The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Our girls

  • Our Girls; Ghana’s anti-corruption; Berger, RCC red card!

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

    The Ghanaian president informed us that he created the Office of Public Prosecutor to independently investigate past and present government corruption. That the post is occupied by an anti-corruption opposition lawyer is exemplary for Africa. Nigeria dropped the Office of Public Prosecutor here. Existing structures, ICPC and EFCC, struggle under the yoke of authority of the very people needing maximum investigation –politicians and the president. The president of Ghana gave guidelines to pursue the anti-corruption drive across an Africa where a text book, a kilometre of road or a classroom block built by African government contractors costs many times more than in the non-government world with African contracts padded up to 45-100% minimizing the developmental mileage of budgets and terminating African developmental dreams. African leaders are directly responsible for Africa’s underdevelopment leading to  ‘The Great Youth Trek’ from underdeveloped Africa through the Sahara to the ‘The Great Youth Mediterranean Crossing’ breaching developed Fortress Europe by many thousands of mainly young desperate African migrants of whom 10,000 drowned off Lampedusa with others raped, robbed, murdered and sold into slavery by human traffickers. The blood of Africa’s youth is on African politicians’ hands.

    The long-term horrible experience on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway exemplifies a ‘perfect storm’ nationwide faced by government projects which have failed, are failing, long delayed uncompleted like ‘shell buildings’ – abandoned or semi-abandoned projects. Though started to fulfil African developmental dreams, nobody gains by abandoning for 15-20 years, the six-storey see-through ‘shell building’ owned by the people through former NEPA on the Bodija road in Ibadan or the Ilubirin massive 10 block estate of see-through ‘shell high-rises’ in Lagos. Political successors have a duty to eliminate funds being lost as if to punish predecessors. Certainly, please quickly investigate mismanaged funds and hold past contractors to account, recover funds but always renegotiate the completion of contracts.

    Nigeria ‘achieved this disgusting failure’ by the deliberate CINS – Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness of its leadership, military and political and civil service and contractor classes in spite of our great God-given soil and oil wealth, yielding the national treasury nearly $1,000b, in oil and other revenues so far. Where is the infrastructure to keep pace with ‘the population guesstimate? Unimaginably, we struggle with 3,000Mw vs UN recommended 1Mw/1m population or 150,000Mw. Perhaps the $10b China facility will provide electricity from China which adds 30-40,000Mw to its national greed annually? But vested petroleum interests want us to remain dependent on generators, fuel and air pollution.

    It is sickening to see the unnecessary exposure to discomfort, disability and death that millions face daily as their only ‘DOD- Dividends of Democracy’ since 1999 on unmaintained or abandoned highways nationwide. Roads labelled ‘Under Construction’ are worse as construction work means nightmare traffic with a suspension of any moral obligation for maintenance to ease the suffering of citizens during re-construction. In fact ‘Under Construction’ roads automatically get worse. Is this punishment under the ‘You have to suffer to develop’ or ‘No pain no gain’ mantra from government? Empowered, the contractor’s unsupervised employees abandon or destroy existing contracted roads, neglecting the citizen’s rights during contract postponements rivalling adjournments in courts. Today the Lagos-Ibadan Road exemplifies an agonizingly slow upgrade to its former ‘Expressway Glory’ postponed to 2017, 2018 and now to December 2019.

    All such roads require contracts with ‘A Maintenance Clause’ demanding pothole filling during construction with easy access diversions pending completion of the roads. Ministry of Works’supervising engineers must take protection of the citizen from ‘Death by Contractor Negligence’ seriously and monitor contractors’ activities. Contractors in Nigeria, expatriate and local, have been allowed to ‘inflict pain’ as part of malicious contract execution. Lagos Airport road and the Apapa Port roads exemplify mass suffering. The problem is with poorly constructed entrance and exits from diversions. RCC and Julius Berger deserve red cards from supervising engineers!  Just smoothening the rough entrance to diversions at the two main Berger diversions and filling potholes on diversions and existing unrepaired roads will help greatly. Who will speak out for the citizens?

    Millions have been forced, by a lack of supervised construction, to face the multi-potholed ‘under construction’ or ‘yet to be constructed’ treacherous parts of the Lagos-Ibadan Road riddled with jagged potholes which must filled. Travellers may die in or trying to avoid potholes till the contract is full executed. Postponements increase deaths. Each pothole costs a few thousand naira to fill. ‘Death by Pothole’ is loss of a human economic resource-a life, a wife, and a multi-million naira waste. Now, as a direct result of National Assembly, NASS anti-people tactics, we are to await December 2019 for final construction, which may be postponed again. NASS stalled the completion of the road. Every go slow, crash, robbery attack, linkable to bad road traffic jams can be placed at the feet of NASS members who should all be denied re-election in 2019.  The people must sweep most NASS members away.

    We lost several NYSC members to accidents and other causes in 1975/6 when I did NYSC. A coffin is an unacceptable cost for NYSC. Some are even murdered. What honour do they get and what support do their families receive for paying the supreme sacrifice with an irreplaceable family loss of dreams and future?

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

     

  • Our Girls; Cancer centres; Road probes; Guesstimated census

    Our girls from Chibok were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released. Why?

    Both Aretha Franklin and John McCain had magnificent but beautifully different funeral events, after the best cancer care. Nigerian cancer patients suffer deprivations though Nigerian politicians shamelessly pay themselves the highest salaries and perks worldwide but rarely offer world class medical facilities to the citizens on whom they prey.

    Life is serious for citizens. This week alone I have seen three 20 year olds with breast, colon and ovarian cancer and far too many other patients in need of care that eludes them because they have insufficient funds or face inadequate government medical facilities due to corrupt reduction in health budgets, theft or misplaced unchallenged developmental priorities!

    Politicians selfishly forget their responsibility until one is afflicted by a disease that affects thousands with no funding! Then the politicians approve flying the fellow politician abroad at the people’s expense. Citizens are not pebbles to be trodden under politicians’ feet or dogs waiting for crumbs from the National Assembly (NASS) table. They are real desperate humans maliciously denied their right to good medical services by kleptomaniacal theft of trillions since pre-1999 by a wretchedly selfish ruling class refusing to have a powerful watchdog financial system, supervised banking, civil servant and contractor classes now steeped in bribes and 10-70% kickback sleaze pathology! Instead of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) investing directly in medical and cancer facilities, it put N150b in non-medical banks and shady fund-managers. Could this be for corruption-driven ‘finder’s fees’?

    Vote only for politicians in 2019 who present concrete development plans to decentralise health care and particularly cancer care to states!

    Please search www for ‘Attorney General dies’. The AG of Gombe State died at 58, Spain’s AG died at 66, Tasmanian AG died at 48, and now the AG of Rivers State died in London of cancer of the colon. In a typical knee jerk reaction, some governors have ‘magnanimously’ proposed an ‘Immediate Effect’ ‘Cancer Centre’. A Cancer Centre in UK where Nigerian politicians, and Nigeria patients, jet to for cancer treatment, can cost the British £25to £160m.

    Nigeria can only establish such cancer centres with a major government mind-set change, prioritizing cancer care and if Nigeria stops corruption dead, doing like Prof Ishaq Oloyede did with N14,000,000,000 ‘Excess of JAMB Fees Over Examination Expenses Revenue’. A corruption-free government will then use the un-stolen money for the people generally and medical cancer tourism. The governors’ cancer centre may never materialise. Remember Prof WoleSoyinka reported the frustration NASS and the Ministry of Health visited on late Professor Femi Williams who died aged 81 years spearheading a cancer centre in Lekki Lagos. Hardly any serious professional idea passes through the corrupt political/civil service/contractor approval system without crippling compromise destroying its goals and any development outcome and killing patients.

    For more than 40 years, the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, has demanded decentralization from the traditional sixregional teaching hospitals of the specialized ‘Cervical PAP smears, Ultrasound, Mammography, MRI, CT Scan, PET Scan and the Laboratory Histopathology and Cancer Screening Bloodwork Investigation’ and also the ‘Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy Treatments, the Monitoring and Terminal Care of Cancer Survivors’.

    Every one of the 36 state capitals need cancer care facilities ‘within easy reach of the state citizens’ – a right which when denied force so many to die prematurely or find money to go to India for medial tourism –a very sick word for a patient traveling with a cancer!!! Imagine if the senators, three per state, planned a senatorial cancer centre instead of the fake ‘Constituency Projects’ amounting to N100+b annually, which since 1999 have left no trace in 2018 – 19 years later!!! Shame!! Such cancer centres would ease access, minimise life and family disruption and emotional upheaval, aid early cancer diagnosis and ensure quick and easy access to treatment. It is agony witnessing patients travelling 600km to receive ‘lonely cancer care’ with few relations in 2018 or are told to come back or the heart-breaking news to never return because the cancer is too advanced or the machine has broken down!! True stories!!!

    You have no idea the job disruption and financial cost to the family member[s] accompanying a cancer victim to a regional centres. Governors preside over 2-12million people, bigger than 20 countries, and do not provide state-based cancer services. This is a total dereliction of duty and abandoned responsibility. Is it not just because a friend/AG died of cancer that governors suddenly think of a cancer centre? We in medicine pray for such centres, but only politicians and governors have arrogated financial power to authorize them. Mr Governors, your people have been dying from cancer and you did nothing. Any hope?

    A Channels TV picture showing a DamaturuYobe State eroded road reveals that only laterite, no stones, were used as underlay- faulty design, faulty supervision, corruption and collusion with the contractor?  The Nigerian Society of Engineers’ investigation committee and EFCC should investigate collapsed roads as they should collapsed bridges, building and crashed planes.

    Who believes the population figures? Guesstimated census! We parrot ‘fake’ census figures. Our National Population Commission, NPC, has failed to pass the integrity test and will not be believed. ECN, PHCN and successors invented the corrupt ‘Guesstimated Bill’, a hyper-inflated imagined amount designed to destabilise and force the meter owner to pay a bribe. Reduce figure by 30%.

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

  • Our Girls; Ransom? Pothole disease, Sango-Ojurin Ibadan

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Release the remaining Chibok girls. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released. Who will free Leah? Where are the graves of the five dead?

    Did millions of dollars dissipate and disappear under Lawal Daura, the ex-DG DSS, using the budget heading ‘Ransom’ as highlighted by international forensic evaluation with bank data evidence but denied by our government? Where lies the truth? The messenger in Nigeria, big or small fry, often feels entitled to ‘disappear part of the delivery’ 50-70% of ‘messaged money or gift’ as compulsory ‘transport fee’. This is especially if, out of good manners, the recipient cannot confirm the exact amount or number of gifts sent except to say ‘thank you’ be they gifts, for ‘delivered’ money for political bribes and for political mobilization. The boss’s close employees are often guilty. The messenger is not immune from inflating the ransom demand and keeping the difference.

    Nigerians know how the system works or fails. We struggle through endless traffic jams in Lagos, a city in need of at least two more bridges, while 50 year-old roads and bridges fail us. The 2nd Niger Bridge is a mythical four yearly political pawn to be brought out again during the 2019 election. The myth has lost its allure and the ‘2nd Niger Bridge Promise’ charm will fail. The 4th Mainland Bridge is cancelled and the Lagos Light Rail Project is postponed again having been cancelled by Buhari over 35 years ago precipitating permanent developmental stagnation. Our transport network’s deliberately delayed development is engineered by myopically insincere politicking and theft under past leadership with corrupt civil servants and contractors. They have succeeded in making Nigeria the Undisputed Pothole Disease Centre of the world! Imagine, the first walkway across the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is being put up only now, on a toll road built in 1975. General Yakubu Gowon told me that the road was planned as three lanes each side. Who stole the third lane 120km each way or 240km- billions stolen condemning us to 40 years of transport misery? The road generated billions in tolls for maintenance which was all ‘disappeared’ by toll contractors and accomplices -another development disaster.

    In Ibadan we have Pothole Disease like in elsewhere. Disease Alert: Example of an actively growing mega pothole disease is a new pothole six feet wide on a 12 feet wide road which has grown in two months at Secretariat Roundabout within 100metres of the secretariat – interestingly on the UCH Secretariat side – perhaps waiting to make casualties? For 40 years there has been no solution to the disease at the railway crossing ‘Sango Ojurin’ on the right side of the Sango Polytech junction road. This has resulted in a perpetual traffic jam around the un-motorable section of the railway crossing defying an engineering solution for ever. Perhaps we can offer the problem to PhD students of University of Ibadan to solve. Is it not just a job of filling spaces between the railway and road with construction underlay and pouring tar and using a roller just like at Bodija Ojurin, which also needs attention now, not post-election? I am no engineer.

    We once learnt to use PWD, Public Works Department, methods to fill potholes from the ‘hated’ colonialists. Unfortunately the PWD methodology has been ‘lost in translation to the Post-Colonial Civil Service Code’ and we have refused to remember or forgotten, how the cardinal rule and secret of the success of PWD – ‘maintenance’. We have also lost the apparently difficult engineering science of how to fill nightmare potholes and the space between railways lines with tar and underlay. In Nigeria filling potholes is ‘Nuclear Physics’. Nigerian post-colonial governments prefer that citizens die in potholes and suffer in Sango Ojurin’s 40 year traffic chaos rather than participate in the Herculean effort to simply fill potholes and smoothen the rail-road junctions Nigeria-wide, and ‘make straight our path‘ .

    They could also place strategic ‘Pothole Warning’ Road Signs. Why have road authorities lost the art of preventive writing road signs to warn of ‘Potholes Ahead’ to prevent accidents before they fill them in 2020. The patrolling traffic control agencies say it is not their job to signboard potholes. They are preoccupied by repeated ‘stop and check particulars’ activities and often embarrass citizens for their cash needs. They say signboards will expose and embarrass as ‘incompetent and lazy’ their sister organizations –the federal and state ministries of works, which obviously are ‘incompetent and lazy’. Instead, private tow vehicles, usually old LandRovers, position themselves 50 metres after the pothole to malevolently prey on the injured and corpses- dead of pothole disease.

    Our plight is manifest by the magnificent N7billion annual fraud at Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) uncovered and stopped by Professor Oloyede as DG. Wow!! This was followed by exposure of fraud at National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and National Primary Health Care Development Agency ruining our health services.

    APC, do not come in 2019 to reveal fraud in 2018. Prevent it now!!!

    John McCain, US senator, Viet Cong prisoner, fighter pilot died at 81 years. Nigerians should note that you can be a soldier and politician and honourable, ethical and respected. Some are, but we wish there had been more.

     

    • NB: INEC is not responsible for election violence or its prevention. Whistle blow election political perpetrators!

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

  • Our Girls; Classroom Aretha/ Annan corners pls!

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Release the remaining Chibok girls. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released. Is government doing anything to save her?

    Selfishly, a politician lost an election and insultingly dismantled the projects he put in place with taxpayers’ money that paid him millions. This confirmed that the projects were just ‘voting tricks’ and not for development. He is no different from a political prostitute who changes political party like underwear, concerned not with service but only the need for greed. He should be dismissed from his party.

    The term ‘constituency projects’ is a corruption criminal corridor and should be removed from all budgets. Politicians should lobby and direct their local requests through relevant ministries to be included under existing budget headings. Then the National Assembly (NASS) will pass the budget quicker next time.

    First the great Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, has died. She made the Otis Redding hit ‘Respect’ into a feminist anthem and also reminded everyone of the value of prayer with ‘Each morning I wake up, before I put on my make up, I say a little prayer for you’. Rest in Perfect Peace, Amen. And now it is Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the UN, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, opposed to the Iraq War and peace mediator is dead. Unfortunately during some of his peace missions he was rejected on racist and religious grounds by some protagonists. He founded the Kofi Annan Foundation for International Development and was a member, later chairman, of the Elders Forum.  He was a key leader and motivator in the fight for a cleaner, cooler better-protected safer environment anticipating the fearsome global weather upheaval we see today with forest fires, floods and heatwaves and the epidemic of plastic everywhere including in the food we eat.

    Kofi Annan was a classic gentleman, a warm smile, a calming modulated unhurried empathetic voice, a super-statesman and diplomat par excellence on the world stage. He leaves that stage a distinguished gentleman who contributed hugely to the elevation of the African profile in the world except among racists. He personified the UN of which he was staff member, elected twice as Secretary General. May his soul Rest In Perfect Peace, a credit to Ghana, Africa, the human race and a template lesson for citizens particularly African.

    There is one last Kofi Annan legacy you can create and participate in: Homework for you as a teacher, lecturer or parent. Every teacher should obtain a magazine/ newspaper cutout picture of Kofi Annan and a newspaper biography and create a role model classroom teaching tool poster – a ‘Kofi Annan Corner’ for  every classroom, school and university department notice board worldwide. All students should be asked to write and read essays and opinions on his life and achievements.  Kofi Annan should already be in the African schools curriculum. Start a Kofi Annan Prize in your school and institution. This can also be done for Aretha Franklin and other great leaders, local and international.

    Walking in the footsteps of Kofi Annan, Africa certainly has many fine professionals working in all spheres of life and particularly in organisations at local and international levels. But politicians with questionable contributions to development get almost all media publicity. Shame on the media.

    In access to the media and ability to influence society, the media prefers the trivial pursuits and utterances of the worst and most disgraced politicians over efforts of the professionals to develop the country. Africa’s media personnel should promote such professionals and bring their ‘road of struggle and achievements’ to public knowledge. Young Africans at the secondary and tertiary institutions level, so preoccupied with ‘Reality Shows’ like Big Brother etc, need help and guidance and documentaries to improve their minds with what is good for their professional and moral growth.

    Our youth are distracted by the struggle to survive-food, water, sanitation- and the struggle to make progress surrounded by African schools’ bare walls in empty classrooms, libraries and laboratories and subjected to class subjects lacking in stimulating teaching methodology and updated curriculum content. The miracle is that our children often succeed in competing against youth attending fully functional schools.

    We envy developed countries and migrate to them because their budgets are not stolen in billions and the money is mostly used for development. Nigeria, indeed Africa, must put in power those who will see servicing the needs of the youth through sanitation and schooling as more important than stealing.  The potential African politician, contractors and civil servants require regular university-based 1-3 month workshop courses on Delivering a Development Targeted Democracy highlighting the cost of corruption. It can teach monitoring and evaluation of political agendas and projects, implementation of UN SDGs and UN and other agencies’ statistics like from Transparency International.

    International standards define a school. We put our children in rubbish non-schools and pray for the ‘Miracle Of Good Broad Education’ to be inflicted upon them while ignoring their needs in sport, brain-gain, morals as dictated by the definition of school in the dictionary or the internet. Most schools are abandoned by most politicians in favour of ‘theft of book budgets’ and have less attractive items than enumerated by Professor Soyinka when, at the age of three and a half, he followed his older sister to school.

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

     

  • Our Girls; Old students, MPR

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

    We must establish Old Students Associations, OSA, in all primary schools. This encouraging act will get millions to assist primary school development. It will build on secondary school OSAs success which has provided billions to substitute for negligent authorities and the ministries, governors and state assemblies which underfund and abuse the inadequate education budget. Plagued with low education quality, Nigeria provides 1/6th of the UN recommended 26% of the budget for education. Nigeria runs an annual education budget of 3-5% subject to fraud and non-release reducing such budgets to 2-3% too miniscule to grow the brains of 70+million youth. Do not be deceived by those who proclaim ‘government cannot do it alone’. Government can do far more for education alone. Citizens and Corporate Nigeria are to supplement.

    Before Prof Is-haq Olarewaju Oloyede was appointed registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), N7,000,000,000 was probably stolen annually, oiling corruption in education. Are other multi-billion naira arms of the Ministry of Education -ETF, TET Fund, UBEC and SPEB? Congratulate President Buhari for appointing Prof Oloyede over the negative voices of ‘Corruption Fighting Back’ CFB Party. Buhari should investigate those opposed to Prof Oloyede’s appointment. Did they benefit from the annual N7billion in past years?  If politicians, civil servants, contractors and political parties stopped stealing, government could do its own share alone in education.

    Government in Nigeria has been made up of little small-minded selfish, citizen-neglecting, greedy men and women in big robes and boubous who hide billions behind statements about the pains of development while neglecting their responsibility to citizens. We hear of billions diverted even if wily lawyers and ‘anti-prison’ admission to hospital, thwart convictions! This is not the price or consequence of democracy, but demonic ‘billion-billion’ kleptomania while citizens suffer, becoming victims of criminality or criminals themselves. They refuse to do what governments can do for development.

    Just N1,000,000,000 of the many billions padded or stolen from an education budget is loss to 4,000 schools of N250,000 for laboratory equipment, 3-500 library books and a complete set of Chess, Scrabble board games with table and lawn tennis, field sports equipment like hurdles, javelin, weights, shot-put, whistle annually. But the loss is in many billions reducing the earning potential to self and Nigeria of a 30 school years of Nigerian students. No, our governments have no excuse considering what will be spent by INEC and politicians during the coming elections estimated at N750b -N1 trillion and also with the production of up to N1billion face posters of politicians but these politicians will never authorize school posters purchased or produced by ministries of education.

    Contractors on the Iwo Road, Ibadan have abused their moral responsibility not to punish the citizens during construction. The contractors and supervising government engineers are abusive of citizens’ rights by rendering major junctions almost un-motorable. To add to the insult, this atrocity is within sight of Government House, thus disrespecting and insulting the governor! The Maryhill and the Civic Centre junctions are a nightmare. Government must call the contractor to order and force the contractor to maintain decent temporary junctions even if they refuse to make the roads they have torn up motorable, notably Iwo –Akobo-Ojurin road, during the prolonged phase of construction which raises dangerous laterite dust for months. It cannot be right for contractors to inflict such maximum pain for a development gain. Is this ‘democracy pain for development pain’?

    There are government responsibilities to be taken to develop Nigeria while the National Assembly (NASS) is distracted with the repetitive struggle to clarify its permanent and seasonal pre-identity crisis.

    This NASS crisis is self-manufactured and macabre entertainment while the nation’s real news, the murders and police extrajudicial killings take the inside pages. Shame. The political shenanigans are ‘changing of the political garb’. Who has moved from party to party the most? Perhaps we should offer an award? Politicians love awards. They demonstrate no consistent ideology, no puritanical or logical distinction between progressive and conservative policy positions.  Movements between parties are so frequent now that politicians must be reminded by their personal assistant whose side they are on today. To keep track we should demand that whenever their NASS names are called, or used, they will be followed by the initials of their current party, their last party, second last party, and more. Mr So-and-so, PDP, APC, PDP, SDP, APGA to ‘give’ discredit to whom discredit is due for an Any Government In Power (AGIP) person. Political prostitution is producing the usual rash of diseases to infect us all, notably greed and kleptomania!

    So CBN seeks to increase the Monetary Policy Rate of 14%, further stifling any helpful business and personal loans. MPR of 14% goes to CBN coffers, killing business and family life. What does CBN do with the money it accumulated from such 14% out of the 21-30% that banks charge? Worldwide only 6/54 African countries and 4/74 other countries have rates similar or higher to Nigeria while more than 80 countries have rates 0- 13%. CBN leave us alone. What is the salary and perks of a CBN Director?

     

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

  • Our Girls; Expressway suffering: CRS

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Release the remaining Chibok girls. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released.

    Let us trace the people’s suffering amidst plenty of God’s gifts ‘sun, soil and oil’ its source! Even the traffic jam can be politicized as a failure of politics, governance, the budget, maintenance and of course ubiquitous multibillion corruption.  Can National Assembly (NASS) honestly say that their huge Salaries and Perks, saping us dry and their questionable constitutional projects are the necessary projects to project Nigeria’s development quickly after over 50 years of political interference and deliberate developmental inertia? Does any member of the current NASS deserve to be re-elected given the NASS position on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway?

    Everything is politics. Lest we forget, there was a N15b item in the 2017 budget to quickly finish by end 2017 the long overdue Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – LIE, the main artery in and out of Lagos, with millions of people and tens of thousands of vehicles /day. After many years of increasing life-taking suffering on the unmaintained, potholed road, Nigerians were skeptical when the road finally appeared on the government agenda. Nigerians thought it was another pre-election gimmick, like mythical Second Niger Bridge which is still believed to be economic punishment inflicted politically for the 1967-1970 Civil War. After all, Abuja is a city of 100 bridges, flyovers, but few streams let alone rivers. The promise of doing the mythical Second Niger Bridge has been ‘election promise’ political gimmickry since 1999. Yet its completion can only be good for entire Nigerian economy, but the myopic powers, even Jonathan, thinking ‘punishment over profit’ ignored the huge development responsibility.

    Similarly after years of politics and bloodshed in over 10,000 pothole craters, and fires involving multiple tanker/vehicle crashes, the LIE was started late, as an afterthought in the Jonathan’s PDP government. Distraught commuters actually thought it was another ‘Fake Pre-Election News Story’.But some good work was done by both contractors but at a huge insulting cost to the commuter tortured by ‘Mass Misery’ and suffering accompanying the construction, inadequate alternative routing for the millions of commuters causing 10-15 hour delays in narrow lane traffic and stuck in the mud on a diversion.

    Commuters, the voters, are always victims of politics and construction mayhem. For years they endured the ‘You Must Suffer, Have Pain To Have Development Gain’ a popular insult to the citizen from politicians once elected as government. When will the LIE suffering end? Unusually the successor APC government was keen to finish the LIE contract by end 2017 without too much of the usual trans-party bickering and contract reworking. Unfortunately NASS, whose members do not use the road and instead fly around courtesy of our tax money, tragically for millions of commuters, refused to appreciably fund the LIE.

    NASS rejected the APC budget for LIE-N15b. This further exposed NASS to Nigerians as an apparently greedy and self-centred third force in government preoccupied with constituency ‘petty local and poorly audited projects’ instead of channelling such funds to the national development plan and strategic projects from which all Nigerians will  benefit; NASS has been a selfish disaster for the Nigerian commuter. As you struggle around ask if any NASS member is worthy of re-election. Why not change them all?

    LIE is not for the Southwest. The LIE services every part of the country. The LIE would have been completed by December 2017. Instead the millions of commuters endure 3-6 hours in horrendous six lane, queue jumping, 30 kilometre jams, as I write this. And just for travelling 120km. We are told the contractors are on site, blocking off lanes, with almost zero control of off lane side-driving queue jumping vehicles further delaying those in the queue. There are too few traffic control personnel to control the 30km long traffic and the automatic queue jumpers and get the traffic to move. Even when they are there, they are more motivated and preoccupied by the current craze with ‘stop and particulars’, even in a four hour go-slow. I have been stopped more than 20 times now. Twice this last weekend.

    History, civics, geography and even Christian Religious Studies, CRS, were removed from the school curriculum by the federal government under political direction, crippling the knowledge base, dreams and job opportunities of tens of millions of Nigeria’s Generation Next. The state governors’ collective failure to verbally and actively defend their right to teach the full history of the various peoples originating in their own state history is a shameful and almost irreparable ‘Historical Error of Mind-destroying Proportions’. Governors should have taught their own school populations history, civics CRS and geography simply by keeping the children back in school for 30 minutes a day or an hour or two on Saturdays under the blanket title of ‘General Knowledge Classes’. If this had been done we would not have a generation of students, Nigeria’s best but wasted asset, who are ignorant of these foundation subjects.

    Happily CRS is being restored, employing many and improving morality. Hopefully it is not ‘Fake Pre-Election Feel Good News’ to be withdrawn by an elected/ re-elected president come 2019. Meanwhile the politicised tellers of fake news and twisted stories of Nigeria’s authentic history must be identified and their bad effects countered by local content books in schools and ‘after-school classes’.

     

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

  • Our Girls; 10 yr driving licence & JAMB refund?

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Release the remaining Chibok girls. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released.

    Dangote School of Business for University of Ibadan is good. More please. Coming 10-year passport is good. Now 10-year driving license please. 1,000 security personnel deployed to Zamfara is better late than never, good. Wider deployment with more men, better.

    Ghana legislature and the entire proud Ghanaian nation were addressed by televising the ‘Half Year Budget Performance’ of that country’s 2018-2019 Budget presentation to parliament. Nigeria is just warming up with the budget passed seven months late-a legislative failure, for that same time frame. Does Nigeria’s National Assembly (NASS) consider how Nigeria has been stopped from competing on a level economic playing field with countries which have January to December budget years, a yearning of the current government crushed by differences of principle, policy or politics with NASS. The Ghanaian example shames Nigerian legislators but have they any shame?

    With fanfare the Head of Service announced a face lift for the Federal Secretariat, Abuja. I was hoping for a similar resuscitation for moribund and mismanaged Federal Secretariat, Ikoyi Lagos where it is a painfully expensive eyesore of mega-proportions but they say is the ‘legalese’ of finance causing a 10+ yr so far 10+year delay. This aside, the reason why the ‘refurbishment of the federal secretariat reminds us that even at the highest level of governance in Nigeria, ‘incompetence’ is rife and ‘Maintenance is still a dirty word’.

    Why was everything good that the colonialists taught us about maintenance thrown out with the bad? Every conference harps on maintenance but no maintenance ever gets in the budget or it is merely another line in the budget to be stolen with no maintenance work done. In the 50s-70s, every government property, office or quarters had a painted circle on the entrance wall with the next date when the Public Works Department (PWD) had put in their diary to come to renovate the premises by direct labour. Every seven years, everywhere got renovated in stages according to the PWD Diary.  Every year 1/7th [14%] of the government property was renovated and every month of every year 1/12th of 1/7th [1.2%] of government property was automatically and systematically renovated, no bribe. Why did Nigerian government officials and politicians abandon that excellent ‘PWD Maintenance Dairy System’ of systematic renewal? As we embark on emergency federal secretariat renovation, let us institutionalise a seven- year renewal plan.

    At a time of almost uniform mourning and fear even on the Kaduna-Abuja highway when a female professor and many others were brutally murdered, the weeping was drowned by the jubilations surrounding the movements of NASS members removing their sheep’s clothing.  Politicians in Nigeria have performed far below expectation. Service is almost contrary to their visible character. Do Ghanaian parliamentarians dress simply but do more? Can NASS be as efficient in worrying about policies that will develop all Nigeria within the four years of any government instead of paralysing governments for upwards of two years with six month delays every year for four years in budget passage? And this even when the ruling party supposedly has the majority. The wolves have removed their sheep’s clothing having inflicted the planned budgetary delays and retarding the performance of the government unmindful that the budget and the policies are for the profit of the people of all parties and all parts of Nigeria.

    Even Nigerian students have been inflicted with massive corruption. What have they done to deserve to be overcharged, mistakenly or deliberately, by Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) which until recently was almost a criminal organization, yet another government agency unfit for purpose? Is there one that actually is fit for purpose, without bribes, delays and diversions?  JAMB used to be a corrupt organization feeding on students and providing fake results. It became untrustworthy. We championed the Post-UME to take back admission control to within the universities to guarantee they had the final say. This thankfully largely over five years cleansed the universities of a generation of pay-for place ‘unworthy in character and entry level-learning’ students who mushroomed into the violent and terrorizing cult revolution and ignorant graduates.

    Amazingly JAMB has paid to government its surplus in excess of N15,000,000,000, N15b or N7+b/year. This massive feat of the current chief eexecutive officer, Prof Is-haq Olarewaju Oloyede is worthy of being presented with an immediate highest national honour in an immediate ceremony in the president’s office and a ‘whistleblowers fee’ paid for him of 5% i.e. N350m for the first year as his payment. It was an irrefutable huge whistle-blowing statement on previous JAMB CEOs and top office holders. Actions speak louder than words and so does N7b. He cannot claim for Year 2. However the previous JAMB senior management must be grilled by EFCC/ ICPC to investigate prosecute and recover the N6b for 2016, N5b for 2015, N5b for 2014, N5b for 2013 etc.

    Since JAMB is an education exam body and is not a profit making one, this money amounts to a criminal overcharge on Nigerians students. It should be refunded to students who sat the examinations, just like when banks overcharge. This is N3,500 each from approximately two million students or over N4,500 for 1.5m students usually for servicing JAMB annually. Government must do the right thing and cut JAMB fees from N5,500 to N1,500 now, please.

     

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

  • Our Girls; Mandela; ‘Continuous Forensic Audit’

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

    The Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund faces a N62.3billion fraud and a $4m ministerial bribe attempt. What an insult to those companies forced by law to pay and those employees denied N62,300,000,000 in support, just like National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and its N130b or so. Every good intention crumbles into corruption dust. Why do we wait for billions to disappear, no honest person to stop it?

    Nigeria urgently needs a Pro- active Fraud Prevention Bill eg ‘Compulsory Continuous weekly Forensic Audit Bill’ for continuous forensic audit in every government Ministry, Agency,Department (MDA).

    Market fires again? Jos today, where tomorrow? No serious fire-fighting equipment or grid-plan for market fire-fighting. You say there are no jobs. Firefighting has unfilled jobs requiring recruitment of 50-100,000 firefighters nationwide!!

    Get the Mandela Lectures commemorating his 100th Birthday, especially the Obama+ Lecture and the ‘Madiba Would Have Reminded Us…’ Lecture by anti-corruption guru Prof Patrick Lumumba. Every African, African abroad with children and Africanophile worldwide must study them as Africa faces re-colonialisation from foreign commercial interests and losing its inheritance to religious and ethnic bigots and to fellow Africans stealing the commonwealth. Africans, show your wards these lectures which summarise our African condition in a falsified culture making ‘Instant Millionaires’ and ‘Instant Billionaires’. History is a ‘no no’ for many Africans, partly because they say ‘history is boring’ and history was shamelessly suppressed, politicized and twisted into Fake History.

    So the serpent which I called Ejo Eko, Lagos Snake, a python, has finally strangled Lagos, bringing Apapa to an anguished standstill and the vice president to Apapa, by helicopter viewing the 15 km long EjoEko made up of containers, trailers and tankers. This is the classic example of the evil that ‘False Federalism’ does to negate development. Shame on past and present federal governments for their insincerity to develop essential infrastructure since 1999 and the 3 ½ years currently in power manifest by such a huge disgraceful costly embarrassment. This is yet another deliberately neglected ‘under-funded’ development disastrous event compromising the National Development Plan because of trailer commercial preference over railway.

    Every new government even from the same party does a policy summersault, starves previously government approved projects of funds and undertakes painfully slow, negative contract reviews. Are such old contract reviews genuinely altruistic to save government money or to encourage the contractors to corruptly pay the new people in power? Contracts are cancelled or put on hold, paralysing and rendering useless billions of government naira belonging to citizens suffering a resultant development deficit. Witness the numerous empty-shell building sites littering Nigeria even in continuously same-party states. The disgraceful waste of the federal government secretariat pains Nigerians to the marrow as does the see-through uncompleted blocks at the Third Mainland Bridge started by Babatunde Fashola. But Fashola should have been pragmatic enough to complete one functioning block rather than leave the skeleton of 10 blocks haunting and taunting Lagosians. The project may never be completed because of differing funding priorities, political or personal differences, or questioned contracting specifications from the same party. Such issues like the ‘Problem, Cost and Prevention of Uncompleted Policies and Projects’ should be studied by political and social scientists and taught to politicians by their parties. States and FG should have 4-year plans from Day 1 and deliver in four year terms.

    It is unfortunate that developmental of Port Harcourt and Calabar and ‘Four-Track Cargo Train Container Evacuation’ from the port demanded for an international port have been corruptly rejected and frustrated, yet Nigeria quickly built trains running around Kaduna and Kano – ‘Corruptly Misplaced National Priorities’. Even Lagos still has not completed its internal railway, a project first terminated by Buhari in 1984. Will the truck owners, fearing loss of business monopoly, keep stalling Nigeria’s ‘Southern Port Railway Policy’ which is no threat, just a development and a better managed transport system? The truck owners refuse to pay for parking in holding bays just like the cow herders’ bosses refuse to pay for food on the herders’ route, unleashing the terrorist monster. What is the contribution of port corruption, multiple taxation and many security services to the gridlock? Closing the Third Mainland Bridge will compound the ‘Hell on earth’ woes of commuting Lagosians. Where is the Fourth Mainland Bridge?

    Nigeria is at several battle crossroads. The Apapa/ Tin Can Cross Roads, Corruption/ anti-corruption, Violence/Nonviolence, Governance/ Good Governance, Who To Vote For/ Who Not To Vote For. Worldwide politicians and professionals abroad are being prosecuted and jailed for corruption or sexual or policy indiscretions in the past. Nigerian politicians and professionals are no saints. Interrogate candidates for office in politics and government. Whitewashing corruption in no way cleanses the corrupt. Yes, the stolen money gives political clout but should disqualify and imprison politicians. The 2019 election must become a watershed election against money and moral policy corruption. Politicians consume a sizable budget proportion for few ‘I love Nigeria’ decisions. Too many have been in too many parties. Waking up daily, they cannot remember ‘Today’s Party’ and cannot be taken seriously as ‘Nigeria Political Policy Change Agents’. Political prostitution is alive and well with the expected diseases of Corruption, Underdevelopment, Wasted Generations, Economic Migration and now Internally Displaced Persons.

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

  • Our Girls; Killings; Cup; Fayemi

    It is four years+ since our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. We await the release of the remaining Chibok girls. Inexplicably our Dapchi girl-child, 15 year old, Leah Sharibu is not released. Why have we not extricated this one single girl from the terrifying clutches of Boko Haram?

    How is it possible for the Boko Haram to again, just last week, dent Nigeria’s territorial integrity and our security apparatus by raising a terrorist, foreign flag over Nigerian territory? However, as proud Nigerians, we cannot understand why the armed forces appear only after the murderous event. This is in no way to disregard the supreme sacrifice made by so many, largely unsung, gallant officers and men and women, with 23 now Missing In Action (MIA). Because of that sacrifice that we cannot afford to lose another life military or civilian. The armed forces were well-funded during the military era and also judging from the billions stolen by generals and admirals and buried in soak-aways in the civilian era. Can the armed forces be pro-active to prevent ‘take over events’, village massacres, and fake or genuine terrorist activity?

    But Boko Haram is not the only battle front in Nigeria.

    There is another equally vicious enemy, masquerading as fellow Nigerians! Government and President Buhari must prevent themselves from being seen as Nero ‘Fiddling while Rome Burns’ while people scream in anguish as they die, rot and roast in villages torched by fires, holocausts, set by the vicious herder militias!!

    What manner of cumulative evil is one death per day, 10 deaths per day, 20 deaths, 30,40,50, 60, 100, 200  up to and even beyond 300 murders in any single day or night of attacks by Nigerians on Nigerians? The president’s claim that the perpetrators are Gadhafi spawn rings hollow from all reports of survivors. True or false, it should make him spring into action to protect the territorial imperative and is no excuse for allowing the farm destroyers to run amok, unchallenged by our mighty armed forces nationwide which deny complicity. Close all barracks, cancel all leave, and redeploy them to the village war front, garrison the villages to eliminate this scourge.

    In Ghana this incursion has been nipped in the bud. And if they really are Gadhafi spawn, are they invincible, invisible or merely being wrongly reported to Buhari by his intelligence? Does that presidential ‘ID’ not instantly make them instant invading terrorists and mercenaries? Government and National Assembly (NASS) warn of fire and brimstone against South Africa when one single unfortunate Nigerian is killed. But strangely, they have collective inertia and incoherent plans when Nigerian villagers are wiped out. No one is brought to justice. We appear to be at war with a fake or ghost enemy. This calls for commando type units to protect Nigeria’s rural populations before the farms become deserts and Nigeria has a serious famine. We will be forced to give up eating cows reducing their value to zero except to be used for bride price! It is an unbelievable propaganda paradox for the Ministry of Agriculture to ‘rightly’ claim a triumph about rice production, which is good, while ignoring the huge threat to Nigeria’s food supplies of the bloody onslaught of herders. Government must be aware that forced peace without justice and seizing one side’s weapons of self-defense is no peace.

    We cannot bring back the dead. Their ancestral line is destroyed. Child survivors will never know their history or even their name. The Buhari government’s failure to save life is a Human Rights failure to meet SDG 8,9,10,16 to protect. It prompts suggestions of complicity about the mounting murderous death toll on and around the Plateau and will have election 2019 consequences as too many voters have first-hand trauma knowledge. Bermuda has its ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of mystery and strange accidents, disappearances of boats, ships and planes and people. The herder-instigated farmer killings create a deadly Plateau Triangle including Benue, Nassarawa states and spilling into Benue, Adamawa and Bauchi and now Sokoto and nationwide. Certainly NASS is impotent. Government must stop the matter today instead of offering alternatives including abandoning one’s ancestral property to the terrorist invaders. And yet we all still shed cow blood for meat provided by the blood shed of thousands. Have we no shame? When is enough blood enough bloodshed?

    As we mourn, we congratulate France’s multi-ethnic team for lifting the World Cup in a good clean game. Give opportunity to the youth and witness their Mbappe after Brazil’s teenage Pele. Meanwhile Nigeria’s Footbal Federation members rather risk expulsion /suspension of Nigeria from FIFA than obey FIFA rules thus biting the hand that feeds them and the game of football in Nigeria with millions of often untraceable dollars. Football administrators should be above ‘winning’ or viciously destroying the game.

    So even more congratulations to ex-governor and ex-Minister Fayemi for re-winning the Ekiti elections. Educated Ekiti, have witnessed the horrors of anti-judiciary thuggery, Shakespearian Macbethian medical theatrics and a tragic stream of unsolved political murders. Can Fayemi put any demons of his past performance aside and bind all the people of all political parties in a spectacular service manner? Nigeria sorely needs a new breed of leader-Obama, Mandela? You choose. Ekiti’s development cannot afford to lose a minute of one day in the next four years.

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

  • Our Girls; Powerless; Professional paralysis

    We discuss power, professional failures. It is four years+ since our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. We await the release of the remaining Chibok Girls. Inexplicably, our Dapchi girl-child, 15-year old, Leah Sharibu is not released. Why have we not extricated one single girl from the terrifying clutches of Boko Haram?

    Why does Nigeria allow expressway repairs by Julius Berger to cause such heavy traffic jams?

    The power grid has collapsed three times this year but it is a powerless collapsed grid, period. This is testimony to a myopic insensitive amoral governance structure obviously failing the citizenry since around 1978 when blackouts first became ‘normal’ and the first generators sprang into life, circumventing the political failure to provide power but unfortunately signifying the death of the power grid forever because others recognized a business opportunity in 1,000,000 generators with fuel needs ad infinitum. Unbelievably, serial governments since 1966 were so callous as not to add just 1,000Mw/ year to the grid- a fundamental to any rolling development plan as Nigeria requires 150,000Mw at UN recommendation of 1,000Mw / 1 million population. Is this not, therefore, a glaring example of the urgent need to ‘at last and at least’ decentralise the electricity governance system more radically to overcome our CINS of Corruption Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness to which we should add Irresponsibility in management skills stunting our past rulers’ ability to supply the human right of modern electric power- SDGs  7,8,9,11,12? Inhumanly we are still struggling with the monster of ‘illegal billing by guesstimate’ only because it is a crime-ridden corruption cash-cow for DISCOs. All this in spite of trillions thrown at power since 1999-most of it ‘disappeared’?

    Since the 70s, the federal government has been morally and manpower-wise a failure in the provision of power to the country. Under restructuring and decentralization, power should be the problem of the individual states which are smaller manageable units more easily held responsible for the provision of power needs of their own people. Remember that each state in Nigeria is larger than some countries which because they are bona fide countries power their people. For how long will homes and offices burn trillions of naira in substitution for the grid with fuel and generator fumes when if the grid was working we would all save at least 90% of our current expenditure on electricity supply? Where is the $1-5b CBN Solar Loan Facility to be repaid at single digit interest rates, to allow Nigerians to buy solar equipment and get off the grid? Such solar loan facilities are widely available in many EU countries and the UK where the sunshine is only 10% of our sunshine. Nigerians must be assisted to harness this gift of God –the sun.

    Excuse me, the media has got it all wrong. It may be politically correct to use the terminology farmers/herders clash but is not factually or morally correct. The farmers are the ones murdered, their produce destroyed and lands razed and seized. It is a herders/ farmers clash which clearly shows for posterity that the farmers are not the aggressors but the victims. It also seems to be politically correct to use the more generic job description ‘herders’ and drop the ‘Fulani herders’ which is specific as all Nigerians have known who they are traditionally and that they are actually the perpetrators or culprits. This war started long before the Gadhafi boys announced by President Buhari. Remember that President Buhari was Grand Patron of Fulani herders when Lam Adesina was governor in Oyo State during a Fulani herders/farmers clash. The ethnicity is merely part of the job description.

    There is a plethora of new names in the mix with the old in the run-up to the coming elections at all levels. Worldwide, the perceived ‘’unknown’ has repeatedly unseated the known hands. Can and will this happen in Nigeria so prone to stomach infrastructure in exchange for voting allegiance?  It is a pity that the traditional names are being raised for the presidential race. There are many new candidates but will the voters go and vote ‘old’ or vote ‘b-old and new’?

    Once again, just like Jesse of old when 1000 people lost their lives, pipeline fire and destruction of property rears its head, even in the markets where fires are routine. Are there no engineers maintaining the integrity of such lines to raise alarms? Of course engineers do not even fill the potholes threatening and sometimes ending the lives of their family members on the expressways so why should they fix pipelines before they burst? We suffer from a ‘professional ethic paralysis’ or ‘professional castration’ caused by a politics which ignores professionals as it is preoccupied with self-aggrandisement while the country ‘burns’ in reality and figuratively. Politicians would rather buy N37-50m jeeps than order N50m cancer care equipment. Can we start a social media ‘Expressway Pothole Watch’ to force an unembarrass-able government into sending its road engineers to fill 10-year old potholes now while waiting for politicians to fund the expressway by 2025 or whenever?

    We always provide medicine after death – after pipelines and petrol tankers burst into flames, after potholed roads killed a senator or minister, or after a herders’ attack when they have ‘mysteriously’ disappeared. Nigeria, who will save you from these burning in these flames?

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