Tag: Our girls

Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released.

The struggle for minimum wage continues. Food insecurity looms if the terrorism by herdsmen and their collaborators is not reversed so that farmers and their families can recover and can get back to work.

Jay Ajayi is an American born in London who plays with Philadelphia Eagles. He has an exhibition in his honour on display at the London Museum. But not a word about him in Nigeria where we relegate sports heroes to one-day-wonders – forgotten immediately. General Shehu Yar’Adua has an exhibition in his honour in Central Abuja. Paradoxically Obasanjo has an exhibition in his honour in his controversially-funded presidential library while the National Library remains abandoned. Emeritus Prof O O Akinkugbe, at the impressive and international ceremony of ‘Hanging His Stethoscope’ at 85 years and 60 years of dedicated and excellent medical practice and medical education has an exhibition with Mr Kolade Mosuro as curator in his honour in the Akinkugbe Kidney Centre in UCH Extension. That exhibition should be permanent.

The lesson of a Nigerian-American in the London Museum and the exhibitions in Nigeria is for our largely ancient traditional museums to enter the modern age, even in one section or area of the floor space, by bringing the population into direct contact with the life and times of any of 2,000 iconic individuals in Nigeria. They should not have held public office and not be politicians but successful professionals who have held their heads high in spite of the warped politics which places politics first among all professionals and carried the torch of the Nigeria far higher than any politician. That torch dispelled the darkness imposed by clouds of political uncertainty and developmental backwardness and showed a way through the darkness of despair to many. Nigeria has even better undisputed heroes of no political but excellent professional persuasion with a message in the display of their life and times which would be inspirational to others.

It is the duty of every ancient museum nationwide to introduce the idea of a modern section to help bring the attention of our youth to the fact that even ancient artefacts were once modern and in daily use. ‘Today’s modern is tomorrow’s ancient artefact in the museum in 100 or 1000 years time from now. Our museums should now have vast stores and collection officers of today’s common artefacts against tomorrow’s exhibitions. ‘’100 years of the telephone, the light bulb, the generator, the soft drink, transport, plastic items’’ start with a collector.

The application of dependable modern forensic methods to crime scenes is long overdue. There was a Police Forensic Laboratory at Oshodi, I believe though much neglected before an international intervention in spite of an annual misplaced Police Forensic Laboratory vote of N50m dating back many years which never would have passed forensic analysis. There are many murders daily which are never properly investigated. The painstakingly methodical, time consuming and successful investigation of the disappearance of General Idris Alkali by Military Intelligence is to be appreciated, especially if it was conducted according the Human Rights Watch and  Amnesty International. We expect such rigour to be applied to all subsequent murders starting with the violent murder in Lagos of Ope Badamosi as at present several theories ‘Who don it’ and motives and backers are making the rounds and muddying the waters. It is time as I have said repeatedly in this column, to integrate all the data bases especially the voter card and sim-card data base of faces and fingerprints for the detection of culprits. Nigeria has too many unsolved murders. Enough is enough. Nigeria deserves a modern crime fighting scientific approach to criminal activities to give the best chance of solving such crimes.  Bereaved families deserve closure.

What do you want for you and your family out of life? Safety, security, decent pay for decent work, civilised interaction with security and ministry ‘forces’? Will you do the necessary to get what you hold dear at the next election? Are you a principled voter thinking long term benefits or a pepper soup voter thinking of one meal and forever hold you peace for at least four years? To continue in power, with malleable electorate the governments require an undereducated voter class, easily manipulated, easily deceived, easily fed and easily controlled with fake and other news. For how long is the country to be bought and sold by politicians of any party jostling for four or eight years of ‘ownership’ of the country called Nigeria? This buying and selling of the commodity ‘Nigeria’ will never instal the right quality of politician required to transform Nigeria into a nation. That requires a Mandela. But Mandela held ideals he ‘was prepared to die for’ not bribe for. We as voters should seriously examine the other parties. Learn the lessons from the US midterm elections. High turnout is a hugely important, but neglected simply executed responsibility of the electorate. Secondly if 30m voters vote for one of the new parties, it would sweep away the current crop in National Assembly (NASS) sit-tighters and allow a shake up and economic reform  of the NASS. Nigeria requires a political and security sea-change.

• Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.     

Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released and threatened with execution and one of three female aid workers, SaifuraKhorsa, was executed and there are still more Boko Haram and herders killings and many others dying at a rate beyond all comprehension even in a war. Is there something far more valuable beyond feuding and crops and cattle involved?

With Buhari on the one hand and Atiku on the other, the middle-aged and youth 18 to 20years have not got much choice unless they quickly interrogate the motives, manifestos, methodology and policies of the existing track record of Buhari and the past and projected or potential Atiku parties. The youth and women must also seriously examine the same information from the currently fractionated small new parties. Peter Obi with his tremendous track record for probity and cutting waste is a genuinely inspired masterstroke choice for VP pitting the South against the South. Nobody has a bad word against him, just as with incumbent VP Osinbajo, who has performed well in the limited and severely restricted space allowed him by the kitchen cabinet. He compensated for the major publicity shortcomings of the administration. If Buhari wins, will he reinforce his so far less than comprehensive anti-corruption drive while perpetuating his manifest moral corruption amply demonstrated by his warped sectional appointment preferences, the inadequate response to the murderous enemies of the state, and his slow or no response to inner circle fraud in whichADC to his wife will ‘disappear’ N2,500,000,000, N15 for every Nigerian?

What were the ICPC and EFCC doing? They should by breathing down everyone’s neck, protecting the president from any scandal-prone staff by making criminal activities difficult or impossible to initiate. ICPC, EFCC must be proactive, preventing corruption and not detecting it only after it has reached ‘The New Minimum Nigerian Wage for Stealing/Corruption’ of a billion naira, reaching N2.5b in his case.

Let it be known by every politician regardless of party that the youth and the women of Nigeria are not stupid or as gullible as in the past. They have suffered beyond belief and are growing in the knowledge of their power in the warped arithmetic of voter power. They know that it would be difficult to rig against the entire youth or women’s vote going in a few or one direction. Armed with this information, our swing vote youth and swing vote women could vote either way of the big parties. They are  quickly getting involved to mobilise all those who have been deprived but bad budget activity  to overcome their inertia, get some of the new parties to come together and unite with or against old governance or vote for a new party.  One or 10m can join one party tonight and change the political face of Nigeria tomorrow. All the citizens need is the will and the understanding that one step and one vote can become an avalanche that will save Nigeria from big greedy unproductive politics and selfish crisscrossing politicians. You change, invite others to follow.

Under the ‘unwritten’ zoning arrangement of north/south rotation ‘two terms and you are out’ Buhari is supposed to leave in four years and the candidate should shift to the South. If Atiku wins, will he not insist on eight years even if we hear him say four years now? We all know about the secret meetings are different from the public sayings of politicians. Personally I believe that no job in Nigeria should exceed one term four or five years maximum, too many people run out of steam in four years- and become spent forces and money grabbers during second term. Second terms have not benefitted Nigeria. There are enough good Nigerians to take over. Will a Buhari second term be different?

Meanwhile other countries, like Ghana progress at a normal rate. This is manifest by a quickly passed Ghanaian budget operating January 1 to December 31 while Nigeria’s budget was delayed by National Assembly (NASS) for nine months, like a pregnancy October 2017 to July or August 2018 before delivery and passage. Which if any international standard of excellence is of any relevance to the political pirates, sorry politicians, in NASS which seems to be a separate political party? Do we run a ’Political Monetary Policy’’ best described and in the old chant of prostitute ’money for hand, back for ground’. Are we not in an era of ‘political prostitution’? Already our leaders have led us downwards to the bottom of most UN development indices and abandoned us there as poverty and educational ignorance are growing malignantly everywhere stunting the potential of 30 years of school- aged youth in and out of rubbish schools. Politicians can see their failure at junctions nationwide overrun by urchins. There has been a 50 years’ war against progress and development. The population is desperately restless surrounded by violence narrated by terrified IDPs and the manifest political insensitivity and arrogance of 100s of millions of smiling selfy posters of mainly insalubrious political pirates while Nigeria’s empty schools have no educational posters to learn with. The political leadership especially at NASS, governors, assembly and LGA level has mutated into what resembles a band of pirates, by definition self-serving and cutthroat, ‘The Pirates of Nigeria’.

• Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released and threatened with execution and one of three female aid workers, Saifura Khorsa, was executed and there are still more Boko Haram and herders killings.

We hear of fines on MTN and banks by CBN and other regulators on banks etc. Where do the fine funds go to; the people or ‘chop chop’ for CBN?

The apparently serial murders on the Plateau demonstrate that the Plateau has real live cesspools of corruption and murder malignantly manifest by the vehicular carcasses and corpses revealed by draining of the ‘secret’ I mean ‘sacred’ ponds – legacies of the open tin mining era. Who would have thought that evil indigenes could perpetrate and perpetuate such a serial criminal dastardly act against travelling Nigerians?

If they had not ‘caught’ a General in their bloodstained fishing net, would this crime have ever been exposed and would the murderers face the possibility of soon being caught, in our society where adequate police resources, tenacious investigation, quick justice and scientific accuracy are not available for solving crimes against ordinary citizens?

The rumour of tin mine ponds being murky graves must have been in circulation for years. ‘Don’t go through that village after dark!’ So the ancestors’ spirit for which they ‘walked naked’ was the restless spirit of entombed corpses of fellow Nigerians and their crashed cars horrendously hidden beneath the innocence of calm ripples on the pond surface. No horror story would be worse than this and Nollywood should for historical purposes, make a film to memorialise the victims, fellow Nigerians, who left their homes innocently on trips of trade and pleasure and necessity. These trips became an eternity for them and deep suffering and loss for their bereaved families without closure, the truth or bodies to bury as the victims were murdered and thrown into the lake, a murky grave, a mining pond, over many years and destined to lie undiscovered until the General came to join them.

His gallant and very astute men refused to fall for the actualisation of the threat – ‘we will march naked’. They kept on digging and draining till tearfully they found their boss’s vehicle, absolute proof that the pinnacle of evil was at work. But they did not stop there. They are finishing the draining job searching for his body as they do not know if the General is drowned dead in the pond, buried in a shallow grave nearby or alive in criminal kidnap captivity.

Of course when such mayhem was to be perpetrated, there must have been some innocent villagers who were also mere bystanders and victims of concocted rumours which intimidated the unaware villagers into staying indoors trembling in fear as they heard maybe gunshots, screams of defiance and the groans of agonising death and drowning. This would be followed by the mysterious splash of water as it parted for the vehicles to be pushed into the pond to sink and be ‘drowned’. The innocent villagers may even have been told that the village was under attack and the robbers were repelled, when it was actually the robbers peddling rumours.

The successful army investigative unit must be given promotion and medals for cracking this case as it has saved many unknown citizens from becoming victims in the future. This technique of submerging stolen property and drowning victims is not new. There should now be a systematic draining of all such artificial bodies of water looking for bodies of people and cars. Too many people go missing without trace. How many are at the bottom of the village lake? If this single pond is graveyard for six-10 cars and at least two corpses, how many cars and corpses are in the other 100 or more artificial lakes?  The army must protect the workforce that is doing the draining.

Of course, there is internationally available scanning equipment that can be used to scan the ponds and locate the vehicles without draining each and every pond. The British regularly drag ponds when someone goes missing. Meanwhile though his car was found, the General remains MIA- Missing in Action. Whose action caused him to go missing?

Our police forensics standards would make Sherlock Holmes, the 19th Century detective who depended on clues and tests, refuse the case and are a constant embarrassment as we do not even have a criminal computer database of fingerprints and mug shots of faces. Do we have a ‘central missing persons database’ with a ‘missing vehicle and plate number database’? So we are nowhere near good enough to scientifically solve this case. Computer data should be requested and retrieved from EU and US satellites which sweep over every inch of every county worldwide and using the grid coordinates around that pond and the approximate dates of disappearance the data around those dates can be painstakingly reviewed from the last 10 years. Pictures from our own NigSat 1, or is it 2, should be interrogated to locate people pushing vehicles into the lake. This is the science of crime-solving and the pond is a huge crime scene of multiple murder requiring international investigation techniques.  By now those who have lost loved ones in the area should be contacting the media, the army and police.

• Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

Subtheme: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, BMGF/Goalkeepers UN Media SDG Partners-2018

Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released and again threatened with execution, a very real possibility following the heartless kidnap of the three female aid workers with one, SaifuraKhorsa, executed and still more Boko haram and herders killings while President Buhari mourns 400, now 1000+ dead to the tsunami in Indonesia.

The NLC strike is over. Let the new minimum wage begin. I endorse adding three levels to the pay scale to accommodate legislators and the presidency on say Level 18, 19 and 20 for president. The country will not improve until the naira improves.

Away from politics where yesterday’s hated are today’s jovial media comrades. Politics is certainly an example in forgive and forget failed democracy and a huge lesson. Perhaps politics is a religion. Imagine a party welcoming the architects and executioners of merciless pain –even murder. Remember Ayo Daramola, Uncle Bola Ige, Funsho Williams, my first cousin. Perhaps we should ask which politician is without blood and election fraud on their hands?

The UN/BMGF is partnering with ‘Global Media’ houses to disseminate information on the SDGs as ‘World Media Social Responsibility’. This is a personal triumph for me and the team at Educare Trust as for 11 years we canvassed the Secretary General of the UN and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for UN Guidelines that each electronic media house should allocate ‘’at least one hour in divided 30-60 second slots for such ‘life skill behavioural change’ social messages each day as an International Guideline to achieve the MDGs [now SDGs].’’ This was inletters to Ban Ki Moon, SG of UN in 2007 and to the BMGF in 2008 and Jeffrey Sachs and many others and over the years in this column and at public lectures and journal articles and TEDx talks and in documents to the BMGF Goalkeepers Meeting held in New York in late 2017. It was therefore a personal dream come true to hear and see that this UN/Global Compact/BMGF/Global Media interface is today with Channels TV Nigeria taking a leading role to eliminate ignorance of SDGs in the huge 7.4 billion media audience for them to actively and quickly empower themselves to start SDG strategies in their homes and communities worldwide immediately.

But the dream is only half achieved because the world’s media participation in promoting knowledge for SDGs is only half of the solution to bridging the SDG knowledge gap. TV and radio may not be on 24/7 but there is an advert within eyeshot of everyone worldwide right now! E- secret is advertising media.The other half was to recruit Global Corporates in the Global Compact to use the advertising media. ‘’The UN/ BMGF/Global Compact could champion the introduction of a DUAL/Piggyback MESSAGE Programme. If worldwide every mono-message commercial advert in addition to the primary, principle message also carried a subtle or overt secondary social life skill messag, we could educate the public and change the world. Such secondary messages would include the advert picture showing or saying ‘Read a book’, ‘get an education’, ‘learn about HIVAIDS’ etc. or any of 200 other UN slogans. This dual/piggyback message programme would keep citizens and potential customers alive longer at no extra charge. A simple example is ‘Use Microsoft Computers/drink Coca Cola but if the tide goes out suddenly run to higher ground as it may be a tsunami’ then 220,000 people may still be alive today using Microsoft computers or drinking Coca Cola benefiting the companies concerned. We have just had another deadly tsunami. Such dual messages reinforce each other and double the points of contact for the primary message. Even a poster, newspaper and magazine advert could and should have the primary product and the secondary social message occupying 10-20% of the advert space.

This amounts to a 21st C Advertising Revolution! Any strategy that seeks worldwide witness must involve both the public and private media houses on the one hand and the advertising media, outdoor and branded products, on the other –a $500b opportunity at no cost to the SDG messages. The advertising gurus must be welcomed for quick SDG knowledge dissemination and empowerment. Every hamlet, hut and UN refugee tent boasts of, or complains of, having items branded with advertising, Coca Cola has saturation advertising reaching all citizens of the world’s -7.4billion! Imagine if Coca Cola took on serious SDG messaging, as its social responsible, on each of the 7.4b next generation adverts and stickers, the world would be a better place. And Coca Cola is just the tip of the ice and knowledge is power. Worldwide corporate giants control the minds and buying power of 7.4b citizens. Soon perhaps by 2020 the best awards will be UN/Global Fund/BMGF SDG Media and Advert Prizes for commitment to Achieving SDGs with a WWW a worldwidewinner.

There are other ideas to achieve the SDGs. Ignorance kills a corporate self-interest to keep all 7.4b citizens alive and buying. The dead do not buy products. Many out of ignorance, although corporates, do not support SDG. Suggested UN/ BMGF Recommendation: Insert an SDG message in every advert worldwide. Happy and safe 58th year of Independence.

• Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.