The Nation Newspaper

Tag: wind

  • Wind sowers

    SUNDAYS are celebrated in Christendom. The reason for the celebration is well known. Sunday is the day chosen by the Lord as Sabbath Day – the day He rested after creating the world. The scriptures tell us that the Lord hallows the day. Since we are created in His image, we are expected to toe that line. So, on Sundays, many churches are filled to the brim as worshippers throng them in obedience of the Lord’s command.

    In the Southeast, Catholicism holds sway. Virtually every household is a  Roman Catholic. Catholicism and mass go hand in hand. What other Christians call service is mass to Catholic faithfuls and the mass starts early. The first mass starts by 6am and by 7, 7.30am, it is all over. No matter when it holds, the church is always full. Since we have started outgrowing the fear of Boko Haram attacks on churches on Sundays, worshippers have begun to let their guards down.

    These days, they worship God without looking behind them to see if a suicide bomber is lurking around or driving through the gate. What is the point in being in church and be looking here and there because of fear of being attacked by some beast, who take the name of the Lord in vain? But unknown to the worshippers at St Philip’s Catholic Church in Ozubulu, Anambra State, last Sunday, some beast in human skin chose that day to settle a drug war score. The church was built by a drug baron for the use of his community. Since society no longer questions people’s source of wealth, the community has been using the church without asking where the donor got his money from. To him, it is sowing. But God is not unclean and so will never accept unclean things. Cleanliness, the Quran says, is next to Godliness.

    The donor is engaged in a war with another drug baron and both men have been gunning for each other’s life. They are based in South Africa, but their tentacles extend beyond that country. They have boys at their beck and call who do all sorts of job for them. These boys not only carry drugs, but also kill for their masters. The donor was at home to, as usual, flaunt his wealth and play Father Christmas. In a society where families find it difficult to make ends meet, many flocked his home for one assistance or the other. You need to see  the video of him on social media where he was spraying money as if it has gone out of fashion.

    Our love for freebies may yet be our undoing in this country. Is it poverty that has turned some people into beggars? Why do we find it hard to ask questions about how some nonentities came by their wealth? What should be the role of priests in our society? Should the men of God accept gifts from people whose source of wealth is not known? How should churches treat suspicious characters, such as drug barons, looters, robbers and kidnappers et al? Should we keep quiet about their atrocities all because they donate to the church or give hefty sum of money to pastors?

    What happened in Ozubulu has shown that we can only keep quiet over these crooks’  lifestyle at our detriment. I am sure many who did not know the donor nor ever got a kobo from him paid the supreme price when gunmen came looking for him. As the Yoruba would say, they paid for what they did not buy with their lives. The church should be the place to teach moralty and uprightness. Everything good must be taught there. But what do we see these days? We find pastors shouting from the rooftops that God loves a cheerful giver. Yes, the Good Book says so, but It does not tell us to collect money from people of shady character. If God so loved money, Jesus won’t have driven out gamblers and moneychangers from the temple with these words:

    “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves’’. Many pastors have turned churches into dens of thieves because of their love for money. By their action, they have driven away the poor from church because those people feel ashamed to attend service since they cannot give and give and give as their pastors want. These pastors have given the word shepherd a different meaning. They are supposed to look out for their sheep, but it is now the other way round. These days, the sheep must always look out for the shepherd or else they will become the butt of sermons which have no root in the scriptures. If many of our pastors have lived up to the doctrines of their calling, what happened in Ozubulu won’t have happened. It is the failure of the men of God that has brought us to this pass.

    My fear is that we may not have seen nothing. Worse things may still come if we do not change our ways. If we continue to worship money and eulogise those whose source of wealth is unknown, the Ozubulu massacre would be child’s play compared to what may happen elsewhere in future. It is sad that a drug war found its way into the house of God. This should be a time of introspection for our pastors. Where did they miss it? It is not too late for them to retrace their steps. If they had condemned what these crooks are doing and refused to touch them with a 10-foot pole, these no-gooders may have changed for good. But because they were encouraged by their pastors, who always took money from them under the guise of doing God’s work, they felt they were on the right path.

    How will any pastor feel over the killing of women and children, who were mostly the victims, in what Anambra State Governor Willie Obiano called a “gang war” brought into Ozubulu from abroad? The blood of these innocent souls will continue to cry for justice until their killer is found. The scriptures teach us to reflect on things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely and are of good report. But our pastors will not teach these virtues. They are only interested in money, money and money. They are unlike the Apostle Paul who knew what it was to both abound and suffer need.

    Maybe, the Ozubulu massacre will teach them to, henceforth, know what it is to be full and to be hungry. A pastor who does not know hunger can never know what his poor sheep are going through.The Ozubulu killer can only run, he can never hide. May he be brought to justice soon.

  • Gone with the wind

    Gone with the wind

    Digital software has changed the way advertising practitioners think. Gone is the era of creative manual adverts. Most creative artists simply develop concepts. Software translates it to picture and images. But, there are fears that this emerging trend will cost fine artists their job, reports ADEDEJI ADEMIGBUJI.

    There is big dividing line between traditional and digital advertising. In the past 10 years, they have started to embrace each other more openly, yet the line remains despite being blurred.

    While technology-savvy creative experts see the use of digital computer software such as Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkEx-press, PageMaker as the game changer, proponents of creative traditional advertising creative and fine artists have been advised to upgrade their knowledge in line with the fast changing industry.

    With latest software such as 3D computer graphics, artists may no longer be needed to sketch image for art directors as the software cannot only generate or create drawings but manipulate images.

    Also, the software can add, subtract, stretch among others to create perfect interpretation of creative brief. Though criticised for often overplaying creativity, over-hyping of brands being promoted, hence, making creative experts to become lazy in thinking deeper but the world seem to have engaged the creative tools for competition sake. For Nigerian ad agencies, the software has made the creative work less cumbersome and more competitive.

    According to the former Creative Director, 141 Worldwide and now Chief Executive Officer of X3M, Mr. Steve Babaeko, “digital art software has helped to make the creative process less painful for art directors.”

    He said this has also “helped artists push the frontiers of creativity to hitherto unimaginable frontiers.” While underscoring the importance of traditional art, Babaeko said digital art software would be meaningless without the knowledge of the handdrawn artistry.

    “Like the saying goes: the hood does not make the monk. The best software in the world is at best used less in the hands of an unskilled artist,” he said.

    In the same vein, the Creative Director, DKK Nigeria, Mr. Sam Adeoye, affirmed that digital art has moved the ad business forward as art directors and designers have become more creative in their work, achieving photo manipulations, illustrations, and all that could not be done in the days of copy and paste. He said with increasingly sophisticated demands, meeting deadline for client briefs is now less bothering while quality of work is better.

    “We have also become faster in the process. And generally, the quality of production is now better, especially with the latest printing machines,” he affirmed. Despite the speed and quality offered, Adeoye expresses fears over relevance of old creative method.

    He said: “I’m sure some of the old jobs in the era of cut and paste must have been eliminated as technology improved and photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkEx-press, PageMaker, etc came along. Also, artists who couldn’t use these new applications must have found themselves redundant.”

    However, he maintained that no matter how inevitable digital art has become in delivering value brands creative, the jobs of artists’ remain relevant.

    “We still need artists.Agencies need artists as designers, art directors, illustrators and FA specialists. Even the old skills of drawing remains relevant and artists who can draw are still highly valued. The more clients an agency has, the more artists it’s going to need,” he said.

    Adeoye, who was Group Head, Copy, at STB McCann Erickson, said the artists are not the only creative professionals facing the creative software threat. “It’s not just for artists; it’s for all of us. That’s why we must constantly search for the latest thinking and breakthroughs around the world. The best way to deal with the challenge is to never stop the search for knowledge.”

    He, however, insisted that despite the emergence of animation software like 3D graphics kit, hand-drawing remains key in the creative process.

    “Animation is one of the things agencies are sometimes required to do. It’s on a different level from what is commonly referred to as art directing. But even animation will still require some drawing.

    Even at Pixar, they still draw, and it doesn’t get more traditional than drawing. If we are wondering that machines will one day replace art directors, then we are entering the realm of science fiction.

    And what was once science fiction, such as unmanned drones, is now real; the same thing may happen in advertising. Someday, someone may develop a true iRobot with empathy and the complex understanding of human emotions, which advertising always requires.

    If that happens, then, machines may start producing ads that will resonate with people. For now, we only have good software and this software requires people to use them,” he said.

    Even at global level, many agencies still draw their storyboard which is the template for TVC. As Deputy Creative Director, Prima Garnet, Mr Victor Dairo, noted, “some foreign adverts still come in drawing and sketches; it depends on which message you want to pass on despite the use of software.”

    Meanwhile, the founder and worldwide creative director of BBH, a global ad agency, John Hegarty, while speaking at the Economist’s Technology Frontiers conference, said creativity and technology need to be synergised to deliver the results.

    He explained how in the past, technological innovations such as the printing press and cinema were initially celebrated for the technology itself, but then required creative people to bring the technology to life after the novelty stage.

    “Creativity challenges technology and technology inspires creativity,” he said.

    “Sometimes, there is a schism between creative people and technologists, but we are in cohesion with each other. If we don’t work with each other we don’t move forward,” he noted.

     

  • ‘Osun: Tension will drop as campaigns wind down’

    ‘Osun: Tension will drop as campaigns wind down’

    Special Adviser to the President on Inter-Party Affairs, Senator Ben Obi, the convener of the Osun State Stakeholders Sensitisation Workshop on 2014 Governorship Election, spoke to select journalists in Osogbo on what he observed in the forthcoming election and other issues. Associate Editor, Sam Egburonu, was there and reports

    What do you make of the huge turnout for the workshop after the poorly attended Ekiti workshop?

    Well, I don’t want to say that Ekiti was a poorly attended workshop. Because we didn’t see the major contestants does not make the workshop poor. Election matter is more of participants at the grassroots and  party affair. So, once you are able to get the leaders of the party in attendance, you have achieved the purpose. And like I said to you in Ekiti , my duty as convener is to make sure that  I speak  personally to the candidates, including the incumbents. I did so in Ekiti without exemption. I did so in Osun without exemption.

    Like I said, the Ekiti one was that  we had some slight misunderstanding, gap in communication between us and IPAC. Then this time around, after associating with us when we did the all-party summit, it clearly gave them an indication that we mean no harm. They now saw that it was in their own interest that we work hand in hand. The essence of the workshop is for the people.  The absence of one is absolutely insignificant compared to the electorate that the workshop is supposed to guide. When you look at it from the perspective of oh, the governor did not come, the leading  candidates did not come; but the fact is that the parties under which platform they are contesting are present to convey the message. The governorship candidate may suddenly have a call from a friend who is passing by, saying come and pick up some support. For him, it is probably  more important than coming to workshop to talk about violent-free election. We thanked God that it went well.

    In Ekiti you had a template, you did not allow the leaders of the party to speak, but here in Osun, party leaders were allowed to speak. What accounted for that? The leading party candidates were not here, and there were complains that they should have been around to hear what the participants in workshop said?

    My colleague, Senator Fajinmi, the person who complained, I said distinguished senator, since you have the opportunity to speak, you would have told them that the problem you are having are these candidates, you don’t keep it to yourself. Why you saw that party leaders were allowed to speak was that IPAC  came with some party chairmen and we want to make sure that we enlist their support. There are about 20 candidates,  we want to ensure that the elections go smoothly, peacefully and free and fair.

    Do you think what you have done today will ensure a free and fair election. The PDP  deputy governorship candidate was going to expose something, he made mention of some persons called state boys, but he was not allowed to finish, those state boys from what we heard are armed. Do you think these state boys lurking around the corner will not undermine the election?

    The sensitisation workshop is not for me to check armed state boys. I don’t have that capacity. The people who have the capacity have been alerted. I read about it last week that they have made a formal complaint to the IG. And I am sure that the State Security Service is also aware. And they will know the best thing to do in such a matter. I think that is their duty. I have done my own duty. There is supposed to be harmony to promote a peaceful atmosphere for a free and fair election.

    These series of  workshops, on the face value appear to aide peaceful election where they were held. In Ekiti the election was peaceful but the APC complained of scientific rigging before the election?

    After many years of being in this game, it is difficult to flog a child and tell the child not to cry. The rhythm of the cry will always be different from one child to another. One may be crying in Yoruba, Hausa or Igbo. There is nothing you do that a political party will not have reason to say this is why we lost this election. What I am trying to say here is that we are going through a process of re-engineering and at the end of the day we would come to the reality that we have to understand that the style that was adopted by Kayode Fayemi is probably a civilised and modern day approach, that when you lose an election and you are convinced, you congratulate the winner. Kayode is not a baby. Kayode is one of the best brains in this country. So, he must have given it a deep thought before he made his broadcast to the good people of the state. What follows thereafter is politics.

    Some observers say that the presence of the military during the Ekiti State governorship election was the reason for the violence-free election in the state. Using that as a model, will it be right to say that using the military would be the solution to Nigeria’s election matters?

    Well, there are places that are volatile and when you identify such places you need to beef up security to make sure you don’t allow people to disrupt the activities on ground. That will then guide and protect the votes of the people. Yes, some people have been complaining of heavy military presence on ground but the complaints are not that the military presence was used to promote party A or party B. When you notice areas that are volatile, then your duty will be to beef up the security. There are some other states where you don’t need to deploy the military because they are not volatile as others.

    If we adopt that as a pattern, during the general election, if we have six to seven volatile states, what do we do?

    There is what they call operational order within the security services. If they have made it an operational order, I am sure that they would have gone back to the drawing board to see how they will be able to do virtually the same thing in 2015. You will look at the flash points across the country and that would help or guide you on how to deploy your men. What I am trying to say here is that you have to keep improving as time goes on. We have not arrived there yet. People were skeptical about INEC, particularly after the 2011 elections but Anambra was better last year, Ekiti was better last month. You could see the improvement after seven months. The lapses you noticed in Anambra were completely covered in Ekiti. When you try to make sure that you cover such lapses, it reduces the possibility of manipulation or intervention negatively.

    I was speaking with someone and he said, Nigeria has not had it so bad like this before. Seven months to the 2015 general election, there are no known aspirants for the office of the president apart from Sam Nda-Isaiah that has declared. Someone was also saying that politicians are taking voters for granted. What does that portend?

    I don’t agree with you. INEC has a time table and you have to follow the time table…Campaigning is different and signifying your intention is another thing.

    But you have to follow the time table. If somebody wants to run and he is consulting quietly, how would you know? I know of people who have interest. Running for presidential election is not a child’s affair. For you to go into the presidential race you have to consult to be sure of what and what is on the ground. You have to have a structure. APC thought it was easy but as you can see they are now facing their own internal wrangling. If they don’t sort that out now before going to talk about, who will fly the flag of the party, your guess is as good as mine. Even in the PDP, we are doing some reconciliations. As you can see, the National Chairman, who people refer to as the game changer is moving around and he has brought some innovations, which are making the party come alive by trying to make sure that he reaches out. Fortunately for him, he has been a governor and most of these problems emanate from governors that want you to do this or that. But at the end of the day they are leaders of their various states. So, they have found their equal match and colleague Ahmed Muazu. So, it makes things much easier.

    From what you saw today in Oshogbo may you predict the outcome of the Osun Governorship Election. People are saying that the principal actors are heating up the system. Besides, we know the history of Osun as another hotbed of political violence in the South-West zone, the core area of the historic Wild Wild West?

    Well, history may have placed them in a position to do what they did then but nobody wants to leave a negative history for perpetuity. I think the same history will want to place them in a different page and chapter today. I don’t think they want to go out and put flames all over the state. I don’t think they want to do that. All the people that spoke at the workshop spoke in favour of peaceful and violence-free election. But again, until the campaigns wind down, this temperature will remain high. The candidates themselves, all of them are big boys in the political terrain; they are very senior players in the terrain. That is how it is but believe you me, I think the temperature will drop as the campaigns wind down. I am not a Soothsayer but I believe it would be so. Even the necessary agencies are doing their best to ensure that nothing goes wrong.

    At the Ekiti workshop, the Commissioner of Police was there but here in Osun the commissioner did not come….

    Again, you cannot stop them from going to perform the functions they need to perform. We have gone to some states where the commissioner will send representatives in mufti to at least hear what the candidates have to say. But for the direct attack on the Commissioner of Police in Ekiti by Ayo Fayose, which made the Chairman of the event to invite the Commissioner of Police to react, we do not really invite them to come and address the audience at the sensitisation workshops. They face their duties and do their jobs.

    One of the recommendations of the National Conference was the creation of 18 additional states. But there are mixed reactions. Some are arguing that most of the existing states are not viable. What is your take on this issue?

    My take is that all the recommendations will still go to the National Assembly. So, I am not in a hurry to talk about the recommendations. It is one thing to make recommendations, it is another to get them accomplished. So, since the recommendations will still go to the National Assembly, there is still an opportunity to know if the recommended states are viable or not. My response therefore is that you don’t cross the bridge until you get there.

    Some people have expressed fears on the way the National Conference ended without reaching agreement on some sensitive issues and thereby referring them back to the President. Also DSP Alamieyesiegha had complained that his people are threatened by serious environmental degradations. Some say these kinds of disagreements, threats and complaints heighten the fear of possible split in the near future. What do you think?

    Nobody wants Nigeria to split because they know that the strength of this country is her size and unity. So, I don’t think there is anything wrong with the decision to end the National Conference the way it ended. The president has set up a small technical committee to cross the ‘T’s’ and dot the ‘I’s, so to say.

    I can assure you that nobody wants this country to split.

    Even from the confab, you see how they handled issues. DSP may convey the message of his people. They will listen to him and they will look at it. DSP is also a leader of his zone by any stretch of imagination. He is also a leader of his people. At the appropriate time, there are other leaders that will sit together and be able to say, are we doing the right thing and if we are not, let us do the right thing, or approach other zones and say this is what we want. It’s give and take. Whatever we do, we need to reach some level of understanding. Take the case of state creation. Before they went to the issue of state creation for all, all of them agreed on that of the South-East and said its a clear case of injustice, so, they all agreed on creation of additional state for the zone first.

    So long as we know, nothing concrete has been done since our girls were abducted at Chibok even with the aid of the international community. What is the situation?

    We are talking about a very delicate assignment. Even the international community sees it as such. The intention of every one of us is to rescue the abducted girls alive. So even when you have information of the exact location of where the girls are kept, you don’t intend to storm it because, what they will do is to use them as shield. And what becomes the end of the whole exercise? So, it is a very delicate assignment that requires a lot of experience and a lot of tact to subdue and overcome the terrorists. It is painful that we are talking about all these days after the abduction, but we want these girls back safe and that is what the president has been concerned about, having regular meetings with the service chiefs and security agencies again and again. It is not an easy task because of that peculiar nature of the assignment. There is no magic to it than to be very careful, very tactful in approaching it. So far, the reports have been indicating the possibility that they would be rescued sooner than later. I believe that this matter is very sensitive and once we talk about it, we have to also remember that their parents are there. Anytime we raise this matter, we also raise their feelings one way or the other. So we have to be very careful and continue to pray.

  • Jonathan and 2015: Okupe’s pure wind

    Jonathan and 2015: Okupe’s pure wind

    Last Wednesday, the bellicose Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr Doyin Okupe, dismissed as “diversionary,” a declaration by the Niger State Governor, Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu, that in the run up to the 2011 elections President Goodluck Jonathan “signed” an agreement with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors to serve for only one term.

    Governor Aliyu made the declaration the weekend before in a phone-in programme, ‘Guest of the Week’, on Liberty Radio, a Kaduna based private FM radio station. It is apparent that the governor made the declaration against the background of clear indications so far that the President will re-contest for his job in 2015, come rain or shine.

    “I recall that at the time he was going to declare for the 2011 election,” the governor said, “all the PDP governors were brought together to ensure that we were all in the same frame of mind. And I recall that some of us said given the circumstance of the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua and given the PDP zoning arrangement, it was expected that the North was to produce the president for a number of years.

    “I recall that at that discussion it was agreed that Jonathan would only serve for one term of four years and we all SIGNED the agreement…I think we are all gentlemen enough so when the time comes, we will all come together and see what is the right thing to do.” (Emphasis mine).

    These were the remarks Okupe has since dismissed as diversionary – and a diversion which he said his principal is determined to resist with every ounce of his strength. The president, he said, is simply too pre-occupied with his commitment to transform Nigeria into a land flowing with milk and honey to allow himself to be dragged into the campaigns for the next presidential election.

    “We,” Okupe said, “wish to state categorically that this is neither the time nor the season to begin electioneering campaign…and so President Goodluck Jonathan will not jump the gun. Mr President will stoutly resist any disguised or open attempt to drag him into any debates, arguments or political discussions relating to a presidential election in 2015. The President considers this an invidious attempt to sway him from his chosen pursuit of the set out constituents of the transformation agenda which form the basis upon which Nigerians overwhelmingly elected him to steer the ship of the nation in 2011.”

    When the celebrated journalist and novelist, George Orwell, said in his famous essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’, published in 1946, that “Political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible,” he could not, of course, have had your typical Nigerian politician in mind, much less a 21st century Nigerian presidential spokesman. But if he did, he couldn’t have been more spot-on in his dismissal of political speech as a lot of bull. “Political language,” he said in the essay, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

    Anyone living in Nigerian in recent times, even if he were half blind – except, of course, if he is Okupe and his likes – can see that the presidential spokesman’s attempt to rebut Governor Aliyu couldn’t have been more disingenuous. Few statements, if any, could have been worded to make barefaced lies sound truthful, murder respectable and pure wind appear solid.

    To begin with, most disinterested Nigerians and close foreign observers of Nigeria know that President Jonathan was never “overwhelmingly elected” in April 2011. On the contrary, it is pretty obvious he was overwhelmingly rigged into office, beginning with the dubious PDP primaries, all the way through the manipulation of religion and ethnicity and the abuse of state’s fiscal power and its instruments of violence to square or squash dissent, to finally getting the courts to dismiss opposition rejection of the results on legal technicalities.

    Second, even Okupe knows that his principal has been anything but single-minded in his pursuit of his Transformation Agenda, which, in any case, was an unaffordable shopping list rather than a set of coherent and achievable objectives. If the President has been single-minded in the pursuit of his campaign promises, incoherent and unrealistic as they were, the country would have been a lot better today than it was in April 2011.

    The truth, assuming the likes of Okupe care for one, is that if anyone is guilty of diverting the president’s attention from his job, it is the man himself, certainly more than anyone else. This much is obvious from his single-minded determination last year to replace the “recalcitrant” Timipre Sylva with the loyal Seriake Dickson as the governor of his home state, Bayelsa, and hunt Sylva down into oblivion. It was also obvious from his single-minded determination to impose the loyal Alhaji Bamanga Tukur as chairman of the PDP, even after the gentleman had been roundly rejected by his immediate North-Eastern constituency to which the job had been zoned.

    No less diversionary is his self-inflicted current face-off with Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State whose crime, it seems, is that, like not a few two-term governors, he is suspected of harbouring presidential ambition. At least twice last week the President tried, but failed, to remove Amaechi as the chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum. Before then his self-appointed godfather, Chief Edwin Clark, had taken out a two-part full page adverts in several newspapers to rant and rave at the Forum for its imagined antipathy towards his godson. Chances are those adverts did not cost the old man one kobo.

    What all this suggests is that the President is single-mindedly determined not to let anything or anyone whatsoever to get in the way of his second-term, some would say third-term, presidential ambition, having been sworn into the office twice already. If anything has been diverting his attention from doing his job, it is this single-minded focus on 2015.

    So it is really disingenuous for Okupe to accuse Governor Aliyu, or for that matter anyone else, of trying to divert the President from carrying out his transformation agenda. The governor apparently did not lie when he said the President signed a deal with the PDP governors to serve for only one term on his own steam. The proof that Aliyu spoke the truth, at least for once, given his reputation as a public officer who talks and equivocates too much, is crystal clear from the egregious response to his claim by friends of the president which in effect says, “So what if the President signed a deal?”

    Politicians everywhere do deals often with no intention to keep them. But only in Nigeria do they sign and seal deals with no intention whatsoever to honour them. Worse still, it is only in Nigeria that a politician can look you straight in the eyes and accuse you of diverting his attention from doing his job for simply reminding him that he has not kept his word.

    The surprise in all this, therefore, is not that the President signed a deal apparently with no intention to honour it. It is not even that his spokesman will attempt to make a lie look truthful or make murder look respectable or give pure wind the appearance of solidity.

    The surprise is that even after the President and his estranged benefactor, former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, categorically denied the zoning and power rotation deal in PDP, Governor Aliyu would still talk about the President’s word as a gentleman being his honour in spite of all the indications so far that the man would rather Nigeria breaks up than honour his word not to contest the next presidential election.