The Nation Newspaper

Tag: majesty

  • Her Majesty’s Royal Prisons, Kirikiri

    JUDGING from the tame response of Francis Enobore, spokesman of the Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS), to the news that the United Kingdom government would be adding a $973,000, 112-bed wing to the Kirikiri Maximum Prison in Lagos, it is probably a welcome relief to beleaguered officials struggling to cope with extreme poor funding and overcrowding.

    According to Mr Enobore: “No such building can be built without a synergy between the UK and the Nigerian government; the UK cannot do that. There is no way the UK can just jump into Kirikiri and start to build anything. Officially, we are not aware of such move. No formal document has reached the service. As far as I know, I have not seen any document showing a formal move by the United Kingdom to build a prison wing in Kirikiri. I read about the plan. It is a proposal still being considered in the UK. There is no place where it is mentioned that any formal invitation was given to the Nigerian government…”

    The idea itself is not new, having been whispered many years ago. It was at the time suggested that the new wing would serve the dual purpose of decongesting British detention facilities and also transporting convicted Nigerian offenders back to their own country through guided and lawful deportation. It is strange that it has still not gone beyond a statement of intent. Facilities in Nigerian prisons have undoubtedly become an eyesore, and officials have grown tired of complaining about low funding, overcrowding, and old and dilapidated buildings susceptible to jailbreaks. Thus to have a modern, United Nations-standard prison wing would be an eye-opener.

    But apart from the absence of national pride in welcoming a prison wing to be constructed by a foreign government on Nigerian soil, it is shameful that Nigeria has for many decades not paid attention to the structures as well as the aims and objectives of the prison system. That gross dereliction has consistently undermined the objective of reforming offenders. Indeed, in many cases, prisoners come out of jail in Nigeria hardened.

    By all means, let the UK government build a new wing at Kirikiri. Perhaps, it will serve to inspire the Nigerian government into embracing the responsibilities they have shirked for decades.

  • Anambra’s imperial majesty?

    The mood at the arena was simply eclectic. Only a sea of heads was discernible, as humans milled around. They came in their numbers, like all such politically conceived gatherings are, consisting of all sorts: party men and women, youths with no clearly defined allegiance, traditional rulers and their spouses, presidents-general of various communities, civil servants directed to report for ‘duty’ at the venue, in spite of the day being a nationally recognized public holiday, and perhaps much more important, a hired crowd of countryside folks, for whom the availability of free ride, and a stipend of N3,000 was an almost irresistible bargain at these austere times.

    The venue was the Alex Ekwueme Square, more renowned for its deplorable conditions, which sharply contrasts with the iconic image of the man whose name it bears.

    It was Monday, October 2, and the governor of Anambra State, His Excellency, Willie Obiano, had chosen that date to flag-off his quest to rule the state for another term of four years.

    Amid the clanging of cymbals, frenzied drumming and general merriment, ndi Anambra everywhere and other persons who were watching the spectacle on live television broadcast waited with anxiety to listen to the governor reel out not just his scorecards, but also promises of what ‘democracy dividends’ would accrue should providence be gracious enough to gift him another tenure.

    Around high noon, the moment came. And to herald his appearance on the podium (as has become customary), Obiano’s Special Assistant, SA on Flute, a craggy middle-aged fellow from his native Aguleri community went to work. From across the mountain of loudspeakers strategically placed around the arena, the shrill echoes of the flutist waltzed forth, extolling the one who had transmuted from *Akpokuedike* Aguleri to *Akpokuedike* Global, conqueror of the Anambra political firmament.

    Just as the spirits hearken to the summons of the *surugede* dance, Governor Obiano sprang to his feet, took a few giddy steps, swirled around like an infernal being, before staggering forward like an Abriba war general, leaving the audience pondering if he was merely reacting to the flutist’s call, or some other stimuli.

    Finally, he came face to face with a horde of microphones which he had to speak to. The words rang out in staccato:  “The chairman of the campaign organization, Her Excellency, the Governor of Anambra State, my wife…”

    Pronto, a cold chill descended upon the hitherto boisterous crowd. Did their governor just cede his executive office to his wife, or could it have been an inadvertent slip? Some more implacable citizens in the crowd rationalized that should the reference to his wife be a mistake, they were certain, however, that naming her chairman of the campaign organization wasn’t. Rather, it seemed like a devious move to downscale the importance of former national chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Victor Umeh, who the governor had earlier named the Director General of the 87-member campaign committee on August 3.

    Yet, while Governor Obiano’s adulation of his wife as “the Executive Governor of Anambra State” might seem preposterous to other Nigerians, ndi Anambra and close watchers of affairs in the state are not in doubt that the governor truly wields and shares power with his spouse.

    At many state functions, including the one in review, the state’s deputy governor, the affable Dr. Nkem Okeke, is often not allowed to speak, while Mrs Obiano shares the limelight with her husband.

    Indeed, besides maintaining an office complex from which she operates, right inside Government House, Mrs Ebelechukwu Veronica Obiano can, to all intents and purposes be said to be the de facto governor of the state, leaving her husband with a de jure status.

    For one, she is known to have a convoy which trumps that of the deputy governor; routinely flies on chattered aircraft to her many trips to Abuja, the nation’s capital and other cities, and generally lives off the state, in the costliest and choicest hotels within and outside the country.

    For those who worry over the funding for her ostentatious tastes, they may have to make do with the allegation by a member of the Anambra State House of Assembly, Hon. Onyebuchi Offor, that Governor Obiano pockets a princely sum of N1.45 billion monthly as security vote. Till date, there has been no official reaction disproving the charge.

    But were the Anambra First Family’s ‘sin’ centred around only finances, not many ndi Anambra would have seriously minded. Rather, it is Madam Excellency’s obtrusive conduct that reeks and irks ndi Anambra who pride themselves as “the Light of the Nation.”

    As a matter of fact, in her October 2 speech, instead of focusing on serious matters of state, Mrs Obiano elected to dwell on banalities.  Added to her intemperate disposition, which has seen her publicly slap drivers and aides, many fear that Her Excellency’s acerbic tongue might in the long run do her husband in, much in the same way as former First Lady, Patience Jonathan’s cantankerous electioneering drove a wedge between her husband and several of his erstwhile admirers.

    Consider this. On April 10, Mrs Obiano had visited Ukpor community, home town of the Speaker of the state’s legislature, and engaged in a shouting match with some indigenes.

    Trouble was said to have started after Mrs Obiano claimed that the administration built the Nkwo Oha market in the community – a lie which an APGA chieftain who hails from Ukpor openly repudiated.

    Despite adorning an APGA uniform, Chief Osigwe Aghochukwu had shouted, “Madam, it is a lie”.

    Shocked by the seeming impudence, Mrs Obiano allegedly walked up to Aghochukwu and dared him to repeat his assertion, and he promptly did by insisting, “I said it is a lie”.

    Casting executive decorum aside, the governor’s wife upbraided the man, calling him “a devil in APGA uniform”.

    For a woman who largely turned out in long ankara gowns, with a Catholic scapular always around her neck back in 2013 during the campaign that brought her husband into office, Osodieme Obiano appears to have turned full cycle: from the meek Sister Ebele next door, to Anambra’s Imperial Majesty, before whom all else, including her husband, the governor must kowtow.

     

    • Hon. Ogene, was deputy chairman, Media and Public Affairs, in the House of Representatives, Abuja.

  • Okrika and its Imperial Majesty

    Okrika, the headquarters of Okrika Local Government Area of Rivers State is the hometown of the wife of President Goodluck Jonathan, Dame Patience, and the ex-leader of the Niger Delta Vigilance Movement, “General” Ateke Tom.

    Prior to the October 26, 2007 inauguration of Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi as the governor of the state, Okrika was a hotbed of militancy and a no-go area.

    The youthful ex-Speaker of the Rivers House of Assembly (Amaechi), shortly after his inauguration as governor, declared that his administration would have nothing to do with militants and he declared total war on them.

    Ateke’s “highly-fortified” camp in Okrika was invaded by security operatives, with the then dreaded abode destroyed and the warlords scampering to safety, in the face of superior firepower and more sophisticated equipment/weapons.

    The late President Umaru Yar’Adua, in 2009, gave amnesty to the repentant Niger Delta militants, which complemented the efforts of the Amaechi’s administration.

    Okrika is back in the news. And for the wrong reason.

    On January 11, the All Progressives Congress (APC) secretariat in Okrika was bombed. Then on January 22, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate Nyesom Wike campaigned at the playground of the National School, Okrika. It was attended by Dame Jonathan and transmitted live on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA).

    Ateke, at Wike’s rally in Okrika, boasted that the ancient town belongs to the PDP and that APC’s campaign would never be allowed in Okrika.

    The 44-year-old Rivers governorship candidate of the APC, members of his Greater Together Campaign Organisation and his supporters were billed to campaign at the playground of the same National School in Okrika from 10 a.m. on January 24, but the place was bombed.  while some of them were injured and their valuable property lost to the bombing, burning, shooting and attacks with machetes and other dangerous weapons from 3:45 a.m.

    The Okrika rally was later suspended by Peterside and members of his team, in order not to expose the APC’s members to danger, but indicated that they would never be cowed or intimidated.

    It is believed that the directive not to allow APC’s rallies to hold in Okrika and in Ogu, the headquarters of neighbouring Ogu-Bolo LGA (of the same Okrika-Ijaw stock) was given by Dame Jonathan, for the whole world not to confirm that Peterside  has supporters in her hometown.

    Ogu is the hometown of the self-acclaimed Speaker of the Rivers House of Assembly, Evans Bipi, a former aide to the wife of President Jonathan, and the representative of the Rivers East Senatorial District, George Thompson Sekibo.

    Peterside’s Okrika rally was rescheduled for February 12, but the Chairman of the Greater Together Campaign Organisation in Okrika LGA, Tamuno Williams, a lawyer and ex-Chairman of the council, at a news conference in Port Harcourt on February 11, expressed shock on the refusal of the Rivers police, led by Dan Bature, to provide security for the campaign.

    Williams said: “The wife of the President, Mrs. Jonathan, decreed that the APC  must not  be  allowed  to  hold  its  rallies  in  the two Okrika  speaking  LGAs of Okrika and Ogu/Bolo. Despite several entreaties to Her Majestic Excellency (Dame Jonathan) to allow the APC hold mere campaign rallies, she insisted that the rallies must not hold on ‘her turf.’ To further guarantee that her orders were not to be thwarted, Mrs. Jonathan arrived Port Harcourt on February 11, with plans to visit Okrika on February 12.”

    The Okrika rally was again suspended. The Rivers Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Muhammad Kidaya Ahmad (DSP), however, stated that at no time did the command tell anybody that it would not guarantee security of a rally anywhere in the state, claiming that the Rivers police command, along with other security agencies, was assessing situations in Okrika, with a view of reassuring the APC’s members of the required adequate security.

    President Goodluck Jonathan and the security agencies should take urgent steps to put an end to the escalating violence in Rivers and allow peaceful APC’s rallies in Okrika and Ogu/Bolo LGAs.

     

  • His shoeless majesty

    His shoeless majesty

    I am looking for Jonathan the shoeless. It is a quest I take seriously. Since the half-dusk when President Goodluck Jonathan proclaimed his humble beginnings a few years ago, Nigerians have tried to reconcile him with the rural, maritime misery of the Niger Delta.

    Imagine him around Otuoke, without shoes, walking the water-logged streets. All kinds of spikes, jutting stones, entwined weeds, worms, water-borne diseases lurked. He suffered in that morning of simplicity. He might have defied his fate with play. He might have jumped and laughed in the soggy terrain, splashing the brown water, making balls out of mud and flinging them at other boys who tried to toss same at him.

    He wanted an education then. Today, he has a PHD and he is president presiding over 160 million souls. Like the tale of Joseph, he rose from bowing down to being bowed to, from ordinary to king. He has soared from the prison of the poor to the palace.

    But since he became president, I have tried to see the shoeless man. I have not yet found luck. Two things made me begin that search recently. His minister of immigration, Abba Moro, invited ordinary people to apply for jobs at the ministry. It seemed he was doing something good. But I learnt he asked those who had no money to feed themselves to pay in order to apply for jobs. A profit of six billion naira resulted.

    Some of the applicants probably had no shoes in their beginning. They tried to get through school, just like the president. Thank God they succeeded. They were asked to pay to apply. Even private companies don’t do that. Yet the public establishment buoyed by taxpayers’ money and our oil money were asked to pay. Over 500,000 young men and women applied for about four thousand positions. Not only did they not have an interview, about 19 of them died of suffocation. Sources say the jobs had been allotted to top politicians.

    The president, who once had no shoes, was missing in action. All he has done so far is to query the minister, according to the media reports. But the president of shoeless origin would not show more passion. What about asking the minister to step aside, a minister who accused the dead of impatience?

    Maybe I made a mistake. The shoeless president was not in that incident. The other incident was in the story of the oil minister, the royal Diezani-Alison-Madueke, who now has to answer the query from the National Assembly about spending about N10 billion on a jet travelling around the world. This is not the first time such a charge has hit the peacock madam. Once a N2 billion charge ricocheted the airwaves about her junketing mania. We must admit she is not alone in this jet-set jamboree. Many ministers and governors do this routinely.

    But she is the Teflon minister. We would think that a president who did not have enough money to buy a pair of slippers would show public discomfort. At least, he would summon the minister and make a public show of alarm at the matter. Here again, the president of shoeless origin is missing. How many shoes can N10 billion buy? Let us forget the cheap ones. How many Armani, Gucci, Ferragamo, Louis Vuitton, Brooks Brothers, etc shoes will N10 billion buy?

    I also pondered all the noise over the power crisis in the country. He said he would face it head-on. He probably did, but it is the heads of the poor that are drowning in sweats of sleepless nights because they cannot have power. He said he would follow due process, but it turned out to be doomed process. The people who secured the DISCOs and GENCOs are not those who really want to work. No due process was followed. Rather the friends of government secured it. They are complaining today that what they anticipated was not what they found. If they followed due process, won’t they know the costs of transmission and transportation and the inventory of functioning and damaged equipment? Now they are complaining. We don’t have power because those in power did not contemplate the poor. I know that if the president did not have shoes, there was no way he had power growing up in the village. The irony is that their lack of due process has backfired on the elite. If they followed due process, the wrong people won’t get the contract. Now that they have the contracts, they are on the wrong end of the stick. We the people have to suffer as usual. But the man of shoeless origin has constant supply, whatever the adversity.

    Now, they have announced that they are contemplating the removal of subsidy again. About two years ago, the nation crawled in protests over the same issue when fuel prices soared. Soldiers were deployed on the streets of Lagos, the hotbed of resistance, to maul and silence everyone. They succeeded. They promised that it was the right thing to do. They promised palliatives against shocks the price rise would inflict on us. They included the revamping of the old refineries, the installation of three new green field refineries, the SURE-P project to help build infrastructure, transportation and other welfare efforts. In spite of the insensitivity of the subsidy removal, it seemed the president’s shoeless origin could be sighted in the promised palliatives.

    But where are the green field refineries? His shoeless majesty has not explained. The old refineries now are so in poor shape that the same government is contemplating selling them. It is still a matter wrapped in a stalemate. SURE-P has so failed that even the government has not found the words to explain why. Where are the palliatives? Forget also that what they promised to do are the routine assignments of government. They secured extraordinary money from us and still could not accomplish ordinary work.

    So, why do they want to remove subsidy? Supporters say we are still importing fuel and it makes it difficult to make money for the country. Listen. Is it not incompetence that makes Newcastle to import coal? When learning figures of speech in school, we were told that it was wrong to take coal to Newcastle because Newcastle had it. It was like taking coal to Enugu. Enugu as a city is a metaphor for Nigeria as a nation. There is scarcity in abundance and abundance in scarcity.

    Back to the immigration tragedy. Is it not enough that the government takes money from the people indirectly through taxes, subsidy removal, contract inflation, power projects, life on the jet sky and inflated car deals, etc? Now, they take the money directly from the poor who want jobs and the poor die to the bargain.

    If in the past, they could not account for all the gains in the removal of subsidy, why should we trust them this time? As Cicero quipped, “to stumble twice over a stone is a proverbial disgrace.”

    President Jonathan has to dialogue with the young boy Jonathan. To paraphrase the short story, Going to meet the Man, by black American novelist James Baldwin, the small boy Jonathan should go to meet the man Jonathan or vice versa. Maybe the shoeless boy can redeem the man. So far, I am still looking for the boy without shoes.

    Poet William Wordsworth crooned: “the child is the father of the man.” Is the shoeless child in touch with the man? In the same poem Wordsworth connects the child with the man: “So was it when my life began/so is it now I am a man/ so be it when I shall grow up.”

    So, let it be with President Jonathan.