The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Muhammadu Buhari

  • NNPC to review deep offshore production agreements

    NNPC to review deep offshore production agreements

    The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is set to revisit the fiscal terms of the existing Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) entered into by -the Corporation with some International Oil and Gas Companies with a view to seeking favorable benefits to Nigeria based on prevailing realities in the industry.

    Speaking Tuesday at the France-Nigeria Business Forum organized to mark the State Visit of President Muhammadu Buhari to Paris, France, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, Group Managing Director of the NNPC disclosed that in the weeks and months ahead the Corporation will be re-negotiating the contracts to extract as much benefit as possible for Nigeria.

    Dr. Kachikwu noted that though the PSC agreements are firm contracts which should be adhered to, the NNPC is allowed to make use of the window which creates space for re-negotiation.

    A statement from the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ohi Alegbe that broke the news yesterday quoted him as saying: `We intend to begin the process of the re-negotiation of the PSCs to see what value chain and improvements we can have from these contracts. Some of the contracts were negotiated over 20 years ago and they have since been overtaken by new realities in the industry.”

    He however noted that in carrying out a review of the existing PSCs, care must be taken not to create an anti-investment atmosphere as that may be counterproductive to the industry.

    On the status of France-Nigeria relations in the oil and gas industry, Dr. Kachikwu noted that though the French have a firm presence in the Nigerian petroleum industry, there is still room for French companies to rev up their presence in the refining areas where Nigeria currently needs support.

    “There is no country in Africa that has the kind of resource base Nigeria has; So France really needs to get more bullish if they want to compete in Nigeria with the very aggressive India, China, Germany … It’s a huge competition and I am looking forward to better days ahead,’’ he said.

    On the ongoing reforms of the Nigeria oil and gas industry, the NNPC GMD stated that the global oil and gas community is showing unmatched excitement about the re-invigoration of the industry.

    “ There is a lot of interest in our quest to seek joint ventures across the value chain; there are huge potentials across board and all we need to do is to galvanize the efforts to get the best out of it,’’ he said.

    Dr. Kachikwu noted that President Buhari’s vision for the industry is absolutely on track. “It is being honed every day: there is focus, transparency and diversified income streams.”

  • One hundred days later

    One hundred days later

    One hundred days ago, heady optimism filled the air as President-elect Muhammadu Buhari took the oath of office.  The momentum had built up steadily through the campaign, and not even Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s panicked postponement of the presidential election could stop it.  Buhari’s emphatic victory consolidated the momentum, rendering the change that lay at the core of his agenda more insistent still.

    Not since 1975 when Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo shoved aside General Yakubu Gowon’s exhausted military regime has such optimism swept the country.

    The enthusiasm was understandable.  Jonathan had inflicted grave damage on virtually every aspect of Nigerian life in his six years of misrule, the culmination of which was a systems collapse.  There could not have been a more eloquent epitaph to his tenure.

    The change Buhari and the APC had promised was about to be launched and, finally, the translation of Nigeria’s vaunted potential into actuality was going to start in earnest.

    However, large swathes of the country refused, for all kinds of reasons, to be caught up in the wave, some from habit, some from genuine doubt, some from indifference and some from fear of retribution, especially those individuals and groups and blocs that had profited immensely from the systemic corruption and impunity that were the directive principles of the Jonathan administration.

    Iyiola Omisore, a stalwart of the PDP, spoke a greater than he intended or realised when he admonished the faithful on the eve of the last election that the PDP was “nothing without the Presidency.”  Message:  Win the presidential election at all cost, or face decline and oblivion.

    That prospect is real.  Desperately short on cash, the PDP secretariat recently served notice that it was going to cut its army of staffers and hangers-on by 50 per cent, and then cut by 50 per cent the pay of those who survive the attrition.

    Back when the PDP, the self-proclaimed biggest political party in Africa, was in power, that was unthinkable. The so-called Presidency, of which it was an arm — or was it the other way around? – would have stepped in with a train-load of cash to keep it going.

    But it is a tribute to the PDP’s tenacity that as it struggles for its life, it is showing the kind of innovativeness it could not muster in its glory days, even its life depended on it.   It has launched a hi-tech national campaign, biometrics and all, to recruit young persons into its thinning ranks – the same young people whose lives and prospects it blighted for 16 years.

    For six of those 16 years, the Jonathan-led PDP government saw the young people mainly as a reservoir from which to rent its crowds to create the illusion of popularity, only that the young men and women were sometimes not paid the promised rent at all, or were heavily short-changed.

    None in the PDP is trying more desperately than its pathetic National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, to shore up its sinking fortunes.  Day in day out he is grinding out hysterical screeds that say more about his detachment from reality than about Buhari’s failings, real or imagined.

    Does he seriously believe his own charge that Buhari has in just 100 days destroyed not only the robust economy he allegedly inherited from Jonathan, but indeed all the wonders allegedly wrought by Jonathan’s transformation agenda?

    The truth is that Jonathan inflicted grave damage on every aspect of Nigerian life, and the consequences will be with us for a long time.  What he handed to Buhari was a poisoned chalice.

    That is the background against which Buhari’s first 100 days in office must be judged.

    Those who saw him as the new messiah who would build all the road networks and hospitals and fast trains within that period and deliver to every home trays of fresh-baked potato bread that was reserved exclusively for Dr Jonathan’s breakfast table will doubtless be gravely disappointed.

    So also would those who expected Boko Haram to hand over the Chibok girls or morph into an international relief organiszation, or that Nigeria would overnight become a net exporter of electric power, or that importers would resume paying premium price for Nigeria’s crude oil, or that the Naira would attain parity with U.S. Dollar and greater purchasing power than the Euro.

    And so also would those who believed that Buhari would make life more abundant for all Nigerians within his first 100 days in office.

    They all are entitled to their disappointment, but they must blame it more on their delusions than on what the man said he was going to do or what he could reasonably be expected to do.

    If Buhari’s supporters and opponents can agree on one thing, it would have to be that he has not moved mountains.  He has not moved mountains.

    But he has arrested the drift of the Jonathan years and given purpose and direction to governance.  He has served notice that the depredations of the Jonathan years will no longer              be tolerated, and that the brazen impunity of that era will have no place under his watch.

    In the past, you could abuse the public trust with the utmost contempt, confident that you could use the elastic framework of the law not merely to escape but to prevent justice, and then live happily ever after with your loot.

    Henceforth, that will not be so easy. Buhari has set up a committee of eminent jurists and scholars to devise ways of removing, without doing violence to fundamental legal principles, those loopholes and technicalities that have stood as barriers to justice.

    To be effective, the war on corruption must be as comprehensive as possible.  But in practical terms, it must have a boundary.   However you draw it, the boundary will necessarily be arbitrary. The important thing is to start somewhere, and make sure that appropriate lessons are taught.

    Corruption has reached such an alarming degree in public life in Nigeria because no lessons were taught. And because no lessons were taught, no lessons were learned.

    Nigerians are used to judging government performance mainly on the basis of tangibles – roads and hospitals built or rehabilitated, electric power generated, jobs created, etc. On this score, Buhari has achieved next to nothing.  The period in review is too short even to process a contract for a major project.

    But governance is also about restoring faith and confidence in the system, creating a climate for recovery, in which people believe that government can be made to work for them rather than for a few — intangibles on which the attainment of other deliverables may well hinge.

    Buhari has instituted a dynamic of accountability.  By making public his material assets and those of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, he has set an example that other public officials will find it hard to ignore.  He has begun the difficult task of re-building the value system that the political class in and out of uniform has destroyed.  He is establishing an environment in which mountains can be moved.

    I suspect that most Nigerians now feel more optimistic about the country’s prospects today than they did in the twilight of the Jonathan era, if not throughout its duration.

    That, as I see it, is a good start.

    But there is much more work to do.  Buhari should name a cabinet immediately, not only to give shape and direction to his administration, but also to stem growing criticism that he is running the country as if he was leader of a military regime rather than a democratically-elected president

    His cabinet should reflect the abundance of talent and expertise with which Nigeria is endowed,  as well as the country’s plural identities.

  • Buhari seeks quick re-unification of displaced families

    President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday directed the Ministry of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs to intensify efforts to re-unite families whose members are currently scattered in different camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

    He spoke after receiving a briefing from the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Special Duties, Dr. Jamila Shu’ara, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

    Buhari, in a statement by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, also called for a follow-up on the supervision and audit of constituency projects.

    Expressing concern about the well-being of children in the camps, he said that appropriate mechanisms must be put in place to ensure the proper up-bringing of the children so that they don’t grow up to become another national problem.

    Officials of the Ministry of the Federal Capital Territory (MFCT) also briefed President Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the State House.

    At the end of the briefing, Vice President Osinbajo urged the MFCT to explore alternative sources to boost its revenue base and reduce its dependence on the currently lean resources of the Federal Government for the development and maintenance of infrastructure in Abuja.

    “With the coming of the FCT Internal Revenue Board and property taxation, you must be able to generate substantial income to take care of your needs,” the Vice President told the Permanent Secretary of the MFCT, Mr. John Chukwu and other officials of the Ministry.

    He praised the Permanent Secretary and his team for a “very comprehensive, very detailed and adequate reporting” on the activities of the Ministry.

    The Permanent Secretary said that all was now set for the introduction of a new tax regime in the Federal Capital Territory.

    “The property tax and the tenement rate will be collected together and a sharing formula has been devised between the Ministry and the council areas in order to avoid multiple taxation,” he stated.

  • Unnecessary begging?

    Ha, Hardball wished Fela, the Abami Eda himself, were still alive!

    If he were, how would he have tackled the August 6 Goodluck Jonathan “secret” meeting with his successor, Muhammadu Buhari, the reported details of which The Nation nevertheless splashed as front page lead on August 10?

    Were he in President Buhari’s shoes, he probably, all biting and laconic humour, have crowed: “e don beg me”, as he did of Justice Okoro Idogu, the judge who gaoled Fela for currency offences but who Fela insisted apologised for alleged miscarriage of justice.  That was ironically during the first coming of Major-Gen. Buhari as military head of state, he with the Unsmiling One, the late Tunde Idiagbon — the duo the media promptly christened the “Buhari-Idiagbon regime”?

    Or Fela could play the vintage and unrepentant iconoclast, as he did in one of his immortal numbers: “Unnecessary begging, dem dey call am for area o, or’ebe o sele!” (Roughly: folks call it unnecessary begging — because begging is uncalled for!)

    Well, Hardball could not in all good conscience, even from The Nation report, assert that Jonathan went to “beg” Buhari, over the grave corruption allegations that seem to swirl his administration, as ants would swirl  cubes of sugar.  But he can’t also, in all good conscience, deny that the former president appeared in desperate search of some soft landing — should those grave allegations be proven.

    The Nation report claimed Buhari told Jonathan point-blank: looted funds must be returned!  The former leader reportedly confessed he was hearing the allegations of industrial-scale graft for the first time.  That probably showed the tight hold he had on a government in which about everything was done by his name.

    He also reportedly pleaded the Abdulsalami Abubakar-chaired 2013 Peace Committee, as some magical quid-pro-quo: I have given up power after losing; so, open sesame, vanish any allegation, no matter how dripping in scarlet; and my garment and my ministers’, become as white as snow!

    Even before the visit, media reports had spoken of a rather agitated Jonathan, reportedly pressuring Gen. Abubakar to intervene with Buhari to remember the letter — and well, the spirit — of the agreement.  Abubakar, on his part, had tried to connect the president and possibly set up an appointment between the two.

    But after the meeting, the Peace Committee protocol would appear not the “open sesame” that Jonathan had hoped.  The best deal he would get, it appears, was to be shielded from the direct line of fire.  But what if a particularly irreverent former official of state caught in the sleaze web, insists he won’t go down alone, does the unthinkable?  Perish the thought!

    And former President Olusegun Obasanjo, now with no love lost between him and Jonathan, did he visit Buhari to knock down whatever reliefs he felt Jonathan could have secured?  That, in all fairness nothing indicates.  But then, it won’t be out of character for Baba Iyabo, the political warrior that takes no prisoners!  May you never have his likes as opponent, let alone of enemy!

    Anyway, Hardball’s golden lesson from the embattled former president: always have a grip on yourself and your staff, when in position of authority.

    Post-power years, it just might make all the difference: for how can Jonathan, even if true, seriously say he had no idea humongous sleaze was taking place virtually under his nose?

     

  • My mid-year resolution

    My mid-year resolution

    Last week, I promised I will reproduce today, some of the responses to my column of the week before, on the lecture in Abuja last month by Nasir el-Rufa’i, the Kaduna State governor, in which he suggested that the NNPC, Nigeria’s oil conglomerate, should be scrapped. I also said I will reveal today, my mid-year resolution about the too frequent slips I’ve made in my columns in recent times, typified by the wrong date I gave for the coup that brought Major-General Muhammadu Buhari to power, as military head of state, back in December 1983.

    I made the slip in referring to a survey published by The Economist, the global London newsmagazine, on how Nigeria mismanaged its oil windfall of the early 80s. The survey, “After the ball,” was published in the magazine’s edition of May 3, 1986.

    The way our erstwhile president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, blew our most recent oil windfall, I said, reminded me of The Economist’s survey published “a few months after our soldiers overthrew the fiscally-reckless Second Republic under President Shehu Shagari and Muhammadu Buhari took over as military head of state.”

    As several readers pointed out, by May 1986, Buhari himself was no longer in power, ousted by his army chief, General Ibrahim Babangida, in a bloodless palace coup in August 1985.

    Inadvertent as the slip was, I told myself it was inexcusable and resolved that I simply have to put a stop to such slips, especially after Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, former minister of External Affairs and one of the country’s leading intellectuals, phoned to say every once in a while he referred my columns to his post-graduate students, which, in effect, he was saying I needed to put a stop to my carelessness.

    To err is human. But I’ve resolved that three more egregious slips like the last one, I’ll pack it up and turn my attention to compiling my columns, which I started in New Nigerian nearly 38 years ago, into a book.

    There are, of course, journalists/columnists who have been at it for much longer than I have, notably Dan Agbese and Dr. Olatunji Dare, who also happen to be older than me. But none comes close to me in the frequency of my errors.

    I hope and pray that I don’t have to pack it up any time soon. So help me God!

    And now to some of the responses to my piece of last week, “Aregbesola’s predicament”, and of the week before, “El-Rufa’i, PMB and our oil misfortune”.

     

    Sir,

    Your incisive article on “Aregbesola’s Predicament” failed to point out that the ongoing action by the Osun State House of Assembly is a very loud waste of time, as it is purely illegal. There is nowhere in the constitution that a serving judge or any individual outside the House of Assembly is empowered to initiate an impeachment of a governor.

    The Osun House of Assembly is setting a dangerous precedent whereby every Tom, Dick, Harry or judge who is emotionally challenged can wake up and disturb the peace of a state. Neither Justice Oloyede Folahanmi nor the Osun House of Assembly has told Nigerians the law under which they are acting. The most the State House of Assembly could have done under the circumstance was to have raised Folahanmi’s concerns on the floor of the house by way of a motion.

    Records show that this lady had raised similar dust during the tenure of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola and no one cautioned her. Now she has raised the ante. If not now, this judicial officer is a potential threat to future governors in the state because if she goes on to become its chief judge, one day, she will wake up and summarily remove an elected governor.

    Like the Americans say, “there will always be enough evidence to jail the Pope”. Justice Oloyede Folahanmi is too partisan to be a judge. It is certainly not fair to so unkindly wish away Aregbesola’s heroic interventions in education, health, infrastructure and social development.

    Segun Adedeji

    Ibadan

     

    Sir,

    Osun State had been bedevilled so much by politics of grab over the years that those involved did not want to quit the stage. They had always connived with the state civil service.

    As you rightly pointed out, Aregbesola as a human being has his own mistake(s), but it is appalling for a justice in the service of the state to raise the kind of petition raised by Justice Oloyede Folahanmi. I have tried in vain to get hold of her petition, but if what you stated is the true representation of her claim, it leaves much to be desired. How can anybody in a good frame of mind say there is nothing to show for huge debts of Aregbesola’s administration?

    As for the governor, I wonder why it took him so long to look for a way out. Is it that he is not given any allocation again after the prices of oil plummeted in the world market? If he still gets allocations though reduced, what is the extent of reduction? The governor should realise that a hungry man is an angry man. Many of the civil servants have no alternative income and not paying them is like sending them to the firing squad.

    As for the petitioner, I advise she apologise to the governor and good people of Osun State for sending a wrong signal at this point in time.

    Omo Elu posi.eluwole@springserv.com

     

    Sir,

    Aregbesola is not the only governor owing. Even oil producing states owe. l am not from Osun, but my daughter is in the state university and attests to the construction of good roads and building of schools. PDP is darkness and APC is light. That is why darkness cannot overcome light.

    Adekoya Muyiwa,

    Gbagada.

    +2348035313169.

     

    Sir,

    Are you a paid agent? First, Justice Folahanmi Oloyede is acting to character. She sued Oyinlola earlier on and if 0.00001 per cent of our educated elite emulate her, the country will move forward. The main issue, $2 billon loans and badly executed projects littering Osun State, is quite unfortunate. But what do we expect from half baked semi-literate man?

    Cardinal Wolesky,

    Sinners Redemption Assembly, Abuja.

    +2348055567777.

    Sir,

    “As and when due,” is the preferred usage, not “as at when due.” Your article on Aregbesola refers.

    Aminu,

    Minna.   +23548037042295.

     

    Sir,

    Re- ‘El-Rufa’i, PMB and our oil misfortune’ in Daily Trust, July 22, 2015. From my perspective you have said it all. The problem with our political elite and some others in the upper middle class is lack of discipline and respect for rules and laws.

    Mixed-economy is safe and flexible. Government must retain a reasonable capacity to produce. El-Rufa’i’s diagnosis is faultless. But the remedy is essentially capitalist dogma. Recent turmoil and US government bailout of a major private bank contrasts with the stability of China’s controlled capitalism.

    Ambassador Kabiru Ahmed,

    +2348033908695.

    Sir,

    I refer to the famous New Nigerian editorial published on June 29 l974, titled “Oil Money Honey or Poison” you mentioned in your column of July 22. The comments in it came to pass a long time ago. Nevertheless, Buhari government must work on the monumental plan it suggested.

    Emmanuel Olaniyan,

    +2348034683555.

    Sir,

    With respect to our oil misfortune, the oil boom of the past is becoming an oil doom, given that crude oil has made us crude, very crude.

    Eghosa  +2348033593310.

     

    Sir,

    It seems you know nil about El-Rufai. He is an opportunist, kara-da-kiyashi-daukar-marassani. He possibly, more than any single person, helped Obasanjo to enrich himself. When he is asked where are the over N500b from BPE (Bureau of Public Enterprise) sale of government companies and over N500b from sale of government properties as FCT minister, his response is people should ask Obasanjo.

    Moreover, why not make public his asset declaration? That is the dilemma. He should go quietly and enjoy his ill-gotten riches while he can and stop deceiving people. He is certainly no messiah.

    1. I. Sodangi, +2348034515166.

     

    Sir,

    I read your thought-provoking article and it is like the previous ones you wrote on privatisation years ago. The points you raised were similar to the issues discussed by Naomi Klein in her book, “Shock Doctrine”.

    Let’s remind ourselves what El-Rufa’i said in his book, “Accidental Public Servant”, about the suspicion by OBJ (President Olusegun Obasanjo) of his Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, on the privatisation exercise which El-Rufa’i headed then. It is safe to say that Nigeria began privatisation at a time inappropriate, considering the level of corruption and impunity which largely made most of the public companies comatose. Did Nigeria care to know the where-abouts of the officials who by commission, omission or design made the companies inefficient?

    This is what apologists of privatisation fail or refuse to understand. To them, our public companies must be sold by whatever means necessary. This is the misfortune of Nigeria!

     

    Kawu Bala,   kabaaz@gmail.com

     

  • You are better off in Benin Republic, Buhari tells Nigerians

    You are better off in Benin Republic, Buhari tells Nigerians

    President Muhammadu Buhari has urged Nigerians in Benin Republic planning to return to the country to stay back for now.
    He gave the advice on Saturday night during a meeting with Nigerians residing in Benin Republic.

    Answering the question on what the government was doing to facilitate the return of some of them who wants to go back home, Buhari said: “I believe a lot of you are doing well and are better off here. So, the question of facilitating your coming home does not arise.’

    “We don’t want you to come back home and be unemployed. Don’t come and add to our problems. If you have something doing here please continue doing it.”

    He promised to facilitate the establishment of two new consulates in Benin next year if the request passes through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

    “I think I will direct your ambassador to make the request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that by the time we are doing the next budget, it would be included. Although we are trying to cut down on the number of ministries, the morale of Nigerians in diaspora must be considered.

    “This is because we are so many. We are aggressive whether in business or other facets of life. So, we as a government will do everything possible to look after Nigerians wherever they are,” Buhari said.

    Stressing that it was usual for him to meet the representatives of the Nigerian community wherever he goes and answer their questions, he said that he has always told the Nigerian communities to respect their hosts culture and laws.

    He noted that there were a number of problems in South Africa which did not portray Nigerians in good light.

    “Some of them are in prison for committing a number of crimes. But for you who are so close home, you should do your best in being good ambassadors of the country,” the president said.

  • The Family Dasuki

    The Family Dasuki


    Whose who hate history and have discouraged our schools from making it a compulsory course of study in our secondary schools should follow the interplay between Sambo Dasuki and Buhari’s men.

    For many, it has gone beyond whether the DSS had warrants, or whether the former NSA had 12 vehicles and five armoured cars, or whether Dasuki had a right to wrap soldiers around his home, or whether his driver spirited away five million dollars, or whether he was guilty of treasonable felony, or whether he clucked peevishly at Chatham under Jonathan.

    For many it is a story not of 2015, but of 1985. According to the story, Sambo Dasuki, then a dashing and ambitious army officer, led a group of soldiers to pick up then military leader Muhammadu Buhari. It was IBB’s coup. Sambo was IBB’s boy. The mission was to stop Buhari from firing IBB and a few other soldiers whose conducts were out of sync with the perceived moral gravity of the Buhari junta.

    Buhari, then as now, was a fatalist, and knew of the plot but reportedly did nothing about it. When Dasuki burst into Buhari’s presence and told him his reign was over, the tall, gaunt and defiant leader still demanded Dasuki and his men to give him the military salute as he was still their superior officer. They obliged before arresting their quarry.

    Buhari spent a long time in captivity. When he walked into a free air, he waltzed back into politics. He dueled IBB over June 12. Later, his body language and speech cadences reflected an unfinished match with the man who truncated him, and he ran for president several times. Some said he had to triumph over IBB, and the marker of that triumph was to take back what IBB took from him. His honour lay in returning to the throne.

    In the course of this epic duel, Dasuki materialised, sword in hand. He broke the first lance in Chatham House, and according to newspaper reports, he subsequently urged all means necessary to stop Buhari and his whirlwind of electoral change.

    Dasuki’s failure is common knowledge.

    So when DSS attacked, the temptation was to reconstruct the standoff as comeuppance. Buhari sought his pound of flesh, it is alleged. Whatever the truth of this matter lies in the speculative realm. And all we urge is the adherence to the rule of law. Dasuki is not above the law, and if he has questions to answer, his historic war with Buhari should take a backseat to the preeminence of the law of the land.

    What fascinates me further though is the irony of the Dasuki family. They are royalty, and the first hint was when his father mounted the throne as sultan. Some in the royal porch thought he had no right to the preeminent seat of the caliphate. In not many words, they called him an impostor. But he soldiered on as the first feather of the royal cock. Questions about his legitimacy haunted him, until the Khalifa, the goggled tyrant, swept him aside. Earlier in his career, Sambo had left his precious perch as a senior officer and ADC to IBB as well documented in Debo Bashorun’s book, Honour For Sale. Things did not seem to work. It was a duel between two eminently undemocratic forces seeking the public to adjudicate on who was legitimate. It is as though it was anticipated in Soyinka’s dark and cynical play, Kongi’s Harvest, where the king and the dictator provide the Hobson’s choice.

    Neither Abacha who ousted him nor the Dasuki family had any legitimacy on the streets, just as Kongi and the oba, and the result was a yam harvest that nourished no one in society.

    It took several years and Boko Haram for a revival of the Dasuki name. GEJ appointed him NSA, and the justification lay in his royal roots. He, a prince, was asked to work the paupers, Boko Haram, to a berth of peace in the Northeast. This column warned that Boko Haram had contempt for princes, and a Dasuki provided an antithesis of the militant’s dreams. It was GEJ’s capital misreading of the conflict of philosophy and social hierarchy of the northern cauldron and conundrum.

    His stewardship stumbled and fell, and Boko Haram became another manifestation of the royal family’s failure. Just like Mark Twain’s famous novel, the prince could not abide the pauper and vice versa. It was partly because of the prince’s failure that voters swept GEJ out of power and Dasuki floated along in the epic gale.

    The DSS standoff is the latest of the Dasuki epic, and something tells me we have not heard the last of it. It is stories like that of Dasuki that provide resources for imaginative novelists to tell tomes of stories of big families, slaughtered ambitions, hubris, intrigues, capitalist acquisitiveness and how such theatrics reflect and prey on the rest of the society over generations. Such books include Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, John Updike’s Rabbit trilogy, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks etc.

    Since the Dasuki family tasted the throne, it has lost its innocence. It is like Anton Chekhov’s famous short story called The kiss, when a man lost all concentration for a long time after an unknown lady kissed him in a dark room. He could not replicate the experience and spent the rest of life in despair of that magical moment.

  • Buhari, APC Reps to meet on Monday

    Buhari, APC Reps to meet on Monday

    President Muhammadu Buhari will meet members of the House of Representatives elected under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Monday.

    The meeting was confirmed to State House correspondents on Sunday by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu.

    The meeting, he said, would hold at the new Banquet Hall by 5pm.

  • No bailout for states yet — Oshiomhole

    No bailout for states yet — Oshiomhole

    Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State says contrary to insinuations in many quarters, no state has got any amount from the Federal Government as bailout fund.

    He spoke Saturday at a reception for the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase in Sabongida Ora, Owan West Local Government Area of the state.

    According to the Governor, the cheering news, however, is that President Muhammadu Buhari is committed to seeing an end to the situation where up to fifteen states owe workers’ salaries.

    He said: “there is some conversation going on between the Federal Government and the Governors and the president has been extremely positive in recognizing that he does not want to preside over a country whose workers are not paid.

    “At the end of the day, it is not acceptable where fourteen to fifteen states cannot pay salaries. The good news is that the president is standing by us and there is always a time lag between when you conceptualize and when you implement.

    “For now, no government has got one naira under the bailout arrangement.”

    On the Inspector-General of Police who was holding a thanksgiving on his elevation, the Governor said: “the celebrant is not just a man of history, there are many people who could become the I-G, by political connection, but I think he has a very unique ability.

    “I also believe that your present elevation is a demonstration of the way you have sought to manage your office , deal with the challenges of the police force without being partisan, This is a difficult position to maintain. As an Edo man, you represent the finest tradition with courage, determination and intellect to your job no matter whose ox is gored,” he said.

    Oshiomhole continued “I think at this time, the I-G would need all the prayers, support and encouragement particularly of Edo people. Let it not be said that the task of policing was made more difficult by the people of the state. And he is serving under a president who will not tolerate indiscipline. He is an I-G to drive changes in the psyche and governance of our great nation,

    “It is a thing of pride to our people that coming from a minority, he has risen to become the I-G of the police. But we also recognize that he is coming to office at a very challenging time. This is the time we need such people with security of mind and competence to drive the changes which president Buhari has promised the people by ensuring that the police play their part of providing security to the people.

    In an address of welcome, Chairman of the occasion, Prof. Ehimika Ifidon said in celebrating the I-G, the Ora people of Edo State are also celebrating other sons and daughters who have made tremendous achievements in various areas.

    Responding, the Inspector General of Police, Mr Solomon Arase said he felt elated to receive the honour being bestowed on him with joy.

  • I prefer to go slow and steady – Buhari

    I prefer to go slow and steady – Buhari

    President Muhammadu Buhari has again defended the delay in the appointment of his ministers.
    Speaking in Washington, United States, on Tuesday Buhari said contrary to critics who have nicknamed him ” Baba Go Slow,” he prefers to be ” go slow and steady.”
    He noted that the question of when he would name his cabinet has been chasing him around the world.
    According to him, not even the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during all the years it ruled the country formed a cabinet within the first four months.
    “I am going to go slow and steady,” he assured and called for patience to allow the new administration “put some sense into governance and deal with corruption.”
    The President had earlier in the week indicated that he will name his cabinet in September.