The Nation December 28, 2014 4 by The Nation

Newspaper of the Year

FAYEMI TO FAYOSE:

20 of Borno's 27 LGs now under B/Haram control State has two million displaced persons, says Dep Gov –Page 6

Lying is your official policy •Fayemi

Says new Govt–Page House cost N2bn only 7

•Fayose

Nigeria’s widest circulating newspaper

Vol.09, No. 3078

TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM

SUNDAY

N200.00

DECEMBER 28, 2014

2015: Northern PDP chiefs reject Jonathan campaign jobs –Page 4

–Page 6

President holds secret talks with Babangida in Minna FG SUPPRESSING MISSING $20BN OIL MONEY AUDIT REPORT –APC Okonjo-Iweala denies $30bn missing from Excess Crude Account –Pages 4 & 5

SEC: OTEH TENURE ELONGATION BID RUNS INTO TROUBLE

•All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, addressing the crowd at the 10,000 Man March to muster support for him in Lagos yesterday. Photo: NIYI ADENIRAN

Presidency: Jonathan, Buhari get nine rivals –Page 4

–Page 4

PEOPLES DEMOCRATIC PARTY ALL PROGRESSIVES CONGRESS HOPE DEMOCRATIC PARTY Goodluck Jonathan

ALLIED CONGRESS PARTY

Ganiyu Galadima

Muhammadu Buhari

ALLIANCE FOR DEMOCRACY Rafiu Salau

Ambrose Albert

UNITED DEMOCRATIC PARTY Godson Okoye

AFRICAN DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS NATIONAL CONSCIENCE PARTY KOWA PARTY Nani Ibrahim Ahmad

ACTION ALLIANCE

Martin Onovo

Tunde Anifowoshe-Kelani

Comfort Oluremi Shonaya

UNITED PROGRESSIVE PARTY Chekwas Okorie

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

PAGE 2

CAPTURED

Transit cops deliver baby on Philadelphia train

BABY boy was born on a crowded Philadelphia subway train late on Christmas Day, delivered by two transit policemen who harkened to the call of duty armed with surgical gloves and lots of pluck. "I don't think we had time to get nervous or get scared," Sergeant Daniel Caban said. Caban was patrolling at street level when he got word of the impending birth at about 6 p.m. from commuters exiting the subway. Officer Darrell James quickly joined him on the Market Frankford Line train after hearing an emergency announcement over radio. On bare train seats, Caban, 34, helped remove the woman's pants while James, 29, delivered the child. The father of the baby removed his sweater and handed it to the men to wrap his new child in. Passengers stood by and held open the train's doors during the ordeal to keep the train from leaving the station. Neither officer with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) had ever helped deliver a stranger's baby, they said. After unwrapping the umbilical cord from around the newborn's neck, paramedics entered the train car and took over. The medics cut the umbilical cord and took the baby and his mother by ambulance to the Hahnemann University Hospital. The pair was in good condition on Friday afternoon, hospital spokeswoman Gianna DeMedio said. On Friday, Caban and James visited the mother, who was excited to see them and grateful for their help, they said.

Overload redefined â&#x20AC;˘ The humble Keke Marwa is capable of incredible feats-justlike this one labouring under an overload of coconut shells

BAROMETER

Infrasonic language at Lagos coroner's inquest A POST-GRADUATE student of Explosives and Material Science at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) in Kaduna, Mr Biedomo Iguniewei, has testified before Chief Magistrate Oyetade Komolafe's coroner's inquest into the Synagogue building collapse deaths of more than 100 religious tourists that the building probably came down because it was attacked by a highenergy infrasonic radiation weapon. Mr Iguniewei, 37, claimed he reached that conclusion based on both his sixyear work with the Defence Industries Corporation (DIC) and his apparently unsolicited private but brief investigation into the collapsed building. Until Iguniewei testified about the probable use of this esoteric weapon, it was not clear how many Nigerians, even in the scientific community, had heard of infrasonic radiation or its use as a weapon. Now, whether the coroner likes it or not, he will have to contend with this mystifying theory of low intensity sound, hitherto the preserve of science fiction. Postulating confidently before the coroner, Mr Iguniewei said that after studying the damage done to the building, whose foundation pillars were still standing, he had eliminated all other possibilities and concluded that the collapsed Synagogue

if it had them, on ISIS buildings in Raqqa, Mosul, Sanjar and elsewhere sunday@thenationonlineng.net in Syria and Iraq. But assuming such a weapon as nate distance. Infrasound or anything ble fell on the collapsed pile, described by the highly imaginative infrasonic, whether of weapon -- which Synangogue officials had suggested researcher, Mr Iguniewei, existed in are still being researched into or are that the collapse was probably the hand- Nigeria, why of all places would the already in very limited use -- or of iwork of terrorists who had threatened authorities, in a government that device, refers to anything that gener- to hit the church, perhaps a vague ref- courts religious groups madly, want to ates low-frequency sound (lower than erence to Boko Haram. deploy it against the Synagogue It is remarkable how a rather easy Church of All Nations? Mr Iguniewei 20 Hertz) for a variety of purposes. Mr Iguniewei reminds us, natu- matter to deal with, such as investigat- refuses to be drawn into that quickrally, that infrasound cannot be seen ing the reasons for the building col- sand. He has thrown us a hard bone; he or heard, and is different from acoustic lapse and the unnatural deaths of tour- leaves us to determine whether our or ultrasound. But he also obliquely ists, should elicit the kind of confusion dentition can cope. Perhaps in coming suggests that weapons are always and complexities that have enveloped to his conclusions, the smart Chief being produced and the producers are it. Leader of the Synagogue church him- Magistrate Komolafe will doubtless always looking for ways and where to self has pointedly refused to appear put the evidence together and weigh test these weapons. But he is careful to before the coroner, for it is almost cer- them against all possible motives. He hedge his assertions. Said he: "It is tain he will be embarrassed once he is will also determine whether Nigeria important for this court (the coroner) put on the witness stand. And for a possesses a craft that can deliver the to be aware of this option (his explana- tragedy that involves the death of about esoteric infrasound weapon referred to tion of the Synagogue building col- 115 people, most of them South Afri- by Mr Iguniewei. If his answer is yes, lapse), but why it could have been used cans, it is curious how Nigeria, in the let him praise Mr Iguniewei for helphere is another matter entirely." In name of due process, is allowing legal ing the coroner to come to an astoundguest house was fired at by an infra- other words if the motives for the use of and bureaucratic fog to confuse every- ing decision. But if his answer is no, let sonic weapon, either from a flying infrasound weapon cannot be substan- one and diminish the impact of the lives him reserve very harsh words for the object, presumably the aircraft Syna- tiated, it is no longer the concern of Mr lost. Worse, now we are being enter- weapons researcher, who for one gogue officials claimed hovered over or Iguniewei, nor does that fact vitiate his tained by highfalutin theories of exotic frightful moment, nearly made the milcircled the building, or from stationary theory. Phew! He does not need to James Bond weapons, the kind that the itarily more powerful and developed location on the ground of indetermi- remind us that even before the last rub- United States would have liked to use, industrialised West green with envy.

Fayose v. Omirin: between modernism and traditionalism

HE titanic battle between the feisty Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose, and the unyielding Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Adewale Omirin, has transformed into a test of wills, not of constitutionality. Mr Omirin of course remains the Speaker, and won't surrender his constitutional powers or his office. But Mr Fayose has ensured that the House of Assembly does not make laws for the good governance of the state, irrespective of the limitations to his powers. It is clear to every rational person who, between the governor and the Speaker, is at fault. But something more controversial and bigger is afoot. The test of wills merely masks the struggle between traditionalism and modernism in the state, a strug-

gle revolving around bribe giving and bribe soliciting. Mr Fayose's men claimed that Dr Omirin and his fellow lawmakers asked and received a bribe of N200,000 every time they visited. No, said Dr Omirin, Mr Fayose offered N7 million to each lawmaker to defect to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which the lawmakers declined, but were given N200,000 each to fuel their cars. If they wanted to be bribed, as Mr Fayose's men claimed, they would have received the N7m. Mr Fayose himself has kept discretely quiet, perhaps smart enough in his anarchical longings to know that the giver of a bribe is as guilty as the receiver, and that both, like whores and their customers, are diminished by the very act of asking and receiving, or of lying together in

bed naked. Ekiti is both a highly traditional Yoruba town and a provincial state. Could the governor's visitors in such a state, especially lawmakers anxious not to be seen as unnecessarily antagonistic, have declined the governor's gifts, Greek gifts, as it turned out? It seems very likely that the adamant 19 All Progressives Congress (APC) lawmakers, who are at daggers drawn with the governor, did not see the gifts as bribe. They are probably innocent, if we can avoid the imputation of bribe, which N200,000 elicited. But knowing Mr Fayose for who he is: an eccentric, anarchist, subversive and irrational and loud politician, it would have been wiser to avoid the governor's gifts and largess like a plague, dining with him, if they must, with very long spoons.

By ADEKUNLE ADE-ADELEYE

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

COLUMN

Don't let them die T

HESE are traumatic times for the nation. The country has been literally foaming in blood. We may have to reach back to the apogee of the In?a empire for the equivalent of such medieval bloodletting. The outgoing year is our own annus horribilis, no doubt about that. Before our eyes, Nigeria has become a legendary abattoir with the odour of gore and human dismemberment hanging heavily in the air. The only consolation is that if compulsory change does not come to these climes very soon, we can as well call in the receivers. When a nation is in such historic distress, it can be assumed that its major institutions are also afflicted. An organic crisis of the state does not spare the vital organs of state. The army is the premier institutional bulwark of the state. If we say Nigeria is in traumatic distress, the trauma is writ large over the military in its operational and strategic capacity as well as its offensive and defensive capability. Despite its return to strict professionalism and the enviable strides it has taken in the demilitarization of the polity, the Nigerian military has not been smelling of rose in recent times. The army has suffered a painful and tragic demystification. Once fabled and much respected for its peace-keeping prowess abroad, the Nigerian military has been humbled and taken to the cleaners by a hitherto rag-tag militia which has now acquired the offensive deadliness of a well-motivated fighting force. Reader of this column would have noticed a reluctance to discuss military matters. This is because of the sensitive nature of national security and the territorial integrity of a nation, no matter who is in temporary power. But the military is subordinated to civil authorities because military matters are far too serious and important to be left to professional soldiers. As the modern world is proving, the armoury of knowledge is far superior to knowledge of armoury. The human brains carry the deadliest ordnance. Yet as the last defender of the state and the ultimate bulwark against insecurity and anarchy, the military must be insured and insulated against petty partisan politics. A disgraced army is not only a danger unto itself but a grave danger to the nation. When the army ceases to exist as an

nooping around With

Tatalo Alamu

â&#x20AC;˘Soldiers arraigned before the armyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s court martial

effective fighting force, the nation itself ceases to exist as a viable proposition. This is why whatever its past misjudgment and its current misdemeanour, enlightened self-interest dictates an urgent engagement with the military in order to help them out of the current cul de sac. There is opportunity in every crisis and there is no terrible situation without its redeeming features. It is just as well that the Boko Haram crisis remains within the ambit of an internal security operation rather than outright war against an external enemy. That notwithstanding, the fallout has been equally remarkable. At the last count, eighty officers and men of the army have been sentenced to death for mutiny. About two hundred enlisted men are in the dock awaiting trial and sentencing. It doesn't get more grotesquely unsettling. Let us be clear about something. There can be no question of condoning mutiny which is a grievous offence that undermines the cohesiveness and integrity of the army as an effective fighting force. In dire war situations, mutineers, deserters, cowards and other saboteurs are often rounded up and summarily shot without any recourse to legal acrobatics. Yet the disproportionate number of culprits and the nature of insubordination in this case suggest something more fundamental than routine mutiny. Many of these men have been shouting from the rooftop that their real offence was to have the te-

merity to ask for better and more adequate weaponry to conduct a campaign against an enemy armed with modern and sophisticated ordnance. This effrontery has merely earned them an elongated charge sheet. Last Friday, at a press briefing that was as bizarre as it was bristling with dark comedy, the military paraded an untagged colonel as a whistle-blowing suspect. Morale and discipline appeared to be at their lowest ebb. Even the most malignant enemy of the black race must be sad and sorry that this is happening to the army of the greatest conglomeration of black souls in the world. All of which suggest that as usual we may be treating the symptom while ignoring the fundamental ailment. An internet cynic noted wryly that at this rate the army may as well end up putting a whole brigade on trial for mutiny. The sheer absurdity of the suggestion ought to alert us that we may actually be looking at something probably more sinister: a complete collapse of discipline and the fracturing of the army. Having fought a civil war without the army fracturing, the nation may well be suffering from the accumulated stress of partially resolved crises. The ongoing armed critique of the nation and the state by the Boko Haram insurgency has exposed the grave flaws of both in a way that the civil war and the numerous coups and military uprisings never did. Coups and civil wars are endogamous crises of the state, internal disputes among

Le moinmoin, cest moi

HOEVER coined this name for the Yoruba delicacy made from beans must have a sense of the wild possibilities of language. The name connotes a mellow mellifluousness and a delicate deliciousness which haunt the taste buds for a long time. Even the indigenous name--?l?l?--- connotes suppleness and subtlety which hint at Yoruba cuisine at its most gloriously addictive. The reason for this flight of linguistic fancy and culinary masturbation so to say is a passing reference to the great Yoruba delicacy in this past week's offering of fellow columnist, Tony Marinho, in a moving tribute to his late stepmother, Madam Grace Ebun Marinho, who recently joined the Saints Triumphant. It is when you realize that others also share your secret passions that our common humanity is reinforced. As a whistle-blowing patrol guard of ancient Yoruba cuisine, snooper took in Marinho's casual reference to "moin moin" with considerable skepticism at the initial stage. "What does this oyinbo-looking man know about moin moin?" yours sincerely rumbled to himself in ill-humour. But after the first paragraph,

one became convinced that the good old doctor was an aficionado of the delicacy indeed. Two quick tests of connoisseurship did it. The doctor also has an abiding distaste for synthetic moin moin which comes wrapped in cellophane. This usually robs the end product of a certain aroma and exquisite taste supplied by the indigenous wrapping leaves usually freshly cut. Second was Marinho's contention that "good moinmoin always leaves the best tasting morsels hidden between the leaves". Marinho is spot on. This is what is known in native parlance as "l?b?" About thirty two years after describing this delicious phenomenon as "elusive sublimities cowering under the wrapping leaves" in a review of Soyinka's Ake, snooper is hard put to beat himself. L?b? is the ultimate delight of the moin moin aficionado. It is not always enough to fill the month; always leaving tantalizing hints of insatiable demands. Right from youth, snooper has always had a huge passion for steaming moin moin. Among friends and close acquaintances, this was always a source of heavy jokes and feisty pranks. If one were to be stranded or sequestered

on an uninhabited island, the last request will be for a generous supply of ??l? and ? ko. And whilst we are still on the subject of moin moin, it is meet to report on a curious incident that occurred on September 9th this outgoing year. Snooper's longstanding crony, Barrister Akinlawon Ige, a scion of the illustrious Ige family of Esa Oke, suddenly materialized at the doorstep brimming with mischief and merry gamesmanship. He had left Ibadan at cock's crow to head for Lagos just to wish his friend a happy birthday. Before anybody could say Jack Robinson, Akin had unleashed a basketful of steaming moinmoin and eko all the way from Ibadan. It was a wonderful birthday present. Without wasting any further time on formalities, snooper led the lawyer to a corner of the house where domestic hostilities duly commenced. After about an hour the whole house was piled up with dead wrapping leaves with both aging delinquents unable to get up. Whereupon Akin crawled up and ordered his driver to take him back to Ibadan. Mission accomplished. Snooper sank back in sated torpor. God bless you all and happy new year in advance.

state personnel who have gone to the same schools and learnt the same fighting strategy. The contradictions are not fundamental and are easily resolved. Insurgency, on the other hand, particularly religious insurgency, is an exogamous crisis and an externally imposed confrontation with a different paradigm of engagement and a different order of battle. It is a duel unto death without any mediating or countervailing circumstances. The current crisis of the Nigerian military formations is a reflection of a more fundamental crisis of the Nigerian state and nation. Although the Boko Haram crisis could have been better handled, the ascendant generation of Nigerian military leadership cannot be held responsible for the Boko Haram insurgency. Endogamous crises of the state, because they involve non-fundamental contradictions, are ironically a double-edged sword. Since they are easily resolved and without rigorous inquest and sufficient retribution they leave a trail of impunity and a culture of state promiscuity. For example, because they were still in passive power, the military got away with their misadventure in partisan politics without properly evaluating its short term and long term effect on the institution. Till date, no rigorous inquest was ever conducted into the real cause and consequences of the civil war. It is the sins of omission and commission of their forebears that have caught up with the Nigerian military. When he was asked why the post-Saddam Iraqi army wilts so pathetically before the ferocious onslaught of the ISIS fighters , the American ambassador noted tersely that it was because they had nothing to fight for. Yet this was the fragment of the same army whose forebears fought the Iranians toe to toe in a seven year grudge match between the Shitte elite of Iran and the ascendant Sunni hegemonists of Iraq. The reason for this contrasting attitude within what is supposed to be the same military formation is very simple. Under the tyrannical and cruelly whimsical Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi military had something to fight for. It could be a debased and authoritarian form of Iraqi nationalism but it worked. In the Iraq of post-American occupation, both nation and nationalism have disappeared leaving

a volcanic landscape permanently irrigated by blood. The failure of successive generations of Nigerian leaders to evolve a national ideology as a byproduct of forging the disparate nationalities into an organic community has now returned to haunt the military in its operative and strategic capacity. Simply put, the Nigeria army has nothing to fight for. All the great armies the world has seen, from the army of Alexander the great that swept all before it, the Tartan hordes of Genghis Khan, the human waves of Mao tse Tung, to the rugged Vietnamese insurgents of Ho Chi Minh, have always had something to fight for. For centuries, the political notion of American Exceptionalism powered its fighting forces. Against the ferocious Boko Haram insurgents, it is the military's residual fighting flair developed in the course of several international peace-keeping operations that has kept it going. It was the fighting spirit that produced the likes of the late, iconic Brigadier Maxwell Khobe whose heroic exploits in Sierra Leone have entered military legend and folklore. But it relied on individual talent rather than on solid tradition. Needless to add they can only thrive and flourish within the context of conventional military operations against mainly conventional fighting forces and small time scoundrels. Against an unconventional fighting force with determination and a suicidal frame of mind, an ill-equipped and de-motivated army is bound to have its back to the wall. Only an army imbued with formidable nationalist zeal combined with superior knowledge and cutting edge technology can trump the wild and merciless fanaticism of a fighting outfit spurred by religious extremism. The transformation of the Nigerian military into a modern and effective fighting force cannot be divorced from the transformation of the Nigerian nation itself to true political and economic modernity. We can have a debate about the principles and modalities as part of the current pitch for genuine change. Meanwhile and in the interest of concerned compatriots and posterity, the Nigerian army should immediately put on hold the impending judicial slaughter of its own. Nigeria has already witnessed too much bloodshed in the last few years. Please don't let these men die.

The corrosive art of political insult

ust when snooper was beginning to lament the dearth or possible death of the great art of political insult, things have begun to shape up. The presidential slugfest is beginning to live up to the billing. The happy days of great political insults may be here with us again. A rogue professor from the University of Lamurudu has famously described the presidential candidate of the APC in very uncomplimentary terms. Whereupon an irate Dr Usman sniffily noted that he had googled up the said professor and nothing was coming up. Nothing ? Haba, doctor, not even a letter to the editor as my egbon, Omotoye Olorode, would quip in the course of a bust up in those days with another professorial wannabe? Snooper wishes to inform the doctor that the political economy of scholarship in Nigeria is no longer Google-compliant. A child who says his parents are remiss in poverty has a lifetime to prove his own

worth. However it is in the corrosive exchange between Musliu Obanikoro and Commodore Bode George that political insult inches towards a literary summit. George took Obanikoro to the cleaners noting that "Lagos has moved on, far beyond the primitive wretchedness of little ill-bred hooligans". In a swift sucker punch, Obanikoro noted that "the posttraumatic stress disorder that comes with a time in jail would take more than just an unholy alliance with a pharmacist to heal." Phew!!!! All of which must remind one of an exchange in the ancient Roman Senate. After repeatedly badgering and tormenting a new senator for being a veterinary doctor, one of his accusers rounded on him. "Sir, we learnt that you cure animals?" the man crowed sniffily. "And sir, are you ill?" the vet growled. End of conversation.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

NEWS

Jonathan, IBB in secret meeting P

RESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan yesterday visited former military president, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, in his Minna, Niger State residence with the duo holding talks for about an hour. The president, who was accompanied by the National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, his Chief of Staff, Gen. Jones Arogbofa, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Senator Bala Muhammed, former Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi and his chief campaigner, Dr. Ahmadu Ali, among other dignitaries, later told newsmen that the visit

was to "appreciate our leader" and ask after his health since his recent return from medical treatment abroad. He spoke of Babangida's commitment to Nigeria's unity and peace, saying "Of course, you know that this is the end of the year. Within this period, people pay visits. So, I have come to visit him. "You know he came back from a hospital abroad, not too long ago. Since he came back, we have not seen. I need to see

From Jide Orintunsin,Minna/ Augustine Ehikioya, Abuja

my father to know how he is feeling. I am quite pleased the way I have seen him. "Of course, you all know that as a nation, we are facing challenges: security challenges all over, not just in the North; Yes, Boko Haram in the North; the South is not safe: commercial kidnapping and robbery. "He is one of our experienced leaders. As somebody who is

sitting where he was before, I need to see them from time to time to listen to their suggestions. That is one of the areas we can collectively move the country forward and ensure that Nigerians live in peace. "That is the key thing and I am quite pleased that we had a fruitful discussion." Also speaking to reporters, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida asked Nigerians to support the President to keep Nigeria united. "What I will say is simple:

The President means well for this country and he is working well for this country. Anybody who means well for this country should support the President to make sure that Nigeria survives as a united country." Sources said the President used the visit to solicit Babangida's support for his second term aspiration in the next year's general elections. Jonathan arrived Minna in a helicopter chopper at El-Amin

2015 presidential poll: Jonathan, Buhari get nine other rivals

Okonjo-Iweala says $30bn not missing from Excess Crude Account

FROM: Yusuf Alli, Managing Editor, Northern Operation

From Nduka Chiejina (Assistant Editor)

HE Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi OkonjoIweala yesterday denied claim by Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State that $30 billion was missing from the Excess Crude Account. She dismissed the governor's allegation as shocking and totally untrue. The minister in a rebuttal through her Special Adviser, Paul Nwabuikwu, said the governor's statement "gives the impression that the Federal Government sits alone in secret and doles out whatever it wishes to the states from the Federation Account. But anyone who is familiar with the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) process knows that this is simply not true. "There is no $30 billion missing from the Excess Crude Account as alleged by Governor Oshiomhole. How can such a huge amount be missing from the ECA and the Edo State governor will be the only one privy to this" Nwabuiku asked, adding: "it is instructive that the Edo State government did not table this allegation before FAAC for investigation or clarification before going public with a sweeping, political allegation based on casual, back of the envelope calculations." Governor Oshiomhole, the statement admitted, "correctly observed that the economy would be in better shape today if we had saved more for the rainy day. But he failed to recall that the Federal Government's strong advocacy for a low budget benchmark and greater savings in the ECA articulated by the Coordinating Minister was repulsed by some governors. There is no doubt that oil theft is a challenge but this too would have helped." However, the minister did not share what her spokesman called Oshiomhole's overly bleak view of the country's economic prospects, saying: "Yes, the challenges are great and cannot be wished away but as Moody's, the international ratings agency and the IMF confirmed recently, the economy is resilient despite the oil price crash and we retain some advantages as we confront these challenges."

International School, owned by the late Mrs. Maryam Babangida and drove straight to the Uphill residence of Babangida where the two leaders went into a closed door meeting. All the roads leading to the Uphill residence of the former military leader were sealed off from human and vehicular movement for the period of the Presidential visit. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo paid similar visit to the recuperating IBB shortly after he returned to the country.

â&#x20AC;˘President Goodluck Jonathan (r) in a handshake with former President Ibrahim Babangida, during his visit to Minna on yesterday PHOTO: NAN

SEC: Oteh tenure elongation bid runs into trouble T ROUBLE is looming at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) following alleged plan to extend the tenure of its DirectorGeneral Ms Arunma Oteh, or grant her a second term. Employees of the commission, acting under the banner of the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations, Civil Service, Technical and Recreational Employees, are threatening an indefinite strike should the forces pushing for tenure elongation for her, have their way. Oteh, who is the fourth DG of SEC, assumed office in January 2010, having been VicePresident, Corporate Services of African Development Bank (ADB). Her five-year tenure will end on January 1, 2015. Although the SEC DG optionally ought to go on a three-month exit leave, she chose to stay till the last minutes following assurances from some forces in the Presidency that her tenure might be extended or renewed by the President. The development has made Oteh not to prepare her handover notes before the Christmas break as it is customary in the public service. A top source in SEC said: "Five days to the end of the tenure of the DG of SEC, she has not unfolded her exit and transit succession plan to the management and staff. "We learnt that some forces are pushing for either the extension or renewal of her tenure to complete her transformation agenda in the

FROM: Yusuf Alli, Managing Editor, Northern Operation

capital market. "Those seeking the tenure extension/renewal also claimed that Oteh is the current chairperson of Africa Middle East Regional Committee (AMERC) of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). They said she was reelected in September 2014 for another two-year term and Nigeria ought not to lose such a position. "Others claimed that being a First Class graduate of Computer Science, Oteh is a member of the nation's Economic Management Team whose service is required at a critical economic crisis period Nigeria is undergoing. "They also cited Section 5(1 and 2) of the Investments and Securities Act 2007 to buttress their point that Oteh can be granted second term in office." The section says: "The DG and the three full time commissioners shall be appointed by the President upon the recommendation of the minister and confirmation by the Senate. "The DG shall hold office for a period of five years in the first instance and may be reappointed for a further period of five years and no more." But management staff and workers are opposed to any plan to extend Oteh's tenure because of her alleged high-handedness; alleged one-man management style; face-off with the House of

Representatives on some expenditures; low value the SEC had witnessed during her tenure; and irreconcilable differences with staff. A union leader said: "We are tired of Oteh's administration in SEC. The President should let her quit and bring a fresh hand. She has never enjoyed the confidence of her workers for five years. So, what is the rationale for retaining her? "Instead, security agencies were used to hound staff making legitimate demands. Those arrested were Mohammed Salihu; Racheal Olenloa; John Briggs; Mamman Ali Abba; and Dickson Durugo. "The face-off she had with the House of Representatives led to the unending cold war between the presidency and the National Assembly today. We don't want such a DG again. "You will recall that at a point, she was suspended by the Federal Government and later recalled. What the workers are saying is that the capital market will be better without her in SEC." Responding to a question, the union leader added: "We wanted to go on strike three months ago but we were prevailed upon to shelve it since Oteh's tenure will end on January 1, 2015. Now, some forces are seeking the renewal or extension of her tenure. We cannot be deceived at all. Oteh must go." "The outgoing DG of SEC was suspended on June 12, 2012

but she was later recalled by the Federal Government via a letter from the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Chief Anyim Pius Anyim. The reinstatement followed an audit report on SEC by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Her recall has however created a wedge between the Executive and the House of Representatives apart from protest by workers of SEC. The recall however created a wedge between the presidency and the House of Representatives because Oteh was reinstated on the eve of the presentation of the report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Capital Market on the activities of SEC. The crisis between the House and Oteh followed a public hearing into the activities of the capital market. During the hearing, the then Chairman of the House Committee on Capital market and Other Institutions, Mr. Herman Hembe, had alleged that Oteh was not qualified to be DG of SEC. He said the committee also discovered how Oteh allegedly spent N850, 000 on hotel accommodation in a day with N85, 000 to wit on a meal. But Oteh took exception to allegations by Hembe that she is not qualified to be the DG of SEC; seconding of two Access Bank employees to SEC; and how she allegedly spent N850, 000 on hotel accommodation in a day with N85, 000 to wit on a meal.

EN candidates will be slugging it out in the February 14, 2015 presidential election, and that is official. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) last night released the list of the candidates and they include President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and a womanProf. Comfort Oluremi Sonaiya of Kowa Party. The rest are: Ambrose Albert( Hope Democratic Party); Ganiyu Galadima( Allied Congress Party of Nigeria); Rafiu Salau ( Alliance for Democracy); Godson Okoye (United Democratic Party); Dr. Nani Ibrahim Ahmad (African Democratic Congress); Martin Onovo (National Conscience Party); Tunde Anifowoshe-Kelani (Action Alliance); and Chekwas Okorie (United Progressive Party). Their running mates are: Vice-President Namadi Sambo (PDP); Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (APC); Haruna Shaba (Hope Democratic Party); Balarabe Ahmed (ACPN); Prof. Clinton Cliff Akuchie (AD); Haruna Adamu (United Democratic Party); Obianuju MurphyUzohue (African Democratic Congress); Ibrahim Mohammed(NCP); Saidu Bobboi (Kowa Party); Comrade Paul Ishaka Ofomile (Action Alliance); and Bello Umar( United Progressive Party). The submission of the names to INEC closed on December 25 and Nigerians have seven days to raise any objection on the particulars of the candidates. The list of candidates and their credentials were pasted on a container kiosk at the FCT office of INEC in Abuja for claims and objections. This is in line with the provisions of the Electoral Act. INEC also said the grounds for qualification are as specified in Sections 65' 106, 131 and 177 of the 1999 Constitution. The Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Mr. Kayode Robert Idowu, said: "We have complied with the law; we have published the list of all the presidential candidates in all the states of the Federation. For other elective offices, the lists will be published in their constituencies and senatorial districts as applicable."

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

NEWS

Ambode promises trust fund to tackle youth unemployment

Power supply rises to 3,666.76MW

By Remi Adelowo

From John Ofikhenua, Abuja

NERGY supply from the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) currently stands at 3,666.7 mega watts, an increase of 712.19MW in 10 days. The Ministry of Power said on its website that energy generation, which was 3,206.09MW on December 11, has increased to 3,732.27MW. Of the 3,732.27MW generated energy, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which is responsible for feeding the electricity distribution companies, could not evacuate 65.51MW. According to the statistics, the electricity market recorded a peak power generation of 3,912.3 on December 11. The NESI attained its highest peak generated energy of 4,517.6 MW on December 23, 2012. The ministry says vandalism, shortage of gas and other constraints still militate against the attainment of the 5000mega watts target set for this year by the federal government. Meanwhile, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has approved the review of the Multi Year Tariff Order (MYTO) 2 regime with an implication for takeoff date for a disciplined electricity market by January 1, 2015. The commission explained that it would insulate residential customers from the present hike.

Boko Haram strikes in Cameroun

USPECTED Boko Haram militants killed at least 23 people and burned a village down in Cameroon's FarNorth Region, according to a Cameroon army source, Saturday. The attack took place in Mozogo, a locality near the Nigerian border, Xinhua reported. The locality hosts over 8,000 Nigerian refugees living in makeshift camps, where five people were killed in an attack by militants in November, the source said. Boko Haram militants, who have strengthened their attacks on Northern Cameroon since 2013, clashed with the Cameroonian army in Amchide, Makari and Waza, and three other localities in the Far-North Region Friday and Saturday. The source said that the Cameroonian army managed to repel the simultaneous attacks, adding, "The situation is stable for the moment," and that no casualties were recorded on either side. The name Boko Haram, translated from a local dialect, means "non-Islamic education is a sin". The Boko Haram has become a major security threat in neighbouring Nigeria since 2009 and according to the Nigerian government; this radical Islamist terror group has killed more than 3,000 people this year. Earlier this month, Cameroon's army had killed 116 Boko Haram fighters when the insurgents attacked an army base in the far north region of Amchide.

â&#x20AC;˘The Executive Deputy Governor of Kogi State, Architect Yomi Awoniyi administering newly launched Pneumonia Vaccine with a health worker, Mrs. Aminat Adamu, assisting him to hold baby Nofisat Jamiu at the National Launch for Pneumonia Vaccine introduction in Nigeria by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency held in Lokoja Kogi State on 22nd December,2014.

Missing $20b oil money: APC accuses FG of suppressing audit report

HE All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday accused the PDP-led federal government of trying to suppress the audit report on the missing $20 billion oil money and declared that the deadline for the release of the report, which was set by the government itself, has come and gone. National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said in a statement in Ilorin that the Minister of Finance, Ngozi OkonjoIweala, herself had said, at the Financial Times Africa Summit 2014 in London in October, that the report would be ready in November 2014. The party quoted the minister as saying at the October 6, 2014 forum that: ''We engaged PwC (PriceWaterHouseCoopers) with the Auditor General of the Federation taking the lead. They asked for 16 weeks to complete the work; they have spent 11 or 12 weeks so far and they will be done in a couple of weeks."

The APC pointed out that the remaining four weeks for the conclusion of the report, as requested by the auditors, meant that it should have been ready by latest November 7th 2014. Its words: ''It is now over a month since the deadline for the release of the report expired, and the government has simply kept mum on the report, apparently in an effort to sweep the issue under the carpet, as it has done with all other reports of widespread corruption under the present dispensation. ''However, Nigerians will not allow this to happen. They will continue to demand that the audit report be made public, in the interest of transparency. We also believe that the Minister of Finance should strive to protect whatever is left of her international reputation by living up to her words that the issue will not be swept under the carpet. It is not only Nigerians but the entire international community who are interested in the outcome of the audit.

''If there is any reason why the report has not been released, the minister should immediately come out and tell Nigerians. Otherwise, she should release the report today so that Nigerians will know exactly how much of their oil funds is missing and those to be held responsible for the unprecedented heist,'' the party said. APC would not believe suggestions that the federal government was deliberately sitting on the report because it (report) has heavily indicted it and some powerful personalities in the Jonathan administration. ''In announcing the forensic audit of the unaccounted for money, Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala said the president supported it and asked for it to be done. Now that it has been done, why has the report not been released, even if it implicates the government itself?'' the party queried It said the urgent release of the report will also end the rumour that the missing money is the source of the huge slush

funds being used for President Jonathan's re-election, as well as the speculation that it was the same missing money that formed the source of the huge funds that were roundtripped to the Jonathan campaign fund during his recent fund raising. ''Overall, a government that went cap in hand to borrow $1 billion to better equip the military in its fight against Boko Haram should not hesitate to get to the root of $20 billion missing oil money. Had that money not indeed been missing as alleged, would the government have needed to borrow $1 billion to pep up the Boko Haram war? ''We are therefore joining the millions of Nigerians who have demanded the urgent release of the audit report. Failure to do so before the end of the year will leave Nigerians with no choice than to conclude that the FG is indeed hiding something about the missing $20 billion, a conclusion that will indeed be more than justified,'' APC said.

Rivers: Aggrieved PDP governorship aspirants denounce truce with Wike

HEAD of the 2015 governorship election, nine out of the 17 aggrieved Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship aspirants in Rivers State have clearly stated that they are not part of any reconciliation with the party's governorship candidate, Chief Nyesom Wike. The displeased governorship aspirants, speaking yesterday in Port Harcourt, the Rivers state capital, also denounced the process that led to the emergence of Wike, the immediate past Minister of State for Education, as PDP's governorship candidate. The nine governorship aspirants noted that they did not participate in the meeting that took place at the Le'Meridien Hotel in the new Government Reservation Area (GRA), Port Harcourt on Christmas Day, stressing that that they did not subscribe to any decision that was reached at the meeting. "Majority of those who at-

From Bisi Olaniyi, Port Harcourt tended the meeting were not governorship aspirants. Persons who attended the meeting supposedly convoked for reconciliation with Wike were doing so to achieve their inordinate ambition. We will continue to stand for justice, equity and fairness. We will continue to fight for the attainment of the principle of rotation and zoning within the PDP," they said. The aggrieved PDP governorship aspirants, who kicked against reconciling with the exminister of state for education are Gabriel Pidomson, Dumo Lulu-Briggs, Mrs Biobele Dodi Odesola, Chief Pawariso Horsefall, Major Lancelot Anyanya(rtd.), Bernard Mikko, Samson Ngerebara, Fafaa Dan Princewill and Atamuno Atamuno. They said: "Our attention has been drawn to certain news

reports in both electronic and print media, including a website named Riversconverge, to the effect that 15 nameless PDP governorship aspirants have met with the PDP's leadership in Rivers State and its governorship candidate, Chief Nyesom Wike. "We wish to state unequivocally that we were neither aware of nor were we part of any such meeting and did not subscribe to any decision arising therefrom, particularly when it is realised that majority of those who attended the meeting were not governorship aspirants. "We further state that we did not authorise the use of our names for such a meeting and any person or persons doing so are only striving to achieve their inordinate ambition. "We will be in a position to make our considered decision on the matter of PDP governorship ticket known at the appropriate time. We stand for justice, equity and fairness and must fight

for our cause within the party. We advise our dedicated supporters and Rivers people to remain calm and resolute as they look up to God." It will be recalled that on December 23, the Rivers Chairman of the PDP, Chief Felix Obuah, inaugurated a 69member reconciliation committee to reach all the aggrieved members of the party before the commencement of the party's campaigns and were given seven days to conclude its assignments, but divided into three, with each to address the issues in the three senatorial districts. A former Rivers Governor, Sir Celestine Omehia, chairs the reconciliation committee for the Rivers West Senatorial District. Elemchukwu Ogbowu is Chairman for the Rivers East Senatorial District, while the Minister of Sports, Dr. Tammy Danagogo, chairs the committee for Rivers Southeast Senatorial District.

HE AllProgressivesCongress (APC) governorship candidate in Lagos State, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, has promised to set up an Unemployment Trust Fund to tackle the problem of unemployment among youth in the state if voted into office next year. Speaking at a Keep Fit 10,000 march organised by several youth groups in the state in support of his ambition, Ambode said the fund would be fashioned like the Lagos State Trust Fund set by the state governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, in 2007 to tame the insecurity challenges in the state. Describing himself as a bridge between the young and older generationandthepoorandtherich,Ambode promised that his administration would expand opportunities in the entertainment, tourism and hospitality sectors in order to create more employment opportunities for the youth. He said: "I know what you (youth) are going through; I've lived in Shomolu, Iju, Mushin and understand the state better than someone who has lived his entire life in Victoria Island and Ikoyi. Lagos State must not deviate from the path of excellence laid by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and built upon by Mr. babatunde Fashola. I'm determined to take Lagos State to the next level." Other speakers at the occasion including the Lagos State APC Chairman, Chief Henry Ajomale and former Chairman of Amuwo Odofin Local Government, Mr. Ayodele Adewale also enjoined the youth to continue to support APC in the state. Ajomale said the PDP-led federal government has not justified the 15 years it has been in power in Nigeria, adding that with the APC winning the governorship election in the state and at the federal level, the state would witness more rapid development. On his part, Adewale urged Nigerian youth to take active part in politics, while reminding them the nation's founding fathers attained prominence in the 20's and 30's. The march, which commenced at Maryland, ended at the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park in Ojota area and involved youth leaders of the APC across the state, students in various tertiary institutions and residents of the state.

Migrant Nigerian baby named after Italian medics

baby born at sea on Christmas Day after his Nigerian mother was plucked from a floundering migrant boat by the Italian navy has been baptised Testimony Salvatore in honour of the medics who delivered him. The two-day old infant, who weighed 2.7 kilogrammes and his 28-year-old mother were both recovering in hospital yesterday after what was a smooth delivery in testing circumstances, according to the gynaecologist who oversaw it. The cheering Christmas tale came as it was reported that Italian authorities have identified a 32-year-old Egyptian man as a lynchpin in the large-scale people smuggling that has been instrumental in sending asylum seekers and economic migrants across the Mediterranean in unprecedented numbers this year. Described as a trafficking "superboss" and named as Ahmed Mohamed Farrag Hanafi, the alleged trafficking overlord is now being pursued by the Egyptian authorities at Italy's request, Corriere della Sera reported.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

NEWS

Northern PDP chieftains dodge Jonathan's campaign jobs A

LL is not well with the reelection campaign plan of President Goodluck Jonathan in the north. A good number of prominent northern politicians and public officers are turning down offers to play leading roles in his campaign ahead of the February 2015 election. The development, The Nation learnt, is stalling the composition of the president's campaign teams in that part of the country. His campaign in the north has also not been able to match that of General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the north in terms of poster and bill boards' display. A party source admitted that Jonathan's re-election bid is on the low in the north because of lack of action and information of the candidate. The source, a chieftain of the party in Lagos State, said that many politicians from the north are cautious of being identified with Jonathan. He said: "There are a lot of issues surrounding his candidacy as it affects northern interests and desire. This is keeping his associates and friends here in check," a Kaduna-born former minister told The Nation. We also learnt that effort by the Ahmadu Ali-led Presidential Campaign team of the PDP to draft PDP chiefs into its zonal and state chapters in the north, especially in the Northwest and Northeast, has not succeeded largely because of the uncooperative attitude of many of those earlier tipped for the assignment. "Even ministers, party leaders and other public figures are tactically dodging the president's campaign assignments in the north. At a meeting of chieftains convened by

By Dare Odufowokan, Assistant Editor

the presidential campaign team to discuss the composition of state and zonal structures, some northern politicians present betrayed their fears when they moved that fresh faces be appointed as coordinators while they support the campaign from less visible positions. "This came as a shock to many of those present at the meeting and was roundly rejected by all. But it was a confirmation of the situation in that region. It needs to be dealt with and I am sure the party is taking necessary steps to tackle the unimpressive body language of many of our prominent chieftains in the north towards President Jonathan's campaign." Other party sources said the situation is responsible for the delay in constituting the state and zonal chapters of the campaign team. According to an official of the party in the Southwest, contrary to the scramble for the president's campaign jobs in the south, northern chieftains are not too keen about being named as members of Jonathan's campaign teams in their various states and zones. "I learnt that a former minister in Nasarawa State rejected his appointment as the head of the campaign in his state. In Kano State, two former commissioners were said to have dodged being named as part of Jonathan's campaign. The party is working round the clock to address the development though," the source said. A number of reasons have been adduced for the rejection of the re-election campaign jobs in the north. One is what a source de-

scribed as the prevalent mood of the people of the region occasioned by emergence of General Buhari. Another is the fear of being labelled as anti-north. The voice of Buhari's massive supporters in the north is drowning that of Jonathan in the zone. "The feeling here is that Buhari and the APC represent the best opportunity for power to return to the region and as such all northerners should line up behind the General and his party. Even in states where PDP is in power, the party's chieftains are cautious about preaching Jonathan's reelection so as not to offend the sensibilities of their people," another source said. "And with leading northern socio-political groups like the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) unambiguous in their choice of a northerner as president, many northerners are scared of being seen campaigning for Jonathan in 2015," Mallam Abu Halidu Ahmed, Coordinator of the Voters' Right Agenda (VoRA) in Kano State, said. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had on Thursday, December 11, inaugurated its National Campaign Council, NCC, for the 2015 general election. Alhaji Adamu Muazu, PDP's National Chairman, is to chair the campaign while the former Chairman, Dr. Ahmadu Ali, is to serve as the Director-General of the council. Other members include President Goodluck Jonathan; Vice President Namadi Sambo; Senate President David Mark; Chief Tony Anenih, Chairman, PDP Board of Trustees; Prince Uche Secondus, Deputy National Chairman. The rest are former Minis-

ter of Works, Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe, who is the Deputy Director-General, head office; Honourable Kabiru Turaki, Deputy Director General North; Mr. Peter Obi, Deputy Director-General, South; Chief Godswill Akpabio, Governor of Akwa Ibom State and Chairman, PDP Governors' Forum; Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, Secretary to the Government of the Federation; and Retired Brigadier General James Arogbofa, Chief of Staff to the President. The zonal coordinators are Governor Liyel Imoke of Cross River State, South- South; Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State, South-East; Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State, South-West; Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue State, North-Central; Governor Hassan Dankwambo of Gombe State, North-East; and Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State, North-West. Past chairmen of the party were not left out as Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo and Dr. Bello Haliru Mohammed were named as members of the council. Also in the council are Chief Olabode George and Professor Rufai Ahmed Alkali, SA Political Affairs to the president. The party had promised to release the campaign itinerary as well as members of the state and zonal campaign teams in no time. But it appears the unwillingness of some PDP chieftains in the north has slowed down the process. Efforts to get the reaction of the PDP to the story proved abortive as calls made to the phones of the party’s spokesperson, Olisa Metuh and the national secretary, Prof. Wale Oladipo, went unanswered.

Boko Haram controls 20 of Borno's 27 LGAs, says govt - State has 2m Internally Displaced Persons From Barnabas Manyam,Yola HE Borno State govern- available by the state Deputy ment painted a graphic Governor, Zanna Umar picture of Boko Haram Mustapha. terrorism in the state when it More are to be evacuated, says that the sect has seized Mustapha said during a symcontrol of 20 of the 27 local pathy visit to IDPs from Askira government areas of the state Uba, Lassa, Chibok, Gwoza. over the last five years. He added that the welfare Only Maiduguri Metropolitan, of the IDPs alone is costing the Jere, Konduga, Kaga, Bayo, state N600m per month. Kwayakusar and Biu local govThe deputy governor comernment areas remain in gov- mended the military and other ernment hands. security agencies in Adamawa The state also said it has and Borno states for their battle 2million Internally Displaced against insurgency in the Persons (IDPs) to cater for and North-East but appealed to that it recently evacuated 45, them to intensify their efforts. 000 of such displaced persons He assured the IDPs of from neighbouring Adamawa government's resolve to bring State. These facts were made the situation under control.

Court confirms Takai as Kano PDP governorship candidate From Kolade Adeyemi, Kano

KANO State High Court sitting at Gezewa on Friday evening dismissed an attempt to prevent Mallam Salihu Sagir Takai from flying the flag of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in next year's governorship election. The court ruled in suit No K/564/2014, filed by a PDP governorship aspirant, Dr Akilu Indabawa and 322 women leaders of the party seeking to restrain Mallam Takai from parading himself as the party's governorship candidate that it had jurisdiction to hear the case.

Police arrest three armed robbery suspects in Edo

HE Edo Police Command has arrested three armed robbery suspects along Uwa Street, in the Oredo Local Government Area of the state. The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Mr. Joseph Edoigiawerie, named the trio; Samson Obi, Terry Ekokota and Esther James. They were arrested following a tip-off. "A search conducted on them led to the recovery of two locally-made guns, two live cartridges and some charms from the suspects,'' the police said. The suspected armed robbers were also said to have confessed that they were planning an operation before they were apprehended. In a related development, the command has recovered one locally-made single-barrel gun, 13 live cartridges, one

•Xmas truck parade in the small town of St. Cloud, Florida

PDP backs Jonathan on volatile comments

HE leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has thrown its weight behind President Goodluck Jonathan on his warning to leaders of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) and some former office holders to desist from sowing seeds of discord among the people with their incendiary utterances. The party's National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, in a statement on Saturday described the president's statement as a "perfect act in nation-

From Gbade Ogunwale, Assistant Editor, Abuja

alism, the mark of true leader who is committed to the interest and welfare of the nation and her citizens." It urged the opposition to heed the warning, show decency, patriotism and shun door-die quest for power. According to the PDP, the president had shown that he is "a committed national and patriotic leader, a decent politician, a lover of a united, stable and prosperous Nigeria and a champion of the integrity of the

nation's electoral process." The ruling party also alleged agenda by the APC to politicise the military and other security agencies, including the Department of State Security (DSS) and the police. "Nigerians were shocked and we find it very absurd that the leadership of the APC justified the unhealthy comments by the Director-General of the Presidential Campaign Organisation of the APC and Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, who came under the cloak of fake populism to at-

tempt to politicise the military. "While some people thought that Amaechi was alone in an attention-seeking stunt, the justification by the APC has clearly shown that he was pursing his party's ignoble agenda, which is to drag the military into the political arena, destroy its unity and professionalism and ultimately weaken it ahead of their plot to unleash mayhem in the country by forming a parallel government after they must have lost the 2015 presidential election." the PDP said.

The court had on December 9 first granted the plaintiffs' request but reversed itself on Friday on the strength of a preliminary objection raised by Takai's counsel, Mr. Abdullahi Adamu Fagge. Fagge said the 322 women leaders were not delegates to the governorship primaries and therefore had no locus standi to file the action. Justice Mohammed Yahya, however, declined to award any cost in favour of the PDP and upheld the PDP primaries that produced Mallam Takai as gubernatorial candidate.

Army camouflage cap and three wraps of weeds, suspected to be Indian hemp. The statement said the items were recovered from the vehicle of two fleeing suspects. The suspects, both male, were said to have abandoned the car on sighting some officers of the command, who were on a routine patrol in the Oluku area of Benin. "The policemen on routine patrol at Oluku were informed about the suspicious movements of two men seated in a Cordoba car with registration number AG 678 AKA?,'' Edoigiawerie said in the statement. The state police command, while appreciating the public for providing useful information to it, however, said in the statement that efforts "are in progress to fish out the fleeing suspects.''

Lola Grace Eburuaja Ezirim for burial

HE final burial ceremony of Lola Grace Eburuaja Ezirim, aged 84 years, will hold tomorrow 29th at the family compound, Owerre Nkiworji in Nkwere Local Government Area, Imo State. A Christian wake keep, which will kick off by 7pm, will be held for her this evening at the family compound. After the interment tomorrow at OwerreNkiworji in Nkwere, there will be a reception for guests also at the family compound. A devout Christian and a community leader, the late Lola Grace Ezirim championed the

cause of the less privileged during her life time. She is survived by nine children, many grand children and great grand children.

•Late Ezirim

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

NEWS

2015: Anti-PDP protest rocks East-West road

Why Urhobo elites are angry with Ibori –UPU leader Bolaji Ogundele, Warri

From Shola O’Neil, S’South Regional Editor

RAFFIC on the busy Port-Harcourt - Warri axis of the East West highway was disrupted for several hours on Saturday as anti-PDP protesters took over Patani town in Delta State, to express dissatisfaction with the party’s handling of the state assembly primaries in the area. The protesters were unhappy with the party’s decision to replace the name of the winner of the November 29 state assembly primaries, Rt Hon Basil Ganagana, with that of a losing candidate who scored a dismal 18 votes to come a distant second. Saturday’s uprising was the latest controversy rocking the PDP, which has ruled the state since 1999, when James Ibori was elected, after a series of controversial primaries at all levels. Speaking on behalf of the protesters, a former member of the dissolved Patani LGA Transition Committee, Chief Richman Yinbri, predicted that the party’s rule and support base in the state was at risk and urged the national leadership of the party to intervene or risk the mass exodus of members to the opposition. “We are calling on the National Chairman of the our great party, Adamu Mu’Azu and other leaders of the party to urgently restore the name of our candidate otherwise, we will move en masse to the opposition and the PDP will be the loser!” He declared. It was gathered that protest was sparked off when report reached the town on Friday evening that the name of Ganagana, who scored 31 votes in the November 29 primary, was replaced with the name of Mr Timi Tonye, who scored 18 votes. The development has angered the Deputy Speaker and his supporters in the Ijaw LGA, who are threatening to dump the party. The protesters, compromising market women, men, youths, students and party faithful, took to the streets in the area in large numbers, chanting solidarity songs with the embattled Ganagana and denouncing the leadership of the PDP. They warned that they would resist the unlawful act and vowed to vote against the PDP if the party goes ahead to foist Mr. Tonye on the people.

Murtala’s son, Abba, emerges PDP running mate in Kano

LHAJI Abba, son of the late Head of State, Murtala Mohammed, has emerged running mate of Sagir Takai, the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) gubernatorial candidate in Kano State for 2015 election. Faruk Iya, the Campaign Coordinator of Takai 2015, announced the nomination of Mr. Abba at a news conference in Kano on Saturday. Mr. Iya said the decision to nominate Mr. Abba was made by the party’s leaders and was based on his personal track record of service and commitment to the party. Mr. Abba contested with Mr. Takai during the recent PDP gubernatorial primaries in the state. He came second while Takai won the ticket.

•From Left: APC governorship candidate in Rivers State, Dr. Dakuku Peterside and His Royal Majesty, King Edward Asimini William Dappa-Pepple, Perekule XI, the Amayanabo of Bonny Kingdom, during Peterside’s visit to the monarch in continuation of his governorship campaign yesterday.

Fayemi to Fayose: Stop running govt on falsehood T

HE immediate past governor of Ekiti State,Dr.Kayode Fayemi, yesterday hit back at his successor, Governor Ayo Fayose ,warning him against using falsehood as a tool of governance. Fayemi who was responding for the first time to allegations levelled at him by Fayose said that the deployment of deceit as an official policy of administration would not help the government in any way. He challenged the governor to probe him if he was sure that he (Fayemi) plundered the state of its resources . “If they have anything against me let them institute a probe, I am ready for it,” he said. He cited the allegation that he left an N85billion debt behind as one of such lies. Fayemi said that all total debt at the time of his exit was N35billion. He spoke on Akure, Ondo State-based radio station, ADABA 88.9 FM, Friday evening. Fayemi also dismissed Fayose’s claim that he (Fayose) left N10. 4 billion in government coffers at the time of his impeachment in October 2006. He said that records showed that Fayose left only N3.5 billion and a lot of contractor obligations behind. For the first time, the Fayemi also revealed that the actual cost of the new Government House otherwise known as Ayoba Villa is N2.1 billion. He said the cost of the complex is lower than any other newly constructed state Government House in the country and

•Probe me if you like From Odunayo Ogunmola, Ado Ekiti

that the Fayose Administration which has been critical of the execution of the project is currently using marble in parts of the complex. “It is not only fully completed but it is also fully furnished. It is the cheapest Government House built by any government in the 36 states of the federation in recent times. “That of Plateau State cost N10 billion and that of Kaduna cost N9 billion but we built our own at the cost of N2.1 billion and they are presently doing marble work on the same Government House and they are also doing the roads we have completed. “If he (Fayose) says he refused to move there, why is he lighting up the place by powering it with diesel? I know the meetings he is holding there because it is a four-in-one building. “But for you to try and make excuses that is not acceptable. If God helps you to be there even if you cheat your way to be there, you need to thank God for the favour He has shown you. “These lies are unfounded, it is not expected from somebody holding that exalted position. You are sleeping there, your wife is sleeping there. “Do we have N50 million worth of bed in this world? I want people to ask him to pro-

duce the bed of N50 million. I don’t give contract by the words of the mouth, I have papers and documents to back them up and I don’t award contracts to my brothers and family members.” He also carpeted Fayose for claiming in his monthly media chat earlier in the day that the new Government House is yet to be completed maintaining that “the edifice is not only completed but is also fully furnished.” He said claims that each of the beds he bought for the complex cost N50million was false as no bed anywhere in the world costs that kind of amount. He warned Fayose to stop peddling lies and face the serious business of governance instead of reducing governance to comedy which, he noted, is portraying Ekiti in bad light in the comity of states in Nigeria and before the international community. Fayemi also gave Fayose hard knocks for claiming that all the brand new vehicles he (Fayemi) bought for traditional rulers have not been paid for. Fayemi insisted that the cars which were purchased from Coscharis Motors have been paid for admitting that it is only official cars purchased for senior civil servants from the same company that are yet to be paid for. The ex-governor noted that the wrong information being fed the world by Fayose resulted from deliberate mischief

or lack of proper briefing by concerned officials. He admitted that his administration sourced N25 billion from the Capital Market to execute projects that have generated jobs which are also yielding revenue into the coffers of government. These include Ekiti Parapo Square, Ikogosi Warm Spring Resort, Ire Burnt Bricks, Ayoba Villa, College of Technical Agriculture, among others are now worth over N100 billion. Contrary to Fayose’s claims that N1.5 billion is deducted from Ekiti allocation every month, Fayemi argued that N500 million is deducted from the state allocation. Fayemi stressed that for the whole four years he was in office, the only month his administration failed to pay workers’ salaries was September. He added that secondary school teachers were also owed August salaries which he attributed to problems with their banks. The former governor claimed that Fayose who had since received the September allocation has refused to pay the September salaries to workers describing the action as “callous, ungodly and immoral”. According to him, his administration had problems paying the September salaries because Fayose allegedly went to the banks and directed them to stop giving the outgoing government loans which were procured to pay salaries before allocation arrived.

2015: Peterside promises to tackle insecurity

HE governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, Dr. Dakuku Adol Peterside, has promised to tackle insecurity, in order to boost economic development in the state, if elected governor in 2015. He gave the assurance yesterday in Bonny Island, when he visited the Amanyanabo of Grand Bonny Kingdom, King Edward Asimini William Dappa Pepple, and the Bonny Council of Chiefs, to seek the blessing of the monarch. Peterside stated that if elected as governor next year, his administration would ensure development in every part of the state.

From Bisi Olaniyi, Port Harcourt

The APC’s governorship candidate was led on the courtesy visit to the Bonny monarch by the traditional rulers of Opobo and Nkoro in Peterside’s Opobo/ Nkoro Local Government Area of Rivers state, headed by Alabo Prof. Dagogo Fubara of Opobo and Alabo Okamsin, the traditional ruler of Nkoro. Peterside, an indigene of riverine Opobo and a member of House of Representatives representing Andoni-Opobo/ Nkoro constituency, said: “Today (yesterday), security cannot be taken for granted. On our waterways, we hear about the

activities of pirates. On land, you hear criminal activities everywhere. I do not think that is the state we deserve and desire. So, for government, our primary responsibility should be security of lives and property and I will make that my first priority if I am given the mandate to govern Rivers State. “Your Majesty, you know as I do sir, that without security, nobody can invest in this state. Therefore, nobody can create jobs and when we do not create jobs, our children will be idle and criminality will further escalate. “Your Majesty, I say the choice of who becomes gover-

nor of Rivers State demands diligence in making that decision. By the special grace of God, the founding fathers of Rivers State had a dream of a great state, to be the pride of not only Nigeria, but that of Africa. “Our fathers had laboured, they had toiled, they made sacrifices and we have made a lot of progress, but we are not where we desire to be. Several years ago, the situation was worse than it is today, but by the contributions of leaders like your good self and some of our political leaders, we have accomplished some mileage. There is so much work to be done.”

RESIDENT-General of the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU), Chief Joe Omene, has given reasons why prominent Urhobo sons and daughters are unhappy with former Delta State governor, Chief James Ibori. Alleging that Ibori’s style of politics excluded many of his kinsmen from the corridors of power, Omene, while speaking to The Nation on Sunday in an exclusive interview at his Mosogar home in Ehtiope West council area of Delta, also said the apex Urhobo socio-cultural body would soon decide on who to support for the governorship election next year. He accused Ibori of working against the political growth of Urhobo politicians so as to ensure that no Urhobo politician can rival him politically in the state. He categorically condemned Chief Ibori’s alleged role in the last governorship primaries of the PDP in the state, during which he was said to have worked against the choice of the UPU. “No Urhobo man, apart from his agents and cotravellers, is happy with him. When this new executive (UPU) came, the first thing we did was to set aside the curse that was placed on him when he assured us that we will work together to produce an Urhobo governor. But he turned around to work for Okowa’s emergence. “What Urhobo elites believe is that he does not want any Urhobo man to grow politically. He wants the highest placed Urhobo politicians to dance around him. He wants none of them to become the Iroko tree he used to be. That is the anger of the Urhobo elites with him,” Chief Omene said. On which of the two governorship candidates of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) and Labour Party (LP); Olorogun O’tega Emerhor and the Chief Great Ogboru, respectively, the UPU would support for the governorship in the election next February, Chief Omene said he cannot tell yet.

Archbishop Akinadewo is dead

•Late Akinadewo

HE Founder, Primate, Prophet and Supreme Head of Motailatu Church Cherubim and Seraphim Worldwide, Archbishop Isaiah Moyinlorun Akinadewo (Omo Jesu), is dead. A proprietor of many missionary schools, publisher, administrator and Ondo religious leader, he died on Friday night. A statement signed by Senior Superintendent Gabriel Akinadewo says the remains will be buried today at the Mission House after service at the international headquarters of the church in Ondo.

System breakdown leaves customers stranded at Ikeja DISCO By Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

NEWS

VER 700 electricity consumers from different parts of Lagos metropolis and its environs, that came to make payments as well as lodge other complaints at the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Plc (Ikeja Electric) Alausa, Ikeja, were left stranded yesterday as the management could not adequately address their concerns. When The Nation visited the corporate headquarters of Ikeja DISCO, vehicles parked at the entrance formed long queues making it practically impossible for easy getaway for visitors coming out of the premises just as anxious-looking customers in their hundreds all exposed to the elements sat for hours on end as they awaited their turns to be attended to by the management staff, who seemed overwhelmed with the surging crowd who vented their anger at the management for the sloppy services. Investigation by The Nation revealed that at issue was that a majority of the customers who had pre-paid metres couldn’t load the vouchers, just as many who made payments either online, banks and other channels were unsuccessful and had to come down to the headquarters to have these issues resolved to no avail. Visibly angry customers made up of the aged, after the tireless waiting, ran out of patience as some latecomers connived with some staff to jump the queue, resulting in a melee which took hours to contain as Mr. Edwin Agbo, the Chief Security Officer, tried without success to calm frayed nerves. Sharing his experience with The Nation, Pa Kola Idowu, Board Member, Divine Heritage Orphanage Centre, Ijede, Ikorodu, Lagos, recalled that he tried to load his pre-paid card without success last Wednesday and had to visit the Ikorodu district office of Ikeja DISCO to lodge complaints only to be referred to Ikeja. Upon his visit to Ikeja, rather than getting the needed respite, he was further directed to Ikorodu, where he was told he would have to return to Ikeja. “There is a lot of confusion here. These people have been tossing me up and down in the last few days. I have been unable to recharge my pre-paid cards and the bank is not accepting payments. It’s really confusing and nobody seems to have any clues,” Pa Idowu lamented. One of the staff who would not be named because he was not authorised to speak on behalf of the company offered plausible explanation as to what was amiss. “The reason why we have this crisis is because early this month we switched to a new payment platform and that is why we have this problem. But it will be over soon,” he assured. In a chat with The Nation, Mr. Pekun Adeyanju, Head Communication Strategy, Ikeja Electric, said the management in anticipation of the glitches appealed to its teeming customers during the yuletide that everything was being done to address the issues. “We regret the inconveniences and have already primed our customer care executives to give our esteemed customers prompt attention either at our various IE Serve care centers or when they call our help lines on 07000225543 or 014483900,” he said.

Alaafin advises youths on custom, tradition T

Ondo Police Command gets N106m patrol vehicles From Damisi Ojo, Akure

HE Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi 111, has advised youth not to ensure that they remain firmly rooted to their tradition and custom. He stated this at a ceremony in memory of a late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Siyanbola Onikepe Ladigbolu, who reigned between January 15th 1911 and December 19th 1944. Oba Adeyemi also noted that one of the ways of preserving culture is to continue to research into the lifetimes and activities of our fore-bearers. He said a nation or tribe without customs is as good as a horde of gorillas ravaging

From Bode Durojaiye, Oyo

the deep forests. “It is true that modernisation has bombarded our tradition with various vices, but like an ancient fortress built to withstand fierce military onslaught, our traditions and customs have remained the pivot on which rests the dignity of the black man. If tradition is scrutinised under a historical microscope, it will be seen quite clearly that modernisation is an off-shoot of tradition and as the taproot that sustains modernisation, any attempt to destroy tradi-

tion is the surest way to ruin modernisation,” Alaafin said. Extolling the virtues of the late Alaafin Ladigbolu, Oba Adeyemi said the monarch’s reign was epochal as he recorded many outstanding successes. According to him, during the First World War, the late monarch gave strong support to the recruitment drive of the British armed forces. As such, several hundreds of recruits from Oyo and its environs enlisted in the army. He [late Oba Ladigbolu] also supplied food, men, and materials to the allied forces during the First World War, 19141918.

“Following the German surrender in December 1918, the lae Alaafin Ladigbolu was honoured in Oyo palace by the British colonialists in Januuary 1920,’’ Alaafin recollected. Oba Adeyemi said the road and the railway initiated by the late Alaafin gave impetus to trade within the kingdom, adding that as a result, rubber, cotton and cocoa were introduced to Yoruba land and Oyo province got her share of the benefits. He noted that St. Andrews College that was inaugurated in 1896, had blossomed and is still reckoned with within and outside the region.

•2nd left, Bridegroom Tunde Aroloye, with the bride, Bridget Bukola. Groom’s father, Prince Robert Aroloye (2nd right), groom’s mother, Mrs. Matilda Aroloye (1st left) and bride’s mother, Mrs. Theresa Afolabi (1st right).

Fashola gets kudos over Lagos health care

RONTLINE broadcaster and child rights advocate, Temitope Adesegun, has praised Lagos State Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola on what she called his “consistency in delivering gains of democracy to the state, especially in the area of health care facilities and advocacy.” Adesegun, who is the producer of Health Wise, a Lagos State sponsored health advocacy television programme, said the governor demonstrated his concern for the well

By Dare Odufowokan, Assistant Editor

being of the people not only with his unalloyed interest in providing the best health care facilities for them, but also in his readiness to support health advocacy initiatives anywhere in the state. Speaking yesterday during the Christmas party she organised for less priviledge children on the premises of Television Continental in Ikosi area of the state, the youthful broadcaster said God has used

Fashola and the state’s Commissioner for Health, Jide Idris, to bless the people of the state immensely. “Here are two gentlemen whose pre-occupation is how to secure the lives and health of the people of the state. These they’ve done for years not only in their determination to provide the very best of health facilities for the people, but also in their avowed commitment to always support all advocacy initiatives aimed at ensuring the people are in good health.

Their unflinching support for Health Wise over the years is a good example,” she said. Asked why she organised an event for indigent kids, Adesegun said the Christmas party is meant to say thank you to Governor Fashola for his support throughout the year. “Because I know of and appreciate Governor Fashola’s love for children, especially the less-privileged ones, I am doing this to say thank you to him in a special way. It is dedicated to him for all he has done for the people of the state,” she said.

Lawyer seeks police protection over alleged threat to life

N Akure, Ondo State based Lawyer, Charles Titiloye, who reportedly escaped attack by suspected killers last weekend, has petitioned the Ondo State Police Commissioner over the attempt on his life. The activist is seeking protection by the police in the discharge of his legal duties. Titiloye is currently handling some vital cases including that of increment in court fees by the state government and another involving two lawmakers who recently defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Besides, the lawyer is challenging the imposition of tenement rate on newspapers circulating in the state

From Damisi Ojo, Akure

by the state government. Titiloye argued that the move is aimed at gagging the press in the state. In the petition, Titiloye said all the cases he filed were aimed at protecting the rule of law, fundamental human rights and the institution of justice in the state. He alleged that the state government is disturbed by his actions and as such, has allegedly deployed all means to frustrate the hearing of the cases. “I have many other cases pending in courts involving agencies of government on

the protection of human rights and good governance in the country. In 2012, I was the counsel of Mr Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), the gubernatorial candidate of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) at the state governorship election petition tribunal. Apart from these cases, I am a strong public commentator on the need for good governance based on the rule of law and protection of the rights of the masses. I am also an active member of APC,” he said. Titiloye urged the Commissioner of Police to grant

him Police protection considering the threat to his life and the attempt made to eliminate him last Saturday. It would be recalled that the former Akure NBA Secretary last week Saturday narrowly escaped death when suspected killers reportedly trailed him from his Hospital Road, Akure Chambers to a point near Sacred Heart Cathedral in the state capital. The lawyer had to abandon his car and run to the nearby Sacred Heart Catholic Cathedral Church for refuge. He was said to have been accompanied to the police station by a Catholic priest, Rev. Father Anslem Ologunwa, to report the incident.

HE Ondo State Police Command has taken delivery of provide 13 new Toyota Hilux Patrol jeeps worth N106m to aid it in its renewed effort to clamp down on criminals and criminal activities in the state. The Senator representing Ondo South District, Boluwaji Kunlere, who donated the vehicles to the command, said he decided on the project in his bid to assist the police in security and crime prevention. That was just as he pledged to complete all the projects he is executing in the south district before the expiration of his tenure. According to Kunlere, a lawyer and former secretary of the peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the vehicles were for the use of police divisions within his senatorial district to prevent crime. While lamenting the rampant cases of kidnapping in the district, the Senator urged the beneficiaries to make good use of the materials. The lawmaker noted that security should not be left in the hands of the government alone, stressing that it should be the responsibility of all and sundry. The senator said the donation of the13 new Hilux vans was not to score cheap political popularity but a part of his practical demonstration to the fulfillment of his promise to provide effective representation by securing the environment for his people. The police command through the Commissioner, Isaac Eke hailed Kunlere for his gesture which he described as the first of its kind in the country, urging other well-meaning individuals to emulate his benevolence. Eke promised that his command would make judicious use of the vehicles to combat crime in the state.

Peaceful, colourful Christmas in Ibadan By Adebisi Oladele

BADAN, the Oyo Stare capital and other towns in the state experienced a peaceful Christmas and Boxing Day celebrations which extended to the weekend. The celebrations were also colourful with beautifully decorated recreation centres receiving large crowds of families across the city. Places such as Cocoa/Heritage Mall, University of Ibadan Zoological Garden, Trans Amusement Park and Agodi Resort witnessed a surge in patronage up till yesterday as residents basked in the joy of the season. The large turn-out at night clubs, film houses and other recreational centres did not reflect the mood of the austerity measures announced by the federal government earlier in the month. But the traffic gridlocks that plagued Ibadan from Monday disappeared during the Christmas celebration. Roads such as DugbeMokola, Iwo Road, Akobo, Old and New Ife Road and Sanngo were free from traffic. Police also mounted more surveillance across the state with many patrol vehicles plying major roads to prevent and quell any violence.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

NEWS REVIEW

Due to inconsistent policies, lack of funding, and absence of political will, Ajaokuta Steel Company, Nigeria's largest and only integrated steel plant, is reeling from the throes of abandonment more than thirty years after it was built to about 90 per cent completion. Despite repeated assurances by President Goodluck Jonathan that his administration will revive it, resuscitation hope of the moribund multi-billion dollar steel plant conceived to pilot Nigeria's industrialisation drive is still far in the horizon, reports Assistant Editor ADEKUNLE YUSUF

Ajaokuta: Unending st

AJAOKUTA STEEL COMPANY

•One of the rolling mills at Ajaokuta Steel

ESPITE the rapidity of time, August 20, 2010, is a date many residents of Kogi State still remember with a tinge of sadness, if not feelings of betrayal. On that fateful day, President Goodluck Jonathan, who was in the state on a oneday working visit, made a promise that made over three million residents of Kogi leapt for joy. Beaming with easy smiles in front of the then Governor Idris Ibrahim, and a tumultuous crowd who had gathered to honour him, Mr. President gave his word that his administration would ensure speedy completion of the near moribund Ajaokuta Steel Company (ASC), thus raising hopes that the single most important federal government investment in their state will soon transform from a delayed dream to reality. Reaffirming that the abandoned steel complex is the industrial bedrock of the country, he gave this assurance on the occasion of the commissioning of the Lokoja International Market, vowing that make revival of ASC an integral part of his administration's economic recovery strategy. Perhaps conscious of the residents' near emotive attachment to the completion of the steel factory, President Jonathan returned to Lokoja a year later, this time during his electioneering campaign tours in 2011, tacitly making the completion of ASC a campaign issue as he wooed voters to cast their ballot for him in the last presidential poll, which he won. He said: "One thing that is dear to Nigerians is the Ajaokuta Steel Complex and until we revive that complex, we cannot talk about Vision 20:2020. This is because for you to play big globally, you must industrialize and for you to industrialize you must produce steel. The Ajaokuta (steel) complex must be revived." He repeated this assurance on many occasions in 2011, almost anywhere his campaign train berthed during the last nationwide battle to win the hearts of voters. However, more than four years after, the presidential promise remains an empty one, for nothing meaningful seemed to have been

• Jonathan

done towards completing the integrated steel complex since President Jonathan took over the reins of government in 2010 - though administration officials regularly claim that the much-vaunted transformation agenda is on course. Curiously, now that 2015 elections are around the corner, the administration seems poised again to make the completion of the steel company a campaign issue. Like President Jonathan did before the 2011 presidential poll, top officials in the administration have started tickling voters with the usual good news that Nigeria's only integrated steel project will soon be brought back on track, with promises of viable socioeconomic opportunities this can offer Nigerians. Rekindling people's hope again, VicePresident Namadi Sambo assured Nigerians that the administration of President Jonathan is not just mulling a fresh initiative to make the lingering dream of ASCL become a reality; it is also walking the talk. He made this known during the foundation-laying ceremony of Kogi House in Abuja on May 27. "I want to categorically state that all the encumbrances that have been stopping the progress of this project have been removed," adding that, as Chairman of the National Council on Privatization (NCP), he is under instruction "to expedite action and ensure that Ajaokuta steel industry is back to life." Perhaps to further convince doubting Thomases, the Minister of Commerce and

• Aganga

Industry, Olusegun Aganga, and his Mines and Steel Development counterpart, Arc. Musa Muhammed Sada, also followed suit with a tour of the ailing steel facility at Ajaokuta on Monday June 9. Their mission, as usual, is to ascertain what is needed to breathe life into the abandoned facility. Several ministers in the same administration have embarked on similar visits at one time or the other, all without offering anything concrete that can effect positive changes in the fortune of the steel giant. Over the years, discerning Nigerians are familiar with such unfulfilled promises, chorused by officials of almost every administration since the demise of President Shehu Shagari era, which built the ailing ASC to about ninety per cent completion before it was abandoned to gather dust. As a matter of fact, contrary to the assurances by the sitting government, all encumbrances standing in the way of efforts to rescue the steel company have not been removed. Beyond the much-advertised commissioning of a power plant in Kogi State, which administration officials said is an indication that things will start looking up for the abandoned steel giant, there is no tangible evidence on the ground to support such optimism. At least in all the annual budgets prepared and implemented by the President Jonathan administration since 2010, ASC has been conspicuously absent in the radar of the federal government's capital votes. Even in the 2015 budget, feelers

have it that fund may not be earmarked for reviving the embattled plant, except for payment of salaries of workers. Yet there is less than six months in the life of this administration. Harping on the lip service being paid to the revitalization of the steel complex, Senator Nurudeen Abatemi-Usman, who is Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Niger Delta Affairs, said recently that it is sad that President Jonathan has not shown enough commitment to steel development in the country, with specific reference to the stalled giant steel factory in Ajaokuta. The Kogi State born senator vented his spleen during the defence of the 2014 budget proposal of Ministry of Mines and Steel, which had zero allocation to ASC regarding capital projects. The session, which was conducted by the Senate Committee on Power and Steel on the floor of the Senate, almost degenerated into an uproar. Although a member of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), representing Kogi Central Senatorial District, where the Ajaokuta Steel firm is located, AbatemiUsman jettisoned blind partisanship, carpeting the PDP-led federal government's flawed strategy for achieving the vision 20:2020. According to him, Nigeria's industrialization aspiration will remain a mirage if all is not done to make the Ajaokuta integrated steel complex, reputed to be the largest in the Sub-Saharan Africa, fully

•Contd. on page 11

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

NEWS REVIEW

g storm at troubled firm

•Workers at Ajaokuta Steel

• Abatemi-Usman

•Contd. from page 10 operational. Hear Abatemi-Usman: "We spent billions (of naira) for staff salaries every year, yet we are where we were as far as the revitalization of the Ajaokuta Steel Complex and National Iron Ore Mining Company (NIOMCO) is concerned. Where is the place of Ajaokuta Steel (Company) in our bid for industrial revolution? Do we seem to understand the importance of steel and the significant role it can play in enhancing our economy? If you ask me, I will say Mr. President is just paying lip service to the issue of Ajaokuta steel and steel development in general. When he (Jonathan) came to Lokoja, Kogi State, during the electioneering in 2011, the thrust of his campaign promises for which our people voted for him was his pledge to revive the Ajaokuta Steel Complex. Over three years down the line, we've not seen much from him in that regard." Conceived in the 70s as an integrated steel complex, ASC is arguably Nigeria's most ambitious national industrial project, complete with its own port on the Niger River, a railroad for transporting ore from nearby NIOMCO, facilities to manufacture and maintain all equipment, a power station and as township which houses the company's workforce. The project, which was expected to jumpstart the country's industrialization, was stopped due to what

• Sada

• Otori

authorities called dearth of fund. According to the plan, the first phase would produce 1.3 million tonnes of liquid steel per annum, while the second phase would expand production to nothing less than 2.6 million tonnes per annum. The third and final phase would take production capacity to about 5.2 million tonnes per annum - all designed to cut Nigeria's dependence on imported steel, which is now put at 17 million tonnes per annum. Penny wise, pound foolish Although the multifarious woes afflicting the steel plant did not start with the administration of President Jonathan, his seems to have stood out for turning the revival of the abandoned factory into a campaign stunt, especially when elections are around the corner. Rather than take the bull by the horns, successive administrations in the last thirty years, both military and civilian, have paid lip service to an all-important steel sector by not resuscitating the stalled dream that Ajaokuta steel plant has become. By the time this reporter was conducted round the ailing facility earlier in the year, he was confronted with confounding discoveries, livid that Nigeria's only integrated steel plant, which was conceived to pilot Nigeria's march to industrialization, was allowed to slip into dormancy, despite having sunk up to $6 billion public fund into it. Its four rolling mills, including the billet mill, the light section mill, the wire rod mill, and the

medium section and structural mill, are still intact. So are the raw materials preparation and handling plants, the coke oven and byproducts plant, the sintering plant, the iron making plant, the iron making (blast furnace), and the thermal power plants. And for not mustering the political will to resuscitate the plant, which would have been the envy of other industrial nations, the country is now paying dearly. In the 2014 budget, the Federal Government earmarked N3.921bn as recurrent expenditure for the steel company. A total of N4.58bn was also budgeted for the workers in 2012. According to Aganga, Nigeria imports 17 million tonnes of steel and allied products annually to shore up 3.5 million tonnes it produced locally. Yet, the country has the second largest iron ore in Africa and twelfth largest in the world. Obaka Abel Inabo, an economist, wrote recently that it is regrettable that Nigeria, with humongous potential for steel production, is still importing slabs, roofing sheets, simple agricultural tools such as hoes, cutlasses, glassware etc from other developing countries, thus enriching these countries while its own steel is sector is allowed to go moribund. The economist added that a viable and virile steel sector can open huge vistas of socio-economic opportunities that for millions of Nigerians, stressing a resuscitated steel sector can generate indirect employment for millions of

Nigerians, besides aiding the growth of the new automobile industry and the transformation of the epileptic Nigerian Railway Corporation, among other great benefits. "It would become a net provider of employment with direct employment of about 15,000 and indirect employment of about 500,000 of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled workers and various professionals in the downstream and upstream industries and services. Ajaokuta will also facilitate technological growth, acquisition of technical expertise, provision of input for infrastructural development, thus adding value to our natural minerals that abound and untapped all over the country. "It is trite to state that without developing our own indigenous steel industry, we will end up exporting our natural minerals at very cheap rates, and import the finished products at exorbitant prices as it is with oil today. In addition, a developed steel industry will save our scarce foreign exchange as well as create opportunities for varied capacity building. Obviously, attaining the vision 20-2020 and the Federal Government Transformation Agenda will be a mirage without a virile steel sector," Inabo warned. Protracted industrial disputes, bad management While absence of political will on the part of the powers that be kept the dream of revitalizing the behind company in chains, prolonged industrial dispute was another crisis that also slowed down the hand of the clock. For many years, ASC was embroiled in prolonged industrial disputes, which snowballed into fictionalization of its labour unions and put clogs in the wheel of efforts to implement the vision behind the founding of the behemoth. Not only were the labour unions in the company bickering for more than five years, the disputes were matters of litigation before the cases were withdrawn, paving way for peace and harmony that now exists in the steel company. As if the steel project was jinxed, all the military regimes since the demise of Shagari administration also tinkered with the idea of bringing ASC back to life, but none succeeded. Rather, it became one of the conduit pipes through which public fund was siphoned. Filled with enthusiasm about opportunities for the Nigerian nation, former Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, embarked on a working visit to the plant in the eighties, promising to revive the dream. Nothing happed till he left office in 1993. So were efforts by Abdulsalam Abubakar and the late Sani Abacha, both former military heads of state. Even in 2005, when the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in the face of loud criticisms from steel workers and labour leaders, gave a special consideration of its management to the Global System Steel Holdings Limited (GSHL), nothing came out of it. As predicted, the deal collapsed as the firm failed to meet the inherent contractual obligations, forcing the Federal Government to cancel the transaction in 2007. That was why the late President Umaru Yar'Adua, who terminated the agreement, also set up an Interim Management Committee to oversee it in 2008. Sadly, those appointed as caretakers turned themselves into undertakers, as they fed fat on the moribund company, leaving it worse than they met it. At various times in the checkered history of the plant, others stakeholders have prevailed upon the Federal Government to make the revival of the steel industry a national priority - though such pleas have often largely fallen on deaf ears. The latest came in May this year, when the House of Representatives directed its Committees on Steel, Privatization and Commercialization and Justice to investigate the concession and failure of the industry following the controversy and non-performance of the steel plant from inception. Its committee was also charged to get to the root of this protracted controversy that has hampered the plant over the years with a view to enacting enabling laws that can drive industrial revolution in Nigeria through the steel sector. However, like several probes in the past, nothing came out of the investigation, as the steel plan is allowed to be a bad dream. A victim of grand conspiracy, half-truths

•Contd. on page 12

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

NEWS REVIEW

â&#x20AC;˘ One of the workshops at Ajaokuta Steel

â&#x20AC;˘Contd. from page 11 According to Isah Joseph Onobere, an engineer and sole administrator of Ajaokuta steel company, one of the biggest blows to the interest of the plant comes from misinformation and halftruths being promoted in the media. He is unhappy that ASC, an integrated iron and steel plant that happens to be Nigeria's largest industrial investment in one location, is erroneously being portrayed in the media as a rolling mill, adding that this is doing the establishment a great harm, even as he complained that the ASC "as a strategic national investment has neither been sufficiently promoted nor defended by the press." Speaking during the grand finale of the 2013 press week, organized by the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Kogi State chapter, Onobere protested further that his organization will rank number one in the "list of organizations against which the press has been guilty of spreading misinformation and half-truths in this country." Even if his allegations are true, more lethal blows unleashed on the steel plant is as a result of strident campaigns by powerful economic interests against the company. Over the years, the general public has been made to believe that steel firm is built on an obsolete technology, an erroneous claim. According to the latest statistics of the World Steel in Figures, a publication of the World Steel Association, the basic oxygen furnace technology (blast furnace), upon which Ajaokuta was built, accounted for approximately 70 per cent of the 1.5billion tonnes of steel produced worldwide in 2012. Emmanuel James, an economist, said the problem of Ajaokuta steel plant is not as a result of obsolete technology, but failure of government at the national level, adding that past administrations, especially in the last 30 years, have not shown sufficient political will to do the needful in protecting the

Unending storm at troubled steel firm

strategic interest of the country. He suspicion is that the steel plant has remained as it is over the years because foreign economic predators have willing allies in some unpatriotic government officials, who he said often easily succumb to propaganda from Western financial institutions, which prefer Nigeria, a developing country, to remain perpetually a dumping ground for steel and other products from developed countries. The economist said that is why technical advice from abroad regarding the Ajaokuta steel project has often dubbed it as an unviable investment that should be discarded, adding that it is unpatriotic for Nigerian officials to hook, line and sinker recommendations. In fact, The Nation gathered that another team of foreign experts that recently examined the plant came up with self-serving recommendations. It took the timely intervention of some well-meaning Nigerians before the plot was foiled, as one of the so-called team of foreign experts was uncovered as a meteorologist, thus taking the wind out of the sail of their evil plot. Although Onobere has not confirmed the sabotage theory at any public function, he has consistently insisted on one point: "Ajaokuta is the only hope for the nation's industrial and economic emancipation. We must stand our ground as a nation and should not succumb to the activities of international trade politics. There is no country in the world that has capacity to produce steel that will not capitalize on it. The industrial

nations will want a permanent hold on local steel markets as they have always tried to turn other countries like Nigeria into a dumping ground for their own products at the detriment of the growth and technological development of the country." Revival prospects of the company Although there is a widespread impression that the mammoth steel plant has been allowed to become a bad investment, experts who have either visited or reviewed the plant's health status have consistently returned one verdict: its equipment and facilities are still robust, mechanically and technically intact, viable and ready - notwithstanding the long years of partial operation. Even the findings of a technical audit of the plant, which was carried out in 2010, also gave the company a clean bill of health, confirming that its revival prospects are bright if the political will to bring it back on track is not lacking. "The situation of the steel plant's equipment and facilities is satisfactory. Mechanically, the steel plant equipment and facilities are generally in good condition," the report concluded. An elated Saliu Maliki Otori, national President of the Iron and Steel Senior Staff Association (ISSSAN), traced this to efforts by the workers who have, through thick and thin, ensured regular preservation, idle running, and de-watering of the underground water to keep the steel plant from being flooded. But the current management

of the plant is not resigning to fate. Worried by the idle state of the steel plant, Onobere-led management has signed a number of Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with series of firms to reactivate and operationalize the completed units of the plant. One of the MoUs is between MZV of Nigeria/ZSM of Ukraine on the reactivation and operation on billet conversion, which was signed on the 12th September, 2013. The good news is that the company has already mobilized to site. Another MoU is between REPROM Company Nigeria Ltd on the light section mill (LSM), signed on the 5th March 2013 for the reactivation and operation. It is also heart-warming that the technical team from Ukraine had arrived now reactivating the LSM with local engineering personnel. The Nation gathered that more MoUs have reached advanced stages. The sole administrator of the plant explained that the Central Technical Archives (CTA) of the plant, which houses technical drawing and documents pertaining to the plant, had been equipped to capture all available data electronically, stressing that this is to ensure safe storage and ease of retrieval. "This is in view of the ultimate objective of achieving integrated commissioning of the steel plant, specifically, a wide format scanner XEROX 6705 machine was procured for the upgrading the capabilities of the Central Technical Archives (CTA). The

equipment is a high definition machine which scans, plots and copies documents of wide range of sizes, all plant and equipment drawing and other plant information hitherto on hard copies are now properly stored on soft copies, the CTA is also being networked for access by all shops in the steel plant," he said. The way forward Going by the report of the 2010 technical audit report, the total cost for the rehabilitation and completion of the entire steel plant, including the modification of the medium section and structural mill for rail production within 18 months duration, is $513 million. Regarding the completion of external outstanding infrastructure, it is estimated that $687 million is needed. According to experts, funding options include lifelines from direct budgetary allocations, special intervention fund, funding from Natural Resources Development Fund, and loans (internal and external). As for mustering the political will to bring the steel project back to life, those in the know say that Egyptian success story in steel production offers a good example. It is said that the Egyptian authorities had to rebuff entreaties from the IMF/ World Bank, which recommended the privatization of the Egyptian Iron and Steel Company (EISCO) in order to join the league of global steel producers. "Profitability is not only measured in terms of accountants' balance sheet. Multiplier effects, technological, security, social and socioeconomic potentials of an enterprise are greater indices in measuring profitability," Egypt reportedly told the global financial institution. Today, Egypt is the better for it, for it is now among 63 countries that account for more than 98 per cent of world crude steel production as 2012. Shouldn't Nigeria take a cue from its African neighbour?

Ropo Sekoni

Page 14

Femi Orebe Page 16

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

Making the consumer king Consumer Protection Council's rift with Coca-Cola as litmus test tunjade@yahoo.co.uk 08054503906 (sms only)

FTER a three-week vacation, and one in which I deliberately decided to rest my column, one should return pregnant with issues to deliver, especially given the flurry of political developments within the period. True, I was tempted not to suspend the column during my vacation in view of the (then) pending primaries of the major political parties, the most talked-about being those of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), which threw up the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari, respectively, as contenders for the presidency. Gen. Buhari's emergence has no doubt altered the political calculations, especially in the PDP which had probably hoped that the result of the APC primaries would be different. Anyway, this is not a matter for today. The issue is still evolving and I intend to leave it for now. Next year is going to be loaded politically and one needs to reserve one's energy so as not to dissipate it on rehearsal when the real dance is yet to come. I want to devote this piece to an issue that I had kept postponing since it began early in the year to attend to what appeared to me to be the real burning issues, national or international. But, I have to break that jinx today because the matter is also a burning issue in its own right; first because of the lives of the millions involved and also because of its wider implication for protecting public watchdogs in the country. It is the issue between the Consumer Protection Council (CPC) and two big players in Nigeria's food and beverage sector, CocaCola Nigeria Limited (CCNL) and its franchise bottler, Nigeria Bottling Company (NBC) Ltd. The CPC had, following a complaint by a consumer that he bought two halffilled cans of Sprite, one of the products produced by the companies, issued an order on the companies in February, 2014, with specific timelines for compliance. This was sequel to an investigation which spanned over five months and entailed factory inspections, written and oral representations and analysis of evidence, pursuant to the consumer complaint. Eventually, the council fined the companies N100m, which they are contesting in court. For me, the fact that this has been challenged in court is a good development. It is true that Nigeria needs investors, but I detest this impression that these foreign companies are doing Nigerians a favour by operating here. It is true that our operating environment is not that business friendly but this should not be an excuse for people to give us subhuman treatment. Some people even wonder about the big deal in having half-filled cans of a beverage. It is difficult to blame such people given where we are coming from. The point is, we have been so dehumanised that we do not even know that we have rights as human beings. How many people here, for instance, know that there is

â&#x20AC;˘Dupe Atoki, Director-General, CPC something called 'consumer product recall' in which millions of defective products are withdrawn from the market in order to protect the consumer? In civilised climes where this occurs, the overriding consideration is not the loss to the companies but the health and safety of the citizens and consumers. These big companies know all these and more; they know how they are forced to shell out huge sums in compensation over some of the things we consider non-issues here. In the specific Sprite case, key findings of the investigation revealed that the cans of the soft drink were defective, that the companies neither had a written shelf-life policy for their products nor an implementation plan outlining practical steps for the implementation of the companies' first in first out (FIFO) rule. The investigation also revealed that the companies' grievance resolution policy does not properly address compensation for injury or compensation in instances where replacement will be inadequate. It is only if we want to deceive ourselves that we would pretend that these defects are not there, not only with Coca-Cola products but with many other producers' as well. We have had cases of people who saw cockroaches in bottles of their soft drinks. We have had cases of people reporting other particles in the drinks. Some of these are easily detectable if the drinks are not coloured; but detection is difficult in instances where they are, as one might even have started to consume the content before seeing the strange objects. This could be the handiwork of some competitors in situations of unhealthy rivalries in which producers of similar product try to outdo one another. It could also be the result of laxity in quality control from the manufacturers. Whichever it is, it is not good for the consumers. And this is why governments all over the world create agencies to monitor manufacturers to ensure that they produce products to standard. On a personal, Coca-Cola is my favourite

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The point is that the CPC needs the support of all in its bid to ensure that sanity is brought to bear on the beverage sector and in other sectors where it has jurisdiction ... Early in the year, the council ordered the management of Aero Contractors Company of Nigeria Limited to compensate 39 passengers on its flight AJ132 of November 8, 2013 who were abandoned at the Abuja International Airport... Such an agency is not likely to be popular with the corporate players it is supposed to regulate their activities in our kind of environment where many other public watchdogs are compromisedâ&#x20AC;?

soft drink and it is likely to remain so until I find a better alternative. But I have also had cause to complain to the woman selling it on our premises on not less than two occasions that the taste of the product was different from the usual one. As a matter of fact, the usual gas released when the bottles are opened was conspicuously missing on all occasions that I experienced such. She would always ask me to come for replacement but I never did. I know that ignorance is no excuse in law; but I must confess that much as I am usually particular about the expiry dates of most other items I buy, including milk, butter and margarine, it never occurred to me that soft drinks have a shelf life-span. And if at my level I do not know, I wonder the millions of Nigerians who suffer such ignorance. But then, it is hard to blame anyone for this as not much emphasis is placed on the producers inscribing the expiry dates conspicuously on their bottles as do the manufacturers of drugs, cosmetics, etc. I think they are just beginning to do that. I guess too that I am part of the problem because I had always kept the defects in the product to myself and the retailer. But again, there is a limit to how far you can push such a case once the drink has been opened. You need all the angels in heaven swearing in order to prove that you are not trying to play a fast one on the company so as to make some quick money. The point is that the CPC needs the support of all in its bid to ensure that sanity is brought to bear on the beverage sector and in other sectors where it has jurisdiction. It is good that the Federal Government has waded into the matter by dragging the soft drinks companies and their chief executives to court for alleged criminal breach of Consumer Protection Council (CPC) Act. Early in the year, the council ordered the management of Aero Contractors Company of Nigeria Limited to compensate 39 passengers on its flight AJ132 of November 8, 2013 who were abandoned at the Abuja International Airport and left stranded overnight. Aero Contractor Airlines was ordered to pay N41, 000 each to the passengers, bringing the total fine to N1.599million. Such an agency is not likely to be popular with the corporate players it is supposed to regulate their activities in our kind of environment where many other public watchdogs are compromised. Although the practice of not wanting to abide by global standards is common even among many Nigerian companies, it is particularly worrisome that multinationals that should know better are in the forefront of this. What is particularly perplexing is that some of them even have different standards for the Nigerian market and do all kinds of things which they dare not in their home countries or even in some other African countries here apparently because no one cares about anything in Nigeria, or at least so they think. That is why they would have the temerity to threaten to have removed any chief executive of a supervisory agency who is not prepared to play ball with them. There is no way the consumer will ever wear his crown as king if we continue to tolerate such nonsense. Thank you all I was away for just three weeks but some of my readers made it look like I had been off duty for far longer the way they kept asking what happened. I guess that was because I proceeded on the vacation unannounced in the first week. Thank God I am back. I am particularly grateful to Simon Oladapo, a regular reader of this column who got married on December13. He was the first person who called to find out what the matter was. I thank you all and wish you a happy New Year in advance.

If 2015 comes

N the Church I attend, Living Faith Church Worldwide, popularly known as Winners Chapel, 2015 has already been declared the year of Heaven on Earth. I can't wait for the new year to commence to begin to experience the heavenly realm on earth as declared by my Bishop. Won't it be nice to enjoy eternal bliss, where there is no sorrow, pain, anguish and many other harrowing experiences that have become the present earthly reality for many? We live in troubling times that can shake the faith of even the most faithful of men and women. Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Maiduguri, Rev Oliver Dashe Doeme in his Christmas message last Thursday highlighted the questions that must be going through the mind of victims of the Boko Haram insurgency in the North Eastern parts of the country who have been injured, lost family members and their property. " At this time a lot of questions are being asked by many of us including myself: where is God? Has God abandoned us? Are we being punished because of our sins? How can God allow the agents of the devil to destroy his innocent children? Is God weak? Can evil triumph over good? Etc." Despite the harrowing experiences, Rev Doeme urged Christians to keep their faith alive and should never get discouraged. " Our faith should make us see beyond the immediate experience and look at the future that is, after this temporal life with its pains and suffering, we shall share in the eternal glory of our Lord." With so much gloom worldwide; terrorism, economic depression, wars and rumours of war, that has left many in a state of despair, some are already wondering if what we are experiencing are not end time signs. Hopefully, the world will not end before December 31, 2014 and we will all be alive to hope for the best in the new year. 2015 promises to be a crucial year for our country with the general elections scheduled to hold in February . The success or otherwise of particularly the presidential election will determine the future of the country. Nigerians will have to vote to either retain the Federal Government headed by President Goodluck Jonathan whose performance has left much to be desired or vote for the change promised by the opposition All Progressive Congress (APC). The tension in the country over the presidential election and others is palpable with threats and counter threats by groups on how they will react to the outcome of the election if it does not favour their candidates. We hope that the a Independent National Electoral Commission ( INEC) will do its best to conduct a free and fair election, while politicians will accept the verdict of the voters and seek legal redress where necessary instead of resorting to violent protests. In 2015, there will be need for more determined efforts to curb the activities of the terrorists groups who have continued to unleash unimaginable violence on parts of the country with the fear that they may soon strike in other states. It is very sad that the whereabouts of the over 200 girls kidnapped by the Boko Haram group in Chibok and many others have remained unknown. We cannot afford to continue to live with the fear of where the next bomb will explode and hundreds of persons will be killed. The military must be sufficiently armed to contain the insurgency and prevent the terrorists from having a field day in their operations. In 2015, the positive impact of the economic measures by the government must be felt in practical terms and not in terms of indicators that has continued to make the average Nigerian poorer.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

COMMENT

Is the Nigerian Civil Service irreformable?

HAVE been asked to choose a topic for reflection as my 55th birthday gift to the enlarging constituency of reform of the public sector. The tone of the title I have chosen would appear rhetorical and even somewhat provocative especially given the evidence of the short, medium and long-term reform interventions that have littered, especially, the evolutionary path of the Nigerian Civil Service (NCS) since 1954. To ask whether the NCS is irreformable could therefore be seen, and rightly so, as casting some form of doubt on Nigeria's past reform efforts. If we take the question to be rhetorical however, then the question requires no answer since the evidence of reform in the NCS trajectory speaks for itself. If we take it as provocative, we achieve the same result. Indeed, if the reform of the NCS has been going on for all these years, why would anyone, especially someone who really is in a position to know, still ask if the service is irreformable? This rhetorical question was not freshly minted, it was the unique angle of a seminar task that I was recently saddled with at a continental professional seminar platform of the African Ministers of Public/Civil Services in Marrakesh where I was put in a difficult position (as a civil servant) of assuaging the frustration of policy makers (largely politicians) and experts in public administration on why, inspite of spirited effort of the political leadership as to why except in Botswana, Mauritius, South Africa and Namibia - those that Prof. Adamolekun in his 2005 research report categorised as 'advanced reformers', civil service reform, as distinct from its public service reform success stories like pension, tax, customs, procurement reforms etc., seems to be recording insignificant impact. Disembodied of technicalities, I share a few of my thought at the seminar through this medium, in continuation of our public education series. The two ways of interpreting the question that this contribution interrogates are in a sense wrongheaded. There is therefore a third approach to the intent of the question. In other words, to ask whether or not the NCS is irreformable is to cast attention on some of those protracted administrative issues and circumstances that have ensured that we continue reforming the institutional frameworks of the civil service system without essentially achieving our central objective. What then does this question suggest? Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher, gives us a clue: 'The philosopher's treatment of a

By Tunji Olaopa

question is like the treatment of an illness.' To ask if the NCS is irreformable is therefore to ask for a diagnostic assessment of past reform efforts vis-a-vis our current reform activities. But beyond the historical excursus, it is to highlight some of the tangible reform landmines and insights that could expedite the transition of the civil service system in Nigeria into the future envisioned for it. The question of the reform of the civil service system, anywhere in the world, is not ever settled, another way of saying that the road to perfection is always under construction. This is simply the case with the public service as its reform is intimately tied to governance which in itself is an unceasing and constantly evolving process of determining how to make life better for the citizens; a domain that is also undergoing deep seated reforms. The important issue therefore is not to think of settling the question of reform but to constantly reflect on how to reform right and in a manner that ensures that a system will not continue revisiting the same reform issue for as long as change, regarded as a constant, is imperative. In reform, the real issue is not often doing things right, but doing the right thing to get effective and efficient outcomes. "'Experts," says Tom Peters,'are those who don't need to bother with elementary questions anymore-thus, they fail to "bother" with the true sources of bottlenecks, buried deep in the habitual routines of the firm, labelled "we've always done it that way".' The first lesson in reform is thus that of how not to make it a tradition; that is, reformers cannot afford to reform for reform sake. Reformers cannot afford to make themselves 'experts' in reform matters. Indeed, the issue raised by Tom Peters is peculiar to the civil service because it is a system that is constantly under the threat of becoming bureaucratic. This implies that such a system becomes too overwhelmed by the immensity of its routine work that it domesticates genuine reforms to some trivial administrative changes that leave the real problems-the true sources of bottlenecks-deeply buried behind the thick files. In this context, reformers pay lip service to the necessity of reform while discreetly working to preserve the administrative status quo. Without the burden of a complicated historical analysis of the trajectory of reform in Nigeria, suffice is to say that the Nigerian civil

service, since its inauguration in 1954, has been undergoing series of reforms (this, for me, isn't the same as saying we are reforming). Beginning with the several reform commissions in the pre-and post-1954 period and up till the evolution of the democratic dispensation, the NCS has been subjected to approximately twenty one reforms efforts. Each of these reforms was targeted at specific issues within the evolving civil service system. For instance, the pre-1954 reforms were essentially concerned with the thorny issue of giving birth to the nascent civil service system while facilitating the smooth exit of the expatriates. On the other hand, the post1954 reforms had to settle the issues of the critical absence of an indigenous middle executive cadre in the two-tiered civil service system that had most Nigerians in the junior cadre and the issue of remuneration. By the time the democratic wave was rolling across Africa in the 90s, it has become an established administrative fact that much of what we expected from the reforms have not been achieved. The evolving democratic dispensation revealed a very serious dilemma: How we hope to democratise without an adequate and functional civil service institution already working in tandem with global best practices? In other words, the civil service is still terribly embroiled in severe institutional gaps-process, policy, capacity, performance and resources-that tell us that we have actually made tremendous effort at turning the civil service system around, but we still have a long way to go in terms of making that system a world class institution delivering quality service to Nigerians. The extent of the reformability of the civil service system, especially in its Nigerian context, has to do essentially with the capacity the system has to overcome the execution trap in the development pathway. It has been noted with a special reference to Africa that only 29% of reforms ever got completed; 45% of on-going reform projects are rated unsatisfactory; and 26% of these reforms usually get cancelled. The reform execution trap therefore speaks to the unfortunate fact of excessively conceiving reform ideas without translating those ideas into demonstrable outcomes that we call qualitative and efficient service delivery. In Nigeria, the implementation trap is acutely demonstrated by two critical institutional deficiencies. The first concerns our inability to connect the intention of reform with the

environment within which that reform intent would be implemented. More often than not, an unfriendly environment will always undermine a good reform. One immediate way to read this deficiency is to see it as a kind of disconnect in designs between governance, policy and administrative operations. The second institutional deficiency manifests as the passion for reform without the knowledge of what it takes to successfully manage a reform process. The third relates to the scope and contents of reform that are sufficient to create desirable multiplier effect and systemic impact. The three examples if correlated will demonstrate this deficiency-the failure to recognise that public administration systems have theoretical underpinnings and the inability to derive reform solutions from action research. These systemic deficiencies are so formidable that we are driven, once again, to re-examine our initial question: In the light of these historical outlines, is the Nigerian civil service irreformable? The answer to these questions is doubleedged. A positive answer will derive from the qualitative levels of reform that has been generated by the democratic framework since 1990. We can identify the SERVICOM as veritable concept still requiring oxygen to come alive; IPPIS, GFMIS and the NHIS reforms as valiant attempts to remould our institutional platforms for the ongoing challenge of democratic governance in Nigeria. Indeed, every Head of Service at the Federal level has made spirited attempt to add value with the framework set between 2003 - 2009, while a significant, albeit incomplete, move towards performance orientation has been made with the Tenure Policy in 2009. Subsequent move to deepen the institutionalization of the performance-oriented business model still remains largely aspirational. With the benefit of hindsight, therefore, we can look through the perspective of history at the trajectory of continuously improving reform insights and strategies that had been put in place. The critical point here is that without the framework of successive reforms from preindependence till date, our present reflections on administrative reforms in a democratic context would have become stunted. The Nigerian civil service has really come a long way since its inauguration in 1954. Thus, in terms of the consistency and critical insights â&#x20AC;˘Continued on Page 77

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

COMMENT

Doomsday 2015 Akinyemi’s alert on possible post-election violence in 2015 is probably well founded. Still, his fears are based on symptoms, rather than fundamentals

ROF. Bolaji Akinyemi, former foreign minister and deputy chairman at the 2014 National Conference, has hit the media with his personal fears of possible post-election violence in 2015. In a letter to the presidential candidates of the two main political parties, President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the professor recalled his worst fears before the 2011 election (which came to pass) and insisted that, for 2015, the prognosis was even worse. He pushed a theory that it was because the late Gen. Andrew Azazi, then the new National Security Adviser (NSA), refused to work on his anti-violence suggestions that the situation flared -- and with disastrous consequences. In his letter this time round, he suggested a 10-member committee -- The Sultan, Alhaji Muhammad Sa'ad Abubakar III, The Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi II, The Lamido of Adamawa, Alhaji Muhammadu Barkindo Mustapha, The Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, The Oba of Benin, Omo N'oba Erediauwa, former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) President, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, The Redeemed Christian Church of God General Overseer, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, and former Military Heads of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon and Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar -- to, prior to the election, meet with the two candidates, and commit them to minimal decorous conduct: nonviolent electioneering, accepting the result of elections, and, should there be any dispute over the result, nonviolent protests. The professor also expressed worry over what he called massive importation of firearms into the country, many of them suspected to violently muscle the vote, and set the country on fire. Lest we forget: Prof. Akinyemi also made reference to the "semi-official" American dire prediction that Nigeria might be history by 2015; fearing that a violently disputed election could just set fire to that tinder. He was convinced that should President Jonathan win, there would be violence in the North; but should Gen. Buhari win, there would be violence in the Niger Delta. Strictly speaking, this is no crying wolf when there is none. Indeed, the polity is pregnant; and quite ominous. It is ominous because there appears to be a zerosum mentality, en route to the 2015 election. Stands are hard. Emotions are extreme. Things indeed, appear

HENEVER values are not impacted at home, society is worse for it, society is then left with a huge burden to control a rabid dog that could have otherwise been a guard dog. When the home is so permissive that it fails to limit excesses and then even goes to the extent of rewarding mediocrity, then society is worse for it. A few decades ago, Nigeria was misruled by northern leaders who were heavily criticised by southerners but worshipped in the north. The northern people adored the leaders that impoverished all of us simply because they spoke the same

headed for a crash. For sending an alert early enough, Prof. Akinyemi has earned some commendation. It is what every patriot should do; and he has done his part. Still, that Prof. Akinyemi is spot-on, in his prognosis, does not in any way suggest it is based on sound fundaments. For instance, why should there be assured violence in the stronghold of each of the two major candidates? Is it because each side could be perceived not to have won fair and square? If that were so, is it not sounder counsel to push for a clean, free, fair and transparent election (prevention is better than cure, version) than setting up a committee of eminent Nigerians to, with all due respect to their motives and accomplishments, put some gloss on avoidable disaster? Indeed, if there is spectre of violence, it is simply because the strengthened opposition appears better placed to challenge the abuse of state security by the federal ruling party; with President Jonathan's penchant to skew legitimate coercive forces to illegitimate partisan causes -- witness the electoral siege on Ekiti and Osun states during the gubernatorial polls earlier this year; and the police attempt to banish Speaker Aminu Tambuwal from the House of Representatives, ostensibly because the Speaker had issues with his former party. The polity, perhaps including Prof. Akinyemi himself, bought the lie that the processes leading to the Ekiti and Osun elections were fair, even if, on E-Day, the process appeared free. But how could an exercise be free when processes leading to it were unfair? The election tribunal may have endorsed the Ekiti election; and the Osun election, despite federal illicit machinations, may have gone to the other side.

TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM

•Editor Festus Eriye •Deputy Editor Olayinka Oyegbile •Associate Editors Taiwo Ogundipe Sam Egburonu

•Managing Director/ Editor-in-Chief Victor Ifijeh •Chairman, Editorial Board Sam Omatseye •General Editor Adekunle Ade-Adeleye

But there was no doubt: the militarised processes of both were skewed to favour the federal ruling party. That is a notorious fact. If such brazen abuses were repeated at the general election, there would be natural reactions. Even, the Akinyemi suggested arbitrating committee of eminent Nigerians might just remind a sceptic, even with the best of motives, of the natural sarcasm that leaps off the title of Wole Soyinka's play, Madmen and Specialists. The Nation has profound respect for many members on the list. Besides, it is deeply thoughtful that only Gen. Gowon (who was in charge in the benign and near-innocent years of military rule) and Gen. Abubakar (who had the unenviable chore of, in 1999, leading the military back to the barracks after that institution had thoroughly subverted its essence) made the list. Gen. Buhari is a candidate, the huffingand-puffing Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, with his latter day crusading, appears fast becoming part of the problem; and Gen. Ibrahim Babangida is quietly left off. Even then, what is the value of Pastor Oritsejafor, CAN President, on such a committee, if the committee's job is to do transparent and fair intervention -Oritsejafor that has virtually made CAN a partisan, religious tag-team partner of the Jonathan Presidency? But of course! It is all patently Nigerian: shun the fundamentals but erect needless planks to attempt to solve a problem that needs not have arisen, if the right things were, ab initio, done! With all due respect to Prof. Akinyemi and his patriotic fervour, what Nigeria needs to stave off violence is an election process fair, free and transparent -- and eminently seen to be so, even by the blind! People who don't have the numbers but brag they would win a free election are entitled to their bragging. So, are people who claim they are spoilt for choice in numbers. It is a democracy and everyone is welcome. But a clean electoral process would put everybody where they belong. The ball is therefore in the court of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). It should, by right, get all the state institutional support it needs. If the Jonathan Presidency can do that and everyone, government and opposition, plays by the rule, the Akinyemi jeremiad would happily prove unfounded. Otherwise, nothing is guaranteed.

LETTER

Charity begins at home

language and attended the same mosque. For them, leadership had no responsibility and hence the southerners that criticised these leaders were just envious because they were not in charge. For these leaders, Charity did not begin at home, their corruption was hailed at home and hence their other crimes did not seem to matter. The fact that their parents ate gleefully from their corrupt hands instead of calling them to order

emboldened them to torment the people more. The people from whom they stole embraced them warmly and cheered them on to accomplish more disastrous exploits. History has been compelled to repeat itself because human beings have a penchant for acting in the very same way. Those in the south now sympathise with the man who has made our problems a second choice and not

a priority (assuming we are on the list). He throws excuses to us instead of solutions but is hailed at home and hence can act no different. His parents endorse mediocrity and say competence and responsibility is not a human characteristic whenever they embrace him on his home coming. The people of the south hail Mr. President's transformation agenda that has failed to transform their individual

fortunes, thereby encouraging his actions. The South south man should realise that he can't ask for good governance from a northerner when he fails to do so now. We don't imbibe charity from the streets, we are too hard headed for criticism from somewhere outside the home to matter. Until the hard truth is drummed into the ears of GEJ by the south as a collective region, then

the noise in the north would not move him. Until those of us in the creeks ask what has happened to our subsidy funds and the proposed refineries, we should not expect anything good. Those of us from the South must be able to ask why we are still having less than 5000 megawatts of electricity despite the reforms in the sector. Mr. President can only be responsive to the security challenge in the north east when the humanity of the South south man makes him empathise with his kin across the Niger whose geography is now a curse. By Ekitumi Ofagbor Ofagbor88@yahoo.com

America's restoration of ties with Cuba

RESIDENT Barrack Obama has taken a giant step that history would never forget him in politics and human endeavour. The decision to open diplomatic ties with Cuba is a decision that needs to be applauded in the world of politics; hence it would cement the bound between Cuba and America. When the threat of Ebola reared its ugly head, the

Cuban government deployed its very best doctors to help the countries where the diseases was ravaging, this drew the attention of the American government, which for the first time in fifty years of its sour relations commended the Cubans. When the regime of former President Fidel Castro was in government, his avowed determination to hold his regime's policies angered the Americans, par-

ticularly the communism the Cubans are practising. This restoration of diplomatic relations has drawn world commendation from world leaders which would open the window of opportunities between the two countries. Also, this relationship would afford the Cubans living in America to travel to Cuba without undue intimidation and harassment from the American government. It now behoves on the

American dominated Republicans congress to ensure the relationship see the light of the day, because in any good thing that would come out, it must face some resistance from the section of the society. The Cubans are very versatile and determined people that are contributing to the uplift and development of many sister countries around the world. We hope the restoration

of this diplomatic relationship would ensure greater ties that would reduce the unnecessary political tension amongst the various countries of the world. The end of cold war has opened window opportunities, where many countries in the world believe in mutual cooperation amongst themselves to promote peace, unity and development in the best interest of the humanity. The report that former

President Fidel Castro would be visiting America next year is a welcome development and would go a long way to promote the much anticipated diplomatic ties. The opening of American embassy in Havana is the right step in the right direction which shows the seriousness of the relationship restoration. By Bala Nayashi Lokoja, Kogi State

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

COMMENT

Prof Bolaji Akinyemi Vs PDPâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history of electoral apostasy One would not but wonder what facilities the professor thinks the opposition has to start a crisis knowing how unencumbered the Nigeria police and other security agencies are in turning their offensive weapons on its members

INCE I can, with considerable justification, claim some close affinity with Professor Bolaji Akinyemi who I had actually celebrated on this very page before - see TWO OF A KIND - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - this article should qualify as the archetypical Yoruba's 'oro to so sini lenu to bu'yo si -words that foul up the mouth but simultaneously sweetened it by adding salt because I ordinarily should not be seen controverting Professor Akinyemi on a public forum like this. Unfortunately, these are not ordinary times. Our last mutual engagement, together with some distinguished Yoruba icons, was the effort , not only to position the Southwest appropriately within the Nigerian mix but, in particular, to birth a Socio-Cultural Pan-Yoruba Organisation where all Yoruba, irrespective of political party affiliation, can sit amicably together to collectively interrogate the way forward for the Yoruba nation'. The story of AGBAJO YORUBA AGBAYE, under the distinguished interim Chairmanship of Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade, but which was mummified by then Southwest PDP governors during those days of the locust, is for another day. In our own respective corners, however seemingly significant or insignificant, we make history every day. So not many are likely to forget Professor Bolaji Akinyemi in a hurry having served, not only as Director-General, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, but also as the country's Foreign Affairs Minister during, arguably, the most winsome period in the history of our external affairs relations as a country. To that period must be credited his worthy attempt to establish a CONCERT OF MEDIUM POWERS. I would not know now, if he still considers that

as his greatest achievement in public service given his recent, more than seminal role, in the National Conference which the president recently confessed was a 'Yoruba' initiative. He recently wrote a letter to both President Goodluck Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari which, in my view was either misplaced, or failed to lay emphasis on the appropriate thus indicating that he failed to reflect deeply on the ill-consequences of his 1993 letter to General Abacha, also at a time of considerable anxiety in the country. In the letter, he suggested that the two presidential candidates of Nigeria's two foremost political parties should sign a Memorandum of Undertaking to have peaceful campaigns as well as having their supporters ACCEPT WHATEVER THE RESULT(caps mine) of the 2015 presidential election. Not a few see this suggestion as anything other than offering a carte blanche to a rigprone party like the PDP to rig the 2015 election to its heart's content since such an understanding would have completely tied APC's 'hands' behind its back. Recent elections during which President Jonathan turned the concerned states into virtual garrisons with all manner of 'security operatives', some of them masked, and who in turn manacled the opposition, more than justify this conclusion. It could only be a shame that many believe that Professor Akinyemi is probably only the messenger here, given his well known capacity for original thinking, and that he most probably knows more than he volunteers given his well known chummy relationship with the government. For instance, in a text message to me a few hours after his WAY FORWARD went public, a literally infuriated Olumide Ayeni, PhD, a top class

legal practitioner and celebrated Omoluabi, not given to easily losing his cool, shot it down writing as follows: " Good evening uncle and seasons compliments Sir. I thought Professor Bolaji Akinyemi is supposed to be an eminent political scientist and statesman. Why is he preaching to the converted and playing the ostrich? If he is to be taken seriously, let him stand up to the truth as there can be no violence next year if the elections are free, fair and transparent. JFK it was, he wrote, who once said that 'those who make peaceful change impossible make violent ones inevitable. How on earth did he think that even a fool would not see through his red herring dressed up in statesmanlike pronouncement? This is hubris of the highest order and I am so disappointed'. The respected OODUA PATHFINDER was more scathing in its editorial on the subject. Paraphrasing the paper, it is of the opinion that Professor Akinyemi is being clever by half by pretending he is ignorant of the nature of the current Nigerian presidency thereby leading him to suggest that both parties would jointly be responsible for President Jonathan's anti-democratic actions. Writing further, it said 'there is only one person to be held responsible for any violence and that is the president. The reason it wrote, is simple because he has never held anyone accountable for any high crimes, even as he himself is an active participant. Violence, it says, does not occur in a vacuum; so when security forces embark on illegalities, hiding under "orders from above, when state institutions are used to maul the opposition, it is no rocket science - as the professor himself would say - to know that its purveyors are setting

the stage for violence. So, Akinyemi's warning, the paper concluded, would make sense only if the president had been acting within the Constitution he swore to uphold". This government has committed and has not stopped committing serial illegalities thus confirming the truism that the president really doesn't care a hoot as he personally once told Nigerians. It harassed and tear-gassed elected representatives of the people, and recently led sundry beneficiaries of its ill-digested economic policies to donate sums of money far in excess of the campaign funds allowed by law. Try go to court to challenge this affront on the citizenry and you see Nigerian courts find in favour of a government that has succeeded in compromising every institution of state. Also, rumours already have it that like it happened in the Ekiti election where NYSC members used were trained in far away Akure, those to be deployed in 2015 are already being 'bent', preparatory to assist in rigging the election, a situation which, if true, can completely endanger the lives of these young Nigerians. Parents are therefore put on this long notice to warn their children or wards who might be carried away by amounts which to, a 21billion-plus rich PDP will be nothing more than a pittance. With some of these illegalities not unknown to Professor Akinyemi, it is a surprise he could opine that the two parties should be held responsible for any election-related crisis. Worse is the fact that though most Nigerians are aware of PDP's history of electoral apostasy -apostasy used here loosely to describe the party's serial electoral malfeasance - it accounted for a self-confessed riggedin president- the highly regarded pro-

fessor still found it difficult to be a honest broker. PDP has graduated far and beyond traditional rigging tactics and had gone scientific as we saw in the Ekiti election. The inability to prove it at the Ekiti Election Tribunal was due to its technicality but I believe that Nigerian lawyers will soon get round it. I have no doubt that its success in Ekiti would spur PDP to its further deployment in the 2015 elections. It is therefore the responsibility, not of a complicit INEC, but of opposition political parties to negate that possibility. One would not but wonder what facilities the professor thinks the opposition has to start a crisis knowing how unencumbered the Nigeria police and other security agencies are in turning their offensive weapons on its members. Comparisons can be odious as what is generally forgotten when some misguided people attribute the 2011 post election crises to General Buhari is the fact that his oft-quoted statement had a condition precedent which is: IF ELECTIONS ARE RIGGED, there would be crisis. Last Sunday on this page I mentioned how the first day's election was allegedly cancelled just to ascertain the general's area of strength to which fake papers were then allegedly ferried on subsequent days; something they did successfully because of the general's lean manpower resources on ground but which today, is no longer the case. In concluding, I wish to respectfully say that had Professor Akinyemi, in his letter, laid the requisite and appropriate emphasis on the critical need for a genuinely transparent election, - something ONLY President Jonathan can guarantee, he would have found me standing ramrod behind him.

As we ring out the old year... Christmas is gone but the bleakness remains to close the year for us; though I must say it is a hard bell to ring out the year with

N a few days, the bells will ring for year 2014 to take a bow and exit the stage, and for another to take its place. As usual, a great deal of fanfare attends this change of baton, which begins with the celebration of Christmas. Quite early in the season, for many of us though, Christmas had promised indeed to be a bleak time of it if there was no supernatural intervention. First, though, my own story; it's a long one but I will cut it short. It all began about eleven days to Christmas. We were all sitting quietly in our house of an evening minding our own business and enjoying what little electricity we were given by PHCN (or whatever name they go by now) out of the kindness of their heart, when there was a sudden explosion. We would have put it down to a tyre blow-out or a quarry action if the thing had not coincided with a power cut as we were promptly dumped into pitch-black darkness. That sounds like its coming from the transformer, commented someone from a corner of the dark room, and that means trouble. Why must you put the worst construction on every sound?, someone else asked, obviously trying to stifle her own fears; for all you know, it might well be the top-floor swimming pool of that neighbourhood rich man deciding to come down to street level.

Actually, that's another story. I also did not know that it was possible to situate a swimming pool on the top floor of a three-story building; but there you are; only those who have money know how to spend it I guess. Anyway, the fears of our pessimist were confirmed the next day when electricity was not only not restored, a nasty and wild rumour began to spread through the neighbourhood in the route where electricity used to take: there would not be any energy for a while: the transformer had been damaged. TEN DAYS TO CHRISTMAS?, I shrieked. Whoever heard of such a thing? So, while others are singing 'On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me...' song, I would be singing 'On the eleventh day of Christmas, PHCN sent to me...' Imagine that! In place of help, only a story spread. A very disrespectful animal, we were told, had run violently into the transformer structure, damaging some parts and managing only to get itself thrown out violently too. Fortunately or unfortunately, the blessed thing was not killed, only stunned, as neighbours reported that the thing got up and walked away after a while. Pity, I thought, at least the neighbours might have been compensated for the darkness they would have to endure as the darkness continued relentlessly into the coming days.

That was when we heard others tell of their experiences. In their neighbourhood, said one, when the transformer conked out, we had to wait for three months to get light again. Another reported that each house had to contribute money in thousands to get a new one. Someone asked us: is there no rich man in your neighbourhood who can get one for himself and then make you people his parasites? Indeed, Christmas was but a mere one day away when, with the combined efforts of the concerned consumers led by our pessimist and the (now gallant) PHCN men who looked to me like Fathers Christmas attending to my wish, the flow of electricity was restored right as the neck of Christmas began to peep in. Phew, it was a close one! I hate to think about the many other neighbourhoods where the entire body of Christmas would pull in, feet and all, and there would be no electricity to even light their ways to the kitchen: due to some errant, stupidly playful goat or cow or act of the devil. I sincerely hope such neighbourhoods find respite soon. Now, in my neighbourhood at least, we are back to abnormality: i.e., a constantly interrupted flow of electricity, thank God. Obviously, when the almighty said let there be light, he did not have Nigeria's PHCN in mind. While the uncertainties about the electricity lasted, another shocking piece of news emerged early in the month. It would be a bleak Christmas indeed for many of my countrymen and women because sala-

ries would be delayed or unpaid on account of the downturn in the economy. Now, when I heard that, it felt like a horror story titled 'The return of Job.' He it was who was reputed to have said that that, which he feared most, had befallen him. For us the people, it simply meant that that which the government promised to do, it had begun to do. Remember that it had promised that salaries would immediately become irregular on account of the downturn? Well! We have said it before, and I think it needs reiterating here, that it feels a little unfair and sad that the salaries of workers should be the first place of call for the government when faced with cuts in revenue. Honestly, I have wondered aloud why this should be and I have received no education on the matter. Indeed, the silence following my questions on the matter has been truly deafening. Why are people's jumbo pays not attacked? I soon had some experience of what the nation's finance team promised when the minister said that hard times awaited us in the country. Reality really dawned when I went through the banks. It was only on a fact-finding mission, I assure you, since most of what I have can be carried on my person. That reminds me of a joke. You know those stereotype jokes? Well, this one is targeting several groups at once. There was this rustic just come into town, a real Mr. Deeds. Well, what does he do but go and fall into the hands of robbers who beat him black and blue to get at his pocket. Naturally, your ru-

ral fellow put up a spirited fight but he was outnumbered and out-techniqued by the city thieves. When the robbers eventually got at what he had in his pocket, they were so disgusted they flung it back at him and sternly rebuked him. 'You mean you put up this big fight just to save your three dollars?' 'Naaaa', replied he, 'I thought you were after the one hundred and fifty dollars I had hidden in my shoe'. Like I said, most of what I have can be carried on my person. Anyway, since I know that most people do not use shoes to hold money any more but banks, Christmas time is always a tedious time for bankers and clients. What was my surprise then when I stepped into some banking halls and found I could quite well have driven my car in without hindrance. Where normally you could find nowhere to put one foot after another in some of the halls because of the press of customers, there was ample space. The crowd was just not there. It was true what people had been whispering then: it would be a bleak Christmas indeed because many salaries were missing. Well, Christmas is gone but the bleakness remains to close the year for us; though I must say it is a hard bell to ring out the year with. So, as we ring out the old year and make room for the new one, I just want to give you two wishes. I want to wish you strength to see the year through, fighting for what's in your pocket and your shoes. I also wish that no errant goat will cross your path, or your transformer.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

COMMENT

(96) Falling oil prices and Nigeria's 'blessed' 36 mini heads of states: can we learn from the specter of fast dwindling revenues? The house maketh the feasters merry; it is emptied out. Bertolt Brecht, "Concerning Poor BB"

ROFESSOR Abiola Irele will be surprised to read this, but it was in his house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A., that the conversation that eventually led to this piece took place sometime in mid-November. By that time, though global oil prices had not yet plummeted to slightly less than 50% of what they had been in August, I was still sufficiently troubled by the irony in the "good luck" in the increase in what dollars from my salary could fetch in exchange with the Naira. With this in mind, I thought of the bitter irony in the Ghanaian novelist, Ayi Kwei Armah's Why Are We So Blest? In the novel's symbolic plot and character structures, Africa's economic and social elites are presented as a neocolonial glitterati doomed to achieve and enjoy their wealth and prestige, their "blessedness" at the expense of the terrifying poverty and squalor of the living conditions, the life chances of the great majority of their compatriots. With this in mind, during that conversation with him in mid-November, I ruefully observed to Professor Irele that the gain in the value of my dollar-denominated salary at Harvard in exchange with the Naira is the other grim face of the downward spiral in the value of our national currency. In other words, my gain, my "blessedness", is the result of the misery that the devaluation of the naira would cause to my country. Before I could finish my sentence, Professor Irele shot back at me: "Speak for yourself, BJ! You have to send dollars to Nigeria in exchange for the Naira; I have to send Naira to my family in the U.S. in exchange for the dollar". From this short exchange and from Armah's Why Are We So Blest?, it was a short step for me to identify who among our country's political elites are, like me, protected from the freefall of the Naira in the face of rapidly falling world oil prices. The President and the Executive Governors of our 36 states: they are the most cushioned, the most insulated from what almost all Nigerians are feeling now and may perhaps feel even more sharply in the months

â&#x20AC;˘Governor and Mini Head of State

ahead as the oil prices continue to tumble. The governors - the mini heads of state in Nigeria - in particular embody more than any other social group that word "blessed" as deployed with devastating irony in Armah's novel: a state of benighted "blessedness" that is dependent on the hardship and suffering of the vast majority of the people. This is the subject of this week's column, but before I come to it, permit me to dwell briefly on falling oil prices and what many progressive and patriotic commentators in Nigeria are saying about the alarming specter. In the present discussion, space will allow me to reflect only on perhaps the two most important things that the most astute commentators are saying about the falling oil prices. First of all, they are saying that the hardships that are already here as well as those to come must make us learn, as many other oilproducing nations have learned, that we must diversify the national and local economies in our country and stop depending so overwhelmingly on oil. This argument which, by the way, has been

around for at least two decades now, is buttressed by the fact that Nigeria has an abundance of many other natural resources that lie untapped because of the ease with which oil revenues flow into our national and state coffers. The second argument is newer but no less crucial: a country's most valuable resources are its people. For this reason, far more than oil, far more than any other single or group of natural resources, it is the human beings and their capacities and potential that must constitute the resource base of our country. After all, there are countries on this planet that have little or no natural resources and therefore depend almost entirely on their human capital. For if you have developed human capital, if you mobilize and strengthen the productive and creative capacities of your people, you can get natural resources from other countries of the world, especially countries like Nigeria that fail to tap and develop the productive capacities of their peoples. We all know that the least developed and therefore the most under-utilized resource that we have

is precisely this one that pertains to both the capacities and potential of our people, most especially our young people that constitute the demographic majority of our populace. On the basis of this factor, we can see clearly that our massive and distorting overdependence on oil revenue has not only led to a looting frenzy, a systemic and collective kleptomania by our rulers, but far worse is the fact that it has led to wastage on a monumental scale of our most valuable asset as a nation, this being the productive potential of the teeming millions of our young people. The potential is there in our youths in whom the future of our survival as a nation and society depends; but that potential remains blighted and unrealized thanks to the "blessedness" of our leaders' profligate overdependence on oil revenues. This brings us back to the issue of those in our country who, in their state of "blessedness", are the most protected from the terrifying prospects of our dwindling oil revenues. Now, it is true that in land size and population, most of the states in Nigeria are in fact like many of the countries of the world. But that is not why the governors of our 36 states feel and act like heads of states in their own right. The reason is simply and unambiguously a dependence on oil revenues that is like the dependence of human beings, human communities on water. Much in the manner in which no human community can survive without reasonably assured access to water sources, so can the system that has given us 36 mini heads of states in Nigeria not survive without our overdependence on oil revenues. In all but two or three of our 36 states, oil revenues constitute the only source, the only raison d'ĂŞtre of both the governor's administrative legitimacy and symbolic, honorific prestige. Even in the exceptional states like Lagos and Rivers, the over-reliance on oil revenues is also decisive, if not overdetermining. For everyone knows that every month, the 36 states all head to Abuja to collect their respective allocations from national oil revenues and that this is the single most important activity of each of the 36 states. What is not duly or sufficiently recognized, in my opinion, is the fact that this activity also sets the tone and the agenda for all the governors, al the chief executives of the 36 states. For I think that it is not

sufficiently recognized that if the monies monthly paid out to our mini heads of states are not paid to them but are, by a completely different order of governance than the one practiced now, diverted to developing the human capacities and potential of our peoples, the governorships, the mini heads of state syndrome would end tomorrow and absolutely nobody would mourn its demise. As I stated at the beginning of this piece, the President and our 36 mini heads of state are, like me and millions of Nigerians who work abroad especially in the countries of the convertible currencies of the world, are protected from the dire prospects of the naira's spiraling downward plunge. We are "blessed". But the "blessings" are very illusory, more so for our mini heads of states than for Nigerians who live and/or work abroad. This is because the consequences of the falling value of the Naira in relation to the dollar and the convertible currencies of the world are more gradual and less immediate for Nigerians working abroad than for our mini heads of states. Their monthly trips to Abuja are becoming more and more fraught, more and frustrating. Sometimes, they return with empty bowls, with promissory notes whose future redemption is not assured. They are hanging on by the skin of their authority and legitimacy as all their clients, all their creditors pound on their doors, demanding both their just and unjust share of the largess from the overdependence on oil revenues. There are many lessons to learn from our dwindling oil revenues. Hardship and suffering often serve to teach us about ourselves, about the world and about life. For me, the greatest lesson that we can learn from the current crisis of the downward spiral of oil prices on the world market is that oil revenues, as long as we continue to be able to garner them even if they decline, must go to meet the needs of the young and the most needy in our society. This calls for the abolition of the mini heads of states system of governance in our country, together with its chief hegemon - the strong, bloated presidency. I doubt that this is about to happen. But this is no reason not to herald its presence on the horizon of the present. Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

COMMENT

sms only: 08116759748

UST like religion, the specter of violence hangs ominously over the 2015 general elections. That should surprise no one because virtually all our electoral exercises - with the possible exception of 1993 - have been trailed by tears and blood. If the recent intra-party primaries were as chaotic as they were, we should look with trepidation towards next year when the contest would be across party lines. Up North the Boko Haram insurgents would do their level best to disrupt the process. Add to that irresponsible politicians trying to manipulate religious sentiments for electoral advantage and you have the makings of a real tinderbox. The stakes are incredibly high. For the first time in 16 years a very strong possibility exists that the opposition could seize power from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which has dominated the landscape for so long. The game-changer is the emergence of the All Progressives Congress (APC) which provides a credible platform for the contestation of power with the PDP. The opposition can sense that their moment is at hand: the incumbent is horrified by the prospect of power slipping from its grasp. In these parts being in opposition is worse than winding up in hell: there's no greater incentive to hang on using all possible means. This has set the stage for the some of the most incendiary pre-election rhetoric to assault our ears. A few days ago President Goodluck Jonathan was in church moaning about the volatile comments being made by politicians. Typically, he focused on the threat of the opposition to form a parallel government if the polls were rigged. What he didn't say was that all sides are just as guilty of firing things up. One of his ardent supporters and one-time leader of a militant Niger Delta group, Asari Dokubo, has threatened that there would be bloodshed if the president loses the next election. Some other retired militants have equally threatened to come out of cushy retirement if their kinsman and benefactor were toppled through the ballot box. Another way of putting it is that a band of gunmen are putting a pistol to the head of the rest of Nigeria saying 'Vote Jonathan or else…' What makes this threat interesting is that in 2011 one Northern PDP leader angry that the party would not allow the region field someone to serve another four years of what would have been the late Yar'Adua's second term, vowed that they would make the zone ungovernable. There are those who still argue that the upsurge in activities of the Boko Haram sect is a fall-out of that threat. If we were to take that conspiracy theory seriously then we should be prepared for a fresh red tide of blood in the creeks next year. Up North, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi stirred controversy when he called on Jonathan not to contest the 2015 election. Perhaps to balance things up, a few days after he also advised General Muhammadu Buhari to forget about his fourth bid for power. Last week, he cried out that supporters of the APC presidential candidate had been sending threatening text messages to his phone over his stance. Some other leaders in the region have also claimed that an unspoken threat hangs in the air over anyone who would dare oppose the Buhari's aspiration. Given what happened in 2011 when

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2015 and the violence card

•Post-election violence in 2011

supporters of the general embarked on an orgy of violence through the North because they believed he had been rigged out of certain victory, it is not out of the realm of possibility that there could be a repeat if the results turn out to be controversial. Given this backdrop should we been running for the hills because of the prospect of violence marring the polls? Former Minister of External Affairs, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, thinks we have real reasons to worry about looming "horrendous violence." In an open letter to President Jonathan and General Buhari last Monday, he proposed that both candidates sign an undertaking to rein in their supporters after the election. He wrote: "The certainty of violence is higher than it was in 2011. If President Jonathan wins, the North will erupt into violence as it did in 2011. If Gen. Buhari wins, the Niger Delta will erupt into violence." I don't believe that we need rocket science to make this prediction." Adducing other reasons to support his fears about impending violence he said "illegal massive importation of weapons into the country, which has reached such alarming proportions that I really wonder which is better armed, the militia on one hand or the official armed forces on the other hand".

To prevent disaster, Akinyemi suggested that frontline traditional rulers the Sultan of Sokoto, the Emir of Kano, the Lamido of Adamawa from the North, the Ooni of Ife and the Oba of Benin from the South; elder statesman Chief Emeka Anyaoku; religious leaders Pastor Enoch Adeboye and Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor and ex-Heads of State Gen. Yakubu Gowon and Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar -facilitate a preelection meeting between the candidates, the preparation of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and act as a Council of Wisemen to assist in managing the post-election conflicts. The recommended MoU would commit the candidates to "a civil and peaceful campaign, devoid of threats; a commitment to control their supporters after the elections; and that supporters of whoever loses should be entitled to peaceful protests but not to violent protests." We've already had a quick dismissal of the proposals from the Presidency after its spokesperson said there was no need for Jonathan to sign any agreement since he had always been committed to peaceful, free and fair polls. This is another of saying 'don't worry about us you talk to the bad guys on the other side.' This is where the problem begins -

when we chose to see the speck in the opponent's eyes without first plucking out the beam in ours. No side has been guiltless over the use of violent rhetoric. If we're to make progress towards peaceful polls, a starting point would be for all sides to admit their sins. It is unhelpful when the government and the ruling party posture as the patriots while the opposition are painted as rebellious rabble. Akinyemi's suggestions are some of the most useful I have come across in what currently passes for debate about the coming elections. They deserve to be treated with more respect and given a second look. I believe that given the level of maturity displayed by politicians in most Third World environments violent transitions are things we must learn to live with. Whether in India or Pakistan, Egypt or Zimbabwe elections are often contested against a canvas of booming guns and bombs. As a supporting cast you have the police and other security agencies who think their role is to align with whoever is in power. While it is difficult to hold leaders responsible for the sometimes spontaneous actions of supporters, there can be no denying that their firm utterances can have a calming influence on them.

“Given the level of maturity displayed by politicians in most Third World environments violent transitions are things we must learn to live with. Whether in India or Pakistan, Egypt or Zimbabwe elections are often contested against a canvas of booming guns and bombs. As a supporting cast you have the police and other security agencies who think their role is to align with whoever is in power”

Imagine if the late Nelson Mandela had not spoken strongly against blacks taking vengeance against their erstwhile white Apartheid oppressors? All Nigerians who are truly committed to peaceful polls next year should now insist that Jonathan and Buhari should sign on to the sort of MoU Akinyemi has proposed as a first step. This might not be a magic wand but it would certainly help. The only problem I see is that our leaders have shown that they don't respect agreements or signed documents. People who can baldly disavow commitments they made publicly cannot be expected to respect any deal on peaceful elections - especially when there are no credible means of enforcement beyond moral persuasion. It might also be helpful to remind gung-ho supporters that while their threats of conflict might seem romantic now, the consequences are often bitter. Those who promise violence and act on it invariably turn their home turf into the theatres of war. The wars will not be fought on European soil. Whether it has political undertone or not we have seen how the Boko Haram insurgency has devastated the North East. The economy is shattered and families broken in pieces. Thousands have become internally displaced persons in the own homeland. Even with billions of naira thrown in it would take at least a decade to restore this region to where it was in 2009. The rotund ex-Niger Delta militants who are threatening mayhem if their benefactor losses the polls should remember what happened to poor local people in the days leading to the ceasefire that birthed the amnesty programme of the Umaru Yar'Adua administration. Fed up with the unrelenting attacks by militants on oil installations and security agents, the government unleashed military action to root out the rebels. In a matter of days the lightening fast offensive unmasked a string of militant camps. Unfortunately, the fighting also devastated hapless communities which had been under the thumb of the gunmen. Thousands of women and children were put to flight - an indeterminate number killed. The palace of the paramount ruler of the Ijaw Gbaramatu Kingdom was razed by federal troops. As the one-sided fight unfolded Ijaw leaders like Chief Edwin Clark were forced to cry out that their people were being slaughtered and called for a truce. This bit of history might be helpful in jogging the memories of billionaire ex-militants dreaming of returning to the creeks. What counts is not starting a conflict but understanding where it takes you and whether you can finish what you've started. I suspect that whoever governs Nigeria after now will not treat any insurgency in the Niger Delta that threatens the country's economic jugular vein with the same cavalier attitude the Boko Haram war has been handled. In any event much of these threats might just be empty bluster. Even if Jonathan loses I don't expect millions in the Niger Delta whose lives have not been bettered in the last four years to start rushing into the creeks to fight. Most are just ordinary people who will just want to carry on with their lives. The Asari Dokubos, Ateke Toms and Boyloaf we can understand: they would have millions of reasons to be disgruntled.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

SUNDAY LIFE 25

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

ETCETERA

SUNNY SIDE

Cartoons

By Olubanwo Fagbemi

POLITICKLE

deewalebf@yahoo.com 08060343214 (SMS only)

Steel serpent and other reflections Steel serpent

THE GReggs

IT is late evening, and the serpent splits the dense foliage. With a terrifying hiss, the shimmering beast rushes in and, moments after, stops dead in her rusty tracks. Eyes blazing and belly creaking, she incites animated chatter at a shelter nearby. “It’s very long!” “It’s taken on too much!” and “It’s so crowded there’s hardly any room inside.” “It’s like ants on a lifeless millipede, or worm, for that matter,” I think. In apparent response to the remarks, ‘her reptilian majesty’ slowly sheds old skin. Then she takes on fresh colour, first on one side, then on the other; even on top, behind and, yes, in front. Here goes the hiss again. It is warning enough. “Stand clear, for I come through; hang about, to your peril!” I stand clear. I have seen this monster of deceptive sluggishness do dreadful things. I have seen her churn, crush and discard victims in motion. I have heard helpless mothers scream and distraught fathers wail upon the trail of destruction. Yes, I have witnessed her numbing, dreadful worst and do not wish a repeat. With a distinctive screech, forward lurches the symbol of stagnated development and colonial relic. Never short of desperate patronage, the steel serpent leaves a chain of inconsistencies that none but clueless government would dismiss.

Because of Lulu

OH, LIFE!

PERHAPS Jimi seemed far-away, for the young, plump woman beside the guy next to him on the pavement offered a sweet. He declined. The spirit of giving associated with the Yuletide has set in, he thought with a smile. But the woman persisted. “Take it, now,” she said with the air of one unaccustomed to being refused. “Don’t force him to take it, now,” said her male companion, on whom she leaned. She insisted. “Take. Because of me – because of Lulu.” Jimi took the sweet. It was tempting. Or maybe it was her. The soft, almost musical pronunciation of her name drew a smile. Jimi unwrapped the sweet, and tossed it in his mouth. The pair chatted beside him. Relieved, he returned to his thoughts. He would normally suck but he chewed straightaway. From her room, Fyafa’s squeaky voice and distinctive laughter reached him just then. Hers was one of five in the compound. Her visitor appeared to be Iwedu, one of the sappy fellows forever about her. Almost choking with jealousy, Jimi fought the urge to get up and walk away. He felt helpless. He wondered why he was there until he remembered that he chose to come. He needed to assess competition for Fyafa’s affection. He smiled as Pato approached. His friend wasn’t convinced. Fyafa laughed again. Pato glanced in her direction. “Man, this girl is in love!” he said. Jimi shrugged. He wondered whether Fyafa was truly in love, or, knowing her as he did, in love with the idea of being in love in the season of love. Well, all he knew was that he hurt double. And Pato twisted the knife because Lulu held him back.

All the best

CHEEK BY JOWL

IT’S year’s end and you may or may not be far from where you would love to be. But thank God for little mercies. Think what a privilege it is to breathe, to thrive, and to pursue and enjoy the things you crave. Poverty, sadness and strife may proliferate, especially in a poorly organised society as ours, but positives abound. For some, the ‘thirteenth month’ – coinage for end-of-year bonus in organisations – is guaranteed. For others, it’s the long-awaited promotion. And despite lofty economic statistics bandied by government officials in defiance of stunted growth, business looks promising for the hopeful employer as much as the employee. But have you smiled at someone today? Really? Loved ones barely count, for kindness towards them is routine. If you must know, kindness is the only investment that never fails. As long as society exists, there will always be room for compassion. No thanks to the Boko Haram insurgency, the number of internally displaced people across the country daily alarms. While the nation waits for the government to display a keen sense of responsibility, you can do your bit. Reach out to a stranger today. Help steady the stumbling child or vulnerable old folk. House the hopeless. Clothe the exposed. Feed the needy. There is no better time. Do good, and do the best you can.

Jokes Humour The Escape DURING WW II an American fighter pilot was shot down over Japan and he was captured. He was wounded, so the Japanese doctor amputated his left arm. He requested that they drop his arm over his base in the U.S. The Japanese did. The next week they amputated his other arm and he asked the same thing. The Japanese complied. The next week they amputated one of his legs, and he again asked for them to drop it over his base in the U.S. The Japanese doctor said, “Sorry, we do dis no more!” The pilot asked why not, and the Japanese said, “We think you trying to escape!” References A MARRIAGE broker offered Mathew a beautiful young girl, a real prize, to be his wife. But Mathew was stubborn. “I’m a businessman,” Mathew said. “Before I buy material from a mill, I look closely. So before I get married, I need a

sample too.” The broker had no choice but to relay the message to the girl. “He says he is a good businessman, and he has to know exactly what he’s buying. He insists on a sample.” “Listen,” the girl said. “I’m good at business too. A sample I can’t give. But, I can give him references!” Fat Plate TO celebrate his 40th birthday, the boss, who was battling middle-age fat, bought a new convertible sports car. As a finishing touch, he put on a vanity plate with the inscription “18 Again.” The wind was let out of his sails, however, when a salesman entered the office the following week. “Hey,” he said out loud, “who owns the car with the plate ‘I ate again’?”

Sub-standard Deviation HE: Would you like to dance? She: Not with you. He: Oh, come on, lower your standards a little ... I did. •Adapted from the Internet

Writer ’s Fountain OW to write and win: French scholar Georges Polti these primal drives. If the protagonist is not personally threatened or engaged in these identified only 36 master plots in all the primal areas, he must become emotionally stories of the world. His first master plot involved with a character who is challenged involves a Persecutor, a Supplicant and a in one or more of them. dubious Power which may favour one side For example, a crime story may appear, at or the other. The theme of this master plot? first glance, to involve no primal drive. It The power of mercy over hate. could be a grim whodunit or escapist Have you engaged the original emotions? entertainment. But the heroine, a forensic The theme must engage the protagonist’s and expert, is obsessed with a passion to avenge the reader’s primal emotions or carnal drives. the dead – to re-assert the values of a civilised Defined in the crudest terms, these include community and so protect the ‘tribe’. That’s a sex (or procreation), physical survival (for primal drive. self, family or tribe), emotional comfort The author can invoke a primal drive (love, friendship and community), and explicitly, as in a suspense thriller, or tacitly, spiritual survival or advancement. as in a literary story which fits into no obvious The theme and ensuing conflicts in a genre. But it must be done. If your story entails strong story should involve one or more of all these, and is well-written, it deserves to Queer remarks: be mentioned for an award. Otherwise, no •Monday is the only day of the week that plotting, characterisation or dialogue can help. The stories will simply fall flat and not has an anagram: ‘dynamo’. •If you live to be over 100, you are engage the reader. There is a lot more to writing great stories, considered a Centurian. •French was spoken in England for though. Some stories may break these rules and still resonate. Keep learning and, sooner hundreds of years. •In literature, the average length of a or later, you will find a formula that strikes a winning chord. sentence is around 35 words.

POLITICS

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

POLITICS 37 The choice of a running mate to the 2015 governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Delta State, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, may worsen the fragile peace currently prevailing within the party ahead the next general elections, writes Assistant Editor, Remi Adelowo

POLITICS EXTRA

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

POLITICS EXTRA 41

POLITICS

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

POLITICS 43

POLITICS

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

POLITICS 45

POLITICS

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

PILLOWTALK Raising a voice for the Nigerian girl With Temilolu Okeowo temilolu@girlsclub.org.ng 07086620576 (sms only) Please visit my blog www.temiloluokeowo.wordpress.com for more inspiring articles. Twitter@temiloluokeowo

YETUNDE OLADEINDE molaralife@yahoo.com

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

-- Page 53

Bleak yuletide as civil servants battle credit crunch Page 60, 61

‘How airports can drive socioeconomic activities’ •Dakingari

HE International Monetary Fund (IMF) has asked the federal government to consider increase in the pump price in compliance with the Fund's updated subsidy removal strategy, The Nation can authoritatively report. Should the federal government accede to this request, it means Nigerians are expected to pay more for petroleum products in 2015. The Nation however learnt that the federal government is not keened on making any policy statements regarding the proposed new pump price yet as it reckons this may affect the political fortunes of the ruling Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) ahead of the 2015 election. Investigation by The Nation further revealed that the federal government planned IMF inspired 2015 post-election PMS prices increase will be backed by political and legislative force. The IMF African Department paper 13/02: Energy Subsidy Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa: Experiences and Lessons by Trevor Alleyne et al, April 18, 2013, a document obtained exclusively by The Nation revealed that the federal government had been nursing the idea of raising the current petroleum products prices after the 2015 election in accordance to an updated IMF subsidy removal strategy for some time. In a study titled: 'Energy Subsidy Reform: Lessons and Implications" a IMF paper prepared by a staff team led by Benedict Clements, January 2013, the IMF study blamed the lack of information and credibility for the partial success of the 2012 subsidy removal in Nigeria. It emphasised key elements needed for a successful energy removal programme. These included "(i) a comprehensive energy sector reform plan entailing clear longterm objectives, analysis of the

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IMF pushes FG to hike fuel pump price in 2015 • New pump price likely after polls •Indonesia,othersalreadyraisedpetrolprices Stories by Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf impact of reforms, and consultation with stakeholders; (ii) an extensive communications strategy, supported by improvements in transparency,..(iii) appropriately phased price increases, …(iv) improving the efficiency of state owned enterprises to reduce producer subsidies; (v) targeted measures to protect the poor; and (vi) institutional reforms that depoliticise energy pricing.” A similar study in April 2013, by another IMF team studying energy subsidy removal in sub-Saharan Africa reached similar conclusions. The study tagged: 'Energy Subsidy Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa: Experiences and Lessons' an IMF African Department paper 13/02 by a staff team led by Trevor Alleyne, April 18, 2013, concluded that "in oil exporting countries, the task of removing subsidies has proven even more challenging because it is difficult to convey to the public the rationale for products to be sold at their opportunity cost and not their cost of production." The Nation learnt that Indonesia successfully implemented the updated IMF strategy and raised PMS prices by 30 per cent in November 2014 after its national election and Nigeria is also expected to comply. Every year, an IMF team visits Nigeria, collects relevant data/information and holds numerous meetings with Nigeria's financial and economic officials. The team returns to the IMF headquarters and pre-

pares a report for the IMF Board. The IMF Board holds a meeting and sends a summary of the views of IMF directors to the federal government. More meetings are held. The federal government responds and implements its economic/financial programs within the broad guidelines of the IMF. This is one of the institutional mechanisms that the IMF uses to control the Nigerian economy. The first part of the federal government plan, The Nation gathered, was to re-organise the leading role of the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the CBN in the subsidy removal propaganda campaign. The second part was to mobilise other stakeholders such as the National Assembly, the judiciary, the state governors and political class, the media and trade/student union leaders using SURE-P. Besides, the final part was the 2015 post-election introduction of fuel price hike and the neutralisation of the ensuing public opposition. The ensuring investigation by the House of Representative Ad Hoc Committee on Fuel Subsidy headed by Farouk Lawan had set the three institutions at odds with each other. In response to the unfavorable exposure, the FMF encouraged the Presidency to inaugurate a Presidential Committee on Verification and Reconciliation on Fuel Subsidy payments (the Aig-Imokhuede committee). The FMF ensured that the Aig-Imokhuede committee focused only on local subsidy payments and not on the New York JP Morgan Chase account. This

did not satisfy the CBN. Speaking to newsmen in May 2014, the IMF Senior Resident Representative/Mission Chief in Nigeria, Mr. Williams Rogers, supported the federal government efforts on subsidy removal, adding that subsidy removal is necessary for planned savings in recurrent spending and public sector reforms (reduced government wage bill by workers layoff and fixed wages). The state governments still refused to cooperate with the federal government. On December 8, 2014 the Supreme Court began hearing on the case of the state governors against the federal government method of deducting "fuel subsidy" funds from oil proceeds before payment into the Federation Account. The state governors want the Supreme Court to declare the NNPC practice of deducting "fuel subsidy" funds from oil proceeds before payment into the Federation Account unconstitutional. They also want an account of all "fuel subsidy" deduction made from the Federation Account from 2007 to 2014. Speaking exclusively with The Nation at the weekend, Prof. Izielen Agbon, a renowned oil and gas expert based in Dallas, Texas, USA, said: "The federal government promotes the continuous underdevelopment of Nigeria by imposing European energy prices on Nigeria's developing industrial and agrarian structures. The PMS production cost of a litre of petrol in Nigeria is N40/litre and any price above that is a reflection of the power relationship between the Nigerian masses on one hand and the IMF/FGN/ Cabal on the other. The IMF knows this and therefore conducted numerous reviews of its subsidy removal strategy in 2012-13." From left: Head Public Affairs and Communications Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC) Ltd, Mr. Uzo Odenigbo, NUFBTE Executive, Comrade Ali Ibrahim, President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), C o m r a d e Abdulwahid Omar, and Managing Director NBC Ltd, Mr. Ben Langat, during the NLC President's visit to the company's corporate headquarters in L a g o s … r e c e n t l y. PHOTO: OLUSEGUN RAPHAEL

‘I believe in long-term planning’ •Asanmo

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Nigerians urged to invest in agriculture

GUN State Commissioner for Agriculture, Mrs. Ronke Sokefun has called for the sustenance of agriculture in order to eliminate the wide spread poverty in the country. Speaking at the Gateway Business Award, Abeokuta said the Federal Government should be the arrow head in returning the country to the path of economic development. The commissioner was represented by Director of Planning, Research and Statistics, Mr. Gbele Olugbebi. She said: "'Much of what was done in the west was done with the revenue generated from agriculture. Many of the buildings and roads constructed in the west were funded by the booming agricultural sector. "Ogun State is endowed agriculturally as it enjoys a very good life for planting which yields abundant food and cash crops for the state and also the country. Ogun state can feed the whole of Nigeria because of all the efforts dedicated to the sector by the Ogun state government." Sokefun noted agriculture was being gradually relegated with very little encourage coming from the Federal Government. She said incentives and facilities that would enable those interested in farming should be provided by the authorities. She decried the situation where attention has almost been completely shifted away from agriculture which was the main stain of the economy

The Nation Online editor, others bag media merit award

R Lekan Otufodunrin, Managing/Online Editor, The Nation newspaper, shone brightest as he clinched the prestigious Bright Media Merit Award (Brimma) organised by publishers of Sparklight Magazine. Other awardees include: Pastor Kunle Ajayi, The Directorate of Music, Redeemed Christian Church of God, Rev. David Ibidun, District Head, Foursquare Gospel Church, Agege, Mr. Abayomi Oloko, Mrs. Oluyemisi Adesile, and among others. The event which held at the Staff School Auditorium, University of Lagos, penultimate Sunday was the 10th edition of the award which drew past awardees and other media practitioners from far and near at the Nigerian Union of Journalist Hall in Abeokuta, with a grand finale at Unilag. The event which was heralded by wonderful Christmas hymns to the admiration of crowds present. Various gospel artistes and instrumentalist performed at the event to appreciate God in the past ten years of continuous publication and successful lecture and award. In his remarks, the organiser, Tosin Adesile, while attributing the success of the awards to God's divine mercies, also thanked those who have made the event a huge success thus far. He solicited for the support of Nigeria, urging the need for the encouragement of reading culture among the youths. According to him, "Buy magazine, newspapers and books to read. It will aid your intellectual development." He also assured that Sparklight magazine will continue to improve on what it has to remain a leader in terms of celebrity magazine.

Honey Care Africa wins Nestle prize

ONEY Care Africa has emerged the winner of the 2014 Nestle Creating Shared Value (CSV) Prize. The prize, an investment of CHF 500,000 was shared between the winner and runners-up. The winners were announced at this year’s CSV forum held in Switzerland. The Creating Shared Value Prize rewards innovative businesses that create values for their communities by addressing issues of nutrition, water or rural development. Honey Care Africa has the record of pioneering the honey industry in Africa. Creating opportunities for all, Honey Care Africa believes in transforming lives across East Africa into pillars of wealth, health and environmental stewardship. Honey Care’s success relies on treating farmers and consumers as equal partners in this co-created value chain, designed to increase the incomes of farming families, provide additional pollination for staple crops, sustain environmental balance and bring new sources of nutrition to urban and rural low-income communities.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

BUSINESS

OR Mr. Arinze Enweremji, a federal civil servant, this yuletide season is arguably the most low-key one he has celebrated in years. And the reason for this is not far to seek: no salaries. Speaking with The Nation over the weekend, Enweremji, who is the sole breadwinner of his family lamented that the paucity of funds has dulled the usual glitz and glamour that comes with celebrating the yuletide. "For as long as I can remember, the yuletide season has always been a period to felicitate with my nuclear and extended families. But this year's celebration is the worse I have experienced in years. It has been rough and tough these past months," he said. Pressed further, he said: "With no salaries paid in the last three months, we barely survive with the little savings I have. Unlike the usual practice of travelling to the east during Christmas and New Year, we had to put this on hold this year and my families are not happy about this development. But then there is nothing I can do." What is particularly worrisome, he said: "Is the fact that the government and its agents have been playing politics with this whole thing. There is a lot of misinformation and miscommunication because nobody seems to have any clue as to when we shall be paid. It's been one failed promises or the other." Enweremji is not alone. Many civil servants across the federation are experiencing the bitter pill of unpaid salaries. Suffering all the way Investigation by The Nation revealed that some federal and state workers have had to endure hard time this yuletide as they have not been paid in the last three months. While few state government workers have had their salaries paid up to date, a majority have not been so lucky. The Nation can authoritatively report that the few federal and state agencies that managed to pay salaries of their workers still owed pensioners. The Nation gathered that the delay in paying salaries might not be unconnected with the shortfall in government oil revenue. Work to rule Following the failure of the federal government to pay some of its workers, the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria said it would ask its members to embark on a nationwide strike if the federal government failed to pay the October and November salary arrears. While calling on government to use the N9.2bn earmarked to buy stoves for "rural women" to offset the October and November salaries as well as that of December, the ASCSN urged the government to pay the affected workers before Christmas or "face the wrath of Nigerian workers." The Secretary-General of ASSCN, Mr. Alade Lawal, in a statement in Abuja last Thursday, expressed sadness that the federal government had not been able to pay thousands of civil servants for almost three months. He said: "As we write, information reaching us from informed quarters indicates that about 30 ministries, departments and agencies will not pay December 2014 salaries to their employees. "It is very unfortunate that since October 2014, the Federal Ministries of Agriculture, Education, Works, Labour and Productivity as well as a host of other MDAs have not paid salaries to their workers." The ASCSN lamented that the reality on the ground was that "thousands of civil servants and their dependants would celebrate the Christmas and New Year in sorrow." The union therefore called on President Goodluck Jonathan to intervene in the matter and ensure that civil servants were paid three-month salaries before the Yuletide so as to put smile on their faces.

Bleak Yuletide as civil servants battle credit crunch For most civil servants across the country who are contending with backlog of unpaid salaries, the yuletide season has been rough and tough, reports Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf

â&#x20AC;˘

â&#x20AC;˘Skyline of Lagos business district "We cannot understand how N9.2bn would be spent on stoves while workers who toil daily to keep the wheels of government functioning cannot be paid their meagre salaries," the ASCSN stated. The group recalled that last year, more than 40 MDAs did not pay December salaries to their workers, adding that when the matter was tabled before the government, its officials were quick to deny it. This prompted ASSCN to publish the names of the MDAs that were involved in the non-payment of salaries. According to the ASCSN, based on the sad experience of last year, "one would have expected that serious steps would have been taken to ensure that the ugly scenario did not repeat itself. "Unfortunately, we are now back to square one. Workers, to say the least, are very sad as they can no longer meet their immediate needs as a result of refusal of government to pay them their salaries," the ASCSN stated. When contacted, the Special Adviser, Communication to the Minister of Finance, Paul Nwabuikwu, promised to get back to our correspondent on the matter. He later issued a statement in which he claimed that an overwhelming majority of civil servants were getting their salaries regularly.

He blamed the delay in the payment of others on a "technical glitch" and some MDAs. Nwabuikwu said, "The true situation, as stated by the Coordinating Minister for the Economy (Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala) during the presentation of the 2015 budget proposal yesterday (Wednesday) is that there was a delay in paying the salaries of some civil servants in some ministries due to a technical glitch which affected the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System through which payments are made. "Delays were also caused by some ministries, departments and agencies using money set aside for salaries to pay allowances without consultation with the Budget Office. "As CME has promised, the issues are being resolved and all civil servants will be paid their salaries before the end of December." He accused those behind the claims of non-payment of salaries as being a tool of political groups ready to deploy "scurrilous falsehood against the policies and programmes of the federal government." In Ogun State, civil servants have demanded the regular payment of their monthly salaries as opposed to current staggered mode of payments. The state chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Mr. Ambali Akeem, who spoke for the workers, in Abeokuta, said the government

which claimed to be generating N6bn internally should be paying workers promptly. Investigations revealed that workers were paid in batches, starting with those at the lower cadre. This mode of payment, it was gathered, started in October when some cadres got their salaries on November 15. Akeem said since some of the workers had yet to be paid their November salaries, the hope of getting those of December appeared dim. He said, "Our monthly salary bill is about N2.5bn. So, if the government as of the last two weeks hinted that the Internally Generated Revenue had hit N6bn, then what is the rationale behind the non- payment of the November salaries of some workers in the state? "There is no hope of December salaries. Workers are being thrown into a state of confusion. It is unjustifiable and we demand urgent attention. "Maybe some people are trying to mislead the governor. It is good to do infrastructure developments, but where there is no human capital development, there cannot be happy civil servants.'' Also, the Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, Ogun State chapter, condemned the practice. The association, an affiliate of Trade Union Congress of Nigeria,

raised eyebrows over the development in a statement by its Secretary, Adebiyi Olusegun. It said, "The now familiar selective payment system embraced by the state government where public workers get their legitimate earning long behind due date and the payment in haphazard mode is totally unbelievable and unacceptable." But the Media aide to the Governor, Mr. Semiu Okanlawon, said that it would be mischievous for any worker to claim that the government owed December salaries. He said that the government owed November salaries and was doing everything to ensure that workers were paid soon. This government introduced 13th month salary for workers, among other things." In Kogi State, local government workers have not been receiving their full salaries since last year allegedly because of the dwindling revenue. Our correspondent gathered that the local government workers had been receiving part of their salaries since last year. In Bayelsa State, pensioners have protested the non-payment of their pensions and other entitlements by the government. The pensioners, under the auspices of Nigerian Union of Pensioners, had accused Governor Seriake

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014 Dickson of lacking respect for the elderly and deliberately withholding their pensions. During the protest, the pensioners also accused the government of tying down their N250m monthly payment. They also said the governor had refused to comply with his promise to release N300m every month to them. Living in denial In a move which analysts have argued is reminiscent of the proverbial ostrich which is wont to bury its head as though everything is well, the Coordinating Minister of the Nigerian Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, did upbraid the (Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria), apex body of the civil servants, accusing them of peddling rumours and falsehood for alleging that government owed civil servants salaries. She insisted that contrary to the claim by the group that civil servants had not been paid their October and November salaries, only a few were in that category while most of them were being regularly paid. The minister regretted in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu, that the association had since gained notoriety for distortion of facts and accused them of being ready political tools that do not represent the interest of the majority of its members. "The recent press release issued by a group which calls itself the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria is full of falsehood and distortions about the current status of the payment of federal civil servants. "The group is fast earning a reputation as a tool of political groups ready to deploy scurrilous falsehood against the policies and programmes of the federal government. It clearly does not represent the interest of the vast majority of hard working and professional civil servants. "Contrary to the group's statement, it is absolutely untrue that 'government has not been able to pay thousands of civil servants their October and November salaries. "As can be confirmed, the overwhelming majority of civil servants are getting their salaries regularly. "The true situation, as stated by the CME during the presentation of the 2015 Budget proposal yesterday is that there was a delay in paying the salaries of some civil servants in some ministries due to a technical glitch which affected the IPPIS system through which payments are made. "Delays were also caused by some MDAs using money set aside for salaries to pay allowances without consultation with the Budget Office. "As CME has promised, the issues are being resolved and all civil servants will be paid their salaries before the end of December," the statement said. Ray of hope Apparently playing to the gallery, the federal government had assured that December salaries along with past months arrears would be paid before the festivities proper to the admiration of all. This is contained in a statement issued by Ministry of Finance, signed by Mr Paul Nwabuikwu, spokesman to the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. "The processing of the December salaries started on Friday and is continuing today. "Civil servants should therefore get the salaries in their accounts shortly. "Also being processed are the salaries of the staff of 14 ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) where there has been a misuse of the salary budgets to pay promotion arrears and other allowances,'' it said. According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), it said the IPPIS system, which was programmed to

•Okonjo-Iweala

reject irregular procedures, had locked the MDAs in question out of the system. "This led to the unfortunate delays," it added. According to the statement, action has been taken to rectify the problem and the salary arrears of the staff of the affected MDAs would be paid along with those of their colleagues in other agencies. It noted that the IPPIS system was set up to ensure the smooth running of payment processes to prevent delays, adding that prompt salary payment was important to the federal government. It urged all MDAs to desist from irregular actions which hampered the operation of the IPPIS system, leading to payment delays and suffering for civil servants. Bleak Christmas all the way However, contrary to earlier assurances by the federal government that payment of workers' December salaries would take effect before the festivities, this was not to be. Speaking with a cross-section of state and federal government workers at the weekend, they confided in The Nation that they weren't paid their December salaries despite assurances by government. "We are yet to receive our December salaries as I'm talking to you. In fact, it would be a miracle if we get it by the first week of January," lamented a federal civil servant who asked not to be named. Echoing similar sentiments, the duo of Oriyomi and Azeez, who are in the employ of an agency in one of the southwestern states, said they were yet to be paid their November and December salaries till date. Pensioners' woes Just as civil servants are lamenting over unpaid salaries, for pensioners it has been pretty difficult to survive in this hard times, as a majority of them wallow in abject penury. Sharing his experience, an ex-service officer who asked not to be named confided in The Nation that their pension have been practically irregular in the last few years as their pension expense have not been included in the budget overtime. "It is really tough and rough for most of us ex-servicemen in this country. We are owed arrears running into billions and there is no hope at all as the year winds down in just a few days. We have seen better Christmas in our lifetime," the source said. Corroborating him, Chairman, Ex-servicemen Welfare Association, Col. Mica Gaya, in a statement made available to The Nation lamented the pitiable plight of his comrades. In the statement which reads in part, Col. Gaya recalled that: "After the last discussion we had with the representatives of the Minister of Finance, the government said they can only pay 33 per cent pension arrears in bits for five years from 2015-2019. Then all 63NA's who joined the army after 1960 must have died. We rejected it. It is not acceptable to us. "Another meeting was called on 3rd of December, 2014, which also ended in a deadlock as the association was not prepared to gamble with the future and welfare of our members who have continued to be at the receiving end of government's poor welfarist policies," he stressed.

BUSINESS 61 Communities hail Seplat's safe motherhood initiative

EPLAT Petroleum Development Company PLC has been commended for their commitment towards the lives of women, children and the vulnerable in its host communities through the company's support for the Safe Motherhood Programme, a global initiative to address the rising pandemic of infant and maternal mortality across the continent, especially in sub-Sahara Africa. Speaking on the company's contribution towards this initiative, the General Manager External Affairs and Communications, Dr. (Mrs.) Chioma Nwachukwu said the host communities in Delta and Edo states the social service delivery of the company through the Safe Motherhood Programme being supported by Seplat. Nwachukwu in statement made available to The Nation said, "Safety is our first core value which is why we are committed to promoting safe delivery for expectant mothers and safety of children in order to help curb their mortality in our host communities. This year 2014 we are providing

From Akatakpo Frank, Warri

vaccinations and de-worming children. The good news is pneumonia is preventable and treatable which is why we are supporting our host communities to fight this disease by providing vaccination to children under five years old in our communities. We are happy to also add that we are carrying out de-worming exercises to help eradicate worm infestation in the children." The spokesperson of the company further stressed that the Safe Motherhood Programme is one of the company's health-based corporate social investment initiatives which was launched in 2011 and runs in the company's contiguous host and impacted communities in Delta and Edo states in Nigeria. Every year the programme impacts the lives of pregnant women in over 60 communities where women receive antenatal care and medical counseling as well as over 3, 500 pregnancy kit

bags and insecticide treated nets among others. The 2014 programme, which focused on Pneumonia and Deworming of children under five years old, saw a lot of beneficiaries being taken on board. Mrs. Dele Ovwigho, one of the many beneficiaries treated at the Central Hospital Sapele, said the programme was well thought out, noting that her daughter, Miss Favor Ovwigho, who was suffering from a debilitating ailment, received the best of care, courtesy of the initiative. Among the dignitaries present at the event include: Anthony Owunmi, representing Seplat Base Manager, Chukwuka Oboroma Opara, Medical Representative, Pfizer Worldwide Bio Pharmaceutical Business near, Nigeria/East African region. Others include: Dr. (Mrs.) Werribi Omoaghoja, Chief Medical Director, Central Hospital, Chief W.O. Oyo, Chief William Avwigborighe, Chief Omamurumu Omomor to mention just a few.

Konga blazes trail in e-commerce

HEN Michael Aldrich created the first online shopping mall in 1979, little did he know that he was about to create a brand new sector of business that will one day, metamorphosed into a global phenomenon of easy and convenient shopping. This sterling effort paved way for the popular global online shopping malls like Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, AliExpress, among others. In Nigeria, e-commerce ran straight from the cradle, and blazing the trail is Konga.com, an online shopping mail, owned and managed by Sim Shagaya, a Nigerian entrepreneur. It leads other online malls in delivering efficient services to the growing population of online shoppers. Nigeria had inkling into the depth of e-commerce in the country last November when Konga.com held a sales promotion for its customers. The promo tagged: 'Yakata Sales' the online mall sold various items at

Stories by Tonia 'Diyan give-away prices. Yakata Sales promo is Konga.com's version on the global 'Black Friday Sales' that comes once a year. The mall extended this global phenomenon to two days to give its customers more time to take advantage of the prospects of savings that come with the Black Friday sales. The Yakata Sales promo offered up to 70 per cent savings on select items. Some of the hottest deals available on the site during the period included the Haier Thermocool 3KVA remote control generator which sold at about N49,000 at a discount of almost 60 percent; and the Lenovo A3300 tablet which sold at N17,000 instead of N28,000. During the sales, Konga.com said it recorded sales of more than N600 million while delivering revenue in excess of N200 million for its merchants daily. It was processing sales in excess of N50 million per hour during the peak periods of the two

days of the sales promo. This year's Yakata Sales registered a recordbreaking 1,440 per cent year on year increase in online revenue over its 2013 edition. Also Konga sold 500 per cent more items in the two days of Yakata sales than it did in all of 2012. This feat was remarkable in the light of the infrastructural and operational challenges that face a lot of online malls in Nigeria today and the fact that the company was founded less than three years ago. Shagaya, said, "We received thousands of orders within the first few hours of launching Yakata Sales. The orders poured in from virtually every state in Nigeria and interestingly from several other countries as well. Unlike our closest online retailer competitors in the Nigerian market, our website experienced no down-time during the Yakata Sales, despite the incredible number of concurrent visits to the site during that period."

Ikeja mall fetes orphan at Xmas

OR two years, Ikeja City mall has gotten involved in series of CSR that has to do with giving back to the society and one of them is the 'Gift an Orphan' initiative, which comes up during the Christmas season. This year, the scope is broadened with the mall's decision to affect more kids and put smiles on their faces. Over 30 kids were hosted from three orphanages to the mall for a fun fulfilled day of excitement. Amongst the series of engagement for the kids included movie, face painting, games, music and dance. Customised gifts were given to the kids as they were taken back to their various orphanages. Shoppers were also not left out as the mall created a platform to reward

those who purchased items worth five thousand naira (N5,000) and above in any of the shops. Special vouchers were provided by Lacoste, Spur, Max, Mr. Price, Shoprite and Blackup. The mall's Marketing Manager, Eniola Ositelu, said Ikeja City Mall is committed to giving back to the community and has therefore, pledged that it would not stop rendering the good services it is known for. Ositelu told press men at the event that the management of the mall has made the Christmas party for orphans a tradition every Christmas period, with the aim to fete them, show them love and give them hope to live. He said: "We have been able to give these kids the experience of Christmas

as enjoyed by their privileged counterparts. We did same last year for the first time and we don't intend to stop the act. The event is a huge success for the management of this mall and we are happy that the kids had a jolly good time. They all parted with gifts, they will have good memories of this year's yuletide season," he said. In her words, the Account Director at EXP Marketing, Cynthia Nwagboniwe: "This Christmas is about orphans and we are hoping that they really have a wonderful time to end the year. We are remembering those who do not have and have decided to give to them using the season of sharing."

•From left: Supply Chain Director, Mr. Cephas Afebuameh, Director, Corporate Relations, Mr. Sesan Sobowale and Benin Plant Manager, Mr. Kingsley Imade all of Guinness Nigeria Plc during the Official presentation and blessing of Orijin at the palace of Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo Oba Erediauwa 1 of Benin…recently.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

BUSINESS

HAT is the moivation for building a N17 billion airport, the Sir Ahmadu Bello International Airport in Kebbi State? In Nigeria today, in the north, only one or two states is without an airport and that is Zamfara State; all the rest have their airports. So, everybody has understood that airports are part of development and they are catalyst to development. Economic development is facilitated both in short and long term by having a quick gateway in and out of the state. This enhances the movement of human, good and services and give rise to a burst of economic development. Movement of goods is made easy; at least it is the best thing that can happen to any state and airport happens to be one of the best ways to do that. Given the fact that Kebbi State is an agro-allied state, how will this airport jumpstart your capacity to export those produce that are here? Let me say this, Dangote's company approached Kebbi state and expressed the desire to put an investment of about $9 billion, in sugar cane, rice and maybe ranching. I have seen it in Kenya and other places in Namibia. They send meat overseas to Europe. If people like Dangote come in and say this is possible; we have fruits, onions; we have one of the best markets for onion in Kebbi State. These days we produce watermelon too, we produce mangoes and all these are things that can go overseas. And we have the weather to produce also flowers; we can also export. At present there is a farmer just around the airport that has started warehousing; he will build warehouses for both export and import. These are things that will not happen in one day but the airport is futuristic. In the last two weeks, we started flying in and out of Kebbi, today the aircraft that we started with was full all the time and at times we had to leave passengers. So, by God's grace, we are likely to improve and get a better aircraft and we are sure we will take 60 per cent of the passengers in Sokoto. So the airport will be busy and with the sophisticated equipment we have on ground at the Kebbi airport, during harmatan, there is the likelihood that airlines will not fly Sokoto route and the Sokoto passengers will likely come to Kebbi where flights can take off at low visibility because of the precision and the sophisticated instrument landing system and other equipment that we have, so there are a lot of viability in that airport and this is why we are looking for a next governor who has the exposure, who is well educated to continue to sustain the tempo of development when we leave and for the next five years. How did you source funds and how much in terms of cost component did it cost your administration to put

'How airports can drive socio-economic activities' Governor of Kebbi State, Usman Dakingari, is convinced that airports wherever they are sited are pivotal to socio-economic development as social infrastructure and speaks amidst plans to engage foreign carriers to consider the strategic location of the Sir Ahmadu Bello International Airport in Kebbi into a cargo hub for West Africa. Kelvin Osa-Okunbor met him. Excerpts: together this project? The cost of the project is within the range of about N17billion and when we were building the airport I said it is futuristic, we want the best out of the airport and I also want a situation whereby we can lease it out. You just talked about states not having funds; maybe airlines like Emirates, Ethiopian Airlines can lease this kind of airport and make use of it for cargo and passenger operations. If you have regular flights no matter where you drop cargo or passengers they can connect to wherever they want to go to. And with airlines like Emirates, I am sure they can make this place busy and connect even West Africa from here like Niger, Cotonou, Ivory Coast and other countries like Morocco, Libya and Algeria are shorter from Kebbi State than any other place around here. Given the geographical location of this airport, partnership is key to driving traffic into this airport more so that you are looking at partnership with global carriers like Emirates and others, what is the level of engagement with those airlines with a view to attracting them to come and operate from this airport? What we are trying to do is to commission a consultant who will go round, introduce this airport to other people, like you are here now you have just seen the airport, I am sure from the time the president came here to date, I am sure the airport is well known around the country and maybe, sooner or later people will start asking questions and people with interest may likely invest. This is a state airport, it is available to people who want to use it and what we are trying to do is that once we have the airport, the services is what we are looking for. So, even if somebody takes the airport we still get the services. Are you favourably disposed to discuss with other airlines with a view to having daily flights in and out of Kebbi? Yes we are. We started

â&#x20AC;˘Dakingari

with one airline but we saw that they were dragging their feet and we have to engage Air Peace so that we can start the operation as quickly as we can. So, now we can sit down and plan, Air Peace comes in four days in a week, there are three days available so we can open discussions on the three days. And maybe also Sokoto has been having two flights we can take a bigger aircraft for a daily flight. We have Aero Contractors and Arik coming into Sokoto so we can equally, maybe take one and leave them with one there. For human capacity development, are you training indigenes that will work in this airport? We are training a lot of hands and we have recruited young graduates whom we are likely to send to schools around the country or even overseas so that we can run

the airport efficiently and we can have hands that can handle any type of task at the airport. Are you in discussions with neighbouring states on how they can benefit from the airport by moving their produce from here? We are doing that and this is why I said we are envisaging having inland ports Lolo just at the boarder of Republic of Benin to take traffic from Cotonou. And the airport is well situated, you can take passenger from Kano to Kebbi, you combine it to Cotonou or to Niger Republic or to Abuja. Somebody who is coming from Niger Republic will spend three hours on road to this place, so you can leave by 7:00 am and 10:00 am you are here. You can board an aircraft in Kebbi and be in Abuja or in Lagos maybe within two hours or four

hours. We heard you were able to offset the debts owed by your predecessor and Kebbi State is now debt free. How have you been able to galvanise all these projects with the limited resources at your disposal? The internally generated revenue is maybe about half a billion Naira annually and what we get in terms of allocation from the federal government usually is what we use. Two things, once you block the leakages and you are prudent and the corruption is minimal and with self-determination, you can get what you want. This is first state among all the states in Nigeria that started e-payment; that is way back six years ago. So, we came with a vision that, look, this is what we want to do. I think in Nigeria today, Kebbi has one of the best rural network of roads. And it was deliberate because that is the only way you can develop a state. This is why when people talk about rice in Kebbi, it is not difficult to see; once you can evacuate it and people can access areas in the state they can go and buy the farm produce directly, you find out that producing those things is not difficult. Now we produce rice three times in a year and you will find out that we do dry season farming twice then the rainy season production once. And some people are more prepared to produce more during dry season because they can control all the elements rather than where you cannot predict anything during the raining season. So I think Kebbi now has a foothold on food production, especially rice. Now people have realised that you can get income from farming. Civil servants who have retired now go into farming. So they use their gratuity to invest in farming. In Kebbi we have a policy of paying everybody's gratuity at once, so you can use it to invest in rice production or any other area you want. And we have been paying this entitlement in bulk, we don't cut it. You find a permanent secretary getting

If you have regular flights no matter where you drop cargo or â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;passengers they can connect to wherever they want to go to. And with airlines like Emirates, I am sure they can make this place busy and connect even West Africa from here like Niger, Cotonou, Ivory Coast and other countries like Morocco, Libya and Algeria are shorter from Kebbi State than any other place around here

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;

up to N20 million, so if that civil servant goes into the production of rice, you will find out that he will be okay. And I can tell you that for the last seven years the price of food is stable in Kebbi State. What has your administration done in the area of healthcare? We have hospitals in all the local government areas; in some cases we have more than three in one local government. We have rural clinics, and we had collaboration with MDGs. In every ward there is a clinic which is manned by federal government midwives scheme. And this is why healthcare is improving in Kebbi very rapidly. If you look at the statistics of Aids, you will find that there is less than one per cent of the prevalence in Kebbi State. We are the first state in the north that had no polio case for a long time. We have a programme for children under five years, from the day they are born we give them free medical attention until they are five years. We have the nutritional programme for children that are nutritionally sick. So, with the collaboration with UNICEF and other agencies, we had so many programmes that have helped Kebbi to raise the health indices. We have a programme in Kebbi state where we removed all the mentally challenged people on the roads to a hospital. We don't keep them in the hospital; we treat them every week on Saturdays. You bring in the patients and they are treated for stress, madness and whatever disease that is related to madness. And this how we were able to get this feat accomplished. Today, as I talk to you, you can't see any mad man on the streets of Kebbi State. Release of letters of employment to about 4,000 teachers, to what extent is this going to galvanise educational development in the state? We had a problem of enrolment before I came in. I think Kebbi is one of the lowest in terms of enrolment. So we now had built a lot of schools, we now have over 400 schools for both junior and secondary schools. More than 60 per cent of those schools are boarding, now we have over 400,000 students. So, it is only right after producing so many schools to recruit teachers. And the next item on our calendar is to also buy books and other materials for teaching. I think with that we will be rest assured that the indices for our education will improve in Kebbi State. And it has become a source of employment to reduce the graduates on the streets of Kebbi State. On succession, what mechanism have you put in place to ensure that the right person who will continue with your development philosophy succeeds you? You should expect a better person than me. We would want to build on what we have, we should not destroy and I am sure the person who is coming will be more competent than I am.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

ELL us the story of your evolution as a company The company is over 50 years old. We were formally a subsidiary of FIZA but during the Abacha era, when a lot of foreign companies were leaving Nigeria, there was a management buyout. The management bought the shares of FIZA and they took over the company. But over time, as a result of certain capital issues, the company started having problems. The company was struggling, until about 2006 and the company owed so many banks. First Capital came and they bought over the majority shares. In 2008, we were trying to go to the market to raise more funds. Unfortunately, the issue with the stock market collapsed and we could not go back to the market because it was unlikely to be successful. We found it difficult to get money, we were struggling to reclaim our market share and we still had our old machines. But people still remembered Livestock Feeds because we had a brand. So, by the time the company came back, they still remembered. We had four locations in Nigeria which were Ikeja, Aba and Kaduna. For farmers, two things are important: availability of food and the quality of feeds. We say availability because chickens will always eat. So, if you are a company and you are unable to meet demands, your customers will leave and go elsewhere. The quality is also important and we had problems with this because the machines were old as we kept repairing them. Most of our raw materials are agricultural and are stored between November and January. The price of maize now is about N48,000. But when we get to May, it could rise to N70,000. It is a business that involves money, money to supply raw materials. But if you do not have the money to supply enough, you are going to run into problems. This is because the raw materials will be high, competitors are there with their own prices and so, you cannot increase price. It is either you are not making enough profit or your market share will fall. However, despite our challenges of funds and lack of facilities, we still had loyal staff. The struggling continued until UAC came in last year March and there was a turnaround. All our supply chain people are in the market in different states and we have stored a lot of raw materials. We no longer owe suppliers again and this has made us now have constant supply. In this company, the cost of raw materials is about 85 per cent per cost of production. If you don't get it right at the cost of raw materials, you have missed it for the whole year. The period of November to January, if you don't do the right thing, you are going to fail the next year. This year, we are making sure we have enough raw materials. With UAC, the issue of fund is no longer a problem. Despite the insecurity challenges facing Nigeria, how have you been able to manage the business thus far? This has really affected us because most of our raw materials come from the north and safety of our staff is very important to us. So, we had to take out a major feed from the north out of our feed. We sell to poultry farmers and they sell eggs to be able to buy from us. So, it is affecting the farmers. Normally we have warehouses in Zaria, Kano. We have stocked all these raw materials during this period and we need to transport them and we needed to quickly get the required volume lest the prices will have gone up. This year, we have moved to Oyo, where we can store our produce. So that if these other places become too volatile for us to go, we will go to Oyo. Last year, we had

BUSINESS

'I believe in longterm planning' Mrs. Modupe Asanmo is Managing Director/Chief Executive, Livestock Feeds Plc, a subsidiary of UAC of Nigeria Plc. The former banker, who joined the company as a Finance Director seven years ago, in this interview with Toba Agboola, speaks on what led to the mergers and acquisition of Livestock Feeds Plc by UAC, challenges and prospects of managing a multinational company, among others. Excerpts:

â&#x20AC;˘ Asanmo a saw miller, who was sawing soya bean, we supply soya bean seeds to them, and they crush. This year, we have somebody in three different states doing this. So, if anything happens in the north, we have somewhere to go. We brainstormed on how to handle security issues. We also looked at importation of maize and soya bean to handle security issues. By middle of 2015, we have arrangement of all our imported items. We are looking at areas to go into, especially areas we do not have distributors yet and there are poultry farms in those places. We are looking at new markets, so that if something happens to our regular markets, we will still have alternative. How do you address the issue of compe-

tition? By the time we started, we were number one before we went down. Grand Cyril under UAC was far bigger than us but it was our brands that always spoke for us. People still recall that this is the company that uses to be the number one and has good quality products. People are more aware of good quality protein in poultry that you cannot compare to red meat. So more and more people are willing to eat poultry meat so, the market is growing and it is big enough for everyone. We make our prices affordable and we must always plan because we know we have a competitor. Farmers are more aware now. The cost of feed is about 90 per cent the cost of production. Because of N10 difference, farmers can move from

one feed miller to another. So, your planning for next year starts this year. What products do Livestock currently have in the market? We produce all animal feed apart from cat and dog. We make poultry, stock fish, even laboratory animals, rabbit, cow, horse, amongst others. What matters is what you are offering that your competitors are not offering. If you can assure them that with your feeds, by the time you buy your day old boilers or chicks in five weeks, it would have grown so big that you can sell. Of course, they will buy your own because they know they can quickly sell and make money. What area of innovation are you delving into? We are going into research now to see how we can differentiate our products for our customers. Mergers and acquisitions in Nigeria have always been very challenging, how do you intend to cope with UAC? UAC have been very helpful. When they came, they had to first study us, they saw our processes, documented them, they travelled to all our mills, interviewed our people, since they came we have been doing things better than before. UAC also sees this as a way to also learn from us. UAC is a big company and large conglomerate. So, when they brought their suggestion, gradually, it has benefited us. Before, when my boss approves something, everything is in my control but with UAC coming in, we have been doing things together. They have sent the Finance Controller here, and the Finance Controller here was transferred to another branch and that is one good thing about this. Since UAC came, they have not sacked anyone. So, they exchanged so many things and people so that they will have people here who will drive the change. Although, they may be some disagreement but I think in all, it has really benefited us. Recently, some feed millers closed shop because of scarcity of soya bean, how have you been able to address this? We never had that challenge because we had stored up a lot of raw material. Because of the proper planning we had done, that helped us. In fact, that was when we made our highest sales because we made the feeds available to customers when they needed it. Our turn over and staff strength has been commendable. Our budget for this year is about 70.7 million. This year, we will soon be in a position to pay dividend to customers. We are writing off our debts gradually and the provision to pay dividend is in our budget and we are very excited about it. Our staff strength is about 300. Right now, we have gotten a new mill in Ikeja and we have mill in the north. With UAC coming in, our northern turnover has increased tremendously. Because of availability and good quality feed, we had 25per cent increases in our sales. We are thinking of a new mill for Aba. During that crisis period, because we have a big mill in Ikeja, Ikeja was producing for other areas. What should be consumers' expectations from Livestock Feed? Consumers should expect good quality feeds from us that will make them maximise their profit, so that farmers can also give us good protein. The problem in Nigeria is high cost of feed. Nobody seems to be regulating the agriculture sector. We need to have stability in prices and at the moment it will be more stable for Nigeria. At the moment in Nigeria, we have good plans but it should be implemented. The government wants to encourage agriculture.

Estate firm offers incentive for prospective homeowners

ROPERTYMART Real Estate Investment Limited, one of Nigeria's leading real estate firms, has reiterated its commitment to ensuring that every Nigerian fulfills his or her dream to own an affordable and decent home. To this end, the company has rolled out an incentive regime in which buyers into its new estate called Citiview Estate would enjoy generous discount. According to the Managing Director of the company, Mr. Adeyinka Adesope, between now and the incoming year, customers can enjoy an incredible discount on each home and land purchased at the Citiview Estate in Lagos thereby making the process of becoming

By Adeola Ogunlade proud home owners a lot more easier. He added that the incentive is borne out of the desire by the company to give satisfaction to its numerous consumers without making life difficult for them. "Citiview Estate is strategically located just less than 10 minutes away from Central Business District, Alausa, Lagos. It is a perfect escape from the bustle of Lagos. This wellplanned estate is zoned into different residential schemes with appreciable thoughts towards recreational and commercial areas," Adesope explained. He further disclosed that when Citiview

Estate was introduced in 2010 a plot of land in Scheme 1 was sold for N3.8 million. "12 months after the same plot was pegged at N5.5 million representing a staggering 69.1 per cent appreciation," he disclosed. Adesope attributed this appreciation rate to continuous rapid development in the estate, provision of quality infrastructure, as well as improved accessibility and proximity to the city centre. He said Citiview Estate is for both residents and investors who are thinking of building their houses in an urbane area with modern infrastructure and sharp communal development as the estate offers serenity and high return of investment for both residents

and investors. Adesope said further that there is opportunity for interested home buyers to buy into Scheme 3 with just 10 per cent initial deposit and spread the balance over a period of 12 months. "This is, therefore, coming at the right time considering the rising demand for housing as a result of the ever increasing population of our urban centres, especially Lagos city. This is also one way of supporting the Federal Government in terms of providing homes for Nigerians. Citiview is a luxury estate and we hope to meet the housing needs of people who love luxury buildings when this project is completed," he concluded.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

T is anybody's guess how and what has led to the boom in supermarkets in recent times as virtually every alley and street you visit these days, you find shops and many retail outlets offering all kinds of items for sale. Currently, most people, especially the emerging middle-class in the country, patronise the modern grocery stores which were until recently considered to be exclusively for the elite. Though these international retail shops showed stiff preference to stocking of foreign foods some years ago, increased demand by Nigerians for locally-produced foods, particularly those with no equivalent imported ones, is changing the trend. Nigeria's growing number of foreign and local megastores are taking more stock from local farmers and processors, departing from the former practice of stocking almost exclusively imported foods. Fast moving consumer goods companies are keen about the future of retail business in the country. Nigeria's slowly but steadily growing retail sector is adapting to the demands of consumers. And the expanding presence of local and foreign malls across the country shows these consumers are not all in Lagos. Lagos, always opened to business, is the obvious first port of call for retail companies. The state wants to alleviate poverty and promote sustainable economic development by focusing on power generation, agro-allied businesses, intermodal transportation and housing. A cluster for small to medium scale enterprises and two allied parks are underway. For foreign malls, thin-

xxxx

Rise and rise of supermarkets Bukola Afolabi in this report writes on the boom in supermarkets and other related sales and marketing outlets across the major cities in the country ning margins in the developed economies coupled with slow economic growth has made the search for new markets imperative. Nigeria and Morocco, according to Accenture, have drawn the attention of retail giants like Walmart. Kenya, based on the Nielsen Emerging Markets Insight, has the highest penetration of modern retail channels Africa's growth isn't driven by oil and copper alone. Accenture estimates that by 2020 Nigeria's expenditure on non-durable goods will be N13 trillion naira; the agriculture, financial and real estate sectors are expected to be beneficiaries as capital accumulates and the retail sector evolves. Inadequate logistic; limited access to credit, for micro businesses and the slow adoption of online payment may delay this evolution, but it won't stall the emergence of multiples of local and foreign retail businesses. According to McKinsey, several trends are driving retail penetration on the continent. A young optimistic emerging middle class based in 50 urban areas across the continent are demanding well priced consumer products that are of good quality. Though television and word of mouth are the greatest influences, the media habits of African consumers are changing. They are ac-

cessing the internet via ubiquitous mobile phones. McKinsey warns that businesses looking to expand into Africa must mind the gap: Africans have distinct and regional differences. Accenture says these changing habits have led to three mega trends: the polarised, expectant, interconnected consumer. As a result, retail businesses will have to learn to differentiate, explore reaching consumers via multi-channel advertisement and distribution outlets, and match consumer expectations. The Nation gathered that locally-grown and processed foods on the shelves of the megastores have increased by about 50 percent in the last two years. Industry watchers say this is due to increasing demand by Nigeria's growing middle class who are motivated by aspirational shopping habits and health concerns. Edobong Akpabio, chief executive, Visionage Agrotech Farm, attributed this to the higher prices of locally-produced foods and the non-existence of foods such as locally-produced and packaged sweet corns and canned potato chips, as well as the high cost of infrastructure, especially power. Due to outcry by local producers, many leading retail shops in the country now also stock locally-produced

foodstuffs such as tomatoes, onions, cucumber, cabbage and carrots which were still being imported into the country about two years ago. Ernest Onoja, manager, Favour Foods, said even though he had been involved in the processing and supply of local foodstuffs for several years, it was in the last two years that there was mass acceptance by retail shops in Nigeria. "That was after we improved on the packaging," he said. Nnamdi Anakwe of Foramifera Market research also agreed that the marked improvement in packaging of traditional Nigerian foods has made them acceptable by both foreign and locally-owned retail shops. "It was difficult convincing retailers to have my product on their shelves, probably because the product is not popular. Dried mushrooms are rarely available in the market here. You commonly get the imported ones in cans. Some of the supermarkets are so sceptical that they demand assurance from regulatory bodies such as the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC)," said Chiamaka Uzendu, producer of dried mushrooms, who started her business about a year ago and has not been supplying to any supermarket until recently.

â&#x20AC;˘From left: Group Chief Human Resources Officer, Dangote Industries, Usen Udoh, Group Executive Director, Stakeholders Management and Corporate Communications, Dangote Group Mansur Ahmed, President/Chairman in Council of the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM), Dr Nelson Uwaga and Chairman Fundraising Committee of NIM Obong Inuayen when the Institute visited the Dangote Group in Lagos...recently

Dangote to begin rice production By Nneka Nwaneri

N response to the federal government call to domesticate the production of rice in Nigeria, the Dangote Group of Companies will next year begin the production of rice in the country, Group Executive Director, Stakeholders Management and Corporate Communications of Dangote Group, Mansur Ahmed, spoke when a team of officials of the Nigerian Institute of Management, led by its president and chairman of council, Dr Nelson Uwaga, visited the company in Lagos. Boasting of it as having the largest sugar refinery of 1.5million tonnes and an expected 150 hectares of sugar plantation, Ahmed said Dangote hopes to have the largest rice mill in the country in the next three-five years. Dangote Group, which has presence in nine countries, is the largest dealers of cement in Africa, with a growing presence in other sectors such as steel, oil and gas, sugar and salt industries. Uwaga lauded the group for creating value and opportunities for Nigerians and also becoming an icon in the corporate world.

Experts harp on training for young entrepreneurs By Adeola Ogunlade

HE Chairman, Nigeria Opportunities Industrialisation Centres (NOIC), Arch Bishop Magnus Atilade, has urged young entrepreneurs to continue to develop their managerial, marketing and customer relations skills as that remain necessary toward achieving success in business. Atilade made this known at the graduation ceremony of a two-week Empowering African for Retailing (EAR) training organised by NOlC for 47 young entrepreneurs held at the office headquarters in Gbagada, Lagos, recently. According to the NOIC boss, the best way to achieve breakthrough in a highly competitive economy like Nigeria is to get the right skills set as well as the right attitude. Although, he noted that good ideas are needed for businesses to thrive, he said "training is the root of everything, even with your good ideas, without proper and adequate training, it would flop." He restated the commitment of the NOIC in training young people to become better performers, saying: "We believe in the philosophy of self-help, and our programmes in Livelihood Enhancement and Workforce Development focus on empowering individuals and communities with the skills needed to become self-reliant." He promised the graduate of placement in private and public institutions in Nigeria as the organisation is working hard at providing opportunities for its graduands. Earlier, the programme Manager of the ERA, Fowowe Samuel, an engineer, said that the essence of the training is to instruct young people in the area of customer service and empower them with skills that would make them efficient and effective when they enter the retail industry. He said the retail industry is a major aspect of our economy now and the percentage is contributing to the annual GDP is increasing high. Customer service is a field that cuts across every endeavour of human being and is very instrumental for any business to grow. "The project which is a two-year project is aimed at empowering 6,000 Nigerian youths on employability skills in 2014 which is holding concurrently in Kenya and Ghana," he said. In his words, one of the trainees at the event, Kehinde Damilola, who spoke to The Nation, said that the training has opened his eyes to the use of computer as a tool for taking inventory in his business which is novel and would help in positioning his work as an event planner for greater possibilities. The project, which drew participants from different professions in Lagos and Ogun states, featured trainings on retailing, fund raising, information and communication technology, safety and security, branding, customer relations, saving culture, logistics, to mention just a few.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

INTERVIEW

'Nothing mysterious about the Trinity' W

HAT motivated you to write on a controversial subject like trinity at this point in time? I believe nothing could have motivated me more than God to write. Well, this is not my first title. My first was in 1985. But this time around, I believe the motivation must have been the controversy itself. I think that people must understand that the issue is something God wants us to understand. Are you saying that the concept of trinity is not a mystery? There is nothing like a mystery. I believe it must have been mystified by theologians to make us believe that it is something out of the blues. The fact is that God has been very clear that He manifests in three persons. It is there in the Bible right from Genesis. The story of creation introduces us to the concept of one God in three forms. So there is nothing mysterious about it at all. It is only men that are trying to make it something mysterious. How long did it take you to write this book? It took me twelve to thirteen years. Out of these, I spent ten years to pray eve-

The Zonal Superitendent of Foursquare Gospel Church Orile Agege, Rev. Adedeji Adeoye, believes that trinity is an unambigious concept undeserving of the controversies it has generated. He spoke with Sunday Oguntola on his new book on the issue. Excerpts: ryday for God to show me the truth and reveal Himself to me. I kept saying, "God, show me yourself. Let me understand your word." Then, the moment I started saying those prayers, this book took a dramatic turn. I started getting revelation and insights that make the writing so easy and seamless. Now that the book is out, are you bothered not many will get to read it because it is on a controversial subject matter and not many people read too? I am not bothered at all. First, let me say the concept of trinity is not controversial. It is a biblical, scriptural and logical truth that mankind has been trying to deny for many centuries. Logically, it is a truth; theologically too, it is not controvertible. But then you know people like to raise dust when something is not too clear to them. Secondly, I am not bothered that not many will get to read the book. There is no single book that everyone will read. The Bible is

â&#x20AC;˘Adeoye

the most popular book but how many people have read it? So, I am not bothered or worried at all. Once

hundreds of people get to read it and understand what God is saying about Himself, I am fulfilled. You sound so convinced

about the concept of trinity that has torn Christianity apart. What is the basis of your conviction? Well, let me share with what happened in February 12, 2012 when I was writing the book. God gave me the opportunity to see Him in human form during a dream. I was transported into His presence and I saw Him manifesting in the three forms. There was a table before Him and He asked Jesus to give me a new garment. It was so joyous being in His presence. I was elated and did not want to return. I was still enjoying His presence when I woke up. And since that day, the book took a dramatic turn. I wrote with more insights as God revealed so many passages of the Bible to me. You read architecture. How did you leave that for full time ministry? I believe that working for God is the best form of fulfilment in life. I still practice with a firm but I am fully into the work of God. I enjoy what I am doing

and God has been faithful to me. I am humbled and honoured to be the vessel God has chosen to reveal the age-long secrets about the trinity. But I am sure the fact that the book is on theology will put many people off Well, you know theology is simply the knowledge of God. Deep within every man is the crave to know God. On the basis of that, I believe many should want to know. But then only those God has elected will benefit from the insights shared in the book. What particular message did God give you for the world during your encounter with Him? God stated that He is the same one manifesting in three forms. There is no ambiguity at all. He wants us to believes He is God the father, God the son and God the Holy Spirit. Two, He is coming back soonest to take the faithful ones home. His coming is at hands. And He wants all of us to be prepared to receive Him any moment from now.

NEWS

Kumuyi warns against electoral violence T

HE General Superintendent of Deeper Life Bible Church, Pastor William Kumuyi, has warned candidates, politicians and their supporters to refrain from violence if results do not go in their favour in the 2015 general elections. He also charged Christians to get their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) to be able to elect leaders of their choice at the polls. The mathematicianturned- preacher was in AdoEkiti, the Ekiti State capital where he held a three-day crusade tagged "Three Days of Extraordinary Encounter With the God of Miracle" at Deeper Life Campground located in Ajebamidele area of the city last week. Governor Ayo Fayose; his wife, Feyisetan; Deputy Governor Kolapo Olusola; his wife, Janet; Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Dr. Modupe Alade; political leaders, traditional rulers and religious leaders attended the programme. The holiness preacher warned against voting on premordial sentiments like ethnic or religious backgrounds, urging the electorates to vote

From Odunayo Ogunmola, Ado-Ekiti candidates they believe would serve them better. His words: "Concerning the 2015 elections, we have the ruling party and the opposition parties but those of us in the populace should look at the candidates. "What we followers should look at their records and vote not according to religion or ethnic background and that is the best thing for us to know, we should move away from ethnic or religious affiliations. "People should vote based on credentials of the leaders. We have to look at the records of those that are contesting for us to elect credible leaders that will bring development. "This is the more reason why people should speak brought the ballot by participating actively in the electoral system. "There shouldn't be thuggery, rioting or burning of things, the good of the people should be paramount to those seeking for the votes of the people". Kumuyi explained that his coming to Ekiti was a divine

arrangement as "this will be the first time in my over 40-year ministry that I will be in a location on 24th, 25th and 26th of December." According to him, he is rounding off his nationwide and continental evangelistic outreach with a visit to Ekiti saying"it's like God has reserved the very best for Ekiti." The cleric who declared peace, unity and prosperity on Ekiti land prayed that the state will move forward and every family will be blessed a rivers of miracles will flow. "There is going to be peace, unity and prosperity in this state. This state will move forward and it will not go down," he prayed. Responding to more questions on the disposition of Deeper Life members to the 2015 general elections, Kumuyi charged his teeming church members to do everything possible to get their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) to have a say in emergence of leaders at the polls. Kumuyi said further, "On my own, without journalists pushing me, I declare now that all Deeper Life Bible Church members should go and obtain

their voter cards so that they can vote in the 2015 elections. "If somebody is not serving us right, we have opportunity to speak with our votes but you should not vote somebody just because he comes from my area or because he comes from my church. "All Deeper Life members must get their voter cards. It is good for citizens to participate in he electoral system so that

when your leaders are not doing well, you will have the right to complain. "So Deeper Life members, get your cards, go and vote". Kumuyi clarified a statement credited to him in which he was quoted to have said that he did not believe in Christmas. According to him, what he said was that nobody is sure

that December 25 is the birthday of Jesus Christ but everybody knows that Jesus Christ was born. He stressed that emphasis should not be on the day he was born but his essence of coming to the world to save mankind. Kumuyi also urged the church to take welfare of members serious, noting that his church is trying its best to assist the less privileged in the church.

Gbenga Adenuga back with concert

ULTIPLE awardwinning gospel singer, Gbenga Adenuga, has returned from a self-imposed sabbatical with a concert scheduled for Muson Centre, Lagos. Tagged Worship With Gbenga Adenuga (WWGA), the concert, according to him, is "a time of inspirational, reflective and soulrendering outpour of worship to the Almighty." Billed for Agip Hall of the Muson Centre on Sunday 11th January, 2015 by 5pm, the concert is free but participation will be strictly by in-

vitation. Adenuga, in chat with our correspondent, said: "I have been off the worship music scene for a while. I got involved in other

â&#x20AC;˘Adenuga

things but please don't ask me what." He confessed to have "so, so missed that part of me and the truth is that I long to return actively to creating worship music and performance again." On the concert, Adenuga said: "I look forward to a great time in God's presence and in the gathering of real people." He added: "This is definitely not your every Sunday worship experience. It's some kind of fusion: street, trado, contemporary and church."

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

WORSHIP

COLUMN

In defence of the Trinity Title: God's Trinity demystified Author: Adedeji David Adeoye Year of publication: 2014 Pages: 188 Reviewer: Sunday Oguntola

T takes a daring writer to attempt a expose on a controversial and hot issue. That is exactly what Rev. Adedeji Adeoye set out to do with his new book. The book attempts to create better understanding on the concept of one God in three persons. For centuries, it is a concept that has sharply divided Christianity. Many non-Christians do not even believe in it, dimissing the concept as arrant nonsense. Yet, it is in the troubled waters that Adeoye decides to fish. "I am aware that stating the concept of Trinity runs through the Bible is stirring the hornests' nest," he startes. But despite this, the author believes He has a divine mandate to unravel the mystery based on a personal story he shares in the introduction. The book, as far as he is concerned, is a fulfilment of a dream a close fellow minister had about him several years ago. Bearing this in mind, he begins the exposition with denials of God's trinity in part one. He refers to several Professors of Theology who have written against the existence of Trinity or declared it a nullity. To him, the mystery has been hidden from professors' eyes.

Part two deals with proof of God's Trinity where the author settles down to really convince doubting Thomases on the existence of the Trinity. Relying on the story of creation as recorded in Genesis 1, Adeoye points out that the passage introduces us to the Spirit of God, God the father and Jesus. The Spirit of God, according to him, was what moved. God the father was the one who decreed light into existence while Jesus is the word through which God created the world. "These three personalities, in reverse order, are therefore the God who saw, the God who said and called and the God who moved and also divided," he submits. God the son, he states, is the spokeman of the Trinity while the Spirit of God is the worker and God the father is the thinker. He also applies logics to the relationship within the

Trinity to prove that indeed God is one and only. Parts three and four concentrate on more and more proofs on the Trinity of God. In Chapter fourteen, for example, the author writes that the trinity of man is a forestate of the Trinity of God. God introduced Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In the same vein, God is triune. To Adeoye, whoever does not doubt the existence of Abraham, Issac and Jacob should never doubt the existence of God the father, God the son and God the Holy Spirit. This book is highly theological and logical. There are so many references to the Bible and other theological books. The author deserves great credit for the massive research that went into the book. The readers will indeed find the research materials enriching and captivating. The author also succeeds in simplifying what otherwise sounds as a complex subject matter. He writes simple and makes his points concise. But he has an obvious bias to prove at all rate that Trinity is a reality. In doing this, he fails to answers several other objections from those on the other side of the defence. But all in all, the book is a great work deserving of praise. The scholastic research that went into it is commendable. Believers in Trinity will find several other reasons to back their belief. Those who doubt it will also find reasons why to give it a thought. Indeed, the Christian world will find the book a worthy effort in defence on a doctrine that means so much to the faith.

How to recover all, by Olujobi

HRISTIANS will recover everything they have lost when they align with the purpose of God for their lives, the General Overseer of Wisdom Church of Christ International, Lagos, Prophet Bisi Olujobi, has declared. He spoke at the 10th anniversary of the church in Lagos. Olujobi, who began his ministry in Ibadan, Oyo State, over twenty years ago, relocated to Lagos in 2004. He said he moved to Lagos in obedience to a divine calling to relocate to the city of excellence. On challenges in the ministry, he said: "Definitely

By Yetunde Oladeinde when you start something new, there are always challenges and that is a normal routine for anybody who wants to grow and achieve success. "We have started the ministry over twenty years ago but we moved to Lagos ten years. We started at Ososami in Ibadan, Oyo State. Things are going well there, we have a branch in London too". On how ministry in Ibadan is different from Lagos, Olujobi explained: "We can't compare the way people attend churches in Ibadan with the way they attend in Lagos because Ibadan people attend churches very

well. "If you talk of the spiritual aspect of worshipping God, the Ibadan people are trying. They believe that they must make heaven. They care less about wealth. "But here in Lagos, if you don't preach about how people are going to make money and be rich, they won't listen to you. They believe they have come to Lagos to make money so that is the area where worshippers in Lagos are different from Ibadan people. "However, when a man of God knows what he is doing, he will balance his message and carry everybody along."

Living Faith By Dr. David Oyedepo

Exploring The Secrets Of Success! (4)

Last week,we studied about the power of discretion. I said discretion is divine insight in the approach of any given task. I showed you why we all need discretion and how we can access it. As I conclude this teaching this week, I will be discussing, The Demand Of Skill in our quest for success. Recognize that success is God's plan for you and I, to be glorified and end up successful (Romans 8:29-30). However, there are certain forces that must be applied, if success is to be attained. Skill is one of such forces. There is a demand of skill, if you must enjoy success. What Is Skill? Skill is a learned ability to carry out a task in a satisfactory manner. Another word for 'skill' is 'excellence.' Skill is a vital force we must engage, if success will be a reality in our lives. Why Is Skill Important? •Skill earns you respect (Hebrews 5:13): Some people are unskilful with the Word of God. People may not like you for your grammar or eloquence; but they will respect you if you are skilful. •Skill opens doors: For instance, David was skilful at playing the harp. Apart from that, David was a mighty man of war and skilful in leadership, without any formal training (1 Samuel 16:18; 1

Samuel 17:34-36; Psalm 78:70-72). How Do We Acquire Skill? •We acquire skill by training: For example, Abraham armed his three hundred and eighteen trained servants (Genesis 14:14). Also, the unskilful men who David trained, later became mighty men (1 Samuel 22:3; 2 Samuel 23:8). We must explore every opportunity to learn or to improve on our ourselves for better/greater skills. "Through practice: Also we must think of what God said in His Word about us, and seek training along those lines (Philippians 4:8). Look for opportunity to improve yourself. Keep at it until the best comes out of that. The more you put to practice a talent inside you, you become more skilful (James 1:2225). •By divine endowment: For instance, Bezaleel was divinely endowed in designs and construction (Exodus 35:30-34). Also, Daniel and his companions were endowed with special skills that empowered them for dominion (Daniel 1:17; Daniel 6:26-28). God gave Daniel and the Hebrew boys knowledge and wisdom. For instance, Daniel prospered in the reign of King Cyrus. He was relevant in a foreign land for 65 years, according to Bible historians. He had skill to interpret dreams, etc. Solomon was divinely

endowed with wisdom. This made him to be skilful without learning it. So, we must trust God in this aspect - divine endowment. No wonder Solomon was wiser than all men in his time and his fame spread far and wide (1 Kings 4:2934). John the Baptist was in the bush, where he was divinely endowed. Also, David was divinely endowed. He is still celebrated today because of skill. Note that divine endowments put the believer at an advantage over others (Proverbs 18:16; John 3:31). Divine endowment has no match anywhere in the world. There is nothing in one, except that one has made extraordinary input in one's life. Friend, the power for skill is for those born again. You become born again, by confessing your sins and accepting Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. If you are set for this, please say this prayer: "Lord Jesus, I come to You today. I am a sinner. Cleanse me with Your Blood. Forgive me of my sins. Today, I accept You as my Lord and Saviour. Thank You, for saving me! Now, I know I am born again!" Every exploit in life is a product of knowledge. For further reading, please get my books: Success Button, Success Systemsand Exploring The Secrets Of Success. On Thursday being January 1, 2015, people all over the world will be celebrating the New Year. I know you are set to usher in the New Year. It is not a time for you to get drunk! Before then, you should be able to take stock and make a resolution to obey and serve God with all your heart. I wish You A Happy New Year! I know this teaching has blessed you. Write and share your testimony with me through: Faith Tabernacle, Canaan Land, Ota, P.M.B. 21688, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria; or call 7747546-8; or E-mail: feedback@lfcww.org

Firm set to launch "iOpenHeavens"

pen Heaven, a daily devotional book written by The General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian of Church(RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, is set to be launched on mobile apps iOpenHeavens effective from January 1st, 2015. The Chief Executive Officer of CREO Consulting Ltd, Seyi Fakoya made this known in a release last week. According to him, iOpenHeavens promises to go a step further in revealing God's word daily. "I am excited about the Open Heavens mobile

By Adeola Ogunlade app launch, we have worked in-house to bring the best user experience yet to users of this amazing devotion. "I am glad that we are custodians in partnership with Daddy G.O and his team in bringing the content into people's mobile devices." He said that mobile app also known as "iOpenHeavens" will be available across mobile platforms such as Apple iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Java, Kindle, Windows OS Laptops and PC. "The app will allow us-

ers of the daily devotional written by Pastor Enoch Adeboye," he added. He stated that the functions of the Open Heavens 2015 app will include daily study guide with day-to-day devotionssun, quick access menus, bookmarking, devotional Sharing capability, allows you to read previous and future devotions with a calendar feature, audio Listening, among others Fakoya added: "the Open Heavens Mobile App will also be available in teens and French language with subsequent release in Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba languages."

• L-R: Newly ordained Reverends Adeleke Adebola; Adeosun Mathew; Eyiowunawi Samuel Olusola; Nwebo Chukwuayere; Olusodo Simon; Oluwatusin Gboyega; Omonijo Mobolade, Editorial Board member of The Nation Newspaper and Oshisanya Jacob Olatunde with Bishop of Lagos West Anglican Communion, Rt. Reverend James Odedeji(behind) during the 2014 Advent ordination at St. Peters Anglican Church Idimu, Lagos… last Sunday PHOTO: OLUSEGUN RAPHAEL

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

With Adeola Ogunlade 08083127847

Hello children! Happy New Year Hope you had great time with your family and friends at Christmas. As we enter the New Year, be optimistic, hope for the best and strive to be the best in all that you do. WORD SEARCH

•From Left: Dogbonjaye Fortune from Epe Junior Grammar School, Dogbonjaiye Peace from Solid Rock International School, Dogbonjaye Precious, and Jimeh Hakeem from Good Remarks Nursery and Primary School were the winners at the 2014 Spelling Competition organised by the Community Children Outreach, Sango, Ogun State

BIRTHDAY • Vincent Ovo Agbro, headboy of Pams Montessori School, Mafoluku, Lagos was 10 years old on December 17

Jokes Knock, knock Who's there? Merry. Merry who? Merry Christmas! What is a parents favorite Christmas carol? Silent night! Why did the Christmas tree go to the barber?

It needed to be trimmed. Why don't aliens celebrate Chistmas? Because they don't want to give away their presence. When does New Year's Day come before Christmas Day? Every year!

POEMS Today is a day we all sing In honour of Martins Luther King whenever people fight to be free His name is remembered with dignity When black people weren't treated right He stood stoops to lead the fight He fought with love, not guns or darts He changed people' minds and their hearts But some people didn't like his words He was taken away, to a better world Yet his dreams lives on, that all can free When we knock dona the was between you and me Martin Luther king's life did not last but his dream, and his spirit are free at last Christian homeschool moms

Send in your stories, poems, articles, games, puzzles, riddles and jokes to sundaynation@yahoo.com

DESTINY Born to the purple, lying stark and dead, Transfixed with poisoned spears, beneath the sun Of brazen Africa! Thy grave is one, Fore-fated youth (on whom were visited Follies and sins not thine), whereat the world, Heartless howe'er it be, will pause to sing A dirge, to breathe a sigh, a wreath to fling

Of rosemary and rue with bayleaves curled. Enmeshed in toils ambitious, not thine own, Immortal, loved boy-Prince, thou tak'st thy stand With early doomed Don Carlos, hand in hand With mild-browed Arthur, Geoffrey's murdered son. Louis the Dauphin lifts his thorn-ringed head, And welcomes thee, his brother, 'mongst the dead.

RIDDLES • If there are apples and you took away two, how many do you have? • What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries? • What never gets any water, no matter how much it rains?

• What two words, when combined hold the letter most? • What words when written in capital letters is the same backwards, frontwards and upside down? • What never gets any wetter, no matter how much it rains?

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

WORDSWORTH T

FAAN Training School celebrates year end on classy note

EBERE WABARA

08055001948

ewabara@yahoo.com

Happy New Year

HANEZE crisis: Elders (Elders') council (Council) sets up caretaker committee" "Grass to grace (Grassto-grace) story of…." "Condition of the barracks depressing, e m b a r r a s i n g (embarrassing)" "The terror attack in (on) Kano mosque" (The Guardian Editorial Headline, December 12) "Maybe more light needs to be thrown into (on) this explanation." (THISDAY Back Page Right of Reply on Seven Years of Fashola, December 12) "FIFA demands for Electoral Appeals' Committee report" (THE GUARDIAN, December 9) Delete 'for'. "Truely (why?) a leader" (Full-page advertorial, The PUNCH, December 11) "We deserve a bouyant economy and jobs for our youths" (Full-page advertorial by Atiku 2015, THE GUARDIAN, December 8) For a change & Nigeria for all: buoyant "I'm in best position to succede (sic) Akpabio's shoes" (THE GUARDIAN, December 12) This way: wear Akpabio's shoes "Lets (Let's) do it together" (Full-page advertorial by Presidential Declaration Committee, Media & Publicity, THISDAY, November 11) "One of such trouble shooting efforts by the leadership of the party and the president" National News: trouble-shooting efforts THISDAY of November 13 comes next: "So I said it is (was) not just about complaining or pointing fingers (pointing the finger) at anybody…." FEEDBACK RETURNS NEXT WEEK…HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL! Remembering Oseni It is difficult to believe that this year marks a decade that my mentor left these shores. If he had been alive I am cocksure that our relationship would have blossomed to unimaginable heights. Of all friends of mine that have gone ahead of us, this man meant most to me because he

contributed inestimably to my professional ascent hence this especial remembrance tribute. I still find it an inconsolable reality that my master, chummy and ardent fan of my column, Wordsworth, has taken a glorious flight out of this gloomy space. I am pained the more on grounds of our inexplicable circumstances that made it impossible for us to meet in almost two years, long before his death! This consummate journalist and media manager meant so much to me that words cannot capture. The only way for me to commemorate his painful exit is to cite five memorable encounters out of the legion we had together on several platforms of brotherly mutuality. On an occasion when some cliquish elements in the old Daily Times, where he was the managing director, ganged up against me, it took the swift intervention of this detribalized man of profuse humility all the way from our 3, 5, 7 Kakawa Street, Lagos, corporate head office to extricate me from their clannish and bellicose stranglehold in Times Publications Division, Agidingbi, Ikeja. Shortly after that unwarranted belligerence, he unprecedentedly presented me to the company's shareholders at the 70th AGM for my exemplary contributions to institutional objectives and contemporaneously gave me a cash-backed award for professional excellence through my quintessential language column. He really appreciated my unparalleled productivity and profundity of skills. When he became former President Olusegun Obasanjo's Senior Special Assistant (Media & Publicity) in 2001, he never failed to invite me to executive events in Abuja-in my capacity as the editor of The Post Express-alongside select reputable editors. At one of the presidential media chats in which I participated, he stood at the last gate at Ota Farms where the special session held

•Revellers at this year’s Calabar Carnival yesterday

waiting anxiously for me because I arrived extremely behind schedule due to bad roads and concomitant traffic bottlenecks. After the media chat, he visited me in my office in Apapa months later to solicit my support for government's initiatives and also establish the imperative need for me to be less critical of the Obasanjo administration. The last meeting I had with Egbon Oseni was when I rode with him in his official car from Aso Rock, after an exclusive presidential session over dinner with about 10 title editors of frontline national newspapers in September 2002 or thereabouts, to NICON NOGA Hotel where we were lodged. All through the journey from the seat of government to the hotel he kept expressing bitterness over my hypercriticisms of Obasanjo. I promised to softpedal, which, alas, I never did for obvious reasons! (To further prove our amity, while we used his vehicle colleagues of mine were taken in other vehicles back to the hotel). How would I have known that it was the last goodnight as the man of urbanity bade me farewell at the NICON-NOGA Hotel lobby? I can vividly recollect it all as if it were yesterday! My unassuming boss may your gentle soul rest in peace. You were nice to me in and out of Daily Times. I have not forgotten the aristocratic reception you accorded me the day I visited you at your Ikoyi, Lagos, home. How can I also forget your fondness of my rugged Volvo 244 of yore? Your love for me was exceedingly great. Till we meet again to part no more, continue to rest in peace, for you were a good man. I will never forget you, fine brother. We exchanged goodnight years back in Abuja without any inkling that it was going to be the last! What difference it would have made…I commit you to God's bosom. Again, adieu! Some day we shall meet to part no more! God shall continue to grant your family the fortitude to bear your great demise and comfort the rest of us your colleagues and friends.

HE Management of Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) Training School celebrated the end of year 2014 in a grand style on Tuesday 23rd December, 2014. This time around, it was not only a time for merry making; the occassion also provided a platform for all staff of the Training Centre together with their friends and associate to call on the Almighty God for His divine support. In his address to the staff, the General Manager of FAAN Training and

Human Resources Development Department, Pastor Nath McAbrahamInajoh charged the entire workforce to continually be grateful to the Almighty God for keeping us well and enabling us to meet most of our targets amidst stiff challenges. He concluded that the overall dream of being amongst the best airport groups in the world could only be realized with provision of adequate skills, knowledge and attitude to the entire FAAN staff nationwide. He also remarked that a more conducive working

environment has been created through the provision of ultra modern training facilities. The high point of the event was intercessory prayer sessions offered for the Presidency, Honourable Minister of Aviation, and FAAN Leadership Team. The prayer sessions were anchored by Pastor Festus Eriye of RCCG Joy of Nations (MMIA), Pastor Olatunmibi Omisore of Deeper Life Christian Fellowship, Rev (Mrs) Vivian Menyaga and Dcn Tai Akinro of RCCG Latter Glory Assembly, Lagos.

•From left, Akinro, McAbraham-Inajoh, Omisore, Meyanga and guest

•FAAN Training School staff and guest minister at the event

•Staff of FAAN Training School at the event

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

ORTH KOREA called U.S. President Barack Obama a “monkey” and blamed Washington yesterday for Internet outages that it has experienced during a confrontation with the United States over the hacking of the film studio Sony Pictures. The National Defence Commission, the North's ruling body, chaired by state leader Kim Jong Un, said Obama was responsible for Sony's belated decision to release the action comedy "The Interview", which depicts a plot to assassinate Kim. "Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest," an unnamed spokesman for the commission said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, using a term seemingly designed to cause racial offence that North Korea has resorted to before. Sony cancelled the release of the film when large cinema chains refused to screen it following threats of violence from hackers, but then put it out on limited release after Obama said Sony was caving in to North Korean pressure. Obama promised retaliation against North Korea, but

North Korea calls Obama 'monkey' over Internet row

•Obama did not specify what form it would take. North Korea's main

•Kim Jong Un, North Korea President Internet sites suffered intermittent disruptions this week, including a complete

Russia says to supply coal, electricity to Ukraine

USSIA has agreed on a new deal to supply coal and electricity to Ukraine, which is struggling with a lack of raw fuel for power plants due to a separatist conflict in the industrial east, Russian officials said yesterday. The move comes a day after Kiev said it would suspend train and bus services to Crimea, effectively creating a transportation blockade to and from the region annexed by Moscow in March this year. Kiev has briefly cut off electricity to Crimea before. Russia will supply coal and electricity to Kiev without advance payment as a goodwill gesture from President Vladimir Putin, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS news agency. "Putin made a decision to start these supplies due to the critical situation with energy supplies

and despite a lack of prepayment," Peskov said. Russia plans to supply 500,000 tonnes of coal to Ukraine per month, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak told Rossiya 24 television. It is ready to supply another 500,000 tonnes per month if an additional agreement is reached, he added. Ukraine's coal reserves stand at 1.5 million tonnes compared with normal winter stocks of 4-5 million tonnes, according to energy ministry data. The country used to be self-sufficient in electricity, but months of fighting a pro-Russian uprising has disrupted coal supplies to thermal power plants, which had generated around 40 percent of its power.

Last week Ukraine's energy minister, Voldymyr Demchyshyn, said he was holding talks with Russia's energy ministry on coal and power supplies. Earlier attempts to import Russian coal have been hampered by supplies being held up at the border. Supplies will come at Russian domestic prices, Kozak said, adding that he hoped the move would help ensure reliable energy supplies to Crimea. He did not say whether the transportation hold-ups at the border had been resolved. Russia will also supply electricity to Ukraine, Kozak said, without giving supply volumes. Kiev's pro-Western government has accused Russia of orchestrating the rebellion in Ukraine's east, a charge Moscow denies.

South African man drowns as large wave hits Durban beach

RAN’s army said yesterday it has deployed a suicide drone for the first time in massive ongoing military drills near the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, the army's chief commander of ground forces, described the unmanned aircraft as a "mobile bomb," according to state media, which said the aerial device is designed to strike air, ground and naval targets. He did not provide the name of the drone. The conservative Kayhan daily referred to it as the Yasir, while an online news website called it the Raad. Officials could not be reached for comment.

the Internet operations of the main media outlets of our republic," it said. In a separate commentary, the North denied any role in cyberattacks on South Korea's nuclear power plant operator, calling the suggestion that it had done so part of a "smear campaign" by unpopular South Korean leaders. A South Korean official investigating the attacks this week, which led to leaks of internal data from Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, said Seoul was not ruling out North Korean involvement. "The South Korean puppet authorities are working hard to link this case with (us), though the truth about it has not been probed," MinjuJoson, the official publication of the North's cabinet, said in a commentary carried by KCNA.

Iran tests suicide drone in military drill The Yasir drone, first unveiled last year, can fly for up to 10 hours and carry out 360degree imaging, officials said at the time. Western military analysts say the Yasir is a modified version of the American ScanEagle drone. Iran said in December 2012 that it had seized at least three Boeing-designed ScanEagle drones after they allegedly violated its airspace over the Persian Gulf. Iran is believed to have produced its own remotely piloted suicide drone, the Raad-85, which is designed to crash into targets and set off its warhead. The six-day military exercise is being carried out

over 527,000 square kilometres (850,000 square miles) near the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which onefifth of the world's oil supply passes. Iran frequently touts advances in its home-grown aerospace industries. It says its most advanced drone, the Shahed-129, can reach much of the Middle East, including Israel. The drone is said to have a range of 1,700 kilometres (1,050 miles) and a 24-hour flight capability, and can carry eight bombs or missiles capable of hitting both stationary and moving targets.

Pakistan airstrikes, gun battle kill 55 militants

MERGENCY services say a man drowned when a large wave hit a Durban beach in South Africa. Spokesman Robert McKenzie yesterday said another 40 swimmers were treated for minor injuries when an unusually large wave hit the popular Wedge Beach on the north coast of Durban, a city on the east coast of South Africa. Paramedics tried to resuscitate the man, who McKenzie believed was in his mid-40s. The man died on the scene on the afternoon of Dec. 26. None of the injured was hospitalized. McKenzie said eyewitnesses described the wave as a "large, freak wave." McKenzie said he believed it may have been caused by high tides experienced around the country's coasts.

outage of nearly nine hours, before links were largely restored on Tuesday. But its Internet and 3G

mobile networks were paralysed again on Saturday evening, China's official Xinhua news agency reported, and the North Korean government blamed the United States for systemic instability in the country's networks. In its statement yesterday, the North again rejected an accusation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation that North Korea was behind the cyberattack on Sony Pictures, and demanded the United States produce evidence for its allegation. The National Defence Commission also dismissed U.S. denials of involvement in North Korea's Internet outages. "The United States, with its large physical size and oblivious to the shame of playing hide and seek as children with runny noses would, has begun disrupting

•Israeli soldiers stand next to Palestinian men holding a national flag on December 27, 2014, as Palestinian, Israeli and foreign activists set up tents to create a symbolic village named after Ziad Abu Ein, a Palestinian official who died earlier this month confronting Israeli soldiers. AFP PHOTO / HAZEM BADER

T least 55 militants were killed in airstrikes and a gun battle with ground forces in Pakistan's troubled northwest where the military launched a major offensive this year, officials said yesterday. The army intensified its offensive after the massacre of 150 people in a school in Peshawar this month, a carnage which Pakistan described as its own "mini 9/ 11" and a game-changer in the fight against extremism. Troops raided a militant hideout late Friday in an area adjoining Orakzai and Khyber tribal districts -- near the Afghan border -- where the insurgents had gathered for a meeting, the military said in a statement. "An intense battle took

place, in which 16 terrorists were killed and 20 injured," it said, adding that "fleeing terrorists left behind nine dead bodies of their accomplices". Troops arrested two critically wounded militants while four soldiers were also wounded in the battle, the statement said. Separately, 39 militants, including two rebel commanders, were killed in airstrikes in the northwest late Friday and an ammunition depot was also destroyed, according to military spokesman Major General AsimBajwa. It was not possible to independently verify the casualties as media are banned from visiting the far-flung area. In another incident, police said they arrested an

important Taliban commander who was wanted for attacks on police and was also involved in the killing a local journalist in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The army has been waging a major offensive against longstanding Taliban and other militant strongholds in the restive tribal areas on the Afghan border for the last six months. The offensive gathered momentum after the December 16 attack on anarmy-run school in Peshawar which killed 150 people, 134 of them children. The Pakistani military says it has killed more than 1,700 militants so far in its heavy offensive in the tribal zone, with 126 soldiers having lost their lives.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

WORLD NEWS

ULLED into deep complacency by the election of Barak Obama, the political conscience of Black America has finally begun to stir to life. Sadly, it took the daytime killings of Black men by White police officers to revive the community back to political life. Protests have occurred in major cities throughout the nation. Black people have been jolted by the realization that their lives remain less valuable than they should be, than what they had been told to believe. They hoped racial discrimination had become a residual breach of the national contract on social equality. The painful lesson relearned is that Black Americans are disposable byproducts of a political economy with little need for most of them and one that affords diminishing living space for that beleaguered majority of Black America. The killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson was one thing. The strangulation of Eric Garner in New York was quite another. In the Brown case, conflicting interpretations of that day's events abounded. The shooter said one thing, Brown's friend said another. Witness accounts varied on important points. Although the aggressor police officer's testimony remains highly implausible, it cannot be ruled impossible. The possibility that he was being truthful is slight but the possibility nonetheless exists. (In a telling postscript in the Brown case, a witness whose testimony was cited by the prosecutor has been discovered to be a mentally unbalanced racist. Moreover, this witness may not even have been at the scene when the shooting occurred. She has previously inserted herself in other cases, giving unreliable testimony. The prosecutor in Brown should have been aware of her flagrant history; yet, he still presented her to the grand jury without informing them of her habit of bearing false witness. For this alone, the prosecutor should be investigated for professional misconduct.) The cloud of factual discrepancy and differing versions of the fatal encounter do not haunt the Garner case. What haunts that case is the episode was videoed for the world to see. Yet, the picture made no difference to the New York prosecutor and the grand jury he selected. Normally, a picture is worth a thousand words. This video encapsulated more than a thousand words. It showed all that is wrong in the racial history of the nation claiming to be the world's finest democracy. As long as the legal system affirms killings like Garner's, the claimed greatness of the American political economy is as true as it is false. Mr. Garner was a large, burly Black man living in New York City. Estranged from the world of prosperity and steady employment, the man did what millions of city dwellers across the nation do. He street-hustled. Among his money-making ventures, the man would at times buy packs of cigarettes then resell individual cigarettes to people. The area was a poor neighborhood where many people could not afford an entire pack; they would muster coins for one or two cigarettes at a time. Garner was doing no harm; that same day, he even helped resolve an altercation. However, his street hustle was illegal because all cigarette sales are to be taxed. The day of the encounter, Garner may not even have been selling the loose cigarettes. Had he been guilty of such sales that day, his transgression was de minimis. A loose cigarette probably sold for no more than a dollar each. The city tax on the tobacco sales is 10 percent. Had he sold five cigarettes, he owed the city 50 cents (90 kobo) in taxes. For this small indiscretion, a swarm of police officers descended on him like a small army corralling a thief who had pinched the national treasury and the crown jewels. Gardner had no chance. While a number of officers pinned him to the ground, one officer administered a choke hold unauthorized by the police department that hired him. Adding indignity to impending death, another officer placed his hands on Garner's head, using his full weight to press the man's face into the hard, cruel New York City pavement. The man pleaded roughly a dozen times that he could not breathe. A dozen times, his uniformed assailants ignored the desperate alarm. His last moments on earth were with his face pressed to the ground that he might take in the foulness and grime of the urban sidewalk as his life's breath was slowly stolen from him by those hired to protect him. As he lay dying, no officer sought to revive him. They walked around his body nonchalantly as if walking around an animal struck by a passing car. There was no urgency in their actions, no remorse on their faces. They felt they had done their job. What they had done to Garner was so disproportionate to his alleged wrong; no logical excuse can be assayed for this ending. At most, they should have given Garner a citation as they do any traffic offender or errant merchant. The reason for lethally attacking him for less than a dollar remains cloaked in racism. The coroner properly ruled the outrageous death a homicide. Yet, the grand jury and prosecutor thought otherwise. Upon seeing video, they did not see Garner as a human being. All they saw was black and his blackness obscured any sight and sense of justice they might have otherwise known. Had Garner lived during slavery, he would still be alive. The law enforcement officers would have been more careful with him because he would have been the property of a White man. They would have acted with due care in returning the valued property to his owner. He would have been tussled a bit but not executed. Strange how the worth of a

A Nation that betrays its own Law is the house that justice built but no longer occupies.

â&#x20AC;˘Anti-NYPD protesters march through the Upper East Side of Manhattan with their hands up in solidarity with Michael Brown on December 23, 2014 in New York City

Black man's life is not established by the mere fact of being a human being. It is established by how closely associated he is to White society. To exist outside the social mainstream, makes a Black man a dreaded superfluity, a victim transmuted into the villain in his own execution. Police men who kill him will be excused because they serve a function in society. While you, the Black man, do not. Garner and Brown have not been the only casualties of this dynamic. The average White racist feels the nation is slipping from their control due to Obama's presidency and to demographic changes that see Blacks and Latinos becoming larger percentages of the overall population. Perceived change prompts a backlash. The average racist joins the Tea Party or sends anonymous cant to rightwing blogs. Those racists in blue police uniforms are more apt to pull the trigger when the face on the wrong end of the barrel is Black or Brown. In Ohio, a Black man, walking in a store while holding a non-lethal pellet rifle, was gun downed by police with no reasonable warning. Ohio law allows people to openly carry lethal weapons. Thus, the man committed no crime. Yet, he was killed and the offending police officers were given no reprimand. It boggles the mind and makes a farce of justice when an innocent man can be executed and those who committed the misdeed are exonerated. He did no wrong yet he is gone. They wronged him yet they suffer not even minor sanction. When such partiality occurs in a foreign nation, America criticizes and writes annual reports condemning it. When it happens in America, the power establishment protects if not celebrates the transgression as a necessary function of law and order. In the process, justice is disinherited. Protests against these attacked were organized in major cities throughout the nation. Had this been the summer and not the advent of winter, more people would have been taken to the streets in a greater number of cities. The best aspect of this wave of protests is that they were organized by grassroots activists and not the normal servitors who inhabit the Black establishment. The youthful organizers' first plank is to halt the street executions by the police. But they will not stop there. They will see that defending the right to life is insufficient in itself. That is where the Civil Rights Movement left off. Today's protesters hopefully will assume the mantle of true leadership the current Black Establishment now deploys for their narrow elitist interests. These new leaders will discover the incompleteness in securing the right to life if unaccompanied by demanding the right to live not merely survive on the social periphery. They will demand jobs, education, economic reform and justice. This will attract a backlash much as the Civil Rights Movement did. The most vocal segment of the backlash will be the rightwing conservatives. The most dangerous element of that backlash will be the falsely liberal establishment.

That establishment has given their Black surrogates marching orders to stop the genuine young leaders from organizing more people's marches. The Black establishment did not need to be given the directive. They already felt the heat. They realized their positions were placed in jeopardy. No one was bounded by quandary more than President Obama. If Black people started to display independent action, his job would be on the line. No, not the White House job. Whether for good or bad, his mark there has mostly been made. The position jeopardized by the young Black leaders is the post-White House sinecure the establishment has designed for him - that of the unofficial leader of Black America. For the past six years, he had proven his worth by keeping Black activism in deep freeze despite the hardtack policies he has initialed resulting in the deterioration of community institutions, particularly Black universities, and a growing disparity between average Black and White per capita wealth and income. During the Obama years, the Black community has been weakened willfully by establishment policy and practice. The establishment hired Obama to smile and pontificate his people all the way to the poor house. He was doing an excellent job of it until the unruly police began to exhibit a deadly overt racism that would cause the somnambulant Black community to awaken. Obama's slickness was undone by the gratuitous violence of the new praetorians. A delicious twist of irony is in the making. Black political consciousness may reawaken under the very watch of a man endorsed by the establishment to keep the Black community politically dormant. Sensing things were going awry, Obama went into gear. He sent fellow Black elitist, Attorney General Eric Holder, to Ferguson to express concern in hope that a tactful display of implied solidarity would keep the natives from turning restless. Holder announced his feckless Justice Department would investigate the Ferguson Police Department as a way to soothe community anger. The people realized this Justice Department has a nose for privilege and not a resilient sternum when it comes to protecting the weak and under from the rich and powerful above. Holder's Justice Department refused to prosecute Wall Street for the visible criminality resulting in the 2008 financial crisis and will not take account of those who tortured and terrorized detainees in the alleged war against terror. That same department will not reform the police. It is part of the same federal government that militarized the police by providing the surplus military equipment that has transformed local law enforcement into a paramilitary agency unsuitable for democratic society. The protests continued. Then the First Couple took to the media to demonstrate their blackness by citing they had been victims of racism because they had been ignored by taxi drivers or mistaken as store clerks by White shoppers. If these trite remarks were supposed

to evoke a sense of solidarity with the average Black, they missed the mark. If this is all the Obamas have experienced, no wonder they are out of touch. They should consider themselves fortunate, then open a listening ear that they may learn the realities of the everyday lives of everyday people. (In part, they cited these inanities so as not to offend their White sponsors. If the President testifies that racism is limited to such innocuous inconveniences, it means that racism did not cause dire condition of the Black community.) Raising these trivial incidents insults the millions of Black men and women who have felt the heavy intimidation and have been scarred by the instruments of this unjust system. The bones of thousands of Black men lie in the woods, swamps and along the back roads of the south. So many of us have been stopped along isolate stretches of road by policemen with their hands twitching at their holsters or brandishing their billy clubs, waiting and wanting to draw their pistol or swing that club. As rivulets of sweat swim down your back, you tell yourself to be still and don't move, no matter the provocation or meanness of the man. They await merely one odd movement or angry word and they will pounce. You will be found guilty of causing the assault against you. When their trite examples did not work, Obama summoned a white House meeting of the young activists. His advice was to take it slowly as change comes gradually. This advice was not commended by any true interpretation of history. Change may come slowly but those who succeed in bringing reform rarely seek it piecemeal. They ask for the whole thing then take as much as they can get. The young activists should have retorted that, since the bullets did not kill Brown gradually and the stranglehold did not gradually asphyxiate Garner, they see no reason why their pursuit of justice should march gradually. Next, Obama deployed mercenary cleric Al Sharpton to confuse and sidetrack the grassroots movement by holding a march on Washington of his own. During the Obama presidency, Sharpton has visited the White House an extraordinary 60 times. He has become Obama's man Friday just as Obama is Wall Street's man Friday. Sharpton is the servant of the servant. However, this tack did not work well either. The people are on to Sharpton. They know he has been an FBI informant, ratting on other Black leaders. He may still be. He refused to allow activists from Ferguson a place in his orchestrated rally. He feared they might say something incendiary or anti-Obama. The crowd began to shout him down. Eventually, some activists managed to seize the microphone and speak their piece. Establishment backlash against the protests went into full gear when a mentally unstable Black man killed two police officers in New York, afterward killing himself. The New York Mayor called for protests to be suspended until the burial of the fallen officers. Former Mayor Giuliani criticized Black leaders for inciting hate. Police officials declared that their department had gone on "war footing." To that declaration, most Black men would respond, "That is nothing new. You have always been on war footing against us." The murder of the two police officers is a tragedy but no greater than the killing of Brown, Gardner and others. The protests did not lead to the officer's death. The proximate cause of the officers' demise was that police nationwide had been too lethal. When a White supremacist executed two police officers earlier this year and draped the corpses in racist flags, the establishment did not rail that White supremacists should disband their racist campaign and organizations. Police officials did not assert they needed to be on war footing against White hate groups. White establishment politicians said little or nothing about this episode. Now that a Black assailant is involved, they shout to the rafters and quake with self-righteous indignation. It is all part of the ploy to keep Blacks in a lowly place. The protesters smartly refused to stop demonstrating. To do so would have been a wrongful, coerced admission that their actions prompted the killings of the officers. What they should do is expand the scope of the protests. While protesting police brutality, they should also advocate tighter gun control so that unstable people cannot get easy access to weapons. The spirit of the expanded protests would be that neither the police nor the populace needs to be on war footing. Both should take intelligent steps toward peace. Finally, perhaps the Black community is awakening. Theirs must be a dual arising. First, they must come to grips with the fact that the current ways of the political economy work against them. Second, they must realize that the established Black leadership is wedded to the current ways of the political economy. The people must seek reform as well as reject those who claim to be their leaders. Perhaps, just perhaps, the son of the Civil Rights Movement is being born out of the deaths of Brown and Garner. ( 08060340825) sms only

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014 CHANGE OF NAME CHANGE OF NAME ILORI I, formerly known and addressed as Mojisola Olubola Ilori, now wish to be known and addressed as Mojisola Olubola Oladimeji. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

KADIRI

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Kadiri Risikat Adeola, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Quadri, Risikat Adeola. All former documents remain valid. Nigerian Civil Service Commission and general public should please take note.

SALAMI

I, formerly known and addressed as Salami, Basirat Abosede, now wish to be known and addressed as Abdulrafiu Basirat Abosede. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

AYANDA

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Ayanda Folashade Kehinde, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Omiwole, Folashade Kehinde. All former documents remain valid. Nursing Council of Nigeria, South Africa Nursing Council and general public should please take note.

AIGBOKHAEVBO

I, formerly known and addressed as Florence Olubukola Aigbokhaevbo, now wish to be known and addressed as Florence OlubukolaFasanya-Aigbokhaevbo. All former documents remain valid. Lagos State Judiciary Commission and general public should please take note.

OMOJOLE

I, formerly known and addressed as Omojole Bukonla Fausat, now wish to be known and addressed as Omojole Salaam Bukonla. All former documents remain valid. Government Commission, Ibeju Lekki Local government and general public should please take note.

YEKINNI

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Yekinni, Rafiyat Ranti, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Adegboye, Ranti Rafiyat. All former documents remain valid. NYSC and general public should please take note.

ADEPOJU

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Adepoju Omolara Favour, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. ldiaghe Omolara Favour. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

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ASAKO I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Asako Oluwatoyin Yetunde, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Afeni Oluwatoyin Yetunde. All former documents remain valid. Ekiti State Local government Service Commission and general public should please take note.

ADEBAYO

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Adebayo Feyisike Adeola, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Adedara Feyikemi Adeola. All former documents remain valid. Ekiti State Civil Service and general public should please take note.

OSUNLUSI

I, formerly known called and address as Miss Wuraola Elizabeth OSUNLUSI now wish to be called known and address as Mrs Wuraola Elizabeth DARAMOLA.All former documents remain valid. The Authority of SKYE BANKPLC and the general public take note.

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OKAI

ADEGBOYEGA

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Adegboyega Funmilayo Adenike, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Akinwande Funmilayo Adenike. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

AMADI

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AWOTUNDUN

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014

HE essence of every coloquium is to highlight a theme and bring it into life in the consciousness of the public. This was what the erudile professors and literary eggheads who gathered last weekend at the Freedom Square, Lagos, were able to do to some select works of Professor Wole Soyinka. It was the occasion of the 16th edition of the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) organised by the Committee for Relevent Art (CORA) Even though the overall theme of the festival was Freedom and the word, the discussion around Soyinka's works was anchored on Freedom and Nation Building, using The Man Died, Ake, Ibadan, Isara, You Must Set Forth at Dawn, Penkelemesi and so on, to get the ball rolling. Handled by Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, the idea was to see how Soyinka has been able to use his works to set the necessary agenda for the society. In a society where many things have gone wrong, where the leadership of the country is often foolhardy, where the people themselves, even the so-called champions of the cause of the common man keep silence in time of oppression and massive corruption, what then is the role of the writer in all these? How has Soyinka used his works to tackle these issues and reached out to the people as an activist? Professor Biodun Jeyifo who gave the keynote address noted that the likes of Soyinka are rare in the literary firmament of the world. He drew attention to the era of King Richard II in England who was so wicked and avaricious that William Shakespeare did not spare him in some of his poems and plays. So also is Soyinka whom he said has come for his own generation and the generation to come with abundance of visionary and revoluntionary works to set the tone for possible changes. "To relate what Soyinka is to Nigeria is to make poignant reference to what Shakespeare did in the era of King Richard II. In a land of abundance, a place where wealth is available to make the people happy, there is plenty of poverty, sadness ad agony. In England, Richard II was besotted with expensive lifestyle like most of the Nigerian leaders of today. The leaders are obviously insensitive to the suffereings of the people. This is what we face today in Nigeria. The common understanding here today is that leadership does not care about the people, about how to use the necessary elements of governance to distribute the wealth of the land equitably." In his works, Soyinka follows in the same sequence in his style of writing, attacking issues, lampooning leaders for their inability to make the country better. "So we have so many Richard II in Nigeria and this is why Soyinka has refused to relent. The two WS lived in worlds filled with inequalities and bad leadership. Now we have in addition bad leadership, total looting of what belongs to the people. This was what Shakespeare tackled in his best quintessential artistic ideas and expressions. Therefore the works of Soyinka are deeply embedded in their intents on politics. He deals with the nation and its dispossessions". In Dance of the Forests, Jeyifo noted, Soyinka drew attention to the early signs of fault starts and mistakes in the nationhood. The play which was premiered in 1960 to usher in the independence of Nigeria from the shackles of the British overlords. The play is full of injustices of all kinds. "Here, truly, Soyinka talks about the dispossessed. The work is more explicit as it clamours for change, a proper stage for change.The state of the dispossessed is always clear in all his works." With reference to The Man Died, Season of Anomie and more, his radical activism came fully to the fore. In his memoirs he did not even spare the enemies of the people. Using both social, political and religious undertones, Soyinka pointed out the ills. In Trials of Brother Jero and others he foresaw the revoluntionary approach of men of God towards hoodwinking the people. However, in all these, Soyinka puts himself into his works. He uses himself to projest his stories and present the ideas before him. "This was why he deliberately broke away from the conservative forces to become a revolutionary, an activist just to face and deal with bad leaders in a society peopled by reactionary forces. When Soyinka became

â&#x20AC;˘Soyinka sitting with students during LABAF

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no season of anomie With the theme freedom and the word, renowned literary eggheads gathered in Lagos recently to discuss Wole Soyinka at 80 and Freedom and Nation Building. It was part of activities for this year's edition of the Lagos Book and Art Festival as put together by the Committee for Relevent Art. Edozie Udeze reports involved in the June 12, 1993 protests to right the wrong against M.K.O Abiola, he did so as a revolutionary, someone touched by the problems of the society. All these are what he brings to bear in all his works. Today, there is no African writer as powerful as he is in the way he implores his revoluntionary ideas to better the welfare of the people. This is why he is seen as a rampaging social crusader, who uses metaphors to externalise his ideas. He sees this as a monstrous society, with deep moral and social decadence where political forces are at work." When King Henry IV became the leader of England, things became better, the English people smiled and the economy became more bouyant. Jeyifo infers that this is what Soinka wishes to happen in Nigeria. "When you compare the two leaders in England and then come home to see the irony of leadership in Nigeria, you then see why as a writer, Soyinka wants this era of eldorado to come now. He continues to search for good leaders and seek ways to actualise this in all his works. As a popular writer, the dispossessed must have a say, they should be given back what belongs to them". In his own contribution, Professor Ropo Sekoni concurred with Jeyifo that Soyinka creates himself as one of the characters in most of his works. "He may not really make other protagonists in his works, but then to situate himself in them for proper effect. In his Pekelemesi years in Ibadan, Soyinka uses a character to project highly positive ideas. Even though he did not join any political party, he uses the involvement of those in them to champion his ideas for total change. Therefore in Ake, Isara, Ibadan and You Must Set Forth at Dawn, you see a revoluntionary anarchist, but with redemptive reformism". Sekoni particularly made reference to the role Soyinka ascribed to women in Ake where

he projects them as truly diplomatic and good leaders. He did this so well and ethusiastically, even in his story on Ogboni where he discovers that the place of women as leaders cannot be overlooked. In all, he agrees that as a writer, Soyinka is an activist with unbridled revoluntionary mind, a mind ever determined to ask for change for the good of all. For Profesor Mabel of the University of Abuja, Soyinka could only display his innocence as a boy child in Ake. There, he was untainted by the society and gradually he began to be involved in the affairs of the people with his works. According to her, "In Isara, he is now in the world of the grownups, asking for justice. You see him concerned for justice. He does not run away from fights. A vivid recount of women's role in politics comes out clear here. The role of women in Egbaland in the choice of who leads them becomes Soyinka's total portrayal of women. If the women could unseat the Egba monarch, if they could speak with one voice in such an organised manner, Soyinka is saying that women have a lot to offer to the society. "At that point, he was a young man fully prepared to ask for change in his community. This is why he was more interested in teacher-education through his own father who was equally a teacher. And so in traversing all genres of literature, you see Soyinka involved in social, political and moral issues of the people. The Pekelemesi years shows and epitomises the strength of character in him. To him, freedom becomes a symbol, Nigeria becomes an unfinished business." Describing him as a moving dramatist , Mabel said, "Soyinka believes strongly that the human mind and psyche has to be free. This is why his works try to make life meaningful for the people. He is more guided by the sentiments of his time, of the people around him both now and forever," she said.

In his comments, Kunle Ajibade observed that Soyinka has chosen to live for humanity, for the common people, for a better society. "He is a moving tank of ideas; ideas that do not in any way go obsolete but remain relevant for all time to come. Soyinka's life is for people to realise who they are and what must be done to have a concerted change in the society." In his opening remarks, Ogunbiyi commended CORA for the outing and noted that this is the time to draw attention to serious literary issues to make the society change. "Whether it is the Port Harcourt Book fair or LABAF, we need to keep books alive in the society and in the lives of the people themselves. Biodun Jeyifo has written series of articles on the complexity of Soyinka's works. We are today to listen to him and to learn more on the redical aspects of Soyinka, not only as a writer but as someone who brings himself into what he writes." Ogunbiyi who is also a literatti reminded the gathering that Soyinka uses his deep Yoruba cultural values to shape his works, projecting the people for total effect. "Yes, indeed is a deep political activist who situates his works within the context of the people, the society, the leadership and sustains the interest of readers to follow him all through. This is why his works are of stupendous quality which often gives his literary productions some level of complexity". The discussion was part of series of activitists to give vent to the freedom of the word, in honour of Wole Soyinka at 80. It was to truly see how the man as a writer has fared in his numerous works to effectively touch humanity. It showed that Soyinka even at 80 years of age has not slowed down, has not relented in his quest for an ideal society for all peoples of the world.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

RIGHT OF REPLY

writer named Haruna Jimme, recently wrote an article which was prominently placed as a Guest Writer in the Nation Sunday Newspaper of December 7, 2014 with a title “Wamakko: That threat from high above” (http:// thenationonlineng.net/new/wamakkothreat-high) and also in the Leadership Sunday of December 21, 2014 with a different title “The unnecessary Threat” (http://leadership.ng/columns/396618/ unnecessary-threat). While the writer has right to his opinion the personalities he portrayed in his piece. He was nevertheless unfair in his one-sided and jaundiced article on Governor Wamakko of Sokoto and National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki. The writer while attempted to defend Governor Aliyu Wamakko over his allegation that he was threatened by Sambo Dasuki through a text message. He seems to be sincere enough by providing the so-called threat SMS which goes thus: “I have heard you, you will be hearing from me.” It is rather unfortunate that Haruna Jimme, in the article defended and praised Governor Wamako while attacking and disparaging the person of Sambo Dasuki over the alleged SMS threat. How could a brief message without any WORD connoting negativity or warning to be mischievously misinterpreted to be a threat to someone’s life? The wording are as harmless as friendly smile. After all we have seen media pictures of the two public officers in convivial atmospheres. In a recent widely publicised statement by a registered United Nigerians Forum (UNFO), its North-West Cordinator, Musa Abdullahi appealed to Governor Wammako to allow Dasuki concentrate on the allimportant duty of working out ways to overcome insecurity situation pervading the atmosphere rather the incessant verbal attacks on the retired military officer. The group said that it is obvious that Wamakko is biting the finger that fed him during his times of political wilderness as he seems to have forgotten how the same Sambo Dasuki in the past took him to the

Re: That unnecessary threat

•Dasuki

By Labaran Saleh then Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof. Maurice Iwu, to plead his case and help with his election appeal after court of Appeal in Kaduna sacked him. The same Sambo Dasuki with Senator Umar Dahiru and the then Acting Governor of Sokoto state did mobilize Sokoto people to vote for Wamako instead of Bafarawa’s candidates. The statement further stated that that in act of desperation, Wamakko beckoned on Dasuki and late Yahaya

Mahmood (SAN) to assist him overturn that controversial appeal case. If one must accuse others of threat as the writer claimed in his write-up, it is necessary to remind him that Wamakko has multiple cases of criminal assault and human rights violation pending before the National Human Rights Commission with registration no. C/2012/029/039s/HQ. He was alleged to have physically brutalized one Abuja estate agent, Mallam Bello Usman at NICON Luxury Hotel, Abuja, after denying him his agency fees.

We are all living witnesses to the fact that Wamakko has a similar case of assault involving Sokoto PHCN officials who were in his now infamous gustapo style unleashed physical terror for discharging their duties. Without fear of contradiction, the current NSA, knowing the enormity of the task before him, upon assumption of office drew a thick line between his office and politicians. He knew the implications of hob-nobbing with desperate politicians who can be treacherous and unreliable and therefore distant himself from them. He was one of few top security officers who avoid unnecessary publicity just to enable him concentrate on the job. No one will ever claim that Sambo Dasuki deploy his power against those who disagree with him. It is surprising that campaign of calumny and of hatred against Sambo Dasuki are coming from people in his state, Sokoto. We may recall how allegation that armed soldiers harassed Speaker Tambuwal at a town hall meeting in Kaduna, when the NSA rose in condemnation of the untoward act and personally wrote an apology letter to Mr Speaker even when the allegation was faulty. I strongly appeal to Nigerians, especially Politicians to avoid politicisation of security issues and encourage our security agencies and officers to improve the levels of security measures towards protection of lives and property. Colonel Sambo Dasuki, a Prince of Sokoto Caliphate and former Aide De Camp (ADC) to a Nigerian President in the 80s, is a humble and simple man who will rather discharge his duties responsibly rather than joining individuals and groups in unnecessary debate. His office deserves all the respect. Labaran Saleh Salelabaran@yahoo.com Garki II, Abuja

Is the Nigerian Civil Service irreformable? •Continued from Page 77

generated by the reform efforts so far, the NCS is definitely reformable. Laozi, the Chinese philosopher, said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. In the Nigerian civil service, several reform steps have been taken. What is left is for us to know whether the direction the reforms are taking is exactly where we want to go. The question of whether or not the Nigerian civil service is reformable, we have so far argued, should not be taken as a rhetorical or provocative question. Rather, it is one which is entirely diagnostic in the same manner in which philosophers' treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. We made the point that since reform is so critical to the idea of democratic governance which is constantly evolving to capture the needs and aspirations of the citizens, the question of reform is not one that can be settled once and for all. Rather, the real issue is that of constantly reflecting on how to reform right and in a manner that a system will not continue revisiting the same reform issue for ages. If we grant the fact that past reforms till date have generated crucial insights and strategies that suffice to say the NCS is reformable, then we should be concerned with whether those insights are sufficient to take us to our objectives. In this regard, we should urgently ask the next question: Has the Nigerian civil service been reforming since 1974? Of course, a sub-question would immediately be: Why is 1974 significant in Nigeria's administrative reform history? The irreformability of the civil service system, in this context, will therefore be the function of those insights which have been generated but which we have consistently neglected for several reasons. As such, Nigeria is still far from the objective of a world class public service institution that will drive the business of government and provide efficient and effective service delivery for Nigerians. The worry therefore is: For how long can we keep on reforming without arriving at the objective? Will the transformation of the civil service system happen soon? Or, is

the system essentially irreformable? The quality of reforms that have been initiated (especially with evidences of successful efforts of some agencies and state civil services) so far invalidates the presumption that reform is impossible in the NCS. Yet, that does not allay the pervasive fear that if we fail to undermine the execution trap we outlined in the first part, reforming the NCS may become so protracted that we can as well conclude that the system is irreformable. And this brings us back to the question of 1974. It is significant because it was the year that Nigerian civil servants suddenly came into enormous wealth as a result of the stupendous wage award associated with the Udoji reform implementation. That Commission therefore became a negative administrative watershed in terms of what could have happened to the NCS. The Udoji Commission was preceded by the Adebo Commission of 1971. This commission was set up to investigate the stubborn issue of remuneration that first surfaced in the attempt to pay the expatriates and Nigerians in the civil service. However, the commission's terms of reference was overtaken by the encroaching and far deeper challenge of managerialism that was fast becoming the revolution in administrative practice. The commission recommended that unless the far weightier issue of organisation and structure were first settled, that of wage and compensation would become essentially trivial and unenlightening. It therefore recommended the establishment of a different commission with expanded terms of reference. The Udoji Commission was the result. When the commission began sitting, its job was already cut out for it by the Fulton Report of 1968. That commission in Britain had a very similar responsibility: it was set up at a time when the British civil service was already too bureaucratic to make any success of its many reform efforts. Fulton therefore became the framework for giving birth to the managerial culture in public administration. The Udoji Commission dug deep into the intent of the Fulton Report to advocate the need for a total reassessment of the Nigerian Civil Service and

its capacity to internalise global changes. It not only recommended the institution of a performance management framework backstopped with project management praxis, but it also advocated the enlistment of new professionals that would be compatible with the new global knowledge dynamics that is defining global best practices. Unfortunately, like the Fulton Report itself, the Udoji Report was disarticulated. Its implementation was a disjointed one that selectively executed the compensation package while neglecting the real substance of the recommendations. The Udoji reform is just one in line of other relevant reform programmesPhillips reform of 1988 and the Ayida Review Panel of 1995-that were either not properly implemented or implemented in an unreflective manner. All these reform reports contain deep administrative blueprints for a continuous reappraisal of the NCS. While they are not perfect reports, their recommendations could have been genuinely modified and intelligently refined to purge them of the conception-reality gaps that could have hindered their implementation. Thus, while we can talk of some 'pockets of reform effectiveness' in the reform of the NCS since 2003, the significant points are that (a) we ought to have gone beyond this juncture a long time ago given the dedication and visionary analysis that went into our reform efforts since 1971; and (b) it is still not too late to put in place a serious and collective framework for deepening and consolidating the insights derived from them through a rigorous impact assessment rooted in a critical reappraisal of the MDAs. This approach essentially confronts the idea of reform as a systemic one that transfer our focus to the MDAs as the locus of government business. This immediately implies that what is being reformedwhat all the reform assessments from 1974 has been demanding-is an urgent change in the MDAs' business model which ought to have been transformed through active debureaucratisation. 'The aim of leadership,' according to Edward Deming, 'should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring

pride of workmanship to people.' Reforming the MDAs is confronting them at the level of performance and critically injecting the insights of past reforms to re-engineer their service delivery capacity. This requires not only boldness on the part of the reformers, but also careful sensitivity as to what lessons to learn and unlearn from the diagnosis and recommendations of past reforms. My study of the history of reform commissions and recommendations outlines several issues which are crucial for the task of recalibrating the business model of the MDAs. First, there is the recurrent issue of competitive remuneration. Unfortunately, this issue has been part of our reform experience without any significant way forward. Without a competitive pay system, the idea of performance cannot even be confronted. The same applies to the second issue of the current workforce composition and size characterised by redundancy, administrative in-breeding, skills and competency deficit as well as a very low organisational IQ. This implies that when the NCS attracts people, we necessarily do not attract the right kind of talents. Working for government now in Nigeria is the passport to all manners of laxity and indifference. It is even worse because we have an uncharacteristic large number of people doing practically nothing where we could have an ingenious HR framework that employs the best and remunerate them accordingly based on performance. The third critical issue concerns a subsisting adversarial framework of industrial relations which seems antithetical to the objective of a fast, smart, intelligent and lean public service that can deliver service on the go. A viable and developmental industrial relations framework therefore becomes critical because of its direct connection with an urgent national productivity paradigm that could drive the public service performance dynamics. All these would also be coupled with a deep budget reform of macroaggregate public financing to free recurrent budget essentially for development purposes. - Dr.Olaopa, is Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Communication Technology Abuja. Nigeria. tunji.olaopa@ commtech.gov.ng

SPORTS THE NATION ON SUNDAY

Ghana name uncapped four

HANA coach Avram Grant has called up four new faces in a 31-man provisional squad for the 2015 Afcon. They include Swedenbased midfielders Enoch Adu Kofi of Malmo and Ibrahim Moro of AIK Stockholm, as well as defender Daniel Amartey of D a n i s h s i d e F C Copenhagen and striker Kwesi Appiah of English League Two side Cambridge United. Returning to the side are goalkeeper Ernest Sowah of DR Congo side Don Bosco, US-based defender Samuel Inkoom, Alfred Duncan of Sampdoria and another USbased player, David Accam, a striker who recently joined Chicago Fire. There was no place for experienced midfielders Sulley Muntari, KevinPrince Boateng and Michael Essien. Also missing was goalkeeper Adam Kwarasey who has not played for the Black Stars since their disappointing World Cup showing. The US-based star snubbed a call to feature in the final round of qualifying for the Afcon in November. The Black Stars open their campaign against Senegal before games against Algeria and South Africa. Squad: Goalkeepers: Razak Braimah (Mirandes, Spain), Adams Stephen (Aduana Stars), Fatau Dauda (AshGold) and Ernest Sowah (Don Bosco, DR Congo) Defenders: Harrison Afful (Esperance, Tunisia), John Boye (Erciyesspor, Turkey), Jonathan Mensah (Evian, France), Jeffery Schlupp (Leicester City, England), Awal Mohammed (Maritzburg, South Africa), Kwabena Adusei (Mpumalanga Black Aces, South Africa), Baba Rahman (Augsburg, Germany), Gyimah Edwin (Mpumalanga Black Aces, South Africa), Samuel Inkoom (Houston Dynamo, USA), Daniel Amartey, (FC Copenhagen, Denmark) Midfielders: Rabiu Mohammed (Krasnodar, Russia), Emmanuel Agyemang-Badu (Udinese, Italy), Afriyie Acquah (Parma, Italy), Solomon Asante (T.P. Mazembe, DR Congo), Christian Atsu (Everton, England), Mubarak Wakaso (Celtic, Scotland), Andre Ayew (Olympique Marseille, France), Alfred Duncan (Sampdoria, Italy), Albert Adomah (Middlesbrough, England), Frank Acheampong (Anderlecht, Belgium), Adu Kofi (Malmo, Sweden), Ibrahim Moro (AIK Stockholm, Sweden) Forwards: Jordan Ayew (Lorient, France), AbdulM a j e e d W a r i s (Trabzonspor, Turkey), Asamoah Gyan (Al Ain, UAE), Kwesi Appiah (Cambridge United, England), David Accam (Chicago Fire, USA)

EXTRA

DECEMBER 28, 2014

Rooney celebrates his opener against Newcastle at Old Trafford with United striker Radamel Falcao

SUNDAY FIXTURES Tottenham v Man Utd Southampton v Chelsea Aston Villa v Sunderland Hull v Leicester Manchester City v Burnley QPR v Crystal Palace Stoke v WestBrom West Ham v Arsenal Newcastle v Everton

Mikel turns down Schalke move

OHN Obi Mikel has rejected the prospect of reuniting with ex Chelsea coach Roberto Di Matteo at Schalke 04, after pledging to remain with the London club at least until next summer. Having started all but one of the last six matches contested by Chelsea in all competitions, the defensive

midfielder, who had been struggling for game time, has assured that he will be staying put at Stamford Bridge. The Super Eagles star has admitted that he would have severed ties with the Londoners in the January transfer window if his circumstances had not improved.

''Mikel is remaining in Chelsea until June, he has started playing. Before he was not happy, now he is playing and happy. ''Inter Milan and Schalke 04 had approached him, but he is not moving,'' a representative of Mikel told SL10.ng. In his ninth season in England, Mikel made his

Iorfa impresses in Wolves victory

OLVERHAMPTO N Wanderers defender, Dominic Iorfa, showed his utility prowess impressing in an unfamiliar right full back role as they beat Watford 1-0. Traditionally a center back, the 19-year-old didn't appear out of place at right back away at Vicarage road, showing tremendous pace and tackling ability not expected from a player of his height. The son of former Nigeria International, Dominic Iorfa, helped snuff out the threat of Watford pacy winger Ikechi

Anya winning almost all of his duels with the Scottish International of Nigerian parentage. Iorfa was also neat in possession and covered up well for his central defenders when the need arises and earned a mention from the club's twitter handle for his all round contribution. Also in the Wolves team at Vicarage road goalkeeper, Carl Ikeme eligible for Nigeria, produced top quality save to keep Watford at bay further enhancing his reputation as one of the best

shot-stoppers in the Championship. Ikeme produced a punch save taking it to the post off a deflected shot from former Nigeria under-20 captain Odion Ighalo, denying him an opportunity to level things up for Watford. The 27-year-old shot stopper has already picked up three Man of The Match award this season for Wolves and even though he was EYMAR has admitted beaten to the award this time that he doesn't know if around, he did his bit when he will ever reach the required to help pick up all level of either Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi in his career .The Clasico pair continue to lay the benchmark in world football, with both players sharing the FIFA Boxing Day. His decisive Ballon d'Or since 2008, and the strike on the hour took him to Barcelona attacker conceded it three goals in his last three may not be possible to m a t c h e s , a n d R o d g e r s replicate the unprecedented believes that he has a lot to achievements of his peers. "Cristiano and Lionel are offer in a position which he is better than any player today," quickly adapting to. he told Globo Esporte. "I think Raheem and "It's difficult to compete anyone with that type of pace with them. I don't know if I'll will always stretch teams and reach their level, but I hope to will always make defenders better myself each day. I always want to be better than I think," he said. "He's a different type and am. "Everything happens in not your natural number nine. and mine had come For me it's more about the time, when I left [Santos]. I grow position than the player. For every day, every season. I was the team to function well, that happy at Santos but needed a pace in the team is very fresh start, with bigger challenges, and I hope I can important for us."

Balotelli going nowhere, says Rodgers

HERE will be no route back to Italy for Mario Balotelli this January, according to Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers. Reports in the striker's homeland have suggested that former club Inter Milan, where Balotelli rose to prominence, may be looking at a loan move for him in the new year in light of his poor start to life at Anfield. But Rodgers insists he has no plans to further weaken a forward line which is already lacking the injured Daniel Sturridge. Rodgers said: "It's not some thing that I have even thought about to be honest. We've had

a lot of games this season in a lot of competitions. At this moment in time the key for me is trying to keep the squad together." While Balotelli continues to struggle to find his feet at Anfield since his ÂŁ16m move from AC Milan in the summer, Rodgers has been forced to juggle his forwards to find a combination which goes some way to fill the void left by the absence of Sturridge and the departed Luis Suarez. Raheem Sterling is currently the latest player leading the line and he performed admirably in that role again against Burnley on

250th start for Chelsea in their 2-0 away win over Stoke City on December 22. The 27-year-old is under contract to Chelsea until the end of the 2016-2017 season. Meanwhile, Southampton welcome leaders Chelsea to St Mary's live on Sky Sports 1 on Sunday with both sides enjoying positive results in recent weeks in the Premier League. The Saints have won their last two games convincingly and sit fourth in the table, while Chelsea have won five on the trot in all competitions after their first defeat of the season at Newcastle earlier this month. Jose Mourinho's side have

conceded just two goals in those five games, but come up against a Saints defence that has kept six clean sheets in the last nine Premier League matches at St Mary's. Chelsea players and staff are in confident mood of late; Mourinho claimed captain John Terry is as good as he was 10 years ago, while Nemanja Matic insisted earlier in the week that the Blues could win an unprecedented quadruple this term. Jose Mourinho says Chelsea were very creative with the ball against a difficult defensive side following their 2-0 win against West Ham.

Neymar: it's hard to reach Ronaldo, Messi level

remain happy. "2014 was a year of learning, there was joy and sorrow. I know I have to continue improving as I can't take things for granted. I look for more and more. That was my lesson of 2014." The former Santos star then reflected on Brazil's recovery from their 7-1 capitulation against Germany at the World Cup and maintained there was much work to do. "I had a great experience at the World Cup. Football is growing and becoming more competitive," he added. "I know that for the 2018 World Cup I have to be more prepared than I was for 2014. "[The 7-1 defeat to Germany] is an outdated issue, but we must be humble and remember it because that's what makes us learn.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY DECEMBER 28, 2014

SPORT EXTRA

Di Maria wants Man United to sign Gaitan

WORLD CUP

enfica's Nicolas Gaitan, from Argentina, has been again linked to Manchester United. Rumours have swirled around that Manchester United is interested in Nicolas Gaitan now star player Angel Di Maria has reportedly intervened. Speculation about a move by Gaitan from Benfica to United seemed to be quelled when he signed a new contract in November. However, the Express is reporting that Di Maria wants United manager Louis van Gaal to pay the 30million-pound release fee and bring his friend and compatriot to Old Trafford. Gaitan, 26, filled the hole in Benfica's midfield when the winger left for Real Madrid. Now he is reportedly lobbying United to sign Gaitan, who he plays alongside in Argentina's national side. Liverpool, Tottenham, Monaco and Valencia have all been linked to Gaitan but United appears to have the best chance of securing his signature.

AFCON: Pitroipa, Traore in Burkina Faso's squad

ONATHAN Pitroipa and Alain Traore, who starred in Burkina Faso's run to the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations final, were among the provisional squad of 24 players announced on Saturday for the 2015 finals. Also figuring in the list of 24 players announced by Burkina Faso's Belgian coach Paul Put was Prejuce Nacoulma. The Turkeybased midfielder returns after a spell on the sidelines for indiscipline. Burkina Faso are in first round Group A with 2015 hosts Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Congo Brazzaville. The Stallions were the surprise package of the last Nations Cup, reaching the final in South Africa's Soccer City where they lost out 1-0 to Nigeria.

Awo stadium hosts swimming tourney

N its continued efforts to cultivate school pupils into sports at early stage, KAYROM LEE that partners National Sports Commission (NSC) zone one, staged a swimming competition for primary and secondary schools pupils where new talents were discovered by Oyo State Sports Council coaches. The CEO of the firm, Mrs. Romoke Ayinde, while briefing newsmen after the event held at the swimming pool of Obafemi Awolowo Stadium Ibadan over the weekend said the Holiday swimming Tourney was designed to engage the pupils positively during the school vacation and to introduce swimming the younger ones at the very early stage as its been done in the leading nations in global sports.

State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, SAN (2nd left) decorating the winner of the Governor's Belt for 2014 who fought in the 49kg Boxing category, Mr. Dauda Azeez (2nd right) of Lagos State while the Lagos State All Progressives Congress Governorship Candidate, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode (right) and Chairman, Lagos Boxing Hall of Fame, Mr. Wale Edun (left) watch during the 6th Annual Governor's Belt Edition and 59th Monthly Boxing Show at the Sir Molade Okoya-Thomas Indoor Sports Hall, Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere.

SIXTH ANNUAL GOVERNOR'S BOXING BELT

Fashola enumerates impressive scorecard in sport

AGOS State Governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola, SAN on Friday kept a date with tradition as he graced the 6th Annual Governor's Belt Edition and 59th Monthly Boxing Show during which he enumerated the administration's achievements in the sporting sector and asserted that only the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) will be capable of sustaining and taking forward the accomplishments. At the event which saw Master Dauda Azeez representing Lagos State emerging as the Champion and winner of the 6thAnnual Governor's Belt and 59th Monthly Boxing Show, Governor Fashola, made a personal Five Year Endowment in the sum of Two Million Naira each to ensure sustenance of the tourney from next year. The Governor who spoke at the Sir Molade Okoya Thomas Indoor Sports Hall, Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere also gave a commitment that

...As Ambode ensure continuity of positive developments

the State would support the various winners who want to turn professional in terms of sponsorship and exposure He stated that gradually over the years, the State has built a sports calendar that is second to none for young people across the whole of the Country, adding that from January to December, the young people of the State are doing something or the other, swimming, athletics, Principals Cup. He stressed that the reputation of Lagos as a grassroots Sports State is not limited to boxing, but it is the Boxing tournament that is the climax and the end of the annual sporting calendar now in Lagos, “We have assumed International dimension as well with the partnership with the Rentom Club of England which has exposed these young boys and girls to the opportunities they could only dream of many years

back. I am also delighted that our Ghanaians brothers and sisters are also with us today”, he added. The Governor who thanked all the competitors for the spirit of fair play that they displayed said after the fierce exchange of blows, the boxers still hugged themselves like brothers and sisters which is the true spirit of the sports. He also gave kudos to the Lagos State Chairman of the Amateur Boxing Association, Mr Olawale Edun and the members of the organizing committee because of what has been achieved as a team adding that very few people believed they could get this far when the journey started in 2009. He also had words of appreciation for the sponsors who believed in the state by putting their brands at the disposal of the state as well as the managers of the various sporting facilities for keeping them in excellent conditions.

In his vote of assurance, the Chairman, Lagos Boxing Hall of Fame Mr. Olawale Edun, expressed his profound gratitude to Gov Fashola, for his support towards the success of the Championships since 2009 adding that the competition has brought a lot of young people together in Lagos State. Prominent among those who witnessed the event were the APC Governorship Flag bearer, Mr. Akinwumi Ambode, member, Lagos State House of Assembly, Hon. Gbolahan Yishawu, Permanent Secretary, Office of Sports, Mr. Oluseyi Whenu, Director of Sports, Lagos State Sports Council, Dr. Kweku Adedayo Tandoh, Former member, Lagos State Boxing Association, Mr. Albert Timson, Chairperson, Lagos State Football and other Sports Supporters Club, Mrs. Gbajumo Folashade, a boxing promoter from United Kingdom, Mr. Tony Jackson and several sports lovers.

Ibe fires Derby County to victory

n-loan Liverpool forward, Jordan Ibe, scored his fifth goal of the season for Derby County in their 4-0 victory over Birmingham City in the English Championship. The England youth international, who spent the

closing part of last season on loan at Birmingham City scoring once in 11 games to help them beat relegation, showed no mercy at the ground that was home to him months ago. Ibe set the tone for the high score victory when he scored

the game's opener in the ninth minute, his fifth of the season from 18 games for third place Derby. The 19-year-old picked up an assist for Chris Martin's goal, with further goals from Craig Forsythe and Johnny Russel completing the rout.

He was tipped for a breakthrough in the Liverpool senior set up this season, but a summer of high profile signings pushed him down the pecking order and got him loaned out for the third time in his Liverpool career.

Uchenwa eyes first team role at Real Mallorca

EAL Mallorca m i d f i e l d e r , K e n e c h u k w u Uchenwa, reckons it's only a matter of time before he breaks into the first team of the Palma-based outfit. And you can't blame him for having so much high expectations about himself, as he trained with the first team during pre-season and he has versatility to boot. ''I was training with the first team from pre-season till after the first three matches in

the League. I had to stop when the coach was sacked an we g o t a n e w coach,''Kenechukwu Uchenwa said to SL10.ng. ''This season, I have played central defense and midfield but normally I'm a midfielder. ''In January, I hope to play for the first team, I am really looking forward to that because I'm in a very good shape though I have to improve in some areas.'' Now aged 23, former Dream Team coach Austin

Eguavoen had explored the possibility of inviting him for the 2011 African Under 23 Championship. But his friend Raheem Lawal got the nod ahead of him and as they say the rest is history. ''Well the year Nigeria didn't qualify for the Olympic Games, the coach contacted me and my friends Lawal and Edet Ibok when they were both playing for Atlético Baleares here in Mallorca in the third division.

''But I didn't make it to the tournament but they did. That's the only time I talked with a Nigeria national team coach about a national team call up ''My friend was lucky to score a hat-trick in the match against Algeria, and Stephen Keshi was at the match that day, and that's how he was invited to the Super Eagles, '' the Mallorca number 6 concluded. The former Enugu Rangers and Ebonyi Angels player extended his contract with Mallorca for three more years in 2013.

Van Gaal plots midfield future for Rooney

ANCHESTER United manager Louis Van Gaal says that he will continue to use captain Wayne Rooney as a midfielder. "When you score two goals and you give the assist to the third goal, then you are happy as the manager," Van Gaal said, describing Rooney's decisive performance in the 3-1 win over Newcastle United on Boxing Day. "He is very happy also." Rooney scored United's first two goals, and set up Robin van Persie for United's third against Alan Pardew's side, who could only celebrate a late consolation penalty from Papiss Cisse. "He has the lung capacity to run 90 minutes as a midfielder," said Van Gaal. "That's why I used him like a midfielder. I can also use him as a striker. For the team at the moment, it's better he plays in midfield." With Daley Blind, Ander Herrera, Marouane Fellaini and Angel Di Maria all absent with injuries, Rooney has stepped back from the front line, and has been key to home victories over Liverpool and now Newcastle. Meanwhile, Van Gaal bemoaned the quick, 43hour turnaround he has to prepare his team for Sunday's visit to Tottenham Hotspur, which kicks off at midday. "I cannot prepare my team like I have to prepare," he said. "We have unit meetings, and team meetings, we have training 11 against 11, and examining opponents. We cannot do that now. "With FIFA and UEFA it's forbidden to play within 48 hours. But, OK, it's England."

Fellaini out of festive fixtures

ELGIAN Marouane Fellaini is set to miss the remainder of Manchester United's festive fixture programme after being sidelined with a broken rib. The Belgian midfielder has been absent from Louis van Gaal's squad for the last two games, against Aston Villa and Newcastle, with the United manager citing an illness as the cause for Fellaini's unavailability. But it is understood that the 27-year-old is also nursing a rib injury sustained in training following his last first-team appearance against Liverpool at Old Trafford two weeks ago. Van Gaal admitted on Friday, following the 3-1 victory against Newcastle, that Fellaini would not be involved against Tottenham at White Hart Lane on Sunday lunchtime. And the former Everton player is also expected to be ruled out of the New Year's Day encounter with Stoke City at the Britannia Stadium and next Sunday's FA Cup third round tie against League One strugglers Yeovil Town at Huish Park.

QUOTABLE “Significantly, Nigeria is poorer today than she was at independence. But, if we are determined to live, work and suffer together, we will, in no time, overcome all those difficulties.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2014 TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM VOL. 9, NO. 3078

—One time Kwara State Military Governor, Grp. Capt. Salaudeen Latinwo (Retd), on the state of the nation

“N

EVER was ability so much below mediocrity so well rewarded, not, not even when Caligula’s horse was made a consul,” said John Randolph on Richard Rush in the early days of the United States Congress. He could very well have been talking about President Goodluck Jonathan. But since the All Progressives Congress (APC) has sworn not to focus on the person of Dr Jonathan, though his person could not be divorced from his modest accomplishments, we may be deprived of great invectives directed against the president. Indeed, insults have from time immemorial been an integral part of politics, and memorable putdowns have served to excite, engage and humour the electorate. As an influence on voting pattern, however, their utility is doubtful. Nonetheless, in 2015, Nigeria seems nostalgically to be returning to the virulent past, a past that never really left us. In more than four statements in the past three weeks, the APC has wisely decided its presidential campaign will centre on issues instead of abuse, on facts rather than fiction, and on perspectives rather than persons. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on the other hand has cleverly impressed it on everyone, including party leaders and unwary voters, that its campaign will focus almost exclusively on vitriolic abuse. The reason is clear: on the exigent issues of the day, the PDP is at its wit’s end, unable to offer explanations for its failures and incapable of envisioning a glorious future. The ruling party will therefore do its damnedest to restrict the campaign to abuse and its focus to persons. If the APC is smart, it will recognise it is unlikely to match the PDP in abuse, and must therefore do its level best to stick to issues, where it will be able to prove with little or no effort how woefully the ruling party had performed, and how inept it had become in remedying the grave issues of the day and the mortal dangers of the near future. It is often hard to detach abuse from politics, especially because it constitutes an irresistible part of the dialectics of political campaign. But never in the history of Nigeria has any government proved so derelict of achievements as the President Goodluck Jonathan government, consequent upon which it seems unrepentantly set on avoiding campaigning on records. Indeed, it has already kick-started the campaign of abuse, and is pursuing it unabashedly and with all ferocity. In the past two

PDP, APC and abusive election

•Oyegun

•Muazu

weeks, two top officials of the PDP have dredged the sewers of abuse so openly it is unmistakable what their objectives are. National chairman of the PDP, Adamu Muazu, drew the first blood when, through his assistant, he described the APC candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, as idiosyncratically combative and anti-democratic, traits he concluded would be introduced into APC governance should the opposition party win the presidential election in 2015. It was scaremongering at its worst, but strictly speaking, since it was not libellous, Alhaji Muazu felt confident to make his opinion public. If Alhaji Muazu’s misplaced description of Gen Buhari as a warlord was not bad enough, the ruling party’s national secretary, Prof Adewale Oladipo, descended a notch lower by describing the APC presidential candidate as semiliterate, a reference to the fact that he has no university degree. Dr Jonathan on the other hand had a PhD, said the PDP official, irrespective of what he had done, or is capable of doing, with it. The 2015 presidential poll, Prof

Oladipo gloated, “is going to be between darkness and light, it is going to be between a cosmopolitan, highly focused PhD holder and a semiliterate jackboot.” The problem with invectives is that they don’t have to bear any semblance to truth or reality. If not, there is hardly any Nigerian who does not know that Gen Buhari exudes gravitas as opposed to Dr Jonathan’s boyish simplicity, honesty as opposed to the president’s manifest and offensive untruths, forthrightness as opposed to the president’s prevarications, energy as opposed to the president’s lassitude, and cultured outlook as opposed to the president’s provocative provincialism. Even if we cavil at the PDP’s style of campaign, the party seems to have little or no alternative. There are no spectacular roads rebuilt on a significant scale to flaunt, and no rail network of high-speed trains to boast of. The PDP government has established more universities, but that is not what Nigeria needs, for the government is unable to maintain the

Leadership recruitment: APC needs to proceed cautiously

FEW months back, many Nigerians, including this columnist and even All Progressives Congress (APC) leaders, probably never imagined that the main opposition party would rise to its present stature, let alone stand at the door of forming the next government. But here they are, a few weeks to the general elections, poised to assume the presidency, and riding on the crest of popular disaffection with the jaded and exhausted ruling party. In consequence, they must begin to face many obligations, some summoning them to extremely high dose of discipline, imaginativeness, organisation and character. How they respond to these obligations will determine how successful they become. They already recognise the huge task of formulating a party ideology out of their variegated backgrounds and disparate worldviews, but this is a task, among many other tasks, they seem to have postponed to sometime in the future. But there is one responsibility they can neither ignore nor postpone: the task of fine-tuning their leadership recruitment processes. This is what will define them and help them chart a responsible and successful path into the future. So far, they have approached the matter rather desultorily and offhandedly, an approach that has cost them a lot in terms of prestige and credibility. An example is the rather carefree way they welcomed Femi Fani-Kayode, Ali Modu-Sheriff and Dino Melaye into their fold. Mr Melaye is still with them, and is

continuing to play a somewhat prominent role in the party. Mr Fani-Kayode was barely two weeks with them, after defecting spectacularly from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), when he began to rub elbows with APC leaders and accompany them to high-profile meetings. Mr Fani-Kayode is doubtless eloquent and aggressively eager to defend and advance the interest of his friends; but he is also famously eccentric, polemical, abusive, unreliable and almost wholly without leadership character. It will be recalled that he insinuated himself into the confidence of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, reviling and denigrating him until he got a job with that government, and then kept quiet. It required little effort, after a while, for him to reject his PDP friends and praise his way into the APC, where it seemed a man of his combative talent and piquant disposition was needed to serve as a battering ram against the PDP. In the end, it also required very little effort for him to pick a quarrel with the APC leaders, whom he accused of sectarian insensitivity, abuse them thoroughly and de-

nounce them as unprepared for national leadership. Mr Fani-Kayode is now back to his vomit. Like Mr Fani-Kayode, Mr Melaye is cantankerous, intrepid, willing to risk everything, and a gifted rabble-rouser. He was swiftly welcomed into the APC fold, where he also began to rub elbows with party leaders, offering to lead many of their escapades designed to irritate, frustrate and suffocate the PDP and its leaders. He is a stump maverick and soapbox virtuoso; but he is also a quintessential eccentric who is just a hair’s breadth away from accomplished thuggishness. He campaigns for probity and character, but at bottom those virtues mean nothing to him, going by his behaviour during the last APC primaries in his home state of Kogi. Because of him, a full revolt is underway against the APC in Kogi West. Reflecting its problematic leadership recruitment style and policy, the APC has faced serious leadership challenges, and has barely managed to suppress the rage of its Young Turks, virtually all of them a part of the party’s leadership at state and national levels. The party must urgently mature. It must fine-tune its party ideology, establish parameters for recruiting young politicians and defectors into its leadership cadre, and define rigidly the qualifications and character such leaders must possess. If the party is to minimise discontent and run a tight-knit organisation, it must ensure that defectors and other party faithful are no longer automatically inducted into leadership cadre simply because they possess oratorical gifts, eagerness to fight the enemy, and loyalty, much of it skin deep.

existing ones. The hospitals are a little better than consulting clinics, and whole communities and long stretches of roads are unsafe. Kidnappers run riot, abducted schoolgirls are raped and killed, and schoolboys are massacred at will. The government has become so impotent that it seems there is no government in law and in fact. To avoid emphasis on these embarrassing facts, the PDP will focus attention on the persons of the APC leadership and candidates. If they are tired of focusing on Gen Buhari, and cannot focus on his running mate, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, they will seize some of the party’s national leaders, especially Bola Ahmed Tinubu, their favourite customer, to denigrate. In short, no matter what anyone says, and no matter what the APC does, the PDP will stubbornly remain glued to a campaign of calumny because of its tantalising opportunities. That is its lifeline; that is its last straw to clutch at. That is the engine of its presidential campaign; that in fact is the culmination of its 2015 campaign. It can do no other thing. The electorate will be left to judge in the final analysis who has run the most effective campaign between the PDP and APC, and which is the most persuasive, campaign of issues or campaign of abuse. The voters will be left to judge whether describing Gen Buhari as semiliterate resonates as powerfully as portraying the impotence of Dr Jonathan in rescuing the 219 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram; or whether labelling the general a warlord is not a compliment in the face of Dr Jonathan’s proven failure in taking the battle to the rampaging Boko Haram, a terror group that has caused so much catastrophe in the country and schism, disquiet and restiveness in the Nigerian military.

Kenya’s retrogressive anti-terror law UFFETED by relentless Al Shabab terrorist attacks, Kenya has passed a controversial anti-terror law permitting the incarceration of terror suspects for up to one year instead of the previous 90 days limit. The law also increases sentences and gives the authorities more powers to tap phones, while journalists could be jailed for three years if their reports “undermine investigations or security operations relating to terrorism,” or if they publish images of “terror victims” without permission from the police. It will be recalled that President Goodluck Jonathan’s initial state of emergency declaration contained a few of such deplorable anti-freedom and anti-media provisions. But what is even more controversial about the retrogressive Kenyan law is not the severity and unreasonableness of the law, but the government’s response to criticisms by the United States. The US, said Kenya, had worse provisions in its own antiterror law, while Kenya had checks and balances. Kenyan opposition parties and the media do not believe the new anti-terror law is reasonable. They think it is execrable, dehumanising and targeted at creating a political hegemony and police state. Kenya is after all notorious for its police repression. It is shocking that rather than address the concerns of democrats and human rights activists, Kenya boasts only of the fact that US anti-terror campaign record is worse. It is unfortunately true that the US is forfeiting its moral leadership of the world by its unscrupulous anti-terror war and unrestrained police repression of blacks; but it is sadder that Kenya cannot seem to appreciate that rather than compare itself with a bad case., it owes its people the responsibility of creating social and political systems that should be the envy of all. That it is a developing African country does not mean it should be a laggard in good laws, or compare itself only with worst cases. The quality of leadership in black Africa is appallingly poor; Kenya should not make it even poorer.

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