The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Hardball

  • Hardball too wants to fall ‘sick’

    Ah, little did we know that our affairs were being run by infirm people, or people who are sick or sick people if you prefer. It all depends on the light through which you look at the matter. Of course you understand what Hardball is getting at: how come any member of the immediate past regime who is called upon to give account of his stewardship immediately ‘acquires’ some serious high profile ailment and either bolts abroad if he can or inveigles us as to his right to being innocent and his entitlements to his ‘loot’ until the courts pronounce him otherwise?

    The list is long and it keeps growing. First is the former queen of pearls who held the country by the scrotum (and you may take that literally if you are so minded) and who could have definitely risen to be the first Goddess of the Niger (as in Prince of the Niger, if you understand that) if her regime had subsisted. Her story seems like the ultimate revenge against her traducers. Let’s just say: well.

    There is also the golden-haired boy of the fallen regime who was lord of lords over the creek warlords. He almost single-handedly disbursed what we may take liberty to term, ‘amnesty billions’ as if money was fetched from the creeks of the Niger Delta. He had sneaked out as soon as the bubble burst and generally mixed with the crowd out there in a foreign land. He would hope to hell that Hardball and indeed, entire Nigerians get afflicted with an irreversible bout of amnesia. Well.

    They are quite a clan now, a large community of Nigeria’s ‘Medical Invalids’ of the Politically Exposed Kind (MIPEK). What about the latest member of that special breed, the anti-graft czar who could have been grafted into his job. Nobody yet can tell how he ‘escaped’ from our shores or when. He had disguised like a Beninois dowager exploring the West Coast under the shadow of the night.

    That must have been a sight indeed to overwhelm the Customs men because he is quite a voluptuous man, if we can take one more liberty. Call him the anti-corruption czar who zapped. Describe him as a multiple contradiction and he fits. Hardball knew him to have grown on the job – in a manner of speaking. Or better put, he bloated on the job. Coming on as a trim and fit police officer built to chase down the big thieves, he soon grew bigger than them all. He recently sneaked off to an extended medical check-up abroad.

    Another member of the clan, the former security czar has not been so lucky. He almost bullied his way through, using the courts. He almost pulled a $2billion wool over our eyes, but that was too much wool to fool around with without getting entangled.

    Now that falling sick is hip, Hardball too wants to go for medical escape-ade abroad; he feels wheezy with all these big figures flying around his head and all he asks for is to be arrested and his passport seized so that he too can belong to the in-crowd. Is that too much to ask?

  • One very hardball for Ambode

    An okra plant can never grow taller than its planter, no matter how tall it ever grows; a wooden oracle is but a piece of wood on the day of its demystification. It is said that only the foolishly brave would mistake the stealth movement of the tiger for cowardice; does a proper fish catch cold in the deeps? When the duck swallows pebble, would it not pass water still? And no matter how large a tail is, would it wag the dog? The matter at hand has grown so bloody it has to be presaged with proverbs so that those who have understanding would appreciate its full import.

    On Friday, June 12, 30-year-old Sodiq Shittu was put down in broad daylight on Lawani Street, Mushin, in the suburb of Lagos. A gang of hoodlums surrounded Sodiq, knocked him down, cracked his skull with hammer, gouged out his eyes and finally smashed his head with a large stone. They made to set his body ablaze when residents summoned courage and chased them away. Sodiq’s became another body in the morgue for family to grieve over. That was the third killing on Lawani Street this year.

    A fourth killing suspected to be related was reported last Wednesday. The body of a young man of 30 known as Godwin Victor aka Sangba was washed up by the lagoon front near the University of Lagos, Akoka. The body was bound hand and feet and a log of wood was also found to be tied to its back. It is suspected that Victor Godwin was pushed into the lagoon alive by his killers.

    According to report, Victor had renounced the cult group he belonged to, but his erstwhile members would not hear of it. He was said to have fled to Port Harcourt for sometime, but upon his return to Lagos last week, he was abducted and that was the last his family saw him until his corpse was washed up.

    As sure as the day would break tomorrow, another body would be reported soon and another and yet another. If not in Mushin, it would be Fadeyi, Idi-oro, Somolu, Bariga, Mafoluku, Oshodi or Ajah. This is how it has been for nearly 10 years now. But today, it gets more gruesome, more rampant and more brazen. Today they abduct and kill in the daylight; they use heavier weapons today. They are well known and they terrorise streets and neighbourhoods; they cow the police and they dare the government to stop them. And nobody speaks up.

    When rival cults engage in crossfire, many innocent people get hit. And if you are hit, you are hit. You simply bury your dead and crawl into your corner or go get your own arms if you are so minded. There are dozens of such collateral deaths over the years. Nobody gets prosecuted and none compensated. It is like a jungle where only the most brutish survive.

    And the malaise festers deeper and deeper into many other neighbourhoods and communities of Lagos, the mega city in the making. The gruesome killings of Sodiq and Victor would serve as gauntlet thrown at Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. Will somebody speak up and arrest this malady?

  • Hardball needs a private jet!

    Woe alas! I have just wised up; no, I have just grown up! I had always wondered why Nigerians suddenly caught the bug of owning private jets (PJs). It must be a crazy man who would shell out between N450 to N500 million to buy one iron bird, I had conjectured in my naïve, child-like mind. Why, a man could build a new town in a corner of the country instead of buying a PJ, a wasting asset, but how plebian, how simple of mind can anyone be!

    From recent discovery, any Nigerian above the age of 18 who does not aspire to own a PJ in the next few months must be a moron. And here are reasons why. One, Nigeria is a supremely rich country and can well afford every Nigerian male a jet of his own. And don’t be a fool to wonder for a second where you will park your PJ, just tell yourself ‘I will park mine where others park theirs. Remember nobody brought parking space from his village.

    Another reason you must not be squirmy about seeking to own a jet of your own today is that it is extremely comfortable. Those who revel in it are quick to regal you with stories about the hedonistic comforts of that toy. It is said that if you flew in it once, you will never wish to fly any other way. In fact they say you will simply come to the realisation that it is indeed a curse to have been flying in those air-molues. Further, if it happens to be the kind fitted with water-bed and Jacuzzi like some of our federal ministers fly, then you will realise that paradise is actually a Nigerian reality and not a celestial construct.

    A third reason you must do anything to own a PJ now (!) is that the rate  the PJ cult is growing, in a couple of years, the DNA of the true Nigerian will be determined not just by the ownership of a PJ but by the number and type of your PJ. Then there will only be two classes of Nigerians – the PJ owners and the hoi polloi. And do not say I didn’t warn you dear reader, when that time comes, it would be easy to determine, or if you like, control the population of the country.

    One innocuous way they – the jet-set, super-rich, super-class – can set about eliminating some of us dregs is to fly up mid-air above our heads in their PJs, they and their kinds and let off a napalm of farting that can exterminate half of us. That way even the UN would not accuse them of using chemical weapons; it would simply be termed accidental discharge from acute bowel disorder. And the case will be closed.

    Perhaps the most important reason you must die for a private jet is that once you own one, you will never be poor again. Opportunities will open to you as if you were an Arabian sheikh. There is nothing you cannot do with your PJ backed by federal might. You can haul currencies for the federal government, ship arms for the security community and carry human cargo and body part for the Baby Factory Group of the Manufacturers Association. Everything is legit with a PJ.

    Ah my boy, in all your getting, get yourself a PJ pronto!

  • Hardball returns to school

    I woke up today to discover that I am a dullard and I have vowed to return to school. And make no mistake about it, in this re-education of yours sincerely he is going to start as a fresher in the 101 classes. Not as a graduate student or as a senior but a starter through and through. And he will not be learning such stuff as he was taught at the good old University of Lagos, UNILAG, but will pursue a brand new philosophy; a whole new world of learning and education. We will return to the details of this new age curriculum shortly.

    Hardball has been sent into this serendipitous discovery of the urgent need to return to school by a report that our dear Mujahid Asari-Dokubo has established a university in neighbouring Benin Republic. Before you begin to eat your heart out in case you are learning about this for the first time, he also lives there now. You may now exhale. And while you ponder whether you want to go ahead and set up your own Ekotedo Veranda Force or you want to call up Mujahid and join up with his Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF), Hardball has determined to return to school.

    Hardball will of course apply to Mujahid University, Benin, MUB (not sure what the real name is yet) to begin my re-education. That would be upon the understanding that MUB would devise easy-to-apply curriculum and introduce niche, avant-garde courses suitable for failed and failing nations. Having determined that Nigeria and half of African continent is semi-jungle and would inexorably devolve into a vast Hobbesian wasteland before it would repair if ever, one had better get equipped to survive in the years ahead. As it is, it has become foolhardy hanging on to the classical British education we acquired from conventional tertiary institutions.

    For instance, Hardball has been writing and reporting the activities of Mujahid for over a decade and see where we are today. The blighter has proven to be far more perspicacious and ahead of his time by dropping out of Nigeria’s so-called university (of Calabar); electing to fight for his freedom and very life from an inept elite starkly incapable of running a country. Today he has not only managed to carve a safe haven for himself, he has created a university in his image. Today, our wonky universities have been shut for nearly four months as if we never needed them in the first place, but Mujahid University will not only never experience such misfortune of an indefinite closure, it will teach only life skills and survival tactics in a crazy new world.

    Again, consider that your brother Hardball cannot tell with 100 per cent certainty, the difference between the nozzle of a gun and its butt. And should an emergency come upon us today, he may face the danger of holding a pistol with the nozzle faced to his heart or worse, his scrotum (well, depends on which you consider worse!). Now you see the urgent need for him to get off his ill-educated bum and enroll quickly at Mujahid University, Benin. There, he is sure to encounter such courses as Practical Political Science: apart from the usual stuff from Harold Laski, will entail courses in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat tactics in a free-for-all parliamentary bust-up.

    At MUB, the study of History will no longer be a subject about empires and personalities but about coup d’etat, guerrilla wars and freedom fighters. No verbiage and tales anymore as a course in Practical History will entail courses in the quick assemble of IEDs, simulated assault rifles combats and how to identify and overwhelm weak governments with a small army.

    Hardball will return to school soon because in the years ahead, the world will no longer have room for couch potatoes and supine fellows who claim to be writers. The world will not have mercy on men who cannot forcefully take what they want from their environment. This is the moral of Mujahid Asari-Dokubo’s tale.

     

  • Hardball on discipline of judges

    Hardball on discipline of judges

    SIR: Hardball got my attention when he wrote a piece titled “Discipline of Judges: CJN must proceed with caution” on April 29. I write after an acatalectic illumination of the said piece to express my vehement disapproval of the phrase “CJN must proceed with caution”. If I may ask, what caution does the CJN need? I believe priests at the temple of justice like Caesar’s wife should live above board. Unfortunately we find ourselves in a nation where a few of them live below board. As they deliberately choose to ignore the Shakespearean dictum which says “the better part of valour is discretion in which better part I have saved my life”. Of a truth, the dynamics of crime in our society points to the indispensability of social jurisprudence. Therefore, judges owe God and man a duty to dispense justice to all manner of persons regardless who or what they are. But we have a situation where a man goes to jail for stealing a piece of meat at the market, while another goes home a free man after looting public funds worth billions of naira. Just the other day we were told by a judge that James Ibori ought to be an angel but a British Judge later told us that the man is nothing but a common criminal. Sad as it is many have also died waiting for justice while others now resort to jungle justice to settle disputes because they now see the court as a land of Manama in view of needless and abysmal delay in court process. These anomalies in the judicial system negate the clear principles of democracy. In view of the foregoing, the CJN acted in good faith to sanction some erring judges and Hardball says she should proceed with caution. I think the only thing she need is to proceed with uncommon and indefatigable determination to flush out those who trade justice in the name of discretion. The judiciary must rid itself of corruption if the war against corruption in Nigeria is to be won. I therefore concur with Hardball when he wrote that “by all means the judiciary should be purged.” Ipso facto, the recent disciplinary action against those indicted judges remains a Justa causa. I concede to the factum juridcum that most verdict rest on the oasis of discretion. But I think judges should learn how to exercise their discretion judiciously and judicially. Nigerians should not see the abuse of discretion by judges as mere peccadilloes but grave and unforgiveable crime that should attract punishment from man and God. The CJN has done well and more is also expected from her. Just as I wish to place on record that the war against corruption in Nigeria rest in the Judiciary.

     

    • Godfrey Ogbaisi Ehi

    Benin-city