The Nation Newspaper

Tag: beast

  • Beauty, the beholder and the beast

    Beauty, the saying goes, is in the eye of the beholder. How true this aphorism is can be seen from the different ways we react when we see a thing of beauty, particularly a woman. Most men drool over a beautiful woman. Those specially crafted by God earn our compliments because whether we like it or not they  are irresistible, be they men or women.

    As much as we appreciate beauty, we are not always in one accord in picking a thing of beauty.  What is beautiful to one may not be beautiful to the other. Some will see an ugly woman and scream ”what a beauty” to the amazement of onlookers. Others may see an acclaimed beauty like Miss World and not take a second look at her. What do you make of that? Can we then say that a woman chosen as the most beautiful woman in the world is not pretty?

    She is,  at least to those who chose her, but to other beholders, she may not get a second look.  This is why beauty pageants are always dogged by controversies, with the panellists and members of the audience disagreeing, in most cases, on whoever is eventually picked as winner. But no matter how a woman looks, her head will swell to hear a man say to her ”you are beautiful”.

    Though those three words look simple and ordinary, they have a magnetic effect on women. Many women are known to have taken offence because they do not get such compliments from their men even after taking all the time in the world to look nice for them. Some men do not know how to sweet talk their women to get them, speaking figuratively,  eating out of their hands. And women, no matter how hard hearted they may be, want to hear words that will make their heads spin. It is an age-long practice to appreciate a thing of beauty. There is nothing bad in telling a woman that she is beautiful even if you know she is not. Such compliment is the first step to opening up conversation with her in order to know her better.

    Many men have hit the bull’s eye with that opening line as they have gone to build a lifelong relationship with those complimented women. For trying to use that line on a female cadet officer, a man almost paid with his life, according to a video now trending on social media. He was beaten black and blue sometime in 2014 in Kaduna by the woman and his four male colleagues. They recorded the show of shame on their phone from where it found its way to social media.

    This beauty was not impressed by the compliment of her beholder. And her colleagues, who in this instant can be referred to as beasts because of the way they behaved, descended on the man. The Beast in the fairy tale titled Beauty and the Beast did not behave like that. The Beast appreciated the beauty of Beauty, the last daughter of the widowed wealthy merchant, that it fell ill when Beauty was away from their home in the forest for long. In that tale, we saw the power of love and care, which turned the Beast into a charming, handsome prince.

    But in this true life story, the female cadet officer did not appreciate the language of love. She seems to understand only the power of force, which could be linked to her military training. Does military training preclude a woman from accepting such compliment as ”you are beautiful”? Is there any harm in telling a female cadet officer that she is beautiful? Was that the first time the officer is being told she is beautiful? Was that why the compliment sounded strange to her? Does it not show that something is wrong with her if she can flare up over such innocuous compliment? Does she have the temperament for the military job she is being trained for?

    Who knows the kind of training our cadets are receiving these days. Last December, two Air Force cadets also displayed the beast in them when they locked a porter in the trunk of their car for breaking the windscreen. It was not an intentional act by the porter, but the cadets did not see it as such. They decided to teach the “bloody civilian” a lesson by first dragging him on the ground after which they dumped him in their car trunk. Their plan was to take him to the Air Force Base at Ikeja, Lagos, where he would have seen hell.

    He was saved from these power-drunk cadets by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, who was passing by Mile 12 market, where the incident occurred. The governor directed the police to take over the case. It will be interesting to know what has become of the matter. Have the cadets undergone orderly room trial for public misconduct? When will the police charge them to court for conspiracy, assault occasioning body harm and disturbing public peace? It is when these cadets are tried for their disgraceful public conduct that they will know that their uniform does not confer on them the power to misbehave and terrorise civilians at will.

    The military is an hallowed institution and those who wish to join it must be levelheaded people that will not abuse its might. What is bad in telling a female cadet officer ”you are beautiful”? Even if she is not beautiful, that should not lead to a quarrel. By her training she should have acknowledged the compliment by simply saying ”thank you” and go her way;  or better still she should have kept quiet and moved on. But to now descend on the man with her colleagues, cursing and swearing, is barbaric. It is unbecoming for military cadets to use foul words like “Am I beautiful? Idiot. Describe me, how beautiful am I? This bastard is not responding. See this idiot. Squat down…”

    It is a shame that these cadets are the future of our military. What will they turn to when they become officers? Brutes? The military will be failing in its duty if it does not re-orientate these cadets before they become terrors. The military, whether of now or of the future, must be people-oriented and should not be constituted by officers who run on short fuse.

  • Beauty and the beast

    Beauty and the beast

    Students of the University of Calabar (UNICAL) have complained about the state of its infrastructure, describing it as an eyesore. They want the Vice-Chancellor, Prof James Epoke, to fix dilapidating roads on the campus before leaving office. UBONG EDET reports.

    Its landscape is dotted with adorable architecture, but a ride round the University of Calabar (UNICAL) comes with not-so-palatable experience. Reason: major roads that link notable places, including Administrative Block and faculties are in bad shape.

    Potholes, ditches and gullies have become visible features on the campus roads. Whenever it rains, the roads are flooded, making movement round the campus difficult for students and motorists. While the state of the campus roads has become source of worry to members of the university community, many students are wondering why the management showed no concern about fixing the roads.

    A first-time visitor to the school will be welcomed by a stretch of deteriorating road that extends from the main gate to the Administrative Block. The same road leads to a popular T-Junction and the school’s main library, which is usually busy for research works.

    A ride to the Halls of Residence area of the school is not any better, with some sections of the road are completely washed off and riddled with portholes.

    Some students, who spoke to CAMPUSLIFE, complained about what they called lack of maintenance culture in the school. They wonder how the management felt comfortable with the sight of declining infrastructure on the campus.

    “I see it as mockery when we want the management to provide so many things for us when the school has not been able to maintain the facilities we already have on ground,” said a 200-Level student, who simply gave her name as Inibong.

    The Students’ Union Government (SUG) president, Ekpo Tete Okon, also lamented the poor state of the school roads, describing it as an eyesore. He said he had written to the management severally to draw attention to commuters’ plight on the road, but said the school was yet to respond.

    Students, who walk through the roads to lecture rooms, decried what they called insensitivity on the part of the management. They urged the Vice-Chancellor (VC), Prof James Epoke, to rehabilitate the roads before he leaves office in December when his five-year tenure would have ended.

    A 300-Level Banking and Finance student, who simply gave his name as Edidiong, said the management needed to take immediate action to repair the road, noting that the school needed not to wait for Federal Government to fix the road, since students paid N10,000 development levy every session.

    Felix Ujonukpo, another student, lamented the state of the roads, saying they were unbefitting of  a government-owned institution. He said: “The roads are subjecting students to untold hardship.

    People who drive are also affected. The VC introduced N10,000 levy for students to pay every year for the development of the school. Why must we have this fund somewhere and yet the roads on the campus are bad? The school cannot afford to leave the road in deplorable condition. Prof Epoke should try and fix the road before he finally leaves to save his successor the stress of having to engage in road rehabilitation after assumption of office.”

  • Slaying the beast

    “No matter what anybody says, we have a complete fiscal system breakdown; we can’t pay salaries; we can’t pay wages; we can’t pay our debt. And we don’t even know how much we owe, and how much deficit we have…I have said it before and I have heard people say with some authority, that when we started, deficit was about N1.3 trillion; by the time we finished people were talking about N7 trillion”.

    Those were the words of elder statesman Ahmed Joda in a recent interview with Thisday published June 28. Those statements were made shortly after the handover over the report of his transition committee to President Muhammadu Buhari. Now, if you thought that the old man was given to exaggeration by his sweeping allusion to the collapse of the fiscal system, you will need to read newspaper accounts of the inaugural meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) which although focused on the financial crisis facing the three tiers of government, was an opportunity for the council to beam its searchlight on the criminal mismanagement that has been the lot of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

    While the saying may be true that there is nothing new under the sun, this time around, Nigerians would hopefully get to see the monstrosity of their national oil corporation in its truest element – a government within a government, an octopus that is neither encumbered by the niceties of financial regulation, nor bound by the strictures of parliamentary control – in short, an outlaw corporation.

    You think yours truly is hasty to have drawn such harsh conclusions? Let’s go back a bit in time. Once upon a time, we had a Funsho Kupolokun in charge of the leviathan. Those were the days when the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) could not be said to be short in activism. Against the grain of conventional wisdom, the then Engr. Hamman A. Tukur-led body insisted that the entire proceeds from oil sales be paid first into the federation account before any withdrawal is made.  The argument then was simple: the NNPC as the collecting agency on behalf of the three tiers of government can only draw its sustenance from the pool after the entire rendition is made. In this, the revenue body merely drew strength from the 1999 Constitution which made it clear that all revenues accruing to the three tiers of government be paid first into the federation account. Paragraph 32, Part I (a), of the Third Schedule in fact specifically empowers the RMAFC to “monitor the accruals to and disbursement of revenue from the Federation Account”.

    Like now, the puzzle then was – how do you guarantee fair accruals without a sound basis for establishing what is taken as costs? Ordinarily, the answer would seem as simple as getting NNPC to prepare a budget.  It never did. More than a decade and half after, no one can be sure that the NNPC ever did anything near preparing that financial instrument!

    I recall Engr Kupolokun’s ready-made answer to the raging controversy: “You cannot talk about revenue without mentioning costs…” In other words, there could be no issues as to what constitute the cost elements – it is what the NNPC says it is!

    Several years on, the nation unfortunately would seem far from resolving the puzzle. The result is that we are still effectively at the mercies of the principalities and powers at the NNPC; the only difference this time around is the hope that the correct questions are finally being asked with the governors not surprisingly picking the gauntlet.

    I need to make myself clear here. I am not writing about the $2.1 billion said to have been withdrawn by the Goodluck Jonathan administration from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) which NEC stumbled upon at their inaugural meeting last week. Given the highwire politics surrounding the operations of the ECA, I guess the governors are perfectly entitled to make all the noise about the wierd incomprehensible accounting practices the stuff of which can only be found in the NNPC Towers.

    That is not the subject today. I am rather interested in the ‘undeclared’ revenue – the differential of N3.8 trillion retained – or if you like withheld – by NNPC over the 2012 – 2015 period as alleged by NEC last week.

    Nigerians are of course familiar with the image of the corporation as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for executing all manners of schemes under the sun – except its principal rationale as a state oil corporation. Now, the marvel is that the earn-and-spend image is being presented in such living colours by the governors! While there will be a lot of drama in the coming days as the actual probe kicks off,  Nigerians will do well to take seriously the import of their latest ‘discovery’. Just imagine; NNPC, a collecting agency for the federation account which also doubles as an agency of the federal government setting aside a whopping 47 percent of the entire oil earnings only because it lies in its power to do so! You think that is outrageous? Think about a corporation permanently awash with cash yet suffers the perenial inability to meet up with Joint Venture (JV) obligations; a corporation that can’t or wont fix its ageing pipelines, an outfit that does better collecting rents than go after new oil finds.  That is NNPC for you!

    It seems to me that we may have focused too much on the owners of the distributive pool, the throng made to assemble monthly at the conclave to share a remnant of 53 percent; a group which suffers the strictures of appropriation, as against the outlaw corporation which insists on living only by its own rules. It is about time we paid serious attention to what the corporation does with our money and the process through which it is expropriated.

    If you ask me, I will just say that the governors, like Pa Ahmed Joda in the referenced interview in Thisday, have helped to raise the right questions. Yes, the nation has a fair idea of what has accrused into the federation account. After all, isn’t that what the Abuja monthly conclave for sharing all about? We also know that the ritual of appropriation – no matter how farcical – still goes on accross the different tiers of government if only to fulfil all righteousness. The same however cannot be said of the NNPC which insists on puting the lids on funds illegally retained. For once, Nigerians truly want to know if truly the NNPC has what it can refer to as working budget. How is it appropriated? They deserve to know the quantum of value delivered with the three-point something trillion naira spent. Surely, that can’t be asking for too much? The same would apply to its kiths –Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) as indeed others whose running costs not only exceed those of states but which more often than not, escape parliamentary appropriation. This is after all, the season of change.

    ‘We may have focused too much on the owners of the distributive pool, the throng made to assemble monthly at the conclave to share a remnant of 53 percent; a group which suffers the strictures of appropriation, as against the outlaw corporation which insists on living only by its own rules.

  • The beast that we Nigerians must tame

    It the height of the Western Region crisis of 1962-6, the crisis that led to the collapse of Nigeria’s First Republic and the coming of Nigeria’s first military coup (of January 1966), a prominent Lagos lawyer, Femi Okunu, made a statement that became famous.  He said, “The power of the federal government has grown, is growing, and ought to be curbed”.

    Femi Okunu was speaking in an era when the powers of the federal government were still comparatively small and well-defined, and when our regional authorities were still the makers and movers of development and progress in our country.

    Today, what we still call our federal government does not operate as a member government in a federation; it rules all and dictates to all. We no longer have a federation; what we have is a chaotic jumble of ruins in which, and through which, a so-called federal government stampedes and rumbles at will.

    And herein lies the root of our country’s growing poverty and hopelessness.  Herein lies the ever escalating unemployment among our youths, the constant flight of our educated youths to other lands, the growing spectre of violent conflicts all over our country, the descent of some of our youths into aberrations such as Boko Haram and secret cults.  It is the root of that horrendous iniquity whereby we let the Delta lands that produce all our petroleum wealth become the poorest and most neglected part of our country.

    As natural resources go, our country is one of the richest places in the world. And as soon as our own leading citizens were given the duty, from about 1952, to manage most of our county’s affairs, we commendably began to strive to fulfil our country’s promise. In the context of our federation of three regions, we engaged in a lively rivalry for greater and greater socio-economic developments, and for constantly measurable improvements in the quality of the lives of our people. Our start-off resources for participation in the world economy were humble, consisting mostly of exports of a few crops – cocoa from the Western Region, palm produce from the Eastern, and groundnuts from the Northern.  But we made the best of what we had. Each region developed better and better programmes for supporting and encouraging the producers of its export crop, thereby helping those producers to earn more income and Nigeria to earn more foreign exchange.  Each region went on from this base to advance in its own chosen direction – free primary education in the West, ambitious industrialization efforts in the West and the East and, to a lesser extent, also in the North, and impressive infrastructural programs everywhere.

    Oh, sure, there was partisan politics. That’s the nature of modern democratic countries. But “development” was the big game in our country, and the regions were where most of the big game was played.  Each region commanded adequate freedom and resources to be able to play its own share of the game, and to be able to make its own kind of contributions to the overall growing prosperity of our country. That is how a federation is supposed to be.

    But, then, in 1962, the federal government took the insane step of trying to establish federal control over one of our regions – the Western Region.  That step unleashed a cataclysmic progression of events which ultimately brought our military into the management of our country’s affairs.  Trained for, and used only to, central command, the military turned our country into a centrally commanded country.

    Run-away corruption became a close companion of over-centralized governing.  In the hands of our military rulers, the growing volume of petroleum revenue only bred an almost sub-human species of greed, accompanied by a desire to control more and more.  The regional and local passions and energies that had pushed our country steadily forward were destroyed. Focusing all attention on petroleum, our federal controllers abandoned the nurturing of the other assets that had been building our country’s economy.

    Denied the old regional help and encouragement, our cash crop farmers lost morale and hope. The federal authorities made the situation worse by establishing federal “regulation” (that is, control) over the cash crops.  By 1965, Nigeria was still one of the largest exporters of groundnuts, palm produce and cocoa in the world. By 1980, Nigeria had ceased to be a serious exporter of any, and our farmers who had been luxuriating on the income from those exports became pauperized. Their growing poverty rapidly spread to the general fabric of our society. Economists say that tropical Africa’s earnings from exports fell dramatically during the 1970s, losing about $70 billion per annum, and that much of those losses were Nigeria’s.  The peoples of the former Northern Region suffered the most, because, unfortunately, serious droughts ravaged the distant North in these years, blasting farming and cattle rearing – at a time when our federal controllers just didn’t have any attention to give to anything other than the petroleum from which they were stealing large personal fortunes.

    Concerning the “regulation” of our cash crops by the federal government, I heard a frightening story in 1989 from the Managing Director of a Nigerian private company in his office in Isolo, Lagos. The said company was doing a growing export business in gum-Arabic from the North – but suddenly the federal government ordered them to surrender the export business to federal government agencies. And within a year, Nigeria disappeared as an exporter of gum-Arabic.

    Someday, hopefully, some bright young historian will delve into these matters and tell the world the story of how the Nigerian federal government, in its mad zeal to control everything, destroyed all regional and local development energies, turned Nigeria into a poor country, attracted most enterprising Nigerians away from truly productive enterprises into a life of hustling and sharing of public money, and turned a land of bright hope into a land of utter hopelessness.

    Look in any direction, and you will see the destructive effects of federal seizure and control everywhere – in the brutalizing of the intellectual excellence of our topmost universities and the drastic weakening of our educational system in general.  You will see it in the virtual elimination of our local governments as crucial factors in our regional development efforts, in the collapse of some aspects of our infrastructures (like roads and highways) and our pathetic failure to make sense of other aspects (like electricity). You will see it in the actual deliberate federal obstruction of the efforts of some state governments to do good things for their states, and in the political instability resulting from the use of federal power to manipulate state elections and to impose favoured persons on our states.  You will see it in the destruction of the integrity of our higher courts.

    To return our country to the path of sanity and progress, we Nigerians must join hands, peacefully reorder our country, curb the monster that is wrecking our country, and free our energies to go back to constructive work.  That is the only path of hope for our country. Whoever thinks that Nigeria can exist for much longer than now under the present chaos of federal control is seriously mistaking. If Nigeria breaks up soon, as many informed people are predicting, then it will be because we let the federal government continue to be the unruly dictator and master of all.