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Tag: visit

  • My first visit to Lagos coincided with Independence Day in 1960- Alamieyeseigha’s ex-adviser Okorotie

    My first visit to Lagos coincided with Independence Day in 1960- Alamieyeseigha’s ex-adviser Okorotie

    Born in 1944, in Ekeremor Local Government Area, Bayelsa State, Chief Thompson K. Okorotie was about 16 years old when Nigeria got her independence in 1960. Okorotie, who rose through public and private services to be conferred with the Order of Federal Republic (OFR), witnessed the lowering of the British Union Jack and the hoisting of the Nigerian flag. The elder statesman served in the Second Republic as the Majority Chief Whip of the old Rivers State House of Assembly. He was a pioneer special adviser to the first democratically elected Governor of Bayelsa State, the late Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. A private businessman who has held many positions in the state, Okorotie sits as the Chairman, Governing Council, Bayelsa State College of Health Technology. He shares his experience from 1960 till date to MIKE ODIEGWU.

    How was life in 1960 when Nigeria got her independence from Britain?

    As a matter of fact, that was the year I went to Lagos from the village. My uncle came from overseas to the village and said that they heard about my brilliance and decided l should come to Lagos. But at that time, I had already entered Model Secondary School at Bomadi, which was established by the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. When I finished in 1959 l went to Lagos. One of the remarkable things I remember my late uncle said then was that I was able to trace Ije Village part or adjunct of Obalande, and I found myself there with a wooding box on my head.

    I saw the lowering of the Union Jack and the raising of the National flag whose colours were written and designed by a Yoruba man in London then. We were full of hope. There were issues. Some parts of the country were not ready for Independence. But at some point, Independence had to come because the agitation from the south was vehement, so the British didn’t want to delay further. I must say that the founding fathers had great hope for this country. They had aspirations that were supposed to be the best. And I think that the First Republic did quite a lot. They were positive, transparent and corruption was not as pronounced as it is now. Life was easy. Security challenges were not there. In some areas, you could open your door, sleep with your two eyes closed.

    I remember that at some point, I became a reporter with the Morning Post, a Federal Government-owned newspaper at Kirikiri, Apapa. We were not having any challenges. Food was cheap and it was then in shillings. Some people’s monthly salary was three shillings. If you had 50 kobo, you would have gone to the market and come back, and food was ready. So, life was quite simple and there was love despite the agitations in different directions once the unification took place and once the independence came. Three years later, we became a republic. The three big tribes did not force it down our throat too much at that time. That was perhaps the beginning of the problems. But it was not an obvious problem that we could not manage at that time, because it was not put on our face. They didn’t spite us.

    I can’t remembered how much a bag of rice was sold then. But in the Second Republic, at the time we were leaving in 1983, a bag of rice was N25 and Nigeria Airways ticket was N25. I still have one Nigeria Airways ticket. I didn’t use vehicles a lot, but I don’t think that there was anywhere that was more than one pound, no matter the length of Nigeria you were going. The buses were clean and the people were not rushing. They had speed control. There were no night travellers. At that time, the rush for material gains was not there. The spirit of hard work was there. You would make sure that you go to work and put in your best for the eight hours that you had, whether you were in public sector or you were in private sector. So that was how interesting things were.

    How was the economy generally and where did we miss it?

    The economy was sound in the sense that the naira was stronger than the dollar. In 1981, it was 75k to the dollar. That was how strong the naria was. But after the Second Republic, you see, we miss the point. Many people talk about the past administration, but we should be talking about past administrations. The problems of this country were not created by one administration. Policy summersaults, frequency of leadership change, these are the issues. Many people don’t look at these issues. They look at the palliatives. They look at the sentimental issues. They look at political grandstanding.

    The Second Republic under Shehu Shagari was a very interesting one, because it was still close to the First Republic, and we worked. Life was still very good at that time. There was value for money. It was during that period that it was 75 kobo to a dollar. But everything just suddenly changed and that was why I was talking about my visit to Germany and somebody said after the military was overthrown and it came up to Babangida, that the naira would soon be N40 to the dollar at a time that it was less than one naira. At that time, even the pound was one naira to one pound.

    I am bringing up the subject because I came to understand that it is the developed world that was manipulating the exchange rate. It was still a major component of neocolonialism to still put us under their wraps. China decided to close themselves for 20 years without having anything to do with them. When they came out, they became a world power because the United Nations was forced to admit them in the Security Council. That is one of the things Nigeria ought to have done. There is no country that is as blessed as Nigeria. Every state has its natural resources. If only we can look inwards, we are capable of not looking elsewhere. At most, we can look elsewhere on the basis of equality.

    The military was one of the major problems. We had 14 years of military regime. In the Shagari period, investors were beginning to have confidence in Nigeria when Shagari won the election for a second term. But a coup took place and they went back, and somebody said that Nigeria had gone back 50 years. Nobody wanted to deal with a military regime. So, for 14 years, there was military regime and that was a major setback. Because it was not democracy, it was now negotiations to be tolerated at the international level. so our financial position was compromised.

     

    How do you see life in the country now?

    The culmination of all these adversities, all those incongruities of national policy, of change of government, of not allowing democracy to grow, because if as from Shagari we had allowed government to change government through the ballot box alone, democracy would have stabilised. We will not be learning it each time we come. In fact, each time democracy comes back after a regime, the politicians feel ‘we don’t know when the army will come back again’, so they start amassing wealth. And the military who said they came to stop corruption turned out at some end to be even more corrupt because all the money we had made, all the oil money, most of it are in the hands of the military. If that is not corruption, then what is corruption?

    So right now, I do not know how to describe it. Now, we can hardly go to our home because it is either the place is occupied by agitators or occupied by Operation Crocodile Smile. Nightlife is curtailed. The exchange rate is so high that even ourselves, businessmen, particularly traders, are exploiting the system. Something they bought before Buhari came in, they hide under the exchange rate to increase prices. It is very difficult. I think one of the areas where we have got it wrong, apart from military intervention, which is a major cause, is also that we did not install any institutional framework to prevent corruption.

    I have also discovered the truth that the civil servants are even more of a problem. The civil servants are even the teachers of the politicians in the art of corruption. Because if you go to some states, including this one, assets on ground are discovered to belong more to civil servants than politicians. So we must develop happiness, we must develop contentment and we must develop sincere hard work.

    How do we get out of this mess?

    All the things I have been saying is how we can get out of it. That is why to some extent, I support the campaign, ‘change begins with me’, when it comes to national matters, not politics. I support it because the Nigerian must be reorientated. You have resources here and you would not use them to develop yourselves. You will send them as raw materials outside and the cow will come back as corn beef which you are buying at higher price; the fish comes back as sardines which you are buying at higher price and we have everything you can think of outside of oil and gas.

    So, we should look inward. We should not allow the industries to die. There should be proper fiscal measures and monetary measures. These days, the fiscal planners and the monetary planners are crashing instead of coordinating so that the private sector should be made the real driver of the economy. Let us patronize made-in-Nigeria goods so that it can stimulate the local investors, local manufacturers, and beyond that, export our products to the world, beginning from the West African coast. And leaders in the ECOWAS should try and make sure that this free movement should be properly done. The road to these countries should be properly done so that movement will be free.

  • Zuckerberg’s visit

    Zuckerberg’s visit

    •An opportunity to focus on our place in technology

    He came in the spirit of technology and globalisation. Mark Zuckerberg is perhaps the youngest genius alive in the framing of what we today call the social media but the Facebook titan arrived Nigeria without airs.

    He did not come to smooch with the high and mighty. He did not seek photo ops with the president, or the governor or the chief executives of the corporate high and mighty. He was not impressed with the chance to issue any rhetoric about his place in the world or the vainglory of his invention. He came to meet with the average Nigerian, and he was happy to select one of the most Nigerian of cuisines as his favourite food here. Jolof rice, that is.

    Young men and women received the young man, and he was pictured not only interacting but also working on computers. His was not a charity visit, for sure. But he did not carry crass commercialism on his sleeves.

    His visit was also significant on the level of entrepreneurship in technology. Zuckerberg rose because he enjoyed enabling conditions in a society and once his ideas were found to be viable, the world was his oyster. He found not a few kindred spirits during his visit. Hear him: “Here in Lagos, I want to not just sit down with members of this community, but sit down with developers and entrepreneurs. The reason for this is that I feel there is great energy here and I think the world needs to see this.”

    He noted that the Nigerian economy is undergoing a seismic shift, and it is transmuting from a resource-based affair to knowledge-based. This dynamic is nothing new to Nigerians. The tragedy is that an American would have to visit and stir that spirit for it to make sense.

    We have in different parts of Nigeria what we call computer village, and it has little to do with the work of government but individuals who have fired themselves to modest glory. They do with little and pine for the opportunity. They are often on their own.

    Up till today, we are enslaved to the software developed from above, whether in government or in the social work or in the higher reaches of the corporate world, we do not buy our software. It is technological divide, and we are on the wrong end of the divide.

    Some have done well, and Zuckerberg told of a Nigerian with a relentless zeal. He identified Blessing Obueh who failed to get a berth to train at the Facebook Foundation. She did not give up, he said.

    “She showed up at the training, despite that her application was unsuccessful. She pleaded for a chance and we accepted. Now Blessing is working in a multinational engineering firm,” he narrated.

    We have many Obuehs around us in Nigeria who have been suffocated by our capitalist abuse. We expect that his visit will open the eyes of many in high places to understand that technology is the enabler of the next economic boom, especially now that we are lamenting our entry into a new recession.

    We speak of diversifying the economy but even agriculture that is resource-based will be impotent without technology.

    It is also heartening that Zuckerberg’s visit will also bring a new appreciation for our indigenous languages as he has promised to introduce our languages to the world conversation. We have about seven million Nigerians on Facebook daily, and we are also on some of the new cutting-edge platforms like twitter, LinkedIn, whatsapp and instagram. Nigerians buzz in all of these platforms.

    We cannot progress without taking advantage of them. Hence the young man’s visit.

  • Buhari to meet Chinese leaders on infrastructural development

    President Muhammadu Buhari will leave Abuja on Sunday for a working visit to China aimed at securing greater support from Beijing for the development of Nigeria’s infrastructure, especially in the power, roads, railways, aviation, water supply and housing sectors.

    President Buhari’s talks with President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples’ Congress, Zhang Dejiang will also focus on strengthening bilateral cooperation in line with the Federal Government’s agenda for the rapid diversification of the Nigerian economy, with emphasis on agriculture and solid minerals development.

    A statement by the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, said that several new agreements and memorandums of understanding to boost trade and economic relations between Nigeria and China will also be concluded and signed during the visit.

    The agreements include a Framework Agreement between the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and the National Development and Reform Commission of the Peoples’ Republic of China to Boost Industrial Activities and Infrastructural Development in Nigeria.

    Others are a Framework Agreement between the Federal Ministry of Communications and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, and a Memorandum of Understanding between Nigeria and China on Scientific and Technological Cooperation.

    In line with his administration’s prioritization of economic diversification and industrialization to boost employment, President Buhari and his delegation will tour the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the Guangzhou Economic and Technological Development Zone to gain more useful insights and understanding of the policies that underpinned China’s astronomical economic growth in recent years.

    The President, whose entourage will include some state governors as well as the Ministers of Agriculture, Water Resources, Transport, Defence, Power, Works & Housing, Industry, Trade & Investment, Federal Capital Territory, Science & Technology and Foreign Affairs, will also open a China-Nigeria Business/Investment Forum in Beijing and meet with members of the Nigerian Community in China before returning to Abuja at the weekend.

  • Fayose’s ‘inconclusive’ visit to Osun

    Fayose’s ‘inconclusive’ visit to Osun

    These are indeed interesting times in our country. Many new things are happening. And a good number of them, like the initial gubernatorial elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states, are inconclusive.

    Or what can one say of the unexpected visit by the Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, to the Government House in Osun State during the week. Specifically, Fayose was the guest of Governor Rauf Aregbesola.

    Fayose, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governor and renowned critic of Aregbesola and his All Progressives Congress (APC), visited the Government House, Osogbo, in company with about 50 dignitaries including the Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, Mr. Kola Oluwawole.

    And in spite of Fayose’s insistence at the parley that he will never leave the PDP for any other party despite the crisis within the party, upon a direct invitation to him from his host to join the APC, not a few analysts are saying the visit is an inconclusive one.

    Doubting Thomases, finding it difficult to believe Fayose went to Osogbo with his huge entourage to discuss ‘Yoruba Unity’, are telling Nigerians to expect ‘supplementary’ visits by the Ekiti Governor to Osogbo and other APC-controlled states to further discuss how best to ensure the ‘political’ unity of his dear Yoruba race.

  • Lagarde’s visit

    Lagarde’s visit

    •IMF has never been a friend 

    Many Nigerians literally had their hearts in their mouths when the four-day visit of the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mrs Christine Lagarde, to the country was made public. Of course they had their reasons; and genuine ones at that, too. Nigeria, like many other developing countries, see the IMF as an anathema. Nigerians have not forgotten their experience with the Paris Club to which their country was perpetually indebted and remained trapped in debt for decades until it managed to wriggle out of it when on June 29, 2005, the club and Nigeria agreed on an US$18 billion debt relief package with the Obasanjo administration. With specific reference to the IMF, the country roundly rejected the idea of the country taking a loan facility from it in the Babangida era. It was a big debate in which Nigerians gave a resounding NO for an answer!

    However, Mrs. Lagarde eventually arrived Nigeria on Monday for a four-day visit, as part of a two-country tour of the West African region. She concluded her visit to the country on Thursday.

    Indeed, it was as if the IMF boss had anticipated that Nigerians were going to think her visit would not be unconnected with talking the Federal Government into taking loans from the fund in view of the country’s dire economic situation. Hence her quick repudiation of any such agenda as soon as she came, even as she added that the country did not need loan to get back on track.

    So far, her visit has been a mixed blessing; at least given what is in the public domain about it. Expectedly, she supports the removal of fuel subsidy. She also said the IMF would be more than ready to assist Nigeria in its efforts to plug revenue leaks, trace stolen funds, and to restructure the nation’s taxation system. These are laudable objectives.

    One of the country’s problems is that a lot of public funds are diverted into private pockets. Revelations from the investigations into the $2.1billion arms fund lend credence to this. Moreover, a chunk of the country’s stolen funds is stashed in banks abroad and the IMF boss sure knew what she was saying when she assured that her bank would help trace some of these funds. This year alone, the Federal Government hopes to rake in some billions of the looted funds. Then the area of restructuring the country’s’ taxation system so as to bring in more eligible individual and corporate entities that should be paying taxes but are currently out of the tax net is a good step which would make more money available to the government for developmental purposes.

    All said, Mrs Lagarde might have come and left, the point is that we also know where the shoes pinch. We know how we got to our present mess. We therefore do not necessarily need any outsider to come and show us the way out of the woods. And if at all there must be such advice, it must be one that would point the way forward and not one that would further get us deeper into crisis.  In effect, while the Federal Government should be careful about accepting wholesale the suggestions by the IMF boss, the bottom line is for the government to refuse to accept dictation by the IMF managing director on things that would be injurious to our economy. The Federal Government must sift the wheat from the chaff.

    We should not forget the experiences of some other countries that swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the policies enunciated by the IMF in the past only to be worse off. Indeed, the fund has had to apologise to some of these countries for prescribing antidotes that exacerbated, rather than ameliorate their suffering. Nigeria should avoid falling into such one-cap-fits-all traps.

     

  • The Visit begins cinema runs

    The Visit begins cinema runs

    Koga Studios’ new movie, The Visit, is set for cinema screening, with the start date put at October 16.

    Touted as one of the most sensational movies of 2015, The Visit stars top actors such as Nse Ikpe Etim, Femi Jacobs, Blossom Chukwujekwu and Bayray Mcnwizu.

    The four-cast movie tells the story of two couples living in the same house, but with completely different lifestyles. Their parallel lifestyle at some point colluded and the resulting effect were intriguing plot and sub-plot.

    Robert Jeyibo, an officer for Koga Entertainment said; “Koga has always been ranked as one of the best production company, as seen in recently produced movie Heros and Zeros and The Vist is not far-fetched from their magical touch.”

    Produced by Biodun Stephens, the film is directed by Funke Fayoyin, and executive produced by Koga Entertainment.

  • Postscript of Buhari’s US visit

    President Buhari’s visit to the United States of America (US) has come and gone. And its outcome has meant different things to different people depending on the angle from which it is viewed.

    Broadly speaking however, there is no doubt the nation stands to gain from such engagements given the globalization of the world economy and the prime role of the US in its affairs. It was also significant in the sense that it represented a demonstration of confidence by that government in the capacity of our democracy to endure.

    Of course, his hosts gave assurances of assistance in the war against the Boko Haram insurgency; the repatriation of looted funds stashed in the vaults of other countries by marauding leaders and such other measures that will aid the nation’s economic development.

    But there were two issues in the course of the visit that should not and cannot be glossed over. This is because they seemed to have cast some slur on the overall success of that visit. The two saw the presidency issuing statements ostensibly to contextualize what was said in the course of the event. The first was the statement credited to the President while answering questions from journalists. He had said “going by the election results, constituencies that gave me 95 per cent cannot in all honesty be treated on the same issues with constituencies that gave me five per cent. I think these are political realities. While certainly there will be justice for everybody but the people who voted and made their votes count, they must feel the government has appreciated the efforts they put in putting the government in place”.

    The second came from his prepared speech at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). It read, “unwittingly and I dare say, unintentionally the application of the Leahy Law amendment by the US government has aided and abated the Boko Haram terrorist group in the prosecution of its extremist ideology and hate, the indiscriminate killings and maiming of civilians, raping of women and girls, and in other heinous crimes. I believe this is not the spirit of the Leahy Law”.

    On both scores, the Special Adviser to the president on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina was quick to issue statements either clarifying what the president actually meant or canvassing positions urging the public to be wary of misconstruing what was actually said. Curiously, in all these interventions, he did not say the president was misquoted but only sought to place the statements within the context he would want them to be understood.

    But in doing these, he inadvertently created two sets of problems. The first is the presumption that the larger public is incapable of properly contextualizing both statements and therefore needed to be helped out.  How he came about that conclusion remains largely curious. Second, the clarifications also created the impression that either the presidency was very uncomfortable with its position on the two issues after they went public or it was under pressure from some unseen quarters to defend them. There is also the third suggestion that the president only realized the full purport of the statements after they had gone public. The extent to which those seeming clarifications achieved the desired objective remains largely illusory.

    Before we go into the context of those statements, it will be helpful to bring into focus Adesina’s clarifications on them. The objective is to fathom if there are any differences between them and what the president actually said.

    On how the president will treat those who voted for him, Adesina admitted that what was attributed to the president actually came from him. But then, he contended that the president also said the constitution has guaranteed the rights of every part of the country. According to him, “what this means is that those who voted five per cent will get their due and will not get things commensurate with five per cent votes”. He accused unnamed persons of not balancing the entire statement. The first flaw here is with the concept of what is due to those who voted five per cent. It cannot definitely be the same with what is due to those who voted 95 per cent. There is problem because of the introduction of ratio or proportion. Having brought in this exogenous variable, the clear interpretation is that it will be the prime yardstick for the distributions of the spoils of office. There is absolutely no ambiguity in this. Buhari even went further to admit this consideration as political reality. There are thousand and one angles from which the president could have approached journalists’ question on the matter without bringing in the matter of ratios.

    The argument that the constitution guarantees the rights of every part of the country or that there will be fairness for everybody on that account, cannot mitigate the harm in that position. It could even be further developed to imply that but for such constitutional guarantees, the percentage of votes cast in the last elections would be the only determinant of the president’s relations with parts of the country.

    If you ask me whether the president should have gone into such comparisons, my answer will be capital No! He could have referred his audience to his much acclaimed inaugural statement that he belongs to nobody and belongs to everybody. That could have sufficed. It was therefore a huge contradiction and monumental error to be talking of percentages in the presence of that international audience. By extrapolation, the president succeeded in saying that he belongs to those who massively voted for him in that election. He has to live with that foreboding reality, attempts to clarify it notwithstanding.

    His aide also said in respect of the Leahy Law, the president’s statement was misconstrued. According to him, it should be seen as a passionate appeal to the US government to soften on the law to enable Nigeria intensify action and win the war against Boko Haram. The aspect of the written statement that is said to have been misconstrued and those who misconstrued it is hazy. What that portion of the written speech said is very clear.  Being a written speech, the president must have taken time to go through it and possibly agreed with its content before going public. It is a different ball game if the disputed section was not laced in diplomatic niceties; conveyed unintended meaning and thus inappropriate for that audience. The problem with the statement is in its sweeping assertion that the Leahy Law amendment by the US aids and abets the Boko Haram terrorists group.  The Leahy Law does not aid and abet the Boko Haram terrorists.  Boko Haram is propelled, reinforced and sustained by weird fundamentalist Islamist ideology and the army of their unseen sympathizers. The law only imposes some constraints in the prosecution of the insurgency war. That is the proper perspective. The blame for this vague presentation is still that of the presidency. It was at liberty to have expunged that section if it was sufficiently satisfied it would create doubts for the administration.

    Be that as it may, the discomfort of the government with that portion could possibly have arisen from fears from two quarters-one from the host government and the other from the home country. The US was bound to show discomfort with the statement given the wrong impression it created. On the other hand, the presidency is bound to be scarred by its likely interpretation at home. The second plank is more so given the politicization of the issue of human rights abuses in the war against Boko Haram. Before now, much of the reservations of the US government on that war had hinged on this singular issue. It is for the same reason it refused to sell categories of arms and ammunitions to the last regime. Discomfort could have been aided by the fear that the new regime was about to fall into the same trap.

    There is also the issue of local propaganda. Those who opposed the previous regime had made issues out of its purported human rights abuses. Amnesty International has also been notorious for levying copious allegations along this line without regard for the grave human rights abuses by the fundamentalist group. It would appear this dialectic is at the heart of the current discomfort.

  • Nigeria’s greatest visit to America

    President Buhari has done Nigeria proud in America this week. Everywhere during his three-day visit, the American media welcomed him with great warmth, enthusiasm and optimism. For a change, here is one Nigerian leader who is re-assuring the world very convincingly about Nigeria.

    Known or unknown to us Nigerians, the world has, for years, been gradually giving up on our country. The stories, and the plain evidence, of public corruption in Nigeria have been simply overwhelming. They have been so overwhelming that a foreigner who wrote a book on Nigeria gave it the title This House Has Fallen. An American journalist, Richard Dowden, who visited Africa a number of times wrote a book on Africa and titled his chapter on Nigeria, “Look out world, Nigeria”, as if warning the world that a dangerous predator called Nigeria was on the prowl. Then, he wrote in dismay:

    “Nigeria has a terrible reputation. Tell someone that you are going to Nigeria and if they haven’t been there themselves, they offer sympathy. Tell anyone who has been to Nigeria and they laugh. Then they offer sympathy. No tourists go there. Only companies rich enough to keep their staff removed from the realities of Nigerian life do business there. And big companies rarely mention Nigeria in their annual reports for fear of what it will do to their share price. Journalists treat it like a war zone. Diplomats regard it as a punishment posting.”

    Dowden adds that, in fact, Nigeria’s popular image falls short of the reality – and that Nigeria is a failed state that somehow manages to keep standing. An American young man who took part in a Christian missionary group drilling water wells for poor villages all over Africa returned home and told his friends that he believed that God is probably using Nigeria for an experiment – that God is probably gathering the worst human beings into Nigeria in order to see what would happen if the worst human beings were gathered in a country. He added that he found in Nigeria something that cannot be classified as ordinary corruption – village heads demanding bribes from the missionaries as a condition for allowing the missionaries to drill the well for the villagers. A well-informed agency of the American government wrote in a report in 2004 that Nigeria could break up in 15 years.

    Of course, we Nigerians know that these images are not fair to most of us. The influential citizens who have given us these images are only a minority among us – but they are the most visible ones among us. The foreigner who comes to Nigeria for some business would inevitably encounter our immigration officials, customs officials, police and security officials, may be military officials, then various levels of civil servants, Central Bank officials, ministers of state – and perhaps our President. Predictably, all of these men and women of our country’s frontline are likely to demand or take an illegitimate something from the foreigner. If the foreigner is a journalist or researcher of some kind, he will see most of the above; he may also see, during an election, high public officials grabbing and taking away ballot boxes in broad daylight in order to rig the election – and he will see police, military, and security officials helping the high public officials. If the foreigner happens to be a senior bank official in his own country, he very probably will encounter some Nigerian high public officials who have stolen huge amounts of Nigerian public money and who are seeking help to hide the loots in secret bank accounts. If he happens to be a realtor in his country, he will probably encounter clients who are Nigerian public officials seeking to invest large amounts of stolen public money on expensive real estate properties.

    These are only a few examples. The manifestations are legion. And in reality, many of us too who are not public officials do cut corners in order to survive the poverty that our governments have foisted upon our country. Still, it is not fair to say that Nigerians are all thieves and takers of bribes – as lots of foreigners who come into contact with our country say (innocently or maliciously) about us.

    However, fair or unfair, the image hurts. It has hurt us Nigerians, as well as our country, terribly. We live today in a world in which capital owned by investors from various parts of the world is crucial to development in every country. Most of that capital is searching for the best countries to invest in. We live in a world in which commerce – the exporting and importing of goods – builds most of the wealth of countries. And we live in a world in which tourism is one of the generators of the wealth of countries. We have a country that is wonderfully rich in resources, and that should be one of the world’s largest focal points of manufacturing, commerce, tourism, movements of finance, etc, but our country’s awful image inhibits our share of these things. What this translates to is poverty. We Nigerians live in undeserved poverty, and much of that poverty is generated by the terrible image that we have acquired in the world.

    But now, with Buhari, new prospects are opening up for our country and us – new possibilities, new glimmers of hope. No Nigerian ruler has ever had the quality of image and perception that Buhari has acquired in only seven weeks. From the few steps he has already taken, nobody doubts that this is the real fight against corruption in Nigeria – and not just another one of the endless and empty promises of fight against corruption. And what that can do for our country and us is incalculable. Buhari is inviting the world to trust us and come, and the vibrations strongly indicate that the world will respond. From my home in a distant country abroad, I speak this message to my people back home: Buhari is putting together something big and good for our country.

    This is a war for all of us Nigerians to fight; it is not Buhari’s alone. We must all join hands and fight it. I hereby offer some contributions of my own. One of the things that have made corruption easy in our country is that, since the mid-1960s, we have removed the old civil service rules, regulations and processes that protected access to public money. Today, our president and governors more or less go about with all of our public money in their pockets. We need to revive and retool the measures that guarded public money before 1966. In addition, we need to establish watch-dog agencies that oversee budget performances and the movement of public money. And we need to make ethics laws that all must obey, and establish enforcement processes from which no public official is exempt. We did not have massive “security votes” before 1966 – security votes that nobody can audit. It is a poison from Satan’s own hand. We must review it.

    Finally, as I have said repeatedly in this column and elsewhere, the search for and recovery of stolen public money, the punishment of the culprits, and the establishment of rules and processes for protecting public money – all are just the surface battles of the war against corruption. In addition to them, we must deal with the fundamental root of corruption. When our military rulers robbed our states of their powers, resource control, and development initiative, and pooled all together in the federal centre, they created a super-corrupt federal government, the mother of corruption, the dispenser of corruption all over our country. President Buhari must not leave this unattended to.

  • Mind Builders pupils visit The Nation

    Mind Builders pupils visit The Nation

    The pupils of Mind Builders School last Thursday paid an educational visit to the head office of The Nation Newspaper in Lagos.

    The children were taken to the printing press, the editorial department, and the newsroom among other places, having studied means of communication in Social Studies, according to one of the teachers that accompanied the pupils.

    The teacher, Soyode Olayemi, noted that the primary one pupils had been taught verbal and non-verbal communications like body language and the old method of communication, the use of gongs.

    The Nation’s Joanna spoke to two children, Modebola Oluwasona and Ekomobong Ekanem who said they enjoyed the trip and saw machines, printers, and various vehicles for transporting the newspapers.

    Responding to a short interview on examples of media, Ekomobong said: “Examples of media include Newspapers, radio and television”.

    However, Modebola aspires to become a medical doctor while Ekomobong wants to become an author because she likes to write.

    According to Mrs. Umeh, also a teacher, the primary one pupils were taken on the newspaper organization tour because they treated a topic in communication.

    They also treated the media, means of communication, the way messages are conveyed and the fact that newspapers are used to convey messages.

    Mind Builders School has three campuses located at Omole Phase1, Omole Phase 2 and Ikeja CBD, Alausa all in Lagos state.

     

  • ABC of Jonathan’s visit, by Winners’ Chapel

    ABC of Jonathan’s visit, by Winners’ Chapel

    •Oyedepo ‘never said I will open gates of hell’

    The Living Faith Church Worldwide (aka Winners’ Chapel) has described the allegation that its Presiding Bishop David Oyedepo endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan for this month’s election as unfounded.

    Its Resident Pastor, Pastor Ubong Ntia, in a statement yesterday, said for over a week now, the news and social media had been abuzz with rumours, insinuations and misinformation, concerning the January 25 visit of President Jonathan to the church’s headquarters in Ota, Ogun State.

    Pastor Ntia said the information portrayed an open declaration for the President, adding that it was done with the view to dent the image of Bishop Oyedepo and to create confusion in the polity.

    He said: “Let it be clearly stated that Bishop is first and foremost a man of God and he remains one; and he can only accommodate all persons of different political backgrounds and inclinations, particularly leaders for whom the Bible has instructed that spiritual intercessions be made.

    “The event of Sunday, January 25, 2015, in which President Jonathan visited the church, was obviously not out of place,” he said.

    Pastor Ntia explained that the president and his entourage arrived at the church for the third service at about 9.30am and were ushered in to occupy the front seats alongside the resident pastor and other senior pastors.

    He said: “Thereafter, in honour of the President, Bishop Oyedepo invited President Jonathan to ‘bring a word of greeting’ to the congregation.

    “President Jonathan spent approximately six minutes in his address, clearly stating that he would be careful not to sound political so that his visit and intentions would not be construed as campaign.

    “In his brief speech, he adulated the ministry and person of Bishop for the mighty works of faith, prayer for Nigeria and educational milestones the Living Faith Church has engendered for national development.

    “He then expressed his belief that the elections of 2015 would go peacefully, while also asking for the people of God to pray more.

    “The President neither covertly asked for votes, nor overtly impressed the congregation with any unsolicited advertorial to win their electoral minds,” he said.

    Pastor Ntia stressed that Bishop Oyedepo  did not call the president to the altar for any special cleansing or deliverance.

    Bishop Oyedepo, the pastor added, said at the service: “I like us to be on our feet and lift the President up to God. Whatever you desire to see God bring about in his life, bring about in our nation.

    “Release unusual grace in increasing dimensions, to match the demands of his office. Cause your face to shine upon him. Lord, grant the desires of his heart. Grant Nigeria peace! Under him, grant Nigeria greater advancement. Thank you, Father; in Jesus’ Name we pray.”

    He maintained that Bishop Oyedepo then closed the prayer thus with the remarks: “This entire church proclaims the President blessed today; blessed with divine wisdom to match the demands of his office; and blessed with peace to see the miraculous in his life.”

    Pastor Ntia said Bishop Oyedepo never cursed anybody, who opposed the President.

    “Therefore, there was no where nor was there any time the following prayer or words were uttered by the church or Bishop: ‘I will open the gates of hell to anyone who opposes you, or I will open the gates of hell to anyone who opposes the peace of this nation,’”the cleric said.

    He added that it was incomprehensible, therefore, that some people would attribute “I will open the gates of hell to anyone who opposes you” to the church’s presiding bishop during a service that was attended by over 40,000 people and which was in the full glare of the world.

    “Those imported words were probably for political profiteering and attention patronage by bloggers. Whatever the intention was, may Almighty God forgive the perpetrators.

    “We consider the mischievous imputation and its uncritical acceptance as the handiwork of those who had been seeking a veritable point to strike and injure the integrity of our church, and they found the President’s visit during this season of elections as the right point to make an attempt to drag our hard-earned image in the mud,” Pastor Ntia said.