The Nation Newspaper

Tag: matters

  • Matters miscellaneous

    Matters miscellaneous

    It is miscellany time again; the rubric under which I try to attend to a glut of occurrences with broad strokes and short takes, lest some major newsmakers feel ignored. If a smidgen of the pulverization which Israel’s armed forces Israel forces visited on Gaza and adjacent population centres in the name of self-defence had obtruded in the picture, I might have been led for a moment to believe that the multitude being lashed furiously by the gatekeepers in a feral scramble for bread at the rock-bottom bargain price of N100 a loaf were Palestinians whom the invaders had blitzed of house and home and hospitals and protected shelters and places of worship and even the open air and driven to abject destitution.

    But not even the most savage reprisals ever devised by an invading army with extermination on its mind have robbed them of their quiet dignity.  We see this on display every day on television as they drift amidst the rubble of the homes and structures they had spent decades coaxing out of a most unpromising environment.

    No; the picture contained not a hint of Gaza; more like a scene out of war-ravaged Somalia or South Sudan, if it is not what I suspected:  a conjuration through and through.

    A voice-over tells the audience, unspoken repugnance cutting through his smug narration, that the mayhem is on going on right in front of his shop in “central Lagos.”  It is “Yoruba people” impaling fellow Yorubas in their riotous throngs, drawn by the promise of purchasing a N100 loaf of bread.  You would not find a single Ibo in the crowd as desperate supplicant or stern enforcer, the narrator adds helpfully.

    It was all a Yoruba affair.

    The picture that I saw showed no one emerging from the riotous scene clutching anything resembling a loaf of bread.  It gave no hint of the identity of the philanthropist who had in these hard times organized the sale of bread at a discount in “central Lagos.”  Nowhere was there any indication of when the picture was taken, and when.

    Even if these elements had pervaded the picture, the tribalistic undertone of the voice-over would still have given the game the perfidious game away.   

    Yoruba scroungers and freeloaders and Yoruba enforcers paid to keep them in line and doing so with might and main; Ibos watching bemused too high-minded and too hardworking to engage in such base conduct.  That is the conclusion the narrator wishes to impart.

    How could the narrator tell that there was not a single Ibo person among the freeloaders or the enforcers?

    How could the narrator tell from the safety of his shop, not in the least concerned that the looters might descend on his shop next, tell their ethnicity?

    The rabble that thrives on the manipulability of the so-called social media to prey on the gullibility of its patrons rarely think their crackbrained schemes through.

    The average shopkeeper would have locked up the place precipitately and gone into hiding in the innermost recesses of the building.  Not so our narrator-shopkeeper. He takes it all in, minding his merchandise and conducting an ethnic audit of the crowd.

    He gives multi-tasking a whole new meaning.

    I have learned of a similar video in which an individual, at an unidentified location, is lobbing what purports to be yams into a crowd in the distance.  Can’t these internet philanthropists show a little more respect to the objects of their munificence?

    Then, last Sunday, a website that serves “breaking news” in breath-taking leads and requires you to download its app, reported that half-starved residents of the Gateway City, Ilorin, and capital of Kwara State, had “stormed” and “occupied” the Emir’s Palace and that the 83-year-old (84 on April 22) resident monarch of 23 years, Ibrahim, previously Kolapo Sulu-Gambari had fled to parts unknown.

    An odious and far-fetched comparison to be sure, but the report must have evoked in many a treasonous mind the 1917 storming of the Winter Palace in Petrograd that foreshadowed the Russian Revolution.

    I immediately called my friend going back to our secondary school days in Wusasa, Zaria, Henry Olusegun, a professor of mechanical engineering most recently of the University of Ilorin.  Dispensing with the usual preliminaries, I asked him whether it was true that the emir had fled, following the storming of the palace by starving residents.

    “Haba!” he exclaimed in astonishment.  Apparently, he had not heard.  He asked me to give him a few minutes to make some inquiries.

    Some three minutes later, Rico was back on the line:  “It is not true, Johnco,” he said.  Some residents had gathered on Saturday outside the palace to protest crippling food prices, but there was nothing more to the story.

    Next, I called the managing director and editor-in-chief of this newspaper, Victor Ifijeh, a veteran among newsroom veterans. What was he hearing from his correspondent in Ilorin?  He asked me to give him a few minutes to make sure that his information was up to the moment.

    A motley crowd had staged a protest outside the emir’s palace, Ifijeh reported.  His Royal Highness was secure in his palace.

    So, the story of his flight was another tawdry fabrication in the life of a parasitic medium governed in a perverse way like the currency by Gresham’s Law, according to which rogue currency will drive the real stuff out of circulation.

    This brings us to the subject of banking, which saturated the news last week, following the death in a helicopter in California, of a co-founder and chief executive officer of Access Bank, Nigeria’s largest, Herbert Wigwe, his wife, his son, and his personal assistant. 

    Wigwe’s itinerary included Inglewood, California, to watch Superbowl LVII, the quintessential game of brawn and bones which leaves many players so severely battered that, in every passing year, there are loud and thoughtful calls for its banning.

    He did not make it.

    Read Also: EFCC quizzes ex-Gov Ahmed over alleged diversion of N10bn

    Not unexpectedly, and yet paradoxically, his death has opened the hermetic lid of banking in Nigeria, an industry that is about as transparent as a brick wall, to the extent that it can with justice be described not just as a racket, but as the longest-running syndicated racket in the nation.

    From military president, Ibrahim Babangida’s time, they sprang up like mushrooms after the  first rains and vanished just as suddenly through mergers, takeovers, dissolutions, liquidations and what have you.  As the economy contracted, the banks expanded.  In the early 199s, you could count at least seven banking institutions with their trademark gaudy façades lying cheek by jowl along a 200 metre-stretch of the road leading to the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, and in some cases two branches of the same bank next to each other.

    The businesses and industries they were supposed to cater to closed shop and left town, the commercial banks continued to thrive, as the sedate and astute Vanguard columnist Muyi Adetiba observed.  Not even the law of gravity could keep them grounded.

    The disgraced former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, is only the latest example of the banker as hustler and racketeer.

    It is now an open secret that the industry was sick; that most of the successes they were posting season after season, all the new frontiers they claimed they had created and were celebrating in glossy national and international publications and on international television and marking with bogus awards, were contrived.

    It remains to determine just how pervasive the rot is.

    Nothing less than a probe covering the past 25 years, followed by exemplary punishment for those found to have abused a sacred trust, can perform that task.

  • Matters miscellaneous

    Between Trump and Buhari

    Donald Trump never met a person he could not put down in the coarsest manner conceivable by word, image, or deed, and the person does not have to offend him to be at the receiving end of his vile tongue or his splenetic tweets.

    Except Russian President Vladimir Putin, dating from 2016, and for good reason, as I will explain shortly.

    Last week, the Financial Times (London) reported that, after his meeting with the visiting President Muhammadu Buhari, he warned his aides never to inflict such a “lifeless” person on him again.

    The report sent Nigeria atwitter.  Opposition elements latched on to it as the ultimate validation of what they had been saying about Buhari – that he lacks the robust health the job of president demands, among other qualities.

    Those on the other side said Trump was acting in character and that he was not morally qualified to pass that kind of judgment on anyone, let alone a fellow president he interacted with for only an hour or two.

    To be sure, Buhari is unlikely to be acclaimed the world’s most spontaneous statesman.  But there are things far worse than a lack of spontaneity, and the foul-mouthed, prurient occupant of the White House possesses them in superabundance.

    What is responsible for Trump’s fawning adulation of Putin?  The word in intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic is that the Russians have him “over a barrel.”

    Nothing to do with inordinate consumption of alcohol, I should explain.  They say he does not drink beer, wine or any liquor for that matter.  Trump drinks only diet coke, and that beverage does not come in barrels.  So, how can Putin have Trump over a barrel?

    Translated into plain English, the evocative idiom means that the Russian authorities have him in a situation where he has little choice but to do their bidding; that they have him completely at their mercy.  I hear the Russians are very good at that kind of thing.  They call it “kompromat”.

    What might have landed Trump in this highly compromised situation remains a matter of speculation.

    Some financial dealing, perhaps. Or some sexual indiscretion. Or both, all videotaped.  But the smart money is on sexual indiscretion. Remember how Trump boasted that he often grabbed women by an unmentionable part of the anatomy that they never protested, because he was rich.

    Trump could well have forgotten that he was no longer in the United States. Or probably thought that Russian women would regard it as the ultimate compliment that Himself the Donald, the billionaire business mogul from glittering New York, was paying them that kind of attentio”.

    Whatever it was, the truth will out.

    Oh no. Not again

     Just as he was emerging from Trump’s vile chastening, Buhari worked up a kerfuffle of his own.  In a prepared speech, he declared before a grand assembly of Nigeria’s jurists that the national interest was superior to the rule of law, and that in any conflict between the twain, the rule of law would have to yield.

    The law was settled on that matter, he said.

    The jurists shook their heads in disbelief.   The attentive audience in Nigeria and abroad was aghast.  Was this Decree Four being litigated anew? Had our officials not abandoned that treacherous path?

    The critiques were so withering that Buhari, who is widely credited with having an iron will, backed off, pledging that his commitment to the rule of law was unwavering.

    But how did a postulation so subversive of democracy get into the speech?  Those who prepared the speech did Buhari a bad turn and should be punished for wantonly bringing him into public ridicule.

    “National interest” is a vague concept, a Jabberwock that means whatever a speaker or writer wants it to mean, no more and no less, in the manner of Humpty Dumpty.  It has been invoked to justify colonial subjugation, to wage wars of aggression, to justify the slaughter of innocents, to dispossess other peoples of the land and to desecrate their culture, to jail political opponents, to justify “preventive detention,” as a pretext for abandoning the Constitution, and to put in abeyance those checks on power that undergird a community.

    The rule of law – as opposed to what has been called rule through law — stands as a check on arbitrary power in its many guises and disguises.  Where the rule of law operates, no one can be punished except for a specific breach of the law. You can be punished only for what you do if it is against the law; you cannot be punished for what the authorities think you might do.  Judicial review is guaranteed.  It is the province of the courts to say what the law is.  Government at every level obeys the courts.

    To avert the embarrassment spawned by the speech at issue, Buhari’s close advisers should ensure from now on that every draft is circulated among the persons most knowledgeable in the subject matter inside and outside the Presidential Villa.  It says a great deal about how they operate at the Villa that the draft was not cleared with the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), a legal scholar of the first rank.

    Hijackers at work, again

     In making the much-expected public announcement of his decision to enter the presidential race, the embattled president of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki, lived up to his reputation for opportunism.  When former Kano State Governor, Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso was denied the use of Eagle Square for the event, he staged it at a private hotel in Abuja. Other aspirants made private arrangements.

    Not so, Saraki.

    He had attained his present status through a grand and audacious hijack. One hijack begets another, and another.

    Over the weekend, he hijacked a public dialogue which he was invited to chair by the #NotTooYoungToRun Movement, a non-partisan organisation, to indulge his tiresome grandstanding and to serve as a platform to announce his presidential bid.

    “Your generation does not deserve to live in the poverty capital of the world,” he told his audience, totally oblivious of his role in aiding and abetting the condition he was deploring.

    “GDP growth rate has declined,” he continued. “Diversification remains an illusion. Unemployment is at an all-time high. Businesses are shutting down. Jobs are being lost in record numbers, and the capital needed to jumpstart our economy is going elsewhere.”

    There was nary an indication that he has been in the front ranks of those who created the dystopia he was describing.

    “I am determined to grow Nigeria out of poverty,” he continued.  “We will stimulate the growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as one of the ways of energising the economy and to create wealth for our people, especially the youth.”

    Saraki revealed that he was only answering the call of the “teeming youth” who had asked him to run for president – the youth whom he had always regarded as his primary constituency, and so on and so forth.

    He assured them that they would be given all the opportunities to realise their potential to the full within a national framework that guarantees inclusiveness.

    The man just can’t stop hijacking, appropriating and grandstanding.

    As usual, his fellow highjacker and deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, was on hand to lend support.

    “I’m in total touch with my people and that is why if I want to remain in the Senate forever, I will.” Ekweremadu told the audience.

    God help his constituency.

  • Matters miscellaneous

    Matters miscellaneous

    With so much happening so quickly, the usual recourse of this page is Matters Miscellaneous, in which I try to catch up on the glut of occurrenceswith broad strokes and in short takes.

    Today’s miscellany begins with a follow-up on last week’s column calling attention to some exceedingly attractive job openings for applicants from Nigeria, Ghana and Africa, at Michael MuchinyoIndustries Ltd, in Tokyo, Japan, manufacturers of the best car paint in the world

    The pay, only $7,000 a week as at December 2018, now stands at $10, 000 for a six-day week (Mon-Sat) and may well have risen since the column appeared.  About the only thing the successful applicant will be responsible for is income tax.  Everything else comes free. At the end of 15 years with the company, the employee stands to receive $500,000, a house,and a car by way of gratuity.

    So went the advert copy.  As a service to the public, I promised to send Muchinyo’s contact information, on request.

    Not exactly a deluge, but numerous indeed were the text and email messages that came by way of response.  A good many would-be candidates thanked me profusely for calling attention to the advert and asked if I would be so kind as to send  them Muchinyo’s contact information immediately.

    Their earnestness was touching indeed.

    I was deeply concerned, however, that their enthusiasm would be vitiated by the dire warnings of the killjoys whom we shall always have among us, unfortunately. They said the whole thing was a gigantic fraud, and that I stand to be charged with aiding and abetting.

    One of these days, I will publish a selection from the correspondence.

    Meanwhile, I am glad to relate that the killjoys, aforementioned, have it wrong on this one, and that the enthusiasts stand to have the last laugh.

    The assistant whom I had asked to call Muchinyo and apprise them of his interest in the advertised position received the email message infra from its Nigerian representative (mmuchichi@yahoo.com)  last Thursday, on the strength of his enquiry alone, without even filing an application:

    “GOOD MORNING . pls our confarmations have come from the company micheal muchinyo company now our visa ticket is aveilable in ghanaplsevery bodyhave to be in ghana by wed 21th febuary to summit the inter passport 22th thurs morning for visa. ticket collections and departure is sat  24th night by 8.45 through kotaka inter airport by hossana air to dubai and transit to cathay p air to japan tokyopls get ready and call me thanks.  Eazy.”

    It remains to wish all the successful applicants an uneventful passage to Tokyo and a fulfilling sojourn in thatgreat metropolis. Please go easy on the sushi and the sake (pronounced sakeh) they’ll be serving on Cathay Pacific.

    A Fight in the Executive Branch

    In Nigeria, nothing is impossible.  But pitched combat for power and control between a Cabinet Minister and the head of a sub-ministerial department is a rarity.  And when it does occur, it has the gripping quality of a telenovela.

    I have in mind the on-going, very public feud between the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, and the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Professor Yusuf Usman.  Investigations raised suspicions that Usman may have bilked the agencyof some N1 billion.  The Minister asked Usman to take a vacation so that a thorough investigation could be conducted.

    Usman refused and rented a crowd to stir things up instead.  The Ministry split into two factions, pro and contra, as if the staff were card-carrying stalwarts of the Road Transport Workers Union.  Further investigations have since confirmed allegations of serious fraud at the NHIS.

    Decisive intervention from on high was clearly indicated.  It came from President Muhammadu Buhari, urging the Minister and his recalcitrant subordinate to go find ways of working together harmoniously.  Meanwhile, the Ministry is wracked by turmoil.

    Usman has been so besmirched that he cannot continue to function with any credibility.Adewale seems unwilling not resign as a matter of honour, though it is now clear that he no longer enjoys the President’s confidence.  Nor can Usman and Adewole work harmoniously.

    Both of them should go.

    Fixing the 2019 General Elections

    Well before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) put out its schedule for the 2019 General Elections,some desperate politicians had, in manoeuvers little noticed by a public that has far more important issues to contend with, determined that the extant arrangements would not serve their ambition and had, in their sneaky ways, moved the National Assembly to carry out what amounts to nothing less than a back-door amendment to the Constitution.

    Their reasoning, as I understand it, is that staging the President election in the first of a three-stage or two-stage poll will exert a “bandwagon effect” on the entire exercise, with the result of the presidential election determining the outcome of subsequent contests.

    There is scant empirical support for the kind ofeffect the lawmakers claim they are concerned to eliminate.  If one existed, the governing political party to which most them belongwould profit the most.  So, why would they consciously seek to disempower themselves?  Certainly not out of concern for equity and fair play. That is not their way of doing business.

    In whatever case, any bandwagon or primacy-recencyeffect will operate across the entire contest, no matter the order of the elections.

    So, why not hold all the elections on the same day?

    Cattle Colonyon the Runway

    Those ubiquitous cattle minders who have turned farmlands into killing fields and laid waste rural communities, colonized AkureAirport, in Ondo State, last Saturday, virtually blockading the runway as an Air Peace plane approached for landing.

    Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose and others waiting to board the plane watched in horror as the pilot was forced to execute all kinds of emergency manouevers to avert crash landing.

    Isn’t that carrying open grazing too far?

    This hair-raising incident will no doubt spur Fayose to complete the Ado-Ekiti International Airport that has been his administration’s prime project.  Those obdurate herders know that their prized wards caught grazing there will end up in soup pots across the state to bolster his stalled Stomach Infrastructure programme.

    With that facility in place, the world-acclaimed poet and native son Niyi Osundare, among other distinguished native sons, can fly into Ado-Ekiti direct from his base in New Orleans, conduct a seminar on Comparative African And Asian Poetry at the state university, dash home to Ikere-Ekiti for a piping-hot pounded yam dinner and jet back to New Orleans, arriving in time to give a keynote address at a colloquium on Post-Soviet Literature in Central Europe.

    Transparency demands that I disclose the collateral benefit that will redound to me from the completion of the Ado-Ekiti International Airport.  I would be able to fly direct from Chicago to Ado-Ekiti, cutting off that cratered, accident-prone stretch from Lagos and its infestation of armed robbers and kidnappers.  From there, I should be able to endure the 80 km stretch to Kabba.

    Hurry up, Governor.  Don’t leave office without completing and inaugurating the airport. It will stand an enduring monument to your tenure.

    Finally, finally

    I wish I could broach this matter with the utmost delicacy and avoid altogether the vulgarity in which it has been framed.

    It concerns the imposing statue of the recently ousted President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, emplaced scarcely five months ago in the Imo State capital, Owerri, by his admirer and fellow philanthropist, Owelle Governor Rochas Okorocha.

    Out of the coarsest of motives,the governor’s detractors called it “Okorocha’s erection.”  Behind his back, of course.

    Now that Zuma has become another instance of the instability of human greatness, those same detractors are wondering what will become of it.

    Keep them wondering, Your Excellency.

  • Amid it all, community still matters

    Amid it all, community still matters

    I have just returned to base from a long, memorable visit to the homeland, the first long visit in more than twenty-five years. Yeye and I looked forward to it with excitement, with plans for each of the forty days we had scheduled for the visit. It was going to be capped with the community celebration of Okeho, the historic land of my forebears.

    Of course, we were not unaware of the ageless dictum that man proposes but God disposes. We knew that we were mere mortals with no means of competing with God’s design for us. Yet, we prayed and hoped for the best, counting on the cooperation of the Master of the Universe.

    A few days into our arrival, tragedy chose October 1 to strike. Death snatched Kola, my younger cousin. He was full of life, and of hope. Anytime he called me on the phone, his prayers were as moving as they could be, meant to underscore the sincerity of his motives: Brother mi, bi mo ti fe ko ri fun un yin, Olorun je ko ri bee fun mi. Bi mo ba n wo iwaju, ki n maa rii yin, bi e ba n wo ehin, ki e maa ri mi. Nwon ko ni ru oku yin wale. E ko ni ba sare emi naa nile. (My brother, I want my life to be a replica of what I wish for you. When I look forward, I pray to see you. When you turn back, I pray you see me. They will not bring back your corpse home from abroad. You will not come back to be shown my grave site).

    Then Kola died, and though tradition did not allow me to be confronted with his grave site, the reality of what just struck the family did not escape me. He was the one with the proverbial legs. He ran errands across towns and villages on behalf of the extended family.

    Kola looked after the young and old. It was his lot to convey home the remains of young family members who died while trying to make it in Lagos. When his turn came, he was driven home alive by his son and as he alighted from his car, he collapsed and died. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was then in London while Yeye and I were in Lagos as his guests. I did not tell him of Kola’s passing, but he heard through his aides. He called and offered his emotional and material support.

    Kola was a community man and the community, starting from the Alapinni extended family across Oyo and Okeogun, to Okeho at home and abroad, was wonderful in its expression of sympathy and support for the family. The truth of the dictum, eniyan laso mi (I am because we are) loudly rang through. To lose a loved one is sad. To mourn in solitude is doubly tragic. It is therefore priceless to be a member of a community which is supportive in times of grief.

    At the same time, however, a community that is supportive of its members in joy and sorrow, also gets celebrated and appreciated. Indeed, the main purpose of our long visit was to celebrate Okeho community on the centenary of its relocation to its original site in 1917. As readers of this column may recall, I shared excerpts of my book, Okeho in history, on this page over a three-week period.

    For nine days, from October 20 to 28, Okeho community had a program of events that excited and inspired. The centerpiece of those events was the historic visit to Okeho Ahoro, a serene and awe-inspiring place with magnificent landscape of hills, valleys and caves that provided security for its residents during the most unsettling period of warfare and slave raids in the 17th and 18th centuries.

    Okeho indigenes were out in thousands to celebrate their heritage. The unity was palpable. The love was infectious. For once, politicians of various hues, who had barely seen eye to eye, dropped the animosities that had motivated their politics, for the common cause of lifting the community. Thus, when traditional drummers displayed an individualistic ethos that angered the community, they were soundly condemned by young and old. The drummers quickly retraced their steps.

    The social media was put to good use by the technologically savvy. WhatsApp platforms were created and effectively deployed for the exchange of ideas and fundraising for community projects. The youth were fully engaged in various activities, including a centenary soccer league competition which drew mammoth crowd of spectators. Lectures, seminars and a major symposium were organized on various issues ranging from education to agriculture and drug abuse. Chieftaincy titles and merit awards were given out by the monarch and the community respectively to deserving indigenes and residents.

    The grand finale was the public presentation of the book, Okeho in history, with Asiwaju Tinubu as the chief launcher. Okeho indigenes couldn’t be prouder of themselves and their community. The sense of belonging was heightened with the recognition of the original eleven villages that merged to form the town and each projecting their cultural contributions to the uniqueness of the town. Invited guests were many, from Obas to intellectuals, politicians, media giants, and business titans. Those who were unable to make it in person did not fail to send their support. Iku Baba Yeye, Alaafin of Oyo was well represented. So was Oba of Lagos, HRM Oba Akiolu.

    Though he was not able to personally attend due to a conflict in schedule, Asiwaju Tinubu fulfilled his promise by sending a delegation of three led by Alhaji Hakeem Fahm to represent him with a generous donation to the causes the community identified as its priorities.

    For someone so generous with his time and resources, we have always prayed for enormous blessings in return. Certainly, we did not expect a tragic occurrence to befall him. But we are all puns in the hands of fate and the gods. We are the helpless grass while they are the wild wind. They toss us around at will as we are no match for their smartness, wit, and what our human understanding counts as their capacity for mischief.

    Sadly, on the first day of November, tragedy struck again. Jide, the first son of Asiwaju Tinubu was snatched by the cold hands of death in the middle of the night. Shocked and traumatized, words took a flight from our shuttered mouths. How does a loving father come to terms with a spontaneous emotion of grief over dashed hopes? How is a loving wife to express her fear of the future that suddenly appears cloudy? Or how are three brilliant boys to cope with a loss that they probably still do not understand.

    Yet amid it all, two entities have remained constant.  First is our faith in the author of existence who alone knows best and who alone gives and takes. Tinubu clearly understands this. Expressing his abiding faith in the Almighty, he has not allowed himself to break down in despair or bitterness. As he thoughtfully puts it, “mortality comes upon us all. We have no choice in that; but we do have a choice whether we shall be good or bad, just or unjust. Let us all strive toward the best in ourselves.” It is the mark of leadership.

    Second is the community. Across the six zones of the federation, communities stood by Asiwaju in his time of need for comfort. Hundreds of sympathizers thronged his Bourdillon residence even after he had travelled to London to be with his grandchildren and daughter-in-law. Sympathizers also flew to London, showing sincere fellow feeling. That Tinubu did not mourn in solitude is a testament to the importance of community in human lives.

    In joy and sadness, community endures. We must therefore strengthen the spirit of community. However, a desirable strong community spirit is threatened by the hopelessness that characterizes our local communities. We must therefore work for their educational and infrastructural development. For, as our local communities develop, the nation will reap quantum benefits.

  • Matters miscellaneous

    Matters miscellaneous

    For the benefit of those who need reminding, “Matters Miscellaneous” is the rubric under which, working from no particular design, I try to attend to the glut of occurrences with broad strokes and in short takes, lest some people and institutions feel neglected.

    Where to start?    Maina-gate has got to be the point of departure.

    Elements of Maina-gate

    It reads like a tale straight out of Kafka.

    A suspect in the investigation of the disappearance of some N100 billion in pension funds he was appointed to safeguard vanished from the public view for three years, during which he stayed in a safe house supposedly provided by an enforcement arm of the law he was running away from.  He was sighted living it up big-time in Dubai and other fun cities, and discovered functioning with perfect equanimity in the civil service in a higher capacity than the one from which he had been dismissed  three years earlier.   His reinstatement and rehabilitation resulted from a recommendation of the nation’s chief law officer that the head of the civil service had called flagrantly improper.

    That, in sum, is the story of Abdulrasheed Maina, one-time head of former president Goodluck Jonathan’s Task Force on Pension Reforms.

    Only in Nigeria could this have happened when a war on corruption is being waged.

    Grimly resolved not to go down alone, Maina has threatened to tell all.

    Bring it on, sir.

     

    Dino strikes gold

    Give it to Dino Melaye when it comes to full disclosure.  The APC Senator for Kogi West revealed recently that he has struck gold in a vast field with even vaster potential.

    Not through legislative work , the earnings from which he has acquired a fleet of the finest automobiles ever built, plus prime real estate in the most fetching neighboourhoods of Abuja.  Not through the video recording with which he bequeathed to the entertainment world the enchanting rhythms, the cadenced lyrics, and the captivating dance steps of Ajekun iya.

    To come right out with it, the source of the new wealth is his blockbuster book “Antidote for Corruption”.   At the last count, it had sold no fewer than 100, 000 copies, and doubtless tens of thousands more since then.

    On a recent trip to Germany, Melaye told Leke Baiyewu (Sunday Punch, November 5), he took 500 copies of the book along.  His agents have reported the stock “exhausted.”   A thousand copies sent to the United Kingdom were snatched up in double-quick time. He went to Russia with 100 copies; same story.   Ditto for the 2, 500 copies sent to five states in America.  They are demanding a new shipment.

    “I want to believe that it has been properly received,” Melaye said of the book, with the modesty that becomes him so well.

    How about the home front?

    “Within the country here, I have made huge sales,” he said. “I am laughing all the way to the bank.”

    Not bad for a compilation, the title of which was mocked as nonsensical, and the content of which was dismissed as a pastiche most likely to raise issues of copyright infringement.  Few books on The New York Times Bestseller List command this kind of international attention.

    And to think that the volume is just Melaye’s first literary outing!

    I hear that the authors of the anthologised entries are sharpening their knives and combing the text for anything on which they might be able to ground a copyright infringement law.

    When they strike, the good Senator cannot claim that the book was a commercial failure.  Commercial failures don’t send anyone laughing all the way to the bank, not when the top item on the person’s shopping list, according to inside sources, is a customised personal jet.

     

    Profiler, beware

    In these digital times, a library is just several clicks away on your computer screen.  Putting together a profile has never been easier.  Click your way into Wikipedia, and presto!

    But when several persons share the same name, it takes extra care to avoid a monumental mix-up, the kind that occurred last Sunday in one newspaper’s feature on what it called “Seven strong men around Buhari.”

    Among them, of course, is Abba Kyari, President Muhammadu Buhari’s Chief of Staff.  Only a few things the newspaper published about him were accurate:  his name, his picture, his education at Warwick and Cambridge, and his current designation. Almost everything else was wrong.

    Abba Kyari was not born in 1938; he did not attend Barewa College – I should know, because  he and I belong in the same alma mater, St Paul’s College, Wusasa, Zaria, since renamed Kufena College.  He did not enlist in the Nigerian Army in 1959 as an Officer Cadet.  He never served as artillery commander in the Kaduna-based 1 Brigade of the nor as Commanding Officer of the Kano-based 5th Battalion of the Nigerian Army

    Buhari’s Chief of Staff never served as military governor of North Central State during the Yakubu Gowon regime.  He never held any of the other positions he was reported to have held.  He never led the Northern delegation to the 1994 Constitutional Conference.

    That sweeping biography belongs to Abba Kyari’s older namesake but no relation, the late Major-General Abba Kyari.

     

    72 hours without phone service

    “Emergency calls only”

    For 72 hours last week, that was the message that bobbed up on the screen of my cell phone.  And I was experiencing the phenomenon for the second time in six weeks.  I could not reach the vast majority of my contacts who have no email.  They too could not reach me.  It was all so disorienting.

    Comparing notes with subscribers to the particular service provider, I was somewhat relieved that the fault was with the provider, not with my cell phone.  There had been no previous warning about service interruption, no indication of how long it would last, and no apologies when service was finally restored.

    Is this how brands lose their appeal?

    It is now perfectly notorious that all GSM service providers have sold and continued to sell far more lines than their carrying capacity; hence the disembodied and disingenuous rationalisations for those failed calls with which subscribers have become painfully familiar.

    “Your call did not go through.”  They never tell you why.

    “All lines to the country you are calling are busy.”  How so?

    “Your call is being forwarded.”  Even when no forwarding information or mechanism is indicated?

    “The subscriber you are calling cannot be reached?”  Really?

    And so on and so forth.  Now you know.

    Is there no national security implication to these discontinuities?

     

    Betweeen sleuthing and lawmaking

    In practice, there should be no sharp dividing line between the investigative function and the lawmaking function of the Senate. But lately, the one appears to have supplanted the other.

    At any given time, the Senate is inviting or threatening to invite one official or institution to appear before it, claiming to have uncovered massive fraud in one ministry, department or agency of government or another, and altogether positioning itself as a de facto EFCC, whose leadership it is    sworn to cripple, if not eviscerate altogether.

    The problem here is that the Senate suffers fatally from a credibility deficit.

    Here is an institution that has not audited its own financial transactions in six years, and concerning which it is only a slight exaggeration to say that it will have a hard time winning a transparency contest against a Black Hole, the hulk of a burned-out star with a density so high that not even light can escape from it.

    Whatever happened, by the way, to the challenge to the law “as revised” on which the ascendancy of the Senate president and his deputy was supposedly grounded – a document which the best authorities have put down as an inept forgery?

    They must be hoping to run down the clock on that one.

     

    Relief in Owerri

    I hear they are hugely relieved in the Imo State capital, Owerri, that the kerfuffle worked up by the life-size likeness of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma that Governor Rochas Okorocha unveiled to mark his honored guest’s visit has subsided.

    Government House, Owerri, was flooded with messages from South Africa’s irreverent social media and its ungrateful patrons urging Okorocha to keep the original and send down the copy.

    All over Nigeria, and especially in Imo State, the attentive audience tittered endlessly about  what the media malignantly called “Okorocha’s erection.”

    Whatever happened to our value system?

     

  • Sgt Iboko: Matters arising

    SIR: Professional work place hazards go often underappreciated, especially when you operate in a space where the difference between life and death is a split second.  If after watching the video of the bank robbery which occurred at Wetheral Road, Owerri, Imo State and seen how things have panned out following the unfortunate occurrence, and you still blame the Nigeria police for taking to their heels when they hear the sound of gunshots, without even sighting the robbers, then you need to have a re-think.

    The Nigerian Police ranks as the most vilified public institution after the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA). But that anger has been redirected towards the police after the privatization of power ministry. The men whose responsibility is to protect the lives and property of Nigerians and to combat crime have earned a reputation for being corrupt, exploitive and ineffective. Mounting road blocks and collecting money from passersby have become their cherished hobby. The renewal of pronouncements by different Inspectors General has done little or nothing to dissuade the men in black from this heinous act.

    The emolument of an average cop is pittance. Their living spaces called police barracks are glorified slums, inhabitable for people who are supposed to put their lives on the line to serve and protect. The complainant is oftentimes harassed to cater and provide the logistics for handling a case – criminal or civil. There is no dignity in the force as the officers are no better than errand boys and tools in the hands of the highest bidder to pervert the course of justice at times or harass innocent members of the public. The famous police raids and the attendant “crime” of wandering is a very strong pointer to how low the force has sunk. The question is what is the life of a cop worth?

    The CCTV footage and the commendable crowd funding initiative of The Punch showcase the fact that we still have a few gallant ones. Sergeant Iboko would have joined the long list of Nigeria’s unsung heroes, who have laid down their lives for the safety of others; and his wife, Mrs Iboko would remain in perpetual debt with the children angry at the callousness of the state.

    But for the lead by the newspaper and social activists, neither the bank nor the police would have done any remarkable thing for the family of the slain cop. Credit must however be given to Zenith Bank for the decision to grant scholarship to the children of the deceased, while also giving monthly allowances to the affected families.

    But are these models sustainable?  Sergeant Iboko is neither the first and won’t be the last policeman to be fallen by the bullets of bandits. Would the media and other humanitarians always raise funds for them? It is worrisome that such an occupation with the high level of hazard does not have any form of insurance. Yes, Nigeria police does not have life insurance for its members.

    The police is a classic example of monkey dey work, baboon dey chop, the junior officers are sent on those arduous and life threatening tasks while the high ranking echelon, “who have paid their dues” take the glory with little or no credit to the ‘slaves of death’.

    Little wonder, majority of men and women who are recruited into the force are not driven by the passion for the job nor are they motivated by the creed to protect lives and properties.  Unemployment has pushed many to apply for the role, while there are many others who are there to protect and line their own pockets or cover their past heinous acts.

    We need to create a viable and sustainable plan to cater for these kinds of incidents.  As it is currently, the police do not have a well-defined compensation plan for its officers who are brutalized or killed in the line of duty. We must make this line of our national anthem count – The labours of our heroes (past) shall never be in vain.

     

    • Yinka Adeosun,

    Ondo, Ondo state

  • Matters arising and subsiding 2

    What was lacking in the colonial and post-colonial military moment is denial of political and administrative control of police to lawmakers in the federating units.

    Community policing calls for decentralization in both command structure and decision making. Decentralized decision making allows frontline officers to take responsibility for their role in community policing. When an officer is able to create solutions to problems and take risks, he or she ultimately feels accountable for those solutions and assumes a greater responsibility for the well-being of the community. Decentralized decision making involves flattening the hierarchy of the agency, increasing tolerance for risk taking in problem-solving efforts, and allowing officers discretion in handling calls. In addition, providing sufficient authority to coordinate various resources to attack a problem and allowing officers the autonomy to establish relationships with the community will help define problems and develop possible solutions.—Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice.

    Recently, the country’s governance industry seems to be more forthcoming, than is normal, on ideas that have aroused the interest of political industry pundits. The surge of ideas has not been limited to those in charge of modern governance; their counterparts or compatriots in the business of ruling Nigeria are also agents of what commentators view as ‘new thinking’ in the business of ruling a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation-state. Such new thinking includes hiring 150,000 police and deploying them to serve principally in their primary cultural communities; the re-education of Nigerians about motivation for the culture of begging by Almajiris (young children in the age of absolute dependency on parents in the northern region of the country) not ensuing from the Quaran and all aspects of Islamic theology, doctrine, and practice.

    The office of the Inspector-General of the country’s police force announced recently intention of the force to recruit 150,000 persons for deployment to their natal communities in the country while still serving in the central police system. On this, I received a call from a friend whose intellect I respect, asking me if this is not a progress for those calling for return of federalism to the country. He added, “this seems like the kind of restructuring people are clamouring for.” If my friend, an intellectual activist of no mean standing, could feel this optimistic about hiring police to be deployed to their local communities in a police system in which such policemen and women take orders from their bosses located in the federal capital can get so excited about such tokenist policy,  millions of the country’s federalists are likely to get away with a wrong assessment of this new policy by the Nigeria Police Force.

    Since the policy statement references Community Policing, I have taken the liberty to provide the quotation overleaf. This policy is not likely to enhance community policing, largely because it appears too mechanistic and requires a more elaborate discussion of the philosophy behind the new policy. Community policing is more than invocation of local content provision of memorandum of collaboration with multinational corporations operating in the country. It requires a fundamental change in the philosophy of law enforcement in a democratic federal space. It calls for ‘decentralization in both command structure and decision making,’ as the policy wonks in the home of community policing have recommended. Nigeria had in the colonial era, application of the local content provision in operation of a police force designed as the name implies coerce citizens to act in compliance with their master’s desires. Colonial officers hired people in the three regions to serve regions which cultures recruits understood or appeared to understand.

    But the goal that the policemen controlled by colonial administrators were mandated to serve was principally the goal of the colonial office in London, pacification or terrorization of the natives who were likely to get too big for their shoes. Deploying of police recruits to communities whose language and culture such recruits hardly understand grew worse after independence, particularly during the era of military rule, which in the name of national unity even posted governors to communities or state whose languages they hardly speak. What was lacking in the colonial and post-colonial military moment (which also continues under the 1999 Constitution) is denial of political and administrative control of police to elected governors and lawmakers in the federating units. It seems that this alienation of elected rulers from policies that guide law enforcement of such states is not being touched by the new policy to send police recruits to their natal communities, now in the name of community policing. It is palpably illogical to elect a governor, state and local government legislators who have no control over enforcing laws they have duly made for such communities. Reforming law enforcement in the country requires a review of both Form and Content of policing, i.e. decentralization of decision making or ‘flattening of the hierarchy of police agency,’ not just mechanistic application of percentage of local content.

    A more exciting development is the progressive interpretation of the Quaran and Islamic tenets by the Sultan of Sokoto: “Islam encourages scholarship and entrepreneurship and frowns at laziness and idleness as exemplified by itinerant Almajiri…. Therefore, attempt must be made to stop the practice of Almajiri system of begging among Muslim faithful….”  For too long, governments in the country had made policies that attempted to solve problems that had no roots in religious values of the people under the guise of promoting religious and cultural diversity.  For example, creation of Nomadic Education (schooling through mobile classrooms) by military dictators and their policy wonks is one such wrong intervention.  Another is the establishment of Almajiri Education. So popular was Nomadic Education in the 1980s that leaders of riverine communities argued that fishermen and women were nomads and deserved allocation of funds to fishing communities for the purpose of educating children from households in which father or mother made a living from fishing. There were even buses parked along oceans, rivers, and lakes in coastal communities in Ondo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers and even on the campus of University of Ibadan with bold signs on them: Nomadic Education Scheme.

    As if he wanted to compensate for his over literal interpretation of the policy on local content in the police force, my friend called to draw my attention to what he called earth-shaking rejection of Almajiri culture by the Sultan. In his love of hyperbole, my fellow intellectual activist rued not having the current Sultan in office 100 years ago, when Nigeria was being shaped. He asked me if I thought we would have had Boko Haram, Western Education is Evil, if the average Muslim in the Northeast of Nigeria had been given the benefit of the Sultan’s declaration that Almajiri is nothing more than institutionalization of laziness or glorification of lack of achievement orientation? My Awe has said it all. Just a few weeks ago, the Emir of Kano shook Nigeria when he made mordant criticism of social policies in the North, calling for new vision of equality and equity in the North, especially education of the child, particularly the girl-child, humanity’s most active and consistent agent of socialization, even in the age of globalization. The Emir of Kano’s recommendation was not just for the North but for all regions of the country requiring sustainable policy of empowerment of the people. As if this was not enough, Voila! The Sultan himself has demolished the myth that young children in the North are obliged by Islam to beg for alms. The Sultan is also talking to non-Almajiri communities in the country indirectly. Just as it was with Nomadic Education, Yoruba states have had for many years produced adult Almajiris begging on the streets of Lagos and Ibadan for alms.

    In the tradition of dialectics: confrontation of thesis and anti-thesis and inevitable generation of synthesis, Nigeria’s problems may diminish as leaders of thought respond to calls for needed change(s) and deploy the courage that undergirds leadership to assist in weaning their followers from a culture of false consciousness. The deeper reflection that our leaders are capable of applying to realities of their followers, the higher our chances that we will all get on the train of modernization and democratization that seeks reduction of all forms of inequality among us. Change is different from scratching the surface the way the police leadership wants to do in respect of law enforcement by calling for adherence to local content legislation. Change may become more meaningful and sustainable when leaders come to terms with obsolete traditions designed to demobilize the people, just as the Sultan has done in respect of Almajiri and the culture of economic parasitism in the country.

    Roposek@msn.com

     

    • To be continued

  • ‘Don’t dabble in chieftaincy matters’

    Ex-Oyo State Governor Rasidi Ladoja has advised Governor Abiola Ajimobi to steer clear of Ibadan chieftaincy matters.

    He said any attempt to dabble into it might have consequences.

    The governor last Friday announced plans to institute a judicial panel of enquiry to review the 1958 chieftaincy laws in Ibadan land.

    Ladoja, who spoke at the weekend at the graduation and distribution of empowerment tools to graduating students trained by a lawmaker in the House of Assembly representing Ibadan South East 1, Fatai Adesina, described the planned review as “a distraction”.

  • When real gold matters

    Title: City of Gold
    Author: Dave Chukwuji
    Reviewer: Ovwe Medeme
    Publisher: Words Rhymes and Rhythm Limited
    Year: 2017

    In the 90s, romance wasn’t overrated and chivalry wasn’t dead. And even though between that era and now, a lot of things have changed, one thing will always remain; culture will determine how people live their lives.

    City of Gold is an embodiment of that notion. The 121 page novel chronicles the life of Richard, a motor mechanic who lives a quite life in the sleepy town of Ibadan.

    Denied of an opportunity to get formal education, his world is exposed to opulence and innocent love when he meets and falls in love with Jennifer, his patron’s half daughter.

    His bosom friend, Osaro, is a student of the prestigious University of Ibadan provides a lacking balance in Richard’s otherwise boring life.

    Things seem to be going well for Richard until Jennifer’s mother, Aunt Adaobi meets him for the first time, a meeting which opens a closed past, sending Richard spiraling down the path of suicide.

    With City of Gold, Dave Chukwuji proves to be an authority in the 90s era. And although his timeline might be faulted a bit, he does a great job describing the paraphernalia that define that era.

    As one of its themes, City of Gold explores culture as a catalyst of stigmatisation, especially with the caste system which was in place even at the latter part of the 20th century.

    Richard, who went by the name, Ndeoma was denied his rightful place in his father’s compound and his status in Anninyi village was likened to a bat that is neither a bird because it has teeth, nor is it a land animal because it has wings.

    His father, during his own academic sojourn met, fell in love with and got an Annninyi damsel pregnant. But on getting to the village to perform the usual marriage rites, it was discovered she is from the Osu quarters.

    That discovery was to determine Ndeoma’s trajectory. And changing his name and leaving the village had no effect on the outcome of his life.

    Author of the book, Dave Chukwuji was born and raised in Lagos, even though he hails from Inyi, a small village on the bank of one of the many tributaries of the great River in Ndokwa East Local Government Area of Delta State.

    He grew up reading Leon Uris, Nick Carter, James Hadley Chase, Pacesetters and West African Writers’ Series.

    While in secondary school, he was exposed to the literary world. He says that writing, for him, began purely by chance.

    He is married to his childhood heartthrob, Ngozi and they are blessed with three children, Izuchukwu, Ogochukwu and Ifechukwude.

  • Health Matters

    Health Matters

    I had not planned to write about Nigeria’s poor health status, clearly evident in my column this week. But last week there was a mild protest in Lagos by health care workers to call the nation’s attention to the deplorable state of health care delivery system in Nigeria and the appalling conditions of health care workers. Then there were one or two articles in the media warning about the deteriorating situation of health care in our country. Shortly after that I received an alarming tweet that Nigeria ranked 187 of 190 nations whose health status was surveyed in 2000 by the World Health Organization (WHO). I found this shocking and disturbing. I had no idea that health care in our country was that bad. Of the African countries on which the survey was carried out, only the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR) ranked below Nigeria in terms of health care, with Myanmar bringing up the rear.

    Even though I was fully aware of the appalling state of Nigeria’s health care delivery system and its deterioration in recent years, I still found the alarming report attributed to the WHO incredible. I decided I would google the WHO report myself. What I found out about the global health ranking of Nigeria was even more disturbing. The WHO report for 2014 showed that of the 200 countries surveyed, Nigeria ranked 197 in health care delivery. Again, only the DCR the CAR and Myanmar still ranked below Nigeria. All other African countries on which the WHO carried out a medical survey in 2014 ranked above Nigeria. Absolutely shocking.

    Here are some of the randomly selected incredible WHO rankings for African states in health care: Morocco, the African leader (29), Senegal (59), Libya (87), Benin Republic (97), Burkina Faso (132), Ghana (135), Cote d’Ivoire (137), Burundi (143), Uganda (149), Zimbabwe (155), Cameroon (164), Rwanda (172), Chad (178), Somalia (179) and Ethiopia (180). All those countries, including war- torn Sudan (134) and Somalia (the failed state), ranked incredibly above our own country, Nigeria. How come Nigeria, an oil producing country, touted as the largest economy in Africa, ranked so low in WHO’s ranking of global health care? All our relatively poorer West African neighbours, including Chad, Niger, Togo, Burkina Faso, were ranked higher than Nigeria in health care delivery. So were Ghana and Cameroon.  Further afield, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Burundi, all vastly poorer than Nigeria, were reported as having better health care delivery systems than Nigeria. Now, Nigeria’s low ranking is not due solely to its large population. China, India and Brazil have large populations too, but rank far ahead of Nigeria. They spend a lot more on health care than Nigeria.

    When I checked the WHO data for health care in Nigeria it was even more disturbing. In virtually all cases we were worse off than other African countries. From 85 in 2000, infant mortality has increased to 110 per 1000 live births in 2014, globally one of the worst. The rate of maternity deaths has also increased substantially. The WHO had recommended that all states should commit 15 per cent of their annual budgets to health care. Nigeria signed the protocol to this WHO recommendation, but it has always fallen way below it. In the last two or three decades Nigeria’s total annual expenditure on health care has averaged only 3.7 per cent instead of 15 per cent prescribed by the WHO. The average for Africa was given as 8 per cent, more than double that of Nigeria. In 2016, while Nigeria spent only US$40 million on its health care, Kenya, a much smaller and poorer country, spent over US$100 million on its health care. It was only in 1998/9 and 2002/3 that Nigeria spent 5 per cent of its budget on health care. These figures include expenditure on health care by the states. The WHO recommends the annual expenditure of US$3400 per head on health care. Nigeria’s average as at 2014 was only US$217. As the WHO report observed, “Nigeria lacks a serious approach to health care”. In fact, the situation is worse at the level of primary health care which, due to wilful neglect, has declined very rapidly over the years. When he was Minister of Health, the late Professor Olikoye Ransome Kuti tried very hard, and with some success, to reform and stabilise our primary health care system.

    But the improvements he made in our primary health care have not been sustained largely due to our failure to increase public expenditure on health care. The WHO report also referred to poor training facilities for health care workers and lack of the necessary medical equipment in our hospitals, including the most advanced. We have over 50 university teaching hospitals, but they all lack the necessary medical equipment to function maximally. This situation applies to the private hospitals as well. Very often surgeries cannot be performed on patients because of the irregular and uncertain power supply, In both urban and rural areas of our country, access by the poor to health care is very poor. The limited private health care available mostly in the urban areas is very expensive. Children, women and the elderly are highly vulnerable to this appalling lack of an efficient and affordable health care delivery system. Where it exists at all, the facilities are very poor and inadequate. The national health insurance scheme is a total failure. It covers only a negligible few. To further complicate matters, drugs, most of which are imported, have become outrageously expensive, due to the exchange rate adjustment of the naira.  Only the rich can afford them. The poor now resort increasingly to self medication, quacks, or dubious herbalists for their health care. It is estimated that there are 4,000 Nigerian trained doctors now living and working in the US and Britain. There could be another 1,000 of them working elsewhere. Most of them emigrated abroad because of poor pay and poor working conditions here at home. Our rich now routinely go abroad for medical treatment because they know what is available locally is wholly inadequate. And because they can afford private health care they care very little about the appalling state of public health care in our country. Right now, President Muhammadu Buhari is receiving medical attention abroad. President Yar’Adua died while receiving medical care in Saudi Arabia. This is a national shame and embarrassment.

    Now, despite competing financial needs, I believe Nigeria can afford an efficient and respectable health care delivery system. What is lacking is the commitment of its leaders to this objective and the vast public corruption that diverts huge financial resources away from investment in human development. Cuba, under its late leader, Fidel Castro, showed, within a generation, what a committed leadership can do for health care, particularly at the primary level. Cuba, despite its financial constraints, has one of the most advanced health care delivery programmers in the world. It concentrates mainly on primary health care. The development of physical infrastructure (roads, electricity and public transportation) is important. But the development of social infrastructure (health and education) is even more important. Investing in the development of social infrastructure is even more profitable. It should be treated as a priority in public expenditure. It creates more jobs and has a more positive effect on the economy.

    Health care matters. Health is wealth. A healthy nation is a prosperous nation. Its workers are more productive. Some of the social divisions and conflicts in our country are made worse by the existing poor health care. Though there can be no justification for it, the poor are tempted to take to crimes, such as kidnapping and armed robbery when they are unable to meet their health challenges and medical bills. A good and affordable public health system will reduce some of the violence in our country. Nigeria does not lack the financial resources to improve on its health care. In 1953, when Chief Obafemi Awolowo introduced his free health programme in the then Western Region, he committed 50 per cent of his government’s budget to health and education. That gave the Western Region a good start in health care, which it has maintained since. The region is far ahead of other regions of Nigeria in health care. We must find a way of getting our governments at all levels to commit themselves to meeting the WHO prescription of spending 15 per cent of our annual budgets on heath care. The National Assembly must take the bull by the horns. It should pass the necessary legislation that will compel the Federal Government to meet its financial obligations in that respect to a better health care delivery system. In addition the importation of vital drugs should be made easier and cheaper by lowering the tariff or duty on imported drugs.