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Tag: OBJ

  • OBJ vs Adenuga: A memory

    OBJ vs Adenuga: A memory

    The following, an abridgement of a twopart series entitled “Michael Ishola Adenuga” and “Of War, Stray Bullets & P.O.Ws” first carried 11 years ago (2006) by Sunday Sun, is rerun today with a view to offering readers some illumination to better dissect the epistolary grenade hurled Wednesday by former President Olusegun Obasanjo against Oba Sikuri Adetona of Ijebuland over the latter’s claims in an autobiography, “Awujale”

    Though isolated by space, a correlation of irony is easy to decipher at two events in Brussels and Lagos in July 2006. In a landmark pronouncement, the European Union fined Microsoft a whopping $357 million for its refusal to obey an anti-trust ruling, thus opening yet another epic chapter in international jurisprudence.

    The computer software giant, it is alleged, would not avail rivals of technical information pertaining to its Windows operations. Earlier in 2004, the EU had levied a record 497 million euro fine on Microsoft and ordered it to hand over communication code to rivals that complained that they were being crippled by its vice-like hold on the market. Naturally, Microsoft objected to both rulings. As the world awaits the outcome of Microsoft’s objection, the political undertone of this potentially explosive international legal slugfest will certainly become audible soon.

    Microsoft, owned by American Bill Gates, is being challenged by competitors on European soil. True, America may be signatory to relevant international info tech protocols which owns make its corporate citizen, Microsoft, liable. But notwithstanding, it would be entirely surprising if the dominant mood back in the States would be that of a lynch mob, due primarily to the spirit of nationalism.

    Now, contrast that with the spectacle witnessed in Lagos on the night of July 8, 2006 when business mogul, Otunba Mike Adenuga, was seized from his residence by a team of gunmen who practically broke down walls in a mafia-like operation.

    When the news broke Monday, many feared the worst had happened. Until the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) issued a statement claiming responsibility, followed with another disclosure Thursday that the Globacom boss is still innocent after all; that no felony had been established against him yet. From the latest seven-point release, perhaps the only fresh angle the anti-graft body gave is that the investigation of the business mogul has “international dimension”.

    To be sure, this writer is one of those who subscribe to EFFC’s puritan philosophy to reclaim the nation’s lost moral territory, setting a new creed in corporate conduct. But as one had observed on this platform countless times in the past, for EFCC, the big challenge remains the ability to enforce moral order without creating an atmosphere that, in turn, stifles or weakens the very basis of society itself: loss of human dignity by individuals.

    True, conflicts are inevitable in the dog-eatdog world of business, much less in an underdeveloped political economy such as ours. What counts really is the degree of the benefit of doubt a state is indeed willing to concede to a defendant, especially if he/she happens to be its own national. National interest – much more, pride – is certainly not served if operatives of a national agency begin to conduct themselves in a way that suggests that its own nationals, against whom a protest is purportedly lodged by a foreigner, is treated ab initio as guilty even before trial.

    No self-respecting nation acts that way. That perhaps explains why a Bill Gates would readily enjoy the sympathy and solidarity of the American establishment in the times ahead in case the EU monitors seek instrument to shut the cyber space against Microsoft.

    In its statement, EFFC stated that the investigation of the Globacom boss has “international dimension”. In the absence of further clarification, perhaps it is safe to assume a conflict of international dimension has ensued. In the circumstance, what could then be considered a bigger tragedy is if it’s proved that Adenuga’s detention was indeed prodded externally, as the EFCC statement seems to suggest.

    Given his role in many jobs-creating enterprises in Nigeria, the least Adenuga deserves is some respect. With a business empire straddling banking, oil and gas, and lately, telecoms, the magnate singularly provides a source of livelihood for tens of thousand of Nigerians, and much more indirectly. Who, in turn, pay taxes to the state and tithes to the temple.

    At a personal level, with the deeply contemplative eyes, avuncular agility and folksy sense of humor, the merchant from Ijebu could, in fact, be described as the personification of that daring instinct, optimism against adversity, the can-do spirit that readily set the average Nigerian apart from the rest of the human race.

    Really, nothing could be more iconic of the very new liberal economic order the Obasanjo reforms seem to envisage. In terms of scale, perhaps the only other Nigerian entrepreneur in his category is he whiz-kid of the sugar/salt/cement market, Aliko Dangote.

    For instance, in the telecoms sector, it is doubtful if the GSM line would have become so readily accessible to the Nigerian poor today without Adenuga’s Globacom. After the first GSM line buzzed in 2001, we were told thereafter by South Africanowned MTN that per second billing (PSB) was not feasible in the nearest future. Of course, the GSM landscape was still monopolized then by foreign players.

    When we made a second call then, we were billed by the minute, giving glamour to a new form of corporate heist. But not after Adenuga stormed the arena. Globacom started PSB from the outset. Suddenly, PSB became possible for others. By that gesture alone, Adenuga no doubt gave one thing to long-suffering Nigerian consumers: victory.

    Of course, given what is now known to the public, there is surely more to the Adenuga/ EFCC romance. This becomes even more evident if we put the theory of “international dimension” to some scrutiny. So far, we were told that the detention of the tycoon extra-ordinaire was in connection with “international crime”. Isn’t ironic that the same man, apparently no longer sure of his own safety, has since taken the “NADECO route” to London, a supposedly now hostile territory for financial criminals from Nigeria?

    Of course, the phrase “NADECO route” is euphemistic of the somewhat ingenuous self-preservation tactic adopted by “dissidents” when Sani Abacha began to limit the political space beginning from 1994. Since the hunter had resolved to police all official gateways, the hunted too soon learnt to plot their gateway through border bush-paths.

    There have been conflicting accounts on how Adenuga was seized on the night of July 8. Whereas EFCC claimed that “minimal force” was applied when the Globacom boss repeatedly rebuffed invitation to its office, the Adenuga people insisted that the operation was cruel and humiliating, typical of Hitler’s Gestapo. Apparently, it took public uproar before the business mogul was released from detention.

    In letting him off, the anti-graft commission made us believe that investigations of the alleged “international crime” was ongoing, hinting that the matter was not over yet. Indeed, from the constellation of information now put in the public domain, Adenuga’s “sins” can be reduced to a four-count charge: that the PTDF placed deposits in Equitorial Trust Bank owned by Adenuga; that public fund was converted to augment payment for GSM license of Globacom in 2002; that he donated a building to ABTI University owned by the Vice President (Atiku Abubakar) apparently as “gratification” for his influencing the lodgement of PTDF money in ETB; that the Vice President owned a stake in Globacom.

    The last charge would seem to have been informed by the fact that the Vice President presided over the FEC meeting that approved the GSM license for Globacom while the president was on official trip abroad. The inference to be drawn here, therefore, is that, left to the president, Globacom would not have secured the license.

    But truth be told, these facts can hardly be said to correlate today when subjected to the rigour of simple logic or even common sense. If Adenuga must be nailed, then it is better to start digging elsewhere for skeletons. For instance, it is well documented that Globacom paid for the license in 2002 with a loan facility from BNP Paribas while the PTDF money was lodged in 2003.

    Again, it is hardly a secret too that in the pre-consolidation era, banks in Nigeria mostly specialized in jostling for public sector funds to bolster their liquidity. So, how could it now amount to a crime for ETB to have been favored to bank PTDF money? Again, on the issue being made out of donation to ABTI University, it is also well documented that Adenuga had donated generously to causes involving the president (including the Presidential Library in Ota).

    Against this backcloth, argument by the Adenuga people that the man is only being witch-hunted would, therefore, now seem strengthened. What is invariably left unsaid is that perhaps authorities are just unhappy that Adenuga, known to be very close to the Vice President, refused to squeal information to nail him on his alleged “shady deals” in Obasanjo’s desperation to nail his deputy since they fell out.

    Of course, it is now also public knowledge that Adenuga had famously committed a grave verbal indiscretion early in 2006 in the heat of the desperate manouvre by Obasanjo’s strategists to wangle tenure elongation. At one of the nocturnal conclaves to which he was invited to fine-tune the strategy, the guileless business mogul had reportedly proposed the idea of a “Plan B” in the event that the Third Term bid refused to fly.

    Just as he feared, not only did Third Term fail like a pack of cards even after billions of naira was given to federal lawmakers as bribes, Obasanjo’s political humiliation was compounded by the lack of any dignifying “Plan B” immediately. There is, therefore, some sense in the argument of those interpreting the new frenzy of clampdown by EFFC on perceived “opposition elements” and anyone related to them upon the collapse of the tenure elongation agenda at the National Assembly gallery in May 2006 as OBJ’s vicious fight-back.

    Like the NADECO exiles of old, Adenuga can only pray that the Abuja warriors (OBJ and Atiku) bury the hatchet – a remote possibility now – to enable him return home and continue his normal life. God save the P.O.Ws (prisoners of war).

  • OBJ: Thank you, Na’abba

    Sir: Last week, former speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Ghali Na’abba, was constrained to label ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo (OBJ) as one of the most corrupt leaders Nigeria has ever had.  Early this year, some members of the National Assembly poured similar invective on him. All of this venom, which is undeserving of a ‘statesman’, was in response to unstatesmanlike remarks he made about the lawmakers regarding opening up their accounts to public scrutiny and the raging controversy over budget padding in the House of Representatives. But even before these, ex-President Obasanjo had become the butt of insults for his rank popularity for rash utterances and conduct unbecoming of an individual of his status.

    When Obasanjo launched an onslaught against Jonathan by writing open letters and publicly denouncing him and his government, it was perceived to be the height of insensitivity to the noble ideals that dictate the engagement of national leaders with one another. Ironically, it is those very people that stood on the side-lines and cheered OBJ that are now agonizing over his bitter jibes! Anyway, it must be observed that the world over, and as we have seen in the case of other past Nigerian leaders, former heads of states strictly abide by and unwritten creed, an esprit de corps if you wish, of never publicly denouncing or interfering in the affairs of incumbents. Even when it becomes absolutely necessary, it is done with such decorum that shouldn’t scandalize the person or office of the incumbent. This is because no matter the degeneracy of incumbents, the very sanctity of their offices must be respected and protected by patriotic citizens, irrespective of their position in society. But not so for Obasanjo who carries on his obnoxious campaigns with so much bile; casting aspersions on individuals without any respect for the institutions they represent.

    I strongly believe that public officers must always apply the most dignified level of conscientiousness and diligence in running their affairs, especially in the highly tricky matters of finance. Those who betray this trust must be made to face the full wrath of the law. Therefore, if the National Assembly is indeed a cesspit of corruption as OBJ has continued to shout on rooftops, it must be prosecuted strictly within the ambits of the law. No more, no less. Moreover, OBJ has the right to quietly summon heads of anti-graft agencies to Otta and reveal his evidence to them. And as a father and elder, he could have quietly summoned Saraki and, or, Dogara and cautioned and advised them appropriately. Such are the ways and methods of real statesmen who are genuinely concerned about the well-being of the polity and the individuals at their helm.

    No doubt, occupying public office in Nigeria comes with too many temptations that very few can resist. Stealing from the public till, taking bribes, nepotism, etc, have been perfected into pleasurable pastimes in government. Incidentally, Obasanjo first ruled Nigeria as a maximum ruler. Those years of military dictatorship witnessed some of the most spectacular pillaging of our national treasury. He also holds the distinction of once more leading Nigeria for a record eight years; a period when the war on corruption had not been put on the front burner of national policy and public discourse as today. These, and his saint-like posture, must have compelled Na’abba to challenge him to disclose the source of his wealth; which echoed earlier sentiments by certain powerful voices in the National Assembly. As a man who served as Speaker of the House of Representatives when OBJ was president, could Na’abba’s claims be completely unfounded?

     

    • Chris Gyang,

    Jos.

  • Obj’s catharsis

    If only the handlers of former President Olusegun Obasanjo could have him hold his peace on matters that are better forgotten, then he would probably earn his hero status in a country that has few heroes. But for a man who made the famous remarks that he advised his advisers and not the other way round, then one can imagine that he (man) handles his handlers if he ever had any.

    Age ought to mellow and mature, wizen and make wiser and most important, makes a man come to terms with himself, his people and his maker. As a man sitting in the departure lounge of life, to borrow from Chief E.K Clark, one expects Chief Obasanjo to travel light, shed all excess baggage and be at peace with his world.

    But that is not the case with the Owu deity who enjoyed the rare privilege of ruling Nigeria for about 13 years, first as a military head of state and then as an elected president for two terms of eight years. But Obasanjo comes across as a man in prolonged and un-assuaged agony. Like all agonists, he is always seeking to be seen, to be heard and to be courted. He seems to covet and cherish the high table of relevance all the time. When he is not in the limelight, he creates his own lime and light and bask in it.

    Such was the case last week when the former president granted an interview to Channels Television explaining why he chose his late successor, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. For a classic Obasanjo mala fide that happened eight years ago and for which the nation had agonised and moved on, why Obj had to be scratching the scar of our wound cannot be fathomed.

    The underhand event happened before our eyes: Obasanjo the incumbent wanted a soft and weak successor and he found his best bet in the late Yar’Adua, a visibly ailing man. He paired him with a yodeling yeoman straight from the creeks of Otuoke. The Yar’Adua/Jonathan ticket for the 2007 presidential race must rank among the most debilitated and puerile pairing to be found in modern democracy.

    At the end of that era on May 29, 2015, a cycle of a debacle that was total and comprehensive had been completed. Anarchy was almost loosed upon the land. The nation still roils from it till this moment. A slew of mind-boggling corruption, abandoned projects, misery and poverty for the populace were what Obasanjo’s singular succession perfidy earned Nigeria.

    Yet he would not let us be. Unprompted last week, Obasanjo told us that choosing a terminally ill man to preside over this vast country was the right thing to do. All the other seekers of the job were corrupt, he said.

    If only Baba Obasanjo would hold his peace, if only he would keep quiet and allow time to heal the wounds he has inflicted on us. But Hardball knows he won’t; he can’t until he has achieved catharsis. But there lies the dilemma; Obasanjo is not likely to achieve such a redeeming state of self-purification. What a pity.

  • Obj.: Who will rescue us from this ‘strongman’?

    Virility is the mark of ultimate manhood and a man who proves to be manly into his old age must be saluted especially for his good fortunes. Hardball can confirm that virility – not merely the ability to procreate and by no means discounting it – but the sheer aura of masculine wellbeing and strength, is the essence of the male gender.

    It is man at the apogee of his physical strength and charm; at the height of his fame and authority be-straddling and towering over his environment like a colossus. Some call it the Alpha male – men who drive the world around them, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. Men bursting with a flush of testosterone; men like dynamite.

    Hardball, having encountered Obj during his time in Aso Rock can attest to his sweltering virility and sod-busting manliness. After all, he is a root-chewing farmer besides being a soldier. On one occasion after an interview session that lasted into midnight, yours truly was worn and sleepy but Obj, the doughty rustic, slung a towel around his neck and headed for the squash court.

    Of course, concupiscence is the corollary of manliness and there is a rich repertoire somewhere but Hardball would leave mundane matters to the tabloids. Baba is a statesman of no mean virility even as a septuagenarian. But surely, every good thing has its offside, including a man’s glorious powers. Indeed, what is power and strength without the requisite control and circumspection?

    This, essentially, has been the trouble with Obj, the chink in his armour so to speak. After his second coming as Nigeria’s president (1999 to 2007), an era which he fluffed and debased by the very virtue of his crude masculine gruff, he has continued to reckon himself as the “father of modern Nigeria” and the foremost African statesman of the day. There is also a hint of a messianic fervor in his carriage.

    He would openly ride roughshod over luckless sitting president, Goodluck Jonathan, a neophyte he brazenly foisted on the country at the height of his megalomania. He tore his party’s membership card before a watching world to spite the man in the saddle and openly worked towards the electoral downfall of his party. Obj would have crushed this manner of ‘insurrection’ against his power and authority; he hated opposing ideas.

    A strongman not happy to be outside the ring, he recently handed to the president-elect, what he terms strategies for solving the nation’s problems. Obj’s unsolicited pieces of gem are minted from a think-tank he set up four months ago to set agenda for the incoming president. Wow, how perspicacious!

    The president-elect, General Mohammadu Buhari of course received the ‘great’ document with thanks. But Hardball can affirm that Obj would never have exhibited such grace. But more remarkably, Obj was not only stumped by these problems in his eight years, he was impregnably obdurate. And who would dare to empanel a body to advise an Obj presidency? He would be sure to shred your exertions right before you and in public glare and mock you to scorn.

    Who will rescue us from this ‘strongman’?

     

  • As OBJ suffers catalytic catharsis

    Ah, power must be a bastard and you can quote Hardball on that. Exactly 10 years ago, a certain President Olusegun Obasanjo was at the peak of his power. He was in the middle of his second and last term in office. He brooked no challenge to his power and authority. He ruled with so much alacrity, so much drunken omnipotence that he did literally whatsoever he wanted.

    He ‘captured’ the party that installed him to power and had it under his armpit. He would change its chairmen like he changed his under wears. And with each change, he polluted the party with lackeys and scallywags made in his own image. When the National Assembly sought to assert the principle of separation of powers, Obasanjo would simply reach for the axe and hack the ‘recalcitrant’ Senate President or Speaker of the House. There were four Senate Presidents in eight years and two Speakers who fought him to the ground every inch of the way.

    How wonderful life would be if it were a video machine to be played back at will on our palm like a magical device. But never mind dear reader, if you live long enough, the way the world goes geeky by the day, someone would invent something that would convert our memories into video.

    With that, Hardball would play back his memories of about ten years ago, showing that scene in which Chief Sunday Awoniyi, a staunch founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was lamenting Obasanjo’s relentless perfidies. In April 2005, Chief Awoniyi was as frustrated with President Obasanjo just as Obasanjo is frustrated with President Goodluck Jonathan today.

    Awoniyi accused Obasanjo of suffering from “spiritual corruption” which, accoding to him, flowed from Obasanjo’s Aso Rock. He went on to define it thus: “When a man is afflicted with spiritual corruption, he corrupts everything around him. He prefers to bring around himself, men who are tainted and morally depraved, and easily blackmailed or manipulated…one of the ugliest attributes of the spiritually corrupt is greed. Greed for power…”

    This perfectly encapsulates Obasanjo in his hey days. By 2005, Obasnjo had dispersed all the founding fathers of PDP. In a show of his peculiar male hormone, he hijacked the party and converted it to his personal estate. The party was run from Aso Rock and his word was its law. When the men who founded the party and understood its guiding ethic spoke, he abused them and called them ‘senile’.

    Today, Obasanjo makes a public show of tearing his PDP membership card. What poetic justice. My father used to joke that let those who imbibe snuff suffer the indignities of leaky noses. He also said that it is often better for a man to step on his excrement so that he will learn to be a lot more decorous in his toilet manners.

    In his valedictory speech, he said he would not be part of a party that would destroy Nigeria. That’s nice; what Hardball wants to describe as catalytic catharsis: some sort of spiritual cleansing for all his misdeeds. Shall we now all join hands in burying his abiku called PDP?

     

  • The dearth of quality research (II)

    In the past weeks, news media have been awash with the letter former President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote to President Goodluck Jonathan. Hardly any day passes without reference to the content of the controversial letter. After digesting the content of OBJ’s letter, Jonathan replied, addressing some of the issues raised by the former president.

    My major concern here is not about the letter or its content, but on research, as the title of my piece portends. I had to stand this concluding part down because of the more crucial issue of the faceoff between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government on the state of our varsities; thankfully, the issues have been resolved, at least for now.

    I concluded the first part with these words: “Years of sowing mediocrity later manifested in dearth of quality research and scholarship as we started reaping the ‘reward’ through flawed leadership in almost every facet of our national life.” I had no idea then that the issue of controversial letters would give this article more potency. Why am I saying this?

    As a communicator, I have closely observed the way we do things here without weighing them on the scale of time – as far as we are concerned, the past does not matter. How many of the president handlers – I wonder – knew that on September 25, 2005 Chief Orji Uzor Kalu, former ‘firebrand’ governor of Abia State, once wrote an angry letter to Obasanjo? As a writer and historian, I recollected that the letter was published in some newspapers – as the present letters were. It is instructive to note that to date no response came from the former president or his aid; I however stand to be corrected if there was a response.

    The charges Kalu levelled against the former president included a call for him to explain why he revoked the contract for the building of the National Stadium in Abuja, which was approved to be built along with a five-star hotel attached among other allegations. The paucity of researchers in the presidency and the response shows clearly where we are today.

    In 1975, Eugene Garfield, founder of the Institute for Scientific Information came out with the Impact Factor (IF) module; the IF of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in a journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the importance of a journal within specified fields. Journals with higher impact factors are deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. Since 1975, IF are calculated yearly for journals that are indexed in the Journal Citation Reports. Although high impact factored publications are hard to obtain, they are the closest objective means to access the productivity and promotion of researchers globally.

    As the citadel of advanced learning, research plays a fundamental role in the university system, in fact it is its lifeblood as lecturers are promoted by meeting research requirements. It is however worrisome that some Nigerian Universities have carried on to promote lecturers – sometime up to the cadre of professors – without serious consideration to this important global measure of scholarship. In some of these varsities, promotion had been based on the volume and quantity of printed articles mostly in local journals often reviewed by associates of the author. Are some of the researches published in these local journals relevant to the nation? This question is apt because it appears lecturers are only interested in having their ‘papers’ published oblivious of whether it makes an impact on the society or not.

    There is therefore a correlation between low quality education and the productivity of University graduates. The attenuation of quality invariably implies low quality graduates who cannot contribute substantially to the productivity of the economy. Today, millions of graduates in Nigeria are not employable because they lack employable skills and talents needed for a dynamic economy in the 21st century. As the graduate unemployment index soars, the indication is that the state of university education is worsening. This ugly trend is worsened by the fact that Nigeria has not defined her position in a fast globalising economy.

    If we have to play on the global scene therefore, we have to conform to global standards because barriers have been broken down and one standard applies to the world. For instance, indices used in assessing the best Universities in the world include: teaching strength and research; international reputation; teacher/student ratio; research impact which is calculated by measuring citations in bolometric indices per faculty member – that is a measure of articles published in international journals by Lecturers of the Universities -, and the proportion and percentage of international Students and international Staff on the Undergraduates and academic Staff roster of the Universities. How many of our varsities can boast of meeting these requirements?

    I will now try to situate where the problem lies. Innovations come from research that is why advanced economies spent money on research. But Nigeria spends a pitiable 0.1 per cent on research and development. Federal Universities spend about 1.3 per cent of their budgets on research. The implication is that technological breakthrough or development for that matter cannot happen without engaging in basic applied research.

    In advanced and serious economies also, most research is funded by the private sector; as such research results may be commercialised for profit maximization. It is little wonder then that it constitutes a veritable catalyst for economic development and advancement, but we have unfortunately neglected this critical aspect of quality education. Today, no Nigerian university is on the list of the top 1,000 schools around the world in terms of publication of research output. In this age of the internet, it is quite appalling that most university websites are drab and uninspiring.

    One of the critical issues in the last ASUU/FG faceoff was the challenge of under-funding the University system. But beyond this, it is clear that lack of research skills in modern methods, dearth of equipment/materials for carrying out state-of-the art research will remain with us for some time.

    Lecturers are often overloaded with teaching and administration schedules which leave them with very little time for research. Besides, most Universities have difficulty in accessing research funds, and the young lecturers in the Universities have little or no mentorship because the senior professors have been forced out of the system because of the harsh environment.

    Yet we are playing on a world stage where the key indices used in measuring varsities, according to the World Economic Forum, are growth competitiveness index (GCI) and public institution index (PII). In GCI, Nigeria ranks 12 in Sub-Saharan Africa (SAA), and 87 in the world. In terms of PII, Nigeria ranks 20 in SSA and 98 in the world. GCI uses hard data and survey data for ranking educational institutions. On the other hand, the PII indicates the state of the country’s public institutions. Nigeria ranks below such less endowed countries as Cameroon, Namibia, Ghana and Senegal. The general perception is that Nigerian Universities are not well positioned to contribute effectively to productivity, growth and the national economy.

    In the USA, a typical ratio of research and development for an industrial company is about 3.5per cent of revenues; this measure is called “R&D intensity.” A high technology company such as a computer manufacturer might spend 7 per cent. Although Allergan (a biotech company) tops the spending table with 43.4 per cent investment, anything over 15 per cent is remarkable and usually gains a reputation for being a high technology company. Companies in this category include pharmaceutical companies such as Merck & Co. (14.1 per cent) or Novartis (15.1 per cent), and engineering companies like Ericsson (24.9 per cent).

    Where is our private sector in all this? Yet, the main importance of research is to produce knowledge that can be applied outside a research setting. Research also forms the foundation of program development and policies everywhere around the universe because it solves existing problems of concern, tons of which we have here.

  • OBJ: I dey cry o

    OBJ: I dey cry o

    Hardball feels like singing a dirge, a sad, melancholic dirge upon reading the rambling missive of former President Olusegun Obasanjo to his anointed son and current president, Goodluck Jonathan. But the muse fails me; it must have journeyed to a faraway country, having found no sober soil here to sprout. I want to sing, to moan about the black egg laid by the dark crow seven moons ago which has now hatched into a malevolent vulture. I want to weep about the prodigal father who sired a son who would out-prodigal him. I want to cry on behalf of the wayward father but tears fail me, my eyes having been worsted by evil sights, is stark like the night thief’s.

    Hardball wants so much to laugh as our former president was wont at his opponents when he had them by their jolly sac; when he squeezed them with sardonic mirth and he would chant, “I dey laugh o.” I want to echo his laughter with peeling ecstasy but the situation is grave. See who is on the run now; see who is afraid now and crying wolf. He says they are training snipers; what a laugh! Does a president need to train snipers to eliminate people? Are there not trained snipers all over the world waiting to be beckoned upon? Why would any respectable eliminator leave an entire training base of evidence?

    The other day when our dear Bola Ige was vaporised, no evidence whatsoever was left. Even as Baba wrote this long, ‘love’ letter to his ‘son’, he never gave us a coherent answer about our Cicero. He who dispensed wisdom from his front pocket the way his contemporaries would only dispense lucre suddenly became a fool’s tale before our eyes. Marshal Harry met a similar fate. Over a dozen others too all fell under the watch of our Baba Obasanjo; not one was explained or unraveled. In fact, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) under his leadership was described as harbouring a “nest of killers.” Haba Baba, when did political killings become the sole franchise of the Abacha era? We were all here between 1999 and 2007; while the Abacha regime had a boisterous gang. PDP’s was a clandestine, sinister machine that ‘worked’ with an especial gruesomeness. The “nest” was not content to eliminate, it picked quarrelled with the cadaver and often went on to squash and pulverise it. Don’t remind us Baba.

    Every issue Baba brooked in his long, whimsical letter, he sowed the seed and perfected the act. He cries about honour, character and keeping word: he was accused of promising to do just a term by his vice. He did not only jettison that, he tried to damage the constitution and organised a voodoo national conference in quest of a third term. He rigged elections at will and all the ones he conducted (2003 and 2007) were all a travesty in the annals of polling in Nigeria.

    He says “Corruption has reached the level of impunity” but the Jonathan administration must have learnt all the tricks from his political ‘father’. Does Haliburton ring a bell? What about Siemens and Transcorp and power contracts, to name a few out of hundreds of blatant malfeasance that defined the Obasanjo era. Impunity! What is impunity? Who disobeyed Supreme Court rulings at will? Who used state powers to stage impeachments galore across states, sometimes with a handful of legislators and sometimes from hotel rooms? Who deployed police in Anambra to lock up a governor in the toilet while the state Assembly held a mock session that impeached him?

    Every line of that ego-boosting letter is a farce; let’s just call it a PDP tale, told by idiots full of sound and fury and not just signifying nothing but denigrating Nigeria and her people. But we take solace in the fact that the PDP undertakers are finally singing their end-song.

  • Now, OBJ spits on own grave

    Now, OBJ spits on own grave

    There are a thousand and one reasons to dislike former President Olusegun Obasanjo. What one can’t help but admire is his infantile garrulousness. After close to 12 years in office at the highest level of governance, many had expected that Baba would gloriously retire to his Ota farms, tending his chickens and enjoying fresh palm wine away from Abuja’s intriguing politics. No one had thought he would still be that active to disturb a nation’s peace with scathing parodies. It turned out that we had placed too much value on a man who worships nothing but his own ego. We may not have a sense of history but we are not that dumb not to understand why an Obasanjo would forever find it convenient to run his mouth riot on his former deputy, AtikuAbubakar or anyone for that matter. This man sees himself as some kind of superhuman. And he may deny it till the end of life; Obasanjo knows that there is more to his sour relationship with Atiku than the allegations of corruption. Central to this pathological heckling of Atiku at any given opportunity is the ‘disloyal’ role Atiku played in frustrating the self-perpetuation agenda otherwise known as tenure elongation in the days of the long knives. Second was the humiliation that Obasanjo went through in the hands of Atiku before he was eventually given the green light to contest for a second term in office. Aside these two, all other things seem to exist in Obasanjo’s fantasies.

     Before I proceed, I hasten to make this clarification. Atiku does not, by any standard, come close to anyone’s definition of a man without blemish. Like Obasanjo, he is part of the Nigerian problem. He may be a dogged fighter for whatever reasons; he is clearly not doing that purely out of a patriotic calling. He may not have won the war against Obasanjo in the struggle to remain in power; Atiku should be given the credit for winning a battle aimed at consigning him to the dustbin of history. It is also to his credit that the sucker punch he delivered on Obasanjo’s jaws some seven years back has turned the retired Army General into something of the proverbial bird with the broken beak. Perhaps, Obasanjo would have looked elsewhere for a toothpick if Atiku had not chickened out when his lieutenants had expected him to pull the trigger. Today, he is the victim of that grave mistake of 2003 when General Obasanjo was seeking a lifeline on bended knees!

    And, in continuation of the cravings to hit Atiku with a sledgehammer, Obasanjo was offered yet another opportunity to voice out his frustrations in a recent interview with “Zero Tolerance”, the in-house publication of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. It is amusing that an elder statesman so addressed does not see the joke in playing the judge and the jury in his own case. Besides, what sends Obasanjo on a binge of delirium is a delusional idea that he alone has the licence to label other politically-exposed persons as criminally corrupt. He alone, he also assumes, reserves the right to free others of the corruption tag. While it was easy for Mr. Squeaky Clean to dismiss his former deputy as an international money launderer frantically being sought by the government of the United States of America to answer to corruption charges, Obasanjo would be the first to plead with Nigerians to come up with evidence of official graft against notable Nigerians including ex-military President Ibrahim BadamosiBabangida, to enable the EFCC discharge its responsibility! Curious? Very curious!

     In his latest diatribe, Obasanjo, as usual, threw caution to the wind and carelessly engaged his oral gear. The rage he feels against his estranged deputy is packaged in the bitterness of his language. He just can’t wait to see Atiku in prison – any prison! He is enraged that the EFCC has not arrested Atiku and put him on trial for corruption as demanded by the FBI. He is bitter that his arch enemy has not visited the US so that he could be put on trial for corruption and jailed just like James Ibori met his waterloo in the United Kingdom. He is flustered that Atiku only visits Dubai and sees him to be perennially running away from the law in other countries.  Listen to him: “He travels? Travels to where? To Dubai? Let him go to America and return to Nigeria. Well, I don’t know what the EFCC has found out about him, but I don’t know if he can go to America. Do you know? I am asking you, do you know?”

     Question is: what bites Obasanjo? The answer is not that difficult after all. If he has not been tagged corrupt for the mere fact that he was mentioned in the Halliburton scam and several other deals perpetrated under his nose by some of his trusted aides, why this fixation on an Atiku-must-go-to-jail campaign? Besides, is it just a mere coincidence that the EFCC interview was released at a time Atiku regained some political relevance with the successful coup against Jonathan at the Peoples Democratic Party’s Special Convention a fortnight ago? Was Atiku the only politically-exposed person that was investigated and never tried by the EFCC? By now, it should be clear to Obasanjo that if Ibori could be arrested in Dubai and crated to the UK to face trial, it should not be difficult for the US government to arrest Atiku in the same place if it so desires. Or is it that Atiku travels to the country with fake identity? Now that Atiku has told the nation that his US visa has just been renewed, Obasanjo may need to write the US Ambassador to Nigeria, Terrence McCulley, to invalidate the visa!

     Interestingly, Obasanjo reserved some harsh words for the former chairman of the EFCC, Farida Waziri, in the controversial interview. He did not only pooh-pooh her for displaying crying incompetence but blurted that Farida facilitated Ibori’s escape to Dubai. In impugning the reputation of a woman who meritoriously served the Nigeria Police for 35 years, Obasanjo offered no convincing evidence other than the usual beer parlour rumour of Ibori playing a major role in Farida’s appointment. As far as he is concerned, no other person can do a better job of the EFCC than NuhuRibadu, his chosen one. That, in my view, is pedestrian and jaundiced logic. Even Ribadu would readily admit that he bungled key cases and needlessly haunted some persons just to please Obasanjo. The Atiku’s case should still be fresh in the memory.

     In all this, there are some positives. At least we now know that Farida could be privy to certain hidden truth about Obasanjo which has been buried in the Official Secrets Act for long. Thanks to an ex-president’s indiscretion in opening his mouth too wide, we may soon be availed with the sordid details of what went down behind the scenes should Farida go ahead with her threat to “open up on him.”

    Here is Farida on the marble: “If Obasanjo’s real age has not blurred his memory, I will like to remind him that I was a Commissioner of Police, Admin Force CID, CP General Investigations, CP Anti-fraud, CP X Squad, CP Police Special Fraud Unit where I secured the first conviction in a case of Advance Fee Fraud in Nigerian history.To further expose the height of mischief in the allegations, the past and present chairmen of the EFCC have both worked under me, yet someone can open his mouth to say I am not qualified to head the same agency.This is in addition to my educational qualifications, such as a first degree in Law, a Master’s degree in Law and another Master’s degree in Strategic Studies. I doubt if Obasanjo himself can boast of this level of educational qualifications.I will like to warn that those who live in glass house don’t throw stones and, as such, Obasanjo should not allow me open up on him. Respectable elder statesmen act and speak with decorum.”

    Hell, they say, hath no fury like a woman scorned. The mystery of how a nearly broke OBJ and his troubled farming operations became overnight financial success after a period in power waits to be unravelled. OBJ’s latest indecorous outburst and opprobrious rant against Atiku and Farida may well be the starting point of spitting on his own grave of infamy.  As a former crack detective in the anti-fraud unit of the police, Farida’s threat may be the beginning of the end for Obasanjo’s hollow triumphalism on corruption. Will Obasanjo dare Farida to lay it bare on the table or will he, in the twilight of his life, learn the wisdom in not throwing stones when living in a glass house of infamy? Time will tell.

  • Obj, IBB, Oldbreed and New

    Obj, IBB, Oldbreed and New

    For the second time in recent years, former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), has begged to differ from his “boss,” as he often likes to call General Olusegun Obasanjo (Obj), on the seemingly perennial debate about the Oldbreed political class versus the New.

    Tuesday August 13, Obasanjo, the only person to have served Nigeria as its leader in khaki (1976 to 1979) and mufti (1999 to 2007), came down heavily on the latter class of politicians like a ton of bricks. As a group they were, he said in effect, worse than useless. The occasion was the Fourth Annual Ibadan Sustainable Summit at Le Chateau, Bodija, Ibadan, where he was the guest speaker. His topic was Leadership in Africa’s Quest for Sustainable Development.

    As often happens on such occasions, what made the banner headlines the following day was not the paper the former president delivered. Rather, it was the extempore remarks he made in response to comments and questions by discussants of the paper and from the audience. The comment by Professor Mojeed Alabi, the first of the two discussants and a former Speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly, that the country’s problems stems mainly from the refusal of the Oldbreed to “step aside” – to borrow Babangida’s now famous phrase when he not-so-voluntarily left office in August 1993 – for the Newbreed apparently got old man Obasanjo’s dander up.

    The professor, he said in effect in a counterpoint, was talking so much rubbish. Many governors during his tenure were less than 50. The first Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Salisu Buhari, was even much younger, he pointed out. Yet the record of these Newbreed politicians on the whole was, he said, dismal.

    “We had some people who were under 50 years in leadership positions. One of them was James Ibori. Where is he today? One of them was Alamieyesiegha, where is he today? Lucky Igbinidion, where is he today? The youngest was the Speaker, Buhari. You can still recall what happened to him. You said Bola Tinubu is your master. What Buhari did was not any worse than what Bola Tinubu did. We got them impeached. But in this part of the world some people covered up the other man.”

    Trust the man not to leave out his deputy and eventual nemesis, Atiku Abubakar, in his list of villainous Newbreeds; the former vice-president, he found out after studying him for a year, he said, was too corrupt for him to have groomed as his possible successor.

    In short, the Newbreed, he seemed to say, should not complain anymore since they had their chance but blew it.

    This was the conclusion General Babangida, not surprisingly, found somewhat disagreeable, as a well known champion of the Newbreed even though he had had cause in recent times to express his disappointment at their record of performance in power, a complain which I once loudly thought on these pages meant he has at last broken faith with them.

    In a rejoinder to my article in question entitled “A Newbreed apart” (July 7, 2010), which was a tribute to Honourable Isa Kawu, a Newbreed member of the Niger State House of Assembly who had stood virtually alone as a thorn in the flesh of the state’s executive and has also stood almost alone as an example of a rare exception which proves the rule that, generally speaking, our politicians’ first commitment is to themselves and everyone else a distant second, Professor Sam Oyovbaire, my Political Science teacher at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in the early seventies and much later, Babangida’s minister of Information, said his principal never lost faith in the Newbreed.

    “It’s not true,” Oyovbaire said in his rejoinder, “that IBB has changed his views about the historic role and value of the ‘new breed’ segment of the political class. His well-honed critique of its disappointing performance from the Abacha era through the OBJ’s horrible legacy to date has been, as usual with the press mindset on anything IBB, badly twisted and made to hang! He believes in the potentials of the youths/new breed in the development process. Believe me on IBB’s thoughts.”

    On the occasion of his 72nd birthday last Saturday, the general seized the opportunity of an encounter with the press to re-iterate his faith in the Newbreed and disagree with his “boss” over his (the boss’s) expression of lack of faith in the competence and integrity of the Newbreed in politics.

    “I am not sure,” Babangida said during the encounter, “I read what he said neither am I sure he said so. In any case this is a matter of opinion…There are other young men who have done equally well.”

    The former military president is absolutely right to say Obasanjo is wrong to tar all Newbreed politicians with one brush. However, he too is wrong to think the role of the Oldbreed in bringing about development in society is essentially marginal simply because the future belongs to the Newbreed.

    In other words, both of them are wrong to think leadership is essentially a matter of age. It is not. The virtues of leadership have never been a preserve of any age group. There are good and bad, wise and foolish, etc, old men and women, just as there are good and bad, wise and foolish, etc, young men and women.

    Obasanjo may be right to say that right now the preponderance of Newbreed politicians have proved incompetent and corrupt but to conclude, as he seemed to have done in his counterpoint to Professor Alabi, that governance is therefore best left largely, if not solely, in the hands of the Oldbreed is to mistake correlation for causation.

    Not only does he seem to have mixed correlation and causation in his conclusion, the old man was characteristically selective in his choice of examples to buttress his condemnation of the Newbreed. Conspicuously missing from his list of villainous Newbreed politicians was his own daughter, Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello who rode into the Senate more on his coattail as president than on her own merit but whose tenure as chairman of the important Senate Committee on Health was scandal ridden.

    Even worse for the selective amnesia was his remark that the media and the leadership of a section of the country employed double standards in their treatment of the accusations against Speaker Buhari and Governor Tinubu in 1999 that they forged their university certificates. While he made sure, he said, that Buhari was impeached – itself an admission of his interference in the internal affairs of the federal legislators, something he had often denied – “in this part of the world some people covered up the other man,” meaning, of course, Tinubu.

    What the former president forgot to mention was, first, he wilfully ignored to check out information in the open that the young man might have forged not only his university certificate but also that of his age, all in his bid to impose a leadership on the House which he could easily manipulate. Second and worst of all, he conveniently forgot to mention that he quickly granted the former speaker presidential pardon after he was tried and convicted and sentenced to jail with an option of fine which he quickly paid.

    However, the one point the former president made which is hard, if not impossible, to disagree with is that development is not just about leadership alone. “If you talk about good leadership,” he said, “you should also talk about good followers.”

    The Encarta Concise English Dictionary defines leadership as “the ability to guide, direct, or influence people.” We have remained underdeveloped precisely because we all think the virtues needed to be able to guide, direct or influence others are different from those needed to be good followers. In this sense, the leader/follower dichotomy is a false one. The fact is that only a good follower can make a good leader because, leader or follower, you need a sense of equity, self-sacrifice, self-discipline, compassion, personal integrity, competence, among others, to be the good and honest person any society needs a preponderance of to make any progress.

    However, in so far as the leader/follower dichotomy exits in our minds, the burden of cultivating these virtues lies more with leaders, elected or self-imposed, than with followers. For, without enough leaders willing and able to practice the virtues of being good and honest men and women, the vicious circle between bad leadership and bad followership will never be broken.

    The problem with Nigeria is that we have engaged for far too long in a futile debate about the false dichotomy between Oldbreed and Newbreed politicians when it is pretty obvious that the answer is Good-breed.

    To that extent, the Oldbreed, Obasanjo included, must accept greater responsibility than the Newbreed for our lack of development because, by merely preaching virtues they hardly practiced, they have only succeeded in creating a Newbreed of leaders – and followers – after their own poor image.

     

  • Clinging to the serpent for help

    Clinging to the serpent for help

    That govs had to rush to IBB and OBJ to save democracy shows the depth we have  sunk 

    In one breath, it is good to commend the five northern governors who, seeing the way the country is drifting like a rudderless ship, took the matter to three of the country’s former heads of state. Yet, in another breath, one could also query the wisdom behind the decision. In a country where birds are no longer singing like birds and rats are not crying like rats, that is exactly what to do: look for people with the experience to intervene and get the country back on track. It is only when there are no elders that a country goes into ruins; it is also when the family head is no more that the house becomes desolate. Nigeria, as it is today is like the proverbial child strapped into its mother’s back but with its head bent. When that happens, then the elders around have become the exact opposite of what true elders should be.

    The governors in question are Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto), Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) and Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano). Nyako was not at the meeting held last Monday, which lasted two hours at the Presidential Lodge in Minna, the Niger State capital as he was reported to have been held back in Yola by a meeting with a Camerounian envoy. He was however represented by his deputy. They met with Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar. The good thing about the development is that the five governors are all of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The governors had earlier paid a similar visit to former President Olusegun Obasanjo on July 20.

    The visits afforded these former leaders the opportunity to play the roles they hardly could play well. General Babangida in particular must have relished the visit because it afforded him an opportunity to come into national limelight once again. Hear him: “I want to commend the governors and some of their colleagues. I was very impressed because they have seen the problem of the country as our problem and they have taken the right steps to consult widely in trying to find solution to some of these problems.

    “These governors are real patriots and I am very happy and I told them so,” Gen. Babangida said after the meeting.

    Now, what are Babangida’s antecedents? This is a man on whom we can write volumes without making reference to any library. This is a man who had all the opportunity in the world to write his name in gold but chose, rather, for selfish reason, to write it on the marble of infamy. If we look at his economic programme, the so-called Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP); it was a monumental failure. It was during his reign that the country’s currency lost its essence and it has never recovered from the slide of that era. In Babangida’s time, his go the slumber to talk about corruption despite the fact that the issue had become a cankerworm then.

    Babangida, perhaps, might have been forgiven for all of his maladministration if only he had honoured his promise to hand over to a democratically elected government. But, rather than do that, he chose to scuttle the process in spite of the billions that his government sank into a transition programme that failed, in line with the design of the evil genius. Babangida kept shifting the goal post, banning and unbanning politicians depending on his whims and caprices. As is usual with all evil geniuses, Babangida eventually shot himself in the foot when the June 12, 1993 election finally held in a peaceful atmosphere, contrary to the chaos that the Babangida government had expected. After failing to stop the election via a kangaroo court ruling on the eve of the election, and seeing that Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola was coasting to victory, Babangida summoned the courage to finally annul the result of the election, adjudged the fairest and freest in the country’s history. Now how can a man with this kind of antecedent save democracy?

    In the same vein, if it takes the deep to communicate with the deep, I do not know what lesson someone like Chief Obasanjo wants to teach when the issue is democracy. His eight-year tenure, from 1999 to 2007 was replete with various acts that were detrimental to democratic ethos. Is it his seizure of Lagos funds for months that we want to commend? Or the illegal manner by which some governors were removed by people backed by the Obasanjo presidency.

    As a matter of fact, this is the script that his estranged political son, President Goodluck Jonathan, has been playing and which is now heating the polity unduly. He did it in his home state of Bayelsa and got away with it. Now, he is experimenting with it in Rivers State, where he wants to remove the democratically elected governor, Rotimi Amaechi, by hook or crook. Although Jonathan’s presidency has continued to deny its involvement in the Rivers fracas, the more it does that, the more opprobrium it gets from Nigerians who are seeing through the presidency’s hands in all the shenanigans going on in that state.

    When the president of the federal republic descends so low as to be involved in the politics of a mere governors’ club and he gets rubbished in the process, whose fault is that? And, if the presidency still has not learnt its lesson and be able to truly gauge its true worth in the eye of the average Nigerian correctly, then it should have no one but itself to blame for whatever disgrace it attracts to itself. It is this Dance Macabre by the presidency that has made the five governors rush to where there can never be salvation in search of solution to some self-inflicted crises.

    That is the kind of thing that happens when one is caught up in the circle of confusion. The tendency is for such a drowning person not to mind clinging even to a serpent for help. Going to Babangida and Obasanjo to help solve problems of democratic nature is akin to asking someone to give what he does not have. Clearly, these two generals do not have any answer to the problems we have at this point in time. The only good thing working for General Abubakar is the fact that he promised to hand over the reins of power to a democratic government and he did within what we considered a reasonable time. But the choice of the then powers-that-be (Obasanjo) has turned out to be a disaster. But, if we can give General Abubakar the benefit of the doubt; we cannot for Generals Obasanjo and Babangida. Indeed, but for our common resolve, Babangida would have returned after he was forced to ‘step aside’ in August 1993. Nigerians seem unanimous in telling Babangida that ‘you step aside today, ‘you step aside forever’. In like manner, Obasanjo would have got a third term through the back door if we were not resolute in saying ‘no’.

    Politicians in the country have to ponder this sad development. By going to Babangida and Obasanjo in search of solution to democratic challenges is indication of how things have degenerated in the country. It shows the depth to which we have sunk as a people because, apart from General Abubakar, the other two generals are in the red in terms of goodwill and can therefore not draw anything from its bank. We gave them enough rope to tie themselves and they did not disappoint us. How then can they be the ones to rescue democracy, the very thing on whose grave they danced naked in their eras in government and in power?