The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Our girls

  • Our Girls; ban tyre burning; Solar Africa?; Our soldiers; Single digit interest rates; cut political pay

    Our Girls; ban tyre burning; Solar Africa?; Our soldiers; Single digit interest rates; cut political pay

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15th 2014. Happily our soldiers are moving forward, perhaps ‘with a little help from our ‘mercenary’ friends’? The greatest murderers in Africa are Ebola 10,000 and Boko Haram 15,000 dead and 1.5 to 3million injured mentally, medically, financially or family wise. And add POLITICS, political incompetence refusing to solve poverty alleviation problems and election violence. Political Murderers kill through bad policies or refusing to implement good ones. It is still blood on their hands even if it is only files they see and votes they sell in parliament.

    For example, the NASS as a Matter of Urgent National Importance, MOUNI, should introduce a Law ‘BAN ON TYRE BURNING’ by NAFDAC, SON, etc  when destroying seized goods as tyre rubber is the worst form of ‘man made’ pollution.  Each tyre is an environmental time bomb releasing 4,000+ chemicals in a black toxic cloud destroying the air breathed for days. We do not need to smoke, just stay near a burning tyre to die. Protesting citizens and vulcalisers clearing old stock should also be banned from tyre burning. ‘Ban tyre burning’.

    As we witness the solar powered plane flying around the world, belatedly the sun is actually taking its place in powering Africa. However we see business ignoring the sun for out-door advertising using electronic billboards currently powered by large street corner generators when solar energy would work better for them and the millions of streetlights. The cost of solar equipment has gone down by 80% and the efficiency has gone up by 80% in the last two years rendering equipment older than 2 years obsolete. The use of the sun goes against the selfish grain of most African Governments which seek to control and exploit the people’s rights through reckless billing for poorly provided utilities and other services never rendered for citizens rightfully demanding a modest modern human existence. No serious energy-conscious right-thinking, science and tech, savvy modernist African government ignores the sun and the power for independent social and business wealth and growth it offers. Africa should stop wasting the God given, clean air and sun. Botswana Innovation Inc built a largely solar-powered multi-story complex green multi-business Science and Technology Park. The Pan Atlantic University in Lekki, Lagos has built an Entrepreneurial  Development Centre powered by solar energy. Lagos State is powering 173 schools with solar power as part of a plan to ‘solarise all schools’.  Many states are playing lip service to ‘the solarisation of Africa’ by lighting streets. Good but ‘Solar Business Is Serious billion dollar Business’ needing a serious leadership to lead the continent of Africa out of the Dark Continent centuries. The sun has always been in Africa but Africans ignored and ran from it apart for sun-drying gari et cetera. If the UK, with its anaemic sun shining 10-20% of the year, can use solar for electricity, then we in Africa are stupid to miss something so huge developmentally. Dangote, rich from selling rice, cement and pasta and Co and CBN should contribute to a $2B-5 BILLION SOLAR ENERGY REVOLVING LOAN SCHEME at ZERO to 9% interest. African Scientists do little cutting edge solar research and hardly get the newest technology. Why are we in Africa not solarising all our new buildings as recommended by the new housing policy?

    However, there is a solar light at the end of our tunnel of electricity darkness and there are some inspirational examples. The IFC plans to fund alternative power sources under a ‘Lighting Africa Initiative’.  There is an EU plan to put Solar Panel Farms across the Sahara for EU power perhaps with an Africa spinoff.  Solar services are being offered by Total and Shell and many oil companies. Africa is dying for solar energy.

    As we hail the successes of our valiant troops against Boko Haram, we must remember that no victory without the supreme sacrifice. Add to that the deaths of over 15,000 and the maiming, orphaning, widowing by Boko Haram to sense the horror and urgency. All Nigerians should note the dignity accorded the heroic 38 Cameroonian soldiers killed fighting Boko haram. How many uniformed personnel have we in Nigeria lost? How were they buried? Perhaps we are too busy court-marshaling our formerly under-equipped troops. Should one-discountenance press suggestions that the real military problems were ICC, inefficiency, incompetence, corruption and greed further up the military chain of command?

    Nigeria is no stranger to our soldiers making the supreme sacrifice in foreign lands on behalf of ECOWAS, the UN in the Congo, and elsewhere. Certainly for soldiers who died in ECOMOG, perhaps around 8,000 courageous men, they were buried quietly. I saw a wife arriving by danfo, at her husband’s military grave during the funeral, crying out that the army could not even inform her that her husband was dead.

    Austerity everywhere. Russia has cut its salaries and reduced its interest rates to 14%. Unfortunately Nigeria’s CBN does not recommend slash in salary or our immorally high interest rates, now near 25-30%. The rich bankers are shamelessly protected at the expense of the suffering poor in Nigeria. We demand single digit interest rates for very small street business and citizens and citizens and salary cuts  for political office holders. Unfortunately Senate has increased the proposed NASS budget from N120b to 125b.

    And the Lagos Ibadan expressway has no ‘Emergency Expert Supervisors’ to get traffic going when it stops.

  • Our Girls; BH-IS; IDPs: single digit loans, billionaires, Banks; Okoya Thomas, Gimba; Putin salary cut

    Our Girls; BH-IS; IDPs: single digit loans, billionaires, Banks; Okoya Thomas, Gimba; Putin salary cut

    Our Girls, still missing since April 15, 2014, bring us to despair every day. Since then the Boko Haram death toll is approaching 15,000 and the displaced are estimated at 1.6-3million, voluntary and violence affected IDPs. And predictably Boko Haram has joined Islamic State with murderous consequences for ‘soft target’ West Africa which is now an agenda item of ‘Things To Do’ for well-funded and manned ISIS as it flees Iraq. Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon must stop squabbling militarily over who takes which towns and eliminate all pockets of Boko Haram before any link-up of forces and ideology of evil!

    Congrats to Dangote, Odedola, Alakija etc, among Africa’s and the world’s richest people, climbing in the Forbes List. Good feeling eh, for them and their drops of ‘charity’? We also have silent billionaires, some with good money but most with ‘bad’ money, disqualified by Forbes regulations. With riches, good or bad, come huge responsibilities to help others, ask Bill Gates and ‘TED’ for ideas. Most poor persons are not lazy, lacking in drive and dishonest. They just lack billion naira ‘connections’. Being  ‘chosen’ to be a billionaire by home delivery of  ‘awoof’ oil blocks, cheap rice and cement ‘Import Duty’ concessions or fronting for wealthy military geniuses are ‘connections’, not hard work. There are exclusive clubs admitting only rich kids and the politically wealthy in Nigeria where a ‘Champagne Coffin’ is 12-48 bottles of Champagne-on-ice@N120,000 each bottle, chicken feed to a rice, cement, oil or cellphone billionaire. Meanwhile we have up to 1.5 million IDPs desperate for rightful assistance for N120,000 start-ups to kick-start their Boko Haram bomb destroyed lives. Is the N56b Victims Support Fund donated partly by Dangote etc getting to victims speedily, with no red tape,  efficiently to ensure the right people get the FFF –Funds, Food and Furniture- needed today, not in 3 months when they will be demoralised, depressed, and even dead. And government and banks should realise that the IDPs are already motivated, experienced entrepreneurs with destroyed livelihoods urgently needing ‘Single Digit Start-Up-Life-Again Loans’ with Federal Government, or the VSF, offering collateral. Are First, Second, GTB, Stanbic, FMCB, or Zenith Bank giving ‘single digit loans’ to IDPs as a war effort support? No! There are many ways of combatting Boko Haram and ISIS. Make Nigeria more financially friendly for individual citizens- young and old entrepreneurs, seeking tiny loans.

    We mourn the passing of a serious good-hearted philanthropist and distinguished gentleman and exemplary Lagosian Chief A. Molade Okoya-Thomas We also mourn the passing of economist, public servant, Past ANA President and social engineer Alhaji Abubakar Gimba. I am honoured to have known them and many other true Nigerians.

    Nigerians are constantly forced to the wall of national shame and despair because of the distasteful evil that is said or read or another evil deed displayed in ‘exclusive interviews’ with malevolent political attack dogs from different political parties. Too often our youth see truth becoming a casualty of lies, morals abandoned, with the rise of brigandage and the failure of right. Wrong overcomes right. Strangely past Heads of State are forgetful of the truth behind their murky ‘service’, and take centre stage to postulate about a good governance they ruined. And people stupidly listen. With these moral and financial burdens Nigeria may remain in a squalid state at the bottom of world rankings in everything good and far below the basic human right on even toilets per capita. We are not in slavery or under colonialists but under worse- a destructive greedy political class!

    Yet we are the ‘largest economy in Africa’ and Nigerian banks declare 50% increase in profits while the people lack housing and single digit interest loans to survive. But we must remind ourselves that there are many good Nigerians, on our street, in our neighbourhood, in our state, in Abuja and in the Nigerian diaspora who are already exhibiting traits of Chief Okoya Thomas and Alhaji Abubakar Gimba. A country in search of genuine role models need seek no further than their own neighbourhood and the newspapers where daily ‘Nigerians struggle across the pages’ to be heard for justice and good. Every LGA should have ‘A Book of Role Models’, taught in neighbourhood schools. It is the dedication, calling and contributions by Chief Okoya Thomas and Alhaji Abubakar Gimba that helped to plug holes of corruption and incompetence in many areas while politicians steal, waste and misdirect our time and money. Without the hundreds of Okoya-Thomas and Gimbas of Nigeria, thousands of schools, hospitals and young citizens would have remained rubbish. Such Nigerians have filled the hole abandoned by government, and its thieving political agents. May they RIP.

    Even the reactionary Russian ‘Tzar’ Putin has reacted to the economic collapse of oil and sanctions by cutting salaries including his own. Why not cut political salaries in Nigeria by 75%? Much of governance has stopped for most of the last six months confirming we should run apart time political system. The media is ecstatic with the billions, it and the shareholders are making from politics. Are FIRS, LIRS etc which tax citizens almost for the air we breathe, are taxing the individual politicians, parties and political support groups for their adverts?

    Political Fact: The price of 2015 politics is in excess of N1trillion. Will this and more be stolen from the budget by any political party in power? Think and act ‘Anti-corruption!’

  • Our Girls; Funeral for murdered ‘Toilet Paper’ Naira;  Any resurrection?; Indian budget lessons

    Our Girls; Funeral for murdered ‘Toilet Paper’ Naira;  Any resurrection?; Indian budget lessons

    Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014 and Boko Haram bombs are taking lives daily. The regional armed forces are doing a good job and soldiers are paying the supreme price totally unsung, as usual. Let us pray.

    Ask yourself of this 2015 ‘democratic’ election: How Much, Who, Where, How and Why? How much is spent by parties? Who is paying? Where is the money from? How does it escape government coffers? Nigerian Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and investigative journalists must deliver the truth about the ‘EVIL ELECTION EXTRAVAGANZA’. Go on. Work out the cost of this election, lethal and financial, and provide an ‘ELECTION COST FIGURE’. Nigeria is ripped off as politicians, our servants and employees, shamelessly spend a FRIGHTENING FINANCIAL FIGURE. Today we address this and the prevention of the funeral of the naira.

    There is an immeasurable cost in political mistruths rampantly regurgitated without intelligent interrogation by the mindless media. There are deaths and injuries which require monitoring and quantifying by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) so far reporting 58 deaths, including 28 police officers. The National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) is a dangerous army needing to be demobbed, registered, tagged and all its members’ vehicles numbered for safety and recognition.

    NOW HEAR THIS: Apparently National Assembly (NASS) is considering the ‘Budget 2015’. Four items are glaringly missing from the budget which will stop the naira’s death and reverse it towards N150 in the first instance in its resurrection.

    First is the question of the ‘NAIRA AMOUNT’ for the ‘SECRET & CORRUPT REIMBURSEMENT OF ELECTION EXPENSES’. Incoming party members will in 2015 generously  reimburse themselves and their parties for real and imagined campaign expenses with interest by ‘illegally’ removing budget funds through bogus hyper-inflated’ phantom contracts. This cost can be calculated as an important research project by NISER, Political Science Associations and university students by a collation of a count of the cost of millions of items of election as following: The T-shirts and face caps in tens of millions, party clothings, posters- one billion, billboards, newspaper and radio and TV adverts, rent a crowd + organisation x 10,000 events and rallies nationwide and half a million+ bags of rice ‘stomach infrastructure’ and  inducements, bribes and ‘gifts’ to ‘show the enlightened party pathway’ to royal fathers, pastors@N7billion, imams@?billion, atheists and hundreds of groups and counter-groups and organisations set up for ‘party activities’. Also estimate the huge legal fees, N15m/SAN and N1-5m/lesser lawyers by some 2011 estimates before the naira fell to toilet paper value, of the endless court cases. The ‘2015 Election Reimbursement Figure’ will be billions and even A TRILLION NAIRA, up to 30% of the budget. The removal of this money will ‘ruin’ the budget even as Due Process and the Bureau of Public Procurement claim to save billions. This is stealing from every baby, child and adult Nigerian.

    The second figure missing is the opportunity for savings from an ‘Expected reduction of the political burden on the budget’, from ‘cutting salaries and perks, of all political office holders and political appointees by 50-75%’.

    Thirdly is the opportunity for budgetary savings by ‘REDUCING THE NUMBER OF POLITICAL OFFICE HOLDERS AND POLITICAL APPOINTEES BY 50%’.

    Fourthly, the budget misses out the opportunity for savings by getting all such political persons mentioned above ‘TO WORK ‘PART TIME’ AND FOR A SITTING ALLOWANCE’ except for ministers and commissioners.

    A word about our current currency collapse. Currency is national pride and currency appreciation is a goal of every leader except in Nigeria where the aim is a weaker naira to get more government naira for fewer dollars. ‘Currency stability’ is a mantra by economists and bankers but what is ‘currency stability’ when your currency has been made into toilet paper? Who needs stable toilet paper? Let our leaders pull our currency back from the brink of this this VERY Nigerian-made instability N210+:$1. If not, in a month or two the same economists will be praising the ‘new stability’ of N210+:$1 and fight any improvement or reversal to a stronger naira. Remember only the citizen gains from a strengthening naira as the naira buys more dollars. If you are a politician with dollars to change to naira to pay for salaries or elections, then a weak naira gets you more naira for the dollar. A politician with a foreign account will never improve the naira and will applaud the naira collapse because each $1m will buy N210m instead of N150 three months ago. Shamefully, since the time of recently 80 year old Gowon and 90 year old Shagari, happy Birthday to you, and all those in the picture of Shagari@90 ‘Past Heads of State’ responsible for our predicament, it has never been on any Nigerian civilian or military government’s agenda to ‘appreciate the naira’. Since poverty is ‘less than a dollar a day’, the fall of the naira plunges another 30% of the population below the poverty line in shameless ‘largest economy of Africa’. We require to drastically resurrect the naira from the toilet before the economists say ‘stability is better than appreciation’ of the naira. Wanted: A Nigerian leader to Resurrect the Naira –and Nigeria.’

    Nigeria and India face similar corruption problems. Any party solving Nigerian’s economic problems and working on the 2015 budget should tune Channel 413 and study the Indian Finance Minister Jailey’s 2015 Budget. Even toilets are budgeted for. NISER, economists, political students and all Nigerians must learn important lessons from the Indian Budget commentaries.

  • Our Girls; Politicians, bankers: No corruption difference? Fight ‘Illegally legal’ NASS salaries for life

    Our Girls; Politicians, bankers: No corruption difference? Fight ‘Illegally legal’ NASS salaries for life

    Our girls and many of our people have been missing on, before and since April 14, 2014. Many others, over 10,000, lie dead in mostly unmarked graves and there are the perhaps millions displaced or injured. The recent King of Saudi Arabia was also buried in an unmarked grave even though he had almost $20 billion, not as rich as Dangote whose name appears in the Swiss branch of HSBC discussions about international tax evasion and undisclosed secret bank accounts confirming international bankers’ fraud. In the 60s, the magazine West Africa advertised Swiss Accounts. Corruption has been around forever.

    The civil service, political and economic banking class all stink of manipulative corruption igniting the historic anti-corruption stance of the Buhari campaign facing the reactionary ‘who-is-who’ in ‘Who is afraid of Buhari?’ on the other side. Millions of Nigerians are frustratingly sick of the personal and public service cost of corruption consuming as much as 50% of budgets of most LGAs, states, federal government organisations.  This cost of corruption is murderous and is an election issue and an affront to national pride. Corruption thought is seen in the high political wages; bankers’ corruption is seen in high bank rates and destructive naira value. Political corruption includes a weak security strategy, near-perpetual darkness, potholes filling our roads, poor education and health delivery systems, high graft in government functions and services, cost of doing business, the greedy open hands of all uniformed organisations, poor return on the contract naira, the education exodus to Ghana, the growing Diaspora population and even worse – the corrupt funding of political parties by government/ contractor corruption.

    African leaders could have directed the Africa Union to declare ‘2015-2025 -The Solar 10 Years’ and negotiated the cutting edge solarisation of Africa as an ‘African-Anti-Poverty, Job Creation’ strategy against the invasion of fortress Europe and as a priority of development from village to Presidential Villa. Of course very few African countries have the criminally low power supply that Giant of Africa, Nigeria, has. The Nigerian citizen has been punished by politics for ever. All our powerlessness, suffering, falling naira, high interest rates are all caused by a lack of true leadership. It seems the leaders have got well ahead of the followers in ‘benefits’. In Nigeria we have a ’Politicians’ Paradise’  Vs a ‘Citizens Cesspool’ of preventable suffering from which we foolishly smile and applaud when we get chairs in a classroom or a few potholes filled or  a 31% pass in WAEC or ‘only 20 deaths from Ebola’ or a 50kmph slow-train while they get a new presidential plane.

    People wake up!! Do not applaud at the dregs given you while they steal us blind. Nigeria was never supposed by God to be so bad.  God gave us oil, geological minerals, millions of hard working people, 12 hours daylight a day, a good climate filled with solar energy, a naira valued at $1.2:1Naira in 1970. Where have they gone?

    Last week the National Assembly, NASS approved for themselves new salaries-for-life for certain national officers within the NASS. This is after receiving huge unknown Salaries and Perks, while in office which are SAPping our budget dry. All this in a country where politicians are regrettably the highest paid in the world while they cannot pay others their salaries and pensions. All this in a country whose currency has plummeted from N150 to 200+ or 25% and whose oil revenues have fallen by 50% through falling oil prices and reduced demand.  Is this ‘Salaries for life’ law a copycat law from the USA, EU or UK? Is there not a body which fixes Salaries and Perks for political office holders? This body perhaps called the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal something has failed yet again to curb the politicians who are drinking greedily from the near-empty well of Nigeria’s budget. But these politicians are already stupendously wealthy at the nation’s expense. How greedy can a man get? How many golf courses, private jets or mansions in different continents does a man need while fellow Nigerians are protesting seeking unpaid salaries and stolen pensions and food for children? This law giving life salaries and perks to even one NASS member is an insult to our sensibilities, morally reprehensible and though NASS may make it legal, it is an illegality and must be challenged in the courts as ‘ILLEGALLY LEGAL’. Today officers, tomorrow everyone in NASS. This must be challenged in court and some political parties must take this as a key policy strategy like the excessively high political salaries and the need to cut the NASS and state and LGA from ‘full time’ to ‘Part-Time with Sitting Allowances’. The politician appears as a blood-sucking leech on Nigeria’s budget. This political class must be stopped before there is nothing left.  Nigeria has had seven+ years of plenty stolen and faces politically induced seven years of resultant famine.  We need a change.

    Apologies for a missing sentence on Feb 18. The full paragraph was: Nigeria’s builders must visit The Pan Atlantic University Lekki, Lagos has a fantastic eco-friendly building, Enterprise Development Centre, powered by solar energy. All Nigeria’s buildings must be eco-friendly buildings. Of course Africa’s traditional mud and grass buildings were eco-friendly. There is a new National Solar Policy suggesting that all new houses under the new Nigerian Housing Policy and all new government and corporate buildings must include renewable energy, solar. These are huge policy steps

     

  • ‘Our Girls’; ‘Scale the fence in defence of democracy’; Austerity, Fiscal Responsibility; ‘Ember’

    ‘Our Girls’; ‘Scale the fence in defence of democracy’; Austerity, Fiscal Responsibility; ‘Ember’

    Our girls are still missing since  April 15 and no sign of a solution.

    So, another austerity period looms. Have we learnt no lessons? Far more than the financial demands of civil servants, it is the greed of the political class which sucks the blood of the treasury like a giant leech. It is never satisfied and always takes more and more. All the political class is paid and given too much in ‘Salaries and Perks’, ‘SAPping’ the treasury dry. There are no concrete answers given to questions of how much they take home. Is it N10m and N30-40m monthly for National Assembly – NASS Reps and Senators respectively? No wonder the political struggle in NASS showed members prepared to ‘Scale the fence in defence of democracy’ – their own democracy! Politicians from across parties, every Special Adviser in every ministry, every political hanger-on from LGA to Aso Rock, and do not forget senior civil servant administrators, all have easy access to secret allocations of land which they sell for millions and have many perks as of right, merely for being in-post?

    Yes, the price of oil has crashed reducing the revenue but that crash should also bring down the cost of the so-called fuel subsidy. Yet the pump price has not been affected. Why? The first round of belt-tightening should be within the billions/day blood sucking political class. We expect NASS to pay as much attention to political budgetary waste as to power tussles. NASS must immediately announce cuts in NASS operational costs including costs of public hearings and committee meetings. NASS must go part-time. Salaries must reduce by 75% to or better still replaced by sitting allowances.  Constituency projects must be scrapped. There should be an announced and effective slash in numbers of active politicians paid by governments at all levels by at least 75%. The post of Special Adviser should be severely scrutinised as a cost-saving opportunity. Special Advisers should be reduced in number by 80%. Special Advisers should revert to being used part-time and on demand, as the need arises, not permanent. There is something called fiscal responsibility. As interest rates remain the highest in the world, except for some ‘Favoured  Areas’ and the naira plunges lower and lower because of political profligacy, can we say we have a government demonstrating fiscal responsibility? Will this be a debate question during the elections?

    In addition to the political questions around the budgetary waste, we must ask hard economic questions. Why is our oil not being bought by many countries? It is because of shale oil and oil at nearer points than Nigeria to the countries in need. For example, Angola and Ghana are nearer to the US and UK markets than Nigeria. So why would they buy from Nigeria? Is the Nigerian market as business friendly as the markets of Angola and Ghana for example. Has Nigeria started producing enough kerosene? Why have we not, as a gas-producing nation not moved from kerosene to gas for cooking? As a tropical nation, why have not moved more massively into renewable energy like solar energy? As the people brace up for the political and financial mayhem about to be unleashed in the name of democratic elections, is any politician offering hope in these areas? Manifestos are easier to write than practice.

    The impossible and too often impassable Ibadan-Lagos road is under punishingly slow repair. We sympathise with the family of the contractor murdered on the expressway.  Beyond that malicious tragedy, must we suffer a near-death experience in order to smile in Nigeria? So many missed meetings, so many millions of wasted hours and billions in lost opportunities on a road that should have been made six lanes over 30 years ago. When first approved, it was supposed to be a six lane road, three-a-side. Instead, the government upgraded airport road in Abuja into a misplaced 10-lane ‘masterpiece’ just to rub our noses in their disgraceful arrogance of power while showing us that they actually know the right thing to do even if they put it in the wrong place. Unfortunately, those long charged with the responsibility for good roads are loaded down with National Honours for their dishonour. With their ill-gotten proceeds of unexecuted or improperly ‘executed’ contracts, they then seek other political offices like governorship and NASS membership unmindful of the deaths and delays from contract failures!

    We again ask what it costs the federal government supervising engineering team and indeed the minister[s] of works and transport, demanding better, one or two feet wider, usable lanes with smoother surfaces in the interest of the comfort of and human rights of millions of fellow Nigerian babies, children, women and children who are forced to use the roads daily?

    It is very sad that government responds to the ‘ember months’ as special times to fix the roads. Roads and road users kill and maim all year round and not during ‘ember’ months only. So please fix the roads and potholes year round to save many lives and much property in ‘non-ember months’. Travellers in ‘non-ember months’ have as much right to smooth safe journeys as in ‘ember months’ of September, November and December.

    PS Thanks to those who came to my performance of ‘You Do Not Know Me’ in Lagos.

     

  • ‘Our Girls’; What country@54? The Great Greed’; ‘OBJECTION’ 40 years later

    ‘Our Girls’; What country@54? The Great Greed’; ‘OBJECTION’ 40 years later

    Our Girls’ are still unaccounted for since April 15. For them, what is there to celebrate today 1-10-2014, Independence Day? One of them has turned up or has one? Is she pregnant? Perhaps. The lives of so many brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers and other family and also friends are in emotional tatters this 1-10-2014. The pain is unquantifiable and all so needless and spread around the areas of conflict in the North-east and the areas of the Fulani War across 10 states. Blood is dead and children women and men are dead. Does no one care? Are we just to say a prayer to a God who gives us everything we need and satisfies our need but not our greed but who we do not listen to or obey? Can no one with appropriate weapons and uniforms prevent this calculated murder and mayhem across Nigeria? Now there is rumour and counter rumour about who started and who is involved in Boko Haram funding as revealed by a foreign expert whom we have no real doubt about. There are additional questions about helicopter and jet plane crashes and cargoes and the fate of ejecting pilots.

    I received a tragic first-hand account of one of many citizens of towns captured temporarily by the Boko Haram. His family escaped into Cameroon before circling back into Nigeria. Thank God they are all safe but how many are not? In addition, his house was overrun and his magnificent library built up book by book of more than 2000 volumes over 40 years was burnt, reminiscent of Rome burning Alexandria, Egypt. And who will compensate for such a loss of home, history, memory and library? Nigerians deserve much better medical care for surviving Boko Haram and Fulani Wars. Just as Ebola has forced us to begin the update of our sanitary systems, these Wars should force us to upgrade our emergency facilities. He who buys weapons of war should cater for the casualties of that war. In a war zone in 2014, 54 years after Independence, good medical services must include a decent modern electronic artificial limb service suitable for human beings, not goats.

    What manner of country @54 is still at war with itself since October 1st 1960? Instead of another party and day off work, all 100+m of us should be forced to stand still for one hour and think deeply, and take stock of our sorry state as an LGA, state, country and consider if we are actually a nation. Once again, we have the opportunity to take stock and the result is not good. Have enough citizens not died? Have enough citizens not tried? Has enough blood not been shed? Have enough citizens been left for dead? Have enough true Nigerians not been born? Do our children not deserve better from those who have seized the ruler-ship? Why is our national fabric so torn and badly worn? God has given Nigeria more than its need. But still our political and contractor classes cannot satisfy ‘The Great Greed’.

    Why is power used to erect a malignant tower? When did politics become just another Master Class in ‘Budget Disappearing Tricks’, ‘Executive Lawlessness’, ‘Criminal Corruption’ and ‘Neglect’? It seems that too many politicians are boastfully vast in saying the right things 100% in manifestos but deliver only a fraction, 20-40% of the promises in spite of adequate funds. How can we live in a country that allows 40-75% of budgets disappearing in inflated salaries, mirage projects and hyper-inflated contracts?  Yes, of course there is corruption worldwide but it is unsustainable above double digit corruption percentage rates. Entire countries were built on the corruption of slavery, stolen raw materials from colonised countries and still today the Mafia and other similar organisations have infiltrated government organs which are often ‘Fountains Of Fraud’ and corruption on their own. The stories that came out of cash-cows like Nigerian Ports Authority, Nigerian Football Federation, Pension funds and the most recent ‘unsolved’ and unsettled atrocities – Oil subsidy scam, the $600,000 oil bribery scandal, jets with $9.3m on board, etc.

    In my poetry collection OBJECTION written in 1989 there is a poem called ‘An Ode To An Adolescent Nation’ better known as ‘Objection’ about Nigeria being on trial at 28 years old for failing its people. The older ones among the readers will recall the incidences below. Unfortunately, the poem could have been written today with the items changed

    JUDGE: At 28 years old, You stand accused of / Pride in your nothingness/How do you plead?

    NIGERIA:            Guilty out of innocence/ I’m only 28, my Lord/ A minor in the league of nations/ Childish pranks/ Youthful exuberance. Objection!

    JUDGE:                Did you ‘Objection!’/  When 2/3 of 19 became 12 2/3 and 53 suitcases passed

    Through the eyes of the needle/ When $2.8 billion in oil money missed monitoring?/When health care eluded the common man?/And education cutoff points left goats in school/And the gifted at home?/ When railway rotted and rusted?/When your people dined from dustbins?/ And kwashiorkor came calling on the kid?

    NIGERIA  Stop! Stop

    JUDGE    Nigeria, you are sentenced to one year/ Of total goodness/Failure in this is fatal to your nationhood/                Will you fail?

    NIGERIA   I’m still young, inexperienced/I’ll only be 29 next year

    JUDGE  Excuses, excuses/  A fool at 28…

    Has anything changed since 1988? You be the JUDGE in 2014 for Nigeria@54! Have a Prayerful Anniversary.

  • Our girls must come back alive

    “It won’t be out of place if the whole nation marches up to the insurgents to demand for the release of the youngsters”- Zainab Okino, Executive Editor, Blueprint Newspaper.

    There are the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped on April 15 at the Government Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State? This is a question the authorities have not been able to answer for the agitated citizens since Boko Haram insurgents kidnapped the helpless pupils. For weeks, there have confusion in the land. There have been protests and mourning everywhere; ceaseless outcries, uncomplimentary remarks and severe criticism of the Federal Government’s inability to rescue the girls.

    Given his handling of the abduction, many people had urged President Goodluck Jonathan to take after the South Korean Prime Minister, Chung Hong-Won, who threw in the towel 11 days after a ferry carrying school children on a field trip to the Island of Jeju capsiszed, killing over 300 people.

    Hong-Won said: “I offer my apology for having been unable to prevent this accident from happening and unable to properly respond to it afterwards. I believed I, as the Prime Minister, certainly had to take responsibility and resign.”

    But many, who had expected the same expression from President Jonathan on his inability to rescue the abducted girls, were disappointed when the Nigerian leader flew to Kano for a political rally. This generated criticisms but the presidency explained away the action as one to “shame Boko Haram” that wants to bring down the government.

    However, with the unabated killings by Boko Haram in the Northeast, it appears nobody is safe again in the country. Critics have said Nigeria is fast becoming a banana republic.

    Weeks after the much-publicised security meeting was held in the Presidential Villa, the whereabouts of the abducted girls is still unknown. Already, we are beginning to hear different stories about the teenagers’ wellbeing. There is a rumour that the girls are being taken away from Sambisa Forest, where they were kept to unknown destinations.

    A report said some of them have been married off with N2,000 bride price. Another report said the helpless girls have been scattered and are being taken to neighbouring countries, such as Chad, Cameroon and Niger Republic. In case of full war against the insurgents, the girls would be used as a shield. This would make rescue operation by government and allied forces ineffective.

    It is becoming worrisome and frustrating that the exact figure of the abducted girls and how many of them that escaped are not known. With this inaccuracy, the agony of the girls’ parents would be compounded.

    The reason for the abduction of the girls has been said to discourage girl-child education. Some said, perhaps, the Boko Haram fighters are in desperate need of wives, which may have informed the comment by Abubakar Shekau, the sect leader, who said the girls would be married off?

    In her article titled: These schoolgirls must not die, Zainab Okino observed: “It is criminally repulsive and no responsive and responsible government watches and allows this kind of things to happen to one or two teenage girls, not to talk of almost 200… My heart goes out to these schoolgirls and their parents. It is understandable to lose a loved one, but to think of them as hostages in the midst of mindless insurgents is incredulously ludicrous…”

    The psychological trauma the girls and their parents are going through cannot be quantified. It disturbs every sane human to imagine what the gun-wielding criminals would be doing to the innocent girls. But, the nation is waiting for who will lead the rescue mission to Sambisa Forest. Even, the military resorted to prayers, asking Nigerians to join in prayers for the safe release of the victims. This smacks of helplessness.

    It’s pertinent that collaborative efforts among relevant agencies and political will on the part of the president must be shown to secure the girls’ release. The decision by the president to set up committee is not appropriate and one wonders how far can the committee go in securing the release of the schoolgirls. Without mincing words, there is no alternative method to secure release of these girls; government and its troops must show action and convince Nigerians that they are up to the task. None of the girls must die in the process. If any of the dies (God forbid), it may generate an outcry whose magnitude may be too large for the government to contain. In any way the authorities plan to rescue the girls from their captors, all of them must be brought back alive.

     

    Azeezat, 400-Level Mass Comm., UNILORIN

  • #BringBackOurGirls (Week Three)

    As I watched the campaign to #BringBackOurGirls take a life of its own on a global scale, I breathed a sigh of relief. At last the tragedy that had befallen Nigerians and over 223 families living in Chibok town, Borno State was being acknowledged by a force greater than our government. After about two weeks of being shell shocked over the Chibok tragedy, many Nigerians all over the world began expressing outrage over the lack of information about what efforts were under way to secure the girls’ release. Our fury on the abduction of the girls was amplified by the perception we had that the authorities were not doing enough concerning the process of bringing back the girls safely to their families. So out of frustration we united as one in a vociferous outcry, stood up in great numbers, took to the streets via protest marches in different parts of the country and abroad and used social media to get our story out. And we managed to tap into a huge reservoir of public attention. As the story went viral, reactions to it dribbled over from Twitter, Facebook and blogs to the classic media, with basically all major TV stations picking it up. Finally, the world was aware of our missing girls! And as we continue the campaign, until there is a resolution or some breakthrough, henceforth my articles will be dedicated to the movement to see our girls safely back home and I will focus solely on this issue in order to continue in the struggle to #BringBackOurGirls. Now that the effort of Nigerian civilians and youth has ignited awareness and a global call for action, the question is, ‘what next’. How can our government and we, as a people, capitalize on the momentum and the awareness generated by this campaign to #BringBackOurGirls so that, like the Kony 2012 campaign, the impetus does not fizzle out? Nigeria is literally melting down. The government’s attempt so far to stop the spread of terror, especially in the North Eastern part of the country has, not only exposed the defects within our security structure, but has allowed thousands of innocent civilians to be butchered, massacred and executed by an irreverent group resolute in shedding the blood of innocent people. With all the turmoil we have seen and the innocent blood that has been shed, this violation where over 200 young girls are taken from their hostels by such depraved scum has pushed us to the very brink and we have completely reached the end of our tether. This has got to be the point in which we say “enough is enough”. This has got to be the beginning of the end of this insanity. From the onset, the official response to this latest transgression appears to have been weak, to say the least. Right from the start, the authorities have downplayed the scale of the abduction in a manner that has been understandably interpreted as a failure of the government to treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Now that the whole world is demanding to #BringBackOurGirls, we are not yet home and dry. There is no doubt that, before any foreign assistance is called upon, the Nigerian government has primary responsibility of bringing our girls back. More than any other time, this administration has no choice but to pursue a measured and assertive course in ending this terrible terror in Nigeria. Because the longer this threat lasts, the greater the threat it poses beyond Nigeria and beyond Africa. As a starting point, the government must take full responsibility and stop shifting blame by implying that the parents of the girls are somehow culpable, in that they have not been open in giving the identities of their missing children. I have spoken to a relative of one of the girls that is alleged to have been taken and I asked why they were not willing to cooperate with the government. What they told me was that, they had been warned that if they pursued the girls or gave information about their children and the abductors came to know of this, their children would be killed. One can understand how, as parents, they would be sceptical of cooperating with a government that they believe does not have the will or capability of rescuing their children and protecting them. Like it or not, even with the threat that goes with the exposure of information that we are desperately clamouring for in this case, the government, to a certain degree, has got to shed the cloak of secrecy that it has so far draped on this crisis. Because by being overly secretive, all the government has done so far is alienate itself and created an information vacuum, leaving many casting doubts on what, if anything, has been done to rescue and #BringBackOurGirls. The silence has also created an avenue for confusion to reign; where dissimilar accounts and conspiracy theories have popped up all over the place. A round the clock information source should be set up immediately to give out adequate information, which would not compromise the security operation that is being carried out to rescue our girls or ensure their safety. The whole world is increasingly becoming emotional over the abductions and people are desperate to know the true situation, efforts and measures that have been taken in ensuring that our girls are brought back home safely. And it is only through the responsible and steady flow of information from government that public anxiety will be reduced. Though it has come under a lot of criticism, in my opinion, the recent pronouncement by the President, setting up a committee to #BringBackOurGirls is a step in the right direction. Now, that committee must get to work immediately of getting as much information as possible from the parents of the girls, teachers in the school, residents in the village, witnesses to the incident and anybody that is directly connected to the incident. The committee can humanize the victims of the Chibok tragedy by compiling the identities of the girls and ascertaining how many girls were taken and how many have returned so far. Let us know the exact amount of girls that were abducted, the amount that escaped and can be accounted for, and the amount of the yet to be rescued girls in addition to statements of what and where they were taken by the girls who managed to escape. With accounts that the girls may have been taken out of the country, any rescue operation may have to take extra measures. Given that the group which took responsibility for the abductions has been declared a terrorist organisation, legal steps should be taken by the government in obtaining adequate warrants that would satisfy cross border detention of anyone culpable of these crimes. This may mean that the proper authority in Nigeria would have to reach out to the world’s largest international police organization (INTERPOL) to work together to #BringBackOurGirls. INTERPOL may issue notices to all member countries that the girls are missing and it may ask police in member countries to look for the abductors and search for our girls. Amidst all this chaos, the silence from the Chad, Cameroun and Niger governments is so deafening one would not have thought that we have representatives and ambassadors in each other’s countries. Let’s not forget that Chad, Cameroun and Niger share a border with Nigeria around the area where these atrocities are taking place. In fact several times in the past, accounts of bands of terrorists relocating to the neighboring countries to remobilize and rearm has been reported. In order to rise to the challenge of our porous borders and cross border insurgency, a Multinational Joint Task Force composed of soldiers from Chad, Niger and Nigeria was put in place. If the accounts of our girls being taken over the border are true and if the pathetic state that our borders are in is enhancing the flight of the insurgents, then this is no longer an immediate Nigerian problem; this is an immediate problem of every country that exists within the region of West Africa. There is an urgent need for the government, together with the Multinational Joint Task Force to give a press conference, the challenges they face and steps needed in order to quell this monstrosity. Reports that, despite the outrage at these abductions and despite the fact that security has allegedly been stepped up in the areas of concern, about 8 more girls were abducted solidifies the need for the government to relocate all the families living in the danger zones with immediate effect. Most of the families that are left in the most dangerous areas are poor and don’t have the option of relocating or the means to do so. The families of our missing girls need to be relocated at the expense of the government until there is a response to bring their daughters back. My greatest fear, which has already began to be played out in Nigeria, is that the focus of this campaign will somehow be lost on the cutting room floor of the prejudices and power-hungry tendencies that consumes almost every African society. Whispers of “It’s this one planning to bring this one down…, No it’s those ones scheming to destroy these one’s” is already polluting the air. For God’s sake, we should stop making this issue a political, ethnic or religious one on the expense of the lives of our Chibok teenage girls. Children’s lives are at stake here and every Nigerian regardless of political affiliation, ethnic or religious differences should make every effort in unity, in seeking for the rescue of these innocent teenage girls. At every point, until our girls are found, we must remind ourselves that our focus has got to remain steadfast on the rescue of the girls. There is a time and a place for everything and this is not the time for Nigerians to politicize or tribalize this issue. No matter ones view or theories on all the sundry concerns that surrounds the awkward and mottled tapestry of Nigeria, this one matter has got to be about bringing our girls back home safely. There are so many steps that the government should take; amongst which setting up an enquiry panel which will investigate how over 200 students could so brazenly be taken from a hostel in a state that is already under martial law should be paramount. But for now, the focus must remain on getting our girls back. So, despite the fanatical rambling of a raving lunatic that has nothing to show for effort other than an out of control, trembling right hand, completely misguided ideology and sins that only Allah can adequately give dire punishment for, the kidnap of #TheChibokGirls is not about religion. In spite of veiled implications via an astounding public meltdown of a first lady, the mass abduction of young girls is not about a conspiracy against a president. Even with the finger pointing along political, ethnic and regional lines, we cannot allow the threat of the trafficking of 223 of our young girls to be manipulated in the interest of party, tribal or regional lines. By giving this atrocity a reason, we are acknowledging and giving an identity to it and playing right into the kidnappers’ arms. No, our focus has got to be about just our girls and on bringing them home safely. Time is the merciless enemy. And as the clock ticks, the plight of our girls grows ever more desperate. It is imperative for the government to step up and assert its authority against this horror. For those of us in the public bleeding inside, we will utilize every tool available to us including the awesome power of the media because all that matters at this stage is for us to ensure that they #BringBackOurGirls.

  • Our girls, our shame, our failings

    BURYING my thoughts in the cadenced candour of poetry would only have produced an elegy. But, truly, words fail me. Rhythm means nothing in Nigeria’s atmosphere of organised cacophony. How I wished someone would tell me it was all a dream and that what we have been reading in the newspapers about the traumatising experience of the abducted school girls in Chibok, Borno State, were the fictional exertions of Nigeria’s growing tribe of newsmen in the new media. That there was no abduction, heroic escape, phony ‘release’ of 80 of the girls to our ever-vigilant security forces, the principal’s denial, the parents’ brave efforts in the dead zone called Sambisa Forest, the empty promises and that the yet-to-be-accounted for 234 girls were all part of the crafted twists and turns in a work of fiction. Sadly, these ugly stories and more are part of the horrible reality that haunt us daily as terrorists luxuriate in the widespread attention they attract as well as the benumbing incompetence in high places. Just when you thought you had seen it all, something more grotesquely stupefying happens and jolts you to the reality that this might just be the beginning of yet another cycle of confounding happenstances. We really don’t need to ask how we got here, do we? Never mind how we got to this stage of paralysis and collective amnesia. What is important is how and when we are going to get out of it – if we ever do. Abuja may continue to delude itself with its dud promissory notes of ‘ensuring that terrorists are made to pay’ for their odious monstrosities. Even when such empty promises are being repeated ad infinitum, it does not obliterate the fact that this country is sick – so sick that it requires the best expertise in the Intensive Care Unit for it to wobble through this harvest of doom after gloom. Nigeria bleeds and its leadership parties sums up the story of a country in dire straits. Blood flows on our streets and we belie this humongous horror in plastic laughter. Where others see laughter as catharsis, we have mastered the art of laughing out our impotence. As bombs after bombs boomed, we offer the most tendentious excuse ever: Terrorism is a new reality in the country and it is our share of the global crisis but we will overcome it someday. Churches, mosques, entertainments spots and workplaces were violently attacked with lives cut short and properties wrecked, yet we offer the same excuse. We said we were on top of the game and even offered a definite timeline when the insurgents would be kicked out of our lives. Each time we boasted about our competence, the insurgents jeered back with deadly bombs and more audacious killings. We were still talking, wondering and wandering about, seeking the best strategy to keep the enemies at bay when the terrorists brought horror to the backyard of the holders of state power. By the time the inferno of the bomb blast was quelled, 75 lives had been lost while about 200 ordinary Nigerians were injured. No one had thought the terrorists were that close but the Nyanya motor park bombing on April 14 suggested that the agents of terror could be nearer than we could ever imagine. In fact, these blood-sucking terrorists did not wait for us to count our losses before hitting us again. Precisely on April 15, they were at the Girls Senior Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State. In what was reported to be a six-hour operation, they hauled over 200 young school girls into trucks and carted them away. They ruthlessly crushed the sole resistance on their way – a soldier – and went away with the bounty of a senseless attack. Of course, when the news broke, many Nigerians thought it was one of those fake ‘news’ items on the social media. Some said it was a bad joke. But it was not. It turned out that, as I write this, about 234 of those abducted school girls are still missing. No one is sure of the fate that has befallen any of them. It is to our collective shame that no definitive action has been taken to free the girls from their captors. It is not just about the shame of the abduction but the mindless lethargy that followed it. While the girls were still in transit in the bushes trying to understand what hit them, the nation’s Number One Citizen and Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces was singing, dancing and vibrating at a political rally in Kano. While parents and relatives of the abducted girls besieged the burnt school, ceaselessly praying against the outright abuse of the rights and privileges of these unlucky children, the nation’s security forces popped up a lie that over 80 of the children had been rescued. It turned out to be a national embarrassment. Not a single abducted child was rescued in a country where billions of Naira is routinely voted for ‘security’! It was an expensive joke that puts a big question mark on the veracity of the tales being told by the military hierarchy on the war against terror. Again, it is a shame that some persons are still sitting pretty even after that horrendous tale of a rescue that never was! But for a terribly shaken populace that has not wavered in relentlessly drawing the attention of the authorities to the missing girls, it could have ended up like many other tragic stories before it. Parents and relatives of the 234 girls would have been left to their fate as that wouldn’t be the first time the state would abdicate its responsibility without any iota of shame. We shiver to think about what the girls have been facing in the last 18 days or more in the hands of their hardened abductors. Could it be true that they have become sex slaves to be tossed around by men who have no value for human dignity? Do we believe the rumour that some of the young girls have been violently married off to some of the insurgents on N2,000 bride price? Was their virginity callously desecrated? Have they been dehumanised, murdered or used as human shield while those saddled with the task of ensuring the security and safety of each and every one of us fidget? At this point, it is hard not to talk about our failings as a people and as leaders. Sometimes, you wonder if there is any marked difference between the insurgents in Sambisa Forest and their counterparts in the corridors of power. A leadership that has lost its humanity or one that attends to issues on the whim of political expediency is not any better than governance that has gone rudderless. Part of those failings would naturally include the Presidency’s seeming inaction in all this. If it was doing anything, then it can be said that it is obviously not doing enough. President Goodluck Jonathan clearly missed the point when he described the death of Capt. Yusuf Sabo Sambo, Vice President Namadi Sambo’s younger brother, as one of the ‘saddest’ days in the country’s history! By every stretch of imagination, that statement does not even qualify as a hyperbole. It was a gruesome abuse of literary licence. Inasmuch as we mourn with Sambo on the tragic loss of his brother, we do not see how that qualifies as a national calamity at a time when hundreds of lives were being needlessly wasted by the insurgents while over 200 girls are being held captive! It is also an abysmal failure that a government that sees nothing wrong in switching into the party mood few hours after the deadly blast in Nyanya and dreadful abduction in Chibok would cancel the Federal Executive Council meeting as a mark of respect for the VP’s late brother. What have we done to honour the thousands of lives lost to this endless harvest of blood across the land? What has the state done to raise a flicker of hope for the missing school girls? Did we declare a day of mourning for those who met their untimely deaths in the Nyanya blast or any other blast for that matter? Has any top official in government met with the grieving parents of the Chibok 234? Do they feel their pains and anguish as they try to live with the upsetting situation confronting them? Where equity and justice reign, there wouldn’t be any need for this shenanigan. The girls of Chibok deserve no less. Somehow, this national calamity would have to come to an end one way or the other. How can we rest when our girls remain in captivity, enslaved and violently abused by evil-minded men? Question is: would the state live with the shame of this national tragedy or would it summon the courage to bring them to the warm embrace of their parents and return whatever is left of their dignity?