The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Our girls

  • Our Girls; Mismanaged NHIS $1b

    Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15-year old, Leah Sharibu is not released. Shout and scream until government gets all our girls back.

    As Nigeria faces daily rampaging marauders, the mounting death toll from the herders murderous and callous invasion of the Nigerian farm space will almost certainly cost President Buhari any moral high ground he thought he had. Death cannot be wiped from memory with a few ‘good deeds’. Too many dead have had too much bloodshed to be swept under the carpet of party loyalty by the 2019 electorate. Everyone is well enough travelled due to business, educational, NYSC or ethnicity to know someone displaced or murdered or is familiar with the murder village or LGA. The souls of the innocent will not die, but cry out to Buhari for justice. How much longer before we are all consumed?

    The disgraceful revelations of the forensic audit into the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) up to 2015, or more obviously NHIScam,  is yet another nail in the coffin of the citizens of Nigeria yearning for adequate healthcare. The sums manipulated are enormous but ‘billions’ are common among the thieving class of Nigeria. The NHIS is exposed to have misplaced, mismanaged or directly used with criminal intent, the sum of $1,000,000,000, $1billion or N135,000,000,000, N135b using the exchange rate of the time. We are used to hearing probably true stories of organisations being solicited or volunteering to ‘roll over’ funds for anything from days to several months thus delaying the ‘as and when due’ salary and pension payments, payment of debts for services rendered like contract medical bill payments. We have heard of ‘finder’s fees’ being paid anyone from CEO to accountants who deposit public and private money in banks. Periodically our workers and retirees have to resort to strikes to get their monthly benefits while the officials laugh all the way to the bank ‘for their percentage’.

    Is this NHIS scam any different from the previous and obviously ongoing scams, from electricity to road to education, tearing us apart? Be aware that the NHIS’s reputation has been rubbish, almost a cesspool, since inception. I was not impressed in my personal professional relationship with it. It is plagued by opaque accounting, arrogance in its relations with partners, preferring to give orders and instructions without negotiation, deliberate delays in payment of legitimate bills for services rendered by primary and secondary care providers, suspicion of corruption and discrimination in the payment and non-payment and refusal to pay bills and insisting on paying bills in bulk and stopping payments of the bills of 99 patients if one patient’s bill has a question mark from the NHIS.

    The forensic audit is a picture of a  plague ravaging the NHIS. In contrast, its template the UK NHS celebrates 70 years of service to many including ‘former’ Nigerians. The forensic audit has exposed a great lack of projects to grow the NHIS. It demonstrates a great amount of small minded decisions like bank stuffing. Follow the paper trail to those who benefited from kickbacks, finder’s fees, and delayed bill payments of millions of participants. Prosecute  and when found guilty, have their assets stripped and imprison them. The money appeared in NHIS accounts in and around 2012, presumably to boost medical services. Or was it a carefully orchestrated scam with $1b between $8 and $12/person.

    In a normal society, we would have expected a 2012 conference or NHIS task force to accept memoranda and proposals from stakeholders in medicine to discuss the A-Z relevant to standard National Health Services worldwide and to the Nigerian context which is statistically altered by high family numbers, multiple partners, numerous children, infrequent salary payments and an untested home address system. From ambulance services to Zika virus, defective health service should have been put on the table, dissected and sewn back together with the problem exposed – all to better allocate the funds. The NHIS research team, if it existed should have been doing a good computer-based Research and Development, R&D job by collating medical journal papers and hospital vital medical statistics to produce data on the commonest diseases, medications, surgeries and failures of the medical system. We have severe problems in malaria, maternal and infant mortality and cancer care with too few centres offering any semblance of cancer diagnosis and care at state level.

    We have too little good quality equipment spread too thinly. Every single General Hospital should be as good as a Federal Medical Centre or very good State Hospital. Medical practitioners cannot afford the 25-30% interest on loans for already exorbitantly priced medical equipment. Medical equipment is more expensive in Africa than in the UK or Middle East but Africa charges a low price for using the equipment and cannot recover the cost. Similarly for medical drugs.

    Instead of investing in banks for the profit of a few, an intelligent caring NHIS could have partnered with medical equipment suppliers, pharmaceutical companies, and various training bodies to produce those  trained in the needed skills and equipment use and recovered the money over time by deducting the money from investigation fees et cetera. If the $1b which is not worth $0.5b can be recovered, the NHIS must empower medical services nationwide and not banks to better impact Nigeria’s poor health indices.

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

     

  • Our Girls; June 12; Lagos snake

    Today we discuss Our Girls; Consolidating June 12 History; Lagos snake strikes; Strategizing to keep our citizens in the country by Making Nigeria Great-Again.  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. How can a whole country not be able to marshal its diplomatic and military skill to extricate one single girl from the terrifying clutches of Boko Haram? We must shout and scream until government gets all our girls back.

    So we have the 2018 Budget at last. Is this Budget 2019 presented early or Budget 2018 presented almost eight months late, no thanks to National Asembly (NASS) all of whom should be swept away in the 2019 election for complicity.

    So it has finally happened. The snake of Lagos –the trailers strangling Lagos and forcing a single lane even on bridges has struck with a trailer falling from the Ojuelegba Bridge onto vehicles. A predictable accident easily preventable. The company which owns the trailer must be made to pay full compensation.

    Let us not blame innocent farmers for the ongoing one-sided war. Already the media has been intimidated into calling the war ‘Farmers-Herders War’ but it is actually a Herders –Farmers war. The media should take note as posterity will not forgive them for not naming the perpetrator first.

    By now all departments of political and social studies will be embarking on research and theses on and about and  around the cost of June 12 to the country struggling to become a nation. At last, June-12ers can come out of the closet, retrieve and dust up their hidden journals and offer information to assist such research in order for full capture of resource material. They war however is not over until there is restitution, of course the leader MKO is passed away but there are many other aspects of recovery that can be achieved by a willing government. Making the judiciary in particular and Houses of Assembly fiscally independent is a key component. The judiciary must also speed up the process of justice, introduce fines for delays and be incorruptible.

    The killings continue suggesting the uniforms are not doing enough to prevent the terror and mayhem unleashed across the country. Yes you may say it is Ghadaffi leftovers, but a Gahdaffi leftover would not attack a seminary for not allowing cows to graze on the pristine lawns maintained by the sweat of the students –the seminarians.

    Every other day we celebrate a UN day of something to highlight our failure to teach our children the things that really matter to their lives in addition to aRithmetic, Reading and wRiting. Yes it is wonderful to rehabilitate and upgrade all the many miserable schools in poor condition around the country. However not enough attention is being given to ‘Curriculum Expansion Change’ and if it not forthcoming from the quick positive intervention of the federal government’s Ministry of Education which is notoriously slow and often moves in reverse. How does no one remember the cancelation of History and Geography and Civic Education.

    How do we reverse the migrant fever to ‘flee from your home’ country by all legal and illegal means. Why would we emigrate illegally, on a scale never before heard or seen? The general answer includes poverty, poor prospects and facilities, unequal life and living opportunities, political and perceived persecution and finally a perception of a war situation, declared or undeclared. These lead to a grasping at straws of ‘the grass is always presumed to be greener’ across the border in another country. Often evil relations, acquaintances and even strangers telling you that you are too beautiful to remain lost in Nigeria, or that they have jobs waiting abroad for you and you wind up being trafficked. How do we reverse this in our own particular case in Nigeria?

    The answer is simple. Each one of us needs to bury whatever divisive bad policies we have put in place and work towards the needed re-examination and restructuring at every level to meet the 21st Century needs of the citizenry. The time of domination should be over, no one wants to be a second class citizen in his own country. Very many people are dissatisfied with the historic political and governance structures in Nigeria that have landed us in this quagmire and powerlessness with a very high cost of initiating and doing business. If they all became illegal immigrants and bombarded Fortress Europe and America, there would be no country left behind for those anti-restructurists so busy with their profits from the current system and shouting an empty ‘Unity’ with no substance. To prevent this mass migration we must all  ‘Make Your Country Nigeria Great‘ you can add ‘Again’ if you think Nigeria was once great. Make Nigeria so attractive that the citizens will not feel the overwhelming and life-threating urge to go abroad for greener pastures’.

    Giving IDPs money to commence businesses of their own is a vital way of restoring the dignity of life. It is bad to just bring occasional food and building materials to them. The IDPs are Nigerians and can work even within IDP camps.

     

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

  • Our Girls; Farmers: ‘Too Young To Die’

    It is now four years+ since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 15 year-old, Leah Sharibu.

    Mr President, the truckloads of Nigerian needless dead should pass Aso Rock en route burial during the conviviality of the weekly Federal Executive Council meetings so as to get full government attention.  Even in the face of the wicked and wanton murder of three Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) men and officers along with evil killing of nine farmers they were supposed to protect, we are suspiciously dumfounded by the inactivity of the combined uniformed services. Our Inspector General of Police (IGP) was on television declaring that the response would be taken against in two whole bloody weeks ignoring the word ‘Rapid’.

    What happened to the ‘First 24-48 hours’ in crime detection? And will the herder terrorists not kill and destroy more according to the timetable and go on break in two weeks? Sadly when the security council met, the only solution articulated by the Minister of Defence was that Nigeria should ‘abandon the Anti-Grazing Bill, AGB’. Was it a truly national meeting – fair to the victims? Was any victim there to speak? Who wrote the security reports considered? But sadly and dangerously for Nigeria the defence minister demonstrated a failure in the basic ‘Logic of Problem Solving’. The problem was the wanton rampaging murder of thousands and destruction of thousands of farms and occupation of villages and farmlands with absent significant impact of the federal government. The solution creatively created out of victimization by the victims is the AGB, a reaction to disarming of potential victim communities by the authorities leaving then sitting ducks.

    So how can withdrawing the well-thought out solution, AGB, solve the problem? Rather it will explode murderously. The minister is advised that the AntiGrazing Bill must remain. My personal solutions include a boycott of beef as I cannot eat ‘blood beef’ provided by the murder of anyone – farmer, his family or herder. Other solutions available are forcing the cow owners to pay for cow and herders’ food and drink en route the market just like other produce owners, fattening the cows on ranches of the owner’s states and shipping them by trailer or maybe trains in one or two days nationwide. This is a needless war that should never have happened in Nigeria, compounding suspicions of territorial ambitions.

    President Buhari, we, the living Nigerians nationwide, are mostly happy at the Not Too Young To Run Act. But Nigeria has already lost thousands of potential young political office holders cut down in the herders/ Gadhafi-spawned terrorist war. Therefore even more urgent than this law is a new bill you urgently need to introduce – the ‘Too Young To Die’ stating that all Nigerians are ‘Too Young To Die’ at the hands of terrorist herders, their cohorts, mercenary foreign bandits and in 2019 election wars. Buhari beyond the monetary imperative to be Mr Clean, there is the moral imperative to the president’s commitment to ‘make all Nigerians safe and secure’ for every group and profession including farmers.

    Our democratic heartbeat is out of control. Our democracy is on very expensive life support not giving value for money. It is not vibrant, life-giving, hope-raising but facing cardiac arrest, with an exorbitant cost for little returns. It is in urgent need of self or imposed restructuring from top to bottom. Can it cut away the greed and fat?  Starting with the National Assembly (NASS) and state assemblies, they need urgent surgery to cut 70% of personnel salaries and perks, introduce part-time sitting allowances, and even payments of salaries by the states which politicians represent. Is this overbloated re-numeration scheme why NASS acts like a despicable bullying military unitary outfit? It makes a sordid political case study for political science students of contemporary politics as NASS shamelessly disregards public opinion or good leadership by ‘witch-hunting so-called dissident NASS members’ and any who question their ‘word’ or authority. Aruma Oteh of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) responding to the haranguing by NASS spearheaded in the sordid ‘Hembe Affair’ has long confirmed Jega’s assertion that most CEOs dread NASS visitation panels because of their interpretation of ‘oversight’. ‘Money for hand, back for ground’ is a phrase used in certain professions beginning with P. Why does NASS relish discrediting and vilifying its members with different or opposing opinions especially if articulated publicly? Where is its democracy, accommodation of different views: party, partisan and personal? Why are NASS ‘Minority Reports’ a declaration of war, considered anti-NASS and fit only for punishment of the ‘dissident perpetrators’. Is NASS an unregistered political party that it should present itself as a united front, its membership up in arms in self-protection and seemingly against the wishes of Nigerians to have a cheaper more effective single house parliament?

    A country that cannot complete its National Library since 2006 to be built in 22 months with a contract awarded to RCC at N8+billion, now an immoral N78b, says it all about political priorities in education.

    One announcement says Second Niger Bridge is 44% complete and another says some Bureau is hindering finishing the bridge. Who is lying?

    Mr President: Cholera in 2018? Nigeria loses 440 citizens to cholera. Every LGA gets N1b a year –but still no sanitation in schools, markets and motor parks!!

     

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

  • Our Girls: Killers, Drugs and Potholes

    It is now four years + since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 15 year old, Leah Sharibu. Is President Buhari’s team stopping the killings? No!!! In Adamawa, 12 people killed and 15 killed in a Zamfara village and life goes on. If Buhari will not take adequate containment measures, how can it end? Buhari should immediately empty the country’s barracks and transfer all soldiers to the state battlefronts to save the indigenous farming communities across Benue, Taraba, Plateau, Nassarawa States and 21 other attacked states. Soldiers have no right to be in officers and NCO messes and barracks when their C-in-C has informed the country that the herders’ attacks have sinister links with Ghaddafi terrorists confirming that we are at war by an infiltrating army in collaboration with known violent herders. This killing must stop before elections. President Buhari, this killing will stop your re-election. Far too many Nigerian voters have been traumatized directly and been attacked or forced to evacuate their ancestral lands by Fulani herder terrorists. Nobody will forget by 2019 election.  Unless Buhari creates a miracle, his ‘I am MR Clean’ will not cleanse him or his government of the ongoing tragedy of the herders’ terrorism and he will lose the election on ‘security’. Nowadays we talk of ‘security architecture’ so Buhari should review the ‘security architecture’ in every state and hamlet!

    The drug epidemic among the youth has finally hit the media and is highlighted by the outcry against Codeine containing cough mixtures and Tramadol. The vulnerable youth are educated and not educated, wealthy and poor. They mix these drugs with hemp, power drinks and other medications in an unregulated, unmeasured dangerous ‘Champaign Cocktail’ and drink ‘innocently’ from a soft drink bottle. Why? The usual suspects in every country – boredom, joblessness, availability of funds through stealing or scams or family money, and fads of peer pressure. Add medical treatment gone wrong, especially the misuse of painkillers, sometimes in collusion with medical staff. It is difficult to measure pain as it is a subjective personal perception prone to be exaggerated. There are too many important prevention steps that Nigerian leaders at every level have refused to institutionalize, thus forcing the whole country to abandon our responsibility to provide prevention to the youth, the physically and mentally challenged and the elderly. Already Ebola rears its head again. However it was expected that the Ministry of Education would involve the Ministries of Health, Transport, Sports, Youth and other ministries to come up with a ‘Life Skill’ Course Textbook teaching about the above topics. State and Federal Level must take such important educational information from co-curricular to curricular mainstream and include the subject ‘Life Skill Education’ as an examination tested subject.

    For many of our youth such prevention measures are too late. We failed them! Our ineptitude is now causing a serious drug use epidemic among our youth and young adults. This has arisen partly from stupid adventurism of youth and also for a lack of being taught the Dangers of Drugs’ as a classroom subject all added to a backfired culture cultivated by Corporate Nigeria creating ‘Instant Millionairism’ with no work done. Since 1994, 24 years ago, Educare Trust was probably the first youth NGO to pioneer an education programme in communities, schools and universities aimed at avoiding youth hazards captured in an Educare Trust acronym called  the SAD Syndrome= Smoking & Sex & Sickle Cell, AIDS & Alcohol & Abortion & Addiction, Drugs & Dangerous Driving and recommended to our Youth to be GLAD –Good Lungs, Abstinence, Diligent Driving and Democracy-Voting at 18. All this was done as a ‘Life Skill Project’ under co-curricular activities with willing schools numbering in the thousands and cooperative teaching staff and also on NTA, BCOS and elsewhere to reach a wider target audience comprising many millions.

    Certainly the time has come for not just NGOs but government Health and education ministry joint serious consistent drug surveillance and quarterly reports from such surveillance in student facilities, hostels and boarding houses. Governments must learn that government achievement is not just measured in statistics like financial figures on inflation and job rates. Students must be treated like athletes and have urine drug testing in and out of examination time.

    I want to ask us what type of evil animal are we that we have approximately 1000 major life-threatening craters and big potholes, some dug up every night, every night to criminally promote ‘go-slow’ and sellers’ business or actual vehicle crashes and robbery, on old sections of the Lagos Ibadan Road. They are begging to kill us and we are begging that ‘Road Surveillance and Repair’, denied us ever since the misleading hype of the 400 road engineers in 1999, be implemented by road crews filling temporarily such potholes and craters until contractor corporation or ministry of Works, deem it fit ‘to save lives today’ by filling these craters and bad patches, while waiting for the big bucks denied the road by an apparently greedy, selfish NASS. We do not even put Highway Code recommended ‘Warning Signs’ before major potholes but ‘FRoadSafetyC’ and Police checkpoints gather nearby. What work do they actually do?

     

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

  • Our Girls; FRSC; Single term!

    It is now four years + since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 14 year old, Leah Sharibu. Disarming villagers, without providing protection is like preparing them up for slaughter as the herdsmen have not been so disarmed.

    Can FRSC clarify why one FRSC official Olanrewaju stopped me on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway before Ogunmakin on Sunday 13th May at 8 o’clock and kicked carelessly at my plate number and informing me that my vehicle registration plate number was ‘not in the FRSC database’? Is that a crime?

    Name a single politician at presidential, Governorship, LGA or even NASS, or professional in any parastatal who has done better in a second term than in the first term. Very few and far between.

    We are a nation supposed to be in a hurry, because of our low ranking in all UN development indices and the relative disadvantage of our citizens. Having even a good leader demanding a second term as of right and rigging his or her way back into power deprives us of even better leaders. If the recycled leader is bad it further impoverishes the quality of life and the level of service delivery for another four years. We know that the people’s will is not always carried out at elections. As for federal and state parastatals, the heads hold office and re-appointment by the President’s will and his circle or the Governor and his own circle. Any renewal or extension of terms has become more of a burden than a blessing of continuity.

    More often than not new Vice Chancellors and other parastatal heads, governors and even Presidents spend a good deal of time belittling the achievements and dismantling or abandoning construction work of predecessors. This happens worldwide. There are several ghostly see-through incomplete buildings to confirm this, Federal secretariat in Lagos is a disgraceful waste of the Nations patrimony as is the Ilubirin Estate.  In Nigeria a sect in power has managed to make the school subject history redundant. We are all witnesses as students or workers, to Heads of Departments and such places, going off at a tangent to the previous direction while warning that their predecessors name must never be mentioned again.

    However such issues do not call for perpetuation in power by anybody. There is an obvious decline in productivity during the second term. In Nigerian ethnic politics compounds this problem as the longer one ethnic group or one part of the state is in power, the less content are those who feel left out leading to perceived and often genuine cries against marginalization following a 2 term, 8 years rotation,  instead of a single term 4 year rotation. At the presidential level the present acrimonious 8 year North –South cycle of power has done no one any favours. The cycle is too long and requires revision and reduction to a single term of four or maximum five years. With a teeming population of qualified professionals why should one person be allowed to take up someone else’s job, depriving other Nigerians of the same job and depriving   and the citizens of new ideas, directions and goals every four years? Second term has become a cancer depriving Nigeria of exposure to the tree of leadership. Of course there are exceptions – few and far between.

    Today therefore let us think deeply about the value to Nigeria and Nigerians and the cost : benefit analysis  to our rapid development by introducing a single term of four or maximum  five years. Let us contrast that gain with as yet unwitnessed gain and losses from the ‘second term syndrome’. We must change the mindset of the citizen and the politician in this regard. All political parties should initiate studies and look seriously at the second term. Imagine where Nigeria would be today if it had had a new President every four years. Better or worse?

    At some point in our future we Nigerians have got to face and deal with the ‘8 year- two term right’ because it is wrong and has stunted our political and economic and even our ethnic recognition development. We all know that ethnic differences may be brewing at every national political opportunity but they also fester at state and LGA level. A compulsory four year system with create a wider playing field with more winners and hope for aspirants and more opportunity for development delivery.

    The strangely boastful Obasanjo claim that he ‘made’ several billionaires while he was president may be correct. The other way of saying ‘I made billionaires’ is to say that he did not make 1000 people with $1,000,000 each but a few who had over $1,000,000,000 each. Imagine the different impact on citizens in the wider spread of wealth. The result is cement is more expensive in Nigeria than anywhere in the world. Strange abi? Are billionaires not supposed to be generous? Of course not! Perhaps only in later life?

    Please note that the security of material and elections in not the responsibility of INEC who has no security personnel. It is government’s full responsibility.

    NASS has failed to deliver a budget in 7 months. Why should even a single one be re-turned to office in 2019?

     

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

     

  • Our Girls; Terrorism: Garrison Villages

    It is four years + since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 14 year old, Leah Sharibu and an end to war hostilities or terrorism by both Boko Haram and The Fulani herders and their murderous rampage across most of the innocent and unarmed and now terrified and terrorised general population. There are attacks and killings in every location from Local Government Headquarters to roadside culminating in those 27+ BBC says 51,  slaughtered in Kaduna and those recently killed inside religious houses. This is a maximum terror tactic because it is the religious leaders who are charged by God and even by government with keeping the citizens calm and holy and ‘turning the other cheek’.

    Murdered people, Priests or Paupers, Senators or servants, are equally precious to families, friends and God. Terrorism, mayhem, destruction of property and laying waste other people’s labour are a breach of their human right to a good life but obviously Herdsmen do not agree! President Buhari is being reactionary by crying wolf after the recent killings. We need  preventive leadership, nipping potential death and disaster in the bud before the loss of  a single life. The current rate of loss of human life and the cost of the ‘laying waste crops and the burning the land’ if added to the well-known coming potential violence associated with elections will further cripple the country into 2019 in a nation where it has taken 6 + months to think of passing a budget!

    Our Nigerian democratic system pretends when it suits it to follow the UK system and now the US political system. However our political leaders are not forced to put their activities under the microscope of scrutiny like in the UK and its Question Time in UK parliament  or US’s press conferences. Why did not President Buhari cry out, and take decisive proactive actions during the last 3 years before accumulating thousands of deaths under his watch and now suddenly giving the Ghadaffi-sponsored- them angle as a lame excuse to side-track accusations to escape personal responsibility. To the dead, does it matter who sponsored those who killed you on your own father’s farm and in your own sovereign country which has not yet declared war?  For years Buhari said nothing even in the face of rumours arising from a study of lapses in Presidential conduct marked by inactivity and lack of condemnation of the massacres. He as Grand Patron, must know more than he is telling Nigerians and his routine silence is not comforting to the corpses or the living citizens. No president we know ignores the death of thousands and displacement of millions and survives an election. The herders War against farmers and road users and villagers is a major ‘2019 Election Issue’ because the war impacts with misery and mourning so many millions of eligible voters. They cannot explain logically the slaughter and cannot have faith in a security apparatus that has allowed such murderous routing of village and roadside populations. Potential voters in every state – far beyond the Boko Haram War will react to this insurgency/invasion by Ghadaffi in diaspora -something every security observer pointed out as far back as 5 years, including in this column. How come therefore can the security and even the president be pointing out to us what we know after doing no counterinsurgency measures for years?  A failure! Murderous armed herders are murderous armed herders, no matter where they have come from-local or Ghadaffi bred. No ranching will stop the thirst for blood or the pattern of wonton destruction because ill managed-ranches will not hold the herders in check as the grass will die and not be nurtured and will always be greener on the other side of the fence where the diligent farmers are tilling and watering and  tending crops -soon to be food, not for humans but for cows! Nigeria is a sad country where cows are better fed on stolen and seized  yams and cassava than the citizens who plant the crops. Should we become like cows and led to other people’s farm to farm for free feeding?

    following the okada motorcycle epidemic every single Nigerian has witnessed an okada attack or knows a victim. Unchecked herders violence and the destruction of livelihoods  and human life have meant that most of us know farmers and families and places where these nefarious crimes are being committed. In addition to discussing the questionable origin of marauders with Trump, has Buhari strategized with Nigeria’s  security agencies who need to change from post attack visits and reporters of terrorism to preventers of terrorism.  He has not been proactive enough in the mayhem. Buhari’s finding that many are Ghadaffi/Libya mercenary graduates is no comfort to Nigerians under terrorist alert. Just provide security, close the barracks and redeploy to garrison the villages and use drones for surveillance and ask Trump and UN bosses for hourly satellite terrorist movements. Nigeria must garrison its villages.

    There was a local council election across the UK on Thursday. Approximately 22 million people were eligible to vote. No violence or marked fraud and everybody went to work. What stops us in Nigeria replicating this ‘normal cyclic democratic activity’?  Politicians or he people. Ourmumudondo-Charlie Boy!

     

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

  • Our Girls; No Bullying; Uniform Corruption

    It is now four years plus since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 14 year old, Leah Sharibu. We also seek an end to hostilities by both Boko Haram and The Fulani herders who recently killed inside religious houses. Priests or paupers, all are precious to God not the herdsmen!

    All hail the Cancer Control Strategic Plan of Oyo State. Every state in Nigeria is larger than many other countries and should take total responsibility for citizens’ welfare without waiting for Abuja. Upgrading medical services to ensure the citizens receive even better care than offered at Federal Medical Centres and University Teaching Hospitals is a first step. Cancer screening is a human right and for cancer care is best delivered in the local environment.  So far these big hospitals have been the only ones offering cancer treatment and the states have refused to upgrade and employ expert cancer manpower for diagnosis, treatment and care. There is only one reason why state governments do not make its state hospitals better than teaching hospitals. That is corruption! It takes motivation and manpower and equipment.

    Why does the media make the same mistake year in year out? The media always puts the politician ahead of people. A media house interviewed Saraki but failed to interview the woman Sergeant At Arms who Saraki went to visit. She had been injured on duty for trying to block the mace thugs entrance into the Senate! Surely that human interest story should have been a large report in order to enlighten Nigeria and give a genuine role model. The citizen, especially the hero citizen deserves media exposure. The media did not even put up the standard media ‘suspected rogues gallery’ mug shot pictures of the mace thugs in the most media covered act of political thuggery in Nigerian history.

    In notoriety and brigandage, it beats standard political assault on the citizenry like stealing ballot boxes any day! Nigeria’s media must take an oath not to subordinate the people to the politician to stop the creation of yet another set of monsters who will devour even the media. We should not continue with this backward trend into 2019. Nigeria by 2019 requires a ‘new direction media beyond even social media. The media must refuse to publish every silly comment by politicians of questionable election honesty and character. Already some media houses discriminate in favour of one party or another in line with their ownership or policy bias-a worldwide ‘ownership’ practice. However, paradoxically perhaps, we expect journalists to be unbiased and give more exposure to the people than to the politician. Almost all professionals debate national issues and come up with guidance and planning for the next year. Of course little gets done but dreams are made of planning.

    What priorities do the media have in Nigeria beyond music and advert revenues? Of course there are many educational programmes but can the media massively motivate young voters and all female potential voters to vote in 2019? Beyond reportage and the editorial what does your favourite newspaper do for the nation?

    You have heard the estimated cost to the constantly empty pocket of Nigerian youth and the profit on the phone calls of the millions of Big Brother ‘de-voters’ and tweeters? Add the corporate sponsorship and advertisement arena and you may easily count the billions projected by economists.  Ask yourself what a warped society we have when one single show of little ‘conconbility‘ about “Virtual Reality, artificially inflated egos, lies and cheating, and nearly live sex on screen can provide revenues suspected to reach nearly 10% of the national budget of N7 trillion while IDPs live in misery, farm destruction in thousands and poverty among millions. Imagine if these unfortunates also had the wherewithal to vote and the cost could have been higher. This is an amazingly unfortunate spin-off of the instant millionaire programmes championed and executed by a section of corporate Nigeria during the last 20 years which has poisoned a generation of youth, against my and others advice, in the direction of ‘get rich quick’.

    Christiane Amanpour of CNN says ‘I will be truthful not neutral’. That is the answer to those who trying to cover over massive criminal activity seek the neutral ‘non-judgemental’, national interest or unity as grounds for a bad solution when caught out often drowning injustices like mega-corruption, one-sided violence, discriminatory policies and law enforcement  under the canopy of ‘that was yesterday, let us move to today’. Without restitution? Without justice? No bad for the future!

    First the Nigerian people, then Amnesty International, then Transparency International and now the US State Department have ‘objected’ to Nigerian human rights and anti-corruption success! Amidst the fine men and women in our uniforms there are bad eggs who terrify Nigerians, even with full documentation,who approach any uniform on roads or ports with terror and trepidation. ‘Stop and search’ is a terrorist activity. And this in full glare of the anticorruption government and its agencies EFCC and ICPC. For the few caught, ‘Dismissals’ without prosecution after ‘guardroom trial’ is useless. Prosecution is essential. Unless this government can stop such ‘public and visible corruption’ there is no hope against invisible corruption. Stop uniform corruption now.

     

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

     

  • Our Girls; ‘Say No to bullying’

    It is now four years + since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 14-year old, Leah Sharibu.

    Amidst the outcry against a really lopsided anti-corruption effort, we may be forced to appreciate even these small beginnings even though National Assembly (NASS) and courts have tied the release of the returning money in knots in order to tie the hands of the government and perhaps guarantee a failed budget 2018 with consequent 2019 election failure.

    Nigerians should understand fully the statement that “We Nigerians are where we are in this largely imperfect Nigeria because of the massive serial politically-led theft of the resources” that God gave Nigeria leading to moral and monetary insufficiency throughout the reign of these leaders. The process was accelerated by a 50-year agenda to deliberately cripple the police force. This was compounded by a major political policy criminality as Nigeria is the only country in the world that gives away [allocates] publicly owned oil wells to individuals depriving millions of desperate citizens of billions of dollars in developmental income while making a few boastful billionaires and many silent billionaires.

    A developmentally different civilian or military leadership, since the 1960s would have probably left us well in advance of any country in Africa and many in Asia. Instead under their short-sighted and greedy guidance and full control, with full collusion of a corrupted followership and weakened policing system, Nigeria has been a beautiful bride robbed, raped and left for dead on her wedding bed of soil, oil and sun. Economics does not describe our lack of power, water, bridges, and books in schools! Corruption does!! So those believing that corruption should be forgotten should remember that corruption is now a measurable economic ‘failure to thrive’ with the politicians proclaiming a ‘We will not save’ policy. The results have decimated development and the foreign reserves which 50 years on should be $300b, robbed allocations and prevented our needed 150-200Mw of electricity being provided. Corruption is also about evil laws!

    Seeing the thugs invading Senate reminded me of their childhood in school where they were probably bullies if they went to school at all.  Remember that corruption made their schools rubbish pre-programmed by greedy politicians years ago. It is too late to help adults traumatised by a stolen education during youth. The youth accused of expecting handouts are largely products of little or no education delivered in rubbish schools – see Chibok and Dapchi pictures.

    Back to bullying. But we can each do something. Unchecked, bullying manifests itself malignantly in adult callous behaviour and violence at home and office.  Bullying really changes the lives of both victims and perpetrators. By adulthood, the bully gets worse and the victim is physically and mentally traumatized. After corruption, bullying ruined and is ruining the happiness of millions more daily and we can change that for the better by taking a pen or sitting at the computer and making a font 48 poster – ‘SAY “NO” TO BULLYING. ABC – AVOID BULLYING CHILDREN AND ADULTS’. Tomorrow we could put 1,000,000 such home and office posters around school and office ‘bully venues’ and help save millions another day of helpless hopelessness and fear.

    Parents write out 10 or 20 signs at home with your children for school tomorrow. This simple sign will help prevent and start authorities monitoring bullying today in your school, home, workplace, office.

    Ten people, fellow human beings, killed in Benue. Is that 1,000 or 10,000 in the last five or 10 years? When will it end?

    Kudos to the vice president’s ‘Ease of Doing Business Initiative’ by reducing a deliberately obstructive and actively and passively, ‘delay until you pay’ corrupt bureaucracy and even the cost of setting up an office. The effort moved Nigeria up by 24 places on the ease of doing business. Go and tell that to farmers driven from their farms by herders. The Nigerian public service and business model is best represented by remembering and regularly revisiting the formerly impressive Federal Government Secretariat (FGS), Ikoyi, which had thousands of offices which could have been immediately rented out to Lagos citizens when the FGS was closed. But no, it was stripped bare and a now just a naked skeleton, an eyesore. A good example of a bad, if not evil, government decision and showing how government shoots itself in the head regularly for questionably altruistic or corrupt goals. Electricity, single digit loans, corruption, one year rent in advance are not nuclear physics but cumulate into the denied right to a decent work environment.

    President Buhari should guard his speeches to ensure they cannot be interpreted, correct or misinterpreted.

    Stealing the mace is not the only disgrace to the nation’s democracy in the NASS. Stealing the mace is certainly wrong but NASS questioning adult members because of political differences and then suspending members is equally wrong. Is it doing the work you elected it for? Is it providing an obstacle or a wheel for democratic motion? Why is NASS deaf to the difference between ‘Ayes’ and ‘Nays’?  Why has NASS not passed the budget 2018 in nearly seven months? Is it to guarantee the failure of governance with uncompleted projects pre-election? NASS has not passed! It has failed and disgraced us.

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

  • Our Girls; ‘Middlle Belt must not fall’

    It is now four years and three days since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped in a terrorist attack on an unprotected all-girls school on April 15, 2014. The title of every article in this column since then has started with ‘Our Girls’ to prevent the absent ones being forgotten. ‘Our Girls’ will remain. Figures are being released of dead Chibok girls. Are you incensed? Or are you insensitive to the catastrophic calamity of losing a child to such barbarism like in the 15, 16, 17th Century Slave Trade? This followed many unreported ‘Silent Kidnapping’. Some cases were investigated ‘after the fact’ just like with the murderous herdsmen attacks. No proactive effort!

    The creation of Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) made Chibok insuppressible and many girls eventually returned. Unfortunately Nigeria deploys more police against BBOG than against herders’ terrorism! We learnt no lessons and Dapchi followed with the tragic loss of five girls though the rest were returned in suspicious security circumstances. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 14 year old, Leah Sharibu. Nigeria is a dying patient ravaged by the disease terrorism on an operating table with blood dripping to the floor with thick red-black clotted material round the feet of the surgeon –the government including the National Assembly (NASS). How many time have police pensions and weapons’ funds been bastardised from within and outside the force? Too many daily deaths, 99%+ farmer/villager 5-20/day x 365 days a year at the hands of Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen or Gadhafi trainees, and now Niger Delta pirates terrorizing shipping lanes. Death is death no matter who kills you! The police manage to arrest a single Fulani herdsman with an AK47 out of the many hundreds marauding across the country. Contrast that with gleeful way that 28 villagers are already in court for allegedly defending themselves and killing 10 herdsmen. But no herders are in court for killing even one of the thousands of dead farmer/villagers. A paradox and an injustice!!!

    My article ‘Maiduguri must not fall’ was in response to Boko Haram’s evil intent on Maiduguri. Maiduguri did not fall. Now we must shout ‘The Middle Belt Must Not Fall’ to herder terrorists because we all will fall after it. Listen to Governor Ortom. We need a huge deterrent and proactive police and army body presence nationwide. Only they have the weapons to combat this extreme violence and the villagers have been disarmed ‘to prevent retaliation and bloodshed’. Whose bloodshed??? UNICEF figures for both wars include 1000 children kidnapped, 1400 schools burnt, 2275 teachers murdered, 100,000+ hamlets destroyed, at least 3-5% of Nigeria’s population rendered homeless and dependent. If that is not war, what is? We are under invasion by a terrorist force, Nigerian or imported.

    The president is now fully informed to upgrade the Fulani herders attack threat to the war we know it is and add the herders’ war and the Niger Delta pirates crippling shipping to his daily briefing itinerary. Meanwhile the military is investigating its own military complicity by silence or otherwise in herdsmen attacks. The military must remember that complicity may not be proven but perception is key.

    Mr President, ‘hate speech’ is not the cause of Nigeria’s current wars but please be seen solving the problem fast, today, not post 2019 election. The face of Nigeria would have changed by them with every family knowing a terror event at first hand. Please urgently deal with it as such with military precision, not ‘Attack And Withdraw’ or ‘training mission’ but ‘Attack And Liberate. Your job title demands it and your party’s re-election with or without you depends on it. Please do this before the daily death count will include us all! Did not Boko Haram grow from a mosquito bite into a monster?  Mr President, it is good to order the rehabilitation of all barracks. Mr President your country needs you not only to cater for the welfare of our gallant troops. You must deploy them out of the barracks to fight the herders war, on the side of the farmers/villagers to save Nigeria’s rural population and rural economy now that the villagers have been disarmed by government and left like sitting ducks.

    Second Niger Bridge 44% complete? Wow!!! But, quiet, do not tell NASSty NASS it will most likely stop the funding as it did Lagos-Ibadan Expressway which brought the government into disrepute.

    I still complain about weak media political analysis as the 2019 election approaches. In addition to the moral and legal issues of the Omo-Agege’s suspension from NASS, NASS is about numbers. No media or TV house I saw analysed how the suspension of one and the deaths of two members recently affected the ‘political party numbers game’. Shame!! Of course our NASS voting behavior is politically, deliberately immature with too much credence given to misinterpretation of hearing ‘ayes’ and ‘nays‘ volumes. Hearing voting should be cancelled in NASS.

    Apart from the huge undeserved salaries and perks that Nigerians seem unable to strip from it, NASS appears pathologically pre-occupied with self -protection. Disenfranchising 1/108th of the country’s citizens for 90 or 180 working days is outrageous. Is it a crime to be political in parliament? Peculiarly the whole matter exploded from a statement of loyalty to the president. NASS is indeed a mutated animal, separate from party and citizens desires.

     

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

     

  • Our Girls; Cancel Budget 2018? Education

    Our Chibok Girls are missing since April 15, 2014. We await the release of the remaining Dapchi girl-child, 14-year old Leah Sharibu. Too many more deaths even as the police claim a victory by arresting a single Fulani herdsman with an AK47 out of the many hundreds marauding across the country. The rampage in Offa, etc. was a murderous outrage demanding quick solution. The police have lost six or more officers and men and perhaps women and many civilians. The police announced they have several suspects. Good. No country can allow its police to be attacked so recklessly. Prevention is better than cure. Lives once lost can never be replaced.

    There is an international wave of jail time for corrupt leaders across the world. All cases started in national courts. When will Nigeria follow this fine example? Nigeria has to DIY, Do It Yourself and take past leaders to courts.

    It will soon be six months that the budget was given the Senate. No matter who is wrong and who is right, it is an insult to the nation of Nigeria by all elected politicians, in the Presidency and the National Assembly (NASS). It is a 12-month budget. We are the only country in the world who would dare to waste the peoples’ time by spending 6/12s ‘discussing’ a 12 month budget –a complete waste of the time of the nation for whatever reason, politics – pure or dirty, power, pecuniary benefits, distribution of figures, protection of turfs or even corruption issues. Like with universities constantly on strike, Nigeria will soon lose a year of budget. Perhaps it is time for NASS to pass a stupid bill ‘Cancelling the 2018 Budget Year’ and give the now infamous 2017 Budget an ‘Elongation of Tenure to End 2018’.

    Budget 2018 can be renamed Budget 2019 and worked on during the next eight months for release in December and effective in January 2019.  ’Tenure elongation’ to the still running 2017 seems the logical lazy man’s solution. Every politician identified as being involved in this budget delay should be removed from office at the next election. Budgets must become above politics. We are proving ourselves to be a dysfunctional society not like the USA. Unlike the established US, Nigeria cannot afford the luxury of repeated political debilitating delaying budget rows which render it even more dysfunctional.

    CBN is insensitive to the common man by keeping the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) at 14% point component of every Nigerian 30% bank loan – probably the highest in the world and creating a free fund for CBN, governments which burgeoned under Babangida. Sadly Nigerians live in country in 2018 with maximum interest on very difficult-to-get loans, 1-2 year rent demanded in advance, absent hire purchase, almost zero availability for mortgages. We also live in a country where we must substitute for an archaic, immoral, moronic electricity system that defies improvement in spite of billions of dollars allocated and released. And someone who becomes a politician demands generators etc. as personal  dividends of democracy and ’political perks and necessities of office’ and says we should be happy with our lot and it is the will of God?

    It is not the will of God that Nigerian should not have 24/7 electricity. NB Portugal has gone 100% renewable from solar, water and wind power. Can we use our coming vote to protest against and work to stop the excesses of NASS ‘Salaries and Perks, SAPping us dry?

    If Nigerians are among the happiest people living among such misery, then we are very easy to please or mesmerise or just mumu because we substitute the lack in developmental governance with our sweat or corrupt acquisition of bribes.  Imagine how ecstatic all Nigerians would be with 24/7 electric power, running water, a police force that protects and schools with, guess what,  a library, a lab and a clean attractive toilet-all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

    For most schools in Nigeria, the quality of the schools we send our children to is so low as to almost guarantee no inspiration, low performance, little achievement and poor examination outcome; why is that? We are awash with government organization struggling for political authority over these children but the high failure rate at the last WAEC and NECO says it all. Nigeria’s education system does not need Boko Haram to force its failure. It is a failure in its own right with snail pace curriculum innovation and sometimes curriculum innovation reverse, a bureaucratic quagmire of corruption for book purchases, an almost zero allocation for science and sporting equipment, empty classrooms bereft of posters and visual learning aids.

    We have a paltry six percent, Vs 26% minimum to prevent deterioration in normal societies not under-budgeted like Nigeria, of the budget going to education showing the general political disgust at initiating the educational mechanisms required to procure an educationally competent electorate and workforce. Even the application of UBEC funds supported by huge efforts of Old Students Associations at secondary school level have not  rescued education from the “I am a dunce dustbin’. Our education system, if it can be called a system at all, fails woefully to teach, provide toilets, inspire, motivate, provide labs and libraries or adequately prepare our millions of innocent expectant children for examinations or for life post-examination-SDG rights in spite of politics.

     

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