Category: Yomi Odunuga

It is not an accident of history that the Nigerian story, like that of all other nations across the globe, is sketched in mosaics of joy and sadness. Those happy moments give us the confidence to smile through the occasional tears that come with quotidian living. Life or living, they say, is not a bed of roses. There are always thorns on the way and that’s why humanity matters. And so, we are always mindful of these two extreme contradictions and we brave the odds daily. However, in our clime, it appears the pendulum swings dangerously more towards the negative when compared with several other countries that bear generally similar burdens as ours. Simply put: there is too much sadness in the land. The once happiest people in the world are no longer finding anything funny!  What sickens, in the episodic rendering of our tale, is the consistently repetitive streaks of gloom and spasms of despair. Rarely does the poor exhale in an environment in which government after government continues to bequeath a monument of failures for generations yet unborn. A society where its weather-beaten citizenry has come to accept every tendentious excuse offered by different categories of the fleecing elite as justifiable reason to ignore the daylight malfeasance going on under their noses. Pity.

At tempestuous moments like this, Knucklehead dares to ask: What happened to our humanity? So, some deranged youth could trail a 17-year-old undergraduate who is close to graduating from the university to her parents’ home only to stab her to death for being ‘proud’ in refusing their animalistic sexual advances? And as if that was not a sin grave enough to attract eternal damnation, the same misguided youth, having disembowelled the lady’s intestines with a knife after a failed rape attempt, had the gut to take the family’s jeep and send an SMS to the deceased’s mother, justifying the gory act? And they think it’s perfectly cool to do that in a society that runs on laws and regulations? Are these the kind of animals that now pervade our institutions of higher learning, be it private or public? Were we not to be living in strange times, the callous murder of Opeyemi Odesanya would have attracted a biting commentary from The Presidency. But, in a country where hundreds of lives are being wasted by insurgents in some parts of the country, those who killed Opeyemi could just be having champagne on ice until such a time when members of the civil society decide to nudge the authorities into action. Until that happens, Opeyemi’s parents’ salty teardrops are painful reminders of the agonising cries of a voice soaked in blood—one among the other thousands that have been hacked to death, unsung and crying for justice. I shiver each time I think about how we allow the fear of the unknown to becloud our sense of responsibility!

When a society demeans its humanity, it loses all. It is at the heart of the nation’s tragic impulses. We play the ostrich when the situation demands that we stand up to the mirror and tell truth to power. Right before our eyes, this house has become a canvas of blood. Those regaling themselves with garlands of achievements in Abuja and elsewhere should understand that they have completely let down the innocent lives whose throats were being slit daily by insurgents in Borno State and other parts of the country. They say Nigeria is not at war but blood continues to flow on our streets. They say the battle against the Boko Haram elements is yielding positive results, yet the group has not relented in its crazy commitment to maim, plunder, kill and destroy. In the last threeweeks, it has sent over 300 lives, including men of the Nigerian security agencies, to early graves. We are still counting the numbers as bodies of slain students of Government College, Boni Yadi in Yobe State, were being retrieved from the bush. We have asked questions as to why these ones were exposed to face the enemy’s fire but all we got was a loud silence. They say they are on top of the game, but this faceless group keeps on with the tempo of surprise attacks which must have forced the Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, to make a dash to Abuja, to inform the Commander-In-Chief, President Goodluck Jonathan, of the need to face the war within.

Knowing that the teardrops are not about to dry soon in his eyes with the way dead bodies litter villages and communities in his domain, Shettima knew there couldn’t have been a better time to vent his frustration than the period when Abuja was clinking glasses for the ‘sustained successes recorded against the insurgents’ in some parts of the North. The irony? While Abuja was seeing victory, Shettima was seeing a crushing defeat. Hear him: “What we are being confronted with is that we are in a state of war. The sooner we stop playing the ostrich and rise up to the challenges of the day and marshal our resources towards visualising the antics of Boko Haram, the better for all of us. I made it emphatically clear to Mr. President that the Boko Haram are better armed and better motivated. Have we ever succeeded in thwarting any of their plans? Honestly, we the leaders should be held responsible for our failure in leadership.”

Well, Shettima could just be having a bad time, ranting at the marines. He might as well be the lone mourner in this crowd of revellers. Yes, the invaders held sway for five hours in Konduga, killing, maiming and abducting young girls. He was also on point that the group operated freely for some hours in Kauri and Idzge, leaving behind blood and tears. But were those raids enough reasons for any right-thinking person to say Nigeria is at war? Would he rather we move the entire armoury of the Nigerian state to Borno State, all because some ill-informed individuals have chosen to wage guerrilla warfare against Nigeria and label democracy and Western education as grievous sins? I guess Shettima is not that teary-eyed not to see through the strongly-worded response by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe. It was an unshaken affirmation of the government’s conviction that the Boko Haram menace is, at best, a mere scratch that should not make Shettima to cry more than the bereaved.

Noting that Shettima must be have been speaking from the perception of a civilian with insignificant knowledge of military operations, Okupe said: “Our military, which has participated in numerous international peace keeping operations where they helped to quell insurgencies, has acquired the sophistication and necessary capacity to adapt to the ever changing modus operandi of the insurgents. We state categorically that the Nigerian military is one of the best equipped in Africa and that in 2014, the Federal Government made budgetary provision in excess of N1 trillion for the military and other security agencies, an amount, which is about 22 per cent of our entire national budget for this year.  The Nigerian military and security agencies have taken up this challenge and like every facet of this struggle will put an end to these incursions in the shortest possible time. In conclusion, we state authoritatively without any fear or equivocation whatsoever, that Nigeria is already winning the war against terror and the activities of the insurgents will be terminated within the shortest possible time.”

What was Okupe flaunting? The money we throw at every problem? The expertise of the military? Or was he blowing empty grammar? Is there any Nigerian citizen, living or dead, who is not aware that all that government does is to throw humongous money at problems? In that tradition, without finding solutions, the bulging pockets of bureaucrats and their cohorts get scandalously lined.

Surely, with this kind of explanation, no one can label this government as playing the ostrich. First, it rolled truckloads of money into the problem. Recall that President Goodluck Jonathan had once given a June, 2013 date for the final onslaught and total extermination of the irritants. Due to some technical glitch, that date became unrealistic. Today, the April 2014 target set by the new Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, has been tactically adjusted to a vague, “shortest possible time” by those whose sole responsibility is the security of the citizens’ lives and property. All they ask of us is the kind of patience that would enable them to put their sophisticated experience into proper use in due course. And so, for the voices that would be soaked in blood as the propaganda machinery takes off, maybe we would be revisiting their fate when we finally decide to carry out a forensic audit of the collateral damage inflicted on the nation through this needlessly prolonged war…in due course! If that is enough to give you loads of hope that smiles and songs of joy will soon burst through the present torrid tears in this season of uncertainty, I can only wish you loads of good luck.

Happy Centenary celebrations!

“Hocus pocus, abracadabra; the more you look, the less you see” were ‘magic’ words that a fake but entertaining conjurer in our childhood days employed often. Sadly, official actions and events in Nigeria these days now mimic the comical logic of abracadabra. Often, the more people watch officials’ sleight of the hand, the less they are made to see. The Presidency may not like newspapers’ headlines announcing the gale of ministerial sackings earlier in the week. The nation’s Information Minister, Labaran Maku, may equally refuse to be on the same page with newsmen for insisting that there was more to the disengagement of the affected ministers than the fantabulous tale being told in high quarters about some vague political or business interests as being responsible for their sudden exit. Even the dropped ministers reserve the right to shout blue murder over our insistence that they were kicked out. What is clear is that President Goodluck Jonathan seems to be gradually whipping order into a cabinet that has, for long, throttled on with organised chaos. And it was a good thing that he seems to be having a firm grip on governance at a time when some of us had almost given up on his capacity to rein in a modicum of order into the system. Before now, Jonathan ministers, his close aides and all manner of hangers-on had carried on as if they were in some kind of unmanned aircraft. As they say, most of them mistook liberty for licence and their boss’ genteel nature for some kind of timidity. The ship of state was gradually grinding to a halt whilst bootlickers held sway. But, today, this self-styled ‘most criticised President in the world’ appears to be reaping from the gains of constructive criticisms, which he so much despised! I will explain. If members of the opposition had not stood firmly against the persistent reign of impunity playing out in high places, we could probably be rueing this democracy by now. It’s easy to accuse the opposition of heating up the polity whenever it threatens to frustrate key policies of the government, as a tool for forcing government to dump bad policies for development and people-oriented ones. But if recent developments are anything to go by, the hard stance being taken by the opposition appears to be yielding positive results. Most significantly, the society is the highest gainer as democracy gradually takes a firm footing amid the organised chaos. For example, who would have thought that the cantankerous former Commissioner of Police in Rivers State, Mbu Joseph Mbu, could be easily eased out of the state and redeployed to the Federal Capital Territory within just two weeks after the leadership of the All Progressives Congress charged its members in the National Assembly to frustrate all executive bills, including the screening of ministerial nominees and service chiefs? Who would have thought the mere threat to employ filibustering would set off a wave of edgy redress by The Presidency? Don’t get it mixed up. No one is in doubt that this journey is going to be tedious and tasking. Democracy, it has been said, is not a destination but an unending marathon with twists and turns. Even advanced democracies still experiment and reappraise its ethos. The good thing about our peculiar situation is that it is gradually becoming clear that governance will no longer be by the whim if the current tempo is maintained. Yes, the shape and form of the opposition, as presently constituted, may be a queer marriage of strange bedfellows, it does not distract the fact that some gains have been made. If the opposition had not coalesced to give the ruling Peoples Democratic Partya tough time at the National Assembly, there wouldn’t have been any need for the on-going fight to regain majority by all means possible in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. It is interesting that the pendulum now swings back and forth like a yoyo. No matter how long it lasts, it is clear that the President of the Senate, Senator David Mark, cannot latch on to legal excuses in perpetuity, to halt the defection of some senators to the APC. Same goes for those that may eventually defect to the PDP in both chambers and in the states. It all points to one direction: when impunity gets a knock, democracy thrives. On the sacked ministers, I was almost fooled into believing that it was a well-thought-out decision until I realised the role that Nigerians’ persistence played in the eventual ouster of Princess Stella Oduah as Aviation Minister. Were it not for the tenacity with which concerned Nigerians pestered the President on the need to do the ‘needful’ by showing one of his favourite ministers the exit door, impunity would have won yet another battle. A woman, who was indicted for the dishonourable role she played in the purchase of two armoured cars by a parastatal under her ministry – both by a committee in the National Assembly and The Presidency – could have retained her seat simply for a tendentious campaign by her supporters that she has been rehabilitating airports. If pressures had not been mounted on the President to walk his talk on fighting corruption or a semblance of it, this also could have gone the way of many others. Even at that, it is unclear if anyone will ever be punished for flagrantly flouting extant procedures in public procurement beyond the ‘soft-landing’ that has been gratuitously extended to Oduah. Or how else can one explain Maku’s explanation that the sacked ministers voluntarily retired having told Jonathan that they had “indicated interest in pursuing higher and deeper interest in the polity?” As for Maku, let me extend to him my legendary ‘hmnn..’ when confronted with knotty issues of this nature! My people say the cane that was used to beat the senior wife is normally hovering somewhere in the rooftop until it will come in handy to discipline the junior wife! I don’t envy Maku. Whoever told them that we will ever buy that puerile illogic that all the ministers, including the President’s right hand man, Chief Mike Oghiadomhe, were asked to leave the cabinet to pursue political and business interests? Were these the only cabinet members with political ambitions at that material time? So, Maku is no longer interested in the gubernatorial seat in Nasarawa State? Nyesom Wike, who has publicly declared that he remains the candidate to beat in the Rivers State gubernatorial race in 2015, has dumped the ambition? How about the gist making the rounds that the FCT Minister, Senator Bala Mohammed, is top on the race for the Bauchi Government House? Besides, which political post could be more ‘rewarding’ at this material time that Oghiadomhe would hurriedly abandon his plum seat in Aso Rock to embrace politics? What could have lured Oduah out of that highly influential office? Politics? Business? Or the reality of the futility in fighting a battle that was lost on the greed for armoured four-wheelers? Questions, questions and more questions! It’s not for nothing that most Nigerians suspect some form of cover-up in the way and manner certain presidential aides were being asked to resign. This is not just about Oghiadomhe and the four ministers. It goes back in time. To my mind, there shouldn’t be any fuss to voluntary retirement. But the drama that always surrounds the ‘resignations’ speaks volumes. Wouldn’t it have been tidier if the President had communicated the resignation order to Orubebe, Olubolade and Ngama instead of passing across the message during the Federal Executive Council meeting? And was Stella’s absence from Wednesday’s meeting meant to shield her from the likely humiliation her three other colleagues could have experienced by being walked out midway through a meeting they were fully prepared to see to the end? And then this: why was the President heckling over the public outcry that he was doing next to nothing in fighting corruption? Unlike the public that appears to be in the dark on the workings of the anti-graft agencies, the President spoke as someone who has privileged information on the ‘high achievements’ recorded by both the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practice and other related offences Commission (ICPC). Listen to him: “ICPC and EFCC must make Nigerians believe that they are working. I know what you are doing but not everybody knows what you are doing. Ordinarily, these are agencies whose activities are not supposed to be made too loud because you don’t celebrate a situation where you send 100 or 200 Nigerians to prison. But the society is so funny, that these days, anybody who wants to claim any element of credibility at all, will go to the television and attack government for corruption. The President’s body language shows that he is not fighting corruption or he is not ready to fight corruption. And sometimes it is even the very corrupt people that are making these statements because if you attack government you are insulated, you become an angel. If you want to be an angel, just attack the government, so whatever you have done is covered. So, you must prove to Nigerians and show to Nigerians that you are working. Recently, the EFCC published the list of about 250 people they have convicted and that is a huge number of people and they said the government is not fighting corruption. How many countries have convicted half that number of people within a space of time?” Again, I could have been fooled but for the fact that even the President failed to mention just one notable person in his administration that has been interrogated for corrupt practices. Question is: what’s the pedigree of the 250 persons that were convicted and what were the charges? Isn’t it queer that even those with proven cases of corruption are being asked to resign just that they can put the looted war chest into functional use in the forthcoming elections? If this is what the President plans to bandy around as evidence of a convincing war against corruption, then he stands no fighting chance in nailing the monster! And should Oduah’s resignation mark the end of the N225m armoured car purchase scandal, then those who think that they could fool us with this veil of deceit must not rush to take a bow. The corpse they seek to bury still has its rotting legs dangling ominously outside the grave!

For the first time since President Goodluck Jonathan mounted the presidential saddle, Knucklehead can conveniently say he is gradually shedding the self-inspired conceit of a meek and gentle dove. We may not know why it took him almost three years to appreciate the futility of adopting a docile, almost clueless, approach to governance in a country where armed robbers, insurgents and all manner of killers have turned the streets into a canvas of blood. What we vividly remember, when things started taking a turn for the worse in our national life, was admonishing him to sit up to the arduous tasks before him or risk a situation whereby his subordinates would exploit the situation to the point where they could inadvertently inflict serious collateral damage on the country. We did harp on the fact that it was important for the nation to have someone who was truly and firmly in charge—an effective leader, a proactive thinker and not the laid-back reactionary court jester. At that time, we felt he was leaving too much to chance in his warped belief that a tiger needs not proclaim its ‘tigritude’; that a lion need not to roar to announce its presence as the king of the jungle or that as Nigeria’s president, he need not make an impression about being really in control. Shouldn’t it be clear to all that the man with the trademark fedora was the President and Commander-In-Chief of Africa’s sleeping giant? Still, we observed that, in a military where petty jealousy, ethnicity and religious affiliation continue to play a major part in the discharge of a responsibility which ought to be carried out with utmost professionalism, he should be the one barking orders. We thought we could nudge him to rev the engine and stop sitting on his hands while all shades of criminals perpetuate evil across the land. But, as usual, his response came in truckloads of words. He appealed to our understanding. What we got from our President was a detailed explanation of why he couldn’t be any of those things that we really expect of an epochal leader. He said he was simply wired differently – much beyond our collective dreams! Speaking in September 25, 2011, at an interdenominational service to mark Nigeria’s 51st Independence anniversary, here was Jonathan’s lengthy sermon on his personae and leadership style: “Some Nigerians still want the President of this country to be a lion or a tiger; somebody that has the kind of strength, force and agility to make things happen the way they think. I don’t need to be a lion, I don’t need to be Nebuchadnezzar, I don’t need to operate like the Pharaoh of Egypt, and I don’t need to be an army general. I can change this country without those traits. “Some others will want the President to operate like an Army general, like my Chief of Army Staff commanding his troops. Incidentally, I am not a lion; I am also not a general. Somebody will want the President to operate like the Kings of Syria, Babylon, Egypt, and the Pharaoh-all powerful people that you read about in the Bible. They want the President to operate that way. Unfortunately, I am not one of those. But God knows why I am here, even though I don’t have any of those attributes, or those kinds of characters I have used as an example. But through your prayers, God placed me here. The only thing I ask you to do for me, and that is the prayer I pray every time, is for God to use me to change this country. “There are Goliaths everywhere – very terrible Goliaths, the ones that can even kill their father, their mother and even their children in order to stop government. And they are willing to do it. So, we have these terrible Goliaths that are trying to frustrate us, but surely with God we will conquer them. Every Goliath has an exposed forehead; all the Goliaths that are stumbling blocks to the development and growth of this country, God will expose their foreheads for the stone of David.” Like I once noted in an earlier piece, if canticles were all that were required for a leader to excel, Jonathan would be unrivalled. Not even President Barrack Obama’s pitch, poise, elegance and elevated language would have matched Jonathan’s in the art of rendering tendentious excuses to dab incompetence! Our President may not be blessed with the poignant oratory of some of the world’s greatest leaders; he sure has a way with muddling through words. No matter how he puts it, we always dissect the queer message he struggles to pass across. What exactly did we ask of him to warrant the prolonged, needless and effete sermons? Angered by the repeated killings in Plateau State and the pace with which bombs were being detonated in some major cities in the North, including Abuja, with hundreds of casualties and victims, he was called upon to be a bit firm in dealing with the situation on his hands. We said there should be a concerted effort by all the security agents, who were obviously operating independent of one another, to work together and employ more intelligence with the aim of putting an end to the scary menace. Unfortunately, that was the time the President chose to scare us to our briefs: he said members of the dreaded sect were not only in his government but they had also infiltrated the security forces! Ha! We shouted. If that was not a direct assault on the Presidency, then what is? We said we had got tired of government’s long-winded platitudes as thousands of citizens were being murdered in cold blood but our President mistook our angst for a call for a reign of impunity from his office! How? Did David allow the Goliath that was tormenting the Israelites to crush them before wiping him off? Did he not take on the image of a tiger, lion and Commander-In-Chief? Did he not summon the courage to muster the force and agility that silenced the enemies? After David received the blessings from God to confront the Goliath in the lives of the Israelites, would he have succeeded if he had clasped his hands, whining the lullaby of the meek and gentle dove? Did he not gather his troops and proceeded to the war front? Thankfully though, Jonathan appears to be seeing things differently. It may be a little too late but the situation is not entirely irredeemable. I believe his latest rant in Yola, Adamawa State, is a welcome development. Some of us had expected him to bark the orders long before now. It is a relief that he has taken the decision to live by that name as it relates to policy on security matters. Not that we doubted his ability to combine all those traits if had wanted to. At least, we have seen that at play in Rivers State and even in Bayelsa when a certain Timipre Sylva dared him. All he did was to muscle him out of the contest with presidential powers! We just couldn’t understand why he found it difficult to replicate that on national security until things got to its head and he had to resort to removing his over-pampered service chiefs. Listen to him in Yola: “I urge you to cooperate. Sometimes we hear about some kind of mutual and individual competition among Service Chiefs and security personnel. But this time around, we will not tolerate any unnecessary competition that will bring retrogression to this country. We charge you to work together because our country is exposed to cancer and I told the former chief of defence staff when I came back from a meeting in France, that was the time they attacked our five helicopters, and a journalist asked me, ‘Mr. President is it not shameful?’ And I asked him, ‘If you were me, how would you have felt?’ “And I believe we will no longer experience that kind of situation. That happened because of some obvious lapses. We will make sure we work with the National Assembly; we will work with the Service Chiefs and other senior military personnel; we will work with our traditional rulers and governors and senior citizens to see that we move our country to the next level.” Now, that’s how a President should roar! That’s my President speaking. We want to see more of that. We want to see him putting the fat cats in our security agencies on their toes. They either shape up or ship out. We want to see that the huge funds appropriated for security are actually spent on tackling the menace of Boko Haram and other forms of criminality. We want to see that officers and men that put their lives on the line for the safety and security of Nigeria are adequately compensated and funds meant to buy arms and ammunition don’t find their ways into private pockets. We also want an end to the internal heckling and private animosities that led to that national disgrace in which insurgents attacked five of our helicopters and made a jest of our military preparedness to combat terror. We don’t want to hear any of that nonsense that some security agencies would not like to report to the incoming Coordinating Minister of Defence and National Security. It should not be their call but that of the President. In short, we want to see more of a President that roars like a lion, face the Goliath working against the progress of the country and a leader that would henceforth desist from offering lame duck excuses to justify crass indolence!

Sometimes, you can’t help but wonder if President Goodluck Jonathan deliberately courts controversy or whether he is simply controversy personified. Three clear weeks into a New Year, he appears not to be in a hurry to cede the altar to the clergy. His -endless, not so Christianly church to church visitation has been carried into the new year. It is intriguing that he has found the pulpit as a fertile ground for his holier-than-thou posturing. Just when one had thought the laity should have had enough of his new-found ritual of grabbing the church microphone and throwing darts at perceived political opponents, Jonathan unleashed invidious venom on the same group of persons last Sunday at the Aso Rock Chapel during the post-national pilgrimage thanksgiving service. It is one thing if the politicisation of church sermons is a one-off affair. It is another for it to be a regular sauce on the presidential menu. Like some people have observed, the church should not be an avenue for presidential pontificating and political heckling, especially when his presumed ‘enemies’ have since made their points and moved on to other matters of greater importance.

Evidently smarting from the hangover of the double-barrelled letters from former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria which, if we must say the truth, rattled his government, Jonathan again fired volleys of vicious innuendoes against those he called “jobless politicians, impostors and misfits” in the system. Listen to him: “These days we learn not to talk, or we talk very little. The chaplain accused us politicians that we do not forgive, or that some politicians don’t forgive. Apparently, the bible said this that politicians are the people who forgive. Politicians, I would not say much, are those who forgive because in politics whether local politics or national, the bible word is that you don’t have permanent friends or permanent enemies but permanent interest. If somebody is your enemy today and there is a change of interest and he becomes your friend, first of all, you have to forgive otherwise, you cannot have a friend that you cannot work with him. But politics is just like some kind of trade. More than 50 per cent of us who are into politics are not supposed to be politicians. So, most of us who are in politics are not supposed to be there; but because we have no other thing to do. So if you see a politician that cannot forgive, he isan impostor.”

My opinion? This man talks too much! We may overlook the blasphemy and the ‘unpresidential’ diatribe which has become routine. What we cannot ignore is the fact that this is another costly joke carried too far. That the laity did not chorus shameless blasphemy as the presidential homily, wreathed with sugar-coated lies, went on did not, in any way, suggest that they were oblivious of the ‘colouring’ or outright implantation of a non-existing Biblical passage to fit the presidential canticles.

Where in the Christian Bible, I dare ask, was it written that “politicians are the people who forgive?” Which verse of the Old Testament or the New Testament stipulates the virtue of permanent interest being high and above permanent friends or enemies? And if that were truly a Biblical injunction, how far is the President prepared to live this belief by walking his talk?

He may as well start with Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State by returning the strife-stricken state to the path of peace. Or do we take it that Amaechi is one of those enemies that shouldn’t be forgiven regardless of whatever ‘sins’ had beenrecorded against their names by The Presidency?

Talk, they say, is cheap. In Nigeria’s peculiar case, it is quite easy for the leaders to walk away with expensively cheap talks because the populace rarely put them through the rigour of the illogic they spew out. This, more than anything else, explains why the President would tell the international community in Davos, Switzerland venue of the World Economic Summit, that major cities in Nigeria now enjoy 18-hour uninterrupted electricity supply daily. Ha, Oga Jonah! Thankfully, he did not tell them that Nigerians have thrown their individual power generating machines into the Lagos lagoon! If he had, quite a sizeable number of the audience and his entourage would belch! If only he knew how many citizens watched that news item back home on power generators, he wouldn’t have been so quick to pad the riddle up with how his wonderful economic policies led to the emergence of Alhaji Aliko Dangote as the 25th richest man in the world. Only Dangote knows how much he had expended on alternative power supply through the years he has been doing business in Nigeria and how much of that is passed down to the end users of his range of products. Question is: what impact has the Dangote position in the class of the rich made on the lives of the vast majority, living in abject poverty? But then, talk is cheap.

If mere political pronouncement is all that a nation needs to develop, Nigeria should by now be the world’s fastest growing economy. We never seem to run out of figures, statistics and datato woo investors at every economic summit attended by our leaders in any part of the world. How we manage to reel out the astonishing figures without as much as a rye squint beats the imagination. Unfortunately, what we sell to the world is the direct opposite of the reality on the ground. We may not accept it but the joke flies right back at us. Nearly all the sectors that provide indices that define the economic well-being of a potentially great country suffer one form of debilitating disease or the other. And so, it does not matter how hard we try to sell this product with those fantastic statistics, the search for investors outside the shores of this country would continue to be a Herculean task until leaders

stop deploying cheap talks to cover the endemic rot that needs to be cleansed.

We all know the state of the health sector but those tasked with the responsibility of turning it around speak of the uncommon transformation of the sector. Education suffers same fate but we pretend to be making giant strides. We do know that corruption has assumed a life of its own, attracting converts to its fold daily yet some persons speak of zero-tolerance for graft and glowingly relate how deadly the fight against it has been. Nobody is showing

the scars neither is anyone seeing the positive impact of that fight as oil theft and official sleaze inflict painful blows on the economy. Even with the privatisation of the Gencos and Discos, millions of Nigerians are still groping in the dark while we remain the world’s largest importer of power generating sets. But because Abuja and two or three other cities now enjoy additional hours of electricity supply, those who promised uninterrupted power supply think it’s cool to gloat about the laughable gesture.

We know how many lives are being lost to attacks by insurgents in some key northern states down to Jos, the Plateau State capital, yet, we carry on as if we live in a completely secure environment.

In spite of the heavy presence of trained security personnel in these areas, terrorists still carry out occasional deadly attacks in barracks and other settlements and we expect the international community to take us seriously when we talk about the safety and security of their investments in any part of Nigeria? But then, talk is cheap.

Talk has become so expensively cheap that the new Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alexander Sabundu Badeh, excitedly told us the other day of his projection that the Boko Haram insurgency in the North Eastern part of the country would be crushed by April. Hear him: “The security situation in the north east must be brought to a complete stop before April 2014. Substantial progress has been recorded in the war against the insurgents. We must bring it (insurgency) to a stop before April so that we will not have constitutional problems on our hands”.

Not that we doubt Badeh, but we need to remind him that he is treading a familiar terrain. In the past, his predecessors had equally given us timelines which were never met while the monster grows in leaps and bounds. Even a presidential assurance of quelling the insurgents left the nation reeling in tears and blood. And so, Badeh’s words leave a deep blister in the throat. They do not inspire confidence not because we doubt his professional competence or his well-guarded war plans. We doubt him because there is nothing on the ground to convince us that his words would be his bond. Or is he not a product of the same institution that confidently told the

nation that Ibrahim Shekau, the leader of the Boko Haram insurgents, had been eliminated following a gun battle with the authorities? Six months down the line, why then does the image of Shekau still pervade his territory? And why should anyone take Badeh’s new timeline on its face value when countless others were never met? But then, talk is cheap.

While at it, those who have mastered the art of using cheap talk to gloss over germane issues begging for serious attention should understand that it has implication for the overall growth of the country. It may serve the primary purpose of fooling the people some of the time, but how far do they think they can go with this expensive joke of fooling the people with cheap talks that lead to nowhere? For eternity? Let’s hope things would begin to take a new shape in April, the magical month when most communities should be enjoying, at least, 18-hour electricity supply in addition to having maximum security coverage with elimination of the Boko Haram insurgents. Who knows? It could just be the magical month when the shenanigans playing out in Rivers State and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party would be put to an end.

Will those who have genuine’ business in politics shame the ‘impostors’ by leading the way in putting an end to the rein of impunity and cheap talks on the altar? But then, didn’t they say talk is cheap? No wonder a self-styled elder statesman now thinks anyone that opposes Jonathan on policy issues is indirectly questioning God! Sad, very sad.

First, this background: at the flagging-off of the reconstruction of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway on 5th July, 2013, President Goodluck Jonathan was unequivocal about his desire to bequeath an improved national transport infrastructure to the long-suffering people of Nigeria. Amid pomp, panache and naked politicking, he made a song and dance of how his administration wrestled the rights to reconstruct the road from Messrs. Bi-Courtney Limited and granted the rights to “two competent construction companies.” Claiming that the termination of the concession agreement, which was entered into in ‘good faith with Bi-Courtney in 2009’, was due to the concessionaire’s ‘four years of evident non-performance’, the President quibbled, “The state of disrepair of the road; the recurring fatal accidents; unprecedented traffic jams and security breaches, which compromised public health and safety are not issues a democratic government can ignore. Today, I am happy to inform you that we are ready to bequeath to Nigerians a better and more durable road after 35 years when the first construction was made.” That was in July, 2013. Now fast forward to January, 2014. Today, about six months after that inspiring speech, it appears the government is already having a rethink about its ability to walk its talk to deliver a top-notch, first-class road to increasingly sceptical Nigerians in 48 months. With reports in this paper that funding may eventually stall the project going by the appropriation of a meagre N5bn for the project in 2014 budget, one may not be wrong to conclude that the grandiose flag-off, speech-making and presidential chest-thumping could just be one of those hypnotic dizzying heights that this government frequently takes its citizens to before unfolding realities pull the wool off their eyes. It is a case of hope that is perennially differed, promises deliberately made to be broken. There are countless examples with the most prominent being the constant shifting of dates when Nigerians would truly begin to enjoy uninterrupted electricity supply from the combined efforts of the DISCOs and GENCOs! It is laughable really that the government could be toying with the idea of generating 20,000 megawatts of electricity even as it struggles with the 4000 megawatts it claimed to have generated over the years. Ours has always been the case of ‘the more you look, the less you see’. Now, the scenario is not quite different in the road sector, especially as it concerns the jinxed federal roads in the South-West. When President Jonathan laid out his plans for the reconstruction of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway which he described as “an important economic artery that connects our nation’s economic nerve centre: sea ports; airports and other vital businesses to many of the states of our federation”, he said the government had “made adequate funding arrangements to see the projects all the way through to completion and delivery on schedule.” Although he did not clearly state how the funding would be sourced, he never, at any time, told Nigerians that the project would be funded through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) procurement arrangement. If he had, it would have contradicted the excuse given for the termination of the deal with Bi-Courtney. The failure of the PPP deal informed the decision by the government to take the bull by the horns as far as that road project is concerned. That was why most Nigerians commended the Jonathan administration for taking the bold initiative. But little did Nigerians know that it was simply another ruse or, at best, publicity stunt to jerk up the performance index of a waning government. Of course, there is no price for guessing why the July 5 flag-off entered the long list of other ‘flag-off’ achievements of the Jonathan transformation agenda. His media minders never failed to remind us that the country has become one huge construction site with ongoing projects scattered across the six geo-political zones. They say it with such relish, candour and passion that we almost ignore the crying fact that Nigeria has never ceased to be the global capital of white elephant projects where contracts are continually re-awarded, re-evaluated, re-assessed and rehabilitated in a crazy cycle of graft. They say it as if the Federal Executive Council has stopped the weekly contract-awarding meetings, even if there has been few well-thought-out capital layout for most of the contracts. They say it as if contractors have stopped absconding from project sites after the official ground-breaking ceremonies and initial mobilisation and ‘sharing’ of funds with government officials. Perhaps, no one would have doubted the government’s commitment to delivering the road project within the 48-month completion period if the public had been adequately briefed on the nature and form of the funding. Unfortunately, Jonathan merely scratched the surface by speaking of adequate funding arrangements. He never told the citizens that there was a backyard agreement with the two contractors to provide 70 per cent of the N167bn rebuilding cost while the government would be providing a 30 per cent counterpart fund of N50bn. Even at that, it is benumbing that the government could only set aside the sum of N5bn in the 2014 budget for the project contrary to the N25bn the Ministry of Works claimed to have set aside for same in 2014 (Before the resort to lying through the teeth, officials of the ministry should please check page 886, Volume 11 of the 2014 FGN Budget Proposal.) It is this kind of lopsidedness that ignites the suspicion that the project may go the way of many others – loud on promises, abysmally poor on implementation. Most importantly, it is my belief that someone in the Ministry of Works was being economical with the truth in denying that there was some sort of concession. To put it bluntly, what the ministry’s Director of Information, Mr. Bisi Agbonhin, dubbed ‘private sectorled project finance’ or infrastructure finance facility wherein the government would provide just 30 per cent of the project cost is nothing but a PPP concession. It matters less whether such agreement was reached with the connivance of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) without the input of an idle agency like the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), which ordinarily should have been at the heart of such deals. It is this kind of brazen breach of processes and procedures that has rendered the ICRC rudderless in its over four years of existence as a regulatory authority in that sector of the economy. Question is: why fritter billions of naira on the agency yearly if ministries, departments and agencies have perfected plans of drafting under-the-counter deals bordering on concessions with investors? As it stands today, the two firms handling the Lagos- Ibadan road project – Messrs. Julius Berger Plc and Reynolds Construction Company Plc – are not just contractors but major investors with 70 per cent equity share. Now, if this is not PPP procurement through the back door, then what is it? And if it is, can the ministry avail us details of the competitive bid for the contract before the two firms were selected as winners? Can they show Nigerians the due process mechanisms that were adopted before the contracts were awarded? We do understand that those plying the road, including the millions that had lost loved ones to the endless carnage on the road, may care less about the financial details and the implications such an arrangement harbours for motorists on completion. All they care about, for now, is its rehabilitation and complete turnaround. But while at it, it would be suicidal to ignore some germane issues. Why, for example, was the government silent over the funding arrangement until the hurried, reactionary statement penultimate Tuesday? Why were Nigerians left in the dark on the contractual/concession agreement signed with the two construction giants? If issues of finances had been carefully spelt out as explained by Agbonhin, why is the reconstruction work criminally slow on that road after the much-talked about ground-breaking ceremonies by Jonathan six months into a 48-month critical project? Besides, shouldn’t the Minister of Works explain to Nigerians how a project that was initially given to a concessionaire for N89.53bn for 25 years was suddenly re-awarded to two other concessionaires for a whopping N167bn? A humongous N77.47bn difference! And so, without any prejudice to Jonathan’s good intentions on the road, we ask: exactly what’s up with the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway reconstruction project? What’s responsible for the snail’s pace at which the project is painfully moving? Cash crunch? Politics? Or could it be due to some unresolved hiccups in the signed agreements? We need to know!

Let’s face it, no one in this country of ours has a monopoly of the art of letter-writing regardless of what authority such a person has exerted in the shockingly repellent race to rape and plunder Africa’s sleeping giant. And so, I am writing this letter without any formal courtesies or obeisance to such persons who have written before me. However, it is expedient to state, without any equivocation, that this letter is solely for the attention of the esteemed clique of political rapists and official kleptocrats who gloat about their ‘achievements’ and ‘anticipatory achievements’ in power. Sometimes, I believe we are cursed to suffer as unwitting captives of ‘one chance’ adventurers in positions of authority. And that’s why I think that the bleating ex-Senator daughter of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Iyabo, hit the nail on its damn head when she said “Nigeria has descended into a hellish reality where smart, capable people to ‘survive’ and have their daily bread prostrate to imbeciles!” Ouch! But, talking seriously, if we ignore Iyabo’s grammatical logjam and instead try to deepen our understanding of what she is trying to pass across in the open letter to her ‘dear daddy’, we would come to the conclusion that those hard punches are simply the bitter truths that we all hate to talk about. But for the harvest of letters authored and ‘leaked’ by those an almost teary-eyed Iyabo derisively called ‘imbeciles’, how would we have known that things have irreparably fallen apart even within the rank and file of the high and mighty? If they had not chosen to sing discordant tunes like the canary with the broken beak, how would we have known that all the plastic laughter, bear hugs, firm handshakes and photo-ops are powered by greed and selfishness and not how to change the fortunes of the crumbs scavengers? So, Iyabo knew all this and she failed to do anything about it whilst living lavishly on state funds as a Senator? Or was she placed under oath to never see or hear any evil? How come she just suddenly realised that her dear daddy and his ilk have been milking us dry in this ‘hellish reality’ called Nigeria? But then, this letter is not about Iyabo and her anguished cry. It is something deeper. It is more about the untold stories of our lives and the sinking ship of state. The intriguing thing about us as a people is the criminal equanimity with which we accept our fate in the hands of these characters. At a time when other communities have gone past bothering their leadership over issues relating to quotidian living, we are regaling in the allure of celebrating the mundane. Okay, I agree that this feast of letter- writing in high places provides a veritable platform for some persons to score cheap political points. What is not clear to me is how that affects the price of fish in the market. So, Obasanjo writes a scathing letter to his estranged political godson, Jonathan, who later responded by claiming that landmines are being placed before his future political compass and we were expected to take them seriously? Have we forgotten, so soon, the story about how political bombs were used to pave the way for the one who is now crying foul? When Peter Odili and others were – literally speaking – bombed into relinquishing their presidential ambitions in December 2006, just to We are coming to the end of 2013 and are glad that we are alive today and pray that we will make it into the New Year. I am particularly happy that my daughter is here today. For us, 2013 was a tough year for all of us in the family especially for her. The year started with a bang for us. My daughter, my only child was barely two months old then. It is needless to say that I and my wife just commenced our parenthood and were both immature at the time. On that New Year’s Eve, we noticed that our daughter was having difficulty breathing. We called her doctor and he asked us to remove her mosquito treated net. This we did to no avail. He then asked us to bring her to the hospital. This was 10:12pm We went through Gbagada Phase II and didn’t bother to take the Lanre Awolokun Road as it is always locked by 7pm so we drove through Olumoroti Jaiyesimi Street and on getting to the gate, we were told that the gate was closed for the night. All our efforts to make them understand that this was an emergency fell on deaf ears as they left us and walked away. As we had no time to waste, we had to go back and use the expressway. That meant that we had to make a U-turn at New Garage and go to Anthony and make another u-turn at Town Planning Way and back to the expressway to Charly Boy Bus Stop, Gbagada, where the hospital is. It was another round of negotiations at KKK Street but these security men were more understanding and they let us pass when we explained we were going to the hospital. We eventually got to the hospital by 11:15pm. A journey that would have taken us 15 minutes eventually took over one hour. At the hospital, she was admitted to the ward and was given series of transfusion and intravenous injections to stabilise her. In the course of her examination, the doctor asked if any of our families had a history of asthma and we answered no. She asked us to describe our environment and we did. Our kitchen is far from her room, we were not frying, our house is tiled, her net is even child-friendly etc. Our answer didn’t satisfy her curiosity. She expressed her surprise and told us that our daughter was showing symptoms of asthma, albeit at a very tender age. “Please always ensure that her room is well ventilated and not stuffy,” she advised. Then was when it struck. Smoked had filtered into our room earlier that night, as some people in the neighbourhood were having a bonfire to usher in the New Year. We came out of the hospital a week later and after two monthly checkup appointments, she was given a clean bill of health. This is how some people’s ‘enjoyment’ could have brought terrible sorrow to our family. This is Lagos. Everyone is in pursuit of his or her own happiness and hardly pays attention to how our ways of life actually affect other people’s lives. It is in Lagos that one resident will decide to close the street because he is celebrating the birth of a child. It is in Lagos that some driver will change his flat tyre in the middle of the road instead of driving it to the kerb. A danfo driver will park in the middle of the road while his conductor goes to solicit for passengers. Market men and women will block half of a major road with their tables as they sell their wares to their customers. Tanker drivers will line up and almost block the expressway as they queue for fuel at the various oil tank farms in Lagos. Some landlords’ associations have banned commercial vehicles into some of the estates, not minding that these estates are maintained by tax payers’ money. People indiscriminately cut the roads to lay their water pipes without properly filling the roads thereafter. The list goes on and on. We are not interested in the hardship other people suffer on account of our actions. A few years ago, the Lagos State government abolished the erection of gates and directed that these gates, if they are to be allowed, must not be locked before 12 midnight and 5am. It also directed that such gates must be manned during the time they are locked. Men from the state’s Ministry of the Environment actually enforced this order at the time but the situation has returned to status quo today. The day the government goes to demolish these illegal structures and arrest the offenders; arrest those who block the roads for parties; arrest those who trade on the roads; confiscate the tankers that block the expressways etc., we will start shouting that the government has no human face etc. The question is: should we wait for the government to come and arrest us before we know that we hurt others. Don’t these landlords associations know that there are people who do not have cars of their own and depend on taxis for movement; don’t those who lock the gates know that there could be emergencies and people may need urgent medical attention; do these people who block the road not see the traffic jam they cause innocent road users etc? It is high time Lagosians stepped back and assessed their behaviour and how this behaviour impacts other people. For everything we do, we need to do a social impact assessment to know how the society is affected by our activity. We do not need to be prodded by government always. The same way we pay for our children’s school fees; take them to hospitals when they are sick; and give them food when they are hungry; is the same way we could accommodate the society in our actions. We only can make that resolution and all of us will be the beneficiaries of the better society we create with this resolution. •Ekechukwu writes from Lagos clear the podium for Yar’Adua and Jonathan to mount the saddle with unusual ease, did the beneficiaries of such manipulations cry blue murder and injustice then? Or didn’t they know that, in the final analysis, what goes round would naturally come round? If they don’t know, the self-styled architects of modern Nigeria are responsible for its gradual descent into a failing state. This is a country with many statesmen but no single hero. By the way, we have our peculiar way of making a statesman out of ‘mistake’ in the corridors of power. It is the same way we have, over the years, made gods out of every reluctant candidate in Aso Rock. Obasanjo was one. The late Umaru Yar’Adua was one. And Jonathan is one. And so, for all his canticles on graft, political assassinations and landmines, one wonders why he still sits pretty on his hands when, as President and Commander-In-Chief, he could have initiated a probe into all the innuendoes he alluded to in his response to Obasanjo. Unfortunately, we ended up with a letter that was, at best, specious in content and poignantly beggarly. With the ‘vicious’ tone of Baba’s letter as identified by the current ‘Baba’ in Aso Rock, most Nigerians had expected that the issues raised would be thoroughly and frontally addressed. Unfortunately, Jonathan is as guilty as Obasanjo sans his sanctimonious preachment and flexing of presidential muscle, to wit, he wrote about subversion and threat to national security. It is clear that Nigeria will continue its movement without motion as long as it suffers the misfortune of having leaders who would rather blame others for their incompetence or conveniently enjoy the luxury of placing the fault at the doorsteps of their predecessors. Of course, like Iyabo rightly pointed out, they go away with this criminal attitude because they have the backing of an eternally docile populace–those she called the downtrodden. It’s amazing the way our leaders have mastered this art of shifting responsibility. When Obasanjo expressed fears about the general insecurity in the land and the need to be more proactive in tackling it, Jonathan was quick to point out that he never did any better when he was in the saddle. When he wrote about allegations that snipers were being trained to eliminate some 1, 000 top politicians placed under surveillance, Jonathan said more unresolved political killings took place under the Obasanjo regime. Not only that, he would want the former president to hold the Bible and swear if he truly believed that a self-confessed dove like Jonathan would even order the killing of a fly! When Obasanjo raised concerns about those who threatened war if their ‘son’ was not re-elected in 2015, Jonathan said the noisemaker from Ota Farms couldn’t have been speaking on his behalf. Okay, maybe they are not speaking for you but what did you do about it, Mr. President? And when the issue of corruption is mentioned, Jonathan said corrosive corruption started under the military and became systemic under the Obasanjo presidency. He fell short of calling Obasanjo a direct beneficiary of an enduring legacy of graft, which is meant to be a devastating technical knock-out. But is it? And so, we ask: what could have stalled investigations into the Halliburton and Siemens’ bribery scandals in Nigeria since President Jonathan made allusions to it in his letter? If he says he is locked in a bitter war with corruption, then it must be one hell of a fight where the ‘combatants’ share the spoils on the dinner table! If Jonathan says Obasanjo played a critical role in frustrating people like the late Chief Sunday Awoniyi, Late Chief Solomon Lar, Chief Audu Ogbeh, Tom Ikimi and Okwesilieze Nwodo out of the ruling PDP, it would not have been out of place for him to tell us who frustrated Chief Vincent Ogbulafor and Nwodo out of the chair of the PDP and for what reasons. He should have also explained why notable personalities continue to defect from the party in droves since he appears to have elevated his office to be high and above the “unbridled jostling and positioning for personal or group advantage ahead of the general elections.” Is this man who craves nothing but the whole truth speaking the whole truth? However, I must admit that this art of letter-writing has exposed so many hidden truths, including the manipulations that led to the callous electoral heist of five South-West states in the 2003 elections by Obasanjo. Of course, no one had expected Jonathan to dwell more on this as he had vented his anger on retired Justice Ayo Salami for allowing the reclamation of stolen mandates through the Court of Appeal. The truth may hurt but if hidden secrets would be revealed through such exchange of letters, then let the tradition continue. It’s pointless for Jonathan to admonish certain individuals for “doing what they ought not to do, making statements they ought not to make and writing letters they are supposed not to write.” If the people must be set free from the stranglehold of ‘imbeciles’, then this latest fad of writing letters must be allowed to thrive. Who knows who is next in line to write another bombshell of a letter? For now, we are content to know that, while one heavyweight has accused another of being clannish, deceitful, dishonest, incompetent, divisive and plainly clueless as the ‘chosen’ captain of the ship of state, the other has equally labelled his mentor as not only hypocritical but also treacherous and a looming danger. Interestingly, there is also that one that sees her own ‘dear daddy’ as a liar, a manipulator, and a two-faced hypocrite.” Can any of these characters hold the Bible and swear that they are not guilty of one or two of these grave allegations? Can they? Clearly, these are not the attributes that mark out truly great leaders of great nations. I just hope we have not sold our future to one-chance ‘imbeciles’ in our polity? And so – To Whom It May Concern – kindly accept the assurances of my highest consideration and warm regards!