Reject Buhari's Loan Application - Gov Fayose Tells Chinese Govt

Ekiti State Governor, Mr, Ayodele Fayose, has written to the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to turn down President Muhammadu Buhari's request for a $2 billion loan from China. The letter (Ref. EK/GOV/28/10) which was  delivered to the Chinese Embassy in Abuja by top officials of the Ekiti State Government will also be given directly to the Chinese leader by Gov Fayose has already left the country to China. Incidentally, President Buhari is still in China on a state visit. Below is the letter:  

*Gov Fayose 

“I write as one of the major stakeholders in the project Nigeria, and a governor of one of the federating units making up Nigeria, to draw your attention to report that the Federal Government of Nigeria is on the verge of obtaining a $2 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of China.

“This $2 billion loan is part of the N1.84 trillion the Federal Government of Nigeria has proposed to borrow to finance the 2016 budget, which is yet to be signed by the President, Muhammadu Buhari owing to unending controversies between the Executive and Legislative arms of government.

“According to reports, Nigeria desires to raise about $5 billion abroad to cover part of its 2016 budget deficit. This is projected to hit N3 trillion ($15 billion) due to heavy infrastructure spending at a time when the slump in global oil prices has slashed the country’s export revenues.

“While conceding that all nations, especially developing ones need support to be able to grow because no nation is an island, I am constrained to inform you that if the future of Nigeria must be protected, the country does not need any loan at this time.

“The government of China should be mindful of the fact that Nigerians, irrespective of their political and religious affiliations are totally opposed to increment of the country’s debt burden, which is already being serviced with 25 per cent of the Federal Government annual budget.

“It will interest the government of China to know that some of the projects for which the loan is being sought are not captured in the controversial 2016 budget, which has been sent to the President by the National Assembly for his assent. For instance, the Lagos – Calabar Rail project was not included in the budget proposal the President presented to the National Assembly and it was not included in the Appropriation Bill passed by the National Assembly.

Obasanjo And The Pathology Of Absence

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

WE now live in a country where if our moral sensibilities are not assaulted by the cases of corruption of our political leaders  which are unearthed with shocking regularity, our attempts  at every critical moment  to live down the jarring consciousness  of a dearth of  exemplars of a singular commitment to the collective good are  often  mocked by a stark reminder that this national malaise has  besmirched  us almost irrevocably .

*Obasanjo

It may be tolerable if we elect in a sombre moment of reflection on our seemingly intractable national challenges to grieve over the absence of men and women who ought to effectively hold the reins of the nation. But it is unbearable when we are reminded of this national affliction by attempts by some people to project themselves as the ultimate answers to our problems. What makes this situation doubly unbearable is that those who recommend themselves as solutions are part of the problems the nation has contended with in decades.

What really riles one is not the villains’ vacuous attempts at self-deification. What is more alarming is the danger of the obliteration of national memory which ultimately ought to guard us against the endorsement of such self-valourisation. With the national memory being overtaken by amnesia,  the urgent national  challenge is not how to rein in  the villain who is obsessed with  a  quest to transform himself into a hero but the citizens’ rapturous  approval of him as the  hero the nation has unfairly treated by not properly appreciating his place.

It is this search for national heroes that makes us to applaud former President Olusegun Obasanjo whenever he rails at the excesses of the leaders of the day, especially through highly envenomed epistolary media.  Of course, there are many excesses of our leaders that should rightly provoke umbrage from someone who is sufficiently aware that the nation is on the brink. Here, we need not split hair. But as a people who are scarred by the decades of misdirection, pillage and remorseless mismanagement of the nation’s bounteous resources by past leaders, we must not applaud those who are part of the malaise of the warped governance when they attempt to regain socio-political relevance by reminding us of our problems and blaming others as their vitalising forces.

Rather than encouraging Obasanjo as he struts around, self-deluded with the notion of being festooned with diadems for rare governmental insights and an unbreakable record of giant strides in government, the question we should ask is what are the institutions he established to check the excesses of the members of the National Assembly whom he excoriated in his letter to them last week? For if Obasanjo had established such institutions that nurture moral rectitude, he would not  be complaining that the lawmakers are preoccupied with how to cater to their selfish lifestyles at a time the nation is faced with an economic crisis that requires that they forget their personal comfort for now.

Grazing Bill An insult To Nigerians

By Tola Adeniyi

The National Assembly is about to pass a Bill that is set to kill whatever is left of our so-called over-centralised federal System. The bill if passed will be the greatest rape on our democracy and the biggest insult on our collective sensitivity as a people and as a country.

“The Fulani National Grazing Reserve” is presently before the National Assembly. The bill has successfully scaled through second reading in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. For it to become law it is to pass through the third reading.

The bill seeks to provide for the establishment of national grazing reserves and stock routes. It is sponsored by Senator Zainab Kure.

The Bill proposes to establish a National Grazing Reserve Commission (NGRC) for the country. The NGRC will be charged with the responsibility of using funds received from the Federal Government to forcefully acquire farmlands from Nigerians in all the 36 States of the country, develop same at government expense through the provision of bore holes, water reservoirs, etc; for the exclusive use of nomadic cattle rearers.

The issue here is very clear. Fulani herdsmen are cattle farmers. They could as well keep their cattle in ranches. They could devise whatever means like their counterparts in Argentina, Australia and the rest of the civilised world to do their animal husbandry. The men and boys roaming the streets, roads and bushes driving cattle are not the owners of these animals. They are just employees, labourers, attendants or whatever name they are called.

The owners of these cows like Generals Obasanjo, Nyako, Abdulsalami Abubakar and our president Buhari are big time farmers. They are businessmen. It is immoral to ask tax payers to finance the operations of these businesses. Cattle owners must provide capital through bank loans or whatever means to create their grazing lands in their localities. The cows are not owned by the Federal Government.

Just as the Federal Government is not creating farm lands for cocoa and kolanut farmers in Sokoto or Katsina, or creating farm lands for Agatu yam farmers in Enugu or Maiduguri, or creating special areas for fish farming in Zungeru, it cannot for any reason ever consider creating special lands for herdsmen for grazing. Let the herdsmen run their business without encroaching on the lands of other people. Let the cattle owners buy into the Fodder technology and other modern methods of providing feeds for their animals without roaming the streets and plundering other people’s farms.

To ever dream of this perverted bill is to step on the toes of other Nigerians and step on sore foot, and by so doing create a dangerous precedent.

Nobody should play ethnic game here. This is not an issue directed against any ethnic nationality in Nigeria. The simple matter is to let those who trade in cattle fund their business like all other businesses, including farming, in Nigeria.

The bill must not see the light of the day. The sponsors want to create serious problem in the polity and their design must be nipped in the bud.

The Nigeria Bar Association, the Coalition of Civil Societies, and all those who care about the continued existence of this troubled country must rise up to strongly oppose and kill this obnoxious and self serving bill. It beats my imagination that members of the National Assembly did not see the serious danger posed by this corrosive Bill.

In a reaction to the threats posed by this obnoxious Bill, the National Co-ordinator of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), Otunba Gani Adams, says: “Without any doubt, this is a very dangerous proposal for Nigeria. We all have seen how the Fulani herdsmen kill and maim members of the community where they graze their cattle without the backing of any law. I am sure that we can only imagine what their attitudes would be if the supposed grazing reserves are forcefully taken over by government and handed over to the herdsmen.”

Nigeria has enough problems on her hand right now; we should not provoke new and potentially more dangerous ones.

•Chief Tola Adeniyi, a former Managing Director of Daily Times of Nigeria, is Executive Chairman, The Knowledge Plaza and Founder Global Intelligentsia for Buhari. (adetolaadeniyi@hotmail.com)

Herdsmen And The Looming Rage

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

As a prime indicator of the failure of leadership in the country, government at all levels and public officials seem to derive some inexplicable joy from a creed that requires the neglect of problems until they deteriorate and almost defy any redemptive measures. Let the citizens protest or wail over roads that have been rendered impassable by their dilapidation that is worsened by floods and decrepit drainage systems. The government and its officials would wait. For to them, the bigger the problem, the better. If at all they intervene after the citizens’ outrage, it would only be because the problem has festered.

This official neglect was the compost for the proliferation of the Boko Haram crisis. Now, after the crisis has hobbled the North East, the government is troubling the citizens and the rest of the world with how to redevelop the region. Yet, our leaders have not learnt their lessons; they have not realised the futility of waiting for problems to fester before deploying tepid measures to solve them. The current response of the Federal Government to the danger posed to national security by Fulani herdsmen who are now on the prowl is underpinned by the same attitude of not frontally attacking national challenges as they occur.

Of course, we cannot capriciously abridge the right of Fulani herdsmen to pursue their business like other citizens. But the problem is when the pursuit of their business is a danger to the existence of other citizens and their legitimate businesses. It is the herdsmen’s predilection for blurring the distinction between their right and the right of others to their businesses that has launched them onto a path that is paved with impunity and tragedy. They ravage farmlands of other citizens in the course of grazing their cattle. Worse still, they rape women and girls. As has become rampant, a whimper of protest from those whose farmlands are destroyed provokes a ferocious response from the heavily armed herdsmen who unleash violence on them. These confrontations have led to tragic consequences: thousands are left dead and entire communities sacked and the residents rendered homeless.

But a more worrisome development is that the Federal Government has embarked on a course to legitimise the impunity of the herdsmen. Or how else do we consider the plan by the government to establish grazing reserves for the herdsmen? Already, President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Audu Ogbeh to set up 50, 000 hectares of grazing reserves within six months first in the north before moving to the south. By this policy, the government would seize the land of other citizens and give it to the herdsmen. Under the auspices of the new policy, the herdsmen can now leave Daura in Katsina State and have grazing reserves funded by the citizens’ taxes in a community in Anambra State. Aside from the president’s move, there is a bill that has passed the seconding reading and waiting for the third reading to be passed into law that would empower the Federal Government to create grazing reserves for the herdsmen.

But rather than having any potential to end the conflicts between herdsmen and farmers, the approach of the government would rather aggravate them. For in the first place, no one wants a neighbour imposed on him or her. Not even the likelihood of the government paying compensation for the land acquired for the grazing areas would make farmers to accommodate unwanted and destabilising guests. And why must the host communities accept the government’s position when without a clear legal backing as it is now, the herdsmen are already causing so much havoc? If there is an official policy that legitimises their grazing in other citizens’ communities, would the herdsmen not be more audacious in wreaking havoc? And why should the government spend the citizens’ taxes on private businesses?

The position of the government shows that it does not sufficiently appreciate the seriousness of the crisis. It does not take into cognisance the need of the communities that are afflicted by the menace of herdsmen. And since it is getting clearer that the government has failed to solve the problem, we must all be alert to the possibility of the victims of herdsmen’s violence protecting themselves. In fact, but for the efforts of some leaders in the south where the herdsmen have caused so much havoc, the crisis provoked by them would have assumed graver dimensions. For instance, the anger of the south west was only assuaged when the herdsmen who kidnapped its prominent son Olu Falae were apprehended last year. But apparently, the arrest of the kidnappers is not enough deterrent as Falae’s farm was again invaded this week and his security man shot dead. But for the intervention of the leaders of Ondo State, there would have been reprisal with its attendant calamitous consequences. Indeed, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) to which the security man belonged has threatened that one major way to appease them is for the suspected killers of the security man to be apprehended or else they would retaliate.

The likelihood is fast disappearing that the citizens would forever contain their anger in the face of provocation by the herdsmen. That the patience of the much-offended farmers is running out was demonstrated in a community in Delta State where a lawmaker, policemen and community leaders went into the forest to search for the herdsmen who were destroying their farmlands and raping their women.

Instead of pursuing a tendentious policy of establishing grazing reserves for the herdsmen, the government should find a lasting solution to the issue. It is shocking that the government cannot ask itself the simple question of whether in the countries of the world known for producing beef what the government is considering is the best practice there. Nigeria is not on the list of the largest producers of beef in the world. Countries such as the United States, Brazil , China, Australia and even Libya and Gabon are not riven by conflicts over cattle like Nigeria. In these countries, there are no herdsmen who wake up every morning, strap guns on their sides and begin a mission of destroying other people’s farmlands. The governments of those countries have better things to do with their time than settling herdsmen-farmers’conflicts. In these countries, those whose business it is to breed cattle have ranches for doing this.

The government should be concerned with how to improve the standard of living of the nomadic Fulani herdsmen. There is the need for the government to encourage their education. This can only be done when the herdsmen are made to settle in ranches with their families. This has an additional benefit of stopping the spread of arms. Indeed, the government must appreciate the urgency of resolving this matter without seeming to be protecting the herdsmen. This is the only way to check the looming rage of communities that have been ravaged by the herdsmen with remorseless regularity and seeming government’s complicity.

*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is on the Editorial Board of the The Guardian where he also writes a weekly column that appears every Thursday

Nigeria: Of Bastards And Legitimates

By Chuks Iloegbuhnam

Two recent telephone conversations: My brother called. He was in something of a fix. Opening his door earlier that morning, there were two 30-li­tre jerry-cans placed in front of his house. Who had left them? He didn’t have long to wait for the answer to his unvoiced question. Our cousin’s wife, who lives in the same estate and whose husband was out of the country, had left them. She soon surfaced with an unam­biguous request.

“Your generator was on throughout the night.”

“It was.”

“That means you have a way of sourcing fuel. Please, don’t come back today without fuel for us!”

“Eh?”

“You can’t beat off the heat with your electric fans while I suffocate with my children.” The woman spoke matter-of-factly and returned to her house. What to do? I told my brother to go find fuel for his household’s further use, and for our cousin’s family too. He complained that the proposi­tion was far more difficult than it sounded. But, in my book, that aspect of our conversation was at an end. I was ready for us to discuss the moon and China.

I later called a journalist friend of mine. He had just returned from his barber’s, he said. The barber had doubled the cost of a haircut. When he asked why, the barber respond­ed with his own question:

“Oga, you no see say na genera­tor I dey use?” My friend drove home to find his wife frowning by their open freezer.

“What’s the matter?”

“The fish is melting.”

“In that case, let’s put the generator on for an hour while I go out in search of fuel.”

He had brunch and drove off again. Back after five hours without as much as a pint of petrol, the generator was still on. Seven minutes later, its fuel tank ran empty and the poor thing went off.

“As I speak to you now,” said my friend, “there’s no fuel in the house for anything. None for fighting the intense heat. We can’t even afford the luxury of watching the La Liga tonight. What gives me the jitters, how­ever, is the contingency of my wife’s fish going bad; that will earn me some roasting.”

*Chuks Iloegbunam 

I sym­pathized with my friend, and advised that he detailed his ex­periences in his next column, leaving out, of course, any as­pects that may, even if vaguely, suggest that his wife was some­thing of the authority on the domestic front.

The next story is about someone who got fuel all right but, against his will and the de­sire of his family, paid with the expensive currency of his life. The price was uncritically ex­tortionate and raises afresh the whole question of the place of the human being in contempo­rary Nigerian society.

The following report, by nu­merous online publications, came from Festac Town, Lagos, on April 6, 2016: “The lingering fuel crisis has claimed a life as a female staff of the Nigerian Se­curity and Civil Defence Corp (NSCDC) shot dead a boy at the AP Filling Station on 21 Road.

“The boy was alleged to have bought fuel in jerry cans and was going home when he was accosted by a team of Civil Defence officials who arrested him. The boy who should be about 18 years old was said to have laid down on the road pleading with the Corps mem­bers to allow him to go home, as he was not a fuel hawker but had just bought fuel for per­sonal use.

“Eyewitnesses said the Com­mander of the team who felt that the boy was resisting ar­rest, ordered a female official to shoot the “Bastard” and the woman obeyed his order and shot him. On seeing the boy dy­ing in the pool of his blood, the Corps members zoomed off in their patrol van.

“As at press time, men of the enhanced military patrol tagged “OP Mesa” and the Nigeria Po­lice led by the Festac Police Sta­tion Divisional Police Officer (DPO) Monday Agbonika were on the ground, making sure that the angry mob did not take the laws into their own hands.

“The angry sympathizers had attempted to set the filling station and some petrol tank­ers ablaze but were prevented by the security operatives. A senior police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said the killing of the young boy was unwarranted.

‘‘Why should they kill the boy? I think the Civil Defence doesn’t know when to use fire­arms; they don’t even have reg­ulation on firearms usage.’

“The Lagos State Police Command spokesman, Dolapo Badmos, who confirmed the in­cident, said that the Police was investigating the matter with a view to fishing out the Civil Defence personnel who com­mitted the act and prosecuting them in the law court.”

The Civil Defence officers abandoned the boy they had shot dead and zoomed off! Who did they expect to clear their mess? Also, something new is self-evident. If people previously entertained only suspicions, the Civil Defence commander in Festac Town finally confirmed the composi­tion of Nigerians as legitimates and bastards. The legitimates are armed to the teeth and, like poachers in a games reserve, are running around gunning down bastards indiscriminately. But, until recent times, it wasn’t spelt out that bastardy was a capital offence.

There’s another considera­tion. An unidentified Police officer questioned the Civil De­fence’s knowledge on gun us­age. In fact, he wondered if any regulations guided their use of lethal weapons. The murdered boy had not committed any of­fence known to Nigerian law, let alone an offence punishable by summary execution, with­out any form of trial. The bas­tard was sadistically shot dead at pointblank range, despite the fact that he was rolling on the ground, pleading for mercy.

In some societies, this out­rage by the Civil Defence Corps should lead to a thorough re­view of their arms-bearing cir­cumstances. But, the problem of Nigerians – or more appro­priately, the problem of Nige­rian Bastards – has not been only at the hands of the Civil Defence. All other gun-bearing services are into this indiscrim­inate poaching of ‘bastards’. A DSS officer recently shot and killed a voter in Nasarawa State, at pointblank range and with­out provocation. As for the reg­ular Armed Forces, the Shi’a in Zaria and Biafran agitators are severely bloodied patches on their slates.

It all leads to the fundamen­tals. Official wantonness is a needless invitation to the chaos of backlashes. Again, Nigerian commentators often audit gov­ernments on their performanc­es regarding mundane things like power supply, availability of petroleum products, the provi­sion of jobs and the creation of the feel-good factor. Needless to add that these are critical areas in which the current dispensa­tion has so far posted mind-numbing failures, for which it has consistently blamed every other entity but it bumbling self.

Yet, the most important barometer for measuring a gov­ernment’s worth ought to be the amount of premium it places on human life. Any society with the apparent or inherent dichotomy of Legitimates and Bastards, in which the former mindlessly plunders and mur­ders the latter, execrates politi­cal leadership.

 *Mr. Chuks Iloegbunam, an eminent essayist, journalist and author of several books, writes column on the back page of The Authority newspaper every Tuesday.

If I Were Buhari…

By Okey Ndibe

…I would not have traveled to China. Not at this time, no. In fact, I would tell my Chinese hosts today that I must abbreviate my weeklong visit and return immediately to my office in Abuja.

I know that some defense could be made for the current trip to China. Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina seemed to anticipate the objections to the president’s current excursion, and preemptively cast the trip in entirely positive light. “President Muhammadu Buhari,” he wrote in a press statement, “will leave Abuja…for a working visit to China aimed at securing greater support from Beijing for the development of Nigeria's infrastructure, especially in the power, roads, railways, aviation, water supply and housing sectors.”
 
He continued: “President Buhari's talks with President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples’ Congress, Zhang Dejiang will also focus on strengthening bilateral cooperation in line with the Federal Government's agenda for the rapid diversification of the Nigerian economy, with emphasis on agriculture and solid minerals development.”
 
All that sentiment sounds high-minded and noble. Nigeria desperately needs to diversify its economy. Heck, a major tragic strain in the country’s mostly woeful narrative is the decades-long neglect of this imperative. Nigerians are paying the price for lazily laying all their eggs in the crude oil basket. We wagered on the globe staying eternally addicted to fossil fuel. We never reckoned that a time would come when there would be a glut of crude, or when the US, the world’s greatest consumer, would make a strategic turn toward domestic production.

Nigeria’s singular reliance on crude oil earnings meant a high degree of susceptibility to the capriciousness of the market. As oil prices plummeted into the valley, Nigerians suddenly realized that they were in a deep mess. Diversification of the economy, hitherto a fanciful phrase that cropped up in politicians’ speeches, became a rallying cry, one that President Buhari is rather fond of.
 
Yet, if I were Buhari, I would not only rush back to Abuja, I would also put a moratorium on all presidential foreign trips—until a semblance of normalcy returns to Nigeria.
 
As a military dictator, Mr. Buhari hardly traveled out of the country. In his civilian incarnation, he seems infected by Sokugo, the wandering spirit. In fact, his wanderlust rivals that of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term in office. Like his predecessor, the incumbent president invokes the attraction of foreign investment to justify his junkets.

Buhari And 'The 24 Disciples'

By Iyoha John Darlington
We are doubtless caught in an agonising web of untold hardship, ruthlessness, frustration, totalitarianism, violence, and bloodshed - a period that could be characterised as anything but horrors orchestrated by a fascist Nazi front.

On May 29, 2015, a government was sworn in in Africa's most populous nation headed by a dictator cum born-again 'democrat' at the Eagle Square, Abuja, Nigeria. The cloud reeking of blood and violence that ominously hung over Nigeria dispersed; with the apostles of violence and not propagators of ideas but crusaders of lies and deceit now in charge.

President Buhari and two ministers: Amaechi and Fashola

Nigerians with a slim margin of two million votes or thereabouts we were told opted and voted for a change which spoke volumes for the historic gathering at Eagle Square where power eventually changed hands. And how well has this change actually impacted on their lives? The firebrand Septuagenarian amid a sense of impatience and repulsion in some quarters like a cow with a mouthful of cud held a nation patiently and anxiously for over half a year before his cabinet of ''efficient ministers' was unveiled as the ministries were pruned down to 25 headed by recycled politicians.

Curiosity, upon my soul , hung in the air, in fact , it got the better of everyone! In the event of power outage prior to his inauguration, we had enough fuel to run our engines, electricity generators inclusive, that, of course, kept Nigerians in business. With the stride recorded in the agricultural sector , Nigeria was something near a food exporting nation. This , in no small measure , encouraged Nigerians in the Diaspora to start girding up their loins probably for a hejira to their homeland.

Today Nigerians are neck deep in a ding-dong battle for survival under a power acquired through violence and intimidation as it is being misused to thwart the rule of law and this today has triggered off a very sad situation via a resurgence in crime particularly violent ones, economic collapse, brutality by security agents, lawlessness , terrorism and anarchy have taken deep roots as Nigerians now live at the mercy of nomadic herdsmen across the country.

Only yesterday reports emerged that nomadic herdsmen numbering 10 led an armed invasion of Dr Olu Falae's farm had the guard abducted who days later was found lifeless in a pool of water while Ugwuleshi and Agatu communities in Benue and Enugu States have also been attacked by these same band of invading marauders!

Nigeria like other nations under the sun was supposedly created for an economic welfare of its people and improvement in human resource development and not for the welfare of an elite cadre or group that it has degenerated to. There is no gainsaying the fact that moral bankruptcy has plagued our paid civil cum uniformed bureaucracy, judiciary, law enforcement and elected executive under the self-styled Mr. Integrity in fallacious pursuit of a credible system of accountability, prosecution, and punishment.

2016 Budget Crisis: My Position That Buhari Is Clueless, Incompetent Confirmed- Fayose

*Buhari 

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayo Fayose has described the raging controversies between the Presidency and the National Assembly over the 2016 Budget as a confirmation of his position that President Buhari was clueless and incompetent, saying: “Nigerians should expect more blunders like this until they send Buhari back to Daura in 2019.” 

The governor, who said it was now obvious that the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC) only wanted power desperately without the wherewithal to govern, added: “I warned Nigerians of the consequences of electing an octogenarian as president and with the international embarrassment that this budget crisis has become, I have been vindicated.”

According to a statement issued on Tuesday by his Special Assistant on Pubic Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, the governor said: “It is obvious that there is total disconnection between the President and his cabinet members as many of the ministers don’t even have access to him probably because the President spend most of his time resting as a result of his old age.”

He said further: “The reality is that the President is challenged by age, exposure and ability. He did not read the budget proposal that he presented to the National Assembly and this should be a lesson for those who clamoured for a Buhari presidency that no man can give what he does not have.

“The question is: can a minister present supplementary budget to the National Assembly and can the National Assembly act on budget proposal submitted by a minister? It is shameful that after blaming former President Goodluck Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for close to one year, the presidency is now blaming the National Assembly for its inability to prepare a common budget.”

Grazing Reserve Is Ethnic Imperialism

By Ochereome Nnanna

 The All Progressives Congress (APC) Federal Government led by President Muhammadu Buhari appears hell-bent on imposing the establishment of grazing reserves across Nigeria in spite of the many unpalatable implications it will unleash on unsuspecting Nigerians. On Thursday, 31 March 2016, I wrote an article on this column entitled: “Ranching, Yes; Grazing Reserves, No!” The article called attention to what was then speculated as intentions of the Federal Government to launch this obnoxious policy aimed at handing over lands belonging to indigenous communities to Fulani cattle owners in the guise of establishing “grazing reserves”.

Now, the masquerade has been unmasked: the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Audu Ogbeh, has disclosed that President Buhari has directed him to implement the programme. According to him, he will start it from the North, where he will establish 50,000 hectares of grazing reserves. Then, he will import his beloved Brazil grass to feed the cattle. When he is done with that, he will, in his own words: “move South”. With the Fulani herdsmen now settled in their newly-acquired grazing lands, perhaps without paying a kobo or even negotiating with landowners and obtaining their express permission to use their land, the herdsmen will stop invading communities, destroying the farms of poor villagers, killing, maiming, kidnapping, raping and dehumanising innocent Nigerians.

Nigeria will become self-sufficient in animal and dairy products, and everybody will live happily ever after. That is the picture Ogbeh and his paymasters are painting for us. However, we have very strong reasons to suspect that the establishment of grazing reserves is an ancient agenda of ethnic imperialism which dates back to the Fulani Jihads that Islamised the North about two hundred years ago.

I read an interesting article by one Dr. Gundu of the Department of Archaeology, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He gave a useful insight into the grazing reserves phenomenon, which should jolt our complacently ignorant countrymen, especially those from the Southern parts of the country. Gundu’s article is entitled: History Class On Grazing Reserves: Why Fulani Herdsmen Want Your Land.

There Is No War Against Corruption In Nigeria (1)

By Femi Aribisala

I was invited to a Roundtable on Corruption by the Law Faculty of the University of Lagos, only to discover that some “Buharideens” had highjacked the occasion and were inclined to use it as a platform to promote the onslaught of “democratic dictatorship” in Nigeria.

*President Buhari 

The topic was on corruption in Nigeria, but the mast-head in the hall was more specific. It read: “Winning the War against Corruption”. This was easily seized on by government agents to imply that President Muhammadu Buhari was well on the way to dealing a mortal blow to corruption in Nigeria.

The composition of the invited discussants was biased. Most of those on the panel with me were dyed-in-the-wool government apologists. The Chairman was Professor Itse Sagay, currently the Chairman of Buhari’s Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption. As it turned out, he was not prepared to entertain any meaningful discussion about corruption in Nigeria. His agenda was to showcase ostensible government achievements in the anti-corruption campaign and to proclaim new promissory notes grandiloquently for public consumption.

Also there was Oby Ezekwesili of #BringBackOurGirls fame. She used to pitch her tent with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But now that the All Progressives Congress (APC) is in power, she has been romancing the new government. It was even speculated at one time that Buhari would reward her with a ministerial portfolio. Not surprising, she is no longer as strident in demanding government rescue of the kidnapped Chibok girls as she had been under Jonathan.

The kingpin of the government apologists on the panel was Femi Falani, a lawyer and human rights activist. He was chosen to give the keynote address. Falana had been heavily touted as Buhari’s attorney general. In fact, on the eve of the ministerial appointments, a list was widely publicised in the press that had his name penciled in for the post. But someone apparently put an eraser to it. Nevertheless, in order to remain in the good books of the government, Falana seems to have jettisoned his earlier dedication to the defence of human rights.

President Buhari's Cockroach Ride

       By Remi Oyeyemi

President Muhammadu Buhari, has shown that he enjoys sycophancy. He appears to revel in it. He swims in it. He eats and drinks it. He definitely loves it a lot. The echoes of praise – singers are sonorous in his ears. The cacophony of sycophants translates to rhythm of rhymes in his ears. He adores the way boot-lickers make his shoes shine. The cringing around him seems to make him feel whole. It is a revelry not grounded in reality. And if he continues with this attitude to governance, it is easier to see how he would end up. Any president who is already accepting any form of nomination for a second term towards the end of his first uneventful year in office has to be less serious minded than expected.

*Buhari 

The party leaders who are behind this are not friends of President Buhari. To begin to offer him the ticket of the Party three years out at this point in time is premature, sycophantic and inimical to the country’s progress. It is aimed at bringing the President down and ensuring his failure. But Buhari himself, cocooned in self aggrandizement, inebriated in self importance and intoxicated by egoism could not see the danger of the Greek Gift. His crapulent myopia could not avail him the opportunity to see how such a decision was not in his own best interest.

The implication of this is very huge. It suggests that President Buhari wants to be president just for the sake of it and not for the interest of Nigeria and its yoked people. Since he assumed office about a year ago, everything has been going from bad to worse. He has no single achievement he could point to that he has accomplished. He has filtered away all the goodwill he enjoyed when he assumed office and majority of his reasonable supporters are already scratching their heads if they had not made monumental mistake by electing him to the country’s presidency.

Rather than focus on the challenges of putting Nigeria in order and getting things to work, President Buhari has turned himself to Mr. Gulliver. He has been traveling all over the place. This is not new. What is new is that the public uproar about this has not made any dent. He does not seem to care. Nigerians could make as much noise about what he is doing wrong, he won’t be bothered. He has continued to travel and cost Nigeria hard earned naira. Some estimates have put each travel by the president at around NGN 350 million. It could be more in some cases. For a President who complains about lack of money in the national purse, this does not make any sense.

According to a recent report in the media, the combined worth of Presidential Fleet is $390.5 million (NGN 60.53 billion). This fleet includes two Falcon 7X Jets, two Falcon 900 Jets, a Gulfstream 550, one Boeing 737 BBJ, one Gulfstream IVSP, one Gulfstream V, Cessna Citation 2 Aircraft, and Hawker Siddley 125-800 Jet. The President’s party APC criticized the previous president, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan for profligacy. Refusing to dispose some of these Jets to recuperate some money and put an austere style in place makes the President to look like a hypocrite.

Wailing For Buhari's Waning Popularity

By Suraj Oyewale

Abdulhakeem is the name of my two-year-old son, but we fondly call him Baba from birth due to his resemblance of his grandparents.  At the height of President Muhammadu Buhari’s popularity before and shortly after the March 2015 presidential elections, my neighbors added ‘Sai’ to this alias, to form ‘Sai Baba’, the phrase used to hail President Buhari, which means ‘only Baba’.

*Buhari 

A few days ago, while having a walk on my street with the boy, I came across two of such neighbors, and while one, as usual, was hailing my boy as ‘Sai Baba’, the other interjected, with fury: “Please don’t call the boy Sai Baba again, Sai Baba is in Abuja doing nonsense.” That was how my neighbors stripped my boy of the alias they gave him.

I walked away thinking: So this is how life is? The same Buhari that these gentlemen were proud of just last year to voluntarily want to share name with, is now the man they despise so much that they don’t want their neighbor’s beloved son to take after again? The reason is simple: they had just come back home after hours of queuing and fighting at the fuel station to buy petrol to fill their generator, which is what they had to resort to due to the power outage they had been experiencing for weeks. They had thought that, with Sai Baba in power, the era of spending hours at the filling station was over, or that there would not even be the need to resort to their generator every day.

The above experience is one of the many I come across everyday in the last three months. From the market woman in Obalende to the tricycle operator in Ajah, the story has been the same: things are hard, this is not the change we voted for, we expected a better deal from Sai Baba.  

Expressing my worry to a Buharist friend, he tried to downplay this pulse of the street, I dared him to go the nearest newspaper stand or board a BRT from any point in Lagos and try to say Buhari is doing well, and see whether he would not be literally skinned alive! That’s how angry people are.

As someone that believed in the Buhari project and expended a great deal of intellectual resources to actualize a Buhari presidency, I owe it a duty to express my worry through the same open medium I used to sell him.

The common men on the street are the easiest to lose support of, because they’re usually unidirectional, and they care probably only for things that affect them directly. The trader in Isale Eko or the barber’s shop operator in Apapa does not care whether one looting general is going to prison, he only cares about fuel availability, transport fare, power supply and water – at least, before anything else. Herein lays the problem with the current trend of things.

Of Government, Doctors And The Sick

By Dan Amor

Fillers emanating from the health sector point to the fact that the sector which manages the lives of the downtrodden and sick Nigerians may soon witness another major industrial action. The National As­sociation of Resident Doctors of Ni­geria (NARD) had on Monday giv­en government a 21 day ultimatum to address their nagging demands “failure which industrial harmony in our hospitals may not be guar­anteed”. Unfortunately, anticipating the outcome of its lethargic dispo­sition towards the urgent needs of the sector, the Federal Government had last week directed the immedi­ate implementation of the no-work, no-pay policy, just to intimidate the doctors into submission.

It is benumbing that health personnel entrusted with the lives of Nigeri­ans are owed salaries ranging from three to eight months by the cur­rent administration in several states of the federation. This has resulted in the collapse of the healthcare de­livery system and loss of lives in the affected states. The doctors are also peeved by the undue sack of their members from some training insti­tutions, none funding of residency training and delay in effecting pen­sion deductions of members. Ac­cording to them, hospitals at all lev­els are not adequately funded and existing facilities are not upgraded in line with international best prac­tices. In fact, our healthcare system is, lamentably, a sorry spectacle of the untold blight and decadence that have overtaken the Nigerian landscape. But another strike by doctors would spell doom for the ailing economy and its attendant hardship would be disastrous. A brief analysis of what patients suf­fered as a result of strikes in the re­cent past would here suffice.

Sometime in 2002, Mrs. Do­rathy Williams (not her real name), a pregnant teacher in Egbeda area of Lagos, fell into labour. Promptly, she gathered her ante-natal materi­als and headed for Ayinke House, the ante-natal ward of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital built and donated by the late philan­thropist, Sir Mobolaji Bank-Antho­ny, where she had registered for the ante-natal care. But she was greeted by a rude shock: the doors were slammed on her face, as doctors and nurses had embarked on one of their countless strikes. The woman was quickly rushed to a nearby pri­vate hospital, where she laboured for another three days, without any inch near delivery. This prompted a Caesarian section which was suc­cessful. But her husband’s eyeballs nearly popped out of their sock­ets when he was slammed a bill of N45,000! The teacher-husband was able to raise N30,000, with a prom­ise to offset the balance later.

The hospital refused to budge. He had to threaten to abandon the moth­er and the child before they were discharged. Even then, vital drugs were denied them until the money was fully paid. Another woman, Mrs. Yetunde Olumide, a fashion designer, also fell into labour dur­ing the same period. Although she had a normal delivery at a private hospital near her house at Itire, she soon developed post-natal compli­cations, as she began to bleed. Plans were mooted to refer her to the La­gos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, Idi-Araba, a stone throw to their residence, when the bleed­ing was getting out of hand. But that was not possible because of the strike. She gave up the ghost the fol­lowing day. And because there were no facilities at the maternity to pre­serve the child without the mother’s milk, it died two weeks later too.

Also, in 2002, one Charlie, a lo­cal contractor living in Iba area of Lagos, had rushed his pregnant wife to a private hospital in Ojo for delivery. It was an emergency case as it was not possible for the lady to deliver through the normal chan­nel. To be treated to a Caesarian section, the hospital management needed a cash deposit of N25,000, which Charlie could not afford. All entreaties including the pledge of Charlie’s elder sister, Lizzy’s car as collateral, were refused until the la­dy’s condition became increasingly complicated. There was no option of taking her to any General Hospi­tal due to the health workers’ strike. As she was reluctantly taken into the theatre to be operated upon, the lady died in the process.

Even then, the hospital management re­fused to release the lifeless body of the woman with that of the unborn baby insisting on having their mon­ey before the release of the corpse. It was the quick intervention of neighbours which prevented a dou­ble tragedy, as the man went wild, and like a possessed beast, started smashing everything and snarl­ing at everybody in sight. The man even threatened to sue the hospital management for negligence. He told this writer that it was his threat to abandon the lifeless body of the wife at the hospital that prompted them to release it to him even as he actually rallied round his family members in Lagos to offset the bill.