Rueben Abati’s Archives
The NPA Six and other offenders
By Reuben Abati
“MI’LORD has caught a big one. In fact not one, five. It is a wonderful day for Nigeria”.
“You always like to jubilate when someone falls on bad times. What’s the matter with you?”
“Why shouldn’t we jubilate? No, tell me, why shouldn’t we roll on the floor with laughter from rib to rib? When last did the long arms of the law catch up with big men who have mismanaged public resources? Madam Farida Waziri’s EFCC has been busy with too many cases in progress. Everyone who wanted progress with the anti-corruption war started yearning earnestly for Ribadu, the action-packed former Chairman of the EFCC. Now something big has happened”.
“I know. Mrs. Waziri has been beating her chest. President Yar’Adua must also be pleased”.
“But it is the judge that we should praise. He has shown courage and determination. It doesn’t matter what they do to him after this. He will be remembered for his courage in sending six big men to jail in one day, without the option of fine. What was it again? - the splitting of contracts, abuse of office, and disobedience of lawful orders.”
“Heavy matter”.
“And the whole matter took 14 months. The case began in August 2008 and now, it has been determined. Some other judges allow cases to drag on endlessly. And lawyers would be allowed to keep making frivolous applications just to delay the course of justice”.
“I hear this Oyewole is a no-nonsense judge. I recommend his example to other judges. Take a case, stay with it, do justice in record time”.
“You know for a moment, I thought Chief Bode George was going to get away. I mean the man is a big man in every sense of that word in Nigeria. Former Governor of Ondo State. Former Principal Staff Officer to the No: 2 man in the Abacha Government. National Deputy Chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (South West). The topmost chieftain of the PDP in Lagos State. A friend of the one and only OBJ of the do-or-die politics fame. A judge looked at the man straight in the face and sent him to jail?”.
“They are already sewing his prison uniform at Kirikiri. Have you not heard? He will get it today. The moment he arrived, the prison authorities took his measurements. The law is no respecter of persons. Nobody is above the law. That is the good news in all of this.”
“Even those five others are big men. We are talking of Board members of the Nigerian Ports Authority and a former Managing Director of the NPA. The NPA is one of those lucrative departments. When a man is given a high position in a body like that, he throws a party”.
“But there is something about the case that I still don’t quite understand. I think there is an escape route for the NPA Six when the matter goes on appeal”.
“It doesn’t matter. What we know at the moment is that the men have been convicted. That is the position of the law. Did you not read that when Chief Bode George arrived at the Kirikiri Maximum Prison, one of the first inmates to welcome him was Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, Abacha’s Chief Security Officer who has been in that prison for nearly nine years”.
“Ten”
“Whatever”
“No condition is permanent, my brother”.
“I’d like to see more big men in jail. May be that will curtail their greed”.
“Like who and who?”
“Like all the ones whose cases are still pending.”
“Name one person”.
“I don’t want to be charged for contempt; only a Court of Law can determine who goes to jail”.
“You see? You are a coward. You don’t want to offend anybody”.
“Okay, you too, name somebody you think also deserves a prison uniform and a special welcome by Abacha’s CSO.”
“Walahi, prison no good o. So, where do you think they will keep Chief Bode George. Will they give him a VIP suite?”
“You think Kirikiri Maximum Prison is a five-star hotel?”
“I understand it is organised like one and you can stay in a VIP suite if the price is right. You may even get a chance to have your wife sneak in for an overnight stay, again if the price is right. This is Nigeria. Were you not in this country when the wife of a prominent prisoner took in while he was still in prison and it was reported that the pregnancy was his. At night, you may even be allowed to go home and return at dawn before anyone notices your absence”.
“One of these days, this your mouth will put you into trouble. But whether there is a VIP suite in prison or not, I don’t think Chief Bode George will find it funny”.
“I hear he is not taking prison food.”
“Don’t worry, he’d soon adjust.”
“But why are you talking about Chief Bode George? What about the other five?”
“This is Nigeria. Don’t be surprised if they are granted amnesty sooner than you think.”
“You think they will be granted bail pending the hearing of their appeal?”
“I suspect the men will be released at the Court of Appeal. I have been reflecting on the grounds of their conviction. Splitting of contracts, Abuse of office. Disobedience of lawful orders. These look to me like administrative irregularities. I mean when did a contract become an atom? Is Bode George a scientist turning contracts into atoms, and splitting them to create a bomb?”.
“Yes. A bomb of free cash. It swells the pocket, the mouth, the belly, and it can send a man to prison… Because public funds are involved, when you split contracts in order to top up prices, you are violating the law. This case should teach Board members of public institutions that if they abuse their fiduciary responsibilities, they may go to jail”.
“How will those big men look in prison uniform”
“That is not important. They don’t do fashion parade in prisons. A prison uniform is a prison uniform. One elewon is not different from the other”.
“Jesus Christ, the husband of widows!”
“I understand Chief Bode George’s supporters wanted to make trouble at the court premises. They became unruly, raining curses on the judge, and threatening journalists”.
“If they are not careful, they’d join their man in prison.”
“And to think Chief Bode George caused all this by suing The News magazine for libel. If he had known, he would have kept quiet.”
“It is like Jeffrey Archer and the UK Daily Star. Look, it simply means that big men should watch how they behave. A big man today can wear a prison uniform tomorrow. That is the way of the world”.
“Even if they sew prison uniform with damask, may my enemy never wear it”.
“Why? Your enemies should wear prison uniform. What kind of prayer is that?”
“You know I am a Christian. We are taught to pray for our enemies.”
“Well, don’t pray for people who split things that shouldn’t be split”.
“Like who?”
“Like the kidnappers of Pa Simeon Soludo, the father of Prof. Charles Soludo”.
“Prof. Chukwuma, please. He has retired his Charles.”
“Look, that is not important to me. What kind of country is this? Why would anyone kidnap a man, an old man, 78 years old, just because his son wants to be governor?”
“Some people’s wives and mothers have been kidnapped before now. And this is the second time they’d take Pa Soludo. When his son introduced banking consolidation as CBN Governor in 2006, and some banks lost their licenses, he was also abducted. He lost an eye during that incident”.
“It is a clear sign of Nigeria’s underdevelopment.”
“More like the failure of the Nigerian state.”
“It is obvious that certain elements are determined to intimidate Prof. Soludo, and frighten him”.
“The kidnappers are asking for N500 million.”
“What price must a man pay to be part of the Nigerian governance process”?
“Certainly not the life of a father.”
“It is called collateral damage, though”
“It is pure criminality and it should be condemned. It raises serious questions about human security.”
“This Nigeria tire me, no be small”.
“Look at what is happening with the U-17 football tournament that we are hosting. When other countries host such an event they end up making profit from ticket sales and endorsements. Nigeria is losing money. Other countries gain international recognition and pride, but Nigeria is ridiculing itself”.
“I hear FIFA is not happy with the Local Organising Committee. They are complaining about low turn-out at the stadium”.
“But I have seen some improvement this week”.
“Artificial improvement. To keep the tournament going, the Nigerian authorities are renting crowds to fill the stands”.
“I know”.
“For the Nigeria-Honduras match, 40,000 tickets were given out free to encourage spectators to come to the Abuja National Stadium”.
“In many of the centres, school children are taken out of school and forced to make up the numbers at the stadium, I don’t remember which match I was watching. It was around 7.30 p.m. and I saw these helpless children, secondary school pupils, watching a football match they probably were not interested in. That’s child abuse”.
“In Lagos, the state government provides free transportation to and from the stadium”.
“In Bauchi State, Governor Isa Yuguda is buying up all the tickets for the matches, and asking people to just come to the stadium. He is paying N20 million.”
“All the governors and Ministers who are buying up tickets for free distribution, I hope it is their personal funds they are spending. I really hope so.”
“It is not only the Nigerian authorities that are bribing the spectators. I read a story in the Nigerian Tribune about how the Italian U-17 team decided to distribute sweets and T-shirts to spectators.”
“Wonderful.”
“And trust Nigerians. They supported the Italians.”
“When are they going to serve food? I beg if you know where they are serving food, let me know.”
“Hungry man.”
“But you know, the biggest scandal of the U-17 tournament occurred on Wednesday in Enugu. It rained heavily and the Burkina Faso-New Zealand match had to be suspended. The artificial pitch was flooded. It became bloated.
“I saw it on television. I saw concerned officials using buckets to drain water from the pitch’
“Nobody used a plastic bucket. You sef?”
“You mean you did not see people frantically using towels to drain water? I saw people using knives and blades to rip the flooded pitch open”
“And that is a pitch that was specially imported and installed. Expensive installation.”
“You never know. May be someone split the contract, and the contractor had no option but to do a shoddy job.”
“It is a shame.”
“Don’t worry. Soon, it’d be over.”
“That thing I said about food, don’t forget eh/”
“Mr. Food.”
“I just want to split some dollops of pounded yam.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t end up in Kirikiri for that.”
Rueben Abati is the Chairman, Editorial Board, Guardian Newspapers
This page chronicles his weekly publication in the Guardian Newspapers
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Five Banks And Sanusi’s Big Axe
By Reuben Abati
Lamido Sanusi, the CBN Governor is in need of help. His assertive and courageous intervention in the banking sector through the sack of five Bank Managing Directors/Chief Executive officers is curiously being passed off by propagandists and conspiracy theorists as having ethnic and religious undertones. It’s been said that all the affected MDs: Cecilia Ibru (Oceanic Bank), Erastus Akingbola (Intercontinental Bank Plc), Okey Nwosu (FinBank), Sebastian Adigwe (Afribank) and Barth Ebong (Union Bank) are Christians and Southerners, and that certainly, it must be that the CBN Governor is playing the script of some Northern power brokers who want to discredit Southerners and then pave the way for the take-over of some of the banks by Northern interests. Otherwise, one fellow insisted, why has the Sanusi axe not fallen on Unity Bank? They say it is further curious that it is only Southerners - mostly from the same area as the deposed bank MDs (with the exception of the Union Bank MD) who have been brought in as interim managers of the banks: a clever move to justify a future Northern take-over especially now that the North is in charge of all the strategic sectors of the economy: the latest being the appointment of a Northerner also as Comptroller General of Nigeria Customs? My take on this is that the ethnic and religious argument is completely irrelevant.
The events of the last 72 hours in the Nigerian banking sector have nothing to do with whether or not Erastus Akingbola says his bank is built on the foundation of Christ, or that Mrs Ibru is a prominent member of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). Nigeria’s banking industry is dominated by Southerners, it is only logical that most of the casualties in this kind of house-cleaning exercise would also come from the South. The present action is the outcome of a CBN audit of 10 banks, we can safely expect that more bank MDs will be removed in due course, and it wouldn’t matter whether they are Southerners or Northerners, Moslem, pagan or Christian. Commentators on the development should focus on the facts of the case, while Lamido Sanusi and his team need to work harder on their communication of the details and import of what can be regarded for want of a better term as Sanusi’s own Consolidation Exercise or Consolidation Phase II. A proper communication strategy is imperative in order not to over-energise the rumour/speculation mill which appears to have been unwittingly activated by the aggressiveness of the action.
The surprise element in the CBN action and the courage that has been displayed can be sympathetically underscored. We knew all along that Nigerian banks in the face of the global financial meltdown and the crisis in the stock market, made worse by the bank’s over-exposure through margin loans and unsecured advances and bad investment in the downstream sector were mostly unhealthy. What Sanusi’s CBN has now done is to expose the severity of the crisis. The former CBN Governor, Charles Soludo had tried to manage the situation. Being the architect of the consolidation process in the banking sector, he must have been reluctant to expose the banks. He tried to give the ailing banks a chance by introducing a number of measures including the Expanded Discount Window in the hope that they will clean up their acts. But the banks and their managers were mostly insincere. Poor risk management, corporate abuses, incompetence continued apace in the banking sector and more attention was paid to hype.
Research analysts who should have provided a honest analysis of the situation spoke from both ends of the mouth. While some analysts predicted a looming distress, other analysts praised the banks to high heavens. Africa Report, a special publication of Jeune Afrique which was one of the last to blow the whistle on Nigerian banks, and which in the face of counter-intelligence responses stood firmly by its story, as well as Proshare Nigeria which in its 2008 Annual Report wrote confidently about the present crisis, must now feel vindicated. About a year ago, Intercontinental Bank even issued a statement protesting about de-marketing within the industry. There is a big lesson in all of this about reality and appearances. Three of the affected banks are what will be regarded in Nigerian parlance as big banks: Union Bank, Oceanic Bank and Intercontinental Bank. These are banks which have always won local and international awards. Their boards boast of recipients of the country’s National Honours, and university honorary degrees! Media houses were also not left out in the race to decorate both the banks and their leaders with diadem: Best Bank of the Year, Most Improved Bank of the Year, CEO of the Year etc. Now all of that has gone burst. The same Bank MDs that we used to admire and who had so much clout locally and internationally have now been described by the CBN as reckless and incompetent. Take Erastus Akingbola. He is Chairman of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), Second Vice President of the Nigeria Stock Exchange, Pro-Chancellor of a University, holder of multiple honorary degrees and a national honour awardee. The humiliation for the persons involved must be painful.
But let this be said: the CBN must share part of the blame. It presided over the same rot that it is now trying to clean up. The failure of the regulatory authority cannot be excused on the grounds that the banks refused to make proper submissions and disclosures. Institutional failure explains the kind of abuses that characterise the banking system in Nigeria; for too long, the apex bank looked the other way as the banks abandoned core banking and professional services and chased quick gains. In fact this same CBN once told us that Nigerian banks are insulated from the effect of the global financial meltdown. So, what has changed? It is the same CBN Board of the past five years that is still in place. There has been no departmental restructuring at the CBN institutional level. Only one thing has changed at the CBN: the arrival of a new CBN Governor, Lamido Sanusi. Determined to make an impact, Mr Sanusi has so far been focussing on the assignment and he has brought to the job, a sense of purpose and independent-mindedness. His first strike was to tell the Federal Government the home truth on the seven-point agenda: forget about seven points he said, priotise, concentrate on two or three. His second major strike is this earth-shaking coup against five Bank MDs. We must note that in the eyes of the ordinary man, these were not banks that were failing. They were run by high-profile public figures. There are many persons without doubt who will swear by the name Union Bank, for example: big, strong and reliable?
It takes a lot of courage for Lamido Sanusi to take on these sacred cows as it were, and to confront them with the facts of their negligence and the force of the powers of the CBN. If his intention is indeed a continuation of the Consolidation Process initiated by Professor Charles Soludo, then there must be proper articulation of follow up steps in terms of how the apex bank hopes to enforce a return to core banking while strengthening its own regulatory functions. Margin loans are not the only problematic advances and in truth, the crisis may be more serious than the failure to manage risk effectively. A realistic assessment of what the CBN can or cannot achieve must be attempted, and how the interim managers intervene in the process should be of great interest so that the CBN does not in the long run create more problems than it initially set out to correct. Three useful questions in my view: what are the criteria for the selection of the interim managers? Shouldn’t the stocks of the banks have been placed on suspension before this action? And where are those lying auditors who have all along certified the accounts of these banks as true and correct? Sanusi had promised to restore confidence in the banking system. That confidence is now severely shaken. Banking is a business built on trust. If Union Bank, Oceanic Bank, Afribank, Finbank and Intercontinental Bank could unravel as they have, then ordinary people would be tempted to panic and take out their money from the banks. But the CBN must ensure that this ends up only as a short-term, short-lived response and that depositors are reassured of safety.
The CBN Governor has disclosed that a sum of N400 billion will be provided to stabilise the affected banks. Obviously the five MDs had to go because the CBN cannot trust them to manage the bail-out funds well. But since the N400 billion is public funds, it is Nigerians who are being short-changed although we have been assured that this is only a loan which will be repaid as soon as the banks are in a position to do so. We can only hope so, for the amount is big enough to address part of the grievances of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). It could be used to make a difference in the health and power sectors too, now all that money is to be used to subsidise the failure of corporate governance in the banking sector, and to correct the distress that was caused by CEO inattention and auditor negligence. There should be much deeper investigation and where criminal negligence and greed can be established, persons should be prosecuted, and any Bernard Madoff in the system must be unmasked. The CBN has made scapegoats out of five Bank MDs. The debtors, auditors and stockbrokers who have contributed to this problem should also be brought to book. The CBN should go ahead and publish their names and bring in the law enforcement agencies. We hold on in this regard to Sanusi’s words when he concluded as follows: “We will not allow any bank to fail. However, we will also ensure that officers of banks and debtors who contribute to bank failures are brought to book to the full extent of the law and that all proceeds of infraction are confiscated where legally feasible.”
Fourteen additional banks are undergoing audit; clearly by year-end, the present restart mode into which the banking sector is locked would have run its course leaving behind a more realistic ranking of the banks with only the real players left in the game. The banks that survive should not just hope to reap the gains of the process or indulge in needless grandstanding and one-upmanship, rather this should be seen as an opportunity to learn useful lessons and to upgrade their performance, and their share capital, more so as the possibility of increased foreign investment in the sector is foreseeable within the next 24 months. Bank shareholders who stand to suffer more losses in the stock market beginning from this week, and who have a right to be angry, may also have to modify their expectations; size and hype we have all learnt do not determine a bank’s health, what matters more is the quality of its governance.
Between Ohakim And Kalu
The current tiff between Ikedi Ohakim, the Governor of Imo state and his erstwhile Godfather, Orji Uzor Kalu, marked by name-calling, newspaper articles by Kalu and advertorials by the Ohakim camp represents an unfair disservice to the people of Imo state which must end. The debate from that end of town should be about development efforts and the people’s interest, not differences between the Governor and the man who claim that he made him Governor.
In an article in The Sun, last weekend, Orji Kalu claims that he has been taking care of the Ohakim family for more than 30 years. Who cares? The source of contention is Ohakim’s defection from the Progressive Peoples Alliance, the party that Governor Kalu superintends over as if it were a personal property, with two Governors in power in Imo and Abia states. Ohakim’s decision to bolt from the stable and join the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is what has caused the present problem. Ohakim has acted in self-interest. He was originally a member of the PDP, but he had to decamp from the PDP in order to gain a chance in the 2007 election.
Despite the domination of the Imo Assembly by PDP lawmakers, Ohakim has carried on so far as if he were a member of the PDP, forging at every turn a cordial relationship with the state legislature whose members have not hidden their support for him. They recently issued the equivalent of an ultimatum to the Imo Governor asking him to return to the PDP. It stands to reason that if Ohakim wants to keep his seat and a second term in 2011, a practical choice for him would be to oblige. Has he done anything that is illegal? The matter here would seem to have been settled in the Atiku case when as serving Vice President, he defected to the Action Congress and the Court ruled that he had not committed any crime and could run for election as President, while still serving in a PDP government. In Ohakim’s case however, Orji Kalu can only raise the moral question of loyalty, sounding as he does like an aggrieved husband who has been handed a divorce note by a wife he doesn’t want to lose. But what loyalty is at stake here? Loyalty to the Godfather? Both camps should save us the distractive noise.
However, we should be more concerned about the weakness and underdevelopment of our political parties, driven by opportunistic Godfathers not ideology. Between 1998 and 2009, Ohakim has moved from the PDP to the Alliance for Democracy, back to the PDP, then to the PPA and now to the PDP either in search of or to avoid Godfathers. In Bauchi state, Governor Isa Yuguda has also similarly moved back and forth, including the masterstroke of a marital liaison with the First Family. In Zamfara state, Mahmud Shinkafi has moved from the ANPP to the PDP. In Ohakim’s case, he had to keep leaving and returning to the PDP, because of the Godfathers who hijacked the party and who sought to impose unpopular candidates on the electorate. Ohakim’s movement therefore is part-protest and part-self preservation. Political party reform with emphasis on internal democracy should minimise, if not cure this mishief.
In the long run, the growth of viable political parties should help to cure the bigger mischief of an emerging one-party state. The growing impression that it is only within the ruling PDP that elections can be won bodes ill for Nigeria’s democracy and the desirable value of political pluralism. Constitutional amendment as to the proper ownership of the mandate in an election, between the party and the individual should also help to eliminate the current ambiguity which promotes dirty politics.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Ah, God, what’s wrong with Valentine?
By Reuben Abati
THE growing obsession with Valentine’s Day, February 14, that is tomorrow, the day that is specially reserved for the celebration of love, friendships, the sharing of goodwill, international as it now is, wears a cloak of such beguiling paradox in Nigeria that highlights one: the imitativeness of social class behaviour in Nigeria, two: the hypocrisy of our people; and three: psychological yearning for love and affection that is more about the emptiness of our passions, rather than our true understanding of what love is. This phenomenon is fairly recent and it is Southern and Christian. It is as if the more unsuccessful Nigeria is, and the higher the level of anxiety in the land, the more desperate the people become to cry out for love. They seek love as catharsis, as refuge, as compensatory target.
Sadly, every February 14 in the past decade or so, Nigerians remember the need to love and share only on Valentine’s Day, and even then, our expression of love is libidinal, selfish, and alimentary. The religions and all the spiritual catechisms preach love. “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” says the Scriptures. Confucius, a patron-saint of Lodges and theosophical/ philosophical movements, had reasoned that every man should do unto his neighbours as he would have them do unto him.
Buddhists and other spiritual groups preach that to gain a mastery of self, the first step towards knowledge and illumination (Socrates: “Man know thyself”), the individual must be capable of love. Love comprises the high values of giving, of duty, of virtue. Christian eschatology is built on this irreducibility of love: the Birth, the Death, the Resurrection of Christ, and his entire career, are circumscribed with the context of love. The Holy Quran equally preaches friendship, and loving others, more especially the underprivileged in society. The etymological and historical connection of Valentine’s Day, as we know it, with Christian love reiterates the higher normative values that it is supposed to represent.
Hence in Corinthians 13:4-7: “Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself. It is not puffed up. It does not behave rudely. It does not seek its own. It is not provoked. Thinks no evil. Does not rejoice in iniquity. But rejoices in the truth. Bears all things. Hopes all things. Endures all things. Love never fails…. And now aside faith, hope, love, these three: but the greatest of thee is love”.
Since love is the greatest value of all, it is normal to expect that men and women will celebrate it earnestly, and truthfully. Alas, in Nigeria, we merely pay lip service to love. Even to faith. Even to hope. But we love ceremony, pretense, and ritual. Tomorrow, February 14, all of these three would be on display. And ahead of that moment, there is so much to-ing and fro-ing in the land, so much talk about Valentine’s Day - an obsession that has been pushed to new levels by communication technology - Face book, the internet, the cell-phone, e-messages. The power of modern technology makes it possible for love to be professed at the speed of light. The act of love and loving has also become fully commercial. Business opportunists organise travel tours, special evenings, they bake cakes, stock their shops with flowers, perfumes, chocolates, cards dripping with effluvia and sweet-nothings, and every lover boy or lover girl is encouraged to show love by spending money to buy cards and all of these. I used the word obsession earlier.
Last year, Valentine’s Day was around mid-week. School proprietors told their pupils to set aside the school uniform for a day, and wear clothes with a touch of red. They were also instructed to show up in school with gifts for a chosen Valentine. Companies also announced to staff that the colour red, would be the chosen dress code for February 14. By 4 p.m, the streets had been taken over by bright splashes of red colours turning the entire city into a love garden. But there was nothing in all of this about love. Or honesty of feelings.
For Nigerians, Lovers’ Day is about money and sex. It is a grand ritual of deception. It is all about men and women looking for romantic dalliances; reckless dalliance of a thousand degrees, sex and more sex. Biology gone berserk. Valentine’s Day 2009, in many Western capitals is being seen in relation to how lovers and couples will respond to the global economic pinch. Projections in many Western countries indicate a sharp drop in Valentine spending. Relationships could be threatened as lovers try to save costs. In Nigeria, I wager the bet that in Lagos where the Valentine craze is most felt, there’d be a near-commotion on the streets. In matters of sex, Nigerians are less circumspect.
A friend had opined that STJs (short-Time Joints) around Lagos are already fully booked; and restaurants are making special arrangements to accommodate a likely rampaging crowd of lovers. Ordinary Nigerians are yet to start thinking about the economic crunch. Instructively, this year’s Valentine’s Day falls on a Saturday, a day when many husbands and their partners will be at home. But it is beginning to look like a day when married women may have to embark on an “Operation Hold on to your Husband”. When Valentine’s Day falls on a regular, working day within the week, unfaithful husbands take advantage of this to attend to their flock of sweethearts. Wives have been known to complain about their husbands returning home rather late on Valentine’s Day, with excuses about meetings, and other business commitments. It is in most cases, a day of misery for many wives whose husbands have been taken over by young ladies with more tempting assets. Valentine’s Day could well be renamed “Cheaters’ Day”. It is a test of romantic appeal. It is a day for dating. Parents should keep an eye on their daughters and sons. No other day turns Nigerian women into sex objects more than Valentine’s Day. There is so much affirmation of the myth of masculinity on the Day. On Saturday, February 14, 2009, many wives may be in a better position to insist that their spouses must stay at home, receive no suspicious phone calls, and stay with family.
This may sound like an old wives’ strategy but it speaks to the reductionism that attends the idea of love and loving in Nigeria. Why is love so restricted to one day in the entire calendar? Love is a habit. An attitude. A way of life. A belief. But when it is reduced to a biological episode, and a set of empty phrases that do not travel beyond the lips, it is the character of society itself that is projected. On Valentine’s Day every year, Nigerians do not remember to love widows, or the underprivileged, or the aged. They don’t spare a thought for the sick, or the needy. It is all about physical attention. Beauty. Emotional transactions. Love thus defined becomes a means to an end, and not a complete end in itself.
The dissociation is seen in national life. Nigeria is a country in desperate need of love. It is a society that has been taken over by a growing tribe of haters and cynics. Our day-to-day interactions, our language of social contact and negotiation, governance systems, and inter-personal relationships confirm this. Nigerians are so vicious towards one another, so lacking in civility, always you are compelled to wonder whether the churches and mosques are filled on Sundays and Fridays, by imported persons, and not by the same swearing, cursing and unkind Nigerians of our daily encounters.
There is no love on the streets of Nigeria, only unbridled hate. Take the motorists, the motorcyclists who drive recklessly, threatening to push you off the road and maliciously hating you simply because you drive what is in their reckoning, a better car. There is no love either in official circles: the public servants who loot the treasury do not love the rest of us. Those who have been elected to serve us, but who spend more time pursuing their own vanity cannot be men and women of love. All men and women who promote disaffection, religious hate, violence , and who seek willfully to inflict pain on the other lack faith, hope, and love.
Nonetheless, on February 14., they will all pretend to be agents of love - men and women who care. But it is lust that inspires them, not genuine, transparent love - the type that pushes nations to greater heights, and which can only save our nation from perdition.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Goodbye to IBB
By Reuben Abati
GENERAL Ibrahim Babangida was the other day, a guest on Mosunmola Abudu’s Moments with Mo, a successful lifestyle magazine programme on television, and according to reports, by newspapers which monitored the interview, IBB, as he is known, used the opportunity to make a number of useful declarations. Some of these are so weighty and instructive, the General who once ruled Nigeria, should not be allowed to get away without the benefit of a response.
First, General Babangida tells us that he has no plans whatsoever to run for the position of president in 2011. Can someone please shout Alle-lu-ia? Since 1993 when General Babangida purportedly stepped aside from office, so much brain matter has been expended on speculations that the man “stepped aside” (not retire, not resign), so he could return to power some other day in the future. As every election approached, the spectre of IBB’s ambition hung ominously in the horizon, as commentators and political pundits saw his shadow in Nigeria’s political firmament and configurations. Much of this, as I had argued before now, was the product of invented and contrived mythology.
But in the run up to the 2007 presidential elections, that shadow was almost assuming a human and physical form. There were reports of meetings and actual manouevres by IBB acolytes, with the real intention of bringing their man back to presidential office. There were IBB for president billboards in parts of the country, especially in Lagos. The scare-mongering was so much, the only missing link was IBB himself showing up on the podium. It would have been tragic if he did. It would have been disastrous, and most unfair to Nigerians, if he had been allowed to return.
IBB in his Moment with Mo, had noted that by 2011, age would no longer be on his side, and so, on the grounds of age, he would not want to seek presidential office. Born on August 17, 1941, IBB will be 70 in 2011. By saying 70 is too old an age for anyone to seek the office of president, IBB was probably speaking tongue-in-cheek. Isn’t it often the case in Nigeria that the older a man is, the more of a hustler he becomes? We have seen in the past 10 years, old men who falsify their birth records or who tout old age, and experience as evidence of their ability to perform, and deliver and make a difference. IBB has a much bigger baggage, and it is his record of performance as Nigeria’s Head of State and later President.
IBB’s supporters through publications, seminars and other activities that have been organised to launder his image insist that chroniclers of contemporary history have been most unfair to him. Their position is that with IBB as president, there was greater purposefulness to the governance process, not the kind of cowboy assertions of the Obasanjo era, or the soporific attitude of the Yar’Adua era. IBB, they say, recruited the best and the brightest and put them to work in the nation’s interest. Opinion is divided on this. They grant him further credit for astute political engineering. And they point out insouciantly, that under IBB the Naira was relatively stable and that the stock market did not crash. With the passage of time everything in the long spectrum of history tends to appear acceptable, and so it is with revisionism in Nigeria. What IBB’s friends fail to point out however is that he prepared the foundation for Nigeria’s woes. His government elevated debauchery to the level of high art. Deception too. And favouritism and cronyism. And First Ladyism. His wife was the most glamorous as well as the most expensive First Lady in Nigerian history. And it was IBB who demonstrated that it was possible to hand over the national economy to a few persons, and make it look like a legitimate right to do so. Obasanjo years after IBB tried to copy this, and ended up turning Nigerians into slaves in their own country - slaves of oligarchs in banking, importation, and oil and gas.
Ever so quick footed, (they didn’t call him Maradona for nothing, or Evil Genius as he referred to himself), IBB also pointed out that by not seeking presidential office in 2011, he’d be doing Nigerians a favour. In a sense, yes. My words, not his. But his justification is instructive. He says: “You know, I give it a lot of thought, there are things I would do to correct certain things which a lot of you would not like”. IBB had the chance to change and correct certain things between 1985 and 1993 when he was President and the Commander-in-Chief. But did he? Every Nigerian leader gives the impression that he is a Messiah of sorts. The truth is that in 2011, Nigeria would not need a retired military leader pretending to save the country. Nigeria will need someone with the heart, the will power and the physical strength to transform our lives. What many Nigerians would not like to see is IBB mounting the rostrum in 2011, and claiming to have a 10-point agenda that will save Nigeria. By ruling himself out of contention, we thank him for accepting at last, that the road to Nigeria’s future is in the future, not the past.
IBB’s declaration should make many of his associates unhappy. The step-aside, step-back politics that developed around this particular General soon became an industry for many self-confessed admirers who turned General IBB’s politics in the context of Nigeria into a primary business. They organised seminars and symposia. They turned IBB into a subject of intellectual enquiry. They sought to convert him into an icon. Now they have heard from IBB himself: by 2011, he intends to retire effectively from the politics of ambition. IBB’s consultants would have to find other clients. He is one former leader whose home fortune-seekers continued to visit, in the firm belief that his return to the politics of office would serve their own purpose. Added to this is the general belief that he is a most generous man. And so like beggars by the roadside, everyone expected a share of the IBB cake. Hopefully, his declaration that his “stepping aside” is now final, would drive the bees away from his home.
But the politics of 2011 notwithstanding, IBB since 1993 had always been confronted with the annulment of the presidential election of June 12, 1993 - the election that was “widely believed” to have been won by Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. Whatever the 6th President of Nigeria elects to do now, or in the future, he will forever be haunted by the ghost of June 12. Naturally, the issue came up in his interview with Mo. And unlike in previous interviews, he offered a mere explicit explanation of the reasons for the annulment.
According to him, “June 12 was accepted by Nigerians as the best of elections in Nigeria. It was free and fair. But unfortunately we cancelled that election. I used the word unfortunately for the first time. We were in government at the time and we knew the possible consequences of handing over to a democratic government. We did well that we wanted ours to be the last military coup d’ etat. To be honest with you, the situation was not ripe to hand over at the time. Forget about the wrong things that happened in politics. The issue of security of the nation was a threat and we could have considered ourselves to have failed, if six months after hand over, there was another coup. I went through coup d’ etat and I survived it. We knew that there would be another coup d’ etat. But not many people believed what we the military said. They would have allowed me to go away and then they (coup plotters) would regroup and stage another coup. This is how coups are staged - one man will always come to complain. And he will try to convince you about his complaints”.
The foregoing argument is specious. As President and Commander-in-Chief, IBB was in a position to arrest the coup-plotters, since he had intelligence reports that they were planning to scuttle the democratic process. He was also in a position to set up structures to protect the democratic order. Rather than vote for and defend democracy, he chose to know-tow to coup-plotters. What kind of morality is he espousing? He had to annul a free and fair election in order to prevent a coup d’etat. He should have handed over power to the legitimate winner of that election. The same IBB who was afraid of a coup still handed over power to a civilian, in a manner that even encouraged a coup taking place. Chief Ernest Shonekan was made Head of an Interim National Government. But he was not the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The Service Chiefs did not take him seriously. And of course, in due course, General Sani Abacha drove Shonekan out of office, without having to fire a shot. Was this a coup or not? So, what coup was IBB trying to prevent? And has he forgotten that he only recently endorsed the coup in Guinea? The biggest coup against the people of Nigeria was the annulment of the June 12 presidential election. Collectively, we have had to pay a heavy price for it.
Babangida’s place in Nigerian history will be defined by that singular act of annulment of a democratic process. In 2006, he had actually collected a nomination form for the 2007 presidential race. But he allegedly withdrew from the PDP nomination process because he didn’t want to compete with Mallam Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who he considers “his brother”. His planned return to power was originally designed as an opportunity for him to rehabilitate himself in the public sphere. Power politics doesn’t work that way.
Former President Obasanjo had a divine second chance, and later, a third chance. But he blew it all. As IBB prepares for life as an old man (”…I am not getting younger. I am an old man”, he says) he should search his conscience more carefully. On the question of June 12, he owes Nigerians an apology, not excuses.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Queen Okoye: Raped by the police
By Reuben Abati
“I READ this story in the PM News about the woman who went to the Area G Police Station in Ogba, Lagos to protest that she was raped by three policemen two months ago, and that she is now pregnant. She wants justice, but the police authorities won’t listen to her. It is such a sad story.”
“One Miss Queen Okoye. I got the details from someone who witnessed the show. The police insist that she is a mad woman. The woman removed her clothes, and was clad only in her underwear. Pretty woman o. Nice body. Eh, Alhaji.”
“You see? And we blame the police. You, Nigerian men are sick. I can bet that while she was protesting about being raped, other men would have been wondering what it would be like to be alone with her. Rape is such a common thing in Nigeria now. You get to hear of old men raping two year olds, five year olds, husbands raping housemaids, their wife’s relations, the daughters of neighbours, teachers raping their female students. And just now, you too sounded like a rapist.”
“No o. Ha, just admiring the work of the Almighty. There is nothing wrong in that. If I want a woman, I chase her normally and I settle. I always settle. Those policemen are in trouble now because they didn’t settle”
“You always settle. Just listen to that. There was a story about a man who raped his mother-in-law. Did he settle too? The matter had to be hushed up to protect the family from public disgrace. Male talk in Nigeria is riddled with signs that the country is full of not just chauvinists but rapists. You said it now: settle. I have also heard men refer to us in relation to our body parts: big boobs, a pretty face, full or thin lips. Bakassi, Landcruiser, Oshodi Oke, Mango, Pawpaw, Shikishiki, Feeding Bottle, Lepa, Eru, Ile ise, Owialeke, Pepper yo yo, Black and Shine, Baby, Portable, Suzie… They make you feel like you are a commodity to be picked up from the shelf. And you, I expect you to be more civilized.”
“Well, a man must have a choice. Freedom of choice.”
“That is how it starts. Every rapist is a prisoner of choice, including those who rape children. Some even rape their wives.”
“No. In Nigeria, there is no such thing. Your wife is your wife. Point of correction.”
“I believe you are just being mischievous. It is not you talking. Have you taken something? Look, I think what we are dealing with goes beyond that woman who stripped herself naked in Ogba. It is a serious social crisis. Nigerian men are obsessed with sex, and most of them would rather force women to the bed.”
“If I may play the devil’s advocate, in some countries, the men prefer men. The majority of Nigerian men love their women. Give us some credit”
“The big scandal is that the police are not interested in prosecuting rapists. The police station itself is a rape centre. That is the point that woman was making. She had gone there to ask the police to help her arrest her boyfriend who had taken her N30, 000. They asked her to wait till 10p.m, so they could spring a surprise on the man. One thing led to another, she claims she was charmed, and when she woke up at 2. 30a.m, she discovered that she had been raped, and she was bleeding. I guess when she was reporting her boyfriend at the station, they were not listening to her story at all. They were more interested in her body.”
“Looks like all the policemen on duty took part in that special operation.”
“She went to the police station to ask for the support of law enforcement officers. Not knowing that there are criminals in uniform. We have a country where it is risky for a woman to allow herself to be detained overnight in any police station. One girl living with a friend of mine was once detained overnight by the police, she was gang-raped all through the night. In fact, you need to talk to prostitutes that stand by the roadside in Lagos. When the police arrest them every evening, they take them to the station and impose a punishment of free sex.”
“I am working on a theory that sex is the most popular form of recreation in Nigeria. No light. No water. No jobs. No money. What do you want Nigerian men to do?”
“There was this girl that was once shown on television, she had gone to a police station to report that she was raped by her boyfriend. She said the police ended up making jest of her. They asked her to go away and stop complaining about nothing. They were more interested in knowing whether she enjoyed it or not.”
“I am thinking of another theory. Maybe we should castrate all Nigerian policemen. A National Police of Eunuchs. How about that?”
“You and your stupid theories.”
“Okay, this your sister Queen that you are fighting for. What kind of woman is she herself? Did she have to stay at the police station till 10p.m? And how did she know she was charmed? She was raped two months ago, why didn’t she take up the matter then.”
“She did. Nobody would listen to her. She was reporting the police to the police. And you know how it is”
“I don’t know. Is that why she now went to the police station armed with fetish objects? She had with her a pigeon, a cross, other fetish objects and she was chanting incantations in broad daylight. She even threatened that she would not stop cursing the men who raped her until they dropped dead. She could have been arrested for having the mind to commit murder. She could have been arrested for constituting herself into a public nuisance too. And I dare add that her nakedness was provocative, it was an unnecessary invitation to other men.”
“Nigerian women are powerless where rape is concerned. Even the section of the Criminal Code dealing with rape was written by men. It doesn’t favour the woman at all. It exposes her to further humiliation. She is required to prove that she was raped. And in the court, there will be calls for medical examination and proof of penetration, and absence of consent. How do you prove rape with such law two months after the fact? And how many women will have the courage to allow such exposure? Miss Okoye’s resort to spiritual warfare may look like self-help but she speaks for all powerless Nigerian women whose greatest enemy is the phallus.”
“Hey, sweetheart, come on. That is not an objective statement. You are too partisan in this matter. Even all those your women’s rights activists and professional feminists won’t say that. If you want to talk about rape, do so, but be honest about that other matter.”
“To hell with it. We need to do something in Nigeria about rape, about sexual harassment and the Police Command should take Ms Okoye’s protest seriously. We can’t run a good society if every woman that steps into a police station is seen as a victim. Sections 357 of the Criminal Code and Section 282 of the Penal Code should be reviewed and amended. And other women should not leave Okoye alone. Women empowerment groups in civil society should seek her out and take up her battle. There should be a protest of thousands of Nigerian women to draw attention to the rapists in uniform and the crimes they commit.”
“Very good. My only input is that all the women who will join that protest should do so in bra and pants: Ms Okoye’s symbol of protest. And I am looking forward to seeing you, Miss Womanist, join that protest. I will love to see you in bra and pants. You are a pretty woman you know. A perfect symbol of pulchritude, well-made, finely sculptured, a darling, a sweetheart. I confess that if I am left alone with you in a room, I swear, I will misbehave.”
“If anybody tries it with me, that person will go to jail. I assure you.”
“If loving and admiring you will mean going to jail, I am 100 per cent ready, my dear. Jail. No be human beings dey there?”
“You know what you are?”
“A smitten admirer. A gentleman in love.”
“No. You are a goat.”
“Oh, Sugar. Come on Baby. You know you are a sweetheart any day. The only goat that is giving anybody any trouble in Nigeria today is in Ilorin. The robber that tried to steal a Mazda car and then turned into a goat to escape arrest.”
“Are they still on that nonsense?”
“This week, the Ilorin Police Command has issued two statements on the matter. First, they said the goat was on hunger strike. It refused to drink water. And it won’t accept grass.”
“It probably wanted pounded yam with ogbono soup. They should have tried that.”
“But I think two days ago, there was a new twist to the story. The Police Commissioner in Kwara State said they had taken a look at the Police Act, the law does not empower the police to keep unclaimed property. So whoever brought the goat to the police station, or whoever is the owner should come and claim it, otherwise the police would have no option but to auction the goat next week.”
“You mean the Kwara Police Command is just remembering the Police Act? And who do they think will buy a goat that had been said to be a human being. The police themselves should eat the goat. They have mouths, don’t they? One of them should buy it at the auction.”
“At what price?”
“Who cares?”
“No, you should care. Because before long, the entire Nigeria Police will be busy arresting goats, ducks, pigeons, rabbits and so on as suspects. In a season of economic depression, there is no limit to what people can do to fill their stomachs with food.”
“All of this is happening in Nigeria, and President Umar Musa Yar’Adua goes on leave?”
“You mean it is the duty of the President to worry about rape in a Lagos police station and a goat incident in an Ilorin Police station”
“These are symptoms of a deeper crisis. Let’s face it: Nigeria is not working. Nigerians need a new deal. The country needs to be fixed. The President can’t go on leave when the country is facing an emergency. There is no electricity supply in the country, the stock market has crashed, the country’s foreign reserves is going down, the Naira is losing value, about 23 per cent in a month, the national economy has failed, the people have no jobs, no food, no hope, the 2009 Budget is even not in place yet. You go on leave after you have done some work. What has President Yar’Adua done in close to two years for him to merit going on leave?
“He has married off two daughters to state governors. Is it easy? Let’s be fair to this man.”
“People are saying the man is using style to go to hospital”.
“I think the section of the Nigerian Constitution dealing with the qualification of persons for public office is due for amendment. Having the right level of energy for public office must be made an issue. The Constitution talks about insanity as a ground for disqualification. But the reality is that Nigerians can live with insane leaders. What is more frustrating is having leaders who are nursing all kinds of diseases, which have to be taken care of at public expense. ”
“Yes”
“If a man knows that he is not well, him no get energy, let him not seek elective office. In fact, if anybody has any record of constant malaria or typhoid fever, he should not be allowed to run for office. Take the case of the Yobe Governor, Mamman Ali who just died.”
“Don’t speak ill of the dead, please. Be careful.”
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Constitution and a divided National Assembly
By Reuben Abati
THE exchange of recriminations between members of the National Assembly’s Joint Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution, with members of the House of Representatives walking angrily out of the retreat of the JCCR recently in Minna points to only one sordid realization: the lack of political will on the part of the ruling political elite to address any of the questions that have been raised about the illegitimacy and the many shortcomings of the 1999 Constitution.
Constitutions in themselves do not make societies, but they help to set the ground rules for the union. They serve as basic documents to remind all and sundry of duties and obligations. A constitution defines relations and the modes of governance. There have been complaints that Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution empowers a few, to the disadvantage of the majority.
The major challenge is in giving full effect to a people’s Constitution as the fundamental law of the land. Constitution making, constitutional reform and enforcing Constitutionalism in Nigeria have always been rather testy subjects since the days of the Clifford Constitution of 1922. In 1999, with the return to civilian rule, there had emerged a consensus that the extant Constitution is defective, and a true people’s Constitution needed to be produced, or that at best, the 1999 Constitution should be amended in many parts.
This Constitution was given to Nigerians by the military government led by General Abdusalami Abubakar, through Decree 24 of 1999, in the same manner in which preceding military administrations had given Nigerians, the 1979, 1989, and 1994 Constitutions. These constitutions, like others in Nigerian history were handed down to the people, either by the elite or the soldiers, and as such no Constitution in Nigeria had actually been a reflection of the true wishes and aspirations of the people. The operative phrase: “We the people” in the Preamble to the Constitution has been a lie. The return to democracy in 1999 was in part meant to provide the people an opportunity to take charge of their own lives and define the rules of engagement in Nigeria.
But members of the JCCR lack this sense of history. They are fighting like over-pampered children over protocol, status and order of seniority. The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives insists that he must be a co-Chairman of the JCCR. He enjoys the support of his colleagues in the House. The Senators in the Committee argue that there can only be one Chairman, and that since the Deputy Speaker of the House has been functioning happily as a deputy Chairman, why is he now getting ambitious and asking to be a co-Chair, a word which the Senators tell us is unknown to the English dictionary! So much energy has been spent in the last week on name-calling. The Reps are accusing the Senators of greed. And the Senators held a special meeting at the end of which they declared that there are ambitious fifth columnists in the House of Representatives.
The Senators are planning to go ahead with a unilateral review of the 1999 Constitution. The Reps want to set up their own Constitution Review Committee. This is the quality of parliamentary dialogue in Nigeria today. What is wrong? The simple truth is that since 1999, the review of the 1999 Constitution has become a big business opportunity, a racket as it were. Each time a committee is set up to review the Constitution, a secretariat has to be set up. Cheques will be signed for the purchase of stationery.
There could even be overseas trips to study how the Constitution works in other countries. Researchers and consultants will be recruited, the committee will travel up and down and across Nigeria under the pretext that it is consulting the people. Such a big opportunity to earn sitting and travel allowances is bound to result in a clash of egos, a serious jostling for control and name-calling. But it is sad that members of the National Assembly, and of the Joint Committee on Constitution Review are unable to rise above their egos, to act in the people’s interest. The assignment that has been given the JCCR requires statesmanship. The conduct of the members is despicable. Their lack of capacity for dialogue and negotiations and the resort to name-calling short-changes the Nigerian people.
It will be a useful exercise at some point to calculate the amount of money that has been spent on this process in the last nine years. Nigeria is still in the dark. More money, more time is about to be expended and there may be no light at the end of the tunnel. In 1999, the Obasanjo government had set up a Presidential Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution. That committee spent two years studying the Constitution, collecting memoranda. When its report was ready, it travelled round the six-geo-political zones to present a so-called Volumes One and Two. Nothing came out of that exercise.
In 2001, the National Assembly further set up a Joint Committee, like the present one to look into the 1999 Constitution. Again, nothing was achieved. In 2005, the Obasanjo government set up the National Political Reforms Conference. So much money was again spent by delegates and researchers, trying to identify all the loopholes in the 1999 Constitution, in order to activate a process of Constitutional Review. That process was aborted when it was reduced to tenure elongation and the politics of derivation.
At the time, the National Assembly had also set up a Joint Committee of members of the two Houses. All the parties involved found an excuse to scuttle the process. In 2008, the National Assembly, class of 2007, is about to travel the same route, and their Distinguished Senators and Honourables have started again. Nigerians are ever so patient, because they are ever so forgetful. Admittedly, discussions of the Constitution often throw up primordial sentiments, and the unending feud over power and control among Nigerians. But the opportunity for mischief and racketeering would seem to have characterised the Constitution Reform project since 1999.
Shunting aside the protests of the members of the Lower House as the work of fifth columnists, the Senate Committee on the Review of the Constitution has now said that it intends to travel round the country and invite memoranda! Would that be done at no cost to the Nigerian taxpayer? We have had enough travels, local and foreign, on this matter of Constitution Review. There is nothing the National Assembly needs to know that has not already been provided in previous reports and memoranda on the subject.
In 1999, civil society organisations even organised their own Constitution Review process, and there was much enlightenment on the subject. Draft Constitutions were prepared by many groups, there was even a feminist version of the Nigerian Constitution suggesting that the masculine nature of the 1999 Constitution should be addressed. Other stakeholders even produced versions of the 1999 Constitution in indigenous languages. The National Assembly has been talking about Constitutional reform since August 2007. It only needs to study existing memoranda.
Public debates, the rulings of the Election Petition Tribunals and the courts in the last eight years have all indicated areas of urgent amendment in the 1999 Constitution. The issues are so many, over 117 at the last count, all projecting the need to cleanse the 1999 Constitution of its contradictions and come up with a new Constitution that promotes justice, equity and federalism, or far-reaching amendments that transform the country’s Basic Law.
What is required is the political will to embark on the process of Constitutional Reform. The mode of altering provisions of the Constitution is properly spelled out in Section 9 of the 1999 Constitution. The current disagreement among members of the Joint Committee on Constitution Review is a perfect indication that those who are favoured by the limitations of the 1999 Constitution are the real fifth columnists. They are the ones protecting the status quo. The rest of the country pays the price for this through the resort to self-help among ordinary people and the abuse of privilege among the ruling elite and the reign of violence in the land. Voices of reason in society, and in the National Assembly should persuade the members of the JCCR to put Nigeria first.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Okada helmets and road safety
By Reuben Abati
WHATEVER may be the challenges and contradictions in the Nigerian society, one basic redeeming factor remains the capacity of the Nigerian to laugh at himself, to draw a comedy from the most unlikely situations and to push up lessons in the process, even if these may be lessons he or she does not intend to take seriously. But the good thing about comedy is that it makes us think. The burlesque, the farcical, the incongruous of daily living ultimately challenge the intellectual aspects of our being. And so it has been with the recent introduction of safety helmets as a compulsory tool for riders of commercial motorcycles and their passengers on Nigerian roads.
The Federal Road Safety Commission’s (FRSC) regulation on safety helmets is in direct response to a tragic situation, namely the terrible accidents that have resulted from commercial motorcycling in Nigeria. Last year, the FRSC reported a radical surge in the number of road accidents, a significant percentage of which was traced to commercial motorcycles or what is known in Lagos as Okada, and in other parts of Nigeria as Going, Along, or Akauke. At the Orthopaedic Hospital in Yaba, Lagos, and other hospitals across Nigeria, there is what is called the Okada ward, a ward for patients with broken limbs and skulls, all resulting from a sudden tumbling down from the back of the okada. The mortuary is similarly filled with okada corpses. The real tragedy is that the majority of Nigerians find themselves helplessly forced to ride commercial motorcycles.
This is not England or Washington DC, where there is an efficient public transportation system. This is not a country where the cities and communities are well planned and every part is easily accessible. The Okada phenomenon, and what I have described before now as An Okada Economy, are both products of the failure of leadership in Nigeria, the failure of urban planning, the anti-intellectual nature of the governance process and the widespread corruption in the land. Because urban planning officials grant approvals for building constructions without visiting the sites, new neighbourhoods and communities spring up in Nigeria every day, every year, without access roads, without potable water and without electric poles. Vehicles cannot access such locations, so the people have to depend on motorcycles, which have earned a great reputation for their capacity to navigate through bushes and potholes.
Because nobody, over the years, has paid enough attention to population explosion and the standards of existing infrastructure, even in cities and towns that are accessible, the roads are congested. Easy movement is impossible. And so, Nigerians have come to depend on the commercial motorcycle as an escape mechanism to meet an urgent appointment, to catch a flight or to simply escape the stress of a traffic hold up.
In Lagos, ordinarily, a traffic hold up can last for a minimum of one hour. Because there is no efficient public transportation system and network, no metro system, no subway, no public bus system, no alternative means of urban transportation other than the road, and not enough taxis, or buses, Nigerians are compelled to hop on to the back of the okada to be able to get by. For these reasons, the commercial motorcycle has become a necessity for most Nigerians: it has helped so many to realise their Constitutional right to the freedom of movement! Without the okada, many Nigerians would be constructively and literally rendered immobile.
The FRSC regulation on the safety helmets is at best an attempt to rescue an already embarrassing situation: to save a few more limbs and to signpost the importance of safety for both passengers and riders of commercial motorcycles. The safety helmet rule is therefore in the public interest. But Nigerians, two weeks later, see it as a joke. The natural cynicism of the average Nigerian is on full display. The ThisDay newspaper has already published on its front page a celebrated photograph showing an okada rider wearing a paint bucket as a helmet. It invites instant laughter, except that when you look at the same photograph closely, it will be seen that the motorcyclist actually has a real helmet he has chosen not to use. What point is being made? That point is much clearer on the streets of Nigeria. There have been reports of persons who wear painted calabash helmets. It looks like a helmet alright, but it cannot provide any security in the event of an accident.
Every day, you would also notice that most of the helmets being used are factory helmets or jockey caps. But the ludicrous is in the attitude of both okada riders and passengers towards the helmet. Even when the helmet is available, there is really no attempt to use it as prescribed. Most okada riders and passengers wear the helmet on top of a cap, headgear or a turban. The people benefiting most from the okada helmet rule are the sellers of handkerchiefs, toilet rolls, baseball caps and polythene bags, which people first use to cover their heads before putting on the helmet when they decide to use it. The excuse is that it is risky to allow a helmet that has touched another man’s head to touch yours. In our cultures, there is a superstitious belief that the head must be protected, because it is the home among Yorubas of ori or ayanmo and among Igbos of one’s chi.
The meaning of these anthropological concepts is more spiritual than physical. Many Nigerians insist that sharing the same helmet with another person could result in the transfer of bad luck. I have seen ladies who hold the helmet above their heads without allowing it to touch even a strand of hair. When they see policemen or FRSC officials in the distance, they bring the helmet closer to their heads, but keep it apart by using their palm to prevent any contact. Other ladies rely on the protective shield of toilet rolls, handkerchiefs and polythene bags.
Okada passengers also complain about kidnappers on the prowl for whom the helmet could become a ready weapon. I have been told that there is a band of kidnappers called alajaale, who use human body parts for ritual purposes. They were reportedly exposed in a television programme, Nkan Mbe, once anchored by Kola Olawuyi. People are afraid that the members of this secret, underground cult can use the helmet to kidnap innocent people. Nobody has been able to unmask this criminal, occultic syndicate. Kidnapping is a major social phenomenon in Nigeria and the perpetrators are hardly ever found. In the meantime, okada passengers do not want to take any risk. When you come upon these spectacles daily, you can’t but laugh. Even the policemen and FRSC officials who are supposed to enforce the regulation can’t help laughing.
But the humour is of the dark, macabre variety. The introduction of the safety helmets may be endangering more lives than hitherto was the case. With one hand holding the helmet and another supporting the toilet roll, or poly bag shield, most okada passengers no longer hold on to the machine in any way. The roads that these motorcycles ply are pothole-ridden. One wrong manoeuvre and the machine, the rider and the passenger would find themselves in one huge heap on the ground.
The true test of law lies in its implementation and acceptance. The helmet regulation was also introduced in 1984, but after this kind of initial cynical response, Nigerians soon went back to their old ways. The agencies and regulatory authorities, should not just be interested in enforcing penalties for non-compliance, public enlightenment will be necessary, as was the case when the compulsory use of seat belts was introduced. People have to be reminded that it is in their best interest to use the safety helmet. Standards must also be prescribed. How to use the helmet must also be properly stated. It won’t be right to assume that the motorcyclists and okada passengers are incorrigible and that the only way forward is to impose penalties. Many okada riders are college graduates, and the owners of those motorcycles belong to some of the most important classes in society.
All motorcyclists should be registered and given uniforms and numbers for easy identification. What can be done about the threat of kidnappers? This is so metaphysical and confusing. But Nigerians are addressing this by buying their own safety helmets. So many people now go out these days, carrying their own helmets. Due to the sudden surge in demand, the price of helmets has risen from N750 in December to as high as N6,000 in the second week of January. The cheapest for now is the factory helmet at N2,000 per unit. Every helmet, except the locally improvised caricatures, is imported. Things are so bad in Nigeria, we can’t even manufacture crash helmets! The helmet-use directive is only one part of the bargain though. The FRSC and the municipal authorities must also insist on safe riding, and wage war against drunk driving and the use of sub-standard motorcycles.
I get the impression that commercial motorcyclists are having fun. They are beginning to obey the new regulation. Politicians are now buying motorcycles and safety helmets for okada riders. Companies are also now cashing in on the helmet-rule for advertisement purposes. Already, the company that produces Indomie noodles has turned many okada riders into mobile billboards. Commerce, humour and opportunism predominate. The problem is with the superstitious passengers. The onus is on government to create an efficient public transportation system that will rescue Nigerians from the terror of commercial motorcyclists. Our leaders may not know how serious the problem is. Afterall, their wives and children do not use the okada.
Friday, January 09, 2009
The scam that failed
By Reuben Abati
I have always read stories about different kinds of scams that Nigerians have turned into an emergent symbol of the Nigerian national character much to the dismay and discomfiture of the more decent and civilized majority. Professor Pat Utomi’s name was once used by some people to solicit for funds. I was one of the concerned friends who quickly drew his attention to the scam. The Punch website was also once hacked into.
The newspaper had to quickly alert its readers. When a story was put out on President Yar’Adua’s alleged resignation from office, through the News Agency of Nigeria’s official e-mail, it was an astonished nation that was told that this was the handiwork of hackers. The scammers caused so much furore and discomfort. Yesterday, it happened to me too. This is clearly a case of knowing where the shoe pinches only when you wear it. It is not funny at all.
When fraudsters try to tarnish your image, cause you undeserved distress and malign you, you are forced to wonder why Nigerians are so cruel. There is so much cruelty in the hearts and hands of many of our compatriots. Too many sadists in this land. I was on my way to the office when my phone began to ring. The caller had stated clearly that she suspected that some people had hacked into my e-mail. I kept asking her: are you sure? How? It turned out that she had received an e-mail asking her to contribute a sum of N250, 000 to help save Reuben Abati’s daughter. It is pointless paraphrasing this e-mail that went round to nearly all my contacts yesterday morning. Titled “Emmergency” (sic), it is reproduced as follows unedited:
Hello,
This is an emergency , i seriously consider you to help me with sum of 250,000 Naira which i will pay immediately i get back, i am on a Conference in India , I will be back on the 15th of January 2009. My Daughter is seriously in need of medical attention after he was involved in an accident in Lagos , she is now at a private hospital waiting for medical solution and she has been asked to make payment the same above amount before further medical treatment will be continue,
i don’t want to loss her. Hope to hear a positive news from you . I
don’t want other to know about this, do keep it to yourself, all i need at
the moment is 250,000 as a loan for her medical deposit so that the Doctor can save her life, i can not send money from where i am now.
I am very confused and desperate and i don’t seem to understand why this thing is happening to me, i promise to refund you your money immediately i get back home .Please kindly contact the doctor via email
dr.ojolowoonline@googlemail.com or call 070411505005 to know who and where to send the money. I am trusting you that you will do the needful immediately
Regards
Mr Reuben Abati
The first phone call that I received was followed by an endless stream of calls. I practically couldn’t do much yesterday other than explaining to people that “i am not on a Conference in India”, and that my daughter is not involved in any accident, so she is not in need of a “medical solution.” Yes, I don’t want to “loss” my daughter, but I am not by God’s grace in any “confused or desperate” situation. Concerned friends who immediately saw through the scam reported to me later that they told the scammer to go to hell. They had great fun condemning the grammatical howlers in the solicitous mail.
One very nice guy sent a mail later in the day telling me that he was sure I lack the capacity to write such pathetic prose that flowed from the pen of “Mr Reuben Abati”. Thank you sir. But some other friends decided to take on the fellow. They called Dr Ojolowo’s line, only to hear some muffled sounds in the background: a kind of indistinct “hello; listening”. Others sent mails to Dr Ojolowo expressing concern and offering to help. Such persons were given a bank account number, with a name and address. Dr Ojolowo. What a name! Translated, it means money is like rainfall.
The full name in Yoruba is actually: “Ojolowo ko mo enikan” (Money is like rainfall, it can fall on anyone). Dr Ojolowo and his accomplices wanted a Naira Rain using my name and expressing negative thoughts about my daughter. They wanted a rain of foreign currency too. Their e-mail traveled as far as Senegal, Canada, the United Kingdom, Tanzania, South Africa, indeed all over the world. In an age of technology, the new media of the internet has closed all spaces, and so much good or evil can be transported worldwide within an instant.
I was lucky I got to know about the scam early. So I was told. Friends later regaled me with stories about how others have had either their mobile phones or e-mails compromised. One old man sent N800, 000 to an account when he received a text message telling him that his son had been involved in an accident and money was needed urgently to save his life. There was nothing wrong with his son. Mobile phones and e-mails are used in other parts of the world in a constructive and positive manner. A growing population of Nigerians has turned these into tools of crime and abuse.
We continue to argue about how increased penetration of telephony and the computer could help raise literacy and communication standards in Africa. But the Nigerian is busy in front of the computer using it to hack into people’s mails and bank accounts. Yes, such things happen in other parts of the world too, but the growth of cyber crime in Nigeria is frightening. It is even more so as there isn’t in place a proper legal framework yet, or technology, for tracking and dealing with cybercrime in Nigeria. The only “medical solution” that we all need is to beware of the fraudsters in our midst. They cause us so much heartache. They destroy the image of our country. They draw attention to the failure of values in our society. We must render their trade unprofitable by becoming vigilant. Individuals yes. But corporate establishments also, especially banks which may become special targets soon.
I wanted to access my e-mail to assess the extent of damage. Doing so was difficult. The mail box kept telling me that my password was wrong. I eventually managed to access the mailbox after admitting that I had problems with my password. I followed the yahoo prompts. The hackers had tried to clean up their act a bit. Although their mail was sent to virtually everyone in my mail list, I met only about five of such mails in the sent folder. Further checks revealed an alert from Yahoo indicating that my password was changed at 7. 04 am on January 8, 2009.
I also later discovered that a special bank account was opened around 10 am, the same day, specially for the exercise? And the criminals went to work on my friends and associates soon after. But who knows how many account numbers they actually opened for the purpose. And how many banks they used. And whether anyone has sent money into those accounts believing that I was truly in need. I didn’t realize I was so marketable until yesterday. Those guys wanted to turn my name into a cash cow. The idiots. They can’t even compose a successful paragraph in English. They can’t even spell e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-y.
But I confess I was rattled. I was shivering, panicking, and trying all possible means to stop people from parting with their hard-earned money. I ended up with instant diarrhea. My cousin, Tunji, who was with me when the news broke had to stay with me for the better part of the day. He left only when he was sure I had calmed down a bit. To survive in Nigeria obviously requires super-human skills and effort. The hackers had suggested that I wanted a loan. They were going to borrow money in my name from thousands of people. And they used my exact e-mail. The message was sent from my box not a look-alike. There is nothing I hate like taking a loan. My wife thinks that there is nothing wrong with it. But whenever I got persuaded to take a loan to sort out anything, I would immediately lapse into a prolonged bout of insomnia. So, the word “loan” is not a very important word in my private dictionary.
The sad end of this story is that some friends took the scam mail seriously. One of them wrote saying he is “deeply sorry about this matter”. He volunteered to “source funds from his friends in high places.” Please don’t. But the happy side of it all, I guess, is nipping the scam in the bud before much damage was done. My daughter and I also received so many prayers from well-wishers and family relations. “God will forbid any such thing as a motor accident in your life.” “God will protect you and your family”. “God is on your side, my brother.” That God was brought into the matter should not be surprising. God must have heard the name Reuben Abati so many times yesterday, He must have wondered: who is this fellow?
I claim all the good wishes with gratitude. In the nature of things, all the positive thoughts flowing from those illumined souls who responded to the suggestions of the evil-doers, with prayers, had cancelled out the negative thoughts in the scam mail. In the presence of light, darkness melts into nothingness. Tonight, when voices become echoes, I shall pray for those scammers… And for our leaders that God will touch their hearts so that we can avoid the conditions that have created this army of scammers: Yahoo Yahoo boys and girls.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Yar’Adua’s year
By Reuben Abati
YEAR 2009 will make or mar Mr. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s Presidency. After more than 18 months in office, the incontrovertible evidence and conclusion among Nigerians is that the Yar’adua Presidency has been slow and ineffective. It has not done much to make a difference in the lives of the people. The seven-point agenda has been mouthed and repeated so often, it sounds like an echo of an ambition that is perpetually in the making. Hence, President Yar’Adua has been garlanded with all kinds of pejorative epithets: Baba Go slow, Father U-turn, Standstill President, an expression of the people’s impatience with the pace of his administration. In search of explanations for the seeming leisurely pace of a man who has been given the biggest assignment in the land and perhaps the most strategic position in the continent, leadership of Africa’s most populous nation and the sixth largest oil producing country in the world, Nigerians readily bought into the conclusion that ill-health is the biggest obstacle in the path of the presidency.
The President has fought hard to defend his biology, and has even had to take the Leadership Newspapers to court to show how sensitive he is about the subject, but in May 2008, he readily admitted that what is perceived as his slowness is actually an attempt on his part to study the Nigerian situation, to take stock and plan. He had argued that the bane of the developmental process in Nigeria has been the failure of planning. In a country where statistics are unreliable, records are hardly kept, and important files disappear from government custody or are set ablaze by thieves in official corridors, planning really can be an uphill task. Planning without facts is like a walk in a blind alley.
In President Yar’Adua’s case, his suggestion that he had spent a whole year planning was an admission of his own lack of preparedness for that high office. And between May 2007 and December 2008, this was most evident as the government changed its mind repeatedly. The budgeting process in 2007 and 2008 was so mismanaged, unspent funds had to be returned to the treasury at year-end or stolen by greedy state officials. Even speeches at public events became an occasion for politics and regret as the President occasionally said the wrong things (he did at the University of Ibadan 60th Founders day Anniversary and Convocation), and in another instance he had to disown a speech that been delivered on his behalf at the Obafemi Awolowo University Convocation ceremony.
Even the massacre in Jos was mismanaged by the Federal Government. Nigeria runs a funny security arrangement whereby although state Governors are called Chief Security Officers in their states, the actual Chief Security Officer for all the states is the President who exercises direct control over all the state security agencies. The order to move the security units to Jos did not arrive until the violence had gone on freely for hours on end, with disastrous consequences. Where was the Chief Security Officer of Nigeria? An embarrassed and marginalised Plateau State Government has now taken the Federal Government to court. It has also set up a parallel Commission of Enquiry.
Sympathetic observers have noted that the Yar’Adua administration may have seemed somewhat tentative because of the prolonged litigation over the 2007 Presidential election which distracted the President’s attention. But that was resolved before the end of the year 2008, with the Supreme court ruling in two different cases in favour of President Yar’Adua. And so he enters 2009, with a confirmed victory at the polls, assurances of his own good health, not by doctors but by him, and at last, he has managed to put together a cabinet which he says can do the job. All the planks seem to be in place in his reckoning. So he really thinks. In 2009, Nigerians will not expect their President to give excuses. The tentativeness and the U’turns of old if they were to be repeated in this new year will amount to an insult. We expect the Yar’Adua government to be more purposeful, more determined and better focussed. For future purposes, Nigerians must worry about a governance system which requires elected public officials to start planning only when they get into office, such a system which does not guarantee stability and a continuity of the governance machinery. If the Yar’Adua government were again to show signs of dithering and flops in 2009, it would have written itself off the pages of history by its own accord. Nigerians are impatient for good reason.
To be fair to President Yar’Adua, he is, in private, a most articulate man. He is very eloquent about the issues that should constitute the priorities of the Nigerian government. He is analytical in his reasoning and most convincing in laying out what needs to be done. But the same can be said for many other Nigerians. We are a country of eloquent and analytical persons. But to move this country forward, eloquence and paralytic analysis is not enough. Soporific planning is worse. What Nigeria needs is a hands-on confrontation with the issues of development. In 2009, President Yar’Adua must provide the leadership that Nigerians are asking for. It is in this year, that he will show whether he truly merits that office or not. His true electoral victory does not lie with the courts of law, but his performance in office. With the international price of crude oil tumbling, with a credit crunch making a mockery of neo-liberal capitalism, with Nigeria seized by de-industrialisation and a growing army of jobless and angry youths, with insecurity in the land and doubts in the minds of many, Nigeria is indeed in desperate need of visionary and pro-active leadership. It won’t be an easy task, but government must be seen to be making an effort and achieving results, not sleeping on duty.
By the end of 2009, ambitious politicians would again begin to jostle for the 2011 general elections. Each time this happens in Nigeria, politics cruelly replaces governance. Thus, the people are forever short-changed. There is so much wastage of time and ability built into the culture of Nigeria’s emerging democracy. President Yar’Adua is in a privileged position to make a difference. This is the decisive year when he cannot afford to fail Nigerians. If he does, he risks the possibility of his four years as President being written down as Nigeria’s wasted years. It is a terrible verdict that he must work hard to avoid. Like other people of the world, Nigerians are impressed by what they see, what they hear and what they feel in their private lives. President Yar’Adua must give Nigerians the opportunity for hope and faith. Now is the time.
In both his Budget 2009 presentation before the Senate and his Christmas message to Nigerians, President Yar’Adua had again restated his priorities, breaking down the seven-point agenda to specific deliverable targets. His government wants to provide motorable roads across the country through a concessioning process. This certainly doesn’t require endless planning. Have the partners been identified? When are they moving to site? The East-West road is a death trap, just like other Federal roads across the country. Transportation is key to the development process. Since May 2007, the only major response by the Yar’Adua government has been the spectacle of the former Minister of Transportation, weeping profusely to lament the decay of the Lagos-Benin highway.
The Yar’Adua government also wants to address the power supply crisis. This is almost like stale news. What Nigerians are waiting for is results. In the case of the power crisis, they are in fact asking for a miracle. To underscore the seriousness of the situation, President Yar’Adua should attempt the experiment of outlawing the use, sale, rental, repair, and importation of power generating plants in Nigeria for a month. The country will come to an end, and we will all revert to where this country belongs - a primitive, dark age. The use of generators hides the shame of our nation. Can President Yar’Adua tackle the already existing emergency in the power sector? He has talked so much about it. If he fails, Nigerians will always remember how he and his predecessor, former President Olusegun Obasanjo merely wasted public funds chasing the dream of regular electricity across Nigeria. Something that is taken for granted by other countries. It bears restating that a country that runs on generators, and that is perpetually in darkness can neither achieve the Millennium Development Goals, nor the so-called Vision 20 2020 target.
President Yar’Adua wants to take on the Niger Delta Question in 2009, so he has created a Ministry of the Niger Delta. The people of the Niger Delta can no longer be fooled. President Yar’Adua should move trucks and machines to the Niger Delta and begin a concrete process of development and renewal. The Governors alone can’t do what is required. This is not about bureaucracy. It is about the Nigerian state showing for once that an emergency indeed exists in that part of the country.
The President is also promising Nigerians electoral reform in 2009. Putting together a new Electoral Act and amending parts of the Constitution is so easy. Putting the new codes of legislation into practice is where the challenge lies. The litmus test of President Yar’Adua’s sincerity will come in the lead up to the 2011 elections. Will he subscribe to the PDP-must-rule-for-60 years project and thereby use state machinery to impose his own political party on Nigerians by force? Ghanaians next door are putting their democracy to test: they are having two run-offs to determine a 2008 Presidential election that has now moved into a new year. There may be hiccups but what the Ghanaians are doing shows much enlightenment. In Nigeria, elections are often determined by such anti-democratic factors as the will of Godfathers and the given right of an empty incumbency. Much of the problem with Nigerian democracy is not legal, but cultural. Electoral reform must include a cultural re-orientation of Nigerian politics.
But what President Yar’Adua must also worry about is the creeping death of social mobility in Nigeria. There is a terrible war of the classes going on in our country, between the rich and the poor. The rich are getting richer and exploiting the poor, those social institutions which used to provide the poor an opportunity for mobility and advancement have been destroyed. The schools are out, industries are laying off staff, they are closing shop. Education is becoming worthless. Only the children of the rich get good education because their parents can pay for it. They are the only ones who get good medical care. Poor Nigerians of the past produced children who went past the rich of old on the social ladder because there was in that other Nigeria a lot of emphasis on merit and ability. But today, background is the most important factor. A country where social mobility is conditioned by background,, where people are robbed of the natural capacity to hope and aspire is a dangerous society. This is why there is so much violence in the land. President Yar’Adua is called upon to appreciate the urgency of the Nigerian problem and provide the leadership that this moment requires.