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Tag: Olusegun Obasanjo

  • ‘Court will determine Oyinlola’s fate’

    ‘Court will determine Oyinlola’s fate’

    Ogun State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chairman Chief Bayo Dayo spoke on former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s   actitivies in the chapter, the rift between Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola and the national leadership, the postponed  Southwest Congress and preparation for next year’s elections. Assistant Editor LEKE SALAUDEEN met him.

    Are you reaching out to former President Olusegun Obasanjo  for reconciliation, since he said he had forgiven those that offended him?

    We don’t have personal issues with him. He is the leader of our party and the country. In politics, especially in a large family like Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), we are bound to have differences. No one will ever tell an elderly man that he was wrong. In Yoruba tradition, it is the youth that seek forgiveness from the elders. Whether we are right or wrong, we are begging our father, Chief Obasanjo, to forgive and forget. Any day we meet him, we shall bow for him as a mark of respect.

    As regards opening a line of communication with him, that is beyond our level. We are too junior to him. That is meant for the party’s top hierarchy. Being a former President, it is the party leadership at the national level that will deal with him, not state party officials like me. The gap between us and Baba Obasanjo is very wide. We are too junior to him.

    It was reported that the party leadership is making moves to reinstate Olagunsoye Oyinlola as the national scribe. Is Ogun chapter in support?

    I am not aware of that development. I know that our leaders would always follow due process. The case is still pending at the Supreme Court. Until the apex court gives judgment, we will not make comment. It will amount to subjudice to make comments on a matter pending in the court. I think we should exercise patience.

    Why has Ogun State PDP taken special interest in Oyinlola’s issue?

    Everything about the PDP started in Ogun State. We don’t want imposition in Ogun State. We believe in party discipline. We stand for internal democracy in our party. The new National Chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu, is a man of principle. He has respect for the rule of law. He doesn’t believe in imposition, but due process.

    Are you aware that all actions taken by the incumbent National Secretary would be declared illegal, if your appeal at the Supreme Court fails?

    Let me tell you, Oyinlola doesn’t belong to the PDP anymore. He cannot claim to be a member of our great party. Remember that Oyinlola, along with his cohorts, walked out on the national convention of the party last year. He has been suspended for anti-party activities. You can’t build something on nothing. He was the secretary of what they called the new PDP, which doesn’t exist anymore. All his co-travellers have gone to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Oyinlola has left the PDP. I don’t know where he belongs.

    Concerned members of the PDP in Ogun State have written a petition to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) challenging your leadership. What’s your comment?

    I am not aware of any petition. We don’t have factions in Ogun PDP, but groups. For instance, I’m a member of Jubril Martins Kuye (JMK) group. People are fond of writing meaningless petitions. This executive I’m heading was validated by the court. If they are not satisfied with the judgment, they should appeal. They are crying over something that is not within their reach. I can assure you that no group has challenged the authority of the present executive of the PDP in Ogun State. Only selfish members that are looking for short cut to reach their destination are creating the impression that there is crisis in the party.

    Is it true that there is a working accord between the PDP and the Labour Party, ahead of 2015?

    I am not aware of any working accord. All I know is that members of Labour Party have been crossing over to the PDP in recent times. Ogun State PDP door is wide open to everybody, including Otunba Gbenga Daniel and his Labour Party members. People don’t understand that Gbenga Daniel did a lot for the PDP. He left the party in annoyance. The way out is to appeal to him with a view to bringing him back into the fold. That we have been doing for a very long time now. We are ready to beg others who have defected to return to ensure the PDP remains a strong and a formidable party. I prefer working for my enemy within the party, if I know he will help us win election, rather than a close friend that has no electoral value. The door is open to all groups that want to join the PDP. If Daniel wants to come back, he’s welcome.

    Which of the senatorial zones is likely to produce the party’s governorship candidate for 2015?

    We have tried zoning many times in the PDP, but it has failed us. When it is zoned to a particular area, aspirants from other senatorial zones have always kicked against it. Then, you spend valuable time that should be spent on the field on reconciliation. The governorship ticket is open to the three senatorial districts, even though some people are in favour of a particular zone.

    Will the candidate emerge through primaries or through consensus?

    We shall create a level playing ground for all aspirants. Where the consensus option fails, we shall go for the primaries. Even, if only one aspirant disagrees with the consensus arrangement, we will have no other choice but to hold primaries. The executive does not have a particular person in mind. I want to do something that I can defend before my Creator. I can assure you that we shall conduct free, fair and transparent primaries when the time comes.

    Are you worried that the Southwest Congress of PDP is yet to hold?

    It is most unfortunate that we don’t have the  Southwest executive in place. However, we’ve got an assurance from the National Chairman that the Southwest congress will hold before the party’s mini-convention holding before the end of May.

    What’s your assessment of the on-going National Conference?

    I think we should give the National Conference a chance. The conference has just approved chairmen and members of various committees and has settled down for serious business.  Now that the conference has dissolved into committees, far reaching decisions on issues that have defied solutions over the years are bound to be made. It is a good thing that Nigerians of different ethnic nationalities are coming together to discuss the problems of the country and find solutions to them. I am very optimistic that Nigeria will benefit immensely from the report of the National Conference. President Goodluck Jonathan meant well in constituting the conference.

    What are the chances of the PDP in Ogun State in 2015?

    The PDP is the party to beat in Ogun State. It is the only party that is functional in the state. Members of the opposition parties are decamping to the PDP on weekly basis. While other parties are engrossed in internal crisis and parallel congresses, we are consolidating. I do not have any doubt in my mind that the PDP is progressing, waxing stronger and making gains. I am sure the party will, by the grace of God, win the 2015 general elections.

     

     

     

     

  • Rebasing our GDP and the Paris Club debt relief

    Rebasing our GDP and the Paris Club debt relief

    When our economy was rebased on April 6 making it the largest in Africa, ahead of South Africa’s, the continent’s erstwhile Number One, there was celebration in Abuja, albeit not as loud as that nearly nine years ago over the Paris Club debt relief.

    Then, President Olusegun Obasanjo made a special national broadcast on June 30 in which he expressed “great joy” at the announcement by the Paris Club of an “offer in principle” of relief from the debts the country owed it. At that time we were said to owe the club $30.515 billion. It said it would forgive $18 billion provided we paid $12, half in July 2002, the rest by the year’s end. In addition we were also expected to fulfil the terms of a supposedly autonomous Policy Support Instrument (PSI) but which, for all practical purposes, was the World Bank’s infamous Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) in all but name.

    The next day all the national media hailed the announcement as one of the country’s greatest achievements, if not the greatest. Many Nigerians fell over themselves in congratulating the president for what they said was his historic achievement. Some even exceeded themselves by dubbing him the father of Nigeria’s new independence, after the first from our colonial masters in 1960. The president himself, apparently overjoyed by the deal, told representatives of the Organised Private Sector who went to the Presidential Villa to congratulate him that the relief “will remove the burden of debt on Nigerians today and in the future.”

    Those who were sceptical that the announcement was truly a cause for “great joy” were dismissed as inconsequential spoilsports, even killjoys. In a reply to critics of the onerous conditionalities of the relief in a widely published article in July, an apparently angry Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the minister of finance who was central to securing the relief, said it was a fact and whether the “tiny minority (of sceptics) likes it or not, Nigeria will make use of this change.”

    A less charitable Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the suspended governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, then the managing director of First Bank, writing in support of the minister said those unhappy with the terms of the relief were the much pilloried “Babangida Boys.” Nigeria, he said, should fulfil the terms of the relief “even it means emptying the reserve before the locusts return for a second helping.” His “locusts” were obviously the “Babangida Boys”.

    A more subdued Dr Mansur Mukhtar, then director-general of the Debt Management Office (DMO) and a key player in securing the relief, writing in Thisday (July 30, 2005) also in support of the finance minister, said it made good economic sense to use our reserves to “secure a permanent exit from the debt trap.”

    On October 25, 2005, President Obasanjo made another broadcast on the relief when it went from being a mere offer in principle to a virtual reality. His broadcast was against the background of the earlier loss of his wife, Stella, and an air crash which claimed many lives. Still, he said, Nigeria had cause to celebrate its freedom from its debt, even if the celebration was to be subdued.

    Nearly nine years on, it is now obvious that the heady official self-congratulations in 2005 over the Paris Club debt relief were not as justified as its enthusiasts tried to make it. Certainly the promise they said it held for the prospects of a brighter Nigerian economy has not been fulfilled. Instead we seem headed for another debt trap, possibly worse.

    That we are headed back into the debt trap is obvious from an interview with the director-general of the DMO, Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, published in the Nigerian Tribune of December 27, 2012. In that interview he said our debt stock as at September that year was $12.5 billion, $6.2 external, the rest internal. His projections for the external debts were $12.16 for 2013, $14.58 billion for 2014 and $17.76 billion for 2015. For the domestic debts he projected $7.12 for 2013, $7.79 for 2014 and $8.44 for 2015.

    Both Dr Nwankwo and his boss, the finance minister, say there is no cause for concern that we will return to the old debt trap, on present reckoning. Indeed, our chief debt manager last year told Leadership (October 6, 2013) that the country “is under-borrowing.”

    Perhaps so. But then this was precisely what we were told the first time we were dragged, kicking and screaming, into taking our first jumbo loan under General Obasanjo as military head of state in the late seventies. Look where it eventually landed us.

    More importantly, the lot of the vast majority Nigerians has only got progressively worse since 2005, not better. This much is obvious from the figures from our National Bureau of Statistics, which showed that the country’s poverty incidence worsened from 54.4% in 2004 to 71.5% in 2011. In absolute numbers, this was from 69 million to 120 million. More likely than not matters have only got worse since then, considering the pervasive insecurity in the land alone.

    The obvious big lesson in all this is that our government, like most governments the world over – but more so in our case – has become more concerned with public relations than with substance. In other words our government had become more concerned with pleasing and impressing outsiders and a charmed circle of a few insiders than in making the ordinary Nigerian happy and satisfied.

    The official response to the rebasing of our economy last month clearly shows that this lesson has not been learnt. From the president and the finance minister down to supporters of the administration, it seems to have been celebrations galore, albeit more subdued than those of the debt relief.

    In a short statement on his Facebook wall the day after the rebasing, our president, for example, called it a “feat” collectively achieved by Nigerians which should be celebrated. The revision of the size of our economy may not be mere trickery, as The Economist said in an editorial in its edition of April 12. But it truly beggars belief that our president, who holds a doctorate degree in a science subject, would call a mere statistical recalculation to get the true size of our economy an economic feat worth celebrating by Nigerians, if not by himself personally.

    “While this calls for celebration,” the president said on his Facebook wall, “I personally cannot celebrate until all Nigerians can feel the positive impact of our growth. There are still too many of our citizens living in poverty.”

    That his reason for personally abjuring any celebrations was not sincere soon became evident when he rejected the latest World Bank report which classified Nigeria as an extremely poor country, along with China, India, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    This was during his speech at this year’s Workers’ Day parade on May 1st at Eagle Square in Abuja. Nigeria, he said, was not poor because it has produced Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, and it could also boast of the largest number of Africans with private jets! Clearly this was a sharp contradiction of his Facebook statement that there were too many poor Nigerians for him to celebrate the country’s new Number One status on the continent.

    Our finance minister, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, must have been thoroughly embarrassed by her boss’s incredible definition of poverty as a development economist. She had, indeed, agreed with her erstwhile employers – she’s been on sabbatical of sorts from her job as managing director of the World Bank – when she said “Most middle-income countries including Brazil have large numbers of poor people. That is the reality of today and Nigeria is no exception.”

    Even then she seemed to share in a not-so-obvious way the president’s belief that the rebasing of our economy is worth celebrating. The rebasing, she said at a workshop on “A Reflection of Nigeria GDP Rebasing: Issues, Facts and Fiction” organised by Kukah Centre in collaboration with her ministry in Abuja, “was neither done for optimism nor for pessimism nor cynicism and I find it quite astonishing that people are commenting on this.”

    Her full remarks left no one in doubt that she was unhappy with widespread cynicism about the exercise. Yet she should know that if many people read politics into the exercise, her boss, more than anyone, was to blame because of the not-too-subtle way he tried to make political mileage out of it.

    Nigeria may have overtaken South Africa as the continent’s Number One economy. But as The Economist editorial in question said, it still has a lot to do if it is not to remain a giant with feet of clay. Nigeria, the magazine said, has to, among other things, tackle corruption, produce more electricity, transform the country’s dilapidated infrastructure and, above all, tackle unemployment.

    The record of this administration on all these counts remains abysmal. So far it has not demonstrated any will to put that record behind it. Instead it seems determined to rely on ethnic and religious emotions to return to power in 2015.

    Rebasing the country’s Gross Domestic Production will not make any difference to the country’s status as a poor country if President Jonathan succeeds in returning to power by appealing to emotions rather than by proving to Nigerians that his transformation agenda is no longer the mere sloganeering that it has been since 2011.

     

  • Obasanjo: Lamido can rule Nigeria

    Obasanjo: Lamido can rule Nigeria

    FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo has said Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido is competent to rule the country in 2015.

    Obasanjo said this in Dutse, the state capital, yesterday when he visited the state.

    He said given Lamido’s background and pedigree he is capable of ruling the country.

    His words: “Given his background, performance and credibility, he is competent. With his exposure, he can stand shoulder to shoulder with anybody.

    “If it is the wish of the people, it is okay. He did not tell me he is wishing but being the wish of the people let wait and see. Based on his track record, would you say he is not competent?”

    The former President said he was in the state to adopt a school under the Obasanjo foundation and train girls.

    Obasanjo said the rationale behind supporting girl child education in Jigawa is to train and bring them up with ideals needed for good leadership.

    “Our hope is to produce future leaders who would grow up with one Nigeria in their subconscious, committed and patriotic, those who understand that self is not good enough.”

    Obasanjo praised Lamido for the construction of the “best international airport” in the country within a short time.

  • Fathers of the Bride

    Fathers of the Bride

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has in recent months had the pleasurable duty of giving out a succession of his children’s hands in marriage. Perhaps the assignment is beginning to take it toll-requiring him to seek a little assistance. Here he is joined by the Ogun State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun (left), to lead Obasanjo’s daughter, Oludamilola to the altar during her wedding held at Chapel of Christ the Glorious King, Abeokuta yesterday.

  • Jonathan and 2015

    Jonathan and 2015

    Since former President Olusegun Obasanjo tamed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during his eight turbulent years in power, the party had become unrecognisable both as a party, in its fundamental sense, and as a democratic institution, in its structural and operational sense. All it required for the party to retain and nurture its new identity and continue to decay magnificently was for Chief Obasanjo’s successors to be tarred with the same imperious and imposing brush. Luckily for the party, it had a succession of equally overbearing chairmen eager to lend their talents and services, not to say their lack of critical thinking, to the presidents that succeeded Chief Obasanjo. The party thus mastered the art of motion without debate, premise without conclusion, form without substance, and silence without reflection.

    This, therefore, was the ecosystem that produced President Goodluck Jonathan. When he emerged as running mate to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua for the 2007 election, Chief Obasanjo had cleared the way and silenced the opposition within the party. And when it came to the turn of Dr Jonathan to take over from President Yar’Adua as acting president, and to contest in 2011 on his own merit, he was not unmindful of his party’s new political culture. Those within his party he could not browbeat, he bribed; and those he could not bribe, he dealt with brutally. If his opponents within the party thought he was easy meat, he gave them a lesson in life and politics they would never forget. Chief Obasanjo was not always successful in dealing with opponents outside his party, for they were recalcitrant and querulous. But Jonathan too has met more than his match in the opposition, for they have not lost any of their fire and truculence.

    Yet, of all the sure things in Nigerian politics today, probably the most certain is that Dr Jonathan will contest the 2015 presidential election. And given the nature and character of the PDP, it is more than certain that if anyone will contest against him, it will be merely a formality to dignify the party, raise its esteem in the eyes of the people as a democratic institution, and give the false impression that neither the party nor Dr Jonathan engages in the tyranny that has become the PDP’s sinews. Already, party chieftains and rank and file have lined up ingloriously behind Dr Jonathan for the 2015 race. They all understand on which side their breads are buttered. They are not disconcerted by the sham enthusiasm and offensiveness with which they sell the president’s candidacy. They fiercely urge him on and impress it on him that their assurances are all he needs to win.

    But except Dr Jonathan is telling himself a lie and believing it, and the people around him are living in denial, they know the only chance they have of winning the 2015 race is for the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) to field an unelectable presidential ticket. A few months ago, before the insecurity problem magnified into an ogre, Dr Jonathan’s chances rested on the queer dynamics of the contest, especially the fact that he hails from a minority tribe and evokes hope in others like him tired of the tyranny of majority tribes that everyone, irrespective of state of origin, can successfully aspire to the presidency. There is also the unsettling use of religion as a tool of political mobilisation, which the president has raised into virtuoso art. Despite the dangers of elevating religion into the political arena in a country lacking in self-moderation in both politics and religion, Dr Jonathan has avidly plumbed that depth and made himself into some sort of quixotic religious champion.

    From all indications, however, and in the face of the worst security challenges the country has ever had to contend with, neither religious affiliation nor area of origin will avail a politician much. The more Boko Haram terrorists inflict punishment on the country, whether in the Northeast or in the suburbs of Abuja, the more Dr Jonathan’s government demonstrate its impotence. Waves upon waves of attacks elicit from the presidency only messages of condolence and the summoning of security meetings. There are no new approaches, no inspiring and rousing talk of steely resolve in moments of national angst; and beyond cavalier wish of victory, there are no demonstrations of hope and confidence that the terror monster can indeed be defeated. As the Boko Haram attacks become more audacious and telling, so the Jonathan government has become more stupefied and feckless, sometimes even showing the violent sect sinister respect, and at other times pledging to it, out of desperation and fear, a most unnerving and counterproductive clemency.

    It must be noted that Dr Jonathan seized upon the moronic tools of ethnicity and religion to anchor and give fillip to his flagging campaign because he despairs at ever finding concrete developmental achievements to parade. The economy has not yielded to his panaceas, nor has the society responded to his native charms. Even his talisman, which many tie teleologically to his name, has failed to reorder politics beyond his bucolic and innocent sermonizing. The consequence of these multiple failures is that, even without the aggravation Boko Haram’s terror was always capable of causing, the Jonathan government was doomed, to put it mildly. If these multiple failures irritate and vex the electorate, nothing rouses them into a greater rage than the poor judgement the president often exhibited whenever he confronted the mundane issues of the day.

    The country has often been treated to his quaint and outrightly unsophisticated views on what should pass as the philosophical challenges of the day, and to his dour responses to the ordinary provocations of the people and especially the opposition. He dragged his feet on the Stella Oduah scandal and impatiently and infuriatingly dismissed our concerns because, as the Information minister Labaran Maku said, critics and the opposition politicised everything. Even when he sacked Ms Oduah, Dr Jonathan did it reluctantly, sullenly and bad-temperedly. The president has also ignored our irritations on the Diezani Alison-Madueke affair involving frivolously and expensively chartered jets and unremitted oil receipts, perhaps because we also ‘politicise’ the shocking disclosure of opaque public accounting and suspected sleaze in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources. And he has done absolutely nothing about the Abba Moro Immigration Service recruitment scandal, perhaps, this time, because the Internal Affairs minister is backed by the president’s arch supporter, Senate President David Mark.

    By trivialising public administration and policy so abysmally, Dr Jonathan illustrates and underscores his perfunctory and emotive approach to governance. This attitude hardly conduces to electoral triumphs as much as it provokes angry rejection. And by presiding over a government that tolerates ministers who sue the legislature to stall investigations, the rot in the system, not to say in the Jonathan presidency, can’t be more complete. So, Dr Jonathan can’t run on achievements, and he can’t run on sound judgement either, for after all, nothing exhibits poor judgement as his refusal to empathise with Borno families whose teenage daughters were abducted by Boko Haram militants, possibly for sex slavery.

    Indeed, Dr Jonathan is cornered, just as his supporters are irrational to still embrace a president who can’t run on his records or on his ideas, or as it is becoming apparent, given his considerable staidness and lack of grit, on his personality. He will run only on if the opposition APC makes the wrong presidential ticket choice. The APC is still in a quandary over the 2015 ticket, perhaps still consulting. The party will require the highest gift of clairvoyance to do what is right, and to, as it were, read the mind of God. If it is any consolation to them, let them consult Churchill, Nixon, JFK and De Gaulle when those statesmen had to make life-changing and life-defining decisions without the faintest idea what powerful changes the outcomes would trigger. God help the APC.

    In short, in a free and fair election, Dr Jonathan and the PDP can’t win the 2015 presidential election except the APC loses it. Given the president’s string of bad decisions, bad judgement and bad and ineffective policies, and notwithstanding his constant and exasperating resort to ethnic emotionalism and religious grandstanding, the initiative is no longer in his hands; it is in the hands of those he likes to romanticise as his enemies. Let these opposition enemies, therefore, be as ruthless as Chief Obasanjo was when that wily farmer and general corners his enemies, an idiosyncrasy that took the former president repeatedly but undeservedly to heights of glory and splendour in his many tumultuous decades on earth, starting from the time his friend Major Kaduna Nzeogwu planned a coup without telling him, and his former boss General Murtala Mohammed died alone on the streets of Lagos.

  • Open Letter to President Jonathan

    SIR: Early 2006, I wrote President Olusegun Obasanjo, pleading he starts work on the dream Great Nigeria. Past Nigerian leaders dreamed of Great Nigeria too but unless a dream is interpreted and implemented, it remains a dream or mere illusion. The Great Nigeria dream has not been interpreted or implemented. But it is no fantasy. It happens that no Joseph has stepped out to give clues.
    Sir, I am not a preacher or the son of a prophet but I know for sure that Nigeria’s greatness is of God. Nigeria has everything she needs to be great.  If she fails to answer her calling, just too bad! Any man or nation that heaven blesses highly must not toy with it. Nigeria’s greatest assets are human, not oil. If the core assets are not well managed, they will turn disasters; walking bombs… just beginning to show.
    Greatness is never accidental. Great nations give the world something great and none became great with imitating others. Nigeria’s greatness was given. The black race has not given the world one great nation. It lies with Nigeria. One great man does not make a nation great. Nelson Mandela was a great man as also Alexander the Great, but they did not make their countries great.
    Mr. President, it is impossible to fix Nigeria without knowing her. Nigeria’s past leaders failed because they did not know Nigeria. Did they sense the significance of the Rivers Niger and Benue, they would have joined hands and success would have smiled on them and the nation.
    Sir, mass poverty, corruption are avoidable; curable diseases that Nigeria can fix in 15 years. If she cannot wipe mosquitoes in six years, then what hope with armed gangs? Surely Nigeria will do a dozen great things over the next 10 years.
    Apartheid, greed, corruption, deceit, conceit, mass unemployment, disunity, poverty, wickedness, diseases, indolence, insecurity and impunity have joined forces to scorn Nigeria. Mr. President and all Nigerians are dared to fight or submit. Sir, will Nigeria fight or submit?
    Apartheid rules Nigeria. Democracy cannot hand three percent of a nation 75 percent of her wealth. Let’s face it: Neither the National Assembly nor the National Conference is the problem or solution to Nigeria’s woes. The Presidency– leadership – is!
    Recall Sir; the fanfare with which the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) was launched in 2003. States had their version (SEEDS) as also the local governments.
    The Presidency, the National Economic Council, the Economic Management Team, National Council on Development Planning, the Joint Planning Board, the Council of Elders, Ministers, past Secretaries to the Government, Permanent Secretaries, the Economic Summit Group, NECA, MAN, Labour, Civil Society and a 35-member Drafting Committee joined hands. The government promised NEEDS would reorient national values, reduce poverty, create wealth and generate jobs. Ten years later, NEEDS is history. No one takes responsibility; no remorse!
    Every great nation gave the world something great. Greece gave democracy, the Olympiads. Egypt gave the pyramids, astrology. China, India, Israel, Italy, Great Britain, Russia, Germany each gave something great.
    France reinvented democracy to overtake Greece. America did same and overtook Europe. Nigeria must reinvent democracy to enter the road to her destiny. And the time is NOW.
    Mr. President, I beseech you in the name of God Almighty: Please start work now on the dream Great Nigeria. We have wasted years at high costs: despair, avoidable pains and deaths. Nigeria is at the crossroads. More delays, one false step and the costs would be one too much.

    • Anokwuru Richard Anyamele.
    Lagos

  • Obasanjo shielded oil thieves, says Alamieyesiegha

    Obasanjo shielded oil thieves, says Alamieyesiegha

    Former Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyesiegha has accused former President Olusegun Obasanjo of shielding oil thieves during his administration.
    Alamieyesiegha made the allegation yesterday at an interaction session between the National Conference Committee on Public Finance and Revenue and officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
    The former governor, who said he was part of those who engineered the arrest of some oil thieves in Bayelsa State, regretted what he called the high level conspiracy, whichmade it impossible to stop the crime.
    He said: “I had an experience. Tankers were loaded in Bayelsa. I got the information and laid ambush for them and arrested them. About 14 big tankers and they were handed over to the police.
    “They were charged to court and the judge ordered that the product should be tested. NNPC was invited, they came, took the sample and after a week the result came out as agro chemical and they were all released.
    “I went to President Obasanjo; I accused him of being the chief bunkerer.
    “It became so hot that I was persuaded to follow him to his office. He held my hand and we entered. So there is actually enough intelligence that is open to the Presidency.
    “Obasanjo started mentioning names. I said, ‘oh, you are the chief bunkerer; I confirm, you know them. Don’t call me again’”
    The former governor said conspiracy in high places resulted in kidnappings in the Niger Delta.
    “In fact, expatriates are more involved in the crime than Nigerians. Some of them even offer themselves to be kidnapped so that when there is compensation they can share it.
    “They are also involved in kidnapping. They allow themselves to be kidnapped. Oil companies are invited, their home countries will shout  and management of oil companies will pay ransom.
    “When the ransom is paid, they are released and that money is shared among them. So,  it is a high level conspiracy going on,” Alamieyesiegha said.
    Retired naval officers were not absolved of crime. Alamieyesiegha said local boys who were regularly arrested for oil theft were mere escorts with no international connections to sell stolen crude oil.
    His words: “The so-called militants are only employed as escorts. If there is no buyer we will not find a seller. The post-retirement job of a senior naval officer is bunkering.
    “None of those boys you see in the Niger Delta has the necessary connections to bring ships to our economic zone to lift. Those who are making the connections are also part of us.
    “In fact almost 50 per cent of what we produce in this country is being siphoned outside to augment the international market. And where is it going? It is going to those countries and they know the type of oil that is coming out from Nigeria.
    “It is different from others. The sulphur content here is very low and they know this but everybody is gaining from it. Let the Federal Government send warning letter to all the embassies that are in this country and give them three months.”
    Alamieyesiegha went on: “After three months if we see any ship that is not authorised in our economic zone, especially in the Niger Delta, it will be destroyed.
    “Involve the navy, buy few assault helicopters, missiles and after the three months any ship you see, destroy; you will see that no country will allow its ship to enter and so there will be no buyer,” he added.

  • Fayemi to VP Sambo: Ekiti not a war front

    Fayemi to VP Sambo: Ekiti not a war front

    •We need assurance that INEC will conduct credible poll

    Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi has taken exception to Vice-President Namadi Sambo’s description of the state as a war front, saying that the remark is unbecoming of the number two citizen.

    He said the pronouncement, which was reminiscent of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s “do-or-die” slogan, may directly or indirectly provoke insecurity, ahead of the June 21 governorship poll.

    Describing the statement as worrisome and unfortunate, the governor said the state needed a cogent assurance by the Independent Natio0nal Electoral Commission (INEC) that it would conduct a credible poll.

    Fayemi spoke with reporters in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, at the weekend on the preparations for the election and implications of the Vice-President’s statement.

    He said: “The Vice-President is someone I relate with very well. He and I are on the board of the Nigeria Integrated Power Project (NIPP). He chairs the NIPP and I represent the Southwest in the power project in the country. Through that, we meet fairly regularly.

    “ The Vice-President has every right to push for his party in any election. That is his legitimate right. But, what the media reported him to have purportedly said was quite unfortunate because we are not at war in Ekiti. We have been here three and a half years and Ekiti is one of the most peaceful states in this country today. So, for somebody who occupies one of the highest offices in the land as our Vice President, to reduce the importance of his office and promote insecurity, either directly or by subterfuge, and in this case it is pretty much directly and it wasn’t used figuratively, he used it in a matter of fact that he was going to a war front.

    “It is very reminiscent of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s do-or-die statement, which is really unbecoming of the person who occupies the number two office in the land. I still would like to take the Vice-President on himself. I hope he would deny saying that and it would be some form of reassurance. I think it is the underlying text that should worry us.”

    Fayemi said the statement should be taken seriously by lovers of democracy and sanctity of the ballot box, in view of the unfolding alleged unruly behaviour of prominent Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftains in the Southwest.

    He added: “ All of us also saw what happened at Ilaje-Ese Odo and the role played by a minister of government, who does not even come from the state and has no responsibility in the state. The Resident Electoral Commissioner came out openly and said ‘let them challenge what I’m telling you in your report. This was what this person did.’

    “The INEC ought to be sending a very strong signal to Mr. President himself that we would not take kindly to this kind of interference by the minister of state in an election that we want as a precursor for the 2015 presidential election”.

    The governor alleged that certain unscrupulous elements are sewing fake uniforms for fake soldiers and policemen, ahead of the election.

    Fayemi said: “Ihe Ekiti election is even far more important than the 2015 election because, if confidence is lost in INEC’s preparation and eventual implementation of the Ekiti election, that will rub off terribly on the 2015 election. I mean the INEC is already on the tenterhook. We know what happened in Anambra.

    “I think INEC together with Inter Agency Committee and Security that would be involved in the election to give people a lot of reassurance,, following the Vice President’s statement. I think it is very unfortunate. I think it is unbecoming of his office.

    “I think the Vice-President really ought to withdraw the statement and reassure Nigerians that the agenda for Ekiti election is not going to be determined in Aso Rock but by Ekiti people because it is a referendum on the performance of the current government in Ekiti. It is not a national election. It should not be reduced to a national election. So, that would be my reaction to the unfortunate remark of the Vice President”.

    Fayemi urged political leaders to learn from the lessons of history to avoid a repeat of the past tragedy that shook the nation to its foundation. He warned against bungling Ekiti poll as the INEC did in Anambra State, stressing out that the Ekiti will definitely react differently.

    He added: “This is Ekiti and people who are familiar with the history here would know that this is not a very good place to rig election. You can afford to manipulate elections in Anambra because Anambra has a lot of rich people who are even richer than the governor.

    “My friend, Peter Obi, used to say to me when he was still the governor that there were so many people with mobile police and security that they throw him off the street, even when he was still governor. So, election is not what Anambra people see as a big deal; yes, they are interested but it is not for them any big deal. In Ekiti, you will discover that everybody is interested in what happens because we have 2.5million governors in this state.

    “Every single indigene believes he has what it takes; that he understands government and that he knows how to govern. So, you can’t say such a person does not have an opinion. And when you try to manipulate elections in a place like Ekiti, the result has not been palatable. Whether you refer to 1964/65; Ekiti was even more of a resistance zone than Ikenne and, of course, when you talk of 1983, we all can remember what happened here. Even though our son was the person that perpetrated the crisis, they still did not spare him and his supporters.”

     

  • Deputy Registrar honoured

    Deputy Registrar honoured

    The Deputy Registrar, Students Affairs Division, Alhaji Muhideen Shehu Oladamola, has been honoured with the Fellowship of the Institute of Information Management.

    The induction/investiture, which held at the Sheraton Hotel, Lagos, had in attendance former president Olusegun Obasanjo as chairman of the occasion.

  • Nigerian censuses and their discontents (I)

    Nigerian censuses and their discontents (I)

    Last week when I reproduced my column of nine years ago on the composition by religion of delegates to President Olusegun Obasanjo’s 2005 National Conference as proof that President Goodluck Jonathan’s version, which opened last month, was merely a replication of Obasanjo’s strategy of political manipulation of religion, I promised that the controversial issue of the religious composition of this country will be a subject matter of this column another day.

    Against the background of the vehement protests and counter-protests, the huge gap in favour of Christians in the composition of the conference – 309 out of the 497 delegates as against 184 Muslims – had provoked from several religious organisations, notably the National Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), I thought today was as good a day as any to deal with the subject.

    Bar the president’s action itself, the Secretary-General of Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI), Dr Khalid Abubakar, fired the first shot in this war at a press conference he addressed in Kaduna last month.

    “Christians, who by all acceptable records are not more than 40 per cent of the country’s population,” Khalid said, “…constitute 62 per cent of the total delegates.” In rapid response Dr. Musa Asake, the General Secretary of CAN, dismissed his JNI counterpart’s claim as an “unprovoked defamation of Nigerian Christians”.

    The JNI, he said, “should come out with the figures that make the Muslim population more than that of Christians as we in CAN will boycott future census in Nigeria beginning with the 2016 exercise if they do not include religion. Enough is enough!”

    It was like a replay all over again of Obasanjo’s national conference in 2005. Then, the NSCIA, in a petition to Obasanjo, claimed Muslims were over 60% of Nigeria’s population. Obasanjo cautioned the council against the reckless use of statistics but quickly countered with his own ratio of 50:50.

    On its part the Northern CAN, through its Secretary, Mr. Sa’idu Dogo, threatened to boycott the 2006 census unless religion and ethnicity featured in its questionnaire. “In view of these claims by the Muslim community,” Dogo said, “CAN insists that the National Population Commission should, without further delay, include ethnicity and religion in the forthcoming national headcount, so that Nigerians and the world over will know the true position of the adherents of different religions in Nigeria as it is done all over the world.”

    If this was not done, Dogo said, they would ask all Christians in Nigeria to boycott the census.

    As things turned out, Obasanjo did not include religion and ethnicity in his headcount, but no one boycotted it. Under Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, CAN’s more belligerent attitude these days suggests it would probably make good its threat this time.

    Headcounts in Nigeria started in the Lagos Colony in 1866 and were repeated in 1871, 1881 and 1901. The next one in 1911 covered the amalgamated Lagos colony and the Southern Protectorate as one entity. In the same year, there was a separate census in the Northern Protectorate. Following the amalgamation of the two protectorates in 1914, the colonial government passed the Census Ordinance in 1917 and thus paved the way for the first nationwide census in 1921.

    Thereafter, censuses became ten yearly affairs until Independence in 1960. However, there was none in 1941 because of the World War II fought between 1939 and 1945.

    The last census before independence in 1960 was held between 1951 and 1953. It put the North at 55.4% of Nigeria’s population and the South at 44.6. It was widely regarded as a watershed headcount because it became the basis for distributing parliamentary seats among the then three regions in the country, namely, North, East and West.

    The census put the Muslim population in the North at 73% and the Christian at 2.7. Christians in the East, it said, were 50.1, Muslims 0.3 and animists 49.6. In the West Muslims, it said, were 32.4%, Christians 36.2 and animists 31.4. For the putative Midwest, Muslims, it said, were 4.2%, Christians 22.8 and others 73. The headcount put the overall Muslim population of the country at 44% and that of Christians at 22.

    The first census after independence was conducted first in 1962. This was widely rejected and led to a recount in 1963. In his book, The 1963 Nigerian Census – A Critical Appraisal (1972, Ethiope Publishing Corporation, Benin City), I. I. Ekanem, compared the 1953 figures with those of 1963. The comparison showed that the overall Muslim population of the country increased from 44% in 1953 to 47.2 in 1963 while that of Christians increased even more during the period from 22% to 34.5, mostly at the expense of animists.

    The disaggregation of the 1963 figures by region showed that Muslims in the North suffered a marginal decrease from 73% to 71.7 whereas Christians more than trebled from 2.7% to 9.7. In the East the Muslim population remained at 0.3% whereas the Christian population increased from 50.1% to 77.2 and animists shrank from 49.6% to 22.5.

    In the West the Muslim population increased from 32.4% to 43.4 whereas Christians increased from 36.2% to 48.7 and animists shrank from 31.4% to 7.9. In the Midwest Muslims remained at 4.2%, Christians increased from 22.8% to 54.9 whereas animists decreased from 73.1% to 40.9.

    Mr. Mike Okpara, the Premier of the East, rejected the 1963 headcount as “worse than useless” and went to the courts to have it annulled. He lost because the courts said they had no jurisdiction to hear his case and the figures became official, flawed as probably they were.

    The next headcount in 1973 and the last to feature ethnicity and religion proved even worse. Members of the census board disagreed among themselves over its accuracy and its chairman, one time Chief Justice of Nigeria, Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, along with Chief Obafemi Awolowo, urged its cancellation. General Yakubu Gowon who conducted the headcount dithered in publishing it, apparently because of the ensuing controversy. He was overthrown in July 1976 and General Murtala Mohammed who took over promptly cancelled it.

    The next census should have held in 1983 under President Shehu Shagari but even though he appointed the late Alhaji Abdulrahman Okene to chair the census board in 1981, Shagari did not pay much attention to it until he was overthrown in a coup in December 1983.

    The next headcount was conducted in 1991, eight years after Shagari’s overthrow. This was under former military president General Ibrahim Babangida who appointed the late Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa, one of the country’s most accomplished civil servants, to chair the census commission.

    The census gave the North a population of 47,369,237, roughly 53.23% of Nigeria’s population of 88,992,220, as against 46.77% for the South. This was more or less consistent with most headcounts before it.

    Not everyone was, of course, happy with the results. Individuals like the late Chief Bola Ige and institutions like The Guardian rejected it because they said it was rigged to favour the North, as usual.

    However, even among leading Southerners, there was widespread acceptance of the results. Such leaders from the South like the chairman of the failed 1973 census, Justice Ademola, Professor Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Literature laureate, Professor Sam Aluko, one-time economic adviser to Chief Awolowo as Western premier, and Chief Omololu Olunloyo, one-time governor of the old Oyo State, all of them praised the conduct of the exercise as the best since census started in Nigeria.

    Justice Ademola for example, said in The Guardian of March 2, 1992, that the 1991 results was a vindication of his rejection of the 1973 exercise. Similarly, Professor Aluko said in the Sunday Sketch of March 21, 1992 that the results tallied with what had always been his estimate of Nigeria’s population.

    The last census which should have held in 2001 under President Obasanjo was not conducted till 2006, with Chief Samuila Danko Makama, a former senior journalist and bureaucrat, as chair of the census commission. As with all previous ones not everyone was happy with its outcome, fairly thorough as the preparation for it was.

    Interestingly, one of its most severe critics was Makama’s successor, Chief Odumegwu. “No census,” he said shortly after assuming office last year, possibly to the consternation of even those who gave him the job, “has been credible in Nigeria since 1863. Even the one conducted in 2006 is not credible. I have the records and evidence produced by scholars and professors of repute. This is not my report. If the current laws are not amended, the planned 2016 census will not succeed.”

    The chief did not say how the extant laws on our headcounts were flawed but for many, especially in the South, this was their irrefutable proof that every census in this country had been rigged in favour of the predominantly Muslim North.

    But were they?

     

    Someone please call Metuh to order

    It’s hard to believe that at a time all Nigerians should sink their differences – political, religious or otherwise – and join the bereaved families of the victims of the devastating early Monday morning bombing in Nyanya, Abuja, in their grief and pray for the dead and injured, all anyone will be interested in is how to make political capital out of the terrible event. But this is precisely what Chief Olisa Metuh, the spokesman of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has done by his reckless attempt at blaming the bombing on the opposition.

    “We,” he said yesterday, even as Nigerians remained in shock and confusion over the bombing, “stand by our earlier statements that these attacks on our people are politically motivated by unpatriotic persons, especially those in the APC, who have been making utterances and comments, promoting violence and blood-letting as a means of achieving political control.”

    What kind of a heart – and mind – does Metuh have that he cannot wait for the bereaved to collect and bury their dead and treat their wounded before he indulges himself all over again in a useless blame game? If his bosses truly have the safety and security of Nigerians in mind, they should, for God’s sake, call him to order.