Tag: Our girls

Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Work for their release.

Today we discuss sexual harassment, corruption, bereavement, blood cow meat and budget delays.  The sexual harassment revelations in UK’s parliament, after those in Hollywood, BBC and the church can be replicated in Nigeria with a sympathetic, protective reporting enabling environment. There is ‘Resident Evil’ everywhere needing exposure and a new behavioural standard.

Nigeria should observe the new Saudi Arabian anti-corruption committee tsunami. The coup of complicity and conspiracy around Maina with an Interior Ministry protective spy cape – babanriga, is administration arrogance and old-boy corruption –Nigeria’s murky senior civil service! If he has abused Nigeria’s pensioners by abusing pension funds, all guilty heads MUST roll for unleashing an economic and political terrorist – civil service terrorism! ‘Follow the minutes’ to detect ‘Maina-laundering’. Investigate Maina’s stupendous assets and the double-speak – ‘did he-didn’t him’ steal pension funds as ‘Taskforce’? The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and others are at last removed. They must face prosecution and jail-time if guilty. Now the State House Medical Centre is investigated. Hurray!!

I join all sympathisers with the Tinubu family on the painful death of their husband, father and son, Jide, and pray Almighty God will console them and all Nigerians who have lost children. While languages have names like orphan, widow to describe the bereaved, there is no word for a bereaved parent. No word can encompass a tragedy too horrific to comprehend, the despair too deep to describe and the burden too enormous to carry. Sadly many have been forced to tread this path, even since the death of Jide. May he and all the departed Rest in Perfect Peace.

The 30+year rampage of Fulani herdsmen tearing family members including children violently claiming 100,000+ lives of farmers and their families including babies and children from their loving families, with little preventive intervention by government, should never have been allowed to become the ‘Fulani Herdsmen – Farmers War’ that it is. Think before you eat cow meat carelessly delivered by the death of our children and their parents -murder. Blood meat is like blood diamonds and blood oil. Nigerians should start eating only ‘Ethical Meat’ i.e. without loss of life or livelihood. From today, no Nigerian child should lose life or family to feed a blood-thirsty cow!

And whatever happened to dying in old age at home surrounded by family? Is it necessary to have a ‘No Entry’ Intensive Care Unit’s array of tubes in every orifice, medicines and machines singing the mechanical life-support song of ‘life at any cost’ and a N1-2million bill for a few days usually still terminating in death. Does it make family or economic sense sending an aged patient or even former Vice President, and family members, to a nearby teaching hospital or an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) 4,000 miles away by multimillion naira air ambulance? Surely, ‘Family Matters’? I am speaking as a doctor with many variably active, inspiring and depressing hours in ICU with patients, family, friends and other people and sometimes being turning off the machines. Re-discover the human right to the ‘dignity of dying at home’ surrounded by family in our own bed, bedroom, with familiar home objects and known people in order to exchange that final glance, smile or hand-squeeze during our personal ‘End-time’? Even film writers reserve dying alone, as a ‘punishment death’. We must not let politics cloud our basic right to give our loved ones and ourselves a quiet peaceful family-around-us death even after service to the nation. Many doctors advise the family to say a polite ‘NO’ to an isolated death in a distant ICU-bed! Even a ward death is a better option if there is more compassionate access to family members. We are African not British, and we must not forget it!

Hospital life on a respirator tube is hell, believe me! We need to change their ‘Imminent Death’ protocols to move patients to ward corners where family can gather for ‘Near Death Duty’ without disrupting the ward routine. We must offer and accept the ‘Do not Heroically Resuscitate’ clause. There is nothing sadder than the calculated, concerned or even callous enforcement of impersonal Visiting Time laws that deny a visit of anxiety-laden family members to say ‘final parting words’ because the visit is not 4- 6 pm especially if the patient dies alone while the family is outside waiting. Few medical staff know the ICU patient as well as family and will not attend the funeral. So how can they have rights over ICU bedside rights?

Medicine has little moral right to hinder a sister or son exchanging ‘last words’ at an ‘end of life’ experience even if the patient manages to survive. Enough already! Indeed in many hospitals, the family helps manage the patient due to staff shortages.

Some misguided National Assembly (NASS) members want to stagnate Nigeria, stalemate our democracy and enforce a ‘slow or no business as usual -’ agenda arrogantly saying the budget cannot be passed by Dec 2017 and ‘booing’ or ‘No-ing’ the President’s letter about the budget presentation to NASS. Some NASS members have missed, messed up or misread their ‘political calling’ to accelerate Nigeria’s development and risking Nigeria becoming ‘Last in Class Africa’ – a dead  democracy with its citizens wallowing in the doldrums as its politicians pollute the polity while partying worldwide. God forbid! Do they really care?

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

Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Work for their release.

Today we discuss Loot- mega-corruption Malabu, Abacha, National Library corruption- and the Ejo Eko ‘Lagos Traffic Snake’.

Malabu is a recurring disgusting decimal, a festering ulcer on Nigeria’s face or a recurrent Sexually Transmitted Disease –our syphilis. Hurray for the recovery of $85m Malabu Loot. How much more of the $810m will be recovered? Will we get it back? We are just about to the recover $350m of another recurring disgusting decimal of corruption –Abacha Loot. Is Abacha loot available only because he is dead and the others sacrificed him in exchange for ‘Presidential Plea Bargain’ with immunity from presidential prosecution? Is Jonathan in the line of fire because he is a touchable southerner and non-military ‘disposable’ as many think other presidents, untouchable northerners or military have gone free after worse damage to the economy.

Such ‘Recovery’ is good, yes! However Recovery without Revelation and Successful Prosecution and Punishment of ‘Returnees’ will never change society. We must ‘Name and Shame and Jail’. Investigation must be conducted to confirm any perversion of justice in decision-making as a result of corruption. Efforts must reverse corrupt decisions influenced by loot throughout the civil service including the destruction of true federalism. The Malabu case should be exorcised of its demons and cured and deserves closure with jail-time for offenders in and out of National Assembly (NASS).

With 25 companies signifying interest in revamping our refineries, we recall the $185 infamous TAM-Turn Around Maintenance announcements used to lull us while nothing was done except steal. Refineries are not nuclear physics. Get on with the job and give us results ASAP. Period.

I do not agree with General Gowon’s anti-restructuring stance. Restructuring is primarily the federal government giving up a lot of its fiscal and political powers. The next battle after that will be governors restructuring.

The 26-10-2017 Channels Report on the National Library decay is an Anti-Corruption Award Winning Report for depth of research, evidence of medical disease and physical structural decay and also the suffering of the library staff. Those bold enough to appear must be protected and promoted as whistle-blowers. The Report ranks with the iconic report into the Ikeja Police College years ago. A revisit report is required to see if there are improvements for recruits. The current report highlights the inflation of the contract from N8b in 2006 to N78b, demonstrating a massive lack of interest in library services but a huge interest in massive corruption.  Only in Nigeria are engineers ignored and potholes on expressways et cetera allowed to fester and grow cancerously into deadly craters unchecked. Why does government’s neglect the armies of ‘siddon look’ road workers willing to fill millions of potholes screaming out for filling?

There is an evil, devil-inspired historical government indolence/arrogance culture not to provide decent libraries, not to react to potholes or even erect warning pothole signs. Yes, make straight our never-finished expressways- but please fill the potholes ‘while we wait’ an eternity! Nigerians have a human right to pothole-free roads and will punish failed political parties at election. Nigeria has always had funds to fill potholes. See what is being stolen nationwide and also taken by NASS. In the coming election, we will judge by the ability, desire and urgency with which potholes have been filled.  The local pothole matters. Roads washed away are discovered to have no foundation of stones under a one-inch depth of tar. Was that the design or contractor or corruption modified? Government is getting a World Bank loan for 10 state rural roads nationwide by mid-2018. Hurray. To deal with the problems, this $500+m should be spread among 200 contractors each doing 10 km of road. Competent, honest contract splitting is essential to reduce delivery time.  Years ago the Polytechnic Ibadan invented a quick-drying pothole filler. Their worst enemy was the political contractor seeking a criminal mega-contract. Today in the UK there are roads being repaired using plastic base derived from every day throwaway plastic. It should be explored by our technology and tertiary institutions to reduce our mountains of plastic rubbish!

Nigeria needs an urgent commitment now from all politicians and civil servants and contractors to obey the oath to be FLH, Faithful Loyal and Honest and the GO, Government Orders. We can save Nigeria from more years of internal slavery and ‘Yes, Mr. Politician’ mentality. The election years 2018/19 are fast approaching. By evil ‘Nigerian tradition’ government activities, epileptic as they are, usually stop for one calendar year pre-election to allow for massive fraud, stealing self-enrichment and party ‘election war chest’ enrichment for election and selfish ends. But this is not destiny; it is deliberate devilish decision-making by those pulling political party and civil service strings. Will change mean we will have governments working throughout their last year or will they still steal for the election?

Nigeria is sacrificed by its leadership to no standards malignantly manifest by the unbelievable long mechanical Ejo Eko, Lagos Traffic Snake –a manmade giant python, strangling Lagos in the disgraceful 1000+ trailer-tanker-truck line-up transformer-like, from Apapa Port to Ikorodu Road. Unfortunately not one ministry official or politician in NASS will be held responsible or be prosecuted for the decisions or indecision creating this massive disgraceful policy and civil engineering failure! Why?

NB: Nigerians must uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014, contravening UN-SDGs Sustainable Development Goals 4, 5 and16, United Nations development yardsticks. Work for their release. Please access #FreedomForGirls film on Youtube and show AMGAP-As Many Girls As Possible at home, school and work. No girl should not see this Youtube download.

Kudos to Sterling Bank plc for the ‘Save the Environment Campaign’ featuring the star singer Olamide. This fits into SDGs 3 and 13. Beyond advocacy, the bank should support/fund a “Plastic Clean-up or Back to Glass Bottles Campaign across Nigeria.

Today : Farm Murders; Solar at last???

The executed citizens during ‘no movement’ curfews in Benue State and fear of ‘where else will they attack next?’ attest to the ancient intelligence deficit, denial, inability or lack of political will to rise to the bloodthirsty war challenge with military dispatch. Disarming the survivors is not the answer as they will be massacred again. Nigerian authorities have failed to stop the violent, apparently ‘politically or ethnically motivated and protected’ perpetrators, mostly Fulani herdsmen demanding ‘might and right of way’ over traditional ‘right of occupancy’ and ‘right to plant and harvest’. There is a supreme arrogance in marching cattle through other citizens’ tenderly nurtured well-demarcated cultivated lands killing children, parents and others to feed cattle ‘for-free, no money’ or seeking territorial gains. The death toll from this Fulani herdsmen-Nigerian farmers war is shamefully high across 23 states and in the 100,000s with millions displaced with many destitute with no compensation outnumbering the victims of the boko haram War. In the 21st Century, cattle should be fed in their state of origin, where the money goes when the cattle is sold, and transported to target states by road, rail and river not by trail or track!

THE OFFER OF ‘FREE EDUCATION’ is to be embraced by everyone but parents must be told that ‘Free’ is not ‘Total’ and cannot provide all essentials that we take for granted in ‘normal’ schools. Free education is one of the five fingers of the hand of education and requires contribution from other fingers. The first finger is government effort – Free Education, scholarships and bursaries, salaries and monthly grants. Government always overestimates free education but because of misapplied politics, it refuses to ask for contributions to fill any gaps it leaves. The second finger is teachers who must be empowered to ask for contributions to grow education. The third finger is the parents sometimes gathered as the Parents Teachers Association, PTA, often satisfied that the children are in school and who ignorantly refuse to contribute. The fourth finger is Old Students Associations (OSAs) of secondary schools often rescuing them from disaster and wisely harnessed by Ogun State as the Alma Mater Day. OSAs, should be started in all neglected primary schools. The fifth finger is the community as the Board of Governors and neighbourood business and citizens. All make up the hand or fist of education.

It is in poorly equipped public schools that parents and PTAs must supplement budgetary allocations and infrastructure. Parents of public schools must be reminded that even high fee-paying schools and universities ask parents to contribute material and sometimes money for a complete education. Government schools are of minimum standards when Nigeria deserved and can afford maximum standards as it suffers maximum theft.

Teachers in private schools happily ask parents to send/donate/loan learning-tools like books, newspapers, scissors, thread, material, cardboard, bottle tops for art et cetera. Government historically muzzles its professionals. Why has the Nigerian public school teacher been ordered not to ask parents to bring these things? Politics is the answer. ‘Free’ does not mean ‘no contribution’ from others. No Nigerian government will give enough library books or footballs but Instant libraries can be created if every family lends a book and a ball. Education is a joint effort a PPPPP – Public Parent Past students Partnership. Governments must desist from talking about ‘free’ as if the parents are to hands-off and abdicate their responsibility. In Oyo State the schools have local Boards of Governors.

In summary teachers in public schools must have the same rights as private school teachers to ask parents and students to contribute aids to learning. Government should reward contributions.

At last, the federal government through Minister Fashola advocates alternative energy and in particular ‘Solar Energy’ one of the natural four gifts of God to Nigeria –soil, oil, sun and minerals. We are still searching for the other necessary God’s gift, decisive positive and speedy leadership, to bring them all together in the service of the nation. This government when it came immediately re-invigorated the repeatedly re-invigorated and repeatedly failing soil sector –agriculture. Perhaps it will succeed? It should have initiated a revolutionary Solar Energy $5b Grant from CBN or the pension scheme to get millions off the ‘monkey-poxed’ electricity grid by copying the low-interest rate 5-8 year solar loan schemes abroad. Nigeria is overly dependent on the grid the Achilles’ Heel of Nigeria’s progress. Why is solar not providing more power in ‘strong sun’ countries like Nigeria? The answer is politics. Keeping the people in real slavery and keeping cartels wealthy forces the use of expensive generators and fuel to substitute for a rotten grid without pay-as-you-go meters, run by rotten people in a rotten system doomed to ruin Nigeria. Can Fashola break the jinx?

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

Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014 contravening UN-SDGs Sustainable Development Goals 4,5,16 especially at this time of The International Day of the Girl Child. Work for their release. Please access htpps://youtu.be/3BMgV8jj9IU for the #FreedomForGirls film by Beyonce and 100 girls. Please spread the film word to achieve SDG 5- Gender Equality. No girl should not see this Youtube download.

Life jackets are Nuclear Physics in Nigeria! Still more totally preventable deaths on waterways, even school children. Why? Irresponsibility and no accountability! Remember the battle for the seatbelt? Everyone in a boat must wear a lifejacket. Water is not man’s best friend. Water = lifejacket. Simple! Entrepreneurs: Can Nigerians make and use lifejackets or should we ask an NGO? Life is cheaper than a life jacket in Nigeria! Drowning is real death!

The government-friendly historic mantra ‘No Pay No Work’ should read the worker-friendly ‘No Pay No Work’! Yes: The billions stolen annually could have paid all workers ‘AAWD’ –As And When Due!! Many feel the worker in Nigeria is too servile and trusting of being paid eventually and are thus abused by politicians. Nigerian workers are unsung saviours and heroes, keeping it going during the war of late pay. Nigerian workers are so unbelievably patriotic, nationalistic, trusting and feel duty-bound to work for an unsigned transferable bond between governments ‘a promise of pay’ even though the legal framework for pay is a calendar month. Meanwhile and inexplicably, Nigerian politicians across the nation are first in line to feed at the trough and are so wealthy that politicians in National Assembly (NASS) manage to appropriate for themselves and greedily eat through N150,000,000,000 of public funds qualifying them legally-illegally as being the highest ‘take home’ for politicians worldwide.

Governments are worker-friendly or worker-wicked! Good or bad, salary-paying or non-salary paying, pension-paying or non-pension paying. All government is a continuum. Each new government happily uses and often abuses ‘decrees’ of the bad old government. But each new government is reluctant to pay ‘inherited’ arrears owed workers by previous regimes. All Nigerians must know that, except in rare circumstances, the budget can pay workers monthly and thus break the vicious cycle of the preceding regimes stolen wages, a misused or abused treasury denying workers of their financial human rights to a living wage. This government mechanism has repeatedly passed the buck of paying wages and emoluments from one wayward government to the next government. If that is not criminal what is? Add the fact that each government employs its hangers-on into government for ‘perpetual salary or pension, work or no work’. This further overburdens the burgeoning unpaid salary bill to be the first burden on the budget of the next regime. And the old regime will join in the accusation that the new regime has a backlog of salaries to pay- political bastardisation. We have been victim or witness to such serial government’s irresponsible behaviour to its workers. American workers, will shut down government merely by staying at home if their pay check is not delivered. This is why every December there is a US Congress stalemate resolved on the brink, just to keep the workers paid and at work.

Therefore how and why on earth is it morally, ethically, legally or humanly the workers fault in Nigeria if they strike after being short-changed, underpaid, paid an ‘agreed’ 50% or 80%, or not paid at all for one or nine months and are owed five, or 20 years pensions? A worker without wages is a slave and workers without wages are a slave army even if the army is paid at some indeterminate point in the future of a government or the next. Hunger and need are minutely, hourly, daily occurrences only postponed by the weekly or monthly salary.

Can every Social Studies or Political Science Faculty or Political Party explain the ‘First Wonder of the Nigerian Worker-the Wizardry of Survival without Wages’ – the economic wizardry of survival of a worker, partner, children and extended family when no wages are paid for two months or 10? Does the worker walk to work, eat nothing, drink nothing, not pay rent or transport, attend social functions including funerals? If these things continue to be done who is paying for them? Is it corruption by the worker or charity from others or family borrowing from extended family and others? All are wrong because they allow the worker to depend on substitutes for failed governance withholding justified earnings. The failed government has failed to meet its legitimate, legal obligation to workers. And yet there is so much stolen daily but workers are told not to resist this rape on pain of ‘No Work No Pay’.

Traditionally, but regrettably, governments only respond when workers go on strike for their withheld rights. It is unlikely to change as politicians and authoritarian civil servants see themselves as masters and not servants or facilitators of workers’ rights. The profit of a government is efficiency in policy implementation and following the agreed timetable for the delivery of services, salaries and pensions. Anything less is a failed government. Weed out corruption and ghost workers but that is no excuse for short-changing or non-payment of workers. The government workers salary reaches everywhere and is the heartbeat of the nation’s economy. Stopping salaries stops the state and nations’ heartbeat. No Pay No Work!

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

Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014 contravening UN-SDGs Sustainable Development Goals 4,5,16. Work for their release.

Why did most dirty politicians, civil servants and collaborators in the private sector never have allegiance to the nation? Rather than serve, contravening all SDGs, they have reneged on the principles of nation-building- Justice, Equity and Honesty- and broken their Oath of Allegiance to the poor sick children of Nigeria, SDG 1,2,5,4, 5 and abandoned the struggle between ‘what is right or wrong, proper or equitable, moral or immoral’ against SDG 16. They have engineered a slothful, manipulated police investigatory and justice system, with no supervision.

They got away with 10% of contracts in the 60s, millions in the 70s, billions in the 80s and now multiple billions in the 21st Century rubbishing SDGs 1-17. For these evil people it is okay to steal billions, destroying the future of 50m youth, SDGs 4 and 5, partly used for committing mayhem, murder and vote manipulation to seize power at ‘Fake Elections’ –Civilian Coup Plotting against all SDGs.

These ‘criminals in power’ have only one fear – ‘Going To Jail’, SDG 16. But even jail may metamorphose into a hospital private room exit strategy of falling politically sick. So ‘Getting Caught’ does not bother them because they have mastered the dark art of silky-mouthed SAN lawyers and ‘admiration’ from the media and are happy to perform in soap operas before power- struck reporters for the 9 O’clock news during a deliberately delayed British Justice System and its ‘Innocent Until Proven Guilty’ injunction-SDG 16. We need the French System of ‘Guilty until Proven Innocent’. Adjournments will disappear. Returning some funds in ‘Plea Bargains’ leaves the evil ones amused, ‘clean’ and wrongly still rich with our stolen money and with no physical restrictions or punishment. So they wear the cloak of invincibility and taunt honest Nigerians with the insult ‘catch us if you can, stupid’. It adds to the outrageous corruption of ‘legalised illegality’ of obscene Salaries And Perks, SAP, of office SAPping Nigeria dry.

Indeed these ‘leaders’ appear in the eyes of unpaid pensions as ‘multiple pension thieves’ and ‘common highway robbers’ having succeeded in actually and figuratively ‘stealing the highway’. I hereby give Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, my support and that of Educare Trust, and you should too, as it leads the fight in court against multiple salaries and/or pensions by politicians-SDG 16.  Highway stealing is an old corruption game played by mobilized contractors and their political masters on every road ever built in Nigeria rendering roads not-fit-for-purpose, death-traps, after a short time or never finished, SDG 16. General Gowon told us that the third lane on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway ‘disappeared’ between the approval in the early 70s and construction-240km of single lane road. This highway robbery is marked by the brazen diversion, in spite of national outrage, of N20b from the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, a project of mega-economic significance. Hurray for the Sukuk-funding of N100b to rescue it and many other roads from apparent vultures nit-picking at the budget’s corpse.

The millions of hours lost annually at the Lagos port shows Nigerian politics is past its sell-by date and developmental nation-building politics is in crippled infancy, SDGs 8, 9,11,and 16. A nation’s leadership which plays corruption politics with everything will eat the nation’s hands and feet crippling it beyond recovery. Thousands of containers abandoned to the notoriously corrupt Customs’ consistently sabotaged national development plans. Every electricity advance was doomed as component containers were refused clearance due to incompetent coordination and corruption. We have had a political and civil servant class that could not keep the nation’s port[s] in competition and efficiency tandem with even Ghana’s Takoradi or Accra, let alone Southampton we used but did not learn from in the 50s and 60s. Dangote Corporation is to do the Port Road. We pray!

Is Nigeria oblivious of the recent Sustainable Development Goals Goalkeepers Meeting held in New York? Please spread the word about the 17 SDGs. Google them, learn about them, print them out, teach them to all children, youth and adults at home, school, lecture room, office. SDGs need everyone to play a part in saving the world through ABC-Action, Broadcast and Change. Is Nigeria also oblivious to the ‘Our Oceans Conference’ on SDG 14, Life Under Water, held in Malta aimed at preserving clean water flows and fish stocks by reducing the tons of plastic polluting water worldwide turning it into gigantic sewers choking sea-life and beaches? ‘Ghost nets’ which are old fishing gear snagged on reefs, entrap and kill fish forever. Our world misuses 320m tons of plastic annually with 5% recycled. Most of the rest are in oceans.

Use of Single-Use Plastic bottles and packaging has been condemned, with a serious attempt to phase out plastics altogether because they are non-biodegradable, block waste channels, worsen floods and enter the food chain when swallowed by fish and wildlife. SDGs 6, 7, 8,9,11, 12, 14, 15. Credit to Sky News for their campaign to eliminate ‘single use plastics’. Whales have been killed by plastic accumulating in their stomachs.

In Nigeria, plastic bottles and bags pollute the environment, drown us and worsen flooding, SDGs 11, 12.  Yet we see no serious government advice and parents, teachers and communities do nothing to protect their families and communities or teach ‘anti-plastic’ next generation.

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

Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Work for their release.

We often miss the point and will prefer to discuss political trivia than scientific upgrades illustrated by candidates whose pathetic antics will create further doom for Nigeria’s political growth instead of elevating genuine life changing strides. Who can forget the tape recordings and military protests about being used to ‘advantage the candidate’? Shamefully there are few or no school science and other educational posters budgeted and purchased by governments and politicians for the 1+m classrooms to help 40+m children learn easily. But every four years we are victims of one billion political posters, and now we vomit at the ‘early-bird’ campaign of a tsunami of political posters, showing politicians’ faces and confirming that politicians know the value of posters but refuse to use them for education. What shameless people. Nigeria should tear down any single political poster and refuse to allow them in the 2019 campaign.

The disgracefully oppressive and controlling NGO/CSO Bill can be read another way. Is it also corruption fighting back?

As a professional in medicine, one of the most important recent developments is the Lagos State Forensic DNA Laboratory opened by Governor Ambode. Such labs are commonplace in South Africa, our so-called African financial rival. We have the kobo, SA has the sense!! Do we have any excuse not to have labs like SA labs? They have corruption too!!  In the past we complained of the ineffectiveness of the Police annual budget for a forensic lab in excess of N50m. Corruption? Today the Police Forensic Lab is a shadow of a real police lab. Labs must be funded and upgraded with cutting edge ‘serious science’ equipment like spectrophotometers etc. Corruption? Probably the best funded and best run forensic laboratory in Nigeria is probably the WHO-funded reference lab hosted by Redeemer’s University under Professor Christian Happi. In his lab, the Ebola and recent viral epidemic samples were handled. Wonderfully also, the laboratory allows tours and visits by young science students and undergraduates to interact with the scientists and learn about isolation strategies and the super science equipment for cutting edge work qualifying for publication in the top medical and science journals. It is time the so-called education, science and technology, health, police and other relevant ministries and National Assembly committees understood and championed ‘Serious Science Support’ for Nigeria to become a modern science and technology-based society. Every state in Nigeria is larger than some countries and should install similar DNA lab institutions.

All such labs can expand beyond DNA and should grow into a Certified Forensic Training Programme or Affiliation to LASU’s College of Medicine or Sciences a short and long course training ground in medicine and for medical and laboratory scientists in this huge untapped area – creating jobs for the brave and brilliant. It requires very serious security protection of evidence, processing and results which are as relevant to paternity disputes as to crime solving and unidentified body identification after floods. Can Nigerians do this or will funds be signed off officially but go to politicians? If well-funded, not prohibitively expensive to run and with reasonably quick results and linked to a frequently checking foreign laboratory for ‘Quality Control Studies and ‘Monitoring and Evaluation’, it could work. It should have grown naturally within the pathology laboratory opposite the prison on Broad Street, Lagos and run in the 60s by late Dr Justin Uku before he left for the USA becoming the Chief Coroner of Buffalo County. I almost wept at the houses of Chief ‘Uncle’ Bola Ige and my late cousin Funso Williams as police failed to ‘secure the crime scenes’ and took fingerprints even though we were all avid watchers of CSI, NCIS and other films representing brilliant counter-criminal minds at work. This will reduce awaiting trial prisoners, increase CID crime-solving rate and professionalism, increase gloves and masks and reels of yellow and black tape sales for police cordons- ‘Do Not Cross this Line Crime Scene’.

One lab cannot scientifically serve 180m of whom 0.1-1% are serious criminals or requiring paternal confirmation. There would be much less money to steal by politicians if they developed their states, created jobs in science areas and spent the budget correctly. But Nigeria’s leadership, federal and state, preferred fat foreign accounts and mansions, mistresses and ‘misters’ in the case of female politicians. There are over 1000 similar and other science-based areas needing development to employ our scientists, technologists and specialists who ‘sell cement’ instead.

Annually Nigeria produces thousands of bright, hopeful but repeatedly unemployed laboratory scientists, physiologists, chemists, geologists, engineers and biologists, mostly also unemployable because they have studied the theory of science and done too few practical sessions to compare favourably with their counterparts abroad. The stumbling block that the backward unitary system of government has caused by limiting practical education in favour of slow states is immoral. Ask who introduced the Backward Education Plan, included cancelling ‘Practical classes’ and shamelessly substituting ‘The Theory of’ ….. sport, science, physics, chemistry and biology in Nigeria’s curricula rubbishing standards, knowledge and practical ability? They should be given a ‘Disservice to Nigeria’s Science Education’ medal for cutting budgets and allowing money for practicals to be stolen or diverted, thus robbing students of a firm science foundation.

NB: Nigerians discover a new generation of untainted ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019.

Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Work for their release.

As we move towards another October again, we need for the 57th time to reflect on where we are and where we were supposed to be from the multiple gifts from God, namely Sun, Soil and Oil. We fail to use the Sun, are slowly using the Soil and may run out of Oil. All these were and sometimes still are stolen in multiple billions or maliciously manipulated and mismanaged by Fellow Nigerians. Ask what greed and actual madness possesses anyone to steal in the billions causing Nigeria to totter wildly as it approaches another birthday Oct 1.

Nigeria is unfortunately not tottering from the weight of nationalistically motivated political and societal wisdom and achievement that comes with a mature age of intensive nation-building and personal and collective sacrifice. Nigeria totters with signs of dementia and split personality-progressive and regressive conservative, restructuring and status quo.  We have wiped from our memory not only the horrors on both sides and the collateral damage and friendly fire of the buildup to and the actual civil war and its 1+million dead but also its discriminatory aftermath during which justice evaporated as we were bound together by the war cry ‘Unity at all costs’.

Today ‘Unity’ is just another political dirty word used and abused by powerful political voices as a clarion war cry to cower and keep enslaved and shackled the population in order to ensure subservience of the frustrated majority. However ‘Unity’ can only be guaranteed if it is used as recommended in the national anthem with the qualification word ‘Justice’. It is only then that ‘Peace’ will kick in, not by force of arms but naturally like a river. Only this will guarantee avenues for development.

Any politician who harps exclusively on ‘Unity’ without admitting there were glaring ‘Injustice’ government policy faults like lopsided state and LGA creation, lopsided VAT and revenue formula anomalies and a glaringly false federalism, is insincere and breaking the morality laws. The ‘Unity’ call without making immediate supporting reference to justice, is dishonest, manipulative, irresponsible and part of the problem with Nigeria’s political leadership. The True Federalism or True Democracy Einsteinian Equation for Political Equilibrium is ‘Unity = Justice + Peace’.

The real cost of the national stain of corruption and our inability to stop it at the N10m or N1bs mark by audit alarms, is multipronged. We here of mega-purchases but even seizing the buildings will not recover anything near the equivalent paid for the properties if they are auctioned tomorrow. The buildings were overpriced, there is not enough money to resell them for the money initially paid and everyone is hiding their money now and pretending to be clean mouthed.

What is the cost of JAMB corruption to the youth of Nigeria? The JAMB money returned through TSA is supposed to eventually amount to N8b vs N3m paid by the previous JAMB administration during the same period. Within our estate in Bodija and against our protests, there is a new nightclub being built on a property where the house was knocked down. In addition, a conversion from residential to commercial fee of N10m was said to have been paid for. The building is a stone’s throw from ICPC or EFCC in the same estate in Bodija. ICPC/EFCC would do well to exclude corruption or even diverted JAMB funds as part of the financial plan for the nightclub.

The mega-bribes however fuel a craving for high-end and totally unnecessary luxury goods which Nigerians would never have spent their money on even if they did not have to bribe. Multiple high end homes, mansions and cars at home and broad, diamonds, and other jewelry drain from the country’s foreign reserves. When recovered by EFCC and ICPC, their resale value is usually a fraction of the exorbitant purchase price usually 30-40% -take it or leave it. Even big projects built at home with bribes are a drain because they stop the country building for the masses and providing transport. High end mansions and flats house only a few people while N400b spent on mass housing would have made a huge difference to low cost housing.

Emotion is closely allied to perception. What is the emotional toll of corruption on the psyche of Nigerians? Depression, disbelief, denial, submission, participation, beneficiary, fightback or flee the country? Perception is an important yardstick arising from one’s emotional response to corruption. What is your perception of a visit to a police station, a ministry, the LGA, even a hospital? What is the common and indigenous international perception of doing business or visiting Nigeria? What is the perception of anyone in any ‘uniform’?  What is the perception of a politician? For all of these it is ‘disgust at the expected corruption’ unless the person is from the same village as you. Only the occupiers of the posts can change that perception, not the public or the professional corruption observer.

President Buhari in his October 1 speech should consider addressing government efforts to increase foreign reserves to $50b by next year, reduce interest rates to single digits across all loans by reducing or withdrawing the 14% CBN Monetary Policy Rate, make loans available to pay for cars etc.

NB: Nigerians discover a new generation of untainted ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’

KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019.

Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Pray and work.

ALERT: We will also discuss potholes, sports failures and wasteful Lagos-Ibadan expressway cement medians.

The demand for restructuring, to release most Nigerians from the imposed yoke of false federalism is no joke. It is the reaction to the pain inflicted by a listless leadership depending on the crutches of a false federalism to crush and rob by all means necessary many other citizens of their right to the decent 21st Century life. Obasanjo compounded matters by saying he masterminded a cohort of previous coup plotters into high political office as a successful preventive measure to save Nigeria from coups from 1999 to date. Did he consider their competence to lead Nigeria into the 21st Century which they ‘uniformly’ failed to do? The current system has repeatedly failed Nigeria which occupies an abysmal position in development-ranked UN development indices. All ‘restructurist’ citizens of Nigeria feel cheated of rightful dues wrongly going to others –the ‘anti-restructurists’ who must be forced towards true federalism’. A cheat is a cheat –‘federal cheat’ or football.

The pothole is the daily reminder and visible cancerous ulcer trumpeting the worst incompetent governance imaginable and disfiguring the beautiful Nigerian skin. Happily Lagos State has, belatedly, directed state-wide pothole filling -an overdue cancer treatment. For governors, this will help re-election campaigns! Better a pothole filled late than never. Unfortunately most potholes are not seen as diseases but curiosities. Potholes are doomed to live forever in Nigeria where they grow, killing more people than Boko Haram does. Potholes are court admissible evidence of disgraceful government failure to take the road network seriously. In Nigeria, it is nuclear physics to eliminate potholes nationwide, though they can all be filled in a week giving jobs to thousands. Filling potholes is highly visible, positive vibe, immediate benefit, ‘complete political common sense’ to keep the citizens happy pre-elections by easing the preventable pain of citizens suffering ‘pothole grief, financial loss, delays, damage and death’ nationwide?

The Lagos-Ibadan expressway should in any 21st century country have had all its potholes filled certainly while waiting for the N20billion maliciously removed by an ill-motivated National Assembly (NASS) so we can endure the road now before the election and not in 2025!! Why do Nigerian governments act as if Nigerians have ‘Rights to Potholes’? Of course the other leg of the Lagos State order is that the job is for ‘now in the rainy season’, a major policy shift, and not for the dry season –the usual excuse of government to endlessly postpone work. Let all governments nationwide ‘fill potholes with immediate effect’ and see the real smile of the face of the citizenry who just want to be left alone. Government is not just about taxes. Governments have failed over the years with the stupendous amounts in multiple billions to develop even one state to 21 century level. Calculate the total billions income by each state since 1980 or even 1999 ‘And It Will Surprise How little The Governors Have Done’. So will giving states more responsibility and billions under a ‘restructured true and fair federalism’ system not just enrich governors even more? Already teachers remind us that LGAs and governors cheated them in the past.

So Usain Bolt, legend, lost his final professional competitive 100m race to a convicted drug cheat, ‘reformed’ they say, merely because he caught and forced to do his time. But if he was never caught, would he ever have admitted cheating? No. And, medically speaking, the cheating ‘winner’ has what we call ‘Residual Muscle Mass Development’ from deliberate abuse with steroids and other drugs. Drug cheats in athletics should be banned ‘for life’ and not for a ‘2-4’ years.  This is because the abuse produces unnatural muscle development and increased endurance which will not disappear during the ‘Ban’ period. Cheating athletes take the risk and punishment for a future result like beating a clean legend like Bolt. Drug cheating in sport is not like cheating in examinations where the next exam will exclude cheating by brain which drains between exams while muscle once grown remains to run another day. Though Bolt painfully lost the 4x100m to a ‘muscle pull’, his achievements, like those of Mo Farah who lost to the next generation, are far in excess of his losses.

Each of the non-Nigerian athletes at the London Games 2017 has 10-25 years of ‘sport security’. These are mostly alien to Nigeria causing our spectacularly poor showing at competitions. Where are our sports pyramids, ladders, talent scouts, coaches, places to practice, allowances, functioning toilets, running water and secure lockers for athletes’ possessions? Do we pay them for transport and spend time to encourage them? Nigeria should do better across a wider sports range than football. Sport is recognized as a youth motivator and income earner. Nigeria’s typical fire brigade approach is failing the nation’s youth. When last did talent scouts make enquires or contact by phone, email or visit any schools and universities for Sports Generation Next?

The waste in the Lagos-Ibadan expressway double concrete median is compounded by the thousands of cement girders demarcating construction.  The federal government must urgently re-strategise to build roads in phases. Phase 1: tarmac road. Phase 2: single concrete median. An uncompleted road surface is a waste.

NB: Nigerians discover a new generation of untainted ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’

KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019.

Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Pray and work.

Also today: Professors Osotimehin and Williams Corrigendum: Article July 19 ‘Much new construction’ mysteriously became ‘Much new constructions’. Apologies.

Babatunde Osotimehin is dead at 68. He was Professor of Chemical Pathology and Provost, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Director General, National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Minister of Health and an Under Secretary UN as Executive Director of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) promoting girl education, youth and gender equality and protection. He was mentored by late Professor Kwaku Adadevoh, chemical pathologist and Vice Chancellor University of Lagos. He was a personal friend for 45 years, member of The Group- an Ibadan-based band of professional families involved socially, and of Educare Trust- an Education and Health NGO in Nigeria.

We interacted when I was trying ways to get the UN leadership to champion advertising mainstreaming of marginalized ‘Social Life Skill Empowerment Messages’ like ‘Girls Get Educated’ and ‘Real Men Do Not Beat Their Wives‘ in the ‘commercial advertising mechanism’ by printing these UN messages on every advert pack and billboard as an add-on like for ‘cigarette packs warnings’ and especially female product packaging, towards widening the visible space to empower and defend female rights. This remains unfinished business. Bob, Rest In Perfect Peace.

We lost Professor of Pathology Femi Williams, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan. In medical school in 1970s, he was a fantastic teacher earning him the cerebral sobriquet ‘Willy Sarcoma’. Thank you sir! Several years ago he called  on me in regard to his Africa Cancer Centre Project in Lekki. After years of efforts to get budgeted funds, Nigeria once again disappointed another brilliant professional star by corruption and visionlessness just as it disappointed late Professor Enitan Bababunmi. Professor Williams was a Trinity College Dublin, Ireland star, like my father back in 1948 – late Dr Abayomi Marinho who was at Psychiatric Hospital Yaba, Lagos. He also championed solar energy use. Prof Wole Soyinka informed Nigeria that the project was hindered by corruption and politics. Government never delivered.

A nation is doomed developmentally if it continues a tradition of disregarding the counsel of its non-political senior professionals. In Nigeria, politics is ‘‘The Most Expensive But The Least ‘Valuable Or Viable’ Profession’’ and a society which sacrifices its ‘true professionals’ in favour of a political class of questionable quality and loyalty will fail developmentally. By ignoring its professional giants, Nigerian politicians continue to sign Nigeria’s ‘Development Death Warrant’. How many true professionals die underutilized by Nigeria OR THE MEDIA only for magnificent graveside eulogies? The media broadcast every petty performance of politicians but treats professional achievements as advertising ‘To Be Paid For’. Shame! Professor Femi Williams of the immaculate bowtie and incisive insight, will Rest In Perfect Peace but will those who deliberately hindered the establishment of the Africa Cancer Centre? We are so rich in money and manpower but so poor in political performance, and we are paying the price!

Emmanuel Akinwotu and Sam Olukoya report in The Guardian [UK] July 18, Oxfam has found that ‘nowhere else is the Wealth Gap bigger’ than in Africa’s wealthiest country, Nigeria. The writers highlight that Development Financing International  and Oxfam rank Nigeria last of 152 countries in their ‘Commitment To Reducing Inequality’ and Nigeria is 118 /144 in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap with girls poorer than boys while Nigeria has 112million below the poverty line, earning 8000 times less than Dangote per day.

With this bleak background, should we express anger or fake surprise that approximately 250,000 of 1.6million of ‘Nigeria’s Finest & Brightest Youth’ were detected/suspected/confirmed as having cheated in the last examinations? How many are guilty and how many escaped the net? Is that merely the exam body labelling brilliant students as cheats, which has been done before for ‘too good to be true’ results which were then maliciously withheld and candidates suffered humiliating undeserved F9 as a result of unsubstantiated accusations by the exam body – judge and jury? There were no interview and investigation to even casually retest ‘accused’ brilliant candidates.

What is the ‘self-inflicted cost’ of abandoning millions of Nigeria’s youth in often ‘sub-teachered’ pigsties mis-labelled ‘schools’ in 2017 while the counterpart funding in N50+billions languishes unutilized in the UBE bank? The cost is an assault on education, a ‘Nonviolent Form Of Boko Haram’ with equally vicious results of an ‘Political Earthquake Against Education’. Cheating is the first sin and is a symptom of decay worldwide. Anyone can cheat in any school and from any background. It is a personal, peer, group or societal pressure decision. Biometrics may reduce cheating but integrity among all actors is a key prevention strategy.

Dangerously, Nigeria’s warped ‘Schools Starve In The Midst Of Plenty’ and encourage cheating involving parents, mercenary candidates, teacher collaboration et cetera, like a malignant ‘sarcoma’ cancer or untreatable infection. We all recall that JAMB required the desperate countermove of post JAMB exams to sanitise admissions when JAMB fell into ‘cheating’ disrepute costing Nigeria 20 years of misfits and a rise in cultism while depriving real candidates of tertiary education. This year’s results called ‘Youth Corruption’ must be ‘stamped out’ and punished but so should cheating be stopped in politics, elections, budgets and governance. No cheating in the 2nd Paris Club refunds!! What is good for the youth goose is good for the adult gander! Political cheating destroys democracy!  ToBeContinued…

NB: Nigerians put forward untainted ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019.