Until
now, I didn’t believe any representative of the Nigerian government would raise
their voice during a conversation with parents of the missing Chibok
schoolgirls. Government exists to protect life and property, and, where it fails
as in the case of the Chibok schoolgirls, it should at least feel guilty. I
thought no Nigerian leader could look the distraught parents in the face and
still speak words that hurt.
I was
proved wrong on Thursday, as I read with disbelief what “Mama Taraba” Aisha
Alhassan told the Chibok parents during a meeting in Aso Villa. Here were
agonising parents transported from Chibok by the #BringBackOurGirls (BBOG)
movement to receive consolation from the powers that be. Here were parents
expecting the presidency to tell them when to expect their long lost daughters.
The presence of Hajiya Alhassan, who is also Nigeria’s minister of women
affairs, must have reassured them that there was a mother who would protect
their interests. How then could Alhassan, a mother and grandmother who is still
hoping to be awarded the governorship of TarabaState,
have spat on their faces?
“Mama
Taraba”, first, told the grieving parents they were not invited to the villa.
Then, she reportedly told them that the girls were not kidnapped under the
current government, “so why are you harassing us?” As if the diatribe was not
enough, Minister Alhassan reminded them: “You wanted schools, you wanted
hospitals, you wanted this and that… you wanted so many things.”
Professor Ali Mazurui wrote it all in his seminal work titled: “The African
Bigman”. And by this, I think he meant to refer to those Africans who inherited
the elite dynamics and dialectics of the departing Colonial Masters, and who
always want to act similarly in their colonial-mentalities and ways of doing
things. Also, methinks he was also referring to those emerging and emerged
African elites in their countries after independence, who lack humility in all
they do, especially because of their belief that they have attained high
societal positions that gives them the leverage to flaunt their kind of
attitudes (and therein knowingly and unknowingly trample on the less
privileged).
*Perpetual Victims
Yes! There is what could be regarded as “African Bigman
Syndrome”; which emanates truly from “Colonial Mentality”; whose roots is
surely, as we earlier said, from “Colonial Mental Attitude”. Indeed, Africans
who became elites after the departure of the white Colonial Masters, and indeed
those who replaced the departing Colonial Bourgeoisies in commercial and
administrative positions of authority (inheriting and living in their then big
houses, segregated Government Reserved Areas, using their types of big cars,
joining their segregated clubs, wearing their kind of clothing, eating their
kinds of food and drinking their kind of wine, etc) developed a syndrome of bigmanism
that “sickens” them all the time; making them to want to separate and
discriminate other down-trodden Africans (their less privileged brothers and
sisters). And this sickness has lingered from the days of our political flag
independence (we are yet to be economically independent), and have now,
dove-tailed-into what could be called/posited and asserted affirmatively today
as “Chronic Elite Conspiracy” against the masses of Nigeria.
What is this endemic elite-disease? What are its operative
methodologies? How has it affected the socio-political and economic aspects of
our society (country, nation, nation-state or call it whatever name you like!)?
Let’s attempt an answer! But before we do this, please permit us to first of
all define the three key words that are entrenched-in and encapsulates this
topic: Chronic; Elite and Conspiracy.
According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Chronic means:
Lingering; lasting; bad; intense; severe; acute; constant. Elite means: Best
(of a group); Select group or class. Conspiracy means: Act of conspiracy;
combination for unlawful purpose; plot; agreement to say nothing concerning a
matter.
Therefore, having all these definitions in mind, and having
observed the obvious display of the kind of mannerism (attitude) and actions of
Nigerian elites since her independence in 1960, can it not be rightly said
then, that a lingering/long lasting plot (which is definitely unlawful in
purposes) has been unleashed by a select group or class of Nigerians (who
through their high intellectual, administrative and commercial-enterprise
positions); have denied a vast majority/generality of Nigerians (through
discreet and open operating methods) their rights to their basic needs of life
(like food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care, employment, water,
electricity, transportation facilities, security and other social
amenities/utilities and services) and freedom; and also used the people’s
resources and wealth (commonwealth actually) to better themselves (which they
consciously and unconsciously concretized through their high-conspiratorial
high-life)?
By Dan Amor Nigeria is a nation of experts without roots. We are always
creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot even
take a step. And when the culture has finished its work, the weak institutions
handcuff the infirmity. But what is at the centre of the panic which is our
national culture since we are not yet free to choose our leaders?
*Buhari and Obasanjo
Seeing how
ineligible dunces who don't even understand the secret of their private appeal,
talk less of what the nation needs jostle for power, I realize all over again
that Nigeria
is an unhappy contract between the rich and the poor. It is not that Nigeria is
altogether hideous, it is even by degrees pleasant, but for an honest observer,
there is hardly any salt in the wind.
Yet, in Nigeria, the myth of politics and the reality of life have diverged too far. There is nothing to return them to one another: no common love, no cause, no desire, and most essentially, no agreement here. Nigeria needed a hero before the exit of the White man, a hero central to his time. Nigeria needed a man whose personality might suggest contradictions and mysteries which could reach into the alienated circuits of the underground, because only a hero can capture the secret imagination of a people, and so be good for the vitality of his nation. A hero embodies the fantasy and so allows each private mind the liberty to consider its fantasy and find a way to grow. Each mind can become more conscious of its desires and waste less strength in hiding from itself. Roosevelt was such a hero, and Churchill, Lenin, De Gaulle and Mandela. Even Hitler, to take the most odious example of this argument, was a hero, the hero-as-monster, embodying what had become the monstrous fantasy of a people, but the horror upon which the radical mind and liberal temperament foundered was that he gave outlets to the energies of the Germans, and so presented the twentieth century with an index of how horrible had become the secret heart of its desires.
By Ugochukuwu Ejinkeonye By Wednesday,
April 1, 2015 when Nigeria’s
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced General Muhammadu
Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) the winner of the March 2015
presidential elections, the rainy season was already here with us. And as all
keen and informed observers of Nigeria’s
power sector were already fully aware, at that particular season each year, we
usually witnessed some improvement in electricity supply due to the increase in
the water level usually witnessed at our dams; and 2015 was certainly not going
to be an exception.
*President Buhari and Lai Mohammed
While the APC
and its supporters were all over the place immersed in boundless revelling, chest-beatings
and other self-congratulatory gestures, and asking anyone whose ear they were
able to attract to await the wonders and miracles which the APC had so freely
and loudly promised during the elections now that their “Wonder Man” has won
the election, I visited a shop near my office. And there I saw a barely
literate young man who was so happy with himself as he confidently told the few
people who had some time to spare for his poorly coordinated lectures about what
he perceived as Buhari’s pre-inauguration accomplishments:
“You see what I have been saying? The man has not even
been sworn in and we are already enjoying light [electricity supply] every day!
What will happen then when he is sworn in? Just wait and see! Once he enters
there, you will see how everything will change!”
His cocksureness
was amazing. He spoke pidgin English, and so what I have attempted here is mere
paraphrase of his happy outbursts.
Now, one could
easily ignore this clear advertisement of ignorance, but after listening to that
fellow that bright afternoon, and thought about the matter later, I begun to have
this fear lurking somewhere in me that the APC, given its antecedents and
distinguishing character, might soon start reechoing this fellow. Anyone who closely observed the party during
the campaigns and elections would readily recall that, somehow, it does not easily
recoil from saying just anything that can help it win a few more ears no matter
how easily such claims would simply evaporate in the face of reality.
And so, I had
to quickly write an article entitled, “Electricity:
Can Buhari Break The Jinx?” in which I attempted an analysis of why,
in my view, former President Goodluck Jonathan could not achieve an impressive
record in the power sector and urged Buhari and his people to hasten to do the
right things to achieve a name for themselves since they had unduly raised the
people’s expectations during the campaigns. Then I gave them the timely counsel
which is contained in the following extract:
“Now, it is a known
fact that during each rainy season, there is usually some improvement in
electricity supply as currently being witnessed by Nigerians. But instead of
deploying solid effort to increase the amount of electricity generation and
distribution in the country, the government may naively choose to sit still and
start announcing this development as one of its ‘great achievements.’ That would amount to repeating the folly of
previous administrations which had also done that forgetting that the rains
would soon go away and they would run out of lies trying to explain away the
biting reality that would dawn with the sudden return of darkness.”
Prof Charles Chukwuma Soludo, former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria and former governorship aspirant in AnambraState,
got the nation anxious again when he declared in a no-holds-barred manner that
former President Goodluck Jonathan ran the Central Bank of Nigeria in manners akin to that of Uganda’s
late dictator, Idi Amin. Soludo did not fall short of accusing the former
president of ordering the CBN to ‘print’ say, N3 trillion under the guise of
creating an intervention fund for national stability but which is eventually
doled out to prosecute an election campaign or just about anything the
president fancies. He further described the CBN as the presidency’s ATM under
Jonathan.
*Soludo
Such an unsubstantiated grave allegation coming from a man like
Soludo is, indeed, worrisome. That a man of Soludo’s status would condescend so
low, throw caution to the wind, jump on the bandwagon, play to the gallery and
take advantage of the political situation in Nigeria to make spurious
allegations unscrupulously against the former president is a sign of the
decline and amnesia which has gripped our political class in the last eight
months.
Apart from the fact that such unguarded outburst is false, the timing is
instructive.
In the months prior to the appointment of Ministers by President
Buhari, Soludo was so desperate to be noticed that he suddenly became vocal in
condemning the immediate past administration and accused them of just anything
that tickled his fancy all in a bid to get Buhari’s attention. His nearly
endless tirade against Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s immediate past Minister
of Finance and
Coordinating Minister of the Economy, is legendary. Despite all his efforts,
President Buhari overlooked him and settled for someone who by her deportment
is timid and easily malleable than a Soludo who is brash, rash, abrasive,
confrontational and does ITK (I Too Know).
After having missed that opportunity, and with the growing rumour that the job
of the current CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, is hanging in the balance
following the shambolic state of our economy and the continued slide in the
value of the naira, it is time for Soludo to remind Buhari that he is still
jobless and quite available for the CBN top job, and the only way to do this
since he does not have direct access to the president is to criticise the past
administration for just anything that would make him sound as being in the same
boat with the president and his men, and probably be considered for a job in
the current administration.
However, a look at Soludo’s leadership of the CBN between May 29,
2004 and May 29, 2009, when he held sway there leaves much to be desired.
Instead
of giving Nigerians the change you championed, give them excuses. Blame
Goodluck Jonathan for everything.
In six years of Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency, the
opposition told us again and again the man was “clueless.” It made sure the tag
stuck to him like glue. But now we have a new sheriff in town, with the APC
claiming to be better at everything than the PDP. While that might still be
subject to debate, there is overwhelming evidence that in the cluelessness
department, the PDP is certainly no match for the APC.
*Jonathan and Buhari
Here is a compendium from the APC textbook of
cluelessness, provided within barely one year in office. If you want to know
how to be a clueless president, this is the APC blueprint.
Instead of giving Nigerians the change you championed,
give them excuses. Blame Goodluck Jonathan for everything, including the
harmattan. Whenever you make a blunder, pass the buck to the former president.
If there is petrol shortage, blame it on Goodluck Jonathan. If the budget is
dead on arrival, blame it on Goodluck Jonathan.
In the middle of an economic crisis, promise to provide
Nigerians with free education; free meals daily for millions of Nigerian public
school-children; free tertiary education; free health-care and free houses.
Facing a drastic drop in Nigeria’s
income, declare you will be giving grants of N1.5 trillion a year to Nigeria’s poor.
When you fail to deliver on any on these highfalutin promises, blame it quickly
on Goodluck Jonathan.
Forget the name of your vice-presidential running-mate.
Call him Yemi Osunbade instead of Yemi Osinbajo. Tell President Obama the name
of your political party is the All Nigeria’s Peoples’ Congress when it is All
Progressives Congress. Call your party on CNN the All Progressives Confidence.
By
Kparobo M. Ehvwubare
Four years after the amalgamation of Nigeria, an ex-Judge Stocker, described
the Contraption called Nigeria as a form of system he called: The Nigerian System. He described the Nigerian system as "A setback to a condition of things resembling the barbarous ages”. As at the time, “The Nigerian system”
was and is still the most infernal system that was ever designed for the
express purpose of humiliating and depressing the units of any loyal and
progressive community.
(pix:homestrings)
The three basic principles for the successful
working of the Nigerian System were and are still: *IGNORANCE, FEAR and MILITARY
TERRORISM: Infernal – extremely evil or cruel; expressive of cruelty or
befitting hell.
The Nigerian System– Designed To Fail To restrain and subvert the greed and selfishness of the Emirs because of his consistent dread of a Jihad or holy war against him or his government in the Northern Protectorate, Lord Fredrick Lugard charmed them into submission with the princely salary and a 50% allocation of the native’s treasury funds. These funds were derived from direct taxation thereby creating a distinction, without a difference between their private and public funds.
While Sir Lugard humored at the greed of these Emirs and the ignorance of the peasant natives, he had a successful rule as a mini-god, as long as he did not tamper with their religion. Hence, the cementation of the system where only “a few were beneficiary of state funds while the peasants were at the mercy of a ruling class”. In that system, he termed as the “indirect rule” in the Northern Protectorate. He had subtly guided these Emirs {ruling class} to the center of the garden to taste the fruit of knowledge, and to be able to decipher between good and bad while the natives were left in perpetual ignorance.
Things did not work out so well when Lugard arrived the Southern Protectorate and the Lagos Colony. There, he met missionary schools in several nooks and corners, educated natives with a system of government that was designed to progress. During his presentation on taxation policy to the parliament in 1913, he was bombarded with several questions on these policies and considerations were put forward on the affordability in defense of the natives. These didn’t quite go well with the god-emperor Sir Frederick Lugard. Ignorance was not going to be a basic tool for success in the Southern Protectorate/Colony as it were in the Northern Protectorate.
Most of the Princes and some commoners of the Southern Protectorate were already scholars of western education. Hence, history reports that Sir Fredrick’s policy met with such a lamentable and disastrous failure in the Lagos Colony and Southern Provinces. The darkness of ignorance from the Northern provinces was dispelled by the people of the Southern provinces championing Rights, Liberty and Justice.
Faced with the challenges of imposing the "divide and rule by ignorance” policy of the Northern provinces on the Southern Provinces and Colony that was strongly opposed by the natives of the Southern provinces, Sir Fredrick Lugard thereby devised the sudden thoughts of creating the CONTRAPTION called UNITED NIGERIA.
The minister for
justice just announced that judges found to be corrupt will be tried by
this administration. This is problematic. Though this sentiment is much shared,
it should not be left to the president and his administration to define
“corruption,” or determine which judge is corrupt. For the avoidance of doubt
the writ of this republic does not make the president the supreme authority of
the land.
*Buhari
The constitution
is the governing authority of this republic, and the president is, as are all
Nigerians, governed by the Constitution. It would amount to overreach for the
president to break the thin glass boundaries that established the separation of
powers under the constitution. It would be power-grabbing, and the National
Assembly and the courts must keep an eye on this president. In fact, it is
about time that the National Assembly moved to reduce some of the powers
granted the president, because one of the great sources of corruption in Nigeria is the
enormous and almost limitless power granted the executive by this constitution
designed by the military. Let me advert the minds of Nigerians to January 1,
1984: a military coup had just sacked the democratically elected Government of
President Shehu Shagari. At the head of that coup was a tall, lean, unsmiling
General, who came across as a Spartan, no-nonsense, missionary soldier, out to
rescue Nigeria
from political and economic collapse.
Shagari had just
been re-elected in a very controversial election, which had the great Nnamdi
Azikiwe spewing fire in his very prophetic, as it turned out, post-election
letter to Nigerians, “History Will Vindicate the Just,”
published widely in the Nigerian Press. It was clear that the election was
riddled with irregularities. Yet, corruption in the politics of those years was
the bread and butter kind. It was confined mostly in the political parties. The
civil institutions were still intact: the public service; the judicial system;
the entire bureaucracy of state governance which could put to check to the
excesses of political leadership. And they were still all there in 1984. Then
came Buhari and his dark-browed praetorian guard, sacking the civil government,
and instituting a rule by decrees. The first order of business was to dismantle
the credibility of the elected political leaders the soldiers had sacked. In
very elaborate fashion General Buhari and his rubber-stamp Supreme Military
Council authorized the arrest, detention, and prosecution of the discredited
politicians. His Minister for Justice, Chike Ofodile quickly crafted decrees
that established extrajudicial tribunals that evacuated the powers of the civil
courts. Some of the trials were in-camera. But it soon became obvious that
these arrests and detentions were skewered mostly against politicians from the
South, particularly of the group that called itself the Progressive Peoples
Alliance (PPA) and by politicians from the Middle Belt. It might have been
inadvertent, but the impression it created was of a partisan, regionalist
witch-hunt of Southern politicians – some of them the most popular, and in
fact, the more credible in their visible achievements in the four years between
1979 and 1983.
By Dan Amor Even as the River Niger surges still along its
wonted path to its dalliance with the River Benue and the consequent emptying
of the passionate union into the mazes of the Delta, and, thereafter, into the
vast, swelling plenitude of the all-welcoming seas, it is Nigeria, our Nigeria. True, Lagos
is still Lagos; Abuja
is still Abuja.
It is, indeed, injury time in a new country under a new democracy, our
democracy! Yet, everywhere you look, things look pretty much as they always
have been. Still, the sway of buffoonery and unintelligent greed; still the
billowing gown arrogance of the supposedly powerful, the surface laughter of
the crashing rivers celebrating the disquieting crisis of democracy, the
riveting appearances of things.
*President Buhari
Splendid is the current! Yet, into the heart of
the average Nigerian pop uninvited intimations that we live today in the cusp
of a new age, a new country and a new democracy. Alas, it is a new era. But in
the lull between the passions and exertions and excitations of our workaday
world today, at these times when the body yields to repose and the mind nestles
in shades of quietude, it hits you: it is the dawn of change! But, what manner
of change is this? From better to worse? Something, you realize, is going on in this
country, something is happening here. But what? What is it? What really is
going on? It is simply real. It is the season of change. It is the season of
democracy. But democracy, as you know, never comes like a bolt from the girthless
skies. It comes rather upon the ripening. Whether in our bodies or our
characters, or our large, tall and considerable affairs, democracy is a
ripening, stage after stage and after stage. The trouble, however, is: we live
half-blind, usually even totally blind to the obvious processes of liquidation
being sponsored by our rulers against our nascent democracy.
In the last few years,
there has been increased agitation for localisation of services in the power
sector especially in the local manufacture of smart meters. Local manufacturers
of meters now have an opportunity to showcase their capability under the local
content initiative. This will lead to the creation of jobs and business
opportunities as marketers of electricity recharge cards or vouchers just as
experienced in the Telecommunication sector will spring up along with companies
involved in metering and customer billing systems.
*Idowu Oyebanjo
A critical element that will
hold NESI in good steer is the need for a global procurement strategy or
culture where stakeholders leverage on the volume of purchase to reduce cost.
In the atmosphere of cuts, this will serve the industry well. This can start now.
As Discos seek to purchase meters in bulk, they should negotiate a fair deal in
view of the number of meters they will have to purchase. Consultants and
service providers will not be left out as installation, operation, and required
maintenance services for meters procured will be sourced. Generally speaking,
there is need to establish the Joint Qualification System (JQS) and register of
suitably pre-qualified practitioners to provide these services by the Nigerian
Content Joint Consultative forum.
Other potential
opportunities include but not limited to the provision of Demand Side Response
and Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), pursuit of revenue protection
initiatives by Discos, energy efficiency and energy conservation (as those who
waste electricity will now conserve it and therefore contribute to increased
availability of power elsewhere on the network), increased network operational
efficiency, phased introduction of feed-in-tariffs (as consumers deploy
renewable generation on their roofs), increased penetration of embedded
generation with the attendant reduction in network losses and accelerated
increase in availability of electricity supply.
The
Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency’s Executive Secretary, Farouk
Ahmed, reportedly announced, at a press briefing in Abuja on 29th December,
2015, that a revised template for fuel pricing had been approved by the Agency;
the announcement was evidently the formal manifestation of the ‘modulated
pricing’ model earlier canvassed by Ibe Kachikwu, the NNPC CEO and current
Minister of State for Petroleum. Thus, with the adoption of the new template,
petrol price will be reduced from N87 to N86 in NNPC filling stations, while
other marketers would sell at a pump price of N86.50/litre.
However,
in contrast to the previous static cost template, fuel prices would henceforth
be reviewed quarterly to reflect fluctuations in any cost variable. Indeed,
Kachikwu had also corroborated the thrust of the new template when he
emphasized in an earlier press briefing in Kaduna on December 2015 that “we are
not going to be fluctuating prices day to day, we are going to take like an
average, and I think that today when you look at the prices, we have no
subsidy, because prices remain low and that is what we need to do”. Kachikwu’s
statement probably suggests that the reviewed fuel price has fallen below the
existing subsidy threshold of N87/litre; consequently, government decided to
pass on between N1 and 50Kobo/litre discount on petrol prices to the public,
despite the oppressive N2Tn projected loan required to fund 2016 budget
deficit. The PPPRA’s modulated response to fuel pricing is allegedly a
demonstration of government’s “honesty in being able to sell products to
Nigerians at affordable prices that make sense”. Nonetheless, the Minister is
certain that we still need to get out of the subsidy debacle, because, according
to him “the reliability and affordability of subsidy are issues we need to get
away from, whether or not you believe in subsidy”.
By Iyoha John Darlington The world has lived through great civilizations and civilization itself has had its worst enemies. Man driven by lust for power and personal aggrandizement plays god to others and we have encountered with so many of them through the ages. The historic tripartite pact of 1936 saw a fusion of power blocs. Benito Mussolini ruled by caprice in fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler allied with Emperor Hirohito of Japan in a bid to bestride the world like a colossus.
*Buhari
Other outposts of tyranny include Jordan under
King Abdullah, Libya under Ghaddafi, Cuba under Fidel Castrol, the rogue
regimes of North Korea and Iran, Iraq under Saddam, Uganda under Amin the late
despot and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe who has ruled the country for nearly four
decades.These were cold-blooded brutes who hid under a cause to unleash fury on
their subjects and silenced dissenting voices in their political domains.
A lot of lives were lost and the world and most
regions experienced unprecedentedly abysmal demographic change calling to mind
the attempted extermination of the Jewish race out of which six million Jews
gassed to death where they were held in death camps and other million of lives
that were lost in World War11. Thousands of unarmed civilians mainly Kurds were
killed in Halabja poison gas attack by the regime in Baghdad
under Saddam Hussein, Iron-fisted Benito Mussolini clamped down on his own
people while he ruled over Italy.
Back home in Africa,
the State Research Bureau, Amin's secret agents killed many Ugandans some of
whose flesh he fed on like a cannibal. These were all dark moments in human
history. As luck would have it they all methodically took their unceremonious
exits from the earth under unfortunate circumstances.
By Emmanuel Onwubiko The universal symbol of justice is the statue of a very
beautiful but blindfolded beauty queen wielding a sharp sword with which
justice is dispensed to all irrespective of class, status or race.
There is also a universal unanimity that justice must be
dispensed with timeliness since justice delayed is said to be justice denied.
In Nigeria however criminal and civil justice is slower than a
typical snail because of a number of reasons ranging from prosecutorial
bureaucratic bottlenecks created by professional incompetence of the police
which coordinates much of the prosecution of criminal cases and several other
extenuating factors including but certainly unlimited to outright corruption
and compromise on the part of the presiding judges.
Judicial corruption is therefore a hydra-headed monster that has
unleashed unwarranted delay in the dispensation of justice especially to the
poor and disadvantaged litigants.
Miss Cynthia Osokogu and the four undergraduates of University of Port Harcourt
(ALUU4) murdered by the villagers in Aluu ikwerre in
Rivers State on trumped up charges of theft have come to symbolize the most
abominable kind of delayed justice because these two cases have lingered for
almost four years without the killers being punished for these gruesome acts of
criminal depravity.
Miss Cynthia’s case is pathetic because she was lured into
her untimely but primitive death by her would-be business associates whom she
encountered via the social media of Facebook.
Handcuffing
Of Metuh: A Deliberate Plot By Buhari To Subjugate The Opposition — PDP
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has condemned in totality the brazen display
of authoritarianism demonstrated by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC
Government in handcuffing its National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh
even when the court is yet to hear his case.
This was contained in a statement signed by its National
Secretary, Prof. Adewale Oladipo.
The PDP spokesman who was remanded in Kuje Prison last Friday,
was brought to court this morning in handcuffs.
He was brought to court in a prison bus with registration No.
PS-682-AO.
Metuh is answering to a seven-count criminal charge that was
preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
“This development which expectedly elicited widespread public
outcry clearly betrays an extra-judicial, top political witch-hunt policy of
the APC, carefully designed to humiliate, embarrass and portray PDP leaders as
common criminals and set the stage to cow and decimate opposition and perceived
foes of the government”.
The feud between the Igbo and the Yoruba ethnic groups
is contrived, just like the feud between the Igbo and the Ikwere. Whenever
these feuds take centrestage, the impetus is invariably traceable to the
divide-and-rule imperative, which inevitably profits the oligarchy of northern Nigeria. Every
other explanation adduced in the explanation of the phenomenon can only be peripheral.
It is important to make this point from the outset, before going about the
business of explanations – for the benefit of those who may genuinely be ignorant
of a crucial factor in the continued inability to resolve some of the more critical
of Nigeria’s
contradictions.
Femi Aribisala, one of the more perceptive of the
motley coterie of columnists currently on the national stage, discussed the
origins and manifestations of this feud in an incisive article entitled Time
To End The Bad Blood Between The Yorubas And Ndigbo (Vanguard January 12, 2016). “What is the basis of all this hate?” Mr.
Aribisala asks. “In the sixties, the Igbo
were slaughtered in pogroms in the North. However, the principal exchange of
hateful words today is not between Northerners and Easterners, but between Easterners
and Westerners. Why are these two ethnic groups so much at loggerheads?”
The straightforward answer is that it serves the
interest of the “core” North to keep the South permanently in mutually assured
destructive contention on largely immaterial issues. It happened between the
Igbo and the old RiversState in the wake of the
Nigerian civil war. It was suddenly and conveniently “discovered” that the Ikwerre
were not and had never been Igbo. The people went into a flourish of
re-spelling: Umuomasi became Rumuomasi; Umukrushi became Rumukrushi; Umuola
became Rumuola; Umueme became Rumueme. In truth, all these represent no more
than distinct dialectal spellings of Igbo root names typical to the areas
around Port Harcourt.
But the re-spelling exercise was used to manufacture an entirely new ethnic
group.
The acclaimed writer, Professor (Captain) Elechi
Amadi, who led the group that lent intellectual weight to this fad, went
further to celebrate in fictional terms the political marriage between Rivers
people and Northern Nigeria. Yet, he did not see fit to change his name to
Relechi Ramadi. Of course, the contrived ethnic dissonance achieved its purpose.
While the fight raged relentlessly on “Abandoned
Properties”, mostly mud houses over three decades old, the “core” North
moved in and harvested the oil rewards. Their members became instant
millionaires by being allocated shiploads of crude, which they sold off at the
Rotterdam Spot Market. Further, they appropriated 99 percent of the oil
blocs. Then they seized Professor Tam David- West, a Rivers man, “tried” him
for causing the country “economic adversity” and handed him a tidy prison
term.
But the picture is becoming clearer. Had the black
gold been found in the “core” North, would the Rivers man have been allocated
even one percent of the oil blocs? It was not the Igbo that killed Major Isaac
Jasper Adaka Boro. It was not the Igbo that killed Ken Saro- Wiwa. It was not
the Igbo that banished Delta nights with the interminable flare of gas. The
Igbo was accused of desiring nothing but the expropriation of Delta oil and
gas. But science since proved that the entire Igbo country sits on oil, and
holds in its bowels the largest concentration of gas on the Africa
continent. That is the way everything goes and turns round.
Finally we have witnessed change in Nigeria. Not the kind of change we
expected because Santa Claus is yet to join the ruling party. The change is
that the “change cry” is over. It is now very quiet on the “Western front.” The
reality that all is vanity, according to the wisdom of King Solomon in the
Bible is beginning to settle in. There was no way we were going to have change
when all the connecting roads came from the past and the men who were driving
the change agenda were those who had fed fat from yesteryears.
*Jonathan and Buhari
But the human mind is quite deceitful. All you need to fool and
deceive an idiot that man is descended from monkeys is to show him a picture of
a particular state governor side by side with a monkey. He may not bother to
think that simply because someone Aki looks like Pawpaw does not make them
brothers. So many were led to think that soon Nigeria would become a paradise.
Hmm! instead it is nearly paralyzed.
But the Pied Pipers of change are still on the swing and leading some to
Wonderland. Lai Mohammed, a jolly good guy and a find gentleman when he is
asleep, is still the drum major. He has the uncanny ability to come up with the
kind of answers which make you forget the questions. He claims that the reason
the All Progressives Congress may not pay unemployed youths the five thousand
Naira per person they promised to pay, during the campaigns, on assumption of
office was because Goodluck Ebele Jonathan did not have the presence of mind to
include it in the budget at the beginning of the year. Hmmm! What this means is
that APC did not know that this was not a budgetary provision when they made
the promise. They believed that since the Biblical Jonathan was a prophet, this
Jonathan was also a prophet and would have known what the future holds. He
should have know that change was coming.
The latest fad now in the “change business” is to blame all our
woes on Jonathan and his aides. What a beautiful El DoradoNigeria
would have been if it were not for Jonathan and his men. Lets attempt to sing
the APC swansong to an old nursery tune “If you are happy and you know it clap
your hands.”
Most Nigerians can hardly understand that Biafra is not just a location or geographic expression
but a phenomenon as far Ndigbo are concerned. The declared
intention of then military Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, to reintegrate Ndigbo
into the fabric of the Nigerian society at the end of the civil war with his
3R’s programme (Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction), ended up just being a mere pipe dream.
How could there be reconciliation, rehabilitation and
reconstruction when Ndigbo who fled to safety had their homes in Port Harcourt and its environs classified as
‘abandoned properties’ and seized without any monetary compensation and with
active government support? When the government abruptly changed its currency
just to impoverish Ndigbo with stacks of pre-war Nigerian currency? When returning
Ndigbo
were not reinstated in their previous positions even as the government ruled
that they should be considered as having ‘resigned’ from their posts?
When every man was given a paltry twenty pounds
irrespective of the money he/she had in the bank or the amount of pre-war
Nigerian currency and Biafran currency they owned? When the Nigerian government
hastily embarked on an indigenization policy even as erstwhile Igbo middle and
upper classes were deliberately schemed out through impoverishment? When the
entire Southeast lacked infrastructure and no single federal industry was in
existence for decades?
When one considers the lot of Ndigbo more than 45 years
after the civil war ended, one can readily concede that Nigeria is yet to become an
equal-opportunity nation as far as we are concerned. The least number of states
in the other five geopolitical zones is six – with the Northwest having as many
as seven – but the Southeast has only five. The high opportunity cost of this
deliberate attempt to suppress their political development can be seen in the
disparity between the number of our elected representatives and that of other
zones.
By Israel A. Ebije
Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu became an internally recognized activist in the
1980's for his strong opposing views against the oppressive era of apartheid in
South Africa.
Born in Klerksdorp [1], Transvaal [2], South Africa, he was the first
black Archbishop of Cape Town.
The 84 years old activist has stood against so many injustices, has helped
raise awareness for HIV/AIDS campaign, tuberculosis, poverty, racism
xenophobia and many more endemic health and social practices. He is indeed a
globally recognized role model in the class of former South African President
Nelson Mandela.
*Desmond Tutu
Against the backdrop of his lofty background therefore, it came to many of his admirers as rude shock when the highly respected Anglican Archbishop attended his daughter Mpho Tutu and Marceline van Furth same-sex wedding in the Netherlands. His presence at that wedding indeed endorsed gay orientation, which measurably smears his chains of achievements as an archbishop and activist. Some say he is within his rights to be at the wedding and at the same time endorse the ceremony, others like me totally condemn his implied endorsement.
While I feel laden with burden venting my spleen against his decision to attend
the same-sex wedding, it is necessary to confront wrong decisions no matter a
person's social, religious profile. No matter the quantum of advocacy for
same-sex relationships, it is still frowned at by a good number of humanity who
believe it's largely against moral instructions of virtually every religious
practice.
I may sound obnoxious, obsolete to persons inclined to same-sex relationships
who think it's an attribute of modernity, but regardless of their descent on
this matter, it is instructive to harp against the dastardly persuasion which
is now encouraging other sexual vices. It is even more sickening for Tutu to
raise the stakes considering the strides he has been able to accomplish as a
religious and as an opinion leader who advocates on human interest issues that
transcends beyond Africa.
The presence of Archbishop Tutu at that wedding may have helped in no small
way to either confirm the decision of some youths or to direct them towards
taking same sex preference stance. It is therefore instructive to intimate that
as a role model, he has taken a position, which indeed will go a long way in
fashioning the outlook of so many people on their views towards a pattern of
sexual persuasion with all attendant health, psychological and social issues.
The Nigerian
Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has finally succumbed to pressure from
investors in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) to increase the
tariff regime in the absence of steady power supply and at a time of economic
downturn. Consumers, organised labour and affected stakeholders have expressed
dissatisfaction. As painful as this may appear, it is suffice to examine the
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats inherent in the increased
tariff structure planned for the 1st of February 2016.
*President Buhari
The Strengths
Government's
Responsiveness And Support
In every regulated
electricity business, the price of electricity as a commodity needs to be
cost-reflective. This among other requirements means that price must cover the
cost of efficient delivery of electricity through the value chain. Before now,
the price or electricity tariff in Nigeria
is one of the lowest in the world and one of the lowest in West
Africa. Electricity as a commodity is produced worldwide following
roughly the same process so cost should within reasonable limits be reflective
and comparable. The usual dilemma in a regulated business is the requirement
for government, by means of the regulator, to seek to be fair to all
stakeholders especially consumers, while maintaining a fair profit margin for
investors. This is generally a conflicting role. However, the government showed
leadership in trying to accede to the plight of the investors by setting new
guidelines that will enable increased availability of supply albeit with
increase in tariffs to large consumers.
Most Nigerians are exempted from the increased tariffs
The increased tariff
regime exempts consumers in the R1 and R2 categories who make up the largest
number of residential consumers (albeit for six months only) whose consumption
of electricity is strictly for non-commercial, but regular day-to-day home use.
Most homes, and therefore the bulk of workers and citizens, are therefore
unaffected for now. However, it must be stated that consumers who engage in
commercial activities either in their residence or in a separate facility along
with industrial consumers who consume a significant amount of electricity (high
end users) have been directly targeted by the increased tariffs.
If you are in Nigeria and you have not done this
before, try and do it right away. Just open a Nigerian newspaper near you. Go
through its pages to find out how many people were described in that particular
edition as “credible” politicians or “honest and selfless” Nigerians. You
would be shocked to see the number of people that recklessly allowed themselves
to be associated with such superb qualities even when they are fully aware that
by what most people know about their character and vile history, it might even
be considered a generous compliment to dress them up in the very opposites of
those terms.
*Leaders of Nigeria's two major political parties
Indeed, these are some of the words and phrases that have
been so callously and horribly subjected to the worst kinds of abuses in Nigeria with
hardly anyone making any attempt to intervene. I won’t in the least, therefore,
be surprised if I wake up tomorrow to hear that decent people in this country
(or even outside the country) have begun to protest and resist any attempt to
associate them with those terms any more.
In these parts, we appear to be such exceptional experts
in the effective devaluation of all that ought to inspire awe and noble
feelings. I can confidently predict that there are now some Nigerians who
would, for instance, feel greatly insulted should their dogs be nominated for
our country’s “National Honours.” Especially, since the Obasanjo regime, the
“National Honours List” in this country has sadly distinguished itself by the
ease with which people who ought to be in jail star prominently in it.
And as you look at the haggard or even dilapidated and
grossly impoverished nature of a country with a long list of “illustrious” and
“honest” sons and daughters annually honoured for their “selfless” and
“invaluable” services to their fatherland, you cannot help wondering how indeed
their so-called “immense contributions to the growth and progress of the their
country” were not able to leave some bit of positive impact on the same country
and its people. Why is a country with
such a long and intimidating list of “patriotic achievers” and “nation
builders” still one of the most backward in the world despite being endowed
with enviably abundant natural resources?
