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Tag: Wolf

  • The cowards have cried wolf again

    The cowards have cried wolf again

    Text of the Centre for Management Development (CMD) Director-General Dr. Kabir Kabo Usman’s reaction to a published report on the CMD under his watch, entitled: “Impunity unlimited”. In this re-joinder, Usman’s Media Consultant & Special Assistant (Media & Publicity) Abdulkadir Ahmed Ibrahim, describes those behind the report as cowards, who have been misleading the unsuspecting members of the public with lies.

    It is not our in our character to join issues with any pundit who chooses the mass media to express his opinion as guaranteed by the constitution, but where such opinion is presented as fact, certainly no responsible person or organisation as the case may be, will allow such lies to go uncorrected. More particularly, as a 19th century philosopher said: “To leave an error not refuted encourages academic irresponsibility.” This prompts us to respond to a piece titled: “Impunity unlimited”, written by Amos Kayode Adeaga from Lagos, published on page 18 of The Nation newspaper edition of Thursday, January 4, 2018. Right of reply is also a cardinal rule of journalism practice.

    The writer started with a pedestrian composition to court the attention of the authorities and interested curious members of the public where he posited that “the unbridled impunity that is rendering services inaccessible in many of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) spread all over the country is hardly excusable. It appears rules and regulations have gone to sleep in the absence of any strong administration in place.”

    He then moved to expose what we consider the motives of his unimpressed write up, though he was acting  the script of some faceless cowards, whose stock in trade is a pull him down (PhD) attitude to leadership wherever they are.  Mr Adeaga protested the non-replacement of the headships of these establishments with new hands by the present administration because as he put it, “many watchers of the civil service were expecting a clean break with the past.” One may ask; who are the watchers and what is a clean break with the past?

    He complained of directors-general loyal to the immediate past administration who were not only allowed to stay but some of them elongated their stay and subverted the real essence of their appointment. This is a serious though vague allegation. After reechoing a circular by the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation on the sit-tight public office holders, he quickly stated that “there may be many of them”.

    The writer then moved to tell the story of the Administrative Staff College (sic) (ASCON) established in 1973 and the Centre for Management Development (CMD) Abuja in 1973 and said were Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s ingenious answer to the problem of indigenous poor management capacity following the enactment of the Indigenisation Decree of 1972. He was brief on the history of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), but went ahead to describe ASCON and CMD as sister organisations “established to perform similar functions”.

    It may interest Mr Adeaga to know that Gen. Yakubu Gowon was Nigeria’s Head of State from July 1967 to July 1975 while Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo ruled as Head of State from February 1976 to September 1979. One also queries the relevance of the Indigenisation Decree of 1972 to the mandate and objectives of ASCON and CMD.

    In the fifth paragraph of the article, the writer said: “In 2010, the then CMD Director-General, Dr. Joseph Maiyaki, was removed unceremoniously and forced to hand over to Dr. Kabir Kabo Usman, who then was serving as a Personal Assistant to Dr. Shamshudeen Usman, the one-time Honourable Minister of National Planning Commission. Kabir Usman’s qualifications for the job were a doctoral degree in chemistry, a 25-year stint in the United Kingdom as a tutor and a few months as personal assistant to the Minister of National Planning Commission” This tale is laughable

    Mr Adeaga should ask his informants, we know are the fifth columnist in the CMD and their conspirators who had worked there before, about whether Dr. Joseph Maiyaki was ceremoniously or otherwise disengaged as a Director-General of the CMD in 2010. As for Dr. Kabir Kabo Usman the current Director-General, it was a pleasure for him to work with the Dr Shamsuddeen Usman a former Minister of National Planning before coming to CMD as a director-general.

    The impeccable records of Dr. Usman show that in 2008, he was recruited by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as a Technical Adviser to Nigeria’s Minister of Education and for two years (2008 to 2009), he provided advice and guidance on educational policies, plans, coordination and implementation.

    He worked closely with the executive secretaries of the then 19 parastatals in the Federal Ministry of Education and also provided support to the Departments of Plans, Research and Statistics of the Ministry.

    Described as a motivator, manager and a visionary master trainer by one of Nigeria’s leading newspapers (The Guardian) Dr. Kabir Kabo was later engaged as the Technical Adviser to the National Authorising Officer on Social Sector Coordination of VISION 20: 2020 and the Seven-Point Agenda in 2009.  He later took up another appointment as a Consultant to the European Union (EU) on Strategy and Policy Coordination involving               Vision 20: 2020 and the National M & E Framework and prior to his appointment as the director-general of CMD, the Manchester University (UK) and Harvard University (USA) trained academician and administrator was the National Authorising Officer to the Minister of National Planning. May be this enviable responsibility confused Mr. Adeaga to say Dr. Kabir was a personal assistant to the minister.

    Yes, Dr. Usman spent 25 years in the UK. He was an administrator and an academician. He contributed positively to the development of the communities he served and was an inspiration to the diverse peoples of the world who interacted with him in one way or the other.

    Let me quickly inform all and sundry that for six years (2002 to 2008), he was the deputy head of a Tertiary Educational Institution in the UK (The Manchester College of Arts and Technology) that had over 60,000 students with an annual income of over 200 million pounds. Hitherto, he was the Director of Curriculum at the College from 2001 to 2003. As stated by the writer, Dr. Usman has a doctoral degree in chemistry, he proudly obtained 30 years ago (1988) at Manchester University, but he cannot be denied the ownership of a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship of University of Manchester (1992), a Certificate in Education (1994) and a Post-Graduate Certificate of Education – Teaching Qualifications (1996) of Huddersfield University, UK, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) obtained at a Metropolitan University also in the UK in 2006.

    He also had a professional training on Leadership in Development in 2012 at Harvard University USA and attended a seminar on Certification and Training of Training Institutions and Trainers at Baltimore, USA, in 2012, both as a participant and a resource person. The erudite PhD holder was also a Visitor at Paul De-Camp Community College, Virginia, USA for four years in the 1990s.

    Mr Adeaga was angry that Dr Kabir “premptively” relocated the corporate headquarters of the CMD to Abuja but unless the writer has emotions of a regional agenda, otherwise there is nothing wrong with the organisation having its headquarters at the nation’s federal capital. However, it may be of interest to those who don’t know that there was a directive from the then Federal Executive Council (FEC) that certain MDAs, including the CMD should move their corporate headquarters to the nation’s capital.

    On the status of the Lagos Office, the case of the retired members of taff (directors) who still believed that they ought not have retired statutorily and who have gone to the National Industrial Court where the case is still being heard, the ownership and physical possession issues of the South West Zonal Office in Ibadan being handled by the Ministry of Budget & National Planning and the Office of the Executive Governor of Oyo State with a view to resolving the matter amicably and more importantly the achievements of Dr Kabir Kabo Usman as the Director-General of CMD for eight years will be addressed appropriately with facts and figures later by the director-general himself.

    He has been updating the trend of events at the CMD and regularly informing the public through the media. If we can have the contacts of Mr. Amos Kayode Adeaga, we will gladly invite him to the forum where the director-general will elaborate more on this and other issues.

    Let me not forget that the writer erroneously said Dr Kabir’s tenure will end on Jnauary 10. It is not correct. He was re-appointed for a second and final term of four (4) years on 3rd March, 2014, in a letter from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) with reference: SGF.50/S.3/V/816 signed by the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim, GCON, which conveyed the approval of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of the appointment with effect from   15th FEBRUARY, 2014.

    So, whoever Mr. Adeaga is hoping to become the next director-general of the CMD should be more patient till after the 15th of February.

  • The lone wolf

    In16 the sleepy town of Ibeshe in Ikorodu, Lagos, women have become endangered species. No woman is safe in the community. Whether young or old; married or spinster, they have become game for a man who prowls the vicinity in the dead of the night. The women go to bed every night in fear because they do not know whether they will become his next victim. And this evil of a man does his homework well before he strikes. He targets women who are alone at home. For the married ones, he seems to know when their husbands are not around.

    He knows that his potential victim will be most vulnerable when she is alone,  so he bides his time before he strikes. He strikes under the cover of darkness and he is aided by the unavailability of light. Since the nation has been thrown into darkness by the power firms unscrupulous elements now have a field day committing atrocities across the country. This man is one of such elements. He prowls the Ibeshe community, raping and maiming women. To him, raping has become a pastime. He sneaks into a house, binds his victim, rapes her, inflicts injuries on the poor woman and vanishes into thin air.

    If the victim screams, she is dead, if she does not, she suffers the same fate. It is a no win situation for her. Last June 5, he struck again. His latest escapade was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The community had become fed up with his atrocities and in no time, the dwellers rose as one to smoke him out. ‘’Is it possible for an outsider to be tormenting us like this?’’ they reasoned. Indeed, somebody cannot be coming from outside to be committing such atrocities except if he has the support of an insider or he must actually be an insider.

    They thought they had their man last Sunday, but it turned out that the fellow is not the one behind the mask. Who is the man? Where does he come from? Is it possible that he comes from outside to torment these women without the support of an insider? Who are his partners within Ibeshe? Where can he be hiding in the town? Does he have friends or family members? Who are they? To get this man, all these questions must be answered, otherwise, he will continue to strike and run.

    Only an insider will have the kind of information that the man has about the dwellers. His June 5 victim was a married woman, but her husband is not based in Ibeshe. Her husband works in Osogbo, the Osun State capital. This information was at the disposal of this evil doer, who knew that he had all the time in the world to do whatever he wanted when he stole into the late Mrs Grace Jubreel’s home in the wee hours of that fateful day. The deceased was with her 14 months old daughter. Poor girl, what could she have done to save her mother? Nothing. The tot was as helpless as her mother as the beast of a man forced himself on her. The late Mrs Jubreel screamed and screamed, but no help came because of the noisy generators, which muffled her cries.

    If there had been light, things may have been different because her neighbours and the security guards might have heard her and rushed to her aid. But the community was in pitch darkness. Regular power supply is critical to crime fighting, especially at night. But what can we do when the distribution companies have resolved to subject us to perpetual darkness and endanger our lives. The public is not demanding stable power for the sake of it, but because it is essential to the people’s safety and security. A well lit place will always be a no-go area for any criminal; while a dark spot  will embolden them to attack people. We are at criminals’ mercy when there is no light and this was what happened in Ibeshe 11 days ago.

    The man had all the time in the world to harangue his victim because everywhere was dark. Even when help belatedly came, getting more people to take the late Mrs Jubreel to hospital was difficult because of, you guessed right, there was no light. Hear Mr Titilayo Ibraheem, Oke-Ota Community Development Association Chairman : ‘’Immediately, I started knocking on other tenants’ doors because none of them knew what had happened …they were all still in deep sleep. I saw that a generator was on and the sound might have prevented them from hearing. I quickly put off the generator and hit the doors hard, they later came out’’. The community’s  chief security officer, Femi Oluwaloba, also told a similar story.

    Wolves like this unknown serial rapist operate in the night because it is the safest time to do evil. The more daring among them operate in the daytime, most times to their peril. These wolves operate in a pack, relying on the strength of their number to terrorise people. But this rapist is a lone wolf, who has turned the women of Ibeshe into his play thing. God saved the man that was caught last Sunday, exactly one week after the rapist, who is at large, mauled Mrs Jubreel. The people wanted to give him jungle justice thinking that he is the man, but for the intervention of their monarch, Oba Richard Ogunsanya, the Olu of Ibeshe, who insisted on inviting the police. The rapist is on the run, but the women who he raped will never forget the trauma. He ruined their lives just to satisfy his inordinate urge.

    What will make a man rape a 87-year-old woman as he did? What is his motive? To make money? Acquire spiritual power? Whatever it is,  I pray that the law will catch up with him. I felt like weeping when I read the story of his octogenarian victim who said she has accepted her fate. What else can the old woman do? Only the law can give her succour. May the law not disappoint her.

  • Crying wolf

    •Buhari should not be deterred by Jonathan’s ministers’ outburst

    If some of the ministers who served in the Goodluck Jonathan administration had their way, they would want Nigerians to decorate them with garlands for their ‘meritorious service’ to the nation. This is the impression one gets from the letter by the ministers to President Muhammadu Buhari, asking the president to give his predecessor ‘his due respect’. The former ministers say that the Buhari presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have been condemning, ridiculing and undermining the efforts of the Jonathan administration as well as rubbishing the integrity of its individual members.

    A statement issued on August 30 by Dr. Abubakar Suleiman, former Minister of National Planning, on behalf of the aggrieved ministers, put their grievances in bold relief: “We, the ministers who served under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, have watched with increasing alarm and concern the concerted effort by the Buhari administration and members of the APC to condemn, ridicule and undermine the efforts of that administration, in addition to impugning the integrity of its individual members”.

    And, as if to tell Nigerians that they made a mistake at the polls in March, the group added: “We are proud to have served Nigeria and we boldly affirm that we did so diligently and to the best of our abilities. The improvements that have been noticed today in the power sector, in national security and in social services and other sectors did not occur overnight. They are products of solid foundations laid by the same Jonathan administration.”

    It is regrettable that some of President Jonathan’s ministers would come out to say the kind of things that Dr Suleiman said, given the monumental disaster that their administration represented, leading inexorably to its defeat at the presidential election. Indeed, it shows how unserious and petty some of our highly-placed people could get in their self-delusion.

    We cannot see anything that President Buhari has done to warrant the complaint by these former ministers. Contrary to Dr Suleiman’s insinuation that the present government is painting every member of the Jonathan government with the tar of corruption, only a few of the former president’s ministers are being mentioned in most of the scandalous revelations and allegations that are making the rounds in the country.

    If Dr Suleiman cares to know, no one should have any apologies for saying the Jonathan administration was corrupt because that was the least that could be said about that government. So, the question of vilifying it does not arise. In the same vein, there is nothing that is ill-intentioned, unduly partisan, and in bad faith about the allegations.

    The best we would have expected Dr Suleiman to do was defend himself as a person if he was not involved in the monumental graft and primitive accumulation that have come to define that era.

    We urge the Buhari administration not to be intimidated by the ranting of these former ministers or any other group or association that might want to derail the government’s anti-corruption efforts. Rather, it should be more resolute in its bid to know what happened to our money, particularly in the Jonathan years. Lessons must be taught and learnt; and how do we do that if we do not beam the searchlight on that dark epoch in our national life?

    If, truly the former ministers agree as they claimed in the press statement, “that every administration has the right to chart its own path as it deems fit”, then they should leave the Buhari administration to pursue the anti-corruption war its own way. Anyone who feels offended by the way it is going about it can approach the courts for redress.

  • Akpabio and crying wolf

    Akpabio and crying wolf

    Akpabio, Akpabio!

    Let off that hail in The Nation Editorial Board suites, and you probably would elicit equally passionate but contradictory responses.

    Commendation: a socially responsible and historically conscious former governor, whose laudable education policy was aimed at ridding his people of the “houseboy/girl and cook syndrome”, by making education free, compulsory and attractive; and gifting his state monumental physical infrastructure, easily a generational reference point.

    And condemnation: a brash narcissist, who always thinks he remains the issue.  Whatever he says, no matter how ridiculous, he tends to feel that, because he says it, confers on it the wisdom of Solomon and the depth of Socrates.

    That is Ripples’ honest sweet-sour impression of Godswill Obot Akpabio, former governor of Akwa Ibom State, and newly minted Senate Minority Leader.

    That much is clear from Senator Akpabio’s latest crying wolf, over President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war, DSS’s alleged partisanship in election matters and of course, the restive Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) staff, agitating against a 50 per cent pay cut.

    “We can no longer run to the Villa for cash, so we don’t have the wherewithal to maintain that large number of secretariat workers”, Himself, Akpabio the Infallible, barked, in company with Uche Secondus, acting PDP national chairman, at a press conference.  “The workers should understand that they are in a master-servant relationship, in which you cannot force an unwilling master to keep a recalcitrant servant.  We are definitely going to downsize.”

    Pray, what was that?  No, not the master-servant stuff in employment matters.  That is trite, though a being less infallible would sure have been sweeter, less stark and less combative.

    Rather, it was the bit about running to the Villa for cash.  Was that a Freudian slip?  An Akpabio-istic hyperbole?  Or a hedge-and-be-damned combative war cry from He, who cannot be wrong?

    Whatever it was, was the PDP dipping its hands into the public till to run its business, simply because it ran the Presidency?  Mr. Akpabio’s dismissive roar tended to suggest such.

    But even if it were just the impassioned hyperbole from the House of Akpabio, it was harmful no less: for the senator’s arrogant diction seemed to portray the rump of a regnant impunity, that peaked in the power hubris, that finally smashed the PDP Humpty Dumpty.

    Imagine referring to your own party workers as near-contemptible urchins that must take it or chuck it!  Still, the least said on that the better: post-power PDP — and its workers — appear perfectly capable of carrying their cross!

    Which takes the discourse to the Akpabio and Secondus latest campaign on DSS’s alleged satanic activism on electoral officials allegedly linked to contentious polls; and President Buhari’s allegedly skewed anti-corruption war.

    Just as well the DSS, through Lawal Musa Daura, its director-general, has responded to the partisan allegations.  It’s left to the public to decide the more credible — the accuser or the accused.

    But, for Ripples, the issue is simple: a key security pillar of state becoming a partisan rod, does no one no good.  Under President Goodluck Jonathan, DSS was notorious for such brazen abuse.  By that same logic, it can’t be popular under President Buhari, if that vile habit has continued.

    If true, that would be a negation of building state institutions.  After all, to paraphrase US President Barack Obama, strong institutions deepen democracy, seldom strong personalities.

    It is, however, rich Mr. Akpabio is raising hell now.  What was his reaction to DSS excesses during the Jonathan presidency, when “golden girl” Marilyn Ogar became the stylish “Charlie’s Angel” (remember that American crime-busting TV series, that aired on ABC from 22 September 1976 – 24 June 1981 — and much later, via syndication, on NTA?) in the Jonathan government’s unending war against the opposition?

    On 8 August 2014, Lai Mohammed, then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesperson, with Sunday Dare and Salisu Shuaibu, were celebrated DSS pre-Osun gubernatorial election “prisoners of war”.

    On the spot, a DSS trooper alleged Alhaji Mohammed always “abused” Jonathan.  Even, if abusing the president was a crime — which it is not, though it may be tort if it is slander or libel — when did DSS become the courts to settle the matter in a one-way adjudication of summary arrest?  But Ms Ogar soon moved in to clear the air: those in the net were nabbed for “loitering” (another novel crime)!

    The same Ogar swiftly moved in to canonise DSS’s illegal raids — twice: the second, an open defiance of an express court order — on an APC IT facility in Lagos, brutalising the staff, wrecking assets.  The angelic Ms Ogar again weighed in with a plethora of “evidence”, suggestive of alleged electoral subversion.  True, Prof. Attahiru Jega’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would pour cold water on the DSS supposition, but the immaculate Ms. Ogar had spoken!

    Now, what was Mr. Akpabio’s reaction to these clear abuses, though then he was both Akwa Ibom governor and chair, PDP Governors Forum?  Perhaps as muffled back then, as his hell-raising now is shrill!

    Sure, that would appear immaterial, particularly if the allegation is true — for, ad hominem, his preferred reaction does not affect the objective reality on the ground.  But it pushes a legitimate case that Senator Akpabio, for partisan motives, might just be crying wolf where there is none.

    Besides, the states under reference, Akwa Ibom (where Akpabio was involved as a partisan) and Rivers, are instructive.  Media reports before, during and after the elections, in the two states, strongly suggest probable cases of grave electoral subversion (with lost lives and limbs to boot!), with alleged criminal collusion from ranking electoral officials and security agencies.

    The tribunals are adjudicating the allegations.  Still, the Akpabio-Secondus tag-team is not deluded enough to think that just crying partisan wolf would force the authorities to back off those with genuine cases to answer?

    The alleged Buhari one-sided corruption war speaks of a particularly virulent strain of political nihilism: accusation and counter-accusation soon democratically spreads the muck among a gullible people, uh?

    Though the Presidency itself has given a fitting response, the states where the PDP points a finger of guilt, Rivers and Lagos, are rather interesting.

    Even under PDP banners, Rivers under Rotimi Amaechi, from all objective analysis, had a lot going for it: its futuristic public schools, its effective post-militancy security infrastructure before murderous politicking set in, by a desperate but doomed presidency; and its huge investment in physical infrastructure.  The allegations would, therefore, appear a once sweet song turned sour — without prejudice to whatever the probing authorities may find.

    And Lagos under Babatunde Fashola?  Arguably, in his 2007-2015 set, Nigeria’s brightest advertisement for democracy.

    Even if he did nothing else, his clinical tackling of the Ebola virus remains a global reference.  If Lagos — and Nigeria — didn’t collapse under Ebola, Fashola earned all the plaudits.  Pre-Ebola, his place, in sane and responsible governance, was secure: a tremendous blessing to his generation. Besides, how come Fashola ran Lagos with admirable pluck, that earned a national reference?

    Rubbishing due praise is political nihilism taken too far.  More than the target individual, the system loses the credible dream of a glorious repeat.

    That is a loss a growing democracy can ill afford.

     

  • ABS’ Ichull now a Wolf

    ABS’ Ichull now a Wolf

    ABS midfielder, Lordson Ichull, has officially penned a two-year deal with Warri Wolves ahead of the 2013/14 Glo Premier League season.

    Ichull, who was ever present in relegated ABS’ midfield this past season, has been on the radar of a host of Glo Premier League sides, but Warri Wolves have won the race to sign the former Kwara Football Academy graduate.

    The 20-year-old told supersport.com that he was ecstatic about the move and hopes it will be a step forward in his career.

    “I can tell you that I’ve signed a two-year deal with Warri Wolves. I was satisfied with what they put on the table. Negotiations have been going on and speculation flew around that I had already signed, but I can reveal to you now that it has all been sorted,” he said.

    Ichull has already arrived in Warri and will begin training immediately with the Glo Premier League outfit as they prepare for the 2013/14 season.

    The Benue-born midfielder also explained why he chose Warri Wolves instead of the other clubs that have been hot on his heels.

    “There was a plethora of clubs willing to take me on, but various factors made me chose Warri Wolves. They are a stable team and are also on the continent (CAF Confederations Cup). That itself is a motivation for me to put myself out there and show what I can do. I believe I made the right choice,” Ichull added.