The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Goodluck Ebele Jonathan

  • #Bringbackthegirls

    #Bringbackthegirls

    •The president and his team must rise to attention and spare us the agonies and international disgrace

    It is no more news that we have attracted, like many other times, attention to our dear country for the wrong reasons. We have attracted attention not only because 200-plus young girls were ferreted away by dedicated rascals who called themselves God’s disciples. We have attracted attention not just because we have a military that stumbled at every turn at a formidable opponent. We have, more tragically, drawn the world’s ridicule because of a bumbling presidency that has exposed a naiveté and lack of understanding of governance in an age of expectation. In the midst of it, we suffer pain, tensions, apprehensions, fantasies of tragedy.

    That explains why the president, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, reacted only three weeks when the vulnerable citizens were already ominously secure in the arms of their predators. That explains why the president displayed a stunning disbelief that the young girls were missing when, in the last presidential chat, he thrust the onus of responsibility on the parents, and asked them to cooperate by providing pictures. His wife, Patience, demonstrated no virtue when she chided protesters and even ordered the arrest of those who expressed not only their inalienable rights in a democracy but also showed open emotions. She shamelessly quipped that no girl was missing. We are sure she saw the pictures now virile in the world media. If, of course for her, seeing is believing.

    When such unfortunate incidents such as the kidnap of many girls happen, it is time not only for action but also accountability. One of the cries of the past half year since the escalation of the violence of the Boko Haram insurgents is the call for accounting for the budget allocated for security since the Jonathan presidency started prosecuting its war against the militants. The budgets of 2012, 2013 and 2014 have been especially high.

    For 2012, the budget allocation was N921.91 billion. In 2013, the sum budgeted was N950 billion. This year’s budget is N845 billion. For the three years, the Federal Government has budgeted N2.7 trillion for security, and this covers the armed forces, police, the office of the national security adviser, and other operational costs. We are still in the throes of 2014, so we cannot say that all N2.7 trillion have been spent on security in the past three years.

    Yet, we can say that with 2012 and 2013 behind us, at least N1.8 trillion went to security in the past two years. But this is not early days in 2014, so we can surely say that at least the Federal Government can say it has spent at least N2 trillion so far on security, since we are in the second quarter of the year.

    Yet with all that humongous outlay, we do not justify that generous eye on our money with the stature and capacity of our military. In his presidential chat, President  Jonathan said the military lags in equipment and training. In spite of over N2 trillion? That is why we need the Jonathan administration to render account to Nigeria on how we have expended such a sum of money and we cannot see any form of surveillance technology to monitor and track the hoodlums who have roamed, with leonine defiance and damage, plundered lives and property in the Northeast of the country, complete with rapine and ruin.

    Yet, last week, during the World Economic Forum that Nigeria hosted for vanity, former British prime minister announced a $10 million donation to protect the schools in the area. This is small money in comparison but it is money already accounted for at N3.3 million per school in a year. We need such clinical numbers from the presidency and the National Assembly should not play coy in this matter. They ought to step in since they approved this meaningless jamboree in the name of the people’s safety.

    It is this failure to account for the money that leads to foreign countries promising to provide equipment that we ought to have bought with our money and implemented to prevent the tragedy we live through practically every day as a people.

    We still wonder why the president uttered with confidence the untruth that he had called the United States President Barack Obama to help with equipment and soldiers. He was exposed by both British and American governments when they announced that offers to help came but his government rebuffed the overtures. That was disingenuous governance and failure to connect with the people who voted him into office.

    How can the president have been serious about the fight against terror in the eyes of the Americans and other western countries when the same presidency fought furiously against even the Christian Association of Nigeria when the clamour came to brand Nigeria a place of terror. The presidency balked at such branding because top brass of the administration would fail to enjoy travel privileges and visas. Their private vanities trumped national interest. They lived in denial and expected Boko Haram and its murderous scourge to, in line with the president infamous quote, somehow quietly and providentially disappear.

    Amnesty International reported that the army was informed hours before the Boko Haram onslaught on Chibok, but the military failed to act. Yet, the Nigerian army had fought back that they had no such forewarning. If such documented evidence can be denied by the military brass, it only confirms what Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka described as the government’s sense of denial about the crisis. They have not been able to explain why several trucks could ram through the streets of Borno State to the now mythicised Sambisa forest.

    It is amazing that apart from the symbolic changing of the service chiefs, Jonathan has not demonstrated seriousness by sacking or asking for the firing of men down the military and political chains who have failed in critical moments of Boko haram tragedy. Merely changing service chiefs only shows that the problem lies with the commander-in-chief who has failed to provide the vision and the discipline of example. In more organised climes, President Jonathan would either have been impeached or resigned.

    Apart from the president’s rhetorical stumbles, we have also witnessed some of the president’s lieutenants who have weighed in but not with logic. They have proffered inelegant untruths like Doyin Okupe’s assertion that 200 sorties had been executed in the area at a time the president said they were advised by the military not to go into the Sambisa forest. Okupe who is the president’s spokesman also said two battalions had been unleashed. A battalion is a subset of a brigade which is a subset of a division. Yet we have a division deployed in the area at the time of the onslaught at Chibok.

    It is the string of inelegances that has turned the president and his team into a laughing stock not only in the diplomatic circles and international press but also in the bursting temper of the social media. The president must wake out of his lethargy and show leadership. It must also do that by giving us daily, if periodic, updates of reports and words that inspire rather than the insipid air that sterilises our hope.

  • Rescue these innocent girls with wisdom

    Rescue these innocent girls with wisdom

    THIS is an important message to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, and I will want him to urgently attend to it.

    He should find ways of rescuing the kidnapped students of Government Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, without wasting time.

    In embarking on the rescue mission, the security operatives must apply wisdom. This is a mission that also requires prayer. It is a delicate matter, and there is no room for mistakes.

    These girls are innocent. They did not commit crimes. They did not ignite the social and political hate in the country. They are just starting life. They are entitled to freedom.

    President Jonathan, please act urgently and wisely too. The Almighty will be with you at this critical hour.

    Chika Nnorom,

  • Owanbe prince in Aso villa

    Owanbe prince in Aso villa

    If there is any royal father in Nigeria who does not play servile to any political office holder, be he a governor, senator or president, it is the Oba of Benin. He is a man who guards the integrity and honour of the office with ancient dexterity and pride.
    So it was out of character of the Oba that his son, who is now regarded as the crown prince, to saunter into Aso Villa and scramble for a photo opportunity with the president. Sons sometimes devalue the high prestige of their fathers, and that is in the time-honored abuse of what psychologists call the oedipal complex.
    In this case, Eheneden Erediauwa, who carries the prefix of ambassador, was not the ambassador of the great and proud Benin Kingdom when he appeared with a supine smile, all clad in white cap and white dress in photo op with President Jonathan.
    The tongues of the Benin people have been restless with wonder, asking themselves why the son of the proud and doughty Oba of Benin could go to the corridor of power to dine and wine indiscriminately with power. What was he doing there? Some have asked what kind of support was he seeking from the president?
    His father is not in the habit of leaving the glorious shadow of his palace to do obeisance to anybody. The Benin Kingdom would rather be defeated than grovel, witness the story of the Benin Resistance against the English over a century ago.
    That is the reason for the Ovonranwen Square in the city. It is a homage to the honour and pride of a race that plays no second fiddle to any potentate.
    Not long ago, the story was told of the visit of the President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, to the palace in the run up to the last governorship election. With the president’s usual cavalcade of several men, vain and glorious, was the Peoples Democratic Party’s governorship candidate. The president wanted the support of the Oba. The Oba did not want to see the candidate and, according to the reports, he sent word that he could only see the president from inside one of his chambers. And so the president visited and he shunned the PDP flag bearer.
    It was a matter of principle. He did not believe in anything other than honour and competence. He endorsed the performance of Governor Adams Oshiomhole, and he was not one to be intimidated by the false colour and concourse of a presidential convoy. He sent a clear and unmistakable message. He was not one to be impressed by a president when such a president did not impress his people.
    Was it not the same Oba who sent a minister out of his palace after lashing him for leaving fallow the Benin-Ore express way? So, having known the father, does the son who is called an ambassador appear like an ambassador of the man who now occupies the saddle? Nada!
    The people of Benin are wondering whether they should be preparing for an antithesis of their present Oba, an Owambe prince preening in the vortex of power in self-prophesy of his own reign?

  • Kutigi to chair conference

    Kutigi to chair conference

    •Akinyemi is deputy chair

    Retired Chief Justice of Nigeria Idris Legbo Kutigi will chair the national conference billed to be inaugurated on Monday.

    He will be assisted by former External Affairs Minister Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi.

    Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Anyim Pius Anyim announced the appointments last night.

    Dr. Mrs. Valerie Azinge was named the secretary of the conference.

    The statement announcing the appointments reads: “His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has approved the appointment of the Leadership of the National Conference as follows:

    Honourable Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi-Chairman

    Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi-Vice Chairman

    Dr. (Mrs.) Valerie Azinge-Secretary”

    “The appointees are to resume at Abuja on Wednesday, 5th March, 2014 and would be received on arrival by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.”

    Mrs. Azinge is the wife of the DG of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Prof. Epiphany Azinge.

    Investigation by our correspondent showed that the President decided to choose Kutigi and Akinyemi because of their belief in the unity and stability of Nigeria.

    A source said: “I can tell you that the pan-Nigeria attitude of Kutigi and Akinyemi earned them the appointments.

    “Jonathan opted for them because he does not want any issue at the conference which could affect our corporate survival.

    “Also, the preference for Kutigi was informed by his tough and principled stand on issues. He is not somebody you can sway by tribal or political persuasion.

    “Since he left office, he seldom speaks truth to power. So, you can see that the government is really determined not to influence the conference.

    “He is not a blind critic or a friend of the government. Kutigi has the opportunity to lead the conference to preserve our unity.”

    Responding to a question, the source added: “The fact that Kutigi is a former Chief Justice of Nigeria would help address legal and constitutional issues at the conference.”

    On the appointment of Akinyemi, the presidency source said: “He loves Nigeria with an uncommon passion and he is internationally exposed. He deserves such a post.

    “He is also a patient Nigerian whose bridge building experience nationwide could assist in managing the tempo at the conference.”

    It was learnt that the President decided to appoint a secretary from the South-East so that the conference can start on a national tripod from the onset.

     

  • Jonathan feasts, the nation sinks

    Jonathan feasts, the nation sinks

    GOodluck Ebele Jonathan, president of the Federal Republic, feasts with his centenary crowd, over their centennial wonder.

    But the nation — or more correctly, the country — over which he and his foreign and local revellers swoon, sinks more into the quagmire, of a hundred years of pretence.

    The grim trophy: slain school children and mass bombing by Boko Haram; and paralytic fuel queues that show the Nigeria of Jonathan’s celebration is no more than a centenary joke!

    That was the grand contrast, that faced luckless Nigerians, in the last week of February.

    Even at a crucial crossroads, there appears no link between Nigeria’s rulers and the ruled.

    In that cynical spirit, President Jonathan beatified a horrible past, with the fond hope that would blot out the hard present, which portends a grim future. Some hope!

    Dazed Nigerians, not a few caught in a debilitating ennui, could only look on and wonder!

    Talk of the beatification of horror, and the so-called centenary honours list jumps into the mind. Sitting atop the list is Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, Lord Frederick Lugard and even his girlfriend — as far as the Nigeria story goes — Flora Shaw.

    Now, the queen is a wonderful personage, adored by her people. But as far as Nigeria’s British colonisation goes, she heads a bandit state — every empire is a bandit state — that stole from, and raped the peoples of Nigeria, simply because it had superior arms and inferior conscience. And all these under the grand hypocrisy of Pax Britannica!

    So, for beatifying the queen in the context of Nigeria’s colonisation, is Jonathan endorsing that evil? That is house negro complex taken too far!

    As for Lugard, he did his job as a patriotic Briton. But that boon to Britain was — and still — is a mess to Nigeria. That Lugardian mess is still being sorted out by the Nigerian people, even if the Nigerian state appears to have made its peace with the unconscionable Lugardian court.

    It is only such a soulless court that can proceed to celebrate as epochal, a non-event as 100 years of Nigeria’s slavery — and, to boot, in the midst of intense anguish in sections of the country, especially in the North East.

    There, Boko Haram continues to spill innocent blood, the most outrageous being the 29 minors, killed at the Federal Government College, Boni Yadi, Yobe State. Phew! A federal government that cannot secure the lives of its young citizens, in its own secondary school, must find time to clink glasses! Does it not know it is the raw blood of its slaughtered youngsters it drank as wine?

    Away from foreign colonisers, Jonathan’s centenary honours list crawls with local colonisers. To start with, the ace thief, Sani Abacha! Abacha was a classic example of how not to be a citizen; yet, no thanks to the mechanical balancing of the dysfunctional Nigerian state, he is a Jonathan winner!

    Still, none of the rabble of ex-Nigerian leaders that queued for the so-called centennial honours could be said to be morally superior to Abacha. Sure, Abacha was their collective image at its most decayed, but their image all the same!

    Gen. Yakubu Gowon would perhaps enjoy most of history’s sympathy. His, from military rule’s days of innocence, is perhaps a charge of culpable omission. Not the others!

    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida wilfully annulled the freest election in Nigeria’s history. He stands legitimated charged, for Nigeria’s current rotten public morality.

    His two successors, Abacha and Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar, take the can for the fate that befell MKO Abiola, winner of that presidential election of 12 June 1993.

    For insisting on his mandate, Abacha locked up MKO and threw away the key. MKO died in custody under Abdusalami’s charge, even if the general had the presence of mind to quickly release Olusegun Obasanjo. Yet, the duo are honoured as national builders, while their acts, by commission or omission, could well have pushed the country over the cliff.

    Gen (President) Obasanjo was, of course, key to the continuation of the old order under a new guise. So, scratch the Ota farmer, and you probably would locate the roots of the current unease. He is the author and finisher of health-challenged President Umaru Yar’Adua, whose death in office has brought about the peculiar mess of the Jonathan presidency.

    Though Obasanjo now cries the cry of the innocent and the wronged under Jonathan’s onslaught, perceived or real, it is rather the deserved shriek of a plotter snared by his own trap!

    As for Chief Ernest Shonekan, who neither staged a coup nor won an election, his sole ticket to centenary honour was being the chief tool of sustaining the crime of annulling MKO’s mandate. Now, how can that be a motivation to Nigeria’s generation next — that perfidy pays?

    These were the unconscionable leaders that have left Nigeria in a ditch at the turn of its first century. Yet, these leaders (more of power dealers!) toast themselves to high heavens, not caring a hoot about how prostrate they have left the poor people in their charge!

    Indeed, reading Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s book, Adventure in Power Book Two: The Travails of Democracy and the rule of Law, clearly showed Nigeria’s leadership crisis started from the very beginning — at independence.

    Instead of envisioning a bright future for their new country and working hard towards it, the federal leadership at independence was rather fixated with crushing Awo’s Action Group (AG); and with it, all its developmental strides.

    But even if Awo was biased for himself, as he articulated his own case in his own book, how the Tafawa Balewa federal government milked the Western crisis to get at their perceived nemesis is all too clear, from accounts from that troubled era.

    But the moral, in the context of Nigeria’s centenary mis-celebration, is that that fixation turned out a grand distraction, with the tragic consequences of a relay of bad leaders, of which Jonathan is only the latest.

    But just as well: the bright sparks in Nigeria’s opaque skies — Wole Soyinka, the families of Gani Fawehinmi, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and the grand martyr of Nigerian democracy, MKO — have rejected the centenary awards.

    Still, the irony is that, pound for pound, they are far more deserving of the awards. Despite the long haul in the wilderness, they have shone brightest; and demonstrated what dazzling heights Nigeria can attain under the right leadership.

    If any good can come out of a gaffe, the Jonathan honours list, with its parade of leadership fat cats, has shown something: those leaders are the direct opposite of what Nigeria needs to be great.

    So, as the country takes its first gingerly steps in its next century, Nigerians must vote the direct opposite of these past leaders. Much more importantly, the National Conference must radically restructure the country for productivity and sustainable development.

    If not, a second centenary for Nigeria would be a pipe dream, for Nigeria would have sunk without trace, in the violent ocean of its own contradictions.

  • GEJ vs Sanusi, the whistleblower

    GEJ vs Sanusi, the whistleblower

    Last Thursday’s sack of Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was a bombshell even though it was hardly surprising. From the moment the former CBN boss was issued a query three or so years ago by then National Security Adviser to the president, late General Andrew Owoye Azazi – a query he rightly ignored because it did not come directly from the president himself – for a remark he made abroad linking Boko Haram insurgency with what he said was the financial neglect of the North by Abuja, it was obvious that if the authorities had their way, they would’ve fired him long ago.

    What apparently stood in their way was the CBN Act which said its governor and his four deputies cannot be fired without the support of two-thirds of members of the Senate the president needs to hire them in the first place, something he could not be sure of, given the uncertain political terrain that has lately confronted his ruling party. From his defensive answers in his media chat two days ago over his firing of the governor, it is obvious that the president must have been advised, more like misadvised, that he could go round this obstacle by announcing that he was merely suspending the governor.

    Trouble is, the law is completely silent on whether or not the president can, short of firing them, suspend those he’d hired. I am told by some of my legal expert friends that a cardinal principle of law is to give the benefit of doubt to an accused where a law says nothing or is ambiguous about the issue in contention.

    A more satisfactory solution for everyone in such cases is to resort to the courts for interpretation. Obviously, this would’ve taken more than the four months or so Sanusi had left to serve out his five-year tenure. It seems the way the man started running his mouth about corruption in high places in the oil business foreclosed the option of allowing him to end his tenure quietly since there was no telling how much more damage he could do if he continued talking with the authority of a governor of the CBN.

    The President claimed in his media chat that he has “absolute” powers to suspend the governor. Perhaps he does. However, it remains no more than his opinion until the courts agree with him. Happily, Sanusi, as irrepressible as ever, has said he will go to court to challenge his suspension and has already gone to court successfully to stop the authorities from unleashing their law enforcement and intelligence forces to arrest or detain him.

    Try as he may the President and his team are highly unlikely to ever win the propaganda war between himself and Sanusi. And it’s not just because the former CBN governor, in sharp contrast to our generally incoherent and bumbling president, is as eloquent in speech and in writing as they come from anywhere in the world. It’s also not because the President does not at all have a case against Sanusi. The President may have overstated it when he accused Sanusi’s CBN of being “characterised by various financial recklessness and misconduct” but it seems to me, at least, that in going to equity the former CBN governor did not do so with clean hands.

    In an interview with Metropole magazine after his sack which Daily Trust of last Monday reproduced, Sanusi rejected insinuations by the magazine’s editors that his latest accusations of corruption in the oil business against the authorities was like taking out an insurance against being fired for the charges of recklessness and mismanagement that had been levied against him. “You can never,” he said, “have any insurance in life. What is insurance? The only insurance you have in life is to try to do the right things.”

    As CBN governor, Sanusi did many right things. If nothing else, he, as I said on these page on August 26, 2009, barely a couple of months after taking over from Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, cleaned up the mess his predecessor created after he had done a good job of creating 25 mega-banks in place of the odd 80 that were in existence, most of them no better than glorified family automated teller machines. Soludo had virtually ruined his good job by becoming too chummy with the bosses of the banks he was supposed to supervise and regulate. The result was a financial crisis which led to a near-collapse of the economy, and certainly of the stock market where you and I bought and sold shares of companies, including those of banks.

    By putting a stop to the casino capitalism which the new big banks had fostered while Soludo kept assuring us that all was well when it wasn’t, Sanusi brought back stability and integrity to the financial market. If that was all he did, the man deserved praise as CBN governor for his courage and competence. But that wasn’t all. His exposure a few years ago of the magnitude of the huge remunerations the federal legislators decreed for themselves in violation of our Constitution, and his refusal to back down from his charge in the face of intimidation by the law makers, if nothing else, served to underscore the public’s concern about how we’ve spent more, much more, of our annual budgets on recurrent items than we have on capital goods since the return of civilian rule in 1999.

    There are even more right things he’s done as CBN governor than these two, but even these alone suffice to show that his tenure has, on balance, done more good than bad to our political-economy.

    The trouble with Sanusi, however, was that he did not measure up to what he had led the public to expect of him as someone who had consistently spoken truth to power before he became CBN governor, and which he continued to do even after.

    The report of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) which the president has relied upon to suspend the governor has listed his many alleged transgressions including the award of no-bid contracts in billions of Naira, the spending of billions on his own and his management’s creature comforts, overpaying legal and public relations consultants and donating hundreds of millions of Naira to victims of natural and man-made disasters without board approval, etc.

    His defence has been that he has the president’s approval for some of the expenditures he’d incurred and that with things like donations he was not the first governor to do so. He also says he has constantly reduced operating management costs since he became governor.

    The governor’s self-defence may well be tenable. But this is beside the point, which is that as a long standing social critic he should’ve known better than to give those in authority sufficient ammunition to impugn his integrity and credibility. And this is exactly what the FRC report has done, even if only a fraction of its charges are true. The specific nature of the FRC report means it cannot be easily dismissed with the wave of a hand.

    That he built a one billion Naira car park at his official residence, as is common knowledge, and the fact that he was always accompanied by a huge and expensive retinue of bank staff, friends and hangers-on alike, to receive awards and honours abroad and here at home, were enough to suggest he did not act with the degree of prudence and integrity his crusade for good governance and transparency demanded of him.

    Sanusi’s alleged transgressions as CBN governor notwithstanding, he clearly has the upper hand against the president in the war for public sympathy and support. The reason is obvious; his alleged transgressions are small beer compared to what the oil thieves and their partners in government have been stealing with impunity.

    So long as the president is seen to be incapable and/or unwilling to take on these mega-thieves, so long will anyone who poses as a whistleblower against corruption in governance win public sympathy, whether his own alleged transgressions are true or not.

    It is, of course, not realistic or even sensible to expect the authorities to fight all cases of corruption or none at all. But when they are seen to ignore cases more deserving of their attention than those they are pursuing, they will find it hard, if not impossible, to convince the public that a case like Sanusi’s is a fight against corruption not a witch-hunt.

     

     

     

     

  • How Nigerians will remember Jonathan

    How Nigerians will remember Jonathan

    SIR: The Yoruba say people may feel hunger same way, but may not feel same way deep down about issues, events, and occurrences. Thus, those who made illicit wealth during the presidency of Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ), due to which Nigeria is in debt and deficit financing, will remember him as the best thing that happened to them. He is currently in bribing spree, visiting traditional rulers and religious leaders, countrywide. Even ordinary citizens will hardly visit such people empty handed; so it goes without saying that he is bribing them.

    How will ordinary Nigerians remember GEJ? Very many Nigerians will remember him for driving them to join him to truncate rotational presidency, which led to terrorism, properly so-called, for the first time ever in Nigeria. Churches that had existed for many years were bombed with people worshipping inside them; many Imams, other Muslim leaders, and near innumerable Muslims were also killed and are still being killed. Many Christian leaders were and are bribed to shout against the Muslim north; the confusion is second only to Nigeria’s civil war. Is it the Muslim north that asked GEJ to truncate rotational presidency; and to divide and rule Nigeria’s Governors’ Forum? Is it the Muslim north that is now asking GEJ to deny that he promised to spend no more than a single term of four years? Yes, some bribed northerners are still behind him, but that is because they are bribed and they are corrupt.

    In the name of God and for the sake the nation’s Civil War, I appeal to all well-meaning Nigerians to give peace a chance and vote for rotational presidency; 2015, northwest; 2019-2027 southeast, etc. Let’s make that our modus vivendi, towards order, equity, peace, stability, and progress. Political opportunism, such as GEJ availed himself can never work; it worked for GEJ who became President, but too many Nigerians are still dying, both terrorism and corruption are on rampage; Nigeria is in shambles. I told the former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, to forget about becoming Nigeria’s President, and simply face his private University, because we want zonal rotational presidency, and we don’t want anybody who built private university from corruption.

    Being nice is good. General Muhammadu Buhari was Petroleum Minister, Finance Minister, and Head of State; in none did he mess-up. By the grace of Almighty God, he will win the 2015 election and teach us to straighten our petroleum and other accounts. He will not seek a second term, because we don’t want another civil war; it will be the turn of the southeast; southwest and south-south will wait for their second round as we rotate from zone to zone, north-south. Yes, if chosen,Governor Rotimi Amaechi will work well with Buhari, his peers have confidence in him as Chairman of the Governors’ Forum.

    Yes, University of Cape Coast, Ghana, is looking favorably into my Masquerade Studies proposal. I am highly hopeful. With God, all things are possible.

     

    • Oyeniran Abioje,

    Ilorin

     

  • Ekweremadu: Between reality and desire

    Ekweremadu: Between reality and desire

    For Ike Ekweremadu, the senator representing Enugu West Senatorial District, these are not the best of times. From his self-inflicted miseries to bereavement, he is now an object of scorn in his home state. By his own doing too, he has set tongues wagging in the constituency he represents by figures he recently released about projects he claimed to have attracted.

    However, the Deputy President of the Senate needs our condolences over the death of his police outrider this festive period. What is surprising till date, were the efforts put into covering the news of the death of this outrider from the public. Perhaps, it has to do with the fact that his position does not guarantee him the use of a police outrider.

    But close watchers of events in Enugu State are not so amazed about Ekweremadu’s obsession with such absurdity because he wants to live an imaginary life of a governor, a title he has an undying crave to bear.

    For him, reality has taken a forced flight and he is, regrettably, caught between reality and desire.

    Nigerian laws made specific provisions about the type and number of legislative aides that a Deputy President of Senate should have. Most of them are, indeed, to be provided by the government.

    But it is not so with Senator Ekweremadu. Just like a governor, he has all manners of special advisers alien to his position, ranging from security to projects among others. He continues to strive to replicate what obtains in the state within his own “state”. He perceives himself as the chief security officer and must have a special adviser on security and a multitude of other aides. And how can he have these aides without adding an outrider to it? It was only unfortunate that the young man crashed and died during the Christmas holidays.

    But what do you say of the figures which the Deputy President of the Senate recently released on the projects he claimed to have attracted to Enugu West which he represents? Today, his claims have become subject of controversies, criticisms and denials from within and outside the country.

    In the recent weeks, Ekweremadu has been locked in a dirty war of words with S.K.C. Ogbonnia, an Enugu citizen based in the United States. The latter’s sin was that he pointed out that a library in Ekweremadu’s long list of dubious claims was not anywhere in his Ugbo community in Awgu Local Government Area. Rather than address this and other similar denials from different quarters in a decent way, Ekweremadu has continued to call the man names. Besides, even the list itself has exposed the Deputy President of the Senate to ridicule for its parochialism, lop-sidedness and lack of equity and justice in its spread. I was also dumb-founded when I got a copy.

    Now, take a look at the list as released by Ekweremadu. Aninri 33 projects; Awgu 34; Oji River 32; Ezeagu 20 and Udi 20.

    For purposes of clarity, it is important to put the above figures in clear perspectives. Ekweremadu’s home Local Government Area which is Aninri is the smallest in Enugu state in terms of population. It has 10 wards but it got 33 projects in that discredited

    document but Ezeagu and Udi with 20 wards each got 20 projects each! This is our Ikeoha’s idea of justice and equity.

    Amid all the criticisms and the denials of the existence of such phantom projects by various persons and groups, it is incumbent on Ekweremadu to prove his accusers wrong by clearly telling his constituents when the projects commenced, the contractors, the date of completion. Afterall, what is the job of his special adviser on

    projects, even though he is not entitled to have one? Unless we find out soon that either he or his office also executed jobs or recommended contractors, we all know that his primary job is to supervise and carry out other oversight functions.

    Politics, as we all know, is a game of intrigues. Therefore, it does not matter that the senator continues to hold meetings here in Enugu and at Abuja with the sole purpose to mount smear campaigns against Governor Sullivan Chime. It is up to the governor and his aides to know how to handle such conspiracies but he will do well to do what we have known him for: ignore the attacks and their known sponsors.

    If anything, Ekweremadu needs urgent redemption from his self-imposed isolation in Enugu State. Or how else do we view the fact he is now a lone ranger even when it has to do with his party, the Peoples Democratic Party? I was present during the inauguration of the 17 local government chairmen at Okpara Square on January 4.

    On this day, he was the only National Assembly member from the state who shunned the inauguration of the chairmen, an event that was attended by important dignitaries including Chief Ken Nnamani, the former President of the Senate.

    Governor Chime, speaking during the event, instructively implored the federal lawmakers and other citizens to shun divisive politics even as he pledged the loyalty of his government and the people of the state to the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Said Chime: “On behalf of the government and people of Enugu state, I pledge our unalloyed loyalty to the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GCFR). We have continued to tell him that so long as he is in this business of politics, we will continue to be with him.

    “I also want to say to him that if and when he declares to run again (for the presidency), he should count out Enugu State as one of the places he needs to come to campaign. This state is firmly for him and firmly behind him.

    “Also, I want to say to our other brothers and sisters, especially those in Abuja or outside our state that this is the time you have to start coming home to identify with our people. We (PDP) are one big, happy family. You must be a family member for us to chart the way forward for each of us. There’s nothing that we individually want that cannot be resolved when we come together and talk things over.”

    My advice to Ekweremadu is that he should embrace this reassuring message from Chime and not continue to behave like an orphan. If he is scared stiff that the governor may battle for the PDP ticket of Enugu West Senatorial District with him, the solution does not lie with sponsoring smear campaigns in the media. He has to start coming home to identify with his people who are the ultimate deciders of who wins both the primary and the general elections. If he decides otherwise, Ikeoha should be man enough to shun anonymity and give identity to such pedestrian rabbles by his hatchet men.

    • Ugwu sent this piece from Enugu.

     

  • Good leadership is Nigeria’s bane

    Good leadership is Nigeria’s bane

    SIR: There is no gainsaying that President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is in difficult times. But the truth must be told, Nigerians are expecting purposeful, resourceful, Godly … leadership. One is deeply surprised that since May 29, 2011 when we began another democratic dispensation, Nigeria’s development continues to be hampered by bad leadership, moral decadence, hunger, poverty, insecurity and deep-rooted corruption. Our leaders tell lies under oath, trust in deceitful words. They make promises and break them.

    What Nigerians need now is a good and God-fearing leader who will work hard in raising the standard of living of the people, transform the society, enact policies that would give all Nigerians a sense of oneness. Some of the challenges of national integration and development in Nigeria include the challenges of economic crisis and poverty, unequal development, crisis of governance and poor political leadership.

    Nigeria has a very big potentials to become one of the most powerful countries in the world, and for it to occupy such position, it must transform its system, integrate the people, grow the economy and fight poverty and hunger. Nigerians and the leaders should also allow God to direct their affairs.

    Nigerians should be full of prayers for divine assistance and grace for President Jonathan to tackle the raging socio-economic and political problems facing the nation. He needs it to be able to tackle the energy problem, to revive the ailing industries, encourage entrepreneurs, create mass employment  for the youth, tackle corruption seriously, adhere to the tenents of the rule of law, improve infrastructural facilities, among others.

    Nigerians must create the atmosphere of trust, transparency, honesty and accountability. We need to harness the God’s abundant gifts of nature around us to make the country great. Our leaders have to learn and start taking decisions on what is best for the country rather than their self-serving interests. Unless and until we address the challenge of leadership, the country can never move forward.

    Religious leaders in the country should not feel shy to address issue of bad leadership and also make their views read and heard.

     

    • Prophet Oladipupo Funmilade-Joel (Sekunderin)

    Lagos

  • Amaechi: David slays Goliath

    Amaechi: David slays Goliath

    BETWEEN President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the top dog, and Rivers Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the underdog, there is a parallel in William Shakespeare’s plays.

    In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, Mark Anthony often thought aloud. When he led Julius Caesar loyalists to crush the Brutus-led conspiracy against Julius Caesar, the subject of Julius Caesar, another Shakespearean play, Augustus Caesar was only a subaltern while he, Anthony, was already a general.

    How come then, he wondered, that the mirthless Augustus always worsted him in military manoeuvres, in the fierce struggle for power among the second Roman triumvirate of Mark Anthony, Augustus Caesar and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus?

    Anthony, of course, lived in denial, for the facts were stark.

    The colourful Anthony ensnared himself in the Alexandria court of Cleopatra, the enchanting Queen of Egypt. But Augustus, the prim-and-proper empire machine, back home in Rome, accused Anthony of abandoning state duties.

    By the time he, self-serving no doubt, released damning evidence of Anthony’s will giving part of his estate to his children by Cleopatra, Rome was furious of an uxoriousness unbefitting and unbecoming of a Roman noble.

    Rome declared an anti-Cleopatra war, which Augustus needed to get rid of Anthony, to remain the last of the triumvirates standing, having earlier got rid of Lepidus. The beginning of the end, for Anthony, came with the defeat of his forces in the Battle of Actium, in Greece, in September, 31 BC. He, with his Cleopatra, later committed suicide in Alexandria, thus doting in death as they were in life.

    Like the tragic Anthony, President Goodluck Jonathan may well permit himself some dose of self pity, in pondering the Rotimi Ameachi political challenge.

    In Nigeria’s skewed federalism, Amaechi is only a governor — of oil-rich Rivers State, no doubt but a “wretched” governor, nevertheless, in Nigeria’s peculiar unitary federalism. Yet he always ran rings round the all-mighty president in political manoeuvres!

    Still, to be fair, a Jonathan-Amaechi contrast is not quite as starkly dramatic as an Anthony-Augustus one. While Jonathan was a quiet, taciturn deputy governor to Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the inimitable “Governor-General of the Ijaw Nation”, Amaechi was an up-and-coming Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, under the colourful Peter Odili.

    But for former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s political elimination of Alamieyeseigha on corruption charges, it is doubtful if Jonathan would even have attained the Bayelsa governorship, given his low-profile under Alamieyeseigha.

    On the contrary, as Speaker, everything pointed to an Amaechi ascendancy, as a son in whom the Odili political establishment was well pleased.

    As two-year governor to complete impeached Alamieyeseigha’s term (December 2005- May 2007), Jonathan could hardly point to any enduring project, though a still uncompleted high rise hotel in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa capital, has become some tower of Babel of recrimination between Jonathan and his estranged successor as governor, Timipre Silva. To be fair though, Jonathan was governor for only 18 months.

    In contrast, Amaechi has remarkable achievements to point to in health, futuristic and egalitarian educational policy, sports development, huge investment in roads and other infrastructure, and improved security before the recent slide-back, following the current Rivers political crisis.

    Though Amaechi is a two-term governor and Jonathan but a brief one, were quality to propel political ascension, Amaechi, on the strength of his gubernatorial performance, would most probably have, other things being equal, acquitted himself better than Jonathan as vice-president and later president.

    But Amaechi is not The Nation Man of the Year Runner-up because of his better performance, compared to Jonathan’s, as governor. He earned the accolade because he, in 2013, stood as an irresistible and implacable symbol of justice for the oppressed and the underdog, stout and fearless defender of the inviolability of citizens’ right as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution as amended, positive force for the federal principle in Nigeria’s pseudo-federal set-up and a solid tower of democratic dissent.

    Of course, in Nigeria’s brazen federalism, where a president assumes the role of a demi-god, no matter how woefully he performs in office, and dissent is always equated to rebellion no thanks to shallow understanding of democratic concepts, the courage of Ameachi’s stance can better be appreciated.

    Yet, morning indeed showed the day. It is just that President Jonathan, Amaechi’s principal opponent for the soul of democracy in Nigeria, did not appear to listen.

    When in 2007 Obasanjo announced the cancellation of Amaechi’s Rivers State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial ticket, claiming in pidgin English the ticket “get K-leg”, Amaechi did not lay to be run over. Instead he stood for his right.

    Though back then it seemed the grand folly of a David faced with the Goliath of a sitting president and the entire PDP apparatus, or even a man daring a zooming train, Amaechi triumphed at the courts. Though that audacity earned him his first arbitrary PDP suspension, Governor Amaechi enjoyed the rare spectacle of his party eating crow.

    The moral of that first judicial triumph was clear: though the president could be all-powerful and the ruling party all-foreboding, a citizen’s right, guaranteed by law, is inviolate if that citizen has the balls to insist on it.

    But all seemed lost on President Jonathan, when his aides fired the first shot: the president was reportedly cross with Amaechi because he was allegedly planning to run as presidential running mate to Jigawa Governor, Sule Lamido. Elder Godsday Orubebe, Niger Delta minister, fired that first salvo.

    Now, in a republican democracy, why is it wrong for Amaechi to run for vice-president, even if just alleged, when it is right for Jonathan to run again for president?

    Then came the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election, from which to preclude Amaechi, Jonathan virtually released a presidential fatwa. But again, Amaechi triumphed with the votes of majority of governors. The subsequent play of naked impunity, epitomised by the disgraceful mathematical gerrymandering, in which 16 is greater than 19, further wrong-footed the Jonathan presidency. Again, Amaechi’s victory here is not just a personal triumph. It is a solid blow for the sanctity of democratic institutions, in a realm of democracy sans democrats.

    The NGF carry-over impunity would, for PDP, lead to even graver consequences. Enter, the G-7 PDP dissenting governors: five later defecting to the All Progressives Congress (APC), one reportedly “threatening” to follow suit in January and the remaining one adamant to remain, even if he declared his beloved party was brain dead, only waiting to be buried!

    But perhaps where Governor Amaechi’s armour glitters most is upholding the federal principle against the bale, the bile and the consistent battering of a bully president, egged on by uncritical, if not outright sycophantic, acolytes.

    Against rogue “federal might” that would throw everything — compromised police chief, politicised police, destabilised Rivers Assembly and ethnic blackmail, in a bid to procure an illegal gubernatorial impeachment; and even reported freelance anarchists alleged to be former militants — Amaechi has stood firm.

    He has insisted on the right and majesty of his gubernatorial office and the right of his state, particularly regarding the alleged pilfering of Rivers oil wells, for which he alleges the president of the Federal Republic stands indicted.

    Indeed, not since Lagos Governor Bola Tinubu’s titanic face-down of President Olusegun Obasanjo, has the republic witnessed a continuous Gulliver vs Lilliput match-up, in which the giant is consistently worsted. That, by the second, drives the hapless Gulliver crazier and more ultra-reckless!

    From media reports, the Jonathan group still seeks the procurement of an Amaechi “impeachment” by any means possible, including another legislative gerrymandering of six trumping 24! It is the classic presidential malady of doing things same way but expecting different results.

    However the plot plays out, Amaechi has brilliantly made the point that a democratic republic ought to be based on law, not on arbitrarily power, no matter how the powerful the overlord feels he is, and how puny and frail the underdog is made to feel he is.

    Nigeria’s democracy will deepen when both the strong and the weak, as routine, totally surrender to the dictates of the law. It is way back to the pristine Social Contract, a paradox of the past being a compass for the future.

    Indeed, in Ameachi, David has again slain Goliath — and the fledgling federal democratic republic is the better for it.