The sudden resignation of the pope or abdication of his authority or papacy or reign came to all Catholic faithful and indeed religious people all over the world as a shock. This the pontiff attributed to old age and his inability to be strong to continue in his capacity as Saint Peter’s successor and head of the Catholic fold.

This hasn’t happened in the history of the church for 400 years. This brings to mind the recent retirement of His eminence Anthony Cardinal Okojie, Emeritus Archbishop of Lagos, and many other religious and clergymen.

Maturity and an understanding of the rigours associated with their offices informed their decisions. Our prayers is for the Catholics all over the world to be guided by God to have a worthy successor to the pope and grant the pope blessings, favours and sound health in retirement. This we import to our own situation in Nigeria albeit Africa where our leaders and men in authority sit tight and want perpetuation or die in power. Being an ex-leader makes one’s input and opinions well-sought after and encourages one to put one’s house in order in case of the eventuality.

Leadership is about service even in retirement; elder statesmen and other men and women of repute are always a crown to the development of any community or nation. Like the saying goes, health is wealth. Our leaders should know when to call it quits or draw the curtain on their careers for it is better and far honourable to bequeath a legacy in one’s lifetime. A word, they say, is enough for the wise.

Anyanwu Nnaemeka (ace_brothers@yahoo.com)

It was billed as mission impossible by cynics who have seen past attempts at mergers and alliances by political parties fizzle at the altar of outsize egos and gargantuan ambitions. And, the speed with which four major opposition parties announced the formation of the All Peoples Congress (APC) was, to say the least, dizzying.

Of all the reactions to the event, the one I found most entertaining was that by the national chairman of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Bamanga Tukur. At a time when Nigeria’s football team, the Super Eagles, decided to shock a jaded nation with its exploits in South Africa, it was not surprising that Tukur would succumb to a sporting metaphor to respond to an equally unscripted political development.

“If they have the strength why do they come together?” he wondered. “If you go for a contest you have the striker, you know Lionel Messi, PDP is Messi in the contest. They (opposition) are not a threat at all, it is better; it will inspire PDP to action.

For the uninitiated, Lionel Messi is the pint-sized Argentinean dynamo who plays for the top Spanish La Liga side, Barcelona. He is quick, consistent and skilful beyond belief. Those are not words that you would ordinarily use to describe the PDP – a lumbering, bumbling, unwieldy assemblage of disparate interests welded together for so long, by the sole fact that in 13 years it has remained the surest path to power at the center.

I didn’t expect Tukur to react to the news by saying he and his party men were shaking in their boots. Although, PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Olisah Metuh, did issue a statesmanlike statement welcoming the merger, some leading members of his party have been to quickly dismissive.

On the face of it they have grounds to be so cavalier. In 2011, Muhammadu Buhari’s infant Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) went into a late-hour mating dance. The alliance effort was half-hearted, but more critically, it was grievously ill-timed coming as it did just a few weeks before polling day.

Many will also recollect another chaotic attempt at electoral collaboration in 1999. By the time of elections, leaders of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) who had dashed in and out of the nascent PDP and All Peoples Party (APP) for all manner of reasons, found themselves boxed into the South-West.

The only way to power at federal level was to cooperate with the then APP which appeared to enjoy some popularity across the northern states. It turned out the APP’s supposed strength was exaggerated. Some of its leading lights like Umaru Shinkafi whom the AD-APP alliance was depending upon were roundly trounced. More than incompatibility, the 1999 failure was more because the collaboration was rushed – leaving no time for adequate mobilisation of the people and familiarisation with the political platform.

Again, one of the reasons why such mergers and alliances had failed in the past was down to the presence of larger-than-life figures who led the potential partners, and whose ambitions stood in the way of genuine cooperation.

When they were alive the ambitions of the likes of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, were considerable cogs that made any talk of cooperation between the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP) little more than a pipe dream.

Many will see in the APC that same challenge given that Buhari still dreams of reaching the presidency. Some in the new partnership believe he remains a hard sell in other parts of the country, and prefer he anoints a younger individual around whom the new party can rally. But there’s no sense that the general has decided to sacrifice his aspiration. The only light at the end of the tunnel might be that the other parties have decided to live with the reality that the general will run one final time.

Of course, many PDP strategists believe Buhari can never win an election in Nigeria. That much has been said by Dr. Doyin Okupe, Public Affairs Adviser to the President. Since we are still throwing football metaphors and analogies around, I might just add that in politics as in sport anything is possible. The current Super Eagles team at the African Cup of Nations went there unheralded. Many expected them to be humiliated by Cote d’Ivoire. Today, they will be playing in the finals against another underrated and unheralded bunch of no-hoppers – Burkina Faso!

I suggest that rather than laugh and think that it will be business as usual, the PDP should be worried for all manner of reasons. Even if the opposition does nothing else, they have managed something major with the creation of the APC given their differences and the personalities who have agreed to subsume parties where they were once lords and masters, and join a bigger team where they will just be one of the major players. In Nigerian politics that is not something to sneer at.

Will there be disagreements? Of course, there will be. Will someone people suddenly make an about-turn when they fail to get what they hoped for? Depend on it! Will some people starting carping about a lack of ideological purity? Of course, they will.

But like the pragmatic former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, once told his nitpicking colleagues in the then opposition Labour Party: even if you have the best ideas you can never do anything about them for as long as you remain in opposition. His message was clear: Labour had to downplay the ideological grandstanding and find ways to make themselves electable.

In the very existence of the APC today, Nigerian opposition politicians are finally waking up to the reality that PDP could govern for 60 years, as they have threatened to, unless they find a way to make themselves electable.

Another reason the PDP should worry is that the key pillars in the new party have strength in two zones with the greatest haul of electoral votes: North-West and South-West. With that as foundation and with pick-ups in other zones, they can easily make the constitutional requirement of winning one-third of votes cast in two-thirds of the states of the federation. Believe it or not, there is a clear path way to Aso Rock for the APC.

Lying like a time-bomb in the belly of the PDP is the President Goodluck Jonathan factor. Will he run or will he not? After the bitter zoning battles of 2011, and the unwritten understanding that he will govern for just one term, another bid by the incumbent is bound to fracture the party – to the benefit of a new, credible platform with a realistic chance of going all the way.

Another factor the ruling party has to be concerned about is PDP-fatigue. Across the world the electorate often gets to a point where they just become bloody-minded, tired of the same old faces, and would gladly throw them overboard if there is a credible alternative in sight. Margaret Thatcher was kicked out by voters after 13 years in power for similar reasons. Come 2015 the PDP would have been in power 16 years non-stop.

As a kid growing up in the 70s, I became familiar with a particular brand of analgesic called APC. The new opposition party can turn out to be Nigeria’s pain killer if its leading lights can show that their desire to get into power in order to implement their ideas is far greater than all their egos put together. That is the real challenge: forming the new party was the easy part.

– Festus Eriye

Read original article via The Nation

This nation has been ‘independent’ for more than 52 years [some will say ‘gained flag independence’], yet as of today the promise of independence has become a mirage and the immense potential at the ‘birth’ of our independent nation recklessly frittered away.
The focus and pre-occupation of the ruling elites throughout these 52 years has been largely around the organised, conscious, systematic and unrestrained looting of the national treasury and pillage of our collective wealth!

From these concerted gang rape of our country’s resources have emerged stupendous concentration of ill-gotten wealth in a few hands, and the mass impoverisation of the overwhelming majority of our peoples. A situation that is manifested in the immense gap between the rich and the poor, with the top 10% richest Nigerians owning 41% of national wealth, while the bottom 20% of poorest Nigerians own a mere 4.1% of national wealth! A staggering scale of injustice indeed!
To understand and underscore the scale, as well as the impact of this rot let us take a cursory look at what can only be the tip of the iceberg!

In the period between July 2010 and June 2012, a period of 2 years, according to investigations by a team at Punch Newspapers, this country lost over 5 Trillion Naira to budgetary and extra-budgetary fraud and corruption, an amount roughly equivalent to the size of the 2013 appropriation bill/federal budget!

Through the petroleum subsidy regime alone, between 1.7 Trillion [more than the capital vote proposed in the 2013 appropriation bill] and 3 Trillion [more than half the 2013 appropriation bill] Naira has been lost to fraud and corruption since 2010!

Similarly in the 10 years between 2001 and 2010 [a period spanning the regimes of both ‘yesterday’s and today’s men and women of power], according to investigations of the Senate committee, the country is littered with approximately 12,000 abandoned infrastructural projects, costing 7.7 Trillion Naira, and for which 2.2 Trillion Naira had already been paid in mobilisation fees!

And as if this is not enough from the Fika committee set up by the Federal Executive Council [FEC], we now know that this nation expends 1.3Trillion Naira annually on the salaries and allowances of just 18,000 top federal functionaries and senior civil servants alone! 18,000 public servants gulping away 1.3 Trillion Naira annually, an amount more than the annual capital vote for any year since the return to civil rule in 1999.
Yet this grand piracy is compounded by the inhumane treatment that is meted out to the poor, whose poverty is a direct result of the light fingered treasury looting greed and gross incompetence of this shameless ruling elite! The poor are condemned to live in slums, which these brigands then turn around to demolish without remorse, forcefully evicting millions of citizens across the country and rendering homeless. A ruling elite that will not facilitate access to affordable housing for the poor turns round to contemptuously demolish the homes they have provided for themselves!

It is not just the dwelling places of the poor that this elite attacks, it is also their means of livelihoods! The poor forced to erk out meager existence on the fringe of the economy are then attacked at the source of their income! Okada riders are banned and harassed; bus drivers are chased out of city centers to make way for elite owned and operated subsidised luxury buses; street vendors and small kiosk operators are harassed, brutalized, their wares seized and small structures destroyed as illegal structures, all over the country! And all of these is done without provision of any alternatives accessible to the poor in the process of their being dispossessed of their meager properties!
And in this race of primitive accumulation through treasury looting, unmerited state patronage and the dispossession of the poor, it does not mater what wing of the ruling elite is in and exercising power! So-called progresthieves and Conservathieves alike have been involved in this audacious mis-governance and atrocious pillage and looting of the treasury!

The result of the callous rule of these thieving elite over the past 52 years is very glaringly displayed for all to see! The parlous and prostrate nature of basic infrastructures and services: impassable trunk roads and un-motorable rural feeder roads [despite the investment of more than 500Billion Naira since 1999 alone – take for instance the East-West road under construction for more than 20 years, with tens, if not hundreds of billions of naira already spent; only for the sitting Niger Delta Minister to inform us that we require additional 189 Billion naira to complete the road, an amount that is more than the annual budgets of at 18 of the 36 states of the federation].

What about electricity? Generation [not distribution] capacity still hovers around 4,300 MWs after 52 years of independence, and after more than $27bn investment since 1999 alone! And Education and health? The mere fact that these shameless elite cannot dare treat themselves for even the most basic of ailments in our hospitals, nor will trust the education of their children to our public education system speaks volume for the current state of the provision of these basic services.

They then aggravate the consequences of their ineptitude and thievery with their inability to combat crime and insecurity. Under their thieving and callous watch, our nation has been wracked by various types and levels of armed insurgencies across almost every corner of the country. The waterways and coastlines are infested by pirates and oil thieves! In-land, the highways and bush paths, include neighbourhoods are overrun by armed robbers and kidnappers!

It seems like unlike the fabled Midas, everything these thieving elites touch is converted to their personal use, appropriated for themselves; while every life of citizens they are supposed to touch is consequently devastated!

This is why the euphoria greeting the announcement of the merger of the opposition parties among sections of particularly the newly active youth is perplexing and misplaced! These ruling elites have been tested over the past 52 years and they have failed! No amount of remixing or rejigging of their platforms can represent any hope for our country; for the liberation of our nation and the social emancipation of her peoples!
Amongst them are tired and recycled hands in the ruling and opposition parties! What manner of hope can be put in this lot? What manner of miracle can they wrought? What are they doing with the power entrusted to them now? What did they do with the power entrusted to them previously? What have they done with the power they hijacked and have monopolised in their many incarnations in the corridors of power as well as in its inner chambers?

Across the world today, in many climes, a younger generation [young not only in age but also in the freshness of their ideas and approaches to governance] are coming forth to the center of politics, and even taking over the governance of their countries! Men and women in their 30s and 40s, who were born in the turbulence of the 60s and 70s of the last century, have moved or are moving to the fore. However here, concerned Nigerian citizens, the age mates of those now governing across Europe, America, and other parts, are still looking up to spent and tired hands, who have spent a life time trudging the corridors and inner chambers of power, to help us organise and lead the process of emancipating ourselves and our country from their own death grip! How can this be possible?
There is surely a different path that can be taken towards achieving our freedom, redeeming our society and transforming our country to the benefit of the overwhelming majority of her citizens now locked out.
This is a challenge to all of us who are the victims of the misrule and grand theft of this inept treasury looting ruling elite; this is a challenge and a clarion call for us to work together to organise the political platform and party, independent of these treacherous ruling elites, with which to battle with and wrest political power from them.

I am part of such a process, one of several, all of which must at some point merge their different tributaries into a mighty stream, whose tidal waves alone can be strong enough to precipitate the deluge that will flush out these looters.
Come join with us as we build an alternative platform: the Democratic Party For Socialist Reconstruction [DPSR] to Take Back Nigeria.

Follow me on Twitter: @jayegaskia; Interract with me at Jaye Gaskia & Take Back Nigeria on FaceBook.

Yesterday 7th February, 2013 we got news of the successful merger of the opposition parties (ACN, ANPP, APGA and CPC) which has been ongoing for quite a time now pending INEC’s ratification.  They came together to form the APC = All Progressives Congress. As expected, there will be supporters, skeptics and those who antagonize.

I have been waiting for this outcome for quite a long time, I believe it is the only realistic revolution we can have in Nigeria to effect change that won’t involve bloodshed (Well, minimal bloodshed). The reason for my belief is due to the poor condition and the sorry state the PDP led administration in the last 14 years has put Nigerians through. The APC as we know still parades PDP elements and those members who may have decamped for one reason or the other.

Our nascent democracy won’t survive in the hands of incompetent leaders for long, it will continue to cost us the future of our kids and the gradual death of the positive potentials our generation possesses. Now that we have another mega-party, I strongly believe it will keep the PDP on its toes. It will force them to act now in the interest of the general public or lose the next election. I am of the opinion that the PDP have taken Nigerians for granted so long because they haven’t faced a serious competition. Now that the APC is coming on board, they know they have an incredible competitor and they’ll do everything not to lose grip of power. That is if APC lives up to it’s billing.

Something is better than nothing! We can’t settle for just anything but we can’t also let that deter us from lighting the fire under PDP. The PDP’s grip on power needs to be loosened as soon as possible, for us to uphold our democracy and make it participatory. No party should be guaranteed a win as the case is presently. There is need to flash them the badge of “sit up or get out” and without a credible opposition or a good plan in place, we are just labouring in pain.

14 years is more than enough for a political party to build a strong foundation, it is enough to salvage certain ills in the society and it is enough time to convince the people that the movement is geared towards reasonable and beneficial one. The PDP led administration has failed in this respect, I urge us all to give the APC a try. Yes, I know leadership shouldn’t be a trial and error thing, but can we afford to dance to PDP’s horrible music over and over again?

This is the time for us to get down to work and do something. It is not the time for lazy or petty talks, surely no time to look for loopholes. It is the time to drill the APC and know what they have in stock for us. It is the time to let them know we will hold them accountable for everything promised. It is time for us to demand for their manifesto and study it. This is not the time to rubbish the party, this is not the time to be all pessimistic, and it is not the time to point fingers without providing realistic alternatives.

However, it is important to know that the APC are no saviours, we are the ultimate saviours because sovereignty lies in our hands, and it is time for us to decide which party we will support or join. We can only be hopeful that the APC brings the change we clamour for. Having great minds in both parties will be a huge plus for the country. It is high time Nigeria had two great parties and two great alternatives. That will do our nation a whole lot of good, no doubt.

The APC is still a work in progress and I’ll urge Nigerians not to ruin this opportunity with continuous and unnecessary skepticism. If you don’t support APC then you are in the hands of the PDP, there are NO saints in politics everywhere in the world. Morality without will to compromise is not a potent ingredient in politics, we need to understand this. Politics is a combination of the good and bad but the ‘bad’ must not overshadow the good. The outcome has to be positive, has the PDP given us this?

Democracy is all about viable alternatives, the APC could be that viable alternative which must be supported. It is time for us to be vigilant, it is time for us as a people to come together and ask for the very best from both parties. We still have 2 years to 2015, we can’t afford to wait till then before we act as citizens, let us put the heat on this current administration, the 2 years shouldn’t be a repeat of the wasted years.

We don’t have to necessarily join partisan politics to project progress. Some of us need to be on the look out to act as check for the actors, but being an ordinary critic without efficiently looking for ways to effect change is useless. Part of the efficient acts is educating the masses on need to vote and protect their votes. It is important to vote when the time comes and not say “They are all bad I’m not voting”.

The future of Nigeria is in our hands. Let’s give the APC a chance and for those keen on partisan politics, why not examine the manifesto of APC and see if you can align with it. Make haste before the bad eggs of PDP start decamping into the APC.

God Bless Nigeria!

By AAABORODE
Edited by Debo Adejugbe

It was considered one of the more remarkable points in the relationship between the executive and legislative arms of the Federal Government when at the end of last year that the National Assembly passed the 2013 budget proposals. Now all the gains are about to unravel.

It was the first time in the life of the fourth republic that the budget of the Federal Government had been prepared before the commencement of the fiscal year. But now what was considered a spectacular landmark only few weeks ago is about turning out to be an anti-climax.

Both President Goodluck Jonathan and the National Assembly it has emerged are weighing their options following a blunt refusal by the legislators to reconsider objections raised by the president on some specific issues in the budget as passed by the National Assembly.

President Jonathan had during a meeting with the National Assembly leadership on January 25 in the presidential villa raised his concerns on the budget and some clauses planted into the budget document approved by the National Assembly.

At the end of the meeting and reflecting the difficulties raised at the closed door session, the president of the senate, Senator David Mark had parried questions raised to him by anxious newsmen that accosted him.

While the president was reported not to have directly questioned the decision of the National Assembly to raise the budget from N4.92 trillion as proposed by him to N4.98 trillion, the president had at the meeting raised his concern over some projects he said were not well funded and others which received superior funding to what was desired by the administration.

He was also reported to have seriously expressed his discomfort on the clause in the budget barring the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC from funding its activities with Oteh as director-general and the decision to raise the benchmark for oil revenue from $75 to $79 per barrel.

The legislators were said to have listened favourably to the president and promised to get back to him on the issues of the funding details. They were, however, firm on not reconsidering the issue of Oteh and the benchmark.

Ms Oteh, in particular has suddenly become a burden for the administration. Arguably one of the shining intellectual lights of the administration, the director-general’s seeming bad politics has rubbed off negatively on other political stakeholders.

While the House of Representatives has been largely criticized for shielding its own deviants, the administration has also come in for questioning for shielding Oteh who was found by the House to lack the necessary qualifications for the position of director-general. The House resolution asking the presidency to sack Ms Oteh was ignored.

“When he mentioned the issues of the funding and all that, the legislators promised that they would see what they could do, but on the benchmark and Oteh, the president met a brick wall as mum was the word from all the legislators present,” multiple sources familiar with the development told Vanguard at the weekend.

The National Assembly had in passing the 2013 budget barred SEC from utilising its funds with Oteh as DG. The action of the National Assembly followed the report of the House of Representatives committee on capital markets which affirmed that Oteh did not have the minimum requirements to hold the position of DG.

Oteh had on her part before the submission of the report levelled allegations of corruption against the leadership of the house committee on capital market. Mr. Herman Hembe, the erstwhile chairman of the committee and his former deputy, Ifeanyi Azubogu are presently standing trial for allegedly collecting estacode from SEC for travels that they didn’t go on.

While the leadership at the meeting with the president immediately refused his entreaty to revisit the matter of Oteh and the benchmark, they had, however, promised to pass on his message for a revision of some portion of the funding provisions of the budget.

On returning the leadership of the two houses had passed on the president’s message to the legislators it was learnt as at last weekend were unyielding.

The legislators, Vanguard learnt at the weekend, are claiming that any alteration to the budget would amount to an amendment which they said should go through due process.

“Under what law can the budget be revisited after it has been passed and transmitted to the president?” one legislator familiar with the development asked at the weekend.

While some were hopeful that a way would be found around the issues, many are, however, not waiting for such.

A number of the legislators it was learnt have commenced moves to mobilise their colleagues to override the president if by February 17 the president does not give his assent to the budget.

The budget was transmitted to the president on January 17 and he has a latitude of 30 days to give his assent to the budget bill or turn it back raising his objections or keep mum which in effect would amount to a veto.

Close observers of the latest development were especially downcast flowing from what they claimed was the hard work put in by senior presidential aides and the legislators to pass the budget before the end of the last financial year.

Arising from the discontent, a clamour to overturn the president’s objections to the budget is springing up among the legislators. The clamour, would, however, have to wait till February 17 to get a life of its own because the law says that the President should be given 30 days before the National Assembly can revisit the issue.  The    budget was transmitted to the president on January 17.

Section 59 (4) making provisions for an override of a presidential veto states thus:
Where the President, within thirty days after the presentation of the bill to him, fails to signify his assent or where he withholds assent, then the bill shall again be presented to the National Assembly sitting at a joint meeting, and if passed by two-thirds majority of members of both houses at such joint meeting, the bill shall become law and the assent of the President shall not be required.

via Vanguard

Colombian singer Shakira today introduced baby Milan Pique Mebarak to the world via twitter. The entertainer tweeted an adorable pic of her footballer boyfriend Gerald Pique and their tiny bundle of joy.
“Meet our baby boy Milan” she tweeted alongside the picture.

READ MOREhttp://www.yenihsworld.com/2013/02/picture-of-day-shakiras-baby-milan.html

One of the most important and dramatic emblem of democratic citizenship is the right to criticize a government. No amount of glorious hyperbole by the government or its agents could stop critics from airing their views.

Reuben Abati’s article “The Hypocrisy of Yesterday’s Men” is a sharp rebuke of revolving PDP beneficiaries of political spoils.
Reuben Abati, President Jonathan’s senior adviser on media and publicity as well as Aso Rock attack dog came out swinging on past and present critics of Jonathan’s administration.

I will not dignify the article by responding to the phantom of fear dressed up as substance by Abati. However, a general comment will be in order.
The write-up is undisguised propaganda ploy of Abati’s pleasant fantasy to shut up the critics of Jonathan’s government and hope they’ll for ever remain silent.

The Aso Rock way of operating a democratic government is to hurl accusations and insults on critics who are merely expressing their democratic rights.
Abati’s writings are anti-democratic. They amount to democratic apartheid to stifle the freedom of speech and freedom of expression of Nigerians.

He has been consistently hostile by trying to gag, coerce, intimidate, and muzzle voices of dissent and views diametrically opposed to the PDP led federal government.

In representative democracy, the majority that rules has all the powers over the minority that loses. Elections have consequences. However, the succinct characteristic in the relationship between majority rule and democracy is the right of dissent.

Whenever a government sees critics as enemies, and is all out to erect barriers to prevent opposing views, such government is delicately perched on the coat tail of tyranny of the majority.

James Madison warned, “If a majority be united by a common interest (corruption, fraud, repression of people’s views as in the case of PDP government), the rights of the minority (those outside the ruling class) will be insecure.

Madison elaborates further that in order to prevent the tyranny of the majority, there must be safeguards to protect “one part of the society against injustice of the other part.”

The concentration of all powers in the same hands, Madison warned, “whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Madison’s concern about the tyranny of the majority is that the majority may not represent the whole. As in the case of the majority rule PDP federal government, the government does not represent all the competing interests of our people.

As the PDP central government has demonstrated through financial profligacy, redundant     policies and programs time after time, the majority is self-interested, greedy, arrogant, ignorant, insensitive, and indifferent to the concerns of the people.

The majority becomes tyrannical when the self-interested majority does not give a damn about what the governed thinks, says, or feels.

When the majority is fixed and permanent in power for so long similar to PDP’s hold on power for years now, there will be no checks on its ability to be overbearing. Despotism, Madison insists, must be opposed “whether it came from kings, Lords, or the people.”

Abati, no doubt has taken leave of his senses. He’s an obsessive advocate of anything Jonathan – senseless or stupid.

He believes the critics of Mr. Jonathan are implacably hostile to the person of Mr. Jonathan. Abati feels the critics are not authenticated Nigerians.

The battle for spin control on the views, perceptions, and criticisms of Jonathan’s administration can never be won by propaganda. Rather, it will leave Aso Rock more distracted, more disorganized, more disarrayed, and more paralyzed.

We need a debate on issues not on personalities. What Abati is doing is when the Jonathan administration is criticized, he demonized, when challenged, he demonized some more!

Abati no doubt, is willing to be mean, nasty, rude, crude, and raw because he’s willing to do anything to deceive the people.

It’s been said that “differences of opinion make horse races.” But in Abati’s case they do not. In his pontifical defense of a corrupt, insensitive, and ineffective government; Abati has surnamed thoughtful and creative critics as dangerous radicals.

Tocqueville once asked: “What is a majority, in its collective capacity, if not an individual with opinions, and usually with interests, contrary to those of another individual, called the minority?”

Tocqueville believes that a group (such as Aso Rock propagandists) is not wiser that its parts.

The fact that the PDP run government supports or initiates a policy/program or enacts a law is no evidence of its wisdom. The people’s interests more often than not are excluded in the PDP’s scheme of things.

I think it is a cruel joke on the part of Abati to attack critics of Jonathan’s administration with distorting vituperations and to label them as yesterday’s hypocrites.

In the words of the Sanza Player in Aime Cesaire’s play, A season in the Congo, “Even when a man has good eyes, you have to show him some things.”
If the critics were yesterday’s hypocrites, what shall we call Abati of today? :  Yesterday’s hypocrite and today’s pharisee!

Political struggles should not be a contest between rulers and people. For a government that worth its salt, political struggle should be a struggle to make life happier, safer, better, and prosperous for the people.

The work of a responsive and responsible government is not to transcend different interests, but to reconcile them.

In an ideal democracy, the majority would rule but the people would also be protected against the power of majorities.

No amount of propaganda, arm-twisting, distortions, fabrications, and intimidation by the Aso Rock propaganda coterie will quell the firestorm that the ineptly corrupt Jonathan administration continues to ignite.

The tirade unleashed on the critics by Abati sends our intellectual and moral nature to a fierce revolt. In essence, Abati has derationalized the debate.
Abati’s venom on the critics is a product of some heated imagination. It’s a product of blurred vision typical of ecstatic and half-hysterical propaganda disciple.

In days like these when death is busy and loss is common to Nigerians, when hunger, joblessness, and homelessness ravaged the land, when young ones are written off as lost generations, when the country is headed into the abyss, no academic writing can rewrite the situation on the ground.

The reality on ground lends no evidential value to Abati’s article. Blogger Sunkanmi Adesina on The Nigerian of Our Dream Group sums it better: “The article is full of words, yet it conveys no iota of common sense regarding the allegation on ground.”

Abati reminds me of the great truth which Browning teaches in his poem “A Grammarian’s Funeral.” There he depicts a scholar “dead from the waist down” because of his fastidiousness to the practice of his craft.

Like the Grammarian, Abati pursues the goal of distortion and disinformation with effortless stylistic literary gem believing that will change the hard life faced by impoverished millions of Nigerians.

The Hypocrisy of Yesterday’s Men – is Abati’s Grammarian’s funeral!

Only last week, US Billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates in an interview said: “Nigeria really needs to think that relative to its level of wealth, it is really far from behind.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron the G8 President in a similar vein remarked: “…corruption and mismanagement of huge oil wealth still continues to deny the nation’s (Nigeria) people of their prosperity.”

“Nigeria oil exports were worth almost a hundred billions,” continued Cameron. “That is more than the total net aid to the whole of sub Saharan Africa,” said Cameron.

“So, put simply, unleashing the natural resources in these countries dwarfs anything aid can achieve, and transparency is absolutely critical to that end,” concludes Cameron.

Instead of Mr. Jonathan and his staff to roll up their sleeves and get down working and solving the country’s problems, they continue to churn out useless and sickening cacophonies.

I’m sick and tired of the threadbare excuse that Mr. Jonathan didn’t create the problems. That’s not the issue and of course it is beside the point. That’s a dishonest way of debating the issue.

What we’re saying is what’s Mr. Jonathan doing and what’s he going to do about the problems?

Can Abati and other congenital fools employ some rational thinking and nuggets of wisdom instead of using reverse psychology to slice and dice important national issues?

Is Abati saying that we don’t have right to question the government for allocating N4bn for First Lady’s Mission House?

Can’t we discuss the rationale for: N5bn rehabilitation of Abuja prostitutes? Seven billion Naira for a new city gate for Abuja?  N16bn for the Vice-President’s house? Cell phones for farmers?

How can a government gets its priorities so twisted, so warped, so comedic, and so completely out of logic to allocate money for the above absurdities when the country’s safety and stability are being threatened by 80% unemployment and 70% of our people living below the poverty line?

The critics of the government may lose in the short run, but they cannot be suppressed in the long run. Public dialogue is critical to represent all perspectives. No one viewpoint should be permitted to monopolize, distort, caricature, or shape public debate.

Suppressing the people’s viewpoint is part of the tyranny of the majority. It is excluding their representation or preferences from government’s priorities and policies.

We need a broad public conversation about issues of representative justice that seeks practical solutions to real-life problems.

– by Bayo Oluwasanmi  (byolu@aol.com)

via SaharaReporters

Nigeria’s crisis of leadership has grown so malignant that one is frequently tempted to cry, “Where is Fela Anikulapo-Kuti when we need him?” The latest distraction is news that former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his posse are at war with President Goodluck Jonathan and his circle. Were Fela alive today, he would have deployed his rhetorical genius to examine this astonishing drama. Fela had this inimitable facility for finding the right expressive idiom to lay bare the machinations of “authority people.”

Trust Fela: he would have come up with the most eloquent phrase for the absurdity playing itself out in Nigeria, the “government magic” behind the supposed feud between a man, Obasanjo, and his beloved son, Jonathan.
At any rate, that musical maestro with a prescient philosophic acumen would have recognized the precise nature of Nigeria’s tragedy-in-progress. We are starved for true, tested, focused leadership. We desire – and, I dare hope, deserve – a leadership that understands that the space called Nigeria is woefully backward in every index that counts. Nigerians are hungry for a leadership willing and able to meet the arduous challenge of humanizing our environment. Instead, we are being treated, once again, to some silly, inelegant theater that presumes to be a war.

The latest incarnation of this manufactured war was provoked by Oby Ezekwesili – a former minister and due process czar in the Obasanjo Presidency. In a speech at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Ms. Ezekwesili (most recently a top official of the World Bank) implied that the Umaru Yar’Adua and Jonathan administrations had irresponsibly squandered much of the nearly $70 billion they inherited in foreign reserves. You’d think that she had questioned the law of gravity for the fury of the response that issued from Mr. Jonathan’s coterie. She was pilloried as a liar, categorized as a yeoman for Mr. Obasanjo, accused of elephantine wastage during her ministerial stint, and described as unworthy of engagement in a debate she called for. In Nigerian parlance, she was both “rubbished” and “finished.”

The Ezekwesili World War was still simmering when Mr. Obasanjo opened up a different sector of conflict. Last week, several Nigerian newspapers culled an interview in which Mr. Obasanjo, again, censured Mr. Jonathan for failing to arrest Boko Haram’s terror scourge. In a fierce response, one of Mr. Jonathan’s aides told Obasanjo what the present administration thinks of him – not much!

This whole messy affair should disturb Nigerians because, as an American friend of mine would say, there’s nothing there. It is a typical political exercise, a concatenation of attacks and counter-attacks in which nothing as substantial as a principle is at stake. It’s an ego-driven, feigned war between two men – Obasanjo and Jonathan – and their two camps. But the two sides share the same fundamental outlook on misgoverning Nigeria and impoverishing our lives.

At heart, both Mr. Obasanjo and his protégé, Mr. Jonathan, are one. For all of Obasanjo’s veiled and direct criticisms of the late Mr. Yar’Adua and Mr. Jonathan, the fact remains that he foisted both men on the Peoples Democratic Party as candidates. Obasanjo was the closest thing to an imperial president. He could easily have chosen any other pair and forced the PDP to acquiesce in his choice. Instead, he insisted on a Yar’Adua hobbled by grave illness and a Jonathan whose record in public office – as a deputy governor and governor – was far from impressive. And he was the ubiquitous, visible campaigner-in-chief for the two men. He dominated each campaign event. At each stop, he seized the podium to vouch for his self-chosen successors. He told Nigerians that the tag team of Yar’Adua and Jonathan was the only one to safeguard, sustain and build on his achievements as the (self-proclaimed) founder of modern Nigeria – never mind that his tenure was tall on propaganda and short on real, enduring accomplishments.

Call me a sucker for conspiracy theories if you wish, but I suspect that Mr. Obasanjo knew exactly what he was doing when he decided on his successors – and underwrote their “landslide” triumph in an election he notoriously declared a do-or-die affair. Nigerians had denied Obasanjo his fantasy about a third term in office. If you ask me, then, I’d hazard that a miffed Obasanjo set out to give us grief. He designed a future in which he could assail the men he installed in office as weak, confused and ineffectual – and be assured of our collective assent and corroboration.

Those possessed of a long memory should not be fooled. Often, I receive telephone calls from friends or acquaintances who argue that Obasanjo’s presidency was better than those of Mr. Yar’Adua and Mr. Jonathan. On such occasions, I give two responses. One is to remind my interlocutor that it makes little sense to apply the word “better” in discussing three mediocre, middling presidencies. It strikes me as odd to describe a pupil who scores 30% in an exam as better than another who scored 26%. The important fact is that both students FAILED. Beyond that, I also stipulate that the Yar’Adua and Jonathan administrations ought to be properly seen as extensions of Obasanjo’s legacy.

Life for everyday Nigerians continues to deteriorate, to descend into ever more brutish, nasty states. Mr. Jonathan’s apologists boast about improvements in the power sector. Yet, during my recent visit to Nigeria, I visited a friend whose area had not had one second of electric power in five straight days. Of what use is it to tell such a man that Nigeria now generates twice the quantity of megawatts from the levels when Mr. Obasanjo misran the country?

Though he’s no Fela, presidential spokesman Reuben Abati last week struck a plausible note when he called yesterday’s men and women hounding Mr. Jonathan by a fitting name: hypocrites. Ms. Ezekwesili was once hyped as a champion of due process. Yet, that gloss was extremely thin. She served in an administration that blew $10 billion or more on the power sector – with nothing to show for it. Did due process go to sleep as Mr. Obasanjo paid huge sums of cash to companies that simply disappeared, never to do the job that was paid for – or to be seen again? She was also there when US authorities caught one of Mr. Obasanjo’s closest aides for ferrying close to $200,000 in raw cash on a presidential jet into New York City. Part of the money was used to buy a Mercedes Benz, and close to $50,000 to purchase equipment for Mr. Obasanjo’s farm in Ota, Ogun State. That bizarre transaction violated both US and Nigerian laws about cash movements. US authorities extracted a fine of $26,000 from the president’s aide. Nigerian authorities pretended that – to use a popular Nigerian saying – “nothing spoil.” Did Ms. Ezekwesili ever raise any objection to that scandal, or insist that the presidential aide face the legal consequences?

It bears repeating: the spat between the Obasanjo and Jonathan crowds is not informed by any differences in principle. Why are we even arguing about the size of foreign reserves when our citizens have no decent hospitals to go to, our schools – from elementary to university – are dilapidated, our roads are a shambles, power supply remains woeful, and most Nigerians have to pee and defecate in the open, like animals?

Serious leaders around the world spend their waking hours thinking up strategies for improving the lot of their people, and positioning their nations as players in the global economy. Nigeria’s pretend-leaders spend half of their waking hours scheming over who, among a set of undesirable parasites, is to become the ruling party’s next chairman of the Board of Trustees; the other half on depraved conspiracies to corner scandalous sums of public funds for their private use!

In the end, the Obasanjo and Jonathan camps do not disagree on a fundamental point: that the mindless, unconscionable screwing of hapless Nigerians should continue. In fact, to speak about them as two camps is a misnomer. They have a shared consensus on the things that matter to them.

They hurl accusations of corruption across the faux lines, but they will never unmask themselves – never let Nigerians into the real gist, or initiate any serious prosecution. They’re staunch believers in the sharing of oil blocks among themselves – at the price of a breeze. They believe it’s better to transport themselves and members of their families to foreign hospitals rather than fund modern healthcare for all Nigerians. It makes more sense to them to buy up more private jets and acquire more swanky homes abroad than fix our roads. They will continue to cart away billions of dollars each year in security votes and constituency allowances. They don’t mind in the least that our police academies are unfit even for rodent habitation; they see to it that those of their number guilty of stealing billions of naira from the police pension fund should receive nothing harsher than the slightest slap on the wrist. No, they are in no hurry to mandate public declaration of assets. They’re even less willing to consider erasure of the odious constitutional provision that grants immunity to governors and the president when they commit serious crimes.

My hunch was always this: that once all the smoke disappears, Nigerians will awake to see Mr. Obasanjo hugging President Jonathan, his beloved political son, the two men beaming like sin. That scenario played out last Sunday as Mr. Obasanjo joined President Jonathan in a photo-op worship at Aso Rock chapel. That was proof that the so-called disaffection between the two “gladiators” is a smokescreen. There’s nothing in the ongoing fray that cannot be settled in the usual manner: the award of a juicy contract or two, or the trading of one or two oil blocks.

Please follow me on twitter @okeyndibe
Email: (okeyndibe@gmail.com)

via SaharaReporters

President Goodluck Jonathan’s self-admitted label as “the most criticised president in history” has since become his badge of identity. He wore that badge again at a recent CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour, which continues to draw criticism from all quarters.What shocked me was how much poorer he performed that he did in his interview with the same reporter three years ago. In the recent interview, Jonathan’s diction was awful; his demeanour was pitiful; and his responses to a number of questions were off the mark or incomplete.

He did not show mature understanding of Boko Haram or how to contain it. He tacitly admitted to corruption allegations of “$7bn a year” by government officials. Asked about what he was doing to curb the theft of “400,000 barrels of oil a day”, Jonathan shifted the blame to the foreign refineries that purchase the stolen crude, instead of addressing the problem at the source. Neither Amanpour nor Nigerian watchers of the interview could reconcile Jonathan’s response to power “shortages and outages” with available facts on the ground. Jonathan even violated the rules of turn-taking by interrupting Amanpour in the middle of her questions, with “How”? “No, No.”

But then, it could have been worse. What if he gaffed as he is wont to do? What if he lost his thought in the middle of a sentence? What if he dosed off in the course of the interview? Come to think of it. Don’t we sometimes cringe when we watch Jonathan address the nation on the Nigerian Television Authority? Don’t we sometimes gnash our teeth whenever Jonathan speaks on his feet, even at a funeral service? Why would we expect him to be transformed on the world stage?

However, this should not detract from the real symbolism of the recent CNN interview. It signals the implosion of the Jonathan Presidency. If after three years in office, a president could not speak confidently on his feet about his country’s major problems and proffer concrete solutions, such a president can no longer improve, handler or no handler. If the Jonathan presidency is not already spent, then it is open to serious re-examination.

It is not an unexpected outcome, because the Jonathan candidacy was a political balloon inflated by powerful interests in the Peoples Democratic Party. These are people who know Jonathan. They know he will never make a good president. However, he is good enough to be manipulated, thus allowing them to plunder the nation’s resources as much as they could. But the balloon started deflating on April 16, 2011, when the most violent protests followed his election. Further deflation would follow his inauguration on May 29, 2011, when Boko Haram struck in four states and has never let off since then. In no time, everything else began to fall apart. Armed robbers, kidnappers and pirates went to work. Road accidents increased as the roadways worsened. Airplanes began to crash as a result of poor regulations and safety checks. Even floods covered more areas than ever before. Jonathan’s “bad” history was already in the making.

It is not the case that Jonathan did not occasionally try to do the right thing. For example, he confronted subsidy thieves at the behest of technocrats in his administration. He set up a panel to probe the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. He also set up committees to look into other problem areas. But nothing came of the reports and the full rewards of the subsidy removal have yet to be reaped. At every turn, Jonathan has been held back by the same powerful interests. Why is this so? Why does Jonathan appear as a weak leader? Why does he appear to lack a strong voice in his own administration?

Three factors stand out. First, the man was never a presidential material. Apart from fortuitous appearances on the corridors of power, there is nothing in his background that makes him a leader. Second, instead of being prepared for the Presidency, it was packaged for him. So, he never really had time to think through the onerous task of leadership; of what he would accomplish; and how he would accomplish it. Never mind his Declaration and Inauguration Speeches. They were prepared for him. The speeches were a string of promises, none of which has been fulfilled. Similarly, you could not pin him down to specifics on the campaign trail, as he appeared to stand for everything, from generating employment to generating power, from improving schools and hospitals to building roadways and railroads.Nothing much has changed since he assumed power, at least not much for the people to see, feel, or experience.Third, if you look closely at Jonathan’s prepared and campaign speeches, you would find neither an ideological core nor an underlying philosophy of governance. No successful leader is known to lack both.

The critical question now is: What to do? First, if Jonathan and his handlers do not want to bring further ridicule to this nation, they should observe two simple rules: One, Jonathan should give only prepared speeches on all occasions. Two, he should no longer grant interviews to foreign reporters.

Second, if Nigerians want to break the jinx of poor leadership and perpetual misrule, they should begin now to look for their next president. In doing so, they should rise above political party, region, ethnicity, religion, and personality. They should reject candidate imposition and rigged elections. They should look for a proven leader, who can talk on his feet at home and abroad.

Third, if we want this country to survive till 2015 and beyond, then decisive action is needed now. Civil protests should be mounted against the ongoing plundering of the nation’s resources; against mounting insecurity; against poor infrastructure; and against poor educational and health care facilities. At the same time, citizens must demand the diversification of the economy, especially now that the United States is looking more and more inwards for its own oil supply and as other nations join the oil production race.

Fourth, the protests should not be limited to the Federal Government alone. Citizens should protest poor governance at state and local government levels and challenge their governors and local government chairmen to perform. But citizens must also be willing to contribute their own quota by paying appropriate taxes. I will have more to say on this subject later.

For now, it is important that we do something other than keep hoping for the best. Otherwise, we may be inviting the worst scenario—this nation may fail.

– Niyi Akinnaso (niyi@comcast.net)

Read original article via Punch

A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.

~John Burroughs

Ordinarily we have been led to believe that a democratic government is essentially a participatory one and as such citizens have inalienable rights to ask questions of their representatives while expecting sensible, reasonable and civil answers, backed with facts. It is universally held that people who get “voted” into political offices are answerable to those who voted them in. But it appears we are practicing something else in Nigeria where it has become a crime for freeborn citizens to ask questions of their so called government.

It is a known fact that in most third world countries, the mass media is controlled by government or business men who are mostly stooges and yes men of those in government. Therefore, the government usually controls what streams out from these media channels. Since the media generally shapes debates and discourse, opposition voices are usually muted. But with the advent of social media, online blogging, twitter, Facebook etc, the various governments in third world countries have been running helter skelter; having lost the monopoly of information. Nigeria as a third world nation is no exception. We have been denied information over the years but suddenly, it does appear, the people have found a voice in social media and are judiciously using it to call their government to order.

One thing is clear though: despite the rants and dissenting voices online, the Nigerian government scoffs at the voices of the people so much so that a presidential adviser once branded some citizens as ” collective children of anger”. But there seems to be an exception to this rule. The moment certain personalities use the social media to make their voices heard, a horde of presidential minions are unleashed, from the attack dog, to crawling roaches. Like a cackle of hyenas, they are usually out in full force. They do not have to give any intelligible answer or clear grey areas as raised. Their singular aim is to muddle up the puddle, in their usually rambunctious manner. They raise unsubstantiated allegations and mudslinging is their watchword.

The presidential minions have no restraints nor decorum. They don’t care about the sacredness of facts or the sanctity of proof. NO, that ain’t their turf. All they want is to divert attention and turn the gaze of the masses away from salient issues raised by anyone they perceive as influential. When all that fails, the government, through any of their numerous agencies, may start to pursue spurious court cases against these so called opponents.

Recently, Obiageli Ezekwesili, former World Bank Vice President, was University of Nigeria Nsukka’s 42nd Convocation lecturer. There she observed that the two administrations that succeeded Olusegun Obasanjo’s had squandered $67bn – a combined sum from our foreign reserve and Excess Crude Account. Deeply troubled, she complained that six years after the administration she “served handed over such humongous national wealth to another one, most Nigerians (especially the poor) continue to suffer the effects of failing public health and education systems, as well as decrepit infrastructure and battered institutions.”

The government got jolted by that revelation. They were more troubled by the image of the messenger and the damaging impact it will have on their already grossly despised administration.

After such revelation, one expects a sensible government to either explain what happened or contradict such claims. Not this government. In came the rambunctious and loquacious Labaran Maku, the misinformation( sorry, information) minister. He didn’t bother to explain or contradict Mrs, Ezekwesili, but rather in his usually unintelligent fashion, cast aspersions on her person. It was almost a contest of ‘yes, our government is bad, but was yours better?’ Nigerians were treated to more macabre dance steps when a member of the presidential media gang, a supposed intelligentsia and a former chairman of the editorial board of a national newspaper, jumped into the fray.
Reuben Abati took infamy to a new low, going on an expletive laden spree. Not once did he he even pretend to address Ezekwesili’s allegation. No, that wasn’t necessary in Abati’s book. He chose to give her and her supposed co-travelers a serious tongue lash. The only sad part was that Reuben was not man enough to mention their names. All he could do was make allusions that keen watchers of events could piece together to know who particular invectives were meant for .

Let us stop for a moment and examine what the bone of contention has been about. Ezekwesili alleged that the government under which she served, left behind a humongous amount of $45billion in Nigeria’s foreign reserve and $22billion in the excess crude account (ECA) totaling $67 billion as sum left behind by the Obasanjo led government. But the government that succeeded theirs, while the incumbent president was a vice President, had frittered some of that sum. Let us also recall that the same Obasanjo led government paid off the entirety of Nigeria’s foreign debt which was around $30billion at the time.

Today, Nigeria owes about $10billion in foreign debt and $50billion in local debt. Bear in mind that crude oil which forms between 70-80% of our national income has never sold for less than $90 per barrel in the last 6 years. Nigeria’s current OPEC quota is 2million BPD. You can do the maths. Recall also that the British Prime Minister, in Davos, recently asked the Nigerian government to account for the over $100billion which accrued to Nigeria last year. He made the call while belaboring the point that Nigeria does not deserve more foreign aid.

What is lost to most Nigerians in this government orchestrated “roforofo” public mudslinging, is that instead of asking the hard questions, the masses are being treated to a Nigerian brand of the Roman Coliseum. During the zenith of the Roman empire, when the citizens are disillusioned and therefore become restless, especially when the government’s performance is abysmal, the rulers will stage a big gathering to entertain them by throwing a Christian into the arena to battle bare knuckled with either a lion or a tiger. These regular “shows” were usually staged as a form of diversion to turn the attention of the populace from the ineptitude of the government of the day. Today in the Jonathanian era, we have our modern day coliseum. It is an arena that reads like: “yes I am very inept and corrupt but others are corrupt too”. The gullible amongst us lap it up and say “yes those people are not saints”. They (the gullible ones) usually miss it. The question we all ought to be asking is: “when did governance become a contest of the worse among the worst”? Is governance meant to improve our welfare or seek to prove that preceding administrations didn’t fare any better? The joke is on us.

Nigerians have lost sight of the real deal. 0basanjo was not a saint, neither were his subordinates. But what you can’t take away from his government was the fact that he placed Nigeria on the path to meeting the millennium development goals. I will seek to clarify a few points in the paragraphs that follow. I believe that all sensible Nigerians should join Mrs. Ezekwesili in this crusade. Follow me patiently, as I enumerate a couple of issues quickly.

What is the use of having a large reserve? International(foreign) reserves are a country’s “external assets”—including foreign currency deposits and bonds held by central banks and monetary authorities, gold and SDRs. Nigeria under Obasanjo, saved the excess money which was not in the budget, due to sudden increase in global oil price. Note that in reserves, you merely hold the funds as savings but it doesn’t yield any interest. To answer the question of why a country needs its FR, in global trade, countries show up at the negotiation table with what they have in store as a way of gaining an upper hand and tilting the bargain their way. Nigeria as an import based economy needs to maintain a low and stable exchange rate. The healthy state of our external reserve is a means to achieving that lofty goal.

Any business man can bear witness to the catastrophic happenings of December 2008 when the exchange rate crashed from 118 naira to a USD to about 200 naira to a USD. What created such a terrible and unstable situation was the depletion of the external reserves by the federal government of Nigeria led by Yar’adua and Goodluck Jonathan. Herein lies the crux of the matter. What became of the $67 billion? Having a healthy foreign reserve is a precursor to being able to dictate the play in global finance and foreign trade. It enables a country to play and bargain from a position of strength. A healthy foreign reserve also helps to defend the local currency from unnecessary fluctuations and sharp drop in value.
Let me quickly explain that countries are moving away from just having foreign reserves to creating Sovereign Wealth Fund SWF. What is SWF? A sovereign wealth fund (SWF) is a state-owned investment fund composed of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, property, precious metals, or other financial instruments. Sovereign wealth funds are global investments. Most SWFs are funded by foreign exchange assets. Since the SWF is usually funded by foreign exchange assets, we could have easily funded ours from the ECA. Some sovereign wealth funds may be held by a central bank, which accumulates the funds in the course of its management of a nation’s banking system. This type of fund is usually of major economic and fiscal importance. Other sovereign wealth funds are simply the state savings that are invested by various entities for the purposes of investment returns, and that may not have a significant role in fiscal management.

The aftermath of the depletion of our foreign reserves was what led to many Nigerian banks losing their foreign credit lines, thereby emasculating those banks from being able to fund importation requests by Nigerian businesses.

From the foregoing, it is crystal clear that the government of Yar’Adua and Jonathan have a lot of questions to answer, but they would rather be clever by half. While Angola, a former war enclave, has launched the SWF in October 2012, our presidential rabble rousers and attack maggots are busy making a fool of themselves. The question of the $67billion is no longer a question of yesterday’s men against today’s men. It is a case of the crimes of this GOVERNMENT against our collective sensibilities. Enough of these roman coliseums. We are no longer interested in who is a saint or the sinner. We need answers to the question posed by Dr. Mrs obiageli Ezekwesili: where is NIGERIA’S 67 billion USD?

Like I earlier averred, Obasanjo or his team were no saints; but he clearly had a team of forward looking technocrats, proven men and women who were forward looking and who made provisions for a better future for Nigeria, unlike the present administration that does nothing but borrow while plunging Nigeria into a deeper hole. Nigeria’s debt; both local and foreign, is almost $60billion (that is over N7 trillion). I weep for the future. Indeed Obasanjo did make a lot of mistakes, but what you cannot accuse him of is not planning for the future.

Rather than Reuben Abati engaging the citizens in a civil manner, like the proverbial elder, he chose to walk into the village square with corn cobs tied to his waste and inadvertently has made himself a playmate of fowls and chickens. Let them continue their macabre dance in the market square. That is their palaver. What we demand is an explanation by their financial managers about what became of the $67billion.

Of the many mistakes Obasanjo made, herein lies his greatest mistake– that he bequeathed to Nigeria two of the worst kinds of successors: an invalid and a nincompoop, because success without a successor is invariably a big failure.

You can also meet me on twitter @Ayourb

Bound by seedless corruptive emergencies, a group of today’s men and women seems to be on the defensive against the Nigerian people. They are perfect rulers with tinted immunity to correction. The outlandish scheming and circumscribing tactics of such vapid rulers on the political terrains in the country have so gained currency that any attempt by any well-meaning persons to seek clarity on questions on governance is usually greeted with mind-boggling opposition from the hotchpotch of yes men and women defending the blinding cause of their lascivious pay masters. In a sick country, all efforts aimed at curing its sickness is opposed by people who feed from its sickness. They are ever so suspicious, conformist and scornful.

We have on our hands such charlatans traipsing the corridors of power, puffing and huffing in habiliments reeking of ignominy, underdevelopment and stagnation. They obviously got so intoxicated with their own sense of nonsense they began to imagine themselves as the messiahs of our departing nation. As the apocalyptic rumbling intensifies, it is suicidal for these men and women to stay too long in the corridors of Aso Villa. Shorn of authority, they can only become authoritarian, swaggering about in an infertile display of violence and naked aggression against their own citizens. It is raining thunder and sulphuric acid.  This is the reality of our animal kingdom and we have a bunch of hypocrites to deal with.

With no exception at all, they care less about Nigeria as a progressive nation but the corruptive leftovers that accrue from it. And so they will stop at nothing to discredit those they think are not as brainy as they imagine themselves to be. The Nigerian people have unfairly become the target of their intellectual kwashiorkor. In case you don’t know, we are talking about the hypocrisy of today’s men in Aso Rock.

With their stuttering tongues and wide mouths, they arbour deep-rooted hatred for the brainy among the electorates. Perhaps, it is a malady they inflicted on Nigerians. In the same advanced societies which today’s men and women hate to be measured with, public service is taken as a privilege. People are called upon to serve; they do so in humility and great commitment. The special adviser spends his time to perform his constitutional duties; the lawmaker makes his presence in the chamber productive, the minister discharges his duties with measured decorum no matter how wide his mouth is, the governor tells the truth about his health to his people, the president makes priority of his deliverables and makes himself accountable to the citizenry. As public citizens, they are not entitled to use the benefits of their positions to shield corruption, to cover up sickening First Lady. They speak up on matters of public importance not as a part-time job as in the case of today’s men and women in Nigeria.

*Haba Obajeun

What then, is the problem with our public governance? As part of our regression into nothingness, most people become elevated beyond their competence. With this, public service becomes private service. Then they easefully forget they are mere journalists and trade off their once writing activisms and get swamped up in the national corruptive emergencies.  They become emperors and spit acid from their Olympian heights. They fly the shortest distance in jets to attend parties; they arrange international media conferences to lie to the world and to morph into self-appointed messiahs of the power sector of Nigeria. They sell Nigerian property to themselves in the name of privatization.
They are currently milking the country, lobbying to move from the less juicy ministry to the juicier one. They belong to the political party hosting the largest political gangsters in Africa. They keep quite on obvious conspiracy among themselves and write books to unveil the mystery once they are kicked out. They disregard their journalistic ethos and lash at their former constituency at the slightest opportunity. If that still doesn’t work, they open twitter handles for houseboys and instruct them to abuse the Nigerian taxpayer, with a jobless doctor who prefers to be called an ‘attack dog’. Power blinds them to the reality that they are all in corruption together and not with the unsuspecting and hardworking electorates.

Unsatisfied with the performance of their dogs and social media voltrons, they arrange and spend $60,000 to grant interview on CNN where they lie against the Nigerian people hoping to force themselves into the heart of Nigerians. They swiftly arrange soldiers to take on assignment in Mali in order to gain undeserved attention from the international community. Sadly enough, no one talks about the Nigerian soldiers in Mali, the praises from the Malians have been on the French soldiers. These characters suffer from creative delusions, claiming they brought facebook to Nigeria. The fact that they have dedicated employee who manages their social media accounts and the citizens often correct them for their misfires through these accounts since these accounts provide direct engagements, makes them feel uncomfortable.

Saying that the government of the day welcomes criticism and political activism is like saying it is possible to clap with one hand. The government’s readiness for criticism was murdered on arrival. During the build up to the 2011 elections, the president shunned a debate put together by an independent body, apparently running away from criticism of his rulership after Yar’Adua’s demise. In January 2012, the same administration sent its troops out to march protesting Nigerians on the streets gun to mouth. This administration is wobbling in lies, and the goons are running away from the issues, calling the brainy liars. The current administration has held and still holding the country to ransom. The goons in this administration have appropriated the right to determine what is best for the country. The drunkards in the corridors of power who have turned public service privilege into a life-long self corruptive aggrandizement must be told to work for their pay, hence they become jobless.

The current Ministers, current Special Advisers, Current Governors, Current DGs, and all sorts who have been busy defending their wastes and promoting goebellian propaganda must be reminded that the Jonathan administration is in fact trying to finish up the $67b foreign reserves left in 2007. The ball is in their court, but they don’t know how to play the game. They are refereeing their own game, they are the accused, they are the judge, they are the prosecuting lawyer, and they are the defense lawyer. They are playing God with Nigerians and what they don’t realize is that in the end, they will still come back to us.

When one of them argued that Port Harcourt airport was abandoned by a self acclaimed social critic and there was a sign of corruption noticed in the abandonment, he failed to tell us if there was a paid budget to execute the ‘renovation’. If there was, what happened to the money? Who was the budget custodian? Has the case been investigated by the Jonathan’s administration since it noticed the corruptive lines? Who has been brought to book? If there was nothing like this to show, then they should bury their rotten heads. It is not about pointing fingers alone, it is about being up in the logic of our reasoning. It is a shame that our primary school pupils are now rationalizing the logic of the crop of the PhDs we now in government. There is something to learn from Oby Ezekwesili, use facts, numbers to argue your case.

They said the rail lines are now working and when they wanted to cap it all, they said, very ‘soon’ more rail lines would start working. The word ‘soon’ will continue to haunt them. They are jealous because they could not think through crisis and come up with creative solutions. Somebody invented due process and opened the door of accountability, but they are scrambling to talk about railway lines that will ‘soon’ start working. We ask them that where the money in our foreign reserve is, they are saying that the money is not missing but they could not just find the money. They have declared emergency in the power sector, they have managed to move from 2000MW to 4200MW. Unfortunately, this is not reaching the bottom-line. And this is evident in their 2013 budget allocation for generator set. The 2013 budget provides that, to fuel generators in the State House alone, the Presidency will spend N72,510,832. Also, the Presidency in its entirety is to spend the sum of N654.02m on generators. The money also covers the amount set aside to replace some generators in the agencies under the Presidency. Also, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources plans to spend N22,525,507 for fuelling of generators and N25,036,676 to maintain the generators.

There is also another huge sum allocated to defray the cost of power supply from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, such as the sum of N148,105,373 to be expended by the State House alone to pay for electricity charges in 2013. MDAs include purchase of generators at very exorbitant prices and this appears year after year. For example, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency has a budgetary allocation of N23,515,181 for this purpose. The lifespan of every generator, even the one called “I pass my neighbour” exceeds a period of at least two years. So why is there the necessity for this request for the purchase of generators in the budget of some MDAs every year?

They are saying that we are complaining of bad roads. If illegal contracts were awarded to the tune of billions, what have they made of it? They said to the ‘tune of billions’, no figure. This is vague. We told them they lavished our $67bn, this is definite. Yet they claim to be PhDs. Has any court convicted the person who apportioned plots of land to his people? Was the apportioning illegal? What have they made of the case? If they really have a case, they should make the case with sense and come out to defend it. The summary is that they don’t care about the Nigerian taxpayer who has had to bear the brunt of their wastes and making a mess of our treasury.

We are not being hysterical for the sake of it. We are greatly appalled and disturbed by the grim social reality of our time. We are confounded by the savage existence of humanity. We are perturbed by the descent into bestial cruelty and the callous disregard for human life. We are aghast at man’s inhumanity to man. All we could do for now, is to laugh at grief.

Nigerians are wiser; they know who to follow and who not to follow. Today’s men and women are supercilious, and they are lost in their own ignorance. The power currently intoxicating them is transient. A time will come, they will be stripped naked of the power and they will need us to cover them. We will drag them on the street, and try them in people’s court and then, they will be remanded in their own solitude of quietness!

It is me, @Obajeun

Jonah Ayodele Obajeun blogs @www.obajeun.com. Reach him twitter via @Obajeun

I read Dr. Reuben Abati’s article titled ‘The Hypocrisy Of Yesterday’s Men” (3rd Feb.2013) which was published in virtually every newspaper in the country with amusement. He sought to ridicule and demean those of us that served President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government and that are not very impressed with the performance of his boss. The fact that we asked President Goodluck Jonathan to account for the 67 billion USD that he squandered from our foreign reserves has clearly upset him. We dared to ask about the money and so we were singled out and targetted for a tongue-lashing and a long lecture from the Presidency. Yet we remain undeterred. This is how weak governments that have nothing to offer and something to hide always behave. They come after their perceived enemies with full force and they are petty and oversensitive. This is all the more so when they lack experienced hands and when they do not have anyone with deep insight or wisdom about the art of governance or politics within their ranks. In his response instead of answering our questions, addressing the issues or making any pertinent and sensible points about the numerous allegations against his principal, Abati chose to go on a delusional and self-serving joy ride. He simply refused to address any of our numerous concerns but instead indulged vainly in what can only be described as an utterly vulgar and distasteful form of intellectual, spiritual and psychological masturbation by telling us that he and his master were ”today’s men” who needed no lessons from the ”men of yesterday”. The essay was nothing but the usual smear campaign and a crude attempt to intimidate which has been the hallmark of this Government whenever they are faced with even the mildest form of criticism. I will not dignify most of the insulting and childish submissions that Abati indulged in with a response other than to say that he told a shameless and pernicious lie when he wrote that as Minister of Aviation I ”shut down Port Harcourt Airport for two years” and ”allowed grass to grow all over it”. This is false. It is a classic case of disinformation coming from a man that is obviously suffering from a very low self-esteem. It is clear that Abati, who is a journalist, has forgotten the most important tenet of his profession which is that ”facts are sacred and opinion is cheap”. Ordinarily one would have ignored his bitter rant but it is important that I set the record straight for the sake of posterity. The facts are as follows.

Port Harcourt International Airport was closed on Dec.10 2005 after the Sossolisso Air crash in which 100 people were killed. The crash affected the runway of the airport very badly and consequently the then Minister of Aviation, Professor Babalola Borishade closed it. I was redeployed from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to the Ministry of Aviation in November 2006. This was 11 months after the Sossolisso crash took place and that Port Harcourt Airport had been closed. It is clear from the foregoing that I was not the one that shut down Port Harcourt Airport. When I took over at Aviation my priority was to carry out all the necessary repairs at Port Harcourt Airport and to open it as quickly as possible. I was saddened to discover that in the previous 11 months before I got there nothing had been done and the contract to repair the runway had not even been awarded. Consequently within a month of my being appointed Minister of Aviation we set to work and awarded the contract to Julius Berger at the cost of 3 billion naira. 50 per cent of the money was paid up front and Julius Berger set to work immediately. The runway was fully completed and the airport in pristine condition before I left office on May 29th 2007 just 6 months after I awarded the contract. However despite this the airport could not be opened before we left because the runway lighting system was still in the process of being installed. The Yar’adua government went ahead and opened the airport a few months after we left office even though the runway lights had still not been installed. The record shows that from the day that I was appointed Minister of Aviation and the time that our mandate ran out 7 months later my staff at the Ministry and Julius Berger worked night and day on the runway project at Port Harcourt International Airport in order to ensure that we finished it in record time. And this we managed to do. It was my project. I sourced the money for it, I paid for it, I forced the contractor to move fast on it and I finished it. The fact that the Yar’adua administration did not complete the lighting system and open the airport for another few months after we left office, even though the runway was ready, is for them to explain and not for me. Even though nothing was done at that airport for 11 months before I got to Aviation, once I was appointed we swung into action immediately. I repeat that it was under my watch that work commenced, that it was rebuilt, that it was completed and that it was fully restored and after that the airport was ready to be fully utilised. Given these facts how Abati can peddle the lie that I was the one that not only closed the airport but that I also kept it shut for two years, did nothing there, caused it to remain idle and allowed ”grass to grow all over it” honestly baffles me. I was Minister of Aviation for only 7 months and not 2 years and within those seven months, from scratch, I did all the work that needed to be done in order to make the airport functional again. I am proud of the fact that we succeeded in meeting our target and completing the job.

Abati also so asserted that I closed down ”other major airports” whilst I was Minister of Aviation ”for the purposes of renovation”. Again this is not true. Not one of the four major airports in the country were closed down for renovation works or any other reason whilst I was Minister of Aviation. And neither, to the best of my recollection, did I close or suspend the operations of any of the smaller airports except perhaps for safety reasons. As a matter of fact the opposite was the case. I actually installed and completed the sophisticated Safe Tower Project in three of the four major airports in the country, resurrected and funded the Tracon Radar System which is operational in our country today and which gives us full radar coverage in our airspace, upgraded the facilities in many of the old smaller airports and granted permission for the establishment of new airports in places like Gombe. Quite apart from that we not only stopped the terrible cycle of plane crashes that was prevalent at that time but there was not one aircraft that crashed under my watch and no loss of life from the air under my tenure. I am the only Minister of Aviation in the last 10 years of our country that can boast of that and yet Abati seeks to tarnish my name, stain my record and rubbish my efforts with his lies. All this and far more and Abati accuses me of ”running the aviation sector down to a state of near collapse”. For that I commit him to God’s judgement. It is obvious that he is just being malicious and dishonest. I take strong objection to his specious lies, his brazen falsehood and his distortions of fact. The suggestion that I closed Port Harcourt Airport and neglected it for two years, that I closed other airports for renovations and that I ran the aviation sector down to the ground is what I would refer to as a figment of his malicious, overactive and fertile imagination. It is a glaring mendacity, a brutal assault on truth and an affront to my sensiblities. I find it utterly reprehensible and repugnant that a man that is entrusted to speak for the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria can indulge in such petty lies.

Let me end this contribution by pointing out the fact that being ”yesterday’s men” does not mean that some of us cannot be ”tomorrow’s men” as well. Only God knows what lies ahead for each and everyone of us. So when Abati glibly writes people off as if they will never be in power again it is a sad reflection of his lack of experience and naivety. It is God that determines our tomorrow. It is He that lifts men up, that pulls them down and, sometimes if it be His will, lifts them up again. There are countless examples of that in our history. Finally I have a few questions for President Jonathan and his ”todays men”. When will they take President Obasanjo’s advice and finally do something concrete about Boko Haram and our security situation? Does the fact that at least 4000 Nigerians have been killed by these terrorists in the last two years under their watch not bother them? How can they sleep well at night with all that innocent blood that has flowed and precious lives cut short whilst they were at the helm of affairs of our nation? More innocent souls have been killed in the last 2 years by terrorists than at any time in the history of Nigeria outside the civil war. How does President Jonathan and his ”today’s men” feel about winning such a dubious and dishonorable title? Does he still regard Boko Haram as ”his siblings” who he ”cannot hurt”? Why has the President refused to visit the good people of the north east despite the fact that dozens of people are still being slaughtered there by Boko Haram every day? Moving to the issue of corruption and the economy when will our President and ”today’s men” answer the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron’s question and tell him what they did with the 100 billion USD that they made from oil sales in the last two years? When will they answer Obi Ezekwsile’s question about how they squandered 67 billion USD of our foreign reserves? When will they answer the question that Nasir El Rufai asked sometime back about how they spent over 350 billion naira on security vote in one year alone? When will they answer the many questions that Dr. Pat Utomi and many other distinguished and courageous leaders and ”yesterday’s men” have raised about the trillions of naira that have been supposedly spent on oil subsidy payments in the last two years? When will they implement the findings and recommendations of the Nuhu Ribadu report on the thivery that has gone on in the oil sector? When will they cultivate the guts and find the courage to respond to a call for a public debate to defend their abysmal record? When will these ”today’s men” stop being so reckless with our money? Why would our ”today’s man” FCT Minister budget 5 billion for the ”rehabilitatioin of prostitues in the Abuja”? Why would he budget 7.5 billion naira for a new ”FCT city gate”? Why would he budget 4 billion naira for a house for the First Lady? Why would the Federal Government of ”todays men” budget 1 billion naira for food in the Villa? Are these the priorities of ”today’s men and women”? And all this when Nigeria is back in foreign debt to the tune of 9 billion USD and is still borrowing, when local debt has hit almost 50 billion USD, when graduate unemployment has hit 80 per cent, when 40 per cent of Nigerians do not have access to good food and ”are hungry” and when 70 per cent of Nigerians are living below the poverty line? Is this the vision of ”today’s men and women”? If so may God deliver Nigeria.

“Jesus was having sex with Mary Magdalene”- Malam Nasir El-Rufa’i

The above startling caption was what greeted me early this morning when I got on twitter as is my daily ritual now to check my ‘Timeline’ 1^st thing in the mornings. As senile as I am to media antics and sensationalism, this had to make me jump from the comfort of my bed and take a second hard look. The first thing that came to my mind was since when did El-Rufa’i became an expert in biblical theology as to dabble into such deeper waters? Without holding brief for Malam El-Rufa’i, I instantly concluded that he couldn’t have said or written such a thing, thus I decided to read the whole report hoping I could catch some glimpse of mischief by the author by way of distortion of the truth. But the report to my amazement was consistent in its allegation all through; that indeed Malam has blasphemed and desecrated Christianity and the whole Christendom. It then occurred to me to check Malam’s tweets myself and get the whole gist from the source; and then I found this…

So essentially Malam El-Rufa’i was responding to a tweet by my good friend Bukola (popularly known as @zebbook on twitter) in which he found @zebbook’s tweet on Jesus hilarious as to use the popular acronym ‘LWKMD’; meaning ‘laff wan kill me die’. Naturally, I understand the reaction and anger this miscue generated, after all this is Nigeria where religious sentiments run wild faster than a Californian fire. Furthermore, this is Nasir El-Rufa’i alias ‘controversy on two feet’. Few public figures evoke such passions in people as he. This is one man whose beliefs led him to take on an army of Okada riders and a behemoth of illegal housing occupants when he was Minister of the FCT. Nasir has always been on the unpopular side ever since I can remember; never the type to shy away from criticism. So this particular incident must have been probably just another day at the office for Malam I guess.

Now I must emphasize the fact that I for one as a Muslim and respecter of both religions, do not find @zebbook’s tweet hilarious, neither do I find Malam’s subsequent retweet. Even though I understand the context from which Bukola was trying to paint his story, been an ardent student of sarcasm myself, it is nonetheless most regrettable, and in as much as the Freedom of expression dictates that Bukola acted well within the confines of legality, a certain degree of decorum is expected from us from time to time. The last thing this polarized society of ours needs are such sour jokes. But I believe in my friend Bukola, I trust his judgments and perhaps being of flesh and blood as he is, one is always prone to err; this is just one of those days.

Now to the media and its frantic pursuit of sensation, I must say this is one appalling escapade that leaves one disappointed in so many ways. The way the media was agog with this El-Rufa’i palaver, one would imagine he had formed his own religion and declared an all out war against the whole Abrahamic religions. We are already a tensed nation, with bad blood caused by religious intolerance cutting deep into our collective psyche that the last thing we could handle is a media-twisted campaign riddled with mischief and falsehood. And if truth be told, this frenzy isn’t much about Jesus and Christianity as it is about the man El-Rufa’i himself. For I am of the opinion that if some other person and not El-Rufa’i was the one credited with such blasphemy, it wouldn’t have made the rounds as to be accorded front news status. The whole thing for me was totally blown out of proportion. Being the fourth estate of the realm, the media is charged with informing the citizenry in the most credible and ethical manner. A strict code of conduct- devoid of distortions, lies, and unverified assertions is the barest minimum expected of it. Now when it fails in this basic service, then it seizes to be what it is. Our media outlets, both online and off need to stay true to themselves by reporting objective news devoid of bias.

Lastly, to the self-proclaimed twitter ‘activists’ who in every matter of religion seem to take rather agnostic and secular views; well Nigeria for the good and ill reasons remains by and large a religious nation. God remains perpetually at the center of affairs. Their incessant rant over religion is almost always certain to land on deaf ears. It must be noted that our quest for human rights and freedom should not become license for us to import cultures and values alien to us and our beliefs. Yes I agree that religion can become the opium of the masses; at least Karl Marx for all his extremism and heretical poise pretty much has a point here. And over the years in Nigeria, this concept of using religion to keep the masses subjugated has been all too predominant. Hate preaching, extremism, intolerance, and dogmatism have combined to plague our religious circles and by extension the entire Nigerian space. However still, this unfortunate phenomenon is not enough reason as to reduce religion entirely to the back-burner and chastise those who strive to uphold its tenets even in matters of the State. In the end though, we mustn’t as a nation lose sight of the burning issues bedeviling us. What birthed this whole religious debate were pertinent questions asked by the esteemed Madame Obi Ezekwesili regarding misappropriation of state funds by governments at the center.  Whether Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or even atheist, we are all consumed by infrastructural rot, economic hardship and generally poor living conditions. For our sake and that of our children yet unborn, we mustn’t shy away from our collective responsibility of calling the government to account and invariably aid it in its duty of safeguarding our well-being. So help us GOD.

Follow me on twitter: @ibmaleeq

There have been several analyses of President Goodluck Jonathan’s interview with the CNN reporter, Christine Amanpour, such that, I, not a Jonathan fan by any fanciful stretch of the imagination, have wondered what the fuss is all about. Let’s face it: the President is like dough without yeast; you can knead him all you want, he’s not going to rise.

Some even went to the extent of analysing the President’s grammar; he spoke about electricity and remarked, “…the bulb will light”. Well, his linguistic failing is no big deal. Most Nigerian pupils fail English language in the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination, and members of the National Youth Service Corps, we were told recently by the DG of NYSC, can barely write their own names. Mr. President, to me, merely (and thankfully) reflected an urgent social reality. And come to think of it, maybe he should resort to vocalising in Ijaw instead of speaking Ijawnglish? All he needs is an interpreter; his spin-doctors can sell it off as national pride.

My own vexation is that he granted that interview.

A quick caveat: I intend to sound petulant in this piece; I have no apologies whatsoever for it.

Here is why: He was inappropriately dressed for the weather and even though the President of Nigeria, he stood outside in the snow like a schoolboy before an annoyed school ma’am. His entire demeanour was undignifying. Was the interview so impromptu they could not have prepared him properly? Why interview the Nigerian president in such circumstances?

Could it be that the CNN crew didn’t think he was of much consequence anyway and anything was good enough for him? And if they did not imagine the Nigerian president deserved better, does that attitude mirror the sort of regard they have for Nigerians because, invariably, a president is the sum total of his people? When President Barack Obama bowed to Emperor Akihito, the Japanese Premier, his countrymen were outraged. They protested that he made them bow to Asians; a gesture of respect took a life of its own and we cannot divorce racial/nationalistic supremacy from their reaction. In the case of Jonathan/Amanpour, the entire outlook was deeming. Our man on display himself was seriously out of his depths and showed himself as a quibbler, straw man and, a barely literate administrator. I argued this point with a friend who detests Jonathan yet believed I was making too much of a non-issue until I asked him if he thought even the Syrian president would have been treated that way.

And this brings me to the nexus about Oyinbo journalists and what most times resemble a fixation with the spatial space they derogatorily refer to as “sub-Saharan Africa” and its peoples. When this column newly berthed, I did a piece on a documentary that sarcastically lampooned Lagos titled, “This is Lagos”. There was something unsettling about watching that film and which became clearer after seeing another journalist, a Briton called Louis Theroux, make a similar one, Law and Disorder in Lagos. It is about Area Boys phenomenon and the undertone of the documentary narrative was depreciatory. I felt uneasy at the pejorative manner Theroux was dealing with Lagosians and that he seemed to be inducing the single stories he was reporting. What was more worrisome was the apparent overcompensation of our own people in their interaction with this Oyinbo. They appeared excited that an Oyinbo took interest in them and too willingly yielded themselves up to him, indulged his silliness, and even told lies in the process.

Interestingly, these Oyinbos appear to have access to spaces that would be denied a Nigerian journalist. It’s complicated but says a lot about the psyche of the postcolonial subject; from Area boys to even gun-totting law enforcement agencies in the Theroux documentary, it was the same story. You marvel that the Chief Area Boy of Lagos, whose name I would rather keep away here, did something as silly as showing off the security of his house, went to the point of showing off his shoes collections and boasted he shops in Milan, Italy!

Seriously?

I was embarrassed when Diego Bunuel interviewed a pastor of the largest Pentecostal church in Nigeria who boasted they set up churches within five minutes walking distance from people’s homes because Nigeria, unlike the West, is a developing country where people do not have cars. The man admitted we are a country that invests in church buildings at the expense of enterprise.

Seriously, why are we so blessed?

It could easily be misconstrued as diligence on the part of Oyinbo journalists –that they work harder to get stories from ‘dark’ Africa than local journalists –but it’s not quite true. It is racial privilege; the Oyinbos too are not unaware of it and they wield it. Check out another documentary, Don’t tell my mother that I am in Lagos, where the director/narrator, Diego Bunuel, voices this racial asymmetry. You hear deprecation in Bunuel’s rhetoric when he says of Lagos, “Welcome to hell”, “Minivans are known to self-combust” and “I might end up as a spare part…(in Alaba market)”

It’s reprehensible how these journalists romanticise poverty, spectacularise the ghetto (can this “ghetto fabulous” be the reason Governor Babatunde Fashola wants to pull down Makoko?) and valorise brawn over brain. They make Black people look resolute in their destitution and blend effortlessly with poverty without offering criticisms of how their own society contributes to the problem. Bunuel made the electronic waste coming from Europe to Africa seem like we are a natural dumping ground.

My impression is that these journalists are not really looking for insights but out to pillory Africans. You only need to critically read the artifices they plant in their visuals to understand it is more than journalism.

Can our people stop making themselves prey to such entertainment ploys? Of course, Amanpour is a “serious” journalist but I cannot shake off the feeling she knew all along that President Jonathan was a “chicken”, not table tennis egg, and was never going to bounce; the interview was to confirm to the world we are lost.

I concluded that the President should stop giving interviews internationally because, really, it is a pointless exercise. He should keep the shame at home and restrict himself to the presidential media chat on NTAi (with their pretend international label) where the village style format enables him to parry questions, speak patronisingly to journalist-interviewers and even tell fibs with confidence. He should stop providing cheap entertainment and stay in the shadows.

– Abimbola Adelakun (aa_adelakun@utexas.edu)

Read original article via Punch

“Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it.” –  C.C. Colton

“Many have quarrelled about religion that never practised it.” –  Benjamin Franklin

Nigerians are a funny lot. We have a natural propensity to trivialise germane issues, while we place premium on issues that don’t count.

I logged in to facebook only to be greeted with a post titled: “SHOCKING!!! EL-RUFAI ACCUSES JESUS OF SLEEPING WITH MARY MAGDALENE”. I was taken aback. Like most Nigerians, I was angry. But unlike most of them, I actually took time to trace the comment back to the source. After reading and re-reading the tweet that had generated so much controversy, I was convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the cry of blasphemy that most Nigerians had taken up was greatly exaggerated and a mere show of ignorance and extremist traits. I was also convinced that some platforms, forums and blogs need to be scrapped totally, because in their desperation to gain more followers, likes or visitors, they have done Nigerians a great disservice.

Like I told some people, I don’t like Mallam El-Rufai at all. And my reason is personal and one that I will not want to explain now to avoid over-flogging issues. But I will not because of my dislike for him join people to slander him for what he has not done or take his word out of context to achieve whatever goals.

The kind of dust that was raised as a result of that tweet is one that could only be raised by religion. I saw some people posting and commenting with just two facebook friends and 0 twitter followers that I was convinced they opened accounts with facebook and twitter just so they could participate in the discussion. I read what some people posted and had to ask myself if God had PA. Some even went as far as giving ultimatums for the man to offer apology or he will die. Warriors of God!

I engaged some people in polite discussions on facebook while I replied some people that threw insults in kind. But I have actually had enough time to think about the issue, and I’m convinced more than ever that at the rate we are going, and with the kind of dust we raise religion-wise, we would be the architects of our own destruction. Many people read the title of the misleading post, and immediately started cursing, abusing and throwing insults. They never bothered to even check out the tweet itself, and when they discovered it wasn’t even tweeted by Mallam El-Rufai, they changed their song, and refused to acknowledge that they were wrong.

I also had to wonder if the people who actually read that tweet passed comprehension in secondary school or they were just bent on being mischievous. The comment was tweeted by a writer and popular blogger, Ogunyemi Bukola, Zebbook and retweeted by the Mallam. The tweet read: “If Jesus criticized Jonathan, his aides will claim that he slept with Mary Magdalene”. That is what caused all the brouhaha.

My problem with these people is that unlike the Mallam and Zebbook who had to bow to the conflicting opinions and tender public apology for peace to reign, these people will actually not agree that they are wrong. And the discussion and arguments will continue for long without them realising that their ignorance and extremist views have made them ready and oblivious tools of slinging political mud.

I wonder how many of those people who have taken up battle-cries actually live the life expected of a “child” of Christ or a Christ-like life. I wonder how many of them even attended Church last Sunday. I wonder how many of them even know where Mary Magdalene’s name is in the Bible. And I wonder how many of them will even go if the trumpet sounds. Little wonder, Charles Spurgeon said, “When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it, he keeps a very small stock of it within.”

Nigerians must start trivialising minor issues and stop ‘fighting’ on God’s behalf. The man who tried to ‘help’ God in the Bible, Uzzah, God killed him. Let God fight his battles and let us not declare as enemies whom God still views as a friend.

There are far burning issues that should arouse our interest. Issues that have to do with how we are governed. Issues that deal with how they are stealing us blind while we go to war on trivial issues. We must not allow ourselves to be played like pawns on their big board of chess.

Remember the words of Voltaire, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

God bless Nigerians!

Ogunjimi James Taiwo

Twitter: @hullerj
E-mail: hullerj@yahoo.com

President Goodluck Jonathan
| credits: nigerianbulletin.com

On Monday, a Federal Capital Territory High Court handed down the first conviction of persons involved in the theft of N32.8bn Police Pensions Fund.

However, in what seems to have turned out to be another wild goose chase in the President Goodluck Jonathan administration’s anti-graft war, the convict received what is tantamount to a slap on the wrist, considering the amount of money involved and the attendant moral issues, and not forgetting the implications for the nation’s image in the comity of nations.

A director in the Police Pensions Office, Mr. John Yusuf, alongside six others, was convicted for converting public fund to their personal use, an offence punishable under Section 309 of the Penal Code Act, Cap 532, Laws of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Nigeria, 2007.

Yusuf had used the purloined fund to amass 13 houses in the FCT and Gombe State; while he also had N325m stashed in his bank account.

Initially, Yusuf had made a “not guilty” plea, which he later changed to “guilty,” obviously in return for a light sentence, which he got.

Under the extant laws, each of the three counts of offences carries a paltry two-year jail term or an option of fine in the sum of N250,000. The two-year jail terms run concurrently. And if he is able to pay the N750,000, he will be a free man.

The presiding judge, Justice Abubakar Talba, handed down the sentence on Monday, after Yusuf had successfully utilised the doctrine of plea bargain – a process that has been bastardised in recent times by influential but corrupt public office holders in Nigeria. The list is only getting longer.

It may be recalled that on December 19, 2008, an Enugu High Court fined former Governor of Edo State, Lucky Igbinedion, the sum of N3.5m, after he had entered into a plea bargain with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

Igbinedion had faced 191-count charges which were, on December 17, 2008,  narrowed down to one after his plea bargain.

The final accusation against him was that he “neglected to make a declaration of your interest in the Account No: 4124013983110 with a new generation bank … in the declaration of assets form of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and you thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 27 (3) of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Act 2008.”

Though Igbinedion walked away a free man, the international community was not amused; and on January 12, 2013, the United States Government effectively barred him from entering its territory henceforth.

Concerned Nigerians cannot forget the sentencing of the former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the now defunct Oceanic Bank, Mrs. Cecilia Ibru, who, alongside three other senior banking executives, was involved in a multibillion-dollar banking scandal.

While investors and depositors groaned in agony, Mrs. Ibru acquired properties all over the world, from Nigeria to Dubai, using their money.

She denied the charges. And, although sentenced on October 8, 2010 on a 25-count fraud case and ordered to refund N1.29bn, she spent her six-month jail term in a high-end hospital located in a swanky area of Lagos.

This is mockery of justice, when compared with the 150-year-jail term currently being served by Bernard Lawrence Madoff, American former businessman, stockbroker, investment advisor and financier who pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme – which defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars.

Time will fail us to talk about ex-governors James Onanefe Ibori and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, who the Nigerian judicial system literally handled with kid gloves.

But then, what sort of judiciary is Nigeria’s? How come the principle of plea bargain has become a dirty tool in the hands of highly placed criminals, while disadvantaged citizens suffer the full weight of the law when they commit misdemeanours?

According to the legal dictionary, “a plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case between the prosecutor and defendant, whereby the defendant agrees to plead guilty to a particular charge in return for some concession from the prosecutor. This may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to a less serious charge or to one of several charges, in return for the dismissal of other charges; or it may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to the original criminal charge in return for a more lenient sentence.”

While this system prevents a lengthy criminal trial, a situation whereby a criminal defendant undergoing felony theft charge is offered the opportunity to plead guilty to a misdemeanour theft charge is unhealthy for any justice system, as it sends wrong signals that it is profitable to steal.

Essentially, the process is unfair to the society where criminal defendants are involved, as in the case of these public figures, as its close relationship with rewards, threats and coercion potentially endangers the correct legal outcome.

Indeed, this tactic is prohibited in a country like the United Kingdom, where the prosecutor’s code states inter alia:

“Prosecutors should never go ahead with more charges than are necessary just to encourage a defendant to plead guilty to a few. In the same way, they should never go ahead with a more serious charge just to encourage a defendant to plead guilty to a less serious one.”

In complex cases such as major fraud trials like the ones under review, the overriding duty of the prosecutor is to see that justice is done. But in the Nigerian case, this is doubtful. So far, plea bargain has tainted the image of the Nigerian judiciary, as justice now seems to be for the highest bidder.

Just last Wednesday, an Abeokuta Magistrate Court sentenced a 49-year-old man, Mustapha Adeshina, to two-year imprisonment for stealing vegetables worth N5,000, with an option of N10,000 fine.

The nation cannot forget in a hurry the amputation of the right hand of Mallam Buba Bello Kure Jangedi – for stealing a cow. He was convicted under the Sharia law in 2000 by the administration of Zamfara State ex-governor (now senator) Ahmed Sani, who had been accused of fund misappropriation but who currently enjoys immunity as a public office holder.

The FCT High Court judge should uphold the plea of the EFCC counsel, Mr. Rotimi Jacobs (SAN), that Yusuf be convicted and sentenced as appropriate. Only then can the image of the judiciary be redeemed from what has come to be seen as a ‘Justice For Sale’ syndrome.

via Punch

Good day and welcome to #AwakeningYou, a Tuesday weekly script of #StartupNigeria. My name is Haastrup Steven.

Sir Francis Bacon made perhaps the most audacious statement on knowledge when he equated knowledge with power. We know what power can do, don’t we? Power turns the weakling into a strong man. Power grows up a child into accelerated adulthood. Power turns a slave into a slave owner. With power the reviled becomes the revered; the rejected becomes the embraced; the unnoticed becomes the celebrated. Power draws fame, draws wealth. We all have an evident display on the turnaround Power does to a man in this Nigeria’s highest Office.

In any community, the one who wields the power has the control. He takes the centre stage. He calls the shots. That’s why many will do everything, including maiming and killing, to get power. Like someone said, “Power is sweet.” Power opens doors. Power elicits subservience. People defer to you. You do not have to earn the respect of the people. Power has got you that already. Power expands your circle of friends. Your enemies bow at your feet. Your detractors seek for a truce on your terms. Those who hate you with a passion now sing your praise. You are the man. Power speaks.

Ironically, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is a limit to power after all. History is replete with the fall of many mighty. There had been no despot that had not suffered shame and disgrace – in life or in death. There had been no misuse of power without a corresponding loss of face. It would seem that the harder they come the easier they fall.

_____________________________________________________________________________

“Knowledge emboldens you in a world where many live in fear.”

“The bridge that connects you to that desirable future you seek is Knowledge.”

“Knowledge energizes your relationships, changes limiting perceptions and creates new frontiers for you and your society.”

____________________________________________________________________________

But then, there is a power that is more subtle and yet more enduring. It is the power that comes from knowledge. Knowledge gives you an edge. It distinguishes you. It enables you. Knowledge empowers your vision. It emboldens you in a world where many live in fear. It raises the bar of your performance at work. Knowledge energizes your relationships, changes limiting perceptions and creates new frontiers for you and your society. It is your power in this mysterious world.

You know what I think, dear reader, you should make the quest for knowledge your passion in 2013. I believe there is so much in store for you this year. The bridge that connects you to that desirable future you seek is KNOWLEDGE – Knowledge.

Thank you for reading through.

Join me next Tuesday as I continue the Startup Nigeria series! Invite friends and family… we own this country and we must take it back as one!

That was Powerful article… Be Nice and don’t go off this page without sharing this article on the social media! Just a few clicks will do. Let it inspire your friendsin 2013.

Follow the Hash Channel ‘#TheStartUpKing’ on Twitter every Tuesday and Friday between 4pm and 5pm as we split up the lives of World greatest Entrepreneurs from Startup, Emergence and then to Dominance.

This series is for majorly uncovering Practical unexposed Universal StartUp Lessons from these leaders.

Last Tuesday was with Richard Branson (Founder/CEO – Virgin Group); This week will be a continuation of the Friday series with recent college grad Max Levchin (Co-founder PayPal).

____________________________________________________________________________

Follow me today on twitter @StevenHaastrup

Email: haastrupsteven@gmail.com

I live in a country where the term corruption could easily be mistaken for an individual or a group’s name. Every single person from old to young just blames Mr. or Mrs. Corruption for every form of irregularity within the system in the geographical location called Nigeria where I reside. Over time I have come to get used to the term corruption being used everywhere from bus parks to schools, from corporate organizations to government agencies and even religious organizations, you would almost begin to wonder if this corruption is a ghost or spirit being, since no one seems to take the responsibility of being called corrupt or better still corruption. Little wonder we are still where we are.

However am not in the habit of just problem analysis (which is important to proffering solution) as the average Nigerian is a master of such an art, rather in the face of problems I try to think of sustainable and pragmatic solutions which are often mistaken for an idealistic thought pattern, well it’s just my own thought and opinion. If we all start proffering solutions and stop arguing we would move forward.

It’s no longer news that the activity or actions of the unit affects the collective, so it is safe to say that the accumulation of all our individual actions is the picture we see in our communities, societies and by default our nation today. It’s quite easy and convenient to blame Mr. A or Mr. B or the government for whatever state you find yourselve, it seems logical and easy right? How nice. Now before I proceed, it’s important we find out how corruption is defined. Well before the word became synonymous with just Government officials, the word was originally translated to mean “extremely immoral or depraved”. With this definition in mind, do you see how you are implicated in our present state as a nation? Let me elucidate more explicitly;

• Each time you throw things out of your car or home improperly; you’re corrupt.
• Each time you beat the traffic light; you’re corrupt.
• Each time you sponsor exam malpractice for your kids, niece, nephew etc.; you’re corrupt.
• Each time you refuse to pay your bills e.g PHCN, Waste Bills, etc ;your corrupt
• Whenever you refuse to vote; you indirectly contribute to corruption in governance.
• When you take bribe; you’re corrupt.
• When you allow your kids get away with little acts of mischief without rebuke; you’re helping raise a new generation of corrupt individuals.
• The list is indefinite…

You see our problem is that we think corruption is only when you give bribe or steal money, forgetting that before that man started stealing money he or she had at one point stolen meat from the pot, or taken daddy’s money or just been plain exposed to high level mischief in the family of environment without ever been rebuked or corrected. How do we then expect a different picture than we see daily? There can be no change nationally or in governance until a majority of us take responsibility as individuals to deliberately become positively transformed. We must understand that systems are run by people; the best of systems in the hand of a fool is a foolish system.
If we all knew that at some point in our history that a young boy without shoes in Otuoke in Bayelsa state will become our president would we have spent some more time preparing him and his peers and ensuring that the right environment is put in place to properly expose him?!! The list just goes on and on. My dear friends my point is simply this; take responsibility of your actions, you just do what is right and preach the same message, we would be shocked at the visible change we would see within a short frame of time. Change is very predictable, especially with the right actions in place. Ofcourse the system is terribly gone wrong, but I don’t see how complaining, nagging, backbiting or just doing nothing would contribute to the balance we seek in our society.

Well I hope I made some sence today, guys our future is in our hands. Let the change begin with me and you and things would naturally fall into place, this is my humble submission.

Hi pals please leave your comment or contribution, I am eager to hear from you.
Please follow @okolieken on twitter. Love you.

While we may not totally absolve the west of its historic complicity in the Nigerian tragedy, it may go a long way in setting a template for the resolution of Nigerian crisis. If you do not bury a dead man because of his family, you will have to bury him for the health hazards his corpse constitute. Some nations are becoming a menace to global health. Unfortunately, most of them are in Africa. And I hate to think that Nigeria is a part.

However, the recent seedless corruptive emergencies in respective ramifications, witnessed the later strand of the last century, has left a pungent puncture on Nigerian honourable garment, thereby recommending the Nigerian legion to the rising human Diaspora to be wrongly and badly punctuated and referenced. Nigeria is ken to be seat of rival-free multivariate material and immaterial cultures, exceptional traditional containment, culturatitudes, exacting values, artistical arts, and among others, keeping human pulchritude displayable by Africans.

Perhaps, the Nigeria we now know has metamorphosed from primitive practices and cannibalistic savagery of nude figures dashing in and out of dense forests, with an unintelligible chatter as language and of an arboreal existence but non corruptible order, to a post-modern Nigeria with chemically polluted, sprawling civilizations, corrupt governments, failed institutions and disease-ridden interiors; of stick-thin, half-dead children staring fixedly in different postures of hopelessness at an impending fatality. This, unfortunately, has shaped our subconscious, that we no longer blush about killing.

So how did we get here? How did we arrive at this point where news of killings no longer appeal to our inner feelings? How did we finally arrive at this dead end where the country seems to have been wiped out of genuine value for life? How did we travel down to this age of de-civilization where the stench of clogged human blood has become the natural aroma of our atmosphere? How did we fly to this zone where common sense is no longer common among our kinsmen? How did we lose our sense of commonality? How come we still live as Nigerians, we still crave for our oneness, we wave away the possibility of our departure from nationhood, yet we are no longer jittery to daily news of mass killings? Where did our national feeling evaporate to that we no longer blush about mass killing?

National feeling plays a central role in providing a focus for our sense of commonality. The nation survives based on the principle of commonality, operating through a shared set of collective memories, as narrated through popular culture, school curricula, the media and so forth. Ideas about the continuity of nations are often conveyed through a cultural perspective that emphasizes traditions and cultures as a set of fixed and repetitive practices, as a means of forging common feeling and combating the indeterminacy of changing events. Like any work of memory, the concept of nation is selective and, in the case of official national feeling, often reflects the interests of dominant elites. So when the country, led by the president mourned late Yakowa and Azazi, which passed as the national feeling, the other four victims were at the mercy of their own sorrowful tales. It was a case where the dead mourned the dead.

How how did we come to where we no longer blush about killing? It was a gradual journey of negligence and failed promises. The communal clashes became escalated in Jos in 2008. Till now, the city of Jos now lives in the shadow of its own fear. Mass killing became rife with the arrival of Boko Haram. Churches became ashes, families wiped off, bloodshed everywhere, suicide bombing now the order.

Suspects have been arrested but same suspects have been freed in jail breaks. Promises fell on promises, that perpetrators would be brought to book, that Boko Haram would fizzle out, that we would win the war against terrorism, that there would no longer be bloodshed. Today we are still living with the burden of Boko Haram, we have not started fighting terrorism not to talk of winning, Boko Haram influence is growing, and we record mass killing everyday. For the fear of the unknown, our media houses now refer to Boko Haram as “Gunmen”. This is where we became hardened and we no longer blush about mass killing. Sadly, we are now used to it.

The mass killing in Connecticut took tears from Barack Obama’s eyes. He was moved by actions, not rhetorics of promises. Today, the gun control debate is sweeping across the God’s own country. This is why Americans blush about mass killing. The national feeling of grieve overrides sentimental judgment. When Madalla bombing happened, we were told to bear the burden of the ongoing killings by “gunmen” until it fizzles out. Today, the ongoing killings refuse to fizzle out, we still live with killings and killing has become a natural part of our national life. Our newspapers have taken news of mass killings off their front page since it is no longer news to their customers.

The last time the president visited police college, he did not blush about the rots, he blushed about the film. It is the same message. We are victims of our choices. Until we throw these rotten eggs called leaders into the thrash-can of history, until we action our grieve, until we move with conviction, until we unite with a common purpose of pursuit, until we dance to the rhythm of informed choices, until we decide to jettison kinsmanship in our electoral journey, until we see reasons to reason with logic, until we start seeing ourselves as electoral opposition, fighting to defend the dead, we will still not be blushing about mass killing.

It is me, @Obajeun

Jonah Ayodele Obajeun blogs @www.obajeun.com. Catch him on twitter via @Obajeun

Its been two months and five days since the students of University of Abuja were unceremoniously asked to go home and the University was shut down due to student unrest over students protest as to the non-accreditation of certain courses. It would be the second time in 2012 alone that the institution would be shut down over the same issue. Now, we are in the last days January 2013, the school is yet to re-open and worst of all, there is no word from school authorities as to any date of resumption, let alone exams.

The protests which began on Monday, 19th November 2012, which was the scheduled date for the commencement of the University’s second semester exams, was ignited mainly by aggrieved students of the Faculty of Engineering due to non-accreditation of the engineering courses which has been ignored for long. The protest began on the main campus and quickly spread to the mini-campus in Gwagwalada where other students joined in, lamenting over poor learning conditions and infrastructure.

These protests continued the next day, with the students barricading the Lokoja-Abuja expressway. Security operatives had to be called in to take charge of the situation, and on the 21st of November 2012, the school was shutdown by a circular from the office of the University’s Registrar. Members of the Nigerian Army were then called in to evict the students out of the hostels, having them scampering away in different directions, with two cases of female students being beaten mercilessly by the soldiers.

University of Abuja turned 25 on January 1st, 2013, but it is sad to say that the deplorable state and the latest trouble beguiling the institution is hardly anything to roll out the drums to celebrate a silver jubilee. Burdened by the constant strikes, both internal and general, mal-administration, and inadequate monitoring, the institution has known little or no development in its 25-year existence.

Unfortunately, the students have been the ones to bear the brunt of such mis-governance. In an attempt to lessen this, the students of University of Abuja took to Social Media Network – Twitter to raise these long-unanswered questions.

The aim of these visibly aggrieved students was to tweet about the apparent aimlessness of the University, ask for precise dates of resumption and 2nd semester exams for the 2011/2012 academic year and generally, not to be taken for granted. Armed with the hash tag #UnibujaInPeril and constant mentions of Reno Omokri @renoomokri (Special Adviser to the President on New Media), Reuben Abati and Federal Ministry of Information, their goal was clear; to get their voices heard and to get the ear of the government.

Tweets like:

“I have slept 30years worth of sleep from December till date, thanks to Unibuja…I don tire #UnibujaInPeril”

“1 word: FRUSTRATED. 1 slogan: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. 1 Wish: TO SEE A BETTER UNIABUJA. Is that too much to ask? #UnibujaInPeril

“We fight for Admission, fight for seats, fight for grades, now we are fighting to continue fighting. #UnibujaInPeril

“We are tired of being left in the ‘Streets’, we want to be in our lecture rooms!!! #UnibujaInPeril”
These students have suffered for too long. They were driven out like refugees from their hostels by soldiers, not because they were being naughty, but because they were not given their bread and they asked for it.

This today is the plight of Students of the University of Abuja. We want to go back to school, we want to have a better education, we DO NOT want our futures consumed in this idle stay at home.

Let The Government Come To Our Rescue.

@CzarArchie
Follow – @LOLMAGAZIN – @JohannesMathews – @UNIBUJAinPeril – @alcoholheero – @preachojo – @ivoryink – @joebabe1 – @HRH_Klover – @cjbaronize – @U_A_M_A_A – @JakeChukwu For live updates and RTs.

Expectedly, a rejoinder to my last week’s column, “A lesson from the ‘Little Jesus’ of Owerri”, came in just in time, and also from the right quarter, to counterpoint my praise of Governor Rochas Okorocha’s administration. However, it may be unfair to echo any word from mine as the readers may still return to the piece and take apart our line of argument. Our guest columnist, Suraj Oyewale, who is the economist mentioned in my take on Governor Rochas’ populist policies, is not only a vigilant follower of Nigerian politics, but a regular commentator in the train of Nigeria’s “awakened” youths, youths possessed by a passion for change. Suraj is currently a MBA student at Edinburgh School of Business. I yield this space to him today – Kakanda   

Of Fashola’s ‘Elitism’, Okorocha’s ‘Welfarism’ and Kakanda’s Misjudgment

By Suraj Oyewale

My good friend, Gimba Kakanda, is a very brilliant fellow. For some time now, I have touted him as the next Abubakar Gimba, not only because he is a look-alike of this veteran writer, but equally because of his gift with words. Witty, yet hard-hitting, you cannot but marvel at this budding writer’s literary prowess. With sharp pen and an even sharper mind, Kakanda is not one to be equivocal about his convictions through his favourite medium – writing.  Such is the stuff of my friend, who was recently brought aboard the Blueprint Newspapers as one of its columnists.

Kakanda was again at his satirical best when he wrote his piece titled “A lesson from the ‘little Jesus’ of Owerri”, published in his Blueprint column of Friday, January 18, 2012, only that this time around, as was the case a couple of times on his Facebook wall, he missed the point.  Eulogizing Imo state governor Rochas Okorocha and subtly thumbing down his counterpart in Lagos, Kakanda wrote what I will summarize thus: Okorocha’s policies are welfarist and that is exactly what is needed to take the state out of the abyss past administrations had plunged it into. Governor Fashola, he wrote in contrast, is an elitist whose policies only benefit the upper class, further widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. I have decided to pick just these two central postulations, ignoring the third – a jibe at economists – where my friend opted for the convenient path of puncturing controversial British clergyman-cum-political economist, Thomas Malthus’ theory on population.

The thing is, many Nigerians fall for cheap publicity stunts and our political class has effectively devised strategies around this and it’s working wonder for them. Let’s flip with Kakanda in commonsense: consider two political office holders, A and B. Mr. A goes to every household to distribute free bread, Mr. B constructs roads. In Nigeria’s political space, Mr A is more likely to earn more applause. That is the tragedy of our political understanding.

I am a longtime admirer of Okorocha. He has been a philanthropist for many years. I have known about his almost free schools, situated in different zones of Nigeria, for almost a decade now. He came to politics with a lot of goodwill. Fine. With such image, Owelle is the least person that needs populist stunts, wrongly taken to be welfarism. This is why I am disappointed in his approach to governance, which is more of needless showboating. Where do you situate wearing school uniforms a la primary school pupils and inviting press to cover that, in the context of good governance? Why must you announce that you would pay more than minimum wage to your workers when you knew your revenue can’t finance that, only to renege on this? Joining the regular queues in airports? Fine. But I need Kakanda to tell us whether this is a routine or just some one-off action to score a cheap point. How many times a month does Mr. Okorocha travel? How many times does he travel by this popular ‘queue’ route? While I don’t have any problem with a governor identifying with the common citizens, when such is done only to score points, the merit is lost. To me, the only faultless programme from the Imo governor to date is his free education policy, but probably unknown to Kakanda is the fact that public education is highly subsidised, if not free, in many other states as well. In Lagos state, registration of students for NECO examinations is free. I don’t know how much is paid as tuition fees in primary and secondary schools in public schools in Lagos state, but I am not aware of the fact that it is prohibitive enough to be a deterrent to schooling. In many northern states, what students receive as annual bursary payments in tertiary institutions is far higher than the cost of their education per year. The point here is, Okorocha’s free education policy, noble quite alright, is not something new.

Now, are Fashola’s programmes elitist as my friend would want us believe? The oshodi traders that suffered untold hardships in the hands of social miscreants before the Fashola clean-up are not elite sir; majority of the residents of my Langbasa domain here – who benefit from Fashola’s road construction – are not members of the upper class sir. Well, the elite are no less Lagosian and they deserve a value for their tax too, hence Fashola giving them Eko Atlantic city is not a misplacement of priority. And okada was never banned in Lagos, it was only restricted.  The ‘lowly’ okada riders can continue to make a living from plying the permissible routes.

Okorocha has his high point no doubt, but when we rank joining queues in airports or wearing elementary school uniforms over massive long term development-enhancing capital projects like road constructions and expansions as we see everywhere in Lagos, then there is something fundamentally wrong in our assessment criteria. My final advice to my good friend is to shine his eyes, as we say in Fashola’s Lagos.

Oyewale can be reached at oyewalesuraj@yahoo.com.

NB: KakandaTemple column is simultaneously run with ‘Flips of Commonsense’ in Blueprint Newspapers every friday. Follow Gimba Kakanda on Twitter: @gimbakakanda.

I have two beautiful native sisters. I love them with all my heart. If any of them asks me to give her my coat, I’ll give her my tie too.Whatever will hurt them will strongly hurt me. Now what could hurt more than emotional hurt? Or worse still, marital hurt? ‘God forbid, bad thing!’ as we say in my country.

 
But then again, I also have several innumerable sisters scattered all over the world. Jesus is my Elder Brother. And if Jesus is also your Elder Brother, then we are family, making you my sister – by Blood.

 
Hence the advice – if any man comes to you and complains about your being too spiritual – when I know that every truly spiritual man is always striving to know God more and be closer drawn to Him – please run from that man.

 
I truly pray that you have not given yourself to him. In that case, run. He will do you no good, but will only make a mess of your spirituality. In fact, in any case, run!

 
If you truly love God as you say you do, you’ll need a man who will help you draw closer to God.

Okay, let’s say he is too busy to join you for every fellowship meeting, or ask to hear what you learn from church, which really is the case with most men who want to make sure their families have enough to eat and spare, he should not be the type to make you lower your standards, spiritually.
I hate the fact that my sentences are very long. But I’ll continue.

 
I have come across a few sisters complaining that a certain young man likes them, but complains that they are always in church, or always reading their Bible, or always praying.

 
Of course there should be balance, and if he has observed, say, that your being always in Church is making you go late for work or make poor grades in school, that might perhaps have necessitated his advising you to cut down on some other church activities so as to meet up with those other responsibilities that make you a responsible woman.

 
And brothers, I know we are a very jealous sort; but let us please encourage our sisters, whom we have observed to be genuinely spiritual, to indeed be!

 
We need more spiritual women so we can populate the world with spiritual children!

 
If you find a man who encourages you to stay spiritual, marry him!

@ikeamadi on Twitter

P.S This series tagged #MarryHer will continue to run on this column every Sunday, God willing.

Elementary lunacy – the idea that the insistent repetition of a process can lead to a completely different outcome!  We can leave psychologists to determine if that form of lunacy is elementary or not.  But it is pure lunacy.

Nigerians who continue to wonder aloud why the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, with its regime of crises has not crumbled need not wonder at all.  It will not.  The ties that bind the leaders of the party are such that the party members and leaders can continue to suffer serial folly.

The ties that bind the leaders (and even owners) of the party can be encapsulated thus: wealth, property and power.  That is what binds them together.  Mind you, some other political parties, too, do have them.

To understand the mentality of PDP leaders (and by extension, the typical Nigerian politician) you need to understand their perception of wealth and power and the relationship that exists between both.

It was Andrew Chua who wrote that “some have said that Wealth is Power. But it is equally well-known that Power brings Wealth. So what is the relationship between these two objects of desire? Which brings which? Which is the chicken and which is the egg?

When we combine the definitions of Wealth and Power, we get the correct perspective to view these two subjects.  The truth is, Wealth is ONE TYPE of Power. Wealth itself can also be traded for other types of power. You can use wealth to influence those in positions of authority, through both legitimate lobbying and corruption. So the question of ‘Do you want wealth or power?’ is in itself faulty.

Wealth is one type of power. It’s like asking if you prefer apples or fruits. A better question would be ‘Do you prefer Wealth or Authority?’ Maybe this is what people really mean when they ask the afore-mentioned famous question. Now we are correctly asking if you prefer apples or oranges. And of course, like choosing between two different species of fruits, the answer comes down to personal preference”.

For those who own PDP, they want all.  And any which way, the one brings the other.  But which one first!  Both; depending on the status at the point of entry.

And because they want all, they create all manner of confusion in their bid to get all.

Even the simple matter of laid down procedure by their own hand is treated with scornful disdain. That is why the aggregate of litigations from internal crises of all the political parties in the country during the 2011 elections are just about half of what was generated by PDP’s shambling approach to the observance of its own rules.

Today, intrigues and surfeit of distractive tendencies to good governance have become the hallmarks of PDP.  Not that the other political parties conform to a modicum of decent conduct in their activities too, the one-chance problem Nigeria has found itself in, and which is the vehicle of PDP, is that just as both Olusegun Obasanjo and late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua spent more time attempting to resolve intra-party crises, even President Goodluck Jonathan, too, now spend more time interfering via subterfuge in the affairs of an already shambolic party.

But at every turn of the road when PDP’s detractors profess that the party would collapse, it bounces back in its own way.

So, how do PDP leaders do it?

The ties that bind them are wealth and power.  The roots of the dog-eat-dog syndrome that manifests in every aspect of PDP’s modus operandi can be located in the quest for and retention of wealth and power.  From elbowing one another out of electoral contests, to breaking limbs and bruising heads, to inflicting maximum embarrassment, and allegations and threats of assassination and assassinations, leaders of PDP, nevertheless, still find common ground.

And that is why every contestation for power is derisively termed a family affair.  Members of that family run on the steroids of distrust for one another and treachery against same.  Most of the leaders must of necessity swim or sink with the party; the few who have tried to break away have almost always become targets of anti-corruption agencies.  A few have been killed mysteriously and not one of the murders has been resolved.

The latest round of acrimony in the party, made worse by the crisis in its Adamawa State Chapter revolves round the issue of following due process of its own laid down rules which are obeyed in the breach rather than observance.

Pray, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, the party’s National Secretary, who was sacked by the courts penultimate Friday, emerged in a manner that was at once flawed and improper – at least that was what the court pronounced.  By the same token, how did Bamangar Tukur, the chairman, emerge?

How did President Jonathan become the party’s candidate for the 2011 election?   Though there are a few good men in that same conclave, those who own the party must have their way always.  And that is why Nigeria is where Nigeria is – because those who own PDP and who have owned Nigeria since 1999 rely on the pursuit and retention of wealth and power.

via Vanguard

Last Monday, January 14, the Pastor Tunde Bakare-led ‘Save Nigeria Group’ marked the anniversary of the 2012 “Occupy Nigeria” fuel subsidy protest in Lagos with a public lecture titled “Nigeria’s Fiscal and Monetary Crisis: the Way Forward”.  The occasion afforded the Central Bank of Nigeria the opportunity to publicly defend its failure to create an enabling environment for industries and businesses to bloom, in consonance with its core mandate for price stability.  The major indicators of price stability, of course, relate to conducive low single-digit interest rates for bank loans and an even lower inflation rate.

I was privileged to be a guest speaker at the forum, where the CBN Directors of Research and Finance argued that it was virtually impossible to resolve what they described as the “unholy trinity” of low interest and inflation rates, and simultaneously also improve  naira’s exchange rate.

Nonetheless, the apex bank commended its own performance on these indices when compared with other economies in West Africa.  Why they chose to benchmark their performance against ducks, when indeed, they should be aspiring to be eagles, remains unclear.

However, the directors were hard pressed to identify any nation that successfully grew its economy with cost of funds to the real sector at over 20 per cent, and abiding inflation rate at over 12 per cent, while its domestic currency rate is constantly threatened by increasing export dollar revenue.  In order to compensate for its failure to enthrone an enabling monetary strategy, the CBN reported its involvement in several projects such as the cash-lite policy and various selective bailout packages involving hundreds of billions of naira.

The source of these huge cash injections including the N1bn donation to a particular university remains a mystery. Regrettably, these rogue interventions have so far failed to revitalise beneficiary subsectors and stimulate economic growth and employment opportunities.

Interestingly, the CBN rejected responsibility for the nation’s poor infrastructural base, as well as blame for the inability to diversify production in our economy.  The apex bank’s representatives were obviously in denial of the fact that massive infrastructural enhancement is impossible with double digit interest and inflation rates. For example, Bi-Courtney would most probably have since revamped the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway if cost of funds were as low as five  per cent rather than 20 per cent or more.  Also, the agricultural, power, aviation, textile, transport and other sectors would similarly be much stronger if operators in each sector also had access to much cheaper funds.

Indeed, Nigeria’s paltry annual capital budget of barely $9bn indicates that our hope for rapid infrastructural enhancement is better placed on private sector investments.

Nonetheless, the CBN boasted that only the uninformed would demand a stronger naira rate of exchange, as textbook economics suggests that a strong naira rate would make Nigerian products more expensive than imports!  The fallacy of this argument was obviously ignored, as reckless depreciation of the naira from stronger than parity to about N160:$1 has obviously had a negative rather than a positive growth impact on exports and other sectors of the Nigerian economy.  The CBN certainly misses the point that the demand for oil, our major export, does not depend on naira’s exchange rate!

Surprisingly, the CBN’s understanding of its core mandate of price stability seems related primarily to modulation of excessive high and low cycles in the levels of interest and inflation rates rather than the promotion of enabling rates as in industrialised and successful economies elsewhere!  Besides, according to the CBN, the capital market remains a cheap source of funds for all investors, including Small and Medium Enterprises.

The CBN directors were obviously acquainted with my strident advocacy for an urgent review of Nigeria’s monetary strategy, but quickly described the thrust of our argument as “misleading, misguiding and miseducating”!  Regrettably, however, they failed to demonstrate the logic beneath this questionable conclusion.

They also failed to justify why Nigeria’s economy has remained a victim of surplus cash for decades, or indeed, why the burden of excess liquidity exists side by side with the failure of the real sector to access adequate and cheap funds!  Besides, there was no satisfactory explanation why the CBN combats inflation by borrowing back perceived excess cash in the economy from commercial banks at rates above 12 per cent, only to warehouse the loans as idle funds.  It is inexplicable that any commodity would become more expensive whenever the market is awash with a surplus of that item, especially when the CBN also agrees that our high rates were the product of market demand and supply.

The CBN is obviously unrepentant for crowding out the real sector by borrowing at outrageous levels of interest rate while such risk-free sovereign borrowings in successful economies elsewhere generally attract lower single-digit interest rates; rates level, which the CBN insists are inapplicable in our state of development.

The directors did not even attempt to fault my observation that the CBN’s inability to achieve its core mandate of price stability is actually the product of its poor management of money supply!  It is nonetheless, irrefutable that the ever-present burden of excess liquidity induces heavy government borrowings at high interest rates and also fuels inflation rate as the increasingly huge cash surplus in the system cannot be immediately matched by available goods and services.  This systemic cash surplus is regularly pitched against relatively paltry dollar auctions by the CBN, and this ultimately also depreciates naira’s exchange rate!

Undoubtedly, the CBN’s alleged “unholy trinity” of interest, inflation and exchange rates have a common causative influence; i.e. the ever-present burden of excess liquidity.

Instructively, massive reduction or total elimination of excess liquidity will actually create a “holy trinity” of lower single-digit interest and inflation rates and also engender a stronger naira, all of which constitute the requisite profile for an enabling environment for growth and economic development with increasing employment opportunities.

In truth, the economic poison of excess liquidity is not administered by increased government spending, as often alleged, but by CBN’s capture of the nation’s dollar revenue and substitution with naira allocations to the three tiers of government.

The CBN’s claim that they are compelled by the constitution to substitute naira allocation for dollar revenue is certainly not substantiated by Section 162 of the constitution, which simply states that all monies must be paid into the federation account.  The section really does not stop the three tiers of government from maintaining domiciliary accounts just like any other citizen.

We will discuss the CBN’s lion share of our reserves next week!

– Henry Boyo (lesleba@lesleba.com

I’m a young, politically conscious Nigerian and, should I say, someone whose vote is up for grabs in 2015. First of all, I do not have any party affiliation. Out there, many Nigerians like me would love to vote based on conviction, not some party or ethnic allegiance or financial inducement. Globally, the people who determine outcomes of elections are not always the partisans. “Unattached voters” have a say. They usually vote judging by the issues at hand and their assessments of what the candidates are bringing to the table. In advanced countries, ruling parties are voted out from time to time. Politicians debate issues (not zoning) that impact on the lives of the ordinary people. In Nigeria, we are still far away from experiencing this glorious expression of liberal democratic culture.

Last Tuesday, I was at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, for the launch of 2015: Manifesto of Nigerian Opposition Politics by Salihu Moh. Lukman, a renowned activist. It was an impressive outing, even though I was a bit disappointed that the two leading opposition figures, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, were “unavoidably” absent. As speaker after speaker mounted the podium, it was glaring that there was some enthusiasm in the opposition camp. There were talks about an impending merger of opposition parties and a quest to send the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) out of Aso Rock in 2015.

The PDP has been winning all the presidential elections since 1999. Why is this so? Some will say it is because they enjoy incumbency, with all the trappings, and always rig elections. Maybe that is true. Or maybe the opposition is not doing enough to whittle down the might of the PDP. Maybe it is a combination of both. But it is easy to say the PDP is a party of riggers or that it lacks internal democracy. However, I have observed our parties over time and I can assure you that the PDP does not have the monopoly of rigging and imposition of candidates. My key evidence is how the opposition parties produced their presidential candidates in 2011. They made the PDP look like a gathering of pastors and imams.

All said and done, though, I worry a lot that the PDP is too comfortable at the centre. The competition, unfortunately, is too feeble and disorganised. So the PDP gets away with murder all the time. Many Nigerians are disdainful of the PDP – but the question is: what is the opposition all about? What are they offering us, beyond tough-talking press statements? Definitely, there is a prime place for propaganda in politics. But this must be in addition to other strategies to win power – such as alliances, mergers, finances, headhunting, and, not the least, marketing of alternative agenda. Our opposition parties appear to lack the pragmatism needed to unseat the ruling party.

Yes, they issue eloquent press statements to criticise every move of the PDP. But to an undecided voter like me, I think the opposition behaves more like student unionists with a “we no go gree o” posture. Student unions are often good at criticising a policy – their major undoing is articulating a better option. However, if we look closely at the nature of opposition in advanced democracies, such as in Europe and the US, the parties always say something like: “Bad job! This is how it should be done.” Remember the policy debates between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney before the last US presidential election.

There are two issues, for instance, that I would love the opposition to tell us how they are going to tackle if they successfully dislodge the PDP from Aso Rock in 2015. The first is the petroleum industry. This government says it must be liberalised and subsidies removed so that private investors can have the incentive to invest in refineries, etc. If our four refineries are working at full capacity today, they are not enough to satisfy local consumption. We will continue to import until new refineries come on stream. Now, what is the opposition position on this? Would they liberalise the sector? Would they remove subsidies? Or would they build more refineries and retain the subsidies? Through a well thought-out position on this critical issue, the opposition can market itself to us.

The second issue is power. It is not enough to say the PDP has sunk $16 billion into the sector since 1999 only to produce megawatts of darkness. What would the opposition do? The current strategy, I suppose, is to unbundle PHCN, privatise the successor companies, build power plants all over the country and lease out the management of the transmission company. How would the opposition tackle unending power cuts? When Tinubu was governor of Lagos State, he came up with the idea of an independent plant set up by Enron and now run by AES. This is a major source of power in the state today. All over the country, we have similar projects coming up. How does the opposition hope to encourage and fast-track more private investments in the sector? How would the poorly executed power projects be revamped? Would subsidies be retained?

I could discuss a dozen more areas, such as education, roads and healthcare, that need alternative strategies, but I’ll stop here because of space.  However, don’t get me wrong: I am not suggesting that the opposition does not have ideas. I am saying there is a need to market these ideas to millions of unattached voters, the group I belong. Propaganda serves a purpose. Mergers serve a purpose. Finances serve a purpose. In fact, among the electorate, there are those who vote based on N1000 notes stuffed in loaves of bread. But what I am seeking to do today is to make a case for my constituency (unattached voters). We should not be ignored. We want to hear policy issues being fiercely debated, with better alternatives and ideas being proffered. I don’t know how critical we are to the outcomes of elections, but at least we exist. We deserve some attention.

Even if the PDP always wins by rigging, I am convinced that one day, their cup will be full. That is why the opposition must go beyond “we no go gree” statements. Luckily, they have enough time before the next general election to win over undecided voters with well-articulated and intelligently propagated alternatives ideas on the way forward for “Project Nigeria”.

– Simon Kolawole (simon.kolawole@thisdaylive.com)

Via ThisDay

Pastor Tunde Bakare, Senior Pastor of the Latter Rain Assembly and former running mate of Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari in the last presidential election, speaks with KUNLE ADEYEMI and ADEOLA BALOGUN on some burning national issues

One year after the fuel subsidy protests, when you look back, would you say the protests achieved their goals?

When there are clear goals and objectives for any movement or protest, then you have the opportunity of judging whether those goals are attained or accomplished. We didn’t just rush out; if you recall, the increase in petrol pump price took place on January 1, 2012. Like a sadist, the President gave us a cause to be sorrowful on the first day of the year; even those who didn’t even have vehicles of their own and had to pay through their noses to move from one place to the other. The Save Nigeria Group sat down to analyse the situation and joined the protest in Ojota with its allies. There were pockets of protests here and there; there was a general strike by the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress; then we sat down and set the objectives clearly: that the increase in pump price was not our problem but corruption. We said the time had come for us to educate and enlighten our citizens and unblock their minds as to the root cause of the continuous increase in petrol pump price all the time and the affliction and oppression inflicted on the people of this country. That’s why we came out with the watchword, “Kill Corruption and not Nigerians.” And I leave it to you as journalists to see whether or not we accomplished our objectives because immediately we began to hammer that, probe after probe, live on television came out. There is no Nigerian anywhere in this country and in the Diaspora that does not know that filthiness is in our garments. Corruption is the bane and we have unmasked the masquerade.

It was alleged that you led the protest because your party lost the election to the President’s party.

You cannot tell clueless people not to reason wrongly. Did all the people who participated in that protest run for an election? All the musicians that came there, all the artistes that came there without taking a penny from us, did they run for any election? And even if you are going to judge me that it was because you rigged an election that you said we lost, that led to the protest, did I ask you to increase the pump price? And if you are to judge me, judge me by my overall character; did I stand for you when you were being oppressed, Mr. President? Was I a politician when we led and took to the streets in Abuja and Lagos where we stood against every form of oppression and injustice because injustice to one is injustice to all? Were we sponsored by politicians when we took to the streets in January, 2010 after the prolonged illness of (Umaru) Yar’Adua? You can’t help people who don’t engage their brain to think; they are entitled to their opinion. But let me tell you the truth, there was no political motivation of any kind to that protest. We rose to protest an injustice being meted out to a people deserving not only respect, but those whose welfare should be the primary concern of a good government. Everybody is aware now that somebody is watching somebody. With all the exposure of corruption in high places, everyone is careful and they are so scared. In spite of threatening to increase the price of PMS, they couldn’t, although they are doing it illegally by allowing people to sell at any price they like. But it is still illegal and that is why I dared them three days ago to come out and increase the petrol price without cushioning the effect and providing alternative for the people. They will know that it is for the dog to wag the tail, not the tail to wag the dog; people will tell them enough is enough.

Don’t you think that 2015 is still far away for campaigning to have started?

They have signalled the campaign by going to kneel down before Pastor Adeboye (General Overseer, Redeemed Christian Church of God). See, I am not saying that pastors should not pray for presidents, that man was representing an office; a whole nation crumbling before men of God because of political advantage they think they can get. And if the prayer will bail him out, let us wait and see. The truth is who is preparing for 2015, which faction of the PDP? Is it the (Olusegun) Obasanjo faction? Or IBB faction? Or Jonathan faction? The governors’ faction? Because PDP is a house divided against itself; it’s a chicken that has begun to eat its own intestines. By going to kneel down in the open before the pastor, the man (Jonathan) did not even recognise the dignity of his office. If it were a private thing, it is okay for you to crawl or kneel but it is a whole nation. That office has been diminished by a man who does not know the worth of it and does not deserve to stay there for one more day.

What then should be the role of religious leaders like you in the affairs of the nation?

I am not a religious leader. I don’t believe in religion; religion is deadly. Jesus Christ did not start a religion here. He began a relationship with God. Let’s separate the two. Religious leaders don’t think any more, they lose their brain. Paul said, I speak the words of truth and reason. What is the impact of the church in this country other than to pray for men who have stolen the treasury and wealth of the nation and coming back to give us different kinds of gifts; giving us jets and all kinds of things that will silence us so that we cannot speak the truth to power? I know the church that Jesus Christ is building will continue to wax stronger but this synagogue of Satan will fold up soon. I hate religion with passion.

How will you assess the Jonathan administration so far?

Under Jonathan’s leadership, Nigeria as a whole has become a titanic ship on sail to hit the iceberg and sink. Right-thinking people must rise to rescue the helm of that ship from his (Jonathan’s) hand before he wrecks the entire nation. We have promoted men who have no mental capacity to do what we ask them to do. At a meeting we had on Monday to mark the anniversary of the protest, the Chairman of Punch Editorial Board brought this to my consciousness by describing leadership of Nigeria as inept. He said we have put men who have been promoted beyond their mental capacity in position. That is our problem.

Many people believe that the PDP has become an albatross to Nigerians and that is why there is a clamour for an alliance among the opposition parties in order to wrest power from the ruling party. What do you think has been hampering such alliance?

You have put me on the spot and I will only be truthful. In order to steer the ship of Nigeria aright, there must be a handshake across the Niger; between the North and the South. But it must be of like minds; the best of the North and the best of the South. How that will take place is a function of many factors. An alliance is not the way forward. In a presidential system of government, there is no opposition; it’s winner takes all. If the party in power has a majority in the National Assembly, they don’t need anybody. That is the weakness of the presidential system of government. Each time they talk of opposition, I think we are so much inundated by our past experience with the parliamentary system where the prime minister can be removed from the parliament and nothing will happen because the system allows it. But the presidential system does not brook any opposition, except only when they don’t have the majority. I think the way forward is a merger of all the so-called opposition parties especially the Action Congress of Nigeria, All Nigeria Peoples Party and the Congress for Progressive Change. But I realised recently when the ACN said PDP is a party of rogues and thieves and criminals, the PDP replied that there are more criminals in the ACN than the PDP and there was no response thereafter. I read all that in the newspapers. If there is going to be a merger, between who and who-between rogues and criminals? Can light and darkness co-exist? Let’s pray that men and women of goodwill will rise and do the needful. However, having said all that, I am of the firm belief and conviction that there will be no election in 2015. I am of the firm belief that this house of cards will collapse before 2015. As it is now, what we have does not have what it takes to drag Nigeria along; and anything can happen anytime from now. And I pray that it would be what would be for the benefit of the entire nation. Each time we have spoken that way, some have thought we are calling for the military to take over. What did the military do for the nation before? Don’t let me be misunderstood, except we have a kind of Jehu revolution, where the worshippers of bell and the worshippers of the altar of greed are all dealt with as it happened in Ghana. Then, there may be some hope there. Our people may revolt, which can happen so unexpectedly. Remember what happened when the Shah of Iran ran away from that country and the Arab Spring? It would be worse here because they have pushed people beyond limit. Look at the level of insecurity, daylight robbery; you are coming out of the church and they are pointing a gun at you. North is not safe, there is Boko Haram; South-East is not safe, there is kidnapping; South is not safe, there is pipeline vandalism. And fire is now ravaging everywhere. People have been pushed beyond limit and there may be a people’s revolt. Beyond this, there is God almighty, who may say the cries of the people have come up to Him, enough is enough.

When you as a man of God says there will be no election in 2015, is that as a result of a vision or what?

Leave that to me but by the time this nation is 100 years old in 2014, God will answer the prayer of the people of God and there will be a new beginning. The madness that is going on everywhere now is that God is hardening the heart of Pharaoh.

The President warned a few days ago against statements that could destabilise the country such as this.

Is the nation not destabilised already? What have we said that will destabilise the country? Let’s call a spade a spade and not an agricultural implement.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo also warned against a revolution recently going by the way things are going…

He said the truth but he would be the first victim that it would consume because he caused the problem; by forcing the weak and the sick on the nation. A few days ago, Adamu Ciroma came out to say that Obasanjo knew that the late Umaru Yar’Adua was sick. Just wait, the result is about to happen. He did that as a way of revenging on Nigeria for the collapse of his third term agenda but Obasanjo will be the first victim of the revolution. I presented a lecture on Sunday that Obasanjo had the greatest opportunity to put Nigeria in proper shape and to leave a legacy for generations unborn. But he chose not to do that. I had the privilege of launching a book in honour of a venerable man, Chief Akin Olugbade, an Owu, to mark his centenary birthday if he were alive. I said Owu as a kingdom had produced angels in human flesh like the late Akin Olugbade, whose generosity and philanthropy benefitted a person like me. I went there to say that this is a return on investment and I gave the little that I had. If Obasanjo dares, let both of us walk through Itoku Market in Abeokuta even as an Owu man without any aide, or the streets of Sokoto among the almajiris. That is why I told them that Owu kingdom has produced angels and demons such as Obasanjo, who incidentally is called Ebora Owu. Ebora means demon and demons are to be exorcised. Our job is to cast out demons of Owu and that we would do by God’s grace.

How do you see the rift between Obasanjo and Jonathan; probably Obasanjo has realised his mistakes and now thinks it is better to fight on the side of the people?

Obasanjo does not realise anything. I think Jonathan has surpassed him in misgovernance and he is frightened. It is only a thief that knows the footprint of another thief on a rock. How did he come by his big house? How much was Obasanjo worth when he left the prison, how much is he worth now? How did he come about his big investments? How much was he paid as President of Nigeria. Let him explain. What we have is a government of crooks by crooks.

In the last election, you tried politics. What should we expect now?

I didn’t try politics. I was invited to assist a person whom I thought was a honest man and would be surrounded by good people and then we would fight corruption. That was the only reason. I was a running mate; I wasn’t a member of any party. I was invited but I am back in my element to keep doing what I am doing. That ended there; if the opportunity comes to serve my country in any capacity, I will but I am not forming any party.

What did you see in Maj.-Gen.Mohammadu Buhari before you joined him?

His integrity and his anti-corruption stance stood him out. He is the only head of state alive who made the public statement that in his entire public service career, as a governor, as a commissioner (now minister), as a commandant of different army formations and as a head of state, he never touched one penny in the public treasury; that he can account for everything God has given him. His mother’s house was built through a loan both in Daura and in Kaduna. The one in Lagos, he had to sell to fund the one he took a loan to build in Abuja because he didn’t know how to steal. He is very forthright and honest; that’s all I saw and if we can surround such a man with people who have the capability and the capacity to run the state and the treasury is safe and there is no more stealing and Nigeria is no longer haemorrhaging, we can salvage it. That was why we assembled a change team that we thought would be allowed but they rigged the election.

Some people believe that if somebody like you becomes the President of Nigeria, there will be more evidence of despotic actions in governance. How would you react to this?

The only way to judge that is to come to a church I have headed for more than 20 years and see whether there is any evidence of despotism. Then you come to my house and see my wife and children to see if there is an evidence of despotic actions. I am not a despot and in fact, how can you be a despot in a democratic setting? Don’t forget I am a trained lawyer; I would not violate the rule of law. No true leader should be a despot.

Apart from corruption, security is another challenge facing the country and the Presidency has had to change the head of police several times because of this. So far, how would you assess the present IG, Muhammed Abubakar?

There is nobody you put there who can accomplish anything about insecurity because the fish starts smelling from the head. If you say corruption is not the problem, what leads to insecurity if not corruption? The IG can give orders but the men at the toll gates and roadblocks are there to perpetuate corruption. Corruption and violence are Siamese twins and in Genesis, God said He was grieved in His heart that He created man, that the earth was corrupt and there was violence everywhere. You can’t find corruption and not see violence. I do not approve of what Boko Haram is doing but if you grant amnesty to those who were vandalising the pipelines because of fighting for what they claimed was legitimately theirs, and Boko Haram are saying their governors are not taking care of them, who are you to judge them? Why have they not been able to fix the problem?

But it has always been argued that Boko Haram is faceless and so it would be difficult to engage its elements…

Boko Haram faceless and yet Obasanjo met with them? I don’t know them but the President of Nigeria said Boko Haram members were in his cabinet. Who are those he alleged were in his cabinet, are they ghosts? What led to the removal of the late Gen. (Andrew) Azazi as National Security Adviser? They are totally insincere. There is PDP Boko Haram. Let them not fool you. They arrested some people in Jos and elsewhere, why have they not been able to prosecute anyone with all the arrests? Do you think it is the Boko Haram that started in the Borno area that are the ones planting sophisticated bombs everywhere now? Please let’s think; there is security Boko Haram, there is political Boko Haram and there is criminal Boko Haram.

Recently the government came out to say electricity has improved a bit but the way you are talking, it’s like it has not done anything.

If a man told me a lie yesterday and I believed him but it turned out to be false; and he told me a lie a day before, how long am I to continue to believe him? Nigerians have been told of improved electricity in recent months but how many parts of the country have you travelled to? They are putting electricity where you make noise so that you don’t bother them. I still burn diesel in my house everyday up till now and my budget for diesel both in the church and in my house has increased with all the noise they are making. And by the way, how much have they invested in electricity generation and how much electricity have they produced?

But the government has been trying to put electricity generation into private hands for improvement.

I have had the opportunity of living in both Britain and America for six years each and I never met the electricity officials. All I had to do was to pay my bills; that was all. All the privatisation noise they are making is fraught with deep-seated corruption. They sell everything to themselves. They have been mentioning privatisation when I was still in my mother’s womb. Once upon a time, there was ECN and there was stable electricity. They are insincere and they sell everything to themselves.

How do you see the politicking involved in the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway project, where a lot of lives have been lost? Soon after the contract was withdrawn from Dr.Wale Babalakin, he was arrested for alleged money laundering.

Evil is self-destruct. That’s all I see there. If Babalakin is being tried for something, the question is, is it true? If it is false, then the trial will fall on its face. I have told you that it is only the thief that knows how to trace the footsteps of another on a rock. They know what they are doing. If you remain in our camp and you don’t attack us, you remain our friend. Babalakin used to be the solicitor for Obasanjo, have they fallen out? Was there anything between Babalakin and the minister and is there a fall out? But the truth is, can they come and revoke a contract that I have not seen or can they come and charge me for money laundering? My accounts are in the open and if you access them, you will see that it has been regular. And every business I have done, I have gone to the banks for legitimate loans and I have paid back those loans. If you have done no evil, you need not fear no evil. So, if Babalakin has done no evil, no evil will befall him. But if he has done it, then let him find a way of reaching out to them before they wreck him completely because they are vicious. What is going on on that road is the failure of the entire nation. Leadership has failed Nigerians. That is the main road that connects the South and the North and any serious government should have done something about it. I am aware that the South-West governors showed an interest and met with the President but I don’t know why they were not allowed to do it. There is more to it than we ordinary citizens know.

As kinsmen, people would expect a kind of rapport between you and Obasanjo but you are one of his critics. Is there something personal?

Apart from answering questions about him in interviews, I don’t think or talk about him at all because he does not even occur in my thinking. If Obasanjo is my kinsman, does it mean that if he does evil, I should keep quiet? I have no personal hatred for him. Let me tell you something, I don’t know whether he knows but I am saying the truth and it can be verified. When he was in prison, one of the pastors that went to minister to him, I sent him. He was a member of our network. When he was in prison, two of his children were brought here because their school fees could not be paid by one of his wives, I paid the fees. I have nothing against him.

On a personal note, do you at times regret leaving the pulpit and venturing into politics?

Look at me, as the Lord lives and when the opportunity presents itself, because of my interest in an orderly society, I will do it again. I have no regret. When good men leave politics alone, evil men will continue to traumatise the nation. And by the way, I never left the pulpit, in all the months of electioneering, I was absent in church only one Sunday because it caught up with me in Borno and I couldn’t get back. Gen. Buhari knew that by Friday night, or latest Saturday morning, I must be back in Lagos to feed the flock.

Supposing the President chooses to come and fellowship at your church, what would you do?

Let him try it. Jonathan dares not and if he does, he will sit at the back.

What is the Nigeria of your dream?

The Nigeria that works in my lifetime, that is the Nigeria of my dream. My ears have heard about this great nation, my eyes will see it in my own lifetime. I am not an ambitious person and that is why I can come back here.

via Punch

Sir, by your not so humble proclamation, I am a member of the “Collective Children of Anger” and I must say, I am proud to be one. Thank you for that honor done to me and others like me – we, who do not trust that the (present) government can be left alone to take all the vital decisions that directly impacts on our future. Sir, let me assure you, we would not relent neither will we stagger till those in government act justly for the collective interest of the governed.

But this open letter is not to debate “our” tenacity in the quest for good governance, no it is not. This open letter is to brief and debrief you on your utterances & mannerism as regards national issues. With all due respect Sir, the governed or “Children of Anger” do not ask for scrums of bread from the tables of the government, therefore we reserve our rights to question the way and manner in which a government official that is “paid, fed, transported and clothed” by Taxpayer’s money addresses us.

Need I remind you, Sir, that when you address the citizens of Nigeria, you are neither addressing your students in the university nor your former subordinates while you were with the Guardian Newspaper. When you address us, Sir, please note that you are addressing those that gave your boss a job to do, as well as provided room for you in the corridors of power. At least extend to us the courtesy due Stakeholders or joint shareholders in the Nigerian commonwealth; the same commonwealth to which you owe your monthly pay as of today.

What is in Kastina Windmill?

Sir, this question is not centered on the arrest of Mr. Egghead Odewale and his Friend at the Kastina Windmill on Saturday, no it is not. Rather, this question is about your response to questions asked by Nigerians on the social media platform, Twitter, as regards their arrest.

Without a flicker of doubt, you have more insight into the intelligence and security reports of the nation than any of us. I believe your response to questions/comments on Saturday is a reflection of this knowledge. You said and I quote: “FYI Egghead and Ibrahim were taking pictures of locations which have implications for National security and Foreign Relations”

From the above, the question to ask therefore becomes: What is Nigeria “hiding” in Kastina Windmill? What is at that location that if it becomes public knowledge can cause severe damage on our National Security and Foreign Relations? I understand from the arrest that there was an abduction of a French Contractor some weeks back at the same site of Kastina Windmill and everyone found around the site since then has been treated as a suspect or something close. If the abduction of the French citizen is a cause for National security concern, this is understandable and if this can/will affect our Foreign Relations, it is equally understandable.

What is not clear is why a harmless activity such as taking pictures of the Kastina Windmill can result in National security or Foreign Relations threat?

If Mr. Egghead Odewale and his Friend were not taking pictures of the windmill – according to you – then what really is ‘behind’ the Kastina windmill? At least we can insinuate by your utterance that there is more to the Kastina windmill than the windmill itself, and that Egghead Odewale knows more than he claims to know, hence his mission at Kastina.

For all our sakes, I sincerely hope that you have an intelligent answer to this question, because if not, am sure you know that you have put the entire nation at a great risk by your very careless utterance – an utterance am certain a year one international relations undergraduate will not make.

Moving on…

The Presidential Media Team

What went wrong here? How did you and your team succeed in a very short period to make a once “loved” President become the most hated in the history of this nation? I must say Sir; your Presidential Media team has to be the most porous ever in the history of our nation.

I have not been here long enough to relate first-hand the media team of President Sheu Shagari but I recall vividly the media head of some of the worst Military Junta in this nation. And I must confess they did perform better than your Team has done so far. Sir, Senator Uche Chukwumerije who served as Minister of Information and doubled as the Spokesman for ”Maradona” Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida would never have uttered some of the statements that have been credited to you in this democratic setting.

Sir, you and your team have belittled the Presidency so greatly that even the loquacious era of Femi Fani-Kayode has nothing on you. If you must know Sir, indeed you have “sold” the entire presidency in such bad tastes that even Ima Niboro now has bragging rights that he did a better job while in the office.

I want to believe you know your job but the ability to perform excellently seems to be lacking with you, after all your boss “does not give a damn” about your performance. It is quite sad (well, not for someone like me) for people who used to look up to you either as a role model or an example of brilliance to realize that you really are not what you seemed.

Dr Reuben Abati, if one is to predict your reaction to this letter on the basis of your past responses & utterances – usually borne out of misplaced loyalty, anger and arrogance – then it is certain you will not disappoint this time either. I can only hope against all hope that somehow you’ll manage to prove us all wrong and try to redeem your image and that of your boss while you’re at it.

‘Wale Babatunde is a TechnoPreneur and Social Entrepreneur, with a keen interest in Politics.

Follow him on Twitter: @BabatundeJnr

How many times have we heard the expression “Nigeria won’t break up”? This clichéd expression has become the chorus of Nigeria’s ruling elite; an elite that will not raise a finger to defend the territorial integrity of Nigeria if it becomes necessary to do so.

Like every bankrupt ruling class, ours never ceases to find an opportunity to proclaim its commitment to the country and her unity. One such opportunity offered itself a few days ago during the Inter-Denominational Church Service to mark the 2013 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Celebrations at the National Christian Centre in Abuja.

The Armed Forces Remembrance Day, also known as Remembrance Day, was celebrated on November 11 to coincide with the Remembrance Day for veterans of the World War II in the British Commonwealth of Nations. The date was changed to January 15, in commemoration of the surrender of Biafran troops to the Federal troops on 15 January, 1970, an action that brought the Nigerian Civil War to an end. January 15 is also remembered for another important event in Nigeria’s tortuous road to democratic governance and nationhood. It was on that day, 47 years ago, that the first of many military coups took place, ending Nigeria’s First Republic.

It is understandable, therefore, if presidential emotions run high on Remembrance Day. While lauding the Armed Forces and other security services for their efforts to “keep the nation one and in peace” the President assured Nigerians that the country would not break up. “Some people talk about disintegration of Nigeria, now even at political levels, some people take it as a weapon… when they want to discuss politics. But my conviction, and I believe that of most people here and those listening to us, is that Nigeria will continue to remain a united nation,” the President averred.

Two months ago, at the height of the debate about another petrol price increase, the President had likened the pains Nigerians were experiencing to a boil on the face of a five-year-old girl. Then, he had suggested surgery for the little girl with an assurance that “if she bears the pain and does the incision and treats it, after some days or weeks, the child will grow up to be a beautiful lady”. The President was saying in essence that Nigerians should be ready to bear the pain of his government’s agonising policies.

This time around, President Jonathan likened Nigeria to a 100-year-old marriage which, in his wisdom, is indissoluble. “Nigeria will not disintegrate… I know Nigeria will remain one”, the President assured his audience. “In 2014, we will celebrate our centenary, 100 years in existence. It will only take two mad people to stay in marriage for 100 years and say that is the time you will divorce and we are not mad. If there are issues that have been brewing over the period and we have been managing, we will continue to manage.”

I wonder why the President keeps coming up with these pedestrian comparisons. First, there are not many people in the world who live up to 100 years and there are even fewer who are married for that long. Even if we assume that the President was speaking metaphorically, there is no law that says people who have been married for so long can’t go their separate ways. You don’t have to be mad to divorce after being married for a long time. Sacrifice, yes, but marriages survive based on trust, love and respect, not because of how long. No marriage can survive for too long if it is based on abuse, neglect and deprivation.

Mr. President, we can’t continue to manage after over five decades of independence and almost a century of amalgamation and billions of dollars in earnings. Every Nigerian, including those whose actions have brought the country to its knees, has become a professional manager. No country can survive that continues to patch rather than fix once and for all the long-term structural problems that continue to hold down its progress.

Waxing patriotic, President Jonathan had this to say about the motherland: “I always say that Nigeria is great not because of our oil, because we have people that produce more oil than us but we are appreciated and still reckoned with because of our size and diversity both for human beings and environment. These are areas we should exploit for unity and development”.

Mr. President, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the reality is that Nigeria is only great in our imaginations. Nigeria is big for nothing! We are not respected in the comity of nations; our citizens are mistreated around the world, sometimes because of their actions, and other times simply because they have a green passport. What is there to respect? Even with the abundance of human and natural resources, we have one of the highest maternal  mortality rates in the world. We are ranked amongst the most corrupt nations in the world and we are in competition with Afghanistan, Chad, Angola, DR Congo and Pakistan, for countries with persistent polio transmission. To our eternal shame, while Afghanistan’s polio programme has been described as “consistently performing at a reasonable level”, Nigeria’s “has slipped back in a quite alarming way”.

That President Jonathan – like those before him – has to use every opportunity to proclaim that “Nigeria won’t break up” is reflective of the state of our union. Forty three years after the civil war ended, we have a virtual war on our hands. The same issues that existed before the civil war began are still with us, except that today they have grown worse. The President is unable to visit certain parts of the country; fiends are murdering at will in the name of religion; militancy has become profitable; armed robbers and “freelance assassins” prowl the country while kidnapping has become a lucrative profession; poverty, anger and disillusionment are rife; and our corrupt public officials have graduated from 10 per cent to 150 per cent kickback. What this means is that our rulers, and their collaborators in the private sector, have become so brazen that contractors are guaranteed to receive full payment for a contract that was never started, let alone completed. And they are entitled to an additional half of the total contract sum after a review of the contract in line with the rate of inflation.

Indeed, we are witnessing a scenario worse than the country breaking up. The real fear shouldn’t be the country breaking up because that is a harder and much longer route to travel. The real fear is the possibility that anarchy will envelop the country and we will go the route of Somalia, the poster child of failed states.

The President admonishes “us all (to) stand up and condemn those who say otherwise about our unity. Those who call for our  disintegration or who make similar  statements should be condemned by all Nigerians”. I agree with the President. Now also is the time for all Nigerians, including the President himself, to rise up in one voice and condemn those ills that breed terrorism, anger, disillusionment, poverty and threaten the unity of the country. Ills such as corruption, abuse of power and suppression of the rule of law.

Ultimately, Nigerians would have to take control of their destiny and decide the shape of things to come. If in the end the country survives the doomsday prophesy, it won’t be because the present administration has done anything to stem the slide.

– Chidi Onumah (conumah@hotmail.com)

A colleague told me recently that he met repentant Niger Delta militant Asari Dokubo in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia during last year’s or 2011 hajj operation (can’t remember which year now) and their discussion naturally veered into politics and the comrade was at his vintage best.

Dokubo he said wasn’t happy with what he perceived as the discriminatory way Muslims from the north treat their southern counterparts and would therefore not go to the north in the run up to the 2015 presidential election to campaign to them on behalf of President Goodluck Jonathan. He would rather do his campaign for the president in the south and leave others to handle the north.

While one is not in a position to verify the alleged position of El Hadj Asari Dokubo on northern Muslims, one can safely say at this moment that the man is not likely to campaign for Jonathan’s 2015 presidential project anywhere in Nigeria or even outside. He is simply fed up with the lackluster performance of the president and he has in all intent and purpose told the man to count him out of his second (or is it third?) presidential bid and carry his own cross.

His grouse with the president is simple. Jonathan he opined has failed to live up to expectation and deliver on his promises. And he (Dokubo) an Ijaw man like Jonathan can not in good conscience go before the rest of Nigeria to canvass support for him for another term. What would he tell them or us?

Expectedly the President’s attack dogs saw Dokubo’s comment as an attempt to derail their principal’s fresh presidential bid and have spared no word in condemning the ex militant. They called it bad belle, that the man was annoyed that the president had refused to renew his multi-million-dollar security contract for the protection of oil pipelines in Rivers State against theft/vandalisation.

Recall that the presidency sometime ago discreetly awarded multi-million-dollar pipeline protection contracts to ex. Niger Delta militants covering the oil facilities in Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers States and environs. Many, including this writer saw it as a nepotistic gesture on the part of Jonathan to settle his own people, buy their support and loyalty (for 2015) and reward criminality. The contracts to Asari Dokubo, Ateke Tom, Gens. Boyloaf and Tompolo were not made public by the government until a foreign news agency scooped on it and revealed the details to the world. In criticizing the deal then, one had argued that it was not likely to deter fresh attack by militants in the region on oil facilities there, as those outside the loop of beneficiaries would see any successful attack on the oil facilities as a way of telling the president that they also want a piece of the pie.

Recent pipeline attacks, oil thefts and piracy in Rivers and Bayelsa States have affirmed this position while the jury is still out on the success or otherwise of the contract awarded to Tompolo for pipeline protection in Delta State.

As an aside, it is good to note that Tompolo is carving a new image for himself by veering into humanitarianism using the money he made from militancy and the pipeline protection contract to set up a foundation to take care of the less privileged in the society.

If the pipeline protection contract was meant to shut Dokubo and co up and buy their loyalty, it failed and it remains to be seen whether the termination of his own contract was punishment for being critical of government or failure to secure the pipelines. What is clear however, is that the president is using a multi-prong approach to buy his way into the heart and mind of the society instead of working/warming his way into society through performance, to secure majority support from Nigerians for his 2015 project.

If Jonathan wants to re-contest in 2015 he is free to and he should be bold and man enough to say so instead of beating about the bush and looking for scapegoats among critics of his abysmal performance.

While he is denying interest in the next presidential election for now, it is no secret that he wants another shot at the presidency and his foot soldiers are already on the field trying to hoodwink us into buying a bad and failed product. It is in this light that one would want to view the half-hearted denial of any link to the Jonathan for 2015 posters now all over Abuja, by the presidency, as another of the character weaknesses of President Goodluck Jonathan. What is he afraid of? As the saying goes man dies only but once, but cowards die many times before their death.

It is a matter of yes or no for Nigerians in case he decides to throw his hat into the ring and the earlier he throws his hat in there or keep it with wife Patience the better, instead of accusing imaginary enemies of trying to distract his attention or derail his programmes with the Abuja posters and similar campaigns for his 2015 project currently being carried out through proxies.

From his first day in the White House, it was clear President Barack Obama was going to seek a second term barring any catastrophe and even when the US economy was wobbling and unemployment rising he was still able to convince his party and the rest of America that he remains the best man for the job. And they obliged him with a second term, but not without anything tangible to show as achievement. He was proud to point at his bailout package for the auto industry that saved millions of jobs and affirmed his commitment to strengthening the middle class, even as he vowed to extract more tax from the very wealthy Americans who constitute 2 per cent of the American society.

These with a combination of other factors including the killing of world renowned terrorist Osama bin Laden won him a second term even when the situation on ground economically was so grim that were the times to be different or his opponent Mitt Romney better, he would have been rejected.

Pray, as bad as things are in the country today, especially the deteriorating security situation, is there anything or a combination of things that Jonathan has done well for us to deserve another term even if he is entitled to it?

I am sure it is this fear of what do I tell them that is driving the man into using third parties to sell his second term ambition while publicly denying them. We know the trick Mr President, you don’t need to hide behind one finger. If truly you or your people are not behind the Abuja posters and similar subtle campaigns for your 2015 project why don’t you direct that the posters be put down or ignore them? Why are you labouring to convince us you knew nothing about the posters? Conventional wisdom dictates that when someone tries strenuously to convince the other person or a people about his own position, the likelihood of lies somewhere in the explanation should not be ruled out.

What has been lacking in Jonathan since fate put him at the helm first in Bayelsa State and now at the Presidential Villa in Abuja is a firm, strong and decisive character who knows his onions and ready to act at all times in the best interest of Nigeria and not given to nepotistic tendencies.

It’s been argued rightly or wrongly that part of the weaknesses of his character is his inability to rein in the alleged excesses of his Ijaw kinsmen both within and outside the government. Not that his predecessors were any better or his critics would behave differently in this regard, but because of his level of education Nigerians expect a much better performance from him.

One can go on and on pointing at his character flaws, but what we as Nigerians are not, as Jonathan probably thinks we are, is that we are no fools. We know where his going and we are waiting for him. And as we like to say here, he should not tell us a dog is a monkey.

– Waheed Odusile

Read original pieve via The Nation

I have avoided writing anything on Nigeria’s on-going under-development for a while now because of my belief that we spend a lot of time – too much time – on social media analysing policies of government. We seat in the comfy of our homes or offices, blackberry or iPad in hand, tweeting and updating our Facebook profiles and not ready to do anything to actually bring about the change we tweet about. The government knows this and that is why Dr Reuben Abati described Nigeria’s online social advocates as ‘twittering collective children of anger’. Isn’t that all we do? Tweet. And they have learnt to ignore us. Or so I thought.

The recent arrest, and subsequent release, of Seun ‘Egghead’ Odewale in Katsina State and Dr Abati’s ill-fated and counter-productive attempts to douse tension on twitter while this was going on did so much to restore my confidence in online advocacy as a means of getting the government’s attention. Odewale said one of the senior police officers asked him why he was ‘abusing government on the internet’ being part of government himself. Due to the furore generated online about the arrest even the Inspector General of Police had to call the Command in Katsina to find out what was really going on. Maybe the next call would have come from the president himself. Maybe. The danger however, is seeing this ‘elite social media-tion’, as Tolu Ogunlesi put it, as an end itself because of the popularity it brings, and no longer the means to something greater.

So, why shouldn’t Goodluck Jonathan try his luck one more time come 2015? Two words. Peter’s Principle. He has risen to his ‘level of incompetence’.
We all have our ‘levels of incompetence’, that position to which an employee can be promoted which, alas, is beyond his level of ability, provided he does not keep developing himself. Perhaps, Dr Jonathan was good as a lecturer or as a director at OMPADEC or even as a Deputy Governor that will not stand in the way of his principal’s thievery or a Vice President that will not add to a sick president’s many problems. On those levels he was competent and this got him eventual promotion to higher office until he became the President. And his incompetence became all too glaring.

The Peter Principle was formulated by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull and, according to Wikipedia; it holds that ‘in a hierarchy members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions’. Goodluck Jonathan got to his level of incompetence the day the Senate President, David Mark, invoked that Doctrine of Necessity from God-knows-where and made him Acting President. Since then his minders have been tripping over themselves as they run around daily in attempts to mitigate the damage this man does to the country via his policies, legendary cluelessness and extemporaneous utterances. The earlier Jonathan recognises that Nigeria’s presidency is one shoe too big for him, regardless of whether he had shoes or not, the better for him and his praise singers. His display of incompetence has reached pitiable levels. We don’t get angry anymore. We just shake our heads, and wait for 2015.

AND ONE OTHER MATTER…
Ohimai Godwin Amaize, a Special Assistant to the Minister of Sports, wrote an article recently that created so much buzz within Nigeria’s online community chiefly because of the title of the article (Like It or Not, We Are All PDP). Since then there has been rejoinder after rejoinder after rejoinder. Even rejoinders to rejoinders till it has become a sport. And that, to me, is a representation, an adumbration, if you may, of the Nigerian opposition. Nobody wrote on those issues, at least to my knowledge, until Mr Amaize decided to set the ball rolling. The same way, Nigeria’s ‘opposition parties’ do not take certain actions until the PDP has done something. And then everybody reacts. No recommendations on the direction a policy should take until there is a costly error which makes everybody lose. No national convention until the PDP has had one. No candidates for elections until the PDP has selected theirs and the losers come running to the ‘opposition’. Little wonder we have such despicable quality of opposition as we see in Nigeria.

This was put very succinctly by Japheth Omojuwa in his article Activism 3.0: Activism, Reactivism and the Necessary New Order where he called the actions of the opposition a ‘cat and mouse game between policy makers and activists’. According to him, ‘the latter waits for the former to make policy mistakes, and then goes to town with what is wrong with the policy. This in itself is not wrong but it must not be the default mode of operation.’ He went further to boldly state that ‘there is a necessary need to move from the era of “we no go gree” activism to “this is what we want and this how we want it” proactivism’.
Enough said.

Collins Uma writes for ekekeee.com and he welcomes direct engagement on twitter via his handle @CollinsUma

Lawmakers told the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday to pull the brakes on its plan to obtain a $1.5billon loan.

The oil giant proposes syndicated $1.5billon loan to pay off its debt, according to its officials.

President Goodluck Jonathan is believed to have given his nod for the loan.

House members, who were on recess when news of the proposal was broken, retuned yesterday to mandate its committees to investigate the NNPC’s plan.

The Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Petroleum (Upstream), Justice and Loans and Debts were requested to investigate the plan.

The lawmakers said details of what the loan was meant for were vague, adding that it has the potential to further plunge the nation into greater indebtedness.

Concerns were also raised by the lawmakers on the decision of the NNPC to swap crude oil as collateral for the loan.

The decision of the House followed the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance raised by Ralphael Igbokwe (PDP, Imo), who observed that the loan was neither included in the 2013-2015 Medium Term Expenditure Framework nor in the 2013 budget.

He said the corporation deliberately ignored relevant sections of the law that require it to present such a financial transaction before the National Assembly.

He said: “Section 44 subsection (2) (a) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act prescribes as a mandatory condition, that government in the Federation and its agencies and corporations desirous of borrowing shall show the existence of prior authorisation in the Appropriation or other Act of Law for purpose for which the borrowing is to be utilised (to the National Assembly).

“Furthermore, sub section (3) of same section 21 (2) mandatorily requires the Minister to cause the budget estimate submitted by the corporation and agencies to be attached as part of the Appropriation Bill to be submitted to the National Assembly”.

The lawmaker said since neither NNPC nor its supervising Ministry of Petroleum felt it was necessary to follow due process, the lawmakers should stop the loan.

After putting the motion to voice vote, Speaker Aminu Tambuwal directed the committees to investigate the matter and report back in two weeks.

via The Nation

The International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) NIGERIA wishes to condemn in strong terms the recent reported cases of rape and violence allegedly perpetrated by Soldiers from Brigade of Guards of the Nigerian Army on innocent women in the Federal Capital City. The impunity with which women and girls are daily raped, defiled and violated in this country is completely unacceptable,
FIDA Nigeria is worried at the seeming silence, nonchalance and outright complicity of law enforcement agents in addressing the high rate of violence against women, especially rape, assault, sexual harassment as well as defilement of young girls even as these acts are crimes already codified in our law books such as the Penal and Criminal Codes. It is quite sad and ironic to see people who are paid from state coffers and charged with the responsibility of protecting citizens and maintaining law and order being the same people that are perpetrating crimes against the same citizens. A situation where the bodies of women and girls are seen as objects to be acquired willy-nilly by men without their consent leaves much to be desired.
FIDA Nigeria therefore calls on the leadership of the Nigerian Army to investigate and ensure that the perpetrators of this dastardly act are fished out and made to face the wrath of the Law. No stone should be left unturned until the perpetrators are brought to book and the course of justice is served. We wish to emphasize that Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to have been done. This should serve as deterrence to others. The increasing rate of sexual violence in our society further reiterate the need for the National Assembly to speedily pass the Violence against Persons Prohibition Bill that is currently before the National Assembly.

Dated this 16th of January, 2012
Hauwa Evelyn Shekarau
National President, FIDA Nigeria.

Opposition parties are back on the drawing board. But how far can they go in 2015 without a formidable alliance. Group Political Editor EMMANUEL OLADESU writes on the lessons past botched alliances and the imperative of a new merger plan.

Can opposition parties get it right in 2015? To observers, history may not repeat itself, if the main opposition parties form a formidable alliance to confront the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the next general elections. There are signs that the parties are determined. Their leaders are afraid that PDP may cause more havoc, if it is not dislodged at the polls in 2015.

Indisputably, the parties are meeting to perfect their strategies. Options being explored include fusion, merger , accord and alliance. Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) chieftain Senator Chris Ngige confirmed the merger talks, stressing that the proposed mega platform is in the interest of democracy. “Fourteen years after the emergence of the present dispensation, it is obvious that nothing good can come out of the PDP and that is why we are determined that, by the first quarter of the year, Nigerians will see that the progressives mean business,” he said.

Political parties involved in the alliance talks are ACN, All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). Other like-minded, smaller parties may also come on board.

According to analysts, the parties have woken up to the reality that none of them can single-handedly floor the PDP, unless there is collaboration among them in national interest. It is believed that the envisaged collaboration by these parties may restore ideological politics and present the polity with alternative choices between conservative and progressive ideas.

ACN controls five of the six states in the Southwest geo-political zone. In other zones, the party is also popular. It has federal and state legislators, who are committed to progressive ideals. ANPP has maintained its hold on Yobe and Borno states. CPC is the ruling party in Nassarawa, but the party also has federal and state legislators in some states in the North.

Many challenges are confronting the opposition camp. Top on the list is how to agree on a popular presidential candidate and running mate. If they are to merge, as it is being contemplated, they have to agree on critical issues, including party name, logo, manifestoes, constitution, symbol and composition of leadership at the federal and state levels. After overcoming these hurdles, the next challenge is the registration of the new platform by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The commission’s spokesman, Mr. Kayode Idowu, said the new party must meet the conditions stipulated by the 1999 Constitution and the 2010 Electoral Act. “If a political party is to participate in an election, the party has to be on INEC’s register before INEC issues its notice”, he added.

There are other challenges that will confront the opposition leaders. The PDP is aware of the threats to its 2015 calculations. Already, sources close to the opposition parties said that they anticipate threats by the PDP, may plant moles in the fold to frustrate the coalition. Also, PDP is likely to motivate the remaining mushroom parties outside the merger plan to support its presidential candidate at the general election. But, observers believe that the success of the collaboration depends on the opposition leaders, who are expected to make sacrifices and be less inflexible and more condescending without compromising their fundamental principles.

It is not the first time an alliance is being mooted by the opposition parties. Ahead of the 2011 polls, talks between the ACN led by Chief Bisi Akande and CPC led by Major-General Buhari (rtd) had broken down, owing to irreconcilable differences. Indeed, their inability to harmonise these differences, approaches and strategies led to the failure of the proposed accord. Akande blamed the botched alliance talks on the CPC leader, who he said was stiff and unbending where compromises were expected. Buhari refrained from any rebuttal or clarification. He was diplomatic. However, when the proposed alliance broke down, the picture of the 2011 elections became clearer. Ironically, Buhari’s running mate, Pastor Tunde Bakare, had warned in October that year, that PDP would overrun the scattered opposition parties, if they failed to come together. The Convener of Save Nigeria Grouop (SNG) was miffed by the declaration by the PDP leadership that the party will be in power for 60 years. He said the opposition gave the ruling party the licence to aspire to perpetuate itself in power. “If all these parties fail to present a candidate, PDP will overrun them. Only a combined effort can bring PDP down, ” Bakare stressed.

Many eminent Nigerians also expressed worry over the PDP’s bravado. Some of them advised the alliance drivers to put the alliance back on track. However, they met a brick wall. Sources close to the two parties- AC N and CPC- said mutual trust was absent and their leaders consequently closed their eyes to the slim opportunity for renewal of contact.

Initially, PDP leaders were jittery when the hope of an alliance brightened. An attempt, said a source, was made to harass prominent AC N leaders over the proposed collaboration. “They were either to be intimidated by the anti-graft agents, the Code of Conduct Bureau and security agents or distracted by other means, especially through the erection of credibility hurdles,” added the source.

Also, ACN National Publicity Secretary Alhaji Lai Mohammed alerted Nigerians that the federal government wanted to molest certain party leaders, ahead of the elections.

Before the prospects of alliance dimmed, many Nigerians who were tired of the 12 years of PDP rule, were eager for the consummation of the alliance.

Explaining the mass support for a strong opposition bloc, Lagos State AC N chairman Otunba Oladele Ajomale said: “Many people who know what progressive governments have accomplished at the state level want a replica of those achievements at the centre”.

In 2011, prominent opposition figures, who wanted alliance talks to resume with speed, volunteered to broker meetings between the leadership of the two main opposition parties. These senior citizens, who were involved in the pro-democracy struggles that heralded the civilian dispensation in 1999, were sad that opposition parties were in disarray in the country. Following their pleas, a meeting between the CPC leadership and these concerned elders to fine tune arrangements for wider and painstaking consultations that would lead to meaningful cooperation between the two platforms was held in Lagos. Then, fears were rife that, unless both parties put their minor differences aside and acted with the speed of lightening, time was running out for any alliance and substitution of candidates. Already, political parties and candidates had started campaigns.

Among eminent Nigerians who waded into the pre-alliance crisis between AC N and CPC are a retired General and former minister, a former university don and chieftain of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), rights activists, leaders of labour movements and pro- national conference agitators.

Shedding light on their intervention, the source, said: “These eminent Nigerians feared that, if PDP was not stopped in the 2011 election, Nigeria, which was being mismanaged, may become bankrupt. These elders were concerned about the direction the country was going. They have studied the national budget and realised that the pattern of recurrent expenditure tended to show that there was no concern for development.

“There is a lot of silent corruption going on. The President was perceived to be a weak man, but he had the capacity to wreck havoc on the opposition for his party to survive”. In addition, the source said the elders doubted the ability of either the AC N or CPC to single-handedly dislodge the ruling PDP “in an unpredictable Nigerian environment”.

“These people had to swing into action too, I suspect, because many Nigerians complained to them. They have access to information, which is beyond the reach of ordinary Nigerians and there is cause to suspect that the masses of our people have placed great hope on active and effective cooperation between Akande’s AC N and Buhari’s CPC”, added the source.

Will opposition parties learn from their past mistakes? This remains a puzzle. Historically, Nigeria is a fertile ground for two party system as the alliance patterns have always shown. This, perhaps, is the greatest lesson of the moment.

In the past, unlike the opposition parties, the ruling parties have often moved swiftly by seizing the storm. Instructively, when opposition parties converged under the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP), the Federal Government polarised the movement. While frontline politician Alhaji Balarabe Musa was selected as the leader of the group, another opposition politician, Dr Olopade Agoro, challenged his leadership. The CNPP because a dog that could only bark, but not bite. The leader of the light weight Mega Progressives Peoples Party (MPPP), Chief Rasheed Shitta-Bey, who reflected on this tragedy, reasoned that, although the scattered parties are united by the similarity of ideas, they are separated by ego, personality clashes, rivalry and competition”.

The loss of focus and cohesion has agitated former Yobe State Governor Abba Bukar Ibrahim, who is among the leading ANPP leaders involved in the proposed alliance. He said the opposition is blind to the power of strength in unity. “There is no party that can single-handedly defeat the PDP, which believes that power is a matter of life and death”, he warned, advising progressives to close ranks. Alhaji Balarabe Musa agreed with this view. He pointed out that many opposition leaders feared that they would lose their identities, if they surrender their groups and promote a larger platform that could be result-driven.

To the AC N chieftain, Chief Bisi Adegbuyi, the time is ripe for the opposition arrowheads in Nigeria to emulate their counterparts in other countries, where, after pulling their resources together, the progressives dislodged their conservative rivals from power. He advised the opposition to explore the possibility a coalition government. “We should borrow a leaf from Israel, Canada, Pakistan, and even Kenya. In a diverse country with a multiplicity of tribes, cultures, languages and religions, it is not possible for a single party to form the government”, he advised.

History has shown that many opposition leaders usually back their moves with hypocritical commitment. In the First and Second Republic, when concerted efforts were made by opposition leaders to forge an alliance, it was short-lived. Instead, it has been relatively easier for the opposition to team up temporarily with the ruling party for pecuniary political gains. For example, many were surprised in 1960 when the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) led by Dr Nnamidi Azikiwe forged an alliance with the Balewa’s Northern Peoples Congress (NPC), instead of Action Group (AG), which was closer to its ideological leaning. When the alliance broke down in 1964, prominent NCNC ministers in Balewa Government refused to leave the government. Later, AG, NCNC and some smaller parties came together in an alliance for the purpose of 1964 federal elections. But there was no strong leader to wield them together. AG leader, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was in prison and many believed that Dr Michael Okpara, the NCNC leader, lacked the leadership capability to move the alliance forward. The onslaught by NPC was unbearable. As a former Western Regional Minister, Chief Ehinafe Babatola, recalled, there was division within the alliance over plans for the elections. While a section supported aggressive pursuit of victory, others who feared the NNA’s suppressive machinery, canvassed the boycott of the polls. Both camps went ahead with their antagonistic strategies.

Thirteen years after the military rule in 1979, the Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP), which was an incarnate of the banned NCNC led by Zik, teamed up with the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in an uneasy accord, following the 12 two-third controversy. When the accord broke down in 1981, NPP ministers held on to their portfolios in the federal government. Some of them even defected from the NPP to NPN. In 1999, PDP and All Nigeria Peoples Party (APP) formed a controversial alliance. The chairman of APP, Senator Mahmud Waziri, later abandoned his party when he was appointed Special Adviser by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. In 2003, the national chairman of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), Alhaji Ahmed Abudulkadir, was rewarded by Obasanjo with the position of Special Adviser on Manufacturing, following the inexplicable cooperation between selected party leaders and PDP federal government. In 2011, ANPP led by the late Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke isolated itself and teamed up with the PDP to form an strange ‘Government of National Unity (GNU)’. The terms baffled Nigerians. The party also became polarised.

Since 2007, when the country has been witnessing bad elections, opposition groups have been holding discussions on possibility of an alliance. But the Southwest, which was perceived as the main pilot in the venture, has been politically divided. Opposition figures outside the zone were in regular contacts with a faction of the entrenched establishment, which had regrouped under the Democratic Peoples Alliance (DPA), following the eclipse of the AD. But the old men lack mobilisation prowess, unlike their old colleagues, who are in AC N, the widely accepted party in the zone.

The alliance talks supported by the men of the old order had also hit the rocks in 2011. From its ashes rose two parties; the MPPP led by Shitta-Bey and another mega party sponsored by Prof Pat Utomi, Chiefs Olu Falae, Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Chief Olaniwun Ajayi. Although the former governor of Lagos State, Alhaji Lateef Jakande, also tried to bring some groups together for the purpose of rallying progressives, the effort did not see the light of the day.

Observers are of the opinion that 2015 offers another opportunity. The options are also plausible; mergers, accord, alliances and fusion. Former Kano State governor and ANPP chieftain Alhaji Ibrahim Shekarau assured that the alliance talks would succeed. “We are determined to make it work”, he said. The party chairman, Chief Ogbonnaya Onu, has also demonstrated seriousness and commitment like Akande and Buhari. Already, meetings are being held regularly to concretise the idea. But Buhari faces personal hurdles within his camp. While the CPC chairman and former Information Minister Prince Tony Momoh, and former Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister Mallam Nasir el-Rufai are said to be enthusiastic about the alliance, it is not certain that Buhari’s former running mate, Bakare, and spokesman, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, are supporting the initiative.

In 1964, 1979, 1999, 2007 and 2011, attempt at collaboration among oppositional parties failed. Proposed alliance, fusion and accord also crumbled. Will it be different this time? Will they succeed in 2015? Time will tell.

– Emmanuel Oladesu

via The Nation

“A rattlesnake that doesn’t bite teaches you nothing.”– J. West

 At the zenith of his power, President Olusegun  Obasanjo was credited with the quip that you should check your watch every time President Ibrahim Babangida said good morning to you.

True or not, the point was to emphasise how wily or deceptive Babangida had become. Chances are that Babangida would have heard of the popularised caution, and it is quite possible that he took it in his stride.

After all, the leaders who hold out all their cards for all and sundry to see are soon run out of the game. These days, a new caution is in the making. It may come out in any form, but it will basically suggest that the best political strategies are cleared only when you know where President Obasanjo’s camp is. If you do not build him into your calculations, you could suffer a damaging ambush.

If you underrate his strength, your assault or defence could be shredded to smitherings. If you overate his power, you could end up misallocating resources and designing the wrong strategy for the right battles.

The politician in President Obasanjo must be relishing all this attention. And why not? Life has been kind to Obasanjo.

He was part of a military that shot itself into power in 1975. When another set of coup plotters shot dead his boss, Murtala Mohammed, he was the principal beneficiary, becoming the Head of State. He resisted the pressure to submit to ethnic pressure by handing over the President Shehu Shagari in 1979, becoming a pariah among Yoruba, and a hero in the North.

When he fell foul of a more intolerant Sani Abacha, he was promptly slapped with a treason trial and sentenced to death. His international connections saved his neck from the noose, and God intervened and took away Abacha.

The military released Obasanjo, dusted him up and presented him as its candidate for the Presidency in 1999. A North which had been placed on the defensive over the aborted 1992 elections saw in an Obasanjo presidency, a win-win situation.

Yoruba people sulked and turned their backs to him. The nation moved on, under the leadership of a man with a personality that could barely be accommodated by a fragile democratic system.

With every one of his eight years as president, Obasanjo grew in confidence that the President should run the government and the party exactly in his own image. Huge powers and massive resources give the Nigerian president awesome opportunities to create wealthy people, wreck political careers, make bold policies even against resistance by the legislature, and abandon them at will. Obasanjo learnt quickly that a President needed to have the legislature in his pocket; the party at his beck and call, and a war chest to fight elections and the opposition.

But eight years is all the constitution allows the President, no matter how powerful. In those eight years, with such awesome powers, he must have stepped on many toes; initiated many policies; kick-started many political careers and built up many rich and powerful people, all of whom could suffer massive setbacks when he is no more in power.

Above all, he would have become hooked on the power to influence events, and the prospect of irrelevance in the face of legions of enemies who would want to rub his face in it would spur on even people with weaker personalities than Obasanjo’s.

And so a larger-than-life personality is unleashed on the political terrain who haunts it at every turn. Years out of power, Obasanjo’s uncanny capacity to re-invent himself is being played out even as we speak.

One day after encomiums were poured on him in far away USA during the inauguration of the new Africa Institute at Valparaiso University, Indiana, the former vice-presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Pastor Tunde Bakare told his congregation that President Obasanjo is responsible for just about everything bad in Nigeria today.

He said Obasanjo imposed a weak and sickly Yar’Adua, squandered the nation’s resources, promoted corruption and turned Nigeria into a makeshift nation without vision or goal.

Bakare’s grouse

Pastor Bakare’s swipe from the opposition merely repeats everything that has been said about Obasanjo, and it is unlikely to even generate an acknowledgement or a response from a man neck-deep in other battles in his own party.

The falling out with President Goodluck Jonathan is now out in the open, in spite of spirited efforts to paper them over. The manouvers to determine who has the final say over 2015 are very visible.

The messy fights over the Adamawa State Executive of the PDP; the fight over the chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of the PDP and the visible efforts to build an anti-Jonathan northern front in the PDP by Obasanjo are only some of the more obvious signs that Obasanjo is determined to remain firmly at the heart of Nigerian politics.

This determination will not go unchallenged. President Jonathan’s political future hangs on it. Governors will lose or gain power depending on who ultimately loses out.

These two will split the right party down the middle, before either huge resources, political clout and incumbency win, or it loses to opportunism and the capacity to exploit weaknesses of President Jonathan’s administration and ineffective control over the PDP.

Northern governors in particular will be key in deciding the outcome of this epic battle, and both Presidents are likely to sap their energies and exploit their weaknesses as well.

The OBJphenomenon

The Obasanjo phenomenon is a complex one. In a nation which desperately needs to build and strengthen its institutions and democratic values, the dominance of powerful individuals like Obasanjo is a major  liability.

President Jonathan needs to stamp his authority on his administration and the party, yet much of the space is taken up by relics from a past he himself had benefitted from.

A relatively young President is surrounded by geriatrics who have made a life career of politics, all of whom will do much more damage to him in opposition, than benefit him if they are part of his team.

He is being torn by the need to focus on governance threatened by insecurity, violent crimes and corruption on the one hand, and the temptations to play the 2015 game on the other.

His opposition, both within the party and outside it, will exploit his weaknesses in both areas. His own party, the PDP will be the battlefield, and the opening skirmishes being witnessed are vital to his position both in governance and in the political field.

Jonathan’s administration

The continuing influence of President Obasanjo may be testimony to the resilience of a personal character, but it reflects very poorly on the PDP. Its two most outstanding features are that it has been in power at the centre and much of the states since 1999; and its character has been essentially defined by one man: Obasanjo.

It has never outgrown its basic problems, and it does not appear on the threshold of a revolution that will transform it from a party of a powerful man or handful of men, to a party which retains power because it is genuinely elected by millions of loyal party men and women.

If, in addition to exposing the weaknesses of the Jonathan administration, the opposition takes it upon itself to lampoon Obasanjo as well, its poor record of denting the PDP’s stranglehold on the nation will be that much more challenged. President Obasanjo is likely to be a constant factor in Nigerian politics in the near future.

Whether that turns out to be for better or worse depends largely on whether those who wield power today, and those who want to replace them, intend to change the way the game has been played, or submit to the old way of doing things.

– Hakeem Baba-Ahmad

via Vanguard

Nigerians, it seems, have a short memory. We suffer from collective amnesia. Doctors say those who suffer from this ailment forget very easily; but our case is chronic and complicated. The type that deliberately conjures reasons to justify even the unjustifiable. Our reasons are often ethnic, religious, filial or even conjugal but always selfish, self-seeking and unpatriotic. They are manufactured to provide escape routes for those caught in a bad behaviour especially corruption to go in peace and enjoy their kill. Otherwise, why would you explain that Farouk Lawan representing Bangwai/ Shanono Federal Constituency of Kano State, is still walking around a free man? Here is a man who woke up and admitted before the media that he actually collected the sum of $620,000 from businessman Femi Otedola, to allegedly clear his companies after denying same for many days. In a few days, Lawan had reportedly changed his story three times finally settling that the amount was actually taken as exhibit and kept in the custody of his colleague, an allegation, which was categorically denied by the said lawmaker who threatened a court action.

Both the Nigerian Police and the Ethics Committee of the House of Representatives, who purportedly investigated the matter, have yet to make public their findings or at best charge Lawan to court. One will recall that the Ethics Committee promised to submit its report within two weeks. It is now more than six months and everyone is quiet. There are a few questions that ordinary Nigerians watching these intrigues are asking (or should ask) which are worth our reflection. Or have we forgotten again? Where is the $620,000 allegedly collected by Lawan? Why is the leadership of the House of Representatives reluctant to deal decisively with such a contentious issue that has tainted its image, for the umpteenth time, before the Nigerian public? What role did the Nigeria Police play in all of these? Why is the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission keeping quiet over such a critical issue?

The strength of any legislature in a democracy lies in its core duties of appropriation and oversight which are essentially vigilance against executive excesses and corruption. However, it seems that our legislature is increasingly losing sight of these constitutional responsibilities. What we hear is that corruption can go as far as we ‘take our own share of the cake’. How sad? When the bribery scandal involving Lawal broke open, many people pointed fingers of complicity at the leadership of the House. More so, the drama that played out during the apparently pre-rehearsed session where Lawan raised the controversial motion for the clearance of Otedola’s companies, after he allegedly received the gratification, was enough to raise questions. Dependable sources have alleged that the House leadership might have influenced the ethics committee to hand a clean bill of health to Lawan in its yet-to-be released report. What does that say about such a leadership?

Another point is to examine the role of the Nigeria Police. Such a high profile case provided an acid test of the style of the Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Abubakar. We were told that the Police were investigating the matter and even allegedly arrested Lawan. Does it mean that they have not concluded yet? What is there to investigate about a man who publicly admitted guilt? I hear that the Police needed the bribe money as exhibit before the court. Really? One wonders if the evidence provided by the video and the confession of Lawan is insufficient to put him in jail, if ours is a sane society. What is the Police waiting for to charge this man to court or are they employing delay tactics so that Nigerians can forget? Is this part of the code of conduct that the IG is touting about? There is a danger that many may use this to assess the commitment of the leadership of the Nigeria Police to the issues of corruption and criminality.

Another important point is that the EFCC does not seem to be interested in prosecuting Lawan even when it has arraigned some of those indicted in the fuel subsidy scam. How come? Is this not the selectivity that has almost ruined public perception of the foremost anticorruption agency? A top official of the EFCC once reportedly boasted that if the case of Lawan came before him as a judge, he would put him in jail. So why is the EFCC as an agency refusing to just do that? Are they acting a different chapter of the same script that their sister agency, the Nigeria Police, is orchestrating?

Let us, on a final note, examine the response of Nigerians and how our behaviour is encouraging the impunity that we are getting from the political class. I will use two examples. I saw Farouk Lawan last in Sokoto during the honorary doctorate award to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, and others. As soon as he (Lawan) walked into the arena, he surprisingly drew a loud ovation from the audience. I wondered why would a man that had brought shame and opprobrium on both himself and his people would draw an ovation. To an observer, it means that either the people do not care about the scandal he is submerged in or they are tacitly in support of his alleged inappropriate behaviour. Where is our morality? Such attitude will only embolden rather than discourage potential corrupt elements.

I will draw my second example from the response of some civil society leaders from the North as soon as the scandal broke out. I know some “activists” who ran to the media (on Lawan’s behalf) and used all forms of antics to distort the story in an attempt to deceive the public apparently because “their” brother was involved. I weep that such sectional tendencies have infected the only constituency I call my own. Before now, Nigerians trusted the civil society leaders to speak out about corruption and bad governance regardless of who was involved but the Lawan saga have clearly exposed that things are changing.

Many Nigerians are still asking about the whereabouts of the Faroukgate report because that incident and how it is handled have a lot to say about the extent of decay in our democracy. It is not only Farouk Lawan that is on trial. The leadership of the House of Representatives, it must be stated, is on trial. The Nigeria Police and its leadership are also on trial. The EFCC is on trial. The Nigerian Civil Society and media are on trial. Our democracy and our nation are on trial. The Jonathan administration is on trial more so given the President oft-mouthed pledge to tackle corruption headlong. Even you and I who suffer from selective amnesia are on trial too.

Uche Igwe (ucheigwe@gmail.com)

Read original via Punch

It’s 2013 and close to four years after the Lilly ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law. Surely, the gender wage gap has been closed, right? Wrong.

Even with moves toward equalizing pay between men and women, men still make almost 20% more than women in nearly all industries. This is despite the fact that women receive the same education, with the same tuition price tags and levels of debt upon graduation. The only major differences are that there are more ladies in college and they have better average GPAs to boot. The benefits of paying women their fair share include increasing the GDP while reducing the poverty rates for families.

Check out the infographic below to see what else the gender wage gap affects.

Equal Education Unequal Pay by LearnStuff.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at learnstuff.com

#AwakeningYou: ‘SPARKLING WITH A PASSION FOR IMPACT’ – by @StevenHaastrup

I sat and I thought of the Inspiration, Encounters, Projects, Initiatives and Persons that bettered my Life in 2012… In 2012, I made presentations, I met people, I went to places, I forgot some, I remembered some, some made me think, some made me smile, some made me cry…

___________________________________________________________________________

Welcome to the Personality Week of #AwakeningYou, a Tuesday weekly script of #StartupNigeria, My name is Haastrup Steven.

 ___________________________________________________________________________

In my past, I have read of Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King but not so much of this man.

I met him first in early 2012; I had a project dream to build one of Africa’s most interactive and societal beneficial networks (currently developed). He gave me the huge support I needed and he believed in my ability to make it happen.

I can remember the day I went through his profile online and I met him, He was so humble and down to heart and was eager to meet me… He made me feel aware of that King that I was.

If you think you know this man, you don’t the side of Him that I know. He has mentored many to become giants. He has the passion bubbling over him; He talks like he wants to change the world in an instant.

I don’t want to care what school he came out from or what grades he finished with, who cares? He is the source of Joy to many, reason for laughter to many Youths and also a reason to Hope for many undergraduates around this Nation.His initiatives are never about Him, He just wants to do something and birth change in our society through His passion.

I heard about the #EchoesFromAjegunle Initiative in August 2012but I felt it is just one of those initiatives with a SELF agenda within.

In November 2012, I visited his office to endorse and embolden a partnership proposal between StartUp Nigeria and his organization and I encountered the project that changed my Perception and reengineered my Passion for the society forever.

As my first time in Ajegunle, I saw a place that was so poorly planned with houses over gutters, drainages and structures so poorly arranged. Ajegunle is a very popular place in Lagos and well known as the Ghetto of Lagos, I have always heard about the place as a kid because of the likes of Daddy Shokey.I wondered at first, Why would he take an Office here… as pissed as I was but full of expectations, I cheerfully kept asking the name of the street to his office until I got there. On entering, I was dripping because rain had beaten me from the entrance of Ajegunle to the office.

On getting there, I was excited to finally get to a place where I had never been.

The office was divided into compartments, the first thing I saw was a place with many computers… inside of me, I said… he is a programmer so what do you expect.

I met with the manager and after an in-depth discussion, she took me around and that was when it happened.I walked into a conference hall, small but cool and equipped, in there I saw teenagers both male and female all seated and excited at the stranger that just walked in. I was introduced to them by the Manager and she told me this were kids from Ajegunle that they were trained and equipped by the best hands and facilitators, in the best environment.

I felt broken… She took me around and talked to me about the History and achievements of the initiative. I saw in the office floor a currently developed Library, the new Computer Lab and finally the office of the initiator… She opened the door and told me that… This is His Office!

I was like… My God! Why? The office was empty, Just a chair, No table, Nothing at all! It was Dry!

She said, he (The initiator) wanted to finish up everything he was doing in terms of making the place better and well equipped for the students picked up from the streets of Ajegunle before he made His office befitting.

At that point, I got broken finally… Tears welled up and could fall at a blink of my eye.

Gbenga Sesan

I marveled at what Man this was… He was different from every other man I know. His Name Is GBENGA SESAN! A Man with a Great Heart, a Heart of Gold… A Heart of Change and sold out to Societal and National Impact.

I might have understated the project (#EchoesFromAjegunle) but you can check for testimonials yourself at http://bit.ly/UY2ooF.

Hands on Tommy… Heads Bowed… I give it to my most inspiring project… #EchoesFromAjegunle

Let me leave you with this Quote…

If your dream is of the People, God will direct all power in you and around you to make it happen – David Oyedepo

StartUp Today! Become a selfless initiator… It’s in you to be that Hope to yoursocietyToday!

Join me next Tuesday as I continue the Startup Nigeria series! Invite friends and family… we own this country and we must take it back as one!

Be Nice! Don’t go off this page without sharing this article on the social media! Just a few clicks will do. Let it inspire others to StartUp in 2013.

God bless You!

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

____________________________________________________________________________

Follow me today on twitter @StevenHaastrup

Email: haastrupsteven@gmail.com

This is important – We are underestimating the problem, and overstating our capacity (#NewLeadership Series by Chude Jideonwo)

There is a truth young Nigerians need to know – and it is that if many of us find the privilege to step into public office today, we will act the exact same way as many of those whom we criticise, even despise.

Recover quickly and let’s interrogate that assertion.

The problem is neither a default in character (the “all Nigerians young and old are corrupt” doctrine) nor a sudden absence of conscience – the problem is, as I see it, one of understanding.

More than once, I have quieted down and listened to government officials who were once activists or critics or columnists or opposition members repeat that they “did not fully understand the depths of the problem that existed” or that suddenly they have seen the light.

That in itself is a major problem, and I don’t think we understand how grave a challenge it presents – and why we need to pay attention to what these people are saying.

It is very troubling to listen to the public discourse amongst young people and see them belittle and simplify the magnitude of the problems Nigeria faces or why it has been impossible for many brilliant, determined Nigerians in government to fulfill the promise that they made orrepresented.

They are preparing themselves to fall into the same traps that have caught their predecessors.

Let’s look back on perhaps the finest example of this tragedy – Bola Ige, that excellent man who government took away from us. It had been barely days since he joined the government, without looking at the files, sitting down with the decision makers, understanding the bottlenecks or indeed having a cup of coffee to think over the mountains ahead, but he went to the public space and declared that he would solve the problems of NEPA in a couple of months.

His timeline came and passed – and, of course, he failed.

Government in Nigeria is surely not a matter solely of good intentions.

If you are a politician, you face a number of woes: a severely corrupt set of grassroots politicians that subsists almost entirely on cash-patronage and is driven by primal, primitive interests. To break all that English into a simple phrase – it is cash-and-carry (to win a local government election in the South-West, I have heard, you need at least N20 million).

You face an electorate populace that will sit outside the home of a Senator to get their “dividends of democracy”, most times in cash. On rare occasions, they demand that a legislator sink a borehole in the community or build a bridge, a responsibility that is neither his nor does he oversee whose it is.

If you are, say a minister, your woes surely multiply – government is a complex layer of mundane, redundant, and gravity-defying bureaucracy that can consume (and corrupt) you. There are permanent secretaries who have outlived two decades of ministers whom you have to co-opt or circumvent (ask Adenike Grange). By the way, you cannot fire them, nor can you discipline them.

The Ministry of Youth Development is perhaps a good example here. It is a ministry that “handles” the National Youth Service Corps, but then, that is easily a joke.

Despite the fact that its budget is taken almost 90 per cent by the service corps scheme, the minister unfortunately has very little control over matters as simple as whether corps members allowances have been paid – in fact, effectively, the director-general and other officials of of the Corps are beyond his control No amount of “fire and brimstone’ threats can make any real change in those places unless he somehow finds himself having the ears of the president on a constant basis. Unfortunately, youth development is not a ‘powerful’ ministry – another major problem.

You find yourself beholden to a severely corrupt National Assembly whose members have been there since democracy returned in1999, who already know “how things are done here” and are armed, dangerously, with small minds and huge egos.

You are pressured on every corner to ease your own passage during sittings and hearings (ask Fabian Osuji) for everything fromyour budget to mini-controversies, and you find yourself having to learn a whole new range of social skills to get any work done.

And I have only mentioned two principalities.

One remembers Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala tell a tale on her first course in Nigerian government about how she had to go out and buy pens for the ministry herself because the process of getting the monies out was about to drive her crazy. And that’s just pens.

Have I told you the story of a government minister who entered into office and sought to do the simplest thing possible –a re-design of the ministry’s website?

Ah, then maybe I should tell you. First and foremost, the directors in his office could give him no clues, claiming the previous minister had single-handedly managed the site. There was no email trail made available to the new minister, no proper handover in documented format (theminister before him had simply upped and left).

When he eventually got a contact, informally, to the special assistant to the former minister (whom, as you must recall was no longer in the vicinity), he was told that the contractor who managed the back-end of the site could not reached.

Cut a long story short, to get anything done, he had to register a whole new URL and get a new website designed, leading to a situation where different ministries in Nigerians government circles have wildly different URLs.

Of course, when you go down to Twitter to hear the chatter, you hear things like this: “Why can’t this minsiter do a simple thing like change the website of this country?! Why do we have such daft people in government in Nigeria?”

The problem unfortunately, is not daft people. The problem is a daft system that has made itself so impossible to change that it takes the will and guts of a mad man.

What do you find, therefore? Brilliant technocracts who have blazed trails internationally or in the private sector or in the development community who find themselves hampered by the labyrinth of government in Nigeria – where they are unable to do the most basic things. Cushioned unfortunately by the interminable luxuries of that same government, they will not resign, but will simply throw their hands in the air, do the little that they can to “satisfy their conscience”, moan about how terrible it is to steer any change in Nigeria.

Where they are smarter, they launch into quick wins – developing a string of nice-sounding ideas and projects that will quickly win them column inches and the admiration of donors and foreign governments. They are seen as visionary and transformative, but they know that the minute they step out of government, their unsustainable ideas will be churned out, along with their strategists, consultants, and other suits.

The result is that we take no step forward, and two backwards.

This is the challenge that a new generation of leaders faces. Government is the most important force for change in any society so ultimately to make any sustainable change, you have to have people in this imperfect, impossible governance structure.

Getting into public service without seeking to correctly understand how deep the corruption, the ineptitude, and the failure of common processes runs means that you are getting into government without the competence and the capacity that you truly need to make any change possible.

We don’t need another generational merry go round where people go into government all fired up and ready to go and come out with no concrete achievement – ending up as additions to the long list of failed “whizkids”.

Therefore, any young person who is desirous of joining that system (indeed, any system) on a tangential or major level, must begin to take the time to understand that system –indirectly through observation, monitoring, and knowledge osmosis (conferences, sittings, etc), or directly through internships, mentorships and other interactions.

That is what will truly differentiate a new generation of leaders from the old: knowledge, and the capacity to make change happen.

Not to complain about how hard it is when you eventually arrive there, not to be crippled by the relentless graft that defines it, not to be slowed down by its institutionalided inadequacies; but to come into those offices fully understanding the complexity of our problems and how deep they run and armed with a plan and a strategy on how to circumvent or de-mobilise those situations and achieve sterling results.

For now, we are not at that stage yet.

Many of us are still under-estimating the problem, and we are over-stating our own capacity to make that change happen simply because we have read a couple of textbooks that have outlined “alternative sources of energy in emerging economies”, we have not faced any situations that test our character, or have attended one or two conferences on “The Asian Tigers” during our summer holidays at Stanford.

Many of us still imagine for instance – and this is truly worrisome – that good intentions are enough to solve our power problems and dismiss the circling of vultures including ex-heads of state who have vested interests in that sector and will fight reform tooth and nail; or that it takes just one fiery senator to dismantle the wickedness in high places that are siphoning Nigeria’s oil wealth.

I’m sorry, but it doesn’t have anything to do with passion, or righteous indignation. It has everything to do with the competence and the capacity to navigate these treacherous waters.

The solution bears repeating – Any young person who is desirous of joining that system (indeed, any system) on a tangential or major level, must begin to take the time to understand that system –indirectly through observation, monitoring, and knowledge osmosis (conferences, sittings, etc), or directly through internships, mentorships and other interactions.

These are not times for trial by error.

———-

Chude Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV & YNaija.com. He is also executive director of The Future Project/The Future Awards. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31.

“He whom the gods have purposed for extinction, they first make irrelevant.”

“All PDP members are Nigerians”

“Nigerians are bad”

“Therefore the PDP is bad.”

The above fallacy was the premise upon which Ohimai Amaize’s piece titled: “Like it or not, we are all PDP”, rested. It was flawed logic at its asinine best.

I will begin with a caveat: I am a closet fan of Messrs Godwin Ohimai Amaize, the young man who straddles the moniker of ‘Mr -Fix- Nigeria’, everywhere he goes. It takes admirable guts for a young man still shy of his 30th birthday to run a Presidential campaign for an opposition candidate in one minute and plunge headlong into the coven of graft the next minute; while declaring with unrestrained pride that his new found political party is his ‘greatest’ discovery since Mohammed Ali.

Here’s another caveat: I am not holding any brief for the Opposition in this rejoinder. In a piece captioned: “Will the real opposition, please stand up” and published in this column, I had challenged Nigeria’s rag tag opposition political parties to prove to Nigeria’s longsuffering masses that they represent the answer to the country’s mounting woes rather than the question. Thus far, I had noted, they were yet to do so in clear, unmistakable terms.

In handing ‘Mr-Fix-Nigeria’ his just desserts, we may have to lend a paragraph or two from his expletive laden ‘satanic verses’….

“The current fad is how well you can demonize the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). I have seen young people on Twitter curse PDP like our problems as a nation begin and end with the PDP. But what really is the PDP? The PDP is not a collection of aliens who just dropped from the skies? The PDP is a group of human beings who are Nigerian citizens. They were raised in this same country in Nigerian homes by Nigerian parents just like the rest of us. They grew up in our neighborhoods and were taught how to read and write in Nigerian schools. They worship in our churches and pray in the same mosques we know. Without doubt, the PDP is an assemblage of the good, the bad and the ugly. But ironically, so is our country Nigeria and every other nation in the world”.

Nigerians did not just wake up one morning to begin raining insults on the PDP, like Ohimai will want everyone to believe. The PDP has morphed into a serial offender over the course of time. The party has been calling the shots at the center since Nigeria’s fledgling democracy began its tortuous march to nowhere, thirteen odd years ago. Ohimai’s infamous party controls a chunk of the State’s resources. If, like Ohimai posited above, the much maligned PDP draws its membership from within the Nigerian populace; does that inhibit the PDP from championing people centered policies once at the helm? Which political party should the people vent their spleen on when roads become deathtraps and public infrastructure remains the stuff of dreams? Should Chris Okotie’s Fresh Democratic Party, for instance, be blamed for the high level corruption that reigns supreme at the Federal level? Which political party, pray Ohimai, boasts the majority of its members in the National Assembly? Which political party surreptitiously meddles in the affairs of the Judiciary while subverting the course of justice for many? Which political party subverts the will of the people the most at the polls?

When you pride yourself as ‘Africa’s biggest political party’, you just learn to live with the attendant ‘curses’ that comes with being monstrous. It is one of the perks of the status. Ohimai also fired broadsides the way of Nigeria’s teeming young population in the social media when he wrongly averred:

“We hate politics because we think politics is dirty. We despise politicians in government because we believe they are all rogues. We perch on our moral high grounds on social media and abuse them. We castigate them and blame them for everything. We are saints and politicians are devils.”

How churlish and utterly simplistic! If these people hate politics as much as Ohimai suggested, why are they ranting everyday in the new media and vociferously demanding for a change in the way the affairs of their country is being run? Why do these groups of ‘noisy Nigerians’ follow all the happenings in the political terrain closely on social media, while making sure they are also part of the discourse? If their voices do not count for anything and their opinions have become ‘rants’, why is Ohimai worried? Shouldn’t the PDP dismiss these ‘collective children of anger’ with a wave of the hand and move on with running the State aground? These young men and women may not have the financial war-chest the PDP possesses ( no thanks to grand State theft) to float political parties and rig elections, but that in no way suggests that they do not care about politics.

Mr Ohimai may not admit it, but the PDP is very wary of the growing political awareness amongst Nigeria’s young population. It is all too easy to sit down in the comfort of the Federal Capital Territory and assume that young Nigerians do not care about politics. Yes, they may rant annoyingly sometimes and veer off course with their carping criticisms, but the fact that they are beginning to engage the process a lot more, cannot be glossed over. Are they card carrying members of political parties? While some of them may be, others will align with progressive political parties as soon as the opposition gets its act together.

Nigerians are no longer as gullible and politically naive as Ohimai will want us to believe in his article. I agree with him that we probably have shown ample nonchalance in the past as it regards getting politically involved, but across the Nation, a 20 million strong young army is being raised to turn back the clock and set Nigeria on the path of recovery again—a task the PDP has been loath to get around to, since 1999. Several young groups are sprouting across the land with the singular aim of galvanizing Nigerians to not only get politically active, but to also make informed choices at all levels of governance in the next general elections. I have heard some ill-informed folks condemn Nigerians for ranting incessantly on social media. Our country is where it is today because we have kept mum for far too long. We shouldn’t condemn those who care to make their displeasure felt because those ‘rants’ are unwittingly shaping policies everyday within the corridors of power.

So, are we all members of the PDP at heart? That is baloney writ large! Are they young Nigerians out there who are ready to roll their sleeves and give the PDP a run for its sleazy money by the time the next elections come around? You can bet they number in their thousands.

The danger in allowing the likes of Ohimai Amaize get away with articles like his latest offering is that syllogistic hogwash may just gain traction as the norm. It is a clear and present danger all men of sound mind should immediately rebuff. The PDP may well be made up of Nigerians, but it hasn’t represented the best Nigeria has to offer in all of 13 years. The next gale sweeping across the political landscape could well be taking ‘Africa’s biggest political party’ along with it.

The writer is on Twitter as @egbas

Via Ekekeee.com

Welcome to 2013, a year declared by President Goodluck Jonathan as one that will witness improved governance. Just as it is natural at this time of the year for individuals and households to project on the promises of the immediate future, our President, in addition to his charming Goodluck, seems to have taken to the ancient mystical art of crystal-ball gazing in the bid to assure us that the journey to his Nigerian Eldorado is on course.

First, was the occasion of the foundation laying ceremony of Living Faith Foundation Bible College in Kaduna on Christmas Eve where the President spoke of better times for the citizens in the New Year. His words: let me assure all of you and indeed Nigerians that 2013 will be better for us than 2012 in all aspects of the nation’s history (sic). The New Year shall be better for us in terms of job creation, wealth creation and improved security among others”.

Days after – this time at the Christmas Service in Abuja, the President broached on the subject of perception of his administration as being a slow one.

Again, his words: “people say this government is slow. Yes, by human thinking, we are slow; but I can say that we are not slow. He added, perhaps for emphasis, that “the government will not, because of the perception, begin to rush….”

Although, the latter must have come to many Nigerians as a new one, from the President, it may well be evidence that the cries and anguish on the Main Street have finally pierced through the impervious walls of the Villa.

A snail speed administration? C’mon, that would be far more tolerable than the astonishing inertia or even the outrageous but expensive presidential indulgence of outsourced governance – the variant of which finds expression in irrational fatalistic abdication; the practice of leaving routine matters of governance in the hand of the supernatural in a supposedly secular, presidential democracy.

Without taking anything from the rare candour of the presidential admission that the past year was a colossal disaster as far as governance went, I have struggled in vain to find the substance in the so-called solid foundation on which the President plans to erect his transformational infrastructure.

Let’s begin with the touted claims of achievement. The most obvious one of course is the “improved” performance in the power sector. Considering the state of power generation which is said to have hit the 4,500 Mw, it must be galling to most Nigerians that a federal government that has poured over $20 billion in the last decade has been on an orgy of wild jubilation over the incremental achievement – a notional improvement that is no more than 25 percent – in electricity supplies.

Or the railways. Amazingly, the nation is supposed to be in frenzy that the railways has been primed to run –on the same old, disused Lugardian tracks. How about touting the “feat” of the overpaid Chinese contractors in fixing the relics in the age of high speed trains as “transformation”!

In the last year, more industries closed shop than we have had new start-ups. We know why: the same old, worn, recycled but nonetheless valid tales of inclement policies, infrastructure deficit, high interest rates, and other countless bureaucratic impediments which constitute the body and soul of industries’ lack of competitiveness.

And the result? Manufacturing remains at the abysmal low level of 4 percent contribution to the GDP – the level it was at independence. We remain net importer of just about anything – from refined fuel to domestic consumables, and to industrial spares.

We have since found a magic in starting our charity abroad. Not for Olusegun Aganga, Jonathan’s Trade and Commerce minister, the reciprocity subsumed in global trade relations. Progress, Nigeria style, is denominated in foreign investment: the higher the number of those high-octane cocktails in off-shore hotels packaged as foreign investment drive, the more progress is said to be made. The question of how foreign investments would thrive in an environment littered with carcasses of dead industries hardly matter. How about herding our policy wonks for a refresher course in Globalisation 102?

Today, the single greatest threat to the nation’s socio-economic stability is unemployment. The figure is said to be some 25 percent with youth unemployment put at a frightening 50 percent rate. That’s nearly twice the population of our neighbour, Ghana. What’s being done? The last I heard was that the inelegantly couched Sure-P headed by Christopher Kolade, an extra-constitutional contraption very much like the PTF, has been drafted to the rescue.

What more can be written about the security situation that is not already known? There is war with the Boko Haram in the North; kidnappers are threatening to overrun the South. The capacity of the nation’s military is stretched thin – bogged down with internal security operations with no signs of respite on the horizon. The police, being no match for the sophistication of the criminal gangs on rampage appear overwhelmed.

Why the picture of these realities? It is to show where the nation is coming from. It seems to me the only way to evaluate the President’s prognosis for the year. After all, isn’t it said that were wishes to be horses, beggars would ride?

So much for the President’s exaggerated picture of 2013; last year for instance, it took a paralysing protest over the fuel price hikes to move the President to act on the racket of fuel subsidy funds administration. Twelve months after that holy rage forced the President to commit his administration to the establishment of three new refineries, it has since backtracked: the refineries are no longer on the table.

In the year ended, the nation spent N1.3 trillion on fuel imports; this year, the figure is likely to be much higher. Lost on the hierarchs of the administration are the drag-on effects of the avoidable fuel import regime on the nation’s foreign exchange reserves and the economy as a whole.

Consider also that it took the threat of impeachment to prod the President to implement the capital provisions of the 2012 budget. Thanks to executive-bureaucratic inertia, the roads remain a picture of abandonment. Sprucing up airport terminals may be Minister Stella Oduah’s idea of modernisation, the aviation sector is nowhere modern or safer any more than new entrants are willing to venture into the sector.

My prognosis for the year? Nothing will change. Not in the quality and pace of governance. The bazaar driving its processes will continue no doubt. Industry capacity utilisation is likely to remain, pretty even. Surely, no one expects unemployment to come down; Not the interest rate. The monetary authorities will continue their ‘inflation targeting’ while the real economy grinds to a halt.

You ask why? I say there is too much thinking within the box. Isn’t it said also that ‘what you see is what you get’?

Happy New Year!

– Sanya Oni

Read original piece via The Nation

Jonathan And Obasanjo Feud – Implications For 2015 –  By Theophilus Ilevbare @tilevbare

The latest round of bickering and mudslinging between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and incumbent Goodluck Jonathan took a new twist when the former chose the auspicious occasion of a CNN interview to criticise Jonathan’s approach to the Boko Haram insurgency, he said “To deal with a group like that, you need a carrot and stick. The carrot is finding out how to reach out to them. When you try to reach out to them and they are not amenable to being reached out to, you have to use the stick”.

Prior to Obasanjo’s recent comment, he had stunned his audience; at a gathering to review the unemployment in the West African sub-region tagged the West African Regional Conference on Youth Employment held in Dakar, Senegal, as he fired salvos at his protégé. The ex-President as a guest speaker predicted a revolution was looming in Nigeria if the high rate of youth unemployment which he put at 72 percent remains unchecked and should the Jonathan government fail to create employment, the attendant catastrophe would consume the elite, himself included.

Still smarting from his Dakar outburst, he continued his barrage at Jonathan, this time around in Warri, at an event marking the fortieth year calling to ministry in the vineyard of God of CAN President Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, where he described the president as a weak leader pointing to the government’s lukewarm approach to the Boko Haram crisis and the pervading insecurity in the country that could have been effectively tackled if decisive action had been taken by the Jonathan administration.

November last year, President Jonathan broke his silence in a televised media chat as he responded to Obasanjo’s prescription, describing the military invasion (to fish out militants who killed some security men) and brute use of force on the people of Odi as futile as it only resulted in bloodshed and lose of innocent lives.

Not long ago, Obasanjo also took a swipe at Jonathan’s administration for waste of the country’s foreign reserve, put at about $35 billion in 2007.  Obasanjo said, “We left what we call excess crude, let’s build it for rainy day, up to $35 billion; within three years, the $35 billion disappeared. Whether the money disappeared or it was shared, the fact remains that $35 billion disappeared from the foreign reserve I left behind in office. When we left that money, we thought we were leaving it for the rainy day…”

Meanwhile as a strategy to checkmate Obasanjo’s overbearing influence on the ruling People’s Democratic Pary (PDP), loyalist to the incumbent Jonathan have been mounting pressure on government to petition Obasanjo to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague on the invasion of Odi by the military which left civilians dead, by any standard this equates to crimes against humanity. Another ploy to tame the rampaging former president are plans to expose some of his misdeeds during his 8-year unimpressive tenure.

The postponement of the BoT chairman (s)election can easily be linked to the face-off between President Goodluck Jonathan and ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo as loyalists of both men came to a stand-off in their bid to elect a new chairman, which interestingly was the only agenda of the meeting. Delegates where thorn in two minds as to whom to pick amid intense lobbying for the former president’s candidate Ahmadu Alli, a former chairman of the party, and President Jonathan’s prefered choice – the newly appointed chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority – Tony Anenih, with the sobriquet, ‘Mr Fix It’.

As events unfolded, it became crystal clear that the battle for the BoT chairmanship had a direct bearing with the tussle for the Presidential ticket of the PDP in 2015 and whoever emerges as chairman is crucial to that agenda. Jonathan’s group opposed the election of Obasanjo’s anointed candidate, Alli. His group convinced other members that it won’t augur well for Anenih to be the chairman of NPA and BoT, as others should be given the opportunity to serve the party. Apparently, the Jonathan camp opposed Pro-Obasanjo’s choice of Alli, arguing that such would be detrimental to Jonathan’s second term ambition. On the other hand, Anenih’s emergence as chairman might hinder the choice of Obasanjo’s candidate for the presidential race in 2015. Therein lies the stand-off.

The ex-President is getting tacit support from northern political figures of PDP extraction especially those eyeing the 2015 presidential ticket. They consider his feud with Jonathan as capable of withering his prowess and ultimately truncate Jonathan’s ambition to contest the 2015 elections. These northerners still feel shortchanged that the two terms of Yar’adua’s administration which began in 2007 was not completed before Jonathan came onboard shoving aside the zoning arrangement of the PDP. They reason power should return to the north in 2015 and any role Mr Obasanjo can play to rejig would be welcomed. This much Mr Obasanjo displayed when he invited politicians from the north to the launch of a ‘political’ mosque project. A good number of northern governors and politicians were present at the fund-raiser at Abeokuta. They made generous donation to the project.

Chief Obasanjo in the past was instrumental to Mr Jonathan’s meteoric rise from a deputy governor in Bayelsa state to governor, then vice president, acting president, substantive president and later elected as President in the aftermath of Yar’adua’s death in 2010. The Ota farmer was peeved by his exclusion from Jonathan’s administration as the President now prefer his kinsmen and sycophants as members of his inner caucus rather than seeking his benefactor’s opinion on key national issues. More so, his disaffection with Jonathan can easily be traced to the elections in the South-West states of Ondo, Osun and Ekiti where PDP lost to the ACN and LP. The ex-president, famous for his ability to spin election results is irritated by the failure of President Jonathan to flex his presidential muscle to influence court judgments in favour of PDP, a suggestion Jonathan turned down. Against this backdrop, if Chief Olusegun Obasanjo now finds everything wrong with the man he installed as president then it must be nothing more than an agitation for the 2015 polls.

That the former president is building bridges across the country ahead the 2015 elections and picking holes at Jonathan’s government is a strong indication that Mr Obasanjo has pitched tent with those opposed to Jonathan running the 2015 election. Awkwardly, the President is up against his benefactor. President. Jonathan is fighting the battle of his political soul as he now seem to have reneged on the promise he made to Nigerians that he won’t seek a second term in office and Obasanjo is at the front of the queue to stop his re-election.

In the event of Chief Obasanjo’s inability to clinch the PDP ticket for whoever becomes his anointed candidate, his ties with the members of the PDP who have defected, and now part of the planned merger between the ANPP, CPC and the ACN will prove invaluable as his anti-Jonathan rhetoric has already won him support from the north, majority of whom are still angry at the PDP’s zoning arrangement that was breached by Jonathan.

As the incumbent, Jonathan can swing major decisions in his favour, he has enough resources, as some recent appointments and contracts awarded has shown, at his disposal to deploy in a desperate bid to ensure he returns, but he must first slug it out with a strong northern candidate from the PDP in the primaries and another from the possible merger of some opposition parties in the election proper.

It is not happenstance that Obasanjo has come out unscathed from tough political battles, ask the likes of Atiku Abubakar his former vice President; former governor of Ogun state, Otunba Gbenga Daniel; former Senate President, Anyim Pius Anyim; former Speaker of House of Representative, Umar Gha’li Na’Abbah and a host of others, the ex-President has always had his way in the end. He sure wields a lot of influence politically inspite of his resignation as the chairman of the BoT of the ruling PDP sometime ago. It has been a herculean task replacing him as I write and now it seems incumbent President Jonathan might be stretching his goodluck rather too far should he decide to contest in 2015.

Theophilus Ilevbare (theophilus@ilevbare.com)

http://ilevbare.com

twitter: @tilevbare

#SomethingFresh: The Final Say – @IkeAmadi

Pride is fast becoming a marketable commodity, partly stemming from our need to see others express themselves in manners a little untoward. Such persons are hailed for their courage and resistance to existing dictums.

4 years ago, while doing a stint in the US, I observed that the working condition was very inflexible. There was no breathing space for me to do what I wanted to do. I wanted to have fun; ‘but only after working hours,’ the one said. This sometimes made me be at loggerheads with the authorities. It was not fresh. Not fresh at all!

Looking back, I observed that I should have been more humble. I shouldn’t have tried to rebel at the laws binding the vicinity where I was domiciled and work. I should have humbled myself more, and in every ramification.

Now back to today. I have discovered, upon meditation that man who is humble will go far in life and ministry and will eventually make heaven.

Being humble is not very different from being teachable.

You cannot learn unless you humble yourself to receive that information or teaching into your mind.

You can’t grow unless you’re humble. For a seed must first die, before it will germinate and bring forth fruits that will last.

We go through several pains in life, simply because we refuse to be humble. If only we had been humble to receive and carry out that instruction; if we had shunned that friend, or that ill-advised project, we perhaps would have been on the better side of life now.

It takes humility to seek counsel from elders, for ‘in the multitude of counselors, there is safety.’ Would to God that I would remain humble.

“Humble yourself under the mighty hands of God and He will lift you up.”

Pride caused the fall of satan. Pride led to the fall of man: ‘… and you’ll be like God.’ If you don’t want to fall, be humble.

Many think humility is for the weak, but I tell you, only the strong can be humble.

Weak people resort to an ego consciousness. Strong people surrender. They know how to lay down their lives, their wisdom, and their strength for something greater!

The proud can never be wise! Pride and wisdom can never co-habit.
It is therefore foolish to be prideful.

Don’t let pride cost you that big advancement in life.
What is that thing you must do? What does it take? Are you shunning doing that thing because it appears beneath you?

As Khaled Hosseini wrote in his book, The Kite Runner, ‘There is a way to be good again.’ The way is to stop being prideful and acting as though you have the final say, and to start seeking counsel – from God, from the elders and watch your dreams come to fruition.

Eschew pride! Stay Fresh!

–          Ike Amadi

@ikeamadi on Twitter.

Blogs on ike-amadi.com

Madiba Will Not Die…

This is the story of a heart in search of gripping solace, perhaps in the pains of his strife. Today, I will not rant like a typical frustrated social commentator on good governance. I will, for the period my heart permits, fiddle with the essence of my existence. I am not rich, I have not arrived, I have no food to eat, I have a skinny bank account, yet I dream dreams and hope not to be rich but to be comfortable, still keep moving and have food to share with others. I will continue to live my life for others and still keep motivational books at arm’s length. But in all, I will not die; neither will Mandela die until the handshake comes, the handshake of the gods.

Madiba will not die…

The broadcast came into my blackberry phone, queuing behind other unread senseless broadcasts waiting for my angry finger to tap the ‘delete’ button. That morning, the end of the world came so close. For the first time, I lost my sense of tomorrow momentarily. I remembered the trials of the SOWETO clan, troublous and disheartening peregrinations of a people from joy to sorrow; from sorrow back to joy; from hope to despondency and from despondency back to hope.

Madiba will not die…

My perspiration resisted the cold ambience of the Osun-Osogbo grove when I paid a visit to the gods with my ipad. Goose bumps took over my skin and tears cascaded down my cheeks. The early morning harmattan failed to douse my temperature for beads of sweat began to form under my armpits, on my chest, under my temple and under my feet. The creases on my forehead moved in tempo with my palpitating heart. Few minutes after, I realized it was a rumour and instead of mourning Nelson, I cursed the sender of the broadcast and pre-mourned him. The gods are on his case. Just like Udo in Ubujuonu’s Pregnancy of the gods, Mandela has become an avatar of Complex Paradox; even if he dies, he will still live in the story of the world.

Madiba will not die…

Blame me not, for the gods have also failed. Blame me not, for I ended as an Engineer when I could vocalize with my thoughts. Blame me not, for I will marry, not to my today’s friend, but to my yesterday’s friend. Blame me not, for my failures have set me up when the dreams are not close. Blame me not, for I am not bothered about today when the merry is going round. Blame not my mum, blame not my destiny, and blame not my dreams, for I missed the chance to make my millions at 22. But blame me if I miss to fulfill my childhood dream of having a handshake with Mandela before he dies.

Madiba will not die…

It will be a handshake of the gods, a feast of palms where the gods will gyrate to the rhythm of accomplishment. Once this is done, then I am ready, I am on the warfront. Clear the path for me, the prime mower dreams, let me see the tall building I am aiming at its roof tops. Let the SOWETO trees clap and bow for the son of the soil, the black soil of distrust and love. Good morning SOWETO, here I am for the handshake. Let the neighbours be aware, for we will play the music of AMALA AWETU. This is my story.

It is me, @Obajeun

Jonah Ayodele Obajeun blogs @www.obajeun.com. Catch him on twitter via @Obajeun

Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila is the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. In this interview with LEKE BAIYEWU, the lawyer speaks on the cause of conflicts between the House and the Executive

How does it feel being in the opposition in a House that is dominated by the Peoples Democratic Party?

It is an experience that is interesting, challenging, fulfilling, tasking and worthwhile. Sometimes your arguments win in debates, sometimes they do not. The opposition is important because it is an important aspect of any democracy. It is challenging because sometimes you raise issues that will almost land you into trouble but above all, the opposition is striving. It is a wonderful experience.

Have you ever been intimidated by the overwhelming majority?

I am not a type that gets intimidated; I cannot be intimidated. When the opposition raises issues, it is interesting to know that we have some leaders in the majority who relegate their political party affiliations and background to consider such issues because they are of national importance and are for the betterment of the people. We may have some challenges but we have never been intimidated.

The House has made some discoveries through several probes but Nigerians are losing faith in the House because almost all the reports are unimplemented.

We are playing our role in a democracy. We probe and submit our reports; it is for the Executive to execute those reports. It is not for us to execute them. When we try to execute, they say we are overreaching our boundary. We did a report on the Security Exchange Commission and recommended that the Director-General be removed for certain reasons but the Executive has refused to execute it. We have also refused to appropriate money to the sector but Nigerians are still criticising us. I will do a piece on that very soon, just to make Nigerians understand better what we are doing about SEC. The National Assembly is not overreaching itself, as far as the SEC is concerned. We are working within our legislative powers. It is not childish like most people will want to say but this is not a topic for today. I will do a report to give a broader and more objective analysis of what happened between the SEC and the National Assembly.

Is it not possible for the National Assembly to do a follow-up on the reports to ensure proper implementation and prosecution?

We do follow-ups and one of them is on the SEC matter and the DG. One of the ways of doing follow-up is to say, ‘You know what? We cannot tell you this person is not fit to hold office and at the same time appropriate money for her to spend.’ Therefore, we have withheld appropriation for that section. That is one way of following up your resolution and ensuring that your resolution is implemented.

Many Nigerians believe until the allowances of lawmakers are cut and legislature is made part-time, the National Assembly will not perform better? How would you react to this?

It is a remedy, if it’s thought out properly. If it is a remedy, it’s absolutely welcomed by me. But I think it’s not about allowances neither is it about being full-time or part-time; I think it’s about commitment and doing the right thing. I think it is about putting the right people in the right offices. If you cut the time and allowances, as long as you don’t have the right calibre of people that will deliver what needs to be delivered, you are going to get same results. It is called ‘garbage in garbage out.’ For me, it is a welcome development if we look at it.

What I want to say on the issue of allowances is that we should take a global look and see whether truly, Nigerian legislators are the highest paid in the world. From my research, they appear not to be but if that is the case, then, we should look at it, slash it wherever we want to slash it. Anything that will give better performance, I am all for it. What is important is that we grow our democracy and deliver the dividends to all Nigerians wherever they may be.

Again, it is not enough to talk about allowances without talking about what the followership is also expecting from the legislators. When they start comparing a legislator in America with a legislator in Nigeria, what they forget is that there’s no basis for comparison. What are the demands of legislators in America? The legislators in America are not expected to pay house rents, school fees, or use their money to sink boreholes. There are several things legislators here do and you don’t have a budget for that. Many legislators do these out of their pockets.

Yes, if you want to slash the allowances for legislators, please go ahead, and slash it. But, you also have to deal with the whole picture and make sure people don’t come to these same legislators and start to make unbearable, unbelievable and unpractical demands. These demands are not made on other legislators in other parts of the world. A legislator in America that earns N100 a month keeps all the N100 to himself but a legislator in Nigeria, that earns N300 a month, is expected to spend N350 out of the N300 on the constituents. And that is why you see today, legislators who are out of office are in penury because all the so-called basic allowances are spent on the constituency. I am all for slashing of allowances, if we can slash the demands as well.

People believe they are not seeing what they should see despite the fact that there are allowances for constituency projects. Why is this so?

This is another misconception, unfortunately. Constituency projects are never given to National Assembly members. I have been in the House for close to nine years – this is my third term – I have never been given a kobo for constituency projects. Never in my life! And nobody is given money for constituency project. Constituency project means you identify something that may be needed and it is only a limited amount. You identify something small that is needed in your constituency and it is put in the budget, that is your constituency project. For instance, I might decide that we need to fix a federal road in my constituency. That might be the constituency project. It may be N30m they will give each member but they will not give them in cash. It will be included in the budget not that they will give you money.

The House protested the percentage level of implementation of the 2012 budget. Is there a plan to do a follow-up on the implementation of the 2013 budget?

What happened in 2012, for me, is a good thing. It is a foreshadow of what is to come in 2013. We have made it clear that it is not going to be a business as usual. We have thrown down the gauntlet and it is for the Executive to take it up. The budget is meant to be and must be implemented. We did it in 2012; it got to a point where serious repercussions were about to happen. I am sure that the Executive fully understands that our language was hard. Our rhetoric was very serious and direct — implement the budget or face the consequence, which is what will happen in 2013.

How independent is Nigeria legislature?

Nigerian legislature is very independent. Maybe we were not in the past. That is what we have done in the seventh assembly; to ensure independence. At the beginning when we were sworn in, we independently elected our leadership of the House. It had never happened before in the history of Nigeria, at least not in recent times.

At the House, the ruling party normally dictated who was going to be the speaker, leader, etc. We were not going to have any of that and we made that abundantly clear. And we have followed that path of independence in all our decisions. That is why people think there is conflict between the Executive and the legislature. There will always be conflict because they are two separate arms of government. There will always be conflict, as long as the conflict is healthy and it is for goodness of the Nigerian people. We say ‘welcome conflict’ as long as it moves the country forward. I have no fears or worries about the independence of the National Assembly anymore. Besides, the opposition has grown in number unlike what we had before. So, that independence has been enhanced.

Does the House have any plan to empower the anti-graft agencies in their fight against corruption in terms of legislation?

We are working on it. We have set up the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Law. If the EFCC is being influenced by the Executive, we are working on tightening that law by amending it. I have a process of the amendment of the EFCC, where the Attorney-General of the Federation is no longer relevant in the operations of the EFCC. We are working on that; it is a bill that I sponsored — that, the AGF can no longer, under the constitution of the EFCC, issue what is called nolle prosequi. Hopefully, we will strengthen the EFCC and other anti-corruption agencies.

What are the prospects of the merger of the opposition parties in the 2015 general elections?

The process is ongoing and it is going on smoothly. The good thing is that it started early. The problem with the last time was that the parties came just before the electionsand that did not give us the time to meet all the necessary legal hurdles and requirements set up by the electoral law. Now we have started in good time and in earnest. I truly believe that this time around, we will have a single party forming an opposition. While we are doing that, we will ensure that elections are free and fair.

What are your challenges with tackling the ruling PDP that has the finance and government machinery on ground?

Challenges have always been in Nigerian politics. Some see it as a competition, others see it as a battle. The challenges we are looking forward to would be not just a battle of wits but a battle of issues.

via Punch

On January 10, 2013 while driving to work with my colleague, I stopped at my usual newspaper vendor for my dailies. The vendor handed me my usual papers, and my colleague who sat in the front seat took them from me and placed them on his lap. Then he picked up The Guardian and hurriedly flipped through its pages. Suddenly an amused expression started playing on his face. I was no longer in a hurry to restart the ignition soon, as my curiosity had gotten the better of me. My colleague lowered the paper for me to have a look, and I noticed he had dwelt on page 10. The page had the pictures of President Goodluck Jonathan and that of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim. I still did not get it. Then he pointed at Jonathan’s nose, and said “see his nose o.”
I took one good look at what he was talking about. Perhaps it was a badly taken picture, or the problem was with the printing, but the picture showed Jonathan with a nose accentuated by a light shade, making it somewhat bigger, longer?and amusing. I blurted out: “Pinocchio!”

In case you have forgotten, Pinocchio is an American animated film done in 1940 and produced by Walt Disney. Pinocchio was a wooden puppet which was brought to life. But the thing about it was that any time Pinocchio lied his nose grew longer, and longer, with each succeeding lie.

Jonathan has been seen to be keeping people guessing on whether he will run for president in 2015. Guessing? Anyway, just into the new year, campaign posters for Jonathan’s presidency in 2015 started spreading in the streets of Abuja. But the president has denied having anything to do with the posters. His Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Dr Reuben Abati said those who were behind the posters didn’t seek the president’s permission. His words: ‘Those pasting the posters are trying to express their own view. The president had stated that he will talk about the presidency from 2014. Those doing these do not have the consent of the president. What is most important now is for the president to deliver on his electioneering promise to Nigerians and not to embark on the pasting of posters. It has not come from the president. Nigerians should take the president for his word and ignore any other information to the contrary.”

But many think otherwise. They believe he must have had a hand in those posters, in fact that the whole thing was Jonathan. Why is it so hard to believe the president? If people cannot take the president for his word, does it mean they think he has a credibility gap?

Looking back now, there are many things Jonathan said to Nigerians, many promises he made to get their votes, which today he has denied ever saying. To some people, perhaps for those posters he had hidden behind the scene, only using his foot soldiers to fly a kite. Just a little gimmick to test the waters shouldn’t hurt, should it? But aren’t politicians known to be liars? Perhaps it is no big deal if the people are fed loads of lies. Who will know? And if they do know, what can they do? They will always get us to vote for them they tell themselves. Empty promises and a few naira notes and our votes are assured. They would not even need to plead our emotions anymore with having had no shoes growing up.

I might not have bothered if Jonathan had a credibility gap or not until I heard he said that there has been an improvement in power supply?which should be celebrated. Jonathan’s government said Nigeria’s power generation had reached an all-time high of 4,502 megawatts, up from 4,349.7MW. He also boasted that with his administration Nigerians will no longer be dependent on generators

I have not heard anything more galling. As I typed this piece I was sweating, as my generating set had used up all the fuel. And I did not want to add any more fuel into it until the next day because if I opened the doors I might let in mosquitoes. It was our light off. We usually had two days on, and one day off. This arrangement has been on for about 2 years now. The last time we had an improvement was during the time of Prof Barth Nnaji as power minister. Now, even on the days we are to have light, in 24 hours it is rare to have 2 hours of light uninterrupted. We do not sleep with the generator on.  One particular night in this new year was so terrible. My new born baby sweated and could not sleep. My wife, sweat all over her body too, cursed.  And after that, there have been more of those nights.

It was the same Jonathan who during a Presidential media chat last November said the combined average power generation capacity from all the power plants in the country had moved from less than 3,000 MW to above 5,000 MW. But thankfully the misinformation was immediately refuted by the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, which said Nigeria has never reached a peak of 5,000 MW.

Credibility confers on a leader moral garland. If a leader has lost their credibility they become like dry wood, dry leaves in the harmattan, there is no life in their leadership, their legacy if any soon easily blown away. A leader without credibility is not doing term, but doing time; credibility gives a leader freedom to lead, while the lack thereof makes the leader a prisoner. Credibility is the most important aspect of effective leadership. Leaders without credibility are at best waiting on time, they will still be remembered no doubt, but only as blotches in the delicate canvas of history.
Dr Odoemena, medical practitioner, Lagos

via SaharaReporters

We are a nation of 150 million spectators. In political discourse, we are arguably the world’s largest spectocracy. Our spectocratic tendency may be music in the ears of the English Premier League and other European football leagues which serve as national diversion from our sorrows, in the domain of political agency and participation, however, it makes us a thing, that insulted thing which is the exact opposite of a citizen. When next you call yourself a Nigerian citizen, you lie. You deceive yourself. You are not a citizen, Nigerian, you are a spectocrat and here’s why.

You are a spectocrat because the validity and legitimacy of your country’s political process do not inhere in you, your choices, and your preferments. It is precisely because these things inhere in the citizen in genuine democracies in Africa and elsewhere in the world that the citizens of such countries are referred to as an electorate. You, Nigerian spectocrat, are a member of a spectocrate, Africa’s largest spectocrate, because all political choices and options are rammed down your throat in a top-down process. Your ability to even be a spectator of how your life is run and ruined is further dependent on the benevolence of PHCN or your generator. Otherwise, you are in total darkness.

It is from the pit of this spectocratic darkness that you grumble – in your living room, in beer parlours, at Premiership viewing centres, on commercial buses, on social media – that your vote does not count during elections. Actually, you are making a mistake by focusing on your worthless vote at the election. You are underestimating the condition of your sorry ass. It’s worse than you think. There are other things that did not count before your vote did not count. You just didn’t realize this because you are used to being a spectocrat. And a spectocrat, like I told you already, is a thing, not a citizen.

So what else did not count? Check out these scenarios from two responsible democracies. You know already that in the build-up to the last presidential election in France, Ségolène Royal lost out in the race for her party’s nomination to François Hollande, the man who eventually ousted Nicholas Sarkozy. What you may not know is the scenario she describes later in interviews about her preparations for the party primaries. She talks about some four to five years of crisscrossing France, selling herself, her vision, and her programmes to the people: townhall meetings, focused-group meetings, meetings with all kinds of organized professional bodies, labour unions, associations, organizations, rallies, debates, advertorials, etc.

Mind you, she is not the official candidate of her party yet. Why is she doing this? Let’s go to America for our answer. Those positioning themselves to run in the Democratic or Republican Primaries also begin the race, like Ségolène did in France, by trying to sell themselves to the party base and to the country. Then the media comes in, playing a civic role by constantly relaying news about who is polling well in which critical states and among which critical segments of the country. Who is polling well with – women, men, young, old, whites, blacks, latinos, rich, poor, middleclass, students, teachers, industry workers, trade unions, Christians, gay rights advocates, civil rights advocates? Who is polling well with all these critical demographics and why?

You can see that Hillary Clinton (you know why she is leaving the State Department), Chris Christie, Paul Ryan – indeed, anybody with a potential for 2016 – has already begun this critical process of trying to poll well with the electorate. Meanwhile, what are the party leaders doing as Wolf Blitzer, John King, Rachel Maddow, Chris Mathews (and even racist lunatics like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh) begin to relay analyses of who is polling well and where?

Party leaders are listening and watching very carefully. They are plugging in because that is how they eventually gauge who is sellable, who is a viable candidate. In essence, whether it is in France or in the US, the process begins and ends with the electorate. I am not saying it is perfect. Money and other factors do come in, by and large, but you do not stand a chance of getting your party’s nomination if you have not gone through a grueling pre-electoral process of selling yourself to the electorate and polling well.

What do you have in Nigeria? It is an arrogant and frustratingly insulting process in which the spectorate – I insist that we don’t have an electorate – considers herself grateful if she is even accorded the privilege of spectatorship at all. And our media is complicit in this process of national insult. It’s always the same ritual, at least since 1999. Two years to an election or so, Obasanjo, Babangida, Tony Anenih, Tinubu and all kinds of risible godfathers, corrupt stakeholders, and yeye elder statesmen will wake up and begin to announce who they have decided to endorse. The media falls in line and the spectorate is treated to haughty headlines: “Obasanjo Endorses X”, “Babangida Opts for Y”, “Governors’ Forum endorses Z”.

Then these characters will spend the next year treating us to catfights, mudfights, and roforofo fights. Mind you, nobody has yet asked us our opinion. We are spectocrats. Then they will kiss and make up. They will align and realign. They will enter into every manner of agreement. They will zone, re-zone, de-zone, and unzone. They will share offices. They will then organize primaries and announce to you who the candidate will be. Nobody has consulted you up till now. Nobody has tried to sell any vision to you. You do not matter. They know that they have produced three generations of Nigerians who lack civics and therefore will not ask critical questions about why they are spectocrats. It is only after this stage that a general election is announced and you are told that you have now qualified to go and cast votes that will not count because the winner of every election is always already pre-determined.
2015 is at hand and you can already see this insulting scenario unfolding. Which presidential hopeful have you seen crisscrossing Nigeria since 2011, selling a carefully-calibrated vision to students, farmers, traders, market women, etc, in the hope of polling well, preparatory to contesting his or her party’s primaries? Which presidential hopeful has been selling himself to NURTW, NUT, NUPENG, PENGASSAN, (we can’t mention NANS, can we?) and other critical national unions in the hope of polling well with them? Which presidential hopeful has been grilled by socially responsive media outfits such as Punch, Premium Times, Sahara Reporters, Ynaija.com, Omojuwa.com and a host of others? This will not happen because you do not count. They do not need to poll well with you. All they need is a war-chest built with the proceeds of corruption and the blessing of Obasanjo, Babangida, Anenih, Ahmadu Alli, Bola Tinubu, and patati and patata.

If you are tired of these insults as we approach 2015, then you belong in the category of Nigerians that Tunde Fagbenle, Okey Ndibe, and yours truly want to work with as we map out strategies to break the jinx of spectocracy in the weeks to come. Tunde Fagbenle has already kicked off what we plan to do in his Punch column last week. Please check it out here is you have not already read it: (http://www.punchng.com/columnists/tunde-fagbenle-saying-it-the-way-it-is…).

Nothing is cast in stone yet. We are still discussing. And we are under no illusion that the task ahead is easy. We are merely powered by the conviction that we are neither voiceless nor powerless. And we believe that there is a sufficient number of Nigerians out there whose anger and frustration could be harnessed and conjugated into a movement towards 2015. We believe that we have the numbers to confront the corruption and insults of the current crop of players and their godfathers who are already preparing to ram candidates down our throats top-down. We believe that we do not have to accept their choices, their arrogance, and their rudeness. We believe that if we build a movement powerful enough – powerful only in numbers for we have no money – our largely docile and complicit media will resign from their vocation of merely reporting the choices and preferences of corrupt godfathers and yeye elder statesmen and begin to focus on the preferments of the people. We believe that we are the only ones who can transform ourselves from a spectorate to an electorate.

Our strategy for now – we are open to suggestions. Just join us first and let’s start the movement – is to see if we could collect five million signatures in support of a candidate we would have agreed upon through a process we shall make public in due course. We are thinking of drafting a credible, patriotic compatriot with solid personal capital, who would not come from the ranks of the current jokers running Nigeria. We are thinking of massing at least five million or more of you behind this choice. Personally, I have expressed my preference for Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah and Tunde Fagbenle has supported it. Okey Ndibe will also let us have his own suggestions in due course. When we open a Facebook page for this project, you will be able to let us know who your own choice(s) might be and what strategies you envision going forward.

Please do not join us if you are wearing tribal or religious blinders. We are reaching out to kindred spirits hungry to become an electorate beyond the limiting and destructive faultlines of our national experiment. We are not interested in the ethnicity of the next President. We are not interested in his religion. We are not interested in quota and zone talk. For all we care, if he or she is your choice, has credible personal capital, and has not been tainted by dalliances and alliances with the current crop of corrupt rulers, s/he may even come from Otuoke. In essence, there is nothing inherently wrong with an Otuokean succeeding an Otuokean in Aso Rock so long as the new man is not cut from the same clueless, corrupt, and incompetent cloth as the incumbent. In essence, do not bring religion, tribe, zoning, and quota talk into our conversation. We have serious work to do and we have no time for distraction.

As discussions proceed and as we refine and define our strategies, please stay tuned to the three weekly columns of Okey Ndibe, Tunde Fagbenle (Punch), and yours truly for periodic updates. Let me leave you for now with this parting shot. For 2015, I endorse you, spectocrat, to become a democrat. I endorse you, spectorate, to become an electorate.

– Pius Adesanmi

via SaharaReporters

Political power intoxicates. And so, many who have tasted it always play Oliver Twist, asking for more. Given the recognition of a second term by most country’s constitution, hardly has any African President outside the South African Hero, Nelson Mandela willingly relinquished power after serving a lone term.

Back in Nigeria, controversy has continued to trail the circumstances that threw up the presidency of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan in 2011, more so, when current developments in the polity suggest  a possible comeback in 2015 of the President.

Will that be an achievable task? How herculean will that be for President Jonathan should he attempt to contest? Saturday Vanguard’s JOHN BULUS in this special piece analyses the intrigues currently playing out in the polity enroute 2015 general elections.

The silence is so vexing yet suspicious. He may have spoken but he was very tacit and tactical. Not exact. Not explicit. The people expected more especially in the midst of the growing concerns from several quarters. But be that as it may, the taciturnity has continued to elicit unusual apprehension even as current developments around him conspicuously point towards another big dream in 2015. Believe it or not, President Goodluck Jonathan is caught up on the edge of controversy. And as far as 2015 elections are still underway, the controversy rages on.

Indeed, not a few persons had been nerved by the re-emergence of Tony Anenih as the new Chairman of the Board of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA). Alas, many had asked what the man forgot at the Authority or what work he had gone back to do that eluded him in his first missionary journey.

Anenih had been the NPA Chairman. In fact, he preceded  Bode George who was later imprisoned on accounts of illicit activities while at the Authority.  Anenih played a role during his term as the Minister of Works and Housing in the President Olusegun Obasanjo’s era.

His influence in the Obasanjo’s presidency later earned him the sobriquet “Mr. Fix it”. Of the incidences of that time, his rift with the then Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu was one incident that came close to revealing what was hidden between the two people.

Though it was seen as a personal rift between the duo, what was however fathomed in the public spheres was that the cause of the face-off bordered on public interest. Until recently, much has not been heard of the man who retired back to his home state politics in Edo except when the self acclaimed political godfather of Edo State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) appeared in the public  to present Charles Airhiavbere, the PDP candidate in the last Edo State gubernatorial election.

But to the chagrin of most Nigerians, President Goodluck Joanthan at the twilight of December 2012 dusted Anenih and reassigned him the portfolio of heading the Board of NPA. At first, the news was like a distorted fiction to many Nigerians when it filtered  but it  later dawn on Nigerians to be an undisputable reality.

To those who are in the know, Anenih’s appointment, smacking a tirade of controversy, was a strategy. It is a means to an end. And the end is 2015. On the periphery, Anenih is the NPA Board Chairman. But  investigations reveal that Anineh is the political machinery rejigged to “fix” President Jonathan in 2015.

Then enters another veritable platform which is the Chairmanship of the PDP’s Board of Trustees (BoT). Saturday Vanguard’s checks indicated a well calculated but skewed move to enthrone Anenih as the new BoT Chairman. Tuesday, January 8, 2013 was supposed to be the day the new Chairman would have been unveiled but apparently, high-wired intrigues and horse-trading stalled the move after a three hour meeting of PDP stalwarts at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, venue of the event. Those who spoiled for the contest included Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Chief Tony Anenih, Senator Ken Nnamani, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo and Ahmadu Ali.

Others in the race were Chief Emmanuel Iwuayanwu, Chief Don Etiebet, Senator Bode Olayinka, Chief Yekeen Adeojo, Senator Onyeabor Obi, Chief Harry Akande and Chief Shuaibu Oyedokun. Ahmadu Ali, reports said came very close to grabbing the position but for the “politics” allegedly orchestrated by the Senate President, Senator David Mark that edged him out at the eleventh hour.

Mark by his position, is currently the PDP leader in the North Central geo-political zone where Ali also hails from. Had Ali been elected, Mark would have automatically lost his grip of the party as the boss in the region to Ali. But sources said that was one development Mark was not home with and so, sided with the move to formalize the tenure of the BoT Secretary, Senator Walid Jibrin who refused to step-down for Ali to five years. By adopting the principle of federal character as accentuated by PDP’s constitution, Ali is now tactically edged out of the race thereby heightening the chances of Chief Tony Anenih to becoming the next BoT Chair.

And to resolve the process, a Committee chaired by Former Minister of Information, Professor Jerry Gana was set up. With the development, analysts believed that Anenih, the widely speculated choice of President Jonathan would have a smooth ride to the position when the election is finally held.

Meanwhile, if Anenih would deliver, he will have many rivers to cross. These rivers include the multi-faceted choices of the various zones clamouring to produce President in 2015. Thus: the North and Ndigbo which have already started the leg work with gusty.

via Vanguard

#KakandaTemple: Between Terrorism and Terrorism – by @GimbaKakanda

I’m devastated. I woke up in the morning of Friday, January 4,to the story of an unnamed student shot in Maiduguri. Like most Nigerians used to hearing news of assaults and atrocieties from the northeast, I muttered a prayer for the victim and returned to my business. My attention was drawn to the name about an hour later and, upon investigation, the victim turned out to be from my own family tree. Abdulmumin? My heartbeat stopped for a minute. Abdulmumin? I went for my phone at once. This very unlucky Nigerian isn’t another log of wood, not a mere statistic to be impersonally prayed for. This one is a brother.

Abdulmumin was my “school son” in secondary school. He was the most sociable student in our dormitory, and the truest dandy in our room. I was either three or four years his senior in school, but his knowledge of the vogue meant we relied on him for the latest songs, clothes, shoes and perfumes. Skip the next sentences please. (We used to dash to Abuja together from the Suleja-based boarding school to hang out with friends.) Our parents must not hear a word of that! But you must forgive this because, if what our clerics preach about purgatory is not exaggerated, the experiences there are just as found at government-owned boarding schools.

I began my enquiry on the online news media. At Sahara Reporters, that hub of sensationalism, Abudlmumin was merely “hurt”. Nothing more. Abdulmumin had been caught in a shootout between JTF soldiers and Boko Haram insurgents. Hurt. That Sahara Reporters didn’t sensationalise or investigate the story means that military brutality is, just like the many evils before it, already becoming non-news. At the Premium Times website, Abdulmumin was “hit by a stray bullet”. The stories kept coming, each with slightly different details, until friends and family of Abdulmumin intervened and thus contradicting narratives going viral on the cyberspace.

There were indeed no Boko Haram insurgents, they said. There was no shootout, they clarified. It was just another case of state authorised terrorism waged by the Joint Task Force, they accused. Abdulmumin, I learnt from their narratives, left Minna for Maiduguri on Thursday 3^rd January 2013, with the post-holiday fervour (and fear, I assume) of settling down in that hotbed of terrorism. Vehicular movements are outlawed in Maiduguri from 9 pm but the bus that took Abdulmumin to Maiduguri didn’t beat the curfew regime, so the passengers passed the night at the Borno Express Park. It was on his way back to his base at 303, a private hostel in the university’s vicinity, in the early hours of the morning that he ran into that fate. Abdulmumin was in a taxi with other passengers and just as they approached a military checkpoint at Gwange quarter, the soldiers began to shoot at them. According to the narratives of eyewitnesses, the bullets that left those guns were not “stray”. They were “aimed”. And so they lodged a bullet in Abdulmumin’s head.

But, were they remorseful? The emerging stories scared me: When the taxi driver managed to stop and was forced out to lay face down, he reportedly called the attention of the soldiers to a shot passenger. “So what?” They responded, and then threatened to kill the driver if he misbehaved. That unfolding tragedy was checked only by the approach of the operation commander. Their exercise was, ironically, dubbed “Operation Restore Order”. The commander asked to know what happened and the soldiers gave that the taxi driver was speeding towards the checkpoint. Case one. The taxi driver told the commander that he didn’t see the soldiers, neither did he their checkpoint. Case two. In summary, the commander, God bless his heart, joined the driver in the taxi to have Abdulmumin rushed to the University Teaching Hospital where he is now a pitiable wreck in the Intensive Care Unit. Case closed? Oh no, the other passengers who were witnesses to that episode of human worthlessness were not dropped off. They were left with the soldiers!

What happened to the witnesses? London-based Nigerian blogger, Kayode Ogundamisi, shared a story of one of them. Hauwa Seidu, he wrote, was threatened with death if she dared say a word about what transpired. They then seized her identity card. The choice is left for her.

On the social networking media, all the Nigerians who commented on this flip of our history unanimously agreed that JTF is now a “government-endorsed terrorist group”, citing the security agent’s previous brutalities and killings, and clampdown on the media houses and journalists that reported on their exploits. This discord between JTF and the people to whom they consider themselves protectors seems to me a breach of trust. Oppression justifies terrorism, and much as these peace-keepers in khaki fail to set themselves apart from the ideologically hollow insurgents of Boko Haram, their opponents expand their reach. May God save us from us!

Gimba Kakanda

@gimbakakanda (on Twitter)

Between them, three women have partitioned Nigeria into an overbearing and scheming country. It is doubtful whether the three – Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Finance), Stella Oduah(Aviation) and Diezani Alison-Madueke(Petroleum) – do so deliberately. But by their policies, and the vociferous arguments they summon to drive them, the country’s fate seems sealed, at least under President Goodluck Jonathan. The situation was probably not better under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidency, but in those days it was at least difficult to determine where Obasanjo’s overbearingness began and where the conceitedness of his appointees ended. We groped in that fogginess for eight years to 2007 assured that some sort of balance could be conjured by nature itself. Nature, we convinced ourselves, abhorred imbalance. But under Jonathan, there is no fog anywhere, nor is nature keen to intervene.

For a moment, let us put aside the policy parade of the Finance and Petroleum ministers, and instead concern ourselves with the Aviation minister, who is on some sort of rampage. It is of course mere co-incidence that the three ministers are from the Southeast/South-South. Their power and influence – some say dominance – is probably not due to their states or regions of origin. They are influential partly because of their intellects and mostly because of their personalities. When it comes to the debate over finance and poverty, have you ever tried to convince the highly opinionated Okonjo-Iweala that the square of the longest side hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides? Forget it; it’s a lost cause. No matter how right you are, she is even righter. If you draw the sword of Pythagoras, she will counter with the shield of Euclid. And you would be lucky to get in a word when she is declaiming on any topic.

Diezani (I mean no disrespect; her first name, which is not common, is simpler to use than her hyphenated surname) is probably the most oratorical of the three, and certainly the most dashing. What degree of persuasiveness she loses by way of conjured or ambiguous facts and figures, especially when she is put to task by the National Assembly and the querulous long-suffering public, she makes up for by way of sheer verbal profundity. It is always an unequal combat when a brilliant but not fluent speaker meets an eloquent exaggerator who can manage to pay occasional homage to logic. Whereas the Finance minister undermines your statistics and makes you doubt the sources of your figures, the Petroleum minister overwhelms you with her rolling words and glacial composure, thawing only sparingly to remind you of her humanity, nay, femininity. Neither of the two ministers is ever able to convince anyone about the fidelity of the facts and figures coming from the two ministries, whether as they concern poverty and the application of fiscal tools to regenerate the economy, or as they concern fuel consumption or the so-called subsidy regime.

Of the three, however, Oduah, who is the main focus of this piece today, appears to be the most daring and enterprising, and perhaps the most energetic. By dint of her obtrusion, she has managed to raise the status of the Aviation ministry from a sedate, backroom bureaucracy to a frontline and, if we should borrow a phrase from modern analysts, cutting-edge organisation. As her obtrusiveness during electioneering showed, when she made the so-called Neighbour-to-Neighbour unit of the Jonathan campaign organisation a powerful instrument propelled by delicate and indecipherable financial engineering, she has a knack for turning water to wine, and turning a molehill to a mountain. Left alone in the Aviation ministry, as the Jonathan government seems increasingly bent on doing, she could soon begin imagining the prospect of developing a rocketry department in the ministry with the objective of putting a Nigerian on the moon, if not next year, then the year after. Her imagination is so fecund that, like God observed of human beings at the Tower of Babel (Gen 11), whatever she proposes to do she was likely to accomplish. But of course I exaggerate, for Oduah’s fecundity is neither profound nor without a terrible price.

During the 2011 electioneering, Oduah knew how to get things done. She has transferred that talent and energy to her present assignment. Somehow, she does not seem to be discomfited by lack of funds. She is renovating, modernising, and in some instances, expanding the airports in the country, of course, in phases. And from all evidence, and by frequent fliers’ testimonies, she is doing the renovation to taste. But that exercise, as salutary as it seems, jars against a sensible consideration of the economics of airports. Might the renovation not be an unsupportable elevation of aesthetics over functionality? Ghana’s Kotoka Airport is not as fascinating as Murtala Mohammed International Airport, but it is better maintained, better utilised, friendlier to travellers, and there is always a general sense of sanity and safety in its precincts. I won’t push this point, however, for Nigerians, high and low, are eternally fond of the meretricious.

Oduah speaks interminably about grandness in the aviation sector without a correspondingly grand and realistic paradigm to support her dreams. She wants at least one International Airport comparable with the best in the world. But in which aspect of Nigerian leadership is there anything comparable with the best in the world? Is it in observance of the constitution? What of the justice system, education, politics, healthcare, and all other human development indicators? This objectionable lack of realism, as personified by Oduah’s approach to aviation matters, is discernible in the attitudes of Nigerian leaders to the construction of State Houses, legislative complexes, official residential quarters, and the headquarters of some powerful ministries, departments and agencies. Oduah’s comparable airport terminal will pander to our outsized ego, and nothing more.

Perhaps the most disagreeable policy to come from the Aviation minister is the decision to float a new national carrier barely 10 years after the same federal government scrapped the old carrier, the Nigeria Airways. The old carrier was scrapped because the government and its World Bank economists argued that governments were notoriously inefficient in running businesses. With maniacal zeal, the previous government scrapped virtually everything publicly owned. Official residences and cars were monetised. Roads were to be offered to willing concessionaires, and even Federal Government Colleges were scrapped. Virtually nothing was to be left in the hands of the government except the privileges of power. Now, they are gradually reversing themselves – a troubling indication of sloppy thinking, official grandstanding and depressing lack of public debate.

When the Aviation minister first mooted the idea of a new carrier, a columnist with this newspaper argued along the following lines: “Oduah indicates the new national carrier will welcome private equity and be jointly and professionally managed to make it a successful venture. In addition, she says, if all things go well, the new carrier could hit the skies before many months. But it was not too long ago, however, that the government invited Virgin Atlantic to invest in the airline business in Nigeria over the ashes of Nigeria Airways. It proved an impossible task after just a few years, as the new airline made huge losses estimated at more than $300m between 2005 and 2010. In 2007 alone, Virgin Nigeria Airways lost nearly N10 billion. Moreover, Virgin Atlantic Limited never took more than 49 percent equity in the Virgin Nigeria project. So, what has changed? Oduah says the government has learnt its lessons, and will not repeat the mistakes of the past. She is confident that a new national carrier operated jointly with private capital will fly. Nonsense.

“If private investors want to come into the airline business either in partnership or alone, the skies are always open. As everyone knows, the skies may be open, but the capital to establish and run airlines here has not always been open or friendly. Airline business has been a difficult one in recent years requiring the help of the government to keep it aloft…It is doubtful whether Oduah can convince anyone of the need for a new national carrier. The idea of a new national carrier is idle and wishful thinking. There is absolutely no basis for it, either financially or managerially…”

And while we were still trying to come to terms with the new carrier bugaboo, Oduah threw us an even tougher bone to chew. According to an aviation source, the federal government plans to buy 30 new aircraft to be distributed to airlines to help them operate better and to crash air fares. Now, if there is a worse malady than this, we would like to hear it. The crazy venture, we are told, is to be funded by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) – would Sanusi Lamido Sanusi countenance this nonsense? – and the Bank of Industry (BoI). Would the planes be given free? If not, would it not further aggravate the financial distress of the operators and encumber their operating costs? And are the CBN and BoI so loaded with idle money that they can be persuaded to throw it on fantasies?

It is not enough to absorb the fact that these three ministers are powerful and influential, or that they give the Jonathan cabinet its steely core; we must also recognise that they are in fact symptomatic of the lack of consistent policy framework required to run a disciplined, transformative and progressive government. The ministers and their policies indicate just how besotted to grand fantasies the government has become, and why their successes will be few and far between.

– Idowu Akinlotan

Read original piece via The Nation

Ever since the rumour mill became agog that he may contest the 2015 election, President Goodluck Jonathan has consistently refused to be drawn into what he and his aides consider to be an ‘idle talk’. A wise man, the president neither denied nor confirmed that he would run. His position has always been that the time is not yet ripe for him to make his intention known. He will do so in 2014, which is less than 365 days from now, he once told us. He also made it clear that if he decides to run, he is eminently qualified to do so.

Reading the lips of the president, there is no doubt that he will run in 2015, but until he says so, it is taboo for us to speculate about his ambition. Some people, who seem to love the president more than himself cannot wait for him to declare for the race before they start canvassing support for him. These loyalists have printed the president’s posters and painted the Federal Capital City red with them. I don’t know how the president honestly feels about it all, but we are being made to believe that he is not comfortable with what is happening. Can that be true? Is there anyone of us that sugar won’t melt in his mouth?

Yes, what we are seeing may be the hand of Esau, the voice certainly is that of Jacob. Those pushing the president’s posters are no ghosts. They are flesh and blood like us who know what they are doing and why they are doing it. They may not have the president’s consent, but do they really need it when they know that in the man’s heart of hearts he will be chuckling to himself that yes ‘’my boys are doing a damn good job’’. The posters are a way of preparing the ground for the president’s declaration when as he has told us the time is ripe to do so. The president may not have approved the pasting of his posters all over Abuja, but can he feign ignorance of the planned clampdown on opposition leaders?

Even within the Presidency all is not well all because of 2015, going by what we are hearing. The North, which is interested in returning to power is set to pitch Jonathan and Vice President Namadi Sambo against each other in order to achieve its aim. What is not known is whether Sambo will go with the North or remain on the side of his boss. With the way things are playing out on the political scene, we have interesting days ahead. If Sambo ditches Jonathan for his people won’t we have another Obasanjo/Atiku brouhaha on our hands? And if he decides to side with his boss, won’t Sambo become a pariah at home? The choice is that of Sambo. Wherever he chooses to be, I know that he will weigh the options well before jumping into the fray.

Like the North, the opposition has never hidden its intention to wrest power from Jonathan in 2015. Knowing that it failed to win the Presidency in 2011 because of its refusal to merge and confront Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) machine in that year’s election, the opposition has been meeting and planning on how to kick out PDP in 2015. Not unexpectedly, the PDP government is jittery because it knows that if the talks succeed, the opposition may kick it out of power in two years time. To avert that, it has covertly launched operation stop the opposition. The aim is to scuttle the opposition’s merger plans toward the 2015 presidential poll.

Since the government has control of the security agencies, its problem is half solved. These security agencies are to be used to muzzle the opposition. These agencies are said to be gathering reports on some opposition leaders which will be used to tarnish their image. The Jonathan Presidency is ready to go to any length to stop the opposition. It is prepared to adopt even crude means to achieve its aim. In political warfare, it believes that all is fair, as long as the means justifies the end. Right now, a former top official in government is being harassed and hounded all over the place because of the belief that he is interested in the 2015 presidential election. Is that an offence? It is not, but the harassment is a ploy to force him out of the race so that the coast will become clear for Jonathan. Yet, the president is saying that he has not made up his mind about 2015. They should say that to the marine.

If he has not made up his mind yet about 2015, why then are opposition leaders like Gen Muhammadu Buhari and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu being tormented? Is it a sin to be an opposition leader? Politics is a contest of ideas and those who think that they have what it takes to contest for political office should be allowed to do so without let or hindrance. To hire people to rake up mud about your opponents all in the guise of political contest is not a decent way of playing politics. Like the posters issue, the president may not know the atrocities some people in his administration are committing in the name of politics and by way of protecting his political future. Now that he knows, he will surely do something about those who are protecting his interest by trying to run others out of the 2015 race in a shabby and unholy manner. Or won’t he?

– Lawal Ogienagbon

Read original piece via The Nation

Pension reforms: To be, or not to be?

By: Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai

A few years ago, it was common sight to see aged pensioners struggling – and often dying – in the process of obtaining what was rightfully theirs: their pensions. Due to the chaotic and punitive conditions suffered by these senior citizens who more often than not travelled great distances to Abuja to receive their dues, many simply gave up the ghost – some literally died while standing in queues.

Those that persevered were subjected to sleeping on the streets under harsh weather conditions and begging passersby for what to eat. To reward our parents and grandparents who had devoted their lives to serving Nigeria in such cavalier manner speaks volumes about our essence as individuals and collective humanity as a people.

Any discourse about the issue of pension reforms in Nigeria must begin with critical questions: What systems were in place for pension administration and how effective where they? What happened to the funds that were expected to be set aside for these pensioners over the years? Was there not a less cumbersome means of pension funds administration? What are the gains and losses of a decade of pension reforms, and what more do we need to do as a country to widen and deepen the social security system?

Pension, which is essentially setting aside monies for use in old age when one can no longer work and earn much income, was first started in the 1880s in present day Germany when Otto von Bismarck introduced social insurance programs that became the model for other countries and the basis of the modern welfare state. Bismarck introduced old age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance. Bismarck appreciated that society has a responsibility to put in place a safety net for the old, the vulnerable and disadvantaged. Decades later, John F. Kennedy concurred with Bismarck’s vision when he observed that “if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

The first attempt at pension legislation in Nigeria was enacting the Pension Ordinance of 1951 which allowed the Governor-General to grant pensions and gratuities applicable to public sector employees, in accordance with the regulations, which were reviewed from time to time with the approval of the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs in the UK government.

In 1961, the National Provident Fund (NPF) now the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) was established by an Act of Parliament. It was established in line with the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention 102 of 1952 and sought to cater to employees in the private sector of the Nigerian economy.

Subsequently there were; the existing civil service pension scheme covered by the Basic Pension Decree 102 of 1979, the Local Government Pension Scheme which was established in 1977 and the Armed Forces Pension Scheme created through Decree 103 of 1979 by the Murtala-Obasanjo administration. There was also the Pensions Rights of Judges Decree No.5 of 1985 as amended by Decrees Nos. 51 of 1988,29 and 62 of 1991. The Police and other Agencies Pension Scheme Decree No. 75 of 1993 which took retroactive effect from 1990 represented another landmark development in the history of the Nigerian pension system and sought to cover the largest public sector organization in Nigeria – the Police with its nearly 400,000 officers and men.

There was one fundamental flaw with all these schemes – they mandated in the laws pension entitlements, called “defined benefits’ in pension’s parlance, without setting aside any cash to pay for the future liabilities. The assumption of successive governments in Nigeria (and indeed in many countries) is that there will always be tax (and oil) revenues to pay for future pension entitlements. This held true until the mid-1980s when profligate spending accompanied by collapsing oil prices and resultant debt burdens brought our economy to its knees. Pension payments became erratic and current arrears built up, and unfunded future liabilities escalated.

When the BPE was tasked with the responsibility of privatizing public enterprises in 1999, we realized that the unfunded pension liabilities in NITEL, then estimated at N43 billion and NEPA at N75 billion would make difficult if not impossible to privatize the companies. Who would buy a company with such hidden, future liabilities, in addition to over-staffing, attitudinal and other problems? Drawing on a seminal paper by a Nigerian lawyer Jude Uzonwanne of Levin & Srinivasan LLP, New York, the BPE presented a memorandum to the government in year 2000 warning that unfunded pension liabilities in public enterprises alone amounted to nearly N500 billion, while the rest of the public sector had another N1 trillion of the same.

The Obasanjo administration realized that a ‘defined contribution’ system needed to be put in place to replace the unfunded, defined-benefits “pay-as-you-go” pension scheme prevalent in Nigeria. A steering committee on pension reforms under the chairmanship of Fola Adeola worked at resolving the problem first in public enterprises, then nationally, with many outside stakeholders and select BPE staff. Many people like M K Ahmed, Dr. Musa Ibrahim, Chinelo Anohu and Aisha Umar that ended up being foundation staff of the future Pensions Commission played active in the committee and the aftermath.

The Fola Adeola team did extensive and commendable work and attempted to reform the pension structure in the country due to the gross inefficiency and poor administration of the previously launched schemes, culminating in the enactment of the Pension Reform Act 2004 (PRA 2004). In line with this, National Pension Commission (PenCom) was established to regulate and supervise all pension matters in the country.

Some of the highlights of the PRA 2004 are that the scheme would be contributory and fully funded, mandatory for organizations in the private sector with five staff and above, portable, provide full pension rights in the event of dismissal and the contents of Retirement Savings Account (RSAs) cannot be deducted by employers for any outstanding financial obligations among others.

How the contributory pension scheme works is that the employee contributes 7.5% of their income while the employer provides a minimum of 7.5% of the employee’s income into the RSA of the employee. For a country like Nigeria with huge income disparities and numerous low income earners, the total amount to be accumulated by an employee who worked for about 30 years on the current minimum wage of N18,000 monthly would roughly amount to N972,000.00 – less than a million naira for a lifetime of employment unless the contributions are invested in safe, but high yield investments that would increase faster than the rate of inflation and exchange rate deterioration.

The initiative, while laudable on paper and a major improvement over the old, unfunded system, has still not translated to alleviating the plight and hardship of current pensioners in the country, many of whom are not covered by the scheme. A lot more work has to go into the structure and manner in which pensions are administered in order to achieve the desired aims. It is time to look at the nearly ten years of experience of administering the PRA and enact amendments to improve the operations of the sector, and abolish the transitional arrangements that have led to the theft of billions of Naira under the office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation.

As at 2012, 23.9% of the labor force was unemployed according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). This invariably implies that a whopping 76.1% of the labor force is gainfully employed. According to the CIA World Fact Book, the total labor force in the country was 52.5m in 2011. Using 2011 statistics to calculate even though the numbers must have risen giving the teeming population of graduates churned out daily from our institutions of higher learning, the probable number of employees in the country is nothing less than about 39.9m at present.

However, of the total employed population across the country, only a paltry 13.2% (5.28 m) of workers had been registered under the scheme as at September, 2012 since its inception in 2004 according to the immediate past CEO of the commission. The statistics are bleak for the pace of work carried out in the whole of 8 years, and more needs to be done!

In addition to the snail pace at which the scheme is being executed, a major issue with the pension administration in Nigeria is execution at the state level. At the end of 2012, very few state workers were beneficiaries from the scheme; mainly because the states are allowed to enact their own laws and the PRA 2004 is not binding on them. So far, about 21 states have adopted the contributory pension scheme while 14 others have initiated the process of enacting versions of contributory pension schemes in their states. Lagos state is the only state according to Pencom that has fully funded its pension obligation to its workers. Katsina used to be another until recently when arrears have accumulated without any justifiable cause.

Another noteworthy area is private and informal sector participation in the scheme which has been particularly poor. Many reasons come to the fore here. How do you enforce an act when there is no data on the number of private companies or informal businesses contributing to the GDP of the nation? Majority of small businesses evade the scheme because of the cost to them and minimal penalties for evasion. Pencom has barely been able to cover the urban areas much less the rural areas. The implication of this is that the scheme is highly imbalanced; focusing mainly on employees of the Public Sector and urban dwellers while neglecting the private and informal sectors as well as the rural areas.

To worsen matters, the Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT) set up sometime in 2010 to bring some sanity to the system and ensure that pensioners received their pensions as and when due, rather than perform their tasks, only succeeded in embezzling the funds at their disposal. While claiming to have uncovered misappropriated funds, the committee itself depleted pensioners’ funds worth billions of naira on frivolities and corruption.

Pension funds, the world over, are designed not just to provide respite to employees in their post-retirement years but are meant to boost economies by improving their financial markets, accumulate re-investable savings and contribute to the GDP. Funds accumulated from pension deductions ideally, would be channeled into creating employment opportunities and financing infrastructural projects such as electricity, transportation, housing e.t.c. As at September 2012, the accumulated pension funds had amounted to some N2.94 trillion quite impressively. Whether this will translate to visible infrastructural development in the next few years is an entirely different matter.

It is imperative that the government critically analyzes the pension structure and make amends where necessary so that the scheme does not die a natural death. Pensions could be a very important aspect of the economy if done right with multiplier effects across many sectors. A contributory pension scheme where pensioners die in the course of claiming entitlements is definitely not a step in the right direction. It will certainly hamper on employees’ productivity while still active. One where those at the helms of affairs are embezzling retirees’ hard earned funds, is without doubt a disgrace to the nation as a whole.

The pension schemes adopted must take into cognizance our peculiarities as a nation and those in our economy. It should not be implemented in the typical fashion of other economic policies which are just cut and paste models of those obtainable in the more advanced nations. It should be tailored to the needs of the beneficiaries. The structure, direction and sustainability of the scheme must be clearly articulated so that it does not end up as another haphazardly implemented project. Most importantly, it should achieve its purpose which is securing the future of employees in the most convenient manner.

If there was any lingering doubt that campaigns for the 2015 presidential election have started in earnest, that doubt was erased with the emergence last week of the Jonathan 2015 campaign posters in some parts of Abuja. The audaciousness of that action and the feeble response from the Presidency to the effect that the President is “preoccupied with working to fix Nigeria and did not want to be distracted by undue politicking about 2015”, are all too typical of the Peoples Democratic Party’s brand of democracy.

For those who cringed and raged about the appointment a few weeks ago of octogenarian, Tony Anenih, a man who ordinarily should be in an old people’s home, as chairman of the board of the Nigeria Ports Authority, that selection is beginning to make sense.

President Goodluck Jonathan has said publicly that he would not think about 2015 until next year. This disclaimer comes even as his aides keep reassuring us that “the wonderful performance of Jonathan at the end of the tenure would make most Nigerians to compel him to run in 2015”. That is the clincher. It doesn’t matter whether the President thinks about it now or in 2014, “Nigerians are going to applaud him and even if he does not want to run for election, Nigerians are going to force him to run again because of the level of performance”. That’s according to Doyin Okupe, the  Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs.

In the last few months, President Jonathan has had occasions to trumpet his democratic credentials, all with an eye to the 2015 election. After the governorship election in Ondo State on October 20, 2012, Reuben Abati, the President’s spokesman, reminded us that “the President would naturally have wanted his party, the PDP, to win the governorship election in the state, the fact that he has never abused the enormous powers of the Presidency to influence the outcome of elections shows that he is a man of his words, a committed democrat and a President who believes in the rule of law and the supremacy of the will of the people”.

Shortly before the United States presidential election on November  6, 2012, Abati wrote: “This should mean something to us in Nigeria, and in the larger African community, for it is at the centre of President Goodluck Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda. It is the same electoral ethic that President Jonathan has insisted upon since his assumption of office. Nigerians, long used to a political situation in which the privilege of incumbency confers all powers have seen under President Jonathan’s watch, a completely different arrangement. It used to be the case in this land, that all that was required of an incumbent in the position of a President or Governor was to sit back and assume that incumbency would confer automatic re-election, and if the incumbent managed to stir at all, he did so with so much arrogance. Most of the time, this worked. The incumbent bullied and forced his way through to a second term”.

Beyond this rhetoric, however, there is nothing the Jonathan administration has done to advance the integrity of the electoral process in Nigeria. Recall that after the 2007 presidential election that saw the selection of Umaru Yar’Adua as President (and Goodluck Jonathan as Vice-President), President Yar’Adua was humble enough to acknowledge the electoral heist and travesty that brought him and his deputy to power. Three months after he was sworn in, on August 28, 2007, he set up a 22-member Electoral Reform Committee headed by retired Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais, to “examine the entire electoral process with a view to ensuring that we raise the quality and standard of our general elections and thereby deepen our democracy”.

The ERC made far-reaching recommendations aimed at guaranteeing the independence of the Independent National Electoral Commission and safeguarding the electoral process. Rather than addressing the salient issues raised by the ERC, as a first step toward deepening our democracy, President Jonathan has conveniently discarded the report and left the electoral process to run on autopilot.

Shortly after the 2011 presidential election, in an article titled, “When Democracy Insults”, I took Jonathan’s INEC to task on its avowed commitment to free and fair elections. I wrote: “When a court ruled that the INEC was the only body with the authority to fix the order of election, after President Jonathan had colluded with the National Assembly to subvert that power, why did the INEC appear helpless? The lame excuse the commission offered was that ballot papers had been printed, as if that had any bearing on the date the election would take place.”

That action which amounted to holding the electoral process to ransom — and the massive infusion of funds, way beyond anything Nigerians could have imagined — led to “victory” for President Jonathan and the PDP. It is the same confidence of their ability to manipulate the electoral process that Jonathan and the PDP will ride on to contest the 2015 election. The scenario above, minus the money factor, may not be the trump card this time around, but rest assured they have their plan well laid out.

It is in this context that we should view the mysterious appearance of the Jonathan 2015 posters, though described as the work of “mischief-makers who want to deceive Nigerians”. That statement actually fits the PDP because that is exactly what the party has done since 1999. I have brought this up to show that Jonathan and the PDP will do anything to remain in power, not minding what Nigerians want. But it also comes as a warning to the opposition. It is with this in mind that the opposition should approach 2015 knowing full well that they are not fighting against “flesh and blood”.

As I write, there is a suit at the Federal High Court, Abuja, presided by Justice Adamu Bello, where Jonathan through his counsel, Mr. Ade Okeaya-Inneh, has made a case that he has the right to run in 2015. The question is no longer why or whether the President will run in 2015. He will. As a layman, legally speaking, I believe he has the right to run. Does he deserve re-election? The answer, of course, is a resounding no.

The question, therefore, is how do we defeat President Jonathan and the PDP in 2015?  The opposition should stop behaving like the kid whose toy was taken away by the unruly neighbourhood bully. If they truly share a common vision for Nigeria, and if that vision is altruistic, then it shouldn’t be difficult for them to unite in this urgent task of national reclamation.

So, I say, let the race begin. Now is the time for those outside the PDP who have expressed interest in the 2015 race or have been linked with it one way or another to come out and present their agenda on what is to be done. A lot of names have been bandied about. Here is a shortlist, in no particular order: Muhammadu Buhari, Nuhu Ribadu, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Pat Utomi, Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, Nasir el Rufai, Babatunde Fashola, Adams Oshiomhole, Olisa Agbakoba, Ibrahim Shekarau, Matthew Hassan Kukah, and Jubrin Ibrahim.

The issue shouldn’t be where you come from or “it is the turn of this region or ethnic group”. As we have seen, to our eternal regret, the politics of “it is our turn” has failed us repeatedly. President Jonathan says we should wait until 2014 for his position – a position we already know. That shouldn’t be the standard for an opposition that seeks an alternative, a new Nigeria.

It is never too early to prepare for victory. The opposition needs to stop watching President Jonathan’s body language and concentrate on its most urgent task: rally behind a nationally acceptable and credible candidate.

The public presentation of ”2015 Manifesto of Nigerian Opposition Politics” in Abuja on Tuesday, January 15, 2013, is a great platform to kick-start this agenda.

– Chidi Onumah (conumah@hotmail.com)

I was uncomfortable the moment I received the Mail above. Who wouldn’t be? In the heat of the Occupy Nigeria protests along with the NLC strike, we were being summoned to Abuja for a meeting. Equally unnerving is the announcement that the Airspace would be temporarily opened to facilitate the meeting.
When a Viable Union meets a Recalcitrant Government, something’s got to give. Until the January 2012 watershed, Nigerians had become used to the Oshiomole-esque kind of strike, and the pattern had become predictable. The Government announces an increment, NLC demands a ‘status quo or nothing’ and all of a sudden, pulls a volte face and goes into negotiations.
The Obasanjo government had, between 1999-2007, hiked the pump price successively from N20 to N 30 (June 1, 2000), amidst mass action, came down to N 25, and eventually bent further to N 22, on June 13 the same year. On January 1, 2002, Obasanjo increased the petrol pump price from N 22 to N26 , and on June 23, 2003, just after he was sworn-in for his second term as president, Obasanjo again increased the fuel price to N34 and then to N40. Obasanjo’s administration actually hiked the price of fuel seven times with the last one on May 27, 2007, two days to his exit from office, when he raised it from N65 to N70.
The Yar Adua administration was burdened with the unpleasant task of negotiating an ‘inherited’ decision with the Labour Union, and reversed the N70 pump price to N65. Intense negotiations however continued on the deregulation of the downstream sector.
The Oil and Gas Unions, PENGASSAN and NUPENG gave a conditional support for deregulation; that the ‘government must provide the necessary succour and palliative measures to assuage the impact of import-driven deregulation within the set timeframe’
PENGASSAN also provided a further condition, that the ‘Original PIB, as drafted by the Rilwanu Lukman Oil and Gas Sector Implementation Committee (OGIC) be implemented’. The Petroleum Industry Bill, as originally drafted, was to eventually end Government interference in the Oil and Gas Sector, and eventually provide a framework for the growth of the Oil Industry and end the inherent Corruption spawned from a Subsidized Market that was import driven.
The Goodluck Jonathan administration, amidst a façade of intense consultation, would spin a notorious surprise on January 1, 2012 with a 117% increment from N65 to N141.
For the first time in the history of pump price hike, protests sprang from a Rag-Tag team of Youths while Labour was still sprawling in lethargy. The Occupy Nigeria logo and T-Shirts sprang up and spates of peaceful demonstrations commenced.
Eventually, the NLC/TUC would announce an ‘Indefinite Strike Action’ commencing January 9, 2012.

January 8, 2012
To All Branches, Zones and CWC members
RE: STRIKE DIRECTIVE
This is to inform all members of the CWC, Zonal & Branch Executive Committee that the indefinite strike action scheduled from Monday January 9, 2012 in protest against Government approach to Subsidy Removal will go on as directed.
The strike Monitoring Teams at all levels shall ensure that essential services are maintained while all our members are strongly advised to stay at home.
The strike monitoring teams shall go round to assess compliance and give reports through the Team Leaders.

The National Secretariat shall give all information and directive on further devel
Aluta Continua!! Victoria Asserta!!

At this time, I had joined the ‘Rag-Tag Team’. Setting out to Ojota in the wee hours of January 9th 2012 did not come without apprehensions. Parents who saw the horrors of the June 12 agitations did not want their children involved in any struggle. Moreover, Nigerians had begun to see protests as ‘NLC declared Public Holidays’ at the end of each Strike, pump prices never get reverted to status quo ante. I went, anyway, and before my eyes, I saw the gathering grow to a record ground-breaking watershed that sent strong signals to the Jonathan administration. Not so many Nigerians would realise the level of fear the Ojota Rallies generated in the heart of government, and even Labour Leaders.

For the next five days, I’d set out to Ojota, and by evening, hold meetings and plot strategies for the next day.

NLC’s decision to go into negotiations with the Government in spite of the earlier stance of ‘Revert first, we discuss later’ sent the first distress signal for the heavy blow that would be dealt the Occupy Nigeria movement.
The Save Nigeria Group (SNG) switched the strategy and methodology of protests in Nigeria. Until January 9th, Nigerian protests had been limited to Tyre burnings, and long marches. No one had ever thought gathering in one spot could make such an impact. SNG was however, not alone. Loose coalitions emerged all over, with Ikoyi spinning a great surprise, Corporate Moguls, Celebrities, Medical Directors, amongst others joined the throng. No one would forget Ali Baba’s Truck in a hurry.
For me, the high-point was seeing Muhammed Fawehinmi, the Son of the late human-rights activist/legal luminary, Chief Gani Fawehinmi coming for the Rally in his Wheelchair.

There however, remained a grey-area/loop-hole the Government would cash into: The Convener of the Save Nigeria Group was the running mate of General Buhari in the 2011 elections. This normally would mean nothing in a sane society where freedom of speech/association is sacrosanct. Unfortunately, in a Winner-Takes-All society like ours, IT IS A CRIME TO BE IN THE OPPOSITION! The ballot is meant to be the bullet that kills your Freedom of Speech!
It is worth of note, however, that when the Late Chief Gani Fawehinmi became silent shortly after running for Presidency under the flag of his National Conscience Party, the general populace appealed to him not to be quiet. But then, that’s another musing for another day.
Against this backdrop, I found the Abuja summons unnerving and initially resolved not to go. What if the meeting turned out to be a ‘Settlement Meeting’?
My good friend, Gbenga Sesan as well as others in the ‘Rag-Tag team’ asked me a question: ‘If you do not go, how would you know what happened?’ At that point, I made up my mind to go, and ensure I cover my Transportation expenses myself. That would be another obstacle, considering the Strike and the draining out of most ATM machines at that time. Gbenga facilitated my ticket fare to Abuja and I got some personal funds on standby for my return.
By Saturday, January 14th 2012, I had met with other PENGASSAN members and we headed for Abuja. We had arrived at the Hotel venue before it all became clear: All Labour Leaders from NLC/TUC had been summoned to Abuja! As a matter of fact, in a ‘We know where you live’ manner, we were lodged in the same hotel wing. This was coming on the heels of the directive issued by PENGASSAN to commence a Systematic Shutdown from midnight of that same Saturday the 14th January, 2012.

The Hotel was a hub of events, from Reporters nodding off on chairs clutching their ‘Panasonic’ to Union leaders split into several camps, from those sympathetic to GEJ to those who had been part of the Ojota and Abuja rallies and wanted nothing but a total showdown. Apparently fed up with the NLC/TUC leadership insisting on the fact that they were accountable to various NEC (National Executive Council) members, they had been told to summon us all to Abuja. I would later discover upon checking out of the Hotel that all Hotel Bills (Lodging and Feeding) were on NLC/TUC account; that was huge, considering the number of Unions and Leaders.
A lot of Nigerians might not know this, but NUPENG and PENGASSAN were/are still licking the wounds sustained in the 1994 June 12 actualization struggle. Pascal Bafyau of the NLC had betrayed NUPENG/PENGASSAN when the Oil Workers’ Union went ahead with the Shutdown. Pascal Bafyau (NLC) walked free while Frank Kokori (NUPENG) and Milton Dabibi (PENGASSAN) went to jail and remained in Prison Custody without trial till June 16th 1998, a week after the death of General Abacha.
The likes of Asari Dokubo had been making personal calls to threaten the Leadership of the Oil Workers’ Union.
In spite of all these, PENGASSAN NEC meeting held that evening in the Hotel. Tribal/Political sentiments were rife at the onset, ‘nothing must happen to Jonathan’, ‘the day you kill a madman, na im you go know say e get family’ ‘we should not be used by these Politicians, is it Bakare that did not even win a Local government?’ In essence, those who went to negotiate directly with Government from the core NLC/TUC leadership had claimed that the Lagos struggle had been ‘hijacked by Politicians’. Comrade Peter Esele himself had said ‘We’ve lost Lagos (to Politicians), we’d have lost Abuja too, but we were there to make sure the Politicians did not hijack it’.
The PENGASSAN Chairman presided over the PENGASSAN meeting. Along the line, we were addressed by one of the 1994 PENGASSAN detainees, who reminded us that Posterity will judge whatever decision we made that night. He reminded us that although neither himself, Kokori nor others who went to jail in the heat of the June 12 struggle had anything physical to show for their struggle, they had a clear conscience about the decision they made. He, however, advised that should we opt for the systematic shutdown; we should make sure we had all returned to the safety of our bases before a total shutdown.
Eventually, a unanimous decision was made to go ahead with the Systematic shutdown. Truth is, a total shutdown would invariably throw the Nation into darkness, among other things. For the Old Oil Wells, it would take a sizeable time span to get the Wells back to Optimum Production. In essence, a shutdown is an economic Coup d’etat; that was why Kokori and Dabibi back then were held for ‘treason’.
We sang our Solidarity Song, unsure what would befall us all with the decision, but with the calm assurance that Posterity would judge us for good….while the Communiqué was being edited for print, Comrade Peter Esele came to chat with us. He told us how scared the Government had become and how a Minister was even begging that the Union accepts even a marginal increase to N67 so that the President won’t be seen as weak.
Unknown to us all, the NLC Chairman had gone on Air to pull the greatest Coup on PENGASSAN. He had announced on our behalf that we were not shutting down. Funny how you are in a meeting and made a decision, only to hear a contrary thing on the Social Media who had access to TV that was to cover our Meeting!
The Ghost of 1994 had come calling; we left the Hotel in haste the following morning, my family and friends worrying about my safety. By Sunday, we were back at our bases without a clue how it all changed. I was still in a haze when Omar and Esele came on air. I’d have sworn I saw Omar dictating to Esele what they would tell Nigerians before Esele lowered the Mic from his mouth. Soldiers had been deployed to crush Ojota, and Labour was announcing to Nigerians that from a vantage point of victory, she preferred to Kiss Defeat (Kiss the Feet). That was a Mystery I could not understand, even as an eye witness. I never recovered…I hope I do someday.

“…Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.“ —Denis Diderot

One year ago, Nigerians flirted with revolution. In an unexampled move, the citizens protested to resist an economic policy foisted on them by vampires in power. A state that had long neglected its mandate found itself caught on the brink of people-power. We know how the January 2012 protests went down. The peoples’ revolt was cut short but while it lasted, it lasted. The fact that it came in the wake of the Arab Spring created unease in executive quarters.

While Nigerian people-power might not have had the Arab Spring impact, it spurred the people. Questions were asked, answers questioned. A new direction was sought. And more importantly, it showed people possibilities existed. Its immediate and lingering effect, for good or bad, shaped Nigeria.

Since then, a lazy rehash of revolution has seized the minds of certain Nigerian elite. It has long been the fashion of the elite, divorced from local or international realities, to long for what neatly falls between rhetoric and silly posturing. A recumbent longing for a revolution in Nigeria seems the fad. Politicians, social commentators, youths and the marginalised seem to find the prospect of a revolution inevitable and, maybe as the final solution to our intractable problems. Hardly does a day pass that an overwhelmed Nigerian doesn’t sigh, “We need a revolution in this country.”

The question is, Is a revolution desirable for Nigeria?

A former Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari, has flogged the horse of revolution to coma until you wonder what else he would have to say if a revolution indeed does occur in Nigeria. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is not left out of the bandwagon of alarmists who rant endlessly about a revolution. In a recent interview, Methodist Prelate, Dr. Sunday Ola Makinde, joined the discourse on revolution. He not only gave the usual prediction of a looming revolution, he proceeded to describe Boko Haram and Niger Delta militants as revolutionaries!

There are several assertions in his interview that I disagree with but to describe Boko Haram as a “revolution” is, for me, unsettling. It is not only a deodorisation of stench, it is outright misleading. If Makinde’s thinking mirrors that of other Nigerians nostalgic for a revolution, is there not a big problem?

I mean, if people don’t even know what a revolution looks like, then how far will they travel, galloping on the horse of misrepresentation? Seriously speaking, can the idea of “revolution” be capacious enough to subsume every anarchist, insurgent, militant, nihilist, rebel and maybe even bandit?

I have been wondering on the desirability of a Nigerian revolution as the calls become more frequent and intense. Are those calling for a revolution aware of its far-reaching impact or they simply assume it’s another buzzword they can bandy about? Are they mere pessimists who have found a cliché to romance so they will not have to address critical issues? Are they perhaps overwhelmed by the troubles with Nigeria and resorted to calling for a revolution as a sort of pacifier? Is there an ideology driving these calls or it’s just a nostrum that gives them time to do nothing?

How many of them have engaged in strategic thinking in readiness for the fall of the present administration? In fact, has it occurred to them that a revolution would mean at least toppling the present system of government and replacing it with something else, radically different? Have they thought of how to avoid a power vacuum post-revolution so that while we chase out one demon, seven others do not replace it? Or is this a case of “Let the Empire fall first”? What if we start it and the military hijacks it? Are Nigerians prepared to start all over again under a military government? Can they resist the military? Weapons, anyone?

Of course, we can compare the famous examples of revolution: French, Russian, Nazi and American. The first three had revolutionaries turned autocrats, more evil than their predecessors; the last one was comparatively successful because the founding fathers worked assiduously to build a great nation from scraps they wrested from the Empire. Does Nigeria have such selfless forward-thinking fathers/mothers waiting in the wings, ready to rebuild?

Have those who think a revolution will solve anything taken cultural specificity into account? Do they imagine Nigerians have as much staying power as the Egyptians or Syrians to sustain a revolution? Or we would soon be eager to get back to the rituals of our daily grind while hoping some other people keep up the fight?

Have we reviewed our history enough to question whether revolution is for us? Africa is full of old men who were youth revolutionaries but became a bigger plague on their countries than HIV/AIDS. The 1966 coup in Nigeria is a revolution in and of itself; till today, Nigeria is still giddy from its after-effects.

Wishful thinking is not a bad thing but can revolution advocates state how their end desires differ from what is already stated in the Constitution and why we need a revolution to achieve them? What really fascinates them about a revolution? The spectacles of violence and bloodshed, or a genuine desire for change? If the latter, is a revolution really necessary? Won’t protest culture or even rebellion suffice? Won’t a more participatory citizenship be far more helpful? I have put out all these questions, not necessarily to seek answers but for us to interrogate our thoughts.

Very soon, we would be called upon to begin the process of electing a fresh set of leaders. Rather than expressing outrage the President plans to re-contest, it is up to us to act with circumspection. It is our duty not to be carried away when our leaders start crawling to religious grounds or kneeling before gods. They will cut a perfect picture of pathetic prayer projects when they assume a humble stance and announce they need divine wisdom. When that time comes, can Nigerians transcend all this vaudeville and reject directionless and clueless leadership? Can we transcend tribalism, ethnicity, regionalism, sexism and all those factors that have successfully held us down in the past and choose more worthwhile people to lead us? That might be a revolution to look forward to.

– Abimbola Adelakun (aa_adelakun@utexas.edu)

Read original piece via Punch

I have followed the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) movement for some time now. I am concerned that this group is in danger of perpetrating the same things they’ve accused others of doing: Narrow-mindedness and bigotry.
May I explain why before your mind shifts to defensive mode?

If you’ve ever begun a conversation about LGBT issues on a global forum like Facebook or in a city where Gay Marriage is legal, and you decide to play devil’s advocate; arguing for heterosexuality or “the sanctity of Marriage”, you’re immediately met with defensiveness, anger, suspicion or even outright attack. After a while, you may be shut down, threatened with a hate crime or slander!

During the height of the “Anti-Abortion” movement in America, those protesting came up with the term, “Pro-Life”. Unfortunately, when they used the term, they inadvertently tried to cast the other side as “Pro-Death” or “Anti-Life”. This was of course wrong. So, I guess it was only a matter of time before the Homosexual community tagged anyone who openly spoke against the lifestyle as “Gay-Hater” or “Gay-Basher”. [I guess payback is a bitch. And really, anytime we call heterosexuals straight, aren’t we indirectly inferring that homosexuals are “bent”? No wonder the claws are out on both sides of the aisle?]

I have often wondered why so much venom is unleashed when the subject of sexual orientation comes up. Same as religion. You rarely see such displays of temper when a grown person refuses to eat meat at a function, stating that they’re vegetarian, or when they decline a drink or cigarette at a function. At best they’re viewed as different or subscribing to another lifestyle. But when a person openly states that he doesn’t subscribe to the LGBT lifestyle, he’s vilified as religious, a bigot, not understanding or “with it”. Why? Saying what a person believes doesn’t make him/her a bad person. Disagreeing with something, someone or even an entire movement doesn’t automatically make that person condemnatory. Holding a different belief from yours doesn’t make a person narrow minded or backward. After all, 50 yrs ago, very few people believed what you believe now, and they weren’t stupid or unenlightened. Heck, 10 years ago, you probably didn’t even believe what you believe now!

Typically, in conversations about differing lifestyles or beliefs, BOTH sides are guilty of the following:

1. Wanting to prove a point: “I really don’t care what you have to say. I just want to score points to prove you wrong”
2. Wanting to be right: “I desperately need to be right. Secretly, I’m afraid of the possibility that you may be right, after all”
3. Bitterness over some perceived or actual oppression by the opposing group: “I can’t have a rational conversation with a group that has done this or that”
4: Rebellion: “I want to think what I want to think and no one should tell me any different”
5. Self righteousness: “My way is better, and by the way, it’s the only way”
6. Self-pity: “You poor ignorant backward soul”
7. Defensiveness: “No one is going to browbeat me or snooker me with unverified facts. And anyway, I know you have an agenda”
8. There’s also what I call “appeal to authority” – facts and data are reeled out with an end-goal in mind. A person takes a position then adduces “facts” to support that position. Information is also divorced from religious beliefs, cultural norms, ideologies and the prevailing zeitgeist, forgetting that people rarely do things because of factual reasons.

On another note, I’m worried that the desire to be accommodating of EVERY lifestyle is spurning a new type of affirmative action in the workplace and Hollywood. There’s a token LGBT role in many movies. There’s a deliberate attempt to provide for an LGBT role in the management cadre in cities where the lifestyle is legal. What then happens when fringe sexuality like bestiality becomes legal (I think it’s actually legal in some American States) or when every religious group clamours for affirmative action?

In Nigeria, where religion and ethnicity are huge considerations in Government appointments, we have witnessed such shocking dislocations, as positions are “zoned” to individual ethnic or religious groups without regard to competence or appropriateness. It also logically follows that since gay couples can adopt children, then LGBT characters should also be introduced in Disney movies, so that children may be tutored on becoming more understanding of sexual orientation. Mmmn…Is that really where we’re headed?

The laws a country makes are largely driven by the amount of influence a specific group wields and how passionate they are at advocating their position. So whenever a law is passed, I actually don’t subscribe to the opposing side bitching about it. The truth is while the opposing side was sitting pretty, the other group did the hard work of taking to the streets, raising money, and articulating their position using persuasive propaganda. It was simply a matter of time. If you don’t like it, organise effectively. Once upon a time, tobacco industry loyalists thought the anti-tobacco movement would go away, but now in developed countries, smoking is no longer permitted in public places. Sustained propaganda and strategic movements work. Conversely, rhetoric very quickly gets you ignored.

Now, to my personal beliefs about homosexuality. I have gay friends and recognise it’s a choice. None of my friendships has suffered because the other person subscribes to a different lifestyle from mine. However, I cannot divorce the subject of homosexuality from my religious beliefs. To do so would be to hide my head in the sand in a bid to appear politically correct. My objection to Homosexuality has NEVER been about lifestyle. It’s about MARRIAGE. Christianity tells me that marriage is not about a boy or girl wanting to have sex or make babies. It was meant to represent something completely God-focused – The union of Christ and His Church. A union that accommodates believers from different tribes and tongues who form a body – the BRIDE of Christ – with one head – Jesus. A homosexual marriage DOES NOT represent this and I am yet to hear any argument that refutes this.

An interesting text in Genesis Chapter 2 speaks about marriage being between a Man and someone who was “taken from him”, a “part of him”, a Woman. It wasn’t primarily about procreation.

~ (c) Adesubomi Plumptre @subomiplumptre

POINTER: EVIL IN THE LAND – By Valentine O. Ogunaka @Naijamatta

People of Nagera! Have we seen it all? There is evil in the land—gamuts of it, missioned to ravage our lives in the same way pests have voraciously munched our crops.  We have cried and cried! Some of us like bush babies. The rest of us, the meekest…in squeaks like orphaned squirrels.

I keep wondering why my nightmares return—about a little puppy that got crushed by a whirring wagon as it limped across the asphalt street. The owner saw this—the gory end of his timid pet and guess what? He burst into laughter and afterwards called a party. That is the kind of evil in our land. A life however precious is worth only a glass of red wine.

Wait. There are others: misplaced priority and wastefulness. A father lets his children starve and beg while he buys gold trinkets for his darling concubines. Does that sum it all? Perhaps! I will tell you more. At least you may have heard of those communities that build bridges and dams during famine. Please hold your breath! Don’t chuckle yet. We could be among.

People of Nagera! Are you listening? Ok…

We have a king but he lacks wisdom. His heart is cruel, but his mind is weak. He is aware of our anger yet thinks our daughters are in love with him. Yes, that is what his whirlwind advisers whisper, his cabinet of sycophants and yam weevils. They tell him: the people marvel at your rulership! Their love for you is unconditional. They even call you Moses. They strongly believe in your candid visions. They know you are a TRANSFORMER, that you are much wiser than your greatest grandfather, Solomon who was merely an arbitrator. Oh Messiah Jones! Disregard the rants and tomfoolery of a rented few. We mean the twitter rebels, intellectual zombies, inebriated journalists and rabid elrufarians—who feed on wee-wee, shisha and brain-wracking syrups. Your Excellency, you remain highly favoured in the eyes of farmers who are ever ready to pluck the feathers of their fowls for your bowler hat.

Those are the lies they feed him. Coupled with his glaring blindness, cruel kindness and inaction, the evil in the land has exacerbated, exponentially. People of Nagera—I must state now that evil has no hiding place. It manifests itself in every step even as it attempts to put the cloak of a saint.

Do remember to spread this message across the enclaves. Encourage our disillusioned but optimistic brothers who dwell at the other side of the mountain; tell them they cannot rely on the promises of our king, for he is too faithful… Remind them that before he was made king, Messiah Jones promised to bring back the rain upon our farms. He even promised to give us an extra life. Now our rivers have dried up. Our cattle have grown fatter eating dust. And our children—when there’s just shrubs to harvest from our farms—how do we reward the rabbi that teach them?

Now that there are so many evil machinations against our land, “we must resolve to jointly exorcise the evil spirit behind this darkness…” Yes it has become a spiritual problem. That is what the king and his goons insinuate. But we know what they mean. We no longer need to watch our most talented comedians. This administration churns a spectacular crop, until 2015, maybe.

Just sit back, take a matchbox and light up your television. Or just follow me on twitter @Naijamatta. Let’s go spiritual and rant away the evils in our land.  Feel free to drop your comments below.

I am Valentine Ogunaka, author of The Undergraduate, The Perfect Pawnbroker and National Heroes. I write weekly on omojuwa.com.

Response to Omojuwa’s Tweet: NIGERIAN YOUTHS ARE DELUDED IF THEY THINK TWITTER AND FACEBOOK WILL MAKE THEM OUST THE CONVENTIONAL POLITICIANS. ACUTE DELUSION @omojuwa

By Rees Chikwendu

Based on this tweet, I am almost sure that Omojuwa misunderstood the intentions of the so-called “Nigerian youths” he refers to. This is why it behooves me to try to readjust his understanding in the spirit of mildness. I do not believe that Nigerian youths hold such notion that social media could oust conventional politicians – at least not most educated Nigerians that I know of. However, this is not to say that social media has no effect at all. The argument I would like to make here is the need to not underestimate the power of social media.

In an article I wrote some days ago, Why a Nigerian Revolution Should Be Expected than a Possible Break-up, I mentioned several reasons why a Nigerian revolution is more likely to happen than a possible break-up. Along the lines in the article, I pointed out that with the growing number of Nigerian youths engaging one another on social media and sharing their thoughts, there is an opportunity to form strong bonds that could lead to change in attitude of these youths; a change that could band them together. These young Nigerians in time could override their ethnic and religious differences by cognitively becoming aware of their common societal problems instead. When people become aware of common problems created by their decision makers, they would take action to solve them, potentially leading up to an uprising of some sorts.

I am convinced that in any moment of political struggle or change, media will continue to play strong role. Whether that role would amount to installing or ousting a government is something that anyone must not deride. Media and communication are intrinsic and achieve success when used effectively. If inflated, people could think and believe that social media alone foment protests and revolutions in dire situations. But any statement that equally underestimate or deny the power and the important role social media could play during a revolution is laughable. Furthermore, social media do not make a revolution: people do. What social media does is to enhance the activities of those involved in a revolution. In that sense, it can be argued that social media could be utilized to oust a government. During revolution, people use YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter, mobile phone SMS messages to communicate. They also use images and live video to tell their stories. In such situation they seek for help from those outside and those that have the power to come to their rescue. This was what the world witnessed in the Arab revolutions.

Interestingly, Omojuwa is one of Nigeria’s foremost bloggers and knows the key roles people like him play in the Arab uprisings across different countries. There are millions of media activists on social media that use it to document accounts of atrocities committed during a revolution. Such activists also use these social networks to inform, mobilize, entertain, and create communities, increasing transparency, and seek to hold governments accountable. The sum of all these activities is what makes a revolution or ousting of a government. It is not a singular act that removes a government, but social media activities are inclusive to such efforts. It will be ironic for a Nigerian youth like Omojuwa who uses social media to educate the public to underestimate the power of using social media to bring social and political change.

Social media has become part of our life and the way people communicate; it will continue to shape our future in many areas, including the making of a government or its subsequent removal. Denying its viral effects and ability to circumvent repressive governments attempts to smolder communication against them would amount to large ignorance. If Nigerian youths are utilizing social media with an intention to oust politicians or a government entirely – and if said actions evoke any response – who is to say they are deluded?

Follow writer on Twitter: @drpoetafrica

PS: The writer failed to capture a follow up tweet that said “You have to maximize your strength *social media* then beat them at theirs *grassroots” ~ Omojuwa

Social Media is only one form of media, you need to plug into the conventional ones like the ones that require you to knock on people’s doors. Until then…same story

THE POWER OF ONE

Just waking up… Stretching… Scratching my left eye with my
fingers… Feeling the sensation…

OMG… I screamed! I haven’t written my article for Today!

________________________________

Welcome to a Reloaded season of #AwakeningYou, a Tuesday weekly script of #StartupNigeria, My name is Haastrup Steven.
________________________________

But thank God I wrote it and it’s just about YOU!

My dear reader, have you ever pondered on the power of one person? How much
is one person worth on your scale? What difference do you estimate that one
man can make to the myriads of challenges facing our nation? If you are
like majority of people that I know, your answer will be: Not much.

A tree does not make a forest, so the popular saying goes. With that, we
flee from any adventure that might cast us on the lonely path. Aloneness is
considered a curse. Conformity shows you are a good relationship person.
You don’t rock the boat and you sail smoothly on the rough terrain of
complex life and people. To be caught running against the traffic, is
detested with a passion. Why would you want to be different? That’s the
question we ask people who seem to hold opinion that runs counter to the general opinion.

By thinking of people only as a community with group thinking and attitude,
we downgrade man to a mere robot. The robot has a predetermined behaviour
that fits into the system. His power is limited by the designer. To behave
differently from the designer’s intent is to put the system in jeopardy.
Every effort is made to ensure the robot only does what it is designed for.
Flexibility and creativity are two words that are strange to a robot. If you like, a robot is a zombie.

My dear reader, to change our nation, you must think first of the tremendous power you possess to effect change. To be sure, you are not a robot. You are capable of obstructing the current flow of the decline of our value system. You have the power to destroy the systemic lifestyle that inhibits our march to development and progress.

We need men and women that will put our ball out of joint; that will put our car of
decline on the reverse gear; that will pull down the edifice of corruption and insolence.

We need individuals, who are willing to stand alone, if necessary. Those men and women who do not see aloneness as a vice Greatness resides in you. And with this greatness, you can rise up to
challenge the mediocrity that pervades our national life.

Power resides in you. And with that power you can create a momentum for change.

Love resides in you. And with that love you can uplift the living conditions of the weak
and the less fortunate.

If you still doubt the power of one man, think of anything that has changed
our world, from politics to technology. Each change had a face behind it – the face of a man or woman who dared to believe differently from the
existing limiting beliefs of their days.

We Must, We Will and We Can!

Join me next Tuesday as I continue the Startup Nigeria series!

Invite friends and family… we own this country and we must take it back as one!
I have fully woken up… Please Be Nice!

Don’t go off this page without sharing this article on the social media! Just few clicks will do.

God bless You!

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

________________________________

The Storm The Yard event of Startup Nigeria is closer than ever, it will be
launched at the Main Auditorium of the University of Lagos on the 25th and
26th of January, 2013. This is the first of its kind as we raise troops to fight the economic war and regain control of the nation through self-deployment and her national future through firm dedication of values in the marketplace.

Follow @StormTheYardTV on twitter for updates or mail startupnigeriaed@gmail.com for enquiries for partnership with Storm the Yard.

_______________________________

Haastrup Steven is the Executive Director of Startup Nigeria; He is a
freelance writer, speaker, startup trainer and a lover of God. He is a fan of technology and its influence over our lives and the society.

Follow me today on twitter @StevenHaastrup

Email: haastrupsteven@gmail.com

WHAT HAPPENED TO US

Surely oppression and extortion makes a wise man foolish, and a bribe
destroys the understanding and judgment.
Ecclesiastes 7 : 7 Amplified Bible.

What happened! What really happened to our collective psyche! Are we not
humans again? What happened to our collective sanity? Corruption without
and within has grown to a level that it affect everything around us! Why
the ranting? Why all these questions? Stay with me and you will understand the whys.

Firstly, let us look at the value we place on human life both as individual and as a nation. Presently, infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate is over the roof. We are ranked with such country as Afghanistan or was it Pakistan as a country still suffering from polio!

Just last year, there was a diplomatic spat with South Africa ( a fellow African country ) over yellow fever vaccine certificate because we are still among the
countries of the world suffering the said disease, therefore we needed
vaccination before coming to their country . The story on how the yellow
card is obtained at the Nigerian airport is a story for another day entirely.

Our response to accidents, fire, flood and other life threatening emergencies is another story that tells us the premium placed on human life in this clime. When we see people in life threatening situation like
accident or gunshot what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Run for your life before police says you are responsible!
Most likely that will be our response which is very unfortunate.

Now, we see corpses littering our streets and the response generated is likely stepping over it or turning a blind eyes.

Secondly, the issue of discipline is another case that highlights the collective damage done to our psyche by successive tyrants in the corridor of power parading themselves as rulers in our land. Except for the brief stop in the gap by Buhari/Idiagbon in the early eighties, the comedy play titled governance in this land reek of indiscipline personification.

Indiscipline is the modus operandi of successive government since
independence. Hell no, I am not a GMB apologist but his approached though
impugned on human right of few people brought a more needed sanctity into
the geographic location called Nigeria and methinks we still need such iron
hand once more in this land to usher us out of the conundrum we found
ourselves in as a Nation.

Thirdly, the hydra- headed monster called corruption is our greatest undoing as a nation. This behemoth beast has been
feeding on our national cake and has grown to a level that the so called
national cake cannot sustain its insatiable appetite. The poise of the present government in the country shows total lack of regard to the presence of this evil beast and a total “I don’t give a damn” attitude.

The body language of the “Corruption
in Chief” does little to douse these suspicions as he claimed that
corruption is not only a Nigeria thing but it’s a thing of the mind. The “Grand Corrupter of the Order of the Niger” stance of not declaring his assets publicly and not giving a damn shows a total disconnect to the so called people that elect you.

How do we explain an ex- governor having
forty eight (48) properties in Abuja alone after just serving forty eight month (48) in his state? Or six hundred thousand
dollars disappearing between FaCrook and OteDollar , or how do we explain the various probe panel indicting serving minister and even the C in C himself? How do we explain the five trillion that disappear under GEJ watch?

How do we explain that as a developing nation seventy percent of our budget is used for recurrent expenditure and nothing is there for capital or developmental projects?

When you go into the street and mention all these facts, the response you get is it’s their time or e go beta. It is time we shed the toga of indifference when it come to the issue of governance in this Nation, its
time we let go of “siddon look” apology to Bola Ige.

Let us arise and do something. It’s over a year that we fought this cabal in the name of fuel subsidy. Do not assume a Messiah will jump from the sky. it is time to get
involved.

I will close with this quote from Matthew
Ashimolowo “when there is a chaos ina place, and you want to bring in order,
the people benefitting from the chaos situation will fight you to a standstill”.

Power and freedom is never granted to the oppressed, it must be demanded.

You can reach Isaacola AA on twitter @newnaija

Reports of the recent experience of Senator Chris Anyanwu, representing Owerri Senatorial District, in the
hands of security aides of Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, almost brought tears to my eyes. As the story
goes, Mrs. Anyanwu’s convoy was travelling on the Owerri–Umuahia Road when they were come upon by a motorcade of the state governor. One thing led to another and soon heavily armed men from the governor’s team reportedly jumped down from their trucks and used some of the senator’s aides for a kick-boxing session while the governor watched with glee.

As a man with wife, sisters and daughters, I can only imagine the horror the poor woman could have felt looking
helplessly as her assistants were allegedly brutally assaulted. The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Navy
must have felt more pain than her physically abused aides; because each blow on the hapless men was laced with
insult and humiliation for Oga Madam. She must have screamed and cringed in powerless rage. It is the kind of
experience that poisons the souls of men with bitterness.

Strangely, my tears were not of sympathy. Not for Chris Anyanwu. And not for her bruised courtiers. It is an experience that nearly every Nigerian has grown accustomed to in the hands of those we ostensibly elected and pay to look after our affairs. If we ordinary folk manage to survive, the journalist-turned-politician should do just fine.

In all of this, one thought refuses to leave my mind: Who knows how many lesser mortals the senator and her entourage had run off the road in the past before they themselves got run over by a bigger bully?

Nigeria is one endless jungle of cocky convoys, mad motorcades and screaming sirens. When the President, the
Vice-President, their family members or any of the countless Presidency officials takes to the air, we the people must be grounded so as not to cluster the airspace for them. In the aviation industry, this is called “Presidential Movement” and it can cost you anything between one and several hours at the airports. It doesn’t matter if someone critically ill is being flown for surgery.

On the roads, things get a little more complicated. To the presidential entourage, you must add the nuisance of
36 emperors (sorry, governors), scores of ministers, over a hundred senators, nearly 400 members of the House of Representatives, the Chief Justice of Nigeria and the top echelons of the Judiciary, plus the Service Chiefs
of both the armed and unarmed forces… And that’s only at the federal level. You must replicate this scenario in
each of the states, local government areas and traditional institutions all over the country. When these hordes
and their aides condescend to go by road, we the people must run for cover into nearby bushes or get roasted like
Chris Anyanwu. What a country!

I have not even mentioned the millions of ex-servicemen who keep and display aspects of their former paraphernalia of office such as stickers, belts, hats and horsewhips as instruments for intimidating other road users. Nor have I mentioned the large army of civilians whose only claim to right of way is the dubious courage
to walk into shops and buy blinking lights and sirens to be used when situations demand. As it often does on our
roads.

We are a nation steeped in impunity where everyone seeks to outdo the other, not with good works or the quality
of our contributions to humanity but by the size of our egos and the paraphernalia of office we manage to corner.

Humility is not a virtue in these parts.
They call it security. I call it megalomania. A few years ago, after witnessing one such shameful display, I began
to think of the real security implications of the road practices of our public officials. It did not take long to
come to the conclusion that the only people that blaring sirens, speeding motorcades and drunken security men
can protect from are stone-throwing protesters, amateur thieves and pick pockets — not genuinely disgruntled
citizens or professional hit men.

When will our public office holders and their “security” chiefs learn that their egotist anti-social behaviour on
the roads makes them more of enemies and therefore negates the very concept of security? And, wherein lies
the security in the unruly convoys that regularly crash with multiple casualties, sometimes including the VIPs
they convey?

It would be interesting to know what Governor Idris Wada of Kogi State, the latest such executive casualty, now feels on the subject. Great men are not heralded by sirens. True leaders do not alienate their people. Only tyrants do. If the Lord does not watch over a city, the watchmen keep awake in vain, the Holy Book admonishes. True security comes from being at one with the people. Their love and goodwill are the ultimate
armour.

For those who want a model of responsible security for travelling public officials, they should come to Lagos and
see how Governor Babatunde Fashola does it. He goes around in unmarked cars and with minimal fanfare. And Lagos is better for it, I think. Indeed, the noisiest convoys on Lagos streets do not belong to the host governor but to visiting officials from other states. Empty barrels, indeed, the old Primary school saying goes, make the most noise.

To Senator Anyanwu, I say take heart. For every “big man”, there is a bigger man. If your experience would lead
to the emergence of better laws and conventions for the enthronement of decorum and humility in governance,
then it would not have been in vain.

For Governor Okorocha, I have a parable: Once upon a time, in a far away
kingdom called Omi, there was a king whose name was Okedi Ihakeem. His word was law and those who did not do
him obeisance were crushed. When he went out to the streets, he drove away both plebeians and priests from his
presence. One day, King Ihakeem woke up to find that his staff of office, the fulcrum of his power, was gone. He
searched everywhere but could not find it. Then he consulted the high priest who told him that the gods had taken back their staff. Powerless, in shame and unable to face the people whom he had oppressed, he ran away into the evil forest where he lives alone and in misery to this day. Those who have ears, let them hear.

•Victor Anazonwu, a marketing and communications strategist based in Lagos, wrote in via vanazon@yahoo.com

Via Punch

I am very proud of what Nigerians achieved this time last year, when we came together to fight an unreasonable government policy of fuel subsidy removal, and properly and effectively channeled our anger to highlight the issue of government waste.

As we mark the one-year anniversary this week, January 2012 made me proud to be a Nigerian, indeed to be alive at a time of uplifting active citizenship across the world.

There are people, especially in government, led ably by President Goodluck Jonathan who have dismissed the importance of that historic battle – crediting “failed politicians” from Bola Tinubu to Nasir el-Rufai for mobilising the people with “bottled water”.

As an entrepreneur who closed down my business and made some self-sacrifice to join hands across lines to drive that protest from Ojota to Surulere and Victoria Island and who personally secured the participation of a great number of those artistes who performed because they believed in the cause, I feel very insulted by the allusion that ordinary Nigerians who joined the protest were bribed with “bottled water”.

But, I can understand the perception. The leading lights of the protests were politicians, and when politicians get involved, thingseasily lose their meaning. Of course, it makes no sense to reduce a protestthat involved Nigerians of every hue and stripe simply because the political opposition aligned with it, but in a paranoid Nigerian political space, I understand the push-back.

They looked at the thousands in Lagos, angry and screaming and they saw the opposition’s party vice presidential candidate, Tunde Bakare speaking to them, and our short-sighted, over-indulged leaders put two and two together – and arrived at 10.

True, Bakare was an imperfect, maybe even fatal, vessel for the aspirations of the protesters, unable to rein in his passions and overtly calling for the death of our leaders, but he certainly had earned the right to lead it. He provided a backbone of strategy and resources, andmanaged to build a broad coalition that went far beyond the agenda of his political party or his own narrow ideologies.

But as much as you credit him for its success, he also made the unfortunate call that broke the back of that historic movement – when he came on stage and gave in to the pressure to break up the protest for the weekend and re-assemble on Monday.

Go home and re-load for an Occupy protest? The people of Egypt and Tunisia must have thrown their heads back and laughed at the picnic we were having.

But I don’t blame Bakare. Unfortunately, I make bold to say that retreat is ingrained in the Nigerian character. As I read Chinua Achebe make his justifications for why himself and his intellectual friendsagreed that Biafra should surrender to the rampaging Nigerian forces and give up the hard-won independence for which more than a million had died, I came to that conclusion that we are a people defined by retreat, or as my former pastor put it, “the spirit of almost there”.

Bakare made his call for surrender last year because the people were ready to surrender, and Bakare is a politician, and politicians listen to the people. The people he was leading had begun to grumble on Facebook and Twitter and to murmur at protest grounds across the country. They wanted a break from the protest; they had become tired.

I was in the middle of that protest, working with friends and associates to mobilise young people, and indeed it was a cause for great agony. Colleagues at my office were eager to return to work, many hadlost the financial and other resources that kept the appearances of a normal life while we protested, there had been reports of breakdown of law and order across the state as hoodlums held sway, and people were just frankly, tired.

Let me also share a secret that we don’t want those in government to know: the entire protest wasn’t dependent on our will to see the course to the finish, it was sadly dependent on our hope and prayer that President Jonathan would suddenly agree with us and then reduce the pump price and would quickly declare “mission accomplished” and go back to our familiar routines. When five days after we left our jobs, he hadn’t done that, and his body language portrayed a man who was convinced he was doing the right thing, Nigerians began to second-guess themselves. That was when we lost the battle.

Bakare made the popular call, that inadvertently signaled to the powers that be that Nigerians were not really for a revolution, as it were, or even a change in approach to governance.

We looked ready, we smelt ready, we sounded ready, but no, we were not ready.

No advancing army facing a ferocious, and equally advancing enemy stops to break bread. And that was the end of that.

Let me quickly say on the subject of Biafra, I cannot even begin to understand the effects of war, and how devastating – dehumanising – it must have been for the Igbos and minority ethnic groups (of which I amone) caught in the borders of what would have been a new nation in those times. It is more likely than not that if I had been involved in that war, I wouldhave sided with the majority and conceded. I would have chosen respite overfreedom, and reason over justice. A living dog is, after all, better than adead tiger.

Unfortunately, being “unreasonable” (and may I gratuitously affirm that this is said with all sense of responsibility) that is the nature of revolutions, and of the fight of a people to define their nations. It is the fight the people of Syria are having as we speak; one that the people of South Africa continued to the finish, one that South Sudan has fought and one that those inspiring people of Egypt have refused to stop having until their leaders do exactly what the mass of the people desire to be done.

It comes at so high a cost, that only a handful of nations per civilisation are able to begin and stay that course. Honestly? I am unconvinced that Nigerians belong to that small circle of peoples with thatcapacity for no retreat, no surrender.

By way of explaining this, some Nigerians have then tried to justify our culture of retreat – maybe we do not need a mass revolt; everyone after-all cannot be Egypt – and probably they are right. You couldpoint to countries like Singapore and Malaysia and perhaps post-conflict Rwanda, and to some extent modern Ghana, and speak to quiet and steady economic transformation driven (in some cases) by popular democracy as the solid alternative to “needless” bloodshed and the sacrifice of life and limb.

That is a legitimate explanation. Unfortunately, it is neither here nor there. How do we fundamentally change our country if we will not do it by driving the fear of our collective anger into the hearts of our leaders?

There is no other choice – in the absence of a mass revolt, those who seek to drive change now need to fall back on incrementalchange, a collection of little drops of activity by different sectors of society that will eventually deliver what some have called the Flywheel Effect. This will involve a deliberate, sustained effort to move from business as usual in the way our country is run.

Unfortunately (maybe fortunately) incremental change is in fact the hardest change of all.

It requires a coalition of people committed to that change; it requires a singular strategy; the kind that has driven China’s economic transformation; and it requires the sitting down to work out the details and contours of the shape this change should take.

It requires leaders who have the character to think of a long game and have the vision and temperament to build the coalition mentioned above, and it will require the collectivity of aspirations where we trade off some of our demands (call it principles) in the short term in order to win a long term war and earn the change that our country needs.

Does all of this give you a headache already? Yeah, I know the feeling. That’s why some people just prefer to take a gun and get the job done faster.

Well, take some painkillers quickly. We have work ahead of us.

*Jideonwo is publisher/editor-in-chief of Y!, including Y! Magazine, Y! Books, Y! TV & YNaija.com. #NewLeadership is a twice-weekly, 12-week project to inspire action from a new generation of leaders – it ends on March 31.

His uncommon loyalty to his friends, many of whom are in his cabinet, seem to outweigh his commitment to Nigeria and Nigerians. Development of infrastructures in Nigeria, has taken a back seat in Nigeria, particularly in sectors manned by his friends. To them it is business as usual, lining of their pockets have become primary objectives. In their estimation, Jonathan first term in office, (2011 – 2015) is for personal advancement or aggrandizement. While his second term – (2015-2019); if he is allowed to run, will used to develop Nigeria and Nigerians.

Consequently, dividends of democracy such as the right to life are out of the reach of the citizens. Places of worship have become avenues of mass murder; government response or lack of has emboldened the perpetrators, notably the Boko Haram menace which remains the greatest security challenge facing the Jonathan administration. Bombings, kidnappings have become the order of the day, while the security apparatchiks cash in on the people`s misfortunes.

Kidnapping has clearly become a national malaise, with an epicenter in the South generally, and the South-South and South-East axis, in particular. No President worth his salt should allow the kind of permissiveness now associated with kidnapping which has made it intractable across the country. The fear of kidnapping has made many people uncomfortable and unwilling to visit their homes. There is no doubt that the extant level of policing in the country is ineffective. Jonathan is at a loss to understand that law and order is non-negotiable as a stimulus for peace and development in the country.

One factor that has helped to promote kidnapping is the ostentatious life style of government officials and politicians. It is common to see politicians, even local government chairmen, rise from nothing to affluence, parading chains of exotic vehicles in a system that is stricken with poverty, and to the chagrin of the suffering masses.

There is no doubt that people are bitter with Jonathan.  Millions of young people have no jobs. Good governance that will ensure gainful employment to the teeming youth, and bridge the wide gulf between the rich and the poor is an urgent imperative to eradicating kidnapping and other criminal activities in the land.

As a result, the President is now a lame-duck president. He has lost the trust and respect of the millions of Nigerians, who only twelve months ago turned out in their numbers to elect him. Neither does he wield much influence among his cabinet or within his own party, the PDP. His attempt to install a speaker of his choosing in the House of Representatives was an unmitigated disaster and failure. Bamanga Tukur, his anointed candidate for the PDP chairmanship was trounced in the party primaries in home state of Adamawa. It took the intervention of the state governors, many of whom have fallen out of favor with his uninspiring leadership coupled with strong arm twisting for Jonathan to have his way with the PDP chairmanship.

It is entirely in line with the character of Jonathan’s leadership to moan about problems, which ordinarily, are his responsibility to solve. Poverty in the land is acute and widespread, corruption is endemic, critical infrastructure decrepit and insecurity of lives and property prevail in a huge magnitude. The President has also not found solution to the problem of epileptic power supply. Jonathan prefers to play the ostrich, wringing his hands in the air and claiming that most of the problems pre-date his presidency. Needless reminding him that he was the one who asked to be given the job of President of Nigeria. It probably does not occur to him that the failure of his government to roll out a cohesive and comprehensive policy on security, has expectedly, raised anxiety among Nigerians, even as the problem spirals out of control.

There has been so much bloodletting, and the long-term effect on economic development is best imagined. It is common knowledge that foreign direct investment is sensitive to environments of insecurity. The terror in the land calls for soul-searching by Jonathan. What is he not doing right? Beyond physical security measures to protect lives and property, Jonathan must begin to interrogate the economic and political bases of the prevailing plague.

That, under Jonathan’s watch, the security agencies have lost control over the activities of armed bandits ravaging the country is worrisome. The time has come for Jonathan to live up to his primary duty of ensuring the security of lives and property in the country, as no one is immune from the widespread terror in the land. Not even public office holders. In fairness, Jonathan might not be unaware of the myriad of problems facing Nigeria; rather, he seems to be at a loss for solutions.

Thus political handlers who are campaigning for a second term for Jonathan in 2015 are doing the President a great disservice. They should help him deliver on his campaign promises!

Huhuonline.com Editorial

In successful economies, budgets are usually laid before the respective national parliaments many months before the commencement of the New Year to provide the lawmakers with adequate time to assess and interpret the potential impact of the proposed budget.  The legislature’s judgment would invariably also be guided by evidence of actual implementation of the outgoing year’s budget, in order to ensure transparency and also avoid duplication in expenditures in the new budget under consideration.

However, since the advent of civil rule in Nigeria, the Federal executive has routinely presented the budget to the legislature between November and December each year; such late submission delayed budget approval until well into the first, and sometimes even the second quarter of the year for which the budget was designed.  It was, therefore, a welcome departure from tradition when the National Assembly received the 2013 budget proposals from the President in early October 2012.  The early submission allowed the legislature to effectively sharpen its oversight functions on a host of government ministries and agencies, and in the process, uncover huge shortfalls between approved budget sums and actual implementation in 2012.  Indeed, some critics maintain that the legislative oversight inspection and fact-finding visits could not have been thorough considering the hundreds of government agencies that needed to be examined within the very limited time available.  Critics have always blamed poor budget implementations on the late passage of budgets.  However, the evidence of large unspent funds in the coffers of government agencies nationwide at the end of each year may not corroborate this observation.

Incidentally, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had promised, at the beginning of her tenure, to ensure that budgets were promptly laid before the National Assembly, to allow the Legislature and the Executive adequate time to consult and agree on Mr. President’s budget proposals.  In reality, if our annual budgets are based on a rolling three to five year medium term framework, it should be possible to lay the Appropriation Bill before the National Assembly in August/September each year.  Nonetheless, we commend Okonjo-Iweala for the earlier-than-usual budget presentation.  Indeed, if the Appropriation bill receives President Goodluck Jonathan’s assent in the next week or so, late presentation would not be a valid reason for failure to fully implement the 2013 budget.

However, it seems Nigerians may have placed too much faith on the impact of comprehensive budget implementation.  After all, the total capital budget of about N1.7tn is equal to just about $9bn, an amount that is grossly inadequate when compared with the speculated requirement of over $100bn just for provision of adequate power nationwide.  Indeed Okonjo-Iweala had also promised to gradually reduce recurrent expenditure ratio below 70 per cent in steps of between one and two per cent annually!  In this event, however, analysts have observed that it would take between 10 and 20 years to raise capital expenditure above 50 per cent of the total spending.  These analysts contend that such snail speed adjustment is not in consonance with the realities of our severe infrastructural deprivations.  It is argued that our infrastructural predicament requires a surgical procedure with a battle-axe rather than a thin-edged razor blade.  Nonetheless, critics also insist that early assent to the 2013 Appropriation Bill is no guarantee for full budget implementation.

Fortunately, the adoption of a crude oil price benchmark of $79 per barrel instead of the Executive’s insistence on $75 per barrel would mean a daily accretion of about $10m (i.e. $3.6bn annually) to budgeted revenue.  Thus, the earlier projected 2013 budget deficit of almost a trillion naira would fall by over N550bn with the higher benchmark.  The additional $4 per barrel would consequently also reduce the need for additional government borrowing to finance the proposed trillion naira deficit, which evolved from the initial deliberate understatement of crude oil price benchmark.  Indeed, with prevailing interest rates of between 15 per cent and 17 per cent for government borrowings, we would also avert liability for additional debt service charges of over N75bn if crude oil benchmark had remained at $75 per barrel as per the Executive’s proposals.  These huge savings are undoubtedly positive outcomes as our debt burden will fall by over N550bn in 2013!

Then again, they say,  “All that glitters is not gold”. The additional $4 per barrel has an ugly flip side;  the resultant increase in total dollar revenue of over $3.6bn would paradoxically create severe challenges in the economy as the substitution of naira allocations for the increased dollar revenue will exacerbate the spectre of surplus cash (excess liquidity) when over N550bn is lodged into the bank accounts of beneficiaries of the federation pool this year.  This huge cash inflow into the vaults of commercial banks will sustain additional liquidity and increase credit capacity of the banks by over N5tn.  In such event, the Central Bank of Nigeria would ‘altruistically’ step in to deepen the ‘racket’ of mopping up excess liquidity with greater vigor.  Consequently, the CBN would be induced to borrow hundreds of billions of naira it does not need, while paying interest of between 10 per cent and 15 per cent for the joy of just warehousing idle public funds and sequestering the funds from a credit-starved real sector.  The profits of commercial banks and other investors in government securities will ultimately become bloated by an additional sum of over N100bn with such government borrowings.  Thus, the increased dollar revenue stimulated by higher crude benchmark will, ultimately, also deepen our debt burden inexplicably.

We may deduce from the above that our economy appears severely challenged by the prospect of increasing dollar revenue.  Paradoxically, increasing dollar revenue will inevitably impel the CBN’s creation of additional naira, which will ultimately result in the albatross of excess liquidity or surplus cash in the system;  as if on cue the CBN will step in to contain the prevailing ‘surplus cash’ with increased government borrowings at suicidal rates of interests!  The CBN’s response will also crowd out the real sector from available credit in the market, and the resultant high cost of borrowing will further precipitate inflation, industrial contraction and increasing rate of unemployment.

However, the hydra-headed dilemma of increasing dollar revenue and increasing debt and the paradox of increasing wealth and deepening poverty will only be satisfactorily resolved when the CBN ceases substituting naira allocations for distributable dollar-derived revenue.  The above analysis should answer any question regarding the social prospects of the impact of the 2013 budget.

– Henry Boyo (lesleba@lesleba.com)

I will start by admitting that the title of this article is not original to me. It was borrowed from a song by one of the members of the famous American Jackson Five music family. Indeed, Nigeria as a country needs to get serious with the task of development in terms of articulation of visions, strategies and their implementation. We joined the global community to dream that in the Year 2000, water, education, housing, health among other social services would be available for all. It even got to the ridiculous extent of projecting that bachelors were supposed to get wives and spinsters were to get husbands in the magic year! As it turned out, we left the Year 2000 with no visible results and proceeded on the 2010 dream through the still-born Vision 2010. Before we got to 2010, we developed the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy and its state level counterparts with a focus on a lot of deliverables in 2007 including 10,000 megawatts of electricity. Not unexpectedly, 2007 came and passed and nothing concrete was achieved; rather there was retrogression. In 2013, we are celebrating 4,500 megawatts of electricity!  Before 2010, we had thrown away its vision document.

We joined another vision process that set 2015 as its target date under the name of Millennium Development Goals. As usual, we are very close to 2015 and there has been official admission that we have also missed the targets and have not even scratched the surface of poverty reduction. (The President even bizarrely said the other day he did not promise to reduce poverty) Rather, poverty has increased and deepened. Between 2007 and 2009, we started the Vision 2020 dream of being one of the top 20 economies before the year 2020. We proceeded to draw up a First National Implementation Plan and by the Year 2013, we have not achieved any of the milestones set in the First Plan. If we consider how far we are from the 2020 targets less than seven years to the target date, it is crystal clear that we can never meet the dream of being one of the top 20 economies in 2020. The latest fad, which will likely lead to a shifting of the Year 2020 goal post to the Year 2030 is the projection by the United States National Intelligence Council that Nigeria could join a handful of countries including China that would be pivotal in shaping the world’s economy by the year 2030.

There is a common thread running through all these plans and visions and our failure to realise the targets therein. The first is that the authors of the plans and visions never took the plans seriously. They never believed in them.  They produced and launched the plans as an instrument of deceit to create false hopes in the populace while they continued with their self-aggrandisement agenda. The second thread is that there were no structures and deliberate policy actions in place to implement these plans. A man is naturally believed to intend the natural consequences of his actions and inactions. For example, while successive presidents and ministers were busy launching the war against corruption, they were deeply immersed in the act and indeed were experimenting with variants of the mutation of corruption which their “scientists manufactured in their laboratories”. The plans and visions did not find expression in budgetary allocations, new laws, policies and new ways of doing things. Essentially, the same people who produced and launched them programmed them to fail.

The third thread is that the three arms of government have been operating as different governments and not as components of a whole that need to harmonise their actions and omissions to produce an agreed result. Various committees and groups in the executive have produced tones of reform ideas for new laws in the railways, solid minerals, audit reforms, land use, etc, but they hardly see the light of day as new legislation. Eventually, when some of the reform ideas emerge from the legislative mill, the same president that proposed them becomes lethargic in giving his assent for the bill to become law and when he reluctantly assents, implementation becomes the stumbling block. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo exited government leaving un-assented to, key reform bills in Fiscal Responsibility, Public Procurement, Audit Reforms and the Freedom of Information. The Yar’adua government signed into law the Fiscal Responsibility and Public Procurement bills while the other two had to start a new journey. In the proclaimed war against corruption, the judiciary holds court and uses archaic jurisprudence to indefinitely delay trials and sometimes set guilty men free to the utter disgust of all right-thinking men and women. The James Ibori case is good example. A former Chief Justice of the Federation gave a time limit for the conclusion of corruption trials and what happened – nothing and no judge took the matter to heart. It is a fundamental aphorism that no nation develops when its three arms of government are working at cross purposes.

The fourth thread is that these plans and visions were not products of popular participation. They were not ideas and ideals owned by the people arising from broad national consensus about the desired growth directions and dimensions of the polity and the economy. Most of them were responding to the popular economic mantra and fad of the prevalent powers. They had nothing original or autochthonous about them and as such were bound to fail. The idea of Nigeria joining the top 20 economies by 2020 was not original to Nigeria but we simply latched onto a projection by certain experts and started building castles in the air. For the Year 2000 and 2015 international and United Nations-based campaigns and targets, Nigeria as part of the international community joined the chorus and appeared to be doing something to alleviate poverty and facilitate development.

The fifth thread running through these plans and visions is the absence of accountability. There are no designated individuals and institutions to be held accountable in the event of failure to reach the targets. The targets were more or less like moral adjurations filled with “don’ts” but lacking in the legal bite of sanctions. Thus, whether the Jonathan administration, for instance, fails to realise the goals set in the First National Implementation Plan of Vision 2020 has nothing to do with The President’s performance rating in office or indeed, whether the government qualifies for re-election.

The sixth thread is that while some of these plans and visions are long term and should be implemented across administrations, every new president comes with his own often times “new ideas” which conflict with policy positions already in place. Obasanjo jettisoned Vision 2010 because it was produced by the Abacha administration; Yar’Adua reversed already concluded privatisation processes and brought his Seven Point Agenda and President Jonathan came with his Transformation Agenda.

Nigeria needs to run on a new track; the three arms of government must work as a team with clearly thought-out agenda which every arm buys into. Policy continuity must be the watchword of succeeding administrations. The Nigerian people need to intensify the demand for accountability. We are already a people left behind in time and space and if we do not work out our development, we may soon become too irrelevant to the world. Let’s get serious.

Eze Onyekpere (censoj@gmail.com)

Read original piece via Punch

The idea of this piece was conceived a long time ago as an academic conversation addressing the phenomenon of incessant cases of avoidable crashes of official convoys in Nigeria. Several years on, we have seen more of such wasteful accidents in the country. The recent case of the auto crash involving the motorcade of Governor Idris Wada of Kogi State created immediate impetus for me to briefly represent it today. Do we ever learn?

Since the present civilian administration picked up the mantle of leadership from the totally exhausted military junta, Nigerians have lost count of the number of reported accidents involving official government vehicular convoys. From the local government councils to the state governments, right through to the Federal Government, the story is the same: multiple ghastly car accidents involving top government officials. Many of these crashes had recorded mind-boggling fatalities, not to enumerate the various broken limbs and wasted human organs as well as the millions of taxpayers’ money lost in the endless carnage.

Why would official government motorcades constitute such a tremendous traffic hazard to themselves and other road users? Are there no more traffic regulations in Nigeria? If there are, are government officials exempted from compliance? What is in government business that transforms its members into highway stunts overnight? Is it the proverbial intoxication of power at work or what? Why are Nigerian political office holders so highly accident-prone?

Is it really safe to entrust the management of a nation to individuals who cannot conform to basic traffic ethics or who are making a virtue out of traffic recklessness? What manner of a boss that would sit coolly inside a car while his chauffeur is cruising across the country like James Bond in a movie stunt, spreading death and horror in the process? Can an official driver possibly operate the vehicle outside of the instructions given to him by the boss? These are questions whose answers may give us some insight into the mindset of those who presently rule us.

The late Tai Solarin is on record to have said that any of his drivers who exceeded the nation’s speed limit of 100 kilometres per hour, to his knowledge, had earned himself an instant dismissal; and to avoid the temptation to ever break that personal traffic code, the respected social critic always set out on his missions as early as possible.

It is only in Nigeria that political leaders of all grades and hue literally crash into public assignments, at the very last minute, in ways that are clearly calculated to intimidate the people. Why and how Nigerian leaders developed the risky habit of driving recklessly through the poorly maintained roads of Nigeria as if they are on open race tracks still continue to baffle me, especially if one takes into account the fact that these miscreants are no kids who stealthily took their parents’ cars out without due permission just to impress their not-so-fortunate peers. These are adults, Nigerian rulers!

Here, we are talking about governors, ministers, legislators, councillors, the vice-president and even the president himself. Without exception, they have all been cited for traffic accidents in the last several years. Starting from when former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s convoy, during a visit to Bayelsa in 2001, was involved in the usual bumper-to-bumper slamming due to excessive speed. The unending statistics of ‘executive crashes’ were followed by that of the then vice- president Abubakar Atiku, who apparently would not want to be out-done by his boss in the vehicular kamikaze circus while he toured Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, soon after.

What is really going on among our leaders? Is there a spell? Sometimes, one is tempted to evoke the old road safety frustration-induced billboards on Nigeria’s highway on them thus: For years, we have warned you, kill yourself if you dare!

In the days of military rule, it was very easy to understand why armed convoys of leaders were always moving at break-neck speeds. The risky driving they indulged in was accepted to have suited both their occupation and their circumstances. There was also the psychological fact that they were perpetually afraid of being ambushed and killed by those of their colleagues who were also keen on violently seizing power. So, largely out of fear, they had to always move at break-neck speed.

I always find it a nauseating circus watching these officials as they childishly misuse expensive public vehicles in lengthy convoys to chase and intimidate members of the public out of the way. These routine dramas are generally indicative of the presence of what a colleague used to refer to as Vagabonds in Passage or VIPs. There is no other rational explanation for those stampedes of shame. It is madness.

Let us not forget, however, that apart from the suicidal nature of this driving style, they are also setting bad examples for our youths. Take it or leave it, these people constitute a part of our elite for now and children are naturally looking up to them for inspiration, especially those amusing aspects of such dangerous traffic conduct. But how can a government whose officials are being regularly citable for reckless and indecent driving muster the moral strength to want to legislate on a civilised driving code for the society?

The simple truth about all these alarming official car crashes is that there is a surfeit of misfits in high places. Of course, they may easily cheat on the people, even intimidate and harass them, but certainly, they cannot cheat machines whose basic science they hardly understand. When you abusively push any mechanical contraption beyond its designed safety limits, you are surely accelerating your funeral date. Driving speedily on the bad Nigerian roads is nothing but sheer suicidal plunges. Those who must govern others must first learn to govern their own instincts and idiosyncrasies on the highways. Riding official vehicle should not be interpreted to mean a licence to kill, as it appears to be presently.

Mike Ikhariale

Read original piece via Punch

If anyone was left in doubt, the President – or those pushing for him – have sounded the beagle; forget any pretence to the contrary: the race for 2015 has begun!

Ghost posters appearing overnight all over the capital city, with the President waking up to deny (not denounce!) having a hand in it isn’t anything new. Same politicians, same old trick.The President or his “promoters” are making an early start of it, sending the message to his party folk that the issue of him having a “second term” is foregone and those who want to negotiate (and benefit) or fight (and lose) can make their choices.

The truth is 2015 is just around the corner. Yet it is far: it is a long time yet for the hopelessness the people face; a long time yet for the suffering they still have to endure under the present government.

President Goodluck Jonathan has disappointed those who voted for him (outside his Niger Delta sectional interest) with the benefit of doubt in his favour: that here comes a young man; here comes a graduate (with PhD); here comes God-knows-what-else! In the last couple of years, when their President speaks, the people cringe. He displays a shocking lack of eloquence and depth, even of a good school certificate holder.

The economy mimics his stupor. Corruption has become byword for doing government business: Halliburton and Siemens scandals have been left untouched; petroleum subsidy scandal running into trillions of naira suffuses the air with its pungent stench; Otedola and Farouk bribery scandal has been swept under the carpet; everywhere the President and his men (and women!) turn, corruption and ineptitude follow.

But the President tells us he has performed wonders so far and promises us some more good luck to come! His poster canvassers have also reminded us how staid and unimaginative everything has been, with fatigued words like “No vacancy in Aso Rock,” and “A good term deserves another.” It is all so sickening!

But the President and his party are welcome to their interpretations of what the country has undergone and is undergoing under Jonathan. The choice is for Nigerians to make, and the job starts today, as the President’s poster pasters have alerted us.

Back in 2009, with two years to the 2011 elections as we have now, this column ran its “Will the youth arise?” clarion call. It opened with an exhortation from Prof. Wole Soyinka thus:

“The ball is now in your court… Election is still two years away…What is wrong in identifying now your candidates and beginning to mobilise support for them? Why can’t you invade your homeland…Use your mobile telephones now to mobilise the people and guard democracy… the way Barrack Obama used the Internet technology to mobilise the youths to strengthen democracy… Mobilise the youths to guard the ballot boxes from start to finish… Defend the vote; nobody is going to do it for you…”

I went further to remind our youths of their historical charges:

“All over the world, students have been active agents of societal change. Propelled by their youthful vigour, fearlessness and imbued with a passion to make a difference, student activism has forced progressive legislation and even brought down unpopular governments.

“Student protesters inspired much of the civil rights movements of the 1960s in America. In 1968, over 800,000 students, teachers and workers marched through Paris, demanding the fall of the de Gaulle government. Similarly, students’ protest spurred the 1989 China Tiananmen Square revolt; Hungarian Revolution in 1956; the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” in 2005; Indonesia’s revolts in 1967 and 1998; Iran against the Shah in 1979; and numerous others worldwide.

“Of course, Nigeria has had her own fair share of meaningful student activism: from 1965 when students of the University of Ibadan barricaded the chambers of the Legislative House in Ibadan in protest against the results of an openly rigged election by the NNDP in the Western Region; to 1971 when a student, Adekunle Adepoju, was shot dead by the police while students demonstrated over generally deteriorating conditions in their institutions; to 1978 when Segun Okeowo led university students in “Ali Must Go” demonstration, demanding the sack of the then education minister, leading to the death of a student, Akintunde Ojo; to the 1989 anti-SAP and 1992 anti-fuel scarcity riots.

“But times have changed, sadly so, and the Nigerian students of today are just as mired in the enveloping decay and have themselves become even agents of the forces of regression and political brigandage.

“…The nonsense going on in Abuja, in the National Assembly by legislators that do more looting than legislating, would have received some jolting. The serial electoral rape in the country (Halliburton scandal, Otedola/Farouk scandal, petroleum subsidy scandal, etc.) would have faced the collective wrath and denunciation of a vibrant student body.

“But there are no student protests to force issues or make the leadership know that the youth, whose tomorrow is at stake, are unhappy.

Then about this time last year, this column again brought to the fore the need for Nigerians to “do something” if they truly desire – and DESERVE – positive change.

It began with an idea propounded by Pius Adesanmi, the Nigerian activist professor in a Canadian university. Adesanmi posted a plea on his Facebook status titled, “Desperate thoughts from the precipice of despair,” in which he urged Nigerians to take the matter of the president they want into their own hands by “drafting” someone they would want as president and massing in the millions behind such a person.

Although Adesanmi proposed Bishop Hassan Kukah as his choice, his idea serves for any such person. And I wrote:

“…Nigerians must not sit and mope about their fate… (They should) identify someone who they can trust to lead the country by his dynamism, inspire the country by his selflessness and character, and galvanise the country by his intellect. And having identified such a person, start from this moment to build a consensus around the person, mobilise, and strategise to give the person a political base with which to make their mandate manifest.”

I suggested further that “the way to go about it is to start compiling signatures from now on through the various media of social mobilisation and set a target of, say, five million names between now and 2014, and see how far we can get with that. It must be said that for me at the level of realism, Kukah is only a metaphor, our moral and integrity compass for the calibre of person and character trait we require in our next president.

“Our Kukah-model may come from any part of the country. A guy (a neuter term in this age) can take a five million-strong endorsement to the bank, literally! A backing of that magnitude is enough to start a movement. And, as the Iroko of Ondo (Mimiko) has proved, a popular candidate can win elections on his own steam and party choice. But whether Iroko’s paradigm is translatable unto a national level remains to be seen.”

2013 is here. It remains to be seen how serious Nigerians really are or how much more nonsense they can really take!

Good luck and Happy New Year.

– Tunde Fagbenle

Read original article via Punch

SURE-P Chicanery And The Fear Of Subsidy Removal In 2013 – by Theophilus Ilevbare @tilevbare

Nigerians celebrated the New Year with curious optimism in spite of repeated assurances that subsidy will not be withdrawn by the federal government in the new year but.for an administration renowned for its double standard, January 1, 2013, brought memories of President Goodluck Jonathan’s new year gift to Nigerians in 2012 – the partial removal of fuel subsidy.

The occupy Nigeria protest, took centre stage at about this time last year as Nigerians took to the streets to protest the hike in pump price of fuel from N65 to over N141 before it was reduced after negotiation between the organised labour and the federal government to N97. The Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) was set up by President Goodluck Jonathan, as an interventionist committee to manage the proceeds from fuel subsidy removal. It is now officially the latest addition to the ever increasing conduit pipes employed to fritter away public funds and a perpetration of the legacy of failed promises that Nigerians have become accustomed to.

Lamentably, the Jonathan administration has demonstrated with the SURE-P that proceeds from total withdrawal of subsidy at any point in time will translate to nothingness to Nigerians. The Christopher Kolade-led committee has been very busy duplicating projects and defrauding the nation by making double payments for projects already embarked upon and financed by the various ministries and agencies amid other frivolous reasons the committee chairman outlined for expending billions of its budget.

During the Obasanjo tenure, billions were paid to the Paris Club as debt relief facilitated by the present Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. She and her economic team told Nigerians at that time that settling its huge debt will mean freeing up much needed fund in subsequent years which will translate to prosperity for Nigerians in the long run, but it turned out to be just another utopian ambition of the Nigerian government past and present.

Echoes of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the General Ibrahim Babangida military junta resonates the SURE-P of the Jonathan government. SAP’s high hope of an improved social service, infrastructure and human resource development were dashed. Till this day, those promises never came to fruition.. .

The Refineries are part of the grand fraud perpetrated and perpetuated by the Jonathan government. The proposed $1.6billion as announced by Minister of Petroleum Diezani Alison-Madueke to be spent on Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) on the moribund refineries is just another indication of the perfidy and insincerity in the oil industry. This is in addition to the colossal funds injected since 1997 that have left the refineries in worse state.  The Idika Kalu National Refineries Special Task Force recommendation that the government dispense with refineries in 18months should immediately be implemented

General Sani Abacha, awarded a major contract valued at $215 million in 1997 for Kaduna refinery. In 1998, the Abdulsalami Abubakar administration set aside $92million for the refineries without achieving any result. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo frittered about $350million on rehabilitation of refineries and pipelines. The absurd injection of billions continued in 2007 when $54million was doled out for TAM of the Kaduna refinery. The rot in the oil sector can’t get any messier as it is not rocket science for the Jonathan government to comprehend that these refineries are a waste of tax payer’s money.

The world over, refineries are constantly changing hands with private sector partnership. The Nigeria government with its awful antecedents of managing its establishments should not have any business with the day-to-day management of refineries. They should inject funds into it and make it viable for private investors takeover.

It is a ruse the theory the government peddles around that the price of petroleum products will remain high except the sector is deregulated by removal of subsidy. The likes of Singapore, India and some other countries without oil deposit import about 70% of their crude oil, they refine sufficiently, petroleum products for use locally and even more for export to other countries like Nigeria.

For the foreseeable future, government must forget about total removal of fuel subsidy after all most OPEC countries still subsidise fuel prices. It should rather channel its effort to prosecute those indicted by the House of Representatives Ad Hoc committee on fuel subsidy and whoever found guilty, must return his share of the stolen billions in subsidy loot. Rather than spend N251billion on the repair of three refineries in the country as the Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Alison-Madueke, recently intimated the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), brand new refineries running at full capacity, working alongside some proposed modular refineries is the way forward to ensure sufficiency in local refining of petrol. It is only when these are on ground that the government can revisit the TAM for the near obsolete refineries on ground.

In 2013 and beyond Nigerians must resist every attempt to remove the partial fuel subsidy, a policy that the President and his aides have long ago, made up their minds to withdraw, he only seem to be buying time before he completes the last lap of his systematic removal of the other half of what remains today as subsidy. Sadly, the Jonathan government is perturbed by the subsidy rather than the corruption in the scheme and other sectors of the economy and his only solution to the sleaze is to completely remove subsidy.

theophilus@ilevbare.com

blog: http://ilevbare.com

Twitter: @tilevbare

N60B Phones: The Questions Mr. Reno Omokri and his Principals Must Answer – by Kikiowo Ileowo

In his controversial style of using social media, Reno Omokri- the Special Assistant to the President on new media on Thursday, the 3^rd of January 2013 took to the platform to further explain the President’s much belated New Year gift to Nigerians as revealed by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Basking in the euphoria of a similar gift to Nigerians on the 1st of January 2012 through the removal of fuel subsidy that lead to a week of national protest, President Jonathan this time around unleashed his 2013 gift on the Nigerians with a policy for the purchase of 10million cell phones valued at about N60billion to 10 million rural farmers.

In his message on twitter, Reno Omokri said “One of the aim of this administration is for Nigeria to be self sufficient in food production”, adding that “The FIRST priority of a people is FOOD SECURITY. One way to ensure food security is by ensuring that farmers are informed of best practices”. Continuing, he said “…to ensure that they plant, irrigate and harvest at the right time, SMSs are being sent to our farmers by agric experts at the ministry”.

He further added that “For those who have an objective mind, 60billion divided by 10million farmers gives you a unit cost of 6000 Naira per phone.”

Now let’s begin by asking where Mr. Jonathan got the 10million Nigerian Farmers? This is a joke intended for April 1st.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria’s population as at 2011 stood at 164,385,656. The same Bureau in 2010 released the report of a research it carried out with the title “The Labour Force Report” with an highlight of the population of employed and unemployed Nigerians as well as the age grade they belonged to. The report shows that persons Aged 0–?14 years constituted 39.6% of the total population of Nigeria, those aged, between 15–?64 (the economically active population), constituted 56.3%, while those aged 65 years and above constituted 2%. The report went on to state that of the 92,384,738 who are economically active, 67,256,090 of them are in the labour force out of which 51,181,884 are employed, and 16,074,205 are unemployed.

The question Mr. Reno and his principal needs to answer is where exactly are the 10million farmers? Are they from the army of the unemployed 16,074,295 or from the already employed 51,181,884. If their answer is the former, what exactly are they producing that Nigeria has not become a hub of everything food?

Now, understand that a large portion of food production in Nigeria is done through mechanized farming which makes use of less manual labour. The ‘farmers’ Mr. president wants to provide handset for are subsistent farmers who produce what they mostly consume in their homes. I have a garden at the back of my house, does that qualify me as a recipient of the ‘Jona-phone’?

I see no reason why the president in conjunction with his minister of Agriculture would insult the collective intelligence of Nigerians by playing to the gallery with a noble idea that has revolutionised countries like Uganda, Kenya and India. Giving telephones out as part of a 2015 campaign strategy is just plain unintelligent.

Now, let’s say we accept the president’s assertion to be true, then, the cost of purchasing each handset is simply bogus and outrageous. First of all, no one would dare deal with a supplier in this type of contract. Speaking at Ijebu North East on Wednesday, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture declared that the Ministry will deal directly with the manufacturers of the handset in China and the United States. What she failed to tell us was if there was a bidding process involved in selecting the manufacturer to the extent that it has determined what country to buy them from?

Having seen the mounting opposition to the proposed illegal purchase of the mobile telephone handset, the Minister of Agriculture hurriedly released a press statement, stating among other lies that Agriculture employs 70% of the population, but if we go through the figures of the report earlier analysed, we would see that the Agriculture sector only employs 14million Nigerians representing 30% of the total 50M employed for that year.

By the way, there are more noble ideas we can channel resources too. The road needed by the farmers to transport their goods to the market is non-existent. The much needed power required to preserve their produce is non-existent. Questions are how is the purchase of handset going to impact the government’s aim of food security? Can the subsistent farmers, majority of whom are illiterates, read and understand the text message that would be sent to them?

If I understand the Minister of Agriculture correctly, the aim of buying the phones is to make use of it as a means of communication with the farmers, but the rural farmers already have phones if the tweet by Reno is anything to go by. Reno had tweeted that “to cut fraud in the fertilizer distribution system a voucher system was introduced whereby farmers get their voucher to access frtiliser via SMS”. What this means is that the ministry has already started communicating with the farmers through SMS. Now let’s ask, who bought the phones the farmers has been using to receive sms vouchers for fertilizers? If the farmers already have phones, why does the government want to provide 10million more phones for them?

As a professional in the field, one would expect that the Minister should understand that there are alternatives i.e. Agricultural Extension Programmes…’train the trainers’, where people who understand the various languages of the farmers would deal directly with them in the dissemination of information. That on its own is a noble way of creating employment and still achieving the aim of educating the farmers.

The idea of importing phones from other countries is nothing short of exporting thousands of jobs and income to those economies, whereas, we could create those jobs here to add to our national GDP growth.

Though the minister has denied any knowledge of N60 billion budgeted for such spurious project. It should interest you to note that the telephone handset jamboree was not included in the 2013 budget which we woud consider in a moment.

A variant of the phone used in Kenya is a low-end phone, which would cost N2,000 at the computer village in Ikeja, Lagos. Dealing directly with the manufacturer will cut the unit cost to at least N1,500 totaling a wholesome of N15 billion (i.e. N1500 x 10 million pieces).

Sundry cost which includes Freight, Insurance, Duty, TLC Charges, CISS, VAT, Clearing Agents, Local Transport, Demurrage, Storage and Rents would cost close to another N2 billion (bear in mind that most of this cost would not be paid by the government) but I won’t bore you with the calculation.

Adding another N1 billion as profit for sub-contractors and other unforeseen expense, the purchase is thus estimated at around N18 billion.

If a total of N18 billion is more than enough for a project, you can be rest assured that the N60 billion tag is a fraud and another way by the Jonathan administration to ‘create food’ for the boys. The extra N42 billion excess will be looted and misappropriated.

It is insincerity of the highest order for the government to use a noble idea as a means of fleecing the people.

The last questions I want the honourable Minister to answer are how are we going pay back the loans proposed for the execution of this project? Is this how best we can make use of the fund? Who are the sponsors? The press statement he released has done nothing but raise more suspicion. According to the Ministry of Agriculture’s budget, nothing of such is budgeted for in 2013 or are we looking at another withdrawal from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) to fund repayment or will it be budgeted as debt for future generation?

We the people need to know how a Ministry with a total budget of N81 billion for year 2013 plans to execute this project. Ministry of Agriculture Recurrent expenditure for this year is N32.9 billion with N29.8 billion going into personnel cost and another N3.09 billion going into overhead cost. The capital allocation for 2013 for the Ministry of Agriculture is N48.7 billion. I think expending a fund that equals 80% of the total budget of a ministry on a single project sounds scrupulous.

We must understand that N60 billion is no small money, it’s almost the total of Capital Allocation for Ministry of Education, just N5 billion greater than the Capital Allocation for Health, 10% lower than the Capital Allocation for Power and half of the Capital Allocation for Ministry of Works which is a very critical sector of the economy.

N60 billion is greater than N52.3 billion which is the total budget for Ministry of Transport. N60 billion is no small money as it can do a lot.

I am @ileowo4ever on twitter