The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Lamentation

  • Lamentation on botched Abuja dreams

    Sir: Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Mohammed Musa Bello, raised a fundamental point as we marked Nigeria’s 59th Independence Anniversary last October 1. Musa said a generation of Nigerians has been raised, which belongs entirely to Abuja. They were born, schooled, working, married in Abuja, and are now raising their own families in Abuja.

    But, Musa laments, majority of these Nigerians regard Abuja, merely as a location they inhabit out of necessity for making a living, while their hearts remain elsewhere, as their homes, not in Abuja.

    The minister believes it is time for residents to regard Abuja as theirs in sync with the vision of its founding fathers. He wants all Abuja dwellers, nay, all Nigerians to rededicate and recommit themselves to building the FCT of our dream.

    Such a step would make the residents love Abuja and seek its well-being. It will also create a unified front that would make the people to constitute a force that can hold government and traditional leadership accountable and further good governance.

    Lest we forget, the FCT is not only the administrative headquarters of Nigeria. It is founded to be Nigeria in microcosm – home for all Nigerians. It has been located roughly at the centre point of the country. It is approximately 500 kilometres – as birds fly – from the farthest-most recesses of the country’s international borders.

    It all began in the days of its genesis and birthing. I speak of the days of Dan Musa, as its minister – in the days of Shehu Shagari as president, when yours faithfully, was one of the foremost, unrelenting reporters at the Concord newspapers in the 1980’s.

    Abuja was carved out as a 1,769 square kilometres piece of land. It was a huge expanse of virgin land, dotted with hamlets, here and there, with a cumulative population of less than 20,000, in all.

    Its scant inhabitants were to be evacuated, resettled and compensated. It was to become a no-man’s land. It was to be an all-Nigeria-owned land. It didn’t even have a name of its own. The name it bears now was expropriated from a town in Niger State, rechristened Suleja. The mammoth artificial creation that has sprung up today as a giant is believed to be close to two million people in population, in just a generation of its creation.

    Alas! Over the decades of Abuja’s founding, she too, has been overtaken by the Nigerian factor of never forgetting whose you are. Abuja residents are still always remembering the place of their parental nativity. The people born, bred, schooled, married, working and now raising their own families in Abuja, still regard Abuja as foreign land, away from home sweet homeland of their ancestry.

    But this abnegation against Abuja, which Musa has observed, is actually the problem with Nigeria. It constitutes the biggest affront against national unity. Everyone considers his Nigerianess as secondary. We don’t have a common homeland; everyone sees his ethnic ancestry as his homeland. This affinity in its extremist manifestation is today’s deafening separatist cry for Biafra.

    Musa thinks sparing a greater thought and love for Abuja would bond its residents into a significant force that can propel the people against bad governance. But what my friend (before democratic power) has not considered, is the place of policy in bonding the led, in a plural society.

    If the policy of Nigeria is to ensure that it is only the Dan Musas’, the el-Rufais’, the Bala Mohammeds’ and the Musa Bellos’ are the only ones qualified to rule Abuja, then the FCT could only have belonged to that tribe. ‘Foreigners’, in all reasonableness, could not have considered Abuja a home with all their heart.

     

    • Ola Amupitan, Lagos.

  • AMCON’s lamentation

    •There is a lot more the corporation can do to make the debtors pay

    Troubling – perhaps best describes the latest revelation by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) that some 350 Nigerians account for 80 percent of its entire debt; more troubling however is the corporation’s feigned helplessness on a matter that now constitutes a terrible blight on the financial system.

    Last week, AMCON’s managing director, Ahmed Kuru, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that these individuals and/or businesses linked to them owe N4.3 trillion of the N5.4 trillion debt profile of the company – and this against an unflattering overall scorecard of about N700 billion of debt recovery.

    His words: “I can tell you that today, our major challenge has to do with the judicial process…In other climes, what they do is that they allow AMCON to own the assets ab-initio, which means I have paid for the loans from the commercial banks, I have taken over the loan and I will take it over with the assets so I can sell the assets from day one.

    “But here, somebody can decide to take you to court and he has to be heard. He can lock you up with judicial processes and technicalities for 10 years, 15 years or even 20 years”.

    It is a familiar story. Our banks parcel out the commonwealth to a privileged few in the name of credit – most often poorly collaterised. As sure as most of the credit decisions turn out, they go bad. The ensuing toxic assets are traded by the banks for cash while the corporation takes them over, hoping in the end to get the debtors to pay.

    Of the lot, some N4.3 trillion – one half of the Federal Government’s entire 2018 budget – farmed out to barely 350 individuals/entities in such circumstances! And now, AMCON says there is no way the country is going to write off the huge sum sitting on the balance sheet of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). In the meantime, its managing director blames the judicial system for unduly delaying the resolution process.

    We do sympathise with AMCON over the frustratingly slow pace of judicial processes which it holds responsible for its inability to resolve many of the cases as expeditiously as it would ordinarily have wished. It is also possible that the existing laws no longer serve the corporation well and so would need to be changed. Given the difficult circumstances under which AMCON came into being, that would be understandable. The way to go however is not to use the judiciary as alibi for inertia as AMCOM routinely does, or moan endlessly about the situation it claims is beyond it, but rather to take steps to get the law amended.

    At the same time, it needs to be said that the corporation hasn’t quite made a convincing case about its utter helplessness even with the existing law, considering how swiftly and effectively it was able to take over two foremost airlines – Arik and Aero – when both serially defaulted in their obligations to it. Or was it a case of the promoters of the two entities not willing to deploy the law to tie AMCON’s hands? Put in another way – what made it possible for AMCON to move against the two cases while rendering it nigh impossible when it came to the others?

    As a baby of the bankers committee, and to the extent that the bad loans being complained about all originated from the banks, a framework of collaboration would seem to us an imperative if only to get the job done. Nothing, as far as we can see, makes it impossible for AMCON to go after the assets of the loan defaulters. All that is required is diligence of efforts and the will to go the whole hog.

    A tardy judicial system notwithstanding, there must be something that the financial services industry as a whole can do to deal with individuals/entities known to have acquired ignoble records of preying on the system. But nothing here suggests that the judiciary should not look inward, with a view to helping the system and the country to facilitate the recovery of this huge debt from our high profile debtors.

  • IGP’s lamentation

    IGP’s lamentation

    •State police is the answer to challenges in the police force, not necessarily funds

    THE  lamentation of the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, during the National Security Summit on Kidnapping and Farmers/Herdsmen Clashes in Abuja, is a pointer to the humongous security challenges facing our country. According to the IGP, “to bridge the gap in manpower and to attain the United Nations’ standard of one policeman to 400 citizens, the Nigeria Police Force currently needs to recruit an additional 155,000 new policemen. The force needs at least 31,000 new policemen yearly for a period of five years.”

    He also said: “our challenges are funding, shortfall in manpower and retraining of personnel. The Nigeria Police Force Reform Trust Fund Bill since 2008 has not yet been passed by the National Assembly.”While we agree with the IGP that the police is confronted with fundamental challenges, we are not convinced that the solution lies merely with the passage of the Reform Trust Fund Bill, strangely pending since 2008, in the National Assembly.

    While a trust fund could ameliorate the tragic underfunding of the manpower, equipment and training needs of the police, a more fundamental restructuring is urgently needed, to stave off the debilitating insecurity prevalent across the country. As we have stated here severally, Nigeria is perhaps the only federal republic that has a single national police. As the IGP will confirm, while the police have a central command structure, it is the states that actually provide a substantial part of their infrastructure needs.

    Whether it is operational vehicles, communication equipment and even overheads, save the staff salary, it is the states that the force relies on, to augment the shortfalls. Again, all across the states, we have quasi-police structures to fill the yawning gap left by an over-centralised police force. In that category are the state traffic agencies, neighbourhood vigilantes, brigades against indiscipline and similar state organs.

    While the states grapple with their challenges in any way they can, without offending the constitution banning state police, the society pays dearly in terms of insecurity. To amend the dysfunctional system, the police have toyed with the idea of community policing. Under such arrangement, policemen will be posted to their states of origin, to mitigate the challenge of sending officers and men to police completely strange environment. Such a system is of course not sustainable, since recruitment is based substantially on quota, such that states that need more policing do not get higher number during the recruitment exercise. Again, community policing will not solve the lack of equipment and training opportunities sorely needed to gift our country a modern police. So, instead of palliatives like the police reform trust fund, or sending police to their communities of origin, we urge for a fundamental restructuring of the police, to allow for state police and other cadres of police.

    We restate that it is a sham to proclaim that Nigeria practices a federal system of government and yet has a single centralised police force under the command of the Federal Government, thereby rendering the federating units dependents. We need a constitutional amendment to accommodate state police, but structured as not to impede the powers and jurisdictional control of the federal police, with respect to matters within the exclusive legislative competence of the Federal Government.

    With such amendment, states will become responsible to pay their police, optimally train them and equip them according to their capacity and security needs. The gain will include employment opportunities, efficient policing and enhanced security. While the Federal Government will be substantially relieved of the burden of policing the entire country, the citizens will gain in terms of better security.

     

  • LAMENTATION!Cameroon wanted Oliseh

    LAMENTATION!Cameroon wanted Oliseh

    • Sunday made patriotic choice
    • Ex-Eagles coach rues missed opportunity
    • Indomitable Lions’ management looks elsewhere

    Former Nigeria international, Sunday Ogochukwu Oliseh rejected the offer from Cameroon’s Football Federation (FECAFOOT) to coach the Indomitable Lions while he was still the Chief Coach of the Super Eagles, Sportinglife can reveal exclusively today.

    Sportinglife gathered further that Oliseh politely told his suitors that he couldn’t dump his fatherland to coach Cameroon irrespective of the huge difference in what he was earning coaching the Nigerian side and what the Cameroonians were offering, insisting that he was enjoying his job with the Eagles.

    Those close to the tactician revealed that the coach, on the hindsight is ruing the missed oportunity to handle the Indomitable Lions following the unceremonious manner in which he resigned from the plum Eagles job.

    The Cameroonians moved on from appointing Oliseh to secure the services of Hugo Broos, a Belgian, born on April 10, 1952.

  • Nigeria at 54: Writers’ lamentation

    Nigeria at 54: Writers’ lamentation

    As Nigerians commemorate the 54th independence anniversary today, writers say it is not yet Uhuru – more should be done to protect and empower the pen-pushers.  In this report, they described what independence meant to them and lamented the security challenges that have snatched some leading scholars in the comity of writers. Evelyn Osagie writes.

    right now, I don’t have a house…I don’t have a state… I don’t have a village… I don’t even have a country. Just imagine if there is a ceremony tomorrow in your family in the village, where are you going to hold it where you don’t have a house or a village, it has been taken over. You go to your state, nobody cares about you – in my state people are more concerned with politicking, campaigns and election than the problems of the internally displaced– your family is scattered all over the place. How would you look at yourself – would you look at yourself as a Nigerian? Would you say you have a nation, since your government is not forthcoming with all these crises you have passed through for over five years? You want to tell me the government is not competent enough to bring down these insurgencies with the kind of military that we have over praised and over-estimated and yet we cannot solve the problem.  Something is wrong somewhere in our psychology as a nation.

    I am a book freak; I have all my books, 3000 of them, stored in my library in my country home. As the insurgents took over my house, my library was vandalised, burnt and looted by them and others in the community.

    “My family of two wives, children and dependants, totalling 18, were ferried out of town in the midnight on bike and it took five hours to reach the next safe area where I could pick them away. In fact, a wedding ceremony took place in the chairman’s house – they did the wedding the way we use to do our wedding. They were cool and comfortable as if they have come to stay forever. They hate anything academics to the extent that they are looking for scholars, civil servant, looking for people working for government and so on, we have to run for our dear life.

    “Today, Nigeria is faced with its worst national tragedy since independence, we have a dehumanising government, a strangulating corruption, a decadent democracy and an army of ethnic lunatics and religion fanatics let loose on the entire nation with brutal and gruesome consequences. That no serious work of creative imagination has yet come out in response to these tragedies is an indictment of the relevance and sense of history of the contemporary Nigerian writer.

    These are the lamentations of Dr Othman Abubakar, a Maiduguri based scholar and writer. But the insurgency in the North-east is not new or spontaneous, but a mere re-enactment of an existing political theatrical script “poorly directed and dramatised by one Col. Gideon Okar who, in his schism and plutonian utopianism carved out a new Nigeria where he flushed out the north-east and consigned it to hell”, according to Othman.

    The problem is not entirely that of the writer but the harsh reality of people living in areas where there are insurgencies. If nothing is done to curb the crisis, Othman fears it could get to other parts of the country. In the wake of such precedence the writer is robbed of his patriotism and national consciousness, and “instead his vision is beclouded with abstract, spurious and alien ideologies”.

    Othman’s lamentation and fear are not new. Before now, many writers have paid the ultimate prize to crisis, insecurity, violence and “brutal murder”. Prof Festus Iyayi, General Mamman Vasta, Ken Saro Wiwa and Christopher Okigbo are notable Nigerian scholars that were murdered in controversial circumstances. But, for their death, they would have swelled the ranks of literary scholars that parade renowned writers such as Prof Wole Soyinka, Prof J.P. Clark, Gabriel Okara, Elechi Amadi and Obi Chukwuemeka Ike.

    Security and protection are not new issues on the nation’s front burner. But, the fact still remains that much needs to be done to tackle the issue head on. On the death of the late Iyayi, Soyinka observed that: “The world is watching…the world is waiting and watching if the corpse shown in that image will be interred without a coroner’s inquest. To allow this to happen is to make all of us accessories to a possible crime. It means we are now attuned to the culture of impunity and forfeited all claims to elementary citizen security. Tributes ring hollow if doubts are silenced… We remain haunted by the far too frequent, unexplained decimation in the ranks of the committed. A coroner’s inquest – that is where to begin.”

    As Nigeria marks another independence day, some writers spoke on what the day means to them.

     

    National President, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Remi Raji:

    “To me, “Independence” is the state of being beyond dependence, that point of freedom where everything about development and growth is within reach. With “independence” comes the emergence of political, literary as well as economic traditions that is if it is a real independence.

    “The challenges are legion. There is the challenge of identity and status: the writer is almost always seen as a niggling critic of the system; whereas this might be true to some extent, it becomes an impediment to any complementary relations or engagement between “authors” and “the authorities”. On account of this and perhaps for some other imprecise reasons, the writer lacks institutional support the kind of which sustains and encourages creativity and industry. Over 50 years of Independence, we still struggle to secure governmental and non-governmental support for Nigerian writer and writing; till date, there is no single, deliberate and concerted effort at developing structures like residencies and fellowships for Nigerian writers and artists. Also, there is the virtual challenge of getting the appropriate support base for publishing and marketing. This is beside the related challenge that the writer faces in matters of copyright as piracy. Unfortunately, it has become a ritual for these challenges and impediments to be reflected upon without any hope of change or transformation.

    “No doubt, there is great insecurity in the land; for the writer, it is a symbolic double scare, first, to be literate and secondly, to be creative. In these times when education is a subject of fundamentalist aggression, the writer (this includes the journalist) is endangered. How do you protect a guild, a body of writers or even individual writers who you do not consider significant in any sense of the term to national development? Clearly, the protection of the Nigerian writer is very secondary, if not an afterthought, in the system.”

     

    Former Minister of State for

    Education, Dr Jerry Agada

    “To me, independence means freedom from the shackles of colonial influences. It means being free to be able to make decisions for oneself in terms of political, economic or even cultural considerations.

    As a writer independence to me means freedom to exercise my creative talents without undue influence or inhibition from any foreign quarters or outside influence. It means the freedom to write freely and comment freely on issues that will make for betterment of the society and world at large.

    “As Nigeria celebrates her 54th independence, the writer faces the challenge of asserting his or her rightful position in the affairs of the nation. The writer still struggles to be heard and appreciated. The writer faces the challenges of getting published due to harsh economic conditions. And of course the writer faces the challange of operating in an environment where there is poor reading culture and therefore lacks patronage for his writings.

    “The writer like any other Nigerian citizen faces terrible security challenges. There are bomb blasts here and there. Suicide bombers operate with reckless abandon. Terrorists and insurgents have taken over. In all these, the writer is endangered because he would be inquisitive to write about the happenings and faces the danger of being caught up in the process. Yet I encourage writers not to be discouraged for I am confident that through their writings they can suggest ways of surmounting the security challenges and bring about protection not just for the writer but for entire citizens.”

     

    Director of Book Development Agency, Niger State, B.M Dzukogi

    “If I want to pretend I would probably say it means something to me, today. As much as I want to feel its significance, I must admit that I do forget about it these days. In fact, I had to ask today what public holiday would be observed tomorrow. And a staff of mine said ‘1st October”. This is how tragic, Nigeria has become in our lives. When we were in the primary school those days; in the seventies, we waited all year round to celebrate it. Today, it’s all zero expectation about the anniversary of the independence of Nigeria.

    “The writer is increasingly getting abandoned. The society cares only when he/she has been able to make a mark based on his personal efforts. While a few governments are trying to create platforms for the growth of writers, a greater majority are busy pumping money to the film industry and nothing for the writing community. Popular culture and sex things are now more valuable to the hard core literature. How can we as a nation, retain our identity by copying the west? Can we ever beat them in music and all those? In time we will just lose ourselves and become second class dwellers of the world. Even the Bring-Back-the-Book of GEJ is a trash – a good idea now resting in the dustbin of Aso Rock. All they needed to do that time was to ask ANA to power the project through state branches with heavy funding but our colleagues (writers) working with the president aborted the project. We are on our own in Nigeria as writers. But in Niger State, we are a pampered lot.

    “Heavily vulnerable! There is no security in Nigeria today. As an individual, you are on your own let alone the writer who will want to assume the voice of the people, the risk is more. So, the choice of an option is personal to each writer. But we have no choice than to dare the consequences of being a writer in the face of all kinds of security threats. To do otherwise is to kill the society out rightly because vagabonds will take over power. You die only once.”

     

  • Lamentation of two ex-militants

    Lamentation of two ex-militants

    For some time now, there have been complaints about the Presidential Amnesty Programme. Most  times there are complaints, the leadership of the programme has always explained them away by saying the complainants were fake.  Adediwura Aderibigbe tells yet another tale of aggrieved ex-militants who traced their woes to their camp leaders

    The duo walked into The Nation’s headquarters in Lagos. The young men in their late 20s did not look an inch individuals who can foment trouble. Phillip Ukange and Avurakoghene Ogofotha said they are ex-Niger Delta militants, whose allowances are allegedly being owed. They presented identification cards to prove they were militants enrolled on the Amnesty Programme.

    Mili 3
    Ogofotha

    Ogofotha said after laying down his arms following the offer of amnesty by the late President Umar Yar’adua, he enrolled at the University of Benin. Now, he is troubled that his education is under threat as the expected source of funding has dried.

    Ukange said he was entitled to N65, 000 monthly allowance; he said he only got paid for six months.

    The young men claimed they were victims of corruption in the Presidential Amnesty Programme having being enrolled in the 2012 phase two of the initiative.

    Ogofotha said: “I want to do something meaningful with my life. I am an ex-militant of the second phase of the amnesty programme, I have not been paid since 2012 when they started paying money into the account of the second-phase ex-militants.

    “As at the time, they gave us a phone contact of a man called Tony (he said he couldn’t recall Tony’s full name) who was said to be the paymaster. We called him but to no avail. We also tried to go to the office but whenever we attempted going there they would bar us.

    “Although some other affected ex-militants have gone to lay complaints but nothing was done; sometimes we would be molested by the military men there.

    “I am not the only one, we are over hundred. Some got their money for a number of months while others were partly paid. When we disarmed, I actually started school with the hope of using the allowance to pursue my education in the university but that was not the case. It became difficult for me to pay my school fees to the extent that I had to resort to menial jobs to remain in school. As it is now, my graduating from the school is hanging in balance; I may not be graduating with the right grade because of financial difficulties. All I want is to get paid in full from January 2012 till date.”

    They said as militants they could afford all they wanted but not freedom to live and walk around. “There was money but we were not free to move around and enjoy the money. We were always staying in the bush,” said 28-year-old Ogofotha.

    He went on: “Some of the repented ex-militants might have gone back. For me, I don’t want to go back; I want to go to school and live a different life but I need the money to complete my education. I may not be able to give you the exact number of the ex-militants affected by the unpaid allowances but I know we will be up to five hundred as it cuts across different states.

    “They have influenced the list of the ex-militants, some of them have put their girlfriends in the position. They receive money that ex-militants are supposed to be receiving and they are even going for training abroad.

    “When we took our protest to Abuja in 2013, they promised that they would send officials to come and rectify the problem in Warri. They did come to find out if we were the real people documented as ex-militants. And when they came, they found out that we were the real people because they came with their own list which tallied with what was on ground. They promised us that when they got back to Abuja they would rectify the problem but since then we have not heard anything.”

    mili 4
    Phillip

    Ukange said he got his first six months payments.

    “When I noticed I stopped receiving money I called my Generale,George Esebaro. He is the leader of the group called Uti Camp which I belonged. When I called him, he said I was a very rude boy, that since I had been receiving my money I did not pay return, I did not call him let alone send him call cards so that was why he went to Abuja to block my account.

    “He told me that the people that have been receiving normally paid him some money. So, if I could not do the same, then I should not expect to keep receiving money. Since then, he stopped responding to my calls; sometimes he would pick, he would warn me not to disturb him and hang up.”

    Ogofotha offered more insight: “At the initial stage before they started paying into our accounts, the money was being paid through our leaders who were always deducting from our legitimate allowance; out of N65, 000 we were being paid, each ex-militant would pay their leader N25, 000 – sometimes we were not even paid anything.

    “Meanwhile, at a point, some ex-militants refused to comply and all allowances were blocked by the leader of my camp, Abraham Ekokotu. He had gone to court to get a documentation to back his action which resulted in the blockade of accounts from my camp called Agbalakoko Camp.

    “When the affected ex-militants stopped receiving money, they had to seek a way out and he forced them to sign an agreement even as some of them could not read, they had to sign. The accounts were later unblocked when the people succumbed to his demands.

    “It has not been easy for me going to school though my brother has been assisting me in a little way and advising me not to get involved in anything violent. When they stopped my payment, my intention was to go back to the creeks but my father did not allow me to.”

     

  • Atiku’s lamentation of PDP’s loss of South-west

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s piece in The Nation on July 2, titled “How to Resolve PDP Crisis” was such an interesting read. Atiku seems to believe that the crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party is largely self-inflicted because it had derailed from the vision of its founding fathers. The Turaki Adamawa also harped on what the party must do to reclaim its lost glory in the piece.

    Although, Atiku may have riled a significant segment of his supporters and admirers for being unprincipled, having gone back to his own vomit in light of the humiliation he suffered as a sitting vice president from his boss. But consistently principled he has been in denouncing the crude and reckless power play of his party’s leadership hierarchy. As a key founding father, one can hardly fault Alhaji Abubakar for shouting himself hoarse in his attempt to draw attention to a party that seems to be taking a rapid nose dive less than five years after, in his exuberance, a top party apparatchik boasted that the party would rule for the next 60 years.

    Atiku’s piece can be divided into three distinct parts. In the first part, the former vice president went down memory lane as he tried to acquaint his readers with what seems to be the philosophical underpinning and vision of PDP’s founding fathers that conceived and gave birth to this behemoth, which Atiku probably believe, and rightly so, that may have lost its soul. As one of the founding fathers, Atiku’s conviction that a party platform with “credible internal capacity to produce leaders who will be committed to the public purpose…because it is within such a national party that…can guarantee national harmony, promote human development and safeguard the freedom and dignity of all citizens” is no doubt noble.

    But it appears Atiku is probably the only founding father with this noble ideal. And if not, it had since been jettisoned and replaced with acquisition of power in its crudest form, flagrant violation of the rule of law, inordinate and reckless pursuit of personal wealth in the name of politics, and in-your-face looting of the collective patrimony ever since those founding fathers made that singular blunder of inviting the chicken farmer from Ota to be the party’s CEO. The party had never known peace since and probably never will as the acorn seed of discord he sowed before he left the helm had grown into a mighty oak.

    The mid-section is the former vice president’s lamentation of PDP’s loss of the South-west to the opposition and his admonition to the South-west party leaders that the “trend be reversed” in the region. He also suggested what needs to be done for the party to rid itself of its self-inflicted crisis and return to that philosophical ideal for which it was founded in the last leg of his piece.

    One is especially curious as to why the former vice president suddenly developed this nostalgic feeling about the South-west and hence, his insistence that “PDP cannot afford to depart” from the region. If the basis of his reasoning is that any government in Nigeria can hardly be considered relatively successful if it’s not at peace with the South-west, then he’s probably on point. But if he had chosen the South-west as a case study in order to show the extent of the party’s degeneration in the region’s body politic, then he’s being clever by half as the facts did not support his case study.

    As a veteran politician who has been in the trade probably longer than he can remember, Atiku knows full well now that a party does not need the South-west to be the government at the centre. But he is also politically astute enough to know that God helps that government at the centre that had not only lost the South-west but also the respect and acceptance, no matter how tacit, of the people of this region as that government may never know peace in its lifetime. It’s politically naïve of the former vice president to think that his PDP have even a fighting chance, outside of doing what it does best, in coming back to political reckoning in the South-west geo-political zone. And this is why.

    Contrary to his assertion that “PDP became a very strong political party in the South-west as a result of the efforts and commitment of leaders who commanded the respect of the generality of the people of the South-west” which culminated in its control of the region’s levers of power, its control was primarily due to the massive and blatant rigging of the 2007 elections which have gone down in infamy as the worst election in Nigeria’s history. It was an election in which INEC, the electoral umpire was in full collusion, and the stage for it having been set by then President Obasanjo with his “do or die” declaration. The rigging was so egregious that the facts of any case in respect of that election brought before any judge with any iota of conscience left in him/her could not have been overlooked. And that was why the courts overturned the governorship elections in three South-west states of Ekiti, Osun and Ondo.

    The “startling reverse” that the fortunes of the party took from 2011 in the region was not only due to the people’s realization that the party is really clueless as to what governance was about, but they had come to terms with their inherent progressive political philosophy, which is fundamentally opposed to the conservative political ideology of PDP at the centre. His assertion that his “party didn’t come to this sorry state in the region because the party men failed to deliver good governance to the people” where their “landmarks of achievements…dot the region” is at best delusional.

    It is also important to put into proper perspective the emergence of PDP in the political landscape of the South-west, in case Atiku did not know or conveniently choose not to know. The emergence of PDP in the driver’s seat of the politics of the South-west in 2003 was the result of the dummy sold by Obasanjo to the region’s progressive governors before the elections, but which was steadfastly rejected by then Governor Ahmed Bola Tinubu who consequently became the last man standing among them. Secondly, the people of the South-west, with their votes, made it abundantly clear to their leaders then that they were in a hurry for development in all its facets.

    Atiku Abubakar would do well by focusing his attention to fixing the big umbrella at the centre as well as the smaller ones in other geo-political regions that are drenching their members and the hapless people where these umbrellas are still open. The only renegade state left to be liberated and brought back into this regional family of progressives is the degenerate government in Ondo. And it’s only a matter of time.

     

    • Odere is a media practitioner. He can be reached at femiodere@gmail.com.

  • Lamentation

    THANK God my name is not Jeremiah. But, today, I have cause, once again, to lament the state of things in the country. It is so easy to see that those who have forced their ways into government, especially at the centre, are up to no good. Sincerity is the scarcest of commodities. On the one hand, they are busy trumpeting a resolve to drive the national economy to join the league of the 20 most developed in the world in the next eight years, and, on the other, they do things that clearly demonstrate that they are only in office to feather their nests.

    As I was about writing this, I had just read the response of the federal lawmakers to the request to spend 15 billion Naira in providing a “befitting” residence for the Vice President. An  initial 6 billion had been earmarked, but the Jonathan leadership felt that was paltry and enjoined the legislators to make provision for an additional 9 billion.

    This is in a country where many go to bed without food; where many children learn under the trees; where malaria still kills millions; where pensioners die on the queue waiting to be paid some five thousand Naira.

    Those in government are so insulated from the reality of daily living that they could so insensitively budget a billion Naira for meals in the presidential villa in one year. When the big man in government, living on public fund, moves about for functions that have no bearing on the lives of the people, he does so so arrogantly that some could just be moved to commit suicide. The convoy is so long that one is left wondering what all those corralled into following the big man actually do.

    What is actually wrong with us, leaders and followers? Could it be the genetics? Is it the quality of what is packed in the cranium? Is God partial in allocating endowments to the Caucasians and the Negroes? Do we have aspirations? If we blame the leaders for taking us for a ride and misappropriating what belongs to all or for privately accumulating what should be publicly dispensed, are we the followers so helpless that we live with it, shrug our shoulders and merely call for divine intervention? If the Arabs could take steps to free themselves from the shackles of dictators, what are we doing about modern colonialists who have seized the reins of powerhere?

    In a country where nine billion naira is being proposed to provide state of the art furniture, fencing, two guest houses, banquet hall and security gadgets for the VeePee’s residence, people are still dying of polio, guinea worm is still a major concern in many rural areas, unemployment rages on and the roads are in such a terrible shape, leading to needless loss of lives.

    Perhaps, it is difficult for those in power to appreciate what I am saying. But, let us illustrate with the budget just presented to the Ekiti State House of Assembly by Governor Kayode Fayemi. The total budget size is 93 billion. It is to be sourced from Value Added Tax, Internally Generated Revenue, the allocation from Federation Account and sundry others.

    Only about double what is to be expended on the VeePee’s house would accrue to the state from the Federation Account for the 12 months of 2013. Roads are, understandably, the major priority of Ekiti  in the year, and, for this, 9.9 billion has been earmarked. This is just what the federal government is proposing as supplementary allocation for Sambo’s house construction.

    Ekiti State is hoping to spend a little more than 2 billion Naira for rehabilitation and equipment of its general hospitals and comprehensive health centres. Water resources is being allocated 2.4 billion Naira. All workers will draw their salaries, pensioners will be paid, the elderly will draw their stipends and security will be beefed up. All from a 93 billion Naira budget.

    Ekiti is not alone. Kwara’s budget for 2013 is 91 billion, Anambra 84 billion, Adamawa 95 billion. The most pathetic case is presented by Yobe. A state ravaged by security challenges, where bombs and guns boom daily, has only 44 billion Naira to do government business next year. The people live in fear, many are fleeing the towns, yet, succour cannot be provided for those who have no choice but to stay. The total budget for the state is only a little more than double what has been allocated to provide a comfortable residence for Sambo.

    We need to begin to take our governments to task. We need to throw away the tag of a docile people. We need the steel that saw the Zikist Youth Movement stand up to break the yoke of the colonial masters.

    If Nigeria must turn its potentials to actual development, then the way of doing government business must change. We need to insist on a thorough review of the electoral system. Like the Aba women in 1929, we have to show that we know what is good for us. Where a state government decides to oppress us with instruments of power, the people should rise up to challenge it. If things continue as they are, not only would Vision 2020 remain a mirage, Nigeria would be worse in 2099 than it was at the beginning of the century.

    On this count, I agree with Professor Chinua Achebe that Nigeria’s problem is inept leadership, but the solution lies with the masses.