BY ALL MEANS, LET’S RESTRUCTURE

We are yet again at the season of unreasoning – the season when hair-brained ideas are put forth in order to advance personal ambitions instead of moving the country forward.  These are times when after running out of ideas, our politicians resort to emotive issues to whip up sentiments and draw the undiscerning to their cause.  Nigeria has seen so many of such fly-by-night politicians in the past and I am sure will see the back of the current crop.  These politicians are not averse to pushing the country to the brink as long as their scheme gives them political mileage.  The vogue today is the call for the restructuring or renegotiating the structure and unity of Nigeria as it exist today.  These were the same currencies used by pseudo-democrats in the early and mid-90s to fight both Babangida and Abacha and also scuttle Abiola’s ambition of becoming the president of the country.  It achieved its purpose when two candidates were presented from one part of the country and Obasanjo emrged victorious

Most of the chorus men couldn’t talk thereafter because their mouths were stuffed with gravy.  Throughout Obasanjo’s eight year tenure, we were spared this particular demand.  When we called for restructuring of the country, we were shouted down by this same gang.  They chose to be mute and in many instances they were found to be complicit throughout the PDP locusts’ years because they were direct beneficiaries of the skewed federal structure.  Now with APC and Buhari in control of the country, and with no hope of getting back on the saddle strapped on the backs of the poor in the foreseeable future, they are not averse to bringing down the roof on all of us.

I am for restructuring or renegotiating the federal setup or even the unity of the country, if you may.  South Sudan was excised from Sudan and we can all testify to the progress the southerners are making after being weaned from the oppressive yoke of the retrogressive northerners.  So I am for whatever will bring an end to this oft-repeated cliché by failed politicians looking to reinvent their fledgling political careers.  We have been subjected to intimidation, blackmail and outright insults in the past by advocates of restructuring.  Unfortunately none of these advocates came out with a very clear agenda or framework of how this should be done.  Some believe Nigeria should be restructured along ethnic lines while others call for a nebulous fiscal federalism.  To most, it is just a cliché.

By all means let’s restructure but in doing so we must take into account how we got “structured” in the first place.  According to my records the northern and southern protectorates were what was cobbled together by the British to give birth to Nigeria so if we have to re-negotiate our continued existence as Nigeria we have to start from there.  The federating units as we know them today – states and local government councils – were creations of the military, therefore ‘unelected’ governments that were not representatives of the people.  These federating units were created either at the whim of elites to satisfy their lust for power which most will not acquire in bigger political units, therefore the need to fractionalise the country.  These same elites are the ones calling for restructuring of the country.  They prey on the gullible and the undiscerning.  They made their names and ill-gotten wealth under this same imperfect Nigeria, wealth which they now deploy in calling for the renegotiation of Nigeria.

We are also for the restructuring of the country but we will like to call for the implementation of certain conditions before we do that.  First among these conditions is that we should go to the negotiating table on the basis of our amalgamation and not on the basis of any other factor particularly as may be defined by those who brought the country to where we are.  Also anyone found to have been in public service and conducted private business while in the employ of the government must first return the proceeds of such business to public coffers.  It will not be fair on ordinary Nigerians to be saddled with those who want to have the best of both worlds – steal them blind while in government then turn around to pull down the same system they employed to the fullest to gain advantage over less fortunate Nigerians.

Fiscal federalism or ‘true’ federalism is good.  Let’s go back to whichever is acceptable to majority of Nigerians.  If my history serves me right it was Ironsi who moved Nigeria away from ‘true’ federalism to unitary system.  Most of those now crying for a return to regionalism were at the forefront of applauding Ironsi for bringing some arrogant regions under heel.  The conventional wisdom is that some regions may not survive once they are weaned from oil tits.  I remember clearly during the - Jonathan convoked, skewed national conference in 2014, it was the Lamido of Adamawa, a delegate to the conference, who advocated for 100% resource control.  I concurred with the royal father then and now.  This will have been a sure path to attaining the cure-all “fiscal federalism” that some people have turned into a bogey slogan to be trotted out anytime they don’t get their ways.  The Lamido’s proposal wasn’t allowed to see the light of the day despite the disproportionate presence of those from the region that believe the area where the Lamido come from will not survive without petro-dollars.  I just pray this government will have the courage to reintroduce this as a bill to the National Assembly who are perpetually amending the constitution without amending their ways.

For those who may not remember, the “zonal” structure upon which the country operates today was a baby of those same people who are scared of a ‘monolithic’ north.  The north is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious political unit very much unlike the rest of the other regions with, by and large monolithic religious and ethnic configuration.  This notwithstanding, the post-independence leaders of the region were able to bring the diverse people of the region together to live in peace and harmony despite the efforts of some people from outside the region to endanger hatred among the various peoples living in the area.  Realising that breaking the north into three zones hasn’t worked out well for them, and with dwindling national political fortunes by many among them, the call for restructuring and renegotiation has taken front seat once more.

Like I said earlier, let’s restructure by all means.  Or better more – let’s have the courage of our conviction by dissolving the union instead of pretending to live together while hating each other.  We shouldn’t allow those elites who gained tremendously from the system they now disparage set the agenda for us.  We are not responsible for anybody’s political failure and therefore will not be expected to carry their failed political cross.  Let the southern and northern protectorates go their separate ways and develop at their separate pace.  This way, the hating, the denigration, the insults and the uncouth language may abet.

ATIKU AND HIS REINVENTION CAMPAIGN

There seems to be no more shame in our land.  Or the level of impunity is far beyond what we are all thinking.  How do you explain the recent boast by erstwhile vice president that graduates of public universities cannot compare with those of his secondary school?  What gall!  Have we reached the stage where those who steal from our till, will rub it in our face by reminding us how unfortunate we are?  Have we so lost our humanity that we can berate the poor and the honest for being unable to send their kids to schools established by modern day pirates?

Atiku Abubakar was the vice president of Nigeria when he established his American University of Nigeria in Yola.  He and his supporters didn’t see anything wrong in establishing a private institution while superintending over the systematic destruction of all government social services, education inclusive, while serving as the vice president.  The unprecedented decline in the capacity of public schools to accommodate, train and graduate students reached its zenith during the period he was vice president.  The former vice president’s schools were established when Boni Haruna, his political son was holding sway in Yola as governor of Adamawa state, therefore conventional wisdom has it that the schools were established using public funds – the same funds meant to run these same institutions that the former vice president is running down its graduates.  As a matter of fact, the American University was established at a time the Adamawa state government was not able to pay WAEC/ NECO fees for students of public institutions.

I think it is the height of insult for this carpetbagger to come out bragging about the quality of his students, rubbing it in the face of the those less fortunate to occupy public offices thereby availing themselves of our common patrimony and sending their kids to such schools; established by pirates for the nouvea riche. Yes, the quality of graduates of public universities may not be at par with those who passed through his schools – but how about the satisfaction of knowing you don’t have to deprive the less unfortunate in order to send your kid to such schools like American University and Bells University?

I know that the likes of Atiku Abubakar feel the poor lacks understanding of their social importance to the society and to the politician.  This lack of understanding may not be unconnected to the deliberate policy of those in government to pauperise the people and destroy government social services and making sure those they established becomes unaffordable to us.  Thus the poor have been conditioned to think of themselves as only important to the politician either only as a voter or a political thug with no higher purpose than to be at the beck and call of the same people that turned him into a zombie.  Isn’t it time to pause and redefine our position and importance to the politician?

I do not have any problem with Atiku’s desire to be the president of Nigeria.  I equally do not have any problem with firing his first campaign shots this early in the life of an administration he was supposed to have midwifed (though anyone observant enough knew he never gave Buhari a chance of winning).  But for him to have the guts to come out and tell Nigerians what he was credited to have said is the height of insensitivity.  But this is Nigeria where criminalise are canonised – the more you steal the more you are revered.

Anyone with a modicum of compassion in his heart won’t be so callous as to denigrate the same system that he once benefited from and help in destroying.  Most of those from Atiku’s generation attended public schools because it was free.  Whatever position they attained in life was largely due to this free education they were given by a caring and result-oriented government of that time.  Most of them might not have been lucky to attend school for the same reason we now have school-age children hawking and begging on our streets.  The few that are lucky to attend public schools are now facing ridicule from the likes of Atiku, who helped in no so small way in destroying the very foundations of their successes.

Atiku Abubakar lined up activities to mark his 70^th birthday – doling out handouts to IDPs, visiting his various business interests in and around Yola and hosting political jobbers.  I don’t have any quarrel with that.  But to think he can use the serene environment of his University to denigrate us? Ah, ah!  Feeding IDPs who made IDPs in the first place by the (in)actions of the same man Atiku was wining and dining with on the eve of the 2015 elections is bad PR as far as I am concerned.  We still remember vividly the night Goodluck Jonathan visited him in his house in Abuja in the heat of the 2015 campaigns.  When all thought he was leading the campaigns in the north for Buhari, he was actually hosting Goodluck to a nocturnal visit.  Atiku should therefore be held vicariously liable for the plight of the IDPs since he played a passive role when Goodluck was fiddling while the villages of these IDPs were set ablaze.

We attended public schools from LEA primary schools to public universities and we are proud of these institutions.  For anyone to think he could put them down, good luck to him, but first he must tear his certificates.

ABDURRAHMAN ABBA: CHIEF OF STAFF OR THUG-IN-CHIEF?

Well, good people of Adamawa both at home and in the diaspora, here is a fairy tale with a moral.  Seems there was once upon a time a little boyman with a face resembling a mashed melon who thought he could always say what he wants and get away with it.  So to prove it, over a period of ten years or so, he usually put his mouth in motion before his brain (if he has any) is in gear.  He has perfected the art of verbal hemorrhage to the extent he believe he has become an untouchable; that he can insult anyone and any group of people and be applauded.  But his last outing may yet proof to be his Achilles heels.

The chief of staff to the Adamawa state governor is known for his belligerence towards anyone who disagrees with his brand of thuggish politics, or anyone with an independent mind to disagree with his bosses at any given time.  His attitude defies the age-old saying that “dress makes a man”.  Despite his being clothed by people far superior to him in character and comportment, he has failed to lift himself up from the gutters others have been trying their best to bring out from.  Rather true to his nature he has been doing his dandiest best to drag his benefactors in to his pigsty.

He has been severally reported in the past as daring (in insultive terms) anyone who may not like his brand of politics to do his worst  - he is the new kid on the block. May be he is yet to come to terms with his new elitist status and therefore failed to rid himself of his in-born thuggish insolence.  In the past ten years he was thrust into leadership positions by leaders who weren’t ready for leadership roles; leaders who were only willing to use him as a battering ram against their people knowing that he lacks scruples.  Honesty to him and his bosses is just another word and not a way of life and therefore makes dishonesty a way life.

An honest man had to be of one piece and one faith.  What constituted the life source, the idea in any man and why if any smallest part committed faux pas to that idea – in this case the mouth – the man is dead to al practical purposes.  The good, the high and the noble in society are only those who keep their integrity.  The chief of staff is not capable of reaching such heights because he is flawlessly inconsistent.  We will all be a heap sight better off if we will consign the likes of Abdurrahman Abba to the rubbish heap and continue with what our predecessors did – build a state.  Not ethnic alliances meant to bring down or exclude those regarded as not “qualified” to be of the unholy alliance.

The very idea the chief of staff is trying to promote was the precursor to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 which clamed the lives of no less than 1million people.  Garrulous and uncouth public officials who happen to find themselves in power like our chief of staff and using government propaganda machinery got their people in trouble in those days in Rwanda.  In emulating his precursors actions, the governor’s chief of staff is recklessly running his mouth without thinking the consequences or ramifications of his verbal diarrhea.  Even if he believe he is not touchable now, it will do him a world of good to pause for a moment, get his head out of his ethnic laager and beam his myopic eyes on the Hague.  He will find his soul mates behind bars waiting for their day of judgment.

Such alliances as he and his fellow travellers hasn’t worked in the past and will certainly not work now nor in the future - not in Adamawa and not anywhere.

The emptiness in the verbosity of our chief of staff is scary because the gullible, the undiscerning and the truly ethnicists may latch onto it thinking it is government policy and therefore unleash mayhem on the unsuspecting.  I had deliberately given him and his ilk a wide berth thinking they are not important enough for any verbal assassination.  But he is becoming a danger to the civilized society.

Nobody begrudges him his “Bataness” and he should therefore not hold anybody’s tribe or ethnicity against him.  If he believes strongly about who he is, so do others and where you have such a mix, there is bound to be combustion.  There has been pockets of ethnic related crisis in the state in the past where no one was held responsible.  Whenever there is any reoccurrence in the forseeable future, we know who to hold responsible.

As to those who were seated when the thug-in-chief was making his incendiary remarks and chose to keep mute, posterity will have no pity on them, to paraphrase Fanon.  This, in my book is either tacit approval or complicity in the tirade.  I strongly believe most of them are well beyond board but if they choose to associate themselves with such garbage in the future, we should find it difficult to spare when they are docked before the peoples’ court in the future.

Verbal thuggery is not a preserve of any individual – we can choose to be nasty when the time and occasion demands.  I am therefore belatedly asking my readers to forgive my language for this particular piece.  Much as I tried to be civil, I find this piece is as civil as I feel today.  This was my reason for trying to give the likes of Abdurrahman Abba I wide berth.  I fear I may pick up their bad habits – bad language inclusive.

CROOKS AS PARTRIOTIC ECONOMIC EXPERTS

There is worldwide economic recession at the moment.  This is a fact and repeating it will only be stating the obvious.  Most countries today are faced with one type of hardship or the other.  Most people the world over are struggling to feed themselves not caring for other comforts and luxuries.  The rate of migrations from other countries to Europe and the Americas is indicative of the desperate situation many people find themselves.  Interestingly, countries worst hit by the recession are those dependent on oil as a major foreign income earner.

Individual countries reacted to the recession in different ways.  Those that invested heavily in infrastructure and other revenue earning ventures during the boom years are less susceptible to the harshness of the meltdown than those countries unlucky to be ruled by visionless and kleptocratic leaders.  Nigeria among the latter group.  Even though investments were made in the power, oil and gas, transportation and other revenue yielding ventures, the accruals ended up in the pockets of a few and now all of us are paying the price.  Most infrastructures were established about forty years ago and over time they gradually atrophied because of the lack of vision of our leaders whose forte is to steal us blind without putting in anything into the maintenance of these infrastructures. 

Sadly because of this lack of vision, whenever we sail the country into turbulent waters, our reaction is all too well predictable and knee-jerk.  Sale our crown jewels assets.  It is of no significance to the proponents of the “sale campaign” that these assets were put up in the first place to generate income for the country by some foresighted men in the past.  It is not the fault of the assets that those who took over from those that built them are thieves.  I am yet to come across any suggestion that these assets that the Buhari government want to put on the block are not making money nor are they haemorrhaging the economy in any way.

If history is to be our guide, then recent history tells us that we have gone down this road before without anything to show for it.  Since the days of the TCPC, the number of government owned companies and enterprises sold by the government are well over 150.  The most recent daylight robbery perpetrated on Nigerians by the ruling class was the doling out of power sector assets to robber barons that strut our landscape as successful businessmen.  We have seen how a sector that got an investment of well over $25billion sold for less than $4billion dollars.  What happened to the proceeds?  We are yet to be told.

Mr president, I am of the strong believe that those who lost out in robbing our country blind in the scramble for our national assets like banks, power generating and distribution companies, telecommunication companies, etc. in the past, are those trying to bamboozle you into selling to them what little remains for 180million people.  They are not satisfied with buying fuel stations so they want to buy refineries, gas liquefaction plants and oilfields.  Check out and you will begin to understand those behind this new criminal enterprise.

Mr President, majority of Nigerians voted for you because of certain qualities which you possess.  Part of these qualities includes your firmness on issues you believe in.  We all know you don’t believe in selling our assets, or devaluing our currency or increase in the price of petroleum products.  We know because you have said this several times.  The summary of all these is that you always believe strongly in your convictions which led to your being labelled as rigid.  Your bending backwards to project a Buhari that is different from the one Nigerians trusted and voted for is giving us sleepless nights. 

In your desire to prove to crooks that you are not rigid, they succeeded in making you eat humble pie and in the process make you look uncertain and feeble.  Most of us who voted for you didn’t bargain for the policy summersaults we have been going through under your watch.  We were hoping to see a reversal of the privatisation of the power sector which didn’t happen.  And suddenly out of left field, we are presented with a proposal to sale the remaining assets.  Putin did it in Russia and heavens didn’t fall.  Yukos, one of the biggest oil and gas companies in the world was sold for one rouble by the late Yeltsin to Mikhail Khodorkovsky in a drunken stupor.  Realising the importance of the company to the Russian economy, Putin did not hesitate to reverse this daylight robbery.

Nigerians were ripped-off by neo-oligarchs in the past and what we are seeing today is peer rivalry among this unscrupulous, vicious arm of the business class in collaboration with their comrades in government trying to go in for the kill.  Those who lost out in the past are the ones who are pushing you to auction the country to them.  They bought all government interests in oil marketing companies, banks, construction companies and manufacturing concerns.  The same reason was given – injecting the proceeds in to the economy.  If it were injected, will we have been where we are today?

Mr President, we are in recession not depression.  The only time in recent history that United States went into recession was in the 1930s.  Roosevelt, from his wheelchair pulled the country out of the meltdown without selling a single government asset.  He fought a war and even assisted in rebuilding Europe through the Marshall Plan.

Mr President, act like Roosevelt.  Be our Putin.

OF ORNAMENTS AND BEAUTY

 

The Adamawa State governor is a man after my heart.  He is a flashy dresser, appears urbane and consciously cultivates the cosmopolitan look.  He dresses like a peacock and to all intents and purposes seems to be a smooth operator.  He has also been lucky in his short time in politics.  When he sought to be elected a Senator, he easily defeated an ex-governor and he won the election to the gubernatorial office at his first time of asking.  Very lucky guy.

I pray that the glitzy dressing style is not a camouflage for a mind of a village head.  His circle of advisers is made up of men with a tunnel vision whose foresight is limited by the vista of their horizon.  The bespectacled governor’s idea of development may not necessarily be the same as mine, but I believe there is a universally accepted standard of development.  His notion of development may be judged by driving around Yola, the state capital.  Coming from the airport, one is confronted with billboards and banners featuring the governor in different poses with different attires.  At first glance I mistook the billboards as advertisements for those Kano dramas and then on second look, I thought the governor was modeling for some tailors or watchmakers.  Here is hoping that the reported N47billion debt incurred by the government in the last one year (according to a report by the National Bureau of Statistics) did not go into buying these braided livery displayed to the man struggling for a plate of food.

Before I am pilloried, I will like to point out that politicians and their followers always have their reasons for saying you hate them, particularly when you question their motives.  Truth is, they will hate you for asking them to look in the mirror.  They won’t say they hate you.  They will say that you hate them.  Asking a politician to look in the mirror may be about the worst thing you will ask him to do.  This is the primary function of the critic.

I have hesitated for long to comment on the government and happenings in my native Adamawa.  Such hesitation is requisite when some of the audience may say my intervention as an anomaly, taking into account certain factors and variables.  Our governor seemed to have succumbed to the superstition of beauty and ornament well before he became a governor.  I therefore wonder how his excellency find the time to subordinate himself to the demands of his office seeing how besotted he is to his ornaments and beauty.

Governance, in my view, demands unadulterated simplicity – like the honesty of the unspoiled common man.  In his Excellency’s desire to dress and look good in our modern day braided livery, citizens like me are left to wonder where the next meal is going to come from.  Less I be misunderstood, I am not trying to be a killjoy, particularly to those who exert a lot of labour in erecting the governor’s billboards.

I know I have read a lot of rave reviews from both the discerning and praise singers about the good works the governor is doing in rehabilitating atrophied infrastructure hitherto abandoned by past governments, particularly roads.  It is a laudable and welcome development, which shall be encouraged by all and sundry.  Our state capital wears the look of a place coming out of war, which suffered aerial bombardments, so rehabilitating infrastructures in the state capital is to be lauded.

Being the skeptic that I am, coupled with the fact that my idea of development and that of the governor differs as I pointed out earlier, I have my suspicions on the over concentration of physical development to the detriment of other areas of development.  An example here is accountability, which in my book is the bedrock of any development that will propel our dear state to higher heights.  Developments that by their nature are based on the award of contracts to me are a negation of the concept itself.  Contract awards are susceptible to abuse, and over time our politicians have perfected the art of over invoicing, fictitious awards and such other nihilistic practices to line their pockets.  Areas and sectors that do not require heavy financial investments and whose results can easily be measured and verified are neglected.  Sectors such as healthcare delivery and education are reduced to merely cosmetic renovations of hospital wards and classrooms.  Equipment and teachers/ healthcare workers welfare are not profitable and so are deliberately neglected.

There is no wealth anywhere in the world that surpasses manpower therefore manpower development is crucial to any concept of development.  Leadership is a burden placed on the shoulders of leaders by the Almighty.  They are obliged to lead the led in a just an egalitarian manner.  It doesn’t matter whether the leader hate some and like others.  They become leaders only because the people made them.  They must overcome the aversion for opponents and critics and rather work with and for them.  It is the best guarantee for success in service delivery.

Our politics, and indeed politics everywhere, is in such a way that no one man is any one thing which anybody else can’t be.  If you believe in the doctrine of equalitarian rotation, then you will know what I mean.  A lot of people have been governors in the past.  Some are dead while others are alive.  None among them is remembered by how flashy they dress or how much time they devote to pampering their skin.  They are chiefly remembered by the impact they made on the lives of the ordinary man.

Your excellency, I beseech you not to allow yourself to be deluded into believing that you are the best thing to ever happen to the state.  The men around you told Atiku and Nyako the same thing and look where the duo is today.  To them, you are all interchangeable, but the yes men and praise singers remain.