The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Picture

  • Why picture tells story – Lizzy Jay

    Having worked her way to become a brand, rising comedienne Lizzy Jay, who posted a picture in which she is decked in native Yoruba attire has said that very picture posted has a reason and story behind it.

    “Not everyone you see smiling is actually happy, we all have a unique battle we’re fighting underneath,” she wrote.

    “May the Good Lord grant us all peace of mind, May the Lord help fight our battle…Every picture tells a story.”

    Lizzy Jay Adebola, known as Omo Ibadan has carved a niche for herself in the entertainment industry with her comedy skits, making waves on social media.

    The Federal Polytechnic Ede graduate and an indigene of Ile-Ife, Osun State also plays the guitar, dances and sings.

  • Mfum border… It’s a sin to take pictures here

    Mfum border… It’s a sin to take pictures here

    They are deployed to borders to check smuggling of contrabands and other illicit activities sabotaging the economy. Ironically, the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) personnel at Mfum in Cross River State have added other roles, reports Precious Igbonwelundu.

    The time was about 7:49pm and it was not so dark. Like vultures, about six officials of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) clustered a 42-seater bus marked CMRNW908AY with the inscription ‘Naitre Bosco’. Several bags of rice, fabrics, fresh tomatoes, Turkey, Power malt, among others, were on the ground beside the bus coming from Cameroon. The items were off-loaded from the bus.

    These officers were soliciting bribe from the smugglers. Their colleagues on the opposite side openly stretched their arms to other vehicles for tips, allowing in those who parted with money without screening.

    Welcome to Mfum border in Ajassor community, 27 kilometres from Ikom, in Etung Local Government Area  (LGA) of Cross River State, where the fear of NCS personnel is the beginning of wisdom.

    To residents and road users, it is ‘legal’ for any item to be brought into the country from neighbouring Cameroon and for people to move in and out of the country as long as money changes hand.

    “They are the Lords in this area. People are too scarred to challenge them. Their main business starts around 9pm. You visit the border from 9pm and see how these so-called officers sabotage Nigeria. They are into smuggling and by that time, that’s all they do. It’s really embarrassing the things that happen at the border. It is so normal that everyone, including children know. How do you think guns and other weapons enter this country? The government should beam its search light on Customs people at Mfum border,” said one of the residents whose name cannot be mentioned for security reasons.

    Eager to see the hanging bridge and experience night life as narrated by some residents of the border community, this reporter, who was on mission at Ikom, decided to visit the border.

    But the excitement faded away upon sighting the NCS officials openly encouraging smuggling.

    A woman was overheard lamenting that they had collected all the money she had and stolen two out of the bags of rice she was taking to her village for her uncle’s burial.

    The story took another turn as the reporter brought out her android phone to secretly photograph the officers.

    “Hey! What are you trying to do? Who told you that you can use your phones around here? Are you trying to snap us? Common keep that phone away,” screamed a tall black man who seemed to be most senior officer.

    As if not satisfied by his yelling, the others like bees moved towards this reporter and demanded that she must give them her phone.

    “Why should I give you my phone? Which law says I am not allowed to hold my phone at the border? Is it because you are engaged in illegality that you people intimidate innocent people going about their lawful businesses? I won’t give any of you my phone. At least, I know that isn’t an offence,” this reporter replied.

    Then came officer Queen, who according to residents, is a sister to the wife of a former President. Queen, a short and dark-complexioned lady rolled up the sleeves of her tee-shirt; removed her wristwatch and told others to “allow me deal with this woman”.

    Pushing the reporter into their office aggressively, she said: “Oh! You said you won’t bring your phone abi? Okay, I will teach you a lesson today. You will enter our cell. Who are you to think you will just come here and snap us? If you know you didn’t snap, bring your phone. You must enter cell today.”

    At that point, the area become rowdy, with the reporter daring the officer to put her inside the cell.

    “You can do your worst. I am nobody and I won’t give you my phone. I really want to enter your cell. Please, put me inside. If you think your assault will break me, you are fooling yourself. You will have to kill me first before collecting my phones. Since I told you I didn’t snap you and you don’t believe it, just shoot me already.

    “Besides, why are you bothered? It’s obvious you know you were doing the wrong thing. You are here encouraging smuggling of contrabands and collecting bribe instead of carrying out the duty you are employed for,” replied this reporter.

    After attempts to stop Queen from pushing this reporter inot the cell failed, a security expert, Austin Young, who drove the reporter and three others to the border was called into an inner office by the man who earlier told the reporter to not snap.

    Minutes after, both men came out and the other officer told Queen to “leave the woman alone. Don’t push her again and let them go.”

    Officer Queen then went and sat on a chair-still enraged. The man came to the reporter to broker peace.

    “I was the one who told you not to snap, right? I told you that taking pictures was not allowed here and so, you would have just listened to me. Nobody here knows you. The villagers in this community know that you cannot take pictures here. It is a security risk to snap any part of the border. If you post it on the Internet,  terrorists might come and bomb this place,” he said defensively.

    This reporter brought out her phone, opened the gallery and asked him to check if there was any picture of them as they claimed.

    “Sorry madam, please do not be angry. We thought you snapped our men who were by that bus. But now, the issue is cleared. We are sorry. If you are still angry over the assault by Queen, you can push me as much as you want to feel better. Please, do not be offended,” said the senior officer.

  • The bigger picture

    Sitting before my computer on Thursday afternoon, a lot of headlines ran through my head, with every topic looking like a weekly column idea. In fact, I started writing many in my mind’s eye but shelved them, especially those that I wrote on sheets of paper while in Benin City.

    Indeed, in one’s quiet moments, the head is free of life’s baggage. Rather than sleep away the time, one tries to scribble down interesting trends of the beautiful game. I plead guilty of being a football writer, even though I played cricket in my younger days.

    Truth is, if the business of soccer thrives, those firms which cannot find the space to identify their goods and/or services with the beautiful game would shift their attention to other sports with the right followership and men who can convince the corporate world not to sulk over its inability to identify with soccer.

    Sports, such as cricket, boxing, basketball, golf and table tennis, have robust marketing initiatives which have been used to activate some of the programmes executed today. It is true that they need more, except that soccer, which ought to be the elixir for other sports, is burdened by the intrigues of failed NFF people.

    Let me not bore you with these intrigues but look at the bigger future for soccer as it is being showcased by other nations. I hope this bigger picture can be appreciated by the coaches of our national teams, if they truly want the game to move up.

    I cringe when I hear ex-internationals distort facts in pushing their case for them to run the game, as if that is the norm in other climes. The last time I checked, the three FAs in which ex-footballers are in charge as Federation presidents are Chile (Arturo Salah), Portugal (Fernando Gomes) and Spain (Ángel María). Their countries are listed among the top 10 in FIFA rankings.

    In descending order in FIFA’s rankings, England FA has Gregory “Greg” Dyke (born 20 May 1947), a British media executive, journalist and broadcaster, as chairman of The Football Association (FA). He was Director-General of the BBC from January 2000 to 29 January 2004.

    In Uruguay, the FA President is Wilmar Valdez (born 10 July 1965), a Uruguayan football executive. At 21, Valdez started working for his hometown’s club Rentistas. Valdez also worked as a sports journalist for a while. At Rentistas, he served in various positions, including Secretary General and President, for four years.

    Portugal’s FA president is Fernando Mendes Soares Gomes (born 22 November 1956), a retired Portuguese professional footballer, who played as a striker for FC Porto, Sporting Lisbon and Sporting Gijon. Brazilian FA President is Marco Polo Del Nero (born 22 February 1941); he is a lawyer and sports administrator.

    One of the three FA presidents, who is a former footballer, is Spain’s Ángel María (born 21 February 1950). He played as a midfielder. He is the acting President of UEFA. He wasn’t an ex-international.

    Germany’s FA president isn’t a footballer, yet his country is the defending World Cup champions. Reinhard Dieter Grindel (born 19 September 1961 in Hamburg) is a German journalist, politician (CDU) and football administrator. From 2002 to 2016, Grindel was a member of the Bundestag (Lower Chamber of the German Parliament). On 15 April 2016, he was elected president of the German Football Association (DFB) and resigned as a member of parliament.

    Colombia’s FA president is Ramon Franco, a businessman. Chile’s president Arturo Salah is a former Chilean footballer and manager. Belgium’s federation president is Francois De Keersmaecker and he is a lawyer. Argentina’s Luis Segura is a business entrepreneur.

    England, Brazil, Germany, Argentina, France, Spain, Belgium and Uruguay are not being run by their ex-internationals. Note that these countries are in the top 10 in FIFA’s current rankings, with not a few being former World Cup champions like the reigning kings- Germany.

    The trend shows that lawyers, business men, journalists and politicians make good soccer federation chairmen. It is very revealing that a journalist presides over Germany’s FA. Need I restate that the Germans are the World Cup kings?

    What most ex-internationals in Nigeria, who disturb the media with the infantile wish, fail to understand is that the essence of any enterprise is profits and losses. And it isn’t a venture for half-baked and unprepared people not versed in the rudiments of business. Our players still see soccer administration like an inheritance, forgetting that there are many people who are eminently qualified.

    Besides, our ex-internationals must know that they won’t be interfacing with Lilliputians from other climes, hence they must equip themselves properly before seeking positions of importance, such as NFF’s headship.

    Most times when I hear or read about these advocates for ex-internationals running our football, my mind goes to reconciling all that they achieved as players – tears run down my cheeks. Perhaps, if they equipped themselves, they would be talking about owning clubs in their states that would serve as models on how the game should be run.

    Again, I laugh at these ex-internationals because only a few of them have contributed to the local clubs which made them. These gestures come when they are in the twilight of their careers – more or less like forward purchase stuffs or as public relations stunts initiated by their friends and lackeys.

    Clubs, such as Rangers, 3SC, Bendel Insurance, Heartland, Kano Pillars, Enyimba etc shouldn’t be run by any state government, given the exodus of players from these clubs to Europe. Our players must learn to put their money where their mouth is. Is it out of place if five top former players of 3SC in Europe decide to pay the players’ annual salaries as their contributions to the club’s existence?

    Is 3SC’s yearly budget up to N700 million? I doubt it. That is the equivalent of $2 million which is what the club’s ex-internationals and those still playing can cough pay. Not so here. They would tell you that the money would be misappropriated. But if they pay it into a bank and get the bank to do their biddings in terms of payment, the players would get their dues. If our players are serious about their cry to run our football, they must go back to their local governments and states to contribute to the grassroots development of the game.

    If those players who left Enugu Rangers FC for Europe contribute 10 per cent of what they earn playing European football to the club’s management, they won’t need government funding. What have those players who left Shooting Stars Sports Club (3SC) of Ibadan to play in Europe done for the club’s management now that the Oyo State government is indebted to the players and coaching staff for five months? Ten per cent from their one month salaries would make 3SC the richest in Nigeria. Only a few of our ex-internationals and those still playing have bought jerseys, boots etc for their former clubs.

    What they do when they visit the country is to drive around the cities in posh cars, with musical sets at the loudest volume to increase the nuisance value that we already have on the streets. Back in their European bases, they dare not do so. They know the penalties involved if caught by the authorities. Not so here, where those who should reprimand them join in the boogie sessions – awaiting when the big star leaves the place like a rocket, leaving in his wake wads of naira flung into the air with multitudes falling over themselves to pick up the crumbs.

    Those who excel in those places would definitely get the votes to qualify them to run for their state FA elections. Once in that setting, it would be easier for them to contest the NFF elections and run the office, if the Congress deems them worthy of such an exercise. Nothing qualifies an ex-international without requisite educational qualifications to run the NFF than the educated mind, who chose the academics. A literarily empty head cannot lead people. Indeed, most of the educated footballers have moved on to other ventures and won’t want to touch the NFF with this kind of rancorous setting.  State FAs run by ex-internationals have been riddled with tales of impeachments and accusations of their leaders running a one-man show.

    One will stand at the roof top to campaign for Adokie Amiesimaka, if he decides to run for the NFF president. I will have advertorials in many media houses explaining why we need Felix Owolabi (Phd) as NFF president, if he takes the plunge.

    I will proceed on vacation to support Edema Fuludu, if he shows interest in NFF president’s job. These (Amiesimaka, Owolabi and Fuludu) are ex-internationals and Africa Cup of Nations winners. The list of educated players is endless. They combined sports at the highest level with quality education, which is the distinguishing line between them and the rest of the pack.

    We want people who are cerebral to articulate the federation’s road map to the corporate world. We need men with pedigree, such as Amaju Melvin Pinnick, who distinguished himself at the state level. The current NFF board has the right mix of technocrats to lift the game, if given an opportunity to deliver on their campaign promises.

    Football management at the NFF isn’t a job for charlatans or political jobbers. It is a job for those who have given life to moribund institutions, not those who want to use the platform to improve their CVs, enrich their international passports, lobby for positions at FIFA and CAF and travel with every team in a bid to collect estacodes in foreign currencies.

     

  • Alamieyeseigha’s life in picture

    They mistook shame for fame. Their yardstick for measuring the conduct of public officials has been so enamoured with inanity that they chose to re-write history with a formal investiture of Diepreye Alamieyeseigha into the fold of exemplary leaders in the political space. They knew about the outcry the state pardon Dr. Goodluck Jonathan granted the ex-convict generated and yet went ahead to twist reality by refurbishing the public perception of a man whose acts of extreme larceny is visible to the blind and audible to the deaf.

    It was a public endorsement of corruption in a supposedly anti-corruption era; while the nation still battles with an image so shattered and battered by chameleonic elements in the mould of DSP, they sort to sell him to us as an individual whose graft must be overlooked because he was mortal after all. To them, his activism in championing the rights of the Ijaw nation which never interfered with his embrace of men of other tongues is enough to wipe out all his sins.

    For a man that stole so much from his people, nothing betrays the democratic ideal our senators swore to uphold than the public veneration of the hat-man. While he sees himself otherwise, reminiscent of Two Gun Crowley in Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and influence people, no one should be left in doubt as to the authority stealing and extreme perfidy of the former governor as he indirectly confirmed it himself when he alleged that the EFCC failed to declare a number of his forfeited properties.

    Had the circumstance surrounding his ordeal been read on the history shelf, one would have doubted , but for an event that happened barely some 10 years ago, one is bewildered as several members of the political elite took turn to speak in worship of a man who contributed in no small way to the castration of the Nigerian project.

    Had the end of life brought forth a redact of history, Hitler should by now be no less a Jew than Ariel Sharon.It is like General Sanni Abacha whose reputation amongst a sizeable number of his people is never short of that of a Winston Churchill among the English. I once engaged a northern colleague – a university graduate – on his opinion about the former dictator and his reply was that the late general never stashed Nigeria’s money with the intention of keeping it for himself and his family. Instead, he said Abacha was a foresighted man whose aim was to keep the nation’s money far away from the claws of corrupt Nigerian officials especially civil servants for protection against monumental theft. To him, the Nigerian people, especially the southerners keep pouring dirt on a Nigerian hero for saving so much for future use.

    Upon his death, he was dressed in Gandhi’s garb for what they called “an unrelenting struggle for his people;” spoken about at par with Rick Warren for his philanthropy, hailed as a man for standing up to Chief Obasanjo who was behind his political ordeal, and praised for his style of politicking. If only they knew how dangerous a precedent they were laying for the younger generation, they would have situated their comparison into proper context because Gandhi’s struggle was championed via extreme self-denial and restraint from anything worldly; with no iota of materialism.

    Had they understood the fundamentals of public good, they would have isolated whatever individual gains they got from their hero from philanthropy for a hand ceases to be that of a philanthropist when it gives from that which ordinarily belong to the people.

    While teachers provide guidance within the school system, and parents do same in the upbringing of their wards, the body language and utterances of elected officials sets the tone for a nation. This is why the continued adulation showered on a man whose pardon the United States Embassy described as “deeply disappointing” should serve as a pointer to the kind of leadership the political elite is preaching. That the London police revealed that in currency and properties, the former governor had invested at least $18 million. Hear Governor  Seriake Dickson. ‘’As far as he is concerned, Bayelsans are proud of his life and the legacies he left behind.”One wonders the kind of legacies Dickson was talking about. He upgraded his mentor beyond the class of what majority of Nigerian politicians are: parasites on the nation.

    What men who immortalise looters fail to grasp is that the goodness or otherwise of a man becomes inconsequential once public trust has been breached; for the atrocities carried out by men like DSP not only damaged the economic fabric of this nation, it brought us to the very nadir on the morality bar.Both the senators and the Ijaw elites held the nation’s consciousness hostage to inaugurate a tainted man into Nigeria’s hall of fame. As birds of the same feather, little did they know that the citizens have long carved his name in stone as a patron of the nation’s hall of shame.

    Alamieyeseigha stayed in the government house stealing and accumulating as much as he could – an act that clouded his consciousness from the fact that like life, it’s a transient seat. With death, he is now a man of yesterday, forgotten and forgotten, forever and forever. He failed to understand that men remain ordinary men unless they do the extra-ordinary: formulate a theorem, write an equation, or move the minds of people.

    The governor did neither. His is not the kind of legacy young Nigerians need to emulate.

     

    • Modiu, is a Corps member, NYSC Jebba

  • Picture that speaks a thousand words

    Not too long ago, a picture over 20 years old went viral on the internet. It was shot right in Dodan Barracks, Lagos in 1994, and in it, the usurper military dictator, the late General Sani Abacha, in his military attire – though not uncommonly un-bereted yet quite unusually unspectacled – welcomes to the famous seat of power, the late Chief MKO Abiola who is clad resplendently in his usual embroidered agbada, buba and sokoto, with his long famous cap to match. For one who had just won the freest and fairest election in the political history of Nigeria, the irony is more than cruelly etched in the loudly-silent question: “who between the de facto despot and the demure democrat should be the welcomer to the seat of power and who should be the guest to it?”

    Yet, it is clear that whereas one was an opportunistic upstart crow beautified with the feathers of our democratic martyrs, the other was a selfless visionary prepared to sacrifice his all to reclaim the stolen mandate of his people.

    Right behind this fiercely contrasting duo in this frozen past, no less laden with the history of days gone and the prophecy of things yet to come, are two of the most trusted personal aides of the usurper-despot and the unyielding democrat: one is the notorious man of infamy, the Chief Security Officer to the late Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha – the de-facto to the de-facto – walking behind Chief MKO; and the other, a young, unassuming, bespectacled Bola Ahmed Tinubu, majestically walking behind Abacha as if to tactfully close-mark the untrustworthy General the way Al-Mustapha digs the heels of his innocent principal.

    Whoever posted this picture on the internet has saved himself a thousand words because the picture is its own thousand words; it speaks loudly of our not-too distant political past, even as it eloquently foreshadows a future we never had the gift of prophecy to apprehend: that the man trusted by the late MKO Abiola to watch his back when he went to the lions’ den to insist on his mandate is, after all, our democracy’s future avenging angel, the sword of Damocles one day to fall on the fattened vultures of our captive political aspirations.

    Who would also have thought that in the little obscure, unassumingly harmless character, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, tucked behind Abiola in the picture, would be the most notorious operative of Aguda House, the de facto Head of State who would torture, maim and kill to keep an aberrant junta in place.

    This is the picture that speaks a thousand words; the picture that proves both time and history are the greatest conspirators, as they both have a way of playing on the psyche of the short sighted man. We are optically illusioned always to look one way, but the blurred and the dimly lit objects that time and history choose not to magnify often are the veritable mustard seeds of a future full of marvel. Watch again in the picture as young Tinubu walks behind Abacha with the solemnity of a golden child that has an uncanny foreknowledge of his future role both as the man chosen to right political wrongs yet in the womb of time, and as the anointed angel to give final rest to the troubled political spirit of his fallen liege and godfather.

    Tinubu has proven himself a worthy son of his proud political lineage. He had been with MKO long before the days of NPN and he was there when the Aare Ona Kakanfo threw his hat into the political ring at the Jos convention of the SDP. He was one of the brains behind the famous Epe Declaration, after which he fled abroad to avoid Abacha’s murderous rage.

    Tinubu, with the late Enahoro, Wole Soyinka, General Alani Akinrinade (Rtd.), Kayode Fayemi and others, sustained NADECO abroad after its virtual demise at home under the asphyxiating disposition of Abacha’s junta. He, with Kokori and others, led the oil-workers strike that crippled Lagos to keep the spirit of June 12 alive. Tinubu was the first person MKO would ask for from me when he had his first day in court on a charge of treason. Tinubu, ironically, was also the first person to call me from London when he heard Abiola was assassinated.

    I remember even in the heat of the pandemonium of MKO’s sudden death, Tinubu still had the equanimity of mind to instruct that I tell Kola Abiola and MKO’s physician, Ore Falomo, to insist on a UN-backed post-mortem to confirm alleged poisoning of his late political mentor; nor did he, thereafter, leave to stray uncatered-for the biological and political orphans of the late MKO – he has nurtured many to the abundant.

    Now that the prophesy has come to pass and the son has, at last, exacted the political pound of flesh to avenge the spirit of his late father, let the son proceed to do the other needful; namely, restore late Chief MKO Abiola to his rightful place in the political history of Nigeria. Let June 12 as a date be recognised as a veritable political watershed in the democratic learning process of this country; let the late icon have to his name an enduring monument of history as his memorial and let the corrective regime of Muhammadu Buhari elevate Abiola posthumously to the highest honour in the land, i.e. the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR). He deserves it!

    The journey depicted in this picture of a thousand words may have ended tragically – justifiably for the usurper-despot and undeservedly for the ill-fated, heroic democrat, nonetheless, they both have their distinctive places in history; whereas Abacha’s name lives in infamy, Abiola’s lives in the memory of lovers of duty, honour and country.

    Thus away from the thousand words that this picture manifestly evokes, are yet many more that only those who saw it all and have a sense of history can give flesh to. Even as society seems to move and carry on as if nothing momentous happened years ago, history appears to tap us on the shoulder, urging that we do not forget “it” so that “it” too – when our due season comes – will not forget us. Let us lift the memory of our forebears who selflessly gave their yesterday so that we would have this promising today.

    Let the last few syllables of the one thousand words contained in this picture be given their full vent. Let Abiola take his rightful place in the history of our democratic odyssey. Tinubu alone was in the right spot in that history; only he can write it.

     

    • Lisa Akerele, veteran journalist and former Political Assistant to the late MKO Abiola, is Atunwase of Ijesaland.