Oludayo Tade

THE attitude of the leadership of Nigeria and its security institutions to the safety of the poor and vulnerable is condemnable. In the same system, the social structure ensures the securitisation of the rich.

While the tenets of the rule of law prescribe equality before the law, supremacy of the law and fundamental human rights, the practicality of these in Nigeria is gradated to one’s social position. The poor are worse off in security of lives and property, food security, health security, education security, road security, human rights security, among others. Impliedly, Nigeria is a country that is elite-designed, structured, formed and governed. Nothing implies a genuine concern to take care of the hoi polloi who are the majority. The masses occupy  the flip side of the pyramidal structure of the goodies fondly labelled democratic dividends. Unfortunately, the masses’ support is sought during elections to enthrone the minority that mostly abandon them when they get into office. The elite minority mindlessly corner public patrimonies to themselves and their cronies.

In Nigeria, it is not only poor to be criminal; it is also criminal to be poor. Undoubtedly, there are differential treatments in who gets policed as against who gets secured. In 2017 alone, about 549 lives were lost to Fulani herdsmen and farmers’ violence (Amnesty International). The year 2018 may surpass this figure as over 200 have been killed within two months across Benue, Zamfara, Adamawa, Ondo, Kaduna and Taraba. In all these, the poor get killed while the care-less elite ‘condemn’ the killings. I draw on these to examine poor policing, policing the poor and the securitized elite in Nigeria.

This is because within and outside government, the Nigeria elite have secured their present and future. In government, they ensure they put structures in place that outlive them. These structures (in the police, judiciary, civil service etc) cover their tracks when out of office. Highly placed politicians allocate to themselves undeserved severance packages endorsed by the ‘ball-boys’ in the legislative chambers when leaving office. They use the structure they put in place to fight the system when being probed when out of office. Whenever their hegemonic control over the country is threatened, they form alliances to oust the incumbent to sustain their hold on the country, not necessarily to better the lot of the masses. In and out of office, they personalise public services. Imagine the lamentation of the Chairman of Police Service Commission, Mike Okiro, a former Inspector General of Police, that out of about 305, 597 policemen (2015 data), over 150,000 are attached to VIPs and unauthorised persons in the country. The people enjoying these security personnel included those who have left government in the last ten years! Yet, over 180 million individuals are to depend on less than 150,000 for the protection of their lives and property. They use the limited number of police left for the rest of us to protect their children and parents. Even Abdulrasheed Maina claimed to have been secured by the DSS when he came in through the ‘door of influence’. When the rich get kidnapped, they get jet-speed reaction and the deployment of the IGP Intelligence Response Squad to rescue them. When they have cases in court, they get soft-landing.  The elite (most of them) are parasitic. They milk Nigeria; they hardly plough back and when they do, it is temporary and these are mostly in the months preceding an election year. They use the ideological state apparatuses to oppress the poor and make them perpetually subservient. To them, it is the poor that is dangerous and must be policed. That is why only the rich enter plea bargaining. To hell with the poor in jail! 

Rather than focusing on poor policing, the leadership of Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari and other State governors is interested in policing the poor. Poor policing as against policing the poor is the inability of the police to check growing insecurity. Mis-governance is responsible for why herders are pampered and cows’ constitutional rights are enthroned. While the courts are quick to sentence a boy who stole N10, 000 to 15 years imprisonment, the same court granted a corrupt pension fraudster who cornered billions of naira into private pocket an option of fine of N750, 000! The same system polices the opposition party but allows culpable inner caucus members (Babachir Lawal, Maina)  etc, in the process rubbishing its policing of public funds.

The institution that turned deaf ears to the  intelligence reports supplied by the governors of Benue and Zamfara States alerting it to  impending attacks mocks the victims by putting the blame on the law enacted to regulate people’s behaviour. Obviously, you are a criminal if the state thinks you are a criminal,  and  a saint at the pleasure of the state. The body language and the interest of the ‘oga at the top’ apparently endorse inequality in the Nigerian  policing system.        

Ideally, the nature of crime ought to determine how policing resources will be distributed. Nobody ought to tell the police that they need to strengthen divisional stations in rural areas. This is because, the police as an instrument of the state, is urban-based. The media thus beam light on happenings in the urban areas where   they are  based while many people suffer violence and criminality in the rural areas.   Since 2009 when Boko Haram became lethal in its campaign, it has operated more in rural areas with its ‘homeland’ located in the remote spaces of northeast Nigeria. Kidnappers kidnap and take victims to forests using the waterways to get to their hideouts. Armed robbers return to the rural areas mostly after a major operation to keep a  low profile. Fulani herdsmen carnages occur in remote rural areas where poverty is endemic and policing is scarce.   

The have-nots are, therefore, at the mercy of the haves whose actions and inactions determine, to a larger extent, their life chances. The criminalisation of the have-nots on the one hand and the securitization of the elite and poor policing represent a contradiction. Apparently, the fate of the Nigerian poor is like that of the  proverbial hen that lays the golden egg but becomes forgotten, malnourished and ill-treated.

Dr. Tade, a sociologist, writes via dotad2003@yahoo.com    

ERIC TENIOLA

Dr Alex Ekwueme’s committee on creation of more states worked in conjunction with another committee inaugurated in the National Assembly and headed by Alhaji Abubakar Tuggar of the House of Representatives and with Mr Bamidele Adewunmi as the Secretary. The supporting staff of the committee were Mr D.O. Enanya, Ladi Falade and Dr. A. Dada.

The Committee was inaugurated by Dr. Joseph Waya, the Senate President on June 23, 1983 with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Edwin Umeh Ezeoke. In 1959, Alhaji Abubakar Tuggar was the Publicity Secretary of the Northern Peoples Congress. In 1979, he was elected to represent Gumawa Constituency in Bauchi State in the House of Representatives. The other members of the Alhaji Abubakar Tuggar’s committee were, Dr. O. O. Oreh, Sule Ibrahim, J.M. Zuokkumor, S.I. Idakwo,Yunusa Folorunsho, T. Sekibo, Umaru Ahmed Shuni, Mrs. Abiola Babatope. The rest were T.O. Akinbode, T. Ogunji, S.A. Odetoyinbo, Chief M. Nwoseh, E. Ononokpono, S.U. Wanganga, G.B. Wodi, J.Y. Mallo, Idi Mustapha, M.A. Tukur Fagam, Badamasi Yamma, Dr. Gordon Idang and David Gba’aondo.

The Senators who were members of the committee were D. O. Dafinone, A. Muazu, I. Dimis, Hassan Zuru, F.O.M. Atake, D.O. Oke, Adeyiga Ajayi, Onyeabo Obi, E.P. Echeruo, Umaru Lawan Bama, Jalo Waziri and Barkin Zuwo. The committee then divided itself into subcommittees. One of the memoranda received by the committee proposed that Lagos Island, Lagos Mainland, Shomolu, Mushin, and Ikeja Local Government Area of Lagos should continue to serve as a Federal Capital (or territory) notwithstanding subsequent movement to Abuja; that Epe and  Ikorodu Local Government Area should be merged with Ogun State. Attractive as this proposal may appear, the committee felt that it will be difficult to accomplish it since the National Assembly can only consider requests for creation of a new state validly made and received by it. Accordingly, the question of retaining any part of Lagos State as Federal Capital or Territory can only be accomplished by an amendment to Section 261, Section 262, and the first Schedule Parts I and II of the Constitution rather than through the process of creation of new states.

At the end of the exercise, Dr Alex Ekwueme and Alhaji Abubakar Tuggar’s committees recommended for the creation of the following states: New Anambra State to be made up of—Anambra, Awka, Idemili, Ihiala, Njikoka, Onitsha, Nnewi and Aguata,.Ebonyi State to be made up of Ishielu, Ikwo, Ezza, Afikpo, Ohoazara and Abakaliki, Gombe State  to be made up of Akko, Tangale-Waja, Dukku and Gombe, Katagum State to be made up of Shira, Katagum, Gamawa, Misau and Jama’re, New Cross River State to be made up of Calabar Municipality, Akampa, Obubura, Ikom, Anioma State to be made up of Ika, Oshimili, Aniocha and Ndokwa. Delta State-to be made up of Bomadi, Burutu, Ethiope, Isoko, Okpe,Ughelli and Warri.Taraba State-to be made up of Wukari, Jalingo,Takum, Bali, Sardauna, Karim, Lamido, Ganye, Maye and Gamadiyo Districts of Numan LGA Zing, Jeren (Part of Mayo Belwa LGA), Abia State-to be made up of Aba, Obioma Ngwa,Ukwa; Isiala Ngwa, Arochukwu Ohafia, Bende, Ikwuano/Umuahia and Isuikwuato District, Afikpo,Ohoazara,Aba state-to be made up of Aba, Isiala Ngwa, Obioma Ngwa and Ukwa, Njaba-As in the Request, Katsina-Daura, Dutsima, Katsina, Kankia, Mani, Malumfashi and Funtua,New Kaduna-to be made up of Zaria, Ikara, Saminaka, Kachia, Jema’a, Birni Gwari, and Kaduna LGA, New Ondo State-to be made up of Akoko North, Akoko South, Akure, Idanre/Ifedore,Ifesowapo, Ikale,Ese Odo/Ilaje, Ondo and Owo, Oyo State-to be made up of Ogbomosho, Oyo, Ifedapo, Isyin, Kajola, Irepo Iwo. Oshun State-to be made up of Ede, Ejigbo, Ifelodun,  Ila, Irepodun, I rewole, Odo Otin, Osogbo, Iwoand Ogbomosho, Port Harcourt-to be made of Port Harcourt City, Tai Eleme LGA, Bori LGA excluding Odual Community,Ikwere, Etche and Aboada, Zamfara to be made up of Talata Mafara, Anka,Gumni, Maradun, Gusau, Chafe, Kaura/Namoda Zurmi, Isa, Zuru and Sakaba/Wasagu LGA, Kebbi State-to be made up of Arewa Dendi, Argunugu, Baguda, Bunza, Gwandu, Jega, Koko/Besse, Sakaba/Wasagu,Yauri, and Zuru, Jigawa state-to be made up of Birnin-Kudu, Dutse, Gaya, Gwaram, Sumaila and Wudil, Lautai state-to be made up of Ringim, Kaugama,Garki, Gumel, Maitagi, Hadeija Keffi-Hausa, Birniwa,Ghari-Kazaure, Bichi, Dabatta,Tiga state-to be made up of Bebeji, Gwarzo, Rano, and Tudun-Wada and Rogo,Gujba state-to be made up of Damaturu, Fune, Gujba, Biu, Fika, Bade and Kaga, New Borno-to be made up of Askira-Uba, Bama, Damboa,Gwoza, Konduga, Maiduguri Metroplolitan, Monguno and Ngala, Nassarawa/Middle Belt State-Lafia, Akwanga, Keffi, Nassarawa and Awe, Kogi State-to be made up of Kogi, Bassa, Okehi, Okene, Dekina and Idah, Okura State-to be made of Ankpa, Bassa, Dekina, Idah, Ofu and Omalla.

I cannot publish in full the reports of Dr. Alex Ekwueme’s committee as it relates to all the states but I will like to refer to the committee’s final conclusion on Anambra state. After careful consideration, Dr Ekwueme’s committee arrived at the following conclusion as it affects Anambra State—That the request to join Anioma is unanimous, moreover the request is not homogenous in character, That the people of Onitsha Local Government Areas should feel free to request for boundary adjustment under Section 8(2) of the Constitution once Anambra State is created. Aghamelum Clan in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area and Ugwuoba, Akpugo towns in Oji River were removed from the component units of the proposed New Anambra State,

The total land area of the proposed New Anambra State is over 4,923 square kilometres with  project population of 2.5 million people distributed among the constituent units of the proposed state. In applying the provisions of Section 8(1) (a) (i) (ii) (iii) of the Constitution of Nigeria 1979 the New Anambra State request is qualified to go into referendum hence it is recommended by the committee. Onitsha is recommended as the capital of the proposed state.

Altogether there were 21 new States recommended by Dr Alex Ekwueme and Abubakar Tuggar’s committee to reflect parity and balancing of the Federation.  Former Northern Region 11 New States were recommended—Zamfara, Jigawa, Lautai, Ghari,Katagum,Gombe, Gujba, Kogi, Nassarawa, Katsina and Taraba, former Eastern Region,5 New States were recommended—New Anambra,Ebonyi,Abia,Port Harcourt and New Cross River while Former Western Region, 5 new States were recommended—New Oyo, New Ondo, Oshun, Anioma and Delta.

On December 31, 1983 the Nigerian Army headed by Major General Muhammadu Buhari overthrew the government of President Shehu Shagari. On September 23 1987, General Ibrahim Babangida created Katsina and Akwa Ibom states. On August 27 1991, the same General Babangida created Kebbi, Anambra, Jigawa, Osun,Taraba and Enugu states.

Following the submission of the report by Chief Arthur Christopher Izuegbunam Mbanefo’s committee, General Sanni Abacha created Ebonyi, Bayelsa, Zamfara, Gombe and Ekiti states on October 1, 1996. If you look closely, what the two Generals did, was the implementation of Dr. Alex Ekwueme and Alhaji Abubakar Tuggar committee’s reports with some amendment.

Fola Adeyemi

Recently, Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, recorded yet another first when he signed seven vital bills into law. Perhaps, the most noticeable of the lots is the Yoruba Language Preservation and Promotion of Law which represents a cognizant reflection of the position which Lagos State prides Yoruba language as the cultural vehicle for articulate communication.

With the signing of the bill, the teaching of Yoruba language is now compulsory in both private and public schools in the state. The law also mandates all state-owned tertiary institutions in the state to integrate the use of the language as a course unit into their General Nigeria Studies, GNS.

The Yoruba Language Preservation Law has been commended, and rightly so, by various stakeholders across the land, as very vital to the preservation of Yoruba language, especially at time when the language is almost going into extinction.

Yoruba Language, like every other indigenous language across the world, deserves its rightful place and recognition like other foreign languages in our school system.

 The new law epitomizes the revival of Yoruba language and I am certain that advocates of the language such as late Prof. Akinwunmi Ishola and Adebayo Faleti would be grinning in their graves, and commending the initiatives of Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, who has not allowed it to die. Today, it is evident that Yoruba language is in dire need of revival, and fast too, as scholars of the language is fast diminishing. Unlike what obtained in time past, hardly do we now have students taking up Yoruba as a course in our universities.

The importance of language in any society cannot be overemphasized.

Language serves as a strong means of communication in every society and as a vehicle of reaching every strata of the community, either at the grass-root or elitist. Therefore, the recent signing of the Yoruba preservation law by Governor Ambode signifies a signpost to the relevance of mother tongue in every society, regardless of adoption of foreign languages as bilingual, multilingual or lingua-franca.

 Besides its arts and culture dimension, the new law will further help in achieving the dream of integrating the south-west as currently being spearheaded by Development Agenda for Western Nigeria, DAWN.  It could, thus, be affirmed that Governor Ambode is a passionate promoter of Yoruba cultural values and interests.

 It will be recalled that it was under his leadership that Lagos became a member of Oodua Investments, one of the most enduring legacies bequeathed by the late sage and first Premier of the defunct Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to serve as economic hub for the Yoruba race.

 It, however, needs to be stressed that the law is part of the Ambode administration’s holistic plan to promote arts, culture and tourism in the state. The administration’s passion for the promotion of art and culture has earned Governor Ambode respect and honour among various arts, culture, and entertainment and tourism stakeholders in the country.

Hence, from all perspectives, the Ambode administration is evidently not just paying lip service to the promotion of Yoruba culture and tradition. It is actually working hard through several policies, programmes and activities to ensure that the Yoruba culture and tradition is not in any way endangered.

 For instance, in the past three years, the State has displayed unlimited pride as the socio-cultural hub of sub-Saharan Africa with a five day show laced with the One Lagos Fiesta (OLF), a colorful multi-cultural expressions across the five divisions of the State.

Similarly, the state government has continued to maintain all existing heritage and historical monuments in the state. Some of such monuments include the Tinubu Square Fountain, Statue of King Ado (the First Crown King of Lagos), statue of Prince Olofin Atekoye, Ma’ami statue, Ojuloge statue among others.

Any society that disregards its language will in no time become extinct. Today, China has become a force to be reckoned with in the world. The instructive thing about the growth of China is that as it grows across all sectors, its language, culture and tradition equally develop even beyond its borders.

As Mandarin (Chinese Language) receives wide acceptance, many have various reasons to learn it, especially considering its benefits as one the most essential foreign languages at the moment. Gradually, Mandarin is becoming one of the world’s most spoken languages.

In addition to the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan, Mandarin is also spoken in places such as Chinese communities of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, Singapore, Philippines etc. As at today, China is the second largest economy in the world and one of largest trading partners of the United States, the nation thrives without allowing its indigenous language to play a second fiddle.

Perhaps, the most important aspect of promoting the Yoruba language, or any language for that matter, is that it serves as a catalyst for the promotion of the culture, custom and tradition that the language embodies.

This implies that whenever a language is preserved, the culture, custom and tradition that the language represents would equally be enhanced.  Therefore, as the younger ones are being taught the language, they will also be exposed to the diverse culture and tradition that the language epitomizes and this goes a long way in preserving societal moral values.

Today, it is regrettable to note that in many Yoruba homes, the means of communication with our children is English Language. Many parents even rebuke their children for speaking in Yoruba. The collapse in moral values as we presently experience in our society, without doubt could partly be a fallout of the adoption of foreign language and culture.

Where are the Tales/Stories by moonlight, as been taught by our great grand fathers and mothers? Where are the “Aalo Apamo and Apagbe”, nobody remembers them any longer, we are all busy chasing monies around the cities. Any nation that forgets its culture and tradition will surely regret it, and this explains why the Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode should be commended for this bold initiative.

To further complement this bold initiative, the State Government in the 2018 State Calendar of Tourism events, will be coming up with a few cultural events that will demonstrate the State’s seriousness towards promoting and preserving the rich cultural heritage of the State and the Yoruba Nation in general. Without doubt, this bold initiative of Governor Ambode further demonstrates his belief and resolve to lead the crusade towards reviving the “dying” Yoruba Language.

To complement the new law and government’s total plan for cultural resurgence, parents need to go back to the tradition of storytelling to teach morals and cultural values; they need to begin to speak Yorùbá language to their children at home and encourage the children to do the same, thereby enhancing their knowledge and confidence in the language.

The younger ones must be brought up to take pride in their language, culture and tradition. Our people should desist from seeing foreign languages as superior to indigenous ones.

Living in a contemporary world where the rate of cultural influence and adaptation has become quite astonishing, diverse languages have found their ways into several parts of the world.

According to Dr Oladele Orimoogunje, an Associate Professor of African Studies at UNILAG, Yoruba language is spoken in places as far as Cuba where it is called Lucumi derived from the word Olukumi (meaning my confidant, intimate friend or associate).

In Brazil, Yoruba Language is called Nago which originated from the word Anago in Republic of Benin. In Trinidad and Tobago, Yoruba is a spoken language and it is known as Aku which is adapted from Yoruba predominant salutation words such as “E kaaro o; E kaa san o; E kaa ale o and Aku odun o etc.  

It is, thus, ironic that same language with such modest global appeal is grossly being undermined by its indigenous speakers.

As Governor Ambode succinctly put it in an address he gave during the presentation of the Museum of possibilities, “Our country is blessed with a very rich culture and heritage.

“This is the foundation on which all our social institutions and interactions are built. Unfortunately, we have neglected our culture and traditions to our own detriment.

“Our youth today do not have a strong appreciation of our history and how we got to where we are. Every society must cherish its historical antecedents because they serve as source of inspiration for succeeding generations to discover, appreciate and take pride in their identity. It has become very imperative that we take a step back and revisit our history. It has become important that we renew efforts to preserve and protect our history.”

Fola Adeyemi is Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Alausa, Ikeja. 

SKC Ogbonnia

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu means different things to different people. But if dynamic opposition is the lifewire of democracy, it is very fitting then to name him the saviour of Nigeria’s current democratic journey. Tinubu, more than any other Nigerian, nurtured and sustained the opposition movement that removed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from power. Before Tinubu’s party, All Progressive Congress (APC), there appeared to be no consequences for bad behaviour in Nigeria whatsoever. Despite mounting corruption and gross mismanagement of national resources, the PDP was boasting that it would rule Nigeria forever.
And, one cannot blame it. It was unfathomable, as at then, for an incumbent president to lose election in Nigeria. But, not anymore! APC recognized the Tinubu genius, and had no problem conferring him with the title of the “National Leader”. But, the honour would become queer in the course of 2015 election campaigns, because Bola Tinubu was neither the party’s national chairman nor the presidential candidate.
Seasoned pundits had reasoned that Muhammadu Buhari, having been elected president, would assume the title of the National Leader while the Asiwaju would be anointed the chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees. Glaringly, that was not meant to be.
Tinubu’s political sagacity was seen as a threat by Buhari’s post-election inner caucus, a clique of primitive loyalists, whose visions appear concocted from the philosophies of Stone Age native doctors. Instead of the change agenda of the ruling party, the clique focused its energy on strategies to decimate the Tinubu-led brain trust that brought Buhari to power.
The president had no reason to look back. Buhari was still gloating with precipitate pride having been greeted with worldwide goodwill after declaring that he “belonged to no one”. Many took the memorable line as a quaint exit from the military arm of Nigeria’s corrupt oligarchy that needed to be carried along to dislodge PDP from power. Well, events have since shown that Buhari’s “I belong to no one” statement might have been referring to an imaginary freedom from Tinubu. The rest, they say, is history.
This history is that party indiscipline, which had been a cancer of past regimes, became full grown as soon as Tinubu was sidelined. The opposition took advantage to wangle its men to critical leadership positions at both arms of the Legislature. The paradox is that a corrupt opposition party dictates the content and character of the much-anticipated change under the APC government. Even the boards of vital government agencies, including strategic foreign posts, remained in the hands of the opposition for over two years after Buhari assumed office.
The president remained indifferent. To his advisers, the post-Tinubu Tsunami would eventually subside in time for the next election. This false hope prompted Buhari to openly admonish that Bola Tinubu was not the National Leader but merely one of the leaders of the party. The mockery of Tinubu became an appetizing ingredient in every pepper soup joint. But, the man kept calm. He had to.
What could he possibly tell the political gods about his predicament? How could he face his long-standing, left-leaning NADECO allies and the powerful Southwest media that he coopted to produce a Buhari presidency? How could he possibly reconcile his new fate in APC after enduring the worst political fire ever directed to a non-candidate in the history of Nigeria? How could Bola Tinubu reconcile the fact that, instead of Buhari, the Nigerian masses are mocking the Asiwaju himself for the failures of APC government?
One can now relate to why I pity Tinubu; and I truly do. But, what has followed is even more intriguing. The Asiwaju is now re-baptised “the National Leader”. With APC in crisis, combined with his waning popularity, President Buhari did an abrupt U-turn, turning to the same virally discredited Tinubu. The goal is to salvage the party and create a favorable image in time for 2019 elections.
Buhari deserves commendation for the peace move. Tinubu, on his part, has embraced the assignment as a Christmas in June, and he has what it takes to weave the innocent opinions of party members as well as the Nigerian people towards a common purpose. However, how that common purpose aligns with the president’s 2019 individual agenda is another aching dilemma.
Nevertheless, as a fervent fan of Buhari from ages and a sapient adherent of Tinubu’s visions, and now a presidential aspirant under APC, let it not be misconstrued that I openly state as follows: The president can make the assignment less herculean by recognizing that Muhammadu Buhari has become the problem. Yes, there comes a time nonsense paves way for commonsense.
Commonsense dictates that Nigerians are in dire need of a newbreed president—regardless of tribe or religion—who is roundly equipped to lead the country to greatness. The Nigerian people also yearn for a party that can earn their trust. APC can become that party once again, if Asiwaju Tinubu is seen as an agent of the truth.
The truth is that history already celebrates President Buhari for his sacrifice in rescuing Nigeria from the ruins of PDP, but the same history will commit him to its darkest side, if he ignores the warning signs and furthers any individual ambition that can propel PDP back to power.

Ogbonnia, an APC presidential aspirant, writes via: SKCOgbonnia1@aol.com

Banji Ojewale

“In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman”
–Margaret Hilda Thatcher (Late British Prime Minister)

It’s fast turning out that ‘the other room’ in the cosmos of President Muhammadu Buhari is where we have to look for answers to some of the bewildering national questions of the day. When he was grabbed on camera as he faced the world to disclose the existence of an enclosure exclusive to his wife, the president hardly perceived the location as a world beyond his own vision. His remarks were a gratuitous riposte to a loving spouse’s customary admonition. He ignored her and sought to cage the woman, as it were. But, the genie was out of the bottle.
For, after we had been told of the room, its occupant has since hogged the headlines, taken over the narrative and compelled a huge flow of media commentary. Periodically, she looks through the window and, noticing scenes toxic to the polity and her husband, drops words of caution. Sometimes, she would venture out, to air views that her husband’s fawning hangers-on wished were never allowed a space beyond her soul.
But we must give audience to Mrs. Aisha Buhari. We must be interested in what she cooks in ‘the other room’, the same way we must be inseparable from the inner working of the Buhari Presidency. It’s close to the eventful days of the JFK Presidency in the United States of America in the 1960s. The Administration wanted to set up an agenda for the media that played down the activities of Jacqueline, President Kennedy’s wife. Leave out JFK’s wife in your political reporting, the White House would seem to tell the newsmen. The authorities missed the point that it was the woman who provided irresistible cannon fodder which the journalists pounced on. Jacqueline’s own body language and fashion statement wouldn’t leave the reporters out of her life!
Now consider our own Aisha. Although not a flea-hop near Nana Rawlings of Ghana, a Grace ‘Gucci’ Mugabe (Zimbabwe) or an Eva Peron (Argentina), she has, in a way, acquired their magnetic and forceful temper: subtle power to shake off shadowy existence. Aisha’s ruthless interrogation of the state of Aso Villa Clinic led her into fundamental submissions on the challenges of leadership in Nigeria and why we are in this sorry pass threatening to consume us. She impliedly threw darts at her husband and all others claiming to be our leaders.
In particular, she shot down the Federal Government’s sing-song of change as a movement or revolution that begins with the citizens. It is sedentary rulers who pursue and embrace this creed. When my leader is ill and he flies out for medicare, he little inspires me to trust in the domestic health infrastructure. He isn’t moving me to change my stand on the system. It is hypocrisy to ask me to change my attitude to national issues when he hasn’t initiated a change through a thorough-going transformation of his own lifestyle which must include endogenous consumption. I want to see my leader and his family patronise the local schools, markets and hospitals my kids make use of.
The homilies on corruption, patriotism, honesty, indiscipline, self-denial, sacrificial national service, humility, good neighborliness etc. are hollow and “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” as long as the leaders themselves don’t first reflect these virtues while in public office and in private. If the citizen doesn’t first sight these attributes in the leader, there can’t be change.
That was the lesson the First Lady kept in ‘the other room’ imparted last year when she took ill. “A few weeks ago,” she said, “I was sick…they advised me to take the first flight out to London. I refused to go. I insisted I must be treated in Nigeria…”
You wonder: what has a singular act of self-abnegation by a leader got to do with good governance? But, the point is that the citizens of a given society meet themselves in the leader, elected or selected. If the leader is obsessed with the notion of self-preservation, and an opulent lifestyle that mocks his people’s poverty with the perpetuation of a retarding system he promotes, he throws back all these vices into the people. Members of this society won’t approximate the change the leader drums in their ears unless the leader himself first renounces those vices in principle and in practice. We have wasted precious time and resources in Nigeria for decades as an independent country, wishfully thinking change lies with the led.
The isolated occupant of ‘the other room’ knows better…you assess a society by its abstemious or wasteful and extravagant leadership, even if she herself appears to have failed that test with her luscious dressing. The other day, as most Nigerians hailed ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo for advising Buhari not to opt for an encore in 2019, they did not give honor to whom it is due: the First Lady had first arrived at that conclusion. Obj got that insight in January 2018; Aisha, operating from ‘the other room,’ had settled upon that counsel nearly two years ago on October 14, 2016.
We should also recall that ‘the other room’ brewed the scary imagery of such predatory beasts as jackals, hyenas, wolves and the king of them all, the lion who have all been feasting on Nigeria. In our dog-eat-dog country, it is the Eighth Wonder of the world that we have not all been consumed, that Nigeria has not altogether disappeared at the table of the salivating animals. The world has long waited for the Eighth Wonder; the ancient world having produced seven.
Banishment or isolation in prison or under house arrest isn’t evil after all. It brings forth sublime productivity as it did for our own Wole Soyinka. His famous book The Man Died was jail-born. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was incarcerated, but his writing skills flourished while in chains. John the Beloved, the great apostle of Jesus Christ our Savior, came up with the eschatological Book of Revelation in exile on the desolate island of Patmos.
Our own Hajia Aisha Buhari must perpetuate this tradition of literary fecundity. We look forward to seminal books emerging from ‘the other room’. The volumes should, among other objectives, help to deliver our politicians and public office holders from the unhelpful notion that leadership is leisure, that leading is living in luxury. No! Leadership is losing yourself in service for the led.

Ojewale writes from Ota, Ogun State.

Segun Imohiosen

The fight against corruption today is a major milestone of the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration. It has not made this kind of impact in its almost three years that reverberate hope of success with the singular act of good governance, transparency and accountability exhibited by the Registrar of JAMB in recent times. The snake that refused to dance in“the dance of the python” but chose to swallow millions of naira has only helped in this piece to give credence to the man who chose to reverse the negative trend.
The theatre of the absurd as it is commonplace is reviewed with this narrative setting a new tone in corporate governance. To borrow from the repertory of literary works is to dare and audaciously say this is “no more the wasted breed.” We can confidently say, therefore, that there is still hope for Nigeria. Not to philosophise, but the pertinacity on the part of the character in discourse is pervasive in its totality to enliven that change the administration has so much tenaciously set to achieve through the anti-corruption campaign. This is a beacon of hope meaning Nigeria will get there eventually.
It is apparent, as the saying goes, that, “you can only give what you have.” To have remitted that mind-blowing sum of money, N7.8billion under a year of taking office as against the status quo-ante in JAMB over the lifespan of the different administrations is outside the scope and smirks of abnormality. You will agree that this, is not what we hear or see in Nigeria, rather these “cowboys” just loot their different organisations brazenly and, with careless abandonment, walk the streets even with security apparatus maintained by the taxpayer’s money. However, the persona of Ishaq Oloyede as a university teacher, a family man and a holder of public office as in the wave of the event of returning money to the government treasury is in total sync with his real self, no façade at all, integrity personified.
When the game changers come, what they do fits like gloves into hands. These performers demystify the myth of rocket science approach to solving problems, the stereotype that has remained the bane of development in the country. The recent reversal of the ugly trend in perpetuity in the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) by the Registrar, Professor Ishaq Alao Oloyede, is not only commendable but something to be emulated by other chief executives at the helm of affairs in their different departments. It is not in doubt that the recent can of worms exposed in JAMB is not peculiar to this agency of government but obtains in so many other ministries, departments and agencies of government. But because somebody dared to be different hence the development that is making the rounds in the media and the public domain.
“Bi egun eni ba jo re, ori a ma ya atokun e.” It is a common saying in the Yoruba parlance that when a man’s masquerade danced well in the market place, the instructor is pleased. When a man has performed creditably well, it is good we praise him. In the words of the Registrar during his interview on Focus, an AIT programme recently, he said, “We should celebrate performance and not criminals.” He further pointed out that “a country that celebrates criminals has no future.”
One cannot better agree with this perspective because of too many criminals that have been thrown up by a system that has not seen the significance of value and character as a keen determinant and yardstick for taking positions of authority. Is it not the same JAMB where between 2010 – 2016 only N5.6 million was remitted as against the N7.8 billion remittance under one year? Oloyede, despite the odds against him, decided to rock the boat and damn the consequences.
This is not to say that the previous registrars were fraudulent but were most likely unable to look into the places the current registrar dared to explore. One can only conjecture that Oloyede was perspicacious enough to have done background checks on the organisation and got a firsthand information on what to do to turn the tide in JAMB. In retrospect, the personification of probity which is ultimately the hallmark of the discharge of his duty merely came to the fore in JAMB, hence this feat in no time. There is the epigraph I culled from a colleague and university teacher friend, Dr. James Akanmu of University Lagos, that: “Every time you are honest and conduct yourself with honesty, a success force will drive you towards greater success. Each time you lie, even with a little white lie, there are strange forces pushing you towards failure.”
Congruously, what obtains presently in JAMB at the instance of the current registrar could only have be borne out of an altruistic, selfless and honest nature that has characterised his duty back then as a university teacher. This nature has ultimately come to play out in the public office. There is always a choice but his patriotic posture has taken the better of him and the result is the sanity that is growing in JAMB. In our time of the “winner takes it all” syndrome, this act is epical and legendary.
Of course, if there are snakes in JAMB, that same snake that swallowed N36 million in the JAMB office in Benue is resident in many other parastatals, agencies, commissions and various departments of government. To further borrow a wandering leaf, the failure to identify the snakes in other such revenue generating organisations of government could only mean that there is the possibility of those in charge also being snakes. In this regard, it would be difficult to identify likes.
However, as we march towards economic and political recovery in Nigeria, it behooves us as a nation to dissociate ourselves from tribal, tongue and religious leanings, and to consciously turn our backs to nepotistic considerations but see the greater good of our nation first and then begin to throw up characters that will turn this country to a brand eventually. In the quest for sustainable economic development and growth, a couple of Oloyedes out there are enough a magic wand if they are rightly positioned to get the country back on its feet. That greatness that seems to have eluded us as a nation is achievable when round pegs are put in round holes. This largely is informed by the sheer sense of accountability exhibited by the Registrar, which ought not to be so difficult to display when holding public office. It is true that our common destiny of greatness as a nation could still be attained despite all the setbacks that have bedeviled us as a people over the years with the right people in place.
While this phenomenon at JAMB was being interviewed, he mentioned an unusual occurrence in some parts of the country where some JAMB officials, while conducting the CBT examination were offered money as bribes, up to the tune of a million naira to compromise the examination, for the sake of the candidates out there.
The officials, understanding the precarious position they were in, allowed wisdom to take charge by agreeing to the offer for the sake of their safety. Wisdom, the holy book says, is profitable for direction. These officials having collected the gratification deposited the large sum of money into the account of JAMB, wrote their reports and detailed the matter.
This is a phenomenon in times like this. It is not all the time you hear this kind of stories. The question one would probably be asking oneself is if this could be possible in this clime with the spate of poverty ravaging the nation. As they say, when the head is rotten, the whole body is bad and vice versa.
The new wave of sanity in JAMB as it obtains from the top is gradually flowing to the rest of the officials at the different levels of responsibility. Needless to say that if this could be the situation in all other organisations of government in the country, alas, we would shout Eureka! It is not yet uhuru but we are already beating the path to that economic, social and political uhuru if the wave of accountability and patriotism that is presently blowing in JAMB could blow through every sector in Nigeria.

Imohiosen writes from Abuja via segunimohiosen@yahoo.com

Promise Adiele

The reality of Nigeria’s political configuration since independence and the extended parodies that have defined its economic undercurrents should agitate the mind of any concerned citizen. Indeed, the North-South dichotomy, sustained by a reprehensible revenue sharing formula and an asymmetrical political structure has subsisted without hindrances. No thanks to the imprudent enactment of the Lugardian administrative architecture in 1914. Although Nigerians have co-habited under an unjust economic and political matrix which glaringly favours a section of the country, the gulf has continued to widen while the rest of the country regrettably imbibe that familiar salve of timid consciences, ‘it is well’.

The tragic consequence of the Nigerian condition is the subliminal endorsement of a perverse revenue formula where a section of the country laid the golden eggs; another section of the country enjoys the plum vibrations without corresponding contribution to the national enterprise. The protagonists of this revenue pervasion, over the years have imposed their imperious diktats through a strangulating hold on economic channels and through a maleficent appropriation of power lineaments. It is this kind of disproportionate alignment that has led to agitations from the Niger Delta to the fight for self-determination spearheaded by the Igbo. Let us emphasize here that the fate of the Igbo in Nigeria was decided after the Nigeria-Biafra war in 1970. Since then, power procedure and the attendant economic disbursement have unfortunately been incongruous to the Igbo as the rest of the country have viewed them with suspicion underlined by inane pronouncements such as ‘the Igbo cannot be trusted with power.’ In spite of all these, the Igbo emerged from the crucible of the civil war and inaugurated through sheer determination an edifice of boisterous commerce and industry. The foregoing is a corollary of their natural inclination for wealth creation with an enviable degree of mercantile solidarity and unbroken continuity of entrepreneurship.

Like the proverbial coat of many colours, the different components that make up Nigeria have tolerated one another with the hope of a new egalitarian system with specific ideological doctrine. This tolerance in quietude has conferred a strain on the collective consciousness with the inevitable risk of generating sinister by-ways which in turn beget revolutionary monsters. While some of us insist in the continued existence of Nigeria, some have vehemently posited for its disintegration citing obvious lopsided economic allotment. Although the latter carries with it ominous reminiscences of war, restructuring has emerged as an ensemble with a more urbane consciousness. The call for restructuring is among other things a response to the problem of economic distortion and political absolutism which negate the principle of autonomy.

Since 1960, Nigeria has been a parcelled territory of the military that produce retired coup maestros, and like the Ogbanje or Abiku child, they continue to re-incarnate. Their peregrination is marked by particularized idiosyncrasy which lacks morality or a culture of devotion beyond plunder and avarice. However, the enthronement of democracy has bred objectivity in the psyche of Nigerians who, in spite of brutal provocation, decide to follow the path of peace to the point of docility. The horse-rider is ignorant of the kind of awareness which currently pervades every section of the country, people whose existence is stripped to skeletal need and are repositioning for a better condition come 2019. While power resides presently with the Hausa/Fulani, the Yoruba is not a fool and cannot be used anymore; the Niger-Delta is now more aware, different ethnicities in Nigeria are concerned about their welfare come 2019 and in this the Igbo must rise to take a definite position.

In a sense, we can argue that since the end of the civil war, no power machinery has been unfair to the Igbo like the existing one. Some observers have argued that Muhamadu Buhari has seismic hatred for the Igbo. While this perception can be interrogated and questioned, the president’s proclamation on anything Igbo will not help the argument. The agonizing number of Igbo in president Buhari’s appointments into major positions in the country can be misconstrued as enemy action or an attempt to communicate that message of hatred. Due to the wanton neglect of the Igbo since Buhari assumed office, the agitation for the actualizing of Biafra has gained traction. It is a political reality all over the world that when a group within a country feels aggrieved, they reserve the right to ventilate their frustrations through any form of revolutionary instrumentality. Such circumstances demand a humane response, an astute political engineering where dialogue would be the best option. The Biafra agitators didn’t orchestrate carnage like the heinous Fulani herdsmen. But for obvious reasons, military action was ordered and in a demonstration of despicable sadism, many Igbo youths lost their lives, an act that revolted the sensibilities, drawing the attention of the international community.

The total lack of federal presence in Igbo region is inimical to good conscience and antithetical to the psychology of political fellowship. Although the present administration recorded very low votes during the last election in the Igbo region, Buhari’s pronouncement immediately after the election that he will first attend to those who voted for him cannot be associated with a man of good intentions. APC as a political party cannot be blamed for the fate of the Igbo in the current power protocol. After all Lagos State is controlled by the same party where there is a semblance of responsiveness in terms of governance, a state where the Igbo are accommodated, making good progress in business and corporate life. However, whatever strides the APC has made in Lagos is obliterated by what presently obtains at the centre and in Imo State where a ludicrous comic circus is in operation.

2019 presents a very big opportunity for the Igbo to assert their identity in the Nigerian project.  The first assignment in the pursuant of this objective is to cultivate the spirit of humility and friendship with other ethnicities. Let the Igbo divest themselves of the putrid garment of arrogance and self-pity but get involved in real politicking by building bridges across the land. Every Igbo person of good age should register to vote as it is their only instrument to make a choice in leadership. The socio-cultural group, Ohaneze Ndigbo, through its actions has proved incapable of representing Igbo interest as it continues to pursue the vanishing illusions of political amorality.

Adiele writes from  Department of English, University of Lagos.

Jerome-Mario Utomi

One of the most exciting teachings I received during my formative years was the lesson on prophecy. It was during my catechism class as a Catholic Christian, and prophecy as a topic posed a huge but thrilling challenge to me. On that day, at that time and in that place, the Catechist (teacher) told the class that ‘prophecy is the certain foretelling of a future event by a person supernaturally informed of it and supernaturally moved to announce it. This, he added, comes in two ways: prophesy of foreknowledge and prophesy of denunciation.

While the prophecy of foreknowledge, according to him, deal’s with what is certain to come, prophesy of denunciation tells what is to come if the present situation is not changed; both acting as information and warning respectively. However, this knowledge gained has since transcended to the political circle as it naturally comes flooding whenever I ruminate about the leadership challenge in Africa. Regrettably, our continent is littered with information and warning prophecies booming across our wavelength without our leaders listening.

 Notably, flagrant disregard of public opinions, ignoring advice/admonitions from well-meaning Africans and groups, paying no attention to political and socioeconomic concerns expressed by the people as well as undermining institutions are but vivid examples. From Zimbabwe to South Africa, Kenya down to Nigeria, the story is the same: penchant for ignoring advice, warning signals, and inability to read the political handwriting on the wall.

No doubt, prominent among the reasons for this flagrant disregard of political warnings is a barefaced illusion on the part of our leaders that they are more patriotic than the other citizens.   A character that is fuelled by inordinate view of their countries as a personal property. This baffling disposition, in effect, prepares the ground for African  ‘leaders’ exercising power and responsibility, not as a trust for public good but as an opportunity for private gains. Acting as a boost to the above is the excruciating poverty and starvation orchestrated by these ‘leaders’ and visited on the continent in such a way that it drives more people into the ranks of the beggars, whose desperate struggle for bread renders them insensitive to all feelings of decency and self-respect.

 A similar reason is the established fact that Africa is a continent where tribal loyalties seem stronger than the sense of common nationhood. A state of affairs that blurs our vision about public leadership and promotes nepotism, cronyism and corruption while making our political judgments bigoted Also working in favour of these African leaders’ penchant  for disobeying political prophecies is their gross poverty of history, a condition that roundly prevents them and their followers from learning  from the consequences that befell some of the past African leaders that ignored political prophecies. In our living memories are: Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo and Mobutu Seseseko of Zaire, among others

Regardless of what others may say, leadership knowledge is gained by probing the past and using the knowledge derived to tackle the present. Or, analyzing the present and using the information gained to predict the future.  But now that the information coming from our past and present leaders are faulty and defective, now that we are faced with the reality that tomorrow has become now, how do we as a continent tackle the future? If you are in doubt of how enormous these challenges are, then, check out the brazen impunity recently demonstrated by one of the so-called African leaders.  Mr Raila Odinga, of the People’s  Republic of Kenya,  who recently decided to, and had himself, illegally sworn-in as the parallel president of the Republic, despite his non-participation in the rescheduled presidential election in Kenya.

With this move, Odinga, again, as an average African ‘leader’  demonstrated his political blindness to prophecies and in effect, proved to the world that public opinion makes little or no meaning to him. To Odinga, it is not about the people but personal aggrandizement. To him, it is not about service but selfishness. Yet, if you think that Odinga is alone on this inglorious voyage, wait till you cast a glance at this.  Jacob Zuma, the ousted South African president, recently among other things stated as follows, ‘I have come to the decision to resign as president of the republic with immediate effect. Even though I  disagree with the decision of the leadership of my organization. No life should be lost in my name. And also, the ANC   should not be divided in my name.’ 

Arguably well crafted and a reasonable statement but notwithstanding,  a deeper probe of this statement again, like Odinga, presents Zuma as a leader enmeshed in an inordinate evaluation of self, position and incurably blind to public opinion. His disagreement with the party’s position is but a pragmatic exhibition of a man that failed to view leadership as a trust that was freely bestowed on him by the people, which can also be withdrawn at any moment when observed that the value-addition role expected of a leader is no longer felt. Back home, political warnings and handwritings have been obvious and torrential, but with hope for abating not in sight.  Prominent among these, was leadership deformity associated with the present administration as authored by the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo.

In the same vein, a similar warning came recently from the Transparency International stating that corruption in Nigeria is on the increase. The situation, in my view, may become worse if something dramatic is not done to arrest the drift.

Nevertheless, such a development should not be a surprise as it is considered a useful ingredient in a democratic environment.  Questioning, condemning when we should, and commending when we can, form evolving democracy. What our leaders do with the issues raised should also be of concern to us. Looking ahead, therefore, if truly a people-purposed leadership is what we seek in Africa, if accelerated  economy is our goal, if social and cultural development is our dream, if  promoting peace, supporting our industries and improving our energy sector form our objectives, then, the solution to these critical demands calls for overwhelmingly urgency  and demand a  generational change.

Why? The simple answer is that Africa as a continent has  talented and well educated youth who can build a modern continent. Apart from other fears entertained, one area of interest the people must watch in the interim is our political leaders’ expertise in adopting the tactics of the coquette.  ‘A tactic that makes the public fall in love with excitement while these leaders remain inwardly detached; while keeping them in control. Such entreaties must be watched and controlled if we are to move forward as a continent.’ Very instructive also, it’s my view that fighting the dearth of leadership is a war that we must win. But, for us to be successful, we must first realize that to safeguard democracy, ‘the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect and oneness’, and insist on choosing the right people as  leaders against all odds.

Finally, leaders on their part should not live under the illusion of a misguided cleverness but should ‘ study history, study the actions of the eminent men, to see how they conducted themselves and to discover the reasons for their victories or their defeats so that they can avoid the later and imitate the former.’

Jerome-Mario, Springnewsng.com, writes via jeromeutomi@yahoo.com

Emmanuel Onwubiko

ZIMBABWEAN’S political horizon has a striking resemblance to that of Nigeria in the sense that there are individuals who by merit ought to have become President of their nations respectively at different epochs but never emerged due to centripetal and centrifugal political forces at play. Kenya has same scenario. 

The Kenyan opposition figure, Raila Odinga, recently made himself President after he was allegedly rigged out of another Presidential race by Uhuru Kenyatta, the scion of the Jomo Kenyatta political leadership.

In Nigeria, Sir Obafemi Awolowo, who for a long time was the political leader of the Yoruba race in Western Nigeria, could not become the Nigerian President even when he worked, dreamt and played active politics all his life to attain this lofty height but died without achieving the dream. Awolowo is reputedly the only Nigerian political force who successfully administered free and qualitative education to his people whilst holding elective office as the Premier of Western Region. Awolowo was the man who first introduced a television station that later metamorphosed into Nigerian Television Authority. Awolowo’s Tribune newspaper is a monumental media institution in Nigeria.  Chief Obafemi Awolowo is generally referred to by some political historians as the best President that Nigeria never had. He was urbane, educated and cerebral. 

In the Southern African nation of Zimbabwe, there is also a man who worked and rose through the ranks as a unionist and contested to become the President of Zimbabwe but was rigged out in his last attempt in 2008. That man who can be called the best President that Zimbabwe never had is Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai who died in a South African hospital on Valentine’s Day. He was urbane, sophisticated, well-travelled and cerebral. 

An online news blog News24.com has only but beautiful words on this great statesman as one of the few rare men out of Africa who gave his best to salvage his nation from the oppressive hold of the then dictator, Robert Mugabe.  Born in 1952 to a bricklayer father in drought-prone Buhera, in the southeast of Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai prematurely ended his studies at Gokomere Mission to support his siblings.  The eldest of nine children, Tsvangirai worked at a textile mill in Mutare in the country’s east, and later joined a nickel mine in Bindura, a town in the north.

After Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980, Tsvangirai became branch chairperson of the National Mine Workers Union, rising through the ranks to become secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) in 1988.  Under his leadership, the labour federation challenged economic policies and a lack of democracy in the 1990s in Zimbabwe, so wrote historians.

As reported then, during the well-co-ordinated and crippling national strikes he led, workers staged street protests against meager salaries, rising inflation, rampant corruption and deepening poverty. He relinquished that post, however, when he formed the Movement for Democratic Change in 1999.  Another commentator in Southern Africa wrote that: “The life and times of Morgan Tsvangirai remains one of the most intriguing and inspiring personal stories of our generation.”

The writer said his courage and tenacity brought the unprecedented advent of open opposition and defiance against the once feared Robert Mugabe regime. 

Indeed, this fast-talking former Union leader, Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai, stood firm at a time when no one else could dare to do so. 

“He personally paid the price of sacrifice for Zimbabwe to be where it is today. Inspired by his courage and rare charisma, thousands of our young people gave up everything (including life and limb) to follow this man and support his vision for a more democratic and peaceful Zimbabwe based on multiparty democracy.”

Political commentators say that Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai’s most illustrious contribution to Zimbabwe was when he gave his 2008 victory for the sake of peace and stability of this great and beloved nation.  According to media reports, the opposition leader who actually won the election but was denied said he would not walk to power over the heads and dead bodies of his supporters. 

“He said they would rather rule illegally than destroy this baby. His rarity is rare, indeed. He has contributed to the peace and stability of this country in many and more ways than our bare and shortsighted eyes can see at the moment.”

A year earlier, in 1998, Tsvangirai became chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly, a position largely seen as recognition for his leadership. His meteoric rise in his political career had been steady, as he became a household name and a symbol of resistance in Zimbabwe with considerable global media focus.

“When hired men unsuccessfully tried to throw him from the 9th floor of his Chester House office in central Harare, the capital, in December 1998, Zimbabwean workers spontaneously downed their tools.”

This man was a powerful public speaker, and had six children with his late wife, Susan, who died in a 2009 car accident. The tabloid reported that his social life at a time posed significant drawbacks to his rising political profile. 

“But his personal life had become a source of some embarrassment for the political leader. In September 2013, he wedded businesswoman, Elizabeth Macheka, 36, but did not sign the legal marriage register due to a legal challenge filed against their union by the PM’s ex-lover, Locardia Karimatsenga.”

The media recounted that erstwhilst Zimbawean President Robert Mugabe, who stepped down in November last year, had campaigned against Tsvangirai’s alleged “immorality”, saying he was not fit to be president.

However, those who should know said that his relentless push for democratic change won Tsvangirai several awards, including an honorary doctorate of Laws from Pai Chai University in South Korea and Solidar Silver Rose award.

Tsvangirai emerged as a powerful public speaker and opposition leader, organizing protests to try to push Mugabe out. Throughout his life, he was jailed several times, charged with treason, and labelled a traitor by Mugabe supporters.

His illustrious democratic credentials are well documented.Specifically, reports have it that in 2008 presidential elections, Tsvangirai was the main challenger to Mugabe and the longtime president’s ZANU-PF party.

Tsvangirai secured 47 percent of the vote in the first round, compared to Mugabe’s 43 percent. But because his victory fell short of the threshold needed to avoid a second round, a runoff was organized.

This fallen African democratic hero has left formidable footprints on the sands of time. He came; he saw and he conquered even without enjoying the political fruits of his labour, his position in the political annals of the African continent is already written in gold. Rest in Peace, great hero of Africa. 

Onwubiko is the Head of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA)

Ariyo-Dare Atoye

Nigeria is in a delicate state: our political survival beyond 2019 now requires a constellation of forces in support of a more prudent option, which must be made by putting a lot of things into context. Apparently, the choice we made in 2015 has put us in a worse situation that demands serious and urgent soul-searching. To salvage our nation from the looming danger, therefore, we must find a viable and pan-Nigerian alternative to President Muhammadu Buhari in the next election. Our country is sliding to the verge of the precipice.  If care is not taken, she may be headed on the dangerous road to Kinshasha.

Our nation is gasping for breath while the survival space is thinning out very fast.  The rate at which evil is encircling our nation is quite alarming, and the incompetence of the current administration in addressing our challenges makes 2019 really too far.   If by any chance we can do a Zuma option in Nigeria, the country will be better for it. We certainly need a new thinking, a new idea, a new perspective and a new leadership approach to solving our problems. Forget the misrepresentation in the highly pro-liberal western media, the rise of Brexit and Trump was never a mistake.  The UK and the US wanted it. It is incumbent on every society to take such an action as would help to secure and protect its interest, economy, heritage and peace. 

We are going to need more than just a president in our search for good leadership ahead of 2019. Because to get out of the current quagmire, Nigeria will need a team of leaders that will comprise the best of the North and the best of the South – real problem solvers – who can give their all, selflessly, and with the fear of God. Having this at the back of our minds, we must make a choice  – an alternative to Buhari – one way or the other to give our nation new hope. However, two prevailing dynamics have so far emerged: the option of a paradigm shift and the option of settling for an experienced hand, with verifiable antecedents, one of which is that he must be a detribalised Nigerian. 

Atiku Abubakar qualifies as a viable option in the experience category of these prevailing dynamics. He is one of the last of the nationalists in the country, and indeed, a pan-Nigerian politician, based on his antecedents, exploits and engagements. In solving problems, there is a time to seek an experienced player to salvage a bad situation and restore hope, and there is also a time to beckon on a wonder kid to do something extraordinary, especially in the game of football, which Nigerian politics has become. This is a decision Nigerians must take without making the mistake of plunging the country into another round of problems.   

There is a huge difference between a team that is still on a level term with its opponent, playing to impress, seeking victory, and a team that is 4 – 1 down, desperately seeking for survival and struggling to come from behind to restore parity. If you are down, survival comes first, before you can think of victory. Nigeria will need more than Dammam and Atlanta miracles combined to redeem the nation from its present state in order to first restore hope to a terribly divided nation. Atiku is in the league of a few leaders who can be called upon to unite, stabilise and secure this nation.   

Recall that the death of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had denied the North an opportunity to have a fair share of power, until Buhari was elected in 2015. So like in 2007, we are most likely to witness a presidential contest that will be substantially an all-Northern affair, just as it was in 1999 for the South. Although, a Buhari from the Northwest is currently in the saddle and may likely seek re-election, but there is a growing agitation in the country that he must not be re-elected. Of a truth, Nigeria has been badly managed under his watch and there is no sense of urgency or capacity to reverse it.

But to stop Buhari from returning, we must put into serious consideration certain factors that revolve around the history of our elections and political trajectory. While the electorate has not been sufficiently galvanised for an alternative to the “no to Buhari” agitation, we must also not forget that we are very poor with our sense of history. As a people, we can easily let go our pains because of momentary benefits. Aside this, Buhari is going to dangle a one-term-left-for-power-to-return-to-South carrot. He has already sent a message to the South-East to wait for 2023, even though it was without any firm pact as Atiku did to the zone in 2011. 

This is where the odds favour Atiku. The former Vice President is known to have once pleaded with the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to allow him to complete the remaining term of the late Yar’Adua, but it did not work out. This time round, the South is more likely to listen to him in a bid to find an alternative to Buhari, and pitch a tent with someone who will not go beyond 2023. Atiku is certainly in a pole position to win the South over with a one-term promise. But it will go beyond a gentleman’s agreement, and the commitment must be real and strategically worked out. 

Atiku can win 2019 if he could strike the right deals with the middle-belt leaders on how to end  the herdsmen’s menace in the country, and faithfully commit himself to the South on how he is going to implement the restructuring agenda he has been preaching. He has little or nothing to fear about the core North who will never vote for him as long as it is not a contest of Atiku versus a southern candidate. The 2019 election is about rescuing the nation; but in a rescued Nigeria, cows cannot graze freely without ranching while the centre cannot hold on to powers without devolution.

The interesting thing about Atiku is that it is even easier for him to win the presidential election than to secure the ticket of the PDP. There are a lot of intrigues and unimpressive gambling going on in his party. The governors in the opposition party are up to different tricks as if it is given the PDP will win 2019 without presenting a formidable team that can defeat Buhari. It is in the interest  of the party to put its house in order quickly, settle for a popular candidate who can win before the emerging coalition makes a political option. I do not know of any core northerner who can assemble a good team like Atiku. He has consistently demonstrated this in politics and business.

But most significantly, Atiku himself must seek out those who can help his political cause. He can indeed surmount both the party hurdle and the national challenge, if he can put in place the right strategy, work with some selfless minds, knowledgeable experts and a committed team; and, also, very importantly, he must sincerely commit himself to God that he will not betray the trust of Nigerians. There is no doubt that the Waziri is the political honey badger of Nigeria: he is fearless, courageous and strong enough to survive political bees. The Atiku option is viable.

Atoye writes from Abuja via aristotle001us@yahoo.com 

Obinna Anyanwu

THE race for Government House, Imo State, has gathered momentum and  a number of aspirants from registered political parties have already started jostling for the number one position in the state ahead of the 2019 gubernatorial elections. However, the recent declarations reportedly made by Governor Rochas Okorocha on who he intends to support as successor to his office has unsettled the political landscape of Imo, my home state. The governor was quoted in the media to have publicly declared support for the Chief of Staff, Government House, Mr. Uche Nwosu, who also happens to be his son in-law.

Public resentment on the issue went wild and majority of those critical to the governor’s declaration are crying foul that the number one citizen wants to convert the number one position in the state to a family affair and by so doing extend his uninspiring administration through covert means. As the resentment against the governor rages, the number of aspirants to  Douglas House, the seat of government keeps increasing by the day. But there is the need to re-engage the current public discourse on the subject of succession in Imo state for a different set of reasons if we are to effectively checkmate the reoccurrence of the sad experience that the state is witnessing currently.

I was born and raised in Imo and I am aware that the forebears of our state had wonderful ideas on how to provide good leadership essential for placement of the state in an enviable position among the comity of states in the country. Sadly, see what we have today! The socio-economic situation of the state is already in ruins  Therefore, the discussion on succession in Imo state, to my mind, should take the shape of a genuine quest for an ideal leader for our state.  Put simply: who should be the appropriate governor of Imo State come 2019? What qualities should be inherent in the ideal governor to earn our support? This question has become pertinent if we must collectively challenge our leadership problem as a state.

There is no doubt that the state’s past and present leaders have left Imo battered and drifting. At the last count, Imo ranks among the top contenders on the poverty index in Nigeria, going by a recent publication by the United Nations.

 With over 70 percent of its revenue base dependent on Federal Allocation and a staggering domestic and foreign debt profiles, our quest as patriotic Imo people must focus on the task of collective self-preservation through the choice of a leadership that understands the uniqueness of Imo and the imperatives of smart governance.

The priority issue that ought to inform the search for and the choice of the next governor of Imo, is that the state is currently lagging dangerously behind in many areas and as such it requires  a tested and trusted leader who would be a manager of resources and creator of wealth for public good in a republican sense.Experience and a track record of performance are urgently needed to address the social and economic headaches inflicted on the masses of Imo State by successive administrations. The new leader must recognise and respect diversity of views, talents, dispositions and aspirations that make Imo different from other states.

The new leader must have adequate knowledge of the dynamics of modern ways of driving the economy of a state effectively and efficiently. A departure from politics of “anything goes” towards politics of ideas must form a major policy thrust of the next administration of heartland state in order for us to break away quickly from the socio-political and economic stagnation currently besetting the state. The ideal governor must be someone who understands the plight of majority of the Imolites and possesses the capacity to point in the direction of enduring change that would impact positively on the living standards of the greatest majority of Imo people. He must also be passionate about reversing the ugly trends manifesting in the form of hopelessness and fear of insecurity among the citizenry.

The solutions we seek are urgent and clear cut, leaving no room for sentiments and unmerited consideration of personages with doubtful experience and lack of track record of achievements and capacity to transform Imo in the shortest possible time.

 As tough as the times are, the selection of the successor to Douglas House becomes easy. This is the time to weigh and balance interested aspirants to the exalted office of governor of Imo state on a scale, especially as it relates to the originality of their visions and capacity to match their words with action.  

However, in a sample of the profiles of some of the notable aspirants to the coveted office in the state published recently in the media, I could not find anyone more qualified to hold the office of governor of Imo with capacity to turn around the fortunes of the state in the shortest possible time than Mr. Okey Ezeh.

Though I have not met him before, but listening to his presentation at a forum in Owerri recently on the way forward for Imo State where he featured as guest speaker, I could not but beat my chest that in our search for an ideal leader, such a personality suits our desire and we are lucky that he is offering himself for service of his fatherland.

His track record of achievement is legendary: He has a wealth of banking experience spanning over a decade and a half, rising to senior management cadre. He was the first franchise owner of the European Armoured Trucks Bureau (BV) of Netherlands to introduce secure armoured cash- in transit for Nigerian banks among numerous other achievements. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Savvycorp Limited, a cutting edge treasury and investment advisory based in Lagos.

Okey is a grassroots politician with a modern inclination to running public affairs and if Imo must advance rapidly in socio-political and economic spheres, deploy we need a man like this young technocrat who is poised to  his versatile experience and knowledge to transform the state. 

Anyanwu writes from Owerri

Adeze Ojukwu

WITHOUT the benevolence of a Danish Charity worker, Anja Ringgren Loven, little Hope Uwem would have died two years ago in Akwa Ibom State. The survival and transformation of Hope, who was abandoned by his parents, over alleged witchcraft, resonate the demand to eradicate obnoxious cultural and religious practices that destroy and undermine human lives. In the name of culture, many people especially children, women and aged are killed, sexually violated, ostracized and  dispossessed of their properties, due to useless ancient and quaint ideologies. He was in a critical condition, wrecked by severe malnutrition, weight loss and  kwashiorkor, before he was graciously rescued by Loven, along with her Nigerian husband David Emmanuel Uwem and the team.

Today, he is a living miracle because a good Samaritan defied the heinous culture of killing suspected child witches. Loven recently shared online pictures of Hope and his miraculous progress in a stirring Face Book post: ‘On the 30th of January 2016, David Emmanuel Umem and I together with Nsidibe Orok and our team went on a rescue mission that would change our lives forever. On the 31st of January 2016, we showed pictures of the little boy we rescued the day before. We named him Hope. He survived. I  celebrate Hope and  the persons responsible for his survival and  recovery. Words are not enough. Today the pictures tell his story,’ she added. Her benevolence is reminiscent of that of Mary Slessor, a Scottish missionary, who was frontal in stopping the practice of killing of twins  in the defunct Eastern region.

This gruesome practice seems to have been replaced by other atrocities, such as the despicable merchandising of children, popularly called ‘baby factory.’ This diabolical business is  perpetrated by greedy operators of fake orphanages and unscrupulous agents involved in purchasing  infants from vulnerable teenage girls and selling them exorbitantly to desperate couples. This is sad considering the region’s notoriety for horrendous discriminations against widows and orphans.

Some of the cultural patterns in the South-West seem quite macabre, with fetish traditions and ritual killings from Badoo gang in Ikorodu to evil forests of Ibadan, ritual  dens in Osun and cult clashes in Ogun states. For several months, Badoo cult members terrorized Ikorodu town killing and maiming many residents. Is it not preposterous to believe that  human organs and cadaver can multiply money?

Sad to note that these horrendous acts in the view of many, mirror the philosophical milieu of the region. Few weeks after smashing a notorious fetish den in Ilesha Osun State, the police uncovered another criminal dungeon with multiple shrines and shallow graves in Ilobu area of the state. Recently, suspected ritualists gruesomely murdered Mr Sunday Ibo, a commercial motorcycle rider, Odogbolu area of Ogun State, even as they  removed his vital organs, allegedly for money. The North has continued to attract international attention and financial support to tackle its numerous socio-cultural challenges, including the subjugation of women and children, which are not only reprehensible but defy human logic.

Terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen and other armed bandits have turned the region into a theatre of war. Obviously, efforts by the global community and  government to tackle these groups have been ineffective, due to ideological tenets of the people. These  complexities are exacerbated by a culture of systemic inequities, illiteracy, poverty, child abuse, gender discriminations, street begging, overpopulation, drug abuse among others.

Senator Shehu Sani blamed the elites for the carnage in the region.  ‘Most political elites from northern Nigeria are not loudly speaking out against the mass murder going on in northern Nigeria, perpetrated by bandits, armed herdsmen or organised criminal gangs out of fear that they may be labelled as anti-Federal Government or anti-president. The elites save their necks by their silence and the necks of the masses are continuously slaughtered.’ Successive governments have spent  billions of naira  on fighting terrorism, to no avail because the insurgents are driven by religious extremism radically opposed to westernization.

Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi, has severally denounced this disingenuous dogmatism saying: ‘Denying the right to pursue scientific and technological knowledge and restricting people to Islamic knowledge is the best means of ensuring that Muslims in Northern Nigeria will be remain economically backward. ‘I’m upset at the legion of beggars on the streets and is trying to bridge the gap between the backward North and  South..

I believe that conservative Muslims are stuck in the 13th Century and their claim that children need no other knowledge than Islamic studies flies in the face of reality. ‘All the poverty, under-development and immense suffering in the North are a result of uneducated masses refusing to learn work or a trade. The majority of technicians in Kano are from the South while untrained indigenes beg? ‘Why is it that conservative Muslims who claim to be against scientific progress enter aeroplanes and fly to perform the Hajj in Mecca rather than using camels to cross the desert! Why do they watch sermons beamed by TV live from Mecca and read the Holy Quran on their laptops yet profess to abhor modern technology? There is no harm in copying from the West, if it brings succour to the masses of poverty stricken Muslims in Northern Nigeria,’ he added.

 Former president Olusegun Obasanjo underscored this point at a public event recently.  He said: ‘You cannot use the security methods that were used in the colonial times and assume that it would be effective in the 21st Century. Adopt modern security techniques and don’t say that it is not your culture. Culture is dynamic. It changes. When we ordered motorcycle riders to ensure they wear crash helmets for safety, the late Abubakar Rimi objected and said it was not their culture in the North to wear helmets. I responded by telling him that riding a motorcycle is not their culture, either. It is a western culture.

I also told him that if he wants to retain the cultural means of transportation in the North, then, everybody should be riding a donkey or a camel because motorcycles were invented by the West.’ Nigeria’s quagmire is largely due to untenable traditions, religious extremities, and flawed political structures. Indeed many citizens may remain disenfranchised politically, economically and educationally, unless this culture of impunity, nepotism, corruption and repugnant traditions are jettisoned.

The nation’s bourgeoning population, for instance, largely viewed, as a ticking bomb, has become  a political tool  by desperate politicians. The recent use of underage  voters in elections is an embarrassment to government and (INEC). It is also  perhaps, a foretaste of what’s ahead.

Ojukwu writes via adezeo@yahoo.com

Fred Edoreh

Caught in the web of slow pace of industrialisation, especially in Africa, thousands of fresh school graduates join millions in the labour market yearly.
In Nigeria, successive federal and state administrations are trailed with failed attempts to provide solutions. Oftentimes, poor in strategic designs and, sometimes, merely politically-motivated, they focus on providing handouts, which only go to sustain consumption, rather than inspire production.
Campaigns into the 2015 elections dwelt heavily on unemployment issues, but, as we complete a four-year cycle, many governments at various levels seem to have disowned their promises, with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), for instance, reporting 3.67 million jobs lost by the fourth quarter of 2016, and a rise in unemployment from 7.51 million by October 2015, to 11.19 million by September 2016, with about 1.5 million more people entering the unemployment bracket by the second and third quarters of 2016.
In 2017, job loss increased to 4.07 million by the third quarter and the unemployed rose further from 11.92 to 15.99 million. Suffice to say these are just official figures on the formal sector as, no doubt, millions more are not captured.
The NBS noted that most affected are the youth, fresh graduates of ages 15 and 24 and older graduates of ages 25 and 34.
It has been globally demonstrated that the way out for nations is to inspire job creation through self-employment rather than have millions marching the streets for non-available white-collar jobs, but matters are not helped here by the educational curricula that pay little or no premium to technical and vocational skills, unlike in Asia, Europe and America, where emphasis in polytechnic knowledge enables tens of millions of cottage, small and medium-scale industrial and commercial enterprises, which form the life of advanced economies.
The difficulty in Nigeria is compounded by the stifling business and investment credit system, which is disconnected from the people and encumbers enterprise. Even when credit schemes have been initiated, they have ended up as mere tools for political patronage and conduits for corruption.
Still, mass mobilisation for productivity remains the panacea, and responsible governments keep developing policies, programmes and enabling environment for citizens’ participation in production as an imperative for nation building.
On this score, only a few governments are demonstrating the intellectual, technical and organisational capacity with the critical political will, sincerity and passion to provide strategic solutions. Delta State stands out in this category with its job creation scheme.
Launched within three months of the administration of Senator Ifeanyi Okowa as one of the vehicles for the delivery of his SMART agenda, the initiative envisions a new, stronger Delta with positive youth attitude towards life, employment and business.
It took off with the establishment of the job creation office, which, in conjunction with relevant agencies, developed about five schemes for the engagement and empowerment of Deltans for the creation of micro and small-scale enterprises and support for the sustenance and expansion of existing medium-scale businesses.
Particularly directed at the youths are the Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Programmme (STEP) and the Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurs Programme (YAGEP).
In simple terms, they entail the training of participants in the technical and business skills of their chosen vocation and providing them starter packs to establish their own businesses.
The truth, however, is that it is a unique socio-economic contract in which the government is partnering the participants to create thousands of small businesses, with government providing all the monetary and material investments for gestation and nurturing while the individual is required to contribute his self-will. Even at that, the government invests in building that requisite new personality in the youth.
As the State Chief Job Creation Officer, Prof. Eric Eboh, said: “The object of STEP and YAGEP is to produce entrepreneurs who have the right mindsets, are well-motivated and totally skilled and equipped for success. This involves life skills and personal effectiveness training to instill the right orientation for personal decision and own responsibility for entrepreneurship and responsibility.”
At the conclusion of the re-orientation programme for the 2017/2018 cycle, many of the participants enthused that they have been mentally reshaped to take their destiny in their hands after the life skill sessions with accomplished entrepreneurs like Mrs. Shimite Bello, executive secretary of the Delta State Micro, Small and Medium Scale Agency, Chief (Mrs.) Mary Iyasere, the state Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Barr. (Mrs.) Omoise Siakpere, Chief Edward Mekwuye, head of State Youths Monitoring and Mentoring Agency.
After the meeting of minds, the participants will proceed for skills training in different accredited centres reputed for their success in their specialised vocational and agricultural enterprises by March 1. Depending on the skill being sought, this could take between three to nine months during which period the government provides them stipends for upkeep. Thorough monitoring is brought to bear to ensure discipline and focus on the part of the participants and commitment to providing the right and complete training in line with developed curricula by the trainers, who are also paid.
At the conclusion of the practical training, the participants are, again, taken through critical entrepreneurship and business management sessions, to prepare them to manage their businesses independently, before their starter packs are issued.
For YAGEP trainees in livestock farming and fishery, for instance, the state provides them with the ponds, juveniles and fingerlings and fish feed for six months, a take-off fund of about N50,000 and a monthly welfare allowance of about N15,000 for six months until they make harvest and begin to turn over.
It is, indeed, interesting to see young persons embrace agriculture again. Equally so is the novel experience of organising the farmers into cluster camps, which enables them to enjoy economies of scale. With this structure, the cluster mates can organise themselves into registrable cooperatives that can enable them access various other commercial and governmental business support and expansion schemes.
While the government insists on keeping close to the graduates even after they have established and are running their businesses, the governor has also instructed that ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) should patronise them in their projects. In this regard, the list of businesses established through STEP and YAGEP has been sent to the MDAs for registration as contractors.
The overarching objective of these initiatives is to consciously and concertedly pull Deltans away from the crowd by providing mental, financial, material and advisory support for the regeneration of a new army of self-determined job creators and change agents towards building a stronger Delta.

• Edoreh writes from Lagos.

Sixtus Chibueze Ezennaya

What makes a Government-Local, State or Federal–likeable, acceptable and admirable to the electorate is how the government responds to complaints. People are also interested in how the government solves their problems, protects them, cares for them and provides dividends of democracy for them.
That some Presidents and Governors even outside Nigeria have remained reference materials is consequent upon their good governance while in office whereas some are a taboo to the society because of their satanic rule.
Whether any government official that came into power through the ballot box likes it or not, one day, he/she must leave the office. Even soldiers come and go but the barrack remains. Likewise, Catholic priests come and go but parishes remain. Statesmen who think of the next generation are recognized for what they donated rather than what they carted away or took from the society. Nigerians cherish the opposite. That is why those who make waves in Nigeria are just vultures and vampires of Nigerian society. Perhaps, that is why the million dollar speech of President John F. Kennedy of USA on January 20, 1960 still remains useful and valid, “Ask not what America can do for you but what you can do for America.”
The rehabilitation of Aba roads ought to be a thing of joy for the residents at Aba.The Enyimba City, (The Japan of Africa?) deserves good roads, potable drinking water, regular electricity, decent and clean environment, crime-free society and law-abiding citizens. All these are not privileges but inalienable rights of the citizens as the city generates more Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to the state governments than any other town in the state. Towns in the category of Aba like Onitsha, Owerri, Awka, Nnewi, Ikot-Ekpene, Enugu, Uyo etc enjoy these amenities without begging for them or in tears. What is not understandable is why the bat should be the only beast created without an anus but rather vomits its excrement from the same mouth it takes its food. Has anyone contemplated why the bat flies at night, perhaps because of its ugliness? Above all, why can’t the bat perch on the branch of a tree like other animals but perches on the branch with its head downwards?
To construct roads in a planless town, demolition of property that is obstructing the road is not out of place. To demolish according to the specifications of the engineers handling the job is not unacceptable.  What sometimes impugns conscience is when the demolition exercise for the road reconstruction is malicious and vindictive. The Aba house demolition exercise would not have been an action raising dust, panic, misery and eyebrows had the roads that witnessed such demolition in the town for over two years now, been tarred as proposed. Rather, the roads have remained in their former states of demolition till now. Government should verify this claim and even conduct survey and opinion polls for the residents of these abandoned roads with demolished buildings to know how they feel.
It was Othman Dan Fodio who reasoned that conscience is an open wound which only truth can heal. The truth of the matter is that those demolitions ought to be done according to the specifications of the construction company engineers and not according to the order of anybody else who wants to exploit the situation and, perhaps, make money out of it or even sabotage the government’s effort.   Governors Chris Ngige, Peter Obi, Willy Obiano,  Godswill Akpabio, Nyesom Wike, Peter Fayose, Fashola et al on such complaints, visited the scene for on-the-spot-assessment of complaints.
On some roads, some of these governors, seeing the extent of damage and the compensation the government would pay for the demolition, decided to refrain from the exercise and make do with what was on the ground. It is tantamount to wickedness to demolish a building and, after the exercise, the road is not extended to the demolished area. SENECA, in one of his postulations said, “Qui non vetat peccare cum posit jubet” i.e. one who does not forbid sin when he can, encourages it.  It is the governor that people voted for and he is answerable to the peolpe for every action of the government. Therefore, whether any governor is enthroned through the Supreme Court or directly through ballot box, the “Numero  Uno” is  accountable to the electorate and not the Government House “House boys.”
That Latin maxim, “Domus Dei, Porta Caeli  Est i.e. the House of God is the Gate of Heaven” is relevant here. It is through the happiness of the electorate that voting and election of every governor flows and proceeds because they are the heartbeat of the society, the gilt in the ginger-bread and the arrow in the quiver, above all, the infrastructure that make up the superstructure. It is, therefore, not advisable for one living on an island to make the sea his enemy.

Ezennaya writes from London.

Ekpa, Stanley Ekpa

What makes some corporate entities in a country more productive, infrangible and sustainable than the countries they exist in lies in the ageless ethos of integrity, strategies in corporate governance, and the founding ideals that define the prestige, elegance and generational acceptability of such corporations.

Corporate governance creates a value system that essentially balances the diverse interests of a company’s multifaceted stakeholders –– the shareholders, management, customers, suppliers, financiers, government and the community. It creates a functional compass that assures public trust and credibility, while attaining the company’s objectives; encompassing virtually every spectrum of management, from target plans and internal controls to performance measurement and corporate disclosure.
Nigeria, a sovereign entity incorporated by the tripod legal instruments of the (Nigerian Council) Order-in-Council, 1912; The Letters Patent, 1913; and the Nigerian Protectorate Order-in-Council, 1913, has existed for a century and nearly half a decade in stagnant search of national identity and ideological bearing. In 1914, the “Nigeria Progress PLC” commenced operations with 24 official and 12 unofficial members, with six unofficial members as Europeans who were representing commerce, shipping, mining, and banking interests in the Council. By the Order (Nigerian Protectorate Order-in-Council, 1913) of His Majesty King George the 5th, which was made on the 22nd November, 1913, by virtue and in the exercise of the power vested in His Majesty by the Foreign Jurisdiction Act, 1890, at the Windsor Castle Court, before Their Lordships, Lord Earl Spence, Lord Stamfordham and Lord Emmatt, the Nigerian first law was made and that legally gave birth to Nigeria – then a legal entity without any internal sovereignity.
Prior to Nigeria’s acquisition of her license of sovereignty and independence in 1960, the colonial masters administered the country for their revenual interests. To be fair to them, they laid strong and firm developmental foundations. A structure that has been crashed by crass ineptitude of successive leaders after our first generation leaders’ stellar leadership of transcendent impact. Upon Nigeria’s independence, such business interests of the colonial masters were transferred to such already existing companies like Unilever Plc, First Bank Plc, Nestle PLC, Cadbury Nigeria PLC, among many others that are still waxing stronger and bigger till tomorrow; serving as strategic growth compass for Nigeria’s emerging entrepreneurs today. Most of those companies have been advanced and sustained based on a crystalline compass of viable visions, transparency, accountability, openness, inclusiveness in governance, and strident commitment of workers to the growth process of the companies. The products and services of these companies which have foreign affiliations and interference in their management are today almost the leading and controlling forces of our economy. As a nation, we must interrogate and emulate how these companies are progressing in order to rescind our country from retrogressive stasis.
These companies do not run abroad for aids, they do not fail their customers as woefully without courtesy and proper notification as is our flopping national leadership, they operate for profit, progress and longevity. Nigeria in her development and modernization drive, must learn from the corporate sector. The managers and stakeholders of the Nigeria enterprise have failed to interogate the situations of our underdevelopment and disunity. To fix Nigeria, all the stakeholders –– the citizens, government officials and the institutions must see themselves as though they are operating a corporate entity. The citizens must play the significant role of the members of a public company. Our leaders must govern Nigeria like credible Directors of a company who have the overall interest of the company at heart. The company’s scope of activities and defined business visions are like the dream of a nation.
It was the wisdom of the Court in Foss v. Harbottle (1843) 2 Hare 461, that the concept of corporate sovereignty and corporate democracy means that the will of the majority of the members of the Company constitute the decision of the body (Corporate sovereignty belongs and resides in the company), a practice that even the Court cannot interface with. Just like the members of a company, the citizens of a nation are the highest and strongest officers of the nation, with the power to hire and fire leaders –– the power of constructive citizenship in nation building. Section 14 (2) (a) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), expressly grants absolute power to the people, that “sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority.”
Just like in a company, viral citizen leadership is the block upon which social progress is built. How exactly have Nigerians exercised their inherent powers on the sovereignty of Nigeria to positively provide perennial development and integration changes? The people, as the victims of underdevelopment and social injustice, are the most significant stakeholders in owning up the advancement process of the “ Nigeria Progress PLC”. Only we the people can make Nigeria work, not our leaders, not foreign forces, not even our African sisters. Nigerians as the custodians of Nigeria’s prosperity must take bold responsibilities to rebuild Nigeria.
Whereas corporate leaders in our country like Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Tony Elumelu, Chief Innocent Chukwuemeka among other stellar entrepreneurs are creating marathon and swift paradigms of progress for Africa’s socio-economic development, our socio-political leaders have remained redundantly passive and grossly ineffective. Our political leaders must imbibe sincerity in service to Nigeria, culture of commitment to national unity, pursuit of excellence in duty, and the practice of patriotism. Our political leaders must stop ridiculing the concept of empowerment, development, governance, leadership and unity. We must govern the “Nigeria Progress PLC” for global productivity, relevance and value, and internally build a Nigeria that Nigerians will be proud to belong to.  Just like prosperous nations, global brands operate in conformance and congruity with the company’s long term goals and defined visions. Great nations are governed by identifiable national dreams. Beyond the American Independence Declaration that proclaimed that “all men are created equal” with the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” James Teuslow Adams in 1931 went further to define the American Dream as a place where “ life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or advancement” regardless of ones circumstances of birth or social class. To give vent to the developmental progress of Nigeria, we must first define, constantly shape and perpetuate an Inclusive Nigeria Development Solution Policy as a Nigerian Dream.
The tenets and practice of Inclusive Nigeria Development Policy must position our nation for shared prosperity, inclusive opportunities and social justice anchored on the ageless concepts of equality, fairness, respect for the fundamental rights of all citizens, respect for due process and rule of law, patriotism, hard work, innovativeness, and the consistency of opportunity for progress. The concept of inclusiveness in our national dream means that our system must prima facie and principally provide an opportunity for all States, regions and individuals to excel not just in an even uniformity but in a healthy competitiveness, because underdevelopment anywhere in Nigeria remains a threat to our collective progress and security everywhere. Hence, our approach must take cognizance of the weakness and comparative developmental advantages, strength, opportunities and potentials of States, and how they can harness same for growth. A Nigerian Dream that will reawaken our spirit for participatory citizenry and quality citizen leadership, for efficient institutions that create a rallying point of new Nigerian values, development philosophies, national ethos of excellence, and a penchant for shunning corrupt and sharp practices.

Ekpa, Principal Development Partner, Nigeria Solution Group, writes from Nigerian Law School, Bwari, Abuja.

Charles Onunaiju

Almost the whole world, including Africans themselves, regard corruption as Africa’s deadliest cankerworm that has undermined sustainable development, sapped her vitality, driven  most of its promising talents and youths to far-flung places and even blighted her prospects.

Yet, Africa’s leaderships have muted its corrosive effects in the past.
In an unusual audacity combined with what appeared like a new political will, the agenda of corruption and its deadly effects on the fortunes of the region was the main theme of the 30th ordinary session of the African Union Summit at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between the 28th and 29th of January.
“Winning the fight against corruption: A sustainable path to Africa’s transformation,” was the broad theme of the summit. Nigeria’s President Buhari was unanimously charged to lead the fight against the debilitating cancer in Africa’s public life.
The irony of leading Africa’s allegedly most corrupt country has not dented the personal integrity of the former military commander, who is famous for his disinclination to wealth accumulation, a notorious trademark of high office holders. After having held string of high offices or what is usually referred to as “juicy posts,” ranging from provincial governor, petroleum minister and former head of a military regime, he is visibly not rich, a reputation that worked in his favour as the first opposition leader to defeat an incumbent in the more than five decades of Nigeria’s political history.
So, when his summit colleagues asked him to lead the charge against corruption, they probably meant business. But President Buhari’s own experience in the fight against corruption in the past two years since he assumed office is that corruption fights back even more viciously. Therefore, the choice of the theme of the 30th ordinary session of the Africa Union summit to “fight corruption,” cannot  even begin to count as the winding down of the scourge in the region. Asking President Buhari whose two-year rule has put the fight against corruption at the topmost of its agenda to lead the regional war against corruption means the theme is not just another diversionary rhetoric of an organization, some Africans in the past,  have derisively referred to as a Trade Union for the protection of interests of the political rulers of the region.
As Africa’s most well known cankerworm, notorious for the many years it has ravaged the region, Africa’s recent quest for revival and renaissance especially as she is open to business and investment cannot happen on a sustainable basis, except a strong commitment to deal a fatal blow to corruption is matched with credible political will at the highest level. Africa Union, the region’s political clearing-house and its foremost institutional platform for collective action has now decisively thrown its hat in the ring with a fresh focus on the fight against corruption.
What corruption does to Africa is beyond words. It is cruelly devastating. Apart from the illicit flight of capital, it shrinks the space for social and economic opportunity, forcing her most productive population, the youths and even skilled persons to scamper all over the world in search of elusive green pastures. The sustained and high casuality rates of youths drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, trying to cross to Europe, were a tiny part of the social malaise inflicted by corruption in Africa. Clinics and local hospitals with empty drug shelves, peasants scratching bare farmlands without the slightest inputs of modern agricultural equipment, children squatting on bare floors in schools, crime colonies and squalor camps in cities, broken infrastructure and perennial energy crises, electricity outages and many others are eloquent testimonies to the ravages of corruption in Africa. More dangerously is even the threat of corruption to investment in Africa.
According to a study released last year by Mckinsey & company, a renowned global management consortium, entitled “Dance of the lions and dragons: How are Africa and China engaging, and how will the partnership evolve?” it observed that “between 60 and 87 percent of Chinese firms in Africa said they paid “tips” or bribes to obtain a business licence,” and noted that “these bribes exact a real cost on African economies as bribes ultimately lead to higher prices for local consumers as well as lost opportunity as some investors will inevitably take their capital to better-governed markets.”
Nevertheless, the study which “evaluated Africa’s economic partnership with the rest of the world across five dimensions: trade, investment stock, investment growth, infrastructure, financing, and aid,” found that “China is in the top four partners for Africa in all these dimensions,” and drew the conclusion that “no other country in the world matches this depth and breadth of engagement.” And now, that Africa’s top political leadership has declared an intention to combat the scourge of corruption, it can take advantage of the comprehensive partnership which spans wide facets to compare notes with Beijing.
China, for more than five years, has given corruption its deadliest blow ever. General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Xi Jinping, who is also the President of the country set out from his tenure in 2012 to trap both the “ tiger and flies,” high level and low-level officials who engage in corrupt practices.
Five years on, even unusual high flying tigers have been brought to book and as even another category, “foxes” who fled the country to escape justice, have been trapped back to face the law. In the report General Secretary, Xi Jinping delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October last year: he said that “the fight against corruption remains grave and complex but we must remain as firm as a rock in our resolve to build on the overwhelming momentum and secure a sweeping victory.” Outlining a new framework to confront the scourge, the Chinese leader told party delegates that  “we will strengthen deterrence so officials don’t dare to, strengthen the cage of institutions so they are unable to, and strengthen their vigilance so they have no desire to commit acts of corruption,” and expressed optimism that “our political environment will, through tireless efforts like seas fallen calm and rivers running clear, be clean and free of corruption.”

Onunaiju is director of the Centre for China Studies,
Abuja, Nigeria.

For Africa to seriously take the bull by the horns and give corruption that deadly punch, it deserves, it can keep a hotline with its ever-reliable friends in Beijing.
Onunaiju is director of the Centre for China Studies
Abuja, Nigeria.

Bob Majirioghene Etemiku

Since the recent release of the Transparency Index rating on Nigeria, so much potopoto has been flying around. I have watched the Federal government pass buck by maligning the index, saying that it is the way it is because certain individuals are unfavourably disposed to the administration. The government has also said that there is no way in hell that corruption in Nigeria can ever be this rampant as portrayed by the TI rating.

Afterall, the EFCC has been up and doing, other advisory bodies daily churns out paper after paper and generally doing their best to rid Nigeria of corruption, and President Buhari and his famous body language clearly showed that he had zero tolerance for corruption. In 2016, Mr. President attended the London Anti-Corruption Summit and signed Nigeria on to the Open Government Partnership. The administration eventually went on to develop a National Action Plan along four thematic areas of fiscal responsibility, access to information, citizen participation and anti-corruption.  Mr. President strengthened our bilateral relations by signing extradition treaties with key countries wherein our monies are stashed.  Just recently, he was crowned Africa’s Anti-corruption champion by the AU. His aides have been doing their best to carry civil society along in the fight against corruption, and as a matter of fact, the Honourable Minister of Justice & AGF, Abubakar Malami (SAN) participated very actively in the first Global Forum on Asset Recovery in Washington DC where he signed an MOU on behalf of Nigeria with the Swiss government for the return of $321million Abacha loot stashed in Switzerland. 

But there is a but. First, why are politically exposed persons on the other side of the political divide who are facing prosecution for stealing us blind suddenly get their charges dropped as soon as they cross the carpet and appear to kiss Mr. President’s feet? Why does it seem that people in his kitchen cabinet and some in his party are sacred cows, and can therefore graze on anyone’s farm and with impunity and immunity? Why does it seem that in spite of the hard work that Mr. President is putting in to tame corruption, his famous body language presented him as a tribal warlord and social collectivist rather than a strong individual seeking to use the instruments of state as pedestal for cleaning our Augean stable of corruption?  What makes the scenario very depressing is the fact that a coterie of commentators has already begun a comparative analysis of the level of corruption between this administration and the one before it. Some civil society groups have called the Index a wakeup call on Mr. President (and rightly so), while others insists that the only way to go, after the index is a paradigm shift in our approach to the fight against corruption.

Let me first of all address the idea that the Buhari administration is not doing much about corruption. It is. The problem that the administration has is that it is yet to apply the same set of rules to all. Let me be very clear. The index is an indicator and most of it is based on the idea which people have concerning the fair or unfair methodology which the government has adopted in fighting corruption. The very first impression we all had that Mr. Buhari will fight and die fighting corruption was with his handling of the Dasukigate affair. He gave us all hope that no matter how big, rich, powerful and politically connected you are, you will go to jail if you dip your fingers in the public purse.  But certain flip flops began to occur. A member of his kitchen cabinet actually dipped his hands in the public purse, and rather than pursue that individual with the same measure of resolve and alacrity as he did the Dasukigate, he appeared to dilly-dally and was slow in wielding his hammer. That was where the disappointment set in.

But we must all understand something about perception. It is usually based on certain precepts like motion, experience and visual projections. It can easily establish or break down prototypes, stereotypes and archetypes. If the Buhari administration had realized that corruption is corruption and must be taken on no matter the political and social considerations which make it an accessory to the fact, then the perception of corruption under his administration would not be subject to such debate.

Yet it is to those calling for a paradigm shift in the way we fight corruption that I may align with…eventually. Let me tell you why. Last year I attended one of those anti-corruption meetings held in a five star hotel wherein the successes and failures of the Buhari anti-corruption fight was the theme. I’d studied the documents which the organizers gave to us only to find out that they had spent so much money and time churning out paper after paper, held seminar after seminar and had trained group after group on fighting corruption. In spite of that, it didn’t seem as if corruption was reducing, rather it seemed to be growing in leaps and bounds unfortunately. And therefore, when it was my time to speak, I suggested a paradigm shift in the form of a counter imagery to dislodge the positive idea which corruption enjoys among our people. To do that, I suggested using pictures (movies) and Nollywood. Stupid idea isn’t it? Yes, that’s exactly what everyone thought of me and my idea.

Simply put, the forming of a perception or idea of corruption begins with a context. Attack it now it diminishes in value. Attack it later it grows and sticks. But attack that perception now or later and use other methods if you like. Mine is with the use of images of a didactic nature and theme. Send pictures of that message right though the rung of our society – our cities and villages, our schools and institutions, and our public and private establishments. But how did I get this idea? Years ago in Berlin Germany, I ran into a group of Africans – mostly Tanzanians, Ghanaians, Liberians who bunched up in a room watching a Nigerian home video movie depicting  Nigerians as a people with a penchant for juju, witchcraft and voodoo. You know what? They believed everything they saw on that screen, and even though I struggled to disabuse their minds they held fast to that idea on the screen.

Therefore, I want to suggest again that in addition to the good work that the administration is doing to fight corruption, it must first use a member of its team as scapegoat. If Mr. President will do that, corruption will reduce. Then rather than spending all that money in five star hotels on anti-corruption seminars and trainings, the Federal government should activate the National Orientation Agency.

Let it come up with an orientation strategy of using that example of Mr. President’s resolve to fight corruption on our videos or any other video for that matter to build its anti-corruption profile.

Etemiku writes from Abuja

Abiodun Komolafe

Osun governorship election is a few months away. In a way, the interplay of forces between ‘Continuity’ and ‘Change’ will soon come to the fore; even take its toll on the state. While the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) might have been scratching its head on how to present a candidate that will be acceptable to the generality of the people, pondering the opposition’s foray into another charade of unrealistic fantasies and false utopias may also not be out of place.

As September 22, 2018 draws near, therefore, we need to interrogate where we are coming from before taking a decision on our next course. Conscious of our recent experience in Rivers, Kano and Kaduna States, we also need to peep into the fortunes of our desired paradise and the profiles of our candidates in order to avoid falling victim to the nominal, hot-and-cold “political dealers” who always explore the people’s gullibility for vicious, ridiculous, hippomaniac and megalomaniac purposes.

Well, that Nigerian is currently at war with herself is no longer news! Like in Prophet Isaiah’s Israel, Nigeria seems to be on a moral and spiritual decline, with a lot of anger taking the better part of the land. From Boko Haram and herdsmen terrorism, to a bastardised economy with a nosedive that has practically taken food off the table of the ordinary man, the country stinks and the opportunists are rejoicing. Quite unfortunately, Osun has been deeply affected by the misfortune which previous administrations wittingly or unwittingly unleashed on the country. But, while the buck undoubtedly stops on Muhammadu Buhari’s table, the president’s shortcomings – real or imagined — may be excused on the fact that the government he currently leads is an emergency contraption, prepared, packaged and contracted to the retired General who didn’t weigh its contents or ask for appropriate prescriptions for the ostensibly bitter capsule. Little wonder, we are where we are!

Coming back to the forthcoming Osun governorship election, our major challenge as Nigerians is that we always consider politicians who can deliver votes without factoring-in the electorate who do the real job of voting. This is why we are always bent on zoning as if it is one-size-fits-all thing. The way I see it, zoning is an unconstitutional party arrangement which, in most cases, only ends up robbing the electorate the chance of choosing the best candidate. While the last Osun West by-election has again demonstrated some of the incalculable inconsistencies inherent in such an arrangement, religion, on its part, has only succeeded in adding its own flavour to our political psyche as a people. 

Poverty does not recognise the politics of zoning, seeds of ethnicity or the politicisation of religion. That a governor comes from a zone is by luck, not design. For instance, I doubt if the judicial process that eventually delivered victory to Aregbesola was on the basis of his being from the East Senatorial District of the state. Aregbesola became governor and the East adopted him as its representative in ‘Bola Ige House’. Even with his administration’s demonstrable spread of infrastructure development across every nook and cranny of the state, Aregbesola is arguably the most misunderstood political leader from that zone at the moment, especially, going by some people’s misreading of the politics of the capital city. But, will Osun Central Senatorial District forget his contributions in a hurry?

Perhaps more importantly, what Osun needs at a time like this is a man with a scientific approach to governance who understands where the state is coming from in terms of development and what the Next Level truly means in the life of the state. Our next governor must be one who appreciates the worth of coaches whose traits revolve around discipline, hard work, confidence and competence. He must also show love to bystanders, meanderers, even cheerleaders. Otherwise, politics may be said to have lost its essence.

Osun needs a governor who will not take away the electorate’s responsibility, thereby rendering them irresponsible. Preferably, he must be an astute administrator with a popular connection that can extract and maximize capital with great efficiency. God forbid that our state is hit by economic challenges! It will require the expertise and ingenuity of an upright governor to galvanize available resources within as well as tap into the critical threshold of competent global leaders to mobilise funds and investment opportunities to the state.

So, who shall APC send as its candidate to the battle of September 22? This is where the ruling party has to read the signs right. In many ways, the greedy power elite as represented by the opposition has no future in the new world order. But, its feigned docility or inactivity should not impose a weird veil of quietness on the ruling party. Those of us who once accused the late Sani Abacha of recklessness failed to realize that he, like Napoleon Bonaparte, saw “an empty throne” and “the urge to sit on it fell on him.” Abacha capitalized on the weakness, incompetence,   incapacity and illegality of the Ernest Shonekan-led Interim National Government (ING) and the uncoordinated approach of Nigerians to the issue at stake, and the rest is history!

In my opinion, the accident of coming from the same political party should unite the aspirants within the APC fold against defeated thinkers and habitual moaners who always end up succumbing to the vagaries of socio-economic hazards. Moving the state to its pride of place should not just be in mouthing platitudes but in the practicalities of delivering dividends of democracy. It is only by voting Aregbesola to succeed Aregbesola as governor that Osun can continue on the threshold of a new era. It is by so doing that there can be a total triumph for democracy and a historic victory for the temporal and moral good of Osun people. After all, the sound and the taste of bitter kola do not mean the same thing. Candidly, if food is all that matters, then, one has no justification for leaving his parents in the village in search of a Golden Fleece in the ci

Komolafe writes from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State, via ijebujesa@yahoo.co.uk

In Nigeria, history does not only occur, it keeps repeating itself even in quick succession. We have plenty of such repeated incidents. They include ethnic clashes, religious violence, herdsmen menace, electoral malpractices and violence, armed robbery, assassination, militancy, kidnapping, child trafficking, corruption, and others.

And the downside of the entire saga is that we hardly learn or profit from previous experience. We didn’t know that after the horrendous abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls in Government Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok on April 14, 2014 in Borno State that a similar incident will be reenacted in Dapchi area located in Busari Local Government of Yobe State on February 19, 2018. The area now known as Yobe State was before part of Borno State.

Since that deadly and movie-like attack on Government Girls’ Science and Technical College, Dapchi, the whereabouts of about 110 schoolgirls are yet unknown. There are obvious similarities in the two different but related incidents. Both occurred a year preceding our general election. The two secondary schools were for girls only. The security agencies did not arrest the situation or were probably not aware of it until much later.

The abductors believed to be members of the dreaded, sorry ‘technically defeated’ or ‘degraded’ Boko Haram sect, came in long trucks and military fatigues and rifles. Their victims in hundreds were carried to unknown destinations, probably in Sambisa Forest, Chad or Niger or all of the above. Both occurred almost in the dark hours of the day.

In both incidents, some of the victims cleverly escaped and came back to narrate the mafia film experience. Our Nollywood film industry is yet to have such horrendous films. Pardon me if they have hurriedly done one with Part 1, 2 and even Part 3 that are evenly and so much pirated and sold in Alaba International Market and hawked on the major streets and highways of Lagos.

Both were trailed by confusion, denials, blame game and utter helplessness. The tales narrated by escaped victims of the abduction were similar to those that escaped from Chibok incident. Both were terrifying and horrible experience that one does not wish his enemy. They were traumatizing experience for young teenage girls that went to school to learn and improve their lot in the society.

These are would-be mothers of tomorrow. The attacks represent an affront on womanhood and girl-child education. It is a vicious attack on modernity and civilization. Both were monumental shame to the country, sorry national disaster.  In both cases, there was failure of security and intelligence that is why some of the security agencies are shifting blames left, right and even centre in the Dapchi episode.

Some people have added sabotage by certain insiders to the national calamity. People fighting a war must expect sabotage. It is part of warfare. We saw it on a high scale during the Nigerian Civil War, especially on the Biafran side. Propaganda is also part of any warfare.  Biafra deployed it to a great advantage.

Are the similarities coincidental or otherwise? These are matters for thorough investigations and unraveling by concerned authorities. Instead of trading blames among the security agencies engaged in the war against terrorism over the Dapchi case, the emphasis now should be how to avoid a repeat of such incident.

Efforts should be geared towards rescuing the abducted schoolgirls if such is still possible. We have already lost some hours, days and very soon, weeks will be added while arguing on who did what and who didn’t do something. In the heat of blame game, we have lost useful hours that ought to have ben used to delay the movement of the abduction trucks and possibly rescue some of the girls.

The official reaction to the Dapchi saga is not quite different from the one of Chibok girls. Therefore, there is urgent need for a paradigm shift in the way and manner the war against terror is conceptualized and executed. The current conceptual and methodological frameworks appear not to be giving us the desired results.

A new strategy should be evolved for the prosecution of the terror war especially in team spirit and intelligence sharing among the fighting agencies. We saw that lacking in the Chibok and Dapchi episodes. The government has said times without number that it has technically defeated and degraded the Boko Haram sect. That should be good news to all Nigerians that want the insurgency to end so that peace can return to the troubled North-East region.

But the reality on ground is that rather than being defeated, no matter how, the sect is still baring its fangs and telling us with their deadly attacks that they are not yet defeated. The war is not yet over. It is not yet uhuru. This is one fact that the government must come to terms with.

The earlier the government come to the conclusion that the war is still on, the better for it in terms of preparation, and execution of the war on terror. Living in denial will be too dangerous. The earlier the government confronts the reality of the situation, the better.

Since the government’s number one function is to protect the citizens and their property, this government must just do that. A situation where government is severally failing in its primary duty is sad and unacceptable. We have had enough excuses on this vexed issue before. We don’t want more excuses again. There is no debating the fact that the current policing system in Nigeria is problematic.

Besides low numerical strength of our policemen per our teeming population, most of them are not properly trained and equipped for police duties. They are also not well motivated and remunerated to perform their police tasks optimally. For our security situation to change fundamentally for the better, this ugly narrative must change.

Our policing must be for the protection of all in the society. The present method where political office holders and privileged and wealthy citizens are given high premium on security and the masses seemingly neglected is not the best practice. The ‘BringBackOurGirls’ campaigners have enough jobs on their hands now with the Dapchi incident. I strongly believe that they will not allow the government to rest until some of the schoolgirls are released.

Government must assure the parents of the abducted girls that it is seriously working hard to quickly effect their release from captivity. That is the minimum this government is expected to do. And it should do it fast. Efforts must be put in place to prevent history repeating itself in Nigeria, especially sad incidents.

 Arize Nwobu

The new policy directive by the Central Bank of Nigeria on dividend payment by banks is a proactive measure to strengthen and protect the banking industry, consumers and financial system, to ensure a more efficient economy. The policy is in tandem with the Consumer Protection Framework for Banks and Other Financial Institutions regulated by CBN which was released in November, 2016 in furtherance of the apex bank’s mandate to promote a stable financial system for a stable macro economy.

The Bank is the most important financial intermediary in developing economies where it provides the Lion’s share of financial services to lubricate the wheel of the economy through efficient allocation of funds from savers to borrowers. In Nigeria banks dominate the Nigerian financial system. In advanced economies,  project funding is largely through the mechanism of the capital market.

CBN’s new policy on dividend payment relates to the residual dividend policy, whereby company earnings are distributed to shareholders after all of a company obligations have been met and the management has allocated funds for reinvestment into business.  According to experts, the residual dividend is ‘’based on the theory that a firm’s optimal distribution policy is a function of the firm’s capital structure, the investment opportunities that the firm has, and the availability and cost of external capita. The firm makes distribution on the residual earnings.’’ It is believed that the residual dividend policy makes the most sense in terms of business operations.

In a letter dated  January 31, 2018, CBN, among other highlights, stated that ‘’no bank shall pay dividend on shares  until all its preliminary expenses, organizational expenses, share selling commission, brokerage, amount of losses incurred and other capitalized expenses not represented by tangible assets have been completely written off and adequate provisions have been made to the satisfaction of the bank for actual and contingency losses on the risk assets, liabilities, off balance sheet and such unearned income as are deductible there from.’’

The new policy is targeted at banks with high Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) and low Capital Adequacy Ratio(CAR). It aims at facilitating sufficient and adequate capital build up for banks in line with their risk apetite. CBN set limits for risk profile of banks, and try to maintain a balance between risk and rewards for banks who could be driven to perilous limits by the competition.

Retained earnings is a primary source for banks to raise capital, and the rule is, as risk increases, the dividend payout as a percentage of earnings should decrease. But CBN had noted that despite its October 2014 circular, ‘’some institutions pay out a greater proportion of their profits, irrespective of their risk profile and the need to build up resilience through adequate capital buffers.’’  CBN  places financial system stability on the front burner, and  has been even more agile in that regard after the 2008 global financial crisis. Asthe Governor, Godwin Emefiele noted,  ‘’in that regard we hope to anchor on two main pillars: managing factors that create liquidity shock and zero tolerance on practices that undermine the health of financial institutions.’’

Non- Performing loans is one of the major causes of financial system instability. It poses a major threat to the health of financial institutions as it disrupts bank earnings and reduces available capital and ability to make profit, thereby leading to low capital base which hampers subsequent lending,  whereas lending is one of the main function of Deposit Money Banks.

NPL is defined as ‘’the sum of borrowed money upon which the debtor has not made payments for at least 90 days’’. A non-performing loan is either in default or close to being in default, and it has been noted that once a loan is non-performing, the odds that it will be repaid in full are considered to be substantially lower. Such loans may be recovered if they are backed by specific assets, otherwise the lender resorts to other permissible and workable mechanism of recovery.

Contributory factors to NPLs include, credit culture of the people, changes in the market/economy, real estate changes, improper assessment by banks, collusive complacency of credit officers and so on and so on. Some analysts have noted that many Nigerian banks will not be able to pay dividend in 2018, based on their capital reserves as well as the proportion of the NPLs. In a press report, a South African research and investment firm, The SBG Securities (Pty), projected that only nine out of the existing 22 banks would be able to pay dividends in 2018.

The latest CBN’s Financial System Stability Report revealed that ‘’commercial banks in the country experienced deterioration in assets quality at end-December 2016’’. The deterioration was attributed to the rising inflationary trend, negative GDP growth, and the depreciation of the naira.  The report further noted that the banking industry’s non-performing loans ratio rose from N1.678 bn in June to N2.08 tn in 2016, and the ratios of non-performing loans to gross loans increased from 11.7 per cent in June to 14 per cent in December 2016. Furthermore, the report noted that ‘’the ratio of regulatory capital to risk weighted assets decreased by 0.8 per cent

In Greece, NPLs have been noted as the biggest challenge facing the banking sector, and it is top priority for the European Central Bank which has nudged Greek banks to work harder to reduce their high stock of NPLs. According to the Chair of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank, Daniele Nouy, ‘’Greek  banks must do more and do it faster’’. Like CBN, Greece also passed new laws to facilitate the ‘work out’ of NPLs, but Nouy noted that ‘’passing laws is just the first step; they also need to be implemented and applied.’’

To ensure strict compliance to the new policy, CBN mandated that  ‘’banks shall submit their Board approved dividend payout policy to the Bank before payout of dividend shall be permitted.’’  And to  curb non-performing loans , the apex bank stipulated that bank directors who are culprits should either quit or be sacked.

In past years before the promulgation of the Bank and Other Financial Institutions Decree (BOFID) in 1991, many  bank directors were notorious for contributing to a greater percentage of Non-performing loans which contributed to the collapse of the banking industry in that era. In some instances, such directors had multiple  non-performing loans accounts  respectively, which was unethical and grossly immoral.

Arize Nwobu, a Business Journalist and Chartered Stockbroker wrote via arizenwobu@yahoo.com.Tel: 08033021230