Abdulkadir Manu

Following in his trail-blazing anti-open grazing law which was first condemned before it became the toast of those who turned round full circle to embrace it, Gov. Ayo Fayose of Ekiti state has embarked on another controversial project of setting up a State anti-corruption outfit in his state as a counter-point to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) set up by the Federal Government.

A bill to that effect has been presented to the Ekiti State House of Assembly for onward promulgation into law and the assembly is feverishly working on the bill. Should the bill see the light of day and should Fayose append his signature to it, Ekiti will become the first state in the country to enact such a law since the present democratic experiment of a Fourth Republic began in 1999.

The state is already on record as the first to challenge the right and legality of the EFCC to probe into state’s finances. In the reasoning of the Ekiti State Government, only the state House of Assembly, which appropriates funds for the state, has the constitutional duty to probe how such funds are expended. On January 30 this year, a federal high court in Ado-Ekiti delivered judgment in favour of the position taken by the state government. While Justice Taiwo Taiwo said the EFCC can investigate and or prosecute individuals, he posited that only the House of Assembly can look into the finances of the state. The only opportunity the EFCC can have in this regard is if it is invited by a state House of Assembly.

This judgment has been described as victory for true federalism. The EFCC is a federal government creation but it has been the graveyard of many state governors. During the government of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, the EFCC was leveraged upon by the Federal Government to orchestrate the kangaroo impeachment of many state governors. Going forward and up till this moment, the Commission has also been perceived and accused by opposition figures as having been used to haunt political opponents. Politicians in the ruling party are alleged to usually be immune from harassment and prosecution while those in the opposition parties are treated as good sport. Once an individual under the EFCC searchlight defects to the ruling party, it is said, he is usually treated with more respect and understanding than his colleagues who remain in opposition. This has been a sore point about the modus operandi of the EFCC. Therefore, not a few would welcome any development that whittles the influence and power of the commission. Justice Taiwo’s judgment, if it stands, and if other states emulate Fayose in setting up their respective state’s EFCC by whatever name called, portends a likelihood that will take the shine off the EFCC.

Fayose is not new to controversy. When he enacted his state’s anti-open grazing law, many of his colleagues distanced themselves from him; some even criticised him openly, but within a year, many of these governors have retraced their footsteps. In Benue State, for instance, Gov. Samuel Ortom who was in the forefront of those who spoke forcefully against Fayose’s anti-open grazing bill has not only retracted, he has enacted his own anti-open grazing law and despite the pressure mounted on him to repeal it, he has stood firm on it.

In Plateau, Taraba and other states in the South, the anti-open grazing initiative is catching on like wildfire in the harmattan. Will the state anti-corruption law toe a similar line? Both the Department of State Security and the Senate have tried to get the Presidency to remove Ibrahim Magu as the EFCC boss. Twice, the DSS has authored damning reports on Magu alleging that he was not fit to occupy the office; and twice the Senate had refused to confirm him. He remains in office all the same, with the Presidency coming up with the face-saving device that it did not need Senate approval to make Magu’s appointment. An unrelenting Senate has, however, insisted that for as long as the Presidency clings to Magu, relations between both will remain frosty. It is safe to expect, therefore, that the upper legislative chamber will welcome the Fayose law. If more states join the bandwagon and Taiwo’s judgment stands, then, the influence and power of the EFCC will be considerably whittled down.

There are many who consider this a very good development for true federalism. States have been muzzled and emasculated beyond reasonable limit by federal might. Taking back some of their liberties and freedoms can only do our democracy a world of good. The clamour at the moment is for restructuring of the polity. The Federal Government is being asked to relax the tight ropes emasculating the states and allow the federating units, which the states or regions are, free rein so they can have more financial muscle and the freedoms they require to develop at their own pace.

The belief in many quarters is that it is by so doing that the country will be better governed and development will reach every nooks and cranny of the country. Much of the tension in the land will be doused and heating up of the polity will be reduced to manageable limit. Conversely, there are those who fear that many State Houses of Assembly are pliant tools in the service of State governors and can, therefore, not be expected to call the governors to order on state finances. They have a point there but the solution, methinks, is not in running away from the fight.

Legislatures the world over are the second arm of government or the second estate of the realm saddled with the responsibility to make laws and perform oversight functions on the Executive. There is no running away from or shirking this responsibility. Popular citizen action must be activated to ensure that the various arms of government, the lawmakers inclusive, perform their functions diligently and creditably. Why can’t Labour or civil society groups picket any House of Assembly that is perceived to have rendered itself a mere rubber stamp of the Executive? I

n other countries where democracy thrives; where the theory as well as principle of separation of powers has been allowed to work, it has been as a result of consistent and robust citizen action. The price of liberty, it has been said, is eternal vigilance. Rather than sit idly by or only complain without taking positive action, it behoves us to insist on the right things being done at the state level. Allowing the federal government to hijack powers and responsibilities that are best reserved for the states will not do our democracy any good. In fact, it will continue to ensure that we do not practise true federalism. The heat in the polity as a result of this incongruity will refuse to go away and the country will not be able to achieve its true potential.

Justice Taiwo’s judgment opens a window of opportunity for us to begin to move away from policies and laws of the military jackboot era while the Ekiti State anti-corruption outfit in the works points us in the right way to go, even if it means taking the shine off Magu or the EFCC as presently constituted. 

Manu is Lagos-based public affairs

analyst.

Mukaila Sanusi

The question that comes to mind as Africa’s model mega city contends with waste dumped by its residents indiscriminately on highways and major roads is:  what is responsible for this unwholesome state?

Lagos, with its rapid urbanization, infrastructural development and good governance, is a victim of its own success. The population of the state, which is estimated at around 22million-and is still growing, continues to receive boosts from ceaseless migration from the hinterland and the West African suburbs. As the country’s commercial hub, Lagos houses about 2,000 industrial complexes, 15,000 commercial ventures and a bourgeoning middle class with high purchasing power.

Since inception of the present political dispensation in 1999, successive administrations have consistently developed critical infrastructure and taken decisive steps to enhance the ease of doing business with the result that Lagos remains attractive to investors, entrepreneurs, as well as those seeking greener pastures. The downside to all these is not just the pressure on public infrastructure but the growing challenge of managing municipal solid waste emanating from the immense domestic, commercial and industrial activities in the state. According to the World Bank, the generation of solid waste is tied to population, income and urbanization. If the report by this body which puts per capita waste generation rate at 1.2 kg per person per day is anything to go by, waste generated in Lagos far outweighs the official figure of 13,000 tons per day. Also, the fact that the per capital waste generation has been projected to rise to 1.42 kg in the next fifteen years presents a serious cause for concern.

This concern is succinctly put by Prasad Modak in the Shangai Manual when he avers that: cities are at the nexus of a further threat to the environment, namely the production of an increasing quantity and complexity of wastes. The estimated quantity of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generated worldwide is 1.7 – 1.9 billion metric tons.  In many cases, municipal wastes are not well managed in developing countries, as cities and municipalities cannot cope with the accelerated pace of waste production. Waste collection rates are often lower than 70 per cent in low-income countries. More than 50 per cent of the collected waste is often disposed of through uncontrolled land filling and about 15 per cent is processed through unsafe and informal recycling.

Increasing with the population of the state is not just the waste generated but the cost of handling it and this underscores the need for more efficient and enduring system of solid waste management.  While they might have served their purposes, the PSP operators leave a yawning gap in the effort to keep Lagos streets free of refuse as experience has shown that they lack both the financial and technological capacity to cope with the waste challenge in the nearest future.

The import of the foregoing is that the system of solid waste management that yields to inadequacies in the collection, transportation and disposal services is not sustainable and cannot on the long run support the vision of a clean, secure and more prosperous Lagos State. Hence, the emergence of the Cleaner Lagos Initiative as a new model to address the observed shortcomings in the state’s solid waste management sector is welcome.  Precipitating the change initiated by the administration of Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode was the need to inject technology, fund and international best practices in the management of municipal waste to replace the old order of haphazard waste collection services, caused by low technology input into route optimization; poor coverage, especially for hard-to-service areas; environmentally degrading and social nuisance-causing dumpsites; poorly managed dumpsites infested with unsightly scavenging and criminal activities; and low cost-recovery for operators due to poor billing solutions.

The new system, encapsulated in the Cleaner Lagos Initiative, subscribes to Ernest Agyemang Yeboah’s maxim that: “If you want to feel the sunshine, change position!” as it offers not only waste management solution through a concession arrangement with a major player in the municipal waste management business, Visionscape Sanitation Solutions (VSS), but also has incorporated into it other components such as highway and street sweeping, job creation, development and management of sanitary landfills and Transfer Loading Stations.

The dumpsites are no help, either. It is a fact that they have all passed their primes with hardly any platform left for dumping of refuse. Olusosun dumpsite, for example, is over twenty-five years old and like most of its ilk, this dumpsite and others in the state are not sustainable as they are not in line with modern trends in solid waste management which support the development of sanitary landfills that are safer as they are sites where waste is isolated from the environment until it is safe.

In line with this reality, the state government has earmarked the various dumpsites in the state for phased closure and planned for the development of landfills in strategic locations in the state. It is in this regard that Lagos State has embarked on the development of the Epe sanitary landfill through the Visionscape group.  There is also the behaviour issue that is typified by the slow embrace of the three R’s concept of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle of waste which hold the key to conserving the environment as they help to cut down on the amount of waste we generate and throw away.   This concept presupposes that by working on their life style to reduce waste, the people are able to support a system that conserves natural resources, save land and money that would be used to dispose waste in landfills- if there is less waste, there is less to recycle or reuse.

Closely related is the poor attitude to sorting and bagging of waste, and preference for indiscriminate dumping of waste, thereby magnifying what ordinarily would have passed for a transitional hitch. For instance, in an effort to mop up blackspots, Visionscape had carted away over 80,000 tons of waste in more than 1000 illegal dumpsites across the state within a period of six months. The figure will be staggering by the time the intervention efforts of government agencies are added.

Sanusi is Assistant Director, Public Affairs, Lagos State Ministry of the Environment, Alausa, Ikeja

Ibrahim Mohammed

“A truly public-spirited person should accept public office not for what he can get for himself – such as the profit and glamour of office – but for the opportunity which it offers him of serving his people to the best of his ability, by promoting their welfare and happiness.”

– Awolowo, 1966.

The above description of selfless leadership by the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, aptly fits the character and leadership trait of President Muhammadu Buhari who today remains the most celebrated incorruptible leader Nigeria has ever produced. It was this anti-corruption credential that recently earned him the African Union’s first and most prestigious award of Anti-corruption Champion of the Continent.

Since assumption of office nearly three years ago, President Buhari had amply demonstrated visionary and purposeful leadership, statesmanship, capacity and the needed sacrifice to transform the nation through the projection of a vision that is positive, attractive, appealing, realistic and achievable.

As a social builder and charismatic leader, the President has consistently shown transparent conduct, charm, and positive self-image that inspire positive change in the citizenry and show commitment to the general will, without pretences, and guided by public interest. His other attributes are high ethical and moral standards, ennobling sense of respect for others, and humility.

It is instructive to note that these sterling leadership qualities are what promote open and democratic exchange of information about every important aspect of governance, strengthen public trust and ensure the emergence of a more patriotic citizenry willing to discharge responsibilities in the interest of the country. Little wonder that the whistle-blowing policy introduced by government is already beginning to yield result.

It is gratifying to note that the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari has brought with it a new governance philosophy that elicits patriotism for the nation, love and respect for the leadership and hope for all. Under this government, the era of impunity has gone with the winds, respect for the rule of law has come to stay and governance is no longer business as usual but a call to duty to serve the people with due diligence, honesty and transparency.

Coming into power with a hard-earned reputation, Buhari has changed the face of governance as rightly observed by Yusuf Alli, the Nation’s Abuja Bureau Chief. “Unlike in the past when loafers, busy bodies, political heavyweights, multi-colour businessmen masquerading as investors, chieftains of banks seeking to influence financial policies, portfolio investors and money bags turned the Presidential Villa into a Mecca of sort, it is indeed no longer business as usual.” Nigeria at the moment fortunately has a new sense of direction under a leadership with the most dynamic, charismatic, modern disposition, a leader who possesses an in-depth knowledge of the nation’s developmental challenges.

It is an incontrovertible fact that President Buhari’s anti-corruption credential is unassailable. He is known to have occupied various sensitive positions at the twilight of his career as a military officer including Military Governor of the defunct North Eastern State comprising the six states in the north east geo-political zone, Group Managing Director of NNPC, the petroleum behemoth, General Officer Commanding 3rd Division Nigerian Army and the ultimate office of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

In his quiet retirement after being ousted out of power by General IBB, Buhari was invited by late General Sani Abacha to serve as Chairman of the board of the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund, (PTF) where he acquitted himself. Throughout his military, post military and political career, the man is known to have and still has an unblemished record of service.  While some of his former military colleagues are known to have controlling interests in most blue chip companies, PMB’s known business interest is in tendering to his cattle in his native home of Daura.

While the political and military elites boast of a formidable power base at their beck and call established through the dispensation of political patronage while in office, PMB’s strong support base remains the Nigerian masses who always see their hero as an epitome of honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability. This is why his traducers expend millions of dollars hiring the best publicists and image launderers to burnish their sullen image, while the common man on the street remains Buhari’s ardent supporter and chief image maker. Till today, Buhari still remains the only popular politician whose candidature was bankrolled by the masses via huge donations.

President Muhammadu Buhari will go down in history as the first African leader to be recognized by the African Union as the Anti-corruption champion of Africa in a continent whose leaders are known for their kleptocracy and squander-mania.  It is instructive to note that up to date, only one African leader qualified for the Mo-Ibrahim Prize for Leadership introduced nearly two decades ago.

Mohammed writes from Abuja

Ignatius Arinze

THE public letter written by former president Olusegun Obasanjo, on January 23, 2018, in which he called on President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek re-election for a second term, and where he called for a third political force to seek power in 2019 and beyond, is self-serving and done in bad faith.  To all intents and purposes, the letter was meant to scandalize President Buhari and second, to cause chaos by creating in the mind of Nigerians a rejection of the existing political parties in the country.

Nigeria at the moment has more than 65 registered political parties duly recognized by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). INEC on its part, is recognised and provided for in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended. Therefore, if Nigerians heed Obasanjo’s call for a third force, shunning the two leading parties, the APC and the PDP, it then means that the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo wants Nigerians to go outside the Constitution to seek for political platforms on which to elect its leaders.

Obasanjo’s letter and similar ones he has written in the past castigating the country’s leaders and advising them against seeking re-election on the grounds of poor performance is typical of this former soldier and farmer to whom providence has given so much. However, it should be stated and known to all and sundry that this man, Obasanjo sees nothing good in other people, except himself. Also, Obasanjo strenuously tries and works to be the sole determinant of who should lead Nigeria, after he used his own two terms of eight years, 1999-2007, and was never for once put on the spotlight.

In fact, some concerned Nigerians have opined that the greatest tragedy that befell democracy in Nigeria at the latter’s restoration in 1999, is the fact that Olusegun Obasanjo was the person given the mantle of leadership by the departing military class. All the impunity and lack of accountability that came to characterise the country’s democracy, are traceable to Obasanjo.

If, as Obasanjo claims in his letter, that President Muhammadu Buhari has not performed, Obasanjo is part of the problem. President Buhari on coming to power inherited so many problems in the economy compounded by unbridled corruption and waste which were the legacy of the Goodluck Jonathan years. Nigerians will not forget that the events leading to the emergence of the disaster known as Jonathan administration had the imprimatur of this man, Obasanjo, who deliberately supports the emergence as leaders of the country, people who will not outperform him.

The road to the sorry state of Nigeria today was paved by Obasanjo’s know-it-all attitude. When he left office in 2007, Obasanjo, against the wish of Nigerians but in accordance with his own agenda, forcefully selected the late President, Umaru Yar’ Adua, a terminally ill man to be President and followed it up with a very badly organised election that was notorious for its mammoth irregularities. The 2007 election organised by Obasanjo to bring the late Yar’ Adua to power was the most unfree and unfair in Nigeria’s history to the extent that the EU observer mission gave the polls the thumbs down! The gentleman that he was, the beneficiary of Obasanjo’s impunity and brigandage, the late Umaru Yar’ Adua even acknowledged that the process that brought him to power was hugely flawed, and asked for forgiveness and understanding. To complete the landmine that would later bring Nigeria to a sorry pass, Obasanjo went ahead to pick single-handed, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who was a deputy governor of small Bayelsa State and a man who would later show that he has a poor knowledge of the geography and complexity of the Nigerian State.

In all that he did above, Obasanjo was motivated by the desire to be in control of Nigeria by being the Godfather of whosoever was in power. Later, Umaru Yar’ Adua died and Obasanjo ensured that Goodluck Jonathan succeeded his late boss. Anyway, while we blame Obasanjo for foisting a sickly, weak and shallow leadership on Nigeria through Yar’ Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, in fairness to Obasanjo, he was aided and abetted by a spineless and self-serving political class that stands for nothing but what it can get from the country. It needs to be noted that a sickly and weak Yar’ Adua and a shallow minded and feeble Jonathan was an experiment bound to fail and it did in that the Jonathan administration which handed over to Muhammadu Buhari laid economic, security and socio- political minefields which Buhari used most parts of his first three years to try to navigate and overcome.

We said above that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is the least qualified person to criticize President Buhari or any other Nigeria leader for that matter. First, Obasanjo is not a democrat. Nigerians should not forget that the man, Obasanjo, employed political blackmail to try to get a third term in office when the Constitution prescribes only two terms of eight years for a President of Nigeria. One of those who employed his democratic credentials and best endeavours to frustrate this Constitutional coup, Obasanjo’s then Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, was hounded and harassed by Obasanjo and called all sorts of names. Till this day, the unforgiving Obasanjo still bears grudge against Atiku Abubakar and has employed every trick in the books to frustrate the latter’s ambition to be President of Nigeria. Second, despite his superiority complex, Obasanjo’s stewardship as President of Nigeria was not fantastic.

Third, Obasanjo has a lot to answer for on the poverty and unemployment that afflicts Nigeria today. During his rule, 16 billion dollars was earmarked for improving the power sector and to ensure that Nigerians have improved electricity for domestic and industrial use, all to no avail.

Nigerians also would remember the series of bribery scandals that were common place during the eight years of his leadership. Specifically, the Halliburton and Siemens Corporation scandals under which Nigerian government officials were handsomely bribed for contracts, come to mind. On President Buhari, Obasanjo has seriously misfired. In view of the mess which his protégé, Goodluck Jonathan left behind, Buhari has not done badly. Perhaps, on account of age and health status, Buhari might consider not contesting the 2019 elections. He should be allowed to decide for himself, anyhow.

However, in terms of achievement, Buhari has not done badly. Aside the success in the area of security and fighting insurgency which has been a strong point of the Buhari administration, the administration has made remarkable progress in economic diversification and the revolution in agriculture.

Thousands of people went into agriculture with the cultivation of rice as a focus. Within the year, the production of rice has so grown that Nigeria’s import bill for the commodity fell drastically with the country becoming a significant exporter to its neighbors. Most states of the federation now have their own rice brands. The result, the country was able to exit the economic recession that had ravaged it since the beginning of 2016.

    Power generation and supply, an area where in eight years of his leadership Obasanjo recorded zero achievement, Buhari has recorded modest improvement on the back of the launching by the Federal Government of a 701 billion naira power intervention fund, known as Payment Assurance Programme (PAP). Following the confidence engendered by the PAP, the amount of power being distributed is now steady at 4000 megawatts, out of 7,000 megawatts being generated, the highest by the country in so many years.

    The business climate in the country under Buhari’s watch improved tremendously according to World Bank data. Nigeria’s ease of doing business position improved radically after President Buhari gave his economic team marching orders to make the country more business friendly. Nigeria jumped 24 places from her previous ranking to occupy one of the first ten positions in the world.

   Given all the above achievements and others by President Buhari, Obasanjo should be advised to give Nigeria a break and allow the 80 million odd eligible voters decide who their President would be in 2019, based on the existing party structure recognized by the Constitution through the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Therefore, Obasanjo’s dream project, the Coalition for Nigeria, is uncalled for, self- serving and dead on arrival. Nigerians are preparing and ready to elect their President, come 2019 from any one of the 65 or more registered political parties. Any attempt to by-pass the existing party structures in place and seek the creation of an intervention Third Force is akin to a political coup which amounts to an effort to undermine the Constitution of the Federal Republic. This is akin to a crime against the State or treason.

Finally, having quit partisan politics, as he recently stated publicly, one thinks that it is also high time that former President Obasanjo quit mischievous letter writing and public political discourse that create distraction and tension in the polity.

Arinze is a Public Affairs Analyst based in Abuja.

Adeze Ojukwu

Few days back, a French journalist stoked award-winning novelist, Chimamanda Adichie, with the ‘book store’ question, thus sparking off disparate opinions across the globe.  The query was meant to poke and ridicule Adichie. And it did. But it did much more than that.

It further blighted the country’s already battered image and demeaned its status, as the ‘giant of Africa’ and most populous black nation.  Adichie’s response was vitriolic and scathing: ‘I think it reflects very poorly on French people that you have to ask me that question. My books are read in Nigeria. They are studied in schools. Not just Nigeria, across the continent in Africa.’

Adichie followed up with a Facebook post: ‘Bookshops are in decline all over the world. And that is worth discussing and mourning and hopefully changing. But the question ‘are there bookshops in Nigeria’ was not about that. It was about giving legitimacy to a deliberate, entitled, tiresome, sweeping, base ignorance about Africa. And I do not have the patience for that. Perhaps French people cannot indeed conceive of Nigeria as a place that might have bookshops. And this, in 2018, in our age of interconnectedness and the internet, is a shame.’

The altercation sent the social media riling, as respondents reacted with acerbic posts about the motive of the questioner. The journalist’s real intent to embarrass the country and its 190 million people was obviously due to vestiges of racism, colonial mentality,  and bigoted  media negativism among others.   Despite the furore over the inquisition, there are some introspections for the country and its crop of leaders.  Fundamentally, the interview underscores the rot in the nation’s educational system.   It also validates the widespread agitation and  demand to revamp the sector through improved budgetary allocations and articulation of effective policies   for  technological advancements and societal progress.

Doing this will change the narrative on whether Nigeria owns bookstores or not.  Many Asian countries experienced inglorious histories of colonialism and  political upheavals, as  Nigeria, but they have become major players in science, technology, health and agriculture.

Today, India is a lead destination for medical tourism and Information Technology, while Malaysia is a top exporter of oil, both palm and petroleum. Japan, Taiwan, China and South Korea are all industrial  and manufacturing giants.  These Asian countries achieved  monumental feats, through strong leadership and huge investments in  science education and technological research.

This is in sharp contrast with Nigeria, where basic school enrolment and completion  figures remain low, even as higher education is equally appalling on several fronts, including examination malpractice, sexual abuse, poor facilities,  wage crises and frequent strikes.

Budget allocation to education is paltry and far below global standards. Only 7.04 percent of the N8.6 trillion, 2018 budget  was assigned to education, which is lower than last year’s allocation of 7.4 percent, and a far cry from the 26 percentage of national budgets for education, stipulated by United Nations (UN). The funding gap in the sector is often ascribed to corruption, low oil price,  war on Boko Haram, which means ‘No to western education’, phony projects, among other frivolous excuses.

  This malaise  has cumulatively  escalated  unemployment, drug abuse, youth restiveness, crimes, terrorism, and insecurity across the country. Government’s lackadaisical attitude to education and youth development, is a reflection of systemic collapse and leadership failure that have collectively  mortgaged the lives of citizens and the future of the next generation.

This nation has for several decades been bedevilled by unimpressive sit-tight military dictators, as well as  corrupt political leaders, who have consistently exhibited stark ignorance of true statesmanship and statecraft,  thus leaving  a beleaguered and pauperized citizenry floundering in spiralling  poverty, illiteracy and depravity.  Even the current political class is viewed mainly as a bunch of characters,  bereft of  altruistic qualities and technological skills to  deliver the country from its myriad woes. 

Clearly, decades of sleaze in governance and public office, as well as nepotism, rather than merit, have contributed in no small measure to the country’s horrid position in global standing and developmental markers, as inelegantly displayed in the  educational spectrum.

Several research findings indicate widespread decadence in educational standards across the country,  with the North East, North West and North Central as the worst hit.  Available statistics from United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) show that Nigeria still has 10.5 million out-of-school children – the world’s highest number. Sixty per cent of those children are in northern Nigeria. UNICEF Country Representative, Mr Mohammed Fall, has severally warned about the security and social  impact of out-of-school children in Nigeria.

‘Such numbers pose a lot of danger to the growth and development of the country,’ he added. Senate president, Bukola Saraki, said it was an alarming phenomenon and ‘a ticking time bomb, promising that National Assembly would tackle it through appropriate legislations on child rights.’

Sadly, many of these promises are never redeemed,  even as analysts also attribute the poor performance in the sector  to socio-cultural predispositions for almajiri system,  forced marriage, polygamy, poverty and religious extremism.  Some religious and political leaders from these affected areas  still  clamour for such infantile and crooked marriages, which   exacerbate population explosion, unemployment  and infrastructural dilapidation.  It is sheer criminality  and breach of public ethos for those entrusted with leadership to renege on their responsibilities to  invest massively in education and other viable sectors, but fritter away the common patrimony on  hedonistic lifestyles and insatiable luxuries.

Perhaps, this explains why the Federal Government’s proposal to declare a state of emergency in the education sector has been trailed with more knocks than nods. While some experts have hailed the idea, others dismissed it as a farce, due to alleged apathetic and jaundiced temperament of the administration. Moreso, are there effective mechanisms to ensure its success and sustainability, given the country’s political exigencies and vagaries as well as poor budgetary allocations to the sector, in dire need for holistic reforms?

However, Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, was hopeful over the plan, if embraced and supported by  governors and stakeholders.  “By the end of April, we are proposing there will be a declaration of state of emergency in the education sector all over the country.  I will also meet with the governors to appeal to them to give special emphasis to address the problem of low standard of education, especially at primary level,” he said.

Without doubt, the plan and its grandiose projections are achievable, if many players in the corridors of power will change their kleptomaniac tendencies and stop putting their hands in the public till.

As it is, Nigeria is grossly  unprepared to meet global benchmarks  in education, science and technology, the tripod and template for sustainable growth.  The country’s lofty dreams for holistic development may remain a phantasy, unless the  educational system is rescued from its present doldrums.   Adichie’s parting shot, is pedagogic. ‘All human beings really deserve equal dignity.’

Ojukwu, a journalist and Fellow of Hubert H. Humphrey (HHH) Fellowship  writes via adezeo@yahoo.com

Chiedu Uche Okoye

A British historian said this about death: the consequence of birth is death. Once we are born into this world, the threat of death hangs menacingly over us.

We do take ill, and recover from it. Then, we will go to either church or Mosque to thank God for healing us. But, a person’s recovery from an illness is a postponement of the evil day, a time of reckoning with God. Today, death is commonplace. And mystics, metaphysicians, agnostics, Church ministers, Islamic mullahs, Buddhists, and others had written books on thanatology. Yet, we dread death, regardless of the fact that we possess the knowledge that our souls will survive our physical deaths. It is the fact that the sting as well as the finality of death is irreversible that causes us to mourn our dead relatives, inconsolably.

So, I could not come to terms with the reality of the death of Dr. Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme when the macabre news of his death broke. While alive, he loomed larger than life, and seemed to be indestructible. He’s a national treasure of whom we are proud. So, when we heard about his death, we wished that it was false news. The news of his death reverberated across Nigeria and sent shockwaves throughout the length and breadth of the country for he’s well known in Nigeria for his countless and unquantifiable contributions to our national development.

The late Dr. Alex Ekwueme came into prominence and national limelight when he became the Vice President of Nigeria. He served Nigeria meritoriously in that capacity. And, he belonged to the then popular National Party of Nigeria (NPN), a political party with national spread and outlook. His belonging to that political party is a proof that the late Dr. Alexander Ekwueme was a detribalized Nigerian. Then, his fealty to the country was not in doubt.

Sadly, the Jackboots and Brasshats cut short the leadership of NPN in the Second Republic via a military coup. The late Dr. Ekwueme and others were thrown into detention for allegedly enriching themselves through corrupt means. However, later, he was freed. And he was not found guilty of the allegations preferred against him. In fact, it was discovered that he left office poorer than when he assumed office as the Vice President of Nigeria. Urbane, knowledgeable and kind, Ekwueme was not tainted by controversies and corrupt deeds while he played partisan politics in the murky Nigerian political terrain. His style of politicking and political philosophies should be recommended to today’s politicians.

After the military interregnum in our politics had ended, he and other like-minded politicians formed the G-34 group that metamorphosed to PDP. PDP was the party to beat in the 1999 Presidential election and Ekwueme was in the running to win the PDP Presidential ticket. However, the political shenanigans and treachery of his ethnic compatriots, the interests of Nigeria’s kingmakers, and other factors caused his failure to win that presidential ticket.

Not being bitter and sad about his political misadventure, he worked assiduously and conscientiously for the progress and success of the PDP during the 1999 presidential election. That was a measure of his large-heartedness and desire for Nigeria’s progress and peaceful co-existence as one country. It is characteristic of the late Dr. Ekwueme to sacrifice his personal ambition , desires and interests at the altar of national good, a political trait that is not existing among today’s politicians.

Not only are most of our politicians selfish and corrupt, they are bereft of political ideologies and knowledge. The late Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Awolowo, Mbonu Ojike, Anthony Enahoro, Mathew Mbu and others played politics of ideas, and not that of the stomach. Azikiwe, it was said, would wow people with his grasp of issues and mastery of the English language while on the husting. Our politicians in the First and Second Republics were men of letters, who set store by knowledge. And until his death, the late Dr. Ekwueme was one of the few intellectuals in Nigeria’s political arena. It was he who proposed that Nigeria should be divided into six geopolitical zones for administrative convenience during the national conference. And it was accepted and adopted by the government.

Ekwueme’s solid educational background prepared him for the task of political leadership. A lover of education, he possessed multiple degrees covering many disciplines. And, he was an alumna of the famous Kings’ College, Lagos. Today, many Nigerian politicians flaunting degrees of many hues are barely educated. They are found wanting both in learning and character. And, that accounts for their political maladministration and misbehavior in office. A governor in the South-east of Nigeria, who belongs to APC, is doing bizarre deeds in the state in the name of revolutionary governance. He should adopt Ekwueme’s political template, ideologies and philosophies.

An exemplar of good behavior in office, Ekwueme, who became wealthy by practising architecture, was engaged in philanthropic deeds. He instituted scholarship schemes to cater to the educational needs of the indigent students. He will be fondly remembered for that.

Death, a thief, stealthily stole the sagely Dr. Alex Ekwueme from us when he’s needed to offer us counsel on the path we should follow. His death has created a void in our political landscape. And, his death at this juncture of our political odyssey and peregrination has robbed us of a voice of reason. While alive, his interventions and mediation in the political crises of Anambra State, wise counsel and warnings constituted the compass that guided us on our collective journey to greatness as a state in the federation.

Ekwueme was a fine gentleman, erudite scholar, political ideologue, philanthropist and politician par excellence. His life is a fine study in ennobling deeds, industry, selfless service, patriotism, love of knowledge and refinement.

As he has left this terrible terra firma for the spiritual realm, we pray that God should grant his soul eternal repose

Okoye writes from Uruowulu-Obosi, Anambra State

Ndubuisi Adaba A consumption tax is essentially a tax on the purchase of a good or service. It may take different forms such as sales taxes, tariffs, excise or other taxes on consumed goods and services. It has the distinct feature of not penalizing savings unlike income taxes. Consumption tax is charged in different forms in several parts of the world. For instance, in Canada, most provinces charge a consumption tax (Provincial Sales Tax, which can range from 0 to 10%) along with the federally applied Goods and Services Tax of 5% (akin to our value added tax). On its part, Japan charges a consumption tax of 8% (1.76% charged locally while the balance is federal) and Singapore has a consumption tax of 7% while in Australia it is a national Goods and Services tax rate of 10%.
In Nigeria, Kano State passed a law in 2017 that imposed a consumption charge of 5% on goods and services purchased in any hotel, restaurant, fast food outlet, bakery, takeaway, suyaspot, shopping mall, store, event centre and other similar businesses within the state. Apparently, it is applicable to all sales of goods and services in the state. Ogun State also promulgated a consumption tax law in 2017.
While many may not know, Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial hub, does indeed have a consumption tax. The Lagos State Hotel Occupancy and Restaurant Consumption Tax Law, which was signed into law on June 22, 2009, imposes a tax on goods and services consumed in hotels, restaurants and event centres within the territory of Lagos State. It is charged as 5% of the value of the goods or services consumed.
According to this law, the term hotel is defined as including motels, guest houses and apartments for short time letting, while a restaurant is defined to include any food sale outlet, bar tavern, inn or café, whether or not located within a hotel. Event centres include halls, auditoriums, fields, and places designated for public use for a fee. They will charge it along with but separately from the Value Added Tax (VAT).
As regular consumption of goods and services (from shopping malls, supermarkets, stores, markets, boutiques, sundry traders and service providers) are not included, the Lagos State Consumption Tax is thus asymmetrical on its effects on citizens. This means that the not-so-wealthy that use hotels, restaurants and events centres sparingly pay a lot less than the rich who frequent these facilities. Furthermore, the tax is also on what is consumed.
Although the Lagos State consumption tax is in force, enforcement has so far not been very efficient. The tax is actually charged to the consumers of goods and services, meaning that the operators of hotels, restaurants and events centres act merely as collecting agents on behalf of government and do not bear the cost of this tax. Inefficient enforcement has resulted in situations where several operators have not been brought into this tax net or are not collecting the tax. And where some operators are collecting the tax, they fail to remit same to the government. Therefore, only a small proportion of operators are actually making remittances to the state’s coffers, thereby denying Lagos State the wherewithal to actualize its growth plans.
Lagos, with over 20 million inhabitants is particularly shortchanged in this regard. At this time of dire need of funds to bridge the huge infrastructure deficit in Lagos, the state can least afford such leakages. This is coupled with a rising population and reduced funding from the Federation Account. To check this and ensure an efficient consumption tax regime, Lagos State must pursue its administration differently from the way it has been done thus far. A new approach would be to engage in massive and repeated sensitization of operators as well as all citizens on the imperative of taxation in general and consumption tax specifically. The relevant agencies of government must also ensure complete identification, enumeration and registration of all operators in a continuous process.
The government must also explore innovative ways that will make the due tax easier for operators to collect, separate and remit to government. This will entail the installation of new technology at the operators’ paypoints as being proposed. The installed software will in turn enable government monitor and track remittances more efficiently. It is incumbent on government to ensure timely remittances by operators. Conversely, it is easier on operators when they make timely remittances of collected taxes. A situation where unremitted taxes cumulate to hundreds of millions and government agents resort to the sealing of operators’ premises is counter-productive or inefficient at best.
Since government will be employing moral suasion along with strict enforcement, it is critical for it to demonstrate enhanced efficiency and transparency in spending. For instance, outlining projects under consideration or execution and dedicating proceeds from taxation to execute such projects will help in stemming the belief that government is not accountable to anyone. In a nutshell, the government must show increased transparency in matters relating to spending.
Looking at this issue purely from a business standpoint, it is my opinion that it is in the interest of entrepreneurs and business owners that this tax is enforced efficiently. I will give some reasons. Efficient enforcement and collection will contribute to the growth of the internally generated revenue IGR of the state and a huge chunk of it is projected for the improvement of physical and social infrastructure. Improved infrastructure will result in a more competitive environment for companies and industries as a result of lower operating costs (power, transportation, maintenance, insurance etc) and higher operational efficiencies and profitability. This improvement in the ease and cost of doing business will also attract a lot of investments into Lagos, further improving economic activity which will lead to increased patronage of the hospitality industry.
It is in recognition of its huge potential to enhance the state’s revenue base that I welcome the recent passage of the Hotel Occupancy and Restaurant Consumption (Fiscalization) bill by the Lagos State House of Assembly. The inclusion of such provisions as registration of electronic fiscal devices, installation of software and hardware, as well as the power to enter and inspect points of sale in the hotels and restaurant, among other requirements, would definitely reduce evasion of taxes by these business concerns.
An improvement of the state’s infrastructure will also result in more productive citizens. As less time is spent in traffic for instance due to the availability of better roads as well as alternative means of transportation such as light rail systems and the waterways, there will be lower levels of employee downtimes because of better healthcare systems; higher employee motivation levels due to availability of recreational parks, etc. The resulting inefficiencies will also free up time to enable people keep multiple jobs more easily. Improved family incomes, by the way, also means improved patronage of hotels, restaurants and events centres.
Lastly, it is instructive to note that the infrastructural development and improvement initiatives of Lagos State also aim at exploiting and advancing her tourism potential. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode proclaimed at the One Lagos Fiesta in December 2017 that his administration is committed to making Lagos “a must-visit and Africa’s best tourism destination”. Current initiatives such as the transportation masterplan; waste management masterplan (cleaner Lagos Initiative); preservation of the state’s historical and cultural heritage; and the creation of more recreational centres and parks are all key drivers of tourism as they have a pull effect on tourists.
Tourism opens up a place further to foreign investments while local businesses and service providers are able to attract offshore funds through the influx of tourists. For instance, certain businesses in Egypt were set up to service tourists. Accommodation, feeding and entertainment, which are provided by the hospitality industry, usually constitute the tourist’s biggest spend. Therefore, hotels, restaurants and events centres may yet be the biggest beneficiaries of consumption tax, which they collect from their clients on behalf of the government.

Adaba is a Lagos-based entrepreneur

Sufuyan Ojeifo

When former President Olusegun Obasanjo released his state of the nation press statement of January 23, 2018, calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to forget about 2019 presidency due to failure of his purported nepotistic leadership that has left the country more divided than he met it, among other failings, the responsibility of responding to him was given to a Yoruba man from Kwara State, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who is the Minister of Information, Culture and National Orientation. 

The minister did a fantastic job of it. His response was measured. He was not combative. He did not go haywire, using invectives on Obasanjo as did the minders of Goodluck Jonathan’s administration when a similar fate befell their boss in 2013. Mohammed simply listed the achievements of the government and politely pointed out the inherent mischief in Obasanjo’s charge of the below-the-average performance against Buhari in the light of all the verifiable achievements that he listed.  Brilliant!

I would have been disappointed if the minister had imprudently jumped into the fray.  With that calculated outing, I had thought the Buhari administration had devised a foolproof strategy of dealing with tendentious issues around the 2019 presidency and the right of first refusal to the presidential ticket that is exclusively Buhari’s in his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), until the salacious press statement of Sunday, February 4, 2018 by former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), hit the already tentative polity like a grenade.

In the statement, IBB called for a new breed of young leaders to step in the saddle of governance in 2019, most especially the presidency of Nigeria.

The crux of the press statement issued on his behalf by his spokesman, Kassim Afegbua, was very clear: even if Buhari decides to exercise his constitutional rights to contest in the 2019 presidential election, Nigerians should muster their voting rights or power to enthrone a more vibrant, progressive, cosmopolitan, knowledge-driven and technologically-inclined alternative from the corpus of young leaders with which Nigeria is blessed.

The IBB intervention could not have come at a better time.  It was evidently reinforcing the call for departure from the old order, coming on the heels of Obasanjo’s admonition.

Although the statement came with unexpected drama: purported denial by IBB that he authorized the release of the statement, another statement of IBB’s purported real position and finally some follow-up confirmations that were personally made to the various media houses by Afegbua that the original statement he issued on behalf of his boss should be respected as his boss’ real position.

The role Afegbua played in preserving the “res” was quite significant.  With the support of his boss, he ensured that the gravitas around the historic intervention and the import of it was not degraded.

Amid the confusion, THISDAY had taken a step further to speak to IBB himself and he confirmed the authenticity of the original statement issued on his behalf by Afegbua.  I had thought that should have cleared once, and for all time, the controversy deliberately orchestrated to create credibility problem for the remarkable intervention by the former military president.  Surprisingly, the response by the federal government, through the Inspector General of Police, this time round, has been shambolic.

The decision by the IGP, Ibrahim Kpotun Idris, from IBB’s Niger state, to declare Afegbua wanted in connection with the statement he issued on IBB’s behalf and which IBB had confirmed as coming from him, beggars belief and understanding.  If it is part of the strategy to sustain the deliberate narrative that the statement was not sure-footedly articulated and issued, then it shows how puerile the Police and their leadership have become.  It also speaks to the IGP’s whimsical defence of his appointer’s political position without considering the full implications of the step he has taken for the polity, especially the human rights record of his boss’ administration.

One only hopes that this is not another indication of the burgeoning intolerance by the administration to opposition.  Only recently, the Police deployed their power to force a former governor of Kano state and serving senator, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, to cancel his January 30, 2018 scheduled home visit that would have enabled him to meet with his supporters, preparatory to his 2019 political engagements.  The police succeeded in keeping Kwankwaso away from Kano only for the state governor, Ibrahim Ganduje, to organise a rally for the same day during which many APC youths displayed dangerous weapons while welcoming some defectors from other parties.

The Police are overreaching themselves, going beyond the points they should not get to.  The Police cannot defend their complicity, bias and incompetence in Kwankwaso’s case.  The IGP cannot also defend his gaffe in Afegbua’s matter.  For crying out loud, the IGP studied law in addition to his first degree in agriculture.  It is a howling aberration, therefore, for him to go after an agent of a disclosed principal even after the principal had confirmed the genuineness of the statement issued on his behalf by the agent.

I cannot really understand what the IGP is trying to do.   Is it a case of abandoning leprosy and trying to treat ringworm? If he had wanted direct confirmation, he should have called IBB; except he wants me to runaway with the impression that he could not muster the courage to put a call through to the “evil genius” at the hilltop mansion in Minna on the testy issue.

I also do not want to believe that the IGP has not maintained a cordial relationship with the influential leaders of his state, including IBB and another former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, such that he could have casually discussed a matter like this with any of them; otherwise, he would not have engaged in this egregious blunder of playing to the gallery with the Afegbua matter and willy-nilly making a hero out of him.   The IGP missed it and it is sad.

Even, if he felt that Afegbua should be invited to interact with the Police on the matter, he should have quietly done so and not by declaring him wanted like a common criminal.

It is good that Afegbua, through his lawyers, had already indicated that he would be at the Police headquarters on Wednesday, February 7, for an interaction with the law enforcement agency.

The attention of the entire world is on the Police to know exactly what demands they would place on him: whether to rebut the statement he issued on IBB’s behalf in its entirety or to rebut some aspects on the grounds that they were his own infusions or inclusions.  If that is the way they want to go, I hope they would not be ridiculous to claim that Afegbua took advantage of IBB’s old age and trust to tinker with IBB’s original thoughts on the 2019 presidential contestation. Whatever happens to Afegbua, the Police should rest assured that they will account to the public.

Ojeifo writes via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com

Rauf Aregbesola

We are gathered here to inaugurate 389 councillors representing the same number of wards in the state. This will be followed by the inauguration of the parliaments from whence will emerge the governments in the Local Government Councils, Local Council Development Areas, Area Councils and Administrative Offices in the state.

The councillors emerged after a keenly contested election on January 27, 2018, following many years of delay tactics employed by those who are afraid of their inevitable defeat and rejection at the polls by the grassroots.
It is most pleasing to see democratic government return to the local governments after many trysts with caretaker committees and executive secretaryship.
The process culminating in today’s ceremony is in fulfilment of Section 7 (1) of the Nigerian constitution that requires that ‘The system of local government by democratically elected local government councils is under this Constitution guaranteed; and accordingly, the Government of every State shall, subject to section 8 of this Constitution, ensure their existence under a Law which provides for the establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of such councils.’
There have been genuine concern as well as malicious opposition to the adoption of parliamentary system of government at the local government, when in contrast, we have the executive system at the national and state levels. Such fears and worries are unfounded.
First, our decision is not against the constitution, as quoted earlier. Nowhere did it mention executive or parliamentary – only that it must be democratic – and parliamentary system is as democratic as you can ever get.
You will recall that in 2012, the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria asked for memoranda on the review of the 1999 Constitution. A 15-man committee was set up in Osun under the chairmanship of Barrister Gbadegesin Adedeji to aggregate the opinion and views from the state. The committee held public sittings for three weeks during which members of the public, institutions, nongovernmental organisations and others made submissions. In the end, it was the overwhelming wish of the people, as stated in the committee’s report, that parliamentary system of government be adopted at all levels of government. What we have done therefore is to defer to the wish of the people in their clamour for parliamentary system of government.
Secondly, parliamentary system is more democratic, compared to the executive, in that the executive system tends towards dictatorship, arbitrariness and absolutism, since power is concentrated in one man’s hand, with little or no check. Whereas, in a parliamentary system, the executive emerges from and is formed in the parliament, making the members of parliament to be members of the executive as well and the leadership of the executive to be first among equals, primus inter pares.
In a parliamentary system, decisions are taken collectively and must be agreed upon by the majority in the house while members of the executive who are also parliamentarians can and are daily called to answer questions on any executive action taken.
Thirdly, because the executive members are appointed from parliament, a lot of cost is saved, compared to when fresh persons have to be appointed as ministers, commissioners, chairmen of councils etc. This system also saves campaign cost and reduces the impetus for corruption considering that a candidate only needs to campaign in his or her constituency, unlike in the executive system where a presidential candidate must tour the whole country and a governorship candidate must tour the whole state while a chairmanship candidate must tour the entire local council.
The final reason we preferred parliamentary system is that it affirmed the supremacy of the political party. The party is an institution that is greater than an individual. It is a body that personifies the views, ideology, beliefs and tendency of a political association. When a citizen joins a party, it is because he or she agrees for what it stands for. Indeed, parties campaign for elections on the strength of their tendency and field candidates that embody and will represent the party in every way. This brings stability, reliability, predictability and order to the political system. This is why studies have consistently shown that parliamentary systems are more stable and less prone to corruption, compared to the executive system.
Those who are familiar with the British Parliament and our experience in the First Republic will attest to the fact that parliamentary system deepens democracy and offers far greater political representation and governance effectiveness than any other system.
This is the system the councillors being inaugurated today are getting into. You must therefore listen to your people and give them access. Your status has placed you in a position of leadership, but not in a position of supremacy and tyranny over the people. You must also see yourselves as change agents that will transform governance at your local communities and deepen democratic practice with quality representation of your people.
Your first task therefore is to maintain sanitation of the environment. You must bring an end to the filth that tends to overrun our communities if care is not taken. You must take ownership of waste management by working with the relevant government agencies and private operators to make our state to be spic and span, neat and beautiful to behold.
Secondly, you must also take charge of the various markets in your communities. You will organise the people and get them to buy and sell only in the markets and eliminate any form of street trading. Street trading is primitive, dangerous, contributes to garbage accumulation and impedes road traffic. There must be no room for it again.
Thirdly, but not less important, is revenue generation. You will galvanise all resources at your disposal to generate revenue for the government. We all take the government for granted, but as we all see now, without revenue there can be no government.

Aregbesola, Governor of Osun, made these remarks at the swearing-in ceremony of 389 councillors that will form the parliaments of the local governments in the state on February 6, 2018.

Bernard Adinuba

Nigeria is today engulfed in a boiling conundrum over the menace of Fulani cattle herdsmen, who as it seems, are engaged in stiff competition with the Boko Haram insurgents for a boisterous position in the infamous acts of terrorism.

Declaration by the Federal Government that the insurgents are by no means terrorists and its demand from the state governments to surrender their lands to the Fulani for grazing reserves, what it euphemistically termed “cattle colonies”, reveals the grave national tragedy waiting to explode. The cattle rearing politics is a legacy of the colonial administration, contextualized within the framework of agricultural policies since 1921. The genesis is traceable to the memorandum of 1921 which blueprint divided the Colony and Protectorate into arbitrary boundaries in accordance with ecological differentiation. It delineated the arid Northern Savannah and their southern fringes for pastoral production which consisted of Zebu and Gudali cattle in addition to export of cotton, groundnut and hides and skins.

The last item alone was valued £3.75 million in 1949. The Middle Belt was designated for food production in spite of the fact that it had large supplies of the trypanotolerant Ndama cattle stock. The palm belt zone was mapped out for export of palm oil and kernel notwithstanding that Igboland reared sizable number of Muturu – the indigenous dwarf, shorthorn tsetse resistant cattle. The Southwestern provinces were assigned with the export of cocoa and palm produce. It is worthy of note that in spite of the cynical reservations of fellow administrators who advanced the argument that the policies were incoherent and in a state of flux, they were adopted by all the directors of Agriculture: O. T. Faulkner, (1921-1936), J. R. Mackie (1936-1945) and A. G. Beatle (1945-1954 .

While busy carrying out boisterous propaganda on Southern and Middle Belt trypanosomiasis for which reason it discouraged livestock development in these places, the regime worked assiduously on the elimination of epizootic diseases in the North, which rinderpest constituted the worst menace, causing heavy economic losses since 1895 when it was first reported. Through wurin aiki – rinderpest camp sites established in each province since 1920, recumbent Fulani cattle were inoculated and the disease was successfully extirpated. In 1924, veterinary laboratories were established at Vom, a tsetse-free territory in Jos, to combat major epizootic diseases.

Fodder crops and grazing methods were developed and in pursuance of the fiscal policy of cattle taxation, the government frowned at the close-knitted practice of the nomadic Fulani cattle herders, who somewhat restricted their business to the North. It encouraged them to spread their cattle marketing southwards so that the benefits of Nigeria’s livestock would not remain the prerogative of a single tribe.

In any case, epidemiology of Cyclorrhapha tsetse flies otherwise called Glossina spp. was nationwide. While the South had a prevalence of Glossina Palpalis and G. tachinoides varieties, the North had in addition, G. Pallicera, G. hanningtoni, G. tabanifomis plus the most widespread and deadly G. fusca, found mostly in Niger, Kabba, Kaduna, Adamawa etc. Similarly, while the poisonous blood-sucking black flies of the simuldae family were prevalent in the Northern zone, they were rare in the Eastern and Western provinces. When it made a brief appearance in Oji River near Enugu in the early 1960s, its eradication programme was immediately carried out using DDT miscible.

In the North, eradication of tsetse flies commenced with the 1925 Kaduna Tsetse Conference, which culminated in the setting up of a joint veterinary and medical investigation centre at Gadau, north of Azare in1930. In 1948, the West African Institute for Trypanosomiasis Research (WAITR) was set up in Kaduna to serve the West African sub-region. In 1960, its name changed to the Nigerian Institute of Trypanosomiasis Research (NITR), with its activities still restricted to the North. The Federal Ministry of Health also operated sleeping sickness centres for the human angle of the disease, again restricting its services to the Northern states. By 1951, over 50, 000 cattle were treated per annum, by 1957, the figure had shot up to 770, 000. However, by 1960, only some 794 km2 of grazing land had been freed of tsetse infestation, increasing to over 500 km2 by the late 1970s. Unfortunately, as effort was limited to extension services and research, no government initiative was geared towards introducing the Western idea of ranching.

The counterproductive effect of the colonial agricultural policies on the entire nation became manifest during the Second World War when widespread hunger and malnutrition became the lot of the people, rich and poor alike, and manifesting more in protein and vitamin deficiencies.

It was worsened by prohibition order on the importation of a wide range of foodstuff from Europe including meat, milk and beverages. But the Fulani became the beneficiaries. Ban on cheese and butter imports led the government to kick-start the production of clarified butter fat (CBF) at Vom and Kano. Network of milk collection centres were established throughout the North and output rose from 90, 000 to 136, 000 kg of butter per annum and 22, 500 and 27, 000 kg of cheese.

The Fulani made good business by supplying the raw materials in the form of cream from which CBF was obtained through hand-driven centrifugal separators. Small dairy schemes also developed in Okene (Kabba Province) and Jakiri near Bamenda in the Cameroons then under Nigerian suzerainty. The booming business, however, ended abruptly at the end of war when better quality products started coming from Europe.

In any case, the wartime Fulani boost continued. Cattle Multiplication Centres (CMCs) also called ‘Fulani Treatment Centres,’ established throughout the Northern Provinces engaged in crossbreeding of local species with exotic equivalent to produce pure Friesian breed.

     It could be seen that the colonial livestock policy created disunity and sowed the seeds of today’s wrongful notion by the Fulani that they alone are endowed with monopoly of cattle rearing business. The report of Nigerian Livestock Mission from London led by Thomas Shaw and Gilbert Colvile (Sir Frank Ware) in 1949 did not fail to indict the colonial administration on the matter, accusing it of exaggerating the tsetse situation in the South. It was not until the Oliver Lyttleton Constitution of 1954, which introduced federalism with regional autonomy, that the Southern provinces for the first time established their own ministries of agriculture with rudimentary research and extension services.

Dr. Adinuba, a Lagos based Agro-Industrial Projects/Investment consultant, writes via adinubabenna@gmail.com

There is no doubt that Nigeria, with its multi ethnic groups, cultures and languages, is a dynamic society. Nigeria’s diversity, which many think is its major problem, can be its strength at times. Unfortunately, the country has not positively exploited its diversity.

The beauty of our politics is the diversity of its participants, some of whom intervene at a crucial point in the life of the nation. The recent letter written to President Muhammadu Buhari by former President Olusegun Obasanjo exemplifies such worthy intervention. The effect of the letter is being felt in the polity.

That is why some Nigerians are hardly not surprised at the All Progressives Congress (APC) belated U-turn on restructuring after Obasanjo’s open letter to Buhari. I recall that this is an issue the party has been struggling for months to find its exact meaning. If there is any single achievement of the Obasanjo’s letter, it is the APC’s new posturing on restructuring, an issue it has not given any serious attention before. The party’s hurried move in defence of restructuring is suspect following the bitter missive of Obasanjo.

That the party has dramatically come up with its recommendations on restructuring, an issue dismissed by President Buhari in his New Year message to the nation, is an indication that Obasanjo’s simple letter is capable of achieving some aims. It shows that words have power and such powers can be politically deployed to achieve some changes and goals.

More confounding is that the APC’s recommendations on restructuring, which include devolution of powers, resource control, state police and scrapping of existing local government structure among other things, are not quite different from the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference report. Why did the party jettison the 2014 confab report? Is government not a continuum?

Apart from APC’s move to restructure the country, Obasanjo’s letter has made the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to wake up from its slumber. To show that the anti-corruption war of the administration is seemingly on course, the anti-graft agency has, at last, arrested the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal. What about the case of Maina that Obasanjo mentioned in his letter? There are indeed more questions than answers. It is unfortunate that simply because of Obasanjo’s letter, APC has now found the meaning of restructuring it didn’t know some months ago. How much the party believed in restructuring is yet to be seen. How far the APC restructuring will go is open to conjectures. How the party tries to restructure Nigeria will be seen before the 2019 general elections commence. If the party wants to be taken seriously by Nigerians it must walk its talk. 

It must do what it is saying because mere pronouncement without action is not enough. Will the APC play politics with restructuring or will it actually do it before the general elections? This is one question begging for an urgent and honest answer from the party. On one hand, if the party really shows signs that it will restructure the country and make serious efforts to do so before the 2019 poll, it will be fine and good.

And on the other hand, if the APC plays with restructuring or uses it as a bait to get the votes of Nigerians in 2019, it will mark its political end.  And if the APC thinks that it can gain any political mileage by its sudden U-turn on restructuring, the party should better think twice. Implementing its restructuring recommendations at this point in time will never confer on it any political advantage.  Therefore, let it not think that restructuring Nigeria now, something it should have done before, will give it any advantage in the coming poll. At the same time, using restructuring gambit to buy time will not save the party from the impending electoral doom that awaits it if it fails to fulfill its electoral promises, chief among which, is restructuring.

The party should know that Nigerians are very angry with it over many unfulfilled promises. The better life it promised Nigerians is yet to be seen. The change it promised has become a mirage. The protection of life and property, the main reason government exists, has turned into untimely deaths to many Nigerians and destruction of property by rampaging Fulani herdsmen.  APC should be made to understand that it cannot deceive Nigerians twice.

A party that has not kept faith with its numerous promises should not be trusted again. There is no doubt that Obasanjo’s observations in the letter are true and objective assessment of the Buhari administration. Even the government recognizes the patriotism of the messenger but faulted the message. But Nigerians have taken the message and no amount of propaganda or media campaign will make Nigerians to disbelieve it.

Most Nigerians have dismissed the APC’s new posturing on restructuring and questioned its timing and integrity. They see what the APC is doing with restructuring as a diversionary tactic to win the 2019 poll. They see it as a means to buy the needed time and sweep aside the germane issues raised by Obasanjo’s letter. But the more the party does that,  the more Nigerians understand the import of Obasanjo’s state of the nation address.

I have doubts that the APC can truly restructure Nigeria before the 2019 election exercise. The time from now to the commencement of the election is rather too short for it. This is the problem with its restructuring posture. There are so many reasons Nigerians will doubt the party’s new romance with restructuring. In the first place, this is a party that did not initially understand what restructuring means even though it is part of its manifesto during the 2015 poll.

This is a party that never believed in restructuring. This is a party that has consigned the 2014 confab reports to the archives. This is a party that says that the problem with Nigeria is process and not structure. Why did the party waste two and half years seeking for the meaning of restructuring?

Besides, key members of the party, including those that are now fronting for restructuring, did not believe in the concept called restructuring. This is the moral burden of APC’s new stand on restructuring.

Akin Rotimi 

Ten eventful years have passed since I met my mentor and benefactor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi in Accra, Ghana during the African Business Leaders Forum. The ABLF was the brain child of Mr. Everest Ekong, now of blessed memory, designed to be the premier annual gathering of African business and policy leaders to advance the peace and prosperity of Africa. For that edition, the organisers had collaborated with Ndidi Nwuneli’s LEAP Africa to identify 101 emerging young African leaders, and invited them to participate, all-expense paid, in the conference.

The initiative was to create a platform for the selected young Africans to receive leadership training, and to connect with older and more accomplished leaders. I was blessed to be chosen, alongside a number of other exceptional young Nigerians, many of whom have gone on to accomplished careers in the public, private and civic sectors. My relationship with Dr. Fayemi today is as much a testimony to late Mr. Ekong’s vision and facilitation, as it is a demonstration of Dr. Fayemi’s patient commitment to mentoring the successor generation.

Looking back over the span of the decade that has followed, it has occurred to me that it was a providential meeting – one that altered the course of my life and spawned a richly fulfilling professional and personal relationship. On Dr. Fayemi’s 53rd birthday, I find it appropriate to celebrate not only the man, but my relationship of ten years with one of the most remarkable individuals I have ever met. Within this period, I have been privileged to work with him at close quarters, first as a volunteer in his campaign before he became Governor; as Principal Private Secretary during his term as Governor of Ekiti; and now as an adviser to him as minister.

It is often said that politics is a game of facades in which no one is truly as they seem. However, there are spaces within which a man cannot be anything other than himself, for no human being can possibly wear political masks at all times. I count myself lucky to be within Dr. Fayemi’s circle of trust and space of authenticity, and can confirm that he has no facades – what you see is what you get. He exhibits a consistency of character that extends from his personal space to his public persona. There is no contradiction between private convictions and his public persona, which is a rare trait among public figures.

At the time I met Dr. Fayemi, he had made the fateful plunge into partisan politics and run for governor of Ekiti. What followed was a protracted and ultimately successful court battle to reclaim his mandate. During the three and half long years of litigation, he underwent the trials of uncertainty without becoming embittered by the rejection of his adversaries and the treachery of supposed allies. His equanimity of spirit made a profound impression on me.

As someone whose work at the time had been in the academia and civil society, Dr. Fayemi’s migration from the sidelines into the trenches of politics was intriguing. It seemed an experiment to test the widely held theory that honest and competent Nigerians cannot survive the quagmire of politics. This is the theory that has kept many good people of my generation, and that before mine, out of politics for fear of being tainted and consumed. Fayemi has negotiated the turbulent waters of partisan politics without losing his humanity. At the heart of this achievement lies Fayemi’s moral compass. He is first a man of deep convictions, and a politician driven by concrete principles rather than situational ethics. This became apparent when during his three and half year legal battle, he made it clear that he was not merely engaging in egotistical obduracy, but was seeking to expand the possibilities of legal remediation in our politics through his dogged pursuit of justice.

After his tenure as Governor, and a central role in the APC Presidential campaign council, there was surprise in some quarters when in November 2015? Dr. Fayemi was appointed Minister of Mines and Steel Development. The Mining sector was not the most obvious choice for a distinguished scholar of History and Strategic Studies, with an expansive array of relationships in the international development and governance circuit. But he was not fazed. Illustrating his conviction that every position is only a point on the continuum of public service, Fayemi confronted his assignment with customary rigour, immersing himself in studying the sector, researching its history, consulting predecessors, and arming himself with knowledge. He has demonstrated a clear determination to leave a legacy in the annals of Natural Resource Governance in Nigeria with his methodical approach to addressing the sector’s historical challenges.

Thus, within his first year, Fayemi drove the formulation of a sector roadmap unprecedented in its scope, ambition and buy-in. The reforms in the sector required a figure of stature to rally all the stakeholders. Fayemi fit the bill. Using a decisive yet consensual leadership style, he secured the buy-in of a disparate range of industry actors in charting a new course for the sector. If his transition from state governor to federal minister has been seamless, it is due to Fayemi’s consistency. In bringing all the sector stakeholders together, Fayemi was applying the same philosophy of participatory governance that defined his gubernatorial term in Ekiti, embodying the belief that the people must have a say in the policies that affect them.

Despite his tedious schedule, the quintessential philosopher-king Fayemi always finds time to engage with public issues. His calendar brims with engagements on the public lecture circuit. Despite being in the political space, he believes passionately in connecting governance to ideas. He is a policy wonk that grounds policies in philosophical yet pragmatic contexts.

Values-centered leadership is perhaps the most important lesson I have learnt from Fayemi. As he often says, a public-spirited, service-driven citizen is undaunted by the transience of power. On the day he left office as governor in October 2014, together with his wife, he flew to the United States where he was billed to deliver a lecture at the John Hopkins University the very next day. He made it a point of duty to be properly addressed as a private citizen since he was now an ex-governor.  Having performed creditably at the sub-national level, he certainly was not at a loss as to what to do post office, before duty called for greater roles at the national level. I was privileged to have accompanied him on that weeklong trip and what struck me was the utter absence of defeatism or bitterness following a controversial electoral defeat – only a resolve to get on with life.

In that week, I got a measure of the man, observing his fortitude and even-temperedness despite a campaign of calumny against him and his dear wife by his successor in office. These slanders have since been proven baseless even as that administration has sought to undo the good works of the Fayemi administration. Dr. Fayemi however remains determined to use every means at his disposal to set Ekiti, the object of his labour of love, back on the right path.

Together with his wife, Erelu Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, he has participated in every major life event I have had, making time out even in inconvenient circumstances to offer their support; thus demonstrating uncommon loyalty and commitment to those associated with them. This is a consistent testimony by his family, mentees, friends and associates. Personally, he has also allowed me room to make mistakes in my own journey of self-discovery, and I am deeply grateful.

Rotimi is Senior Special Assistant to the Minister

During the last yuletide the euphoria was high and aspirants in the coming governorship election in Ekiti State were embroiled in a game of wit for relevance. However, rather than play to the gallery, one of the leading lights in the race, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, was consulting and brainstorming with some of the best minds from the state who are currently in diaspora.

Certainly in Ekiti State of today, the center seems to have been heartlessly severed. The current occupants of political offices in the state have stagnated its economy and battered its people. It is a state where the government celebrates and glamourizes poverty and lack. It was therefore obvious that many of the aspirants exploited the ravaging poverty in the state to sell themselves to the electorates. Gifts came in different forms from all manners of aspirants, all in an attempt to lure the visibly hungry people to support their cause.

The incumbent governor Ayodele Fayose was not left out. He went a step ahead of others to announce Christmas clothes for about 10,000 indigent children but saying nothing about their parents who are being owed close to a year salary by same government.

But as the celebration was in the air, Ojudu who is the incumbent Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, was putting finishing touches into his plans to lift the state back to its pride of place.

The bid to reorganize and reposition his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, which he started about a year ago is already yielding desired fruits. Ojudu has also been talking to both the old and the young across the state on how to revive the state. “It is a project that we have to pursue with vigour and unwavering joint effort. We have to sacrifice our today together for a better tomorrow,” has been his message everywhere he goes.

And having spread the message across the state with resounding success, support came from the Ekiti indigenes in Diaspora . They extended an invitation to him to partner with them in the bid to rescue Ekiti State.

Under the programme, Ojudu would visit the United States of America and hold Town Hall meetings in five major cities, New York, Houston, Atlanta and Maryland and Los Angeles.

Accompanied by three members of the Ekiti Rebirth Organisation, ERO Nigeria, Messrs Femi Ajiniran, Tunji David and Segun Ajibulu, Ojudu joined the USA coordinators and members- Joe Tolu Olugbamila, Kayode Omoboya, Beatrice Ayorinde, Olumide Olamosun, Mina Parker, and Olumide Adakeja for a tour of several US cities for consultations and discussions on the future of Ekiti state.

Ekiti in Diasporas were particularly impressed with how he wants to tackle unemployment in Ekiti State by creating agricultural settlements in the sixteen local governments of the State to absorb the unemployed.

At every stop, Ojudu took time to listen to the concerns of Ekiti in Diasopra as he profusely took notes of their recommendations and suggestions. He took time to explain his vision for the state while also responding on burning political issues in the country as a whole.

On the myriad of problems in Ekiti States and Nigeria which renders political leaders unpopular, Ojudu said it is time politicians came up with programmes that will address the needs of the people collectively.

Reports from the different states visited by Ojudu during the parley show that a new Ekiti is possible with Ojudu in the saddle, says Dr Emmanuel Dada, a university professor based in Houston.

Throughout the Town Hall meetings, Ojudu was very clear about his vision which is to rescue the state from mismanagement, misappropriation of state funds, non-payment of workers’ salaries, unemployment, endemic failures, mental slavery and the insult called Stomach Infrastructure. The Senator’s presentation of his FINE Agenda was met with resounding applause and standing ovation at the Town Hall meetings.

As a mark of honour, Dr. Olubunmi Obayemi came from Virginia to Bowie in Maryland to give her touching testimony of how Ojudu got her through Medical School. Mrs. Bolanle Opanuga of Taxpoint presented the company’s Merit award to the Senator in recognition of his love and passion for Ekiti State. The Senator’s citation read at the Town Hall meetings invoked sympathy and emotional outburst among Ekitis in Diaspora. When they were reminded of the Senator’s role in Nigeria’s political struggle, Human Rights activities, imprisonment without trial, and ordeals in the hands of Nigerian Military Juntas, it was in unison that Ekiti in Diaspora agreed that he can surely rebuild Ekiti State as governor.

The team later visited Sahara Reporters where Senator Ojudu granted an interview to Sahara TV. It is significant to note that Ojudu is one of the few Nigerian politicians who can boldly walk into Sahara Reporters without any fear of being accused of corruption.

The climax of the Town Hall meetings was the presentation of an award to Senator Ojudu by the Atlanta City Council. The award which was signed by the President of Atlanta City Council, Felicia Moore and other members of the council is in recognition of the senator’s service to humanity and contribution to the development of the legislative arm of government at the Nigerian Senate.

The award which ceremony took place a day earlier before Ojudu arrived Atlanta due to flight cancellations in New York was received on his behalf by Engr. Soji Tinubu. He was presented with the award at the Atlanta Town Hall meeting. A similar award by the Georgia State House of Representatives was presented to Senator Ojudu for his role in fighting for democracy in Nigeria.

In Los Angeles, it was more of a pan Nigeria reception than Ekiti. Scores of Nigerian professionals came from the west coast to hear the journalist cum politician talk.  As soon as the Nigerian community leaders in LA knew he was in town, they wanted to meet this man they’ve heard about for decades – first as a brilliant journalist, then as a prisoner of conscience and eventually a politician.

And, he didn’t disappoint. If every politician was like Senator Ojudu Nigeria will be a few miles from economic heaven. Chike Nweke, the publisher of African Life and Times in Los Angeles graciously opened his home and Senator Ojudu opened his heart.

Even though I’ve known him for more than two decades, he is still a fighter at heart, a fighter for the people and the common good. And, that is an uncommon thing. I have seen this man fight for journalists’ welfare when I was a teenager and now firmly settled in my fourth decade, I still see him fighting for the people, this time the people of Ekiti. It’s a fight that flows through his vein and is part of his DNA.

Many people came out of this weekend gathering and meetings in Los Angeles with one clear conclusion – Senator Babafemi Ojudu is the only alternative for Ekiti. Those who didn’t know him now support him. Those who knew him now follow him passionately. And everyone was moved to action, the action of changing Nigeria state by state – with Senator Ojudu starting in Ekiti.

•Gboyega Adeoye is a Media Consultant writes from Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State.

ERIC TENIOLA

On December 12 1978 after winning the Presidential nomination of the NPN, Alhaji Shehu Shagari did not name his running mate. The rules of the party gave him the prerogative to name his running mate after consulting with the party leaders.

As he locked himself up at Eko Hotel, speculations remained high on who he would nominate as his running mate. Several names were mentioned. The name of Dr. Kinsley Ozumba Mbadiwe topped the list. Dr. Mbadiwe and Alhaji Shehu Shagari were colleagues as Ministers under the then Prime Minister, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa. While Alhaji Shagari served as Minister of Internal Affairs in April 1965, Dr. Mbadiwe served as Minister of Trade. In fact Dr. Mbadiwe’s best friend, Dr. Kolawole Balogun, Nigeria’s former ambassador to Ghana, from Otan Aiyegbaju in the present Osun state told anyone who cared to listen that Dr. Mbadiwe was the choice.

Another group wanted Dr. Josiah Onyebuchi Johnson Okezie from Umuahia-Ibeku in Imo state. Under General Yakubu Gowon, Dr. Okezie was Minister for health and later Minister for Agriculture and Natural Resources before becoming Chairman Board of Directors, African Continental Bank (ACB). In the constituent assembly he represented Ikwuano/Umuahia/Bende constituency. There was also the youthful, Dr. Dike Nworah, a historian and businessman from Awka in Anambra state, who later became the Owelle of Awka.

Being the National Secretary of the party, Dr Nwakama Okoro(SAN) was also mentioned as a possible choice. The profile of Dr. Okoro was intimidating. He was from Amuri, Arochukwu in Imo state. He had earlier served as the Secretary of the Enugu branch of the Nigerian Bar Association. Between 1976 and 1978, he was the President of Nigerian Bar Association. In the Constituent Assembly of 1977-198 he represented Ohafia/Arochukwu constituency.

Other names mentioned were my friend, Dr. Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo,the Oyi of Oyi, Chief Christian Chukwuma Onoh, Dr B.U. Nzeribe, Chief Hilary Njoku, Mr.M.N. Elechi and Mr. J.S. Asegua.

Dr. Okadigbo represented Onitsha/Anambra constituency in the constituent assembly while Chief C.C. Onoh represented Enugu constituency. Mr. Elechi represented Abakaliki/ Ikwo constituency. Dr. Mbadiwe represented Ideato/Nkwerre/Isu constituency while Chief Hilary Njoku represented Owerri/Ikeduru constituency. In the constituent assembly, Chief Onoh was very vocal in championing for the creation of WAWA state now Enugu state. He was a member of Federal House of Representatives representing Enugu Metropolitan council between 1958-1959. He was Chancellor of the Anglican Diocese of Enugu in 1969 and Chairman Market Authority (1971-1987) and later Chairman Nigeria Mining Corporation. He held the title of Okaa Omee of Ngwo.

At that time, Dr. Azikiwe’s party, the NPP was the dominant party in East Central zone-thanks to Chief Jim Nwobodo and Chief Sam Mbakwe. The publicity Secretary of the party at that time, Chief Mo Obiekwe told me several times that the people of Imo and Anambra states would never vote NPN insisting that the scars of the war were still with them.

On Tuesday December 15, Alhaji Shagari embarked on a National campaign tour that took him to Ibadan, Benin,Warri,Owerri,Port-Harcourt,Calabar and later ended on December 30 in Enugu. In Calabar at Metropolitan hotel at a party hosted by the former Commissioner for transport in the old south eastern state, Dr Joseph Wayas, I teased Alhaji Shagari to give me a Christmas present by disclosing to me exclusively his running mate. He smiled and directed me to Alhaji Umaru Dikko to tell me. For forty-two days Alhaji Shagari did name his running mate.

Finally on January 23, 1979, the NPN called for a press conference at the party headquarters at Jibowu street, Yaba, Lagos and I saw an unsmiling Dr. Okadigbo at the ground floor complaining to me “He’s not even in our party, can you believe that”. He then directed me to the first floor where Alhaji Shagari was holding a press conference in company of party leaders. It was at the conference that Alhaji Shagari first presented Dr. Alex Ifeanyi Ekwueme as his running mate. I saw a handsome gentle man who looked urbane and polished whom I have never heard of in National politics. It was the introduction and later the Presidential election that shot Chief Ekwueme to National spotlight and made him a treasured National asset. Since that day, he never came down from being valued.

Why Alhaji Shagari picked Dr. Ekwueme is still a mystery and only Alhaji Shagari could explain His name was never speculated. Dr. Alex Ifeanyichukwu was forty-six at that time. He was unknown in the political arena. Except for his business profile as an Architect and Town Planner and that he once worked for Esso West Africa, Lagos overseeing the construction and maintenance department of the company, little was known about him in politics. The media over troubled Alhaji Suleiman Takuma, the spokesman of the NPN at that time to give details about Dr. Ekwueme, he was not forthcoming only promising “later”.

After the press conference, the media mocked Dr. Mbadiwe with a headline the following day Shagari picks Ekwueme but “KO is not OK”. The selection of Dr. Ekwueme rattled a lot of politicians in the East Central zone and created party crisis within the NPN.  A case in point was in Imo state where the leader of the party, Chief Nnana Kalu suspended Dr. Mbadiwe for alleged antiparty activities. Dr. Mbadiwe had to address the press later during which he asked ”Who is Nnana Kalu, From where did he derive his political authority, Have you ever heard where a messenger will auspend his boss, Enough of this political rascality”. The campaign was no doubt hectic especially for Dr. Ekwueme. For he could not mobilise enough people for his party in the East Central in spite of his gospel of reconciliation. He worked hard during the campaign. He spent a lot of money too but unfortunately for him in 1979, the east central zone was the empire of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and in spite of the civil war and fourteen years absence, the emperor was still in command of his empire.

In the July 7 1979 Senate election, the NPP won all the 10 seats in Imo and Anambra states. In the July 14 1979 election to the House of Representatives, the NPN had one seat in Anambra as against the NPP with 28 seats while in Imo states THE NPN had two seats against  the NPP with 28 seats. In the gubernatorial election that followed in Anambra state, Chief James Ifeanyichukwu Nwobodo, (77) alias Jim Nwobodo defeated Chief Christian Chukwuma Onoh of the NPN. In Imo state, Chief Samuel Onunaka Mbakwe from Avutu of the NPP defeated Dr. Nwakamma Okoro of the NPN in the gubernatorial election

In the Presidential election of August 11 1979, Shehu Shagari of the NPN scored 13.50% of the total votes in Anambra state as against 82.88% of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NPP. In Imo state, Alhaji Shehu Shagari scored 8.80% as against Dr. Azikiwe’s 84.69% for the NPP.

By Samuel Nwanjoku

“I understand the vision of my boss. I feel his pulse in his passion to render service to humanity. In all these, keep it simple and ensure you make input to make your leader succeed because that is one of the reasons he has me around.

“He is gifted. You should also pray that God grants you the grace to be able to understand him at every point in time, interpret his vision and you must be proactive to ensure a smooth sail of work plans.

“Again, always show deference to your father irrespective of your knowledge, exposure or whatever because such is the heavenly prize you must pay in gratitude. What Governor Okorocha has exposed me to in his magnanimity is nothing money can buy.”

The above excerpt was how the Deputy Governor of Imo State, Prince Ezeakonobi Madumere  way back in September 2016, in an interview with some reporters,  gave an insight into how deep the relationship he shares with his principal, Governor Rochas Okorocha  is.

Wake Madumere up from deep sleep and ask him about his boss, assuming there is something negative or damaging to the image of Okorocha, you are likely going to get a response not different from what he said in the above quotation that highlights the depth of love they share as political associates and family.

Perhaps, one man who understands the chemistry of Madumere’s relationship with Okorocha too well is Dr. Chuks Osuji, the United States of America trained historian and undisputable public relations icon and former Imo State Director of MAMSER.  

In a piece he wrote recently tagged “Prince Madumere And The Dignity Of Politics”, Osuji, a man who represents the conscience of Imo masses and the elite said:  “We all know that Prince Madumere is a long time confidant of Owelle, long before Owelle became the Governor of Imo State. Such a long relationship transcends political relationship….

“Secondly, it is clear that Prince Madumere has earned and continuously for nearly six years now that Owelle went to the government with Madumere, as Chief of staff, Government House, (prime minister and secondly as the Deputy Governor, his trust and confidence.

“Evidently, his Excellency is a unique person with different complexional and unpredictable operational variables. Some may say very difficult to comprehend appropriately. Yes, but like every other individuals he certainly has two personalities, the public and private personalities. One can therefore say that except Owelle’s spouse, Prince Madunmere is one individual; that can adequately read and analyze Owelle’s disposition.

“During the years of interwoven relationship, the ups and downs, Prince Madumere has remained constantly and unequivocally loyal, trust worthy and reliable. And he has never been known to criticize his boss in private or in public.

“Besides, he has preferred to remain as what John Collins, a social psychologist referred to as grand master of character assessment and adherent to ensure that two different individuals of different kinds remain as one almost two in one.

“Furthermore, since within the last few months as 2019 elections were drawing nearer, people in various press speculations tend to stir some issues of concern which Prince Madumere could emotionally react to, but has remained incontestably calm, quiet and non-committal, believing as he always believe, he is ‘Nwachinemere’, because whatever he has gained from Owelle he gained to the cost of his undiluted loyalty. And Owelle knows it.

“What is more, with such noble trust, he believes that this is time to continue to serve his boss and not time to begin to be drawn into preventable and worthless actions and speeches that would compromise his outstanding qualities for which Owelle loves, trusts and relies on him. Why must he rock the boat?”

Any moment from now, Okorocha will unveil to Ndi-Imo the man after his heart as far as 2019 and who succeeds him is concerned.

Going by what Okorocha told reporters during the week, he knows who will or not succeed him, and definitely the likes of former Senator representing Okigwe zone, Ifeanyi Ararume or the former governor, Ikedi Ohakim are not on the succession radar.

Though Okorocha did not expatiate on his beef with Araraume, he spoke so eloquently why Ohakim should not be allowed to return to the Government House, Owerri. “Ohakim will be on a revenge mission and cannot be trusted with state resources any longer,” Okorocha said.

Okorocha said of Ohakim: “If the former governor, by any means, returns to power, he will loot the state blind to make up for the long time he was out of power.

“I learnt that Ohakim is contesting the governorship in 2019. But this time, he is seeking for vengeance, and if he finds his way to power, he will pack the money of the state to cover up for those years he was out of power. So Imo people should not allow that to happen.

“The governor we want is a man that will continue with what we have done, because my administration has laid a solid foundation for the next governor.”

Explaining why he has not disclosed his likely successor, Okorocha said part of the reason was a deliberate ploy not to expose the person to harm.

Hear him: “If I show them my successor now, they will kill him. The politicians here are very wicked, but at the right time, when I disclose the identity of my successor, I will stand behind him to protect him.”

Tongues are wagging as to who the person Okorocha wants to unveil would or should be.

What is of paramount importance is that the governor had indicated interest in letting whosoever his choice would be to meet the desires of the electorate, who eventually would cast their ballot for the person as stakeholders in the Imo project.

Many names have sprung up in Imo as aspirants to the number one seat. Unfortunately, many analysts and commentators know for sure that not all those aspiring for the governorship ticket of the All Progressive Congress (APC) of Imo are really in the race. To many commentators, there could be more spoilers of shows than are aspirants. 

As I write, none of the governor’s associates is yet to formally declare even though from grapevine the likes of Madumere; the Speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly, Acho Ihim; Okorocha’s Chief of Staff and son in-law, Uche Nwosu; his former Secretary to the State Government, Jude Ejiogu, another in-law of Okorocha who is a House of Representatives member, Chike Okafor; a top banker with the Zenith Bank Plc, Stanley Amuchie and George Eche are said to be interested in succeeding him.

When the above persons make their own aspiration known, they would join one person, Retired Air Commodore Peter Gbujie whose has become public knowledge, to seek the nod of Imo APC electorate.

For the purpose of this intervention, the point ought to be made that nobody indicates interest in governing a state without the person having something to offer. So, to that extend, it is commendable that we have such number of brothers from Imo with genuine interest in taking over from the governor any time he exits office in 2019. They all need to be congratulated.

But beyond that, governance and leadership transcend mere showing of interest, and that is where we ought to be critical of whoever Okorocha unveils at this point in time.

Suffice, therefore, to say that the pedigree, capacity, and chances of the lucky one garnering the support of the generality of the Imolites in such a way that it would turn to electoral victory for the party must be the starting point.

The speculation that Madumere was poised to succeed Okorocha is wide and the sympathy for the deputy governor deep. Forget the political gerrymandering going on within the Rescue Mission camp, insiders and informed observers of the APC-led state government of Imo State believe Madumere remains first among equals and should be favoured and positioned to succeed his political mentor.

.Nwanjoku, a political analyst writes from Orlu

The things going for Madumere are legion. Apart from being one of the oldest associates of Okorocha in the Rescue Mission political family, he remains a known confidant of the governor having worked with him for more than 25 years.

Even within the Owerri zone where Madumere comes from, virtually everyone is at home with his aspiration and will be proud to work for his success which eventually will translate to APC success.

In fact, many had argued that had Okorocha earlier unveiled his deputy, most of those who exited the party would not have done so, and that since it is better late than never, unmasking Madumere now as the preferred choice of the governor would go a long way in healing old wounds and cementing the fractured relationship that many fear was injected in the party by selfish APC political nitwits and killjoys who have been selling wrong ideas to Okorocha knowing same to be faulty and not in his interest and in the interest of the party he has laboured so much to sustain.

Those who live under the illusion that Madumere’s  interest may divide Okorocha’s political family in Imo State are enemies of Okorocha, his private and political life. They are also enemies of Imo State where the people need consolidation of developmental foundation the Rescue Mission had laid in the past seven years.

Madumere, who is from Owerri zone, which has not produced a governor since the return of democracy in 1999, is equally loved in other zones that constitute Imo State. Of late, all segments of the society from across the state have been visiting his office and home to practically drag him into the race, but he is one man who would never jump the queue for selfish reason. He wants his boss to say something first.

Those who understand the complexity and perplexing nature of Imo politics will wittingly or unwittingly tell you Okorocha is a grand master and has been in the game since 1998, but only those with perceptive minds will come to the conclusion that his deputy has learnt the ropes like no other aspirant or aide to the governor no matter the pretension.

Madumere is many things combined – loyalty, hardworking, respectful, intelligent, educated, humane, astute administrator, entrepreneur, God-fearing, family man, and more. He is also a young man full of untapped energy.

Okorocha, what you are looking for in Sokoto is in sokoto (kaftan) and if 1 Corinthians 3-6: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.  So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour,” is anything to go by, then your best bet remains Madumere.

Chinedu George Nnawetanma

The restructuring of Nigeria has been the staple of conversations across the country for quite some time now, in the light of the glaring inability of the extant political, economic and legal structures of the country to support the actualization of the Nigeria of our dreams. It has gotten a cross-section of Nigerians talking fervently – from bloggers to newspaper columnists, and from casual observers to political bigwigs like the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, and the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar.

However, the issue of restructuring has also continued to divide opinions. While many Nigerians are of the belief that there is a pressing need for the restructuring of the country, others have distanced themselves from the idea, and an intermediate group has asked for clarification on what exactly restructuring entails. I want to unequivocally align myself with the school of thought that supports the political, economic and constitutional restructuring of Nigeria, wherein power will be devolved from the centre back to the federating units.

Nonetheless, unlike many other advocates of the restructuring of Nigeria, I do not believe that it is the elixir to all of the country’s ills. Simply revamping the political, economic and constitutional frameworks of the country will not bring about the transformation that we desire, because Nigeria’s problem goes beyond its defective administrative architecture. There is also the systemic defect.

When Nigeria is restructured, what is the guarantee that the newly minted structures of the country will not be abused by those in power and the masses the same way that the current structures are? For instance, Nigeria presently has laws proscribing virtually every offence imaginable, from bribery to examination malpractice and from traffic misdemeanor to domestic violence, yet we are one of the most lawless countries in the world. We flout laws at will and obey them only when it is convenient for us.

Similarly, there are two anti-graft agencies set up to tackle the country’s culture of corruption: the EFCC) and the (ICPC); yet, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) alleged that Nigeria lost $32 billion to corruption between 2010 and 2015 . What is the guarantee that these bodies and agencies will suddenly be up and doing in a restructured Nigeria?

Then again, a certain Federal Character Principle is enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution and a certain Federal Character Commission was set up to enforce it, yet a President of Nigeria can make more than 70% of his political appointments from one section of the country and no one will even bat an eyelid. What is the guarantee that the gatekeepers of Nigerian democracy will be alive to their responsibilities when a regional premier or a state governor (depending on which variant of federalism we decide to adopt) blatantly contravenes provisions embedded in their regional or state constitution in a restructured Nigeria?

If Nigeria decentralizes its police system, what is the guarantee that a state governor will not deploy it as his private army to bully the populace and harass his political opponents?  Restructuring will not solve these ingrained problems.

The fundamental factor that has scuttled and undermined Nigeria’s progress  over the years is the fragility of our institutions. The absence of strong institutions in Nigeria has made it almost impossible to enforce rules, whip people into line and ensure that actions and inactions have consequences. The more advanced societies and democracies that we often look up to, like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and South Korea, have been able to function effectively because of the presence of strong institutions that enable their systems to self-regulate, check the excesses of the ruling class and empower the citizens to be alive to their civic rights and responsibilities.  Accordingly, it has left their leaders with no choice but to render selfless service to their communities, while the followers have been empowered to expect and demand good governance from their leaders at all times .

In his 2009 state visit to Ghana, the former President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, advised African States to build strong institutions in order to escape from the maze of underdevelopment. But, the question is: how can these strong institutions be built?  Since leaders chart the course that everyone else has to follow, the onus lies on them to build these strong institutions. Hence, the natural first step in building strong institutions in Nigeria is sanitizing our leadership recruitment process so that individuals with the drive and motive to alter the status quo and institutionalize good governance and the rule of law will get in and those with vested interests and questionable character will be shut out.

Nigeria, just like those advanced countries that we look up to and aim to emulate, is not lacking in individuals with the commitment to make positive changes. The problem is that our political recruitment process does not allow them to get in. Our leadership positions are sold to the highest bidders at the expense of the candidates with the best ideas, while those who will maintain the status quo and toe the established line are preferred to those who could shake it up. To achieve this first objective, our electoral process and justice system must be strengthened so that the votes of the electorate will really count and the outcome of elections will no longer be determined in the homes of party chieftains and political godfathers.

Secondly, since a country gets the government it deserves, it is pertinent that the electorate and the general public are empowered to make the right choices in the democratic process, demand accountability from their leaders and elect candidates with unimpeachable character and proven track records over those who make vague electioneering promises and dole out a few naira notes and bags of rice at polling stations. They must also be enlightened on their civic responsibilities and be made to understand that the task of building a strong, progressive and sustainable society must not be left to the leaders alone; it requires the commitment and sacrifices of all and sundry.

Only when this systemic revolution is achieved will the restructuring of Nigeria have the effect that Nigerians envision. In the absence of that,  the entire process of restructuring becomes just another academic exercise and cosmetic change that deals with the superficial issues instead of tackling the underlying causes of the problem.

Nnawetanma writes from African Heritage Institution (AfriHeritage), Enugu, via chinnawetanma@gmail.com

Sufuyan Ojeifo

THE Igala of Kogi State in North central Nigeria have a proverb that succinctly explicates an exception to what is generally seen or thought to be the conventional.  While the young people may decide to do all manner of acrobatic displays in the open field or in the farm, they say it is not in the character of old people to so behave.  According to them, “An old man does not run in-between ridges in the farm for nothing; it is either he is chasing something or something is chasing him.” This provides the context within which I want to analyse the recent intervention in the state of the nation by the former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (popularly referred to as IBB). 

My preoccupation is not to deconstruct the general and specific messages contained in the February 4, 2018 press statement in which he shared his thoughts with fellow compatriots on the need to infuse fresh blood or enthrone younger leaders in the mainstream of the nation’s political leadership in 2019; rather, the enterprise is to interrogate the likely circumstances that might have led the former military president to take to the popular media, against his style, to offer advice, pro bono publico, on the 2019 presidential race. 

IBB has been characteristically prudent in matters of presidential power.  But, suddenly, he has unusually acted out of character, intrepidly lending his avuncular voice to the growing corpus of interventions on the modus of dealing with the nation’s seeming incompetent leadership that has brought about unimaginable pains on Nigerians.   I think very seriously that he should be allowed to reinvent himself in the light of the cumulative hunger and anguish in the land, having stoically related with and acted in seeming condonation of the nation’s successive governments since he stepped aside on August 27, 1993.  

Apart from the coup of August 27, 1985 that produced him as head of state, consequent upon the overthrow of General Muhammadu Buhari during which he pilloried the governance style of his predecessor in his takeover speech, IBB has never been openly critical of any of his successors in office until presently. His refrain, anytime the media place a demand on him to assess the performance of any government in power, has been that there are open channels of communication through which he advises the president.  

For the records, he never criticised Chief Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government (ING) to which he handed over power on August 27, 1993 nor did he take on the regime of General Sani Abacha that took over from Shonekan, even when the regime unleashed a reign of terror on the nation.  IBB also did not chastise General Abdulsalami Abubakar’s regime that came after the Abacha regime, not to talk of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight-year administration with all its imperfections and malfeasance. 

There was speculation that Obasanjo breached a gentleman’s agreement to rule for a term of four years after which power would be guided to IBB, one of his sponsors to power. The gap-toothed general did not cause ruckus when Obasanjo forcefully retained power in 2003.  He had maintained a deep sense of equanimity and statesmanlike disposition.  In 2007, after the failure of Obasanjo to manipulate the constitution amendment to provide for his third term in office, his presidency had moved against IBB’s presidential bid. 

Again, IBB did not impudently fight back or insist on having his way.  He quietly eased out of the race, explaining in a letter to Obasanjo as president and leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that he took the decision because his friend, General Aliyu Gusau, and his younger brother, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (then governor of Katsina state), were already in the race and would  not want to be seen to be competing with them for power.

The fact that Obasanjo imposed Yar’Adua on the PDP as the presidential candidate might not have rankled IBB as he did not do anything subsequently to undermine the Yar’Adua presidency.  At the most critical time in the presidency in 2009, when Yar’Adua was sick, it was Obasanjo who, surprisingly, championed the call for his resignation.  When Goodluck Jonathan, another stooge of Obasanjo, who was then vice president, stepped in following Yar’Adua’s death, Obasanjo characteristically did not support him to the end.To demonstrate his public rejection of Jonathan and his government, Obasanjo had to publicly tear his PDP membership card. He had earlier written an open letter to the Ijaw-born leader titled: “Before it is too late”. Obasanjo did not leave anyone in doubt that he was supporting General Muhammadu Buhari for the presidency.   His anti-Jonathan sentiments were so deep-seated that he made up his mind to vote for anybody but Jonathan.  That predisposed him to glossing over, for instance, the weakness of Buhari in the area of the economy.

For IBB, who has been a PDP leader from the outset, it was a time to remain steadfast, not a time to jump on the bandwagon just because the entire north was gravitating towards Buhari.  He did not speak against the candidature of Buhari.  But for perceptive watchers of the nation’s presidential politics, IBB’s body language was unambiguous.  Nothing has changed or even mitigated his 1985 verdict about Buhari, with which he justified the overthrow of the Daura-born general as head of state. Methinks IBB just decided to live quietly and painfully with his apparent minority view about a Buhari presidency in 2015.  It was clear he could do nothing to avert it.  About three years in the saddle, Buhari has unraveled to the chagrin of a vast majority of Nigerians.  Obasanjo’s January 23, 2018 intervention was just a confirmation of the pan-Nigerian sentiments about the incompetence and cluelessness of the administration that feed egregiously on nepotism and ethno-religious chauvinism.

IBB possibly realised that his strategic diplomacy prelude to 2015 presidential election had not helped the nation when it mattered most.  If there was anybody who could have spoken magisterially to Buhari’s capacity to rule, it was IBB.  But he probably chose to watch with subtle amazement the mass hysteria about the garb of Messianism with which propagandists had clad Buhari.  It was only a matter of time and the entire saga about a “redemptive mission” by Buhari has turned into a historic scam. 

Is IBB now trying to atone for his sin of seeming conspiratorial silence by which he left Nigerians to the task of construing or misconstruing his body language at a critical juncture when his voice was most needed to help chart a trajectory in the quest for a president with capacity to redeem our nation?  I think this is the reason he has now taken up the gauntlet in the face of the economic ruins, growing misery, unconscionable divisiveness and rudderless leadership in our nation presently to stand up to be counted on the popular side.

Otherwise, it is not in IBB’s character to lampoon and criticize his successors in office. He must have advised himself to earn his badge as a statesman, who has seen it all and sacrificed so much for the country; a statesman committed to the survival of Nigeria; a statesman like some influential others who are in the night of their lives, quietly waiting in the departure lounge for the ultimate “beatification and canonization” of their respective legacies.   

IBB would be consigning himself to the wrong side of history as a timid and confused leader if he failed to act.  This is why he has acted.  Yet, the Yoruba have a proverb that “a hunter who has only one arrow does not shoot with careless aim.”  That is the vital summation of IBB’s latest and, possibly, last act in the search for a digital president for our beleaguered nation.  I just hope this act enjoys endorsement by a vast majority of Nigerians  for the actualization of his advocacy. 

Ojeifo, editor-in-chief of The Congresswatch magazine, writes  via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com

Ayo Akinola

The above question arose in my mind and got me thinking a long time ago when my State, Osun, was in the news on its account. The question elicited criticisms of the  state governor, Rauf Aregbesola, among civil servants, not only in Osun but all over. Osun soon became the poster boy for states that were not up to date in salary payments. The criticisms were rife and unjustified, as states which we all know could not pay salaries for eighteen months or two years weren’t noticed in the media as Osun, which probably owed just a couple of months of modulated salary arrears.

Sometime last year, I had to engage a very popular radio On-Air Personality based in Lagos on the true situation of things in Osun. He was hitherto fond of using Osun as an example of what he termed “bad governance” until he, according to him, found out the truth. He profusely apologised on national radio to “this man, Aregbesola, whom we have all unfairly disparaged”. What was the reason forthis misrepresentation? It was not for lack of adequate information from the state government’s information handlers, but the penchant for morbid stereotypical reasoning which our media has not, even till date, corrected or condemned.

Thank goodness, Osun has finally gotten out of the mess of inability to pay salaries, allowances and pensions up to date. The modulated salary payments agreed to by labour and government have also ended as Osun has commenced paying full salaries to all categories of staff in its employment, and is up-to-date. But, this is not the crux of this essay.

Few weeks back, a prominent national daily, in its editorial comments asked a similar question as headlined above. The editorial board was of the opinion that payment of salaries by government should just be one of several other responsibilities of government. That explains why budgets are oftentimes segregated into two broad areas:  capital and recurrent expenditures.

One is for real development like educational infrastructure, roads, health infrastructure and others while the recurrent is mainly to pay wages, salaries, pensions and other costs of running government. But, because over the years, citizens see government as the big father, almost everyone sees it as the indisputable provider of livelihood. This is not unconnected with the fact that we have all failed to see an alternative to government as provider, even though better alternatives in entrepreneurship, creative thinking as well as trade, continue to stare us in the face.

For example, going to school to obtain degrees and diplomas is meant to equip us adequately to be self-reliant. But, over the years, we’ve been made to believe that going to school is a certificate for a free meal from government. You can say anything concerning our brothers in the Southeast but one thing that distinguishes them from the rest of us is their spirit of self-reliance. They probably are aware, maybe through experience or instinctually, that the Nigerian educational system does not really prepare one for self reliance, hence they are wont to jettison it and go straight into trading or other vocations. That’s probably why many of them make it at a relatively younger age than their contemporaries who have quite a very long period of conventional schooling in other parts of the country.

Now, according to the board of editors of the national tabloid referred to earlier, “Governor Rauf Aregbesola exposed the precariousness of the current template by his admission that personnel costs alone amounted to over 85 per cent of the total revenue that accrued to Osun State between July 2015 and November 2017.

This is typical of most other states and the message must be rammed home that apart from the primary role of protecting life and property, governments exist to galvanise the people for productive activities. “The 36 states and 774 local government councils must understand that they are not constituted only to pay salaries and pensions”.

The editorial cited a Canadian government policy document which states that regional or state governments are a geographically larger level of government over existing municipalities to provide area-wide municipal functions more economically and to establish a tax base sufficient to undertake necessary new services. If this is the case states exist mainly to provide services and infrastructure as well as generate funds through taxation to provide the aforementioned.

Unfortunately, incompetent governance, dishonesty, fear of public opinion and a misunderstanding of what government stands for have combined to make us believe that governments are in office to pay salaries only.

This self-destructive model must give way to a more rational public finance management system. The solution must begin with a proper diagnosis of what went wrong: the overthrow of fiscal federalism. It is a slide rich in irony; for when Nigeria first codified the federal principle through the 1954 Macpherson Constitution, it “provided fiscal autonomy to its three regions both over expenditure decisions and over a local revenue base (consisting primarily of mining rents, personal income tax and receipts from licences). Centrally collected revenues, primarily from export, import and excise duties, were distributed to the regions based on the derivation principle,” according to a World Bank report.  This allowed vibrant, self-sustaining regions and LGs that competed fiercely and ran successful administrations. But the violent intrusion of over-centralising military rule since 1966 gradually eroded fiscal autonomy with multiple new states and LGs completing the descent that has turned today’s states and LGs into beggars.

According to this board of editors, and which I absolutely agree to, there is no alternative to radical reform; funds are simply no longer there to waste. The World Bank reports that, globally, regional governments are increasingly deploying Information Communication Technology to increase accountability, sustainability and quality of service. The about 600 federal ministries, departments and agencies should be pruned with similar cost-cutting at the states and LGs.

Governments should downsize their outsized bureaucracies but deploy staff and school leavers to more productive ventures in agriculture, trades and vocations as office works are better automated than use of men in order to free resources for rural infrastructure and make their states magnets for investments in agriculture, mining and SMEs.

Akinola is development analyst

Offor Evaristus

Every year, the whole world stands still to hail the virtuous and heroic martyrdom of a Catholic priest, St. Valentine, as far back as 496 AD. A selfless and patriotic servant of God, St. Valentine was ascribed to have been officially bumped off for his love and concern for humanity, especially the youth.

Historically, he was killed for imploring for and nursing back to health the frogspawn of his jailor. In another renowned ascription, St. Valentine was exterminated for celebrating Christian marriages for forbidden youths in secret, and before he was in jail, he used to write the youths engraving, ‘’Your Valentine’’, on his letters,  not  the negative and rapacious derivation of modern and mendacious carnivals and season of merrymaking. It is, therefore, incumbent on pious leaders to redirect our people from celebrating mendacity to the real message of this great and selfless guardian of youth and by extension the public.

Instead of making this heavenly season a tide for social events, Nigerians need to reflect on the way forward fundamentally from a saintly undercurrent, morally, politically and economically. St Valentine we commemorate was an angel of good leadership characterized by love for the oppressed, the marginalized and unjustly treated. This is the season our political leaders should learn from this selfless servant of God and society, to see politics as a vehicle for love of fatherland, and the response to the socio-political harms of the modern world.

St. Valentine was an answer to Jesus’ sanction in the gospel of St Matthew chapters 5 and 25  where he enjoined us to love, cherish and provide integral basic rights of the public. He is a sign of good leadership whereby he died for his parishioners and youths in general. Our political leaders and our youths ought to know that it’s only in true love that happiness is to be found. The happiness of others whose lives one has touched through good and effective leadership and respect to divine commandments engrossed in true love and charity.

St. Valentine season is a time to renounce our ethnic, tribal and selfish ideas and practices of sinful and wicked adventurism which afford scope for pride rather than service. St. Valentine advises us, no matter our religious or political leanings, to renounce ethnic marginalization, religious brutality, democratic misadventure in order to elevate and ennoble true federalism, restructuring justice and equity. Our politicians, and youths must renounce the recycling of old but visionless politicians whose stock-in-trade is the spreading and elongation of oligarchy, cabalism, tribalism and integral developmental disaster.

Our revolution, based on the fearlessness, patriotism and Christian spirit of St. Valentine, is to join the bandwagon for an ideological and intellectual revolution going on in the country for the love of fraternal, charitable and  ethnic integration. This year’s celebration should ginger our politicians and youths to be strong and resolute in being constructive, proactive and positively democratic and nationalistic in order to build the happiness of others. St. Valentine invites all Nigerians, especially our leaders in all ramifications, to humanize the already dehumanized Nigeria via criminalities of herdsmen’s rampaging killings and maiming, youth cultism, political thuggery and profligacy, sexual immorality, armed robbery and kidnapping, ritual killings and rape.

St. Valentine’s message is for us to end the evils of child  and human trafficking, drug peddling, political intimidation and ethnic chauvinism St. Valentine, as an enigma, lived a selfless life, and taught us the essence of common brotherhood, purity of mind, body, soul and spirit.

Our political and socio-economic sphere needs millions of dedicated and hardworking medical doctors, political leaders who will deliver divinocratic dividends of free and qualitative healthcare, education, industrial employment, suppliers of electricity, security, food and all sorts of human basic needs without charge. Millions of Nigerians need dedicated teachers who are more interested in the things of heaven and wisdom for societal change.

Nigerians need morally and spiritually cleansed civil servants who are above corruption and dereliction of duty. Since two out of every three Nigerians are hungry and dissipated by bad governance, selfishness and heartless leadership, our new crop of youths and political leaders must become cultivators of the soil and mind to produce bread for the needy from this badly cultivated political and economic land of ours. St. Valentine enjoins us that we need each other whether Igbo, Hausa-Fulani or Yoruba, hence we all must strive to engrave love, justice, equity, respect and the fear of God in our daily national politics. This is what Valentine needs from us in this year’s Valentine’s Day celebration. Nigerians must be each others’ Valentine. St. Valentine we celebrate today, was also a dispenser of love and an epitome of justice, equity and selfless sacrifice, hence a big challenge to every Nigerian. He sacrificed his freedom, time and personality to solemnize Christian marriages for youths who were needed in the military formation of the country.

Valentine sacrificed his integrity and reputation by having the faith to pray for the ailing daughter of his jailor. He sacrificed his life in obedience to God, hence answered the biblical call in the gospel of St. John 3:16 ‘’this is how much God loved the world that He gave his only Son, so that nobody should be destroyed, by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life of joy, peace and happiness. As Christ came not to judge and condemn, so Valentine came to help, to put the world right again. Rationally, since St. Val gave up his life for others, what can you and I offer today as we cherish his moments of glory on earth. Can you offer that chieftaincy title that has bastardized your community? Can you offer that small piece of land that has torn you and your community into enemies without borders?

Hence, St. Valentine is an eternal lesson for us to always know that “to the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world. We must not continue to materialize the essence of this celebration, since St. Valentine was a priest whose lifestyle was embedded in chastity, charity, kindness, self-control, forgiveness, reconciliation and gratefulness.

As Nigerians join this global event, St. Valentine urges us to live in peace and harmony, common brotherhood, equity and in restructured climate of fairness, honesty, integrity and respect for the dignity and fundamental rights of all, inspite of any differences. As Erich, a psychologist, once said, ‘’love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person.

Fr. Valentine teaches us,  therefore, that pure love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love as well as faint hope.

Rev. Fr. Offor writes from Enugu.

NZE NWABUEZE AKABOGU

THE most recent political development in Kenya is obviously worrisome and clearly portends grave danger to the East African nation even as the present extremely precarious situation might degenerate into national catastrophe unless the Kenyan political leaders across the divide take urgent and decisive action to avert the looming calamity or time bomb waiting to explode.

The African Union (AU) must equally move in quickly to mediate in the crisis among the political gladiators in the Kenyan nation commonly referred to as the economic power house of the East Africa Community.

The ugly political event that engulfed Kenya in the recent past which culminated in the terrible ethnic conflagration that claimed the lives of thousands of Kenyan citizens and which are still fresh in the minds of lovers of peace and democracy across the globe must not be allowed to repeat itself.  That national calamity that took place in Kenya in 2007 had prompted the intervention of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague which consequently issued an international warrant of arrest against the incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto for crimes against humanity consequent upon the mass killings that followed the Presidential election of 2007.  Although both President Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto were later put on trial at the Hague, nevertheless they were eventually acquitted by the Court for want of sufficient evidence and diligent prosecution.

It is therefore imperative for all political leaders across the political divide in Kenya to quickly embrace peace in the overall interest of their people who had been on the receiving end and bearing the brunt of the misguided actions of their political leaders. It is a common saying that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that ultimately suffers.

It is no gainsaying the fact that the genesis of the current political upheaval and uncertainty in Kenya is traceable to the last presidential election in August 2017 when the result of that election was outrightly rejected by the highly revered opposition leader, Raila Odinga who claimed that the election was massively rigged in favour of his rival President Kenyatta and called for its total cancellation. The incumbent President Kenyatta had earlier been declared the clear winner in the election by the Kenya Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission (KIBC). However, Raila Odinga later challenged the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner in the Kenya Supreme Court which subsequently cancelled the entire Presidential election and ordered for a fresh polls within a period sixty days

Regrettably, however, and in utter astonishment of the Kenyan people as well as lovers of democracy, due process, and rule of law across the globe, the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, had urged his supporters to boycott the re-run election and also insisted that members of the electoral commission must be disbanded before he could take part in any fresh polls. Political watchers of Kenya’s situation were, however, appalled at Odinga’s intransigence and his “dog in the manger” attitude.

Analysts are of the opinion that Odinga’s political posturing simply amounted to holding the Kenyan nation to ransom with his ridiculous and unrealistic demands even as he had called for mass resistance to President Kenyatta’s Government. In the meantime, however, the incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta was sworn-in for a second term of five years by the country’s Chief Justice.

The current highly charged and unpredictable political atmosphere in Kenya was clearly precipitated by the recent self-swearing in ceremony of Raila Odinga as the “Peoples President” before a mammoth crowd of his supporters mainly from his ethnic home base in Nairobi suburbs, the nation’s capital. This rather misguided action on the part of Odinga is obviously a recipe for chaos and anarchy in Kenya that is yet to recover from a similar political turmoil about a decade ago. The self-swearing in of Odinga in a democratic setting where there is already a sitting president who was duly elected by the people in a democratic process and affirmed by the nation’s apex court could rightly be regarded as the height of irresponsibility and absurdity in a civilized society that cherishes the principles of due process and rule of law. Raila Odinga must not the allowed to drag the people of Kenya back to the dark era of the sordid past in his morbid quest or vaulting ambition for absolute power. The Kenyan constitution clearly stipulated the laid down procedures governing the electoral process for election into the office of the president of Kenya and Raila Odinga had already exhausted all the legal processes available to him within the constitution and as such any other methods he chose to adopt in his pursuit for remedy outside the constitutional provisions clearly amounted to gross violation of the Kenyan constitution.

In other climes Odinga’s, ill motivated self-swearing in ceremony as the “President of Kenya” could be treated as high treason against the state with the attendant grave consequences. However, the incredible restraint, wisdom and maturity displayed by the people of Kenya and their leaders so far in the face of extreme provocation and unwarranted assault on their constitution is highly commendable.

This act of gross lawlessness and impunity on the part of Raila Odinga as well as his recalcitrant and arrogant posture must be equally condemned in its entirety by the international community that cherishes the rule of law and due process in any democratic setting.

Akabogu (JP) writes from Enugwu-Ukwu, Anambra State.

In conclusion, the African Union (AU) must quickly move in to broker enduring peace in Kenya between President Kenyatta and his fellow compatriot, Raila Odinga, in the overall interest of the Kenyan people.

Africa cannot afford to witness another civil strife in Kenya even as the continent is already engulfed in perennial civil conflicts and instability in many countries such as South Sudan, D.R, Congo, Somalia, Burundi, Central African Republic, Sudan, Ethiopia etc. Most of these man-made conflicts were simply engineered by selfish interest of the so-called political leaders who often masquerade as the “People’s messiah” only to acquire political power purely for their personal ego and self- aggrandizement to the detriment of the down trodden in their countries.

These avoidable conflicts had greatly impeded the continent’s socio-economic development and technological advancement hence Africa continues to be referred to as grossly underdeveloped continent that is incapable of contributing her quota in global affairs

Africa must, therefore, rise up to the occasion and say never again to these self-serving and unpatriotic so-called leaders if the continent must regain her pride of place and play her expected role in international political arena.        

Akabogu (JP) writes from Enugwu-Ukwu, Anambra State.