The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Our girls

  • Our girls remain endangered

    The recent debate over how Nigeria has treated its young started from a foreign source. Bill Gates is not one to join issues with anyone, except where his business is concerned.

    Clearly, he has decided to make Nigeria his business, coming here year in year out, bringing along a piece of that $65 billion dollars he doesn’t really need in the effort to kick out polio. He almost succeeded too, except for a stubborn strain of the disease found recently to be camouflaged in the ‘koro’ of Borno State, like a debtor running from a creditor.

    Anyway, polio is not why Mr. Gates is trending. At the last expanded National Economic Council meeting chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Uncle Bill gave our economic plan a rating of ‘e get as e be.’

    ‘’People without roads, ports and factories can’t flourish. And roads, ports and factories without skilled workers to build and manage them can’t sustain an economy,” he said. That is to say, we don’t have the infrastructure or the manpower to grow the economy.

    This generated mixed reactions.  Opposition started popping champagne. The government disagreed furiously.

    I guess Uncle Bill got this feedback so, in a CNN interview later, he justified himself with this telling remark. “As a partner in Nigeria, I am saying the current plan is inadequate. Nigeria has all these young people and the current quality and quantity of investment in these young generations; in health and education, just isn’t good enough.”

    We must agree that we can do a lot better for our young. And we young people must also agree that we can do a lot better for ourselves and our children. Not just in health and education but also in the very lucrative areas of entertainment and sports.

    There have now been two major incidents of girls kidnapped from school. Bravery should not be a criterion for going to school. We are already afraid of our teachers. We don’t have to add the fear of abduction to it.

    I have an eight-year-old daughter and for me, the whole saga is proof of our inability as a nation to protect the life and wellbeing of the girl child. Boarding schools for girls all over the country are so easily accessible that not just terrorists and kidnappers, but other paedophiles have been known to take advantage of this for nefarious purposes.

    In Lagos where I live, just two years ago, police arrested 32-year-old Chinoso Okonkwo, for allegedly taking out 10-12 year old school girls in Surulere to a hotel, during classes, for use as commercial sex workers. Last year, the gateman of a girls’ school around Abuja was arrested for pimping out the girls to men who gather in the evenings to have their pick.

    Incidents of rape, domestic abuse and sundry crimes against girls are on the increase as we fail to offer real protection to these most vulnerable members of our society. It is getting so bad that the girl child in Nigeria might soon qualify as endangered specie.

    There is one thing that most paedophiles and rapists have in common. They are men. They are men who have mothers or sisters. As we talk about governmental interventions on the one hand, we cannot ignore a decay of values on the other.  From our homes, we must remember what it means to instil respect, discipline and above all – love.

    Speaking of love and respect, I cannot forget how my mother, Luchia Feubodei thumbed the fingerprints of these values on the hearts of my siblings and I. It has become our moral compass.

    The other gift my mother gave us was a good education. Unfortunately, the recurrent decimal about the serial tragedy of kidnaps is the obviously poor education that these girls are getting from these dangerous schools. In nearly every interview, it is saddening to note that the girls could hardly express themselves in the English language, requiring a translator to do the honours.

    Ordinarily, there would be nothing wrong with this – but our syllabus is in the English language.

    In their sitting Tuesday, the Senate in plenary read a motion lamenting the standard of education in the country as exemplified by poor WAEC results. The Minister of Education has been called to come and explain this debacle.

    Yet the reasons are easy to see. The UNESCO recommends that 15-20 percent be budgeted for education by nation states. Nigeria manages to budget less than 6-7 percent annually, or some N60 billion out of an N8.6 trillion budget. By the way, Ghana and Ivory Coast both budget at least 30 percent annually.

    Moreover, most teachers, as shown in Ekiti, Edo, Sokoto, Katsina and recently Kaduna states, have no business in the classrooms. So we can neither guarantee the safety of, nor provide quality education to our girls, yet as Uncle Bill, “If they (Nigeria) can get health and education right, they will be an engine room of growth not just for themselves but for Africa.”

    We need to all stand up and take account. This is not a battle that will be won by governments and NGOs. This is a cause that we must find worthy within our own hearts. The remedies and the changes must start from each and every one of us; in our homes, in our schools and in our workplaces. They are our future. Let us not endanger that future.

     

    • Aiyeola is an ambassador for the ONE campaign, dedicated to fighting extreme poverty and preventable disease.

  • Our Girls; Danjuma; Budget 2019? 

    Our Chibok Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Yes, 104 of the 110 Dapchi Girls have been released from a captivity that would never have happened if the checkpoints had not been withdrawn. Also five young innocent school girls died plunging their families into despair and sorrow. There is no name in any language for an unbelievable pain of a parent who has lost a child. Kidnapping is a deadly game not a drive in and out sport. One 14 year-old, Liya Sharibu, is still held as she refused to renounce her Christian faith. She may have been released by the time you read this. In the 21st Century, unlike in the historic and bloody past, there is wide acceptance that faith is a personal choice and not imposed. In my family, we have Christians and Muslims, no one imposes on another. Children often are brought up uncomplaining in their parents’ faith unless there is a mixed-religion marriage when the children choose one particular one for life. Conversion by coercion should be consigned to the dustbin of history. It is meaningless to one’s soul.

    While the Dapchi girls’ release is welcome, it should be subject to a public enquiry and forensic analysis. There is no comparison between the Chibok and Dapchi episodes except that both are ongoing preventable tragedies and resulted in totally preventable deaths, distress, and depression and have had disastrous Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome results on the children, parents and citizens and dent our international image again. To have a repeat, with deaths, is shameful, inexcusable and resignations or sackings should be demanded. Who will comfort the parents and siblings of those five dead girls? Why did the same Boko Haram convoy of nine lorries return unchecked to the same scene of the crime? Some say the army checkpoints were removed again allowing the same terrorists to psychologically terrorise the same people until it became clear that the girls were being returned!  Nowhere else in the world has any large-scale kidnapping of this nature occurred and then rewarded by allowing the terrorists to return triumphantly to the scene of their crime. This is shocking double trauma to the citizens of Dapchi. Everywhere else in the world the Red Cross or Blue Crescent would have received the girls at an agreed point and they would have been then brought home by such experienced neutral humanitarian organisations. What were the girls thinking as they were driven back home? Were they to be released or executed in the town square? This handover though successful, is shoddy, socially irresponsible and dangerously inhuman negotiating outcome practice -unrepeatable.

    At last General T Y  Danjuma, a key player in Nigeria’s military history and a personal oil block multi-billion dollar beneficiary,  has cried out about the horrific effects of the Fulani herdsmen ‘Not Yet A War’ with deaths in their many 1000s and the destruction of over 1,200 churches and 1,000s of homes in pillaged villages and towns and the war strategy of ‘laying waste’ the land with maliciously burnt harvested and growing crops and forcing millions to be Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs.  The ongoing Kaduna nightmare encapsulated by Bishop Mathew Kukah at a funeral oration for fellow Bishop Bagobiri in a synopsis crying for a ‘unity and justice’, not ‘unity minus justice’ solution. Just last week, 11 soldiers were killed in Kaduna, 11 citizens including a whole traditional monarch and wife were murdered in Kogi, -is this not war? Who is keeping the death toll? The police in Ogun State have caught and killed six of the robbery gang which attacked us on Wednesday March 14, at 4 pm on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and also robbed others and kidnapping of two doctors from UCH. They have been recognized in the Tribune newspaper photographs as the being from that gang. Congratulations to the police which sustained injuries to two of its men. May they recover quickly, Amen. Apparently the gang was ravaging villages for weeks. If only they had been arrested then!

    Government praises its agricultural strides but remembers to forget the cancelled-at-gunpoint impact of the 170,000 farmers, 100s of communities and thousands of hectares of pre-harvest food on land destroyed and burnt and laid waste by the needless war of Fulani herdsmen marauding with impunity. Farmers are digging trenches around their land. Confirm the best source of your meat i.e. shipped in by trailer or grown locally.

    Party loyalty appears zero in a National Assembly (NASS) APC divided against itself and seemingly disinterested in Nigeria which was so desperately looking for cyclic Jan-Dec budget order. What does NASS want? Is NASS overreaching itself demanding to see every MDA? We have an APC-NASS membership unable to grow mentally, swallow its money-ridden pride in its political pettiness or execute its role to protect even its own APC government’s agreed flagship project – a  budget agenda of a Jan-Dec budget, no matter how flawed! The delay in passage of the 2018 national budget is an economic and political bullet in the heart of this government fired by NASS-APC members in sheep’s clothing and the opposition to rubbish and cripple its programmes pre-2019 election. Is this silly strategy or simple sabotage?  Let’s call it Budget 2019, abi?  Please evict them at the 2019 election? Will the 65 other parties coalesce?

     

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

  • Our Girls;  Fulani herdsmen war; Expressway robbery

    Our Chibok Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014 and add the 105 or110 Dapchi Girls to our hearts broken by the horrifying excesses of the Fulani herdsmen ‘Not Yet A War’ with deaths in their many 1000s and over 1,200 churches and countless homes in villages and towns and burnt and millions as IDPs.

    What is war? Just this week another 25 or 32 in one new incident of massacre and mass murder. Among others, on March 17, Sahara Reporters reported an attack on an army GOC’s convoy with four soldiers killed and many injured. If the attack on farmers is ‘the farmers’ fault and ‘passive provocation’ for ‘being there’, is the attack on Nigerian soldiers by superior firepower ‘their fault’ or a Declaration of War, DOW, beyond the scope of any armed forces operation ‘whatever’ requiring a Senate-led declaration of war if the president, patron of herdsmen, tarries?

    Meanwhile we dismiss this murderous rampage in a sentence on the news and go on eating meat, suya and chatting. I did see four trailers bearing cows to Lagos on the expressway- the right direction. Eat only locally grown meat that did not cost the blood of fellow Nigerians. Degrade the value of cows. An unsellable cow is as worthless as a dead cow. If we are forbidden to be armed and defend ourselves with weapons let us forbid ourselves from eating cows and use our brains. If we agree that the Fulani herdsmen war is wrong, we must judge their produce un-buyable because of Nigerians’ blood shed and livelihoods destroyed. We must not support their war with our funds! The product of the Fulani herdsmen – cows – will quickly lose value on the ‘Nigerian Kitchen Table and Livestock Exchange’. Initiate a fasting from meat as we pray. We have a right to buy or not to buy alternative meat sources. No single Nigerian will die from not eating cow meat.

    Fulani herdsmen proxy war is not the time to pretend that ‘murdering, burning, pillaging and laying waste the land’ are not established weapons of war and nothing else. They are a pure act of war and terrorism, terrorizing the landscape and our children.  What made us so insensitive? Surely the viciousness and monumental loss of so much potential must reveal the urgency for everyone in all media to act morally responsibly and begin every report with an updated number of dead from the Fulani herdsman ‘Not A war’ onslaught against Nigeria!

    How many more must die for being born a farmer in Nigeria against AK-47 weaponized ruthless killers fearless of the armed forces and police?  Are the Fulani herdsmen a protected paramilitary rampaging arm of government? There is devastation in the land. Soon everyone will know someone who has suffered this violence as with The Okada Epidemic.  How many more will die before an end to this calculated mayhem?

    They are all around and everywhere. On Wednesday March 14, it was my turn to be a victim of an armed robbery attack at 4pm on the Ibadan-Lagos side of the expressway around Km 45, one kilometre after the Ipara, Ogun State flyover and police station, a slim tall man strode into the middle of a face-me-I-face you section of the road under repair. I thought madman but he waved violently and brandished a black machete with a straight not curved end. I saw the red in the eyes of the machete-wielder and a blackened face I learnt was a concoction.  My driver, Mr Simeon shouted ‘armed robbers’ and I saw a gun pointed at us by a green T-shirted robber on my right as we veered to the left and the cement construction blocks. A car came from behind and beside us and slammed into our front fender, trapping us against the concrete. We reversed away towards other armed robbers, numbering about 10 encircling about six vehicles behind us pulling the occupants from the vehicles. We reversed violently opening a space between two cement blocks and fell backwards into the trench and miraculously out on the other side into a lane under construction. We were about to drive forward to a gap between the concrete blocks when a car crashed in front and straight across the road and unfortunately plunged down a ravine and disappearing pursued immediately by two robbers. We drove forward 25 metres forward to a break in the barriers, made a U-turn facing Ibadan and drove through the remaining three or four robbers aiming guns at us. I saw the white of the eyes of the armed robber with a gun aimed at us. I stared down the barrel and ducked. No shot. We drove fast through the cordon to safety and the Toyota Corolla car tires and engine were undamaged. We drove to Ibadan and Stations of the Cross in Church of the Ascension in Bodija where we found irreparable damage to doors and skirting from the escape. We are alive and well, unscathed and unrobbed!  No personal injuries, Thank God and Mr Simeon.

    The armed robbery for us was in slow motion, an Einsteinian warp in space and time but actually 30 or 60 nightmare in broad daylight, but a person almost certainly died. There were additional reports of at least two robberies on the road on Thursday. Whither Nigeria?

     

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

     

  • Our Girls; Equiano, TII

    Our Girls; Equiano, TII

    Our Chibok Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014 and now we add Dapchi Girls to the burden in our hearts already broken by the horrifying excesses of the Fulani herdsmen-farmers war which has, with the Boko Haram war killed multiple thousands, burnt thousands of homes and displaced millions. Add Medicine Sans Frontier, MSF, the caring aid agency whose job adverts on its website invited workers to Borno State following the Boko Haram mayhem since 2009. Are the successful candidates now the three dead in Rann? Remember the eight Nigerian polio vaccine workers deliberately murdered for saving Nigerian children from polio? Who is looking after their families as of today?

    Watch and spread the word about the film Hidden Figures which has huge educational value and highlights the contribution, challenges and successes of an inspirational group of African American female scientists all hyper-talented mathematical geniuses to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) program that eventually put Astronaut John Glenn in orbit. If shown widely to our Black African audiences, it, along with The Black Panther and films like Mandela, Amistad, 12 Years A Slave and any number of inspirational films confirming ‘Black Positive and Negative History’ will uplift our girls and boys and should be shown in the numerous TV channels we now have in Nigeria.

    Life is far more than the consumptive present and cellphones and other paraphernalia of the Information and Communication Technology, ICT revolution. Granted that these films are on the same ICT platforms our children tweet and text on. However they will never access them without a conscious and deliberate structures intervention from the adults in the room, school and classroom or lecture-room or sitting-room at home.

    How many children know the pre-Nigeria slave turned abolitionist and first pre-Nigeria best-seller author Olaudah Equiano alias Gustavus Vassa 1745 -1797 who died at 52, a free man, friend of Wilberforce and other abolitionists. He was a carpenter, slave owner, navigator, ship captain and more. In a normal society where billions had not been stolen, the federal government would have bought 70,000 copies of Equiano’s book one copy/ school =15,000 secondary and 55,000 primary, in Nigeria or whatever the number of schools is, private and public. Anything less is a disservice to the history of the past, present and posterity.

    I have spoken and written about the Olaudah Equiano legacy for 25 years with no effect on the conservative curriculum committee of the Ministry of Education of Nigeria. Yet there was N100billion of UBE money left lying fallow in one year.  But the successive governors of the state in Nigeria where Olaudah Equiano hailed and was kidnapped, age 11, along with his sister, have never made Olaudah Equiano a statue or part of state history at primary and secondary and tertiary level. Task them all to research him at least on their cellphones.

    Let every single school name classrooms after Olaudah Equiano, the Chibok Girls and the Dapchi Girls to keep hope alive. You would happily name a school after Mandela so why not name a classroom after our own heroes and heroines? Your silence will not make the pain go away. In fact it must be interpreted as acquiescence. Only a loud solidarity shout, like the one wonderfully choreographed by the irrepressible and superheroine Obi Ezekwesili-led Bring Back Our Girls, BBOG will help.

    Olaudah Equiano. If you, reader, refuse to google him because you are too busy texting and chatting, I will tell you that Olaudah Equiano was a pre-Nigerian man, taken as a slave in the 17th Century who sailed with a Midshipman who later became Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, Victor of Waterloo, and who witnessed the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, is worth researching. Nigerians and Africans in general may live in the present but what is our future if we have no knowledge and cannot be boastful of our past –just as foreign powers overpower us with their distorted stories of war and peace success and their our own African heroes and heroines? Even if we suppress information on the civil war, should we suppress our history of the slave trade across the Atlantic and the Sahara? Nigeria is a strange place where every event has 10 often conflicting memories coloured or polluted by the perspectives of ethnicity and gender and greed and need.

    According to the latest Transparency International Index, Nigeria is now ranked 148/180 and dropped by 12 places in spite of the touted and believed to be one-sided anti-corruption drive, the flagship project of this government which has definitely saved Nigeria billions of naira in past and current corruption. The TII is just one of the many UN and other agency yardstick examinations which Nigeria and all countries face. We must remember that Nigeria is doing annual class promotion TI Exam with 176 others in the class who are trying to improve position. All this to force governments to improve institutions to in turn improve citizens’ lives. Even if Nigeria was running on the spot in anti-corruption efforts, we would have lost place to others. Example – since Buhari took over, has the visible corruption on roads, at airports by the numerous ‘Uniforms’ stopped? How many of the numerous soap-opera tragi-comedy court cases parading our media have been successfully prosecuted? For TI, it is not the noise of anti-corruption but the visible corruption that must also disappear checkpoint corruption.

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

  • Our Girls; No slap, eye injuries

    Our Girls; No slap, eye injuries

    Our Chibok Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Add to your prayers the 2,000+ women and children and the Dapchi Girls awaiting ‘Hot Pursuit’ by government. One attack is a surprise. Two is criminal negligence and three is incompetence.

    BBC’s programme on the escape of the Boko Haram leader, government must expose the general who ordered troops to stop for four days just five miles from his camp, buying him time to launch a deadly car bomb counterattack on the troops killing seven forcing them to retreat.

    Did you see the deplorable classroom and dormitory in the Dapchi school on TV worldwide? Uninspiring; depressing. Nigeria shamelessly sends its bright science girls to a ‘mental death’ in a rubbish ‘school’ of science and technology lacking even common wallcharts and ‘Unfit for Purpose’. Contrast this picture with USA classrooms on TV reports of the gunman killing 17 children. And we vex when Trump says we live in huts? Are our schools better than Trumpesque huts? With all our wealth and over N1b/LGA per annum, why are schools so deplorably rubbish? Corruption which places cash above our children’s’ future!

    As we weep and pray for Batch 2 of kidnapped Nigerian girls, we see ‘No Lessons Learnt’, ‘No Action Taken’. Is there a Red alert emergency button to press when attacks occur? We know what should go on as we all watch DSTV’s tracing of criminals during the first 24, 48 hours with police, police dogs, commandos, and drones and satellites redirected if necessary. Mobile police are mobile for a reason and not just to intimidate citizens. We are currently at war, we have helicopters, tanks and armoured vehicles. Yet we repeat the April 15, 2014 mistake of denial. All authorities denied the attack though machine guns were used freely. The police officer denied on TV; the army claimed a victorious rescue of those who no one admitted were kidnapped. Meanwhile, precious clues and the entire trial were being blown away by dust, trodden over by cows and farmers and growing cold.

    Why was the border 200Km away not sealed with an airborne battalion which would then work back towards the school? And Nigeria’s drone is lying in state house. Nigeria still has a satellite. Was it overflying Nigeria at the time? The Diplomatic Corps especially the USA and EU with 10,000 satellites between them everywhere could have given ‘live feed’ over that area which is desert and would easily have seen dust columns. Perhaps Nigeria never even asked for such assistance but every foreign power has already tracked the culprits as ‘an exercise’ and probably sent the photos to their embassies in Nigeria – Just for ‘bragging rights’ to see if Nigeria can catch up with their own superior, scientific intelligence. It is called spying, ‘The Great Game’ especially ‘when they know but pretend not to know so that Nigeria will not know how much they actually know’. That is classic spy double speak.

    Every school requires a rehearsed, regularly changed Emergency Attack Response Plan including 1] Spies in villages around to alert the school and police:  2] Alarm Signs -a whistle, gong, bell; 3] What signal to give; 4] Who to alert; 5] Where to hide; 6] What to do when hidden; 7] When to come out of hiding, 8] If captured, what to look for on the journey and in captors for future escape and identification of captors.

    There are too many schools and innocent defenceless children facing attack opportunities for us not to have rehearsed Attack Prevention Plans. What country does not plan to prevent attacks on its own children even if its incompetence and silence has condoned murderous attacks on its farmers? We demand a School Attack Alert Action Plan.

    Even those not kidnapped face serious school terrors all against Sustainable Development Goals, SDG 3,4,5. Most students face maximum, unrelenting, unpunished, unmonitored bullying and the risk of actually being beaten to death or merely being beaten savagely or being frog-jumped to death-just for going to school! And it is not always teachers and bullies or even Boko Haram who responsible for a student’s misery and sometimes life-long permanent damage. The student faces a major risk of severe and permanent eye injure from the frequent threat of ‘Dangerous Dirty Slap’ which can cause ‘an eye to die’. The slap may damage and detach the retina, the lens, the vitreous fluid and cause haemorrhage or even cause the eye to pop out. The child’s eye may also be injured by fellow students catapulting broomsticks and even umbrella spokes, yes, as homemade arrows into their fellow students’ eyes, in fun or hate but with no consequences for the perpetrator.

    Sadly, daily in practice, I see children with preventable eye injuries but no serious campaign against child eye injuries in every school except the one I mounted. Children’s eyes are also irreparably damaged by other weapons of classroom, playground and home backyard war like scissors, paper and metal pellets, pencils, exploding bottles, punches, elbows and stones – all weapons of the childhood war. The precious eye, once damaged, causes losses like costs, hospital time, and poor or no recovery, limiting the academic, economic and social options in future. Teach ‘No Slap’ and ‘Eye Safety’. With the eye there is ‘Always Prevention but Often No CURE’.

    NB: Watch and show others the film ‘Black Panther’.  Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

  • Our Girls; NSITF, ‘Swallow’ Snakes

    Our Girls; NSITF, ‘Swallow’ Snakes

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Pray for their return.

    Is Nigeria cursed or a wonderful country with some evil citizens, forcing us to ‘Manage’ i,e. ‘endure and struggle to compensate for’  culpable incompetence in Nigeria’s darkness of 5000mw due to the devil even as we get another loan -$459m for grid expansion while Ghana has a KarPowership in Takoradi Port providing 270 of 470Mw?

    Remember a ‘federal’ Obasanjo stopping a ‘state’ Tinubu doing the same in 1999? Ghana 10 : Nigeria Nil!! Again!!!

    Travel is death. Misau town, Bauchi lost 24 young children, teachers and driver, a ‘bad road’ national tragedy. Did the Ministry of Works signboard draw attention to danger spots and does FRSC put signs on danger potholed spots? Perhaps not for ‘for fear of offending the Ministry of Works’. Where is the last road maintenance supervisor’s due diligence report? We had to turn back to Ibadan last Saturday at 8am because of ‘good road’ expressway gridlock crash traffic. More needless death!

    Be aware that a trailer/car crash may occur at Bode, Ibadan due to a water-mains leak destroying the asphalt and potholing the Bode Bridge, Ibadan creating the real danger of a tanker plunging into the market or the World Bank Drainage Channel. Please fix the leaking bridge now during the commendable Oyo State Anti-Pothole war!

    Is Nigeria cursed – a country curse or a citizen curse? Is it not a curse when after all the corruption, yet another major government agency, Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF)’s staff, with the arrogance to prosecute businesses for compulsory deductions are now accused in the theft/misappropriation of N62,000,000,000 or N62b nearly N1000/ adult Nigerian. Our NSITF deductions should be returned to us for 2015-2017 as punishment and National Assembly (NASS) should demand a reduction in the obviously too high percentage deduction and push for NSITF to be scrapped as yet another consumptive government contraption created specifically to steal from the citizenry!

    Look at the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) N1b+ scam. There must be some massive fraud there, no matter who is right, one must be wrong, between the Minister of Health and the CEO mysteriously cleared by Buhari. Remember the recurrent pension frauds N26-32,000,000,000? Are these places all run by mad people?

    Is Nigeria cursed by a financial crimes system’s mental and material inability to pre-emptively instill honest mechanisms or at least catch thieves after ‘just’ N1m, 19m, 40m, 500, 1b theft, well before the Gold Standard of theft in Nigeria of the N20+billion mark? Everyone knows that all fraud starts with ‘the first N1’ and the human ‘swallow snake’ in the office. We are cursed because such fraud must happen in such agencies as a ‘sine qua non’ definition of MDA and big government. Government Agency = Fraud. Period! They deserve a sign ‘Come and swallow N20+billion or else!’ Corruption is curse, a huge cross-party huge iceberg. Can we not prevent the inevitable tip we see? Why must Nigeria wait till N62.3b is ‘swallowed‘ by the ‘snakes’ before discovery? Where are the daily auditors?

    Is Nigeria cursed or blessed by the longevity, advice and cost of its past leaders? Is Nigeria cursed by a political leadership too greedy to fulfill the rights of the citizen to adequate modern 21st century infrastructure to allow the citizens to ‘do their own economic and social thing’? Is Nigeria cursed by a citizenship which expects nothing except a tiny handout of stomach infrastructure as price for selling one’s vote at an election of questionable moral standard? How could the boastful elephant, ‘largest economy in Africa,’ be so mismanaged as to be ‘economically thirsty for fuel’, fuelless now for three complete months – December to February, and counting? Yet there is no punishment for the loss of queueing time wasted in trillions of hours [if 10m drivers have queued for 100 hours in three months =1,000,000,000= 1trillion hours lost], naira in high billons and, business losing, image destroying, internationally disgraceful misery visited upon Nigeria’s population.

    Is Nigeria cursed by a new breed of snake or an old breed newly discovered? Nigerian snakes are well known for causing power cuts by taking residence in transformers. The creation of a ‘New Improved Modern Swallow Meal of Money’ instead of the ‘Traditional Swallow Meals ingeniously defined as ‘Meals Swallowed Without Chewing’ like amala, eba, fufu, pounded yam, is a first. Today we have another first, a ‘circus quality’ mythical ‘Amazing Money-Swallowing JAMB Snake’ which out-swallows everyone by swallowing N36,000,000 or 360 packets of N100,000 x N1000 notes or 720 pkts of N50,000 x N500, perhaps soaked in gari for easy ‘swallow’?

    Perhaps those who corruptly stole our billions actually were also a new species of ‘Swallow’ snake, abi we just de ‘Swallow Money’????  Thank goodness we did not agree to introduce Sanusi’s N5000 notes – just 72 packets of 500,000/packet x N5,000, obviously quite feasible and definitely whetting its appetite and leaving the ‘Swallow‘ Snake hungry for more. Will our ‘Naija JAMB  Swallow Snake’ enter the Guinness Book of Records 2018? And now a car with scratch cards worth N23m JAMB has caught fire. Expensive smoke OO! JAMB is dangerous place. Snake and Fire!

    Are we cursed? We are plagued by needless wars visiting death, destruction, despair and devilry on the citizenry already struggling in a war waged by politicians on the citizens’ budgets and the Election War.

    Nigeria required a restructuring founded on ‘True Unity’ with Justice as the key word.

     

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

     

     

     

  • Our Girls; SVD; Kano Ranch

    Our Girls; SVD; Kano Ranch

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15th 2014. Pray.

    There is always love, especially in wartime as desperation for affection and knowledge of one’s mortality, lower the bars of human courtship and even morality. Today, with Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen/farmers wars, IDPs, and desperate migrants fleeing Nigeria’s ‘Trump huts’, we must not be sucked in by the commercialization of ‘love’ in its broad application to humanity. This St Valentine’s Day show human compassionate love to co-workers, beggars, IDPs, farmers, orphans and the elderly in simple ways- time, a greeting, smile, sharing your snacks and giving a helping hand. No joke, do not go broke! A red card – opposite in meaning to the ‘football red card’- a red rose, red-wrapped gift and chocolate- an aphrodisiac- and maybe a night out, are hallmarks of the massive St Valentine’s day trade. Partners in love or lust are forced by commercialized custom to join the St. Valentine Day Parade (SVD) or face affection termination. Today’s economy allows that the card and gift-wrapper can be skipped. Just give something to someone in need – a good SVD deed. Perhaps undeserved forgiveness is the greatest gift of love you can give or receive. What is the price of forgiveness? A card, a car is sign of forgiveness but forgiveness cannot be delivered in a card or gift wrap. Forgiveness is best delivered through the spoken word, and that look, the genuine eye contact, and the soft touch of hands clasped in affection. These are the non-lie detector ways of true love detection. Sow seeds of peace and affection. SVD is the day to stop and stare and take stock before you hit a ‘Relationship Rock’. Heal family bedsores and bitter matters in the workplace. Remember that some people ‘live to and love to fight’. This SVD, practice forgiveness. Gossip ‘he said/she said’ or ‘he tweeted/she texted’ or ‘she Instagrammed/he whatsApped’ or ‘Just imagine this jist’, all mostly Fake News, drive the ‘I hate you’ wedge in further. If you cannot love your life-long father, mother, sister and brother, how can you dare to profess to love the ‘stranger’ you are going out to dinner with tonight? Settle that inheritance palaver and any other fight. Share. For someone in need – Be there and truly care!

    NB: Daughter, sister, do not be deceived by the broad masculine 32-tooth SVD grin. You may not win. The SVD stakes are high. It is not the time to wish your virginity goodbye in exchange for an ‘I love you’ sigh.  Distinguish between love and lust? For those with sex on the brain, St Valentine’s Day is not ‘Sex Valentine’s Day’ or ‘Give up Your Virginity Day’. No matter what they say or give you, you do not have to give up your most precious and irreplaceable possession! Charge the highest price for your highest prize. Plan to ‘Give away’ that -the most valuable gift you have to give- only in exchange for ‘the life-long gift of a wedding ring’, the most expensive gift of all. Even an engagement ring is no guarantee of a wedding! Too many couples fail and fall immediately after the girl has given her all. ‘Love Forever Promises’ are too often made for the moment that night, to be broken come tomorrow’s daylight. So keep the sex out of Saint Valentine’s Day – unless you are married of course. Then you are on course and there is no excuse!  If your marriage is rocky, St Valentine offers you a track back to seek or offer forgiveness and say and mean ‘I love you’, so simple but so difficult to say sometimes. Happy St Valentine’s Day.

    Some serious Nigerian Mortality Mathematics – add up all the deaths of farmers murdered by since 1970 reported in newspapers and compare the figure to dead Fulani herdsmen and then compare property losses for the two groups to identify the aggressive guilty party.

    Join or start the ‘I am the Nigerian Farmer’ Sticker Campaign and highlight the dangerous ridiculousness of the counter-productive government order to disarm. It will be easy to disarm unarmed farmers in fixed villages while ‘naturally failing to disarm’ Fulani herdsmen who are of ‘No Fixed Abode’ and will easily evade ‘arms-giving’.  The NUT lost nine teachers killed and police have also died!

    The “Farmers Association Movement In Nigeria Everywhere’ –‘FAMINE’ have lost thousands. A totally disarmed rural population could be massacred by groups police already say they cannot find to disarm.

    Did you miss the important governor of Kano State’s call to Fulani herdsmen to relocate to Kano State? It may be late, after too many dead, but it is the most viable solution. A Kano Model Mega Ranch/Farm with proper farming, trailer and train access and slaughtering facilities is welcome. It will not be free and the cow price will increase – business benefit. Cows, just another ‘crop’, must not be ‘fed for free or die’ by farmers of FAMINE!!

    Enforced ‘Peace’ is no solution. True peace demands Justice and Restitution! Join the calls for ceasefire, for compensation for each life lost – N10-20m. We expect ‘Peace and Restitution Committees’ and not brazen misrepresentation and insults on governors by police officials. Like with the Boko Haram war, the Fulani/farmers war should have been stopped years ago at the first skirmish – Good Governance.

     

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

  • Our Girls; Channels;  Rees-Mogg

    Our Girls; Channels;  Rees-Mogg

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15th 2014. Pray for their return.

    Channels can do better–proper analysis of cross carpeting please. Channels TV is right to report carpet crossing shenanigans by ‘turncoat’ or even principled National Assembly (NASS) members. It should never report such cross carpeting without a full political implication analysis of any change in party number for the balance of power within the NASS.

    More deaths and burnings of farms, and government blames the farmers? A shame. The despicable cattle colonies proposed by Audu Ogbeh are aptly named in the light of our ‘colony status’ to Britain and are troubling and questionable. Is  Audu Ogbeh an interested party? Does he own or represent a lobby for those who own millions of cattle? The president owns cattle, no crime. Millions own farms –a new crime? If Audu Ogbeh owns even one cow, not even a million head herd, he should resign now for pushing an evil agenda to give the millions of cattle belonging to  him or/and his cronies ‘right of way’ and ‘free feeding’ funded by the ‘mumu’ Nigerian farmer. Cows are merely another farm produce, a crop, like pigs, goats, vegetables, cocoa, usually raised in different parts of every farm to maturity.

    One cornet grow the cow, another corner grow seed and water all at home in the north and ship cows when ripe by train, trailer and truck to be eaten. Which Nigerian farmer gets free feeding and free fertilizer for crops so maliciously destroyed by Fulani herdsmen long before ISIS was invented to be blamed? In Nigeria, farmers’ deaths and farm harvest losses outnumber Fulani herdsmen deaths and economic losses in the ongoing Fulani Herdsmen –Farmers War by 1000+ to one and still the farmers are blamed for instigating violence.

    I did my NYSC on the Jos, Akwanga, Lafia, Makurdi axis in1975/6 and have great affection for the people and empathy for the suffering inflicted on their land. What social and political arrogance is making the victim the perpetrator?

    It may interest the snail-slow Nigerian Curriculum Commission to wake up to annual reviews of curriculum because schools abroad offer video cameras, 3D Printing, electronics, drone design,  autonomous driving, coding, robotics etc to every level of school which can afford them using  corporations called ‘Rapid Education’ – google it please. Nigerian private schools should contact companies like Rapid Education and kick-start Nigerians into the 21st century. If not when this generation of students goes for A-levels, they will be disadvantaged in the sphere of E-Education, Electronic Education. It is time for the current generation of Nigerian curriculum managers to hand over to young futuristic professionals. They are too old, too stuck in petty power play and too inbred, no international exposure, to deliver a 21st Nigerian school curriculum STEM –Science, Technology Engineering & Mathematics. Visit online the current STEM curriculum in 1000 modern UK, USA schools on the web to know how abysmally equipped the Nigerian student is and where the Nigerian student could be with a quickly delivered Annually Reviewed New STEM Curriculum. We could have been there if we did not have a myopic curriculum review process and massive stealing from government budgets rendering education a casualty with nothing for ‘science purchases’ which are expensive!

    What percentage of politicians have 24/24hr power paid for by Nigeria? 100%. What percentage of schools have 8/24hr x the nine months of school? 1% or 0%. That is the problem. Those ‘high ups’ who can afford to pay always also manage to get it for free, as of right, while those youth who deserve and desperately need it have NOTHING!!! God gives long life to some in order for them to repent and do restitution. Where is ‘Nigeria’s School N2billion Science Fund’?

    I think two years ago, through a very close friend, EA, I met the British MP attacked last week while addressing a university audience, Mr Rees-Mogg MP, in London. In a brief introductory chat, with me and others, I found him warm, accommodating, interested and a conservative Briton to boot. The words ‘racist’ etc hurled at him are somewhat overboard and violence should be a No-No! I have no business or sway with British politics and differ in political views. However I must share in the support he is given as such attacks are shameful and make dangerous the political climate. We all remember the brutal murder of Jo Cox, MP.

    Should all UK MPs now have armed guards? Britain is something of a role model for Nigeria as Nigeria and Nigerian politics has never recovered from the political time bombs planted way back in the 1956 elections and since. But that said, most Western countries, including most recently the USA, have legislated or educated to overcome political violence to achieve political and electoral decision-making. Now they rely on plots and schemes using even the secret service. No life was lost in the acrimonious USA election. When will we be able to say ‘election violence is over’ in Nigeria, even as our previously violent traditionally political parties gear up for another election battle? Can they cleanse themselves or be cleansed of violence? If they refuse to be cleansed, can we take an alternative route to victory over violence and force them to comply? Will this be a third force or a Coalition 60- Parties Agenda?

     

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

  • Our Girls; Join parties; 2018 Projects

    Our Girls; Join parties; 2018 Projects

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Pray for their return.

    Are you active or retired? Then ‘Join to Monitor and Change’ a political party, any party or be silent! Talk less, do more. Swamp them with your democratic principles at ward level. No American died in the acrimonious ‘gun country’ USA election. Nigeria’s political parties must emulate USA Election ‘Zero Violence, Mayhem and Murder during Election 2019’.  You must study and then join one of the 63+ political parties to change this accepted violent behaviour.

    Sadly, those who speak out for victims often are made into victims. The reporter of crime often ends up as the accused. The Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) leadership and members struggling for answers following yet another troubling video were arrested and released. A teacher in Nassarawa State was reported by Channels TV to have released to social media a brutal multi-student ‘caning’. The principal and beating teacher were suspended and strangely, so was the uploading teacher for ‘not following due process’. Protect the ‘Whistleblowers in Nigeria Association’, WINA, please.

    Who truly loves Nigeria? Are Nigeria-lovers only among the dead policeman and soldiers killed in the ‘Line of Duty’ and the thousands of victims from Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen who have willingly or been forced to pay the supreme price merely for being born Nigerian? Why do so many in authority aka ‘service’ act as if they HATE Nigeria, and are only here for the spoils of war and just Nigerian in name? They force Nigerians to become pawns in a vicious game of fraud or as ‘Prizes’ in a deadly Game of ‘Outwit the Stupid Citizen’.

    In other countries with Nigeria’s dollar incomes, the social outcomes increase patriotism. Nigeria has an entrenched failing management class of recycled politicians, civil servants and contractors boastfully wallowing in self-aggrandisement while collectively failing and subjugating the citizenry to calculated cumulative neglect, misery and rights abuse easily measurable by misery queues of citizens at ministries, hospitals and petrol stations.

    Election managers are stuck in Nigeria’s historically corrupt ‘One Year Pre-Election Waste and No Governance Tradition’ where they prematurely prescribe posters, banners, newsbytes and headlines that their candidates are seeking or have been conferred with the next election candidacy or even victory. All very annoying to someone in a petrol queue or grieving beside a Fulani herdsmen’s murder victim! Tell election 2019 managers that the election dynamic has changed. Huge numbers of youth will not be bought, bribed, beaten or cheated into voting stupidly. Many Nigerians see ‘premature electioneering’- as a nail in the political coffin of candidates.

    Life in Nigeria has been a historic needless endurance struggle. Does the camel in Nigeria have a straw-resistant unbreakable back? Politicians laugh to the next rigged election! Will handouts and stomach infrastructure work again or has the electorate been purified by the fire of politically inflicted pain and the many needless dead and suffering?  Struggling through petrol scarcity related queues and paradoxical traffic jams, struggling through potholed roads, struggling through our ‘non-electri-cities’, struggling against our security breaches, struggling through institutions with ignored service contracts SERVICOM with unsupervised and abandoned  moral service delivery, struggling against the devaluation of earnings, struggling with high prices and poverty and contrasting it with the unbridled arrogant opulence of the political and past military class, struggling to comprehend the billions stolen vs. the millions recovered from one political side under ‘TV soap opera’ investigation, struggling with ‘NO’ electricity, fuel, services-, all as the political parody gears up for those to be re-elected and elected. The citizen is sickened while seeking justice and a right to a decent 21st century life usually postmarked by a 24/7 working light switch.

    There are billions worldwide who have government or PPPs or privately provided 1] Electricity at a switch, 2] Water in a tap, 3] Pothole-free roads and speedier railways, 4] Reasonable ‘friendly not ‘fiendly’ police security, 5] Low-interest long-term loans to grow home and business, 6] Single digit mortgages, 7] Monthly payment of rent at home and office, 8] Guaranteed monthly salaries and pensions, 9] Easy scholarships and bursaries, 9] Low-cost housing, 10] Quality education for all, 11] Quality health, 11] Cheaper political offices, 12] Cheaper single part time parliament and  13] A proper justice-based restructured federal system and 14] Raise foreign reserves to $200b 15] Reduce Monetary Policy Rate, MPR, a government/CBN conduit 14% added to every single bank loan,  in the interest of the honest Nigerian borrower, to as near zero as possible 16] Initiate measurable financial steps to improve our currency value back to N1=$1 and 17] Solarisation Master Plan. All these ‘Minimum 17 Points’ can lift the citizenry of any country out of poverty. Is Nigeria immune to treatment?

    Reader, take note and empower yourself to administer these ‘Minimum 17 Points’ here on political Nigerians to ‘2019 – Make Nigeria Proud Again’. Make them as the foundation of new political parties to radically reset the clock to ‘Fast Forward Nigeria Come 2019’.  All parties seeking re-election should address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and these ‘Minimum 17 Points’ during 2018 and not steal 2018 budgets for ‘2019 Election War-Chests’ and ‘premature electioneering campaigns’. The suffering electorate demands ‘Election Winning Projects, not Propaganda’ in 2018.

    Everyone promises to ‘Save Nigeria’ and 2019 political party manifestos must start with a strategic plan to implement the ‘Minimum 17 Points’. Implementation is another matter.

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

  •  Our Girls; BMGF; Cow conflict

     Our Girls; BMGF; Cow conflict

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Pray for their return.

    America slows due to no pay. Nigeria ‘works without salary and pension for 6-12 months?

    Hurray!! Pothole filling by Oyo State Public Works Department (PWD) – should be 365 days job. A small pothole is cheaper than a big pothole. Cost the wasted ‘Pothole Time and Vehicle Damage Suffering’ in past years.

    Is it magnanimity or madness of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to ‘donate’ $76m for Nigeria’s polio debt – a tiny fraction of funds stolen? The BMGF mean well, but if corruption was reduced to the internationally accepted level 0-10%, it could have spent that money better.

    Unfortunately now when corruption is mentioned listeners shrug irritated, change the subject from ‘corruption in politics’ to ‘politics, not corruption’ is the problem. We are becoming ‘corruption immune’. Should we forget corruption, by using clichés like ‘it has been around forever’, ‘live with it’, ‘what cannot be overcome must be endured’, ‘at least some are investing their stolen wealth in Nigeria’, ‘what has been the gain of the thousands of corruption investigations and hundreds of court cases’ all ‘playing’ ‘hide and seek’ or ‘catch me if you can’ or ‘now you have me, now you don’t’, or ‘court is my home’ – from ‘injunction’ to ‘adjournment’ to ‘judge is biased’ to ‘jurisdiction questions’ to ‘sick leave’ to ‘three months annual judges vacation’ to ‘judicial corruption’ to ‘judicial process’ to ‘I will see you in court’ to ‘non-production of accused or witnesses’ to ‘jumped bail’  to court time line of ‘magistrate to supreme court’  for 23 years. To play on Prof Wole Soyinka and Tunji Oyelana songs…‘Na inside court I go live and fight/ whether na wrong or whether na right/ you arrest me, I release you/ you bail me, I surety you/ You adjourn me, I transfer court you/ You injunction me, I bias you/ You change judge me/ I promote judge you.

    The nation stands exhausted by the nauseating daily TV court soap opera theatre, a terribly acted tragedy, with a cast of mainly smiling vultures masquerading as innocent. Indeed an expensive tragedy for the victim, the citizen. Has any university political or social science department put a cost to corruption cases in number of appearances and time costs or quantified financial costs after huge corruption losses? Even Abacha loot was re-looted! We must add court costs to corruption costs and the election tribunal costs for election trials. That money could easily have paid for the polio debt gallantly settled by BMGF.

    The other main area of national despair is the daily tragic trajectory of the totally preventable Fulani herdsmen war-like rampage throughout Nigeria eating and destroying crops, homes and lives- laying waste the land. Can any Nigerian set up a livestock business without permission, buying or renting land and supplying feed and water and paying for labour WITHOUT encroaching on his neighbour or stealing- taking without permission?

    Do cow owners pay VAT on multibillion naira sales get something for nothing making cow herding another extractive but destructive industry? They never spend a kobo on herd food. No one else in Nigeria demands what they would not give even in their homes- free food and water. Now they are burning leftover crops- a common war terror tactic. Have they come to an international agreement among themselves, backed with a cross-border vicious armed militia to take from deliberately disarmed farming communities? This is a horrible injustice, bigger than ‘just one more’ of many Nigerian injustices like individual oil block ownership-unheard of worldwide! The death toll of this injustice is more brazen than the slow, hidden deaths and poverty injustice of corruption, bad politics, unfair VAT distribution, individualized oil block ownership- unheard of anywhere in the world-,  and compounded by unfair representation by rubbishing federal character in ‘oga at the top’ for one ethnic group. The old cow routes demanded free land, free food, free water and cheap labour. Unfortunately that free land is now Fellow Nigerians’ family land, that free food is Fellow Nigerians’ treasured, tended crops and livelihoods and fortunes – borrowed from greedy banks! How can a cow sit down to a free meal of cassava, yams, corn, potatoes, fruit and vegetables, while the cultivators die? Other countries have objected where they are carrying out similar destructive programmes – notably Ghana.

    Question: Who disarms farmers facing armed herdsmen? Are farmers mumu or mad?  Only an idiot farmer would grow crops fit for a king or emir and feed them to non-paying uninvited guests like passing cows and their herders!  Who builds a hovel, house, farm or village only for passing herdsmen to torch it? Who married a wife or husband and has ‘God’s Gift of Children’ only for them to be callously murdered by passing cow herdsmen? The governors’ forum has handed the vice president a poisoned chalice, heading a working group on the Fulani herders-farmers war. His oga can stop this today: Keep the two sides apart permanently – Cow Conflict Resolution:  Grow cows, like crops, on cow farms/ranches in their northern home and ship them by rail, trailer and refrigerated truck when ripe! Remember. Nobody stopped Nigerians taking okada rider job nationwide, so only one side has an agenda in this farmland war! Stop bloodshed of humans today or there will be no bloodshed of cows.

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