Yar’Adua, Please, Fix Lagos-Shagamu-Benin Expressway

(First Published June 19, 2007)

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

The Lagos-Shagamu-Benin Expressway is in a very horrible state. Although it has deteriorated quite beyond what anyone could have imagined was possible in a country ruled by human beings, no one can recall any meaningful attempt made in the past few years to halt its progressive decay. Indeed, the unmissed, out-gone regime of Gen Olusegun Obasanjo was unable to conceal the fact that the rehabilitation of that road was not part of its priorities.

It instead found more pleasure and fulfillment in erecting several signposts bearing the scary photograph of Gen Obasanjo and the shameless lie that it was rehabilitating the road. In addition, the irremediably corrupt and inept regime also awarded mouthwatering contracts to one or more of its cronies to build some brightly painted bungalows at several points along the road, as offices or observation posts for its clearly phantom road maintenance agency workers who were supposed to be rehabilitating the road. Well, those fine buildings are not entirely useless now. They provide comfortable shelter for criminals, lizards, snakes and other wild animals.   

Bad Spot At Ore: Along Lagos-Shagamu-Benin Expressway( Pix: NVS)                                                                 

I was on Lagos-Shagamu-Benin Expressway last week and my experience was most traumatic. Even though we took off quite early, about 8.am, from Lagos, with a very sound, new vehicle, I was only able to get to my destination in the East by about 8.00pm. Yet, this was a journey that should, ordinarily, not have taken more than six-to-seven hours or even less!

The traffic hold-up, which I understand is an everyday trauma for regular users of that road, can hold somebody at a spot for several  hours. Because of the very deep holes that adorn the road, big vehicles are always spoiling, being stuck or falling down on the road, thereby rendering the lane involved impassable. Motorists would now be left with the option of using the other equally bad lane. And because of the usually heavy traffic on the road, the hold-up witnessed daily on that road is an experience not even a demonized mind can wish for his worst enemy.  

The reputation of this road as the bloodthirstiest slaughter-slab in the nation has since been firmly established. The accident scenes one encounters each time one uses the road are so many, that they can cause even the warmest blood to congeal. It is so benumbing. It is so frightening. What a shame! 

Last week, somebody showed us a village footpath through which we avoided most of the traffic jam. We had to pay some very unruly young men (and even women) who had mounted roadblocks on those footpaths to collect tolls from the strangers who had turned their once serene village into a busy thoroughfare. The behaviour of the young men made some of the travelers to begin to entertain fears about their lives. Indeed, if somebody had not shown us that village route, maybe, judging from the kind of traffic jam I saw, we would have been trapped there till past midnight.

 The other day, some people returning to Lagos spent a whole two days on that road, because, both lanes were blocked by big trucks who had either spoilt while trying to crawl past the deep holes on the road or fallen down. Man-hours were wasted in an already prostrate economy. Lives were cut short as people developed hypertension, just because they decided to make a journey in a country somebody claims to be ruling.  

These days, those who are trapped in those terrible hold-ups have become easy preys to daredevil armed robbers/rapists, who descend on them once night falls.

 So how long would this madness, this hell-on-earth, continue?  How long will Nigerians continue to witness avoidable bloodshed on this road? When will users of this road stop developing High BP and Hypertension, because they are trapped in a horrible hold up all day long, punished by the implacable sun, and tormented by the fear of what may befall them once night time comes? 

Considering the importance of Lagos-Shagamu-Benin Expressway, as the only link between the West and the East, and several parts of the South-South, and the volume of daily business transactions that take place between these two zones, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, must show right now that he wants to fix the road without any further delay. The matter is too urgent. It just cannot wait. Yar’Adau should in fact declare his State of Emergency on the road, award the contracts for its rehabilitation to several construction companies, and let Nigerians know which company is responsible for any part of the road. 

As we approach the so-called “ember-months”, the volume of traffic on that road is bound to almost triple. What then would the situation be like?

Many people from the East and the South-South will use this road during the Christmas and New Year period. On no account should Yar’Adua allow Nigerians to taste the kind of hell they experienced on this road last December and January. I would remember that during that period, my family and I spent nearly twelve hours on that road before we could even get to Asaba, and were involved in accident when it was pitch dark, from which God delivered us, even though my car was badly damaged.  Many other people were not as “lucky”. Many have worse tales to share, while many more are not even alive today to tell their stories of woe. Mr. Yar’Adua must intervene immediately and halt the daily bloodshed that is going on that road. The deaths being recorded on that road daily have almost surpassed what is being experienced at some warfronts. 

I would suggest that Mr. Yar’Adua, if he truly means to be a man of the people, should take a trip on this road urgently to have a feel of the daily trauma human beings with blood in their veins like him experience everyday. That is what patriotic leaders do in every properly run nation. Unfortunately, during his notorious reign, Gen Olusegun Obasanjo tried as much as possible to avoid any contact with the bad Nigerians roads. He would alight from his Presidential Jet and step into a waiting helicopter to either go to his farm or any other place.

I just hope Mr. Yar’Adua has not allowed Obasanjo to pass this most atrocious habit over to him. Only recently, when he came to Lagos, Yar’Adua was reportedly flown from the airport to Dodan Barracks in a helicopter, thus, robbing himself of a good opportunity for a direct acquaintance with the horrific federal roads in Lagos.

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scruples2006@yahoo.com
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com
June 19, 2007

Poor Poetry, Rich Deceit: Is POETRY.COM The Most Lucrative Scam In American Poetry?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 
In Nigeria, it is called O.B.T. (Obtaining By Tricks). But in America, it is known as Better Business. In Nigeria, they are not registered; they operate under the shadow of darkness. But in America, they are duly registered and given a clean bill of health by the Better Business Bureau (BBB). 

In Nigeria, they are abhorred and isolated by decent society, but in America, they have on their pay roll America’s accomplished poets and professors who use their hard-earned reputation to polish their image. Also, a bevy of lawyers work for and with them. And their business is “legal.” But each time they stretch forth their hands and reach out for the jugular of unsuspecting victims, they leave in their wake excruciating pain, sorrow, loud cries, and bitter anguish.

Dr. Len Roberts
ISP Educational Director

In the State of Maryland, United States, there is a body called the International Library of Poetry (ILP), or POETRY.COM or the International Society Of Poets (ISP) or as they have begun to also answer recently, LULUPOETRY.COM. All they are after is your money, which they get by flattery and lies. And if you are enticed by their carefully worded letters, then you will tell the story of your penury with hot streaming tears! 

But to Grace Cavalieri of the Poetry Faculty of St. Mary’s College, Southern Maryland, one of America’s nationally known poets, who unabashedly associates with this poetry body, ILP is “run by good people” and “honorable people.”

But let’s hear Theresa Coleman, one of the victims of ISP/ILP/POETRY.COM. She told Charlie Hughes, a US poet of repute and owner of Wind Publications who has been monitoring the activities of ISP/ILP/Poetry.com, (quoted here with Charlie Hughes’s permission): “I am a disabled Veteran and live on a very small pension and Social Security Disability pay. I had to borrow the nearly $1,500 to attend this conference (ISP Conference). It will take me over a year to pay all the money back. Not to mention, I did not have clothing suitable for such an event, so there went another $300.00! …There were hundreds of us… I cried like a baby after realizing that I was just ripped off, knowing how long it will take me to pay back all the money I borrowed…

Organizations like this SHOULD NOT be permitted to continue preying on innocent people and robbing them of money most of us didn’t have and had to borrow …I cannot express the deep, emotional anguish this has caused me…I almost feel like suing the BBB (Better Business Bureau, whose approval rating of ILP/ISP/POETRY.COM helps people get caught in their trap)… Now I am so angry with them that I cannot express how badly I would like to choke every one of those rip-off artists! …I am totally appalled that they have remained in business for so long” (Coleman’s testimony).

Fleda Brown: Professor of English and
Delaware Poet Laureate

 Like Coleman, we too are totally appalled that ISP/ILP/POETRY.COM has remained in Business till now. Unfortunately, American laws have no succour for the likes of Coleman. And there are thousands like her, bleeding at all corners, after an encounter with ISP/ILP/POETRY.COM.

Now why would this poor woman plunge herself into debt to attend an ISP conference? Well, she is one of the several victims of ISP/ILP/POETRY.COM grand lies and deceit, who are made to believe they had won some big money, and lured into paying the conference registration fees which Professor Fleda Brown, another poet who associates with ISP, admits is “very high”.                                                              

     

        
                                                             

David Wagoner: Former Chancellor, Academy
 of American Poets

Len Roberts, a brilliant US poet and professor of English at Northampton Community College, was hired about five years ago as ISP “Educational Director”. With his reputation and ISP’s fat accounts, he hires America’s best poets to speak at ISP conferences.         

Some eminent literary figures like  Professor Stephen Dunn (Pulitzer Prize winner),
 Grace Cavalieri,  Dr. Herbert Woodward Martin, Professor Fleda Brown (Delaware  Poet Laureate), W.D. Snodgrass (1960 Pulitzer Prize winner) Lucille Clifton,  Robert Winsky, etc. also associate with ISP and their names are used to  purchase respectability for ISP’s unwholesome trade.


W.D Snodgrass
Pulitzer Prize Winner


Roberts told this writer that most of the complaints about ISP occurred more than five  years  ago, before ISP hired him. But Theresa Coleman got her bitter deal from ISP in 2000!

Roberts insists: “The only valid complaint I find among all these criticisms  is that the phrasing of ISP’s letter is misleading.”  Now what does ISP gain by misleading people? Simple! To make them believe they have won some money in order to lure them to the conference for which they would pay ISP as much as $702.00 dollars as  registration fee. By their own admission, in 2002 alone, not less than  2,500 people got into their trap. This way they can comfortably give  away $74,000.00 to 36 “poets” and still smile to the banks with their millions. So, contrary to the claims in a recent feature article in a Nigerian  newspaper, ISP holds elaborate conventions where interesting lectures are delivered on poetry by nationally acclaimed poets and university  professors. More importantly, it pays all the prize money as advertised. Only  it achieves that by robbing Joseph to pay Josephine.



Grace Cavalieri:Award-Winning American Poet
And Playwright

 The ISP professors maintain that only those who fail to win prizes complain after the convention. But Charlie Hughes disagrees. “Those people who are disgruntled with ISP convention are not disgruntled because they lost a contest. They are upset because facts were misrepresented to them in order to lure them to the convention,” he told this writer.
Now how can America whose press regularly malign other countries, and whose government regularly issues negative reports about select  countries, including Nigeria, allow an outfit like the ISP/ILP/POETRY.COM to go on “legally” inflicting pain on hapless folks and raking in millions in the process? Their Educational Director has admitted that the “phrasing of ISP letters is misleading”.


So, is there no law in the United States capable of stopping person(s) and institutions from continuing to deliberately circulate misleading letters with the sole aim getting at people’s money and plunging them into huge debts? Even if they have snaked their way through some legal loopholes to make their activities remain “legal”, can’t the US authorities listen to the anguished cries of all their victims and clamp down on them in public interest, as has been done in Nigeria here with even organizations like Umanah I. Umanah’s Resources Ltd in Port Harcourt, whose activities had not even begun to cause any harm to anyone, but was seen as potential time bomb?

       

Dr. Herbert Woodward Martin: Mellon Poetry Prize
Winner

This writer tried to make inquiries about ISP at the Public Affairs Department of the United States Consulate in Lagos, but was told to go to the ISP website, as they do not have any information about them. Also, in June 2001, following “dozens of complaints” it had received, WritersWeekly.com forwarded information to the Maryland State Attorney General about the activities of ILP/POETRY.COM. Now, this is July 2005, what has happened?

Is ISP a sacred cow, beyond investigation? Is it because of its fat taxes?
So what really is the sin of ILP/ISP/POETRY.COM? On their website, they call for poems. Any trash you submit is an instant hit. Then you will automatically become a poet with “unique vision” and great talent, certified by their  “Acceptance Committee” as semi-finalist and eligible for publication in an anthology that costs $59.95 plus another $8.

One Of The Several "Awards" Dished Out By POETRY.COM


And if you want a 150-word introductory note to appear with your “poem”,  you will pay another $25.00. Well, whether you pay or not, your “poem” will still be published. But, of course, many buy several copies out of joy that they are featured in an anthology. So regularly, they churn out these anthologies filled with near rubbish just to get at the money of any one that submits just anything.

Then after this stage, a certain Steve Michaels enters with a letter informing you of your nomination as Poet of the Year. The letter starts with some sort of announcement in front of an imaginary crowd declaring you the Poet of the Year and winner of the grand prize of $20,000! The purpose is to make you believe when you now read of your nomination that you have won the prize. All effort is deployed to make the letter (also sent out to more than a thousand others) appear personal and exclusive to you in order to lure you to register for the conference.

What is the necessity for this deception? What is really happening? Professor Fleda Brown explains: “almost every one who submits poems is ‘accepted’, so they should not understand their invitation as any particular honor”.

But how would these hapless souls know that letters coming from ISP/ILP, an organisation that parades the cream of America’s poets and intellectuals on their website is worthless, not indicative of any honour? Note that, their victims are mostly barely literate “poets”, who are prone to misunderstand letters that have continued to dribble even college graduates!

(Prof. Roberts, ISP Educational Director, is a most charming fellow, as Charlie Hughes confessed to this writer. After a series of interactions in the process of preparing this article, this writer was so affected by Roberts’s personality and manners that he almost gave up writing this article. Apart from his reputation as a distinguished poet and academic, this other personal quality may have influenced the decision of ISP to hire him for the job. He is always handy to charm aggrieved “poets” into silence with his warm personality, beautiful diction, and style.)




Stephen Dunn: Pulitzer Prize Winner

Now, the next in the web of deceit comes from Nigel Hillary of Noble House Publishers with another set of lies and flattery. 
ILP//POETRY.COM subscribes to a Privacy Policy. So, how then does Noble House get people’s addresses and other details in order to write them to announce they had read their poems in the United States and now wished to publish them in the UK also?

Is Noble House just ILP/ISP/POETRY.COM in another name, since both are only all after your money? A question of Esau’s hand, Jacobs voice?

Both flatter you to high heavens with unspeakable lies about a poem they have not even read, which may even contain terrible errors that cannot be accommodated by even poetic license! At the end of the day, you will still be the one to “edit” your "poem."




The Bright Face Of Scam In  American Poetry
------------------------------------------------


In its commitment to publish just any trash, look at ILP’s output posted on its website and compiled by Theresa Coleman:
*In 1997, they published 44 anthologies of “poems”;

*1998, they published 78;

1999,  52 came out (that is, one a week!);

*2000, they had published 46…as of August)…
Source: http://windpub.com/literary.scams/bigmoney.htm).

The Editor of the page estimates that with these publications, the ILP is richer with about $9 million dollars each year at just $50.00 per book. But by this writer’s estimate, based on ISP letters and documents available to him, they realize $84.95 plus additional $8.00 from each “poet” who orders just a copy of their book.

Also, “Greater Maryland Business Bureau reports that ILP has 500,000 customers each year. If only half purchase a single book, that’s $12.5million”! Hughes, also a publisher of long-standing, told this writer that based on his experience as a publisher, the production cost of an ILP book cannot be more than $10.00.

The question is: Can the ILP/ISP/POETRY.COM enjoy a conducive climate in Nigeria? The answer is obvious and it is No! Now, in America, truth is: no one can stop ILP/ISP/POETRY.COM. So, for now, the only way to avoid their trap is: don’t send them a poem; don’t believe anything their letter says. Take time to read them, as Roberts says, and realize that despite all it may say, it is not informing you that you have already won a prize, rather, you are only being invited to a conference where you will then compete for a prize. All the deceptive and flowery language is solely meant to lure you into registering for the conference.

Or, as Ms. Cavalieri says: “Come to learn poetry and have fun at the convention, not to win money.”

Well, tomorrow, American officials will still come down here to sermonize about Nigerians “who obtain money by tricks (OBT or 419)” But can’t anyone out there stand up to them and yell: “Physician, Please, Heal Thyself First? Our boys are merely apprentices of their big brother in Baltimore,  Maryland?”

Well, the fault may after all be ours: We gave room for those patronizing insults. Instead of registering our own equivalents of ISP/ILP/Poetry.com in Nigeria, we blacklisted them!

-------------------------------
Interview With The Dramatis Personae

Charlie Hughes

...Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye Interviews Charlie Hughes, Owner of Wind Publications, And Unyielding Critic Of POETRY.COM/ISP/ILP 

-------------------------------------

Len Roberts

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye Interviews Dr. Len Roberts, Poet, Professor Of English, And ISP Educational Director 



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scruples2006@yahoo.com
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Four Indian Universities to Celebrate Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in October 2008

Four Indian Universities – Osmania University, Hyderabad; Mysore University; Kolkata University; and the University of New Delhi, will kick off conferences to mark the celebration of the 50th year of the publication of “the noted Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s highly influential and widely studied first novel “Things fall Apart,” starting with opening proceedings at Osmania university, the last week of October.

Chinua Achebe (Th Guardian.co.uk)

According to the convener of the sub-continental conferences, Professor Bala Kothandaraman, each major Indian university will host individual seminars organized by their local English Departments – made possible by funding from the respective universities and the ICCR (the Indian Council for Cultural Relations).

Professor Lyn Innes Professor Emeritus of the University of Kent, Canterbury, England, will be the keynote speaker. In addition, Professor Kothandaraman provides that the seminars will celebrate local Indian and Asian scholars and highlight their vigorous and extensive Achebean and African Literary scholarship. Also invited to these ambitious celebrations are noted scholars from America, Europe, and Africa.

The Keynote speaker, Professor Lyn Innes, was born in Australia. Currently Professor Emeritus of the University of Kent, Canterbury, England, she graduated from the University of Sydney, before spending 12 years in the United States as a Postgraduate student and University lecturer, first at the University of Oregon, then at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama (1968-70), and finally at Cornell University. At Cornell, she completed the Comparative Literature doctoral programme revolving around Irish, African and Caribbean literatures (Francophone and Hispanic as well as English). After completing her doctoral thesis on Black and Irish Cultural Nationalism, she taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where the Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, was Professor of African Literatures, and became Associate Editor of OKIKE Magazine: A Journal of African Creative Writing, which Chinua Achebe had founded. In 1975 she went as an exchange lecturer to the University of Kent, and remained there.



At the University of Kent she helped introduce the undergraduate degree in African and Caribbean Studies, which has now become a degree in English/Postcolonial Literatures; developed courses in Australian literature; taught various Irish literature courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels; and joined with colleagues in English to establish a Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and an MA in Postcolonial Studies. She is a member of the editorial board of Wasafiri and of Interventions.

Her publications have developed the lines of interest established early in her career. They include two collections of African short stories co-edited with Chinua Achebe, and a critical book, Chinua Achebe (1990). Her other books are The Devil’s Own Mirror: the Irish and the African in Modern Literature (1990); Woman and Nation in Irish Literature and Society, 1880-1935 (1993); and A History of Black and South Asian Writing in Britain, 1700 – 2000. She is currently engaged in a diverse set of projects: compiling an anthology on the afterlife of the Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly, writing an Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures, and researching the history of black and Asian writers and artists in Ireland.

Professor Kothandaraman believes the series of seminars throughout India will provide “an ample occasion for some of the most expansive analysis of the contributions of Achebe’s oeuvre to world civilization.” A fitting tribute, according to the professor to “ a body of work that is required reading in schools and universities in India and around the world; and a novel (Things Fall Apart) that remains one of the most widely read and influential books ever written.”

2008

Now, Will President Yar’Adua Be Kind?

(First Published July 12, 2008)

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

About forty days after Mr. Umar Musa Yar’Adua was sworn in as Nigeria’s president and the nation was saturated with loud calls on ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo to leave alone the new man he single-handedly imposed on Nigerians to implement his own ideas and programmes to “move the nation forward”, I published a piece in my newspaper column and on several internet news sites entitled, “In Nigeria, Yar’Adua Reigns, Obasanjo Rules,” asking those trying to shout our heads off whether they were sure “Yar’Adua himself [was] even desirous and eager to be rid of the overbearing influence of Obasanjo?”

I said: “Is he really ready to take charge? Are we sure that the ‘Servant-leader’ is not even too grateful that Obasanjo’s meddlesome and looming shadow are providing perfect alibi for what is gradually appearing as his stark visionlessness? I would certainly want to know those great ideas of Yar’Adua’s which Obasanjo’s meddlesomeness is preventing him from unfolding! The truth, as we know it, is that Yar’Adua never wanted to be president, and so, he never sat down to draw up anything that vaguely looks like a blueprint for the country’s redemption. When he was conscripted by Obasanjo and imposed on both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Nigerians at a time elections were merely a couple of weeks away, he was too preoccupied with the thought of winning elections to have any time to concentrate and think about how he would rule Nigeria … it soothes Yar’Adua, [therefore], to still have Obasanjo in charge, while he enjoys the perks of office without the responsibilities that go with them. And at the end of the day, when another four years of devastating failure must have been successfully enacted, Yar’Adua can conveniently come up with the theory that he was not allowed to implement his ‘superior ideas’.”

The essay, judging by the reactions it generated, won me many friends who thought that my judgment of the ‘Servant leader’, though too early in the day, could hardly be faulted.

But there were a few who maintained that it was unfair to state like I did that the president (who was barely a month in office) presented the perfect picture of “a pitiably confused leader groping his way through an impenetrably dark alleyway.”  

President Umar Musa Yar'Adua and Pres George Bush of USA: What Lesson Did

He come Away With From Meetings Like These?

Well, I have since been vindicated because the crippling directionlessness and benumbing passivity which President Umar Musa Yar’Adua presides over in Abuja today have clearly validated the ‘heresy’ I dared to utter about forty days into his regime, so much so that it has since become a permanent feature in virtually every public commentary or formal and informal discussions on the present regime. Unlike the time I first expressed it, the view has now become all too common and very obvious to elicit any more surprises. In fact, I doubt if it still has the capacity to make the president feel embarrassed.

Okay, I have been proved right, but where has that left us? Nigeria is presently weighed down by so many big problems, but here we are, stuck with a president who can neither be hurried nor bothered that the nation he is supposed to be ruling is dying every day.

Yes, we have a ruler who cannot be made to allow even the slightest hint of urgency in his moves and seems not to have the barest idea of what it means to be perturbed that he had flopped on virtually every promise he had made to the nation. In fact, it does not appear he can even be brought to lose any sleep that he has failed even before he started, and that most Nigerians have since lost every confidence in him. Many are no longer able to feel there is a government in Abuja! What is plastered everywhere are utter hopelessness and despair.

Hapless Victims Of Leadership Failure (Pix: Caboose)

Here is a president who evidently came into office without any ideas, focus, any coherent action plans or even an average understanding of what he was coming to office to accomplish. And so, each time his attention is called to the mounting problems begging for his urgent intervention, he appears startled and looks as if he feels he is being unduly bothered. It looks very much like what he would prefer is to merely sleep through the problems with the blissful hope that he would wake one day see all of them solved.

Maybe we should not even blame Yar’Adua, because, come to think about it: what exactly did he promise Nigerians   during his so called campaigns in which he was an imposed, “unwilling” candidate?

Okay, I remember that he kept saying something about “Energy Challenge” which he intended to tackle headlong. But since he came into power, the energy situation has worsened beyond what anyone had imagined was possible in a richly endowed and high-earning country ruled by a human being. The Obasanjo junta had allegedly squandered about $16 billion to plunge Nigeria deeper into thicker darkness, and the toxic revelation had caused Nigerians untold mental torture. But to demonstrate his utter disdain for the feelings of Nigerians on this heartless pillaging of the nation’s resources, and his unambiguous opinion on the astounding revelations at the power probe panel, President Yar’Adua recently appointed three governors (Liyel Imoke, Segun Agagu and Danjuma Goje) who had served as Ministers of Power in that darkest period of Nigeria’s history to serve in the so-called Presidential Implementation Committee on Power.

NIGERIA: Yearning For Purposeful Leadership

What this should mean is that in the thinking of the   president, these men deserved to be applauded by all of us for colluding with Obasanjo to ensure the nation remained in impenetrable darkness. What Yar’Adua has dropped is a bold hint on what he would do with the power probe report once it gets to his table.  What an unlucky nation!

If till now there is hardly any evidence that Yar’Adua has been able to achieve an appreciable grasp of the enormous task facing him as Nigeria’s president, then it would be most foolish to hope that he would still not be groping for direction even after two years from now. In fairness to the man, it could well be said that since he had raised no hopes from the beginning till now, no one can justifiably accuse him of dashing any.

But how long can a continuously decaying nation defer its reclamation by endlessly waiting for a president who is yet to start charting a very clear direction?

If Yar’Adua would be kind, that is, to himself and Nigeria, he should put a halt to all these blind pursuits and dumb guesswork, hand in his papers, retire to Katsina in peace, and save the nation further trauma of having to perennially wait for a man who may never be able to either comprehend or respond to the challenges of such a high and strategic office.

Although hangers-on and parasites feeding fat on the grounded system may hold a different view, certainly, the line of action I am recommending to Yar’Adua would attract a kinder verdict from history to him than going on confusedly like a child handed a terribly complicated, strange toy to decode, and traumatizing the whole nation in the process.

Indeed, quitting now would be more redemptive of Yar’Adua’s person than being remembered later as the groping undertaker of a richly endowed but seriously ill nation?    

scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

Yar’Adua, Give Nigerians Prepaid Metres!

(Published on Wednesday, May 28, 2008, a day before Nigeria’s ‘Democracy Day’ and President Yar’Adua’s one year anniversary)

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

By this time tomorrow (May 29, 2008) President Umar Musa Yar’Adua would be one year in office. As usual, he may call for “low-key, sombre celebrations” and “sober reflections” which would not be extended to the obscene gaiety, excessive mirth, hugging, necking and backslapping amidst endless flow of champagne and sumptuous delicacies, in short, the bacchanalian revel that would take place in the name of State Banquet later in the day.

He would also record a speech in which he would appeal to us to make further sacrifices and exercise more patience to allow the great seeds of growth, development and incredible plenty which he has been carefully sowing and watering for the past one year (and which he may continue to sow and water till he leaves office) to germinate, grow and spread unimaginable prosperity all over the nation. He would probably spice the speech up with a long list of the phantom achievements he had recorded since he was sworn in and grab the headlines by announcing some really ambitious and big projects he would undertake between tomorrow and the “second quarter of next year.”  Needless to add that he may well forget the whole thing before Sunday afternoon. 

 

President  Yar’Adua: Floored By the ‘Energy Challenge'?

If he is able tomorrow, he may also attend a parade at the Eagle Square, give a short address, or send his irritatingly dull deputy to stand in for him, while he stays at home to rest and conserve some strength for the State Banquet, where Turai, his wife (and she that must be obeyed), cannot wait to star without moderation. Indeed, not even the Servant Leader himself can deny her this day!

It is unlikely, too, that the contractors, hangers-on and jobless fellows whose eyes are fixed on the next cabinet reshuffle would heed his call to observe tomorrow as a day of sober reflection. No doubt, newspaper pages would be dominated by full-page colour adverts extolling his “sterling virtues  and great vision,” and the “unprecedented achievements of this great son of Africa who has just under one year taken Nigeria to great heights” – the same words they had deployed to seduce Gen Olusegun Obasanjo into his present grief.

(By the way, when last did anyone witness where Obasanjo was referred to as the Founder and/or Father of Modern Nigeria? The last I heard was Founder and Father of Modern Corruption!)

But if Yar’Adua would take my advice, he should ask everybody to stay at home tomorrow and excuse himself from any grand design by unconscionable fellows in and around government to celebrate failure. I mean abysmal and all-round failure!

He should also be man enough to stand up to his restless, limelight-crazy wife and tell her that any State Banquet tomorrow evening would constitute an obscene provocation to long-suffering Nigerians. What exactly would Yar’Adua be celebrating? Does he need anyone to tell him that his one year in office has been one woeful story of overwhelming failure? Sometimes I am tempted to feel that this country would have even fared better if this government (or any other one like it) was not in place. At least, the country would have moved faster on the path of development without the crushing burden this burden  constituted.

Last Saturday evening, I entered a filling station to buy fuel and the crowd I saw there almost scared me. It was when I looked closely that I saw containers of different sizes in the hands of the people. Oh, all those people had come to purchase fuel for the countless generators they use to generate power for themselves in a failed state like Nigeria. As I looked at this large crowd and it occurred to me that many of them may even be storing the fuel under their beds, I shuddered. No doubt, it is only God’s mercy that has prevented the whole of Lagos from going up in flames before now.

Take a trip today to the various areas in Lagos, especially, where people are crammed into small apartments like the face-me-I-face-you type of accommodation, where whole families and dependants are piled into stuffy rooms, and observe the room occupants showing off their generators and the fuel they had stored. At night when all these machines begin to roar, emitting killer fumes into the already airless, stuffy enclosures, what emerges is a most horrible situation where a failed and heartless government has cruelly driven its hapless citizens into organizing their own bitter deaths with generators purchased with monies they had probably starved themselves to save.

In order to escape the unbearable heat and choking darkness their government and its licensed Agent of Darkness, NEPA/PHCN, have heartlessly plunged them into, they end up creating deadly gas chambers where they enact mass suicides daily. We have regularly heard of whole families being found dead in the morning after an all-night inhalation of generator fumes. For those resilient ones still on their feet, what is left of their sensitive organs by the lethal fumes they abundantly inhale every night are being progressively ruined by the ear-splitting din produced by the countless generators. No wonder cases of hypertension and nervous breakdowns are also on the increase in Nigeria.     

 

Turai Yar’Adua, (Right): Power Behind The Throne?

My view is that as these people whose only offence is that they were born Nigerians develop lung cancer and deadly heart and respiratory diseases and die painful in their obscure corners due to lack of medicare (while their president hops across to Germany from time to time to treat catarrh (common cold) and allergic reactions, their blood would certainly be required at the hands of those who claim to be ruling this richly endowed nation.

 Night time in this nation has simply turned into several harrowing hours of unbearable torments. In the fairly moderate accommodation I occupy with my family, we usually abandon our rooms every night to cram ourselves into the parlour and my already jam-packed study, because the ear-splitting noise from my neighbour’s generator in the next compound is simply destructive. As the monster starts roaring (and this continues till morning), not even the wall demarcating the two compounds can mitigate its damage. I have this feeling that if I try any day to protest, the man might pour on me all the pent up anger he had reserved for Yar’Adua and, of course, Obasanjo who for his own selfish reasons foisted on us a man who neither wanted to be president nor have any clear idea how to get this nation on its feet.

For two months now, NEPA/PHCN has left my neighbourhood in total darkness. We used to complain about irregular power supply. Now, total darkness has enveloped the whole place.  Apart from the two or so brief moments I was informed power was supplied, it has been darkness all the way for more than two months now. In the previous months they had managed to flash some flicker of light. Yet despite all these, the huge bills keeps coming. This is nothing but heartless extortion and daylight robbery, actively supported by the Federal Government under Mr. Umar Yar’Adua.

A friend who recently secured his prepaid metre was so excited to discover that it was only two hundred naira that he had consumed in a whole month. Before now, his monthly bill never came below five thousand naira despite the uninterrupted darkness that engulfed him! What an unarmed robbery! The other day, officials of NEPA/PHCN invaded a widow’s house threatening to disconnect her from their Darkness Supply because she was “not paying her bills.” The woman’s protestations that she was using the prepaid metre only annoyed them further. They hate to hear that anyone is using a prepaid metre because it effectively checks their extortion!

So, how long will Yar’Adua allow this robbery to continue? How long will Nigerians continue to pay for services not rendered to them?  Why are the irremediably corrupt sadists at NEPA/PHCN frustrating attempts by Nigerians to get prepaid metres?  

Now, if NEPA/PHCN chooses to supply only darkness, they should let every Nigerian have a prepaid metre so that no one would be compelled again to pay for energy not supplied. It is cruel to force people to pay these bills after they had generated power for themselves at very huge costs and great risks to their health.

If President Yar’Adua wishes to distance himself from this heartless, official robbery, he should tomorrow (May 29, 2008) announce a date when everybody in Nigeria must, without fail, be issued a prepaid metre. If this measure would dry up the revenue base of NEPA/PHCN and cause it to fold up, so be it. Nigerians are better off without such an agency that produces only pain, torments, sorrow, heart-ache and death.  

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 scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

    +234-802-883-3853

Will Obasanjo Explode President Yar’Adua’s Anti-Graft Balloon?

(First published April 2, 2008)

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  
If you were carrying out an employment exercise in your company, and one of the job seekers  showed up with a letter of  recommendation duly written and signed by Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, the former Chair of the Economic And Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), would that impress you? 

 Well, the strength and credibility of any   recommendation should flow from the performance of the person earlier recommended by the same person. For instance, Mr. Ribadu had told the nation that he had deployed the full force of his prodigious intellect, experience and thoroughness to carefully examine the eight-year nightmare prosecuted by Gen Olusegun Obasanjo but could not detect the slightest hint of corruption in all that the man did while in office!  

But, for the past few weeks now, Nigerians have witnessed with utter disbelief and deep pain horrifying details of the worst form of heartless plunder this nation had ever witnessed, perpetrated with utmost impunity and even fanfare, under the direct supervision of the same man Nuhu Ribadu had told us was above board.  

About $16 billion was callously squandered under the pretext of fixing the nation’s problematic power sector, plunging the country and   its hapless citizens deeper into thicker and more suffocating darkness.  As sordid revelations ooze from the House of Representatives Probe into the management of the power sector under the Obasanjo regime, where, for instance, it was revealed that a contract worth about N88 billion was verbally awarded, Nigerians are shocked that human beings with hearts and blood running in their veins are capable of such prehistoric greed and cruelty.

While Nigerians groaned under the punishing effect of the protracted energy crises in the country, the very resources meant for the alleviation of their harrowing pain was being primitively plundered.  

 In a decent country, Mr. Liyel Imoke would have since resigned as Governor of Cross River State with shame and haste, while awaiting his well-earned trail alongside his big uncle, Obasanjo. But, this is Nigeria, where something called Immunity Clause exists to provide very formidable protection for unrepentant enemies of the people from the just consequences of their hideous actions in office. 

                                                                                                                                Late President Yar’Adua 

Only last week, former Finance Minster, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, told the House Committee probing the mindless brigandage that flourished in the power sector that it was Mr. Imoke and Obasanjo  that concocted the “Due Process Waiver” that enabled them bypass all statutory roadblocks to prosecute their unparalleled clean out of the public treasury to build phantom power plants.  

In 1999 when Obasanjo became president, total power generation within the national grid stood at 2,400 Mega Watts. But by the time he was leaving office in 2007 (and till date), the whole thing had come down to 2,100 MW, despite the billions of dollars said to have been poured into the obviously phantom efforts to give Nigerians stable power supply.  

To sensible Nigerians, that is hardly surprising. Among the companies awarded juicy contracts, and paid jumbo mobilisation fees, which in some cases were as high as 70 percent of the whole contract value, thirty-three (which got N6.2 billion contracts) were not registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission, which means that they were non-existent companies! Even when identifiable companies got contracts and were fully mobilized, several of them vanished into thin air or managed to show some form of presence at the project site. 

 The only believable reason those in charge of the whole obscene profligacy had refused to bother themselves with whether those contracts were executed or not may be that, perhaps, those “companies” were either theirs or belonged to their cronies and agents.

                                                                         
                                                                                 Former EFCC Boss, Nuhu Ribadu            
          
According to Daily Independent editorial of March 27, 2008, “Energo Limited, a company in which a former military head of state is Chairman, [was paid] over N13 billion … without any job done to date … Obasanjo, according to disclosures by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), even commissioned an empty site in Odukpani, Cross River State, as a power station last year.  Top managers of PHCN [also awarded] contracts worth US$142 million to non-existent firms. PHCN was shown to have paid out various sums – N2.1 billion, 2.1million Euros and 1.1billion Yen — for hydropower projects whose existence is unknown to chief executives of the stations.”

According to the Minster for Energy (Power), Mrs. Fatimah Ibrahim, $13.3 billion was squandered in the power sector, under very close, direct supervision of Imoke and Obasanjo with nothing on ground to show for the huge expenditure.

Certainly, this is enough to put these fellows behind bars for the rest of their lives, if President Umar Musa Yar’Adua is serious about all the noise he makes about rule of law and due process.  Well, how Yar’Adua responds to this challenge will help define the image of his administration in the days ahead.

Last week, former Health Minister, Prof Adenike Grange, was sacked or forced to resign, or both, for refusing to heed the Presidential directive to return to the treasury the unspent fund from the allocation to her ministry. The amount involved is N300 million naira, which the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) accused her, her deputy, Gabriel Aduku, and 14 senior civil servants of the ministry of attempting to embezzle.    

Also starring in the slimy scandal is Obasanjo’s first daughter, Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, who is the Chairman, Senate Committee on Health.  It may appear uncharitable to view Prof Grange’s sack or resignation, given its timing, as aimed at diverting significant attention from the earth-shaking revelations rolling out from the Public Hearing on the Power Sector which has provoked widespread demand for the immediate arrest and trial of Obasanjo and all those who had joined hands with him to enact the unprecedented corruption. But then, the whole thing reeks of just that! 

                                                            
                                                                          Former President Obasanjo

On Monday (March 31, 2008), General Jeremiah Useni, the unrepentant alter ego of the late ruthless dictator, Gen Sani Abacha, was quoted as saying that the boundless brigandage that flourished in the power sector has made whatever Abacha was accused of looting to appear like “a child’s play.” He even expressed doubt that the once famous Abacha Loot recovered from several sources were deployed to execute any venture that would benefit the Nigerian people, because, according to him, there was “no bill [that] went to the National Assembly to approve its expenditure.” In other words, Abacha’s may have been looted by those who recovered it!  

Also, on the same Monday, the papers reported that Prof Grange may be charged to court this week. Now, if we consider that what Grange and Co were accused of “attempting to embezzle” was mere “change” when compared with the $16 or $13 billion that was siphoned off thought phantom power projects, we will then begin to ask ourselves whether, under Yar’Adua, different rules apply to different people? 

 Now, some ex-Governors are, justifiably, being dragged about by the EFCC for allegedly stealing N1 billion or N2 billion or even less. If these ex-Governors or Mrs. Grange and Co are found guilty, they should be hastened off to jail, to isolate them from the assembly decent beings, because they have proved themselves to be unrepentant enemies of Nigeria.

But should the alleged bigger thieves be spared? 

 Nigerians and the rest of world are watching to see what President Yar’Adua would do with the fellows who awarded N88 billion contract by mere word of mouth. They would want to know what would be done to the man who gave out juicy contracts to 33 non-existent companies, and commissioned empty lands as power plants, to cover up the squandered fund.

Yes, they would want to know whether the fellow who had bled his country pale to become one of the richest billionaires in Africa is, in the thinking of Yar’Adua, above the laws of the land, and deserves to be celebrated, while the poor clerk somewhere who was driven by hunger to mismanage N5, 000 is sent to jail.  

It must be clear to Yar’Adua that injustice and double standards, especially of this magnitude, can only create fertile grounds for defiance, rebellion and anarchy.
Already, a former Governor standing trial for corrupt enrichment is threatening to make the country ungovernable if big thieves are left to move about undisturbed while mere pickpockets are haunted and harassed with extreme zeal.  

Yar’Adua must be wary of allowing seeds of destabilisation germinate in the country just because of his determination not to “embarrass” some fellows whose only contribution to their fatherland is the ruin and stagnation they had brought to it by their conscious unethical acts.  

By the way, where was Saint Ribadu when the nation was being gang-raped with such unparalleled violence? To what extent did the National Assembly under Ken Nnamani and his brother Aminu Bello Masari exercise its oversight functions when this insane plundering was flourishing?

Well, former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar can gloat today, but would this brazen prodigality have been exposed if Obasanjo had not parted ways with, and handed over to him as he had expected?   Now, we have seen the stench in the power sector, but when will the long-awaited probe of the NNPC commence? 

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scruples2006@yahoo.com
April 2, 2008