The Punch - Nigeria's Most Widely Read Newspaper »» Tunde Fagbenle ‘Saying it’ THE WAY IT IS

Last week we ran the first part of this topic, aimed essentially at setting the agenda for the in-coming President, Maj.Gen Mahammadu Buhari(retd). It is a recall of the very same column on the very same issues tabled before a president-elect Goodluck Jonathan back in 2011, adjusted to meet the present climate of hope in the person of Buhari.

We took on the issue of corruption, considered the beginning and end of all our ills in the country. Say, corruption corrupts the system, debilitates the citizenry, destabilises its security forces, negates every positive action, beclouds every judgement, smears national image, discourages foreign investments, enthrones mediocrity. And when along with a reign of impunity, alas, the end of a country is foreclosed!

We touched on the main anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and hinted on where to begin in the onerous task of cleaning the system and giving the public a sense of a new dawn. Too much unaccountable wealth is out there rudely farting in our faces, represented by hundreds of private jets, vast estates in choicest parts of Abuja and Lagos, architectural masterpieces that mock the level of development of the country, etc. Gently inviting people to show the source of their wealth is a starting point. What is the annual turnover of their businesses to justify what they owned, what taxes paid?

While we are at this, I am of the mind that Buhari’s government will do well to bring back Nuhu Ribadu, the founding and former EFCC boss in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s time. True, Nuhu allowed himself to be used by his boss (the then president) to victimise and hound politicians and business personalities in a plainly selective and overhand manner, the young man, Nuhu, was the dreaded scourge of the corrupt. More importantly, he, from the look of things, did not abuse the office to enrich himself, as nothing beyond that which he could reasonably own has been traced to him. Indeed, he was celebrated to have rejected a bribe of a dizzying sum of $15m cash handed to him by James Ibori, a then governor of Delta State, who was under investigation by the EFCC. On Ibori, a little more below in this column.

Nuhu, unfortunately, has got his fingers burnt politically, jumping from one political bed into another in a manner that showed little discretion. He should have listened to his cerebral hitherto close friend Nasir el-Rufai more. Of that, hopefully, he has learnt his lessons. Though now of the PDP, bringing back Ribadu will serve the EFCC well and perfectly fit into Buhari’s need to hit the ground running on anti-corruption. Nuhu knows the outfit inside out, knows what went wrong, knows exactly what is needed, and with a president ready to give him all the support needed, I believe the country will, once, again, take the agency seriously.

Let us continue where we stopped last week, from the admonitions given Jonathan in 2011.

The column went: “His more immediate task is to sort this NEPA (or PHCN) nonsense out, once and for all. For weeks now I haven’t had a full three-hour run of power in my Ibadan home. Where I stay in Lagos is only a flicker better. We must have power 24/7 and, like the GSM, the space must be freed for competition and appropriate pricing. If the benefit GSM brought to the economy and life is huge, that which a guaranteed and uninterrupted power supply can bring is unquantifiable!”

Unfortunately, President Jonathan embarked late and only half-heartedly on tackling this bane of our productivity and development.

The “unbundling” and privatisation exercises were not only half-hearted, they were yet plagued by corruption and driven by the self-interest of powerful blocs around a president who had neither clue nor grit. In one breath, say informed critics, the government sold portions and aspects of the PHCN to investors at prices ridiculously beneath market value, and then in another breath went ahead to bail out (loan?) the same buyers with sums even in excess of that which they paid originally! Now in 2015, and at the tail end of Jonathan’s tenure, the country remains largely in darkness for the most part, and our power generation has waned rather than improved!

General Buhari must be ready to tackle the hydra-headed monster once and for all. Importantly, someone qualified and competent, someone with national and international exposure and with a vast knowledge of the nitty-gritty of the power industry and competing technologies in the global sphere is who must be sought to head the department. Above all, it must be someone incorruptible, whose track record and lifestyle assure probity and capability to resist the forces of corruption working against the country and uninterrupted power supply. (To be continued)

And that’s saying it the way it is!

Britain whines over Ibori

I was on the tube (Underground train) in London last week when I picked up a copy of the Evening Standard newspaper of Friday, April 17 lying around. Something to busy myself with on the journey to seeing my grandkids, I thought.

But, lo and behold, on page 8, I was affronted by the photo of James Ibori, with the caption: “James Ibori, a former Wickes cashier who committed a series of scams while a Nigerian state governor.” The banner headline ran: “Huge bill to recover profits from £50 million fraudster.”

My upbeat mood was spoiled. I looked about me to see who else may be rubber-necking (stretching his neck) to read it. I then, ashamed, held the paper close to my face to read. It read in parts:

“Taxpayers are facing a ‘huge’ new bill after efforts to force a former Nigerian state governor from London to repay profits from a £50 million fraud were delayed for more than a year.

“James Ibori, who began his working life as a £5,000 a-year cashier at a Wickes DIY branch in Ruislip, became a multi-millionaire after returning to his homeland and committing a series of scams during an eight-year career running its oil rich Delta State.

“His wealth allowed him to buy mansions, a £12 million jet, and a £1 million fleet of cars including a Bentley, a Mercedes and armoured Range Rovers.

“His crimes were finally detected in a Scotland Yard investigation that led to him being jailed in April 2012 for 13 years for fraud and money laundering. But a decision on how much he will have to repay has now been postponed again to June next year after lawyers for Ibori and two other defendants told Southwark crown court that more time was needed to prepare their cases.

“It means Ibori will not have to repay any of the money until at least 2017.

“Prosecuting barrister Sasha Wass QC said the delay to the hearing, which was due to start in 2013, meant the cost to the taxpayer of dealing with Ibori would spiral further. She said £2 million had already been spent on his defence…

“Judge Pitts agreed to delay the hearing after barristers for the other defendants, London solicitor Bhadresh Gohil and Ibori’s former mistress Udoamaka Onuigbo, also called a delay….”

Stories such as this distress. And the distress is not only for the image it casts of Nigeria — for being a country of anything — goes, where any crook can rise to become a governor or president and pilfer the treasury with abandon — but more because one can anticipate what awaits this Ibori, just like what others before him received — a hero’s welcome, with gongs and drums by “his people”! Thereafter, even possibly a passage to the National Assembly.

O, what a country!

Matriarch of the Rosiji family passes away

Mrs. Gbemi Rosiji, nee Mann, is dead. Mrs. Rosiji — wife of the late Chief Ayo Rosiji, former Federal Minister in the first republic, a distinguished lawyer, one of the brains behind the early Action Group party and its Secretary before the crisis that split the party — was 89 when she died on April 8 after a brief illness.

I grieve at her death for I personally knew her and I am a friend to all of her five children, from the eldest Bolu, to Ola the chairman of Nigeria Distilleries, especially Londe attorney and CEO of the family business in Brazil, her sister Bomi, and the youngest Bolaji the avant-garde former president of the Musicians Association of Nigeria.

Beautiful and graceful, Mrs Gbemi Rosiji, fondly called Mamani, was a product of CMS Girls School, Lagos, and the University College of South West of England. She returned to Nigeria in 1948 and began a distinguished teaching career. She is a life-member of the Nigerian Red Cross and of the International Women’s Society amongst others.

Wake comes up at the Muson Centre at 6pm on April 28 and burial service at the Cathedral Church at 11 am on April 29 with Reception at Expo Hall, Eko Hotel thereafter.

Adieu, Mamani.

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Contact: editor@punchng.com

The country is in an upbeat mood,full of hope and expectation that President-elect Muhammadu Buhari would turn the country around: from the precipice of systemic and economic collapse it finds itself, into a country that reinvents itself, rediscovers its lost moral values, and is galvanised into modernity.

But the job is not just retired Major General Buhari’s alone. He faces a herculean task of successfully navigating between the treacherous sea of politics, the quagmire of countervailing interests and the quiet, narrow stream of trustworthy technocrats. It is not going to be an easy job.

The country is, in the words of retired colonel Dangiwa Umar, rotten through and through. Moreover, fear and distrust reign and the people will be impatient for the ‘change’ they have voted for. There also will be those who will actively be working to undermine the new government. They will be there everywhere – in the media, in the ivory towers, in the civil service, in the armed forces, in business circles, alas, in the government itself.

If I were Buhari, I would put out a search for 100 men and women of proven integrity and performance in virtually all spheres – education, health, culture, sports, agriculture, power, technology, etc. – technocrats to form my A-team of modernisers, people who share in the dream to salvage Nigeria and turn the country into the land of prosperity and modernity. They will be folk to whom material acquisition means nothing, but honour and humanity everything. They will be members of his “think tank” to formulate policies and oversee adherence to them.

Way back in this column of February 15, 2012, wondering, I rhetorically called for a list of “100 Nigerians to save Nigeria.” Men and women of proven integrity, intellect, dedication to duty and patriotism “who can be trusted to turn a new Nigeria around, in values, in vision, and in development;” a list to take to God, of men and women of such “redeeming value” enough for God to grant Nigeria a second chance.

The column kick-started the search with its own suggested list of 14 that included, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Nuhu Ribadu, Nasir el-Rufai, Babatunde Fashola, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Prof. Bolaji Aluko, Adams Oshiomhole, Pastor Tunde Bakare, Col. Dangiwa Umar (retd.), Prof. Attahiru Jega, Prof. Pat Utomi, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and Dr. Obiageli Ezewesili.

By the following week, some of the names, particularly Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, were already shot down in a barrage of responses from readers, whilst some other names came up. One Dr. Yinka Ologunsua remarked: “There are several honest, God-fearing, hard working men/women who are not in the limelight; some diligent professionals and artisans, they give themselves for the joy of others. Only God can reward them.” Names of Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Gen. Ishola Williams, Chief Ajibola Ogunshola, Fr. Matthew Hassan Kukah, Prof. Femi Bamiro, Prof. Kayode Oyesiku, Frank Kokori, Prof. Fidelis Oditah, Odia Ofeimun, Prof. Sayed Malik, etc, were mentioned.

One name stood out, both in repetition and in eulogy. It was that of Prof. Roger Makanjuola! So much, the column of 02/09/12 was devoted to readers’ effusion on him.

One by Prof. Kayode Oguntuase read: “Dear Tunde, Thank you for showcasing Roger Makanjuola’s leadership style: Unique, extraordinarily simple, but didactic. Reminiscent of Sofoluwe’s (the late University of Lagos VC) but that’s hardly surprising since both were Edinburgh graduates! Only shows the attention we must pay to the “School as an Institution”, for many a man they make.”

Dr. Peter Olaluwoye of OAUTHC added: He (Roger) is a phenomenon, very un-Nigerian and in a class of his own. His kind is a rarity in this clime. It is sad, my generation may not witness such at the national level as we have a propensity for mass producing swindlers and rogues and decorating them with national awards. Maybe it is our own lot that the beautiful ones are either not yet born or some have come ahead of their times, like Roger.”

While we are at it, I would, even at the risk of being accused of nepotism, and violating my rule of distancing self from the exercise, make bold to include my own elder brother, ‘Layi Fagbenle, in the list. A distinguished professor of mechanical engineering, those who have passed through his hands, nationally and internationally, would attest to the quality of his mind, personal integrity, and commitment to the development of Nigeria.

A professor at UI once told me of how in Botswana the laughing talk amidst academic colleagues is of a Nigerian who was responsible for that country’s stable power whilst his own country suffered. That was he, Prof. Fagbenle, for five years or more in the 90s (under a UN programme) the Director of Energy of Botswana (and Southern Africa overview).

May God lead Muhammadu Buhari aright

Buhari: the task ahead (3)

Continuing from where we left off last week, the task ahead of President-elect Buhari, borrowed from same directed at a then president-elect Jonathan in the column of May 8, 2011, reads thus:

“Another urgent task for GEJ (Buhari) to tackle is land transport of roads and railways. It is a shame that in the year 2011 (2015) the country cannot boast a single interstate motorway worthy of the name. The country hemorrhages daily as hundreds of lives and billions of naira worth of assets are lost on the deathtraps we call roads. Main national arteries are eyesores, particularly in the southern parts exacerbated by severe geographical conditions of weather and topography.

“Security is yet another aspect the government must face squarely and decisively. It is the responsibility of the government to protect the lives and property of those who live within its shores and there cannot be investment and growth without peace and security. The issue of state police is part of the crying need for a whole structural and fiscal restructuring of the country, without which we are going nowhere. The devolution process must begin, and with an inclined National Assembly, the time is opportune.”

It then concluded: “President Goodluck Jonathan does not have all the time in the world. He needs to hit the ground running. Four years is not a long time and the signs of how serious he is will be seen in the calibre and quality of his cabinet. Nigeria needs some of Goodluck’s luck!”

Unfortunately, the President paid scant attention to the column, and four years rolled away so swiftly to leave us no better than when he started. Some would say, worse off we are.

To recap, the four areas of immediate concern enumerated for Jonathan and now being repeated for Buhari are: Corruption; Power (Energy); Land transport; and Security. Buhari has to figure how to deal with these four if the expected rebirth of the country were to materialise.

Uncompromisingly dealing with corruption will release huge funds for development hitherto cornered by a corrupt clique; having uninterrupted energy will work amazing wonders in galvanising productivity of the country; a modernised and efficient railway system and service will reduce the load on the roads, which themselves need immediate development, and complement the increased productivity engendered by more frequent and reliable energy and less corruption; and finally, security to life and property must be guaranteed.

And that’s saying it the way it is! Best of luck General Buhari.

Contact: editor@punchng.com

In the midst of the enveloping gloom — of suffocating corruption, inefficiency in governance, poor national productivity, and abysmal energy availability — it is heartwarming to come across something — almost anything — that is working and showing seriousness and innovation. It is in this light that what is happening at the Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal 2 (MMA2) brings some smile to my withering face.

It would, to yours too, if you have the misfortune of regularly going through our airports and suffering the distress that our departure lounges inflict on travellers.

The worst culprit is the foremost gateway to Nigeria, the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos. It speaks volumes to the poor vision and lack of foresight of our past governments over the last 30 years that eyesore was ever conceived as the gateway to a country with the largest black population on earth, one now affirmed as the largest economy in Africa, and one that boastfully calls itself the “giant of Africa.” If that miniature half met the need of the age it was built, it beggars belief that it could not have been foreseen that it would not meet the challenges of a decade later, not to talk of three decades! And, yet, we lack not in land area.

Worse, the airport has remained the loudest megaphone to the country’s atrocious maintenance culture, its incapacity to maintain anything of its own — roads or structures —; its crippling inefficiency, wanton waste, and monumental corruption. Both at the moment you land and at the moment you are departing, that Lagos so-called international airport sickens. The pity is that it has remained “work-in-progress for the last 15 years with successive ministers of aviation slapping bricks, tiles, panes, and paints on it in scandalous pretensions to renovations!

I have digressed, albeit necessarily. Talking about what is going on at the MMA2 should be put in the context that emphasises its merit and that recommends its model for other airport terminals, nay, for most of our public utilities crying for help. And while talking about that public-private-partnership paradigm, one must give credit to the Obasanjo government that introduced it (regardless of the abuses that may have equally attended the good intentions then) and allowed the Babalakins of this world — the proprietor of Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Ltd. (BASL), the developer and operator of the Terminal (MMA2) — to emerge.

To be sure, it has not been completely smooth sailing for BASL, what with the negative pull-him-down (PHD) syndrome that seems ingrained in the Nigerian competitive spirit. But this is not of concern here. What we know, what air travellers within Nigeria that have experienced MMA2 since the takeover of BASL know, is that the MMA2 has been a breath of fresh air in the manner of operations and service air travellers experience. The environment is clean, the facilities — trolleys, lifts, escalators, security equipment and public address systems, etc. — are well functioning; the variety of shops and the waiting lounges are reasonably decent and welcoming.

The question on the mind is: why, other than the penchant to keep the nation’s poor image alive, can’t we have this situation and service at the international terminals? Cheerfully, in what appears as a rise to the challenge, the MMA1 still run by government, from what I gather, suddenly began to wear a new and improved look too no sooner than BASL showcased their quality at MMA2.

Last Thursday, 7th, MMA2 got a fillip to its leading innovations when BASL introduced its “Common User Passenger Processing System (CUPPS) to the terminal. Those who have been through airports of most of the developed countries must by now be familiar with this technology. But it is the first time it is being introduced to any airport terminal in the Nigeria. It is an innovation that enables passengers to self-service their own check-in and generate, at their own convenience, their own boarding passes and bag tag coupons at any of the strategically positioned self-service kiosks, thus limiting the need to interface with airlines’ officials at check-in counters and removing the annoying pestilence of touts and corrupt officials.

Launching it with appropriate fanfare at the MMA2, BASL, flaunting what it calls “the best and the fastest growing domestic terminal in Nigeria and the sub-region,” says, “once checked-in, passengers can make their way to the boarding gates by simply swiping their tickets at the gates and then proceed to board.”

Other innovations BASL launched on Thursday include the PAXTRACK which “is a complete five-module system that tracks passengers throughout the terminal” for convenience and efficiency of airport administrators, passengers, airlines and handling agents all at once. It also introduced BAGERA, a facility that reconciles and tracks passengers’ bag from check-in to loading, making it easy to “locate bags, identify transfer bags, load and offload bags.”

One cannot but wonder and pity how to operate and sustain these innovations in a climate of very inadequate energy supply? BASL, like any other serious business in the country, must have to turn away from public energy availability and invest massively in its own energy generation at costs that either kill businesses or get borne by the already groaning publics.

I must end this piece on the happy note I started with even at the risk of being badmouthed as Babalakin’s BASL mouthpiece. Truth is, we must learn to praise and encourage those who in their own little corners are striving to make a difference. We need such pockets of sanity and seriousness to mushroom until a critical mass is attained capable of propelling the country finally into the 21st century!

Welcome all to MMA2. About time that model is adopted for the Lagos international airport. The government must, as a matter of urgency, acquire a vast tract of land the equal of about 20 miles radius, perhaps away from and unencumbered by the present location, and then proceed to invite reputable international investors to build and operate on an agreeable lease arrangement an international airport that sees into 50 years hence, one finally worthy of its name, and worthy of the country!

And that’s saying it the way it is!

Bruce and Melaye: right tune

In the event you missed it, you now have it here: Senators-elect Ben Bruce (PDP, Bayelsa East) and Dino Melaye (APC, Kogi West) have both, at separate interviews, vowed to champion the cause for drastic reduction in the salaries and allowances that our lawmakers at the National Assembly (NA) make hitherto. We must remember that in a recently well-circulated global comparative analysis, the Nigerian legislator earns (they don’t ‘earn’ it, they rob the country of it) virtually the highest of all the countries in the world!

What makes the determination of the duo interesting is not just that they made their pledges separately they belong to two opposing political parties! It is a cheerful development.

In reports carried in most media and reported by The PUNCH of May 4, Ben Bruce described as unjustifiable the fact that the NA consumes three per cent of the national budget. “If a company’s management spends 88 per cent of its income to run the organisation, it will collapse. So, government in Nigeria at the moment is inefficient. It is now time to talk about how to reduce the cost of running the government,” he said.

What Bruce will be recommending through the sponsorship of appropriate bills will be more far-reaching. It will seek to bring down-to-earth the classes flown in airlines by government officials and of the hotels lodged when abroad. Bruce said if leadership is by example and leaders live a humble lifestyle, billions of dollars saved would go to improve the lives of the masses.

And to show he means business, he added, “I will publish names of any of my colleagues who voted against it. We will deal with them.” “Nigerians would see them and ask them why they voted against the poor. Why should a government official ride N50m jeep when they can make do with N2m Kia vehicle? The police are protecting the rich when the poor are suffering insecurity,” he lamented.

Melaye also said: “I am actually championing the cause of a cut in our pay. There is a need to cut down our pay because if we talk about change, there is the need to demonstrate that change.”

Cheerful as these intentions of the senators-elect are, they need to be forewarned that there were those with like minds in the present senate, folks who swore to similar action prior to getting in. My friends, Prof. Sola Adeyeye and Femi Ojudu, were such. What mellowed or “killed” their resolve?

Still, the change must come!

Contact: editor@punchng.com

In local parlance, ‘hear word’ means not just listen but ‘understand’ – the message. It could, in some other instances be a plea, an admonition or a rebuke, as in “you no ‘hear word’? “Or “you no dey ‘hear word’?”

But ‘Hear Word!’ is the curious yet inviting title of a play my wife and I watched a few days ago at the prestigious avant-garde Muson Centre, Lagos.

Directed by Ifeoma Fafunwa, Hear Word! is a fascinating play utilising the unusual motif of serial short sketches to explore and present serious, indeed, vexing societal and cultural issues of the womankind, particularly in a country like Nigeria with its myriad and disparate customs and traditions across her many ethnic groups.

It is difficult, nay impossible, to watch Hear Word! and not leave with an ear-full – pun intended. The play is provocative and thought-provoking even as it is supplicating. Or is it really supplicating? No, it indeed supplicated no one; that would run against the spirit. It is inviting and challenging the womenfolk to re-examine themselves, to discover their true individuality and awesome natural powers, to wear the armour of enlightenment, and get into battle for freedom — freedom from the yoke of man-made oppression, repression, discrimination, subjugation, humiliation, nay, annihilation!

Hear Word! has a subtitle: ‘Naija Woman Talk True.’ By this subtitle, we don’t know if it is telling, no, warning us that the Naija (Nigerian) woman is ‘talking true’, or inviting or imploring the Naija woman to ‘talk true’? There are enough in the play to make both interpretations applicable. The play is an all-female (but one) cast, so it’s the Naija woman really talking ‘true’ all the way. Still, the play is full of advocacy for the woman to introspect and ‘talk true’ to herself – after all her ‘bodi no be wood!’

Hear Word!, in short snaps, amazingly confronts us with several plights of the womenfolk – be it as a girl-child, or at puberty; as a girl or woman in rural settings, or in cultures where they are no more than glorified slaves, possessions to be owned and disowned at pleasure of their menfolk; their horrors as widows in the hands of brutish customs and at the mercy of animalistic in-laws, and so on and so forth — some takes are revolting and infuriating that these things actually still persist, for, as the producers say, they are all ‘true-life stories.’

And just when you feel like, ‘that’s it, I’ve had enough’ and you feel sufficiently provoked to go out there and ‘kill someone’ treating our women so, you are brought to laughter by some other takes on a ‘lighter’ explication of femininity that invites the female audience to shed sexual taboos using unshackled language!

Hear Word! is a production of I-Open-Eye, “a performance art production company that challenges the status quo where it limits the potential of the broader Nigerian society with special regard to women issues.”

Perhaps its central theme of addressing womenfolk-issues accounts for the disproportionate, over 80 per cent female audience. That’s not as it should be. The abuses our women suffer are in the hands of men in this cruel male-dominated world. It is our men that should Hear Word! as much as, even more than, the women. The drive must be to get the men, especially those in positions of power within the society, those who can help make laws to illegalise some of the atrocities committed in the name of culture or tradition, to get to watch Hear Word!

Most impressive is the array of topmost actresses on parade, including my sisters, Taiwo Ajai-Lycett, the matriarch of female acting herself, and the iconic Joke Silva. Other stars are: Kate Henshaw, Bimbo Akintola, Omonor, Lala Akindoju, Elvina Ibru, Rita Edward, Zara Ejoh, Odenike, Deborah Ohiri and Ufuoma McDermott.

Kudos to the self-effacing, demure, Director/Producer, Ifeoma Fafunwa, for this very brilliant and professional production of Sefi Atta’s Hear Word! It does credit to her over 20 years of creative experience in the US and Nigeria.

My wife and I would probably not have heard of the play if my niece, Tito Aderemi-Ibitola, visiting from America and working on it as a production assistant, didn’t invite us; which means more has to be done on publicity for all Nigerians to go ‘hear word’! — or, ‘hear wen,’ as the inimitable Fela would say.

Hear Word! will still show at the Muson Centre on 22 and 23 of May. But it must be sponsored to go on tour of Nigeria, with a first stop in Abuja for those in the National Assembly and all the big men out there to ‘hear word!’ And if I were Mrs. Aisha Buhari, I’ll make haste not only to Hear Word! but to adopt it in the campaign for the emancipation of the Nigerian woman, for Hear Word! is a call for action.

And that’s saying it the way it is!

Re: Those Buhari Needs In His Team

Sir,

Thanks once again for apt articulation of who Gen. Buhari should have in his team. Unfortunately, all the names mentioned are as usual, men who have almost passed their prime working age. Please note that is not to say they won’t be able to function if asked to. But it bemoans Nigeria’s dearth of emerging leaders that each time we talk about good people, those who are thrown up are those at a stage where all they have left for Nigeria are regrets of wasted opportunity.

Meanwhile, I would humbly suggest Gen. Buhari’s agenda as thus;

Tackle corruption,
Improve power,
Improve state of infrastructure,
Do a comprehensive revamping of rights of citizenship. This is a key aspect of national issue people overlook, but which holds the key to tackling most of our other social ills. We need to know who Nigerians are (standard identification).

Kamalu Ikechukwu

kamalu.ikechukwu@ipssgroup.com

Egbon,

As usual, reading your piece with the title above, I say thanks for always saying it as it is.

I totally agree with you that turning the country around is a task we should not leave for the incoming President and his team alone. Nigerians must rise in support of the change they voted for few weeks back. Change comes with lots of challenges and it also requires pure sacrifices because nothing good comes easy, more so, if it had been so debased over the years. Many people are already saying without a Tunde Idiagbon-like person in Buhari’s team, the President-elect might not be able to stand his ground for so long. I disagree because over the years, we have seen other Nigerians who stood out for truth and integrity even in the midst of other corrupt politicians. There are still men and women of proven integrity who will steer the ship of Nigeria’s economy and social welfare to the Promised Land.

I want to encourage whoever is interested in politics amongst them that preparation for 2019 should begin today. They should make their presence and impact felt at the grassroots so that people will identify with them when election comes. God fatherism has been demolished by Prof Jega and his team. Ask Lagos APC what Accord Party and PDP did at the last elections.

We shall get there someday.

Thank you.

Olu Aluko-Apalara.

07081476622 (sanfem77@gmail.com)

Correction: Botswana Govt, not UN

In this column of 03/05/15 titled, “Those Buhari Needs In His Team”, I erroneously alluded to Prof. Layi Fagbenle’s tenure as Director of Energy of Botswana as being “in the 90s,” and “under a UN programme.” Wrong on both counts!

He was directly hired by the government of Botswana following advertisement of the position in several international newspapers. He was Director of Energy Affairs from August 2008 and in 2010 was promoted to the then newly-created position of Energy Advisor to the government of the Republic of Botswana.

Well, it looks like much earlier time to my ageing mind (mustn’t say that in Yoruba culture since he is even older than I am). The confusion with the UN arose with his earlier appointment, in 1998, as a resident UNDP/UNECA Consultant to develop the Mechanical Engineering curriculum for the African Institute for Higher Technical Training (AIHTTR), in Nairobi, Kenya.

The error is regretted and apologies to those (government and body) who may feel denied of appropriate credit or those wrongly credited!

The point, as often happens, is: Nigeria’s loss was Botswana’s gain!

Contact: editor@punchng.com

Last Sunday, May 17, Niyi Osundare, Professor of English at the University of New Orleans, United States, and eminent recipient of Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual accomplishments — Nigeria National Merit Award (NNMA) — was the Guest Lecturer at his Alma Mater — Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti — “Distinguished Alumni Lecture” held at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Yours truly was there at the invitation of the distinguished lecturer himself through an SMS he sent me from his US base. Of late, I have had the privilege of closer association with the prolific writer and eminent poet with whom I share same birth year. And to be considered one of his friends is an honour, for, behold, here is a literary exemplar, mentioned in literary circles as possibly Africa’s next Nobel laureate in Literature, following in the footsteps of our own WS.

Osundare titled his lecture: “No More Business As Usual: Nigeria’s New-Found ‘Change’ and Lessons From Our Recent Past.” And through it, the wordsmith gave us an arresting, dumbfounding, reminder of what we have been through as a country in the hands of one mis-ruler or another, tossed like a broken raft at sea; and, in particular, the horrifying spectacle, the unimaginable depth of depravity, we have been subjected to in the last four years of President Jonathan. Osundare asserts that as a result, “Every thinking and feeling human being knew for sure that four more years of the Peoples Democratic Party government would reduce Nigeria to a state more horrifying than the one the world had ever witnessed in the failed states that litter the African landscape.”

Of Nigeria, Osundare says it is a country: “where the surest route to personal wealth and influence is the possession of political power; where that power is characterised by absolutism and impunity; a country in which what you need to hold on to power indefinitely is the possession of more power; a country where power comes without responsibility, control without restraint; a country where the rulers are thieves who live beyond the law; a country where the ruled are too ignorant, too poor, too disunited to kick and too ready to connive in their own abasement; a country, in short, where power is not just the ultimate aphrodisiac, it is also the wine of absolute forgetfulness.”

It is a picture in despair.

The relief that the outcome of the March 28 presidential elections brought unto Nigeria and the rest of the world was palpable. Then Osundare presents us the image of two women voters on that day:

“Through the hurlyburly of the polling day, March 28, beyond the pandemonium of party warlords and overwhelmed electoral officials, out of the folds of waiting voters winding down the street like a restless python,” he says, “two women emerged with an urgent message for a roving video camera. Holding up their Personalised Voter Cards, they said something to this effect: se e ri kini yi? Oun la ma fi gba ijoba ole to wa mbe yi kuro. Ti ijoba to mbo o ba daa, oun la ma fi gba oun naa kuro (You see this card? It is what we shall use to sweep out this government of thieves. If the coming government is not better, we shall use it to sweep them away too).”

Osundare sees their demonstration of freedom – Never Again – as the symbolism for the hopeful future direction of the country. “Implicit in these women’s declaration is a moral-existential chronological sequence that can be read along these lines: before-and-after, once-upon-a-time, and never-again. It is on this sequential grid that I intend to peg my points in the remaining part of this talk.”

And he did:

“Once upon a time we had a government that saw no difference between wrong and right, fair and foul, the decent and the decadent, the civil and the evil; a president that saw no connection between stealing and corruption; a leader who felt so blissfully at home with dubious people and fugitives from the Law. In fact, corruption seemed to be the grand open sesame to the chambers of power, the prime qualification for the most important appointments, the tie which bound the powerful and the ruthless. Rather than serving as that high temple of state from which all goodness flows, our presidential villa became the bulwark of the beastly, the den of the desperado, the last, unfailing refuge of fugitives from justice.

“When a Minister of Aviation who squandered 1.6 million dollars of our money (that works out as 800,000 dollars per car!) on the purchase of two bullet-proof cars for the safety and comfort of her royal self, provoked a hell of protest and was pursued through the streets of the nation’s conscience, she found a ready refuge in Aso Rock and a pliable and sympathetic President who told her: Be not afraid. The favoured Minister romped along in office until a cabinet reshuffle gimmick eased her into the quest for higher trophies. That fortunate ex-minister is today senator-elect of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Logical conclusion to a typical Nigerian narrative, did I hear you say? The March 28 election was a way of saying Never Again!”

Osundare dwelt extensively and despairingly on what Ekiti State (his home state) has experienced and is experiencing; the reign of impunity on the land; the desecration of the judiciary; and so on.

He touched on sundry other acts of recklessness by the outgoing government of Goodluck Jonathan and concluded: “At the root of all these anomies is the monster called impunity. Impunity is the vilest enemy of the Rule of Law, since by implication, it is actually tantamount to the rule of lawlessness. It is the blind bluster behind the I-don’t-give-a-damn braggadocio, the tragic demonstration of l’etat ce moir (I am the State), the practical indication of tani yo mu mi (who will dare arrest me?); it is the sinful spouse of immunity. It was an uncontested truth that in Nigeria you could commit any crime and get away with it as long as you were in the President’s party, or so long you knew someone who knew his wife. And when impunity mates immunity, they produce an inscrutable offspring called imuniti (unarrestability). No empire has ever risen and fallen without the active agency of impunity. No powerful individual has ever fallen into the ditch without its affliction. Those women would like us to bury impunity in the grave of Once-upon-a-time. They are itching to hear something from Nigeria and the incoming government: Never Again!”

“Never again. Never again. Never again, the criminally fantastic remuneration of Nigeria’s public officials: the huge, undisclosed salaries and constituency allowances of our legislators from overfed senators to over-pampered local government officials; from secret security votes to crippling severance packages. Nigeria spends about 60% of its earnings on the maintenance of a club of prodigal, parasitic, unproductive public officials whose aversion to moderation and temperance has turned the country into a moral wilderness. Dear Incoming Government, we demand FULL disclosure of the remunerations and allowances of all public officials, the reinstatement of fiscal regulations and fiscal discipline in all public offices, a new mentality that public service is not a ‘chop-chop’ bonanza. President Buhari, promise us that those days are gone when the national budget carried a vote of one billion naira for State House meals and snacks; and almost 900 million naira for the running of Presidential Villa generators. Outrageous expenditures of this kind are not only destroying the Nigerian economy; they are also depleting the stock of our moral capital. In a way they constitute the fiscal arm of impunity, that monster we tried so desperately to unmask earlier in this lecture. And this is why those women said Never Again!

His charge to Buhari: “For a change, let us try a knowledge-driven government. General Buhari, make yourself and your government friendly to positive ideas and the women and men who generate them; surround yourself with people who are not scared of thinking, of asking questions.”

And to the rest of us:

“Let us also hold our voter cards aloft, wave them in the air and tell the coming government and all the governments after it: with these cards we swept off the perverse government that has held us down for so many years; if you do not want us to do the same thing to you, kill corruption before corruption kills this country; start building with us the just and egalitarian society in which leaders lead by following conscientiously and followers lead by insisting on their rights and doing their duties. Let us remember the miserable dungeon into which the PDP and its government have dumped this country, and join those women by saying Never Again!”

Contact: editor@punchng.com

Those last days before May 29 were truly hell. Nigeria had never had it so bad. Never. Not even during the civil war (unless, of course, within Biafra) did the country come to a virtual state of systemic collapse: sans power, sans fuel, sans flights, sans everything. Workers downed tools, and banks sent text messages advising that their services will be abridged!

The country was rudderless and in a state of abandonment. It was clear to all that the country had been run aground by the departing administration who, having been voted out, were no longer in any mood to get the country working. On the other hand, those of them who needed to flee got busy perfecting their escape strategies.

The whole country was in limbo; the respite being the knowledge that a new government would soon take over. Everyone was counting days and hoping they would still be alive to see Friday, May 29, when a new sheriff comes to town!

What a country!

But it’s a new day; it’s a new dawn. Friday, May 29 has come and gone and the new sheriff in town is in the saddle. This column has written enough on the expectations of the people on the new government. Indeed, it has served a simulated interview with General Buhari — sorry, Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, it takes some getting used to — an exercise in autosuggestion to situate and guide the man.

What a sigh of relief we all breathe. Yet something tells me Mr. Buhari has surprises up his sleeves for us all, surprises, which like Obasanjo served, will pop out of his bag of tricks every now and then. We forget only at our peril that the man was a general — and once a general, always a general.

Although Buhari is made of purer or sterner stuff than Obasanjo, and I can bet my life he will rather walk away from the presidency than do anything that will change his asceticism or contradict his anti-corruption stance, but he will have a tough job navigating the minefield of democracy demands. As he denies one request of his co-party leaders after another, as he dares the National Assembly and refuses to accommodate their shenanigans, the threat of impeachment will be dangled over his head like the proverbial Sword of Damocles.

Buhari will find Obasanjo’s old script handy, and his support and guidance of immeasurable value – at least, until it is time for both of them to fall apart as they certainly will have to in the near future. Obasanjo cannot handle or tolerate being discountenanced over anything, or his advice being ignored. He has to be made to seem relevant, even in co-power, something that would sooner than later tear them apart.

But the script of Obasanjo’s early days, how he craftily compromised and checkmated the National Assembly will be useful, except that Buhari will find it difficult to turn a blind eye to people messing up the treasury as a necessary priority to being compromised.

The army is in a mess. Buhari is a general. He will have to do what Obasanjo did: sack a whole generation of officers and reorganise the army in a manner to suit his design. Obasanjo is given the credit for having sufficiently restructured the army to discourage, if not prevent, the probability of future military intervention in politics. But in doing so, Obasanjo had to shift the core military command away from the hands of the “Northern elements” who had traditionally controlled the army and so were able to stage coups at will and in succession, into a more spread and balanced arrangement. Buhari belongs to the North who felt dispossessed of such control. The country will be watchful of any attempt to surreptitiously and improperly return the army to the old order of geo-political imbalance in favour of the North. Nevertheless, it is important and urgent to surgically reorganize the army; reequip and retrain them; and restore their morale and pride in themselves and the country.

The first few weeks of Buhari in power will set the tone of the manner and quality of leadership to expect. Who and who make up his cabinet? How immediately does he publicly declare his assets and impose similar condition on his cabinet members and key officers? What anti-corruption statements and structures he establishes to clean the Augean stable of a thoroughly corrupt state? Everything he says, everything he does will be studied carefully – with an admixture of acceptance and suspicion.

And that’s saying it the way it is!

I wish General, sorry, Mister, Muhammadu Buhari well. The country pins her hope of recovery and development on you. So help you God!

A daughter graduates from Harvard

Back in the early 60s, while I was still in secondary school and Nigeria was a fledging independent country, it made news, vaunting news, that one leading politician of the day, Akintola actually it was, had a son in that elite secondary school in England, Eton College. “Our boy in Eton,” became a slogan. Chief S. L. Akintola beamed with pride and missed no opportunity to remind Nigerians that a Nigerian boy was schooling in the great Eton, and who else could have sired that boy but he – SLA!

I am not sure if Akintola’s son was the first Nigerian boy in Eton, but I know the college had opened its exclusive doors to a few other Nigerian sons of the rich about the same time and certainly subsequently. Eton College till today remains the pride of Britain, the breeding ground for their top civil servants, military, and politicians. In those days you went to Eton and you almost could settle at that and go no farther academically. You were made!

Today I beam with pride for my daughter, Temi, has just graduated with honours from Harvard. An all-round athlete and scholar, an American newspaper once headlined her the “Renaissance Woman.” Her commencement, as Americans call graduation, was a few days ago, May 28, and what a glorious day it was for the family; our first Harvardian!

It is not for me to talk about the place of Harvard in the collective association of universities globally — Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala could help me at that, ha ha — but suffice it to say that getting a first degree from Harvard — as opposed to attending some business or fellowship programme, good enough as that is – is the equivalent to having a key to the world, well at least to a sure little slice of it! You are an alumnus together with Presidents of the United States and topmost CEOs in corporate America, and they don’t joke with “their own.”

I must thank the good people(hopefully without embarrassing them) who knew of it and demonstrated their share in the pride in wondrous ways to ease the financial burden of being able to get some of us in the family from different parts of the world to attend the commencement and thereby return to Temi only a little bit of the joy she has given us all: Thanks BRF, you made all the difference. Thanks my “daughter” Princess Oyinda, CEO of Still Earth Ltd, for “hauling” my wife and me there. And, thanks my good friend, Alfred Okoigun, CEO of ARCO for the pleasant surprise.But for folks like these three, this poor man would have had it harder dealing with the harsh elements in his old age! God bless you all.

Suitors after my daughter, with no less an accomplishment and the boldness to face a pack of Rottweiler dogs, should bring their applications to me in person when I’m back.

Thank you, Tem-tem, we hope you and your generation will bring back your country!

Contact: editor@punchng.com

I would like to think everyone, well at least nearly everyone who is literate, knows of the name Chimamanda. Not just because it is a beautifully long African (Igbo) name – the sort that makes you wonder (and cringe) at those of us who still cling on to, or worse, give to their children in this day and age, foreign names —, we know of the name more importantly because of she who has held the name aloft to the world – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Chimamanda (you may shorten it to “Chi” or “Chima” or even “Manda” if laziness makes it too long for you) is arguably Nigeria’s brightest star of her generation in the global literary firmament today. Going 38, she is renowned by her bold, creative, and masterful literary works as represented in short stories (like That Harmattan Morning, The Thing Around Your Neck etc.) and novels (such as Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah,” etc.) that have won her laurels and acclaims, including Orange Prize for Fiction, and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

But the fame that her prodigious talent brought her has come with a heavy price, one that beats the imagination hollow and rends the heart: Chimamanda’s ageing father, 83, fell victim to kidnappers on May 2 in Anambra State. But happily the old man, an intellectual in his own right and former Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, was released three days later on May 5. To my shame I missed the story at the time and I am only knowing of it now through Chimamanda’s own emotive and powerfully rendered account, published a few days ago in the New York Times.

Her narration is worth culling for my readers, perhaps to jar our senses into some collective action against this insane and inhuman scourge on our Eastern states.

Yes, our Eastern states have coveted their monopoly of this mindless craze, a craze that can no longer be half-excused on the poverty in the land, and its mockery by arrant display of unimaginable wealth by some powerful clique in government and business.

No, these mad fellows in the business, nay industry, of kidnapping are not materially poor by any stretch of the imagination. They run an “industry”, controlled by big and powerful people in the society; people who are chiefs and are “respected” and “worshipped”; their true colour unbeknownst to the generality of the people.

Their poverty is of the mind and of the spirit. They belong to the Hades! For how can any group of people chose to inflict pain and horrors, on the altar of filthy lucre, on any member of a family that has brought nothing but glory and pride to their fatherland?

Of the horrors the Adichie family went through, Chimamanda wrote in New York Times:

“My father was kidnapped in Nigeria on a Saturday morning in early May. My brother called to tell me, and suddenly there was not enough breathable air in the world. My father is 83 years old. A small, calm, contented man, with a quietly mischievous humour and a luminous faith in God, his beautiful dark skin unlined, his hair in sparse silvery tufts, his life shaped by that stoic, dignified responsibility of being an Igbo first son…

“Sometimes I record his Igbo proverbs, his turns of phrase. A disciplined diabetic, he takes daily walks and is to be found, after each meal, meticulously recording his carbohydrate grams in a notebook. He spends hours bent over Sudoku. He swallows a handful of pills every day. His is a generation at dusk.

“On the morning he was kidnapped, he had a bag of okpa, apples and bottled water that my mother had packed for him. He was in the back seat of his car, his driver at the wheel, on a lonely stretch between Nsukka, the university town where he lives, and Abba, our ancestral hometown. He was going to attend a traditional meeting of men from his age group. A two-hour drive.

“My mother was planning their late lunch upon his return: pounded yam and a fresh soup. They always called each other when either travelled alone. This time, he didn’t call. She called him and his phone was switched off. They never switched off their phones. Hour after hour, she called and it remained off. Later, her phone rang, and although it was my father’s number calling, a stranger said, ‘We have your husband.’

“Kidnappings are not uncommon in southeastern Nigeria and, unlike similar incidents in the Niger Delta, where foreigners are targeted, here it is wealthy or prominent local residents.

Still, the number of abductions has declined in the past few years, which perhaps is why my reaction, in the aftermath of my shock, was surprise.

“My close-knit family banded together more tightly and held vigil by our phones. The kidnappers said they would call back, but they did not. We waited. The desire to urge time forward numbed and ate my soul. My mother took her phone with her everywhere, and she heard it ringing when it wasn’t. The waiting was unbearable. I imagined my father in a diabetic coma. I imagined his octogenarian heart collapsing.

‘How can they do this violence to a man who would not kill an ant?’ my mother lamented. My sister said, ‘Daddy will be fine because he is a righteous man.’ Ordinarily, I would never use “righteous” in a non-pejorative way. But something shifted in my perception of language. The veneer of irony fell away. It felt true. Later, I repeated it to myself. My father would be fine because he was a “righteous man.”

I understood then the hush that surrounds kidnappings in Nigeria, why families often said little even after it was over. We felt paranoid. We did not know if going public would jeopardise my father’s life, if the neighbours were complicit, if another member of the family might be kidnapped as well.

‘Is my husband alive?’ my mother asked, when the kidnappers finally called back, and her voice broke. ‘Shut up!’ the male voice said. My mother called him ‘my son.’ Sometimes, she said ‘sir.’ Anything not to antagonise him while she begged and pleaded, about my father being ill, about the ransom being too high. How do you bargain for the life of your husband? How do you speak of your life partner in the deadened tone of a business transaction?

“Kidnapping’s ugly psychological melodrama works because it trades on the most precious of human emotions: love. They put my father on the phone, and his voice was a low shadow of itself. “Give them what they want,” he said. “I will not survive if I stay here longer.” My stoic father. It had been three days but it felt like weeks.

“Friends called to ask for bank-account details so they could donate toward the ransom. It felt surreal. Did it ever feel real to anybody in such a situation, I wondered? The scramble to raise the money in one day.The menacingly heavy bag of cash.My brother dropping it off, through a circuitous route, in a wooded area.

Late that night, my father was taken to a clearing and set free…

“ ‘They asked me to climb into the boot of their car,’ he said. ‘I was going to do so, but one of them picked me up and threw me inside. Threw. The boot was full of things and I hit my head on something. They drove fast. The road was very bumpy.’

“I imagined this grace-filled man crumpled inside the rear of a rusty car. My rage overwhelmed my relief — that he suffered such an indignity to his body and mind…

“With my father’s release, we all cried, as though it was over. But one thing had ended and another begun. I constantly straddled panic; I was sleepless, unfocused, jumpy, fearful that something else had gone wrong. And there was my own sad guilt: He was targeted because of me. “Ask your daughter the writer to bring the money,” the kidnappers told him, because to appear in newspapers in Nigeria, to be known, is to be assumed wealthy.

The image of my father shut away in the rough darkness of a car boot haunted me. Who had done this? I needed to know…” End of excerpts.

One thing I want to beg of President Muhammadu Buhari, the madness of kidnapping must stop. The police generally (can) know those who are behind this crazy “industry.” Buhari must put in charge of the police an IG who can bring this scourge to an end, not only in the East but anywhere in Nigeria. Indeed the remit of the new IG is: end the kidnapping scourge within six months or lose your job! Adequately motivated, the police can do it. I swear.

For Chimamanda’s sake – she who has given pride to Nigeria – let’s end the nonsense. And that’s saying it the way it is!

Contact: editor@punchng.com

This is coming rather late, but it is said, better late than never. Sam Amuka-Pemu, Sad Sam as his popular newspaper column in the 1960s was tagged, turned 80 a couple of weeks ago (June 13). Revered by all as “Uncle Sam,” the “uncle” of Nigerian journalism, it is important to me that my tribute to this great man, this mysterious yet amiable ‘force of nature’ – to borrow in part how writer/film director Biyi Bandele described me on Facebook recently –, it is important my tribute is not missing in the avalanche of encomiums rendered when history visits this occasion. For Uncle Sam is my uncle too!

Although we all call him “Uncle”, he is, as nurturer, rightly the father of many of the leading lights in the business of newspapering and journalism today. He has touched the lives of many of us in ways too sundry and numerous for him to know about. And this includes the vast majority who has indeed never met the enigma in person but sees Uncle Sam’s big footprints ahead of, and enveloping, their strides.

Utterly self-effacing, Uncle Sam is perhaps the only person I know who against the norm of people of his small physical size does not throw his weight around or seek attention unto his self. On the contrary, rarely perturbed, Sad Sam is immeasurably equable with life’s measures. Although his Sad Sam column wore the mien of one truly disgusted with the way of people and things, Uncle Sam spares no thought or effort in engaging and enjoying life to the full – well, his own way!

Like many of my generation, the Sad Sam column of yore was my staple diet on Sundays in the then Sunday Times on which he also served as editor – the most widely circulating and read newspaper of the day, one which at the height of its run sold in excess of 250,000 copies per edition. Unless you worked in the Daily (and Sunday) Times, you didn’t know him but Sad Sam cracked our ribs with his lively humour and made us think differently of life with his doleful cynicism on untoward behaviours. Yet, he always saw the bright side of things.

In his ‘short’ 80-year life, Uncle Sam has “been there done that”: he wrote a soaring column; he bustled with ideas upon ideas; he founded a newspaper and together with his business partner ruled, nay owned, Lagos and London of his heyday; he welcomed all with open arms, hired all, and encouraged all; he fell out with his business partner; he suffered estrangement and bereavement; he laughed at life and picked himself up from mess after mess; he went ahead and founded another national newspaper with his Midas Touch; he stays spritely with looks belying his age; he is Uncle Sam.

I did not have the benefit of working under the tutelage of Uncle Sam but yet from afar I strove to be him in more ways than one, and what a mess I made in the effort of which I have him to blame. Learnt in the process, there just cannot be two Sam Amukas.

I remember my first meeting with him in 1978. I was Managing Editor of TRAVELS magazine, a colourful business-travels and tourism monthly, part of the Biscordint Group of Mr. Tunde Johnson (eldest brother of Brigadier-General Mobolaji Johnson – founding governor of Lagos State) with office in the penthouse of the prestigious Western House, Lagos.

Armed with some of my writings – poor aping, if I must say, and cross of his “Sad Sam” and Douglas Fairey’s “Sound, Fun, and Fury” (in UK’s WEEKEND magazine)columns – I sauntered into Uncle Sam’s office at the PUNCH newspaper at Onipetesi, Ikeja, seeking to start a column as a freelance in his young newspaper. Sola Odunfa was the editor of the daily PUNCH while young Muyiwa Adetiba was editor of SUNDAY PUNCH.

Uncle Sam was MD/Editor-in-Chief. What first struck me was the ease with which I gained admission into his presence without any sickening questioning or security fuss. Yet he was the boss of bosses. I cursorily surveyed the large office: a painting here; a sculpture there; some leatherwork here and there. His oak desk was surprisingly uncluttered. Then somewhere in a corner, a reclined sofa that appeared like a bed rested inviting but unobtrusive. I spied the man and my mind, knowing the ways of journalists and artists, conjured up the sundry possibilities the commodious furniture item could permit.

Uncle Sam pored through my papers with some interest, raising some points and asking clarification on others. He tried to draw me out on issues of the day to see how I saw things. He thought there was something in my offering but needed to be sure of its sustainability. I should go write some more, he demanded, and come back another day. I left his presence many inches taller. I had not only met the Great Uncle Sam, he has shown interest in my writing and the possibility of me starting a column in his newspaper.

I repeated the visit a number of times thereafter, each time discussing the articles and getting told to go write some more. Then, one day, Uncle Sam called up Kenny Adamson, the iconic newspaper cartoonist who was the head of the art department to take me with him and make a cartoon portrait of me for the column logo. I beamed with joy at a dream come true.

Although Uncle Sam was the boss and he could impose his will if he chose, he allowed his editors room to exercise judgment in what ‘vagrant’ ideas their papers were to admit and when; and those editors guarded that prerogative jealously. Tossed from one editor to the other, for one reason or another, that column never took off, but a well-framed original of the masterpiece portrait of me by Kenny Adamson graces my parlour till today, a priceless part of my little art collection, and a proud reminder of Uncle Sam’s acceptance of me into the large and ever-growing number of his protégés.

At another time within that same period, I told Uncle Sam of my English spouse, Ally, who was finishing a degree programme at the University of Ibadan and what she could offer PUNCH. Pronto Uncle Sam asked to see her and right from the first meeting gave her a job as a writer/artist on a wage that was mouth-watering, even whilst she was yet to finish at the university! That was vintage Uncle Sam; a glutton for talents, his heart was larger than his means could meet.

Subsequently, I met Uncle Sam’s partner, Uncle Olu Aboderin (sadly late), an even more amiable and equally engaging personality. I espied the publishing adventures and activities of Uncle Sam and Uncle Olu, both in Nigeria and in their London offices and abodes in highbrow Marble Arch and Water Gardens, Edgware Road, London, W2 respectively. Slowly but surely began my ‘affair’ with PUNCH that was to see and continue today; and the column Uncle Sam wanted started but was frustrated in 1978 finally was given life to in 1996 by Demola Osinubi as editor, now Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief. That is life.

So much has been written on Uncle Sam by a few others, each presenting his/her own perspective on this great Uncle of ours, but all agreeing to one thing: Uncle Sam Amuka-Pemu is a journalist and entrepreneur (i.e. ideas man) extraordinaire, a complete gentleman, and a wonderful human being.

Eighty hearty cheers, sir, may your tribe multiply. And that’s saying it the way it is!

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Contact: editor@punchng.com

I’m not alone in observing the sudden and dramatic upswing in power supply in the country in the last few weeks, precisely since (retired General) Muhammadu Buhari took over the reins of power as Nigeria’s President. Many Nigerians have equally noted this ‘phenomenon’ especially in the social media and in group talks. It is the talk in homes; it is the talk in schools; it is the talk in the marketplace.

The power supply has not only been reasonably regular, it has not come with any of the old fluctuations. Ay, in my home, for the first time in perhaps years we have had power steadily for two days-and-nights at a go; and when it went in the last three weeks it has been for no more than a few hours before getting back! Alas, the generator and inverter – utilities of forced capital investment – have been alarmingly idle.

Erroneously, some have attributed the change to President Buhari’s ‘change mantra’ in a manner to suggest the new government has done something, invested anew, in the sector to bring about the positive change.

Of course nothing of the sort has happened. Buhari-government has not settled down well enough to throw anything, money or person, at the sector if it has worked out what to do in the first place. So what has happened? Where have the DISCOS found the music to which the new dance steps are taken?

What has happened, in my opinion, is sheer attitudinal change by the same people, who have over the years, frequently thrown us without compunction into darkness. In that regard and that regard only, Buhari’s coming and his fabled no-nonsense reputation can take the credit. The mere thought that ‘a new Sheriff is in town’ whose government will not tolerate the corruption and ineptitude of the past and would only in a matter of time call you to question, was enough to make the same people act differently.

Human factor, what many cynically call “the Nigerian factor” has been responsible for many of the ills that plague us. To just think of the billions of naira, nay of dollars, that has been thrown at the power sector from eight years of Obasanjo to four of Yar’Adua/Jonathan, to another four of Jonathan, with not a flicker of light more enjoyed by Nigerians, and then this? Nevertheless, credit to whom it is due, even if the ‘restructuring’ President Jonathan effected in the sector occasioning the arrival of DISCOS and GENCOS did not immediately yield an improvement to the power enjoyed by the people, Jonathan deserves credit for putting in place the structure that has made the new attitudinal change of the operators yield fruit.

The ‘human factor’, the attention to detail, the commitment to excellence, makes all the difference; that much I have told folks over the years.

Take the printing industry for an example. Years back when the popular German printing machine, KORD 64, ruled the printing waves, the job that is produced by the same machine in, say, England seems light years apart from the job our printers come up with here in Nigeria. No one ever believed it was the same KORD 64 that did such seemingly ‘magical’ feat of producing spotlessly clean, glossy, magazines or books, with one copy virtually identical, page-to-page, to all others, even if a million copies were printed! Here in Nigeria our printers would wonder at your state of mind for not appreciating that a spot here and there, unevenness in colour here and there, are ‘inescapable’ of any printed matter, even if only a few copies are done! With glee, our printers would see a perfect looking printed matter and themselves straightaway excuse it as a “done abroad”, an “oyinbo” job!

What goes for the printing industry goes for every facet of our lives. You visit an office or home, say an IITA in Ibadan, or a Chevron in Lekki, Lagos, not to talk of the premises of any European or American embassy, and you know you are “not in Nigeria”! You know this is an Oyinbo place. Yet majority of the workers, all the labourers that wrought the lawn and environment ‘magic’, are Nigerians. All it takes is for one “oyinbo” to be at the top and it makes all the difference in the Nigerian’s attitude to work, effecting: promptitude, cleanliness, dedication, attention to detail, strive for perfection, etc. It is sickening.

For now, I can sit back and enjoy the unfailing and non-fluctuating electricity that means I can do this column for the hours it may take without panic of ‘NEPA’ striking, as my kids still insist on declaiming the power authority. Hurray!

APC, moving beyond the crisis

When an aburo of mine called me late at night some days ago wondering why I have not commented on the ongoing National Assembly imbroglio that has brought suspension of formal activities at the legislative chambers, I wasted no time in telling him I have no interest in it and so have not followed it in any great detail. Indeed I am disgusted by it all.

In similar vein, another reader, a Mrs. Sinatu Ojikutu, pressed me in her text to “revisit the issue of restructuring”, wondering whether, “now that power has changed hands” what had always been “advocated” by the ‘Progressives’, “sovereign national conference” will see the light of day.

I say, we are an unserious people, the politicians and the rest of us. We are a people who, as the saying goes, want to eat omelette without breaking eggs! We do not want to suffer changes or embark on drastic measures that will bring about the positive developmental changes we want, yet we want ‘change.’

But let me say my two-kobo piece on the ‘shock,’ untoward, welcome-treatment the new ruling party APC suffered at the National Assembly for which they are crying foul from the rooftop.

I have read and heard some of the name-calling and denigration visited on Dr. Bukola Saraki for going against the wish of his party and upstaging the party’s choice for senate president. He is accused of “back-stabbing”, of “prostituting” with his erstwhile PDP (now opposition) party. A lot of hogwash, if you ask me. I don’t know the young man, Saraki; never met him. But I see no difference in him, in his behaviour, or in his character, that is any different from what the whole generation of politicians now on parade, almost bar none, offer of themselves. They all will go to bed, excuse the pun, with anyone, friend or foe, without batting an eyelid when it serves them well. And I don’t want to hear some holier-than-thou cry from any quarter. We have seen them all ‘porting’ from one party to another with ease and as it suits their time and purpose. We have seen ‘sworn’ enemies for whom many followers have gone into mortal battle one day embrace themselves right in public view the next. Examples abound and needless to list here. And what APC has now ‘suffered’ in the National Assembly through shenanigans of ‘treacherous’ voting is no different from what the APC party itself inflicted on the PDP (via Tambuwal) not long ago.

We are at a level of political development that is still evolving, and aspects of UK’s parliamentary system of democracy are mating and confusing the US Presidential system we lay claim to. Methinks President Buhari’s claim to non-interference with the legislature is either naïve or complicit. If it is naïve it is ‘complicit’; if it is complicit it is ‘naïve’! Without necessarily recommending an Obasanjo leadership style – whereby Senate Presidents and House Speakers were changed at his whim through machinations of money and EFCC – Buhari must know that as President he is also the leader of his party and must not give the wrong signal, in words or body language – of a weak or complicit leader.

Lessons learnt, APC must move on, embrace Senate President Saraki warts and all, and build a united front against future onslaughts’; not by some incongruous regional-party style leadership, but by recognising the delicate balancing, the give-and-take, demand of a multi-region, multi-nation, agglomeration.

And that’s saying it the way it is!

Correction: Not Adetiba

In last week’s tribute to Uncle Sam Amuka @ 80, I indicated that “young Muyiwa Adetiba” was the editor of Sunday PUNCH in 1978. Foul, cried Mr. Adetiba. He reminds me that he was way too young and low in the PUNCH hierarchy in 1978 to be the editor. He was Sunday PUNCH editor in later years.

I apologise.

Contact: editor@punchng.com

In one day alone, July 14, news broke (published in The Independent newspaper here in the UK) of two scientific discoveries of staggering proportions, expanding the frontiers of human knowledge about our world and other ‘worlds.’ One was beneath the vastness of the sea, the other up above us and beyond imagination.

Beneath the Tasman Sea more than 150 miles off the coast of Sydney, Australia, was found a cluster of volcanoes sitting three miles beneath the ocean’s surface. In all there were four extinct volcanoes, the largest nearly a mile wide and rising some 2,000ft above the sea floor, says The Independent. It will astound more when it is realised that these monstrous phenomena is thought to lay hidden in the sea for 50 million years until the chance discovery by a scientific vessel searching for lobster larvae!

It is imagined that the discovery may reveal why Australia and New Zealand separated between 40 and 50 million years ago.

Then of more stunning consequence, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of America announced that its spacecraft named New Horizons that left our planet Earth nine years ago exploring the unbounded universe, after covering three billion miles at speeds of more than 36,000mph encountered Pluto, regarded as the dwarf planet for its small size. Three billion miles at 36, 000mph travelling for nine years? I cannot get my mind round it if you can yours.

The spacecraft, launched in 2006, tore past Jupiter in 2007 and then Jupiter’s gravity was used to grab and fling it towards Pluto. “The Jupiter encounter sped New Horizons so much that it cut almost four years off the journey,” according to Dr. Cheng who is the mission scientist. Scientists worldwide have been celebrating this magical achievement as close up photographs of Pluto’s surface reached us on Earth revealing images of geological interest and possibilities.

Where are we Nigeria and Nigerians, is all my poor mind could ask! Where are we, still battling to sort out the road from Lagos to Ibadan such that we could do the 120-kilometre journey at a fair and unimpeded speed of 100kmph, such that the three to four hours we presently spend can be cut down to one-and-half? Where are we, unable to have a reasonably good railway network across the country, not speed electric trains mind you, no, just simple diesel locomotives, but ones that would ensure peoples and goods could be moved hugely and safely east to west, north to south, everywhere?

Where are we, powerless, waterless, roadless, homeless, schoolless, hospitalless, alas, senseless?

Brings my mind back to this column of 13/04/2008

titled: “Time For Us To Be Part Of The Thinking World.” It was a catalogue of lamentation that reads in part:

“Every day, what accost our sense and sensibilities are signs that we’re not about to get it right. Everyone is too concerned with thoughts of self, self, and self, alone. The spectre of possible poverty drives those who come to public office to think of nothing but how to “take care of tomorrow,” not the country’s tomorrow but their own personal tomorrows.

“The cost of government is horrendous and cumbersome on the economy, yet we lack the political will to do anything about it for our country’s sake. The retinue of staff and aides to top government officials is comical. We run a system and layers of government that we can ill afford and that serves only to foster executive corruption, avarice, and political brigandage.

“The country is earning easy money from oil, billions of dollars that translate to trillions of naira every year. It appears all we can think about is first how to take care of our individual pockets, then to pass the goodies to our families, friends and cronies. At the base of any otherwise laudable project is the prospect of personal enrichment such that, in the end, even the project itself goes into a coma through neglect and insincerity of purpose.

“The other day, I was going through one of those scores of promotional materials that, out here in the developed world, get tossed into your letterbox or through your door. It was a little booklet (catalogue) containing all sorts of items, little utility items but great ideas of creative ingenuity. And one thing that hit my mind was the running thread behind all of the products: conquering one’s environment and the desire to make life easier and better for the masses – and making money doing that!

“It got me thinking, what is the matter with us? Where are the engineers and the inventors in our midst? What are our technical colleges doing? Our research institutions; our financial institutions; government departments set up to encourage and support new ideas and products?

“Here are some of the amazing products in the catalogue: “There is the stairs-climber chair: targeted at the elderly and infirm, the chair hooks on to any stair rail and, through the aid of a battery-operated rotor, navigates the stairs all the way up or down with you seated comfy in it!

“Then, there is the “swivel seat cushion” a padded cushion fitted unto car seats that swivels around a full 360 degrees to help ease your leg in and out of the car!

“There is the “flexible bath body brush” that enables you to wash and clean those impossible-to-reach parts of the body (like your back or your foot soles), not to talk of the now more familiar item of bath mat that gives grip to your feet against slippery bath.

“Then you have the “potato peeling gloves” which, when worn over your hands, “magically” does the peeling of the raw potato skin for you.

“Innumerable inventions, from the “blocked drain cleaner” to the “Ready Relief” bottle for your bedside or on journeys and you can ease yourself discretely without searching for a loo and comes with an attachment that follows the shape of the lady’s body and prevents spillage!!!

“I can’t go through the long list of inventions, all with enticing pictures and captivating description.

“The point is, at every stage of their lives they have thought hard and worked hard to find simple solutions to make day-to-day chores easier to manage.

“I’ve never ceased to wonder how come we are still doing many things the old way for hundreds of years and nobody is thinking of how to make most of them easier – and, as it could be, amazingly affordable. It’s a game of numbers, numbers that we have surfeit of.

“I keep wondering what Nigeria would be like if the white man was transposed here and what, say, England would soon be like if Nigerians were transposed there – just for a mere 50 years! It’s anybody’s guess.”

We are like light years away from the developed world, and it is hard to get one’s mind round the possibility of us ever catching up with the far advanced countries. For a start, it would be nice if we can just have light and water in every home, school, office, and factory. The Moon and Pluto can wait!

And that’s saying it the way it is.

Joy as my sister turns 80

My big sister, Ajibike (Mrs. Ayeni) turned 80 on 13 July, a day she shares with our very own WS who also turned 82. Sista ‘Jibike is the matriarch of the Fagbenle/ Ayeni families, with all of our parents on both sides passed away.

There’s a whole 12 years between us, which makes her (even if not ideally) capable of mothering me. And that’s what she was for a good part of our early years growing up in Minna, in today’s Niger State. A teacher by initial training at Kabba and Idi-Aba teacher’s colleges (and administrator in later years in London), she was at one point our teacher in primary school, choir mistress of the Baptist Church, and Leader of the Girl’s Guide Association! Throughout the length and breadth of Minna she was known.

Although she was the second born of my parents, she soon became the eldest child after her older one, the leading light of the family, Sister Bisi, died at the University College, Ibadan in 1958. The mantle of leading the family and nurturing us all fell on Sista Jibike’s matronly shoulders; and with equanimity and fortitude she bore it all.

Eight hearty cheers to a great sister, a woman of ebony beauty, of grace, of virtue, of love, and of unparalleled selflessness. Hurray!

Contact: editor@punchng.com

A referendum on the form and nature of the National Assembly is imperative and urgent if we are to be taken seriously as a country truly ready for CHANGE. And I am ready to join hands with other well-meaning patriots to campaign for such a plebiscite in order to force the constitutional change needed on this needlessly large assembly that constitutes a monstrous drain on the economy.

As it stands presently, there are two chambers in the “house of horrors”; the lower is the House of Representatives, the upper is the Senate. Between them we have 469 (360 Reps. and 109 Senators) or so, men and women of different shades and hues, some bright as day, some others dull as a moonless night. But they are elected to represent us from their various constituencies.

Drunk by our oil into believing we are as good as America, we have modelled our Constitution (and so the Legislature) after the US, forgetting the historical process and the hundreds of years it has taken America to get to its present stage, and forgetting, more importantly, that all of our oil money is literally “chicken feed” to any state in America, nay, even to some corporations! But we are Nigeria, why should we crawl if we can run?

It is no longer news that Nigerian lawmakers at both chambers are the highest paid legislators in the world, a situation the renowned law scholar, Professor Itse Sagay, once described as a cruel anomaly and a breach of trust. Even more angered by the anomaly was the then CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (now HRH, Emir of Kano), who decried the disproportionate amount of money gulped by the National Assembly vis-à-vis the federal budget, which in percentage terms have variously been put between 17 per cent and 25 per cent! That’s insane.

Professor Sagay put the average salary and allowances per annum of a senator at N240m and about N204m for the House of Reps. counterpart. Not bad for a day’s job if one considers that the last Senate spent a whole year bickering and squabbling, enjoying the humongous perks doing next to nothing about mounting bills that are their primary function to formulate and pass into law, only for them to do it all as “a day’s job” with the scandalous passing into law 46 bills in less than 10 minutes! Unbelievable? Well, it did happen on Wednesday, 2 June 2015 under Mr. David Mark as Senate President.

So, perhaps, that’s all there is to it, a day’s job. But we must not let that cruel aberration lead us into thinking we have no use for the National Assembly or a legislative body, far from it. They are an important, vastly important, leg of the governance tripod in a democracy. They are to make the law by which we are to be governed, and more importantly, they serve as the crucial check and oversight to what could easily become banditry of the executive.

But the question is, at our stage of democratic governance and economic development what form and structure must this vital arm of democracy take? What makes the most sense for us at this point? Must we end up hanging by the balls on the democracy tree (excuse the pun) while trying to ape America’s monkey? Yet, if we must know, even in America today only nine out of 50 states have a full-time state legislature.

So, why on earth, other than being unthinking, do all our 36 states have full-time state legislators gulping a big chunk of the state’s meagre revenue? What are they legislating all year-round?

And at the US Federal level (called Congress), America’s “Founding Fathers envisioned that being a member of Congress would be a part-time job. Pennsylvania’s state constitution even had a provision calling for members of the Legislature to ‘have some profession, calling, trade, or farm, whereby he may honestly subsist,’” according to thehill.com. And “for almost 200 years, being in Congress meant holding down another job.”

I believe the time has come when well-meaning Nigerians must come together to reinvent the country. And the place to start is reforming and reformulating the Legislature. For sure, it won’t happen if we leave it to the National Assembly. They are full-time and, for many, their livelihoods depend on it. We cannot expect them to vote themselves out of job and be the first to make that giant sacrifice needed if Nigeria were to survive. Necessarily, we Nigerians, as President Buhari has extolled, must ourselves make the move to save the country from this slope to ruin.

Doubtlessly, the other arms of government, the Executive and the Judiciary would equally and urgently need complete overhaul and drastic restructuring. For now, President Buhari appears prepared to take the bull by the horns and trim down the Executive overweight of the past.

But the president cannot do it all alone. A referendum is necessary to force the hand of the present National Assembly to changing the Constitution to make membership of the Legislature part-time, and with it the cascading of a whole lot of money-guzzling structures. The noise around reduction in salaries and allowances is meaningless and a red herring meant to assuage our badly offended sensibilities.

And that’s saying it the way it is!

President Buhari and our looted patrimony

There’s a Yoruba saying, yiyoekun, t’ojoko, meaning, the stealth of a leopard is not of cowardice. President Buhari just because he has chosen not to play to the gallery by pandering to Nigerians’ desire for a quick-fixer, a Rambo that would as soon as elected start shooting wildly at anything on sight, began to get called Baba Go-slow.

Two things. One, Nigerians old enough remember General Buhari’s first coming as a military head of state, and how immediately on grabbing power he and his partner-in-arms, General Tunde Idiagbon, started hounding all politicians and some businessmen into detention and sentencing many to jail terms of many life times. They expect an encore. But Buhari also remembers that and what befell him. Two, Nigerians hurt badly. Stories of looted monies in astronomical proportions stink to high heavens. They hear of billions of naira and sometimes even of dollars, and their minds boggle. Yet they are hungry and see the looters parading themselves as the wise ones, Lords for whom there is no tomorrow, their private jets mere toys of competition in “my jet is bigger than yours” game.

But some of us knew that the leopard’s stealth is not of cowardice but of cunning to ensnare the game. Now the president has blown the whistle, just when he got the assurance of America’s support in hunting down the looters and their loot.

According to President Buhari, it’s a whole 150 billion dollars of it. Doubting Thomas may say that figure is impossible. Well, wasn’t that how it was said that General Abacha couldn’t have looted $5b or more until the monies came tumbling down in tranches?

$150b? What could that do? For a start, coming to N34.5 trillion, it is more than the Federal budget in any one year almost ten times over! With such sums, we would by now have railway networks with modern gauge running the length and breadth of Nigeria; our intractable energy problem would be consigned to the past thus enabling the upsurge and survival of industries; our schools, colleges and hospitals would be equipped and raised to world standards. But some bast..ds wouldn’t let it be.

The good thing is that the sort of money we are talking about cannot be hidden under a bushel; it can’t be quickly withdrawn in cash and flown into thin air. The mere process of withdrawing just $50m of it at a go will cause a ripple if not uproar in the banks they are held.

“The fact that I now seek Obama’s assistance in locating and returning $150 billion in funds stolen in the past decade and held in foreign bank accounts on behalf of former, corrupt officials is testament to how badly Nigeria has been run,” says President Buhari. And he has enumerated the stages of his approach: “First, instil rules and good governance; second, install officials who are experienced and capable of managing state agencies and ministries; and third, seek to recover funds stolen under previous regimes so that this money can be invested in Nigeria for the benefit of all our citizens.”

For this, the President seeks our understanding and patience. I give him mine! And that’s saying it the way it is.

Contact: editor@punchng.com

A retired Federal Permanent Secretary, an intellectual in his own right and a personal friend, known as a stickler for rules and principles whilst in the service and respected for his integrity, Mr. Kayode Ilesanmi OON, has sounded a note of warning against rushing into the proposed rationalisation of the ministries under any cost-saving guise.
In an email he copied me, he wrote:
“That insightful philosopher has said something to the effect that those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are DOOMED to repeat them. How true this is about our beloved civil service. A lot of the ideas being championed nowadays towards reforming the system have been tried before and abandoned. I would’ve thought we would first try to ascertain why such ideas were jettisoned in their earlier appearances in the marketplace of approaches before we give them another serious look.
“During or shortly after the second republic, many ministries were merged towards attempting to reduce cost of governance. I remember the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. I also remember Federal Ministry of Information, Youth, Culture and Social Welfare for which Mrs. Emanuel was the Perm Sec. during the era of Obasanjo when the same attempt was made I remember the Min. of Agric. and Water Resources. I also remember Min. of Transportation combining Works, Transport and Aviation. Baba Adebayo was the minister while Femi Fani-Kayode was the Minister of State for Aviation. In both cases, the mergers were eventually de-merged! Why? Nothing was saved. De-linking the budgets of the merged ministries became a dilemma while the multiple of Perm Secs in the same ministry fought to protect their turfs.
“Much more impactful, a much more significant part of the time of the SGF and the President was spent settling altercations between the ministers and their ministers of state. This became so problematic that the idea of scrapping the post of minister of state was given serious consideration.
“Instead of reducing the number of ministries to 19, I propose, on the assumption that we will have 36 ministers, that we increase the number of ministries to 35. Foreign Affairs because of its peculiarity will have two ministers, one a Christian and the other a Muslim. The remaining 35 ministers will each head a ministry. There will no longer be a minister of state, except possibly the one in foreign affairs. This will not result in cost increase since there will be no increase in personnel. Rather, the system will benefit from a tighter structure for demanding performance accountability.
Further on “Cutting cost of governance,” he wrote:
“Whatever else may be done in this context, I object to cutting of salaries. The cost is not in the salaries. The cost is in the stealing. Paying a perm sec or a minister what is around $5000 a month is not too much. Indeed it is not enough. The challenge is to make them live within their salaries and prevent them from supplementing these by dipping their hands in the till.
“I propose that ONCE we succeed in getting the Almighty to remove stealing of public funds from our DNA, we review upward the emoluments of our public officers, including those in the uppermost echelons, to what is currently being paid to those serving in NNPC and CBN.”
And on how to ensure integrity and ethics, he wrote:
“We have tried seminars, workshops, retreats. No luck. We have tried the religious angle. The devil has proved superior and will not let us heed any warnings. The traditional institutions and communities that should ideally assist to dissuade us from pocketing public funds have instead chosen to be part of the problem. There is just one more thing to do. And I am certain it will work.
“Jail! jail!! jail!!! Once a public officer is tried and found guilty by a competent court of jurisdiction of stealing public funds, there should be no option of fine. Straight to jail it should be. Sending a couple of Perm Secs and directors to jail for years with the attendant publicity will do more to drive the message to all parts of the system than all the seminars, sermons etc.”
And there you have it from Mr. Ilesanmi.

Re: Would Nigeria ever catch up?
This column of 19/07/15 with the above title caused a stir and a flood of rejoinders from readers particularly on The PUNCH online site.
The responses indicate the shared concern and agony of many Nigerians about this “giant” of a country with arrested capacity to evolve into the league of developed nations.
Ethnicity and senseless negative ethnic rivalry ranked highest as the bane to development. Sadly, the tone of most of the responders was despondent, with but a few having the hope that the country will trump the bane.
Enjoy these few rejoinders, excerpted mostly online, and hope we can all slay the hydra-headed monster that holds the country down from attaining its potential:

Dear Tunde,
Thank you so much for that well researched article on the irrelevance of Nigeria in the world of science. I have long agonised over the fact that no amount of footballing, playing music, “nollywooding” or even 419-ing can get us any respect or acceptance from the developed or even fellow developing world. Until and when we are perceived as a thinking, organised and science-oriented society will we earn any modicum of respect and acceptance.
Kind regards.
Austine Onyekweli.

Dear Sir,
Nigeria was modelled after Colonial India but in 1948 the Great Mahatma Ghandi theorised that it is counterproductive to have a group of people in colonial India who did not share in the dream and vision of one great India, hence Pakistan was created as a separate sovereign state.
To all intents and purposes, the Igbo do not share in the dream of one Nigeria and we have stated this in many different ways so the best decision under the circumstances is for Nigeria to agree to conduct a referendum as a prelude to allowing the Igbo to have their inner most desire. As a separate state we can then compete in science, engineering, technology and mathematics with our in-laws, the Yoruba. As you may have known from your exposure in principles of marketing, competition enhances the quality of life of every one.
Dr. Peter Ejirika, CPA

Dear Sir,
Classically, it may not be fair to classify Igbo tribe as not sharing in the aspiration of One Nigeria. Because, by their actions, which portend as exhibit of evidence, one may not be at the wrong side of history just to say that Igbo is one tribe that has worked so hard towards the unity/development of Nigeria but unfortunately has lost so much in the same token.
For Nigeria to develop beyond what we have today, there has to be a total (absolute) commitment by the citizens who believe in the System of Nigeria. Hence, development of Nigeria can at best be adjudged illusive and apparent. Until all ethnic tribes in Nigeria learn to de-capsulate respective ethnic bigotry and homogenise into one entity. Unless these happen, development will elude Nigeria.
So with all intents and purposes, I do not believe that the Igbo don’t share in the aspiration of one Nigeria. They do, they really do!! The call to part ways with Nigeria is simply because the Hausa and Yoruba have failed to integrate Igboman fully into Nigeria.
And no meaningful development will take place without full participation of Igboman (no apologies, don’t care whose ox may be gored).
Oluola

In my many years of writing, I cannot remember once employing this recourse to open letter — for interpersonal communication. But the subject matter can hardly be considered personal, yet I want to give it that touch of immediacy, of your personal concern. For, regardless of your present travails for dabbling in politics and holding exigent political views contrary to the sentiments of majority of your (Yoruba) peoples, you (your offices) are indisputably regarded as the spiritual leader of the Yoruba, the caretaker of our ancestral heritage.

I do understand that you are also a Christian. I have no problem with that. Christianity is a great religion, that is obvious enough, if from lowly and confined beginnings somewhere thereabout Israel, it has no less than hundreds of millions of followers, that is proof absolute.

Indeed, the crux of my letter is paradoxically to rescue Christianity from looming relegation and disenchantment. As the 21st century approaches, not many are happy with the concept of Christianity that is defined within the very limited prism of the then Mediterranean/Jewish world. Even where the teachings and precepts of the Bible are of universal relevance, the very idea of reading passages that  pray for, or invoke, lands and peoples to which others cannot, by any stretch of the imagination have affinity is alienating. Hence you have a number of rising rebellious sects seeking ways to modernise or acculturate Christianity to give it greater personal meaning.

I am re-awakened to this thought during this Christmas. The acclaimed Atlanta Symphony orchestra, a Christian gospel group of overpowering symphony, treated all America (broadcast on TV and Cable) to an hour and half of their performance. Midway, and out of nowhere, came this explosion into authentic heavy African rhythm of the Ifa/Sango mode. I strained my ears to catch the lyrics and lo and behold, they were singing in Yoruba, some original hymn about “bethlehemu,” thanks to the  assistance of the ubiquitous Baba Olatunji. Needless to say, that piece became the liveliest, most inspiring, most infectious, of all their performances.

The Yoruba are religiously and culturally a blessed people. If I am not mistaken, of all religions and cultures of black peoples of the world that of the Yoruba, through Ifa, is of the most international acclaim and definition. And if despite over a hundred years of Western  colonisation and suppression of that which is ours, Ifa and Yoruba culture still refuse to go under and are still widely upheld amongst millions of black peoples in Diaspora, then there must be something to it which needs treasuring and preserving.

It is so disheartening to see millions of black (and some white) peoples out here (California, Los Angeles, New York, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti etc.) who are holding onto Ifa (with their faltering Yoruba) fervently as their only link to sanity, if not eternity; holding on tenaciously to their view of the distant land, Ife, of their fathers as  the beginning of mankind; and yet we, who they so desperately cling onto and need, have only disdain for these things ourselves.

Kabiyesi, let us embark today on the gargantuan but ennobling mission of first modernising Ifa; thoroughly sanitising it, removing all that which may tend to give it obnoxious, secret or dark coloration. Let us pool  resources together for posterity. Let us have a foundation for the development and propagation of Ifa. Let us have an Institute of ‘Ifaology’ that would bring together great minds, the Prof. Wande Abimbolas, the Prof. Jacob Oluponas, the great living Ifa elders in the  shrines, revolutionary Christian intellectuals, great minds from the Diaspora, and let us begin to write the Ifa “Bible.” Let us open the doors of Ifa to the world. Let us build a great Ifa temple, rather than what they call shrine? Let Ifa be recreated. Let its study get unto schools’ curricula.

Let us create our own story of the beginning of the earth. Let Ifa be the “Garden of Eden.” And why not? Isn’t Ife the beginning of mankind? How do we know?  Because we say so, that’s all. Religion, culture are matters of faith.  They need no scientific proof. It is simply so, because we say so. Let us start today, and in 50 years hence, we would have gained respectability, acceptability and “truth.”

Black youths all over the world are getting more and more confused. Christians amongst them are recreating paintings of Jesus as a black man in their urge for personal identification. Others are hollering in half-baked notions of blackism. It is a black problem. Asiatic peoples  don’t have it. They have kept their religions intact: Hinduism, Budhism, Krishnaism and many others. They have myth and pictures of beings and ancestors they can relate to and draw inspiration from. White folks don’t have the problem, Jesus, to them was a white man.

You remember, Kabiyesi, that story you once told me in your London residence a few years ago? Well, I remember it all like yesterday. That story of when you were visiting Argentina and Brazil. Of how the millions of blacks there still cling on to Yoruba Ifa religion, culture and language (or what they’ve made of it); of how they revere you as the Arole Oduduwa; of how news reached Cuba of your presence in that corridor and the black people there begged for you to visit them also; of how on getting to Cuba you kissed the ground and asked the God of your fathers to abide with you and not shame you in your intermediation in the lives of those who  sought you; of how the peoples cried unto you for rain because they were near famine; of how you looked up into the heavens and told them if it was the wish of God, rain would come; how before they left your presence, the clouds had gathered and heaven was heavy; how the rains  poured and poured and poured and everywhere was flooded; how news got to Fidel Castro; how Castro showed up in your hotel and paid “homage” to you, saying: “The Ooni is not to come to Fidel, Fidel comes to the Ooni.”

Well, I remember all. But this is not about you, Kabiyesi, more importantly, Kabiyesi, we would have given life and hope to millions of black people who look upon us for mooring. We would, thereby, also be helping ourselves. We would  have created our own Mecca in Ile-lfe, with Oyo, Osogbo etc as the Medinas, Jeddahs, and what have you. Millions would be coming on holy  pilgrimage to Yorubaland. There would be more to make from it than oil provides. It may not be today, but it will be tomorrow, for generation yet unborn.

(This article first appeared in SUNDAY PUNCH, January 12, 1997. Reproduced to mark the departure of Ooni Okunade Sijuwade, Olubuse II, to the ‘loft,’ for the King does not die)

AGIP vs ARCO: Respect our courts, please!

A newspaper on August 3 ran a double spread story on the ongoing feud between an indigenous company servicing the oil and gas sector, Arco Group Plc., and the Italian firm Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) over the award of the contract for the maintenance of rotating equipment, gas turbines and machines at NAOC’s gas plants in Delta and Rivers states.

The newspaper attempted to skirt the dangerous grounds of “contempt of court” as a case is still in court in a suit brought against NAOC by ARCO for allegedly wanting to exclude it in favour of another Italian firm. ARCO, together with some foreign partner, had won the multi million-dollar contract in 2006. On February 3, 2015, the court granted an interim injunction restraining NAOC. And on June 30, 2015, Justice Lambo Akanbi ordered that “the parties maintain the status quo” – with the case adjourned to October 26 – an order ARCO claims NAOC continues to flaunt as ARCO’s workers remain allegedly forcefully debarred from entry to the plant being serviced, according to its CEO, Mr. Alfred Okoigun.

Hence, for now, we can’t discuss the merit or demerit of the substantive case. But, for my life, a situation whereby our courts are disrespected, worse by a foreign company, is totally unacceptable to me. And it sickens to think some Nigerian law-enforcement agents may be in connivance in this egregious disrespect of Nigeria. COURT!!!

Contact: editor@punchng.com

Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah is not new to controversy. Back in his younger days in the 90s as a Reverend Father in Lagos, controversy appeared to be his second name. He courted it. But most often, he was known to speak for and on the side of the oppressed, the masses. He was thus loved. He was the young, audacious Father who dared speak truth to power. And in those days, military power!

Then one day, Father Kukah woke up and spoke without much of discretion in an interview he granted the press, such that this column, in its April 14 edition, concluded that the Father forgot to say his prayers before he began the interview.

Father Kukah had, in the eyes of most Yoruba, denigrated the entire ethnic group in his specious characterisation of the major ethnic groups in the country. Whilst describing the Igboman as “hard-working,” and the “Northerner” (the whole agglomeration of them) as imbued with special dignity, all Kukah saw the Yoruba people bringing to the national table was their “sense of extravagant celebration.” All hell was let loose on poor Kukah, a friend I’d known from way back in London when he was still accumulating priesthood learning.

Father Kukah got transferred to Sokoto not long after that gaffe and he also rose in rank to become a Bishop of the Catholic Church. A measure of Kukah’s national prominence and respectability was how often his name came up in intellectual circles, pre-2015 elections, as one such leader Nigerians should have as president.

Our Bishop resurfaced during the heat of the 2015 elections when Nigeria looked down the precipice of war and disintegration, and almost no one saw how such calamity could be averted. A number of distinguished Nigerians from different tongues and walks of life got themselves together, probably with the prodding and backing of powerful countries such as the USA and Britain, self-appointed themselves “National Peace Committee” (NPC) with the mission to broker peace between the two major contestants for president and secure assurances of both parties to “protection” of the victor and the loser — whichever way the pendulum swung.

Our Bishop Kukah is a member of that group of eminent Nigerians that include former military head of state, retired General Abdulsalami Abubakar, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, Ayo Oritsejafor (president, Christian Association of Nigeria), clergymen John Onaiyekan and Nicholas Okoh.

Speculation is rife that at that point members of the committee, as well as important international community, knew one or two things. One, that in all probability, Buhari, with the new political arrangement masterminded by Tinubu, would emerge victorious.

Two, that with the way things were in the country and the depth of rottenness, it was not desirable for Jonathan to continue in power lest there soon would be no more country to “milk.”

It is further speculated that part of the “bargaining chip” with which the NPC was armed in wresting that “noble” act of conceding defeat from Jonathan was a full dossier of the extent of loot he and his cronies have stacked in foreign banks or invested in foreign lands and the NPC’s ability to wrest assurance of “immunity from prosecution” from a victorious Buhari.

Speculation goes further that whilst Jonathan gave his commitment to the deal, Buhari probably cleverly spoke in “generalisations” of readiness not to go after Jonathan but to observe “the rule of law.”

Further speculation is that whereas retired General Buhari had mere general notions of the level of rot in the system under Jonathan, the wanton extent of it now seeing since assuming the reins of power is maddening enough to force repudiation and make one jail anyone, even one’s mother!

This is the crux.

Infuriated that anyone, any Nigerian, could so much “hate” the country to commit the sort of atrocities tumbling out of the cupboard, and also backed by the mood of the people baying for blood regardless of whose ox is gored, President Buhari does not see himself bound by any “senseless” undertaking to “let sleeping dogs lie” – dogs that have swallowed the seeds to national prosperity.

In Buhari’s view, it is heart-wrenching enough to let the top dog lie, certainly not all the other dogs. But waking up all the other dogs would necessarily wake up the top dog. Wahala!

Former President Jonathan, it is speculated, is concerned that one side is about breaching the terms of the deal that saw him accepting electoral defeat and, unprecedentedly, congratulating the victor. The task of the NPC is an unpleasant one. They know the truth, or enough of it, yet have decided that a bargain is a bargain and whatever is now seen or not seen, the deal must be honoured, at all costs.

At all costs?

Yes, says Bishop Kukah, the spokesperson and reportedly the motivator of the eminent NPC group. And this is where Kukah has once again incurred the wrath of Nigerian masses. And he has done so in a manner that, perhaps, may do his reputation deep damage.

Hear him: “The singular decision that Jonathan took (of conceding defeat) is what has kept us as a nation. So, I think that even for that singular act alone, Nigerians must be appreciative of what President Jonathan did… even if he stole all the money in the world.”

Yes, you heard him right, “even if Jonathan (had stolen) all the money in the world.” What could inform this of our dear priest? The religious injunction that, “man must not live by bread alone?” Or that parable in which Jesus Christ ‘embraced’ the sinful prostitute and challenged anyone who had not sinned to cast the first stone? What, for Christ’s sake? Or is it the sheer knowledge that few Nigerians, even amongst his hallowed group, were cleaner than Jonathan who ever had such opportunity?

Right now, Nigerians are up in arms against Kukah and his now-turned-unwelcome group. In a rather unsparing Editorial, The PUNCH newspaper insists that Kukah’s position “also raises larger question about our values.”

To be sure, President Jonathan is not and could not have been “where the rain began to beat us,” as our late Chinua Achebe would put it. Jonathan is not the first or only living president or head of Nigerian state to have done great damage to our national coffers and psyche. Some would even argue that he may not be the worst. We would not know. But the country is at a juncture of change, of restitution, of rebirth. And as The PUNCH editorial avers: “Under Buhari, Nigeria has a rare opportunity to make a break with the oppressive yoke of corruption. And in waging the war, there should not be any sacred cow. There must be no room to tolerate crooked public officials and those who hope for windfalls from powerful friends in high places.

Matthew Hassan Kukah and his eminent NPC group have done well by bringing us peace, perhaps time to stay in their cassocks and give Nigeria the chance to reorder its existence, away from the impunity of the past into a brave new world of zero tolerance for corruption. This war cannot be waged, talk less won, without making examples by jailing those high and mighty, who by their inordinate greed and wanton recklessness, have brought the country to its knees.

And that’s saying it the way it is!

RE: Open Letter to Okunade Sijuwade Olubuse II

Dear TF,

Great stuff! I wish we could henceforth make it mandatory for our incoming Obas, (especially the likes of an Ooni) to swear an oath as well as sign an irrevocable commitment to the sanctity and edification of Ifa as the divine, pre-eminent and compulsory mode of worship in Ile-Ife and other Yoruba cities and towns.

I wish it would become the rule, rather than the exception, that Yoruba Obas will be the chief promoters and exemplars of the Yoruba spiritual worldview rather than the current situation in which most of them would rather be hired proselytes against the pantheons of their own kingdoms!

I wish we could make it abundantly clear to every aspirant to a Yoruba throne that his Christian, Muslim or such other foreign belief system can only be tolerated if it remains private to them; that it will no longer be acceptable that they will be crowned — not to rule and expand the vistas of their people — but only for the purpose of desecrating their community temples, sometimes in more savage manners than the long departed colonialists!

I feel strongly that it is time we got rid of Obas who only want the sociology—economic opportunism that comes with the throne of their fathers but not the cultural obligations and leadership demands that come with the office!

If they’d rather be born-again Obas, let them seek their thrones in the many temples of the mosques and churches that litter our land! Our cultural and spiritual temples have been treated with scorn and derision by our kings and princes long enough!!!

Yomi Layinka

Contact: editor@punchng.com

Last Wednesday, August 26, The PUNCH newspaper carried a story on its inside pages of workers protesting the continued closure of their cocoa-processing factory by Asset Management Corporation. ‘Workers protest factory closure, beg AMCON’ read the headline. The factory, Multi-trex Integrated Foods Plc, has been shut down by AMCON since June 26, after prolonged AMCON intervention (since 2011) that failed to restore the ailing company to good health.

The Multi-trex case is a sad one. The company, within a very short space of its existence, became the exemplar of indigenous industry, showcase-able to the world of what Nigerians are capable of achieving if they put their minds to it. Multi-trex stood tall and clean, growing with impressive gallop to put an end to the anomaly of the country exporting its raw materials only to reimport them as foreign manufactured products.

Multi-trex, from its very humble one-man cocoa business beginning of some years back, grew to employing hundreds of workers from the lowly unskilled to the highly skilled and management cadre, and becoming listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange a few years ago to earn the PLC like a badge of protection it should be but isn’t. Conspicuous on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the huge factory complex (on the left-hand side right after the famous “longest bridge” on leaving Lagos), was a beehive of activities and bubble until a couple of months ago when the “bubble burst” literally, with red inscriptions all over its walls visible from the expressway affirming the surreal lifelessness of the factory on the orders of the almighty AMCON.

Let me quickly make a necessary disclosure: I am related to the founder/CEO of the company in question by marriage. Mr. Dimeji Owofemi is married to my niece, Monisola, whose mum, Mrs. Ajibike Ayeni (nee Fagbenle), is my eldest sister. But I assure my readers that my “intervention” in this matter is based on what I know of the company and what I believe the company represents for Nigeria and Nigeria’s desire to stimulate indigenous manufacturing.

To move on, manufacturing business in Nigeria is almost tantamount to masochism; a business meant for those who simply enjoy inflicting pain upon themselves. Generally, it is treacherous and, depending on its scale, it is even a foolhardy adventure considering the myriad of peculiarly Nigerian hurdles, human and systemic, to surmount.

But as far as the protesting Multi-trex workers are concerned, AMCON is the ‘bad guy’ that has come to deprive them of their livelihood. Some of the placards read: “AMCON please settle with our management and save our posterity;” “Save our families from hunger and increasing debt;” “We are willing to work, AMCON please reopen our factory;” etc. Multi-trex Management also views AMCON’s intervention that has now ended in the shutdown of the factory as premature, extreme, and unfortunate. The former Management of AMCON is blamed for this and an ulterior motive is impugned, which Multi-trex hopes the in-coming AMCON leadership should be wary of, lest it got misadvised into perpetuating an “injustice” and killing indigenous entrepreneurship that should be encouraged and supported.

The nature and scale of the Multi-trex business deserves a little bit of mention to understand the magnitude of business entrepreneurship at stake. It is a wholly indigenous company with over 1,000 Nigerian shareholders. The installed capacity of its two factories, with 65,000 metric tonnes, cocoa processing equipment and machinery for manufacturing chocolate bars, chocolate drinks, etc, is the largest in the country. The first factory, launched by President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2006 has 15,000 tonnes capacity. The second factory also on the same site has a capacity for 50,000 tonnes. I am proud to say I was present and participated at its launch in 2009; jointly opened by Pastor E. A. Adeboye (General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God), and Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, the Sultan of Sokoto, and witnessed by Governor Gbenga Daniel.

The company’s production of chocolate bars and spread was inaugurated in 2012 by President Goodluck Jonathan, and it has a capacity to produce over 30 million pieces of 16.5g bars per annum. Its chocolate beverage powder drink plant was inaugurated in 2013 by the then Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, now President-elect of African Development Bank. Its recently completed chocolate beverage liquid drink plant will manufacture over 16 million units of 30cl plastic bottles chocolate drink per annum.

Apparently, Multi-Trex, as to be expected, owed banks hugely, the severest being N8.5 billion unpaid loans owed Skye Bank as of 2011. AMCON came in then and bought over the Skye Bank loan. Multi-Trex finance man, David Obijole, argued that the move was wrong in the first place as the company was still servicing the loan when AMCON bought it. “AMCON was supposed to buy non-performing loans from banks,” he says in the statement published in The PUNCH. “But our company’s loan was still performing when AMCON bought it over from Skye Bank Plc.”

Matters became complicated as a result of later CBN directive, barring banks from further lending to companies indebted to AMCON above N5m. Multi-Trex operations became stifled and asphyxiated, a position corroborated by Mrs. Mobola Sanya, Head, Human Capital and Administration Services. “The company has been handicapped since 2011 when AMCON bought over our loan facility,” she said. “The company has not been able to access working capital thereby unable to pay back the debt it is owing AMCON. This has led to mass retrenchment of over 200 workers of the company and 50 other employees have been sent on compulsory leave without pay. About 70 staff members have not been paid salaries for 11 months. This has brought hardship to the affected workers and their numerous dependants with attendant loss of revenue to the country through export and foreign exchange generation.”

PROSHARE, a financial information, intelligence and analyst services firm that claims to have investigated the Multi-Trex case, says on its portal: “That Multi-Trex Integrated Foods Plc, the flagship of the Nigerian cocoa-processing sub-sector, is today closed for business is unimaginable, with about 200 persons rendered unemployed and the modern processing plant and equipment exposed to vandalisation and disuse.

“What immediately stood out as we embarked on this exercise was the undeniable trail of ‘institutional failures’ that laid the foundation for the shut-down of an otherwise viable entity and the wrongful tagging of an otherwise quality management that can hold its own within the ‘Trade Finance’ community as inept.” It went further: “The questions, concerns and inquisition were many. So, what went wrong? Who was culpable? How could a company that raised so much money, had an ultra-modern firm launched by the President, State Governor and Bank executives get to a stage of stagnation? What happens to investors now? The more we searched for answers, the more we saw how a series of policy changes, administrative inertia and indifference frustrated a well-intentioned entrepreneurial endeavour, a situation not helped by the regulatory framework that allowed the transfer of a performing loan to AMCON where new financial rules ensured it had no access to working capital legitimately.”

Proshare corroborates Obijole’s opinion above, saying, “The (Multi-Trex’s) downturn was precipitated by the decision of Skye Bank Plc to place the Multi-Trex expansion-driven long-term loan with AMCON at a time it was performing which in consonance, the bank justified was motivated by the “…need to free-up liquidity for the bank, especially on the long dated exposure.”

It continued in its blistering damnation of the system that kills that which should be protected: “This Multi-Trex case therefore offers much more than a story about the collapse of a company – it is the ultimate poster sign of all that was wrong with our financial markets, regulatory environment (lack of nexus between fiscal and monetary policies driving economic goals) and harnessing of resources to build a non-oil economy for Nigeria.”

What is required now is whatever can save a company like Multi-Trex from going under. The new AMCON leadership could investigate and take a more lenient look. So, could the Central Bank of Nigeria provide a waiver, probably with the intervention of the Presidency in the manner it has done for the “distressed” states? Multi-Trex represents more than itself and the hundreds of workers and their dependants whose livelihoods are on the line.

It is, as PROSHARE says, “The flagship of the Nigerian cocoa-processing sub-sector.” It deserves to live for all our sakes. And that’s saying it the way it is!

Contact: editor@punchng.com

Chief Segun Odegbami, MON, but better known in his football playing days as ‘Mathematical Odegbami,’ for his dribbling prowess and the mathematical precision of his speed on the right flank that earned him numerous goals and laurels, is in the challenge for the ‘ultimate goal’ of the world of football, the FIFA Presidency!

You will be pardoned if you thought you haven’t read this right. FIFA what? But yes, FIFA Presidency! In the manner the reader might have wondered, so have many, if not all, on hearing of it for the first time. Many, indeed, do catch cold on his behalf at just the thought of it. FIFA Presidency is not a mean office, and no bruising a player could suffer on the football pitch could come close to the brutality and ordeal of attempting to shoot at the FIFA Presidency goal. The closer picture would be of all 11 players on an opposing team, with probably half of one’s team conspiratorially descending on one player! FIFA Presidency is not only the biggest office in football, it is the biggest office in any sport, and seeing that FIFA has more member countries affiliated to it than even the UN has, it would not be hyperbolic to see the former in a bigger light than the latter.

But after letting the shock of the news wear out, and one calms down to figure it out logically; working out the calculations; the probabilities; the whys and the why-nots, one may come to share in the big dream with Big Seg – another of the many fond appellations of The Mathematical, who was also the captain of the national team, the then Green Eagles.

Shakespeare says in the play Measure for Measure, “Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” Come to think of it, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing that stands in the way of Big Seg running for the office, but our doubts, ourselves, our slavish mentality of looking down on our selves. A close analogy I see is that of when a Mr. Barack Obama woke up one day and offered himself to run for President of the United States of America. Many thought of the black Kenyan-sired man as a joke. Though smart and smooth, young Barack had only been in the Senate, representing his Chicago constituency, for only about three years. What dues had he paid, who knew him nationally, what gave him such audacity? But the simple truth was that Mr. Obama was qualified to run for the highest office in the land according to the constitution of the US and he would not entertain any doubt in his own capability and the appropriateness of the time to weaken his resolve. He lurched and launched at it, doubters began to ask why not, and the train of followers grew longer and longer by the day until it eventually got him to the White House!

The FIFA rules of eligibility are clear, and Big Seg is eminently qualified to run for that office. Just as an Obama would be the first African-American to become the President of the US, so would a Segun Odegbami become the first African to become the FIFA President. And, yes, if he runs (and he is running), he will be running for Africa! It should not be a Nigerian thing, it must be an African thing. The task, therefore, is to figure out how to get this to happen — for sister countries in Africa and beyond to embrace the moment and its candidate.

Article 13 of FIFA rules, beyond demanding that the candidate must have played an active role in association football in any capacity (including technical, medical, administrative, etc, even at League or Club level, or as a player) for two of the last five years before being proposed as a candidate, also demands that the candidate be proposed by a member association, and also have the endorsement of at least five member associations. So primary eligibility of Big Seg’s active relationship with football isn’t the issue, getting him to (1) be Nigeria Football Federation’s candidate, and (2) getting five other countries football associations to adopt him, is the issue. Indeed, in my mind, once Nigeria adopts him, the other half, of getting five other countries, become fait accompli given the ‘Big Brother’ role of Nigeria in African affairs and given the wide popularity of Big Seg within African and international football circles.

As I indicated already, the biggest hurdle remains ourselves, our self-deprecating self; our destructive pull-him-down tendency; our hateful self.

I have equally listened to surfeit of apologies on why not: “O, he has not occupied any office in even our NFF”; “O, he has run for NFF chairmanship a number of times and failed”; “O, he needs this, he needs that!” If any of this mattered, surely FIFA would have considered it necessary to append to the conditions precedent. Sadly, we view ourselves much littler than the outside world regards us. Examples abound, but I leave that for another day.

At over 60, Odegbami is well in years and experience to fit into any office in the world other than the one of small minds, and in the past, even in the run up to this year’s FIFA Presidency election, people in their 30s and some in 40s got into the race up to a point. Former Portugal midfielder, Luis Figo, 42, was in the race until he pulled out, and Prince Ali, another contender, is 39! We are the ones that have no clue what the rest of the world is doing and things are going. Come to think of it, Odegbami is a Sports Ambassador of Nigeria and an Ambassador of the 1-Goal Education-for-All World Cup 2010 Campaign. He is a sports columnist for many international media, print and television, and is the proprietor of an International Football Academy in Wasimi, Ogun State, a model of academic and sporting education with full secondary education component.

What has suddenly thrown this FIFA Presidency thing open is the recent and raging scandal in the House of Football, a crisis that raises huge moral question on the whole gamut of FIFA leadership and demands that the world be unsparing in cleaning out the mess, if the world would have the courage to. Says Odegami, “The current scandal in FIFA is the organisation’s worst crisis in its 111 years of existence. Moving forward, FIFA thus require a new era of leadership that can restore the dignity of the noble sport and that of this esteemed international institution with global followership.” Odegbami believes that to address this will demand that FIFA purges itself, launders its image, restores its reputation and reinstates integrity into its activities and operations. This would require a new form of leadership with a renewed vision.

Odegbami adds, “Times like this call for all concerned members of the global football family to contribute to the actualisation of renewed objectives for FIFA by electing a deserving and qualified person, with the right character that can achieve the desired goals and restore confidence and integrity to the organisation and its activities. The world is very interested in who becomes the next President of FIFA, considering the present image and state of this institution and I see myself fitting into this role.

“Football is what my entire life has revolved around. My life’s ambition has always been to use football to make a difference in my local space and across the world; to go back to the original mission of promoting peace and cementing the bonds of friendships amongst the citizens of the world; and maximising the global followership of the game to transform the lives of people and communities and advance social causes around the world.”

The cat is already out of the bag with Odegbami’s press statement of September 1, reported on the BBC that same evening and carried on most Nigerian media the following day. According to him, he has already conveyed his intention to and sought the support of the NFF and the Federal Government, by which I believe he means Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari. That is great. Buhari’s mantra is ‘change’, it behoves him to carry that faith into all spheres of Nigeria’s, nay, Africa’s relationship with the rest of the world.

It is our time! It is Africa’s time! And that’s saying it the way it is!

Contact: editor@punchng.com

When, last week, our president finally got round to making public his asset declaration, confirming what we all knew all along — that for the first time Nigeria can ‘boast’ of having the poorest president in Africa — one wondered why counting cattle heads took so long. But President Muhammadu Buhari must be praised, nevertheless, for living up to his words. Just like the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had done in 2007, so has President Buhari now done.

So, for whatever it’s worth, we now have two Presidents in our history who have chosen to publicly declare their assets, and both of them are Fulanis — or northerners as they would oft be broadly tarred. And, here, one would also recall the First Republic Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, who had little or nothing to his name, and former President Shehu Shagari. The import of it must not be missed. Why are they more inclined to simplicity and honesty, if one could so define it, than those from elsewhere — broadly speaking? Or were they simply something random? Dangerous territory to skirt, I admit, knowing full well that rogues and dimwits, just as honest and God-fearing folks, are not the exclusive preserve of any ethnic group. I digress, but some thought.

Talking of Yar’Adua, the significant difference, aside the promptness of his declaration coming within a month of being sworn in as president and the size of his wealth (a billion naira of it), is in the inclusiveness of Buhari’s. Yar’Adua’s personal style and leadership character was tepid and laissez faire, leaving his deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, – talk less his cabinet — freedom to choose when if or how he declares or not. It left a poor taste in the mouth then, but it apparently was only a foretaste of the entire governance style of the short-lived regime, whereby poor Jonathan as deputy knew little of what his principal was up to at any given time.

In this column of 2007 (08/07/07) when President Yar’Adua declared his assets, I wrote: “To my mind, two key questions need to be addressed. One is the spirit of the law, the intendment of the demand. Is it for the present – to establish how wealthy our would-be governor or president is, and so, perhaps, how worthy for the office? Or is it more about the future, so we can measure by how much he has abused, or not, his office at the end of his tenure? Or is it for both the present and the future? And these questions are pertinent regardless of whether the asset is declared from the rooftop of the Villa or wrapped in secrecy with the appropriate agency. What is the purpose?”

Interestingly, President Buhari has said this would be his fourth time of declaring his assets in the course of holding various public offices – as governor, as minister, as military head of state, and now as president. That is exemplary, if you ask me, and should be commended.

But, so far, there is no precedence of any president or governor leaving office and either voluntarily or otherwise declaring his upon-leaving-the-office worth, or of the Code of Conduct Bureau getting up to the job of holding them to account for any staggering difference in wealth. I submit that the whole exercise of “assets declaration” is meaningless unless and until the intendment of the purpose is fulfilled, namely, to show the worth of a public office holder before assuming office and after. Were there such imperative, we would have been entertained, not to say alarmed, by the catapulted material circumstances of, say, an Obasanjo or a Jonathan!

By the declarations of both President Buhari and his deputy, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Buhari is worth about N500m (roughly valuing his sundry livestock, mud houses, lands, shares, etc), whilst Osinbajo is worth a billion or two (counting his dollar and pound sterling accounts, shares, properties home and abroad, etc). I find it interesting and remarkable for their modesty and conservatism, a marked departure from the well-known practise of the past where declarations are made anticipatory of future earnings (future stealing, more like) before the tenure is over! I am, therefore, amused by those who miss this salient point and are raising dust even at the, in my view, paltriness of what these two gentlemen have declared.

This public declarations of the president and his deputy, and the president’s averment that all those taking up office in his government must be ready to equally abide by the standard set, has its own salutary effect on good governance and in the anti- corruption crusade. The message is clear: come clean, go clean! In all probability, corruption cannot be wiped out overnight, but the more debilitating morass of corruption-with-impunity will hopefully be buried.

And that’s saying it the way it is!

Congrats as Pastor Bakare’s daughter weds

It was all glitter and gold on Saturday, August 29, 2015 when one of the few “men of God” left whose words could be counted to match his deeds, Pastor Tunde Bakare, gave out his daughter, Olubunmi, in marriage to the dashing, young, Mr. Olaoluwa Fabode, a chartered accountant with Ernst & Young, and cousin of my family friends, Taiwo and Idowu Adedoyin.

Pastor Bakare, ordinarily not a man for frivolities and “exaggerated celebrations” (apologies, Bishop Kukah), got caught by the marriage of his daughter; an exception forced upon him as no expense — bar alcoholic drinks! — was spared in the lavish but classy entertainment of guests at the massive and exquisite ballroom of five-star Lagos Oriental Hotel. And of guests, they were all there, present or represented, leaders of politics, of business, of faith, and of men!

I hold Pastor Bakare in the highest of esteem and so I had the pleasure of showing up — albeit for the reception, just as the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo; Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State were leaving after the wedding proper – to identify with him on the joyous occasion.

Congratulations to the young couple as they begin their journey in matrimony, through the rough and smooth. May the marriage be abundantly blessed.

And my nephew Tokunbo Esho too

Also, yesterday, September 12, my nephew in whom I am well pleased, Tokunbo Esho, also walked into marital life with his heartthrob, Toluwalase Shogbolu, at all-day long wedding ceremonies which began at the Bola Memorial Anglican Church, Ikeja, and ended with the grand reception at Sheba Events Centre, Ikeja, Lagos.

Tokunbo is the son of my baby sister, Bolanle and Mr. Femi Esho, music aficionado and Nigeria’s foremost patron of Highlife music of yesteryear.

Femi Esho and I have become friends since he met and married my sister who was living with me then in Lagos about 40 years ago. And Tokunbo is a special nephew, conceived by his mum in my London home (right under my roof, haba!) when she came visiting with her husband some 34 years ago. But that’s not only what makes Tokunbo special to me. He is a young man with one of the brightest of minds and enterprising spirit. An Electrical Engineering graduate of the University of Lagos, Tokunbo, single minded, veered into creative entrepreneurship (publishing, design, and media management) right from the word go, electing to create his own wealth rather than “suffer indignities of looking for a job,” as he put it. His wife, young and beautiful Toluwalase, holds a degree in Computer Technology from Babcock University and works in an IT outfit.

Again, I am filled with joy at the union. In these days when morality in our youth is at a discount, it is certainly a thing of joy to find two young lovers shunning the wayward path to be betrothed to each other for life. May their marriage also be abundantly blessed.

Contact: editor@punchng.com

With the determination of the “new Sheriff in town” to confront head on our country’s malignant evil, corruption, until it is reduced to the barest minimum, if not eradicated, a point in current conversation is how far back should he beam the searchlight?

Many argue that it will be selective, wrong, and unfair for President Muhammadu Buhari to leave out the deafening, even defining, corruption of the not-too-distant past that cast the most slur on our national image whilst concentrating on just the tenure of his immediate predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Doing that, they argue, would amount to leaving leprosy to treat eczema! Further, that it would be sending an unfortunate signal of “sacred-cow-ism”, of there being some untouchables, or, as the Yoruba proverb says: “ti aja ba nsinwin, a m’oju olowo e.” Meaning, even a mad dog would know its owner!

Perhaps so, perhaps not, but determining how far back to go is important in view of limiting human, financial and time costs involved in such exercise, lest it become counterproductive.

But talking of humongous corruption of the “not-too-distant” past, this column is reminded of scandals of international dimension such as Willbros, Siemens, and Halliburton. And here are snippets of views on them then, if we may borrow a leaf or two.

Of Siemens, this column of 27/11/07 says:

“But back to the avalanche of scandals all over the place, it is so sad that when the dust settles down it will be revealed that there was more corruption and more looting of the public treasury in eight years of Obasanjo than in all of our years as an independent nation combined! The scale is bewildering and truly pathetic. It may be a function of the resources available – relative scale, so to say — but even with all the noise about what Abacha and his cohorts stole, they cannot put a torch to the amount plain looted or siphoned out of the country by just two of the ‘Resource Control’ governors. Mr. President (Obasanjo) himself who made the fight against corruption a major plank of his administration and must be credited with raising the anti-corruption decibel in the country came in virtually broke in 1999 and left in 2007 assured that himself and his offspring will never know want again!

“…The Siemens’ scandal is what happens daily and rampantly. There is hardly a ministry or a government official that is free of or immune to it. Is scale or manner of giving or taking the qualifier? Is accepting a nice dinner or a flight ticket less a crime than accepting a Rolls-Royce car or even a jet? And, believe it or not, a jet has been offered as a ‘gift’ as much as a mansion in Asokoro (Abuja)…

“It is not easy. Bribery may be a universal cankerworm, but in the manner and scale Nigerians demand or take it we not only ridicule ourselves in the eyes of the world, we damage the fabric of social morality and economic development.

“This country is crying for a soul…”

Of Halliburton, this column of 05/04/09 says:

“Starting from about 1994, Halliburton, a United States company founded in 1919 and one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the oil and gas industry, learnt of the prospect of getting multi-billion dollar contracts in the fledgling Nigeria oil and gas sector, specifically to help build Africa’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, in Bonny, Rivers State – if it is ready to “do business the Nigerian way.”

“Quickly, a multi-national joint venture company, TSKJ, was formed with French, Italian, US, and Japanese engineering companies as partners. Done, an intricate web of deceit and criminal contrivance began. TSKJ set up three companies registered in Madeira, Portugal, with the mandate to bribe Nigerian “officials and political party leaders,” according to a sealed indictment filed at the United States District Court in Houston, Texas. And over the next eight years or so, some N30 billion were paid in bribes to those we call our “leaders,” in exchange for over $6billion in contracts to build the LNG plant.

“The lid on the Halliburton dirty deals was blown open by the United States Justice Department and investigation had been going on since 2003. Our EFCC under Nuhu Ribadu knew of the scandal, knew of all the top Nigerians fingered in the massive scam, and had skirted around the case, obviously disabled by the fact that the highest echelon of the country’s leadership since the scam began in 1994 were implicated. As the Yoruba says: ti a ba fa gburu, gburu a fa ‘gbo! If you tug too much at the clustered plant root, a whole lot of forest bushes get dragged along. This, and many more such scams, including the unresolved Siemens one, are what Amnesty International and real great countries of the world see to consign us into the trash bin of development, and laugh at our vaunted greatness…

“And furthermore on 26/04/09:

“Now that the water of the Halliburton bribe-for-contract scandal has been sufficiently muddied — by the government in whom we erringly repose our trust, led by its Attorney-General — it is time for Nigerians to recognise the futility of leaving it to the same government to fish out the culprits of the sordid deed, or bring this national embarrassment to a cathartic closure. It just won’t happen.

“But, if truth be told, there’s nothing about this Halliburton thing that makes it any different or unusual from the general milieu. The country is deeply rooted in corruption to the point where it ceases to be seen as corruption per se, but as a cultural norm. And so, in all the hoopla nobody in government is ready to cast the first stone over the Halliburton irritant to their peaceful “chopping”, anymore than over all the other scandals before it – Siemens, Willbros, etc.

“On the other hand, there is a conspiratorial murky-ing (yes, and mocking!) and muddying going on, on account of the number and calibre of those already being suspected to be involved.

“Let us consider the Halliburton-gate scenario:

“First, this is a case that’s been going on for the last six or so years, from France to America, and our government Intelligence and Security Agencies were not involved, or represented, and showed no interest in the proceedings throughout until the American end splashed out the scandal, indicting and penalising its own citizen(s)!

“Next, Nigeria Government jumping to action – forced upon it by media outcry, of course – to see what it’s all about, with her Attorney-General flying out of the country to America to see if those foreign companies “soiling our reputation” with their bribes can be sued and Nigeria can get some compensation and redress! And also to obtain some belated list of Nigerians fingered in the sordid saga!

“Next, we hear from the Attorney-General the earth-shaking revelation that $150m of the $180m reported bribe had been traced to a Swiss Bank account where it is still sitting pretty – perhaps waiting for our Aondoakaa’s discovery! And now the deflective “drive” to get that money “returned” to Nigeria!

“How does all these add up?…

“If this Halliburton-gate is not to end up like all the others before it, the media must be “sworn” to pursuing it to a logical end. It is our own “Watergate”, and, like the original, it is a battle the media has to undertake, ferociously and perseveringly.

“The media must pursue it relentlessly through all legitimate means possible, including going to court to seek special disclosures, working with international media and pressure groups to “unlock” whatever is supposedly “sealed” abroad, mounting pressure on other arms of our democratic magomago — the legislature and judiciary — to play their oversight and judicial functions or face mass protests (I would like to say, revolt), and so on and so forth.

“To be able to do so, however, the media must have a valid raison d’être. It will not be just so to see to the criminal prosecution of those involved in the Halliburton-gate for its own sake. No. There must be a larger motive, some higher ideal. The media must see it as the start of a revolutionary pursuit of cleansing our society of the malignant tumour that corruption has become in our lives.”

Contact: editor@punchng.com

Shocking, disheartening, ridiculous. These are words that came to mind on hearing the news of the kidnap of Chief Olu Falae last week Monday, September 21, the day he turned 77.

An economist and banker, Chief Olu Falae, was finance minister and later Secretary to the Government of the Federation in the military government of General Ibrahim Babangida during which Falae’s image loomed large as a cerebral technocrat and “brain-box” of Babangida’s economic policies. It was a perception that lured him into politics to run for president when his boss, Babangida, first feigned return to party politics and readiness to midwife democracy. That was way back in 1990.

When nothing came out of it, the debonair gentleman returned to his home state, Ondo where he is a High Chief, to live the simple life of a farmer and statesman but not far from national political radar, if not significance, as a chieftain of the Afenifere ethnic group, and chairman of his Social Democratic Party. And it is a measure of his noble simplicity that he would head for his farm in Ilado village, Ondo state, on his birthday to toil and be with nature, unbeknownst to him that danger lurked.

The questions on many lips when he was abducted were why Chief Falae? Why now? Falae is not known to be in the league of the super rich, even if he is not exactly a poor man. His visibility, political or social, is very limited and hardly poses a real threat to known powerful interests.

The business or trade of kidnapping has not been associated with the South-West other than a couple rogue cases largely by vagrant wannabes, the most notable being the April 2013 abduction of a former Chairman, Ejigbo Local Council Development Area in Lagos State, Mr. Kehinde Bamgbetan, an incident that was promptly busted by the then government of Mr. Babatunde Fashola.

Speculations were rife in this Falae case. It was reported that gunmen numbering over 20 invaded his farm and attacked him and his about 200 workers. Chief Falae was said to have been beaten and dragged on the floor for refusing to go with his abductors. All accounts indicate that the attackers were Fulani herdsmen with whom Falae and his farm workers have been having running altercations over the danger that the grazing herds of cattle led by their non-discriminating and uncaring herdsmen constitute to farms.

The danger of herdsmen (traditionally of the Fulani stock) to farmlands in the south is real and rampant. I do experience it too on my family’s little “Coconut and Herbal” plantation in Iwo, made possible by the State of Osun’s policy of free land to serious intending farmers.

My wife and I took advantage of it and spent the little we had on starting the farm last year only for the whole land with its new plantation to be razed by fire during the last dry season! Fire, we learnt, set indiscriminately on lands by the cattle rearers as a way of making the land yield young nutritious shoots for their cattle to graze upon with the first rains! Undaunted, we set out again this year replanting only to find on a couple occasions these herdsmen with their cattle in hundreds overrunning our farmland. I once, at personal risk, accosted the herdsmen as they roamed my farm and spoke to them in Hausa, telling them what ruin they inflicted on me last year by the fire and what they are again doing now? Their response that their cattle don’t like coconut or plantain made no sense as the animals trample on everything, exempting nothing.

It is nauseating to say the least. In Falae’s kidnap case it is also curious and not adding up totally when the ransom of N100m initially being demanded by the abductors was to be considered. Kidnapping for ransom is hardly the forte of real nomadic herdsmen. This then makes plausible the view of an unnamed police source that the Fulani herdsmen may have been used by other interested party who have requested for a ransom.

The line of reasoning is that the herdsmen may have been paid to carry out the job and hand over the victim to the set of criminals who made contact with the family demanding the ransom. A case of convergence of interests, perhaps.

Brings to mind the case, earlier this year, of the kidnap of the father of Nigeria’s rising international novelist, Chimamanda Adichie, even though the “environment” and circumstance were different.

As Chimamanda herself put it, “Kidnappings are not uncommon in southeastern Nigeria and, unlike similar incidents in the Niger Delta, where foreigners are targeted, here it is wealthy or prominent local residents.” But her father, an academician, was 83 and from all indications, his “crime” or “worth” was being the father of an international writer!

In this column of 07/06/15 on the Adichie case, I wrote: “Yes, our Eastern lands or states have ‘coveted’ their monopoly of this mindless craze, a craze that can no longer be half-excused on the poverty in the land and its mockery by arrant display of unimaginable wealth by some powerful clique in government and business. No, these mad fellows in the business, nay industry, of kidnapping are not materially poor by any stretch of the imagination. They run an “industry”, controlled by big and powerful people in the society; people who are chiefs and are “respected” and “worshipped”; their true colour unbeknownst to the generality of the people.”

In the last few weeks alone, two kidnap cases affecting media persons occurred to bring to the fore the persistence of this social cancer.

First was that of my sister, Donu Kogbara, Vanguard newspaper columnist, who was whisked away from her residence in the early hours of Sunday, August 30 by armed young men reportedly in police uniform. Kogbara’s case was that of robbery and kidnapping as the abductors first robbed her and her family of cash and jewelry before blindfolding and taking her straight to the creeks! She was released a few days later.

Kogbara’s was followed by the kidnap of Toyin, wife of Steve Nwosu, the Deputy MD of Sun newspapers who was abducted on Monday, September 14 from their home on the outskirts of Lagos. She was also released a few days after.

In all three instances, Chief Falae included, the ransom of N100m is the first demand before negotiations commence. In all instances of kidnap this sum drops dramatically on negotiation, but whilst ransom were often paid to secure release of the victims, there has always been silence on this, whether it was paid and how much?

Adichie puts it this way: “I understood then the hush that surrounds kidnappings in Nigeria, why families often said little even after it was over. We felt paranoid. We did not know if going public would jeopardise my father’s life, if the neighbors were complicit, if another member of the family might be kidnapped as well.”

It is annoying that this business of kidnapping continues to occur. One would understand if armed robbery incidents are not resolved by the police. Perhaps, little or no clues were left, doubtful as that may be. But kidnap cases when and where ransoms were demanded, negotiated, and often paid, and yet our police and law-enforcement agencies are helpless? To be sure, these negotiations take a few days before “settlement.” That, yet despite today’s technological advancement which could pinpoint to the last inch the source of a communication our own law enforcers are clueless leaves one to one and only one conclusion: collusion! If still in doubt, ask former governor of Lagos, Babatunde Fashola, how he did it in the Bamgbetan case.

The afore quoted column of 07/06/15 ended on a note of plea to our president: “One thing I want to beg of President Muhammadu Buhari, the madness of kidnapping must stop. The police generally (can) know those who are behind this crazy “industry.” Buhari must put in charge of the police an IG who can bring this scourge to an end, not only in the East but anywhere in Nigeria. Indeed the remit of the new IG is: ‘End the kidnapping scourge within six months or lose your job!’ Adequately motivated, the police can do it. I swear.”

The “Fulani cattle herdsmen” theory to Chief Falae’s kidnap is doubtful and incomplete. Indeed it complicates matters for President Buhari, given his own Fulani ethnicity and his known antecedent of pleading the cause of the nomadic herdsmen years back with the then Oyo State Governor, Lam Adesina.

Any nation that cannot provide, nay guarantee security of life and property to its citizenry cannot demand patriotism from the citizens. Chief Olu Falae’s kidnap is certainly one too many. It is an in-your-face thing to President Buhari; not solving it and not ending the kidnapping menace will spell knell on national security.

And that’s saying it the way it is!

Note: Chief Olu Falae was released on Thursday.

Contact: editor@punchng.com

In the last many weeks and months readers, through SMS and E-mails, have been sending in their comments and rejoinders on the many issues in this column. It is only fair that, at some point, some of the views are published in the spirit of the business.

Edited for space, here is a fair representation of the views expressed on a number of the columns. Enjoy:

Re: Osun and Aregbesola’s revolution

Dear Egbon,

I’m an avid reader of your column every Sunday and a good admirer of your person.While thanking you on your submission on the subject in reference, I think we should have looked at some issues surrounding the policy.

As I have reiterated at every opportunity I have, there is nothing wrong in the policy. As a matter of fact, I’m in support of the policy albeit with some cautions. And the cautions are to make the policy better.

Again, I affirm that the policy is good. However, I raised some observations on one or two elements of the policy. The first I would like to point out is that of same-school-uniform policy for all students in Osun. There are serious issues arising from this. Questions: How do we identify students of Osogbo Grammar School with those from a secondary in Igbajo? How would a teacher identify students from his\her school if he\she found them roaming about the street during school hours? How about during school sports? And a host of other questions.

I think Sir, your good self can advise Ogbeni on this.

Another issue has to do with hijab-wearing. Is hijab part of the recommended official school uniform? You will recall your days in secondary school if any thing not recommended is worn on the school uniform what happens? Why can’t we advise Ogbeni accordingly? This will help his administration which we all cherish.

Thanks egbon.

Oyesoji Aremu

sojiaremu@yahoo.co.uk

Re: Thoughts on a woman of substance

Dear TF,

Your write-up on Erelu Bisi Fayemi,temporarily pulled me out of my cocoon.

Since Nigeria classified as fools all of us who believed we should come back home to build our country instead of staying back in the white-man’s country, after graduating in the 70s, I had devised a method of coping with this “country of the absurd.”

I opened a file in which I put most politicians, “clueless leaders”, power brokers, religious fraudsters, and, of course, her Excellencies, First Ladies. Then, I put the file in the archives.

Now, you have encouraged me to believe that there could be others like Bisi Fayemi; not “mere appendages”. Please permit me to drop the ERELU part of it.

Thank you so much for the breath of fresh air; hope it lasts!

Bola Shitta

bibiajayi@yahoo.com

Re: Nigeria: A time to ponder

Dear Sir,

Both FFK and you missed a point, sir, with due respect. I’m Yoruba, however, something still baffles me. What is the problem with us that even within a particular town people still fight for a particular post to be zoned to their area? Sir, this I think is one of the major problems facing us as a people.

That notwithstanding, I’m totally in support of a true federal approach to things or, in the alternative, may be we should adopt our regionalism as in the past but now on the lines of the six geopolitical zones. This might create the much-desired, earnestly needed, growth.

PS: I always try to read your column at tea before going to asalatu.

Adetunji Aregbe

tunjiaregbe@gmail.com

Dear Tunde,

Your articles are my strong reason for buying PUNCH every Sunday. I’m particularly delighted about the article Femi Fani- Kayode wrote about going our separate ways if there’s not going to be true Federalism! If we don’t know the way forward, I think we know where we are coming from. For too long we had pretended as if things are alright with us but as of truth for every step we put forward there’s a corresponding 20 we moved back.Too many Nigerians are ignorant of what life is hence any mention of topics like this portrays you as an enemy.

Sincerely, it has come to a point we need to start having seminars on the way forward. By now I’m sure the Yoruba would have been talking of landing on the moon when we had television before France and South Africa.We have the resources both human and material and enough of just existing and not living. Our children may not forgive us if we fail to put things right, and may the good Lord help us, amen.

Tunde Babalola

foluclinic@yahoo.com

Thank you for your write-up “Nigeria: A time to ponder”. We should not be talking of breaking up as a country, after 100 years of existence as a people. The problem we have is just ethnic suspicion, fuelled by lack of justice and fair play in our national life. “Turn-by-Turn Nigeria syndrome” we experience today, in which regions engage in endless struggle to produce the President, is because leaders tend to neglect regions other than the region they come from, when they assume leadership of the country. Justice and fair play in all we do as a nation is all that is required to keep Nigeria one. There is nothing wrong with the present constitution of Nigeria. The operators of the constitution are to be blamed for not operating the constitution properly. I say no to break-up.

A. I. Olisadebe.

08033119751

My dear TF,

You and patriots of like minds are the reasons l hope and believe that a stable and viable Nigeria is attainable. Regards,

Uzorma Godwin

08028372509

Re: Oduahgate and the killing of Nigeria

Dear TF,

I’ve always followed your write-ups and love the way you press in your points. What you wrote today about Oduahgate I’ve said it times without number that this country is dying in the hands of ethnic propagandists. Even our president has become an Ijaw president rather than Nigeria’s. The word “is it because…” is so commonly used now that it makes me want to puke, especially when it’s coming from the president. I don tire jare.

AYO, Ikeja.

neetadelinvestment@gmail.com

Oga mi TF,

You and the likes of my brother Okey Ndibe are the crop of people we need in Nigeria to correct this insensitive malady. I totally agree with you on the Oduahgate. We have taken enough from these rascals in government. Enough is enough.

Kevin

08023932909

TF,

I almost wrongly concluded that your views were borne out of ethnic bias against the Minister, until I read further and learnt of your opinion against a political leader from your ethnic extraction in the same column on 2/09/07 (which I quickly checked to confirm) and how that leader would have been treated if she was from your family. Corruption is a cancer that has eaten deep into the fabric of our national cohesion and nationalism. It is either religious, political group, regional, sectional, ethnic, family sentiments or combinations of some of the above factors that have continued to shape the roadmap to ‘disunity’ and ‘underdevelopment’ in our dear country.

I only wish we have up to one per cent of Nigerians who think in like manner as you do and we are on the way to the promised land. Well done and keep the flag flying.

Smart-Markus

08131138719

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