The Nation Newspaper

Tag: shame

  • Obanikoro and the bow of shame

    Viewed from both the moral and constitutional standpoints, the recent clearing of Senator Musliu Obanikoro, the former Minister of State for Defence, for another ministerial appointment by the Senate, amidst protests from the All Progressives Congress (APC) lawmakers connotes the depth of depravity and desperation by the administration of President Jonathan. One that a public affairs analyst has aptly described as ‘jackboot democracy.’

    Perhaps, only that would shed more light on a sordid political aberration that has a minority number of Senators mouth ‘ayes’ after a majority had staged a walk out in protest. The way and manner the Senate President, David Mark, ruled against the objection raised by a Senator who pointed out the reversal of a previous court ruling in the face of a pending case on the controversial Ekitigate, it was obvious the PDP lawmakers were acting out a script by the presidency. They wanted Obanikoro given a leeway at all costs. Even the counsel offered by Senator Ganiyu Solomon that the issue be deferred until the grey areas had been ironed out, was jettisoned by Senator Mark, apparently to foist his preference and, of course, that of his party on all. This is a most unfortunate dimension to politics in Nigeria, more so in an election period.

    The worrisome aspect of the political melodrama paints the ruling PDP as a party only too willing to ram its dictatorial tendencies down the already aching throat of long-suffering Nigerians. For, if Obanikoro, representing Lagos State, has been accused of influencing the voting process in Ekiti State that swung it in favour of his party, what guarantee is there that President Jonathan is not out to use him for another sinister, hatchet job during the forthcoming elections?

    Beyond the desperation of the PDP to win the March 28 and April 11, 2015 general elections, Nigerians should be more concerned because of the culture of impunity which has pervaded our political landscape for years and worsened since the assumption of office of President Jonathan in 2010. One would recall, with a sense of collective shame, how the erstwhile head of the Pension Board accused of having embezzled billions in naira of pensioners’ hard-earned terminal benefits was hurriedly granted a court waiver to pay a paltry sum and go home a free man! That was until Nigerians felt outraged and stated so.

    It has been a similar sad commentary on our description of the simple word ‘corruption’ that one Stella Oduah, then as the Aviation Minister accused of over invoicing of the purchase of two cars was allowed to stay put in office for months until public outcry was loud and compelling enough to reach Mister President in Aso Rock. So far, the other greasy allegation against the jet-setting current Minster of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Deziani Allison-Madueke, for squandering billions of our common resources globe-trotting, has suffered a drowning effect. This may not be too surprising for a country where its number one citizen does not equate stealing with corruption!

    But while the public angst against Obaniokoro is not yet about attempting to milk the national till dry, his speedy clearance by the Senate for a ministerial appointment, while the Ekitigate electoral scam is still in court, smacks of the twin evils of corruption and impunity. These two, we must admit, have collectively undermined the strengthening and sustenance of democratic institutions in Nigeria since the PDP’s stranglehold on the nation’s political jugular for some 16 years. Anyone, no matter how highly placed, who cannot understand those terms may have to consult his dictionary, if he has any.

    Not too surprisingly, the Lagos State chapter of the APC has described the confirmation of Musiliu Obanikoro as a minister by the Senate, despite damaging implications in a rigging scandal in Ekiti, as ‘a show of shame’. The concern of the opposition party is that this recent event further drags the image of Nigeria and the Senate in the mud.

    What also baffles close watchers of the country’s polity is the refusal on the part of President Jonathan to set up a committee to investigate the weighty allegations against Obanikoro.

    In all of the unfolding political soap opera, it is morally reprehensible that a ministerial nominee is forced on the country under shady circumstances. The import of this is that Nigerians who are interested in free, fair and credible elections, the mass media, independent election observers, as well as the human rights community must be at eternal vigilance.

     

    •By Idowu Ajanaku

  • Show of shame

    • The NLC election fiasco was a disgrace and part of our serial loss of institutional integrity

    If any event qualified to be referred to as a ‘show of shame’, the Nigeria Labour Congress’ (NLC) 11th National Delegates Conference held on February 12 was it. Not only did the conference fail to produce a new president to succeed the incumbent, Abdulwaheed Omar, it ended in crisis.

    Delegates at the conference began throwing chairs and exchanging fisticuffs when they should be electing a new leader. The ugly spectacle which took place at the Labour House Headquarters in Abuja immediately reminded us of the way our legislators sometimes behave or, worse still, the election by members of the road transport workers who often throw caution to the wind on such occasions.

    Things appeared to be going smoothly until some discrepancies were noticed in the ballot papers. Three candidates began the struggle for Labour’s Number One position. They were NLC’s current National Treasurer, Ayuba Wabba; the Deputy President, Joe Ajaero, and the President, Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Achese Igwe. Igwe,however later stepped down for Ajaero. Some of the delegates claimed that some ballot papers had Wabba’s name in three places and   Ajaero in two places and that others which did not   have Ajaero’s name on them also had no serial numbers. These made some of the delegates from Igwe’s constituency to call attention to the discrepancies.

    Obviously, delegates loyal to Igwe felt the errors were deliberately made to give Wabba, who had been favoured to win the election before Igwe stepped down and declared support for Ajaero, an undue advantage. It was at this stage that things degenerated as some of the delegates loyal to either Wabba or Ajaero started throwing chairs at each other.

    Whatever the cause, the fact that the Labour leaders who are supposed to be role models could descend as low as to be throwing chairs at each other during an election shows that there is no difference between them and the average politician on the street who sees election as a ‘do—or-die’ affair. Indeed, and regrettably, that is what the contest for leadership positions has become in the NLC. This is not surprising though because the Congress sits atop hefty sums that are dispensed at the behest of the leaders. The Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN), the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) and NUPENG contributed N423m, N320m   and N159m, respectively, to the congress between 2011 and June 2014. This is a lot.

    The Labour leaders involved in the fracas must bury their heads in shame. Coming on the heels of the allegation that the leadership of the Congress had duped workers to the tune of N900bn over their failure to deliver houses promised the workers who deposited 10 percent of the cost of the houses since 2013 for their dream houses in a housing scheme promoted by the NLC, there is a lot to ponder over the affairs of the Labour union. With these dents, on what moral pedestal will the NLC leadership now stand to champion the cause of the common man?

    It is unfortunate that these developments are rearing their heads at this point in time when the country is at a crossroads. What is happening on the political plane demands that all hands must be on deck to ensure that democracy is not derailed in the country and Labour, ordinarily has a major role in salvaging the situation.

    The fracas must be investigated, including the discrepancies on the ballot papers, to determine how they came about. Those involved should be punished for the unpardonable blunders that exposed the Congress to ridicule.

    We call on surviving Labour icons like Hassan Sunmonu and Adams Oshiomhole to rise to the occasion and salvage the Congress before things get worse. Nigerian workers cannot be left in the hands of people who cannot manage their own internal affairs. As they say, ‘when gold rusts, what would iron do’?

     

  • #BringBackGoodluck2015# shame

    #BringBackGoodluck2015# shame

    SIR: It took the intervention of Washington Post to draw attention of the world and President Goodluck Jonathan to the primitive machinations of the president’s men who tried to use the hash tag, #BringBackOurGirls# to pursue their wicked and narrow agenda for 2015.

    First, it was the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) going about the zones, staging rallies even when INEC has not blown the whistle for campaign rallies and drumming support for President Jonathan’s 2015 agenda in the face of massive hunger, insecurity, lack of electricity, joblessness, decayed infractstruture, brazen corruption, impunity, threat of insurgency, weak leadership, etc

    The TAN advocates have been blurring our line of vision and insulting our sensibilities but we have been silent believing that a time will come when a spade will be called a spade. TAN is a resurrection of Abacha’s Youth Earnestly Ask For Abacha (YEA).Their mission and concept are the same and tallies with the decayed politics of our country.

    How can a people with minds of their own forget that nearly 300 of our young girls have remained in captivity for more than 150 days? How can they ignore the feelings of the parents? Do they know that some of these parents have died of heart break because of the missing girls? Are these people real parents?

    Why do they have to abuse the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls#?   Who is playing politics with the missing girls? Are these people not intelligent enough to find something else to use to sell their candidate than to steal the #BringBackOurGirl# hashtag? How can a people who claim to possess good education indulge in this show of shame in the 21st century?

    A friend once told me that you cannot lead people if you do not love the people. You cannot save the people if you do not serve the people. Has the PDP led the people of Nigeria? Have these people served the people of Nigeria very well?

    Another learned friend of mine tells me that it is better to present a weak argument strongly than to present strong argument weakly. The campaigners of President Goodluck Jonathan are presenting a weak argument weakly. In their thinking, Nigerians cannot think or recall otherwise, they would have advised their candidate that he and his government have not done enough to justify the votes they got in 2011. They would have told him that the mounting state of insecurity, the unacceptable level of poverty, the state of unemployment, corruption and infrastructural decay are not testimonials for re-election. Yes, they keep dividing Nigerians along ethnic and religious lines but these are not credible pedestals to power.

    We live in interesting times in Nigeria where fake drugs are being presented to us as original drugs. They are giving us fake currencies for genuine ones. Their campaign for re-election is structured on weak platforms. They are not structured on credible platforms of performance and integrity. They are not based on stellar performance. They are not based on facts. They are based on phantoms and fantasies. Now can this kite fly? It cannot.

     

    • Joe Igbokwe.

    Lagos

  • Shame high-profile convicts, says ex-judge

    A retired judge of the Ogun State High Court, Justice Babasola Ogunade, believes Nigeria has tolerated corrupt public officials for too long. According to him, until they are shamed rather than celebrated, corruption will persist. He urges Nigeria to learn from the United Kingdom. JOSEPH JIBUEZE writes.

    While reading the London Evening Standard in November 2009, a former Ogun State High Court judge, Justice Babasola Ogunade came across a story that struck him.

    It was the report (and pictures) of former deputy mayor of London, Ian Clement, re-painting lavatories and changing rooms at King George’s playing fields in Sidcup, Kent.

    It was Clement’s punishment for fiddling £156 of his expenses. He was caught using his official credit card to pay for three lunches with his 23-year-old girlfriend Claire Dowson.

    After reading the story, Justice Ogunade carefully folded the newspaper cutout and saved it.

    Believing it is something worth learning from by Nigerians, he made cutout available to The Nation, five years after.

    He believes that until the country gets to that stage where corrupt persons, no matter how much they steal or how highly placed, are harshly dealt with, the problem of graft will persist.

     

    The full story

     

    The online version of the story published on November 29, 2009, reads: “Public shame of Boris’s deputy mayor who paints loos.

    “The Standard’s exclusive pictures show (Mayor of London) Boris Johnson’s former right-hand man for the first time since he was convicted of fraud over his City Hall expenses.

    “Five months ago Ian Clement, 44, was one of the most powerful political figures in London. He flew around the world helping to plan the 2012 Olympics and represented the capital at the 9/11 memorial service in New York.

    “But in a sharp fall from grace, he is now completing 100 hours of community service and living with a suspended 12-week prison sentence, a 9pm curfew and an electronic tag.

    “Unemployed, Clement’s 27-year political career is over. He is pictured helping refurbish the lavatories and changing rooms at King George’s playing fields in Sidcup, Kent.

    “He spent more than an hour labouring outside with a handful of other offenders on community service, who were taken to the grounds by bus.

    “A friend today said Clement is ‘totally destroyed’ by the conviction.

    “Clement, a former Bexley councillor, pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud by false representation after using his City Hall credit card to entertain his girlfriend and another woman.

    “He was given a corporate card to cover any ‘exceptional’ expenditure while abroad on City Hall business. But he used it to pay for two meals with 23-year-old Claire Dowson — for whom he left the mother of his son — and a dinner with PR assistant Joanna Laban. He lied and said he had dined with Tory council leaders. The three meals cost £156.70.

    “Clement was first suspected of impropriety last November when he started sending cheques to City Hall to cover personal spending he had made on his work credit card.

    “He initially used it to upgrade tickets for himself and a colleague on a flight to the Beijing Olympics. Clement then ignored a series of warnings and continued to use the card for more than £2,300 of personal spending, racking up bills in excess of £7,000.

    “His spending included £535 of work to his Jaguar and two £100-plus meals at Le Pont De La Tour restaurant at London Bridge, all of which he has since repaid.

    “When the spending was revealed, the Mayor initially decided his friend had made an error of judgment but, following warnings, demanded his resignation on 22 June. The Greater London Authority referred the matter to the police two days later.

    “Sentencing Clement, Judge Quentin Purdy said he had ‘flagrantly and arrogantly’ misused taxpayers’ money.

    “He told Clement he had come ‘very close indeed’ to being sent to prison. ‘You knew full well what you were doing was dishonest and it is your fault and your fault entirely. I accept you have lost much as a result of your wrong-doing but you regarded yourself as above the rules. Your dishonesty is now clear for all to see and it is entirely your fault. You were in a position of considerable authority and you arrogantly and flagrantly abused that with meals at the public expense.’

    “Clement, a former postman from Crayford, publicly apologised to Mr Johnson outside Westminster magistrates’ court, saying he was ‘truly sorry’. He admitted he had ‘let down’ taxpayers and colleagues.

    “‘I have failed to live up to the high standards of officer that were expected of me. I have given many years of dedicated public service to London which has been my pride, my passion and my life. That is over now. I very much regret and am truly sorry for my actions that have let down many good people, my family friends and colleagues including and not least the Mayor of London.’”

     

    A lesson for Nigeria

     

    “Our society has gone to the dogs,” said Justice Ogunade in reference to the erosion of the country’s value system. To him, if it were Nigeria, the money “stolen” by Mr Clement would be considered too insignificant to warrant him being subjected to such public ridicule.

    He believes that apart from a change in the value system, it would require political will to shame corrupt officials.

    He noted that as the mayor right-hand man, Mr Clement he could easily have been shielded from prosecution, especially considering the amount involved. The case could also have been frustrated by the courts.

    Significantly, Mr Clement repaid the illegal expenses, but was still made to undergo community service. He admitted the wrongdoing, and never attempted to appeal against the verdict.

    He was given a 12-week jail sentence suspended for 18 months, ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid community work, stayed at home between 9pm and 6am and pay £1,000 costs.

    “Here, people in authority trample the law and get away with it. Until we’re able to shame corrupt persons, corruption will remain Nigeria’s undoing,” the judge said. Will Nigeria learn?

     

  • PDP ‘s Taj Mahal of shame

    PDP ‘s Taj Mahal of shame

    If the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were a building, it would be remarkable for its status of perpetual uncompletedness. This is not to be taken metaphorically for it would be rather foolhardy now to expect this headless (this is the metaphor) leviathan to run on ideology or edifying mores. Hardball refers to the physical structure. PDP offices across the country often cut the pictures of misbegotten edifices lacking in soul or sobriety. Their architecture often appear haphazard and the environment uninspiring and bereft of any lustre.

    You may argue that the work stations of most other political parties are no different if not worse and that is, where they exist. Hardball concedes to that point wholeheartedly. But this piece has been triggered by the new headquarters of the PDP in Abuja. The 11-storey behemoth of an edifice has been abandoned to weeds and reptiles. Started about six years ago after an elaborate fundraising, contractors are said to have moved out of the site; all is quiet and forlorn there now.

    Over N6 billion was raised then at the launch in 2008 and President Goodluck Jonathan who was then vice president, was the chairman of the committee charged with the project. The big donors had been Alhaji Aliko Dangote who had pledged N3 billion worth of cement; Femi Otedola had donated N1 billion. Other big donors were the PDP Central Working Committee members, Bola Shagaya, Chief Michael Otedola, Strabag Construction Company, and Ogun State Government. The then president, Umaru Yar’Adua, his vice Jonathan and indeed all elected PDP members and appointees across the country were forced to contribute through compulsory deductions of between 15 to 25 per cent of their salaries. The fund-raising for the secretariat of the biggest party in Africa was a huge racket that went on up until the 2011 general elections.

    But in the way of a bumbling giant, there was no account for the monies collected, neither was the disbursement transparent. Some have suggested that the edifice still stands uncompleted and ugly because the bulk of the funds realised were deployed into the 2011 election. But Hardball asks how come every penny missing in the country in the last few years had to have been flushed down the election sluiceway? And how come that in the PDP planet, there seems to be no rules of engagement, nobody raises eyebrows and questions are better swallowed? What pervades is a conspiracy of silence in the face of remorseless incongruity.

    We must not concern ourselves with the need for such an 11-storey monstrosity by a political party in a developing country. What is queer is that the PDP cannot even complete its own much-advertised building that has been on for about six years. If such conspicuous and showpiece edifice can be abandoned, it must say something about how the country is being run. How many far-flung projects across the country have been started and arrested mid-way as a result of official disorderliness, corruption and sheer brigandage. Any wonder that in the last 14 years under PDP, Nigeria has become one land mass of uncompleted projects – disheveled, coarse and ugly. In like manner that PDP may never complete its Abuja Taj Mahal of shame, the same way Nigeria will remain the verisimilitude of a junkyard until we have a change. Running a country is utterly beyond the ken of PDP.

  • Big shame

    Big shame

    •Flood: It is shameful that Big Men are yet to redeem their pledges six months after

    IF a pledge is a solemn promise or agreement to do or refrain from doing something, then, why some Nigerians, prominent ones at that, would make pledges and fail to honour them beggars explanation. Indeed, it sounds incredible that such a thing could happen even when the country’s first citizen was present when the pledges were made. But this is what has happened that has compelled the committee saddled with the responsibility of ameliorating the plight of the flood victims to threaten to publish the names of the big people in the country whose word cannot be their bond.

    Nigeria witnessed one of its worst flood disasters in the fourth quarter of last year, when flood swept through many states, putting millions of people in danger. About 59 communities were reportedly sacked, 38, 228 displaced and no fewer than160 people were feared dead. The disaster also kept travellers stranded for days on major highways in the affected states. Its dimension led to the setting up of a Presidential Flood Relief and Rehabilitation Committee,  co-chaired by business mogul, Aliko Dangote, and frontline lawyer, Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), by President Goodluck Jonathan. The 34—man committee consequently organised fund raising to assist victims of the disaster. Its target was N100billion, but only about N11.35billion was realised, both by way of pledges and actual donations at the fundraiser held at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

    We feel strongly about this shameful act and wish the committee could go beyond naming and shaming. It is disgraceful that our Big Men (and perhaps women) could be so dishonourable even on a thing that touches on the lives of millions of Nigerians. Some of these personalities have enjoyed one form of largesse or the other from the government, probably including bailout funds that we cannot see what they did with it and the government itself is not interested in asking questions.

    We support the riot act read to the defaulters by the committee that such pledges must be redeemed on or before June 30, failing which the committee should publish their names. The idea of not redeeming pledges is fast becoming a conspicuous mannerism of many of our personalities. And it did not start today; it has been with us for long. People who have organised book launch must have experienced such dashed hopes from dignitaries who came, made fantastic pledges, received loud ovation only for the organisers of the book launch to be running after them for the money long after the event would have held. This false lifestyle of our big people is a dishonourable practice that we should discourage. If those held in high esteem in the society would fail to redeem pledges that they made voluntarily to people whose plight should naturally attract empathy, where then are we going?

    This particular case is worsened by the fact that President Jonathan announced tax incentives for corporate organisations that donated generously to the fund as a way of motivating them. It is over six months since the pledges were made and many of the pledges are yet to be redeemed. Sadly, some of those who have not redeemed their pledges have reportedly taken advantage of the tax incentives. We wonder why the incentives must have preceded the redeeming of the pledges, though. Could that have been another form of ‘bailout’ for them? The least the government can do is to compel those who have received incentives without fulfilling their pledge to return whatever they collected. That is the best way to spend the tax-payers’ money wisely.

    We join the committee in thanking those who have honoured their pledges and implore the defaulters to do same to avoid being named and shamed.

  • NGF’s show of shame

    There must be something about the Nigeria Governors’ Forum that other Nigerians don’t know about apart from the governors. If not, it is difficult to understand why the battle for the chairmanship of unconstitutional forum has become so fierce that the two factions of the body are literarily dancing naked, not minding the damage being done to their image and the implication for the nation’s polity.

    It was bad enough that 36 governors who are supposed to showcase what it takes to conduct a free and fair and rancor -free election could not and there have been claims and counter claims about what happened during the election.

    Not even when the video of the election has been released and the truth of the proceedings is now public knowledge, Governor Jonah Jang who was defeated by Governor Rotimi Amaehi with 19 votes to 16 has insisted on being the winner of the election.

    While the Amaechi group is hoping that reasons will prevail considering the public outcry that has greeted the show of shame which the NGF election has become, the Jang faction has carried on as if what is in contention is the chairmanship of a motor park association.

    Not only has Jang attributed his ‘victory to God’, he has gotten his supporters to place newspaper adverts congratulating him and last Thursday, he inaugurated his own secretariat in Abuja with the Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP , Bamangar Tukur, and 15 other governors in attendance.

    Given the present acrimony, it is unlikely that the two factions will be able to resolve their differences and have one chairman. It is indeed a shame that the governors have chosen to wash their dirty linens in public and proved that some of them are not as honourable as they are supposed to be.

    From the build up to the election day, it was clear that there were many forces at play but one was hoping that the crisis would have been managed and whoever emerged as the winner would have been acceptable to all.

    Considering that the NGF is a voluntary association of the governors, there should have been no need for the hullabaloo over the election result. Those not pleased could have stayed away from the activities of the group instead of the embarrassing power tussle they are now engaged in.

    But for personal aggrandizement, I don’t know why it is a big deal to be the Chairman of NGF. The decisions of the forum is not binding on the members and for whatever it is worth, it could best serve as a platform for peer review and collaborative efforts on issues of joint interest.

    Governors don’t need to be members of NGF to give Nigerians the good governance they are yearning for.

    At a time when the President and the governors should be working together to address the myriads of problems facing Nigerians, they have allowed narrow political interests to divide them.

    Instead of being distracted by the battle for the leadership of the forum, the governors should call themselves to order and face the primary task for which they were elected.

  • The shame of our police barracks

    The shame of our police barracks

    Even by Nigeria’s standards, few events have evoked as much shame as the decrepitude at the Police College, Ikeja,recently unmasked by Channels Television under the dynamic leadership of our former student, John Momoh.

    But early official reactions came close.

    After seeing with his own eyes the decay that has overtaken the facilities and the degradation that is the lot of the students at the College, a discomfited President Goodluck Jonathan reportedly turned to one of its senior officers and demanded to know how the media “penetrated” the place. He went on to gripe about how the disclosures had given his Administration a bad image.

    It certainly did not enhance the Administration’s image any more than Dr Jonathan’s recent CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour did. By its serial failures on a broad front, by its actions and even its inaction, the Administration has given itself an image so unflattering that its most resourceful adversary will have to work exceedingly hard to make it less appealing.

    As regards “penetration,” it is as if the college was a fortress, a depository of classified state secrets that must be kept off-limits to prowling journalists and other “spoilers.” It made no difference that its huge compound was often rented out for owambe carousals to just anyone who can pay, which may well include the drug barons and Four-One-Niners the police should have put out of business long ago.

    The college and the sprawling barracks in which it is located were, pardon the cliché, hiding in plain sight.

    From the road leading from Maryland to the domestic airport, one of the busiest in the nation, you could see a row of residential quarters with peeling paint and broken light fixtures and nondescript washing hung out to dryand all manner of junk piled high on many of the balconies. If this was the face of the barracks fit for public viewing, it was not hard to imagine the decrepitude within.

    Nor is the rot limited to the Police College in Ikeja. It hits you between the eyes in Ijeh especially, with police barracks in Idi Oro, alongWestern Avenue, at Sabo and Pedro just a shade less decrepit. The Falomo Barracks that used to be something of an exception has now been turned into a seedy market spilling over into the streets, with no consideration for security.

    For sheer hideousness, however, the police barracks at Ijeh has got to be the frontrunner. By some accounts, when Police Affairs Minister, retired Navy Captain Caleb Olubolade paid an official visit to the barracks early in October 2011, he got an earful of pathetic stories of misery arising from the dilapidated conditions of the housing facilities from the traumatised wives of the residents.

    No running water. No electricity. No toilet facilities. Threat of flooding, with the risk of being attacked by reptiles.

    No remedial action followed.

    In the face of the latest disclosures, Olubolade has taken a leaf from the repertory of Ms Deziani Alison-Madueke,the beleaguered but untouchableMinister of Petroleum Resources,an institution mired irretrievably in syndicated sleaze. He hurriedly empanelled a commission to inquire into how funds earmarked for police colleges over the years were spent, apparently in a pre-emptive bid to absolve himself.

    The panel, which has just one week to submit its findings, is made up almost entirely of officials of the Ministry and the police establishment. It includes no independent outsiders. This is hardly the most reassuring way of getting at the truth, but there you have it.

    Practically every Nigerian motorist has a story about being shaken down by the police. The process could be benign, such as when they call you by some flattering designation or ask after your family.

    My friend and former colleague Sully Abu once told me of how an armed policeman emerged literally from nowhere and frantically flagged him down at an unmarked check point. Abu stopped, and the policeman ran up to the car. Abu wound down his car window, brought out his vehicle identification papers from the glove box and handed them to the policeman, wordlessly daring him to find anything amiss.

    The policeman shook his head, like a person who had been grossly misunderstood.

    “No be for this I stop you, now,” he said. “I just want to wish Oga merry Christmas.” Abu rewarded the policeman’s solicitude with a N50 note. It sent him into a rhapsody.

    Sometimes, the solicitation could be brazen, such as when the policeman lapses into a prolonged yawn and tells you he has not eaten all day, or when he says he needs money to buy batteries for his flashlight.

    The policeman – for it is usually the men who operate in this manner — may well be telling the truth. It is no longer a secret that policemen and policewomen have to pay a bribe to get their equipage and other statutory entitlements. They probably paid a bribe to be recruited in the first place,to be promoted, and thereafter to enjoy the benefits commensurate with their new ranks.

    Nor is it anymore a secret that they are assigned to or retained on “lucrative” beats on the strict understanding that they will deliver appropriate returns to their superior officers.

    Can they reasonably be expected, then, to be more upstanding than the institution that recruited them, trained them, and nurtured them?

    The rot goes a long way back, to be sure, and the degree of Olubolade ‘s culpability will have to be measured only from the time he was appointed Minister; A long line of former ministers and inspectors-general and chairpersons of the Police Service Commission will have to be summoned to render an accounting.

    It is time, too, to reopen the case of the Police Equipment Fund, for which one-time presidential brother-in-law Kenny Martins and his associates harvestedN300 billion from compulsory deductions from local government funds and from other sources. Of this haul, N200 million was squandered on an Arabian Night feast. The balance went for the most part to serve dubious causes, or disappeared without trace.

    I take that back. Some of it went toward creating the illusion of accountability. A helicopter that was presented as a glittering purchase from the Fund and flown around Lagos briefly, to the delight of the police high command who thought they had acquired a strategic asset for fighting crime, found its way back several days later to the Ukraine – or was it Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan — from which it had been rented for display.

    Finally, it is time to proceed with greater resolve to recover the N42 billion-Police Pension Fund that was looted by its custodians and their confederates in high places.

    It would be cruelty most unspeakable if the policemen and policewomen who have suffered so much abuse and degradation during their years of service to find on retiring that they had been swindled right to the end.

     

     

     

     

  • The shame of our prisons

    The shame of our prisons

    Just when you think you have crossed that threshold where nothing in the Nigerian public sphere can shock you, something jolts you out of your smugness.

    No, I am not referring to the N2 billion that President Goodluck Jonathan has asked the National Assembly to appropriate for building a “befitting” banquet hall in Aso Rock, where he can treat his guests to the delights of gourmet cassava bread and fish peppersoup.

    I do not see the delusion of grandeur that some mischievous people have insinuated into the project. On the contrary, I see great vision, and transformative genius. If previous residents of Aso Rock possessed these attributes, they would not only have dreamed up the project, they would have executed it at a fraction of what is now projected. Is it ever too late to do that which is befitting?

    Nor am I referring to N9 billion being requested to complete the official residence of the Vice President, over and above the N7 billion it was projected to cost. Poor Architect Namadi Sambo! Since taking office, he has been squatting in a cramped guest house that is far less swanky than servants’ quarters tucked in a corner of his expansive compound in Zaria, to say nothing about his living quarters on the grounds.

    Instead of praising him for his sacrifice, some so-called analysts have been carping about cost overruns and fiscal recklessness. I commend to them Dr Kingley Mbadiwe’s timeless dictum that those who want greatness must be prepared to finance greatness.

    Nor yet do I have at the back of my mind the vast sums being requisitioned for building new residences for the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. The proper authorities have certified that they cannot guarantee the safety of those principal officers of state, aforementioned, in their present quarters.

    That consideration alone should have settled the matter. When they cannot even guarantee the safety of the President and Commander-in-Chief, when they put him in the humiliating position of having to take the salute at the National Day parade behind the fortified walls of Aso Rock, is it any wonder that they cannot guarantee the safety of these lesser officers unless they relocate to fortified quarters?

    In any case, shouldn’t such protection come with the territory? Is it not a crucial aspect of national security?

    It is, to be sure, galling that Mohammed Abacha, son of the repellent dictator Sani Abacha, is openly laying claim to a chunk of the proceeds from what is without question a colossal theft of the national patrimony, namely the Malabu Oil Field. Too much can never be enough for some people. But again, that is not what is on my mind.

    To cut the crap as they say here and come right out with it, what moved me to write this piece is the living conditions of the inmates at the Kuje Medium Security Prisons, in the Abuja Federal Capital Territory reported in this as reported by this newspaper (December 4, 2012, at page 24).

    Even without the picture accompanying it, the story is disquieting enough. Of 507 inmates there are at the time of the report, 424 were awaiting trial, a good many of them for 20 years or longer, without ever having their day in court. Many of them do not know whether they will ever be released. The facility was not designed to hold so many inmates

    The picture could easily pass for a frame from Rwanda’s national archives of horrors. Absent the debris, it can pass for the mass of bodies washed ashore the tsunamis in South-east Asia and Japan. It evokes memories of the “Black Hole of Calcutta” ginned up by Tory historians to justify a further tightening the imperial chokehold. It conjures up haunting images of conditions on the ships that ferried millions of Africans into enslavement in the so-called New World.

    My equanimity was restored somewhat by the finding that the picture was not taken at Kuje Prisons and cannot therefore be presumed to reflect prison conditions there. It is file photo illustrative of just how horrid prison conditions can get, not of conditions in any Nigerian prison.

    Still, as the once merely notorious Lagos Boy and now totally infamous PDP chieftain, Chief (Dr) Olabode George will testify from personal experience, a prison is no holiday resort even if you are housed in its luxury wing.

    Rare is the prisoner who gets that kind of treatment. Gani Fawehinmi, the departed crusading attorney, certainly never got it. So crowded was the prison cell in which he was once held that inmates had to sleep in a foetal position. If anyone was allowed the luxury of lying on his back, some other inmate would have had to stand throughout the night, assuming there was room even for that.

    Wedged in such suffocating juxtaposition for years on end, with no regard for personal hygiene, the inmates are stripped of their humanity. The squalor and degradation breed further degradation and bring out the worst in the inmates.

    For persons who have not been convicted of any offence, it is punishment most cruel and unusual. Even for those who might eventually be convicted, the punishment is already more severe than the law could have envisaged.

    Even convicted persons have rights. There is thus no reason to abridge the rights of persons awaiting trial. The degradation and dehumanisation to which they are subjected has gone on for far too long.

    It is time for the National Human Rights Commission, the National Assembly, religious bodies and civil society groups to take up the plight of our prison inmates with renewed and sustained vigour.

     

  • The world’s shame in Syrian conflict

    The world’s shame in Syrian conflict

    There is no limit to the cruelty Bashar al-Assad is willing to inflict on Syria. The death toll from his 18-month war has topped 30,000. The trail of death and destruction has displaced more than 1.5m people within Syria and flooded neighbouring countries with 300,000 refugees, a number the UN says could double by the end of the year. Not only is there no end in sight to Syria’s conflict – worse may yet be to come.

    For all the words of outrage expressed by world leaders at the UN General Assembly, Syria’s 18-month tragedy has dropped off the international agenda. US attention is diverted by the presidential elections and Russia and China disgracefully continue to block action at the UN Security Council. Unsurprisingly, the new international envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, has been doing his best to lower expectations about his mission.

    As David Cameron, the UK prime minister, told the UN General Assembly, the blood of young children killed in the Syrian conflict is a “terrible stain” on the world body’s reputation. Indeed, Mr Assad has interpreted western paralysis as a licence to kill. With no threat of consequences, he has steadily escalated the war to the point where he has resorted to indiscriminate air strikes on rebel-held territory. In August alone 5,000 people perished in Syria.

    It is time that Mr Assad is made to rethink his strategy. If Russia is intent on holding the Security Council hostage, then western and Arab governments should start looking at other effective measures, even if outside the UN, including the protection of Syrian civilians through no-fly zones.

    No one wants western involvement in another Middle Eastern war. The constraints must not be underestimated, including the military challenge of enforcing the zones and neutralising Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons. But it has always been clear that without a credible threat from western nations, the US above all, Assad’s murderous machine will not stop.

    The sooner Mr Assad’s demise comes, the sooner Syria’s slide into full-scale civil war can be halted. The conflict is already destabilising neighbouring states and assuming some alarming features. Disillusioned with the west that they feel has abandoned them, the rebels have been joined by foreign jihadis. Their numbers remain small but could well increase if the conflict is prolonged. Mr Assad cannot be allowed to wreak havoc in the region and his chief supporters in Moscow must know that western patience has its

     

    – Financial Times