Category: Yomi Odunuga

Sadly and ironically, it was on a day when the Federal Government announced the deployment of more troops to the North- East to checkmate the confounding excesses of a sect that has promised to flood our land with the blood of innocent and defenceless citizens.

It was only few minutes after Nigeria’s Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, assured a traumatised populace that the Federal Government knew exactly what to do about the abducted 224 schoolgirls in Chibok that would lead to joyful reunion with their family members.

It was a time when the Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike, was busy playing the ostrich by blaming the Borno State Government for the mass kidnap and at a period when all international efforts are geared towards finding the girls. Unfortunately, the entire forlorn search for hope coincided with events that further accentuate hopelessness.

With its usual ferocity, terror once again descended with vengeful wings on Jos, the Plateau State capital. Less than twenty- four hours afterwards, the Boko Haram terrorists killed 10 people in the village of Shawa and a further 17 in Alagarno; the two Borno villages are not far from Chibok. It could have been a tragic death for some 400 football fans in the same city but for the bravery displayed by a landlord who had to pay the ultimate price.

He died with the suicide bombers who had planned to unleash terror at a viewing centre penultimate Saturday. But, in Buni Yadi, Yobe State, the story was different. Murderous Boko Haram members were said to have killed more than 40 soldiers and policemen including a Divisional Police Office while setting destroying the Emir’s palace and other buildings on Tuesday.

That is aside the tales of many villages that had been invaded, raped and abused in the last two weeks by sect members. Sad, so sad! For Jos, a city that was still healing from the gruesome mass killings that eroded its boisterous portraiture as Nigeria’s ‘Home of Peace and Tourism”, the devastating twin bomb blast in which a teacher reportedly lost his wife, daughter and sister in-law poses a serious threat to the healing process while it also deepens the mutual air of distrust and suspicion that exist among the tenuously reconciled parties in the state.

No doubt, the bombings, which reportedly claimed over 118 casualties (the police say less than 80 died) with scores injured, are sad reminders of how vulnerable we have become in the hands of the faceless enemies hounding us to our graves. Mass murders, mass kidnappings and mass maiming are becoming regular routines of living in this hellish clime. We may not have an exact figure of the losses as bombs keep booming and bullet-ridden bodies litter the streets, what we do know is that our losses are being counted in loads of body-bags dripping with blood of innocent citizens.

Among the 118 lost to the Jos killings were Nigerians who never knew how we arrived at this killing field. These people struggled to eke a living with the hope that things would, someday, get better. Among the dead were traders, final year university students, children, mothers and someone’s father – so many people from all parts of Nigeria.

Helpless and hapless, they had taken their fate on their hands, bent on making something tangible out of the difficult situation. Not that they were not angry with those who made living such a miserable journey but they had chosen to trudge on. They never, for once, thought that they would be victims of a terror of another kind. These 118 were just like the rest of us. It could have been any of us in that market.

Who, we ask, is this callous killer that continues to thrust his poisoned dagger deep into this fetid wound? I don’t really know how the authorities feel each time they are confronted with horrific pictures of the citizens mauled by terrorists. What I know is that the weekly morbid images inflict the gravest of psychological trauma on one’s sensibilities. As the bodybags pile up, families mourn their losses with bloodshot eyes.

The painful circle of doom beggars belief. Christians, Muslims, traditionalists and even atheists are bonded in pain and sorrow. Many cling to hope that a loved one who went missing on that bloody Tuesday would soon be back home as no one could identify his body amid the charred remains. There was the story of bride-to-be who was scheduled to tie the marital knot last Saturday.

She had gone to the bombed market to buy shoes but never made it back home. Her phone rang for a while but had since gone dead. Yet, her corpse or a semblance of it is yet to be seen as I write this. Yet, someone thinks it’s fair to inflict such unforgettable pain on humanity.

Tears continue to flow as the dead mourn the dead. Yet, the terrorist promises nothing but more killings, maiming and slaughtering. The one who cannot bring a single life into being arrogates to himself the power to wipe out millions of lives! Question is: who shelters us from this looming catastrophe? Is it the government which has dissipated so much energy on sophistry without concomitant action? Is it the opposition which continues to bark without offering any workable solution? We do understand the argument that because this is far from a conventional warfare, a lot of tact and intelligence would have to be employed in combating it. We also appreciate the regular offer of condolences to bereaved families who have lost thousands of loved ones to ‘devils end evil-minded terrorists.’

We know everything is being done within their power to put an end to the massacre of law-abiding citizens. What we don’t know is how much longer we would have to wait for the authorities to put its house in order and confront this clear and present danger! Quite honestly, I had thought we would have some modicum of order with the appointment of the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency, Mr. Mike Omeri, as the Coordinator of the National Briefing Centre on the abducted school girls and sundry issues.

It didn’t take long for me to know that it was a misplaced hope. Unfortunately, and as it was the case in the past, the Nigerian media became the punching bag for what was apparently a bungled public relations stunt by the Presidency.

Here, I speak of the vexatious statement issued by Dr. Rueben Abati, fingering ‘rumour’ mongers for circulating the story of an impending visit by President Goodluck Jonathan to Chibok on May 16 in solidarity with the parents of the missing girls. Many Nigerians had looked forward to such rare presidential gesture, especially with the peculiarity of the Chibok abduction which has attracted worldwide outrage. Before we get it twisted, let me quickly set the records straight.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with cancelling a scheduled presidential visit over security concerns. Also, it would be uncharitable for anyone to insist that the President should endanger his life in an effort to free the girls. Why should he play superman with a sect he described as having the capacity to “kill anyone” at any time? After all, there will always be another opportunity for the President to exhibit his empathy.

If he could do it when Vice President Namadi Sambo lost his brother in a car crash, he should be able to extend such to the wailing parents of so many missing children. What is unacceptable is when government resorts to giving the media a bloody nose in order to hide its officials’ gross inadequacies.

That was exactly what Abati and Omeri did in blaming the press for the misinformation. I find it hard to believe that Omeri who had earlier spoken of the imperative of government ‘seeing things for itself’ in Chibok during a live interview with Isha Sesay on CNN would hastily chastised the Nigerian press for hyping ‘totally false and misleading information.’

If that was the case, why has no government official come out to dispute the claim that Jonathan’s advance team was sighted in Maiduguri before the trip was cancelled? Why did it take the government more than 20 hours to dispute the story? Why was the ‘rumour’ not debunked in the Sesay interview or some hours after the news went viral on all national and international networks? You ask how this event is related to the issue at hand.

Well, a lot. In the past, a lot of ground was lost to nipping terror in the bud due to petty infighting among the security agencies. The refusal to share information among the agencies had resulted in catastrophic consequences. I suspect Omeri was picked as the warehouse of information to be fed the public in order to forestall earlier mistakes. I doubt if some persons are comfortable with a DG of an orientation agency taking over their duty.

Something tells me that petty infighting has, as usual, crept in. If we ignore Omeri’s diplomatese and strict reminder that, “it is not within the job of the National Information Centre to announce the movement of the President, it is a duty being done by Presidential aides”, we should be able to decode why the clarification becomes necessary.

But, in hitting the media below the belt, may we remind all parties involved that central to this matter is the need to ensure our collective safety and security and save us from the savagery of blood-sucking insurgents? Perhaps, when we get our girls back home and when the insurgents no longer reserve the brutal force to kill our future right in our very own eyes, maybe those who delight in petty infighting over matters miscellaneous can go on with their whimsical shenanigan.

Meanwhile, I hope they remember to tell the President that among the pile of body-bags in the Jos massacre were all shades of Nigerians from different walks of life including eight final year medical students! Do we know how many dreams have been deferred as 234 girls remain in the stranglehold of those bent on killing their future? In any case, how many more body-bags would be lumped into the morgues before concrete action takes precedence over this cacophonous rant in high places?

If we must tell ourselves the truth, Dame Patience Jonathan would not have needed that public show of superficial emotion if certain persons had lived up to the responsibility of paying more than a passing attention to the abduction of school girls in Chibok, Borno State, by members of the dreaded Boko Haram sect. She could have meant well by directly intervening in a matter in which The Presidency had displayed crass impotence and incredulous indifference. Sadly, her badly handled official meddlesomeness has become another example of our national maladies. This is not just about the ill-mannered bullying that was pervasive in her interrogation of the officials that she summoned to Aso Rock. It is not even about her atrocious use of English Language which, in my opinion, shouldn’t be an issue at this critical moment of our nation’s history. It is more about the illegality of the summons and the implied meanings embedded in the First Lady’s pronouncements. In any case, that she was forced to play a motherly role in the abduction saga following the loud silence in government quarters should not be enough reason for her to play the role of the judge, jury and interrogator in such a delicate matter. Lest we forget, the Nigerian Constitution is yet to document any official role for the wife of the President or any public official’s wife for that matter. But because we have become used to implementing established laws in the breach, some of these constitutional indiscretions are unquestionably tolerated. And for those who think there was nothing wrong with the way the First Lady summarily summoned the Commissioner of Police in Borno State, the wife of the governor, the head of the West African Examinations Council in Nigeria, the commissioner for education, the principal of the affected school and other persons, they should also be kind enough to quote the relevant sections of the 1999 Constitution which gives her the power to do such. Perhaps if she had stopped with her threat to lead a powerful band of women protesters from The Presidency to the National Assembly and Borno State, there would not have been any public umbrage over her conduct. The glaring faux pas on show that night would have been clearly avoided if she had decided to exhibit the ‘bringbackourgirls’ banner within the precinct of Aso Rock or she had, in solidarity with other protesters, decided to wear red dresses for some days. Today, we are not just faced with the likely tragic consequences of the move to save the girls from the bloodied hands of their demented abductors; we are also battling to clean up a mess that has exposed us to international derision! If we had known, maybe we would have insisted that those saddled with the responsibility of keeping us safe should live up to that mandate instead of this inchoate melodrama in this season of woe. To be candid, we have always known that the present administration has tauntingly continued to wave its woeful flag of incompetence in our faces. What we never knew, or ever thought could happen, was how determined it was to dance naked before the international audience. It is really sad that this has to happen at the time the First Lady was busy bungling her one-man probe into the Chibok abduction shameful story. Regardless of the religious, political and even ethnic coloration that have been surreptitiously introduced into the abduction of the school girls, the world had waited with bated breath for the unveiling of a presidential master plan for rescuing the girls. Clearly, they were not expecting that a fidgety President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan would come on air to tell them that he was also in the dark like every other person on the whereabouts of the girls! Unfortunately, that was the summation of what he told the world during Sunday’s Presidential Media Chat which was full of words and empty on substance. What we saw was a President mumbling on and on about the tragic failings in governance while blaming every other person but himself. When a Commander-In-Chief talks of death the way he did, then the rest of us should scamper for safety at the mention of Boko Haram! Like someone said, we do owe Jonathan a word of gratitude for being forthright with his ignorance on some key national issues, including his capacity to be outlandishly extemporaneous in stultifying his audience. In moments like this, you can’t help applying the soothing effect that comes from a rare brew of crying and laughing at our ill luck. Even in moments of riotous rage, you can’t but giggle when our President turned out to be defender-in-chief for almost everything that has gone wrong with governance. Where on earth did he get the philosophical calmness to announce to a stupefied audience that he did not know the location of the abducted girls? Yet, at the same time, he was promising a rescue operation with the “cooperation of their parents and guardians?” What relevance is a presidential change of countenance each time law-abiding citizens were mauled down while the Presidency keeps on with the rituals of offering platitudes? For the record, Jonathan should know that he was not voted into that powerful office to wring his hands in surrender while terrorists and their sponsors make life miserable for the rest of us! And if he insists of being a ‘President’ to all, including the blood-sucking insurgents, shouldn’t he evolve a strategy of asking them to sheathe their swords and allow others to have their peace? By the way, why does the President get unnecessarily edgy anytime he is asked to justify his sickening inaction in calling some of his aides to order? Aside from claiming ignorance of his Petroleum Minister’s move to obtain an injunction against being summoned by the House of Representatives to answer questions on the N10bn allegedly expended on a private jet by her office, the President would also berate the legislature for the frequent summons extended to the cabinet members. How petty? As President, he ought to know that the Constitution does not specify the number of times a particular aide can be summoned to clarify issues. Whatever his fears about the ‘politics’ playing out in the National Assembly with majority of the members coming from his party, it should bother him that Mrs Diezani Alison Madueke would rather seek an injunction from the court instead of seizing the opportunity provided by the probe to clear her name of any misconduct in the use of the private jet. How can the President accuse the legislature of entrenching parliamentary dictatorship when he envelopes himself in the garment of executive cluelessness and official recklessness? It is also surprising that the President continues to live in self-delusion that mind-boggling corruption is not at the heart of our problem. In fact, his attempt to redefine corruption explains why official sleaze would continue to remain an unwritten principle directive of state policy. With his usual dismissive poise, Jonathan told an awestruck populace that: “People have been confusing corruption with stealing. If public officers steal money they term it under corruption.” What is the right word for it then? Graft or obtaining by false means? Sir, do we then call it petty thievery and allow the culprits walk away with a slap on the wrists even if the billions they have ‘stolen’ have impoverished thousands of pensioners? How do we label those who siphoned the subsidy funds and contractors who, in connivance with civil servants and politicians, cream off billions of Naira from the economy without turning a sod on any project? What tag do we affix to the breast pockets of those briefcase businessmen and rent seeking agents hanging around the corridors of power, fleecing our collective inheritance at the behest of those entrusted with its safety? Petty thievery? It is really intriguing that a man who once linked his slowness in taking prompt action to being extremely cautious in making mistakes would be the one defending the multiple mistakes being made by his aides and hangars-on. We now understand the perennial lethargy in government. With the elasticity of perception and implicit approval given to the tendency to err deliberately, it is clear that some persons would be pardoned even if they spend billions of naira to buy toothpicks or spend it on laundry offshore. But, while at it, we can only pray that such benumbing elasticity does not spread to the key function of ensuring our safety and security as Shekau continues to hold sway from Sambisa Forest! Whatever it is, just bring our girls back safely!

A perception of the vacuity that comes with living on past glories was not lost on the intellectuals, business persons, politicians, historians and concerned stakeholders that converged on the new Government House Auditorium in Gombe, the Gombe State capital on December 3rd, 2013. It was the opening ceremony of the 2nd North-East Economic Summit where leaders from the six states of Gombe, Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Taraba and Bauchi had met for two days, to discuss ways of transforming a blighted region towards sustained economic development. As the compere rightly pointed out, it was a summit where participants were expected to tell truth to power and evolve a realistic roadmap towards putting the region on the pathway of economic rejuvenation through the attraction of investments both local and foreign. Simple as this objective was on paper, those present were not oblivious of the grave impediments posed to its realisation by the violent, reckless and inhumane activities of the Boko Haram sect. Clearly, without peace, the region can hardly attract the required investments. Although the sect’s deadly activities are more pronounced in Borno, Yobe and some parts of Adamawa in recent times, the North-East has become a theatre of war with countless lives lost and property worth billions destroyed. What was once thought to be disjointed guerrilla attacks being perpetrated by a group of ill-motivated, self-seeking youthful Jihadists in Borno State has transformed into a huge monster which now threatens the foundation of our nationhood. For, if the truth must be told, the Boko Haram crisis has become a national malady. Aside the brazenness of the attacks and cold-blooded murders carried out by members of the sect, the Nigerian public is increasingly losing confidence in the ability of the Federal Government to halt the endless spate of senseless killings. More confounding is the fact that the huge presence of security personnel in Borno State did not stop members of the sect from attacking an Air Force base just a day to the opening of the economic summit in Gombe where President Goodluck Jonathan was the special guest. When an ill-trained group of wrongly indoctrinated youth rounds up specially-trained unit of the armed forces and the central authorities did nothing but to offer lame excuses, then we should know we are all in deep trouble. Or is that not the reality of the Nigerian nation today? Or how else can one explain the bedlam witnessed on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway on the mere rumour that members of the sect had taken over the road earlier in the week? For the North East, it was a moment of reckoning. As for the leadership in the region, it is one thing to embark on a fruitless academic exercise of gathering eggheads to discuss the North- East’s descent into the doldrums of economic stagnation. It is another thing to turn the annual ritual into a concrete framework for development and sustained growth. In doing this, the governors must show more than a passing interest in the paper presented by the Guest Speaker and former Minister of National Planning, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, not necessarily because of its fluidity and eloquence but because it touched at the heart of the matter, where the shoes began to pinch the region—the painful realities that could either make or mar its future. According to Usman, leaders in the region would have to find answers to some hard questions. Do they understand the complexities involved in a region that has attracted the headlines in local and international media for all the wrong reasons? What could have awfully gone wrong that a region which once enjoyed stability, prosperity and rapid economic growth is now practically on its knees, scavenging for investors? How come its abundant mineral resources like gypsum, limestone, gold, diamond, fertile land among others have not been able to attract the kind of investments that would propel the region into an economic hub? Where did the North, especially the North-East with its rich history of great leaders over the past 1,000 years, start getting it wrong? These, he noted, are germane to any attempt at evolving workable solutions. Of course, Usman did not leave the answers hanging in the sky. The region, he noted, must look at itself in the mirror and place the blame squarely at its feet! It is a bitter truth that the present leaders must be prepared to swallow if they don’t want to continue to err further in the name of seeking progress. While agreeing with the Gombe State Governor, Ibrahim Dankwambo, that destiny, geography and commerce may have brought the peoples of the region together; there is no doubting the fact that they are being torn apart by the double-edged sword called illiteracy and poverty! Well, you may need to add the deep-seated religious sentiments and mutual suspicion between Muslims and Christians in the volatile region. Elements of these, he noted, can be gleaned from the rising social tensions aggravated by the widening disparity in wealth, restricted access to basic human needs and growing rate of youth unemployment coupled with the outrageous greed of political leaders who pay mere lip service to good governance. Question is: are these problems peculiar to the North-East? Not necessarily so. It is just that the flicker of war was lit after many years of prevalent poverty, deepening inequality, uncontrolled religious fundamentalism, sectarianism and ethnic tensions. Inevitably, idle minds became the devils’ workplace and the entire region is now reaping the dire consequences of that neglect. The leadership, Usman noted, compounded the problem by their seeming inability “to get the politics right!” So, rather than being a change agent, the leadership has become part of the problem of a region where the law is being supplanted by anarchists with a mandate to banish any shade of western education in addition to foisting their own brand of Islam on the region. Does this then mean that the North-East is dangerously treading on the self-destruct lane? Maybe. Maybe not. But, going by the contributions of participants at the two-day summit, such assumption would appear to be extreme,. Although many readily agree that no significant impact can be made without addressing the security issue, the process of reclamation, they said, should start with an aggressive education drive which would ensure that the millions of children that are out of school in the region get back to the class. Of course, this would have to be carefully planned, bearing in mind that the members of the radicalised sect have attacked and burnt such schools in the past. Perhaps, it is for this reason that Usman and most of the resource persons canvass a stick and carrot approach in resolving the security challenges in the region. While military intervention is seen as necessary, it is not a quick fix solution hence the push for community-based interaction that would turn many an unemployed youth from embracing the path that leads to perdition. And so, the nuggets for the rejuvenation of the abused region are surmised under five broad headlines: need to kick-start massive modern and commercial agricultural programmes; access to quality education by all youth including the girl child; development of an entrepreneurial scheme that guarantees gainful employment; a determined effort to bridge the yawning gap between the stupendously rich and those rolling in abject poverty; and the need for the politician in leadership positions to stop stoking the fire of deceit and pushing a perennially oppressed people to the cliff hanger. Essentially, what the region suffers today is the consequence of the neglect of these key factors over the years. Listen to Usman: “The North, especially the North-East, needs to ask certain basic questions. What brand of north do we want? What sort of jobs and what role must we play in creating new jobs? Government should create enabling environment by working with the private sector. The political leadership should not start a fire because when you start one you don’t know if it will consume you. Some of those that started the fire in the past are busy walking the streets as free men. Unfortunately, they are being touted as leaders. Change the mindset of the youths from destructive energy to constructive energy. It requires hard work.” Beyond the rhetoric, Dankwambo and the five other governors in the region have been saddled with the responsibility of saving this once-buoyant geo-political zone from the free fall in which human dignity has been callously abused and raped. They cannot continue to lament about how the pervasive security challenge has taken a toll on development or organise economic summits while the capital city is completely locked down in the name of security. What they are expected to do, if I may borrow the words of one of the resource persons and President of the American University of Nigeria, Yola (AUN), Dr. Margaret Ensign, is to bridge “the gap between the rhetoric of progress and reality of poverty.” What kind of progress can the region lay claim to when millions of its children make up the figure that readily put Nigeria at the base of the log of countries with the highest population of out-of-school children? As an observer at the 2nd North-East Economic Summit, I am keen to see how the leadership reinvents itself and changes the fortunes of the region. If the spirit of camaraderie on display at the summit was anything to go by, it is safe to assume that the political class would begin the process of putting the deliverables on the ground after the talk shop. With the calibre of professionals at its disposal and abundant resources it has been blessed with, it will be a tragic twist of history for Nigeria’s North-East to selfdestruct when all that is required to apply the brakes is trust, consistency and national interest. Or is Usman’s request too much a sacrifice for those who vowed to return the North-East to its glory years? Only time will tell. ***Note: This piece was first published on December 7, 2013. Unfortunately, all the lofty dreams captured in different presentations during the summit would remain a mirage as long as the region continues to be laden with bombs, abductions, killings and self-inflicted paralysis. Moving forward, the people in the region would have to take their destinies into their hands. Those who think the solutions lie with the bungling whole in Abuja are not only missing the point, they are also prolonging our collective suffering! Let the leaders wear their thinking caps right and stop the blame game. Will the North-East self-destruct? Before cattle have right

In yet another week of madness and senseless rage, Nigeria bleeds further. The peaceful ambience that usually pervaded Nyanya, one of the popular satellite towns in Abuja where millions of residents hide their heads after the hustling and bustling in the city, was blown up in bombs of sorrow and tears. By the time the capital city woke up to count its losses, over 80 innocent lives had been cut short and hundreds were battling for dear lives at different hospitals. The pain was not just in the sickening Monday morning violence that shredded them into bits of human flesh and the horror that greeted the living in that early morning bomb blast. The pain lies in the fact that these ones, like many others in the past, died without knowing what sins they had committed to deserve such an inglorious exit. They were among countless others who have been failed by a state where leaders know nothing about the state’s duty of guaranteeing our right to life. There was that father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt and breadwinner that rushed out just to eke a living that would probably feed many hungry mouths. There was the truck pusher, the bus conductors, the commercial driver, the local cobbler popularly called shoe shiner, petty trader, nail cutter and the jobless graduate brimming with hope in the face of so many odds. They all perished, some burnt beyond recognition. The images that confronted us were gory but we were forced to look at them. They were grim reminders of how low we have sunk, how unfeeling we have become and how fast we are losing our humanity! And then, you ask: did the perpetrators of this evil have blood, no matter how dirty, running in their veins? We yelled, cried, cursed with teeth deeply buried in the tongue, railed and ranted. Yet, inside us, we knew these ones would never come to life again. They are gone forever, to be remembered by those who truly loved them—the husband that has suddenly become a widower; the wife who would have to adjust to living without her man by her side; the parent who would never see that child he had placed so much hope on; the child who would have to hold on to memories of a parent that would never be there again; the brother who would never see his sister again and the sister who knows that that dotting brother has departed to the land of no return. Sadly, that’s the reality that confronts us. Those who have made it a habit to condemn one dastardly act after the other would feature prominently in the papers. They would embark on the familiar drill of visiting the hospitals, consoling the wounded, throwing money at the problems and vowing to bring the demented souls that wiped out a generation to book. Doesn’t it sound like a familiar refrain? Those who never get tired of offering platitudes would be at their melodramatic best, feigning pain and anguish at the loss. In times like this when we are united by an unmitigated sorrow, nothing is impossible. Not even crocodile tears that would belie that of that Valentine’s Day shooter, Oscar Pistorious! And so, while we were still struggling to fathom a reason why the Nyanya mass murder succeeded in spite of the detailed security network in Abuja after a number of tragic moments in the past, the killers of our collective dream were said to have, on a single night, abducted over 100 girls from Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State. In our usual manner, we went into riotous rage. How could that be in an environment that was under heavy security surveillance? Could it be true that students are still being exposed to the maniacal operations of insurgents after the deadly attacks in Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, where 43 students were killed and 16 abducted in March? How ‘secured’ is an environment where insurgents could invade settlements for six hours, packing abducted students in trucks, setting homes on fire and slaughtering residents? Strangely, no one doubted the story. How could we? Were we not told to go about our ‘normal business’ as our ‘safety is assured’ even when hundreds of lives have been cut short in this maddening space? How many lives did marauders waste in Zamfara State recently? How many villages have been raided by gunmen in Benue and what is the casualty figure? How has Nasarawa State fared in the hands of attackers who steal, maim and kill? How about Wukari in Taraba State? What about the daily haulage of dead bodies in Borno, Yobe and other parts of the North? And what is the contribution of armed robbers, ritualists, kidnappers and hired killers to this sea of blood? We may never know the answers to these questions. But we do know one thing for sure. It is the responsibility of the Jonathan administration to rein in the criminal in our midst, no matter their political affiliations, and instil order. It is a sacred duty he owes the nation and not tendering tendentious excuses for his failure! We cannot continue to hang on to a promissory note that devalues our lives as depraved minds take the centre stage. The Nyanya killings, to my mind, sends the message home that the enemy within is not just baying for more blood but that he is audaciously doing it right at the President’s doorstep. I’m sure that message is not lost on the authorities and that probably explains the President’s visit to the blast scene few hours after the light went out for the 80 souls. It is just as well that Jonathan has promised to wipe out the insurgents and their sponsors. He definitely cannot afford to sleep on his hands while the greatest threat to his tenure as a President continues to hit him below the belt. Yet, in times like this, we do not expect that some of the President’s men would be playing to the gallery in the name of political correctness especially when lives of innocent Nigerians are being wasted in an orgy of unmitigated violence. So, with all the bloodletting, one funny character called Olisa Metuh, still had the presence of mind for insensitive politicking in a season of mass sorrow, blatantly accusing the opposition All Progressives Congress of being behind the killings, bombings and slaughtering! And if members of the party were truly behind the horror, why should a ‘caring’ President feign such indifference and avail them the template to elongate our anguish? So impudently, the Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, could relish us with an incredible story about how Jonathan has been undergoing ‘psychological’ anguish due to the killings at a time when his party’s spokesman was busy justifying the President’s singing and dancing at a political rally barely 24 hours after the Nyanya mass murder. Psychological anguish indeed! So, the best way to send a ‘loud statement to terrorists that government cannot be stopped from working’ was for the President to attend a political rally a day after the shredded bodies of innocent citizens were denied the decency of being packaged in body bags to the morgues? So, there is no line of distinction between the cheap politics we play here, the cheap deaths that pervade our land and the hare-brained ranting in high places? How long would this unfeeling mass continue to dance on the graves of the dead? In times like this, words do fail me. I can only shiver at the banality embedded in official indolence in this season of anomie. May God heal our land.

IF there was anything I missed following her tragic exit some years back, it was the humanism often embedded in her soulful lyrics. For someone who rarely settles down to decode the lyrical blurs in modern American pop culture and its fixation to violence and sexism, Whitney Houston’s lyrical clarity came as a breath of fresh air. Today, millions of her fans spread across the world still try to grapple with the reality of how such a wonderful voice was ruined by the split personality that hibernated inside one body. There was Whitney the soulful pop artiste that wowed millions of fans in the public space. There was also a Whitney who soaked her fears in truckloads of narcotics. Eventually, she was consumed by the demons harboured in her cravings for the latter. Yet, it was this same Whitney that popped up a question that never fails to nudge my conscience each time I think about the Nigerian nation and its seemingly insurmountable, multi-layered crises: where do broken hearts go? She asked. In Nigeria, a nation that today, sadly competes for global recognition in increasing numbers of internallydisplaced citizens, there are too many broken-hearted souls who live on the forlorn hope that the mirage-like milk of human kindness would one day get to them. These are folks whose families have been broken by turbulent anomic marauders and storms of circumstances against which the state provided no real succour. Sometimes broken physically, they have been left with scarred psyche and yet they continue being pummelled psychologically and broken down into more wretched pieces by the avalanche of systemic failures, corrosive corruption and grand looting of the national treasury by a set of kleptomaniacs who routinely parade themselves as Nigeria’s ruling elite. They hopelessly cling to hope in a season of anomie and unmitigated catastrophe. Collectively, they are victims of a warped system in which the rich, whose corruption breeds a miasma of easy death and wanton decay, continue to get richer as the poor waddle in putrefying poverty. They are the looming danger that a dozing nation has failed to acknowledge as the mercantilism of quotidian living has blurred many a vision that should have seen through the despair. These are the human ‘time bombs’ that this harvest of neglect and sheer incompetence breed daily. They come in different forms and shapes. Here, I speak of the growing tribe of the unemployed, the unemployable and the vulnerable youths who daily slap the streets to eke out a living, any living. They are a veritable army of the unemployed, waiting for a letter of engagement from the devil. The ones we derisively refer to as the dregs of the society, illiterates and the unambitious. But then, I ask: can the rich sleep or enjoy their wealth when the poor are hungry? It is a question we all need to ponder over. Have we really given a thought to the wisdom buried in the advisory that the rich man should share his riches with the poor before the poor start sharing the inevitable consequences of his poverty with the rich? Or are we still living the deceit that we are completely free from the looming danger just because we have raped the treasury blind even for our generations yet unborn? That is tantamount to living dangerously. Like an ostrich with its head temporarily buried in the sand to – in its forlorn thought – keep the looming danger away. The truth is that luck may be running out on the rich as the poor get more entrapped in further misery. The situation is compounded by the absence of any feasible social security or safety net. Even the crumbs they once depended on are no longer falling off the table of the rich. Excessive greed has blinded the rich against engaging themselves in tangible acts of charity. Now, they not only trample on the poor but also fleece them so unscrupulously. Clearly, the gulf that has deepened the graveyard peace that exists between the rich and poor is worsened by the total lack of charity—the complete absence of love of humankind which, in turn, kills hope and faith in a brighter tomorrow. What rules is the self. Unfortunately, it is killing us softy while it has turned some into beasts. For sure, there is a deeper meaning to charity than doling out crumbs for the needy in the society and making a song and dance of it in the media. And so, inasmuch as I identify with the huge ‘sacrifice’ being made by five out of the over 490 delegates at the national conference who agreed to donate their multi-million naira allowances to charities, I hasten to note that the gesture remains a drop in the ocean. It can only take care of some symptoms but hardly can such ‘philanthropy’ heal a wound that has eaten deep into the marrow. If we must say it as it is, then we must admit that the kind of charity we need is still far from our grasp. Simple as it seems, the kind of love that is needed to heal our land has eluded us for ages because of our collective fixation to self. Nigeria bleeds today because it has lost that compass for love for humankind, which breeds hope and faith. Today, official documents released by the National Emergency Management Agency indicate that over three million Nigerians have been displaced either through insurgency or natural disasters. This is aside the thousands whose blood has been sucked in the endless spate of mindless killings that go on daily in our communities. We are yet to add the figures of innocent citizens who are currently missing and whose families are still trying to unravel the mystery behind their sudden disappearance. Were they kidnapped for ransom or were they victims of the demented souls who trade in human parts as recently unearthed in the ‘evil forest’ in Soka along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway? Could their dismembered vital organs be lying in some secret rooms of some money ritualists, politicians or some cultists with a warped belief that all that it takes to remain relevant in a society that has lost its conscience is to feed some dead gods with human sacrifice and assuage their thirst with their victims’ blood? How can any man think he can thrive by drinking the blood of his fellow man? It’s crazy really but that we still do it in the 21st century Nigeria says a lot about our capacity to handle the challenges of modernity and development. For sure, this is not just about the Soka horror scene or the mindless killings going on daily in Borno, Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, Kaduna states and many other communities. It is more about the deadly horror we inflict on one another through our action and inaction. The tragic rush of horrific scenes that confront us today is the consequence of the many years of neglect and the little we have offered in lifting the poor from their broken state. It explains why young girls now offer themselves as baby factories to satisfy the proprietorial interest of some evil minded matrons! Where they had expected love, many of us had piled up their misery by sniggering at their plight. Many a dream has been killed at its infancy as we continue to ignore the millions of kids that drop out of school every year as our own kids attend the best schools. Even the children of the poor who managed to make it out of school are, more often than not, discriminated against in the search for life-changing jobs. Such jobs are reserved for the kids of the super-rich or those who would do anything to buy their way to the top. It is this mercantilist approach to life and living that has left us with this harvest of monstrosities. At a time when you would have thought that those saddled with the responsibility of lifting the spirits of the dejected souls would put on their thinking caps and do something about the gradual slip into the state of lawlessness in which life has become brutish, nasty and short as the killings fields expand, they are busy playing politics. Do they know that they put the lives of countless Nigerians in danger each time they sit on or gloat over a problem that requires urgent attention? I believe that it is this lack of charity and respect for the sanctity of human lives that has pushed the ruling Peoples Democratic Party into playing politics with the lives of the citizens that died in the ill-fated Nigerian Immigration Service job recruitment exercise organised some weeks back by the Ministry of Interior. Do they get it at all? What we are being confronted with is a clear and present danger in which millions of educated, half-educated and uneducated youths scrounge for survival in a society where only the brutally fit have any chance of living above the madness. And instead of taking responsibility for aggravating the problem in the death-for-jobs scam, the ruling PDP has been bleating about how it provided 1.6 million quality jobs under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration. Can we have a breakdown of the jobs please? It has equally challenged the opposition All Progressives Congress to provide jobs for the thousands of youths that gather at venues controlled by it during the exercise. If you ask me, I’ll tell you that that is not a smart move. Unless the PDP is telling us that its understanding of charity stops with backdoor job opportunities handed out in the dark, to sons and daughters of the big wigs and cronies within its fold, there cannot be any justification for the murderous intent embedded in the way and manner the NIS job scam was organised. There should be more to politicking than the bestial resort to dancing on the graves of the dead. Even the dead deserve some modicum of charity. There are far too many broken hearts awaiting the soothing touch of charity which cuts across political affiliations, religion or even ethnic cleavages. In spite of the seeming hopelessness around them, many of these persons still mask themselves with plastic laughter, faithfully hoping that good fortune will smile at them, someday. Will the kleptomaniacs in high places spare a thought for these teeming millions scattered across the country and begin a process of rekindling a hope long deferred? And, as Whitney Houston asked, would these broken hearts ever find their way back to that home brimming with love, faith and charity which know no bounds? Only time will tell. For now, pessimism and forlorn hope holds sway across the landscape.

MOST citizens cannot help but conclude that these ones are out to get whatever they could chop off the national cake before the tray moves to another station. In fact, I would have been shocked if some of the delegates to the National Conference had not evolved an ingenious strategy aimed at cajoling the government to cough out more than the N7bn budgeted for their three-month talk shop. In a country where millions of people jostle for jobs meant for a couple of thousands, it is benumbing that some of these ‘patriots’ did not see anything wrong with asking the government to take care of the allowances of their aides and hangers-on. They even argue over such petty things as sitting arrangements. Despite the outrage that has greeted the humongous pay that the unelected delegates are to receive for the threemonth show in Abuja for accommodation and ‘logistics’, it beats one hollow that these persons could still make a brazen request to fix extra-logistical issues. I doff my fedora for the Secretary of the Conference, Dr. Valerie-Janette Azinge, for spilling it out that there was no provision for such excesses as issues relating to feeding, accommodation and transportation have been monetised by the government. I believe that should put a final nail on any further request. At least if these delegates, which comprised mostly of privileged Nigerians with a long record of feeding fat on the government, cannot take a cue from a couple of others who have declined to receive the three-month N12m per delegate largesse, they should not be allowed to play Oliver Twist on a government with an abysmal record in bookkeeping and accounting! Besides, has any of the delegates given a thought to what N12m could do in the life of any of the 19 unfortunate job-seekers that died in the Nigeria Immigration Service job recruitment exercise some few days to the inauguration of the National Conference by President Goodluck Jonathan? Any of the unfortunate ‘lads’ (apologies to Jonathan) that died in that scandalous job recruitment scam could have started a life-saving business with just N100,000 or less if they ever had the opportunity of having access to such huge sum. But in a society with millions of unemployed youths deprived of any social security policy, it is sad that some government agents and officials still see nothing wrong in what has turned out to be a grand design to extort money from them in the name of job recruitment exercise. As I write this, there has been no word on what has happened to the over N700,000m ‘processing’ fee that was collected from the applicants in the ill-fated Nigeria Immigration Services job scam. Even from The Presidency, mum has been the word. The identity of the consultant, initially rumoured to be linked to the wife of a top shot at the National Assembly, has equally been shrouded in secrecy. Of course, one must acknowledge that, this time, Jonathan indeed acted swiftly by announcing a number of palliative measures both for the families of the dead, the injured and all the applicants. Yet, quite a number of Nigerians readily admit that the President’s gesture fell short of the expected minimum, especially with his loud silence on punishing those responsible for the tragic incident. It is simply not enough for the government to announce three job slots in the NIS for the families of the 19 victims of Saturday’s bungled job recruitment exercise and dash the over 50 injured applicants with automatic employment as immigration officers. Beyond the outright cancellation of the exercise and the presidential order for a fresh recruitment process that would be transparent and less distressing, Nigerians had expected the government to identify and punish those behind the ill-treatment of thousands of its jobless tribe. They want to know the rationale for collecting struggling citizens’ money for services that were never rendered while humiliating, dehumanising and even, audaciously seeing to the killing of job-seekers. No matter how bad things have gone in Nigeria, the conduct of an exam, regardless of the number of participants, should not pose problems to any organisations. It could have been farmed out to such bodies like the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, the National Examinations Council, the National Business and Technical Examinations Board, the West African Examinations Council or even the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria. These, among many others, have the requisite competence to supervise such exams. With specific reference to the NIS sham job recruitment exercise, those responsible could have adopted a number of measures that could have prevented the ugly situation that played out last Saturday. They could, for instance, have split the participants based on their qualifications, age and sex and allot different days for the exercise, having witnessed an incident of tragic consequences some years back when applicants were lumped together at the same venue. They could also have instructed the IT consultants for the exercise to create a platform through which the applicants would access the aptitude tests online and equally get a feedback online. With online short-listing, there would have been no need to invite all the applicants to different venues across the federation on the same day to write an exam on white T-shirts and sandals. All it requires is common sense which, sadly, is not so common, especially when the overriding aim is to extort money from the unemployed. To say the least, the stampede that led to the death of these Nigerians was avoidable. Perhaps, Nigerians, especially its teeming unemployed and unemployable youths, would have been less combative on this matter if the Minister of Interior, Comrade Abba Moro, had not chosen to add a disingenuous insult to the grave injury inflicted on their psyche through the exercise. For a man who prided himself as having a long history of fighting for justice, equity and fairness as a labour leader, Moro’s elementary understanding of empathy in times of crisis was put to test on the day of the tragedy and he woefully failed that test. Even his principal, who is known to be a perennial failure in acting proactively, would have fared better. At least, since Moro and the other culprits appeared to have opted to close their eyes to past tragic precedents, I had expected them to have cogent, believable and incontrovertible reasons to justify their idiocy. And if it turned out to be one of those human failings that tend to diminish the good in us, I would have expected a remorse that comes right from within. Not less from Moro, who superintends over a ministry with a wellknown record of money-for-job scams! Rather than accept responsibility for the bungled exercise, Moro would insensitively shift the blame to those who were the direct victims of his mental vacuity. Speaking in Jos, the Plateau State capital, where he had gone to monitor the exercise, Moro was quoted as saying: “The applicants lost their lives due to impatience; they did not follow the laid down procedures spelt out to them before the exercise. Many of them jumped through the fences of affected centres and did not conduct themselves in orderly manner to make the exercise a smooth one. This caused stampede and made the environment unsecured.” By the way, this statement was made shortly after he was informed of the death of 7 applicants made up of five women and two men in Abuja. Although Moro tried to do some sort of damage control after activists descended on him on the social media, this also fell short of irreducible minimum. Still playing the ostrich in an event bearing his full finger prints, Moro gloated in a television interview, saying: ““I have been a labour man before I became a Minister here and I know what it takes. Every step that we have taken was out of a patriotic desire to ensure that every Nigerian has an opportunity of being enlisted. It is unfortunate that the poor management of crowd led to the death of people.” If not that Knucklehead has a fair idea of the individual the former Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, likened to “being drunk on something” for berating her role in the crashed Associated Airline last year in Lagos, I would have sworn that Stella was also talking about Moro. So, there was stampede and there was a master plan for crowd control. Then, who should be blamed for the dereliction of duty that tragically became apparent? The dead? The injured? The crowd who would stop at nothing to write the test and participate fully in the physical drill? The organisers who left just one small gate open for thousands of applicants, thereby setting the stage for cheap death? Or a minister who ignored the advice of the NIS board and went on to recruit an IT consultant to design an infallible recruitment platform that ended up snuffing lives out 19 promising Nigerians? I hate to call them ‘lads’ as the President wont because that was a slip that ought not to happen if we truly care about the life of any Nigerian, regardless of his status in the society. Back to Moro, common sense should dictate that he should keep his mouth shut for a while if The Presidency has not deemed it fit to kick him out for such utterly insensitive verbal recklessness. Obviously, he is yet to come to terms with the reality that, on this matter, he remains the villain. That can only be the logical explanation for the incredulous vomit by one of Moro’s aides, Mallam Salisu Dantata Muhammed, who told newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday that the unfortunate incident should be blamed on, wait for it, doctors, nurses, bankers, teachers and others in paid employment who desire to cross to Immigration Services at all cost. Don’t shout ‘Ha’ yet. Muhammed was to continue with his illogic by rationalising that: The unexpected huge crowd shattered the near perfect arrangements Moro and his officials had put in place against anticipated huge crowd; that the Interior Ministry made adequate provisions for the expected mammoth crowd at the National Stadium meant to conveniently sit 75,000 people; that more than 45 per cent of those who eventually turned up were not supposed to be at the centres; 520,000 applied for the recruitment exercise across the federation; that applicants totalling 68,000 were to be at the Abuja Stadium but nearly 70 per cent of non-applicants forced their way into the stadium; security personnel drawn from the Immigration, Civil Defence, Prisons, Fire Services and others to complement the Police were overpowered as many of them got impatient and became very desperate to get attention, and the crowd got more desperate when they learnt that they could get foreign service postings and then become pensionable! Unfortunately, this truckload of untenable excuses simply does not hold water. Personally, I congratulate Moro for having the courage to gum his butt to that seat, probably assured by his principal that he would get a slap on the wrist for inadvertently sending 19 young lives to early graves. After all, those 19 lives have been able to generate 57 jobs for their families while paying the supreme price. Well, that’s okay. But since he has refused to tread with caution in the midst of the dead, will Moro equally respond to the allegation by a member of the NIS Board that he not only ignored an advice not to go on with the deadly recruitment process but that he singlehandedly engaged the consultant which fixed N1,000 ‘administrative charges’? Will Moro tell us why all the over 500,000 applicants got was 40 kobo bulk SMS message informing them that: “Exams into Nigeria Immigration Service holds Sat. Mar 15, 20014 at 7am in your preferred exam state. Contact your state command for more info!?” If this is not shoddiness at its peak, then what is? And so, of Moro would not be humble enough to resign and if his principal thinks throwing jobs at the families of the dead and injured should keep them quiet, can he please spare the rest of us the anguish of listening to jaundiced and vexatious statements by keeping his mouth permanently shut on this matter? Seriously, he needs not waste his spittle on a matter in which the government has decided to keep mum on what happened to the millions of Naira that was raked in from hapless job seekers. We know where to draw the line and Moro should just keep his peace and save us the needless agony of unending official tactlessness and vacuous tantrums!

Save for officials’ anxiety that some Boko Haram elements could be lurking around any corner, Abuja – Nigeria’s capital city of politics and voodoo economics – is in a party mood. Already, smart businessmen and women, journalists, emergency contractors, genuine and questionable consultants, low-class pimps and high class courtesans are perfecting strategies to make the best out of the three-month shindig as the Presidency is billed to officially ‘unveil’ the appetising menu on Monday, March 17, when the Justice Idris Kutigi-led National Conference Committee would be inaugurated by President Goodluck Jonathan. Those conversant with what goes down whenever activities of this nature take place in Abuja would readily admit that free-flowing cash is not always in short supply. All it takes to scoop some dough in seasons like this is having an idea or meeting one of ‘them’, the Kleptocrats who run things. Sometime, a well-thought-out strategic repositioning gets one close to those in charge of disbursing the freebies that come with every talk shop that had been organised to ‘cement’ our oneness as a nation irrespective of what happened to the recommendations of such talk shops! From the look of things, the Jonathan National Dialogue promises to offer more entertainment not just because of the quality of names that found their way into the delegates’ list but also because of the kind of ‘comfort’ that the lucky delegates stand to enjoy in a city brimming with money, power and hot legs. I’m sure no one has any problem decoding what hot legs stand for. Snippets from the yet-to-be-passed 2014 budget indicate that the government has allocated N7bn from the Service Wide Vote for the dialogue even before the Senator Femi Okurounmu-led Advisory Committee on National Dialogue submitted its report to Jonathan. For now, no one can say for sure if the Okurounmu committee, tried as they did, truly came out with recommendations that reflected its terms of reference which included, among others, to consult expeditiously with all relevant stakeholders with a view to drawing up a feasible agenda for the proposed national dialogue/ conference; make recommendations to government on structure and modalities for the proposed national dialogue/conference; and make recommendations on how representation of various interest groups at the national dialogue/conference will be determined. The committee was also saddled with the responsibility of advising the government on a time frame for the national dialogue/conference; its legal framework, legal procedures and options for integrating decisions and outcomes of the national conference into the constitution; and advise the government on any other matters that may be related or incidental to the conference. Although the jury is still out on what can be done with the outcome of the Justice Kuitigi confab. Two main reasons have been adduced for this. First, there is the belief that the National Assembly, which is the only body that is constitutionally empowered to make laws for the good governance of the country, might not be disposed to any attempt to whittle down or tamper with its overriding powers by accepting the recommendations of a nonstatutory body. The body language of members does not suggest a preparedness to shoot oneself on the foot! Second, aside the fact that the authorities might find it difficult to convince members of the two chambers who are torn apart along political divide to accept the recommendations and make moves to reflect them in a new constitution, some have argued that failure to put such recommendations to a referendum might render the report useless. It may just as end up in the trash can of history just as many others in the past. But then, this is still within the realm of speculations since the conference is set to convene in Abuja next week. However, what is not a subject of conjectures is the amount that would be spent on ‘logistics’ for the National Conference Secretariat, accommodation, feeding and other miscellaneous activities for the 492 delegates made up of ‘elder-statesmen’, representatives of professional bodies, civil society groups, politicians, human rights activists, monarchs, youth and politicians. Like a friend put it, the list is a blend of “thieving billionaires, moderate millionaires, innocent kobonaires and privileged criminals!” What is important is that this potpourri of Nigerians would be gathering in Abuja in the next few days to discuss how best we can live together as peoples of the same nation. As would be expected, they are not doing it for free. This talk of a lifetime comes with the kind of perks that would make the forever struggling Nigerians groan with envy and salivate with bitterness. It was the same way most Nigerians were smitten and became punch drunk with riotous rage tucked within their armpits when, in January 18, 2005, former President Olusegun Obasanjo sought an approval of the sum of N932m from the National Assembly to fund a three-month National Political Reform Conference billed to start mid- February of that year. In that particular instance, Obasanjo was kind enough to avail the lawmakers details of what the money would be used for. Delegates were to earn N21.68million as sitting allowance and N650.25 million as allowances in lieu of accommodation. Also included was the sum of N1.7million for return flight tickets from London, Washington, Beijing and Johannesburg in addition to N28,800 for return flights to Abuja for the inaugural session and subsequent conference meetings. Delegates, Obasanjo noted, would be given N14, 400 for airport taxi and local transportation within Abuja while there would be a provision for, at least, two CVU long wheel cars to be hired and fuelled at a total cost of N2.9 million. That was in 2005. Today, eight solid years after the Obasanjo jamboree came out with a report which never saw the light of day and eight years after his third term agenda was quashed by both chambers of the National Assembly, President Jonathan would need N7bn or more to host his chosen ones to a talk show. It is bad enough that, up till now, he has not officially written the National Assembly to make formal request for the funds and neither has he publicly avail us details of the spend. All that we are privileged to know, according to an exclusive report published by this paper early January, is that N11bn would be drawn from the perennially abused and callously raped Service Wide Vote with N7 billion going to the National Dialogue while N4 billion will be expended on hosting the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Abuja. It’s that simple and it’s called voodoo economics. You need not worry yourselves how they came about this humongous aggregate. Just rest assured that nothing is too small to spend on those who have opted to create time out of a busy schedule, to discuss the way forward for a country on the throes of disintegration and a citizenry forever harangued by the challenges of daily living. Pity. But if you are one of those persons who insist on the breakdown of every appropriated figure, then this news report would interest you. According to a scoop by one of the leading newspapers, the delegates are billed to enjoy the sort of reception fit only for royalties. Beyond the talks, jibes, drama and occasional fisticuffs that ordinary Nigerians would be treated to at the International Conference Centre venue of the talk show, delegates would also have the freedom of being ensconced in Abuja’s red carpet treatment status with a monthly accommodation stipend of N4m each and a daily feeding allowance of about N30,000 for three rounded meals! Ha! Life sure can’t be on the down side for any delegate regardless of his status. The N30,000 meal ticket per day, if the report is true, could pay the salary of most Nigerians for four months. And that’s why some people see this latest national dialogue conference as the most expensive talk shop ever organised in this country. But then, who cares? We do understand the argument that Abuja is an expensive town with its peculiar security challenges at a time when terrorists are threatening to disturb its peaceful ambience. We are also not unmindful of the fact that the Obasanjo confab was some eight years gone and things couldn’t just remain the same. Even the beautiful, fair weather friends that line roads leading to major hotels in Abuja no longer charge stipends for services rendered! We can even decode why some of the delegates need extra funds for ‘personal logistics’ in the spirit of ‘body no be wood’ and a labourer deserving his wage. We also know that some lifestyles have to be maintained by some privileged delegates. But then, in line with its avowed commitment to transparency and accountability in the transformation agenda, it shouldn’t be difficult to spell out how much each delegate will get for agreeing to disagree and being ‘patriotic’ enough to attend a talk show which is long on promises and could end up to be abysmally short on delivery if the delegates are to strictly obey the ‘no-go areas’ command by Mr. President. Or should it? And so, we ask: how cheap is this talk and what impact will it have on the price of fish in the market?