President Muhammadu Buhari led All Progressives Congress would have any meaningful impact to the teeming band of unemployed, employable and non-employable Nigerians, then Ngige would have to do more than he is presently doing as Minister of Labour and Employment.

    Unfortunately, Chris Ngige seems to be operating in the realm of political adventurism, struggling to silence the crying reality that confronts him daily. He seems not to understand the enormity of the task before him as a minister occupying such a critical ministry in a regime that vows to do things differently. If the truth must be told, aside the noise-in-the-marketplace media trial of some of yesterday’s men, the business of governance has not changed dramatically to arouse any hope. In a recent interview with The SUN, Ngige spoke glowingly about the government’s plans to elevate the status of the unemployed. Vowing that the administration would not “give N5000 for people to go and sit down at home and be sleeping; we won’t give the money to loafers and indolent persons”, he explained that, instead, the controversial N500bn Special Intervention Fund would be used to service a three-pronged programme that would convert many professionals to teachers.

    According to him, those that would benefit from the “pink and blue collar jobs” initiative would be trained in “mining, agricultural development/farming, rice, tomato cultivation, palm tree development so that we stop the importation of rice, palm oil and even tomato puree. We are going into fish farming, bee and honey development programmes. The pink-collar jobs are the service providers from those who acquire service skills. Among them are computer, GSM phones repairers, cake bakers, mechatronics, hairdressing and barbers.”

    You just cannot help but wonder if the APC is not pushing its luck beyond an acceptable minimum. Hypocrisy has been the watchword ever since critics challenged the Federal Government to implement its electoral promise of providing N5000 stipends to the unemployed in the country. Even if economic realities compel it to renege on its promise to provide some sort of social security funding for millions of unemployed youth, common sense dictates that the Federal Government should come clean instead of dribbling round the matter. It is, therefore, sheer political escapism for an experienced hand like Ngige to wail about the dearth of white-collar jobs when this government has woefully failed to address a pervading culture of shameless nepotism and favouritism in employment process in the country. If I may ask, is Ngige claiming ignorance of the civil service not-so-hidden secret that only the sons and daughters of the high and mighty routinely make the employment list of viable ministries, departments and agencies while equally qualified but poor citizens wait on the wings ad-infinitum for an invitation for a job interviews by the same MDAs? Question is: Why reserve the few available slots for the wards of the same fleecing elite like it was revealed in a recent story by an online medium. As Minister of Labour and Employment, Ngige ought to be petulantly indignant that millions of qualified Nigerians were daily being denied their rights for gainful employment by a corrosive anachronistic system that cuddles nepotism with glee. Quite sadly, he is busy waddling in political escapism and window-dressing.

    Bluntly put, there is nothing new in his ‘pink and blue collar jobs’ initiative. It is a poor copy and a needless duplication of the responsibilities of the National Directorate of Employment. Ngige is probably expecting Nigerians to beat the drums of celebration just because he revealed that the NDE would coordinate part of the programme. Well, here is the missing link. Many of these persons would have loved to compete on a level-playing field with those who get their letters of employment in the comfort of their homes. Instead of a peripheral gesture of a training programme that compels them to become emergency teachers and artisans, they would want the Ministry of Labour and Employment to develop a template where the system would no longer breed officers who shamelessly demand huge monetary gratification for jobs placement. Or is Ngige not aware that under-the-table employment cartel has taken over the MDAs and that these jobs are being sold to the highest bidders daily?

    You know what? I laughed when Ngige whined that it is only the wailing wailers and supporters of the defeated PDP that are unhappy with the ruling government. In fact, I guffawed with relish when he dismissed the claim that Nigerians are becoming increasingly angry over the hardship in the land. “I don’t know what you mean by hardship and those you call Nigerians. Are they the federal civil servants getting their monthly salaries as and when due? We do not owe them, not even allowances and there is no reason they should be unhappy with the APC government.

    Are the Okada riders among those complaining when they are making brisk businesses or the graduates? We will soon address their problem of unemployment after the passage of the budget.” He quipped.

    So, all is well with Nigeria as long as Okada riders make brisk business, federal workers earn their pay as at when due and graduates get soaked in pink and blue collar jobs. Is that the Labour Minister’s antidote to the ravaging hardship plaguing the land? If this is not pedestrian illogic, then what is? It reminds of Dr. Moses Kpakol who, as Economic Adviser to President Obasanjo, projected that the nation’s economy was buoyant because Nigerians could be seen with expensive phones making GSM calls! Such baloney! It is, to say the least, tragic that Ngige does not know that we, the hailing hailers, have technically joined the wailing wailers if that would make Buhari sit up to his responsibilities. Yes, the same Nigerians who are riotously riled about stories of the humongous larceny of our immediate past are justifiably petrified about the seeming indolence of the Buhari administration to steer the ship of state from an impending wreck with its docile acquiescence to the same rot that got us into this mess.

    With his wealth of experience, shouldn’t Ngige know when to come off the high horse of political adventurism and face the stark realities of governance? When will Buhari’s men sit their butts down to walk their talk instead of blaming former President Goodluck Jonathan for the clear and present dangers that threaten the nation’s wellbeing? When will they stop living in the past?

  • Ese, for whom our hearts bleed

    The Ese Oruru story, simple as it looks, is an intriguing piece told in dark episodic flashes. She was a 13-year-old living with her parents in a rustic community in Bayelsa State. Then she was abducted to Tofa, another rustic town in Kano, forcefullhy converted to Islam and ‘married’ by her abductor as a child bride. In a brazen move to legitimatise an illegality, her captors even sought the imprimatur of the Emir of Kano right in the presence of her mother who had come with a contingent of police to whisk the child back to Bayelsa with no success in spite of a belated Emir’s directive that she be returned. It’s the kind of tales you watch on Nollywood.

    In fact, Ese wouldn’t have burst into our consciousness if one of the nation’s leading newspapers, The PUNCH had not boldly taken up her case to confront an uncaring elitist society and a docile populace that sniggers at every heart-wrenching rendition as merely another sad dent in the Nigerian narrative. But for providence and the angst in the social media, Ese’s case could have vaporised into thin air like many other countless cases before hers. Why should the society care about the tale of a 13-year-old that was allegedly abducted from the innocence of her Bayelsa home by a supposed lover, to a culture and religion which pounced on her seeming precociousness to wrought an everlasting damage on this child’s psyche. Is it not the same society that lived in denial for months until the Chibok girls’ abduction saga became a faint appendix in our national discourse? We may shy away from it for now, but something tells me that the Ese that was returned to her parents last Wednesday was a different person. This prodigal that reluctantly came back to her doting parents is a rebel at heart– -a child suddenly thrown into complicated adult roles!

    Still, we need to ask the hard questions. This is not just about castigating a ‘wayward’ teenager for allegedly eloping with a much older lover through enticement, inducement or hypnotism. Unless we want to change the rules or succumb to primordial sentiments, the Ese Oruru story is a clear case of criminal breach of trust. As far as I know, a 13-year-old is not fully mature to take informed opinion on issues of religion, sex or even marriage. Therefore, when Inuwa Yunusa Dahiru, alias Yellow, relocated to Kano with the Oruru’s daughter without their consent, he has clearly crossed the bounds of decency. Without impugning whatever role Yunusa’s religious beliefs could have played in the whole saga, there is an urgent need to put an end to this crass madness in which certain persons criminally perpetuate evil and tarnish the beliefs of millions of others. Under our law, there could be no justification for the outright abuse of our collective humanity. Reading through Mrs. Oruru’s experience in the hands of her daughter’s abductors, it was clear that some powerful forces gleefully supported Yunusa’s criminal conduct. She could have been by a mob who gathered at the Emir’s palace, daring her determined resolve to free her daughter from Yunusa’s grip! Some men of the Kano Police Command also have questions to answer.

    What was stolen from Ese with that singular act is not only her innocence but also her humanity. She is a victim of a deadly abduction surreptitiously packaged as love. She is caught in the trap of decethe it set by Yunusa and his band of demented supporters who think that she was a willing ally in a fairy tale of elopement. They forget easily, as someone puts it, that Ese is just a “pliant and impressionable teen” hoodwinked by a fully-grown man who, in less than seven months, changed her faith and her name without the consent of her parents. Add that to the rumour that she was handed back to her parents as an expectant mother at 14 and you would grasp the extent of damage wrought on the Oruru clan. By the way, what part of our laws empowers a stranger to commit such atrocity and justify it with his religious beliefs? From the little she has said, we now know that Rita Ese Oruru did not know how she got to Kano. It was not surprising that a routine meal of bread and rice in those seven anguished months had transformed her into an old woman even at 14. She could remember that she drank mixtures occasionally but could not recollect for what purpose. She was just there, a baby who was a full time housewife in a strange land where her opinion never counted. That’s her sorry tale.

    When I say I weep for Ese, it is because I could imagine the trauma of a parent whose child has been callously deflowered, diminished and dehumanized. We all have children living under our roofs and we know the depth of the bond that pulls us together. We are a critical part of the whole, forever foraging for fate. Like all parents, Mr and Mrs Oruru had lofty dreams for the teenybopper growing under them. They may have been crammed up in that nondescript structure called home but they trudge on, clinging onto hope. That was why Ese and siblings were put in school. They know that, with education, their story would change. All it takes is perseverance and a commitment to the dream. In their wildest imagination, they would not have thought that 24-year-old Yunusa was waiting in the wings to change the trajectory of young Ese.

    When he spoke, Mr Charles Oruru sermonized about the Ese he knew. He waxed lyrical like many fathers would. Listen to him: “I don’t think a 13-year-old who is just in her early puberty stage will do something like that. A girl that does not know how to bathe well! I don’t believe she could be in love. I am very joyful that she has been released. I am waiting patiently to see her. I have missed her dancing. She is fond of dancing whenever she hears the sound of music”.

    You know what hurts? It’s not the noise in the marketplace where sentiments are being whipped up over religion, cultures and the despicable roles believed to have been played by some notable Nigerians in the prolonged, nay shameful saga. What riles one is the fact that we have become too placid as a people to understand the damage we violently inflict on the psyche of our youth, especially vulnerable children. We give impetus to paedophiles to go away with their despicable act by our inaction. Therefore, it was enough that Ese knew Yunusa and ‘voluntarily’ eloped with him to become a child bride in hijab? Where then is our sense of shame, angst and utter disgust? How many of us struggling to exculpate Yunusa would do same were our daughters to be the victims of the heinous crime? In fact, how many of us still maintain this conspiracy of silence even when we know one or two families in our areas who keep child brides as mementos of their carnal rascality?

    Mr. Oruru spoke about Ese’s love for music and her passion for dancing. That, to me, is a very moving testimonial. Unfortunately, he was merely reminiscing about a daughter he knew some seven months back, before her innocence was plucked before it could mature. From the little we have heard from Ese, that anticipated family bonding might not be a smooth ride. The transformation of the last seven months haunts her. This girl is now a woman with a different orientation, beliefs, religions and ideology. Ese may still dance to music. But would she dance to the sound of music she was used to, post-abduction? She might as well still be that girl learning how to bathe. However, is it not possible that she will inevitably be on the verge of learning how to bathe the baby in her womb? The girl is the mother of the child. She may even desire to continue her education. However, what kind of education would she crave for having gone through a life-changing experience of fate and faith? Ese may still understand the significance of family love and bond. But now that she has ‘tasted’ a different kind of bonding outside her comfort zone, which one would she cling to?

    Yes, Ese may be back to Bayelsa. But can we, in all honesty, say that her spirit is back to her roots? Where is justice for killers of dreams who walk off without punishment due to prisms that are, at best, laughable technicalities. Will Ese, who said Mathematics was her best subject in school before August 12 last year, ever grow out of the double personalities that now struggle for a space in her soul due to the callous act of a criminal underling? Only time will tell as we pray for the Orurus in this moment of joy mixed with heavy dose of sadness.

  • Now, Saraki squares up to Obasanjo

    Make no mistakes about it; the gloves are off in the National Assembly. The nation’s Senate, especially its embattled President, Bukola Saraki is spoiling for a hard-drawn, bareknuckle fight with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Perhaps, if the wily old fox had tended to the needs of the assorted commercially lucrative birds in his Ota Farm instead of picking his pen to write mendacious letters to those in positions of authority, maybe the lawmakers would not be roaring for a fight at this critical period of our national life. But because mischief is second nature to Obasanjo coupled with the nagging urge to display his writing skill after obtaining a degree in Religious Studies from the National Open University, we now have a problem to contend with. For a man whose letters made huge impact, both positive and negative in the runoff to last year’s presidential election, it is doubtful if anyone would have succeeded in persuading the Ebora Owu to lay down his poisoned pen and allow Bukola and his gang of lawbreakers to find a way out of the a pervading, nay putrefying, self-inflicted hypocrisy.

    For, if the truth must be told, there are too many hypocrites fronting as the real deal in the nation’s legislative chambers. Recall that, in the not-so-distant past, one of their colleagues had actually wondered how drug peddlers, certified fraudsters, confirmed criminals and petty robbers found their into becoming powerful members of that ‘distinguished’ gathering? In fact, that senator, a former officer of the law, was forced to withdraw the statement. That was even before former state governor, including those facing criminal trials on corrupt practices, started adopting the hallowed chamber as some sort of retirement facility. Today, a big chunk of these characters have become a sickening plague to the system regardless of their pretentious leaning to party affiliations and ideologies if there is any.

    In all honesty and even before Obasanjo puts his pen to paper, many public analysts have warned against the shameless impunity that passes as a norm in the principle of independent lawmaking in Nigeria. Even where public affairs commentators have insisted on the need to conform to the democratic reality of separation of powers, it is obvious that the leadership of the National Assembly stretches its interpretative elasticity beyond common sense. Clearly, the independence of the legislature to make laws for the good governance of the country does not impose on it the right to have a different set of rules on how it runs its affairs. Unfortunately, the shenanigan in which budgetary appropriations for the National Assembly is drawn in bulk without sub-heads has gone on for too long that successive leadership in both chambers now see it more as a right than a clear breach of the law.

    If the lawmakers would, for once, shed the sanctimonious rage and confront the wailing truth in Obasanjo’s insalubrious letter to the two chambers, they would see the sense in his plea that they ought to tread with caution in their focused craving to bask in affluence in an economy that wobbles on crutches. The allegations itemised by the former head of state are just too weighty for any lawmaker worth the thumbprint of the electorate to whimsically brush off as a ‘misplacement of anger’ like Senator Dino Melaye, the official mouthpiece of Saraki, did.

    Now, what exactly did Obasanjo say? In his so long a letter, he surmised their attitude as wasteful, corrupt and insensitive. Like many well-meaning Nigerians, he wondered why the National Assembly budgets billions of naira to buy operational cars for each lawmaker when such issues of cars, housing and welfare are adequately covered in their allowances as approved by the Revenue Mobilisation Fiscal Allocation Commission (RMFAC). “A pool of a few cars for each Chamber will suffice for any Committee Chairman or members for any specific duty. The waste that has gone into cars, furniture, housing renovation in the past was mind-boggling and these were veritable sources of waste and corruption. That was why they were abolished. Bringing them back is inimical to the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.” He reasoned.

    Okay, I agree that Obasanjo may not be the right person to beat any lawmaker into line. At least, not after Melaye reminded us that the former military head of state ‘introduced corruption’ to otherwise incorruptible lawmakers when he allegedly dashed out N50m per senator and N30m for each House of Representatives member, to actualise the failed third term agenda. Yet, I do not think what his demands are too difficult to meet by an assembly of lawmakers that vowed to do things differently and transparently. What would the National lose if it accedes to Obasanjo’s request that its finances from 1999 to date should be opened for an external auditor to vet? Would the world come to an end if the legislature and the executive genuinely tighten their economic belts in line present realities instead of wasting valuable funds on inanities like Obasanjo suggested? Or would the gathering of distinguished and honourables be ‘mocking democracy’ if they adjust their mentality to attune with “patriotism, commitment and service” to humanity?

    Obviously, the letter failed to reawaken the sensibilities of the lawmakers to the arduous role they need to play in Nigeria’s tortious developmental journey. Instead, it touched the raw scrotum of a vengeful legislature. That is how vengeance threw its hat in the ring for bloodbath with ‘anger.’ Perhaps, not satisfied with Melaye’s initial tame reaction to an ‘angry’ Obasanjo, the Senate President resorted to employing innuendos to forewarn his former boss that he would not hesitate to drag his agbada on the mud. Most newspapers aptly captured that mood when Saraki came out smoking, insisting that the visible rot that permeates the system today is the result of the callous rape of our collective patrimony since 1999. The simple question to ask is: Who was in charge of the country’s fortune in 1999? Hear Saraki: “We have all been here since 1999 up to the recent past when things were not done right. We are all part of it. I was there, you were there; every other political office holder in different capacities was there as well. The response of the 8th National Assembly is that the time for collective participation for the good of all Nigerians is here with us in line with the change mantra of the present administration. We are all on the same page for things to be done differently.”

    In all this, I guess we must give kudos to the 8th National Assembly for the maturity it has displayed so far in spite of the brashness displayed by an angry chicken farmer. Rather than confront him headlong and overheat the polity, the leadership of the Senate has chosen to ignore Baba’s politics of anger and vindictiveness. Instead, they have logged on to his books of many sins and have discovered that he actually superintended over the award of the multi-billion naira Abuja Rail Project in 2007 to a Chinese firm without Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and design. That was not all. According to Melaye, who is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory, the contract was also inflated by a whopping $10m per kilometre. As if that was not enough sin to shut Obasanjo’s mouth, the non-vindictive senator the contract was eventually reduced 45 kilometres instead of the initial 60.67 kilometres without a cut in the contact sum. Consequently, Melaye, after making a thorough research and analysis of the figures involved, said the Federal Government should demand a refund of $195.8 from the Chinese firm.

    I still don’t get point the Senate under Saraki is making with this allegation. Obasanjo and Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, who was FCT Minister when the contract was awarded, left office in 2007. If they benefitted from the presumed inflation, then Melaye should avail us the relevant documents of transactions to assure us that it was not a vindictive move spurned by anger over Obasanjo’s diatribe against the lawmakers’ self-centredness and silly greed. Besides, how come the Senate closed its oversight eyes to the criminal act for more than eight years until Obasanjo tasked them on the need put service before pure mercantilism?

    By the way, Saraki needs not recoil into his shell by denying that his statement was not directed at Obasanjo. That stone was meant for one person and the target is wise to decipher the import. Now that Melaye has unleashed the first salvo in what promises to be an interesting boxing match should Obasanjo decide to join them in the ring, one can only hasten to take prime ringside position in a circus game of political chicanery. So, let the fight begin until another circus show dims the popularity of this latest joke!

  • Where exactly did Buhari go wrong?

    President Muhammadu Buhari is in deep problem with a set of social media-savvy critics who just would not see anything good in what he does, says or refuses to say. Good intentions or not, it is one battle the President seems condemned to lose if recent events are anything to go by. By the way, this set of critics is doing everything within its reach to make sure that Buhari beats the unenviable records set by former President Goodluck Jonathan as self-acclaimed “most criticised leader’ in the world. To them, every step taken to recover stolen loot, address the gaping infrastructural deficits, strengthen the dwindling fortunes of the Naira, make government transparent and accountable or empower institutions to discharge their responsibilities without fear or favour by Buhari often manifests the crying incompetence of his leadership. That’s the illogical logic they subscribe to. If they are not attacking his policies, they swoop on his gait, his body language or even the hidden message encrypted in his traditional attire. They have become powerful leeches that not only stalk the President but also test the inelastic patience of the former no-nonsense military Head of State.

    Do not get me wrong. No one is saying that the President should not be criticised, harangued or even vilified in order to make him walk his talk. Even ordinary Knucklehead enjoys doing that. What is condemnable is the disturbing trend in which criticism now flourish in the waters of mischief and banal calumny. While I acknowledge the need to caution the President against making statements that may project the country in bad light, it is despicable that certain elements who are yet to come to grasp with the reality of a Buhari Presidency would stop at nothing to grind his nose on rocky stone. It is even more dangerous when otherwise respectable individuals ingloriously peddle falsehood – all in an attempt to denigrate a man they love to hate. Like I once noted on this page, no citizen should be under any compulsion to love or hate any particular leader. However, what I found repulsive is the way and manner the characters that have coalesced to nail the President have been going about their vengeful campaign.

    Buhari may not be anyone’s poster boy for oratorical prowess but he has not been found wanting in articulating his points. Slow in his pitch and sometimes drab in speech with diction that tests the wit of the most patient interviewee, Buhari has never failed to articulate his points to the best of his understanding. And so, when the social media went viral with the news that Buhari had done the unpardonable by labelling all Nigerians as criminals in an interview he granted a British newspaper, “The Telegraph”  during his last visit to the United Kingdom, I had to tread on the path of caution.

    A full transcript of the interview on the newspaper’s website includes President Buhari’s statement that: “Some Nigerians claim is that life is too difficult back home, but then again some Nigerians have also made it difficult for Europeans and Americans to accept them because of the number of Nigerians in different prisons all over the world accused of drug trafficking or human trafficking. I don’t think Nigerians have anybody to blame. They can remain at home.”

    At least, common sense, which is a rarity among his growing band of traducers, dictates that one ought to go through the ‘vexatious’ interview before taking a position. It is pointless to note that if Buhari had specifically described all Nigerians as criminals, as some allege, he would have automatically become the nation’s Number One criminal at the world stage. This thinking, more than anything else, fired my interest in sourcing for the full text of the controversial interview especially when the issue had become a hot topic on the Twitter handle of a serving Senator who prides himself as making common sense, oftentimes outside the Red Chamber.

    In a society where tasteless rumour catches faster than wild fire, it did not take long before these ‘patriotic’ Nigerians came up with the hash tag “###I am a Nigerian, I am not a criminal” which turned out to be the greatest hoax of this year. At least, for now. And so, right before our very eyes, a silly, denigrating kite flown by a delusional relevance-seeking senator about the leader of his country resulted in the herd mentality in which common sense took a flight and buffoonery was writ large on the canvas of hatred. They were out to criminalise the President’s statements but they ended up fooling themselves. By the way, how come no one bothered to take some time off the lunacy on the social media to find out if their target of bile actually label over 160 million Nigerians criminals? Could it be because of a blind desire to see Buhari fail?

    Curiously, Buhari said many things which those who would want him to roast in the sun ignored. Naturally, he couldn’t have been playing to their script when he said all efforts to negotiate the return of the abducted Chibok girls had come to naught because the security forces do not have “any evidence of a credible leadership” within the deadly Boko Haram sect as there was “conflicting information on the status of Abubakar Shekau”, it’s most prominent leader in the Jonathan era. Those answers were simply not the ones the opposition sought, to  latch on with the aim of demonise the President.  Not even Buhari’s veiled response to questions regarding the form of foreign military interventions that the country would get could elicit the kind of excitement one had expected from this band of critics. It mattered not that the President told the foreign media that Nigeria-trained soldiers now battle the insurgents with some degree of successes unlike in the past where the government hired mercenaries from South Africa and other countries. Yet, these were the same Nigerian soldiers who “had a good record across West Africa” before allocations to the military find their way into private pockets culminating in the current probe of $2.1bn arms money allegedly diverted by former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd.). As far as they are concerned, Buhari was merely ranting when he expressed regrets about “how the mighty has fallen.” Who cares if it stays fallen forever anyway?

    So what exactly could have drawn their ire and led to the twist in the tale in that interview? Well, they were miffed that the President failed to tell a lie or, at most, justify the craze by some Nigerians to seek asylum abroad under the pretext that their lives were under threat back home. Asked if it was “legitimate” for this set of Nigerians to use migrant routes to the UK to claim asylum saying that their lives were under the persistent threat of the Boko Haram insurgents, Buhari retorted: “Some Nigerians claim is that life is too difficult back home, but then again some Nigerians have also made it difficult for Europeans and Americans to accept them because of the number of Nigerians in different prisons all over the world accused of drug trafficking or human trafficking. I don’t think Nigerians have anybody to blame. They can remain at home. Their services are required to rebuild the country. If their countrymen misbehaved, the best thing for them is to stay at home and encourage the credibility of the nation.”

    To the senator who started it all and his twittering community, the President stands condemned for daring to deplore the criminal intents of those tarnishing an already battered image in which hundreds of our fellow citizens are serving terms for different kinds of offences. For them, common sense demands a diplomatic dribble around the question. Instead of “criminalising” all us, he could have blamed anyone else but Nigerians for risking their lives through illegal routes to get to Europe, for engaging in the dangerous world of drug trafficking, for packaging vulnerable young girls for sex slavery across the globe, for laundering billions of dollars for privileged Nigerians in high places, for engaging in shady businesses and all other dangerous ventures. As a President of Africa’s largest gathering of black people, he should have kept mum about the fact that, as at May 2015, prisons in Asian countries are swarming with over 130 Nigerians on death row over drug related offences; that the UK harbours a former influential state governor in Nigeria in its prison facility; that some are languishing in the same facilities in the United States and even in some African countries.

    That, I presume, is where Buhari missed it. He is a complete failure when it comes to living in self-deceit. His greatest undoing remains his brash commitment to saying the truth. He needs to spice it up with what those who felt criminalised by his responses would rather call diplomatese – covering the lie with some sweet fragrances of untruth. Buhari needs to learn the art of wowing his audience with hollow sophistry that leads to nowhere. For now, he is yet to learn the logic in that principle as being espoused by the senator and his deluded followers. And that’s why it would take more than a denial for The Presidency to wash off this latest allegation that he criminalises a whole nation. But it is not too late to make amends. The path to self-delusion can begin as soon as the President resumes duty. When next he flies to Europe and asked questions touching on whether Nigerians have an image problem abroad, he should fire back with an emphatic “No” instead of the long-winding response he gave in The Telegraph’s interview where he said: “Certainly. But we are on our way to salvage that. We will encourage our countrymen to stay at home, work hard and make a respectable living at home.”

    He could, if he wants, add that the people back at home have been salvaged from the shackles of poverty and are living like kings and princesses in an atmosphere devoid any deadly attacks by terrorists, arsonists and pure criminals. That’s the only way to assuage the fears of the pretentious lot that wax lyrical on the social media about common sense logic that they never get to live in real life. Unfortunately, it’s that sort of political correctness that has left us in this quandary as the criminals run when no one is pursuing them. Do they give a damn? Shame!

     

     

  • Mr. President, can you tarry awhile?

    Mr. President, can you tarry awhile?

    Dear President Muhammadu Buhari, pardon the route through which this open letter gets to you. I know that as one of those people who damned the consequences and risked everything in the bid to make possible your presidential ambition, it wouldn’t have been unusual to have an opportunity to discuss the issues I am about to raise here in the corridors of power, away from the prying eyes of the wailing wailers. By that, I refer to those who see absolutely nothing good in your emergence as President, especially the way you thrashed an incumbent who had no option other than accepting defeat. Let me hasten to note too that you genuinely appreciated the way former President Goodluck Jonathan swallowed the humiliating defeat with inexplicable equanimity while you moved into that palatial edifice called Aso Rock.

    Needless to say that some of us were truly shocked beyond expression at the aplomb with which you shrugged off your decades of Spartan lifestyle and embraced the stupendous luxury and splendour that the Presidential Villa offers. I guess, in life, certain things cannot be hidden. The difference is getting clearer by the day. For instance, we read that Your Excellency ‘improved’ on Jonathan’s use of Mercedes-Benz S 350 that costs $135,000 for the non-bulletproof edition of Mercedes-Maybach S600 which non-bulletproof version is around $258,000. That’s okay. After all, we know it is the responsibility of the state to do everything within its might to protect you.

    However, we knew from experience that there is something beyond our understanding about that place that changes otherwise humble men into arrogant demi-gods. We are living witnesses to how easy it was for certain past occupiers of that seat to lose their humanity; they not only get corrupted by power but got corrupted so absolutely. If we may excuse the despicable reigns of Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha based on their foundation of jackboot mentality, what do we ascribe to the irascibility of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo or the detached cluelessness of Jonathan? Though we may not have seen enough of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua to properly place him in our long history leadership crisis, the little that we could remember of him speaks volume about the failures in our recruitment process. Naturally, we were worried that in due time, you may join the bandwagon of leaders who loaf around in aloof manner in the luxury of government houses while the populace wallow in poverty, realising at a late hour that nothing has really changed enough to give them hope.

    Mr. President, it is just some eight or so months into your four-year tenure and hope is already fizzling away. That is the crying truth. Unfortunately, it is a bare-knuckle fact those who mill around you might not be able to tell you. Baba Buhari, there is anguish in the land. The people in the streets are beginning to ask critical questions about the form and shape of a change that seems to be in perpetual motion without movement. The excitement of a new dawn wanes daily. It is not that these hapless Nigerians have not read or heard about your spirited battle against corruption and corrupt practices. They know how deep the sore is and how painful the blisters can be. They are equally abreast of the earth-shaking details regarding the unbelievable looting bazaar that was freely perpetrated by some privileged Nigerians during the last administration and that ultimately resulted in the economic quagmire the country has found itself. Our people fully support your efforts to trace and recover the entire stolen commonwealth running into trillions of Naira no matter where they are hidden. Even your harshest critics would attest to that objective as non-negotiable, going by your famed zero-tolerance for corruption.

    Be that as it may Mr. President, quite a number of your staunch supporters think you have started derailing too early in the day. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that you are increasingly treading the same path to perdition that Jonathan ignominiously trod with astonishing naivety. Somehow, you are gradually losing touch with your base, the constituency of the voiceless majority that voted you into power against all odds. Question – a big one for that matter – equally hangs on your humanity. No matter the spin your very media-savvy aides put on it, there is something wickedly wrong with that visit to Ogun State earlier in the week, to felicitate with its people, on the 40th anniversary of the state. It was, to say the least, a bad time to party. It was a cruel insult on the memories of the over 80 lives lost to the Dalori massacre perpetrated by the Boko Haram sect. The grim pictures of burnt children, scarred limbs and body parts should have been enough to sober the President on the need to tread with caution. Besides, the grisly details of the Dalori attack as recounted by eyewitnesses and many other narratives from the North-East call for a sombre reflection on the part of the government instead of the tasteless declaration of a ‘technical’ defeat of a group that routinely persists with its callous campaign of deadly attacks on defenceless citizens.

    Unless you have chosen to flourish in self-deceit like your predecessor did, it is jejune illogic to whine that the Dalori incident and several others were aimed at embarrassing the administration. Hian! Even Jonathan did not run away with that sacrilege when he hugged the sky and frolicked with party faithful in Kano shortly after the deadly bomb blast in Nyanya, Abuja. Then we reasoned, and quite rightly so, that such tendentious excuses were meant for the marines. So, whosoever lifted that dumb gambit from the Jonathan tales of woeful whingeing for you did this administration no good. It is even more pathetic that, as I write this, the President is on a four-day junket to France and the United Kingdom while survivors of the Dalori massacre are chewing their pain in isolation. If we accused Jonathan of dancing on the graves of the slaughtered students in a school in Yobe State, why shouldn’t we marvel at the way you shook your head to Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey’s live performance in Abeokuta? Question is: Whither the humanity that was the thrust of the campaign era when nothing has manifestly shown that this administration is poised to do things differently?

    Baba, as some people call you, do you know that an ominous pall of doubts hangs over your Presidency? To be honest, it is not just a mere gloating by those who don’t like the presence of an old man on that seat. It is more about glaring failed expectations. How was it possible that the 2016 budget comes with such humongous padding, even in the appropriations for The Presidency? What has changed if more money would be spent on buying exotic animals for the Villa Zoo, rehabilitating previously rehabilitated buildings and tending the culinary buds of Aso Rock tenants and their friends with hundreds of millions of naira? Why, for example, should Aso Rock Clinic get an allocation of N3.8bn to buy some unspecified medical equipment when the entire allocation for all teaching hospitals serving Nigeria’s 160 million populace gets much less than that amount for a similar purpose? How many sick Nigerians have access to such exotic health resort called Aso Rock Clinic anyway? Apart from the lower cadre staff, how many ‘big men’ in Aso Rock would entrust the clinic medical experts with the treatment of toothache or even minor flu?

    Mr. President, you may need to tarry awhile and reassess the steps you have taken so far. While pointing an accusing finger at perceived enemies especially those who allegedly looted the country, it is important to avoid a situation where the remaining four fingers directly point back at the dreadful indiscretion of the Presidency. This Presidency is becoming estranged and alienated from the masses it claims to serve! Of course, Nigeria did not deserve a sit-at-home leader who loiters around while the international community beckons; it does not also require one that jumps into the presidential jet at every occasion travel opportunities come up. By the way, what happened to the vow by the President to reduce the number of jets in the presidential fleet? We heard that the United States’ President and the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister put together, have lesser number of aircraft than that of the Nigerian Presidency. Do we take it as one of the trickeries of electoral campaigns that becomes unrealistic immediately after the administration of the relevant oaths? By the way, is anyone taking an inventory of the President’s foreign travels, including the grave injuries such must have inflicted on the national treasury in this era of belt-tightening for millions of less-privileged souls? Of course, the cost might not be as high as the $1m per trip credited to it by the errant Governor of Ekiti State, Ayo Fayose. It is nonetheless important to know if the country gets value for countless junketing across the globe. By the way, your aides call it diplomatic shuttles but we are beginning to feel that the frequency of it in the last eight months is, to put it mildly, diplomatically irritating. Tarry awhile President Buhari, tarry awhile!

    Past occupants of our Presidential villa have become people we hardly understand, even as they scoff at our criticisms and anxieties, which they perceive as mere indignities. For all the trials that many of your diehard supporters suffered to arrive at this auspicious occasion in which Sai Baba is now at the top, they just hope that President Buhari has not overshot the runway leading to the redemptive bend! They would like to believe that you have not become yet another victim of that virus in Aso Rock. They wait on time for the answer, your Excellency sir!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Bafarawa’s hypocritical antidote against corruption

    If the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency is to be taken seriously about its determination to engage corruption in a do-or-die warfare, then it would have to do more than the weekly assessments tendered by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. This point becomes more poignant as prominent Nigerians have started speaking up on how the hydra-headed monster has stunted growth and development for ages. It is a miracle of some sorts that a callously raped Nigeria still manages to wobble along; holding on to the hope that things could have been worse than they are presently. Ironically, the solution to the problem might just be found within the rank and file of the privileged few who had, at one time or the other, been fingered in humongous corruption cases. I must confess that Nigerians as well as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission owe these characters some kind of appreciation not just because they have offered to make public their profound knowledge of the effects of corrosive corruption, but for also suggesting what they perceive to be workable solutions in the drive to tame the menace.

    Though the EFCC has continued to tighten the noose around the necks of some suspected treasury-looters that allegedly thronged the office of the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd.) to draw billions of naira without any contractual agreement, it has not stopped quite a number of these persons from offering unsolicited advice. Among these persons, none has spent quality time in ‘dissecting’ this problem than the former governor of Sokoto State, Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa. In an interview conducted by my good friend, Ikenna Emewu and published in the Daily SUN of Monday, January 25 this year, Bafarawa spoke at length on the topic and found time to offer advice on the right path to building an incorruptible Nigeria of his dream. What amuses, one must confess, is not Bafarawa’s declarative statement that 90 per cent of Nigerians are corrupt. That could just be the painful reality. It’s just that corruption comes in many shades and forms. Yet, one’s curiosity was triggered by how Bafarawa struggled to turn a serious matter into a circus show where he positions himself as a hero among the villains that stole the country blind.

    Where one had expected him to speak on his latest travails as one out of the 88 persons listed as beneficiaries of billions of naira doled out by Dasuki for non-existent contracts, Bafarawa was busy reminiscing about how he ran the affairs of governance in Sokoto State between 1999 and 2007. Where he was expected to debunk official rumours that his company got paid N4.8bn for packaging spiritual matters on behalf of former President Goodluck Jonathan, the serial presidential aspirant was waxing lyrical about how the dwindling fortunes in oil revenue has generally affected governance in most states to the point that President Buhari had to intervene with a bailout. Where he should have seized the opportunity to justify the humongous payment he got for nebulous ‘prayers’, Mr. Bafarawa was more at home castigating the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and even Jonathan for not doing much in the fight against corruption. For a two-page interview, it must be said that Bafarawa was long on hollow sermons and abysmally short on the tangibles.

    Listen to him on why corruption thrives in Nigeria: “Today, corruption has become a general thing as you can see that 90 per cent of Nigerians are corrupt, because when you go to the grassroots level, corruption starts from there. The electorate will demand money before voting a candidate, no matter how good such is or the ideology she has. All that the voter wants is how much the candidate is ready to give. Then he who is going for the election will first look for money, whether he borrowed from the bank or his godfather will sponsor him is immaterial. That is the beginning of corruption, from the grassroots to the local government level, state level to national level. The electorate are corrupt; the politicians are either corrupt or forced to be corrupt because when they get to the office they are elected for, their first concern is how to pay the money back. They cannot get this money without the collaboration of the civil servants, because governors do not write the memo or raise the voucher. The civil servants will collaborate in bringing out the money and then you can see how corruption spreads all over”.

    So, what then is the antidote to stopping this madness that bleeds the nation’s treasury? I may be wrong but I didn’t read any from Bafarawa in that long-winding interface with the reporter. Apart from his clarion call on the citizens to rally round Buhari in his seeming lone fight against the powerful forces that continue to milk us dry while offering sickening reasons like the ones tendered above, Bafarawa brought nothing to the solution desk. If one were to go by the prognosis of this self-styled professional politician, there would not be any need to query why mind-boggling malfeasance has become the order of the day, even in sacred places like the judiciary and the legislature. We may as well give Chief Olusegun Obasanjo a knock on his bald head for daring to write the National Assembly to open its books for audit in the last 16 years. Didn’t Obasanjo know that these lawmakers invested huge sums of money on electioneering campaigns and are therefore justified to see the allocation of extra-budgetary funds to themselves as one of the ways to recoup such investment? Okay, maybe it’s an electoral offence to induce the electorate. Were there not cases of Ghana-Must-Go being sent to the National Assembly during the Obasanjo era? But who really cares as long as the end justifies the means? In fact, if we can all live by this principle of electoral planting and reaping, there would be no need for a Dasukigate or any other gates. What is so difficult to understand in a simple analogy which suggests these politicians were being ‘forced’ to be corrupt by circumstances beyond their control? In any case, how do we expect them to pay back loans to the banks if they refuse to fiddle with the treasuries? And let no one ask Bafarawa what could have ‘forced’ the dark-goggled Gen. Sani Abacha to steal with such gusto that, some 20 years after his demise, Nigeria is still recovering billions of dollars looted by him. Well, we can always blame that on unknown forces and the gripping fear of poverty. What else could explain the endless looting ad infinitum in which recovered loot is looted and re-looted by different sets of VIPs?

    By the way, it is not surprising that Bafarawa washed himself clean of the allegations levelled against him by the EFCC. He would proceed to advise Buhari to urgently create public awareness against corruption so that the common man, who elects people into political office, can “see the dangers of corruption” Hian! What baloney. And what happens to the over N1.4 trillion said to have been stolen in just seven years, including the Dasuki bazaar? What happens to the billions of slush funds lying in bank vaults scattered across the world? That must be inconsequential as long as some persons have stolen enough to the point of not only tying the hands of justice to the stakes but also keeping it hanging in perpetuity. One thing is sure though: As long as the rich and mighty walk roughshod on the justice system while the common thief pays the ultimate price for stealing the neighbour’s goat, Nigeria will not stop wallowing in pain and looking for solutions in the wrong corner of the corruption ring.

  • Budget 2016, Metuh’s handcuff, warts and all

    Budget 2016, Metuh’s handcuff, warts and all

    Without any iota of self-delusion, it is easy to say that Nigeria is in a bad shape. Everywhere you go, you meet hapless citizens singing lamentation songs with plastic laugher grafted on their faces. The economy has simply refused to jerk out of a prolonged coma. The dollar, the monetary instrument through which petroleum products’ trading is negotiated, is playing a yoyo game that has defied all measures. The bureaucrats at the Central Bank of Nigeria have developed and redeveloped all kinds of crazy strategies to firm up the local Naira against the international currencies, yet the real value of that piece of paper keeps depreciating as if it would soon go out of existence. We now know that the 2016 Budget, predicated on an ambitious $38 per barrel of crude oil, may have to go for an emergency surgery at the Intensive Care Unit of the Budget Office as crude now sells below $30 per barrel, with prospects to dive further still. Experts’ forecast of further downward slide in pricing with Iran making a re-entry into the oil production market does not in any way help the problem. If you ask those who understand the dynamics of this trend, they will tell you that the road ahead is rough, tough and challenging. The uncomfortable truth is that we may end up waddling in an economic quagmire for a long time to come. That is the crying reality.

    In spite of all this, Nigeria is a peculiar country peopled by extraordinary souls. We have mastered the art of using laughter to cover our pains and anguish. What keeps us moving in this country, despite the serial tragic moments that confront us daily, is our ability to be melodramatic. If we were not making light issues out of what ordinarily should irk us, we would be exaggerating issues that should be waved off. Oftentimes, we trivialise the real issues while getting needlessly absorbed in side talks. We are held captive by sentiments, ethnic cleavages and religious bigotry. With pretentious naivety, we display the same fault lines that we hasten to condemn others for indulging in. Fate and faith brought us together but deep-seated primordial dogmas continue to set brothers against brothers. On paper, we are one nation. In mindset, we are different nations. Education has failed to cement that bond and that explains why this country splutters on in circles that lead to nowhere. In unison, we live a life of mutual distrust for one another. And we laugh off even the foolishness of our collective inaction. That is the pathetic irony in the Nigerian story.

    Just the other day, the Nigerian Senate roared with a fantabulous tale about how a three-volume 2016 Budget documents totalling more than 1,500 pages and personally handed over to the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, grew wings and took an escapist flight from the National Assembly’s vault. Of course, most Nigerians had initially thought that it must be one of those stunts this horde of over-pampered lawmakers fondly pull whenever they want to divert attention from the humongous fund they appropriate for themselves without any subheads. When the story started trending on the social media, I was prepared to make a wager that it was a rehearsed script by the Senators to announce their resumption from yet another break. Well, it turned out to be more than a publicity stunt. The budget, or some form of it, was actually missing. A committee, which was summarily set up, eventually discovered that alterations had been made on another version of the budget distinct from the ‘original’ which Buhari tendered. Just that no one told us how the two versions of the same budget, which mystifyingly disappeared, were mysteriously found. After all the noise and air pumping, Saraki announced with senatorial majesty that the Senate under his watch would only discuss figures contained in the Buhari’s document. You just cannot but wonder what all the hullaballoo was about. Are these characters not tired of playing to the gallery in times of national crisis? Now that Buhari has written to the Senate, intimating them of adjustments in the document, has the world come to end? Is this Senate doing anything significantly different, judging from the prism through which each member has reportedly dissected the budget based on party lines and personal indulgences rather than what would satisfy the collective?

    That laughable happenstance aside, I read, with mouth aghast, the scandalous permutations some folks ascribe to the cuffs on the wrists of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, when he appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja for his bail hearing. Metuh is standing trial for allegedly collecting N400m illegally from the funds meant for arms procurement, to prosecute political campaigns for his party. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the amount was transferred from an account domiciled with the Office of the erstwhile National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, who is also facing trial for illegal diversion of $2.1 billion for sundry purposes other than the procurement of arms for prosecuting the war against the deadly insurgents in the North East.

    In his first appearance, Metuh’s so-called supporters turned the court premises into some sort of carnival rendezvous, singing his praises and demanding his immediate release as a victim of political victimisation. A visibly excited Metuh waved back at the hired crowd as if the matter at stake was a popularity contest between him, his apologists and the government. To that ill-informed crowd, it mattered less that the country is still battling with the consequences of the atrocious clannishness of Dasuki’s inexplicable action of which Metuh is facing trial as a major beneficiary. As far as they are concerned, those innocent casualties of the war, including soldiers who are serving punishment for refusing to fight with obsolete equipment count for nothing as long Metuh and any other thieving elite walks free on the street with his loot intact. If not, what was all that partying, shouting and protest at the premises of the court for? Was Metuh receiving a chieftaincy title or was he in the dock for heinous crime against the society?

    It is worrisome that otherwise rationale minds could only read ethnic agenda to a matter that is as serious as this. It is one thing to question the rationale behind bringing Metuh before the law in handcuffs and it is another thing to jump into conclusion that he was being deliberately humiliated because he hails from the South-East. By the way, when the elite converge to rape the treasury blind, they pay scant attention to ethnic affiliations. The Dasuki largesse connects all parts of the geographical entity called Nigeria; it was an invidious ‘federal character’ robbery of the commonwealth. So let no one sing the ethnic rant here! Even before the officials of the Nigerian Prisons Service could issue a statement on why Metuh was in cuffs, his allies had already gone to town with how Aso Rock directed the Minister of Interior to ensure that Metuh got the handcuff treatment. Some simpletons would even swear on their ancestors’ graves that they were privy to the conversations.

    Question is: what is so special about Metuh that he should be excluded from being handcuffed to a court of law if the prison authorities think it necessary? Was he the first prominent Nigerian that would be so treated? When people parade pictures of Dasuki strolling to the courts in the midst of heavily armed security men, they easily forget that he remains the most humiliated Nigerian in the arms gate scandal. Since his arrest late last year, Dasuki never enjoyed any freedom despite the temporary respite granted by the courts to travel out of the country for medical care. He has never set his foot out of Abuja from the time the security forces swooped on his residence. Yet, no northerner had come out to sing a victimisation dirge neither has anyone accused Buhari of being wicked to a fellow northerner. I doubt if the relevant authorities would waste time in putting Dasuki in cuff if it becomes imperative.

    I honestly sympathise with those who feel hurt seeing their local heroes in unfamiliar terrain just like Metuh found himself. However, what bothers me more is the havoc that corruption continues to inflict on the psyche of this nation. Clearly, there are better ways of making heroes outside those who chanced on sudden wealth just because they have the opportunity to dip their filthy hands in our collective pie. With the rate at which those who prefer eating from the crumbs of corruption worship these villains, it would be difficult for them to understand why something drastic needs to be done about a situation where just less than 60 persons stole over N1.3 trillion from the public purse in just seven years of this democratic journey. Yes, democracy confers some freedom on the citizens but it does not include the freedom to loot with sickening madness and expect to get a slap on the wrists! How long do they want the rape to continue before they stop dignifying the play-acting by the killers of our collective dreams for a developed and progressive Nigeria? This is definitely not a laughing matter. Or is it?

  • The yam eater’s truculent tomfoolery

    The shocking revelations regarding how otherwise respectable citizens of this great nation callously dipped their ten fingers into the public have continued to beat the imagination. By the time they pulled out their itchy fingers, funds meant to procure arms for the military in the fight against terror had disappeared. If not for change, would anyone have known the extent to which some persons can go in packaging deceit as the real deal? For, if we must say the truth, the little we have heard about the $2.1 billion (over N400bn at the time of the criminal act) arms deal scandal popularly known as Dasukigate should be a cause for concern to every rational mind. In fact, it should nudge us to the reality that no meaningful gain has been made from the ceaseless lip service that successive administrations have paid to the fight against graft. While some have said the latest effort by President Muhammadu Buhari to confront the menace headlong may end up as another circus show due to some extraneous political factors surrounding his emergence, it must be said that there is more to the fight than the puerile rant of a witch-hunt by some sections of the society. Is it not intriguing that not one out of the persons currently singing like canaries with broken beaks at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has denied collecting huge sums of money from the office of the former National Security Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan? I puke when I read sane minds trying to dribble round the real issue, mouthing nonsensical prattle about the need to give the accused some windows of escape in the name of rule of law.

    Before we get things twisted, none of the persons under the investigative binoculars of the EFCC has been accused of spending part of the billions of naira legitimately raised to fund Jonathan’s second shot at the Presidency. In all honesty, we do not really give hoot about how the billions raised by Professor Jerry Gana and co at the launching of a campaign appeal fund was spent; it remains an entirely PDP affair. No, this is not about the N9 billion that the embattled spokesman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Olisa Metuh, said was shared among party members for campaigns, lobbying and patronage. It is more about how Dasuki converted 2.1 billion dollars fund appropriated for the purchase of arms to fight insurgency, to curry political favours for his principal while the military suffered collateral damage at the warfront. Lives were lost, limbs were broken, military personnel were court-martialled, jailed and even sentenced to death for declining to prosecute the war with antediluvian weapons while all shades  of politicians thronged Dasuki’s office to take from the booty. That, to my fertile mind, is the shame in the Dasukigate saga.

    Aside the ludicrous subheads through which funds were unimaginatively siphoned, it is imperative to note that the fraud remains a monumental disgrace to common sense. How could anyone have imagined that he would walk free after hauling about N5bn from the fund for some nebulous ‘spiritual’ prayers? They must have thought that none of us would wear our thinking cap right if the news were to filter out that a media mogul cupped N2.1bn from the bazaar for a so-called media packaging for Jonathan with the scandalous alibi that the deal was sealed under the nose of the former President in Aso Rock. Even the media know that something wasn’t just right about the N670m collected through a personal account by the Chairman of the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria, Mr. Nduka Obaigbena. The secrecy surrounding the receipt of the largesse was a mockery of whatever is left of the integrity of the print media, no matter the haste with which some media houses now try to dissociate their organisations from the fraud. It is obvious that so many hands had already been sullied by the putrid stench before the spirited attempts at image laundering which comes a tad too late.

    Having said that, it beggars belief that some individuals are still trying to play the victim in a scandal that has seriously deflated whatever ego they were wearing on their padded shoulders. They want to smell like sweet-scented roses after taking a swim in the cesspit of graft. Among this group is the self-acclaimed Yoruba leader, Chief Olu Falae who was so sure that the entire Yoruba race would have gone to war if he had died in the hands of some Fulani miscreants who kidnapped him some months back. Perhaps the N100m he got from the Dasuki loot, ostensibly to package Yoruba votes for Jonathan through his Social Democratic Party must have fired that bloated self-estimation of his worth. But then, we cannot really blame Falae for that cheap blackmail and his truculent, if not idiotic, argument that there was no basis for returning any money to government’s coffers since it was paid by Chief Anthony Anenih on behalf of the PDP. We place the blame directly at the doorstep of a government led by a President who did not give a damn about the murderous rape of the national till as long as he realised his second term ambition. If not, how would anyone have thought that the insignificant jesters in the SDP or even the Senator Rasheed Ladoja-led Accord Party would have influenced the minds of millions of voters in the South-West to vote against their conscience? They must have thought that the Yoruba are that hungry for crumbs! Now they know better.

    Of course, the deployment of questionable funds to curry political patronage is not peculiar to the Jonathan government. In truth, it is a key element in the Nigerian political lexicon. It is a tradition that dates back in time. What is novel under Jonathan was the desperation with which they depleted the national treasury to pursue a personal agenda. At the drop of a hat, funds running into billions of naira were released to all manner of characters to fix the most benumbing issues. All shades of incredible associations were hastily registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission, to draw money from the bazaar template in Dasuki’s office. I just wonder if those who argue that Dasuki operated within the bounds of the responsibilities of a National Security Adviser had taken a reflective glance at the list of firms that drew lucre from that office. It was, to say the least; pathetic that such devious larceny received the nod of the highest office in the land. That was political patronage at its ridiculous best!

    And so, Anenih said he distributed N260m to some persons to garner favour for Jonathan without benefitting from the sharing. Oh, let him sing that sorrowful dirge to the marines. Chief Bode George (the same man who, some years back, vowed to ‘capture’ Lagos) equally captured N100m to mobilise state coordinators. Sir, kindly wipe off that lie dancing on your lips. Even Mahmud Shinkafi, a former Governor of Zamfara State, also got N100m for the same mobilisation duties. There are Peter Odili, Jim Nwobodo, Ahmadu Ali and many others who confessed to receiving millions of naira to ‘mobilise.’ The harvest was just too smooth to be true. And there was Metuh who is still trying to explain how the NSA office lodged a whopping N400m into a firm he has significant interest in without any documentations or contract papers. Rather than submit such huge sum back to the government, he is said to have opted for a self-imposed hunger strike to prove his innocence. Another report said he brazenly attempted to chew the documents in which he wrote all he knew about the lodgements in his firm’s account. I can only wish him good luck in that suicidal journey.

    I quite understand the modern-day apostles of rule of law, including those who would stop at nothing to tar Buhari with the despot tag just because their ‘heroes’ are being asked to vomit our collective yam which they swallowed even before the cooking. They ate the yam raw and they are now battling a discomfiting constipation. What baffles me is their utter lack of shame or even some form of remorse. People who took humongous funds and pocketed such under the guise of politicking are being projected as victims of a government on political vendetta. Really? Who, out of the dozens in the custody of the EFCC, has given a cogent reason for creaming off the money from our collective sweat other than the tomfoolery of offering dumb justifications? So Alhaji Yakasai collected N63m to seek peaceful electoral process from some prominent Northern elders. Does this excuse appeal to any logical reasoning? Iyorchia Ayu got over N300m for offering political consultancy in the form of an advice! Such expensive joke! How did Ladoja or even Falae distribute their haul apart from telling us that the payment was for some curious alliance to deliver the Jonathan mandate? And, for Metuh, how did his firm become the conduit pipe for the transfer of N400m when the party secretariat was said to have more than N10bn campaign funds to play with?

    No doubt, it is not impossible that blaming a vengeance-seeking Buhari may satiate their craving for a psychological balance in times like this. That does not in any way preclude the fact that these pretentious statesmen (a misnomer) and fluke democrats have cheaply sold their honour and integrity in the twilight of their lives. No amount of brash idiocy and crass resort to spewing hollow verbiage can restore the high esteem in which these persons were once held by the society. The earlier they start living with the reality of self-chosen and unenviable fall from grace to grass, the easier it would be for them to grapple with the certainty of an enduring public odium. Pity.

  • Ettu, Metuh?

    This is clearly not the best of times for the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh. The official megaphone of the deflated and defeated behemoth, which once declared 60 years’ invincibility against any form of electoral loss before ending its 16 years of impunity in power, now faces a Herculean battle on two broad fronts – within and outside the party. For a man who has  taken up the challenge to engage the ruling All Progressives Congress toe-to-toe in the arena of political propaganda, this lonely voice in the wilderness could end up being a victim of the same system that propped him into national prominence. In truth and until now, Metuh has made a good job of shouting himself hoarse even as President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration effortlessly exhumes rotten secrets that passed on as governance in the last 16 years of the PDP’s rudderless leadership. No doubt, Metuh relishes his bird with a broken beak job.

    However, there is some sort of wicked twist in the Metuh tale. Instead of getting decorated with a crest of honour for standing tall for all that was bad with the self-styled ‘Africa’s largest political party’, Metuh might just be on his last step into the hall of infamy if the allegations made against him by employees of the party’s secretariat are anything to go by. Perhaps, Metuh would not have been the issue today if all the matters relating to the financing of the 2015 general elections by the party had been settled when the issue had come up earlier in the year. Recall that Metuh, who had initially threatened fire and brimstone, was the same person that told an anxious public that the matter had been settled within the family. Now, the aggrieved workers in Wadata House have decided to open the can of worms concerning the financial malfeasance that crippled a party with a lofty dream of constructing a skyscraper as its National Headquarters. If we were to use the workers’ exposition as a template for determining how bad the books were in Wadata House, it would deepen the way we grasp the shocking realities of the mind-boggling figures that the Buhari administration has been reeling out as funds that were illegally siphoned in the last five years.

     Here, we are talking about an embattled Metuh struggling to launder his ‘integrity’ before employees who describe him as nothing but a blubbering “repulse to professionalism and a source of embarrassment to party members.” Interestingly, while a clear and present danger was brewing under his watch as the party sinks into deeper crises, Metuh was busy blaming the APC for the self-inflicted misery afflicting his party. He said the aim was to hound him out of circulation as his “outspokenness” has discomfited the ruling APC. A statement signed by Metuh’s aide said the APC found a willing tool in a “handful of disgruntled PDP staff who are attacking him with a view to bringing him to public odium, distract him and deny our party a credible voice to propagate its positions.” That notwithstanding, Metuh has vowed to trudge on in his role “in the rebuilding of the PDP and in providing firm, credible and issue issues-based opposition to the ruling party.” Oh, how delusions can pervade the human mind!

    For those who value informed discourse, Metuh’s stance should be a welcome development because it provides an opportunity to unravel the hidden truth about how the PDP had vended deception as governance for close to two decades. With his vast experience as “the longest serving member of the National Executive Committee due to hard work and the confidence members of the party reposed in him as an individual”, it would be an act of blind injustice for the party to ease off Metuh just because some common office employees are ranting. By the way, who is better qualified than Metuh to puncture the basket of lies being peddled by the APC on the callous manner the treasury was looted and raped by the last administration?

     So, I wait with bated breath to see how Metuh would defend the latest accusation by the ‘uncomfortable’ APC that the last administration spent over N4.8 trillion on subsidy payments which dramatically jumped from a paltry N300 billion in 2010 to N1.9 trillion in 2012. I am sure this brave spokesperson is also studying the books to debunk the claim by the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) in its latest report that the country lost about 160 million barrels of crude valued at $13.7 billion to oil theft between 2009 and 2012. What tale would he tell us to disprove Buhari’s claim that the government is in possession of verifiable information on the banks where the billions of looted oil funds were stashed? Would Metuh also disprove that as one of the many lies of a President who is trying to make sense out of a mumbo-jumbo handover notes by a PDP-led government? Would Metuh also take the former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh, to task on his claim that the war against terror in the North-East was difficult to prosecute because the military lacked the relevant equipment and motivation in spite of the humongous money Jonathan claimed to have spent on re-equipping the military? What exactly would be his response to all the scandalous revelations of the blind, daylight looting being unearthed daily as Buhari clinically dissects the PDP’s padded shibboleths of treachery?

    Okay, let us give it to Metuh. He has not allowed the domestic tiff with his co-workers in the party to weigh him down. After all, he still managed to issue a statement in which he described the government’s economic agenda as something lifted from the communist bookshelf. He speaks of a ‘unilateral imposition of new regulations” to firm up the naira against a skyrocketing dollar as archaic and outdated. How marvellous! Question is: how workable is the modern and digitalised system that the PDP left behind for Buhari to deal with some months back? What checks did the PDP’s corrupt- proof administration place on the illegal freighting of slush funds to foreign accounts owned by top members of that government and their hangars-on? Why were piles of audit queries, including the ones addressed to The Presidency left unanswered?

    By the way, let us not forget the fact that the brouhaha started when the National Secretary of the PDP, Prof. Wale Oladipo, signed a circular indicating that they planned a 50 per cent reduction in the secretariat staff in addition to a 50 per cent reduction in the salaries and allowances of retained lucky staff. Could it then mean that the National Working Committee members were expecting the hands-on staff, who claimed to have worked in the Secretariat for 16 years, to accept the grim news with stoic equanimity? So, do we take it that the APC influenced the job-cutting strategy for a party that has been gloating since it lost out in the last election?  Somehow, we need not blame Metuh if he chooses to ignore some of these questions. Sometimes, it is quite nerve-wracking when those who have worked with you in the same office for 16 years decide to take you up on your stewardship. That is exactly what the band of ‘disgruntled’ staff is doing. They not only dismiss Metuh’s plea of APC’s romance as “absolute bunkum, clumsy, and blundering blackmail,” they said their boss’ gloating was a ‘weak shot from a mortally crippled arsenal’ (Well, I am sure it is not my own Arsenal FC!). Instead of begging the question, they simply tabled their own set of audit queries, moral and financial, before Metuh.

    They want him to defend an alleged endorsement of a rival party’s candidate when Prof. Charles Soludo was gunning for the Anambra State governorship seat and Metuh was National Chairman, South-East. They spoke of his open endorsement of an APGA candidate in the 2013 Anambra governorship election. As entrenched staff with deep knowledge of the party’s operational manual, they seek an explanation into how “a whopping sum of N450 million media fund earlier approved for the office of PDP Publicity Secretary by President Jonathan” was spent. They said it would not be out of place for Metuh to explain how he has been spending the N70m he allegedly collected in July this year, to prosecute a media war with the APC. Could it be true that the leadership of the party squandered the N12 billion being proceeds from the sale of nomination forms in the last general elections? Was another N1 billion that was realised from a compulsory levy of N10, 000 paid by delegates frittered by the NWC? What exactly was the role Metuh played in the widely-reported money-for-governorship-ticket bribery scandal involving a former House of Representatives member and the leadership of the party? What transpired in Kogi State at the party’s congresses in which some persons were said to have demanded another whopping N1 billion bribe to ensure the return of the incumbent governor as the state’s gubernatorial candidate in the forthcoming November elections?

    Questions, questions and more questions. Surely, it is not enough for Metuh to brush the allegations off as witch-hunt by persons who are envious of his intimidating profile as the critical voice in a party that is just learning the ropes of what it takes to be an opposition party. No one learns that from the books. It comes with the sort of experience that resulted in the birth of the APC after fighting from the trenches for 16 solid years. Anyway, now that Metuh is insisting on standing up to be counted, he must first debunk the derisive jibes of the secretariat staff.  No punch could be deadlier than the insinuation by the staff that Metuh’s trajectory in the PDP “in 1999 as a zonal youth leader, then National Ex-officio, Acting National Auditor, Zonal Vice Chairman and now publicity secretary” suggests that, “either his umbilical cord was buried at Wadata Plaza or that he can’t survive on any other thing except the PDP.” This is not simply a joke carried too far but also one that the self-styled anti-corruption tsar within the PDP should not stomach. The law of equity demands no less. Will Metuh burst the pipe this time or would he wait for the usual under-the-table ‘family affairs’ crisis resolution mechanism to shut out the aggrieved workers’ complaints and thereby bury the rotten truth? We wait for time to unravel the question.

    Editor’s note: This piece, first published in August 8, 2015, becomes more relevant now that Metuh is presently telling the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission his role in the despicable $2.1m heist perpetuated by the Office of the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki. It is a tragic twist of fate that Metuh is now the one to explain how N1.4bn found its way into the account of his private firm. Or could it be part of the money Dasuki had planned to kick off the presidential ambition Metuh glibly talked about?

  • Of pain, gain and change

    “The details of the 2016 national budget reflect nothing more than a continuation of the wasteful allocations of the past 16 years”.

    In this period of good tidings, it is generally assumed that the beginning of another year should ignite the feeling of hope across the world. Unfortunately, you rarely see the jollity or good feelings of the season on the face of the average Nigerian. Instead, he bears a melancholic, plastic smile on the face; in spite of everything around him, he wants to feel and seem happy. But repressed concerns and emotions surface into the consciousness now and then. For him, the rude joke of belt-tightening has gone beyond ‘be careful’ as they say in the suburb. Ironically, in this period of joyful bloom elsewhere, all that surrounds him is a pall of gloom. It becomes manifestly clear when he realises that the 2014 celebration, though low-keyed with the crumbs he could muster for the family, was far better than the no-budget reality that gnawed at him last year. The people on our streets are not smiling even when the government has not officially declared any austerity crisis. The pain and anguish of a deflated economy are already biting without anyone knowing when its reality would be officially made public. Yes, it is an era of change with a promise of a brighter tomorrow. What confounds the citizen is the possibility of not seeing that tomorrow if nothing urgent is done now, to save him from becoming a casualty of the present economic strangulation. Crudely put, this country is wobbling on its legs!

    As I write this, I can only imagine the number of families that celebrated Christmas last week in the mood of a horde mourning the death, not the birth, of Jesus Christ. It is not just about those who could excuse the tragedy on a curious ‘presidential order’ that civil servants be paid salaries on the eve of a 5-day long public holidays. It is more about that commoner on the street who forages for faith daily in a society that has lost its humanity due to the raw greed of the privileged few. It is not just about the pain that aggravates the heart of the one who was used to drawing infectious laughter out of the harsh faces of few beneficiaries from his generosity both far and wide.  This year, he just could not do anything while being rendered useless by the asphyxiating economic conundrum in which the country has found itself. It is more about the unmitigated gloom that most families have been thrown into, in a season of imprisoned hope.

    And so, when President Muhammadu Buhari drew applause with his inspirational canticles on the floor of the National Assembly during the presentation of the 2016 Budget, many had thought that the three-volume documents would be spared the perennial repetitive streak that has turned the annual ritual into a waste of precious time by all. But if feelers are anything to go by, then President Buhari would need more than elevated language to convince anyone that The Presidency is not about to shift into higher gear towards exceeding the benumbing profligacy of the immediate past tenants. Yes, Buhari may not have watched idly like Jonathan did when he stamped his presidential imprimatur on the illegal sharing of billions of Naira to apologists, hangers-on and unscrupulous aides by the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki. Maybe he wouldn’t have tolerated the callous rape of the treasury by all manner of characters hanging around the corridors of power in the guise of protecting a weakling whose main interest was returning to office by all means possible. Well, those who participated in the heist are facing the odd music being played by the orchestra of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

    Having said this, some seven months into the life of the Buhari government, we are not exactly sure if anything significantly different has changed in the way Abuja is doing things. It is one thing for Buhari to wax poetic about how deeply sorry he was to see the anguish on Nigerian faces as they forage for faith in a challenging economic terrain. It is definitely another bitter pill to swallow when we woke to the shocking reality that the details of the 2016 national budget reflect nothing more than a continuation of the wasteful allocations of the past 16 years. Simply put, there is something unnerving about a budget that seems to appropriate more money for The Presidency to service the luxurious tastes of a few individuals in an era of recession. Unless Buhari convinces Knuckle-headed me that he never saw the breakdown of what Aso Rock would gulp next year before rushing to the National Assembly to wow us with his “I feel your pain” lyrics, then I align with those who have refused to be overoptimistic about that three-tome disaster called a budget!

    In case none of his aides has been bold enough to tell him, there is a world of difference between saying the right things and doing what ought to be done to instil sanity into a system that is corrosively corrupt. How can a Buhari, an epitome of frugal living, justify the allocation of a whopping N3.6bn for the purchase of posh BMW cars for his office in the 2016 budget? Why must the State House change cutleries in a yearly ritual that gulps millions of Naira of taxpayers’ sweat? We thought that era of sickening madness had gone with the Jonathan mistake. What we did not bargain for is the report that the present change agents, whose Aso Rock residence was refurbished shortly before moving in in May last year, would be needing N387m to renovate a guest house; N47m to furnish the guest house; N27m to buy computers and N764m to provide recreational facilities. If we labelled Jonathan reckless for cornering N944m for his foreign and local junkets in 2015, why shouldn’t we cry daylight murder if Buhari now plans to hug the skies in 2016 with N1.4bn only? And what’s that thing we hear about the appropriation of N189m to purchase tyres for vehicles?

    To be fair to Buhari, he has drastically cut down on the gluttonous allocation for food in the last ten years or more. But The Presidency budget is not just about bread and butter alone. There is little or less to cheer in a budget that projects to spend N29bn, about N5bn more than what Jonathan spent last year, on certain fussy sub-heads. It is not just about the bloated figure but also about the list of spend. Besides the questions hanging over the planned purchase of exotic vehicles to mostly political appointees, it beggars belief and logical reasoning that Mr. Buhari’s palatial residence would be needing N326m for wildlife conservation and the purchase of exotic animals. Pray, wouldn’t Jonathan be laughing his head off especially when we took him to the cleaners for daring to spend common N24.6m on the same subhead last year? Like I wrote in a piece last year, I still cannot fathom any cogent reason why they keep on changing ‘canteen material and kitchen equipment’ every year in Aso Rock. Now, we are being told that N89m would be needed in 2016 to change cutleries; about five million naira more would be added to the N11m spent last year in the Vice President’s office to buy foodstuff and catering services; N12m for recreational materials and N30m to purchase tool boxes, car jacks and diagnostic machines for Buhari’s bulletproof cars! If care is not taken, I may abandon this thankless job and take up appointment as an apprentice motor mechanic in Aso Rock!

    I’m personally pained that the mistakes of the past have crept into this latest experiment at budgeting, thereby exposing the government to ridicule. It is either someone had failed to do his job with the seriousness it required or the government has refused to take the feelings of the common person seriously. You can only attract condemnation when you come out with a budget that ingloriously assumes that it is perfectly cool to spend a whopping N27m on buying C-caution sign triangles, fire extinguishers and cables. Do they think something better couldn’t have been done with N114m instead of wasting it on the upgrade of internet infrastructure in the State House?

    I perfectly understand that the State House needs to be heavily protected especially with the state of general insecurity in the land. Yet, one wouldn’t mind if the drafters of this bogus budget can explain why they need N100m for ‘Active Devices for State House Network’ and another N35m for security appliances, licenses and computer anti-virus software. How much of these gadgets were purchased last year and why should they crop up in the 2016 budget again? Now, what kind of ‘All-eye” surveillance project would be costing the Office of the National Security Adviser to install at N8.7bn with another N9bn going into what this paper tagged an esoterically-named “Stravinsky Project” in this budget of humongous figures?

    We may go on and on about the fundamental errors in the Buhari budget. In fact, some persons may even justify the appropriations. However, what is not in doubt is that The Presidency has failed to lead by example in its campaign of change by failing to cut down on its excesses and needless longing for impudent prodigality. In his budget summation at the National Assembly, Buhari said: “I know the state of our economy is a source of concern for many, worsened by the unbridled corruption and security challenges we have faced in the last few years. Fellow Nigerians, the confidence of many might be shaken. However, I stand before you today promising that we will secure our country, rebuild our economy, and make the Federal Republic of Nigeria stronger than it has even been”.

    Quite a number of persons would naturally doubt how these lofty ideals can be achieved if this unproductive tradition of profligate spending is yet to be nipped in the bud right under the nose of a President with a knack for simple if not rustic living. There is nothing reflective of Buhari’s hyped love for Spartan life and moderation in this budget! Nothing at all to show that we have changed for the better. Should the rot persist, then that would be the greatest pain, the deepest disappointment for the masses in this experimental journey of change. Will Buhari call for a re-jig of The Presidency’s appropriations for 2016 to reflect the pain he claims to feel for the suffering masses? Now that’s a tall order.