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Tag: GMB

  • From GEJ to GMB: A poisoned chalice

    From GEJ to GMB: A poisoned chalice

    Early in Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency, I asked an eminent and influential public figure who was in a position to know — I asked him whether Dr Jonathan was up to the task.

    ‘Without hesitation, no,” he said, his voice tinged with pained disappointment.

    He went on to relate how Dr Jonathan would arrive at meetings not having studied his briefing papers, and how he would often doze off during meetings he himself had convened.

    Nor was the eminent person impressed by Dr Jonathan’s inner circle, men and women who had  no business being on such hallowed ground – “ ragamuffins,” — he called them.  They caroused far into the night, with their host holding court– as it were.

    I had no reason to doubt my source, a person of few but measured words. But I checked his assessment with two other public figures, persons of consequence in their own right, who were also in a position to know whether Dr Jonathan was up to the job.

    Each, separately, concurred in the assessment of my first source.

    That was early in the Jonathan presidency.  As the years passed by, he may have cut down on the night-time carousing and learned to stay attentive and engaged during meetings. But mastery of his brief, or of any public issue for that matter, eluded him throughout his presidency, now mercifully set to end next Friday.

    You could never accuse him of having a firm grasp on any issue, be it commonplace routine or recondite, despite his advertised doctorate in ichthyology.  You could never accuse him of profundity, of lofty thought, the type that springs from a lofty mind.  You could not even accuse him of honest-to-goodness blandness.

    Dr Jonathan was, well, Dr Jonathan.

    It has to be said, however, that he did not seek the office.  He did not envisage public office outside the bucolic enclave where he had spent his entire life until national service took him to Osun State. And as soon as he completed the one-year deployment, he returned to familiar surroundings. All his three degrees came from the University of Port Harcourt, which further locked him into the insularity that he was never able to shed.

    Catapulted from deputy governor in Bayelsa to state governor, to vice president, and then to president of the Republic in two dizzy years, from obscurity to celebrity and to the global stage as it were, Dr Jonathan was more than overwhelmed.

    Nothing had prepared him for such preferment. He never rose to its opportunities.

    Instead he took refuge in a Transformation Agenda that was more slogan than substance, so much motion but, alas, very little movement.   Meetings of the Federal Executive Council became contract bazaars, at the end of which contract awards were solemnly announced as if they were epochal achievements.  And for the most part, nothing was heard again about them.

    Dr Jonathan felt much more comfortable traipsing all over the country in gaudy apparel to attend to the affairs of the dysfunctional PDP than sitting down and contemplating how to make Nigeria work for the masses of the people.  Nigeria was working well for him and his cronies. The formerly shoeless boy had a fleet of 11 executive jets at his beck and call, a one billion naira budget for food and beverages.  What could be sworn with a system like that?

    Despite all the talk of transformation, Dr Jonathan could not build an independent power facility for the Presidential Villa and its complementary facilities.. Nor could he raise to world class the National Hospital that serves the Presidency to world class.  Why bother when he could always hop off in an executive jet for treatment in European hospitals?

    Being at the helm and reveling in the perks was what mattered the most to Dr Jonathan.  Performance was of no consequence, whether at the national level or in the states where the PDP held sway, more by crook than by hook.  Perversity and impunity thrived without even perfunctory remonstrance, especially in the PDP states or in the ministries, departments and agencies headed by its stalwarts.

    It is in fact the case that, the greater the perversity and the impunity perpetrated in those domains, the greater the tacit support of the Jonathan presidency.

    The PDP was never a political party, in any case.  It has always been a patronage organisation, held together by the power of federal patronage.  One of its chieftains, Iyiola Omisore, spoke a greater truth than he intended or realised when, in a plea for party unity, he urged squabbling camp followers to remember that the PDP was nothing without the presidency.

    Omisore was splendidly vindicated when, following the PDP’ rout two months ago in the general elections, its senior officials and card-carrying supporters started jumping ship by the thousands.  The cookie on which they had gorged themselves remorselessly for 16 unbroken years had crumbled.

    Jonathan presided over a comprehensive collapse of state institutions and the national value system.   In almost no area of national life can Nigerians say with confidence that they are better off today than they were four years ago when Jonathan was voted into office on his own.

    At its best, Nigeria generated in the Jonathan years only a small fraction of what a platinum mine in South Africa generates for its operations.  When they work at all, Nigeria’s four oil refineries produce less than one-half of the nation’s needs; the balance is imported through a system that is about as transparent as a steel door.

    Nigeria has been mired in corruption on a scale beyond belief.  But to Dr Jonathan, the problem is ordinary stealing, and we only compound matters when we call it corruption.

    Faced with the devastation over which he has presided, it might be thought that a contrite Jonathan would accept that he was not up to the task, thank Nigerians for the jolly good ride he has had, and humbly vacate the scene.

    Instead, he engineered a false consensus to clinch the PDP’s presidential ticket and sought desperately to buy or steal the presidential election, employing in the process some of the most despicable tactics ever seen in these parts.

    Instead of consolidating the ethnic solidarity that had triumphed over the machinations of a cabal  bent on preventing him from taking power following the death of his principal, and had thereafter given him a strong mandate for a substantive term of his own, he resorted to ethnic-baiting and incitement.

    In the twilight of his disastrous tenure, Dr Jonathan launched out on an activist streak, making major appointments, dismissing senior personnel, setting up new institutions,  threatening to link all 36 state capitals by rail, and even vowing to become a statesman, as if that is a position to which one can appoint oneself.

    He has even cast himself as a super patriot who has always been ready to lay down his life for Nigeria. Coming from a president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces who could not bring himself to go near Chibok where Boko Haram abducted 230 young women from their      school hostel and stole their future, this has got to be the height of delusion.

    The system collapse Nigeria is experiencing now is an eloquent epitaph to Dr Jonathan’s inept rule. The damage he has inflicted on every aspect of Nigerian life will be with us for a long time. What he is handing to President-elect Muhammadu Buhari is nothing less than a poisoned chalice.

  • A brave new world

    A brave new world

    Winning an election, like that of Buhari, sets forth a series of theatrics. The easiest is the first act. He looks like a kid, who just won a prize or is celebrating a birthday. Everyone comes with a smile. They shove and tumble over each other with a congratulatory message.

    They pop bottles, except Buhari would not drink given his teetotaler ways and detached dignity. No cakes will he cut either. Music flows, but not of the owambe variety but drums roll and throats are let loose with political party chants and songs.

    The second act is the loyalty play. Everyone wants to remind the winner how close they were. They want to show how they fought for him, and spent their resources, sold their houses, secured loans and nearly died in accidents.

    After all, one of the loyalists will say he (Buhari) can see the scar beneath his knee (he rolls up his trousers). They visited the hospital many times. The winner cannot forget when they just started out two decades ago. Others will start speaking the same language in deep and effervescent accents. They will spin yarns about village life or when they were only two together one hot afternoon drinking kunu.

    Loyalty naturally gives way to intrigues. The other guy was always undermining the party and spoke one or two unkind words about him as candidate. That short fellow was seen once or twice in furtive shadows dining with the opposing candidate. No, don’t mind that other guy in white top, he does not know anything about holding an office. Others do the work for him. Or it is time to pay back our tribe after many years in oblivion, etc.

    The sober act is the rare one, and that concerns me today. It is the phase of ideas. Few do anything in this area. But that is a crucial part. GMB has said he will use technocrats. That is fine. But technocrats alone cannot make a great team. Some people fought the way to Aso Rock, and if he runs a government of technocrats, he will need politicians to keep the government from falling.

    Technocrats perform; politicians connect. If you don’t connect with the people, your performance will come away like a baby that is still born. You see the baby but cannot hear it. The cry is shrieking not from the little wonder in the mother’s arm but from the one carrying the little wonder. He will find a few “technoticians” – those who inhabit both virtues – and they will be invaluable. He should remember that the primary task of a leader is to raise leaders.

    What concerns me in the realm of ideas is not to parrot the clichés about infrastructure, or education or power or health care. GMB said all these during the campaigns, although the details of implementation are another. What bothers me is the nature of what the British call the exchequer. Our purse is lean, and the revenue generator is atrophying. States cannot pay salaries, and some people are angry with governors for their impotence. They forget that all the resources of states are government controlled, and the absence of fiscal federalism has paralysed states in many ways as revenue drivers. They rely primarily on taxes. To generate taxes we have to animate the private sector. But the economy of the real sector has come to its knees and relies on the federal purse. Banks wait for the money from the federal and state governments.

    States that have gold or have capacity to generate income from power cannot make money. If you have limestone, it belongs to the Federal Government. Oil states are entitled to only 13 percent. We are witnessing the chokehold of a federal leviathan. When the federal fails, everyone fails.

    While we wait for the liberation of states as semi-independent engines of growth, the fulcrum of any economy is the private sector. Humans are the best resource. They are the nucleus of productivity.

    I focus on two areas of creativity. The first is the technology area. The second is textile. The other day I visited Umuahia and my cell phone ran out of power. I sent for a replacement. But it worked only for two days enough for me to return home to my original one. My first thought was to rile at the phony genius. But I have had to rethink this opinion. Those who make counterfeit cell phone, televisions, etc, betray a fundamental talent. They know how to make things. Many of them do not have formal training on these but they are products of enthusiasm.

    Abia State Governor Theodore Orji had set out a modest effort to work on formalising the skills and turning their talent into gems for the country. But it is a good start.

    The Buhari administration should take a special look at these young men who do these things we call “fake.” If they know the technology, they should be encouraged to strike out on their own, and create new ones. These men are idealists. As D.H. Lawrence said the most idealist nations make the most machines. The United States has led the world in this regard because the society enables the environment for individuals to develop stuff and later puts the infrastructure and resources of state at their disposals. Buhari can borrow a leaf from Lincoln’s words in this regard, “The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.”

    A new book on the Wright Brothers written by historian David McCullough is making waves in the west today and it celebrates the rigour, dedication and enterprise of two brothers, Wilbur and Orville, who revolutionised how we move.

    It is a pity that the Southeast states have not jumped at the inspiration of Governor Orji to pool their resources to turn the enterprising élan of the young technologists. In them sleeps the germ of an industrial giant. Isreal today leads the world in semiconductors and they have their equivalent of the Silicon Valley near Jerusalem. It began when the Defence Ministry laid off workers and enabled them to produce chips for their armoury. Many companies sprang up, and the United States encourages them with billions of dollars of free money every year.

    The textile industry is another instance. Nigeria was the capital of textile in West Africa, and Kaduna and Lagos were two of the mainstays before they gradually collapsed. The talent is still here and the genius is coy in dormant minds of many Nigerians.

    The Buhari regime needs to look that way, as well as other areas like furniture, food processing, etc. where, to quote the poet Dryden, lies “God’s plenty.”

  • GMB and Nollywood

    From the head-scratching of members of the 19-man Transition Committee set up by the President-elect, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), we know they are looking desperately for projects, policies and actions that will translate to immediate, resounding and impressive vibrations in the hearts of change-hungry Nigerians. So, the incoming government must device jobs, jobs and more jobs…. Well, with sober reasoning and inventive contemplation, we present one of the idyllic public spaces where a common-sense-driven administration can intervene effectively and glowingly while keeping jobs from disappearing and creating new and numerous jobs.

    It is quite possible that General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB), a swashbuckling young army infantry hot-head in his late 30’s in 1984 would not have heard of the terror and devastation that Pa Moses Adejumo’s Orun Moru suffered in the hands of profiteers barely two years earlier. It took another 10 years after his forced retirement before some semblance of what we now call Nollywood emerged. So, we should not take it for granted that GMB ought to know ‘something’ about Nigerian entertainment – if we insist, we overstretch our sense of importance.

    This is why thoroughbred practitioners snigger when government plays the ostrich in its engagement with the creative enterprise… for a single mid-level Nigerian production with a capital outlay of N5-10m, the long line of operatives work out like this: behind the cameras/gadgets are at least 15 people; the major sets will accommodate from 20 to 500 role players, big and small. Further down the chain of production, are scores of tens of people working in the editing studios, sound studios, photography and graphic designs, printing press, publicity and liaisons, etc. Ancillary outlets also queue up for post-production activities that may help the producer recoup some investment before the almighty pirates swoop: Hall rentals for premiere, contacts and mobilization, DVD discs for mass-dubs, cinema house and its complex of leisure shops, transportation for promotion or road shows, voice-overs for jingles, TV commercials, comedians, DJs and MCs for serial launchings, marketers, video sellers, etc…. On this single work, we have partially identified more than 1000 people directly or indirectly eking a living. Multiply that work by the proverbial 700-1000 movie products we proverbially drop into the unwieldy markets every year. The opportunity is begging to create a minimum of two million jobs within three years in the creative industry alone if hedged with a strong government support, legitimate structures and ultimately international financing and exchange of expertise.

    To bring the cattle home to rest, we merely need to study the growth and growing stature of India’s Bollywood (derived from film-makers’ activities in Bombay city, now Mumbai). Nigeria and India find important indices of commonalities beyond the different shades of colour that distinguish us. Our history as a nation, as British colonized people, with relatively similar huge population of diverse tongues, religions and cultures meshed in a melting pot of blurring political and economic turbulence …among many other surprising relatedness. So, what can our men of power learn from Bollywood and its billion dollar climb to global prominence?

    Bollywood is basically a regional hyper Hindi exercise (one expert says 20%) of the huge Indian film activity. Bollywood’s global brand image dwarfs the other Indian language film sectors and simply equates it as the national jewel, especially in jaundiced international media. As an aside, it is even debatable that Bollywood comes behind Nollywood, even without the additions of Kannywood, Yoruwoods, and such other ‘woods. Their story reads like ours: There is low cost of production; millions of Nigerians work and live all over the world; very high demand for quality Nigerian entertainment; expanding demographics. However, that is as far as similarities go. Bollywood’s key revenue outlets as at 2012 were: Domestic Theatre (74%), Cable/Satellite Rights (11%), Overseas Theatre (7%), Ancillary revenues like endorsements, brand ambassadors, etc (5%)…with Home Video trickling in at 3%! That statistics emanate from its 2012 total annual revenue of $3.5b!

    Just as the new deal dawned on the Central government of India about eight years ago when it granted industry status to Bollywood – the dalliance of Nigerian federal government with the movie business since the coming of outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan six years ago should now be concretized (“gazetted”) and serious attention given to institutionalizing key sectors of the burgeoning industry. We have similar population dynamics (though our middle class is almost wiped out in contrast to India’s 300million – almost a double of our country); we have the passion to sustain flourishing markets of quality works. We have the landmass to build giant multiplex theatres and other viewing centres in both rural and urban centres (Lagos alone can start with two multiplex theatres in each of her 57 LG/LCDAs…and other states can pitch in at least one or more multiplex in all LGs, thus delivering over 1,500 centres of exhibition/distribution/commerce and information – which will trigger high income from product placements, high returns on investments, increased and widespread ‘follow-follow’ erections of theatres and viewing centres thus igniting an explosion in job creation; promoting the flow of communication between the government and its people. Instead of wasting billions on a gigantic stadium that is used once or twice in two years in a landscape of poverty and economic erosion; if the flailing ‘king’ of Akwa-Ibom had built 10 multiplex of entertainment/leisure outlets across the state, there would still have been some sort of thriving legacy of commerce and roll-over employment for young Ibomites…

    Good sensible government policies that allow entrepreneurial capacities of its people to roam and flourish have a way of attracting major investments. When we get our distribution and exhibition channels right and running; when the right people drive a commonsensical pro-people agencies of government with a crusading desire to promote and project the creative endeavours of Nigerians, we shall begin to witness fantastic collaborations with Hollywood moneybags the likes of which Bollywood is now enjoying.

    However,  none of these can be attained without the help of government. Though an intrinsically private enterprise, the sum-total of creative efforts is the elucidation and documentation of people’s culture, lifestyle and struggles through the lenses of their defining citizens. Great nations recognise that their insular confluence of diverse economic, informational and strategic interests are best enunciated by a collaborative creative community – for exports to the farthest reaches beyond the motherland. Perhaps President Jonathan saw the fringes of that great promise, but history will record that he took the stuttering steps (embracing and recognising the power of creativity) that galvanized successive administrations to ascend and catapult the great promise of our Creative Enterprise to the zenith of global ascendancy. Don’t snigger and wrinkle your nose – for this is how America cockily began to surge outfield 95 years ago…it is not late for us to start climbing.

    So, this is not a time for dogmas and crass partisanship. This is a venture where everyone wins – the government, practitioners, business people, consumers, the media, distributors, and allied sectors. The Nigerian creative communities deserve our full and wholesome support, and a watchful encouragement to soar beyond its current supine status. I believe it!!

  • GMB’s ‘ban’ on AIT

    GMB’s ‘ban’ on AIT

    Penultimate Monday, all hell broke loose, following news of a ban on AIT from the coverage of the activities of the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB). Coming on the very day which was this year’s World Press Freedom Day, the widespread consternation at the decision was understandable. Certainly it couldn’t have been more ill-timed – and wrong-headed – even if, as the president-elect’s spokesman, Malam Garba Shehu, said, it was a gross misrepresentation of presidency-elect’s decision.

    AIT, Shehu said, was never really banned. The station, he said, was only asked to “step aside”, pending the resolution of some “security and ethical issues”. He did not spell out what those security and ethical issues were. He probably could not spell out the former, security not being under his purview, but he did not need to spell out the latter for anyone to know that there can be no love lost between the station and the president-elect, given the station’s media campaign against him, which is probably the most scurrilous in Nigeria’s history.

    Still it was wrong for anyone to have asked AIT to even “step aside,” never mind being banned. First, it was not AIT alone that maligned or was shamelessly one-sided against the president-elect. The Federal Government owned NTA, which claims a larger audience than the AIT, was no better. In a sense it was worse; as a publicly funded broadcaster it was not its prerogative to be partisan in any way. But as the Chair of the Commonwealth Observer Group, Dr. Bakili Maluzi, said in a statement on March 30, “the flagship nightly television news on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) channel was completely dominated by reports of the incumbent party’s campaign rallies.”

    NTA apart, the News Agency of Nigeria, was also highly partisan. During the campaigns its managing director, Ima Niboro, issued instructions against running any positive stories about the general and his party, the All Progressives Congress. And when its editor-in-chief, Isaac Ighure, defied his boss and insisted on doing his job professionally, he was simply shunted sideways into the marketing department, where he is still languishing. Not surprisingly he has since been replaced by Lawal Ado Daura. Clearly, Daura got the job not simply because he was qualified, which he was; he got it more because he comes from the same town as the president-elect. Talk of shameless toadying-up to the new powers that be!

    The other two Federal Government owned media, FRCN (Radio Nigeria) and the Voice of Nigeria, behaved much better than NTA and NAN. But this was no thanks to the Federal authorities who put a lot of pressure on their managements to be just as partisan and malicious. By law VON does not carry adverts but the management of Radio Nigeria which does was able to reject the notorious hate documentary against the general carried by AIT and NTA and which came to define much of this year’s media election campaign.

    The independent press may have fared better than the broadcast media, but the conduct of the newspapers too was far from ideal, especially when it came to carrying adverts that were potentially, and in some cases, actually, defamatory. Again, to quote the chair of the Commonwealth Observer Group, “Many newspapers published ‘wrap advertisements’ which looked like normal front pages, but were in fact paid-for advertising masquerading as news.”

    Given the generally poor showing of the media in the coverage of this year’s election, asking AIT alone to “step aside,” no matter how briefly and for whatever reason, was clearly selective. However, there is an even more important reason than this selectivity for why the decision was wrong. And this is the need to respect our Constitution and our laws.

    As a veteran journalist, I have no doubt in my mind that AIT behaved in a most irresponsible and unprofessional manner in running its campaigns against General Buhari and I suspect most reasonable people will agree with my view. Certainly the general is highly unlikely to disagree. But in a democracy such as we aspire to, only the courts have the power to punish such irresponsible and unprofessional conduct as AIT’s, to the extent that the courts agree that the misconduct is defamatory.

    Not surprisingly, Raymond Dokpesi, the proprietor of the station, has said he does not see anything wrong with how his station has behaved. “Daar Communications,” he said in reaction to the purported ban of his station, “is a commercial entity and therefore, reserves the right to run anything it considers worthy of being televised…What is obviously clear is the fact that AIT believes that the historical information about the President-elect that was run was factually correct. Nothing was done to defame him or impinge on his character or integrity.”

    I believe most people who have watched AIT’s coverage of the elections, in particular its hate-filled documentary on the general which the station played again and again, would be shocked at the brazenness of Dokpesi’s defence of a documentary that was so riddled with half-truths and barefaced lies about the general’s person, his religious belief, his past, his late wife and daughter.

    Dokpesi is entitled to believe what he wants. But he should know that Daar being a commercial entity does not entitle him to defame anyone. And the only lawful way to teach him that lesson is not to bar him from doing his business anywhere but to take him to court.

    Happily, the president-elect has shown that he has put his old dictatorial ways well behind him; he said he was not aware of the ban and once he got to know about it, he instructed that AIT’s accreditation be restored immediately.

    The president-elect has clearly passed his first test as a born-again democrat. It is now up to him to decide whether or not to go to court to teach AIT the lesson that a democracy is no licence for defaming anyone.

     

    Re: Jega’s forbearance and Awo’s curse

    Sir,

    In as much I enjoyed the summary of Nigeria’s electoral history by you (April 22), you were not factual by claiming that people regarded the March 28 and April 11 elections as the most credible in Nigeria what with massive riggings in Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Delta and written results!

    People just allowed ‘the sleeping dogs to lie.’ While we keep improving, the 1993 elections remain the most fair, free and CREDIBLE before the CABAL struck.

    Lanre Oseni, +2347064181043.

     

    Sir,

    The 2015 presidential elections were truly not free and fair. The votes turned out in Southsouth and Southeast were all bloated in favour of PDP. Without this electoral heist, APC’s margin of victory could have been about 10 million.

    Barr. Ngozi Ogbomor, +2348033397362.

     

    Sir,

    Your article on Jega’s forbearance and Awo’s curse refers. Please be informed that Awo did not place a curse on Nigeria. He only said that if Nigerians should continue to pervert democracy this generation might not know true democracy. That is a conditional statement not a curse.

    While I wish Nigeria well in her effort to consolidate democracy, it is no yet Eureka, for democracy is a journey not a destination.

    Dr. Ade Adebisi, Akure. +2348034703653.

     

    Re: Tamuno: the passing of a great historian

    Sir,

    Someone should say well done to you for your piece on Tamuno last week. For reasons I can’t quite understand, I haven’t enjoyed an article like this one in a very long time.

    Hector Collins Decker, +2348037172869.

     

    Sir,

    Professor Abdullahi Smith’s initial name was Henry Frederick Charles Smith not Robert as stated in your piece.

    +2348035067192.

     

    Sir,

    Your Wednesday’s column refers. It was not Joseph Smith who became Abdullahi Smith but H. F. C. Smith.

    +2348093468672.

     

    Sir,

    That was a wonderful piece on an extraordinary man. But late Professor Tamuno was from Okrika not Ijaw.

    +2348129146188.

     

    Sir,

    I thought Tamuno was a Kalabari name and not Ijaw. Please confirm.

    +2348035007010.

     

    You are right. He was Kalabari, not Ijaw. However, the two, along with Okrika, are kith and kin.

     

    Sir,

    Your piece, “Tamuno: the passing of a great historian,” was not only a tribute to the demised historian, but a concise account on development of historiography and the roles of selected historians in the evolution of African historiography. Factually, Tamuno deserves all the praises you showered on him for his service to humanity.

    However, my reservation was on the mix-up on the roles of the duo of Dike and Biobaku in the evolution of African historiography. As a matter of fact, I think there is a ploy to downplay the role of Biobaku. You refereed to Biobaku as one of the foot soldiers of Dike in Ibadan. This is far from the truth. Dike and Biobaku were contemporaries. Like Dike, he studied abroad and not at the University College, Ibadan, as you stated.  Biobaku studied at University of Exeter, England (1944-45), Trinity College, University of Cambridge (1945-47), and Institute of Historical Research, London (1951-52).

    As a matter of fact, Dike’s pioneering work on African historiography, Trade and Politics in Niger Delta was published a year ahead of Biobaku’s Egba and their Neighbours published in 1957. All others you mentioned built on the foundation laid by both Dike and Biobaku.

    I think Biobaku was a member of the Ibadan school not because he studied or lectured at UI, but because he aligned with the tradition of the school in his works. I think the only time he worked in UI was as a director of the Institute of African Studies. He was vice chancellor at O AU and Unilag at different times.

    Adewuyi Adegbite, +2347013065440.

  • GMB: Time to right the old wrongs

    SIR: Your Excellency, many people in my generation were either not born or too tender when you ruled the country in the 80’s. Our parents told us and we equally read for ourselves of the different violations of Human Rights that took place when you superintended over the affairs of our dear nation. During one of your campaigns for the just concluded presidential election, you acknowledged that by telling us that we should not judge you by what transpired during the era of military junta.

    My generation never witnessed the controversial decrees number two and four. Many writers opined that they are better imagined than experienced. We heard and read that the decree number four empowered your government to arrest any journalist that published any article/news against your government whether the contents of the news/article were true or not. As a result, many innocent journalists were jailed.

    The recent order on African Independent Television (AIT) not to cover your events sends a wrong signal to the public. My grandmother tells me that somebody that was once bitten by a snake always fears the earthworm. The people that experienced your decree number four  are currently smelling a rat . They are at the verge of concluding  that though a snake may change its colour,  but the character remains intrinsic. Meanwhile, your aides have tried to justify that under the guise of  ‘ethics and standards’. My beloved grandmother always tells me that lies are better told in English language because telling lies is alien to our culture. No matter the grammar used to justify your recent action of barring AIT from covering your events, every Nigerian is aware that it  is not unconnected with the hate campaign aired in their different stations.

    I want to remind you of the life of Nelson Mandela, the whole world celebrated him when he died not because he spent 27 years in prison or that he was determined in his struggle to liberate his people from the shackles of apartheid government  but because when he finally became the  president of his country, he never pursued any political vendetta. As a father he forgave everybody.

    Your Excellency, don’t you think that many Nigerians will love you the more when you ignore those people and organisations  that were involved in hate campaign against your candidacy during the just concluded presidential campaign? I want to quickly remind you that no past leader in our country who did not mean well for the country but the problems for each administration were mainly caused by those around the leaders. This made General Ibrahim Babangida  once to complain that those that caused the annulment of the June 23,1993 presidential  election  are still in the government of the day.

    The youths that voted you in did not  do so for you to start pursuing vendetta; they want your administration to provide jobs for them, construct new roads for them while rehabilitating the ones in deplorable states, fight the current insurgency and to eradicate all forms of corruption in the  ministry of power and other aspects of our civil service.

     

    • Dr Paul John

    Port Harcourt, Rivers state.

     

  • GEJ’s phone call to GMB: the dangers of hyperbole

    GEJ’s phone call to GMB: the dangers of hyperbole

    Whatever criticisms anyone may make of President Goodluck Jonathan’s six-year presidency which will end on May 29 – and God knows there’s a hell lot – he cannot be denied credit for his statesman-like March 31 phone call to his rival, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, in which he accepted defeat ahead of the formal declaration of the opposition All Progressive Congress’s (APC) presidential candidate as victor, the following day.

    That simple call was possibly, even probably, the most difficult decision of the president’s political life, considering the unprecedented bitterness that had characterised this year’s general elections, thanks mostly to the hawks the man surrounded himself with, several of whom had sworn, presumably with a wink from him, that Buhari will never be elected president of this country.

    However, while the president deserves the praise singing that has been heaped on him for that simple but, at the same time, difficult, phone call, it must be said that the country stands in the grave danger of over-exaggerating its significant, in the sense that it is being made to look as if it is enough to atone for the enormous sins the man, his lieutenants and his Peoples Democratic Party have committed against Nigeria and Nigerians the past 16 years.

    No doubt the phone call averted the descent into chaos which many a doomsday prophet – not least semi-official American institutions that had predicted Nigeria’s implosion this year – had prophesied for the country. Even then anyone who thinks that that phone call alone has completely dispersed the storm that had gathered over the nation before and during this year’s general election may be in for a great shocker.

    There are critics of the president who say his concession was forced. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t. However, a two-page statement issued on Monday by the Chairman of PDP’s Board of Trustee, Chief Tony Anenih, titled “Marching on with Hope” suggests that the phone call wasn’t so voluntary.

    “President Jonathan,” Anenih said in the statement, “has worked, selflessly, to deepen democracy in Nigeria. His consistent advocacy of the rights of the people to freely choose their leaders had earlier yielded free, fair and credible elections in some States of the Federation. Now, a peaceful transition is expected to follow after the general elections.” (Note his phrase, “in some states”, presumably PDP).

    Coming from a man who originated and popularised the notorious phrase, “No vacancy in Aso Villa,” the man must think Nigerians are idiots to believe his claim that anybody in PDP can deepen, or has indeed deepened, democracy in Nigeria; after all, advocacy is not practice, and no one resident in Nigeria the last 16 years will agree with “Mr Fix-it” that PDP chieftains ever practiced the principles of anything they preached.  In any case by apparently tagging the election as half-free, it is obvious that his party, and certainly the man himself as its presumed conscience, did not accept Buhari won it fair and square.

    Yet, in spite of Anenih’s dubious caveat about the credibility of the election, President Jonathan’s phone call may have been sincere. However, there are at least two tests by which the president can prove his sincerity beyond any reasonable doubt, one immediate, and the other during and after the transition.

    The immediate test is his willingness to call to order the governors of PDP states and Abuja-backed PDP elements in opposition states who made it almost impossible for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to use card readers in their states and generally made their states hell on earth for the opposition in the March 28 elections through the use of thugs, army and the police, notably Akwa-Ibom and Rivers, the First Lady’s home but opposition state. The president should charge these governors and PDP Abuja politicians to allow for free, fair and credible governorship and Houses of Assembly elections in their states this weekend.

    In addition, he should prevail on the PDP governors who lost their senatorial bids on March 28 – notably those of Niger and Benue states – not to resort to the Samson’s Option of bringing down the roof on everybody’s head they seem hell-bent upon adopting in the same election as punishment against voters in their states for their rejection.

    The second, and bigger, test is how willingly the president cooperates with the in-coming administration in personally accounting for his six-year rule and how far he succeeds in persuading all his lieutenants to do the same.

    General Buhari has assured that his administration will not “witch-hunt” anyone. This is as it should be. However, this cannot mean letting all bygones be bygones. To do so would be to teach the wrong lesson that all it takes for politicians and their sidekicks to get away with the kind of corruption and impunity we witnessed in this country in the past 16 years, the last six in particular, is simply for an incumbent to anticipate the formal announcement of his defeat.

    Re: “Buhari- Fourth time lucky”

    Sir,

    Let us join hands and thank God for Saturday March 28, 2015. We asked for it, and He graciously gave it to us.

    Chief Tony Chigbo,

    +23450494477.

    Sir,

    APC has won the elections. Let sleeping dogs lie.

    +2348057366302.

    Sir,

    Your piece today (April 1) is as usual solid but for the constant recourse to religion and ethnicity. It’ll be good if you could stop looking at the Nigerian crises from the prism of ethnicity and religion.

    Chijioke Uwasomba,

    OAU, Ife,

    +2348037058775.

    Sir,

    I don’t know the inner workings of our darling APC, but to ascribe the ‘poor outing’ in the South-South to Gov. Amaechi’s failings is disingenuous and cruel. Please we need to close our flanks.

    Mikefe Tanno

    +2348062322295.

    Sir,

    I hardly reply to articles but in your case of Wednesday April 1, I couldn’t hold myself. Please don’t set a dangerous agenda with your attack on Gov. Amaechi. The fact that GMB won is a testament to the good job he did as DG. You must appreciate the high risk he took in his fight with the presidency on behalf of GMB. Even some of us who were unknown supporters were nearly mobbed in several quarters.

    The point I am making is that it was not easy being a Buhari supporter down south. Therefore, your early attack on Amaechi’s style is unwarranted and uncalled for.

     +2348030784586.

    Sir,

    Your article, “Buhari: Fourth Time Lucky”, was another insightful piece.  However, permit me to strongly disagree that Governor Rotimi Amaechi, the Director-General of the Buhari campaign team, “came highly recommended”.  If truth is not to be turned on its head, Amaechi came to the position with more brawn than brain.  That was why he found it almost impossible to run a cohesive campaign where all the various tendencies could have been carried along.

    Yes, Amaechi may have been right in trying to check the over-bearing excesses of some leaders, but the limited presence of the other serving Governors and party leaders in the campaign, would have brought Buhari’s electoral bid to grief, but for God’s grace.  This is why, without doubt, many discerning minds rightly say the triumph of GMB was hardly due to the efforts of his party.

    Segun Adewale

    Sir,

    There you go again trying to cause schism among APC leaders and followers. Amaechi never alienated Tinubu and others. They worked together as a team. APC lost the S/E and S/S to money politics, the army and corrupt INEC officials.

    +2348075476140.

    Sir,

    Thanks for your usual great attempts at an equilibrated presentation. A word, however, on the perennial suspicion of GMB for Islamic fundamentalism.

    He is said to have made the application for the thorny membership of Nigeria with the OIC, which IBB later ratified. On the other hand, I read from factchecking.ng in GMB’s defence,  that the OIC Conference of Minister, the OIC organ responsible for treating application did not discuss Nigeria during GMB’s military rule, and therefore it was not he who applied for it; in fact, that he refused to sign to full membership of Nigeria because Nigeria was a secular state. In any case, since secrecy has surrounded the ratification of full membership, some of us are still unaware of the details.

    Be that as it may, could GMB add to his top restoration agenda the restoration of that secular status please?

    I believe this message can reach the president-elect through you.

    Sincerely,

    JOSEPH AKAA

    joeakaa@yahoo.com

     

    Sir,

    I have watched good writers of our time like you doing good job. But personally, I would like you people, using your influence and contact, to ensure that that patriotic and uncompromising army captain who leaked the rigging of Ekiti governorship election is reinstated in the army.

    This captain must not lose his job. He is the unsung hero of our time.

    Alhaji Abiodun Hussain,

    +2348023311676.

    Sir,

    FFK (Femi Fani-Kayode) is Publicity Director, not Director General of PGEJ’s (President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan) campaign organisation. The DG is (Col) Ahmadu Ali.

    +2348073647104.

     

    I stand corrected. The error was inadvertent. Another error was my reference to Buhari’s running mate as Professor Femi Osinbajo, instead of Yomi. Both errors are regretted.

  • Sultan to ‎GEJ, GMB: Accept election result in good fate

    Sultan to ‎GEJ, GMB: Accept election result in good fate

    The Sultan of Sokoto and President General of Jama’atu Nasril Islam (‎JNI), Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III has told President Goodluck Jonathan, General Muhammadu Buhari and other political gladiators to accept whatever is the outcome of Saturday Presidential election in good fate.

    He also charged Muslims in the country to embark on fasting and prayer on Thursday for a violence-free election.

    Sultan made the call in a statement he issued through the Secretary-General of JNI, Dr. Khalid Abubakar Aliyu and made available to newsmen in Kaduna Wednesday.

    According to the statement, ‎”In the event that the Results are announced by the Electoral Empire, JNI implores the political gladiators to take the outcome in good fate and be sportsmanship. This is so because, if ALLAH (SWT) spares our lives, we shall witness many more elections in Nigeria.

    “The polity should not be overheated and the fragile peace in Nigeria should not be jeopardized.

    “All forms of irregularities should be appropriately directed to the competent courts of law which are in tandem with best known practices across the globe.

    “It ‎is our prayers that free, fair, and credible General Elections would be held in Nigeria. May the Almighty Allah continue to grant us peace, security, prosperity and development in Nigeria. Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria

    “Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) under the leadership of His Eminence, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, mni, the Sultan of Sokoto and President-General, JNI, urges the Muslim Ummah in Nigeria to continue praying fervently for a hitch free General Elections in Nigeria.

    “Consequently, he specially calls on all Muslims to utilize the usual Thursday voluntary fasting coming up on 26th March, 2015, to fast and seek Allaah’s intervention in the forth-coming General Elections.

    “In the same vein, all Jumu’ah Mosques Imams’ are implored to centre their respective Khutbah-sermons for this coming Friday, 27th March, 2015, on violence free General Election period and offer special prayers to that effect.

    “On the other hand, JNI calls on all parents, guardians and other stakeholders to monitor very closely their children/wards before, during and after the elections. The youths should in the name of ALLAH (SWT) sheath their swords, as there are many more General Elections ahead, thus they should be calm, peaceful and law abiding before, during and after the General Elections.

    “Likewise, opinion leaders, labour and student unions, community leaders, women and youth organizations should closely synergize with security agencies at their respective domains in order to maintain absolute peace,” the statement read.

  • GMB: Welcome to Kwara

    They may shout and cry about anything that catches their fancy to denigrate you, but the people’s General, the incorrigible advocate of transparency, the one whose names sends cold shivers down the spine of those who have something to hide from the people of Nigeria, keep on moving with your message of change. For no political conspiracy can stop you from marching to victory again. And so tomorrow Saturday January 31, Ilorin, nay the entire people of Kwara, welcomes you to Garin Alimi and the state of Harmony.

    The stage is set, the people are anxious. They are ready, in deed, eagerly waiting to see the General again. And for those familiar with the dynamics of politics in Kwara State, no one would forget how the Leader, Senator Bukola Saraki, believing he was relating with one whose words are his bond, mobilised support for President Goodluck Jonathan on a similar campaign visit in 2011. But now things have changed.  The people of Kwara, still strongly backing the Leader, have shifted and moved; they have CHANGED, as the APC slogan commands, and hence today are out in their thousands to welcome the General who by the grace of God will lead the next government in Nigeria.

    We embraced change because PDP was sinking. Sinking with corruption, ineptitude, cluelessness, injustice and insecurity. The leadership is sensitive to the deplorable plight of the mass of the people. They are dividing us along ethnic and religious lines while appropriating our commonwealth for the benefit of a few.   For six years, no single life-touching, soul-saving project in our state. Jonathan decimated the Governors’ forum with his hypothesis of 16 being greater than 19 and egregiously aiding and abetting the then party chairman to desecrate our party’s constitution. We left because we could no longer tolerate their gross impunity.

    Now that they admitted that their generation has failed Nigeria (I reject to be part of the failure), Buhari deserves to be President again, nothing less. All over the federation, from the far north down south, the generality of Nigerians have been demonstrating their love and acceptance for the man who can be described without equivocation as the man of the moment. People see in Buhari, the kind of leadership Nigeria needs at a time like this: a leader with courage of conviction, a leader with compassion, a leader with example in fighting corruption, and a leader with credible track record when providence gave him the opportunity. Nigeria needs someone who can stand up in the international community and command respect. We need someone whose word is his bond and not someone who only makes promises without fulfilling them. We need a man of the masses, not a man for a few whose pastime is plundering our collective resources.

    Truth be told, Nigerians are tired of empty promises, we are no longer ready to follow a leader who gropes in the dark on grave issues of national security, we need a leader who can stand firm, who will take security intelligence with the seriousness it deserves and not someone who will be dancing on the grave of innocent citizens killed by terrorists because the nation refused to equip those who have signed their lives away to protect the people. And that is why all efforts to denigrate Buhari have failed; because the people know that they were orchestrated to cover the glaring failures of the incumbent. And that is why other efforts still on their agenda will fail, because the reality has dawned on Nigerians that we have been taken for granted these past years but now we have an opportunity to take our destiny in our hands. This is our time and this is Buhari’s time as history beckons to a man of destiny. With the support of the people, the genuine change that Nigeria needs will surely come.

    General we take solace in your promise to “end the impunity of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), a party that has proved clueless in every manner. It has failed to deal squarely with the great security challenge that has faced this nation within the last five years. And it has remained touchy and impervious to all constructive criticism and without concern for human life and for the suffering going on in the land”. ýThey wish you dead because your hands of justice know no bound. But we shall not curse them. You shall commiserate with their family when they eventually pass on.

    Buhari’s is the face of hope; he is the symbol of integrity and no matter how much they try to splash mud on his garments, he will continue to come out clean, and even better shined than before. What he has to offer is what Nigeria needs now and that explains the massive support the retired General has been receiving all over the nation. And that is why Kwarans from all walks of life will converge on the state capital tomorrow to welcome the man of the moment; the man on whose shoulder destiny will put the shape of things to come for our dear fatherland. We have been choked for long, we have endured much pain and disappointments, we have been deceived as a people and now we are holding our destiny in our hands. We are not going to give in to political rapists who will just enjoy the pleasure of our bodies and leave us bruised and traumatised. Yes, they may boast they have the resources, but we have our votes. They cannot buy our conscience. We will give our votes to those we know will use it to love us and bless our union. In Kwara we will give our votes to Buhari/Osinbajo. And that is why we will be trooping out in numbers on Saturday to welcome you, our General.

    Our mothers, our fathers, our brothers and sisters today queue behind the Leader, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki to welcome your Mai Gaskiya to the State ýof Harmony.

    Welcome to our midst, the man of the moment.

     

    •  Abdulwahaab, chief press Secretary to the Kwara State Governor, writes from Ilorin. 
  • GMB does a rope-a-dope

    GMB does a rope-a-dope

    Is General Muhammadu Buhari or any member of his presidential campaign team by any chance a devoted student of the sweet science in general, its greatest exponent Muhammad Ali in particular, and the stratagem he deployed in flattening his most fearsome opponent ever in the encounter he christened the Rumble in the Jungle?

    The opponent was of course George Foreman, who had yanked one-time Ali conqueror Joe Frazier off his feet with an uppercut and dumped him on the canvas with an uppercut, on the way to knocking him out in inside two rounds.

    Foreman had also administered the same brutal treatment to Ken Norton who had broken Ali’s jaw in one encounter, and whose unorthodox boxing style Ali barely managed to figure out in subsequent winning encounters.

    The stratagem, courtesy of Muhammad Ali, has entered sporting history as “rope-a-dope.”

    There are two strands to it.

    In one, you cover up and in the ring and often lean back against the ropes to allow your opponent punch away until he exhausts himself and can no longer defend himself effectively. Then he is ripe for the taking.

    In the other, you behave passively or with little aggression until the moment arises for decisive action.

    This latter is what the GMB Campaign seems to have employed in laying to rest the controversy that had raged for several weeks as to whether Buhari met the minimum academic qualifications for entering the presidential race – an issue that had never come up in his three previous runs for the post.

    At the time of filing his election papers, he had indicated that his certificates were in the possession of the military authorities and could be obtained from them. The military authorities had said at one point that they were indeed in possession of the certificates, only to recant later in a sensational press conference designed for prime-time television.

    In a disavowal heard around the world, military spokesman virtually put the contents of General Muhammadu Buhari’s personnel file on global display. It contained no evidence, Brig.-Gen. Oladele Laleye said that Buhari obtained the requisite West African School Certificate, merely a letter from his school principal recommending him for military commission and expressing confidence that he would pass the WASC examination.

    The way the military spokesman carried himself, you would think that he was the chief prosecutor at a court-martial.

    By then the Goodluck Jonathan Campaign had worked itself and the Jonathan crowd into a froth. They launched a made-for-the-Internet “Buhari, Show Your Certificate” Campaign, hashtag and all. General Buhari, the most desperate elements in this group said, had been smuggled into officers corps on quota, with total disregard to the rules. In the normal run of things, he would have rated no higher than a sergeant.

    All manner of experts on the Nigerian Constitution hopped from television station to television station, declaring that all the credentials Buhari had earned in prestigious foreign military academies could not make up for his not having the WASC. “You cannot build something on nothing,” one of them said sententiously, quoting that epigram in the original Latin for added effect.

    With breathless excitement, the same fellow went on to declare that, by laying claim to a qualification he did not possess, or by claiming that his credentials were in the possession of the military authorities, Buhari had committed perjury. The penalty for that crime, he hinted darkly, was 14 years imprisonment.

    The implication was clear: Buhari was more likely to end up in Kirikiri Prison than in the Presidential Villa.

    It was at this point that the GMB Campaign which had refused to be drawn into the contrived controversy — some were already calling it a scandal —and chosen instead to absorb the jeers and the taunts and the innuendos and the coarse abuse in the finest rope-a-dope tradition came out swinging.

    And what a devastating blow it landed!

    Buhari authorised Government College, Katsina, the successor of his alma mater, the Katsina Provincial Secondary School, to release authenticated statement of result in the WASC.  The transcript shows, as Buhari had earlier disclosed, that he had passed the examination in Division Two, a respectable achievement back when examination leakages were almost unheard of, and the syndicated cheating that today marks most public examinations was inconceivable.

    Buhari’s succinct statement refocused and reframed the presidential contest in a way the Jonathan camp loathes so much. It is not about the certificate Buhari earned 53 years ago, but about the Nigerian condition, defined by mass unemployment, especially among the younger population, corruption on a scale beyond anything the country experienced even in the Babangida and Abacha years, and pervasive insecurity.

    Not a few jaws in the Jonathan camp dropped as what its functionaries had been wielding as a trump card became a symbol of its desperation, its propensity for lying on an industrial scale.

    You would think that its functionaries would now cease and desist, if not admit error.

    No chance. They are calling the document furnished by Buhari’s school a fresh forgery.  They are claiming that Buhari could not have passed Hausa at the WASC exam in 1961 because that subject was not offered then. They even trotted out a “curriculum expert” from one of the universities, who declared without fear and without research that no indigenous-language examinations were conducted on that platform in Nigeria at that time.

    The libel is on them. Back then, Hausa was already being offered even at the Advanced Level, and one of the set books was Shaihu Umar, a well-regarded novel by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, later Nigeria’s first prime minister. It is these slanderers, not Buhari, that should check in at the nearest police station, enter a full confession, get booked for criminal libel, submit to a swift trial, and proceed to jail thereafter.

    Why should anyone now believe anything they say?

    Now that Buhari has provided satisfactory answers to the questions that have been raised about his credentials, the Jonathan Campaign will have only itself to blame if attention now shifts, as indeed it should, to their principal’s credentials, particularly the University of Port Harcourt Ph.D. his acolytes are parading as his unique selling point.

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo for one has been reported as saying that at the time Jonathan was being interviewed for vice president, he did not have a doctorate. It does not follow from this that Jonathan did not subsequently complete the requirements for the degree.

    Even his sternest critics concede that, when it comes multi-tasking, he belongs in a special class of his own. He could therefore have wrapped up the dissertation while holding the demanding job of vice president, or even president.

    But when did he actually obtain the degree?  When was it formally conferred?

    For another, the dissertation on which the doctorate rests, I gather, is not available in the University of Port Harcourt Library, as it should be by law. Again, it does not follow from this that the dissertation does not exist.

    But where is it? Why is the whole thing so dodgy?

    For yet another, in manner, thought and speech, Jonathan rarely comes across as someone who has been tempered, much less transformed, by the sustained rigour and comprehensive sweep of doctoral study. He is certainly not a shining advertisement for the doctoral programme of the University of Port Harcourt in ichthyology or in any academic specialism for that matter.

    He and those who conferred him with the distinction of Doctor of Philosophy of that fine institution surely have a lot to explain.

  • That GEJ/GMB hug

    SIR: Our country men, women, youths and children need to have critical look at the picture of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as captured in the front page of The Nation of Thursday, January 15, tagged “A hug against violence”.  It would seem that while their exellencies are glaringly presenting the gesture of rival captains in just a friendly match in preparation for their main contest, they might have humorously warned each other not to engage in any outregeous cheating in the election proper.

    Let us thus pray and hope that the Hug Against Violence would practically or even symbolically translate  into A HUG AGAINST OUTREGEOUS RIGGING in main elections. And may God answer our prayer.

     

    • Gavers C. Ihematulam Esq.

    Mandegavers@gmail.Com