The Nation July 27, 2014

Newspaper of the Year

Nyako: Succession battle tears Acting Gov, PDP leaders apart –Page 5

Ebola Virus: FG orders red alert at entry points

Osun 2014: Omisore missing at guber debate

–Page 5

–Page 8

Nigeria’s widest circulating newspaper

Vol.08, No. 2922

TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM

SUNDAY

N200.00

JULY 27, 2014

Sect leader, El-Zakzaky: How soldiers killed my three sons –Page 4

Army: We acted Jonathan orders Zazzau Emirate in self-defence probe of Zaria killings cancels Sallah Durbar

AKWA IBOM 2015: I DIDN’T SAY BOKO HARAM KILLS FOUR I’LL KILL ANYONE –AKPABIO CAMEROONIAN SOLDIERS –Page 7

–Page 4

A French soldier looks at debris of the Air Algerie Flight AH 5017 as he stands at the crash site surrounded by journalists and representatives of victims' relatives in Mali's Gossi region, west of Gao, yesterday. UN experts investigating the Air Algerie plane disaster in Mali have recovered the second black box from the doomed plane, a spokesman of UN peacekeepers in the country said yesterday.

Photo: AFP STORY: PAGE 73

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WHERE ARE THE CHIBOK GIRLS KIDNAPPED ON APRIL 15?

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

PAGE 2

River in China mysteriously turns bloody red overnight

CAPTURED

A

WATERWAY in eastern China h a s m y s t e r iously turned a blood red colour.

Residents in Zhejiang province said the river looked normal at 5 a.m.

Beijing time on Thursday morning. Within an hour, the entire river turned crimson. Residents also said a strange smell wafted through the air. “The really weird thing is that we have been able to catch fish because the water is normally so clear,� one local villager commented on China's microblogging site Weibo.

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Coming soon to Bar Beach!

Whoever says books are going out of fashion should consider this. People browsing books at a 'beach library' in the Bulgarian Black sea resort of Albena. The quirky library is the first of its kind in the European Union and only the third in the world. Its shelves boast 2,500 volumes in more than 10 languages and is completely free. Patrons can leave their own books and swap them for something different.

So next stop Bar Beach, Lagos?

Photo: REX

BAROMETER

IGERIA is seething with impeachment plots.

Designed by framers of the 1999 constitution as an unusual tool for changing malfeasant governments, impeachment was to be deployed sparingly in the rarest of situations only when elected officials engaged in gross subversion of constitutional provisions. But as recent events in many parts of the country show, impeachment has become a fashionable tool for whim- political interests of frontline sical overthrow of governments in Adamawa political juggernauts. Nor, still, did furtherance of private political it matter goals. Adamawa State broke the that the mould when in a matter of days it impeac overthrew Governor Murtala hment Nyako, a fiery critic of the Goodluck was carJonathan presidency, and leading ried out exponent of the All Progressives with the Congress (APC) style of liberation annoyand radical theology. i n g It did not matter that he was swiftly accomimpeached mostly for offences allegpanime edly committed during his days as a nt of a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieflegislatain and governor, nor did it matter t i v e that the plot against him was so offencoup, sively open that it revealed the private

sunday@thenationonlineng.net

Impeachment made vexatiously simple one that involved tricking the simpleminded and ambitious deputy governor, Bala Ngilari, to resign, and the enthronement of the triumphant Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Umaru Fintiri. What mattered was that, at least for now, Governor Nyako was gone, and the state's leading political lights were rid of his irreverence, provocation and independence.

The curtain was not yet drawn on the Adamawa spectacle before Nasarawa State began its own political burlesque. Last week, under heavy security, 20 of the state's 24 legislators brusquely decided to impeach Governor Tanko Al-Makura for offences the lawmakers had to scrounge around to

adumbrate. The state's electorate had spontaneously protested the decision, and poured into the streets to register their disgust against what seemed to them an ill-considered and tedious plot. The state's opinion leaders and traditional chiefs added their voices to the people's dismay and remonstrated with the lawmakers to let sleeping dogs lie. But even after some lawmakers were reported to have backed out of the plot, the adamant legislators relocated to Abuja where they proceeded to engineer a stalemate and a sinister subversion of the constitution.

It is not certain what the outcome of the political struggle in Nasarawa would be. But in faraway Ebonyi, the legislators simply damned civility and common sense and proceeded to impeach their Speaker, Chukwuma Nwazunku, with the kind of casualness that reminded many analysts of the inglorious beginnings of the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency. Then, as if an

Jonathan and visiting Chibok parents A BOUT 100 days after Boko Haram abducted hundreds of girls from their school in Chibok, Borno State, 57 of the girls who escaped from the militant sect's captivity and about 119 of their parents finally met President Goodluck Jonathan last Tuesday at the Presidential Villa in Abuja. The president had been expected to meet with some of the distraught parents in Chibok days after the abductions. But citing security concerns, he failed to make the trip. Instead, many months after, he downplays the irony of inviting the grieving parents to Abuja to receive commiseration. As one of the parents said mournfully before the trip, though they would honour the president's invitation, partly because they

did not have a choice, tradition was not lost on them that those who grieve normally receive visitors, not the other way round.

Chibok is a grieving town. About 11 of the grief-stricken parents have so far died: seven from Boko Haram's continuing attacks, and four out of despair and brokenheartedness. Respectful of authority as always and solemn to the bargain, parents who attended the meeting tearfully gave account of the pains and sorrow they have had to endure. The president, reports indicated, was full of empathy, different from the early days of the abduction when, with his wife, he didn't seem sure a tragedy of that monumental proportion had befallen that forlorn town.

Receiving the sorrowing parents of the

Chibok girls at the convenience of his palatial villa may be paradoxical, and indeed even mocking and belittling of the majesty and splendour of the Nigerian presidency, but at least the president has finally discharged an obligation that tugged brutally on his elastic conscience since Boko Haram committed that notable heresy.

Let us for now forget that it took Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girls' education campaigner, to goad President Jonathan into acting a little presidential. But by saying he would visit Chibok after the girls had been freed quite horrifyingly shows the president's abject lack of judgement and his deeply mortifying insensitivity. The Chibok parents braved the odds to honour his belated invitation. But Presi-

dent Jonathan waits for the girls to be rescued before his own courage will manifest for all to see, perhaps after the B o k o Haram war has b e e n w o n .

T h e world must be shocked a n d astound ed by P r e s ident Jonathan's logic.

evil spirit had possessed the land, even the beleaguered state of Borno was last week distracted from its antterror campaign by a most noisome rumour of impeachment allegedly inspired by the Majority Leader of the State House of Assembly, Idrissa Jidda. Alhaji Jidda was reported to be the anchor of a change of government drive plotted by the newly recanted former governor of the state, Ali Modu Sheriff, who was until about two or three weeks ago a member of the APC to which he defected from the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). Former Governor Sheriff was said to be eager to get the Governors of Borno and Yobe impeached for no other reason than that he had joined the PDP and needed the two states to shore up both his political base and President Jonathan's second term bid.

Not to be outdone, Enugu State, under the uninspiring and irritable Governor Sullivan Chime, felt the hideous need to enact a different perspective to the impeachment drama going on in the country. The state legislature decided to serve the deputy governor, Sunday Onyebuchi, with impeachment notice for reasons that included the comical offence of disrespecting the governor. He is unlikely to survive the conspiracy between the executive and the legislature, who both have constituted themselves into implacable Magdeburg hemispheres.

Before next year's general elections, a few more elected officials could still bite the dust. Many of them, it appears, will be unhorsed for wholly capricious reasons, reasons alien to the constitution, the law, simple logic and rudimentary discipline. Similar indiscipline pervaded the Obasanjo years, and it was thought that as year chases year, somehow the nation would become more sophisticated, better organised, disciplined and progressive. Alas, we told ourselves an infernal lie.

By ADEKUNLE ADE-ADELEYE

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

COLUMN

A gathering of crocodiles

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ITH the hosting of a foreign flag on what is supposed to be Nigerian soil in the little known northern town of Gamboa, and with the security forces showing little appetite for swiftly terminating the disgraceful affront, Nigeria is effectively partitioned. Whether we like to hear it or not, and whether we want it mentioned or not, a great horror movie is unfolding not just for Nigerians but the Black race as a whole. Yet like paralysed participants in the Cabinet of Dr Caligari, the German horror film, we appear too dazed and confounded to comprehend what is going on.

To be sure, this is not the first time Nigeria would be so symbolically dismembered. The Biafran flag was hoisted on a larger swathe of the nation and for a longer period. But not with this kind of psychotic daring and in your face bravura. In any case, Biafra never left anybody in doubt about its intention to secede from Nigeria. It was a textbook secession. The hosting of the flag was the final act of formal consecration after the declaration of independence from Nigeria.

As far as rituals of secession go, the leadership of Biafra adhered scrupulously and rigorously to internationally stipulated norms and independence was formally declared after a Consultative Assembly mandated the old eastern region leadership to lead its people out of Nigeria. Thus, the former Colonel Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, freshly cashiered from the Nigerian Army, became the leader of a new nation. The rest is history.

In the case of the Boko Haram insurgency, a rag tag militia has now snowballed into a full blown military force that has gravely imperilled the territorial sanctity of Nigeria, and one that is bent on imposing its weird form of a theocratic state on a substantial swathe of the nation if not the entire country. There is no Northern Consultative Forum as such in sight. There are no Boko Haram officers to be dismissed as yet. The only thing we have going is President Jonathan’s offhand declaration that there are already Boko Haram cells in the sanctuary of his own administration.

Yet the insurrectionist sect has succeeded beyond its wildest expectation, laying to waste and complete ruination the northernmost fringes of the nation. If the federal forces were to withdraw from this troubled and tormented region at this minute, we might as well say goodbye to Nigeria as we know it.

In a development that points at some international conspiracy beyond the government’s tenuous grasp on reality, the murderous sect has the entire north within its rifle sight, and it seems able to strike at will any target of choice even in the federal capital of Abuja. It is now beginning to probe the Southern underbelly of the nation in what promises to be an apocalyptic endgame for Nigeria. History has become a nightmare from which we are trying to wake up.

At the purely symbolic level, the cost to the psyche of the nation and its fabled military has been quite prohibitive and out of proportion. The old northern establishment has had its totems and escutcheons of political and spiritual authority completely devastated and ground to dust.

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nooping around With

Tatalo Alamu

•Buhari

The state and its paraphernalia of authority and coercive disincentives have been shown to be incapable of protecting, not to talk of maintaining, the territorial integrity of the nation.

At the last count, the Boko Haram sect has accounted for General Mohammed Shuwa, a civil war stalwart and one of the finest officers of the old Nigerian army. It has killed the Emir of Gwoza, with his fellow traditional travellers being lucky to escape after they were dramatically abducted in broad daylight.

It almost succeeded in dispatching the late Emir of Kano, Ado Bayero, until natural death mercifully intervened. It has summarily liquidated scores of notable politicians and clerics. It has successfully cordoned off a huge chunk of the nation known as Sambisa Forest. Meanwhile, it continues to hold in maniacal custody dozens of female pupils summarily rounded up in the middle of the night from Chibok, despite all national and international entreaties.

It has continued to cock a snook at the federal authorities, treating them with implacable contempt, even as it spurns all offers of negotiations. From its redoubt, it has continued to issue threats undermining the fundamental raison d’etre of the state.

Perhaps as an uncoordinated response to its deep humiliation, the military are beginning to show a dangerous edginess and a nervous disregard for civil populace and its ranking authori-

ties. For political astrologers reading the horoscope of impending national calamity, it doesn’t get more bothersome.

Last Wednesday, the chicks came home to roost, or rather the crocodiles gathered once again on the banks of the River Kaduna. A desperate and determined suicide bomber almost succeeded in eliminating General Mohamadu Buhari, another civil war veteran, former military Head of state and persistent presidential hopeful, from the political equation. Looking at the scene of carnage and combustion, it feels more like Islamabad or Afghanistan than Nigeria.

The horrific consequences of Buhari’s elimination and in Kaduna of all places are better left to the imagination. For the better part of the Fourth Republic, this formerly pleasant and placid former capital of the old north and administrative seat of Lord Lugard has known its fair share of sectarian and religious upheavals. A tense truce prevails, but the city remains effectively partitioned between a Muslim north and a Christian south.

In a clumsy and inarticulate manner, Kaduna mirrors the endemic fault lines of the nation itself, and its sorry and sordid history of elite-manipulated divisions. Yet it has not always been like this. In its heydays of glory, a breezy and cosmopolitan Kaduna that welcomed all and which served as the headquarters of the Nigerian military cum

political complex and its emerging lions mirrored the strengths and possibilities of this gifted nation.

Anybody who has spent his prime in Kaduna in the glorious seventies like this columnist, must know what we are talking about. It was pure bliss and blessing on the scale of the beatitude.

As a fresh post Youth Corps graduate, Snooper spent a whole year in the cosy and plush ambience of Tourist Lodge on Dawaki Road. The owner, Idris Morrow of the fabled Morrow bread, was as eccentric and impossibly kind as they come.

Snooper recalls launching into a tirade in Yoruba language one afternoon about the quality of the food and the possible racket that was going on to the hearing of Idris Morrow. Alhaji Morrow sat glum, stony-faced and seemingly inattentive. At dinner later, Idris Morrow walked up to yours sincerely in his inimitable dancing gait.

“Omo mi, se o ti jeun?” (My son, have you eaten?”) Idris Morrow asked with a furtive smile in Yoruba as Snooper froze in his seat . Idris Morrow then calmly sat down and explained that he was actually born in Lagos and had lived in Yaba. “The problem with you boys of nowadays is that you are impatient”, the old man concluded with a grinning flourish. Thereafter developed a father and son bonding with the great man initiating Snooper to the rarefied social circuits of the Kaduna power aristocracy. Every Saturday, our first port of call was at Mrs Akilu, the wife of the late respected technocrat.

There is a sense in which it can be claimed that the history of modern Nigeria is irretrievably wedded to the history of Kaduna. It was from here that Lord Lugard proclaimed his famous and infamous Doctrine of Dual Mandate which forcibly grafted the new nation to the apron strings of the metropolitan order. It was also from here that the late Ahmadu Bello began his great feat of social engineering which saw to the emergence of a new northern political, military and technocrat elite which placed the north at premium political advantage.

But it was from Kaduna again that Ahmadu Bello’s feat provoked its violent political antithesis when a group of impatient young majors rose in brisk fury

A wonderful day for a wonderful man

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O the lush and commodious bowels of Eko Hotel and Suites last Sunday for the seventieth birthday bash of our gifted senior friend, Chief Ajibola Ogunsola, immediate past Chairman of the Punch newspaper group and illustrious scion of the illustrious Ogunsola family of Ibadan.

Snooper has rarely seen so many truly illustrious and distinguished Nigerians gather in honour of an exceptional citizen.

The Nigerian illuminati have a way of honouring one of its favoured children who have done the nation very proud. After the death of his brother, Chief Moyo

Aboderin, Ogunsola had taken the Punch group by the scruff of the neck from the brink of bankruptcy and looming receivership to the commanding heights of newsprint respectability.

With the no-nonsense and implacably principled Ogunsola at the helm of affairs, the paper survived several military ambushes and unfriendly fire to become the voice of the voiceless in the struggle against military despotism in Nigeria. It was a daring and courageous thing to do, but then Ogunsola is from the city of fabled warriors.

In the event, it was a moveable feast, straight out of the

pages of The Great Gatsby but without the quirky histrionics of the great American fictional hero. Wit, raconteur, intellectual and celebrated agnostic, Ajibola is a man of refined taste and rarefied public school elegance.

Nothing escapes his meticulous attention to details and the mathematical rigour of his scrutiny. But if you are able to survive the quiet but exacting interrogation of your credentials, you are likely to find just below the surface a man of immense kindness and memorable generosity of spirit. Here is wishing the chief many happy returns.

and radical distemper to abridge the First Republic. Forty eight years after this set of crocodiles swam out of the River Kaduna to consume everything in sight, Nigeria has known neither peace nor durable progress. It has been forty eight years of solitude and still counting.

It is just as well that this great city is named after the humongous crocodiles that once lazed away on its muddy bank.

Only god knows what havoc these fellows must have cost the unwary natives. But their human incarnation have cost the nation even more. The Nigerian political elite are a bunch of crocodiles who cry while feasting on the entrails of the nation.

But this meal cannot go on forever.

Had General Buhari been killed last Wednesday, the crocodiles would have swum out of Kaduna river again in what might have become a Nigerian version of Hiroshima. We thank God for small mercies. But let this remind the political elite of how close we are to the precipice of no return. While the madmen in our midst only need to be lucky once, the nation has to keep being lucky.

For the Daura-born general, it is a win-win situation. If the attempt on his life can be traced to the Boko Haram sect, it will from now on be extremely stupid and irresponsible for anybody to cast him in the satanic role of a fanatic and sympathiser. If on the other hand, the assassination bid can be traced to some other rogue elements, it may have the unintended consequences of softening Buhari’s image and solidifying many undecided Nigerians behind his cause.

What the general should now do his to parlay his new found authority of personal outrage into playing an even more constructive role in the rescue of the north from its self-inflicted wounds and the redemption of the nation from an own goal. He doesn’t have to be fixated on the presidency. What saved him from that mortal embrace may yet turn out to be a higher calling.

They will be singing for Rauf

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NOOPER has just received a zodiac message on the morning of Aregbesola’s re-election. It is not going to be a close call.

There is a vision of school pupils of all hue dancing and singing for Rauf. In the muffled din of celebration, the lyrics are unforgettable. It goes like this.

Our egg is better than your corn The yolk will save us from your yoke The albumen will become a timeless album of the mind Which will remind us of the wasted years of our fathers The growing infrastructure of our brains Will forever mock the shrinking structure of your stomach.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

NEWS

HE three sons of the popular Zaria Islamic preacher, Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, who were shot to death by soldiers in Zaria, Kaduna State on Friday were undergraduates studying abroad, their father said yesterday.

A fourth son was shot in the leg and is currently receiving treatment in a hospital.

Thirty-two other persons, all of them followers of the Shiite leader, were also killed during the sect's annual street procession in the city.

Another three followers were allegedly shot dead yesterday by soldiers as they were passing by in front of Hussainiya, headquarters of the movement.

The Presidency is distancing itself from the conduct of the brains behind the shooting incident while the Army claimed its men acted in self defence.

But it also said it was investigating the matter.

El-Zakzaky told reporters that 16 bodies of the victims were in the custody of the soldiers and the remaining nine at the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital mortuary.

He named his sons killed as Mahmud of Al-Mustapha University, Beirut; Ahmad, a chemical engineering student at Shenyang University, China; and Hamid, an aeronautical engineering student at Xian University, China.

The fourth son, Ali was shot in the leg but is alive.

He said Mahmud was shot in the abdomen and started bleeding.

"We tried to rush him to the hospital but the soldiers blocked everywhere along the way. He bled to death," he said.

He alleged that his two other sons and many of the followers were simply arrested by the soldiers and thereafter killed in cold blood.

He said: "When we demanded for the release of our people, the Army refused. They said they would take them to Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) for medication not knowing that the two were killed.

"The soldiers also arrested some people including three of my sons. They were taken alive and later killed two of them. I want to assure you that these two children were cold bloodedly murdered because they were taken alive."

He said the Police were assisting in locating arrested members of his sect at Basawa Barracks.

Zaria was relatively calm yesterday after the tension that

How soldiers killed my three sons, 32 followers,

by El-Zakzaky

From Yusuf Alli, Managing Editor Northern Operation, Abuja/Abdulgafar Alabelewe, Zaria

engulfed the city in the aftermath of the killings.

El-Zakzaky's followers were on their annual procession when soldiers reportedly opened fire on them.

Friday's procession was also in solidarity with Palestinians following massive attack from Israel.

The Presidency is said to be distancing itself from the conduct of the soldiers who opened fire on the protesters.

Aso Rock, according to sources, is utterly embarrassed by the development and has ordered a probe by the security agencies into the incident during which supporters of the man considered as an influential voice against Boko Haram were killed.

The investigation is to identify the soldiers who pulled the trigger at the peaceful procession and the allegation.

President of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, Comrade Shehu Sani yesterday said President Goodluck

• Jonathan orders probe of Zaria killings • Army: We acted in self-defence Jonathan must take charge of the security situation in the country.

The Nation gathered yesterday that the Presidency saw the Zaria procession of ElZakzaky followers as peaceful.

It holds the fiery Islamic preacher in high esteem in view of his stance against the activities and pronouncements of Boko Haram.

"The Presidency has asked security agencies to investigate how 12 members of the sect were killed because ElZakzaky's group has openly preached against insurgency," a highly placed source said yesterday.

The source described the Quds Day celebration by ElZakzaky as an annual event known to military, security

agencies and the police over the years and should therefore not have resulted in any blood bath.

The source added:"Preliminary report also showed that in the thick of the disruption of the procession and attendant stampede, some followers of the cleric apprehended some soldiers and marched them to El-Zakzaky.

"Instead of being violent, ElZakzaky, who was oblivious of the killing of some members of the sect, challenged his supporters on why they had to arrest soldiers who are law enforcers. He ordered the immediate release of the soldiers.

"Although some of the affected soldiers alleged that they acted in self-defence

following sporadic shootings from the procession, the Presidency and the Defence Headquarters did not buy into the excuse.

"The Presidency has demanded an in-depth probe by security agencies in order to fish out the culprits."

A security source said no one in the North has backed government's counterinsurgency plan against Boko Haram more than El-Zakzaky.

"This incident should not have happened to him," the source said.

Sani said the President should call the military and security agencies to order with a view to stopping the recurring killing of innocent citizens.

In a statement, he said it was the same type of impunity by security agencies that led to Boko Haram insurgency since 2009.

He said: "We have received the tragic story of the gruesome and cold blooded killing of the members of the Sheikh ElZakzaky led Islamic movement in Zaria by armed soldiers. We have learnt that members of the

• From left:. Samuel Obayemi, newly promoted Assistant Corps Marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi, Corps Marshal, FRSC, Charles Theophillus, newly promoted Deputy Corps Marshal after their decoration yesterday.

movement were fired at while on their yearly peaceful procession, in solidarity with the people of Palestine."

"The unprovoked attack and killing of the members of the Islamic movement by the soldiers stand unreservedly condemned. The killings are cruel, inhuman, barbaric and a dangerous act with wider security implications for the peace and stability of our country.

"It is most unfortunate and sad that our security forces have not learnt their lessons on the grievous implications of cold blood killings of religious leaders or their faithful.

"While the nation is still battling with the insurgency in the Northeast, which was triggered by the extra judicial killing of Mohammed Yusuf in 2009, a new front is deliberately and mischievously ignited by Nigerian soldiers."

He said the dastardly killings confirmed that security forces had been part of the insurgency problem in the North.

He added:"The tragic incidence in Zaria is a clear testimony that our security forces are part of the problem.

The unprovoked attack and killing of the members of the movement is a reprehensible and abominable act capable of triggering a wider bloodletting and endless conflict.

"The impunity and brigandage by our security forces undermines the peace and stability of our country and by extension the authority and credibility of the Government."

Sani said the military and security agencies must be directed to operate within the ambit of the laws.

"President Goodluck Jonathan must take charge and responsibility of the situation on the ground. The buck stops on his table. A systematic policy and strategy of gross rights violations by security forces in the guise or excuse of fighting terrorism is unacceptable.

Shooting peaceful protesters is tantamount to encouraging armed rebellion."

The Nigerian Army said it has launched an investigation into the matter.

The Director of Army Public Relations, Brig-Gen. Olajide Laleye, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) by telephone that the investigation would establish what happened.

"However, what is already clear is that Nigerian Army troops did not initiate firing and only acted in self-defence after being fired upon,'' Laleye said.

Boko Haram clashes with Cameroon soldiers in cross-border attacks

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BOKO Haram militants have carried out another cross-border attack into Cameroon for the second day running since Friday, killing at least four soldiers.

The Cameroonian army has subsequently sent reinforcements to the area, army sources said yesterday.

Under pressure from Nigeria to do more to counter Islamist insurgents, Cameroon has deployed over 1,000 soldiers along its remote jungle border.

Nigeria believes Boko Haram wants to use Cameroon as a rear base as it strives to carve out an Islamic state.

The terrorists have killed thousands in the last five-years and have recently bombed targets that were previously

considered comparatively safe, including Lagos and Abuja.

Cameroonian regional military commander, Colonel Felix Nji Formekong, confirmed to Reuters by telephone that four soldiers had been killed in clashes with Boko Haram fighters at the village of Bargaram, without giving further detail.

A soldier based in the area who requested anonymity as

he is not authorised to speak to the media said another 13 of his comrades were missing after the attack, which took place late on Friday night.

He said that Boko Haram had attacked again in the night from Friday to Saturday but that the Cameroonian army had succeeded in pushing them back.

"We are currently in a real battle front and more of our

soldiers have been sent in from Maroua to assist us," he added, referring to the regional headquarters.

The attack at Bargaram came against the backdrop of the recent Boko Haram attack on the same locality, kidnapping a 20-year old civilian and the handing down of up to 20 years imprisonment to 14 Boko Haram members by a military court in Cameroun.

The country's state broadcasting station, Crtv, reported yesterday that the culprits who were arrested in March after the discovery of a weapons cache, admitted to being part of the Nigerian extremist group at a "public hearing" in the northern town of Maroua.

They had been charged with the illegal possession of firearms and ammunition and

Zazzau cancels Eid Durbar for blast victims

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HERE will be no Eid-ElFitr Durbar or any other festivities in Zaria and environs this week, the Zazzau Emirate Council announced yesterday.

This is to honour victims of last week's dual bomb blasts in Kaduna.

The death toll in the blast has reached 110.

Former military Head of State and APC chieftain, General Muhammadu Buhari and popular Islamic preacher, Sheik Dahiru Bauchi both of whom were the targets of the blasts escaped unhurt.

Addressing reporters in Zaria on behalf of the Emir of Zazzau, Alhaji Shehu Idris, the Wazirin Zazzau, Alhaji Ibrahim Aminu, said the durbar cancellation was necessitated by the security challenges confronting the state and the nation.

He commiserated with the bereaved families and wished the injured quick recovery.

He also urged Muslims and Christians to continue to pray for peace, security and progress in the state and the nation at large.

of plotting an insurrection.

"Each of the Boko Haram members (was) sentenced to between 10 and 20 years" in prison, said the report, adding that the sentences cannot be appealed.

The trial is the first of its kind in Cameroon where a large number of members of the sect have been arrested in the north over the past weeks following attacks on police stations, as well as kidnappings and killings.

More than 3,000 Nigerians fleeing Boko Haram attacks have taken refuge in the Cameroon town of Fotokol, according to a municipal official.

"We are worried about infiltrations" by the Islamists among the refugees, a police officer in the town said.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

NEWS

Nyako: Succession battle tears Acting Gov, PDP leaders apart

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DAMAWA State Acting Governor Umaru Fintiri who, stormed the PDP National Secretariat, Abuja last week beating his chest for 'delivering' on the impeachment of Admiral Murtala Nyako as governor, now wants the job full time.

The State House of Assembly under Fintiri as the Speaker initiated impeachment proceeding against Nyako and sacked him subsequently.

His posters have now flooded Yola proclaiming his interest in the race to succeed Nyako.

The PDP of which Fintiri is a member is gripped by tension over who succeeds Nyako with several other top members also showing interest.

Each of the aspirants claims to enjoy the support of prominent leaders.

Stakeholders who masterminded the ouster of the former governor say the plan was never intended to

• Acting governor's posters flood Yola From: Yusuf Alli, Managing Editor, Northern Operation

make Fintiri substantive governor.

One of the stakeholders said they might return to the trenches against the Acting Governor if he tries to impose himself on the state.

Fintiri, The Nation gathered, has already put machinery in place to hijack the PDP structure to fulfill his ambition.

It was learnt that he does not want to return to the House of Assembly as its Speaker.

A highly-placed source privy to the plot said: "The acting governor of Adamawa State is moving fast and clearly will slip very fast on banana peels on his path. His posters have been posted in strategic places all over the state capital urging him to move on to complete the tenure of Nyako. This is

coming barely two weeks after the ouster of Nyako and resignation of the Deputy Gov Bala Ngilari.

"Those urging the acting governor on are obviously playing the script of his close friends without recourse to the provisions of the 1999 Constitution."

Fintiri's supporters want him to remain in office in view of the security challenge in the state and on the excuse that it will be too costly to run two elections in Adamawa within six months.

They are advocating the 'Doctrine of Necessity'.

But a source in the state said:"They totally forget that a state assembly cannot apply the Doctrine of Necessity to suit its wishes. Alternatively, Fintiri's colleagues in Adamawa State House of Assembly are touting the idea that what the acting governor needs to do is to get

all PDP governorship candidates in the state to agree and present him as a consensus candidate in elections within the stipulated 90 days with the understanding that the governor will then not contest in Feb 2015 elections.

"Fintiri seems to have bought the idea. He has not only mobilised his colleagues in the Assembly for the project who are already canvassing same but he also has wooed chairmen of local governments who had gone to the All Progressives Congress (APC) back to PDP and promised full release of local government funds.

"He promised to take them to Abuja where they in turn would request President Jonathan as the Leader of PDP to ensure Fintiri completes Nyakos term."

But another source asked the PDP to watch it because it might lose the state to the

opposition if Fintiri is fielded.

He said the electorate in the state cannot be taken for granted by the PDP. The second source added: "All these permutations are assuming that Adamawa electorate are ignorant because the acting governor had actually toyed with the idea of moving to the APC at the height of Nyako's reign.

"As the Speaker of the Assembly, he was at Lamido Cinema all night with Nyako at the venue of APC state Congress in Adamawa where a deal was reached between Nyako, ex-VicePresident Atiku Abubakar and the ex-Speaker on the

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leadership of APC in the state.

"It was when Nyako outsmarted both Atiku and the ex-Speaker that the Speaker vowed to return to PDP with all his members to deal with Nyako. He got the Assembly to dust up Nyako's sins and get him out . This they did."

A pro-Fintiri stakeholder said: "Does it make sense for PDP to have another candidate to complete Nyako's tenure? Why can't we allow Fintiri to lead the state till February 2015 when we will be due for another election?

"If by October a new candidate is elected as the PDP governor in Adamawa State, he won't be able to settle down till February and he won't achieve anything. This state needs to be stabilised after Nyako's exit. A few of us are supporting Fintiri's aspiration as substantive governor because of the need for stability and continuity."

Oyo 2015: Forum cautions aspirants against desperate acts

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HE Oyo State Unity Forum (OSUM) has cautioned aspirants seeking the party's governorship ticket on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) not to throw the state into any form of chaos.

The Forum comprising indigenes and non indigenes across the state said recent reports and boasts of gang ups against one another on ethnic basis by seven aspirants and a former governor of the state were capable of bringing back the long forgotten days of politics of violence and killings in the state.

The Forum , according to a statement jointly signed by its Chairman and Secretary, Mr. Olusoji Oyelakin and Pastor Benjamin Akpan respectively, maintained that as much as it was the right of each aspirant to use any strategy deemed necessary for his aspiration

wrong and parochial methods with potentials of causing disaffection, hate and fight among the people must be avoided.

They deplored a statement credited to a former minister which suggested that only natives of Ibadan can seek the ticket and another statement by a former governor that he was teaming up with a serving senator to stop aspirants from Ibadan.

The forum said it was unbecoming of people aspiring to lead the state to make such inflammatory statements.

It said:" We believe that Oyo State has grown beyond this shallow politics and that is why we commend the liberal approach and statement credited to another aspirant of Ibadan origin, Alhaji Kehinde Olaosebikan, who kicked against any form of gang up in the run-up to the primaries and election.

Al-Qaeda releases video of US suicide bomber in Syria •From left: Apostolic Nuncio to Nigeria, Archbishop Augustine Kasujja; Bishop Matthew Kukah and Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa'ad Abubakar III, during the visit of the Apostolic Nuncio in Sokoto at the weekend.

Ebola: Nigeria to screen airline travellers

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IGERIAN officials say they are screening passengers arriving from foreign countries for symptoms of Ebola, after a traveller from Liberia died of the contagious disease in Lagos.

This is coming as United States officials are closely monitoring the outbreak of the deadly virus which has claimed the life of a visiting Liberian in Nigeria, and is working with governments and aid groups to try to stop the spread.

Aviation officials said yesterday they were screening passengers arriving from abroad and health officials were distributing information about how to identify Ebola symptoms.

Spokesman for Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria, Yakubu Dati, says air-

•US monitoring outbreak, aiding bid to stop spread ports are also setting up holding rooms in case another potential Ebola victim lands in Nigeria. Doctors say health screens could be effective, but Ebola cannot be diagnosed on the spot and many symptoms are similar to more common diseases like malaria.

Plan International's head of disaster response, Unni Krishnan, warned that an outbreak in Lagos could be disastrous.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with those fighting the virus," Will Stevens, spokesman for the State Department's Africa bureau, told AFP. "The US government continues to provide a comprehensive, multi-agency response to assist those countries affected by the Ebola vi-

rus outbreak," he added, saying multiple US agencies were "contributing to the outbreak response efforts."

As of July 20, the number of Ebola cases recorded in the months-long epidemic stood at 1,093, including more than 660 deaths, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Liberia has seen 127 fatalities, and there have also been hundreds of cases recorded in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

But there were growing international concerns after a Liberian national died Friday in quarantine in Lagos, a confirmation that the virus has reached Africa's most populous country.

US agencies including from the Centre for Disease

Control, and Pentagon bodies like the Defence Threat Reduction Agency and Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) have been lending their expertise to local health officials and international specialists.

Zaire Ebola, the deadliest of three Ebola strains and the species behind the current outbreak, can fell its victims within days, causing severe fever and muscle pain, weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea -- in some cases shutting down organs and causing unstoppable bleeding.

Stevens said the United States also commended West African health ministers for adopting a common regional strategy to combat the disease earlier this month.

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YRIA’S Al-Qaeda affiliate has released a video of a young US suicide bomber from Florida who blew himself up at an army post in the northwest of the country.

Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, alias Abu Hurayra alAmriki, is believed to be the first American national to carry out such an attack in Syria’s more than three-yearold war.

“I want to rest in the afterlife, not in this world... My heart is not at peace here.

Hopefully it will be in heaven,” Abu Hurayra says in broken Arabic in the 17minute video posted on YouTube on Friday by AlNusra Front.

The footage, released via Al-Nusra’s official channel AlManara Al-Baydaa, also shows Abu Hurayra saying: “I came to Syria without money to buy a rifle or a pouch. God gave me a rifle and a pouch and everything, and... (then) he gave me even more,” says the bearded man in his early 20s.

The American jihadist carried out a May 25 truck bomb attack on an army base

in Jabal al-Arbaeen area of northwest Syria’s Idlib province.

Six days later, the State Department confirmed that the US citizen, who travelled to Syria in 2013, had carried out a suicide attack.

According to a Facebook page in his name, he was a fan of the Miami Heat basketball team and his favourite artists included Jay Z. The parents of “the Florida boy” own a grocery store, with his father from Jordan and mother a convert to Islam, US newspapers reported.

Estimates of the number of foreign fighters who have flooded into Syria in the past three years range from between 9,000 to 11,000.

The video gives few details about Abu Hurayra’s precise background, but shows him alongside three other suicide bombers, seated near an AlNusra black flag, each speaking of their mission.

At the time, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four suicide attacks on army positions in Idlib on May 25 left dozens of casualties.

NEWS

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

EID-EL-FITR 2014

Build your spiritual lives, Tambuwal tells Nigerians

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PEAKER of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, has urged Muslims in the country to use the period of the Eid-el-Fitr to reflect on their spiritual lives.

He also asked them to consider how they can contribute more meaningfully towards the unity, stability and progress of Nigeria.

He equally urged Nigerians to be conscious of their health by strictly adhering to instructions issued by health professionals, saying the outbreak of Ebola virus in neighbouring countries is a source for concern in our country.

In a Sallah message issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Malam Imam Imam, Tambuwal said all should be more dedicated to the Nigeria project, adding that with unity of purpose, building a virile and strong nation is achievable.

The Speaker said despite the serious security challenges confronting the nation, the determination of Nigerians to see their country return to peace has never been in doubt.

He said leaders at all levels must close ranks and work for the unity and progress of the nation.

Tambuwal equally urged Nigerians to always remember the less-privileged at all times.

“The same way we all remembered the less fortunate and those afflicted by poverty and disease during Ramadan, I implore us to carry over those attributes to our engagements after Ramadan. Only by so doing can we truly say we have imbibed the teachings of the holy month into our everyday lives,” he added.

IG Abubakar places police on alert From Gbade Ogunwale, Abuja

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NSPECTOR General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, has ordered effective and extensive deployment of officers and men across the country.

He has also ordered the deployment of other special operatives and logistics to ensure hitch-free Eid-el-Fitr celebrations nationwide.

A statement yesterday by the Force spokesman, Frank Mba, said police commands and formations have also been directed to ensure that adequate security is provided in their various areas of jurisdiction.

The statement added that special attention be paid to critical public utilities and other places prone to terror attacks, as dictated by realities in their various jurisdictions.

“While congratulating the Muslim Umma, the IGP enjoins them and other citizens to maintain utmost vigilance and courageously continue to support the security agencies in their prayers and provide useful information towards preventing and unearthing crimes and their authors,” the statement said.

Jonathan to Nigerians: Don’t despair over terrorists attacks

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RESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan yesterday urged Nigerians to remain strong and resolute in defence of freedom, unity, law and order, peace, security and progress of the nation.

He made the call in a message to the nation on the 2014 Eid-el-Fitri celebration.

Stressing that some parts of the country witnessed terrorists attacks during the month of Ramadan, he hoped that the Ramadan’s spiritual lessons and the Holy Prophet’s teachings of piety, love, justice, fairness, equity, peaceful co-existence, tolerance, honesty and dedication to duty will remain with Nigerians towards greater benefit and glory for the nation.

He said: “I felicitate with

From Augustine Ehikioya, Abuja

all Nigerians, especially our Muslim brothers and sisters on the auspicious occasion of this year’s Eid-el-Fitri celebrations.

“I congratulate all of our countrymen and women who have successfully undertaken the purifying Ramadan fast.

“May the lessons and blessings of the holy month also permeate into us all and positively influence our attitudes towards our fellow countrymen and women, irrespective of their religion or places of origin and promote greater commitment to the peace, unity and stability of the nation.”

The president

added:”Although the observance of the Holy Month was sadly tainted in parts of the country with the continuing atrocities of extremists and terrorists in our midst, I urge all patriotic Nigerians to remain strong and resolute indefence of freedom, unity, law and order, peace, security and progress of the nation.

“I feel the pains and anguish of all our compatriots who have experienced the harrowing impact of terrorism unleashed on them by brainwashed and misguided agents of evil and disunity, but we must never throw up our hands in helplessness and despair as the terrorists and purveyors of anarchy want.”

The president also urged all Nigerians to continue to

•Chicken sellers waiting for customers at chicken market in Bauchi…yesterday.

show solidarity with security agencies and give them the full support they require to succeed against terror.

He said: “I assure all Nigerians, once again, that we are totally committed to winning that war, putting the scourge of terrorism and insecurity rapidly behind us and giving the fullest possible attention to the urgent task of improving the living conditions of our people in all parts of the country.

“We cannot and will not be deterred from our goal of positively transforming our nation into a strong, united, progressive, stable, secure and prosperous nation in which all citizens will live in peace in spite of our immense diversities.”

PHOTO: NAN

Mark seeks collective action against terrorism

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HE Senate President, David Mark, yesterday congratulated Muslim faithful in Nigeria as they join the rest of the world to celebrate Eid-el-Fitr, marking the end of the Ramadan fast.

Mark, in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Paul Mumeh, in Abuja, lauded Muslims for the successful completion of the month’s fasting and prayers.

He said the nation desires prayers at these trying times.

He lamented the unabating security challenges

From Sanni Onogu, Abuja

the country is facing at the moment and called for collective action of all citizens against terrorists to end the menace.

Mark said: “The prevailing situation does not call for a blame game but a collective action of all citizens against the terrorists.

“We should have confidence in our security operatives and encourage them to do more.

“The unfolding scenario

clearly indicates that the terrorists have declared an open war on everybody and there seems to be no safe heaven any more.

“This is a challenge we must unite to tackle.

“One way out of this quagmire is to have a common approach against terrorists irrespective of political, ethnic or religious affiliation.

He added: “What is paramount now is our collective survival as a people and nation. This is our fatherland.

“We have a collective re-

sponsibility to protect our common destiny.”

He also decried a situation where the over 200 Chibok girls abducted by the Boko Haram sect more than 100 days ago are still held in captivity by their captors.

Mark said: “I trust that all the strategies and contacts being done by the federal government, coupled with international cooperation would yield the required dividends and free our girls alive soon.”

He prayed for the good health and security of the girls.

Christians and that Nigerians must be united against them.

Atiku cautioned Nigerians against playing into the hands of terrorists by helping them to achieve their agenda of seeking to divide and dismember the country by causing deliberate provocations.

On the current security challenges, the former Vice President said the security operatives should be ahead of the terrorists by nipping their plots in the bud.

He enjoined Nigerians to assist the security agencies by being vigilant and furnishing

them with information that could enhance their efficiency in dealing decisively with insurgency and other criminal activities ravaging the country.

Atiku also urged political leaders to urgently deal with the hardship being experienced by the ordinary people in the country.

He stated that the worsening level of poverty and unemployment feeds criminal tendencies and has become an embarrassment that needs to be redressed.

Atiku urges prayers for unity

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ORMER Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has appealed to Muslims in the country to pray for an end to the spectre of insecurity currently plaguing the land.

In an Eid-el-Fitr message marking the end of the 30day-long Ramadan fasting period, Atiku regretted that the terrorists have shed so much blood in the name of religion and urged Muslims in the country to pray to God to defeat and destroy evil doers masquerading behind religion.

He said the dark agenda

From Gbade Ogunwale, Abuja

of the terrorists defies any clearly defensible goals, adding that their activities contradict all the tenets of the Islamic religion, particularly the injunctions on the sanctity of life.

Atiku advised Muslims to join hands with other Nigerians of goodwill to defeat the terrorists’ agenda of trying to provoke sectarian crisis by attacking places of worship.

He said the terrorists spare neither Muslims nor

Muslims must extend good deeds beyond Ramadan, says Fayemi From Sulaiman Salawudeen, Ado-Ekiti

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KITI State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, yesterday said Muslims the world over must sustain their good deeds beyond the holy month of Ramadan.

He said: “Good deeds should be an all-time, allweather practice.”

Fayemi spoke through the Secretary to the State Government, Alhaji Ganiyu Owolabi, while breaking fast with Muslims across the state yesterday.

He noted that “Islam not only encompases Ramadan. It is more than Ramdan”.

Fayemi said he had applied his four-year tenure to elevate every section, and segment of the state, adding that Muslims had been especially considered by his administration.

According to him, his achievements in government was made possible through the supports and efforts of Muslims.

Fayemi prayed that God would accept the good deeds and spiritual efforts of Muslims in the holy month.

In his sermon at the event which held at Jibowu Hall within the Government House Complex, the Chief Imam of Ikere-Ekiti, Alhaji Abdussalam Babatunde, noted that good deeds should be the character of Muslims whether during Ramadan or outside the month.

According to him, Ramadan should serve as a reminder of such deeds of piety and godliness, which mortals often stray away from when pressed by the flesh.

Abdussalam noted that the conduct of caring and sharing, which the Muslims are especially enjoined to engage in during the month had become rare in today’s world, a situation which he said had heightened enemity between individuals and nations, making life unbearable for many.

Aggression is unIslamic, says Yero

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ADUNA State, Mukhtar Yero, yesterday stated that aggression was unIslamic, just as he stressed the need for peace in the country.

Yero said this in a statement signed by his Director-General on Media and Publicity, Alhaji Ahmed Maiyaki, in his Sallah message to Muslims in the state.

“Islam is indeed a religion of peace and the true essence of the faith is to unite the entire mankind in love and harmony.

“It is therefore a duty on all Muslims to make sacrifices towards ensuring peaceful and harmonious co-existence with adherents of other faiths,’’ said the statement.

The governor called on Muslims to sustain prayers and to be genuinely committed towards resolving the current state of insecurity plaguing the nation.

He further reiterated the commitment of the state government towards promoting a peaceful coexistence.

Yero enjoined the people to continue to live in peace and unity irrespective of ethno-religious differences.

“I also urge all Muslims to use the occasion of Eid-el-Fitr to extend hands of friendship to people of other faiths.”

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

2015: NILS, UNDP to boost capacity of law-makers From Dele Anofi, Abuja

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HE National Institute of Legislative Studies (NILS) and the Democratic Governance for Development (DGD) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have unveiled plans to train members of the National Assembly in the execution of their law-making duties.

The training project, according to the NILS, is to enable them carry out their lawmaking obligation and oversight of government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA).

Key Committees of the National Assembly as well as specific areas for which the legislators need training have been identified.

The Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives involved include: Rules and Business, Ethics and Privileges, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Donor Relations, Constitutional Review, Women in Parliament/Women Affairs and Electoral Affairs.

The Director General of NILS, Dr Ladi Hamalia, said: “Sýustainable democratic development does not end in successfully completing free and fair elections.

“Such elections are rather the beginning, a critical preliminary step on the road towards democratic maturity.

“It requires long-term and comprehensive efforts to build up and consolidate representative and wellfunctioning parliaments able to ensure sound implementation of its law-making and oversight powers.”

Stating that the National Assembly is the youngest arm of government following the restoration of democratic rule in 1999, Hamalai pointed out that interventions directed towards addressing these challenges should focus on developing systems.

Civil Societies to FG: Fix refineries before privatisation From Bukola Amusan, Abuja

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HE Coalition of Civil Societies yesterday urged the federal government to fix refineries before privatising them.

This, it said, will allow for different bidders and create more jobs.

This was stated during a media chat by the group at the weekend.

Its covener, Solomon Olonade, said: “We call on them to immediately operationalise the refineries to function at a minimum of 70% of the installed capacity before re-engaging the argument for their possible commercialisation or privatisation.”

He added that there is far much more to the issue of the refineries privatisation than what immediately meets the simple trusting eye.

While lamenting the loss of N1trillion annually to the offshore processing agreements and crude for products swap, Olonade said this loss is enough to repair local refineries.

NEWS

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FG canvasses support for desertification measures T

Why there is crisis at confab, by ex-NITEL boss Nwanosike Onu, Awka

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HE federal government has urged northern states to sustain the Great Green Wall programme initiated to save the region from desert encroachment.

It asked northern governors to plant trees frequently to fight desertification.

The Minister of Environment, Mrs. Lawrentia Mallam, stated these during the launch of the Great Green Wall

From Frank Ikpefan, Abuja

(GGW) Tree Planting at Daje Baure local government area of Katsina state last week.

Mallam, who was represented by Afforestation and Capacity Building Officer, Saminu Ado, assured that the GGW programme will address degradation of the environment.

She hinted that the initiative will also provide jobs to the teeming population of the communi-

ties.

President Goodluck Jonathan, she emphasised, is committed to saving the north from desertification through the programme.

She expressed appreciation to Katsina State Government for sustained contributions towards the realisation of GGW’s objectives through sensitisation, field activities and management

of the planted stock.

Katsina State Governor, Ibrahim Shema, who was represented by his Deputy, Barr.

Abdullahi Faskari, said his administration has provided 2.5 million seedlings for the realisation of the programme.

The governor said he had released N7m to support the N30m provided by the federal government to actualise the programme.

•From right, Celebrant, Chief Stella Violet Aguele; her Husband Solomon Aiya Aguele; Former Edo State Governor, Sen. Osareme Osunbor and Former House Leader, Tunde Akogun at the 70th birthday celebration of Chief Stella held at International Conference Centre, Abuja... recently

Ministry signs pact with UN Habitat

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HE Minister of Youth Development, Mr. Boni Haruna, yesterday signed a pact with the United Nations Habitat to strenghten the National Youth Service Corps scheme(NYSC).

Haruna, who spoke after the signing, stated that the development outputs identified under the agreement par-

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HE federal government is committed to marine safety, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Transport, Nebolisa Emorde, has stated.

He said this during the submission of a report by the Marine Board of inquiry in Abuja.

The board was inaugurated by the Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar, in November 2013 to investigate

From Bukola Amusan, Abuja

ticularly the proposed baseline historical and institutional study will lead to the establishment of a mechanism for monitoring and evaluation of the NYSC scheme.

“This output hopes to assess the overall performance of the scheme after 40 years in view of present realities and enhance the

the causes of fire incidents involving “Barge S.215” at the MRS Jetty, Tincan Island, Lagos and “MT African Hyacinth” at Okolo launch/Bonny Kalibiama, Rivers State.

According to Emorde, the recommendations in the report will be used to ensure that

Star Times takes digital TV to 32 states From Frank Ikpefan, Abuja

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capacity of the Ministry to do so consistently thereafter,” he reiterated.

The minister expressed confidence that the project will place the ministry in a better position to re-position the scheme for better performance and broader development objectives.

He therefore pledged the commitment of the federal

government to the actualisation of the programmes and project under the agreement.

The Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Dr. Aisa Kirabo, commended the commitment of the federal government towards improvement of the well being of the youths.

standards of compliance and monitoring are dropped with the President.

He commended the committee for its relentless efforts in putting the report and recommendation together.

The President, Marine Board of Inquiry, Babayo

Ubamatu, said a total of 27 witnesses testified and 42 exhibits where admitted in evidence with respect to Barge S. 215.

He added that a total of 17 witnesses testified and 3 exhibits were admitted in respect of MT African Hyacinth during the boards public sitting at Port Harcourt.

TAR Times has said that its partnership with the Nigerian Television Authority(NTA) has spread digital broadcast signal to 32 states of the federation.

The Managing Director of Star Times Nigeria, Mr. Joshua Wang, said this in Abuja at the Beijing TV drama broadcasting exhibition in Africa.

He said the company would soon be taking the signal to 16 cities spread across the country.

Wang said that the move would increase the digital television coverage of Nigeria to 80 per cent.

He assured that the company would have achieved 100 per cent coverage of Nigeria by June 2015.

“However, their hasty attempts to indict the Presidency and our great party while exonerating themselves from the widely held notion that they have been promoting insurgency have raised issues regarding what really happened, especially now that a suspect has been arrested.”

The party added: “Nigerians now ponder; they ask, was the attack a setup aimed at scoring some political points? If indeed it was an assassination attempt, was it engineered by internal frictions and crisis of ambition within the APC? “Has it to do with some other presidential aspirants

in the APC seeing General Buhari as a threat and obstacle to their ambitions?

“Or could it be APC’s desperate strategy of trying to disentangle itself from the internationally acknowledged link with terrorists and possibly undermine the planned probe of their involvement by the United Kingdom?

“These questions have become completely pertinent considering the fact that General Buhari poses no threat whatsoever to any candidate that the PDP might project.

“He lost three times to our great party in presidential elections and will lose the fourth time if he emerges the candidate of the APC. Our ad-

vice to APC is that they might as well consider looking inwards if they believe it was an assassination attempt.”

The PDP insisted that the APC cannot in anyway exonerate itself from the insurgency ravaging the country, which it said the latter had been promoting through the utterances and actions of its leaders, “thinking that the insurgents were after the President and the PDP”.

The ruling party said if the APC leaders had joined other well-meaning Nigerians in condemning acts of terrorism at the early stage, the perpetrators would not have been bold enough to get to the current alarming level.

‘FG will ensure marine safety’ From Bukola Amusan, Abuja

HE ongoing national conference is experiencing hitches because the right people were not picked, a former chairman of Nigeria Telecommunications (PLC), Dr Aneze Chinwuba, has stated.

Chinwuba said that things do not work in Nigeria because the people and government do not do the right things.

He spoke yesterday in Awka, Anambra State during a one-day sensitisation programme for youths by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with Democratic Government Department (DGD).

He said those picked were there to protect the interest of their godfathers and not to defend the interest of the people.

“When Prof Wole Soyinka said we are a wasted generation, some people thought he was running amok but we are all wasted generation,” he declared.

He urged youths to learn to salvage the country, which he said was drifting.

The organiser, Chukwudi Ozalla, said it was a platform for young people to discover who they really are in decision making.

PDP faults APC’s stance on attempt on Buhari’s life

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HE Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has faulted the position of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Wednesday’s terror attack in Kaduna targeted at one of its leaders, Gen. Mohammadu Buhari(Rtd.).

The APC, in its reaction to the attempt on Buhari’s life, had stated that the incident had put a lie to PDP’s hackneyed claim that the opposition party was behind the spate of terrorist attacks in the country.

But in a statement yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, the PDP described attempts by the APC to use the incident to absolve itself of blames for encouraging insurgency in the

From Gbade Ogunwale, Abuja

country as “laughable and lame”.

The PDP said the APC’s true identity as a party supportive of violence and disunity in the country is already well known.

The statement said: “Nigerians will recall that when the news of the attack broke out, the PDP took the high moral ground of condemning the development and sympathised with General Muhammadu Buhari while at the same time calling for a thorough investigation to fish out the perpetrators of the dastardly act.

“We are therefore shocked, disappointed and disgusted that the APC leaders chose to use the ugly development to embark on image laundering.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

NEWS

WSCIJ launches project on women reportage

Alaafin, Duke, others in Brazil for cultural seminar

By Joke Kujenya

From Bode Durojaiye, Oyo

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HE Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, WSCIJ, has launched the Report Women project in its bid to advocate an enhanced reportage of girls and women in the Nigerian media.

The centre, in a press released signed by Mrs. Motunrayo Alaka, Coordinator WSCIJ, noted that the project is focusing on major issues of access and abuse, ranging from education, health care, violence and early marriage, among others.

The project, which began since May 2014, is a collaborative initiative of the Royal Netherlands Embassy and WSCIJ, aimed at using the tool of investigative reporting to highlight these issues, as well as examining the role of religion in the girl-child and woman’s rights trajectory.

Elaborating on the project, Alaka said, “The package is a month-long media monitoring of the reportage of girls and women in seven Nigerian newspapers. It will continue with a meeting of stakeholders on Thursday, August 7th 2014 in Lagos. Thereafter, investigative journalism trainings aimed at honing participants’ skills on the reportage of girls and women issues will hold in Abuja, Ekiti and Cross River States, followed by the administration of small grants to shortlisted journalists to investigate and write issue-based stories on girls and women.”

The project will also include the production of an investigative documentary, and the publication of a reporter’s resource guide on reporting girls and women. The project, which is expected to run till April 2015, will have online campaign on the centre’s social media platforms especially its twitter handle – twitter.com/ wsoyinkacentre using the hashtag #reportwomen.”

Retired civil servant, Fasanya, for burial August 9

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HE death has been announced of Otunba Kotoloro of Ijebu Igbo, Otunba Samuel Adeoye Fasanya, JP. The deceased, who is also the Baba Ijo of St. Luke’s Anglican Church, Japara in Ijebu Igbo, passed on May 18, 2014.

Aged 88, the late Fasanya was the Head of the Odokotolori clan, which he nurtured into a large, prosperous and powerful force in the state.

He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Ogun State University (OSU), now Olabisi Onabanjo University.

A renowned chartered accountant, the late Fasanya served in many federal ministries including Finance, Education and Defence. He is also a former Director of Navy Accounts.

Service of Songs for the late Fasanya will hold at his Lagos residence in Ketu on August 5, while the lying in state takes place on August 7 in Ijebu Igbo. Otunba Fasanya leaves behind a wife, several children and grandchildren. The final burial rites for the late Fasanya holds on August 9, an event which will be preceded by a church service at the St. Lukes Anglican Church, Japara in Ijebu Igbo.

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•Special Assistant to Ogun State Governor on Public Communications, Mrs. Seyi Enitan-Olubode, presenting educational materials to pupils of Holy Trinity Anglican Primary School, Iboro, during the Prize-Giving Day for Pupils, Teachers and Principals of Public Schools at Joga/Iboro Ward, Yewa North LGA at the weekend

Omisore, Akinbade absent at Osun Governorship Election Debate

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HEcandidateofthePeoples Democratic Party [PDP] in the August 9 governorship election in Osun state, Chief Iyiola Omisore, went missing yesterday at a radio debate where he was supposed to square up to the incumbent,Governor Rauf Aregbesola.

Aregbesola is flying the flag of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the election.

Also unavailable at yesterday’s debate organized by the International Republican Institute [IRI]was Alhaji Fatai Akinbade of Labour Party (LP).

The absence of other leading contenders in the election left the candidate of the All Progressives Congress [APC], Rauf Aregbesola, having all the time allotted for the “Manifesto Hour” programme to himself.

Although Akinbade, sent his running mate to stand in for him the debate organisers disallowed him from participating, saying the

rule was that candidates would not be represented by proxies.

The Unity Party of Nigeria [UPN] candidate, Ibrahim Adeoti, who was not invited to the debate, was allowed time to speak even when he was not initially invited.

He walked in on his own and insisted to be allowed to speak.

Organizers were shocked at Omisore and Akinbade’s failure to turn uo. ”We wrote to them and up to 20 minutes to the beginning of the programme, they were still giving us the impression they would be attending,” said Ezenwa Nwagwu, an official of the Partners for Electoral Reform, who moderated the debate on behalf of the IRI. “We even started the debate 45 minutes late just because we were waiting for the PDP and LP candidates to show up.”

The Director of Media and Strategy,Omisore’s Campaign |Organisation, Diran Odeyemi,

claimed his principal was not properly invited. ”It was only this morning (yesterday) that our candidate (Mr. Omisore) received a text message reminding him of the debate and that he was being expected at the OSBC studios,” Mr. Odeyemi said,adding:”We did not receive any letter from them. We have a rally today in Ikirun and as I speak to you, we are on our way there.”

But Mr. Nwagwu rubbished Mr. Odeyemi’s claim, calling it “mere political shenanigan”.

“We invited them properly,” Mr. Nwagwu said. “It was not verbal invitations. We wrote them letters and the records are there. If we did not properly invite them, howdidtheAPCcandidateattend?

How did the LP candidate get to send his running mate?”

The Labour Party admitted that Akinbade was invited but explained that he could not personallyattend ashehadanother

appointment to keep,hence the decision to his running mate. ”In order not to create a vacuum, he sent his running mate but the organizers did not allow him to speak,” said Kayode Oladeji, the spokesperson for Mr. Akinbade, the LP candidate.

“As far as we are concerned, we fulfilled all righteousness. It is the organisers thst should explain why they did not allow our candidate’s running mate to participate.”

However, Mr. Nwagwu declared that rules were clear from the start.

“We had made it clear that only candidates, and not their running mates were expected to participate.

There was no room for running mates and they all know that,” he said.

Aregbesola told listeners that the best thing to have happened in the since its creation are his programmes which the PDP wants to destroy.

Lawmaker faults FG’s proposed autonomy for LGs

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HAIRMAN, Committee on Public Accounts (local) of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Dayo Fafunmi, has faulted a proposal by the federal government to grant autonomy to local governments.

The lawmaker, who represents Ifako-Ijaye 1 at the Lagos Assembly, stated this position during the weekly ‘Time out with the press’ organised by Assembly correspondents for lawmakers which took place at the Assembly complex.

By Oziegbe Okoeki

He alleged that the objective of the federal government in coming up with the proposal is for it to assume direct control and power over the third tier of government, an ideam he argued, is an aberration all over the world.

“The local government is more like part of the state government and, of course, we all know it is the closest government to the people and must, therefore, work in

tandem with the state government.

“What the FG wants by proposing the so-called autonomy is to have the power of direct control over the local government which will amount to over concentration of powers at the centre.”

According to him if autonomy is all about making more resources available to the local government, the federal government should increase the allocation to the states and local government joint account.

“If autonomy will amount to more resources, more money should be given to the states, while the FG can monitor allocation. But to hijack and control local government as the central government is planning pto do is wrong and no state government or state legislative house would accept that because it would mean that local government chairmen will constitute themselves as rivals with their state governors and that is confusion,” Fafunmi argued.

2015: Tokyo plotting to unleash violence, Oyo NURTW boss alleges

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HE Chairman, Oyo State branch of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Alhaji Taofeek Oyerinde (aka Fele), has accused the former Chairman of the union in the state, Alhaji Lateef Akinsola (aka Tokyo) of allegedly planning to unleash violence in the state ahead of the 2015 general elections.

In a statement signed by him and made available to newsmen in Ibadan, the state capital, Oyerinde urged security agencies in the state to keep a close eye on Tokyo, who, he claimed, is secretly training and recruiting boys he intends

•Allegation baseless -Tokyo From Tayo Johnson, Ibadan

to use to unleash mayhem in the State.

According to him, Tokyo, who has been expelled from the union by the national headquarters, is allegedly plotting to cause chaos in the state to enable him take control of the union again through the backdoor.

The NURTW boss said, “He (Tokyo) was exposed some few weeks ago when his boys attacked some boys in Agbeni and claimed that they were my boys who attacked him,

whereas he was only trying to blackmail me. I gathered from a reliable source that he is now working with one of the overambitious governorship aspirants in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who is using him to write petitions to security agencies in the state in order to blackmail the executives and some politicians in the state.

“I was informed on Thursday by my members that some security operatives brought a petition letter to the union’s office, but they didn’t collect the letter because I was not around.

I am sure that it was Tokyo that

is using security operatives to witch-hunt us.”

But in a swift reaction to the allegation, Akinsola in a telephone chat with The Nation described the allegation as baseless.

Calling on security agencies to quiz Fele and his supporters for their alleged violent activities, Akinsola added, “A court judgment that I am the authentic Chairman of Oyo NURTW is still standing and valid; they are the ones that are denying me my rightful status.

“I don’t have any governorship aspirant I am working for and I am not training people to disrupt the peace in the state.”

HE Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi 111, the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Edem Duke, and thirty other eminent personalities have arrived in Bahia, Brazil to attend the first Brazil/Nigeria international seminar for preservation of shared cultural heritage.

The week-long seminar, which begins on Monday and ends Friday, is aimed at promoting common cultural and historical legacies, while there will also be discussions of strategies for asset protection.

The seminar will also showcase the importance of the Oyo tradition, which has evolved in Brazil as a result of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The Trade brought the cultural heritage of the people of Oyo and Traditions of Sango to Brazil.

Before his departure, the monarch formally notified the Oyo State governor, Senator Abiola Ajimobi, of the Brazilian invitation.

The notification letter was dated July 23, 2014 with reference number ApO.13/VOl.63/ 36.

In the letter, a copy of which was made available to our correspondent, Oba Adeyemi said as the current Alaafin, it is his duty and responsibility to uphold the dignity, responsibility, allure and values associated to the institution.

Fayemi greets Muslims at Sallah

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KITI State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has felicitated with Muslim faithful in the country and all over the world on the occasion of the Eid-el-Fitri.

In a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Olayinka Oyebode, Fayemi expressed joy on the successful completion of the Ramadan fast by Muslims. He explained that witnessing another Eid-el-Fitri is a special privilege from the Almighty Allah who has control over the destiny of man.

The governor said the 30day spiritual exercise has drawn the faithful closer to Allah, while urging them to keep on practising the lessons learnt from the holy month in their relationship with their Maker and fellow human beings.

He also urged the citizens to be vigilant and remain security conscious even as they celebrate, noting that the recent spate of bomb attacks and general insecurity in the country has made it imperative for Muslims and adherents of other religions to seek the face of God in prayer for divine intervention in the affairs of the country.

Flaying the killing of scores of Nigerians in the various terror attacks in Kaduna and Kano during the week, Fayemi said the prayer of the faithful is needed more than ever for God’s guidance for the country’s leaders to have the right approach towards ending the nefarious activities of the insurgents.

Condemning the attack on former Head of State and leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), General Muhammadu Buhari, Fayemi said had the terrorists succeeded in killing Gen. Buhari, the incident would have precipitated a chain of reactions, an end of which nobody could predict.

9

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

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RS. Timi Iyabi, a young woman in her early 30s, is now a widow. Her little sons Godstime and Daniel including her daughters Idubamo and Deborah are also fatherless.

Her unborn baby is the worst hit. It will be born in a home without a father and grow without knowing what having a father is.

Perhaps, the unborn Iyabi will only be told stories and shown pictures of its late father. When the expected baby matures into adulthood, it will be told the tragedy that befell its father. Specifically, the unborn Iyabi will grow to learn that its father was swallowed by Bayelsa's rivers of death.

While still in the womb, the unborn Iyabi may have known that all is not well. Their home in Yenagoa is unusually quite while their hitherto cheerful mother, has not known laughter for over a week now. She is now a shadow of herself. Friends and well wishers are trooping in and out not for merriment but to console the household.

The untimely death of gentle Awotimigha Iyabi, 42, was indeed shocking and unbelievable. He was one of the victims of the latest pirate attack along the waterways of Bayelsa State.

Death on the river On July 18 the late Iyabi popularly known among his friends as Awo accompanied his political associate and friend, Mr. Alfred Belemote to Okpoama in Brass Local Government Area, to attend a funeral and other social functions. Belemote is a leading aspirant for the 2015 House of Assembly election in the state.

The two friends and other associates took off from Ogbia water side. But the late Iyabi was being driven in a passport boat owned by his friend. All was well until they got to Ijawkiri and Kinkia Amabuyo creeks in Okpoama waterways. Then came the attack.

Pirates sighted them and immediately opened fire on their boat. The late Iyabi was hit by a volley of bullets launched at the boat by the sea robbers. He died on the spot. Another passenger in the boat, whose wife was said to be pregnant, also died. Others were injured in the 1pm attack.

But there is assassination theory in the incident. Some persons claimed that the gunmen were not mere sea robbers. They were said to have targeted Belemote perhaps because of his popularity in the House of Assembly race.

Those who are of this view believed that Iyabi "died the death of Belemote".

One of these said: "The gunmen stopped one of the speedboats in the convoy of two being used by the aspirant and were reportedly shouting that 'he is not here. He is the second boat'.

"It was at that point they sighted the second boat and opened fire.

The mobile policeman attached to the aspirant put up a good fight by returning fire. But the fire power of the gunmen was huge."

Despite the theories, the incalculable and irreversible loses were Iyabi and the other dead victim. Indeed, the pirate attack that killed Iyabi was one too many.

Bayelsa rivers especially the OgbiaNembe-Brass axis are death traps.

Hoodlums have relocated to the waterways to terrorise innocent

Bayelsa and its creeks of death Mike Odiegwu writes about the activities of pirates who kill travellers indiscriminately. • Korokorosei community,alomg Ikebiri River....Where the Speaker's Mother and Mother-in-law were kidnapped

The Late Awotimigha Iyabi

Osiama River, Southern Ijaw LGA travellers and traders.

Every day, incidents of sea robberies occur. People lose their money and other valuables and in the case of Iyabi their lives to vicious and cruel gunmen operating along the waterways. The waters seem to have been taken over by hoodlums who lay ambush and carry out deadly attacks most times with impunity. Apart from robberies and murder, people especially expatriates are being kidnapped for ransom.

Insecurity on the waterways Mr. Alagoa Morris of the Environmental Right Action, who often plies the waterways, expressed sadness at the high level of insecurity in the creeks.

He said "I am saddened by the ever-rising activities and danger posed to those plying our creeks in Bayelsa State; especially in Southern Ijaw, Nembe and Brass Local Government Areas of the state.

"It is causing travellers and transporters grave concern as lives and property are at stake. As one working for a grassroots organisation which also entails so much sailing in the creeks; I very much don't appreciate what is happening in the creeks."

Alluding to the incident, he said two persons lost their lives on their way to Okpoama from Ogbia. He, however, regretted that no adequate security arrangement has been

made by the government to protect travellers.

He observed: "During my trip also on that same day, I saw Operation Doo Akpo (the state security outfit) in the creeks escorting market boats and at other spots the JTF also escorts speedboats leaving Twon-Brass to safe zones before returning to Brass."

He said the pirates had succeeded in painting the waterways as unsafe for tourists and investors.

In fact, traditional rulers of coastal communities are worried over incessant attacks on their subjects and persons visiting their domains by pirates. His Royal Highness, Sinteh of Twon Brass, Ebiye Golden, painted a gory picture of the development.

"Whenever we want to travel, we become born-again Christians because of how unsafe our rivers are. The people of Brass Local Government Area are scared and unfortunately the persons doing these things are not from elsewhere.

They are Bayelsans and our own brothers. We are extremely scared."

He said the state government had directed each local government area to acquire gunboats and enforce security in their waterways.

He, however, observed "But the problem we have is that when these boats are coming back from Yenagoa and Ogbia they are not being escorted by the ones from Ogbia and Yenagoa Local Government Areas."

On the most effective measure to tackle the insecurity, the traditional ruler advised the government to set up houseboats at strategic areas along the creeks.

He also suggested that the recently formed Bayelsa Volunteer, a team of youths recruited by the government to enforce security in the state, should be used to reduce the waterway menace.

But the Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr. Hilary Opara, insists that the state waterways are safe.

Opara said most of the attacks occur in isolated cases adding that the victims of the Friday incident were cornered by the assailants at a very remote creek."

He vowed to fish out persons behind the killing, describing it as wicked. He said the InspectorGeneral of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, has promised to send more gunboats to the state.

As residents of the state mount pressure on the government to declare emergency on the state waterways, friends and relations of Iyabi could only pay tributes to their late hero believing that his death would put an end to the violence along the waterways.

"My dear husband, my hero, my best friend, the father of my kids, HOS can I go on without you? I am still in shock. I still can't comprehend all these. You were everything to me. I promise to stay strong for your kids", Mrs. Iyabi cried.

The late Iyabi, who hailed from Nembe Local Government Area, was also very popular among journalists. He was the Head of Protocol to the former DirectorGeneral of the defunct Tourism Development and Publicity Bureau, Chief Nathan Egba-Ologo.

Egba described him as the "purest gentleman l ever knew," adding that "he didn't deserve to die a violent death."

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

NEWS REVIEW

10

How terrorists invaded Kano Luxury Bus Park Recent bloodletting occasioned by bomb attacks was reenacted in Kano last week.

KOLADE ADEYEMI gives a graphic account of the macabre event.

•A cross section of passenger buses at the park

H

E was popularly known as Rasta, 18, at the New Road Luxury Park, Sabon Gari, Kano. He was formerly a sachet water vendor who also ventured into all sorts of menial job to enable him get new clothes for himself and his dependants as the Sallah approached—but fate, however, played a trick on him as he met his tragic end on Thursday, 24 July, at about 2:30 pm when sweating life out, he fell victim of terrorists’ strategic attack on the Kano’s multi-million Naira luxury park.

Investigations revealed that Rasta was the one who carried the bombinfested fridge and water dispenser by an unknown person who posed as a passenger due to travel to Port Harcourt through the Onitsha route. Impeccable sources at the park described Rasta as innocent and hardworking boy who never engaged in any criminal activities.

From labour to death According to sources in the park, as Rasta was dying, he shouted in Hausa: “Don Naira hamsin wanda za’a bani, woni ya bani kaya day a Kashe ni. Kumi, a cikin azumi shine wannan mutumia ya bani kaya da wa sanadiyan mutuwa na, In Allah ya yarda, Allah zai yi mun sakayya. (meaning I am in search of my daily bread just because of N50, a heartless someone gave me some goods that killed me. We are in the Holy month of Ramadan. This man made me to carry the load that led to my death. By the will of Allah, He will vindicate me.)”His colleagues who jostled for the bomb-infested goods with him said, the unknown man who alighted from a taxi and stopped by the gate of the park, urged Rasta to take the load to Port Harcourt line, and wait for him to get “change” to pay him inside the park. But in the process of waiting for the owner of the load, the low-profile bomb exploded and wreaked havoc.

Rasta who was standing by the door of a luxury bus was among the five dead victims of that blast which ripped off various sections of human parts and left many wounded.

A ticket attendant with Ifeanyichukwu Industry and

Commercial Services Limited, a surviving victim of the blast, popularly known as Aguleri gave a detailed account of what happened before the incident. In his words: “We were sitting in front of our motor, Ifeanyichukwu, so one Hausa boy came with a truck; and there was fridge inside the truck; and we asked him who is the owner of the load and he said the owner was coming; that the owner said he should wait for him while he looked out for change to pay him for carrying the load. We were there writing ticket for people, and what we heard the next minute was a big bang; and that is how I see myself in this situation.”

The General-Secretary of Association

of Luxury Bus Owners of Nigeria, Kano branch, Mr. Godson Nwokoma, said that, “On Thursday, 24 July, a tragic event happened here in the park; and we are trying our best being a peaceloving group to be pursuing the cause of peace. We still do not want a situation whereby people will be having fears and we will want to believe in the words of the state Governor, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso who has promised that he is going to do everything within his reach to restore peace—and we are also toeing in that same line to see that normalcy returns here. As you can see, activities in the park has picked up. We have started our normal business and also passengers have started coming and

the normal activities are already booming. We still believe that our brothers who are performing this evil act will have a rethink in their minds and consider that what is being wasted are human lives and human blood which cannot be purchased in the market.

Whatever their problems are, we under this umbrella of the Association of Luxury Bus Owners of Nigeria, Kano branch, are still making appeal that their grievances can be handled in a roundtable discussion with the appropriate quarters. So, we are still making appeal to them that whatever their problems are, let them channel it through the proper authorities concerned than wasting

•Members of motor park task force screening passengers before allowing them entry into the park

•Contd on page 11

NEWS REVIEW

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014 •Contd from page 10 innocent lives and properties, which in the long-run will affect hapless Nigerians, affect the unity of the nation, affect the brotherhood of the nation; and so, we use this medium to call on our customers to bear with us. This is not our doing; but as you can see, from the entrance of the gate, we do everything within our reach to see that security is being maintained, but you also bear in mind that we are only human beings. We can only do things that are within our reach.”

Another interest group within the Park known as the Unity Progressive Union (UPU) called on Kano Police Command to position a 24-hour antibomb squad at the entrance of the Luxury Park to frisk all vehicles, luggage and human beings gaining entrance into it.

The chairperson of the group, Mrs. Regina Emmanuel who is the owner of Destiny Restaurant, insisted that the only way to solve terror-attack in the park is to create an Anti-bomb Squad unit.

According to her account, “On that day, I was serving customers food.

Everybody was selling and business activities were booming. Buses coming from the South arrived late largely because of the curfew imposed on Kaduna. At about 1:30 pm the first bus arrived and everybody in the park jubilated; 30 minutes later, the second bus arrived and the jubilation was high; then at about 2:30 pm the third bus arrived and everybody was in happy mood—all these three buses were in Port Harcourt line.

“The third bus that arrived at that time was Ifeanyichukwu Motors. As God could have it, the driver put off the engine; if not, the havoc would have been more devastating. So, as I was telling you, all of a sudden, with a plate of fufu on my hand for a customer, I heard a bang…and as I ran for dear life, I saw people lying on the ground in the pool of their own blood. I counted about three dead bodies, with a woman’s head severed.”

Also speaking, the secretary UPU, Mrs. Joyce S., owner of Madam Edo Restaurant cried out to both state and federal government to consider paying compensation to members of the union who have lost their valuables worth millions of Naira and loved colleagues in the incessant bomb-blasts that have been rocking the multi-million Naira Luxury Park. “Most of us are as old as this park. We started doing business in this park established during the first tenure of Governor Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso. We need serious security.

Police said they are doing their best. Let them provide anti-bomb squad team to work together with our Task Force and the soldiers so that security of lives and properties of Nigerians can be secured.

Unknown to many this park that you see remains mini-Nigeria that generate millions of Naira for the state government as Internally Generated Revenue.”

The Nation investigation showed that no fewer than five people died in that blast and about 12 wounded.

However, Police authorities confirmed that only one woman died in the blast while eight others sustained various degrees of injuries. Giving account of the incident to reporters at the scene of the incident, Kano Commissioner of Police, Mr. Adenrele Shinaba said: “On arrival, we discovered this luxury bus and damages done to these personal properties, properties like goods, all we know is that this luxury bus is getting ready to travel to Port Harcourt.

“In the process of loading the vehicle, one of the trucks that were being pushed was carrying a fridge to be loaded inside the vehicle, and it was the fridge that went off. It is presumed that there is a prime explosive concealed inside the refrigerator and that is what we are working on, now.”

When our reporter visited the Nigerian Air Force Hospital where the injured victims were admitted, security men refused him entrance, but it was gathered that out of the survivors brought to the hospital, four have been treated and discharged.

11

Does this US widow deserve $23 billion?

•Robinson

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AST week, a jury of her peers awarded a lone human, Cynthia Robinson, over $23.6 billion to punish a cigarette company for the death of her husband. And poof, they were no longer her peers—that is, unless they happened to be the only jury in history to be composed entirely of multi-billionaires.

The rest of America—depending on its feelings about corporate malfeasance versus individual responsibility—was cornered into only one of two positions when it heard the exorbitant pile of punitive damages the defendant, RJ Reynolds, was told to pony up: either shows ’em right! Or, are you kidding me?!

Even the plaintiff thought the jurors were pulling her leg. Or rather, according to reports, she thought they had said “million,” not “billion,” and she had to be assured her ears were deceiving her.

Had it been a scant $23.6 million, she was still more than ready to pop some victory champagne. “I got so excited,” she said.

If the 23 billion-with-a-”b” amount stands—23,623,718,906 dollars and 62 cents, to be precise—she could buy the champagne industry. (It won’t. The payday will likely be reduced on appeal, as was a similar $28 billion verdict a decade ago, subsequently reduced to $28 million.

In the law, one must mind one’s b’s and m’s.)

Unsurprisingly, an executive for the cigarette Company called the sum “grossly excessive” and—here’s the kicker—”impermissible under… constitutional law.”

Oh right, that Constitution thing. That prescient and precious set of rules which, thanks to one Article and a couple Amendments, affords us certain rights when we’re accused of a crime. We have right to be heard by a jury for criminal trials, an impartial jury for jury trials,

ANALYSIS

By Kevin Bleyer

even a jury for a federal civil trial “where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars.”

The virtues of a trial by jury are selfevident, especially compared to the Teutonic tradition of determining innocence by winning a duel, or the bygone European (and Monty Python-esque) practice of seeing if defendants can withstand being tossed into the river while tied up in a bag. And true: Among the many revolutionary “facts … submitted to a candid world” in the Declaration of Independence was a complaint against King George “for depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of a trial by jury.” And yes, granted, Thomas Jefferson did once write to Thomas Paine that a jury trial is “the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”

So trial by jury? Check.

Strange thing, though. The Constitution says nothing about the right to, let alone the virtues of, a jury of our peers.

Yet, over the years, as an “impartial jury” has been more narrowly interpreted, we have earned the right to be judged by people exactly like us. Lucky us?

Thanks to the rigorous science that is voir dire (jury selection) we entrust our juries to people who can’t be trusted.

I should know: I’m one of ’em.

I’ve served on a jury. Juries are composed of people like me: People with a bone to pick. People with an ax to grind.

People who feel powerless. People who feel too powerful. People who have too much time on their hands and watch too much “CSI.” People who are either not clever enough or too moral enough to try to game the system and get themselves

excused from jury duty by pretending to be prejudiced, irrational, or a heart surgeon late to scrub in across town. You know, people.

And I’ve said it before: it is with no lack of disgust at myself that I’ve come to realize that if through some advanced “Orphan Black” technology I somehow ended up serving on a jury rendering judgment on myself, I’d likely find the defendant, Kevin Bleyer—a relatively innocent man, mind you—guilty, guilty, guilty in the first degree. Just to send a message. Why? Because sometimes, in the wrong mood, I’d like to send a message that smokers should be thrown in jail for casually throwing their cigarette butts into the street. And I’m sure I’m guilty of something far worse.

See what happens when we trust ourselves? We The Jurors occasionally think it’s our prerogative to be heard, rather than be just.

The widow’s attorney admitted the jury in this poor woman’s case wanted to “send a statement.” The rich widow herself said that that R.J. Reynolds “got knocked in the head” by the jury. (Somewhere, there’s another jury itching to find that jury guilty of assault. Just to send a statement.)

It’s something We The People should consider: We The Jurors are a great argument for tort reform. But I’m not here to start an argument. I am here to render a verdict about our jury system, because I am our jury system: Good in theory, bad in practice.

Or maybe it’s the best of bad options, the noblest effort on earth to render justice in the most democratic, thoughtful, human way.

Or maybe I’m just putting this all on the record so I’ll have something prejudicial to read from next time I try to get out of jury duty.

Courtesy: Daily Beast

12

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

Ropo Sekoni

13

Page 14

Femi Orebe Page 16

SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

The new cement war Govt has to rethink policy on 32.5mpa grade tunjade@yahoo.co.uk 08054503906 (sms only)

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N the last few months, there has been another brewing war over cement in the country. This time around, the issue has to do with the 32.5mpa grade which a few stakeholders claim is responsible for the frequent building collapse in Nigeria. Curiously, it is the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), which had consistently maintained that all the cement produced in or imported into the country, met international standards that prescribed the reviewed standards of cement. Quite interestingly, only Dangote Cement, the dominant cement manufacturer in Nigeria, supports the SON’s review because it already has a headstart as it produces mainly the 42.5mpa cement. Others can hardly catch up.

Cement comes in three grades, 32.5mpa, 42.5mpa and recently, 52.5mpa.. The new policy prescribes the use of the 52.5mpa for the construction of bridges; 42.5mpa for the casting of columns, slabs and moulding of blocks and the 32.5mpa for plastering only.

Hitherto, 32.5mpa had been used for most construction purposes. The matter eventually got to the House of Representatives which set up an Ad-hoc Committee on Public Investigative Hearing on the Composition and Pigmentation of Cement (Cement Quality) in Nigeria. The committee conducted a three-day public investigative session from May 13 to 15, 2014, with relevant stakeholders submitting memoranda to it.

The stakeholders included Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment, SON, Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), Cement Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (CMAN), Nigeria Society of Engineers, Nigerian Institute of Architects, Nigerian Institute of Building, Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, Federal Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development and FCT Development Department.

All the eight cement manufacturers in the country also submitted their position papers on the matter.

Going by the logic of those who claim building collapse is due to the use of 32.5mpa cement, buildings would be safe if the higher grade of 42.5mpa cement is used. This argument lacks substance, as there is no empirical evidence to support it.

The chairman of the ad-hoc committee, Yakubu Dogara, in his welcome address at the public investigative hearing noted that building collapse claimed about 297 lives between 1974 and 2010 .. These numbers do not take into account the injured as well as many cases of permanent disabilities. Material losses, if properly quantified, will be in billions of naira”. Without doubt, the figure will be higher if we realise that not all the cases of collapsed buildings are captured in the media.

Any rational human being confronted with such grim statistics would naturally be moved and the tendency could be to call for the removal of whatever is said to be responsible . But this is not something to be unduly emotional about. The situation requires extensive research to determine the true role that 32.5mpa cement played in these unfortunate incidents. As they say, ‘beheading cannot be the solution to headache’.

Moreover, some of the prominent buildings built decades back were constructed with 32.5mpa cement and many of them are still standing. These include the National Assembly Complex, Abuja; Elephant House, Alausa, Lagos; Nitel Building, Lagos; Airport Hotel, Lagos; Western House, Lagos;

•Joe Odumodu, SON director-general

Great Nigeria Insurance House, Lagos; Federal Secretariat, Lagos; Oriental Hotel, Lekki, Lagos; Premier Hotel, Ibadan and Cocoa House, also in Ibadan, among many others.

Many of these structures have been there for decades. Cocoa House, a 24-storey building, for instance, was commissioned in 1965. The 32storey NITEL Building was completed in 1979, etc.

For me, to blame a particular grade of cement for building collapse is like blaming waiters in restaurants for obesity. We all know, as the House committee and other stakeholders in the industry noted, that cement is not the only material that is used in the construction industry. In essence therefore, it cannot alone be responsible for the high incidence of collapsed buildings. So many other things could have gone wrong in the mix that could have led to building collapse.

It would appear that the Federal Government has finally realised the dangers that unfair monopolies constitute to the economy, hence its decision to break them. At least that was the impression created by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, during the formal presentation of the Draft Competition and Consumer Protection Policy to ministries, extra-ministerial agencies, organised business communities and state governments in the northern part of Nigeria, when he disclosed that a new competition and consumer protection policy that would address the various trade concerns and provide a level-playing ground for businessmen in the interest of consumers, in particular, and the economy at large, would begin soon.

Unfortunately, it is the same minister and SON that are behind the review of cement standards in the country in this suspicious manner.

Now, at what point did SON have a change of heart, having certified the 32.5mpa cement as having met international standards, until lately?

From the look of things, it would seem the decision was hasty and decisions on such crucial matters ought to be properly digested before they become government policy. All the critical stakeholders in the built industry that presented memoranda to the House committee could not have been wrong. Most of them are professionals in their own rights whose views should count when such decisions are about to be taken.

This was what the House committee public sitting on the matter achieved. Its conclusions are much more robust and reflect the cross-fertilisation of ideas that went into their assign-

“If, as SON claimed, the 32.5mpa cement is susceptible to misapplication and can therefore “result in construction failure”, what is the guarantee that cement of higher grades cannot also result in the same thing once those saddled with the responsibility of ensuring standards and best practices in the sector do not do their work as they should?”

ment. If we are even to go by the assertion by COREN that “SON does not have a technical laboratory nor competence to test the qualities of cement produced, packaged or imported into Nigeria, nor equipment for periodic monitoring of companies producing cement in Nigeria”, at the public hearing, a claim the House committee said “was not refuted by SON”, then, we can see that there is much to the matter than meets the eye. As the committee observed, no other country, apart from China, has banned the production of 32.5mpa cement. India’s grade 43 is said to be equivalent to the 32.5 mpa. Even China that banned the 32.5mpa did so because it has achieved over-capacity in cement production, and, also as the committee noted, “to address environmental concerns”. Nigeria is nowhere near self-sufficiency in cement production.

It is instructive that the committee asserted that not in any single case of collapsed building has the use of 32.5mpa cement been blamed by the relevant independent professional bodies that investigated them. Buildings may collapse due to a number of factors including, but not limited to the following: the cement exhausting its shelf span or due to loss of its essential qualities as a result of stacking exposure or exposure to the element; lack of control or regulation, and because relevant standards on concrete and related issues are not enforced in the downstream informal construction sector. Other causes are: inadequate education or awareness on the appropriate application of cement grades in the country. Indeed, this is so serious, as, according to the House committee, “The level of ignorance of the availability of different grades of cement in the Nigerian market is so high to the extent that most directors of works and academic institutions of higher learning are not aware of the different types of cement available in the country”. So, “if gold rusts, what would iron do”?

There is also the problem of the greed of some professionals or end-users who might decide to add more sand than required in the construction mix. Of course, there is also the problem of the quality of iron used in construction, etc.

What one can see in all of these is the ubiquitous ‘Nigerian Factor’. If, as SON claimed, the 32.5mpa cement is susceptible to misapplication and can therefore “result in construction failure”, what is the guarantee that cement of higher grades cannot also result in the same thing once those saddled with the responsibility of ensuring standards and best practices in the sector do not do their work as they should? Or, put differently, when the ‘Nigerian factor’ still reigns supreme? The sad reality is that more buildings will still collapse in the country unless we begin to hold people accountable for the menace.

All said, until it is conclusively proven that grade 32.5mpa cement is responsible for the high incidence of collapsed buildings in the country, or elsewhere, the SON review, which confers undue advantage on the dominant player in the industry that currently produces essentially the 42.5mpa grade would appear to have been targeted at stifling the weaker players who produce the 32.5mpa largely, and the 42.5mpa only on requests by their customers. It would be tantamount to continuation of the cement war by some other means, with the Federal Government throwing its weight, as usual, behind the dominant player. It does not make economic sense for any investor to set up a cement factory for the sole purpose of producing products for plastering. The government has to rethink the policy in the overall interest of the economy.

Curbing indiscipline in schools

W

HETHER in public or private schools, cases of indiscipline abound. It is not unusual these days to hear of students engaging in some unimaginable misconduct or the other.

Indiscipline means lack of discipline, lack of control, lack of proper training; it means unruly behaviour, disobedience and disorder.

I was not surprised that I was asked to speak on this issue that has become a matter of great concern to all at the recent end of year ceremony of a school. My brief was however on the roles parents should play in curbing indiscipline in private schools.

We now live in a world where indiscipline reigns supreme in virtually every aspect of our life. It is however not limited to students.

All of us are in one way or the other guilty and there is an urgent need to return to the good old days when discipline was the order of the day. The situation was so bad at one point in our history that a military government had to declare War Against Indiscipline called WAI. Even now we have various paramilitary organisations charged with enforcing discipline in various sectors but unfortunately we are not making much progress.

There is urgent need to address this issue to ensure that students are as disciplined as much as possible if they are to be good leaders of tomorrow.

The indiscipline we hear of in public schools include students not abiding with instructions outlined for them, indulging in social vices, disrespect for teachers, unruly parents who don’t want their children to be disciplined for wrong doings and many others.

Parents have a major role to play to curb indiscipline in our private schools which are subject to government guidelines on how such institutions are to be run.

The first point to be made is that parents must be disciplined. They cannot give what they don’t have. They are supposed to be role models for the children who normally have no choice but to be disciplined if parents show them good examples.

Secondly, parents must give their children the necessary home training for them to appreciate the need to be disciplined in schools. No doubt schools are supposed to train the students, but without proper home training not much can be accomplished by teachers.

Parents need to spend more time to train their children despite the hectic schedules they now have to cope with. Parents run the risk of having to pay dearly in future for not investing enough time to ensure proper training of their children if they don’t do so when their children are still young and amenable to instructions.

Parents must be aware of the rules and regulations of the schools they enroll their children and not attempting to circumvent them their status not withstanding.

Where they have cause to disagree with some regulations or disciplinary measure they should seek appropriate channels to seek redress instead of taking the laws into our hands like some parents do.

There have been instances where parents go to schools to beat up teachers for daring to discipline their children. This is very unfortunate. While teachers should be moderate in enforcing discipline, parents should not give their children the impression that they are above the law.

Parents of children in every school need to work with the authorities to enforce discipline both for the teachers and students through forums like the Parents Teachers Association.

Parents should take seriously reports of misdemeanours by their children before the situation is beyond their control.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

COMMENT

Transferring Abuja’s governance narrative to Washington

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ITH several years of aggressive cultivation of the Nigerian diaspora by the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, it is reasonable for valueadded Nigerians in the United States to feel unsettled by the recent announcement in Abuja of a multimillion-dollar contract to a Washington public relations or lobby agency.

The federal government’s decision to hire a Washington-based lobby group to burnish its image from Washington to the rest of the globe must have meant a major loss to local professional public relations firms, lobby agencies, and savvy advocacy groups, the type that have been beating the drum of President Jonathan’s re-election bid, even when the president remains reluctant to announce his entry into the race. For a meagre sum of 275 million naira per annum, Levick Strategic Communications has been hired to lead other subcontractors to assist in promoting “transparency, democracy, and the rule of law throughout Nigeria.”

More specifically, Levick is to assist Nigerian government’s efforts to mobilise international support in fighting Boko Haram as part of the greater global war on terror.

What is innovative about this contract is that all the activities of changing the narrative about governance in Nigeria are to be done from K Street in Washington.

The public relations game changer for Nigeria is not working just to spread good messages about Nigeria’s governance in the Western hemisphere but also to spread new narratives about governance in the country to citizens at home. From now on,

What is innovative about this contract is that all the activities of changing the narrative about governance in Nigeria are to be done from K Street in Washington strategising about consolidating and enhancing the culture of democracy in Nigeria will be determined and directed by sophisticated lobbyists in Washington.

And this company will also be responsible for conveying messages of Nigeria’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law to all the corners of the world.

Nigerians in diaspora in the United States must wonder what led a government with which the Nigerian Diaspora Association has a robust relationship of cordiality to jump over them to give such a juicy contract to foreigners. Public communication professionals among them (and they are legion) must marvel why the loss of homeland PR firms in Lagos and Abuja has not been allowed to become the gain of Nigerian public professionals in diaspora.

Those Nigerians abroad who are not savvy about the workings of power are likely to feel betrayed or cheated by a federal government that had organised conferences and seminars in Atlanta, New York, Washington, and other U.S. cities on how to create synergy between the country and its diaspora.

On their own part, Nigerians at home must be astonished by this contract, especially the objective of assisting the government to promote transparency, democracy, and the rule of law throughout Nigeria. Is the local media narrative not already doing that and very aggressively too? Without doubt, some segments of the media created and operated solely to do panegyric journalism has done so much of that and very well too. But there are other

media houses across the country that are mordantly critical of threats to transparency, democracy, and the rule of law in the country. Similarly, top public relations firms within the country must be puzzled about new pro-democracy narratives that Washington spin doctors have been hired to create and propagate all over the wide world.

With respect to the charge to Levick to assist the federal government’s efforts to find and safely return the abducted Chibok girls, those who observed the activities and pronouncements of Malala during her recent visit to Abuja must wonder why the country would need a special contract to do what Malala had chosen to do pro bono for the country. Malala may not be an image manipulator, she is without doubt the world’s most admired symbol of antiterrorism. She is more likely to assist the government in this respect at no cost to a government that is already too stretched financially to the point of seeking one billion dollar loan from the international community, even if on Shylockean terms.

With her pronouncements during a recent visit to Aso Rock, Malala appears to be in the best of positions to talk to the international community about the readiness of the government in Abuja to find and bring the Chibok girls to safety, more so after the government’s announcement that it knows where the girls are and is only working on the best time to emancipate them from their captors.

It is not clear in media reports when the project to hire K Street’s image makers was conceived. Was it before or after the

government discovered where the girls are kept by the terrorists? Given the assurance by the federal government that all its security agencies know the location of the Chibok girls, one part of the project seems to have been accomplished, even before signing the contract with Levick. The second part, bringing the girls home safely, looks less of political advocacy Washington style, than military strategic thinking and attention to tactical details that are needed for the job of liberation of innocent school girls from the den of terrorists. If there is need for special assistance, is it not more reasonable to approach the many countries that have already sent representatives to the country to show their commitment to assist Nigeria in the liberation of the girls and termination of Boko Haram’s terror, especially after the U.S. government has undertaken to train our security forces in strategies and tactics of fighting terrorism?

The federal government may have found one new friend on account of the contract given to Levick. It certainly has lost many friends at home and abroad. It has made it known to the entire world that it does not believe in the professional know-how of thousands of public relations specialists within Nigeria and among its diasporic communities in the western world. It is an irony that at a time the federal government is committed to transformation of the job market to create jobs at home, it is also creating jobs for public relations workers in the United States, a major aid giver to Nigeria on many fronts.

It should not surprise anyone if the federal government chooses to hire another lobby group to work on the message of disalienating competent Nigerian public relations men and women at home and abroad that its offer of contract to Levick’s Strategic Communications for millions of dollars per annum had insulted and alienated. This should be the time for the government to go into its archives to remind itself of the methods used by late Dora Akunyuli to re-brand Nigeria during the presidency of UmaruYar’Adua.

COMMENT

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

15

Indigene registration T

Nigeria can do without introduction of another divisive scheme

HE alleged move to register non-indigenes in some states of the federation is condemnable, whether as an action or a reaction. It is at once illegal and illogical. In a country contending with many forces threatening to tear the fabric of the society, it is unfortunate that leaders who should appreciate the power of a united front are bent on making Nigerians from other parts of the country second-class citizens in their own country.

At first, the news was that Imo State government had issued an ultimatum to non-indigenes to either be registered or prepare for ‘deportation’.

It was a relief when the state government denied the allegation, and was supported by leaders of the Hausa community in the state who said it was a private initiative to know the legitimate Northern residents there, with a view to checking possible infiltration of the ranks by undesirable elements.

Leader of the Arewa community in Imo State told journalists that they were trying to get the state government to buy into the project as a way of assuring all that only law-abiding citizens from the northern states whose details are known are resident there.

But, this did not prevent response from the North where some state governments in the region issued a counter-threat that Nigerians from outside the bloc should prepare to face similar consequences. Even the northern members of the National Assembly who warned that the alleged move should be halted immediately were hasty in coming to the conclusion that the state government actually made such a move. As representatives of the people, it would not have been out of place for the lawmakers to voice their concerns. However, it would have been better appreciated had they used their good offices to get in touch with the Imo State government and the Arewa community leaders in the state before making such pronouncements that did nothing to help the tension at hand.

T

HE twin attack on the two prominent Nigerians which took place in Kaduna could be described as dangerous, callous and unfortunate to the peaceful and cooperate existence of this country.

The attempt on the lives of the two highly respected Nigerians who are revered in different parts of this country for political and religious affiliations, shows those desperados of this dastardly act are out to throw this country into political and religious crises, which would not augur well for the

We take strong exception to the inflammatory statement by the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) that the investment of the Igbo in the North could be targeted in case such an obnoxious policy was implemented. The ACF neither verified the facts nor took steps as an organisation of elder statesmen to consult the Eastern state governments. Such utterances and threats could only provoke further reactions from the other parts of the country. Besides, for miscreants seeking opportunity to cause mayhem, that could lead to looting and plundering of the properties and investments of southerners in the North.

The current state of insecurity in the country calls for utmost caution on the part of all, especially those who claim to be leaders. Leadership behoves restraint in the face of provocation. It must be noted that Nigeria is greater than a sum of its component parts.

The heroes past laboured to bequeath this country to the current set of rulers and they have no right to set it on fire.

The 1999 Constitution is clear on who a citizen is, his responsibilities and rights. This cannot be taken away by the fiat of any other citizen, whatever position he may temporarily hold, or even any institution or law. While section 24 of the supreme law of the land spells out the duties of citizens, the definition of who a citizen is and the process by

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

LETTER

The unfortunate Kaduna twin bomb attacks peaceful co-existence of this country.

Both Sheik Dahiru Bauchi and Gen. Mohammed Buhari have contributed to the development of this country in their chosen fields, hence their being accorded esteemed respect across the country.

The activities of those responsible for the twin attack

did not take into cognisance the great implication of what they intend to do the collective interest of the country, which would have a great impact on the stability of this country.

We must appreciate that God in his infinity mercy did allow this unpatriotic persons to achieve this myopic and undesirable desire of plunging

ing to the stone age of either ferrying their goods and human beings on their backs or risk the hazards by swimming across.

It is disheartening that a people who had done no wrong would be allowed to continually face such punishment. Yearly, millions and billions are being read out during budgets. Is it not surprising, nay amazing, that such a very vital link road to the first major cement factory in the country East of the Niger, has been abandoned and does not qualify as a priority road?

In those good old days, I grew up to learn of ‘Trunk A’ roads, which were federal roads, always well maintained and treasured and ObolloaforIkem-Eha-Amufu-Nkalagu roads prided as such ‘Trunk A’ roads. Alas! successive federal governments have left my people in the lurch.

The story making the

rounds in the villages at my home town, is that the abandoned road has been finally captured in the 2014 budget but that the money allocated can barely complete the construction of the roads let alone attempt rebuilding the three collapsed most important bridges.

My appeal is that whichever ministries are responsible Works and the Finance Ministry too - should release the money on time and that whoever is awarded the job must be competent enough to commence work immediately and of course do a credible work.

We are all going to be on the watch, monitoring the progress of work when it commences and will cry foul if any shoddy job is contemplated or embarked upon. Haven’t our rights been trampled upon enough?

James Agbonchikiri Eha-Amufu Town Enugu State.

A most apt expose on Eha-Amufu roads

T

HE article published in your renowned newspaper about the plight of my people as a result of the deteriorating state of federal roads at Eha-Amufu including broken bridges en route EhaAmufu in Isi-Uzo Local Government of Enugu State to Nkalagu in Ebonyi State, could not have come at a more opportune time.

For decades on end, we have gone through a most harrowing period, the experience of these sufferings and unfortunate neglect are better imagined and no one will wish his enemies such debasement. The rains are pounding the town and the surrounding villages continuously thus worsening the impassable roads.

The Mainland Eha-Amufu is permanently cut off from their brothers and sisters who live on the farmlands because of the broken down bridges.

Our people are painfully return-

which he could be deprived of his inalienable rights are elaborately spelt out in chapter three of the constitution. It is a fundamental right of all citizens to move and reside in any part of the country without any form of discrimination or harassment, and this must be scrupulously adhered to by all.

We support the declaration of the National Security Council that anyone who violates this constitutional provision is an enemy of the state and should be treated as such. At the heart of the Plateau State crisis that has caused untold hardship to many, and taken lives, is the question of who is a settler and who is an indigene. It remains unsettled. To impose further requirements on citizens who in the course of their legitimate businesses have to move across states is unacceptable.

We call on the National Civic Registration Board to speed up the bid to have all Nigerians captured in the National Identity Card Scheme. This is the only civilised and legitimate means of obtaining detailed information on all citizens, including where they live and for how long. Any other thing amounts to courting disaster.

We also call on all Nigerians to be security conscious. Those living in neighbourhoods should take interest in knowing residents and checking up on their activities unobtrusively. Where there are grounds to suspect movements and activities that could endanger the lives of others, such information should be supplied to the law enforcement agents. To defeat insurgents, kidnappers, armed robbers and other enemies of the state, the security agencies ought, too, to step up efforts at cultivating the support of the people.

All forms of social discrimination are subversive of the national interest and should be rejected. Organisations and institutions that, by their utterances appear to be fanning embers of disunity at a time like this must be told unequivocally that they are acting contrary to the national interest.

this country into another mayhem, which no responsible Nigerian will support.

We should continue to be vigilant in our daily activities to stem the ugly trend we are witnessing at this critical period of our nation’s history, that has never been seen, not even during the civil war that took place in the 60s.

No sane Nigerian would support these dastardly acts of spilling blood of innocent Nigerians who are already impoverished going about securing their day-to-day means of livelihood.

We pray that those who lost their lives in the Kaduna twin blast would have peace of grave and God would console their

families, while also praying for those injured to recover quickly.

The government should not rest from its responsibilities by assuring the citizens of providing security to all. Nigerians should report any form of suspicious movement within their environments.

Nigeria will surely overcome such agonising period she finds herself and It will continue to remain steadfast in loving one another.

By Bala Nayashi Lokoja, Kogi State.

Haba! Delta NULGE and Service Commission

L

OCAL governments are supposed to be training ground for leaders and politicians for higher participation and exhibit professionalism in governance at the state and federal levels. What one can see now is that the reverse is the case because of corruption and lackadaisical attitude of union executive members and the Local Government Service Commission in Delta State.

Like the popular saying, “born great but tied down”, the local government system, especially in Delta State, is in chains, even in the face of almost limitless prospects as engine room for massive grassroots development.

During a short visit to one of the local government secretariats in the Delta Central, I observed with dismay and was further perplexed the way and manner staffers were moving from one office to another with

hullabaloo, signifying that things were not in good shape. On enquiry, I was made to understand that workers are complaining seriously of the deductions of seven hundred naira (700.00) per month for ten months by the Nigerian Union of Local Governments Employees (NULGE Delta State).

I reliably gathered that the proceeds will be used to build a fivestar hotel as guest house for employees of the twenty-five local governments in Delta. I was flabbergasted. One may ask, is it fair to all? Is five-star hotel to be used as guest house by the employees of Delta State local government their priority? Deducting workers salaries to build a five-star hotel by union is uncalled for.

Who gave the union the approval? The executive arm of the Delta State government should not use NULGE as “ATM” that is, a way to siphon money.

NULGE should be directed to stop such irregular deductions

with speed and alacrity and concentrate on how to improve on workers welfare and avoid causing confusion in the twenty-five local governments of Delta State.

This is done every four years. In some cases, workers will pay without seeing the ID or at the close of its expiration.

The big question now is, are workers expected to pay for ID? Was the money for Workers ID not budgeted for? What is happening in the NULGE and the Local Government Service Commission of Delta State? I wish Governor Uduaghan will take appropriate action because a stitch in time saves nine.

NULGE and the Local Government Service Commission must not become “ATM” to the state. This is a dangerous dichotomy, indeed! It is pregnant with meaning.

Okwute Emmanuel Okwute, Warri, Delta State.

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COMMENT

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

Revisiting the Photo-chromically rigged Ekiti election Jaws will drop when Nigerians get to know the details of the rigged Ekiti election

I

AM always beside myself when I see the uninitiated continue to insult, indeed, completely rip apart, a doughty, decent and extremely respectable Ekiti people, unfortunate victims of PDP’s unprecedented, in Nigeria, though happened in Zimbabwe’s 2013 Presidential election, photo-chromically rigged election of 21, June 2014, being described in very nauseating ways. There is hardly any insulting epithet under the sun Ekiti has not been painted with arising from PDP’s irreverent rationalizations for its earth shaking ‘victory’ in that election: an election in which the thief foolishly stole more than the owner, with the sitting, performing governor (Fayemi has outperformed all Ekiti governors, dead or alive) not winning a single Local Government area and the vote of the ‘winner’, Ayodele Fayose, warts and all, almost doubling the governor’s in the mistaken belief that the lie becomes more believable if the margin of victory is humongous.

So successful were they that my friend, a world reputed intellectual and proud Ekiti icon , was pained enough to do a poem, rather a dirge, for Motherland’s fabled love of stomach. Fortunately, now that the APC has headed to the tribunal, the world will soon come to know the details of this latest ‘Watergate’. The PDP and ts government have so negatively impacted the country that they would do just about anything to hold on to power or steal it. Dr Jide Oluwajuyitan recently reminded us that Nigeria now generates about 4500MW of electricity as

against 4200 MW it had a whole twelve years ago when the late Dr Olusegun Agagu was Minister of Power and Energy and that was after injecting between $24 -$50 billion while another writer regaled his readers as follows: ‘Former President Olusegun Obasanjo condemned GEJ’s government. Muhammadu Buhari criticized GEJ’s government. Maitama Sule expressed worries over GEJ’s leadership style. Mrs Hilary Clinton described GEJ’s government as corrupt.

Senator John McCain said there is no government in Nigeria. Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni mocked GEJ on Boko Haram. Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe described Nigeria as a corrupt nation. The question is: Are all these people ignorant of what good governance is? And all that was long before we sank into this Watergate, this photochromically rigged Ekiti election.

And I ask, is there a level to which this government will not degenerate?

Many, incidentally and surprisingly including the U.S embassy in Nigeria, have commended INEC for conducting what they call a transparent election in Ekiti. I can forgive the U.S having been accustomed to Nigeria’s shambolic elections of ballot box snatching, murder and mayhem which were patently absent this time around, but I feel certain America will by now be chuckling to itself saying: we were had!

Which election did PDP not rig? Is it the election which Olu Falae contested at the tribunal, or the one Buhari

took to the tribunal and in which, to save President Jonathan an Appeal Court President had to be hurriedly sacrificed? Back to Ekiti, is it the 2007 governorship election and the rerun which the Appeal Court held were both egregiously stolen by the PDP? It is obvious PDP did not overtly rig the Ekiti election because it has long ensured ‘victory’ when Obanikoro flew into the Akure Airport with his strange ‘luggage’, later allegedly ferried to Ekiti in a bullion van. To dispute this, Obanikoro, Jelili Adesiyan and the Anambra perpetual gubernatorial wannabe, none of them Ekiti, should tell the world what their mission was in Ekiti during the election. Obvously the vehicle arrested a few days to the Ekiti election conveying items from INEC’s Ado-Ekiti office was most probably ferrying the batch of vanishing ink to be used in Osun which must have accounted for Omisore’s insistence, and INEC’s subsequent acquiescence, in the transfer of the state’s Resident Commissioner. This is one reason APC must insist on the use of indelible ink in the Osun election as specifically stipulated by the Electoral Law. Otherwise, the party must make such available at all the polling booths if INEC decides to continue to act illegally by providing vanishing ink as it did in Ekiti.

I paraphrase below, the argument of Hon Bimbo Daramola, MHR, Director General of the Kayode Fayemi campaign, which should put the final nail on the coffin of this baloney called stomach infrastructure and the more asinine one that a governor who put in place the first ever welfare scheme for the elderly in Nigeria, giving 25,000 Ekiti elders a N5000 monthly stipend ,who employed about 10,000 youths through such schemes as the highly acclaimed Youth Commercial Agriculture (YCAD) which has seen a trained Medical Doctor turn a farmer, and one

whose annual budgets are made bottom up by going to every Ekiti community to ascertain their critical needs, and much more, was aloof and disconnected from the citizenry: ‘I dare say 95 percent of those who are so confident in their oracular postulation neither have the hard facts about the Fayemi years in Ekiti nor the numerous initiatives that were aimed at restoring Ekiti back from its ruins.

It is obviously unknown to many that no administration treated Ekiti teachers better than Fayemi’s regardless of the competency test which was badly misunderstood. Critics should therefore go and compare the various administrations since the creation of the state. Today they say teachers are against Fayemi despite their regular promotions, payment of rural location allowance, core subjects allowance, 27.5% pecuniary allowance and both local and foreign training. I am sure the election was not won because of stomach infrastructure or rice, he says, certainly not! Otherwise it would mean that all of a sudden, 25000 senior citizens suddenly became memory fatigued or brain dead and forgot the man who made government have such impact on their lives,10000 volunteers who have been on monthly financial support for the past 36 months’ lost their minds’ and the people of Ikogosi who play host to local and international tourists in their thousands equally temporarily forgot the man who made the Ikogosi Tourist Resort what it is.

Continuing he said, the increased state revenue, jobs created from investment in road reconstruction, the Ire Ekiti Burnt Bricks factory left prostrate for 23years, the various job creating schemes, all must have suddenly counted for nothing because somebody brought in some bags of 2.5kg of expired Thai rice?

Hon Daramola goes on: When latter day analysts begin to ascribe interpretations to what they do not know, I expect rational people to step back and attempt a much more dispassionate evaluation before jumping to conclusions. For instance, when one Segun Ayobolu who confessed he has not visited Ekiti since Fayemi became governor goes on to rely on hearsays, reasonable people would expect him to demonstrate circumspection. Although he tried to tuck away his sloppiness by claiming journalists are not intellectuals, one would still expect much more than his cocktail of lies and conjectures. And then Akin Osuntokun goes on to mutilate facts on the altar of the expediency of an urgent, even, dire need to enter into political reckoning which this “victory” suggests to him: time to graduate from sitting perpetually on the President’s Chief of Staff.

Come to think of it, he continues, was that election all about the governor alone? Did it matter anything that the APC has 3 Senators, 5 members of the House of Representatives, 25 state house assembly members in the state, besides political appointees? All these people suddenly froze into political nothingness? And it no longer mattered that 10 of those who vied for the PDP gubernatorial ticket had decamped to the APC; Asiwaju Segun Oni no longer has any political relevance in his home town; ditto erstwhile PDP top shots like Hon Olatubosun , Hon Babade, Chief Ojo Falegan and many more?

Our people must learn to think much more beyond the veneer and take these empty postulations with more than a pinch of salt. They must see the PDP for what exactly it is : an ensemble of political desperados and power mongers who would stop at nothing to win elections.

And as this writer has never shied away from saying, jaws will drop when Nigerians get to know the details of the rigged Ekiti election.

In this place full of all known oddities, life is brutish and short The question still remains why? Will somebody please tell us why these things are happening?

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HESE terrestrial plains are full of oddities enough. Take the countries of the world. Don’t we have countries so rich and contented they are even planning right now to create cities on extraterrestrial plains where some of their citizens may retire to periodically when their souls feel like taking a break? On the other hand, don’t we have countries so poor it is all they can do to even keep their governments running and their citizens fed on one square meal a day?

Then, don’t we have countries so advanced in scientific discoveries they have practically invented everything including machines that work, think, eat, fight, and breathe for humans? In such societies, machines keep the roads orderly, maintain the transport, water, electricity, and all other systems, and generally keep a tab on public utilities. But then, we also have countries that are so steeped in ignorance and superstition that they still make human sacrifices. Just one more comparison before we leave this paragraph. Don’t we have countries so developed they know and protect every member of the society irrespective of race, party, colour or creed? And then don’t we have other countries so undeveloped they are practically at the point of asking you if you are of a certain religion or creed before selling you a box of matches? Well, don’t we?

Now, let’s come to the oddities in our own Nigeria. One of the great

oddities, among many others, that I am never tired of pointing out in Nigeria, is the religious hypocrisy that is so endemic and pandemic to us. All religions in Nigeria appear to recognize the cardinal rule that loving God and loving one’s neighbour summarise God’s laws, making them the two rules that matter most. Yet, here, in this land, we have enough religious oddities. One, we have our religious zealots who hold such noisy night vigils all night long, with drums and other music apparatuses blaring so much noises out of loud speakers placed outside the worship place so that the neighbours cannot sleep. The only thing those ones can do is mutter imprecations against all men of God into their pillows all night. Two, we have other religious zealots who blare their early morning call to prayers right into the ear drums of neighbours accompanied by loud music and sermons, depending on their pick. They never mind such little things as neighbours who may be sick and need some quiet, have been on night duty and need morning sleep, have babies that have been up all night, or have gone partying and have come home to sleep. Yep, we are all entitled to our oddities, but the point is that our religions are so busy loving we their neighbours that they keep us awake all night, muttering imprecations into our pillows.

One oddity that is still difficult to understand though is the predilection for settling scores with bombs, particu-

larly in the north. It is no longer any news that over this last week, bombs went off in Kaduna in such mad successions that had all our collective vertebrae baffled and reeling around in intemperate shock. No one is sure of the death toll but figures are said to be around a hundred, give or take.

Naturally, as with all such bombings, the victims are all innocent of all the grievances that prompted and motivated such a grandiose and disproportionate destruction.

What I find incomprehensible though is that when these bombings occur, everyone is shocked and we all scamper around trying to find reasons or some kind of solace in conjectures.

Then, the country moves on, with nothing coming out of police investigations.

Granted, there are those among us so intelligent that they can read the political terrain and tell what it all means despite what we see, or even foretell what may come next. There are however many like me who are of a more simple turn of mind who like to be told first the kind of leaves at the bottom of the tea cup before being given the interpretation of those leaves and why they are at the bottom of my teacup in the first place and not someone else’s. No one, so far, has been able to explain to us why we are daily losing hundreds of citizens to bombs indiscriminately discarded by aggrieved individuals. It is an egregious violation of our intelligence indeed that we are being slaughtered for a reason we don’t know. So, the question still

remains why? Will somebody please tell us why these things are happening?

Perhaps, I tell myself, some people are so angry with the government that they have resorted to bombing the government’s citizens, you know, as they do in football. If you cannot get the team, get the players by breaking their legs or something. Truth is, I don’t know any Nigerian now who is not angry with this government, but if we all went around bombing each other, where would we all be?

The government is not paying me enough, gboam! The government is not giving enough electricity to the people, gboam! The government is not pumping water into my house, gboam! Now tell me, just how many gboams do you think we will need to make it hear us? One good example, just look at the way the government is handling the crisis in the health sector. I tell you, it deserves many gboams for that. Rather than tell people the truth and let everyone go home and build the country by doing the work they are paid for, the government decided to create a crisis for political reasons where none need have existed. Now, there is a crisis, and there is an impasse and everyone is watching how it will get itself out of that unsavory jam.

Perhaps again, I tell myself, these bombers are truly being used and sponsored by faceless politicians to make faceless political points that have not been clearly enunciated. If that is so,

all I can say is shame, thrice shame on them for using defenseless and innocent citizens to make such useless points! One, I assume these politicians are men; two, I assume they are old enough to fight their own fights. So, I believe it is not only cowardly, it is unmanly of them to fight through boys hardly out of their nappies to be able to fully appreciate the values of left and right thinking, and worse to use innocent people as fodders in their cannons. It is just so cowardly. Cowards!!!

In all of this, we are all losing. Just imagine the sheer number of those who have been sent to the beyond since this crisis began, and multiply by three to include those who have been rendered economically incapable, then imagine the vast area of land that can no longer be farmed because of this problem, then imagine those who have become refugees outside their homes on this account, then you begin to appreciate the problem a bit. Right now, the loss in economic terms is huge. Yet, it does not include the great depletion of future human resources this problem is occasioning. We cannot now begin to calculate the incalculable harm this thing is doing to our future. When the time comes, let us pray that we do not pack our hands on top of our heads.

Let the sponsors and users of this group of arsonists and bombers be made known so that we can dismember them, verbally. It is important that they should come out of hiding and face the nation to tell us why so many people’s lives have been made brutish and short through being killed, maimed, displaced, or psychologically tormented. As fellow Nigerians, we deserve an answer.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

COMMENT

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(75) ‘Stay blessed’: benediction or beatitude, sarcasm or seriousness? [A secular sermon]

•Worshippers at a religious service

Benediction: (1) an utterance of good wishes (2) the advantage conferred by blessing; a mercy or benefit Dictionary.com (online) Beatitude: (1) supreme blessedness, exalted happiness (2) any of the declarations of blessedness pronounced by Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount [Matthew, 5:3-11] Dictionary.com (online)

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S our prayer warriors say, stay blessed”. It is only recently, as recent as two weeks ago, that I noticed that in some of my email correspondence with friends, acquaintances and family members, I have for some time now been ending my emails to them with these words: “as our prayer warriors say, stay blessed”. Indeed, when an email which carries this benediction is directed to a non-Nigerian, I usually say, “as the prayer warriors in my country say, stay blessed”.

Human beings are the most imitative of all the living beings on our planet. As soon as this practice which started rather unconsciously came to my conscious attention, I immediately knew that I was imitating the action of some of my email correspondents who end their communication to me with those words, ‘stay blessed”. These are my “prayer warrior” relatives, acquaintances and friends. “Stay blessed, Uncle”. “Stay blessed, Prof”. “Stay blessed, BJ”. I think it was from responding sarcastically by ending my own emails to such “prayer warriors” that I began to end my emails to non-prayer warriors with the same benediction, ‘stay blessed’. But why direct sarcasm initially meant for prayer warriors to non-prayer warriors? In moving from one to the other, had I moved from sarcasm to seriousness? If so, was the seriousness also there, side by side with the sarcasm, in my emails to my prayer warrior friends and relatives?

Dear reader, questions like these led to my decision to write my column

•Masses of workers at a rally

this week as a sort of secular sermon that reflects on the gap between sarcasm and seriousness whenever I have used that phrase, ‘stay blessed’ to end my emails.

I did not know it initially, but now that I am thinking consciously about the matter, I realize that it must have been the feeling, the intuition that more than a benediction which is an utterance of good wishes, the phrase, ‘stay blessed” had become a beatitude with our prayer warriors that led me to be sarcastic in my appropriation of the phrase in my responses to the emails of my prayer warrior relatives and acquaintances. As the second epigraph to this piece indicates, beatitude is a state of supreme blessedness, of exalted happiness. The word beatitude also refers, perhaps more commonly, to the declarations of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. We shall come to this connection later in this piece, this lay, secular sermon. For now, let us focus on beatitude as a state of supreme blessedness which, I contend, is what our prayer warriors have in mind when they say or write the phrase, ‘stay blessed’.

I am neither a priest nor a theologian, but I think I am not mistaken when I assert that a state of supreme blessedness or exalted happiness is what happens to congregants who have just had a powerful, transcendent experience in an act of cathartic communal worship; to individuals who, through prayer or meditation, have just had an epiphany; or to anybody deeply spiritual who has just experienced a profound intimation of divinity or eternity. Now, I confess that except vicariously, through some books that I have read and a few films that I have watched, I have never experienced such states of supreme blessedness or exalted happiness. But I suspect very strongly that this is true of the great majority of human beings who are living now or have ever lived.

For it is not part of our fate or experience to be in regular, prolonged and common states of supreme blessedness or exalted happiness. There is of course

the false exception of those who apparently regularly achieve such states through drugs, orgiastic sex, severe clinical disorders and manipulative religious frenzy. But we know that it does not last; and there is always a heavy, sometimes terrible price to pay. Thus, sustained and regular states of supreme blessedness or exalted happiness do not constitute part of our spiritual and psychic common heritage as human beings. But this is not an inevitable, natural or metaphysical condition of humanity; it is a product of human action and inaction and very few places on the planet are as illustrative of this point as Nigeria.

In our country at the present historical and political moment, who will contest that “supreme blessedness” or “exalted happiness” is far from the daily lives of the overwhelming majority of our peoples, rich and poor but especially the poor? Nollywood is an eloquent testimony to this grim fact, with its deep immersion in occult evil and devilry and their agents and the terrible emotional and moral havocs they wreak on human lives. But Nollywood is an ironic, reverse but deadly accurate reflection of life in our country.

Boko Haram and their covert internal backers and external sponsors are not witches; they are people like you and me. The gangs of extortionate kidnappers who operate in many parts of the country putting safety and security of life in jeopardy for millions of Nigerians are not supernatural beings, even if many of them patronize occultists for “power”; they are high school dropouts and university graduates who can’t find work and turn to violent criminality as a default option. Those who are looting and squandering our national wealth and making the lives of the vast majority of our peoples hellish are ordinary human beings, not demons. Thus, there are very few instances of beatitude, of supreme blessedness in Nollywood films precisely because there are very few sources of supreme blessedness in Nigerian socio-political reality. But our prayer warriors continue to invoke their beloved, talis-

manic beatitude, “stay blessed”.

The book of Matthew that contains the passage on the Sermon on the Mount and the beatitudes that Jesus declared is my favorite passage in the holy book of Christians. Interestingly, Jesus in that passage makes EIGHT declarations of beatitudes with specific designations of the groups and individuals that are deserving of them.

Again, I state that I am neither a priest nor a theologian. By this I mean to emphasize that my commentary and reflections here are not theological; they are socially and morally diagnostic and prognostic. Ever since I first read this passage of the beatitudes in the book of Matthew, I have marked down in my mind those eight categories of individuals and groups that Jesus thought deserving. They are: (1) the poor; (2) the meek; (3) those that mourn; (4) the merciful; (5) the peacemakers; (6) the pure of heart; (7) those that thirst for justice and (8) those that are persecuted. Even the most casual review of this list will discern that overwhelmingly, the moral and spiritual solidarity of Jesus is with the disenfranchised and the disaffected of society. But he did not completely exclude the rich and the powerful, at least those among them who are merciful, who are peacemakers and who thirst for justice.

As I have stated or even frankly admitted earlier in these reflections, when I use the phrase ‘stay blessed’ in my emails to my prayer warrior friends and relatives, I am mostly being sarcastic, though I know in my heart that I also think of my use of the phrase as a benediction, an utterance of good wishes. The sarcasm comes from the fact - let me state this rather bluntly – that when prayer warriors say to me or say to one another ‘stay blessed’, they are using it more than a benediction; they are using it as a mantra, as a pietistic and smug belief that they are in a state of supreme blessedness. But I look at contemporary Nigerian religiosity - Christian and Moslem - and I see nothing remotely in a state of supreme blessed-

ness. What I see at the top is a deep, wide and self-serving plutocratic collusion with the contemporary money changers in the temple, the secular powers that are ruining our country and making life a hell on earth for the majority of our peoples. And what I see at the bottom of the explosion of religiosity in our country at the present time is a craven and idolatrous surrender of the masses of our peoples to fear, bigotry and superstition. I make exceptions, of course, for I have met many religious people of different faiths who are “pure of heart”, who are “meek” and who are “merciful”, the states of blessedness that Jesus extolled in his Sermon on the Mount.

‘Stay blessed”. In Jesus’ Name (IJN). To combine the two, one must look for inspiration in the radical solidarity with the dispossessed and the disenfranchised that Jesus expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. This in fact has been the historic role of all the religious movements of the past and the present that worked for - and are still working for - human progress in the different nations and regions of the world. At any rate, these are the things that come to my mind now any time that I use the phrase ‘stay blessed’ in my emails. Now that I have clarified for myself that my sarcasm when I use the phrase is not without genuine benediction for the recipient, I feel better and hope that at least those who know me well among my prayer warrior email correspondents know that I mean well towards them. I doubt, though, that they can feel the great anger that also comes with my sense that the phrase is largely used as a mantra, a talisman, a fetish that lures people into complacency in a time and a country in which only the greatest clarity about the sources of the realworld forces that make life so difficult for most of our peoples can save us.

So, stay blessed, dear reader, but avoid the snares of complacent religiosity.

Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

COMMENT

sms only: 08116759748

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OKO Haram is Nigeria’s ultimate manmade disaster. Natural disasters often occur as one-off events, whereas the insurgency in the North East is becoming a never-ending horror flick.

Unfortunately, this is not make-believe as lives are being lost and communities devastated. Speaking in France in May this year, President Goodluck Jonathan estimated that over 12,000 have been killed in the conflict since 2009.

For many years Nigerians living far from the flashpoints could not really relate to the violence because the victims were mostly poor, faceless, nameless ‘nobodies.’ All that changed when the insurgents snatched close to 300 girls from Chibok over 100 days ago.

By that singularly brutal act, Boko Haram landed foot first on global primetime TV. Today, Abubakar Shekau’s sorry visage is about as familiar to the average person as any pantomime bad guy in a Nollywood production.

A few days ago, former military Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari, came within a whisker of being assassinated when suicide bombers took aim at his convoy. He was clearly the prize they were after, but his would-be assassins bungled the task. In the process over 40 innocent persons became collateral damage.

In the nascent stage of Boko Haram atrocities, exasperated Southerners digesting their daily dose of gory headlines from the comfort of their sofas in Lagos, Yenagoa or Abakaliki, could afford to snort derisively that “these bloody Northerners can blow themselves to kingdom come if they like.”

Today, the reality is that no matter how far we are from the epicenter of the conflict, we have all become victims in one way or another.

We desperately need to come to terms with how Boko Haram is impacting our lives, and the way we live, to understand that if we don’t throw all we can muster at the monster, it will soon consume the entire country.

Some years ago, statements credited to unofficial United States diplomatic or intelligence sources suggested that Nigeria could break up in 2015. Ever since that report came to light, Jonathan and several other former Nigerian leaders have vowed that the worst would not happen. They speak with such confidence thinking that a split would follow the old Biafran template.

Truly, Nigeria may not break into tiny pieces in 2015, but what percentage of our sovereign territory would we be exerting control over when terrorists have started planting their flags in parts of Borno?

Unless we radically review our approach and begin to take the fight to the insurgents, what Biafra couldn’t achieve in the 60’s could manifest through the war in the North East.

So far, our best efforts rather than contain the terrorists have only pushed them to un-

Boko Haram: We’re all victims now

•Abubakar Shekau precedented levels of depravity. This is a group that does not operate by any known norms of civilized conduct and is not influenced or affected by international conventions that govern conduct in war. That is why they serve up fresh atrocities every new day.

The question is how many more mindless blasts or slayings can this fragile country take before things spiral out of control?

Many wars have been ignited by some stupid incident. World War 1 was sparked off by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the AustroHungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo in 1914.

Who could have predicted the fallout if Buhari had been killed in the deadly blasts a few days ago? Given the present foul political atmosphere in the country, conspiracy theories would have gone into overdrive – with unpredictable consequences.

This government doesn’t understand the deadly phenomenon they are toying with.

That is why its leading lights are still playing political games trying to tie the opposition to the insurgency. If the governments that have held power since 2009 had properly assessed the danger posed by Boko Haram, we won’t be where we are today.

Five years ago when the sect’s members went on an orgy of violence across three North Eastern states, the then President

Umaru Yar’Adua went ahead with a state visit to Brazil despite the massive loss of lives and destruction of property.

Back then, it was clear that this latest manifestation in a long line of extremist Northern Islamist groups was something special. But what did Yar’Adua do? From the safety of Brasilia, he sent preachy appeals to other Muslims not follow the ‘bad’ example of Boko Haram.

On his return from the trip he didn’t even deign to visit the site of the mayhem, but retired to Aso Villa to business as usual.

His successor has followed that same pattern – treating psychopathic killers as compatriots who can be reasoned with. The government even went as far as colluding with Hillary Clinton’s State Department two years ago to thwart efforts by the US government to designate Boko Haram a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO).

While this tomfoolery was going on, Boko Haram got enough breathing space to beef up its fighting capacity. Now, they have acquired a fleet of pick-up vans, APCs and, according to some reports, even anti-aircraft guns which they still don’t have the knowhow to operate. In that time, too, they mastered the deployment of IEDs to deadly effect.

What could have been contained three years ago within the budget now requires the country to go a borrowing $ 1 billion.

In 2012 when Nigerian government officials and diplomats were strenuously resisting the FTO designation for their enemy, the argument was that it would make life difficult for privileged Nigerians who travel overseas as they would be subjected to intrusive searches. Today, we have much more to worry about.

“Who is going to conduct polls in unprotected places like Damboa or Chibok? If the President could not visit such places for security reasons which school teacher or NYSC member would put his life on the line to guarantee the success of those polls?”

One of the inevitable consequences of wars is that they produce refugees who flee to neighbouring countries or internally displaced persons who run to other parts of the country for safety. Already, thousands have fled the theatre of conflict in Borno.

Recently, over 400 Northerners were intercepted in several trucks headed for Port Harcourt in the dead of night. Although security agencies reportedly apprehended a wanted Boko Haram leader among the travelers, the vast majority have since been repatriated to the states from which they initiated their journeys.

We should prepare for more of such mass movement as the areas of conflict broaden.

Worryingly, the consequences of such movements go beyond security as they have ramifications that are beginning to threaten national unity.

After steps were taken by the Imo government to track Northerners living in the state, reciprocal action has been initiated by several groups in Kano and Kaduna seeking registration of Southerners living in those states. Where will such tit-for-tat actions lead? No one knows.

If things get worse in the North, people would drift South – it is only to be expected. As it is, many farmers in the North East cannot access their farms for fear of being killed. Those who manage to plant crops soon lose all to rampaging insurgents who harvest them to feed their hungry cadres.

The economic impact is spreading beyond locals who have lost their means of livelihood.

Boko Haram is affecting our pocket and impacting our dining tables. Much of the produce that used to come from Borno State and surrounding areas has been cut off leading to price increases because of diminishing supplies of everything from grains to livestock.

On the political front the implications are equally troubling. Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, Attahiru Jega, keeps assuring us that election will hold all over the country next year. Unfortunately, security conditions in large swathes of the North undermine his words.

Who is going to conduct polls in unprotected places like Damboa or Chibok? If the President could not visit such places for security reasons, which school teacher or NYSC member would put his life on the line to guarantee the success of those polls?

If the conditions in many areas of the North are such that free and fair elections cannot be held, how does it affect our democratic transition? There are grave questions that need to be answered. Unfortunately, those to address them are still too giddy with a sense of their power to realise that their empire is shrinking dramatically by the day.

Beyond freedom for the Chibok girls

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TTACKS against the hapless Chibok community didn’t end with the abduction of the over 300 schoolgirls from the dormitory on the night of April 15. Since then Boko Haram has carried out several sorties into areas surrounding the town.

It would appear, however, that pain and death have taken residence in the town. One recent report states that 11 parents of the kidnapped girls have died since their children went missing.

Of that number, seven are among the dead from an attack in the nearby village of Kautakari this July. Four more parents are said to have died of heart failure, high blood pressure and other illnesses that the community blames on trauma due to the mass abduction.

We have the assurance of the authorities that not only do they know where the girls are, but that their freedom is imminent. That should offer a measure of comfort to the grieving families.

Still you cannot help but wonder what kind of girls would be returning from Boko Haram captivity. What sorts of unspeakable experiences have they been subjected to? Will they ever be able to live normal lives again?

The world owes it to these girls and their community to ensure that the one day leaders of Boko Haram, their financiers and collaborators pay for their crimes against humanity. Our duty doesn’t end with demanding their release; we should faithfully document the atrocities of this group for the day they would face justice.

•Chibok mother Martha Mark whose daughter, Monica is one of the missing girls

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

Benue 2015: Disquiet as monarch prunes governorship aspirants PAGES 21

Lagos 2015: Ambode’s unending political battles

Rivers 2015: I am an aspirant Dagogo-Jack

PAGE 23

PAGE 24

2015: Presidency, PDP plot against Lamido Jigawa State governor, Sule Lamido, appears determined to have a go at the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) come next year, but the Presidency is bent on cutting him to size, reports Assistant Editor, Remi Adelowo HE postulation that the Jigawa State governor, Sule Lamido, has an ace up his sleeves after declining to defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) last year now looks real after all.

For some time now, Lamido’s alleged ambition to have a go at the presidential ticket of the PDP has become a huge dilemma for the Presidency and national leaders of the party.

To infer that a palpable sense of unease currently reigns in the top echelon of the PDP over Lamido’s widely suspected presidential ambition would be an understatement.

Though the governor is yet to publicly declare his interest in the presidential contest, his

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body language hints at his positive disposition towards the idea.

In an interview with a national daily recently, Lamido, while not categorically stating his interest in the race, however declared that no law forbids him from taking a shot at the exalted seat on the platform of his party.

“I don’t see any crime being committed by people saying that I want to be the President of Nigeria, because it is not a personal office,” he had said, adding, “Every Nigerian should be able to aspire to that position, provided it is not based on the criteria of tribe, religion or culture. Anybody elected to that position should be a Nigerian president.

Every Nigerian has the right to aspire to be the president of this country. Every Nigerian is a presidential material.

“You see, they tend to personalise the Presidency and therefore anybody who aspires to become the president is like committing a crime. That office is a national office for all Nigerians and, therefore, should not be appropriated. Anybody can be there.”

Speaking further on his political plans, Lamido declared, “By my political culture and belief as a Muslim, I would always allow God to be my guide; He has been there for you and me.”

This statement, as diplomatic as it was, is however being taken seriously by President Goodluck Jonathan’s strategists as the clearest indication that Lamido is set to challenge the President for the PDP’s 2015 presidential ticket.

Though Lamido’s aspiration

looks dead on arrival, as Jonathan is, undoubtedly, the man to beat for the ticket, sources in the party believe that the governor’s aspiration will likely upset the party’s game plan of returning Jonathan unopposed or, in a worse-case scenario, run without any serious contender for the presidential ticket.

Indeed, there are palpable fears within the party that Lamido is acting out a script of a broader agenda to achieve a number of objectives, a few of which include to cause another round of crisis in the party close to the 2015 elections and most significantly to reinforce the undisguised plot to return power to the North next year.

As a source puts it, “It is no longer a hidden fact that the

North wants the Presidency in 2015. And the only way to realise this plan is to cause maximum damage to the PDP, which is not looking back in presenting Jonathan as its presidential candidate.

“While President Jonathan is a sure bet for the PDP ticket, however, Sule Lamido’s failure in the primaries will cause a split within the party and this is what we want to avoid by all means. Any post-primary crisis will surely prove a huge distraction for the party before the general elections.

“Some northern elites will surely allege manipulation of the primary in favour of Jonathan and before you •Continued on Page 20

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

POLITICS

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S the 2015 Delta governorship election draws near, recent untoward events in the political arena have raised the spectre of violence as the fight to wrest political power within the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) intensifies.

The unfolding drama, undoubtedly, prompted Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan to warn against any breach of the peace in the run-up to the 2015 Delta governorship election.

He appealed to aspiring politicians not to over-heat the system, adding that the state has remained peaceful and that he will ensure that it remained so.

He warned that it is his responsibility to “guide the 2015 electoral process in the state to a logical conclusion and in a peaceful manner.”

His words: “The race has started and I continue to appeal to the gladiators and those interested, we are not against any ambition .What we are against is over heating the system as a result of personal ambition. This state has remained peaceful and we intend to ensure that it remains peaceful. My responsibility is to guide the 2015 process to a logical conclusion in a very peaceful manner.”

Delta State has a history of political violence. For instance, the 2011 Delta State legislative elections into Patani Constituency, involving ex-Commissioner of Lands, Survey and Urban Development, Mr. Raymos Guanah, of the Fresh Democratic Party and current Deputy Speaker, Basil Ganagana, of the PDP were marred by violence.

The violence consumed Sixtus Ganagana, 31, a brother and aide to Basil Ganagana. Sixtus Ganagana was assassinated at Ughelli metropolis in the presence of his wife and children.

Earlier in January 2011, a former Transition Committee Chairman of Patani Local Council, Mr. Paul Atie, was shot dead by some unidentified assailants.

Atie, who was the Director of Campaign for Raymos Guanah was gunned down a few metres away from a petrol retail outlet in Ughelli town by suspected assassins.

Speculation is rife that the two murders may have been politically motivated.

Mr. Basil Ganagana and Raymos Guanah, his opponent in the House of Assembly election had accused each other of assassination plots. Mr. Raymos Guanah was briefly arrested by the police.

Also on September 7, 2013, Delta State Commissioner for Education, (Basic and Secondary Education), Prof Patrick Muoboghare, was brutally attacked by irate youths from Uwheru community, Ughelli North during the inauguration of Uwheru Ward PDP executive members at the PDP secretariat.

He was accused by the youths of manipulating the executive list of the ward congress held in 2012.

Muoboghare was stabbed in his right arm and upper abdomen and left for dead in a pool of blood.

With local polls set for October 25th, Deltans are apprehensive of election violence, judging from the succession of violent confrontation within the ruling PDP in the state.

Delta 2015 and spectre of political violence As the Delta governorship aspirants intensify strategies in the 2015 elections, OKUNGBOWA AIWERIE writes that the recent violent exchanges between political interests within the ruling PDP may be a foreboding of events.

•Uduaghan Analysts believe the local polls will provide ample opportunities for the two parties, the All Progressive Congress (APC) and the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to test their strategies ahead of 2015 governorship race, as any political party that gains the upper hand stands a good chance at the gubernatorial polls.

Another incident last year foreboding violence, involved ex-Speaker Victor Ochei, who while on a familiarisation visit in his constituency reportedly escaped unhurt after a botched assassination attempt at Obomkpa community in Aniocha North Local Government Area.

The Nation gathered that an Improvised Explosive Devices (I.E.D.) exploded, critically injuring a female aide to one of the Speaker’s associates who is an indigene of the town (Obomkpa).

It was gathered that the canon exploded behind the seat reserved for Victor Ochei, while he was busy exchanging pleasantries with well wishers at the village square.

Senator Arthur Okowa’s campaign train

also appears mired in controversy over shooting allegations in Agbor, Ika South Local Government Area after his billboard was pulled down.

However, the victim, Sunny Okonye, after initially claiming that he was shot by persons associated with the Okowa Campaign Organisation repudiated his earlier claim.

Dogging the earlier allegation is the murder of Mr. Arthur Agbe in 2003 over a property in Agbor, Ika South Local Government Area.

But Senator Okowa’s counsel, Peter Mrakpor, at a press briefing in Asaba recently, raised the alarm that the respected legislator’s life was in danger, adding that the allegations against Okowa were politically motivated by persons scared of his popularity.

His words: “Senator Okowa’s life is in danger because from the series of events that have been happening and the orchestrated newspaper attacks on him, there is a conspiracy to frame him for murder.”

Continuing, he said, “Senator Okowa’s life is in danger because there is conspiracy

from the series of events that have been happening and the orchestrated newspaper attacks on him. This is not the first time, for John Agbe, his son was killed 11 years ago over a piece of land in Agbor. The question we want to ask is whose building is on that lands.

It does not belong to Senator Okowa.

Why do you now accuse him of fighting over a piece of land that does not belong to him? Ten years ago you accused him, the matter was investigated, and the Director of Public Prosecution came out with a report that it was a false allegation. He (Okowa) ran for the senatorial election, and there was no allegation. Then all of a sudden someone comes with an allegation of murder of his son ten years ago. This is orchestrated. The claimant is a driver in Ika South Local Government Council. So, we are saying let us inform the whole world that there is a conspiracy to not only defame him (Okowa) but to frame him. We are appealing to the press to take our message to Nigerians and let the police also swing into action that if nothing is done, an innocent man will be framed.”

Mr Akpor said his client has instituted legal action against one John Agbe , a driver working in Ika South Local Council in the sum of N20 billion for allegedly making libelous claims in a national newspaper linking his son’s death to his client.

In a writ of summons made available to The Nation, Peter Mrakpor said, Okowa is claiming “damages for libel in the issue of the Leadership Sunday Newspaper on 29th June 2014 in the sum of N20 billion”.

Okowa is also praying for a retraction of the publication and public apology.

Senator Okowa is further asking for an order of perpetual injunction restraining the defendant whether by himself and/or through his agent, proxies and privies from further writing, printing or circulating or causing to be written, printed or circulated or otherwise publishing of the claimant…”.

Akpor declaimed allegation that his client keeps a killer squad to further his political ambition, “as it is our client’s firm belief, that power is at the discretion of the Almighty God and He gives it to whomever He wishes”. He said his client “does not know the Agbe family, the location of the land at Ikpeazue Avenue/Upper Okobi Street in Boji-Boji, Owa, Delta State.”

But a more troubling event occurred July 11th when the wife of former PDP National Chairman, Ahmadu Alli, and Delta State PDP Chairman, Peter Nwaboshi, threw caution to the winds and engaged each other in physical combat.

The incident which occurred at the PDP Secretariat in Asaba at the formal hand over ceremony of vehicles to PDP chairmen in the 25 local government areas in the state is not unconnected with the senatorial ambition of both political gladiators. Peter Nwaboshi and Mrs. Marian Alli are reportedly vying for the ticket on the platform of the PDP to represent Delta North Senatorial District at the upper legislative chambers.

But the question agitating the minds of many Deltans is whether the recent violent exchanges between political gladiators is not an omen that portends grave danger as the 2015 gubernatorial election looms?

2015: Presidency, PDP plot against Lamido •Continued from Page 19

know it, the party will have a big crisis on its hands. Lamido’s decision to challenge the President appears to be the final phase to decimate the PDP.” Options to stop Lamido A few options are being considered by the President’s handlers to handle the Lamido challenge.

First, plans have been set afoot to prevail on the Jigawa governor to drop his ambition in the overall interest of the party.

Sources disclosed that influential traditional rulers in the North, who have the ears of the governor and prominent opinion leaders will be contracted to talk Lamido out of his presidential ambition.

But the major snag to this plan, say a source, is on who to enlist for this task,

as there are strong suspicions on the disposition of most major Northern stakeholders to the President’s alleged second term ambition.

The likely threats of Lamido’s challenge to the Jonathan 2015 project, The Nation gathered, perhaps explained why some close advisers of the President supported the idea of picking the governor as Jonathan’s running mate for next year’s election.

The argument of this school of thought is that Lamido has more to bring to the table than the incumbent vice president, Mohammed Namadi Sambo, who despite his loyalty to his boss and also recording some successes in the recent poaching of some Northern APC leaders to the PDP, is still largely seen as lacking the requisite political stature to mobilise a broad-based support for the President in the northern

region.

While chances are high that the President may retain Sambo in 2015, sources revealed that those opposed to his retention are not giving up in getting Jonathan to have a change of mind on the issue.

But Sambo also has its staunch backers in the President’s inner circle. This group, it is alleged, aver that dropping Sambo for Lamido, who is known for his fierce independent mindedness and loyalty to certain individuals known to be antagonistic of the President will be too much of a risk to take.

The Nation gathered that if the plan to pressure Lamido out of the presidential contest fails, the Option B will be to reopen the money laundering case involving the governor’s sons, Aminu and Mustapha.

About two years ago, Aminu was ar-

rested at the Aminu Kano International Airport on his way to Cairo, Egypt, while allegedly in possession of about $50, 000, which he failed to declare to appropriate authorities.

Aminu was quizzed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) but was released a few days later. The two young men’s predicament was linked to their father’s political differences with the President, a charge that was dismissed by the Presidency.

“Don’t be surprised if this case involving Aminu and Mustapha is reopened later this year to distract their father from his presidential campaign,” quips a source.

Lamido is however said to be unperturbed about the plot against him, but how far he can go to upset the apple cart in the PDP presidential contest remains to be seen.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

POLITICS

21

Benue 2015: Disquiet as monarch prunes governorship aspirants

•Tor Tiv, Dr. Alfred Torkula

• Ker

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The battle to succeed Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue State has taken a new twist following the alleged screening and selection of four governorship aspirants on the ticket of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Uja Emmanuel writes on the controversy that is trailing the purported selection which has divided the ruling party in the state.

HERE is fierce battle to succeed Governor Gabriel Suswam.

Within the ruling party alone, there are at least 25 governorship aspirants that have so far embarked on vigorous campaigns across the three senatorial zones to woo supporters ahead of PDP primaries.

For the first time since the creation of Benue, from Plateau State, all the three senatorial zones (ABC), are claiming that it is their turn to rule Benue in 2015 and have presented governorship aspirants.

In zone A, the former AttorneyGeneral of the Federation (AGF), Chief Mike Aondoakaa, led other aspirants like Dr. Terhemba, Ada Chenge, Peter Chieshe and Emmanuel Akem battling for what they described as “ completing the tenure of the first civilian governor of Benue State, the late Aper Aku, who was from the zone, and the administration was cut short by military coup.

In Benue South Senatorial zone, known as zone C, the deputy governor of the State, Chief Steven Lawani, led few governorship contenders like Mathias Oyegiya and Paul Harris Ogbole in a succession battle. They are appealing to their Tiv brothers, to allow Benue South to have a shot at Government House, Makurdi, for the first time since the creation of Benue from Plateau.

In zone B, there is what we may describe as “a tug of war” as over 15 governorship aspirants are jostling to succeed Suswam in the ruling party alone. Out of these, eight have been described as heavy weights with political clout and so far, none of them is ready to step down for another.

The big eight are: Minister of State

• Ntitse

for Interior, Dr. Samuel Ortom, Dr. Tivlumun Nyitse, Felix Atume, Dr. Eugene Aleigba, Hinga Biem, Alex Adum , Terhemen Tarzor, and Simon Anchaver.

They all hail from Masev, Ihyarev and Nongon, otherwise known as MINDA group among the Tivs covering four local government areas (Makurdi, Gwer, Gwer West and Guma Local Government Areas), in Benue NorthWest Senatorial zone, otherwise known as zone B. MINDA, a group among the Tivs, is insisting they are the only political block which has not occupied the Government House in Makurdi. And they are therefore laying claim to the governorship slot, both in the ruling PDP and in the All Progressives Congress (APC). This explained why they have the highest number of governorship aspirants jostling to take over from Suswam in 2015.

But then, PDP elders in MINDA, and MINDA Cultural Association are worried that having too many governorship aspirants may mar their chances of succeeding Suswam, especially during the PDP primaries.

This prompted the paramount ruler of the Tiv people, Tor Tiv, Dr. Alfred Akawe Torkula, who also hails from MINDA, with his Council of Chiefs to summon all the governorship aspirants from the area on the platform of the ruling PDP to his Palace in Gboko.

Though the meeting with governorship aspirants with Tor Tiv in his Gboko Palace, may have been designed to bring unity, cohesion and to avoid acrimony and division for a common cause, it ended up dividing the aspirants the more.

Even before the end of the palace meeting, news spread that the highly respected Tiv monarch with his council of chiefs had screened and selected only four PDP governorship aspirants out of the 15 from MINDA, to contest the primaries.

But after that, there was denial and counter denial among the aspirants who argued that the meeting neither screened nor selected aspirants, but that it was just a meeting between a father and his sons as Tor Tiv, being the father of the Tiv people, has the right to summon any Tiv man to the palace for consultations.

While some of the governorship aspirants denied that there was no selection, others, especially those allegedly favoured kept mute, but their supporters said there was indeed selection.

The purported selection of preferred candidates is generating tension among PDP family. Tor Tiv has been bashed for allegedly turning his palace into PDP screening committee room.

Nat Apir, Director of Communication and Strategy, Aliegba

•Ortom

Governorship Campaign Organisation, described the purported endorsement as null and void. Apir stated that Tor Tiv’s schedule does not included screening of PDP aspirants and that he should strive to hold the sanctity of the Tiv traditional stool.

The MINDA PDP Governorship Forum, under the chairmanship of Professor David Ker, dismissed the purported endorsement, saying they were in the palace of Tor Tiv, who advised them on how best to go about their campaign devoid of violence.

“Tor Tiv only advised us to maintain peace and respect for one another during consultations as only one person would eventually emerge as governor, at no time did we subject ourselves for screening and four governorship aspirants selected and others told to step down,” said Professor Ker in a press statement he issued.

The four governorship aspirants allegedly favoured by the Tiv Traditional Councils are: Chief Samuel Ortom ( Guma), Terhemen Tarzor (Makurdi), Hinga Biem (Gwer) and Felix Atume ( Gwer West).

But another governorship the aspirant, Simon Anchaver, alleged that result of the screening was manipulated as he was the one endorsed from Gwer Local Government Area, instead of his opponent.

The account by Comrade Anchaver,

•Emmanuel Jime, APC

who is the chairman of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), is a revelation that there may have indeed been an attempt to prune down governorship aspirants on the platform of the PDP. The question is, does the Tor Tiv, as the traditional ruler have the power to screen and select governorship aspirants?

Abraham Kwaghga, Special Adviser to the Governor on Investment told The Nation that as a traditional ruler and a MINDA man, Tor Tiv has the right to ensure that the zone produces the next governor.

According to Kwaghga, what Tor Tiv did was to avoid spending money and acrimony because many of his subjects resigned from top positions like commissioners, permanent secretaries and other high positions to contest the governorship election; a development which he said does not argur well for MINDA people.

Kwagha said if any one disregard the directive of the traditional ruler, Swem (Tiv traditional gods) would punish him and he may never win any leadership position in Tiv land.

Another account said since Tor Tiv hails from MINDA, it would not be politically wise for the zone to produce the next governor of Benue State and as such, Jechira, Kwande axis, led by Mike Aondoakaa, are waiting.

The battle to succeed Suswam has just begun and in the next few months, the people of Benue State would know who gets the PDP ticket.

But for APC, Emmanuel Jime, Akange Audu and Mike Lordye are patiently waiting to re-enact the 2011 magic wand of Ishior Chenji (game has changed) in 2015.

Implications of Sheriff dumping APC for PDP ASKED a chieftain of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Maiduguri his reaction to Senator Ali Modu Sheriff’s dumping of All Progressive Congress (APC) for PDP. He was quick to answer saying “for now I have stepped aside. I am neither in PDP or APC. Let me watch events unfolding”. This is not far from the scenario playing out in Borno since Ali Modu Sheriff, alias SAS, announced in Maiduguri that he had bid farewell to APC for PDP. Most PDP members, especially the chieftains now adopt “Siddon look,” watching if not observing.

No doubt, SAS dumping APC for PDP will alter Borno political landscape. The change could be for better, the change could be for worse.

What is however certain is that henceforth, events in the political field of Borno will not be the same again.

SAS change of party will raise questions. Some questions will get immediate answers, some will get response later and other questions will never get answered. Here comes one of such questions. What are the implications of SAS leaving APC for PDP? The implications of SAS dumping the APC for PDP are multi-

I

By Victor Izekor

dimensional. This is all embracing as it will affect the PDP, APC and the people both positively and negatively. For the PDP, it has hit a jack pot. SAS will come with his supporters in APC to PDP. He will plough his resources for the possible success of the PDP in the state. In his Machiavellian disposition, he would do what it takes to ensure victory for PDP his new found love. In this circumstance, SAS is indeed an asset for PDP. However the disposition and willingness of SAS to open his door of fortune depends on the degree of his acceptance by the generality of the Borno State PDP and not necessarily the blessing and endorsement by the presidency. The question that readily comes up now is how acceptable is SAS to the Borno State PDP? The present Borno PDP is made up of the Mohammed Gonis, the Shettima Mustaphas, the Architect Ibrahim Bunus, the Abba Gana’s, the Abba Ajis, the Kumaila’s, the Asheik Jarmas, the Mahmud Ahmads and a host of other juggernauts. Of all these, the Abba Aji’s, the Kumaila’s and the Ibrahim Bunus who, before joining the PDP years back, were members of the ANPP and had to leave the latter for

the former as a result of the conflict between them and SAS who was then both the leader of the state ANPP as well the state governor. The question is will they readily and willingly accept SAS in PDP in the present dispensation?

The news report in Daily Trust, July 18, 2014, page 18 with the title “Disquiet in Borno PDP over Sheriff” reads: “There is crack in the ranks of founding members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Borno State following the resolve of former Governor Ali Modu Sheriff to join the party. There are indications that some PDP members who are “aggrieved” with the development would dump the PDP. A source said some of them would not have the patience to sit with Sheriff under the same roof because of the fierce political rivalry they had with him in the past”.

“However, secretary of the PDP Youth Forum in Borno State, Umar Sanda said they are tired of playing what he called “Second Fiddle” in national politics. We are aware that most of the chieftains of PDP in Borno State are not happy that Sheriff is joining us but that is their personal opinion. As far as the youths are concerned, he is warmly welcome”,

he said.

Besides, a group designated as “Original Borno PDP” has made it point clear in Advertorial recently that it would only concede the deputy governor position to Senator Ali Modu Sheriff stating unequivocally that the position of governor remains the exclusive preserve of the Original PDP in the coming elections. What will be the position or status of SAS in relation to the existing structure of PDP in the state? Certainly, SAS coming into PDP with his already laid down party structure will not like to play the second fiddle. Besides will SAS allow the party structure he came with from APC into PDP be swallowed by PDP without adequate compensation?

Coming to APC, the exit of SAS will certainly create a vacuum. However, since coming into power as the state governor, Alhaji Kashim Ibrahim through his skilful diplomacy, humility, tolerance, open-door policy, nondiscriminatory policy, mass-oriented programmes, laudable poverty alleviation programmes, exceptional humanistic approach in the handling of the victims of the insurgency and his philanthropic disposition has endeared him to all, including the rank and file of

the state PDP. Governor Shettima’s incontrovertible records of achievements attest to good governance that mesmerizes the people to his administration. According to an observer, “we now know those who used political power for good or for evil, for the people’s happiness or for oppressing them” Though, APC will lose some supporters to SAS, the good governance of Governor Shettima may check the leakage. Wittingly, it appears Governor Shettima as the leader of APC in the state is in control of the party machinery judging from the outcome of the last party state congress and this appears a plus for him in galvanizing APC into further strength. His humility and cautious approach to issues may help swell the population of APC as the likelihood of more supporters from other parties, including PDP is obvious.

The coming into PDP by SAS may break the dominance of the state by APC. Future elections in the state will be competitive and may not be violent free. This is the fear of many. The good people of Borno will have the final say provided there is free and fair election.

— Izekor, wrote from Maiduguri.

22

E

RIC Acho Nwakanma’s well documented track record in the politics of Abia and his national assignments seem to be an advantage in his current quest to occupy Government House, Abia State.

Apart from a group of Abia indigenes seeking attention in faraway Washington DC in the US, through a press conference, giving the impression that Governor Theodore Orji and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were advocating for power shift in favour of Abia South, the home of the Ukwa/Ngwas, the move is a done deal of the citizenry. The well-advertised press briefing by Engineer Nweke Ndineze under the umbrella of ‘Abia Progressives Union’ said the group was registering its concerns over the move, urging leaders of the National Secretariat of PDP to intervene and correct the purported zoning arrangement. Yet, the governor’s gesture and that of the party in favour of power shift have received the endorsement of all the senatorial zones in the state. And one of the beneficiaries of this political arrangement is Acho Nwakanma among the many aspirants squaring up to move into Orji’s big shoes.

Nwakanma’s website has received thousands of visitors since he made an open declaration and intent to step into the gubernatorial contest. A twice deputy governor, Nwakanma’s learning curve in the art of governance and the political process of who gets what and what gets done took place under the watchful eyes of Governor Orji and he does not fail to acknowledge how this has changed his world view on many issues.

Also equally important is his ability to adapt what he learnt in government into his private life and public service at the national level. A good example is his large farm which he sees as a practical response to Orji’s agricultural revolution in Abia, an agrarian state that suffered a somersault after the civil war. Another is the Acho Nwakanma Foundation, through which he is fighting the cause of the mentally ill, using his legislative experience to effectively bring this to the knowledge of a greater number of Nigerians through the passage of a bill at the National Assembly.

For Nwakanma, governance and peaceful co-existence can only prosper when fairness and equity become the watchword. As he puts it: “When you look at equity, you concentrate on the intent not the content. The shift of power to the Ukwa/Ngwa axis is intended to give us a sense of belonging; we have qualified candidates in all ramifications from the axis.”

Ukwa/Ngwa, he insists, houses the economic nerve centre of the state, the Enyimba City, called Aba, which if developed, will enhance the general economy of the state.

Nwakanma acknowledges that even Aba has received a face-lift and tremendous infrastructure development, the previous administrations ignored.

A mention of Kalu took him to memory lane when reminded the only way to steer the state to the next level beyond the legacy projects of the Orji administration was to have a rugged chief executive that must not wobble under the pressure of godfatherism and what in Abia is popularly called “mamcracy” both of which imply a political philosophy of mother and son dominating the state politics. Nwakanma reclines on his sofa and adds he knew where the reporter was coming from, which is the alleged rumour in many informed quarters that he was too soft to face Kalu’s ambition of regaining the political control of the state.

First of all, he asks, how is it possible that Abians who suffered and experienced unparalleled economic regression for eight years plus

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

POLITICS

XPECTEDLY, the impeachment proceedings commenced by the Enugu State House of Assembly against the Deputy Governor of the state, Mr Sunday Onyebuchi, have continued to generate much attention and attract sundry reactions in both the regular and the social media.

Much of the frenzy as usual, is easily attributable to the perennial mischief-makers and detractors of the government whose attempts to distort the facts and demonize Governor Sullivan Chime and some of his principal officers notably, the Chief of Staff, Mrs Ifeoma Nwobodo, have gone rather psyschotic.

Despite the fact that the House of Assembly gave express and explicit reasons for its action against the deputy governor, these fellows would have none of it, instead they have continued to generate and circulate fairy tales claiming them to be the real reasons behind the Assembly’s move against Mr Onyebuchi.

For purposes of clarity, the House upon a motion signed by 22 of its 24 members directed the Clerk of the House to serve an impeachment notice on the Deputy Governor for abuse of office and disobedience to the lawful directives of the governor. The House went ahead to give the

‘I’m prepared to move Abia to the next level’

Two-time deputy governor of Abia State, Eric Acho Nwakanma, is aiming at the coveted job of the state chief executive. In this interview with Agamnetochi Onoh, Nwakanma, who is chairman of the Federal NeuroPsychiatic Hospital Enugu and former Deputy Speaker of the Abia State House of Assembly, argues that Governor Theodore Orji’s successor must be someone who has passed through the governor’s grill and is ready to run. Nwakanma says the cap fits him. Excerpts:

•Nwakanma under the former governor, would want to have him back? The elite was blamed for going to sleep because politics was considered to be dirty and that was how the state was hijacked by those who saw it as the easiest route to expand their economic empire. But that belongs to the past, he adds. Nwakanma will not let the argument rest, asking how he would go back to a man under whose service as deputy governor he suffered so much victimisation and neglect, reminding you that the entire Abia elite and the grassroots were unanimous in the rejection of Kalu and his style of politics.

“When I have the mandate of the people how can I turn against them and bring him back? We are enjoying unprecedented unity and cohesion in the PDP because of the open-mindedness of the governor, the Ochendo. He brought everyone under one umbrella. We do not want any rabblerouser in our midst. We will not change our position on this matter.”

Nwakanma adds for the avoidance of doubt that he is dedicated to ensuring that the unity in PDP remains constant and that the party will continue to govern Abia State because “we have people-oriented programmes endearing the people to us. We are moving forward.”

Nwakanma who is obviously thrilled with the huge network of infrastructure development known as the legacy projects of the Theodore Orji

administration says he will ensure this prodigious assignment remains sustained and elevated to the next level. Legacies, he stresses, are meant for posterity and a critical study of these projects will tell you why they are called as such. Hear him: “His Excellency, Governor T.A. Orji has invested in critical infrastructure, provision of security, good governance, and sustenance of the physical environment. I am particularly excited by the massive investment he has made in healthcare and youth empowerment.

“Looking at the wider picture, he has made monumental accomplishments in providing optimum security and a business friendly environment, building critical infrastructure and uplifting education, creating wealth and employment through empowerment, strengthening governmental institutions and elevating the civil service while guaranteeing a clean environment for healthy citizens.”

But his love for Orji’s agricultural revolution policy knows no bounds and he insists it is one sector the outgoing governor has done so well after infrastructure and health development. He adds: “Agriculture has been a sector the governor has done creditably well. With the establishment of Liberation Farms all over the state, the governor realised that there is a lack of modern skill, set amongst our farmers.

“He has embarked on a comprehensive train-

Enugu impeachment saga in perspective

By Nwabueze Agu particulars and details of the offences. In the first instance, it stated that the Deputy had in flagrant disregard of an existing law in the state, continued to maintain and operate a commercial poultry farm within the premises of his official residential quarters; and further refused to carry out the directives of the relevant officials of the government, including the governor himself, to remove the poultry.

Instead of carrying out the directive, the deputy governor invited the press to ridicule his own government and its principal officiers. On the second charge the Assembly had this to say, “The deputy governor habitually refuses, fails and or neglects to carry out and or perform the functions of his office as directed by the governor pursuant to section 193 (1) of the Constitution, without any excuse. Details of this manifest breach of the Constitution as aforesaid include the following: (a) On the 11th day of March, 2014, the deputy governor was directed by the governor to represent him (i.e. the governor) at the flag-off ceremony of the construction of the 2nd Niger Bridge in Onitsha by the President, Commander-in-Chief of

the Armed Forces of the Federation of Nigeria, His Excellency, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan; but the deputy governor refused to attend the ceremony. (b) The deputy governor also blatantly refused to represent the governor at the South-East Governors Forum, held at The Lion Building, Enugu on Sunday, 6th of July, 2014, despite the express directive of the governor to represent him at the Forum. (c) The deputy governor persists in his defiance of lawful directives issued to him by the governor, which defiance has adversely affected and will continue to affect the smooth running of the government; and he will continue to do so if not removed from office.

Still, the Assembly, accorded the deputy governor his statutory right to fair hearing by giving him 7 days to respond to the charges.

However, even as unambiguous and explicit as these charges are, the hack writers would rather chose to claim that the deputy governor’s impeachment woes are a result of his intention to contest the Enugu East-Senatorial elections against the Chief of Staff, Mrs Nwobodo.

ing programme in modern farming methods, using the Liberation Farms. Some stipends are also being paid these farmers as they undergo training. You see Abians are predominantly farmers although most of them are in the subsistence category of farmers.

“However, the governor’s objective is to produce commercial farmers and drive up Abia’s rating, increase revenues, and make more people gainfully employed, injecting revenue and agro-inputs. But there are limitations given the funds and the resources available to Abia State.”

Nwakanma says under his administration, agriculture will witness a tremendous patronage having practiced it and known what it takes to be a farmer at different levels adding he would aim at elongating the value-chain for most farm produce, identifying and focusing on the areas the state has comparative advantage.

“My mission in agriculture will be to fashion out policies and programmes that will assist our farmers to produce all year round for the populace, market their produce, put more money into their pockets, and increase raw materials for our industries.

“Key ingredients will be finding markets for our farmers and increasing the value chain through processing and finished products. I shall also propel a complete shift from the traditional farming methods and develop unique but modern approaches.”

On the health angle closely followed by the gains in the education sector, Nwakanma says while working with Governor Orji, he saw the tremendous turn-around witnessed in both sectors. And when he was nominated to chair the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, he started crusading for improved healthcare package, amiable and better understanding of the mentally ill in society. That mindset, he explains, will come into play in the new dispensation.

Beyond these pontifications, grabbing the power centre of Abia is the most important issue without which these aspirations will remain mere platitudes and it calls for a sense of urgency, he insists. The often-repeated question of what makes him think he is the best man to wear the cap is posed at him.

Nwakanma says his period of learning and all that he learnt remain an indelible growth process needed about now to move Abia forward.

“I have been exposed to an awesome and stimulating experience, walking the ropes and under the tutelage of Ochendo, the people’s governor. It was worthwhile, especially in preparing me for the task ahead.”

According to him, “it opened my eyes to the challenges that a governor would face, giving me a hands-on familiarity with the job. I would not entirely be a newcomer to the task of being the number one servant of the state.

Let me give an example of something I learnt on that job.

Working as Deputy Governor, he adds, made him realise that Abia State did not have a long-term development plan. So each governor that came had to bring his own approach to governance and the delivery of democracy dividends but with Orji things began to take a turn for the best.

“They each had their unique vision of what they wanted to give to the people of Abia by way of result-oriented governance. And I had the opportunity of understudying them. Now I am better equipped, having learnt from the mistakes of the past, the successes of the present and the challenges of the future. All rounds, the experience was strengthening, he said.

This claim is as nonsensical as it is puerile and clearly portrays the hollowness and pettiness of its creators. Aside from the fact that it would have been the first time that many people, including the electorate in Enugu East, were to learn that the deputy governor was interested in the senatorial contest, one would find it difficult to understand how his removal from office would stop him from participating in the contest-assuming he is really interested.

I refrain from making judgment on the political heft of the deputy governor in the state (as to warrant a sinister plot to stop him) but suffice it to say that whether or not he remained in office as deputy governor, he cannot be prevented from pursuing his ambitions if any.

Therefore, seeking to remove him for the said reason would only amount to chasing shadows or window dressing. I don’t believe that the Chime administration and its officers have time for such frivolities.

Rather than shadow boxing and trying to dodge the real issues, any reasonable person would rather be concerned about the veracity or otherwise of the charges against the deputy governor.

•Continued on Page 23

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

POLITICS

23

Lagos 2015: Ambode’s unending political battles Assistant Editor, Dare Odufowokan, reports on the political battles currently being fought by Akin Ambode, one of the major aspirants for Lagos State governorship seat in 2015

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HE political camp of Akin Ambode, a leading governorship aspirant in Lagos State, remains agog with activities as his handlers battle criticism and opposition to his bid to succeed Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola of the state in 2015. Following the wave of endorsements that trailed his declaration for the plum job, the former AccountantGeneral’s ambition has been generating discussions across the state.

In spite of his growing popularity within and outside his party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Ambode’s candidacy continues to receive serious knocks from some quarters within and outside his party as the 2015 governorship election draws nearer. Consequently, his handlers left with no breathing space in their bid to position him as the man for the job.

“In spite of funny attempts by a few persons to tar his aspiration with the brush of needless controversies, various groups, individuals and the youths are daily declaring their support for the young man’s aspiration, with the strong conviction that his quest to be governor is beyond just another ambition, but a selfless desire to serve.

“Ambode is the right man to take over the mantle of leadership of the state from Governor Babatunde Fashola come 2015.

He is the best man for the job at a time like this. We are convinced that his is not just another ambition, but a selfless desire to serve the people of Lagos State,” Adeola Mejuyipin, one of the leaders of Team Forthright Lagos (TFL), said in Ikorodu at the weekend.

But Mejuyinpin and his co-travelers in TFL may not be speaking the minds of all Lagosians as some people have constantly argued that Ambode’s ambition is against the interests of known party men and women who have been nursing similar aspirations for years.

“His ambition is like a jolt from the blues. We have people who have been around in the party for years. It is not good to leave such people and follow a new entrant who just left public service not quite long,” Chief Adebari Saula, a chieftain of the ruling party in Kosofe Local Government posited.

Aside his not being a politician, how prepared is he for the herculean job of governing Lagos? He should allow those who have been planning for this for a long time to take the saddle,” Saula added.

Saula’s position is a reference to the fact that until two years

•Ambode

ago, Ambode was buried in bureaucratic •Continued from Page 22 Did he or did he not commit those offences and are the offences not enough to warrant his removal? Could anyone in all honesty expect that a principal would continue to trust a second in command who flagrantly disregards laws and his own instructions. Could any responsible House of Assembly sit by and watch such impunity and impudence fester in the executive arm to such extent as to threaten the government’s relationship with other governments, including the Federal Govern-

obscurity; hard to be seen, as he was just another civil servant earning his pay by serving the government. Analysts say not many people would have confidently pinned the toga of a “budding politician” on him back then.

But Mejuyinpin, who argued that Ambode has become a household name in the state and unarguably one of the leading aspirants in the 2015 gubernatorial race, disagreed vehemently with the APC chieftain’s position.

The young man, an entrepreneur who said he and many of his colleagues are grateful for the kind of leadership provided by Fashola since 2007, warned Lagosians against voting for “someone with just an ambition” as the next governor.

“Fashola had no ambition in 2003, so they say, but he had the genuine will to serve the people of Lagos selflessly. That will thrust him forward and today we can see the result of voting for a man with more than just an ambition,” argued Mejuyinpin.

Continuing, he said “Yes, he was a civil servant until recently but all the trappings of leadership were trailing him very early in life. Although he might not have set his mind on any particular political ambition, I have no doubt that even Ambode himself knew all along he was cut out for leadership. While all he wanted to do was put in his best as a civil servant and be remembered for good afterwards, fate had more in stock for him.

“So, against any personal ambition of his, as early as when he was in his midthirties, against all odds, he became the youngest Accountant-General of the state at the age of 37. And given his position as the chief custodian of the treasury, it was not long before his path crossed that of the then leaders of the state.

“This happened at a time the state government was bothered about the finances of the state on account of the political war he was waging against the then president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who through legal technicalities impounded the funds earmarked for the state’s local government councils following the controversy that trailed the creation of additional local councils in the state.

“Ambode became a quiet star in the eyes of those in government when he invented the financial system that helped the state survive those challenging times. It was as such inevitable that Ambode would be noticed and appreciated by leaders of the ruling party.

“So, it is easy to conclude that fate prepared Ambode for leadership. More so because after the enviable feat he performed with the finance of the state in those troubled days, he went ahead to perform other miracles within and outside his purview as the Accountant-General of the state.”

But it is not only the issue of being a new entrant that is standing on the way of the Epe-born politician.

There have also been talks about his not having what it takes to govern a state like Lagos. According to those opposed to him, Lagos needs a man in the mould of

Fashola to keep the state on the path of development.

“Lagos cannot afford anything short of another performer. With what Fashola has done in Lagos, it will be disastrous to elect an untested hand to take over from him,” Comrade Fola Ajayi of the Voters’ Vanguard, told The Nation.

Responding, an aide of the politician, Seni Abimbolu, said Ambode is the most tested of all those jostling to succeed Fashola today. According to him, this became evident in the submission of Governor Fashola about his ability, when it was time for him to bow out of active civil service.

Explaining further, Seeni said with lots of accolades for the retiring Ambode, Governor Fashola wrote: “I write on behalf of the people of Lagos to commend your high sense of dedication, selflessness and integrity which you brought to bear on the civil service. I wish to specifically remark that working closely with you has been of tremendous mutual benefit, particularly in the present administration.

“You have displayed high sense of professionalism and have been a good team player, guided by the philosophy of a true public officer, who must place himself last while rendering service to the public. We are convinced that your brilliance and zeal will make you excel in your future endeavours.”

“With Fashola virtually confirming his ability and preparedness through statements like the ones above, what more does Ambode need to convince the good people of Lagos that he possesses the leadership qualities to continue the great works embarked upon by Fashola?

“His vast experience in the civil service and long period spent in crucial positions would stand him in good stead in the prudent and efficient management of the state’s resources. The immense exposure and connections he garnered while in those positions, analysts argued will be of immense benefit to the people of the state if he is allowed to steer the ship of the state.

“I have also heard some people saying Ambode has the reach and capacity to attract new interests to the state with that critical paradigm shift in additional ideas to deepen our democracy and development aspirations as a state. And I willingly agree that he has the capacity to further reposition the state with prudent management of scarce resources,” the politician said.

On the rumour surrounding the authenticity of Ambode as an indigene of Epe, a sleepy town in the outskirt of Lagos, his aides said Lagosians should critically read between the lines by pondering on the following confirmation of the politician’s origin by no other person but the Olu-Ilara of Ilara, Oba Okunola Adesanya, one of the paramount rulers of Epe. The Oba who said he has been on the throne for 54 years said; “The Ambode family had always been part and parcel of Epe. The Epes have always been looking for a Messiah and that indeed Akinwunmi Ambode fits it so perfectly to actualising this age long dream. He is the jewel of the people of Epe land and as an illustrious son of the land, who used his position as the Accountant- General of Lagos State to better the lot of the people of Epe.”

Enugu impeachment saga in perspective ment? Could anyone imagine what questions could have assailed the mind of President Goodluck Jonathan when he discovered that Enugu State was not represented at the flag-off of the second Niger Bridge?Or could one imagine how the governors of other South-East states would have felt when they attended a meeting in Enugu only to discover that their hosts were absent?

Ever since he became the governor of Enugu State, Sullivan has shown him-

self to be a very tolerant and patient man even to his own detriment. He has weathered all manner of plots, abuses, insults and assaults from his enemies but had rather than join them in the trenches, remained true to his mission of transforming the state. He has endured treachery and subterfuge from close associates but remained ever focused on his job.

- Agu sent this piece from Enugu.

Osun: The new political prognosis

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HE tone for this piece was set last Wednesday as an old school mate of mine from Anambra State sought my views on the Osun State governorship election “in the light of what happened in Ekiti”. He nearly provoked me as he asked for my “honest opinion”. I retorted, “Had I ever given you a dishonest opinion.” He merely smiled in response, fixing his gaze on me nonetheless, prodding for an analysis of the chances of the two parties.

As I told quite a number of others who asked me a similar question, no two political situations are ever the same. The Ekiti election was mainly between Ayo Fayose and Kayode Fayemi. Osun’s will be fought by Rauf Aregbesola and Iyiola Omisore. It is my view that the days of strong adherence to political parties are gone. It was so with the parties of the First and Second Republic and, at least in the West, with the Alliance for Democracy in 1999.

The situation has since changed for reasons beyond the scope of this space.

Although Ekiti and Osun are neighbouring states, the sociological make-up are quite different. Osun is certainly more diverse than Ekiti and it is therefore easier to mobilise the Ekiti with one slogan than it would be in Osun.

Then, the candidates. Omisore is not quite a Fayose.

Attempting to ape the Ekiti political warlord merely made the Ife man look pathetic. It was so unnatural. It would be more difficult for any man to mount the soap box in Ilesa hoping to win over the Ijesa with two ears of roast corn in his hands than it was for Fayose. There are issues, too. Who killed Bola Ige is an issue in Ijesa land that shares the same senatorial district with Ile-Ife. Mr. Omisore flaunts some credentials. He had been a deputy governor in the state. It does not matter if it remains a subject of dispute whether he was impeached or resigned.

He later went to the Senate and could claim some “distinguished” representation on account of serving as chairman of the Appropriation Committee.

Like Fayose, he has access to the hugely important federal might and budget. The federal government controls the security apparatus and the electoral commission itself is a federal executive body. Money cannot be a problem.

The federal government and the party in control are desperate to root out the opposition from the West with a view to boosting its chances at the polls next year.

However, Aregbesola is an unconventional politician, a doughty fighter and a a tested tactician. In the short period of his involvement in Osun’s political milieu, he has shown such dexterity that is uncommon. In 2011, he was the only governor who could rouse his people to vote for a weak Action Congress of Nigeria presidential platform, in addition to winning all the federal and state legislative seats. The scheme had failed even in Lagos State. He is a politician and has campaigned so vigorously that nothing was left to chance.

In terms of campaign style, he stood head and shoulders above the PDP candidate. In performance, he has enough to show and, in terms of perception, he is believed to have provided the now famous or infamous stomach infrastructure. The emergence of Mr. Omisore hurt even his party. Other aspirants are either out or are reluctantly trudging along. It could be asked, where are former Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola and his deputy, Erelu Olusola Obada today? Are they with Omisore? Has a new political factor emerged in Ede to rival pioneer Governor Adeleke? In Okuku, could the Oyinlola influence be dismissed? In Igbomina land, is Chief Akande no longer relevant?

In Ikire, Alhaji Fatai Akinbade would probably have been a factor had he won the ticket of a contending party.

But, in Osun, the Labour Party is not any stronger than it is in Ekiti. The party would be lucky to rake in as many votes as Hon. Bamidele.

The outlook appears bright for Aregbesola. The man knows that he carries a heavy burden- on his lean shoulders is laid the fortunes of the All Progressives Party in the march to 2015. If he wins, he brings the party back into reckoning and inflates an ego deflated by the results from Ekiti. But, should he lose, the PDP would once again have shown that its control of the national political machinery cannot be matched by any other party.

In a way, therefore, the Osun election is about the destiny of Nigeria. Those who believe that the PDP has failed Nigeria would be looking in the direction of APC to show that an alliance between the mainstream political forces of the far North and the West could save the country. Others would believe that a failure of the opposition in the region, following the installation of Labour PDP in Ondo and Fayose PDP in Ekiti signals a new national political equation.

If I were permitted a vote, my heart and head are agreed that Aregbesola is the true way to success and progress.

That opp ones railing a

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

POLITICS

Rivers 2015: I am an aspirant - Dagogo-Jack

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HERE are strong speculations and even poster evidence that you are in the gubernatorial race in Rivers State. Is this true?

For the records I was just as surprised to see those unsolicited posters as anyone else. Indeed, I had to put out a disclaimer of sorts to forestall anyone capitalising on the act for political mischief. I also want to say that it is perfectly possible for some enthusiastic well wishers to do this as this is fast becoming part of our culture in politics. And to your question, yes, I am an aspirant waiting to progress to being a candidate for the guber race. Now, don’t forget that I still have a job to which I am fully committed.

However, I can confirm to you that I am indeed an aspirant to the office of governor of Rivers State in the next election under the banner of the PDP. I was convinced to prepare for the race in order to enrich the field and provide both the political leadership and our party constituents in the state a wider range of qualified and capable options. You know the peculiarities of our state, being very strategic to the national economy.

Our party cannot afford to make unforced tactical mistakes ahead of the main elections which we stand a very good chance of winning landslide. Rivers State remains a PDP state at all levels. Rivers people are waiting adamantly to massively vote PDP in all the elections, especially the presidential and the gubernatorial races. Believe me: all current pretensions to the contrary are mere grandstanding and shall fizzle out in due course.

What are your core political interests?

As they say, no permanent enemies in politics but only permanent interests. Even at that, you will agree with me that the interests are bound to be shifting based on the circumstances of the moment. For me, the principal and paramount political interest I have into the foreseeable future is not to do or be involved in any activity knowingly or unknowingly which can pose even the remotest threat to the re-election of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in the 2015 presidential election. Every other political consideration must be fully subjected to this paramount goal.

Once all plans, choices and actions fully align with this goal, any secondary interest can queue behind this. I totally believe in this and I have no apologies on this.

What motivated you to come out?

Like I said, my first motivation is to enrich the field, knowing that over the years I have received the level and quality of preparation required for a high public office, duty post such as the governorship of our state. On a more personal level, I am motivated to offer a credible alternative to the regime of conflict, suspicion and exclusionbased politics which have dominated our political landscape for over a decade now. It will surprise many to learn that the Rivers State GDP is larger than that of Gabon or Senegal. We have what it takes to perform as a country, yet we live like beggars in the midst of plenty because we allow ourselves to be misgoverned and misled. By far, my strongest motivation is my personal conviction that our President sincerely desires to leave enduring developmental achievements especially in the Niger Delta region in order to fully resolve the restiveness in the region and this can only be successfully delivered when the states are governed by adequately prepared, humble and well committed transformational leaders who

Recently, there was controversy over the sponsor of some posters announcing the candidacy of Reynolds Beks Dagogo-Jack in the 2015 governorship race in Rivers State. While the Abonnema-born technocrat and the Chairman of Presidential Task Force on Power denied being behind the posters, he told Associate Editor, Sam Egburonu, in this interview that he is an aspirant in the forthcoming race although his ambition is secondary to the project of ensuring President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election. Excerpts

•Dagogo - Jack would work to earn the trust and followership of the people. I strongly believe that if we get development right in the states of Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Akwa Ibom and Cross Rivers we can create a momentum of economic opportunities which could cascade across the country with far reaching nationwide impact. In this sense therefore, I personally share the view that the decades of mismanagement of the economy of the oil bearing states has been not only a disservice to the people of the region but also to Nigeria as a whole. Don’t you wonder sometimes how, by some strange process we keep electing all sorts of desperately insecure people with largely unconcealed desire to use the office chiefly to acquire stupendous wealth just to overtake those who they consider previously ahead of them whilst doing everything they can to dismantle meritocracy and enthrone below-par mediocrity for their succession plan? I tell you, I am motivated to present myself as a committed agent of change who would see the state and our neighbours as a huge economic asset to be optimally exploited for the full benefit our people and Nigeria at large. The challenges shall be significant in view of decades of practicing wrong politics and to deliver this change shall require discipline, tenacity and exemplary leadership. It will require ability to set clear targets and secure the buy-in of critical stakeholders; it will require transparency and accountability in governance. It will require capacity to build consensus. It will require humility and a learning spirit.

From information available to us, the Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike, is also an aspirant and he has the state and PDP structures fully secured to his interest. So, how do you think you can compete fairly at the primaries under such a situation?

Yes, I have read and seen different groups filing out in newspapers and mini rallies either endorsing or calling

on Mr. Wike for the ticket. Indeed there is even news of the state PDP chairman openly canvassing for him. Yet, I have yet to hear him say he is running so it will be improper to speculate too widely. Be that as it may, I can only adduce that going by the current brand of politics which have failed to serve the people for decades, I will not be surprised if indeed it is restless political jobbers, incurable dependants and hangers-on who are piling the pressure on him for what they can corner for themselves now and in the future. For me, I believe all prospective candidates for governorship should fully respect the fact that political interests are both interconnected and hierarchical. By this I mean we must first design a winning model for the President’s reelection and avoid placing our interests ahead of his own thereby putting his victory prospects under any undue and unnecessary stresses in the state. As members of the same political family, which has the sitting President, we must be ready to make any sacrifice required for his reelection. Unless subsequent events indicate differently, I want to give all interested candidates, including Mr. Wike when he declares publicly, the maximum benefit of doubt on this.

Again, you know very well that the primaries are meant to be a family affair. I strongly believe that our party would conduct the primaries, produce a flag bearer and still remain united for the main election ahead.

Do you think rotation of key political offices should take precedence over the capacity of a candidate?

I do not think the two elements are mutually exclusive. We are 165 million people in Nigeria with around 5 million in the state. In the state, we have well known ethnic nationalities, which unfortunately denote our political groupings for now. I make bold to state that each of the groups are richly blessed with prepared and experienced leadership materials who most often get crowded out by the

more desperate power mongers in our midst. To suggest that we should at this vulnerable stage of our political evolution pretend we do not know that once a particular group gets elected into power, it can manipulate the dynamics to perpetrate its kind in office on the basis of a jaundiced “capacity and qualification” argument is to my mind self serving and deceitful. No group has the monopoly of capacity and experience. The compelling arguments in favour of rotating executive offices amongst the constituent groupings is well known; chief of which is equity, fairness and trust, which are the irreducible requirements for sustainable peace and development.

Now, if a group can’t trust others to govern over them, tell me what gives them the right to govern over others?

It’s as fundamental as that. A time shall come when we shall transcend such proclivities and collapse the ethnic boundaries into better integrated social classes which shall then predicate our political process. Until then let honesty and integrity prevail please.

In this context, how do you explain the unprecedented and unimaginable victory of Fayose against the incumbent, even in his own electoral ward?

The Fayose victory shall remain a political case study for some time in the annals of contemporary history, yet I see the twin elements of capacity and equity at play here. Without doubt the incumbent governor took far more for granted than he should. Not taking anything away from Fayose, he seemed to have resonated well with mood of the people. On one hand he enjoyed an overflow of emotional redress from the injustice of his forced displacement by the Obasanjo government. In politics as in real life, it’s very unhelpful to compare oranges with apples.

We have heard a lot of people say that you are a well respected technocrat and that you are really not a politician; can you take on Amaechi’s (APC) candidate as well as the Education Minister? Can you?

Again, I want to really avoid being presented as the minister’s bitter rival for whatever reasons, because I am not.

He is my younger brother. I have a lot of respect and admiration for him. He is a very strong politician and we both have a duty to work together and retain Rivers State as the PDP state it has always been. I repeat, it’s not so much about us as it is about our boss’s political calculations which guarantee a win-win for both of us who are the President’s aides. Talking of being a technocrat, I fail to see that as a liability in any way. Politics is a people and contact game which can be likened to football in its simplest form. An all defenders and no strikers line up can’t make a good team and vice versa. The potency of my candidacy is not anchored entirely on my skills, muscles and orientation, but its rather a coming together of several sociopolitical like minds and interests who share a common set of core values and have agreed to rally support behind a single point of leadership. The world is full of such examples where respected technocrats are invited to lead a change vanguard with the full support of the other forces to undertake phenomenal transformation of their nations especially in these times which need deep technocratic experience to navigate successfully in the global village. I am proud to associate myself

with such great minds, including our President and his Vice who have discharged themselves very creditably in the political arena yet both came into public service from the technocrat side of our larger society.

What are your strengths as a candidate?

I am a very credible alternative which can be used to change the destructive direction of our politics to make significant improvements in all socio-economic indices, including health, education, industry, employment, agribusiness, quality of life, etc. Of course, I have other strengths but it’s a bit too early in the game to let them out of the bag.

But what do you think are your weaknesses as a candidate, if I may ask?

I’m not quite sure what you want to know but maybe my not being as desperate as I have seen other candidates conduct themselves? Now, if I know of any more weaknesses you can bet I will keep them to myself and try to overcome them before they hurt me and my project.

What specific values will you bring to the process as the governor of Rivers State?

Strong and clear vision; discipline and robust work ethics; transparency and accountability; I shall do everything in my power to restore peace and security to the state and set the state on the path of irreversible growth into being the destination of first choice by investors and tourists during my tenure .

If you become the PDP flagbearer, how would you rate your chances against any APC candidate in Rivers State?

At this point in time, I have not the foggiest idea who the APC candidate would be? I told you Rivers State has no business with APC. I will always show respect to my opponent but I sincerely doubt it if the APC in Rivers State can boast of the kind of candidate line up from the PDP. What do you make of the recent court judgement secured by the state chapter of the PDP to ensure that only the current State Executive Council can conduct all political activities including primaries for the next four years?

I think it’s immature and uncalled for. Taking a careful look at the actions and the mind boggling judgement that followed, what one sees are: One, inordinate ambition and greed necessitating such a pre-emptive action designed to predicate the results before the exam. It will not work. Two, total lack of confidence in and unmerited disrespect of the national leadership of the party; Three, an attempt to sow the seeds of party crises which can make us vulnerable in the general election; I strongly believe that a full investigation is proper and appropriate disciplinary action should be meted out to all parties involved in the procurement of this obviously kangaroo judgement.

So, when will you declare formally?

For now I remain fully loyal and committed to the official duty I am assigned to. For now I remain an aspirant conducting needed consultations, conferences, engagements, organising, etc. I believe declaration is essentially a formal public event announcing my candidacy and entry into the race and must be done the right way. As soon as my team and I are ready, I promise you guys will be the first to know.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

POLITICS

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hat do you make of the huge turnout for the workshop after the poorly attended Ekiti workshop?

Well, I don’t want to say that Ekiti was a poorly attended workshop. Because we didn’t see the major contestants does not make the workshop poor. Election matter is more of participants at the grassroots and party affair. So, once you are able to get the leaders of the party in attendance, you have achieved the purpose. And like I said to you in Ekiti , my duty as convener is to make sure that I speak personally to the candidates, including the incumbents. I did so in Ekiti without exemption. I did so in Osun without exemption.

Like I said, the Ekiti one was that we had some slight misunderstanding, gap in communication between us and IPAC. Then this time around, after associating with us when we did the all-party summit, it clearly gave them an indication that we mean no harm. They now saw that it was in their own interest that we work hand in hand. The essence of the workshop is for the people. The absence of one is absolutely insignificant compared to the electorate that the workshop is supposed to guide. When you look at it from the perspective of oh, the governor did not come, the leading candidates did not come; but the fact is that the parties under which platform they are contesting are present to convey the message. The governorship candidate may suddenly have a call from a friend who is passing by, saying come and pick up some support.

For him, it is probably more important than coming to workshop to talk about violent-free election.

We thanked God that it went well.

In Ekiti you had a template, you did not allow the leaders of the party to speak, but here in Osun, party leaders were allowed to speak. What accounted for that? The leading party candidates were not here, and there were complains that they should have been around to hear what the participants in workshop said?

My colleague, Senator Fajinmi, the person who complained, I said distinguished senator, since you have the opportunity to speak, you would have told them that the problem you are having are these candidates, you don’t keep it to yourself.

Why you saw that party leaders were allowed to speak was that IPAC came with some party chairmen and we want to make sure that we enlist their support. There are about 20 candidates, we want to ensure that the elections go smoothly, peacefully and free and fair.

Do you think what you have done today will ensure a free and fair election. The PDP deputy governorship candidate was going to expose something, he made mention of some persons called state boys, but he was not allowed to finish, those state boys from what we heard are armed. Do you think these state boys lurking around the corner will not undermine the election?

The sensitisation workshop is not for me to check armed state boys.

I don’t have that capacity. The people who have the capacity have been alerted. I read about it last week that they have made a formal complaint to the IG. And I am sure that the State Security Service is also aware. And they will know the best thing to do in such a matter. I think that is their duty. I have done my own duty.

There is supposed to be harmony to promote a peaceful atmosphere for a free and fair election.

These series of workshops, on the face value appear to aide peaceful election where they were held. In Ekiti the election was peaceful but the APC complained of scientific rigging before the election?

•Obi

‘Osun: Tension will drop as campaigns wind down’ Special Adviser to the President on Inter-Party Affairs, Senator Ben Obi, the convener of the Osun State Stakeholders Sensitisation Workshop on 2014 Governorship Election, spoke to select journalists in Osogbo on what he observed in the forthcoming election and other issues. Associate Editor, Sam Egburonu, was there and reports After many years of being in this game, it is difficult to flog a child and tell the child not to cry. The rhythm of the cry will always be different from one child to another. One may be crying in Yoruba, Hausa or Igbo. There is nothing you do that a political party will not have reason to say this is why we lost this election. What I am trying to say here is that we are going through a process of re-engineering and at the end of the day we would come to the reality that we have to understand that the style that was adopted by Kayode Fayemi is probably a civilised and modern day approach, that when you lose an election and you are convinced, you congratulate the winner. Kayode is not a baby. Kayode is one of the best brains in this country. So, he must have given it a deep thought before he made his broadcast to the good people of the state. What follows thereafter is politics.

Some observers say that the presence of the military during the Ekiti State governorship election was the reason for the violence-free election in the state. Using that as a model, will it be right to say that using the military would be the solution to Nigeria’s election matters?

Well, there are places that are volatile and when you identify such places you need to beef up security to make sure you don’t allow people to disrupt the activities on ground. That will then guide and protect the votes of the people. Yes, some people have been complaining of heavy military presence on ground but the complaints are not that the military presence was used to promote party A or party B. When you notice areas that are volatile, then your duty will be to beef up the security. There are some other states where you don’t need to deploy the military because they are not volatile as others.

If we adopt that as a pattern, during the general election, if we have six to seven volatile states, what do we do?

There is what they call operational order within the security services. If they have made it an operational order, I am sure that they would have

gone back to the drawing board to see how they will be able to do virtually the same thing in 2015. You will look at the flash points across the country and that would help or guide you on how to deploy your men. What I am trying to say here is that you have to keep improving as time goes on. We have not arrived there yet. People were skeptical about INEC, particularly after the 2011 elections but Anambra was better last year, Ekiti was better last month. You could see the improvement after seven months. The lapses you noticed in Anambra were completely covered in Ekiti. When you try to make sure that you cover such lapses, it reduces the possibility of manipulation or intervention negatively.

I was speaking with someone and he said, Nigeria has not had it so bad like this before. Seven months to the 2015 general election, there are no known aspirants for the office of the president apart from Sam Nda-Isaiah that has declared. Someone was also saying that politicians are taking voters for granted. What does that portend?

I don’t agree with you. INEC has a time table and you have to follow the time table…Campaigning is different and signifying your intention is another thing.

But you have to follow the time table. If somebody wants to run and he is consulting quietly, how would you know? I know of people who have interest. Running for presidential election is not a child’s affair. For you to go into the presidential race you have to consult to be sure of what and what is on the ground. You have to have a structure. APC thought it was easy but as you can see they are now facing their own internal wrangling. If they don’t sort that out now before going to talk about, who will fly the flag of the party, your guess is as good as mine. Even in the PDP, we are doing some reconciliations. As you can see, the National Chairman, who people refer to as the game changer is moving around and he has brought some innovations, which are making the party come alive by trying to make sure that he reaches out. Fortunately for him, he has been a governor and most of these problems

emanate from governors that want you to do this or that. But at the end of the day they are leaders of their various states. So, they have found their equal match and colleague Ahmed Muazu. So, it makes things much easier.

From what you saw today in Oshogbo may you predict the outcome of the Osun Governorship Election.

People are saying that the principal actors are heating up the system. Besides, we know the history of Osun as another hotbed of political violence in the South-West zone, the core area of the historic Wild Wild West?

Well, history may have placed them in a position to do what they did then but nobody wants to leave a negative history for perpetuity. I think the same history will want to place them in a different page and chapter today. I don’t think they want to go out and put flames all over the state. I don’t think they want to do that. All the people that spoke at the workshop spoke in favour of peaceful and violence-free election. But again, until the campaigns wind down, this temperature will remain high. The candidates themselves, all of them are big boys in the political terrain; they are very senior players in the terrain. That is how it is but believe you me, I think the temperature will drop as the campaigns wind down. I am not a Soothsayer but I believe it would be so. Even the necessary agencies are doing their best to ensure that nothing goes wrong.

At the Ekiti workshop, the Commissioner of Police was there but here in Osun the commissioner did not come....

Again, you cannot stop them from going to perform the functions they need to perform. We have gone to some states where the commissioner will send representatives in mufti to at least hear what the candidates have to say.

But for the direct attack on the Commissioner of Police in Ekiti by Ayo Fayose, which made the Chairman of the event to invite the Commissioner of Police to react, we do not really invite them to come and address the audience at the sensitisation workshops.

They face their duties and do their jobs.

25

One of the recommendations of the National Conference was the creation of 18 additional states. But there are mixed reactions. Some are arguing that most of the existing states are not viable. What is your take on this issue?

My take is that all the recommendations will still go to the National Assembly. So, I am not in a hurry to talk about the recommendations. It is one thing to make recommendations, it is another to get them accomplished. So, since the recommendations will still go to the National Assembly, there is still an opportunity to know if the recommended states are viable or not. My response therefore is that you don’t cross the bridge until you get there.

Some people have expressed fears on the way the National Conference ended without reaching agreement on some sensitive issues and thereby referring them back to the President. Also DSP Alamieyesiegha had complained that his people are threatened by serious environmental degradations. Some say these kinds of disagreements, threats and complaints heighten the fear of possible split in the near future. What do you think?

Nobody wants Nigeria to split because they know that the strength of this country is her size and unity.

So, I don’t think there is anything wrong with the decision to end the National Conference the way it ended. The president has set up a small technical committee to cross the ‘T’s’ and dot the ‘I’s, so to say.

I can assure you that nobody wants this country to split.

Even from the confab, you see how they handled issues. DSP may convey the message of his people.

They will listen to him and they will look at it. DSP is also a leader of his zone by any stretch of imagination.

He is also a leader of his people. At the appropriate time, there are other leaders that will sit together and be able to say, are we doing the right thing and if we are not, let us do the right thing, or approach other zones and say this is what we want. It’s give and take. Whatever we do, we need to reach some level of understanding. Take the case of state creation. Before they went to the issue of state creation for all, all of them agreed on that of the South-East and said its a clear case of injustice, so, they all agreed on creation of additional state for the zone first.

So long as we know, nothing concrete has been done since our girls were abducted at Chibok even with the aid of the international community. What is the situation?

We are talking about a very delicate assignment. Even the international community sees it as such. The intention of every one of us is to rescue the abducted girls alive. So even when you have information of the exact location of where the girls are kept, you don’t intend to storm it because, what they will do is to use them as shield. And what becomes the end of the whole exercise? So, it is a very delicate assignment that requires a lot of experience and a lot of tact to subdue and overcome the terrorists. It is painful that we are talking about all these days after the abduction, but we want these girls back safe and that is what the president has been concerned about, having regular meetings with the service chiefs and security agencies again and again. It is not an easy task because of that peculiar nature of the assignment. There is no magic to it than to be very careful, very tactful in approaching it. So far, the reports have been indicating the possibility that they would be rescued sooner than later. I believe that this matter is very sensitive and once we talk about it, we have to also remember that their parents are there. Anytime we raise this matter, we also raise their feelings one way or the other. So we have to be very careful and continue to pray.

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Raging battle over revenue sharing formula Page 58, 59

‘I allow employees take the lead’

Cataloguing NEXIM Bank’s achievements • Okonjo-Iweala

Page 60

Page 62

•Ademosu

World Bank, others okay $638m for water, sanitation

T

HE World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB), French Development Agency (FDA), and Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA), have said it will support Nigeria with $638million new financial commitment to boost water supply and sanitation in the country.

The Country Directors of each of the donor agencies announced the new financial commitment in Abuja during a two day workshop with the theme: "Strengthening the Implementation of Urban Water Sector Reform in Nigeria."

The World Bank Country Director, Marie Francoise

• As minister charges states on collaborative effort From Frank Ikpefan, Abuja Marie-Nelly disclosed that the bank had provided a support bank financing of $250million for the third phase of water sector reform in Bauchi, Rivers, Ekiti, and Cross River state.

She said the lack of access to water and sanitation in Nigeria was not acceptable, adding that women spend months looking for safe drinking water.

The Deputy Country Director AfDB, Mrs. Babara Barungi said the bank was providing a finance facility of $205million to boost water

supply and sanitation in Rivers State, adding that the bank have Invested $760million in the sector since 1986.

She called for improved financial management in states where the projects are located.

The French Development Agency (AFD) Country Director, Hubert Dogin said the agency will assist Ogun State with $33million in its Urban Water Reform Project.

He said the funds will assist the World Bank investment in its third phase programme to increase access to water, sanitation.

The JICA country Director, Seki Tetsuo said the Agency is

approving $150million on development of water facilities.

He said JICA was working towards building capacities of State Water Board Agencies to improve the provision of utilities to consumers.

In her response, the Minister of Water Resources, Mrs. Sarah Ochekpe said despite the intervention of the donor agencies, the states were not doing well in implementing the urban water sector reform.

She urged governors of benefiting states to give support and create enabling environment for the project to thrive.

•From left:Chief Olu Akinkugbe, his wife Janet, Founder/CEO, Centre For Values In Leadership (CVL), Prof. Pat Utomi and Chief Philips Asiodu, during the 13th CVL Leader Without Title in honour of Chief Akinkungbe on his 85th birthday in Lagos... recently.

PHOTO: MUYIWA HASSAN

Stanbic IBTC Bank secures $100m facility for us this facility which is N ITS bid to support the SME, energy financing granting devoted to the funding of SMEs, economic growth and

I

development of the country, Stanbic IBTC Bank has received a USD100 million Line of Credit (LOC) from the African Development Bank (AfDB) for on-lending to small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) operating in various sectors of the Nigerian economy.

It was gathered that part of the fund will also be applied to the financing of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in Nigeria, in line with the requirements of the Clean Technology Fund

(CTF).

According to information made available to The Nation of the total amount, Stanbic IBTC Bank will fund SME projects in Nigeria with USD75 million, while USD25 million will be used for the funding of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. Stanbic IBTC Bank is the first Nigerian bank to receive CTF's approval.

Speaking, the Chief Executive of Stanbic IBTC Bank, Mr. YinkaSanni, said that the bank will continue to partner with reputable institutions to

create avenues for growth and development of the Nigerian economy. "We will continue to explore various channels of credit to empower small and medium-sized businesses. We recognise that the SME and energy sectors form an integral part of the Nigerian economy as a whole. As a result, we will remain at the forefront to empower our clients and help them achieve their business goals," he added.

"We appreciate the trust bestowed upon us by the African Development Bank in

energy and energy efficiency projects in Nigeria," Sanni noted.

The USD100 million LOC to Stanbic IBTC Bank was approved by AfDB's board of directors on Wednesday, 26 March 2014 and April 13th 2014 in Tunis. In approving the LOC, the board of directors emphasised that the SME sector represents a strategic pillar for Nigeria's quest to modernise and improve its economy. The AfDB highlighted financial inclusion as part of CBN's drive to diversify the Nigerian economy.

ECOWAS empowers parliamentarians on value for money

By Adeola Ogunlade

I

N its quest to ensure sustainable socio-economic development in the region, the Economic Community of West Africa State (ECOWAS) organised a two-day capacity building workshop for parliamentarians in member countries.

The event which held in Lagos, had international donor agencies, no-state actors among other stakeholders in attendance.

Tagged: 'Value For Money (VFM), it featured on accountability and sustainability in the social sectors, interface and discussions, plenary session to mention just a few.

Justifying the need for the workshop, the ECOWAS Secretary General, Cheikh Abdel Kader Dansoko, ECOWAS Parliament representative, Jacob AmutaOnogwu, at separate discussion said that the objective of the forum was to among other things remove the bottlenecks and constrains militating against effective use of resources in member countries.

The objective of the forum, they contended aligns with the ECOWAS Parliament's 2011-2015 strategic plan.

According to the duo, since 2008, after the global recession in most developed countries, and the attendant rippled effect of the recession took its toll on many developing countries especially in Africa which depend largely of aids and donor from the west, thus, there was a need for a paradigm shift in order to ensure socio-economic and sustainable development in the region.

Shedding more light on what informed the initiative, Onogwu said it is also "The commitment of the African Development Bank to improve governance and accountability in social spending and hence, to an improvement in the living standards of the people of Africa."

Continuing, Onogwu said despite progress in human development indicators, as well as forthcoming funding in recent years, it is disheartening to note that "increased spending for health and education alone does not automatically produce positive outcomes. Rather, ensuring efficiency of the investments, and understanding the issues that affect the transformation of inputs into concrete development outcomes and implementing wellarticulated strategies is what can improve the situation."

He however, suggested that ECOWAS Parliament and AfDB should explore further "the possibilities of partnering in implementing capacity-building programmes on value for money for ministries, parliamentarians and civil society organisations."

He recalled that "parliaments also have the power of the purse and the mandate to scrutinize the utilization of public finances and ensure financial accountability."

Echoing similar sentiments, the Director, African Development Bank Group, Mr. Dore Ousmare urged legislators to reflect on priority sectors and takes actions so that governments direct to them the appropriate resources. The ultimate objectives being to get value for the money spent.

‘How insurance can curb terrorism’ From Nduka Chiejina (Assistant Editor), Abuja

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UK based lawyer and management consultant has said that the current state of terrorism in the country could have been curtailed, if only Nigeria has a robust and fitfor-purpose insurance industry.

Kachi Okezie, told journalists in Abuja that in advanced societies, the insurance industry is a major deterrent to negligence by both public authorities and the general public.

According to him, "the insurance industry is well known for its powerful lobbies all over the world. In the UK, the industry has forced non-performing police chiefs from office for failing to curb rising crimes such as burglary which hurt the industry's finances the most."

"Aside of individual cover," Okezie explained that, "the government's own responsibility is captured in the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (2001) administered by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority under which compensation is payable to anyone (regardless of their nationality) who has sustained a criminal injury on or after August 1 1964."

He defined 'criminal injury' as being "one or more 'personal injuries' directly attributable to a crime of violence" and includes both physical and mental injuries.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

BUSINESS

T is anybody's guess why revenue sharing by states of the federation has remained a very hotly debated issue.

Reason: it's all about politics of money: who gets what, when and how.

Crux of the matter The battle for equitable revenue sharing formula has remained a recurring decimal as state governments from resource rich-states, especially oil producing states, have continued to raise their voice above the din as to why they should get the huge chunk of the pie considering the fact that they are the major revenue earner for the country.

Interestingly, some of the states in the Niger Delta region became favoured in the scheme of things as the Federal Government succumbed to the agitation for a better deal.

But then, this led to more agitations by other regions, especially the north, with cries of marginalisation everywhere.

The contentious revenue sharing formula The contentious revenue sharing formula and derivation principle remain one thorny issue that has remained unresolved.

Expectedly, the same controversy reared its ugly head recently at the National Conference in Abuja, with splinter groups emerging at different camps.

Observers say that the deadlock tends to reinforce the widespread notion that the country's leaders are more interested in sharing the national cake than in baking the cake.

The recommendation that pitched the country's geopolitical zones against each other was the increase of derivation percentage, payable to mineral producing states and the stabilisation, rehabilitation and reconstruction fund, proposed for areas affected by terrorism and insurgency.

To tackle the ensuing crisis situation, the Conference's Chairman, Justice Idris Kutigi, summoned a meeting of the chairmen of the 20 standing committees and their deputies.

Yet, the delegates failed to conclude voting on the recommendations of the Devolution of Power Committee, led by former Gov. Victor Attah of Akwa Ibom and former Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Coomasie; following sharp disagreements between delegates from the northern and southern parts of the country.

To resolve the stalemate, a committee was set up and the committee recommended the increase of the derivation percentage from 13 per cent to 18 per cent.

The committee also proposed that 50 per cent of the proceeds from the 18-per-cent derivation must go directly to communities where the mineral resources are extracted.

The committee, headed by Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, also recommended the establishment of a National Intervention Fund, which shall be five per cent of the annual revenue of the Federal Government, for the stabilisation, rehabilitation and reconstruction of areas affected by terrorism and insurgency.

The fund would be used for the North-East, in the first instance, and other parts of the country eventually.

Three out of the 37 members of the elders' committee did not endorse the report.

Raging battle over revenue sharing formula To pundits, the revenue sharing formula remains a hotly debated issue as opinions are divided that many states of the federation are being shortchanged by the system in the disbursement of the national cake. Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf with agency reports examine the thorny issue

•Nigerian currency

Delegates from South-South, South-East and South-West geopolitical zones kicked against the intervention fund, insisting that ``if there must be a fund of that nature; it must be set up for the entire country and not for a section of the country or the North alone.''

Coomasie, a member of the Elders' Committee, said that the committee failed to reach a consensus on the issue. ``I am one of the delegates from the North involved in the discussion on derivation, and I want to say that we had discussions which ended in a stalemate,'' he added.

However, Chief Olu Falae, a member of the committee, said that the committee reached a consensus, while Chief Raymond Dokpesi, another member of the

committee concurred, saying that the recommendations were agreed upon on principle.

He said that the bone of contention was whether the committee should include the North-West and North-Central geopolitical zones in the areas affected by the insurgency. ``All the Southern leaders, North-Central leaders made sacrifices, but there are some people who never wanted this conference to succeed and these people were the ones shouting today," Dokpesi said.

The impasse was not resolved on Monday, Feb. 14, when the delegates resumed plenary, compelling the conference to recommend that ``government should set up a technical committee to determine

appropriate percentages on the three issues and advise government accordingly."

There were, however, mixed reactions about the inability of the national conference to resolve the issue of revenue sharing via consensus.

Senator Anietie Okon, a delegate from Akwa Ibom, said: ``We are merely postponing what will come to pass. There is no question about the fact that we are in fiscal federalism and the basic principles of fiscal federalism are that there will be resource ownership and that attribution will be to those states which own the resources. ``We have a reverse arrangement of federalism here; states own the resources but the Federal Government collects

revenue on their behalf and begins to allocate funds. ``We have a situation where a lot of states don't contribute anything to the Federation Account. Now, what we are trying to do is to engineer a situation where revenue contribution to the national treasury will be widespread.''

On his part, Chief Sola Ebiseni, a delegate from Ondo State, faulted the decision of the conference to refer decision on the matter to the government, saying that it shirked its responsibility. ``As far as I am concerned, there was no decision taken today.

What we did today was simply to abdicate our responsibility by throwing the issue back at Mr President, who sent us here to assist in proffering solutions to

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

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ActionAid launches community sponsorship

By Joe Agbro Jr.

C

HARGING the need to be one's brothers' keeper, ActionAid Nigeria, a non-governmental organisation, poised to end poverty and social injustice, has embarked on it latest fundraising strategy tagged 'Take Action, End Poverty.'

The launch of a community sponsorship effort, which is to raise funds locally for development of communities in dire need, took place in Lagos on Thursday.

According to the ActionAid Nigeria Country Director, Dr. Hussain Abdu, there is enough resources to go around everyone but not enough for everyone's greed.

"Many Nigerians want to give to help," he said. "In fact, they are already giving one way or the other. But with this community sponsorship, you can see the schools, boreholes, scholarships, and hospitals which your money is helping to build."

The community sponsorship targets middle income earners in Nigeria to subscribe for a minimum monthly donation of two thousand naira or three thousand naira. Interested donors can access www.actionaid.org/ nigeria for more information on how to donate.

The event had in attendance ActionAid ambassadors and Nollywood actresses, Hilda Dokubo and Dakore Egbuson, people from civil society, business, as well as the press.

ActionAid Nigeria began operations in Nigeria in January 2000 and has so far impacted on 205 rural communities.

•President Goodluck Jonathan

some of our national challenges. ``What we fully failed to appreciate about what a national conference is that it is an extraconstitutional assembly of the people convened to critically examine all the issues that were pushed to us in a federation like ours, where we have to constantly review the terms of our national engagement as a country. ``We now come to the tail end of considering a critical issue and then, we say we couldn't take a decision and push it back to the President. That is a crafty way of maintaining the status quo and refusing to talk about it,'' Ebiseni added.

Analysts say that the derivation principle has always been a thorny issue in the country, describing the recent development at the National Conference as a mere replication of what happened at the 1995 Constitutional Conference.

The current 13 per cent derivation for oil producing communities was agreed upon at the 1995 Constitution Conference, after a heated debate and threats from the mineral producing areas.

All the same, concerned citizens advise state governments to exploit other sources of revenue, instead of depending solely on monthly allocations from the Federation Account for their survival.

They insist that the current bickering at the National Conference would have been minimised if the states have been able to boost their internal revenue generation sources.

Commenting on the impasse at the National Conference, Mr Issa Aremu, the Vice-President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), urged the delegates to refrain from taking hard-line positions on the country's revenue sharing formula.

Aremu, who is also a delegate, said that the impasse could have been avoided if the delegates allowed patriotism to replace parochial sentiments, while allowing national solidarity and cooperation for development to supersede unhealthy competition. ``Delegates must look beyond the divisive revenue sharing formula to arrive at all-inclusive revenue growing/production formulae. ``The truth of the matter is that we must grow this economy before

•Elias-Mbam

revenue can be shared. ``Oil and gas, which constitute the base of the derivation principle, is weak due to oil theft and relatively low exploration. ``The challenge for delegates, including myself, therefore, lies in not just sharing what is not enough, but in growing what will be enough to build prosperity for our people. ``We must complement distributive approach with production component to fiscal federalism," he noted.

Diversification as an option Apparently piqued by the rigmarole over the appropriate revenue sharing formula, Chief Elias Mbam, the Chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), emphasised the need for all the states to reduce their dependence on monthly allocations from the Federation Account.

Mbam, who spoke at a zonal workshop organised by RMAFC on ``Economic Diversification and Enhanced Revenue Generation for the South-South Zone'' in Asaba in 2012, also underscored the need for Nigeria to reduce its over-dependence on oil revenue.

He stressed that the goals of development programmes such as the Vision 20-2020 and the Transformation Agenda of the Federal Government could only be attained via the adoption of effective economic diversification strategies which could provide steady, sustainable sources of revenue.

He, nonetheless, urged the three tiers of government and the private sector to make pragmatic efforts to exploit the vast natural resources which abound in all parts of the country.

He also noted that tangible emphasis should be placed on the development of the agriculture, manufacturing, solid minerals and tourism sectors, stressing that the sectors held the key to Nigeria's economic prosperity.

Besides, Mbam stressed that challenges facing the country such as poverty, unemployment and insecurity, could be effectively tackled via the diversification of the economy to expand access to extra resources for the development of basic infrastructure and provision of vital social services.

Experts therefore urge the federal, state and local governments to adopt sound

economic proposals, particularly those that would enable them to diversify their revenue sources and depend less on monthly allocations from the Federation Account.

Recipe for a vibrant revenue portfolio At a public forum in Uyo, Akwa Ibom state capital, recently, Dr. Casimir Anyawu, a Commissioner at the Revenue Mobilisation and Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) noted that "The nation's hope to become an economic super power come 2020 will continue to be a pipe dream if infrastructural inadequacies are not urgently addressed. A Marshall Plan must immediately be designed for power, water, roads, railway etc. The problem of the "Generator Cartel" must be squarely addressed. A ban on further importation of gen sets must be explored, if in the national interest. Leakages and wastages in current tax revenue collections must be plugged."

The RMAFC, he stressed, "must pay closer attention to the operations of the FIRS and the Department of the Customs. The law requires that this be done.

Revisit the policy on the Ban on some Used Products and make the initiative work in the national interest towards increasing the revenue base. The policy on revenue generated by MDAs is woeful. It needs total re-examination. The current model is prone to sharp and corrupt practices.

"RMAFC must come to the rescue of LGAs from the stranglehold of State Governments. Rural Nigeria cannot develop to the extent that allocations meant for that purpose are high jacked by State Governments. We must return to basics. There is urgent need for a Marshall Plan for Agriculture, Solid Minerals, Manufacturing and Tourism.

"Nigeria must learn from the Asian Tigers. The key to their success is massive investment in Education, Science and Technology. We must get our priorities right. Inconsistency in policy formulation and lack of continuity of programmes have resulted in undue waste of our national wealth.

Policy summersaults should be kept to a minimum."

• From left: Registrar/Chief Executive, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) Mr. Rotimi Omotoso, Country Senior Partner, PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Mr. Uyi Akpata and ICAN President, Mr. Chidi Ajaegbu during a courtesy visit by ICAN to the headquarters of PriceWaterHouseCoopers,Victoria Island, Lagos…recently

Consumers want SON returned to Ports

S

OME consumers over the weekend in Abuja called on the Federal Government to return the Standards Organisations of Nigeria (SON) to the ports.

They told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the increase in substandard products in the market had made the return of SON operatives imperative at the entry points.

They said the presence of SON was needed at those points to complement the duties of the other security and regulation agencies.

Chief Omeya Okoh said the nation’s markets would continued to be inundated with fake and substandard products ``because of weak restrictive measures at the sea and air ports”.

According to him, the withdrawal of SON from the ports is inimical to the fight against substandard goods. ``It is better to stop those products at the point of entry than deploying measures to find them after they have entered into the market. ``The current effort of SON at curbing substandard product is, to best of my knowledge, not effective because our markets are flooded with fake goods. ``I call on the Federal Government to return SON to the borders and ports in order to reduce this menace,’’ he said.

Mr Patrick Aturu said all agencies responsible for discouraging smuggling and illegal trade must be empowered to perform their duties more effectively. ``SON has done very well in the past while they were properly deployed.

Their withdrawal from those points should be reversed.”

• From left: Customer Relation Executive, MTN, Ugonwa Nwoye, Director, MTN Foundation, Dennis Okoro, Executive Secretary, MTN Foundation and MTN Ambassador, Praiz at the 7th MTNF Muson Music Scholar’s Graduation Concert in Lagos ... recently.

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P

RIOR to the reconstitution of the Board of Directors of the Nigerian Export-Import Bank on14th August, 2009, the bank was at its lowest ebb. It experienced a decline in risk assets.

The bank's total loan portfolio as at 20th August, 2009 was N14.6b out of which 72% was non-performing. Within that category, N10.03b or 69.05% was classified lost. This led to the bank's income decline with the called-up capital standing at N32.74b, depletion of its shareholders' funds, significant decrease in income and tolerance of excess and escalating overheads, worsening assets quality and poor record keeping, lack of strategic focus, ineffective risk management framework, nonadherence to corporate governance tenets, and overbloated staff strength.

The new board under Mr. Roberts Orya initiated plans to enable the bank to contribute significantly to Nigeria's economy. The board, in 2010, undertook a corporate transformation exercise on strategy, risk management and corporate governance, financial performance, operations, organisation and people, with assistance from KPMG Professional Services. The corporate transformation project tagged Project Spring led to the re-definition of the bank's mission, vision and objectives, to channel its resources into the development of manufacturing, agroprocessing, solid minerals and services which have high employment and foreign exchange earning potential aimed at becoming a major contributor to non-oil exports, build a world-class institution which imbibes best-in-class corporate governance and risk management practices, become a relevant player in the export market, build a profitable institution with a robust balance sheet size, and improved workforce.

There were also a five-year strategic plan with clearly defined market penetration action plans, robust corporate governance and risk management architecture/ frameworks to improve visibility and project the bank's image.

They encompassed organising action-wide key performance indices and scorecards to enhance monitoring of the bank's operations and its shareholders; redesign policies to ensure efficiency; initiate ITtransformation project; reduce redundancies and ensure adequate controls.

The bank currently complements commercial banks and other development financial institutions by focusing on unserved markets S part of its corporate social responsibility, Access Bank has been leading in efforts at salvaging the Nigerian health sector in recent times.

It has particularly shown tremendous commitment to supporting the fight against malaria and other scourges that plague Nigerians and Africans at large by demonstrating its willingness in partnering nongovernmental organisations and private institutions to advance its corporate social responsibilities.

Speaking about one of its major sponsorship contributions to the 2014 GBCHealth/CAMA Annual

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

BUSINESS

Cataloguing NEXIM Bank’s achievements

By Chas Uju

globally. It also adopted an optimal operating model with a robust structure and structured market-facing departments along the key target sectors of manufacturing, agro-processing, solid minerals and services.

NEXIM also adopted a performance-driven organisational culture which has led to strong shareholders' support through fresh capital injection, as well as institutional support through supervisory and regulatory oversight and guidance from the CBN and Federal Ministry of Finance.

This increased the bank's capacity to support the growth of the non-oil exports and complement the export credit support of commercial banks.

Within sixteen months, the bank became profit-making with an impressive performance in 2010, with an audited profit of N189.00m as against the loss of N5.460b incurred in 2009.

Since the inception of the bank in 1991, this is the first time it made profit consistently from 2010 to 2013 and declared dividends for the CBN and Federal Ministry of Finance Incorporated.

Nexim, via its operational interventions, generated direct jobs of 24,139 as at May 2014, plus indirect jobs. It has also, between August 2009 and May 2014, generated foreign exchange earnings of US$325.25m annually. The management has maintained appreciable returns on equity investment of its shareholders.

A dividend for the 2010 financial year performance was declared and paid, which was the first time since 2003.

Dividend for 2011 has also been declared and paid, while that of 2012 is in the process.

The bank also achieved a cumulative loan recovery of N1.96b. To sustain it, a remedial management department was created.

The ratio of NPL as reduced from 72% in August 2009 to 14.95% as at April 2014. The management also initiated Enterprise Risk Management Framework to take care of all risk-related issues. It includes all aspects of the risk buckets, including environmental and social risk. A loan monitoring unit was also created to maintain a healthy loan book.

The success story abound.

Awareness has been created on the bank's objectives, products and services. The improvement

•Okonjo-Iweala in corporate performance and market standing globally led to its being adjudged as one of the leading development finance institutions in Africa in 2013 by the Association of African Development Finance Institutions based in Abidjan.

In human resources, the bank engaged skilled and motivated personnel such as chief risk officer, internal auditor, head remedial management, head strategic planning and head, corporate communications.

To ensure sustainability of its success, the bank reestablished partnerships with other export credit agencies and multilateral financial institutions towards attracting/ availing concessionary lines of credits. Thus, over $80m has been attracted as investment by way of commercial lines of credit from the African ExportImport Bank (Afrexim), Exim India and ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID).

To enhance access to credit by the SMEs, Nexim obtained an approval for a loan of US$200m from the African Development Bank, backed by the sovereign guarantee of the federal government. The bank also has strong transactional relationships with the United States Export-Import Bank (US

EXIM), the Guarantee Fund for Private Investments in West Africa (GARI Fund) and the Africa Biofuels and Renewable Energy Company (ABREC), while it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa.

NEXIM also has credit insurance agency collaboration with the Islamic Corporation for Insurance of Investment and Export Credits, a division of the Islamic Development Bank.

Sequel to an application by the Federal Ministry of Finance on behalf of the federal government, and subsequent presentation by NEXIM in November, 2013, the bank was admitted into OECD in observer status. OECD is a multilateral development organisation based in Paris.

Membership of the organisation integrates Nigeria's financial sector into the global financial system. The bank also partners the Borderless Alliance, a private sector-led partnership in collaboration with USAID/ West African Trade Hub and other stakeholders, to promote regional integration and seamless trade in West Africa by addressing the problem of non-tariff barriers through policy advocacy. The alliance

operates a border information centre, which provides pertinent information to assist exporters and also acts as a collation centre for trade data to support evidence-based research and policy advocacy.

It has continued to support the transformation agenda of the federal government such as the production of the ECOWAS Trade Support Facility to improve the current trade level of less than 12% and deepening the volume of recorded/formal trade within the sub-region, and to foster the implementation of the government's trade policy and regional integration policies like the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme. Other goals of the ETSF are to facilitate formal trade within the ECOWAS sub-region, deepen intra-regional payment system, increase Nigeria's trade flows within ECOWAS, broaden trade and market access for Nigerian goods and services.

Nexim supported the entertainment industry through funding intervention with lending commitments of about N1b in the industry's various value chains in the last three years.

The intervention is to address issues regarding the establishment of credible structures, attract investment in the development of content and facilitate improvement in production standards, distribution, marketing and exhibition standards. In the built industry, the bank commissioned EXIM India to undertake a study to review the industry and recommend best financing programmes in line with global best practices. It also sponsored capacity building programmes and film festivals such as Zuma Film Festival, BOBTV African Film and TV Programmes Expo, Eko International Film Festival, Nigeria Music Video Awards, Nigerian Copyright Commission's Stakeholders' Forum on Review of the Copyright Law. It also sponsored the Nigerian Pavilions at Cannes International Film Festival, France, in partnership with the Nigerian Film Corporation and DISCOP Africa, South Africa to showcase Nigeria's creative talent and attract investment capital and partnerships.

Nexim also collaborated with the Federal Ministry of Culture and National Orientation on the first National Policy Dialogue on the

Access Bank boosts healthcare From Nduka Chiejina, Assistant Editor, Abuja Technical Forum themed:"Capitalising on Competences: Partnering to Eliminate Malaria and Accelerate Impact on Maternal and Child Health", Group Managing Director/Chief Executive of the bank, Mr. Herbert Wigwe justified the need for big corporations to lend a helping hand in the fight against the disease in the society.

According to him:"The

fight against malaria is one that all should embrace, because a healthy society is beneficial to all. The decision to partner GBCHealth on this issue was not a difficult one. The bank is very passionate about its corporate social responsibility.

Thus we cannot close our doors to offers that aim to uplift the wellbeing of our host communities and Nigeria at large."

The bank had recently led massive efforts at attracting the needed financing from international partners towards

fixing the system, spearheading an initial campaign "gift from Africa" in 2010 " where it led several private sector institutions including Dangote to raise about $5 million to support the fight against HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.

Wigwe said:"Health financing in itself is critical to solving it from the private sector but also government support is also critical but there are other things that are just as critical to ensure we fight this issue of disease and health and

all of that which is around partnerships and the mode of implementation in terms of this crusade to make Africa a much better place."

The Access Bank boss also noted that all banking and investment efforts would actually be meaningless if the health of the people to whom products and services were being targeted at is in danger, stressing it is the responsibility of the banking industry to help restore the health system.

Also, Head, Development Banking, Access Bank, Mr.

Development of the Creative/ Entertainment Industries in Nigeria, British Council on Creative Industry Expo and Mapping of the Industry and also engaged in policy dialogues with development partners, relevant regulatory and statutory institutions in the entertainment value-chain on ways of improving industry structures on issues relating to access to finance, monetising intellectual property/ copyrights and risk mitigating instruments.

It also initiated the establishment of a transnational shipping company in collaboration with the organised private sector associations in West and Central Africa in partnership with the Federation of West African Chambers of Commerce and Industries and Transimex S. A Cameroun to mitigate current non-tariff barriers and high logistical costs that hinder intraregional trade and competitiveness of Nigerian manufactured exports regionally.

The Sealink Project is essentially a public private partnership initiative and the private placement for the raising of US$60million is currently going, with application list closing on 30th June, 2014, while the shipping company is expected to commence operations within the fourth quarter of this year.

The offer is being handled by FBN Capital, Nigeria (Issuing House) and SGI, Benin Republic.

The initiative is endorsed by the ECOWAS Commission with technical support by the African Development Bank, the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa, Maritime Organisation of West and Central Africa (MOWCA) and the Nigerian Shippers' Council, amongst others.

The bank's transformation has led to increase in the demand for its products and services, leading to huge amount of pipeline projects under processing. The bank, therefore, requires significant increase in its capital to perform more, considering the recent rebasing, which placed Nigeria as the largest economy in Africa with a GDP of $510bn. There is also need to provide the Seed Funds to enhance some of the bank's activities viz the Political Risk Fund to support its export credit insurance service; the Interstate Road Transit Scheme to mitigate non-tariff barriers in cargo movement by road transport within the ECOWAS region, and rediscounting and refinancing facility designed as an interbank window to liquefy the books of commercial banks, lower the cost of credit to exporters and boost the intervention of commercial banks to the export sector. • Uju, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Abuja Oluwatoyin Idowu said:"We believe in strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) and being one of the leading banks in the country we believe that we need to give back to the community and this is one of the things that we have been doing under our CSR. We have done a couple of things in the past and we will continue to do it. We partner with them (GBC Health) to ensure that the subject of discourse, which is eradication of malaria and maternal and child mortality is addressed."

The World Bank estimates about $4.5 billion is required to make quality health services accessible to Nigeria.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

Two years after Hesey Designs started making fashion apparels for women, its founder and Creative Director Eseoghene Ise Odiete, won the Enterprise Challenge, an initiative of the British Council, Virgin Atlantic, and Zenith Bank targeted at y o u n g entrepreneurs. In this online interview with Joe Agbro Jr., she revealsher beginnings and outlook for the future

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ONGRATULATIONS on being a winner of the Enterprise Challenge contest which over 1000 persons applied, what do you think stood you out to emerge as a winner?

There were five criteria they set: Market appeal, international appeal, Ingenuity, scalability, impact.

I believe my business met those criteria.

Richard Branson is a global entrepreneur and adventurer, how was the experience of meeting him like?

It was an awesome experience meeting and learning from Richard Branson; one that will change my life and business and take it to a whole new level.

Hearing from one of the greatest entrepreneurs and learning that those challenges I face are 'normal' and against all odds I will conquer.

I got to touch him so I tapped some entrepreneurial anointing from him.

'Giving up is not an option anymore'

• Odiete presenting shoes to Richard Branson, founder Virgin Group What was the motivation for starting your business?

I have always been intrigued by the fashion industry even as a child. As a skinny girl, one would expect that I will be a model. Well, I did enjoy the catwalks, but I wanted something more; I wanted to build a global fashion brand. So after my university degree, I decided to set up a fashion brand with a mission to promote Nigeria and Africa, so Hesey Designs was born. I passionately believe that trade is what Africa needs for development.

Why do you focus on creating only women's apparel?

And how much did you use to start it?

Well, I am a woman and I am more familiar with what we will love and what we will buy.

So I decided to stick to that.

Maybe later I can venture into the male apparel.

I started the business with my savings of about 10,000 naira. I produced a few bags, sold them and used the money gotten to produce more.

Being an entrepreneur is a fright for young Nigerians, what fears, if any did you have setting out in your business?

And how did you address it?

As a young entrepreneur, starting up was difficult. My first main issue was sourcing for fund. I had to make do with the little savings I had and grew from there. Also, getting the products out. I couldn't afford a store so I made use of the Internet. I sent emails to several fashion sites requesting that they feature my designs. I knew I had a great product but I needed to be known. So, many of them featured the product with my contact. A lot of people started contacting me requesting for the product.

Business management. I

started after the university and didn't have an idea of how to go about running a fashion label. So I read up a lot of articles and business management books from the Internet. Books and articles on how to start and run a fashion label especially with little funds.

How many employees do you have?

We currently have three full-time staff and two contract workers.

What are the challenges you confront in the course of your business?

My present challenges are getting adequate materials, dealing with craftsmen and shipping products internationally. It's very expensive sending our products to customers abroad. We are looking to work with a courier firm that can offer us great services at a fair price.

In fact different issues spring

PHOTO: British Council up daily and I try to address.

What is the toughest decision you've had to make?

Quitting my day job to focus on the business. It was a 'no going back' decision. I could not afford to fail again as I had nothing to fall back on. So it was a huge decision and also a motivation to succeed.

Before Hesey Designs, what were you doing?

I started Hesey designs in 2012. I had a day job in a media company and I juggled both.

Hesey started after my NYSC. Was there any time you thought of quitting?

So many times! I have cried several times; I have told myself to get a good paying job or marry a rich man “‘laughing” How was growing up like for you?

I am the last of five children, so I think I grew up pretty fast having so many older siblings.

My parents believed in

USAID, NEPC boost cashew industry

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FFORTS by the National Cashew Association of Nigeria (NCAN) to improve the fortunes of its members have received a major boost as the association is in talks with the USAID|NEXTT to strengthen its capacity to provide evidence-based advocacy and facilitate access to technical assistance for its membership.

Experts have identified low production yields, low value added, poor access to finance and high energy costs as some of the challenges facing the Nigerian cashew industry and this has constrained the sector from fulfilling its potential as one of the main sources of non-oil revenue for the country.

Nigeria is currently ranked as the sixth largest

cashew producer in the world, but studies show that it can quickly move to number two with the required support of key stakeholders.

NCAN is looking to develop the cashew value chain, improve crop yields through new plantings, introduce better farm management practices, efficient aggregation, storage & logistics as well as attract

new investments into processing of both the raw cashew nut and the cashew fruit. These interventions, the Association believes, would better harness the potential of the sector for development.

'Less than 20 percent of what is produced is being processed, which means that we are exporting our jobs. No wonder there is so much unemployment and

insecurity in Nigeria. The bane of the cashew sector, over the years, has been weak access to finance which has made the sector to grow inefficiently with resultant export of 80 percent of annual crop as RCN," the National President of the Association, Mr. Tola Faseru, said.

Mr. Faseru strongly believes that with appropriate incentives, the sector could

education so they did their best to give us good education. I have always been a smart child (*wink), I was always top in my class and I was the best graduation Art student from secondary school. I was sports prefect, a long distance runner.

I think all these experiences help me now as an entrepreneur.

What is your driving force?

My vision; I always keep the end in mind. I knew what I wanted to accomplish and nothing was going to stop me.

I knew things may not be the way I wanted it now, but things were sure getting better. At times when I felt bad and wanted to give up, I always remember why I started, looked at how far I have come and remember where am going. In two years, what many people considered a hobby has become my greatest gift so far.

I have grown a N10, 000 business idea to one that can support families, to one that has impacted over 40 women; to one that has been recognised by great women like IbukunAwosika. Bizwatchng named me one of 40 Nigerians entrepreneurs under 40. So when in doubt, I simply play all these images in my head and I realise that giving up is not an option anymore.

If you were start all over again, what would you do differently?

I would not be as experienced as I am now, so I guess I will do it the same way.

I don't think I would want to change anything.

What advice would you give up and coming Nigerian entrepreneurs?

The internet has provided you with all the resources you need to run a business. The government and corporate organisations are supporting small business with the necessary funds to take their businesses to another level. You don't have excuses not to succeed anymore. All you need now is the passion and determination to follow through.

You've won a £5,000 grant for your business, how do you intend to spend that money?

The cash will be invested into the business.

Where do you see Hesey Designs in the next two years?

I see Hesey Designs becoming an internationally recognised brand with outlets in at least two countries. I am looking to expand; increase sales, empower more people and get closer to our vision. easily increase annual export earnings fourfold from N25billion to N200 billion.

'Capital is one problem with farmers. Every other cash crop in Nigeria that is exported enjoys assistance from government, except cashew. Cashew, which is providing significant employment opportunities, has not been given as much attention as other cash crops,' Mr. Sotonye Anga, the spokeperson of the Association, said recently.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

All for 1914

In Because of 1914, Odia Ofeimun, renowned poet and writer, presents a society fused together by external forces, that today all indices of differences still stare the people in the face. Edozie Udeze who watched the premiere of the stage dance-drama, which is infused with poetry and music, reports that the issues involved in the 1914 amalgamation of Nigeria will never peter out so long as all the socio-political, religious and economic dichotomies embedded in the system persist

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ITH poetry, dance and drama, Odia Ofeimun’s latest offering, Because of 1914, which was premiered at the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos, last weekend has ushered Nigerians into an era when the people need to rethink reasons why they have to continue to stay together or make the project called Nigeria drift apart. The title of the dancedrama is derived from the 1914 amalgamation of the nation in which the Northern and the Southern protectorates were fused into one by the British government to have Nigeria as we have it today.

But for the beauty of total theatre, Ofeimun used the elements of poetry, music, remarkable events, cultural issues, political differences and social cohesion of the different tribes and ethnic groups in Nigeria to make the story into theatre. The people were represented and dressed in their usual local costumes and native dresses to make the show complete. The writer who is also a renowned poet has always devised new methods to put myriad of Nigerian socio-political issues into the stage. The idea, he has always maintained, is to enable the people come closer to the issues that have shaped the nation’s political terrain over the years.

Odia Ofeimun had in his two previous experiments of this nature, captioned The Return and Nigeria, The Beautiful, showcased both Africa and Nigeria as places where people could find peace and solace if the indices of leadership and followership are properly defined. However, in Because of 1914, the poet took his time to bring out all the problems that defined the amalgamation and what the people did not do right to make the union work.

Today, Nigeria is a nation walking on its tethers where mutual suspicion, fear, tribal sentiments, economic dominion and hatred for what is good have been the order of the day.

The play opened with the playing of the drums, in a solemn but evocative form.

The solemnity of the drums was to usher in a society where the people have found themselves at the crossroads of confusion and poverty. The drummers, dressed, in the national colours of green-white green with native caps to match played the drums to sychronise with the pitiable conditions of the people.

The songs, which were composed by Felix Okolo, the director of the drama, were meant to soothe the stories. The poetic lines were done to explain away most of the knotty and terrible situations that have been of grave concern to the entire nation.

In the beginning, the tribes existed as indivisible entities, each cohabiting harmoniously with their neighbours. The idea of coming together never crossed their

•Lord Lugard addressing Nigerians

minds. They were happy being who they were and doing what suited them. Every tribe held their cultural values in high esteem and so the idea of forcing them to lose their identity or being some other persons did not arise.

Therefore, the respect for the other person was there. For the exchange of goods and others, people had to travel from their places of origin to the next, to have exchange of ideas and engage in trade. Life, generally, was good and totally in order.

Yet, when the British came, they took their time to understudy all these issues. In truth, they saw these differences, they knew they were quite irreconcilable differences that would not make for a total cohesion or unity. Yet, they ignored them all to give the nation its new name called Nigeria.

From that moment in time till today Nigeria has been tottering between existence and life, between what is good and what is bad and so the whole experiment •Nigerians rise against colonialism. seems to be on the backward slide. another? Why is it that people are yet to Then oil was not yet the binding fac- come to terms with religious, political, sotor. The binding factor was to use the palm cial and economic differences and then use oil of the East and the Kola nuts of the all these to their own advantage? It is just West to unite the entities into one. The that some people have decided that sowgroundnuts pyrami of the North was also ing the embers of discord and hatred is an issue. Yet their inability to catch up in their own hallmark. They benefit from the terms of education was used as a yard- chaotic situation in order to perpetually stick to fuse them with the South. This keep the people in the background. total new approach was indeed to the benThe dances therefore told the stories efit of the North who were supposed to on stage. The dancers were trained to peruse the educational advancement of the form in conformity with the annals of hisSouth to their own advantage. torical factors that shaped the era. Each As each of these segments of di- dance truly dramatised Nigeria and chotomy was introduced on stage, the brought out the total element of Nigeria and artistes used both poetry and dance drama why 1914 will continue to remain an issue. not only to explain them away, but used It was the arrogant posture of Lord stage mesmerisation to douse the weight Lugard that finally pissed people off. Apof the message and then allow the enter- pearing on the stage like a colossus, he told tainment aspect of it to speak to the audi- the people of how her majesty was the lord ence. Both the music and the costumes of the manor, how she has gone round Eusuited the era in question and people were rope and now Africa to plant the seed of seen nodding their heads and shuffling colonialism. And therefore, no one could their legs to the rhythmical movements on stop her, could make her halt until the stage. whole of humanity embraced the British The narrator used powerful poetic culture. It was a task that must be accomlines to tell the people the stories. There plished so that Africa would know that was a complete blend of the major and Britain is a great Kingdom indeed. minor tribes to present a comprehensive As he spoke, the arena wore a solemn scenario of a total nation. A nation where look. The ambiance was sombre; people the wishes of the Whiteman were allowed listened with rapt attention; not even in a to decide the future and the fate of the lo- hurry to discountenance or counter his utcal people, the owners of the land. terances. In the meantime the drums So, why would 1914 be the main wa- played, other instruments pelted away to tershed in the national life of Nigeria as a ensure that the dance drama itself was comnation? Why would it be this bad where plete to make for total theatre. Then Lugard the people still find it difficult to trust one went on: “We have taken over Africa, from

PHOTOS: EDOZIE UDEZE

the Arab world all through the deserts.

Europe does not sleep because her majesty is on the throne. We’ll take over all the nooks and crannies of this continent and other places. We’re imperialists, great custodians of great empires. We take and overcome. We build empires in the deserts to suit our whims and caprices. These are to help investments for we ourselves do not invest. We build railways from mangrove to the hills, to the savanna. We know the future better than the people themselves.

“We do not teach people how to be free or how to ask for it. We will continue to dominate until they know how to fight for themselves and be free. That is the ideology of the Great Britain.” But soon after, some leaders with conscience, with unbridled courage, focus and commitment began to appear on stage. Their mission was to dislodge the colonial masters from the helm of affairs. “We will have schools, we need sound and productive education to be able to liberate ourselves, the entire kingdom from the furnace of hegemony…” And so the struggle began and the internal differences that have since kept the people divided began to rear their heads. But the people needed to be free first.

Amid poverty, amid misery, in the presence of abundant resources, the nation therefore tried to exist. The level of hopelessness; the distrust and endless struggle to live, all came together to give a complete blend to Because of 1914. Ofeimun said one has to watch the story on stage to really appreciate the issues involved.

ARTS

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

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HEN she began to write at the age of 15, Nadine Gordimer’s intention was to use her works to create an entirely new world for South Africa. Born in 1923 in Transvaal of Jewish parentage, and at the height of apartheid, Gordimer grew up in the midst of racial segregation and prejudices which inadvertently helped to mould and shape her thinking and the direction of her writing. Her death last week at the age of 93, has indeed deprived the world the opportunity to continue to have this rare gem, a quintessential writer whose boldness, courage, fearlessness and love for what is right and just is unequalled.

She rose through her works to be one of the foremost and fiercest anti-apartheid campaigners and political activists. At a point in the early years of Nelson Mandela’s struggle to liberate the people from the heinous hands of white overlords, Gordimer became his speech writer and staunch supporter. Even though she was white, born into a privileged home, her parents who also detested apartheid and those who were behind its numerous obnoxious policies, she deliberately chose to be a writer so as to find reasons and avenue to hit hard at the people she described as core racists and enemies of humanity.

Educated at a Catholic Convent School in Transvaal, she wrote her first book in 1937 at the age of 15. The Quest for Seen Gold, her first collection of short stories became an instant hit and turned out to be a pointer to the direction her later works would take. In it, she questioned the few racial issues she could see and experience around her vicinity. The reception of this first book propelled her to publish yet another more compelling book named Come Again Tomorrow at the age of 16.

With her studies at the famous University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, coming to an abrupt end in 1948, Gordimer left to continue her writing. There she was able to mix with people of all races and then came away with more informed insight into how

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HIS is indeed a season of birthdays for several senior citizens in Nigeria. From the Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, who clocked 80 on Sunday; media giant, Prince Henry Odukomaiya, who also recently clocked 80; and ace columnist, Dr. Olatunji Dare, who has also hit 70, it is indeed a season of birthdays.

Now, on July 27, entrepreneur, writer and publisher of the defunct newspaper, ‘Lagos Flight’, Alhaji Ayo Adeyemi, will also clock 80.

Like the other ‘ birthday boys’ who have celebrated the landmarks in different ways, Adeyemi, who is also the founder of the Isolo, Lagos-based Islamic Mission Organisation, has rekindled the writer in him. He has published 11 new books aimed at exposing pupils to the rudiments of Islam.

The books include ‘Why I am Proud to be a Muslim’, ‘Fasting’, Abridged History of Prophet Mohammed’, ‘The Concept of Prayer (Salat) in Islam’ and ‘What is Qadar or Predestination?’

Others include ‘Knowledge is Power’ ‘All Roads to Arafat’ and ‘Act of Charity (Zakat)’.

That Adeyemi is a seasoned teacher, researcher, writer and publisher are evident in each of the books. Apart from the fact that they are detailed and revealing, the materials are presented in simple language that children will especially cherish.

While Adeyemi discusses topics such as ‘The Effect of Zakat’, ‘Amount of Contribution’ and ‘General Condition that makes Zakat Obligatory’, he coaches the reader on ‘Nabi or the Prophet of God’ and ‘Kidden Knowledge’ in Why I am Proud to be a Muslim’.

At 80, Adeyemi is still physically fit. He not only freely walks around, he still drives himself around Lagos, an exercise that, he believes, helps in keeping him alert. But a mark of his creative alertness is the books which Islamic scholars have received with much excitement.

Commenting on the works, the Dean, Faculty of Arts, Lagos State University, Ojo, Dr. Isaq Akintola, notes in the foreword that Adeyemi is a man whose passion for Islam is instructive. The scholar, who is also the Director, Muslim Rights Concern, saluted the writer for his contributions to the development of Islam in Nigeria. Also, he uses the opportunity to correct the wrong impression that some people have about Adeyemi’s preaching, as the latter is a radical missionary who does not believe in using religion to bamboozle adherents.

Akintola writes, “Alhaji Adeyemi comes across as a man with great organisational skills,” Akintola writes. “He is a highly talented manager of men “His passion for Islam knows no bounds. He is also an artist nulli secundus. This is where he surpasses many businessmen of his ilk. He has successfully combined mastery of business integrity with musical stardom. He has produced many enticing albums and his works

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Without apartheid on her mind The death, last week, of Nadine Gordimer, South Africa’s literary giant and 1991 Nobel Laureate for literature has again depleted the rank, writes Edozie Udeze

•Gordimer

apartheid was operated in a wider perspective. And so in 1948, she moved to Johannesburg. In 1949, she wrote Face to Face, chronicling her contacts with those whom she described as inordinate individuals sitting on the progress of South Africa. In 1951,

she published A Watcher of the Dead and then in 1953, her novel the Lying Days finally exposed the inner workings of the apartheid era.

She wrote more than 30 books in her life time, including short stories, poems and so

on. In 1958, she wrote one of her most world-acclaimed books called, A World of Strangers. In 1963, The Occasion for Loving, and in 1966 her book, The Late Bourgeois World dominated the literary discussions in the Commonwealth that her next book, A Guest of Honour published in 1970, won the total admiration of the world.

In 1974, she won The Booker Prize with her book, The Conservationist. After that, in 1979, Burger’s Daughter, a novel that hit apartheid below the belt was also published.

This was followed by July’s People in 1981; The House Gun 1998 and so on and so forth.

In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in which the Swedish Academy recognised her as a woman, “who through her magnificent epic writing has, in the words of Alfred Nobel, been of very great benefit to humanity”. And so having become one of the best and most renowned literary giants the world has ever seen, she swung into more action.

She once said: “The reintroduction of censorship is unthinkable when you think how people suffered to get rid of censorship in all forms”. In an interview with this reporter in 2006, she said concerning a post-apartheid South Africa, “Oh yes, it is good to see apartheid dismantled…when I look through my window and see both white and black children playing together I feel good, extraordinarily happy. But more needs to be done. A lot of people still do not want to welcome this change; do not as yet see a free South Africa as a new glow for all of us”.

As she takes her final bow, it is most heartwarming that her dream of a free South Africa which she lived and fought for became possible in her lifetime.

At 80, I can’t stop writing Publisher, Islamic scholar and missioner, Alhaji Ayo Adeyemi, releases 11 educational books at 80 and tells Edozie Udeze that he can never stop writing linger on till today.”

According to Adeyemi, who is also an Islamic gospel artiste, having released albums while also planning to record more songs, the books are published as part of the ‘Islamic Foundation for Beginners Series’. He explains that that they are to advance the Islamic catechism for which he is famous, having been one of the pioneers of Islamic tracts in Nigeria. He says the series were conceived to show young Musilms fundamental knowledge of Islam.

The writer adds, “Islam enjoins us all to search knowledge and the truth. But many people do not bother to get that knowledge first.

The lack of the real principles of Islam is the genesis of the security problems we are having, especially the Boko Haram issue. Islam is a religion of peace. Now, it is important to bring up our children in the right direction, and that is why I decided to write the books.”

Although he rose from grace to grass, having lost his father at an early age, Adeyemi has remained committed to the growth of knowledge. He says he lives by example in this wise, as he is not only a committed writer, he is still a passionate reader.

“I cannot stop reading. I read even up till today. A leader must be a good reader particularly the kind of people I have been privileged

to lead are people you can’t lead through the nose. You have to be intelligent and educated, and know what is happening around you and globally. That is the essence of religion, anyway. It is not about just prayers, it is about leadership in every facet. There are so many professionals that I am privileged to lead. So I have to carry everyone ahead. I have been interviewed by many university students coming for researches. As a religious leader, you have to lead by reading,” he says in an interview.

He adds that he delved in to singing as means of propagating Islam.

His words, “It is all about propagation. When we were young, the most popular religion of the day was Islam in Lagos because there were lots of merriment and entertainment. It was sweet. There were lots of things to eat by both Muslims and non-Muslims. People enjoyed those things. And most churches then only opened on Sundays. And apart from hymns and prayers, there was no dancing.

The people that introduced dancing and marching around were the Salvation Army, then later the Aladura. It was strictly formal.

The mosque was virtually open till night every day. What was missing in Islam was introduced by the Pentecostal churches.

“Majority of the people who went to

•Adeyemi

church then were not there because they loved church, but because of problems and once the problems got solved, they stayed back. So I introduced choir, bought drums and other things because I wanted people to stay back even after their problems had been solved. That was how I started going to the studio to keep people’s interest, especially the younger generation. Once they come for the music, I also speak to them, and through that, they stay. It is working even though I am being criticised. But until someone shows me where the Holy Quran prohibits what I am doing, it is not wrong and I will continue.”

Child’s play

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•Children playing sax on stage

ITH the long vacation for schools fast approaching, the National Troupe is preparing to host the fourth edition of its annual Children Creative Station Workshop (CCSW). The workshop is conceived as a long vacation theatre workshop for children between the ages of five and seventeen and it is primarily aimed at exposing participants to general theatre practice and appreciation of the creative arts.

The 2014 edition according to the coordinator of the project and director in charge of Drama of the National Troupe, Ms Josephine Igberaese, would begin as from the

first week of August 2014 and will run for a period of one month. She also disclosed that at the end of the creative workshop exercise, the participants would be expected to put up a performance that will detail all they have learnt during the one-month training period. ‘What we are doing is in line with one of our objectives which is to encourage the development of children’s theatre. But beyond that we have used the project successfully over the last three years to groom future theatre practitioners who may want to take up a career in the theatre and allied genre like taking part in Nigeria’s Nollywood’’.

Explaining further that one of the other objectives behind the exercise is to engage the children creatively during the long holidays,

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

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Osun O-REAP:Beyond the purview of mischief

EBERE WABARA

WORDSWORTH T 08055001948

ewabara@yahoo.com

Misquoting Gov. Okorocha

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ATIONAL Mirror of July 24 welcomes us this week with recurrent blunders: “Nasarawa police nabs (nab) 30 suspected robbers” “DSS arrests 4 over (for) kidnap, death of school proprietress” “Robbers write (write to) community on imminent attack” “Police empowers (empower) 45 widows, 13 orphans” “Governor Rochas Okorocha yesterday ordered the newly inaugurated Anti-Cult Task Force to shoot at (on) sight cult members….” “…the governor joined other aggrieved PDP governors to decamp (defect) to the APC.” “Anambra monarchs want tax collection (taxcollection) role” “…as FRSC deploys 1,302 men on (in) highways” “Turkey switch: Macauley (sic) gets Eneramo (Eneramo’s) support” Finally from the Back Page of NATIONAL MIRROR under review come the next two errors: “…his ouster is welcomed as good riddance to bad rubbish.” Get it right: good riddance to rubbish!

“Though certain Northern leaders have (had) in the past vowed to make Nigeria ungovernable….”

DAILY Sun EDITORIAL of July 21 takes over from National Mirror with four challenges: “…the percentage of oil revenue to be paid to oil producing (oil-producing) states.”

“Unfortunately, the inability of the Confab to agree with the recommendation of the consensus building (consensusbuilding) body made up of….” “…the debate on revenue sharing (revenuesharing) formula in the country.” “…the total derivation fund accruable to a mineral bearing (mineralbearing) state shall….”

“The Management and Staff of Ocean Glory Commodities Ltd. hereby (what for?) congratulate the Federal Government of Nigeria, Management and Staff of Olam Nigeria for (on/upon)….” (Fullpage advertisement) FEEDBACK AS a lover of good English, I always follow your column. My observation is that the rate of

grammatical errors in newspapers nowadays is alarmingly too high. Is there nothing the Newspapers’ Proprietors Association of Nigeria, the Nigeria Union of Journalists, the Nigerian Guild of Editors and the Nigerian Press Organisation can do about it? I suggest imposition of penalties or other forms of sanctions. All these mistakes are in actuality products of indolent editorial teams and slothful managements.

(Rasaq Olasunkanmi, 08023670407) PLEASE note that “an appeal to my colleagues” is grammatically acceptable. (Vide Longman Advanced Dictionary of Contemporary English/Fifth Edition). The main clause is syntactically homonymous to “colleagues of mine”. (Tayo Aluko, Governor’s Office, AdoEkiti, 08148803562) REMINDERS: God, capitalize, i.e. should be written with a capital G, e.g. God’s country, God knows, God’s will, etc; other gods should be written in lower case, e.g. god child, godfather, godmother, godparents, godsend, god sent, etc. There are 401 gods in Ile–Ife, Osun State, Nigeria!

Taye is good at Mathematics/English/Tennis.

Kehinde is weak in Mathematics and English (note the prepositions). She failed in English language (not “she failed English language”).

“MONY” (note the spelling) has the plural “monies” while “money” has the plural “moneys”.

Get it right, please.

“About” should only be used with round numbers. Never say or write “about I,724 yards”. Always say or write “about 1,724 yards”. If it is “about”, it should be rounded to the nearest ten or 100 or whatever is appropriate. E.g. I have about 20 dictionaries in my library.

Vengeful Senator Thaddeus Stevens instigated U.S. President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors” on March 5, 1868. The majority in the Senate voted to convict the President. Johnson was the 7th U.S. President (1829 – 1837); he lived from 1767 – 1845. But the final tally, 35–19, was one vote less than the required two– thirds majority. Johnson was saved by a single vote.

He was not impeached.

Bill Clinton was not impeached over the Monica Lewinsky sex

scandal. No U.S. President has ever been impeached!

Clinton served his two terms. Richard Nixon resigned and was pardoned

by Ford. (Bayo Oguntunase/ adorobaba1952@yahoo.com) “Reports of abductions and threats to abduct Nigerian citizens by the Boko Haram insurgents is reprehensible.”

(VANGUARD, July 18) Do I need to resolve the discord here?

I leave that to you, my esteemed reader.

“Because of their often times selfless response to the needs of the children, parents are seen as unique human beings who can shield their offsprings from the vicissitudes of everyday life. ‘Offspring’ is a non-count word.

“The policemen are daily being challenged by the members of the underworld. An encounter with those people have left policemen at the mercy of death.” Get it right: An encounter with those people has….

“An administrator per excellence….” I know of ‘par excellence’. This mixup must have been caused by wrong pronunciation.

“And since the economy is import-dependent, the cost of goods and services have persistently sky-rocketed.” This is an error of attraction. It is either the cost of goods and services has… or the costs have…

“Her role in the liberation struggles in Mozambique and Angola are now part of the continent’s history.” Her role…is (not are).

“Dupes lay siege on NEPA customers” This is the foulest headline ever published. Victims of dupery are dupes while the perpetrators are dupers.

And of course lay siege to; not on.

“First are the enduring hitches related to infrastructure, the life-wire of modern economic growth.” To avoid any maltreatment of language, use ‘livewire’.

“We maintain that the government must take the bull by the horn by empowering NDIC….” The correct idiom is ‘take the bull by the horns’.

The foot dragging (why omit the hyphen?) on the project had dashed hopes of expectant beneficiaries and those who pin their lifelihood on the scheme.”

No foot-dragging here: the right entry is ‘livelihood’.

Let’s avoid slovenliness.

SALLAH GREETINGS TO ALL MUSLIM FAITHFUL

HERE is no doubt about the fact that agricultural policies and programme of the current administration in Osun State headed by Rauf Aregbesola remain a key factor for economic transformation through food security, job and wealth creation especially for the youths.

It is not an overstatement that the state’s agricultural programme called Osun Rural Enterprise and agriculture programme (O-REAP) has been very strategic to the Six Point Integral Action Plan of the Rauf Aregbesola administration targeted at farm estate development through the upgrade of infrastructures in the existing farm settlements such as rural roads, construction of culverts, channelization, river crossing among others.

The roads completed are Iwo-Pataara (12km), Esa-OkeEsa-Odo Farm Settlement Road 5km, Mokore Farm Settlement Road (17.8km), Orile-Owu-AgoOwu Farm SettlementOgedengbe Road (30km), Idiroko-Akinleye Farm Settlement Road (10.8km), Farmers Plank Sellers, Ido-Osun Road Network (5.5km) and Alaguntan Forest Reserve Road (20km).

Also completed are QIIP Farm Road, Kuta (9km), OkinniIgbokiti-O-Fish Farm (9.8km), Reclamation of Olufi Market, grading of IyanfoworogiOrisunbare-Ajobo Junction and Aba Opa (10km), FashinaAgbagba-Adekanye-Osu Express Road (5.5km), bridge on Saasa river to link Akinlalu, Oyere, while several other are ongoing.

The O-REAP programme is an innovative programme and unique in its design as it focuses on a very ambitious and aggressive programme of mass food production through the implementation of different component activities by an array of ministries, departments and agencies of government.

It was also designed to strengthen farmers’ cooperatives associations, expand land available for food crop production and promote ground breaking investments and partnerships in agriculture.

Contrary to some spurious and very frivolous allegations in a section of the media by an opposition party that sees nothing good in the Aregbesola administration,off-handedly declaring that the O-REAP programe was fraudulent and amounts to nothing for the farmers, over 150 rural roads especially those leading to the existing the farm estates have indeed been constructed with river crossings and culverts where necessary amongst many other landmarks as will be revealed presently.

As at the time of filing this report, all the nine farm estates in the state including the ones established by chief Obafemi Awolowo in the 60s have been upgraded with necessary infrastructural facilities including electricity and potable water.All these were provided for the entire population living in the estates.

The government has also set up farm service centres in the nine federal constituencies in the state to enable farmers have access to agricultural inputs.

It was further gathered that 78 hectares of cattle hub was established at Oloba farm with the

•Aregbesola

By Bolanle Akanni

capacity of 10,000 cattle at full operation ,while an additional 400 hectares and 1,600 hectares of land had been secured by the state government for development of two additional cattle hubs in Ede and Ejigbo.

In the provision of storage facilities, one 500 metric tonnes capacity warehouse abandoned since 2009 has been revisited and completed in Osogbo; another 1,000 metric tonnes capacity warehouse abandoned since 1991 when the state was created has been completed while one hundred 10metric tonnes cribs have been constructed across the state to serve as on and off farm storage facilities.

The present administration has also empowered youth cooperative groups consisting of 40 youths engaging in cattle fattening, as part of first phase of the OBeef empowerment programme across the State of Osun.

“N40million has been given as loans to support Piggery Farmers in the State, 3,645 Farmers across the State benefited from the sum of N476,350,000 from the Government Guaranteed Agriculture Loan Scheme; 268 Farmers benefited from the sum of N45,662,065 from O-REAP Loan Scheme, N153.6m ($952,000) agriculture finance loan for 66 farmer cooperative group” The State Government procured 5,000 metric tons of fertilizers and sold it to farmers at 50% subsidy over the last 2 years; 1,830 rural farmers in 61 local communities received farm inputs from the state in collaboration with UNICEF. The government also re-constituted the fertilizer distribution committee to block leakages and ensure that the fertilizer gets to the farmers directly through innovative private sector led agricultural input supply programme.

It is on record that the state government sponsored 40 youths to Germany for intensive training in modern agriculture and 96 secondary schools assisted in arable crop production, fisheries and livestock production systems since 2013.

The government also established (O-REAP) Youth Academy as a deliberate effort towards giving youths a sustainable career in modern agriculture and 1,606 OYES Cadets have been trained in Modern Agriculture at the newlyestablishedO-REAPYouth Academies located in the nine federal constituencies of the state for increased food production.

Corroborating the feat recorded by the current administration in the agricultural programme, the Director General of the Office of Economic Development and

Partnerships(OEDP) and Coordinator of the O-REAP Program, Dr. Charles Diji Akinola said that the state government further went into partnering with private sector such as TUNS Farm Nigeria Limited to promote broiler production to empower poultry farmers and create jobs under the Osun Broilers Out-growers ProductionScheme(OBOPS)withthe sum of N539, 435,200. 578. Farms have been stocked with over 3,654,612 Day-Old-Chicks from inception in 2011 and Over N200 million have been made as profit by the Out-growers in the Scheme.

He stated that these schemes are meant to supply chicken and fish to O-MEAL Food Vendors to feed the Grade one to four pupils in the state public schools under the free school feeding.

Akinola also stated that the state government has for example, through an O-REAP programme activity QIIP encouraged rice production at Onilapa (Ogbagba) on a 410hectares of land aimed at increasing production yield from 1.5tonnes to 5tonnes.

On Tree Crop Production, Akinola noted that 64,000 oil palm seedlings and 25,000 cashew seedlings have been raised for sale, 500,000 cocoa seedlings, 6,000 Kola and 6,000 bitter kola seedlings distributed free to cocoa/ bitter kola farmers respectively across the state while an all year round vegetable production project in Kuta on a 210 hectares of land is now fully operational.

He explained further that 2,000 farmers were supported to plant 1.3 million plantain suckers for refined plantain flour production, encourages cooperative groups to cultivate 80 hectares of yam farm cluster, for yam flour production adding that over 5,000 new farmer cooperative groups have been registered in the state by the Ministry of Commerce, Cooperatives and Empowerment.

Under the agricultural land expansion programme, Akinola noted that land validation and perimeter survey in nine farm settlements using GIS and Remote Sensing Technology, has been carried out under the OREAP programme.

While noting that Aregbesola’s agricultural program has within the last three and half years put food on the tables of the people of the state, created jobs and wealth especially for the youths,Akinola described the wild and unfounded allegation of the opposition that the programme was fraudulent and meaningless to farmers in the state as reckless and mischievous in intent and should be dismissed by the good people of State of Osun.

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INCE the eruption of what was tagged ‘Sharia crisis’ in Kaduna State in the year 2000 and the closely followed ‘Miss World’ crisis in 2002, Christians and Muslims have been living with mutual suspicion.

The development did not only create tension, it also left residents of Kaduna to indirectly adopt segregated living, along religious lines.

The two crises have equally forced people to move their worship places away from where their fellow worshippers are in minority to where they have people of their faith in majority. Where such worship places were left behind, they had often served as the first targets during crises.

Mosques standing around the predominant Christian settlements of Sabo, Gonin Gora, Kakuri, Barnawa and the likes had often been razed during crises while churches around Tudun Wada, Tudun Nupawa and Ungwar Dosa suffer similar fates.

It is against this backdrop that the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) Gospel Church, Tudun Nupawa in Kaduna South Local Government Area of Kaduna State last week donated assorted food stuffs to Muslims within its domain in the spirit of the holy month of Ramadan as part of efforts to foster peaceful religious coexistence.

The gesture is not the first peace move by the church. It recently gathered Imams and Village/Districts Heads from its predominant Muslim host community to fellowship with them.

The Imams were invited to the Sunday church service by the Senior Pastor of the Church, Reverend Yunusa Nmadu, not to change their faith but to worship with them

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

Kaduna ECWA leads quest for religious tolerance From Abdulgafar Alabelewe, Kaduna

and build love between Christians and Muslims.

The Muslim religious leaders and the traditional rulers were in the church from the beginning of the Sunday service at 9am till 12:30pm.

Even though, they could not join in the reading of the Bible and rendition of hymns, some of them gave offerings to the church.

Speaking, during the special church service, Nmadu said even though the church had been burnt more than four times during crises, youths of the area once stood their ground and prevented the church from being burnt by hoodlums.

He explained: “That is why we thought we should return what has been done to us with love. We have done something similar during the Ramadan period.

“So, this is to cement the relationship between us and our neighbours because we believe we can live together in harmony, because we were all created in the image of God. “We invited you Muslim religious leaders and traditional rulers to see what we are doing here and fellowship together with us so that we can show you the love of Jesus Christ.”

Responding, the Chief Imam of Salamat Central Mosque in Bachama area of Tudun Wada, Kaduna, Sheik Dahiru Adamu, said there was nothing as important as peace and peaceful co-existence in the world.

He said gestures like invitation to the church were lacking in the past, which led to distrust among Muslims and Christians.

The church followed up with donation of assorted food stuffs to Muslims within its domain in the spirit of the holy month of Ramadan.

Items donated to the beneficiaries numbering 150 families drawn from the Panteka market union and Tudun Nupawa community included rice, beans, maize, noodles, sugar and eggs, among others.

Nmadu said: “The gesture by the church to provide food items to members of the host community during Ramadan is to demonstrate the Biblical injunction that we should love our neighbours as ourselves.

“Apart from that, we have also embarked on this to show the world that peace is possible and that we are all peace makers by demonstrating it in practical terms.”

Nmadu commended the reformation in the community, saying “Tudun-Wada/ Tudun-Nupawa which used to be in the news for the wrong reasons has since begun on a new slate.”

Even though this community used to be a crisis-prone community, there has been a tremendous improvement over the years due to concerted efforts, guidance, counselling and proper leadership provided by the leaders and village heads.

One of the beneficiaries, the Sarkin Dutse, Alhaji Shaibu Balarebe, commended the magnanimity of the ECWA church by assisting his people during the Ramadan fast in the past two years.

Kadun State Governor, Mukhtar Yero, stressed the need for peaceful coexistence.

Yero, who was represented by the Commissioner for Special Duties, Dr. Yari Everton, urged all to shun all forms of social vices.

xxx

•Some donated foodstuffs (inset: Rev. Nmadu)

He added that any Muslim or Christian that hurts another human being due to religious differences lacks understanding.

According to him: “Prophet Muhammed taught us to love our neighbours, even if they are non-Muslims.

“The Prophet said if we see a non-Muslim that is thirsty and about to die of thirst, we should give him water, even if

the only water we have left is the one we want to perform ablution with we should save the life of the non-Muslim and perform our ablution with sand.”

He urged Christians and Muslims to desist from spreading destructive rumour.

“We should desist from a situation where somebody will send us message that they have killed one Muslim in

Zonkwa, then we too have to kill one Christian in Tudun Wada. That is tantamount to taking laws into our own hands.”

The Village Head of Tudun Nupawa, Dr. Yusuf Nadabo, said: “We have entered the church and worshipped with the congregation. It didn’t change anything about us and did not convert us to Christianity.”

NEWS

Christian group supports Ikuforiji’s gov aspiration Serve God, humanity, cleric

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RELIGIOUS organisation, Christian Coalition Against Corruption (CCAC), has thrown its weight behind the aspiration of Lagos State Speaker, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, to govern the state in 2015.

The Chairman of the Christian anti-corruption body, Bishop (Dr) Francis Shopekan, disclosed this at the weekend while presenting the outstanding leaders award to the Speaker in his Alausa Ikeja office.

Shopekan, who came with the executive members of the group, said: “We have been reliably informed that you want to be governor of the state; we will like to be one of those who will give you support for this project.”

He explained that having observed the Speaker and how he has been leading the House of Assembly for a long time,

By Oziegbe Okoeki

he said: “You are a good man, contrary to the negative impression some people have about you.”

The award, according to Shopekan, “is being given to you after you have been duly nominated and recommended by well-meaning people in the society.

“We want you to know

that we have carefully followed your track record, works and all activities since you resumed office as Speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly.”

He argued that Ikuforiji’s “untainted integrity, fight for good governance, commitment to the development of the Lagos State and Nigeria and your exemplary leadership

qualities, distinguished you as the best man for this award.”

Ikuforiji expressed his profound appreciation to the organisation for the award.

He said that the Assembly’s commitment to selfless service and good governance stemmed from the consciousness that Lagos State is a special place and as such deserves excellent treatment.

Church holds prayer summit, convention

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HE inter-denominational quarterly prayer summit organised by The Way of Reconciliation Evangelistic Ministries (TWOREM) Int’l, aka Prophetic & Solution Chapel, Lagos holds on Monday August 4 from 8am to 3pm.

The summit precedes the second Holy Spirit convention of the church with the theme provoking amazing

miracles.

The convention holds from August 5-9 with a thanksgiving service on Sunday, August 10 by 10.am.

Venue is Sekunderin Int’l Miracle Prayer Mountain, Iyana Agbala Tuntun, New Ife Road, Ibadan, Oyo State.

The host, Prophet Oladipupo Funmilade- Joel, will lead other ministers including Apostle Tim Gbasha

(Lagos), Rev’d Dr. Joshua Telane (Abuja) and others to the events.

tells Fayose

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HE General Overseer of Rapture Assurance Ministry (RAM) Lagos, Pastor Daniel Ikpe, has urged Ekiti State governor-elect, Ayodele Fayose, to remember his vows to God and serve humanity in his second-coming.

He reminded him that God played His part in bringing him back to power against all odds.

Ikpe recalled how he met Fayose in 2006 at the peak of the impeachment plot through a domestic aide attending the church.

Power Park Mission Church’s camp meeting

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HE Holy Ghost Fire Camp of the Power Park Mission Church International holds from August 1724 at 32, Oluwakemi, Temitayo Street off Shangoremi lane Powerline

Isheri-Berger, Lagos.

The theme of the event is Thy Kingdom come (Luke 11:2).

The Chief host, Apostle Dennis Elum, said the programme is for spiritual uplift of participants.

By Uyoatta Eshiet

He claimed that God told him then that Fayose would be impeached but restored if he retraced his steps.

“When the impeachment issue was on, this man introduced Fayose to me and we were invited to Ado Ekiti. I and five other pastors in the ministry went to see him.

“After seven days of prayers, God told me he would be impeached but that He, God, will bring him back to power,” he recalled.

He stated that many doubted the prophesied impeachment because several other men of God were making pronouncements to the contrary.

Ikpe called on political leaders to dissect prophecies by men of God through discernment, saying many of such prophecies are fuelled by greed.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

WORSHIP

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COLUMN

Living Faith

By Dr. David Oyedepo

Engaging the ministry of angels for signs and wonders! (2) •Some of the converts committing to God at the crusade

Nigeria’s crusade team ignites revival in Burundi •Over 500 accepted Christ N

O fewer than 500 Burundians last week gave their lives to Christ at a three-day crusade organised by Lagos-based Abraham Evangelistic Ministry (AEM) in Bujumbura.

The crusade with the theme God of all nations attracted thousands at the expansive ground of Zion Temple Church in the city.

The President of AEM, Bishop Abraham Olaleye, who led the team from Nigeria, stated that Jesus remains the ultimate solution provider to all human problems.

He charged Burundians to embrace Christ, assuring that the nation will witness spontaneous progress should Jesus become their master.

According to him: “If Burundi embraces Jesus, if you would find Christ, every blessing hiding from you will find their way to you.”

Olaleye added: “When Jesus shows up in Burundi, every great thing you cannot imagine will begin to spring forth.”

Jesus, he said, does not just save from sins but also makes living worthwhile.

Launching into the prophetic realm, the fiery evangelist said: “Foreign investors will begin to come to Burundi.

Very soon, fewer than the fingers of my hands, Burundi will become the centre of development.

“Burundi may be small but it will perform great feats in Africa.”

Rev. Toyin Kehinde urged Burundians to shun sins and embrace the light of the gospel.

He stated that God is looking for souls to save, saying Burundians stand the best chance to accomplish their destinies in Christ.

Bishop Joseph Akintunde, who delivered a touching message on the finished works of Christ on the cross, challenged Burundians to turn their lives over to God.

He assured that all the bitterness of sin as well as contending forces will give way when they succumb to the leadership of Jesus.

President Pierre Nkurunziza, who attended the church’s service conducted by the team, held the congregation spell bound with testimony of his survival from a childhood sickness and years as a rebel leader in the bush.

He attributed his rise to prominence to God despite a rocky background, urging Burundians to trust in Him. “I never asked to be president; I only told God that if he saved me from the war, I would serve Him. I am where I am today by the grace of God. “Since He bought me this far, He can do the same for you and much more,” he assured.

He thanked the team for braving the odds to come to Burundi, stating that the country can never remain the same again.

64%, was the fourth best candidate.

The Chief examiner of the competition, Professor Akachi Ezigbo of the Department of English, University of Lagos, said: “In assessing their entries, we looked out for how much they know of the issue, their capacity to express that knowledge in Standard English usage and their ability to follow tested methods of expressing knowledge acquired through observation, reading and experience.”

She explained that four of the more than 2,000 submissions were outstanding.

Brown will get N100, 000, a laptop and plaque while her

Amarachi wins N75, 000, a plaque while her school will get two internet-ready computers and a printer.

For emerging third, Akinboluwarin will go home with N50, 000 and a plaque while her school gets an internet-ready computer.

Oluwasoromidayo will get a consolation price of N20, 000.

The prizes will be presented at the Mike Okonkwo annual lecture, which holds on September 4 at the Shell Hall Muson Centre Lagos.

The theme for the lecture is the power of your vote: A catalyst for a stable and united Nigeria.

By Kehinde Oluleye

their marriages.

Owoade, from Ore-Ofe Parish Isolo, urged them to discover themselves first before going into marriage.

To Superior Evangelist Oyegbesan: “Marriage is a closed door with one entrance but no exit. It isn’t a thing that lasts for six months but forever.”

The seminar ended with healing prayers for strained marriages.

By Sunday Oguntola

Winners of 11th Okonkwo national school gets three set of ISS Patience Brown of Apapa Senior essay emerge internet-ready computers and a printer.

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High School Lagos has emerged the overall winner of the 11th Mike Okonkwo National Essay Competition for Secondary School.

Brown scored 68% to beat other contestants at the prestigious competition.

Precious Nwaigwe of St. Francis Catholic Secondary School Idimu, Lagos scored 66% to emerge second while Master Akinwande Akinboluwarin of Greater Tomorrow International School, Arigidi Akoko Ondo State was third with 65%.

Master David Oluwasoromidayo of Roshalom International Secondary School, who scored

‘How to enjoy lasting marriage’

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HRISTIAN youths have been advised to prepare well and equip themselves with virtues prior to marriage.

This was the consensus at the inaugural edition of a bimonthly marriage seminar organised by the Celestial Church of Christ (CCC) AKAA/KOSOFE Province Lagos.

Speakers attributed the myriad of problems prevalent

in the society to wrong ideas and poor marital preparations.

One of the speakers, Mother-In-Celestial Owoade, tasked the youths of Celestial Church to lay a good foundation for their marriages by understanding and obeying God’s word.

She encouraged them to shun pre-marital sex, saying it ultimately affects the future of

L

AST week, I brought you a teaching on the ministry of angels. I said angels are on assignment to serve our interests as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ; but many people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6).

An understanding of angels and how to engage their angelic ministry, will help every believer to lead a life of exploits. Apart from that, I showed you who exactly angels are and their characteristics.

As I conclude this teaching this week, I shall continue to through more light on the ministry of angels.

It is one thing to have some power and another thing to know how to engage that power. So, power is powerless until it is engaged. Power has no relevance until it is engaged. Therefore, it is important for us to know how to engage angelic ministry so that we can walk effectively in the supernatural. These angels are all around us, but we must learn how to engage them otherwise, we will remain helpless as if they were not there.

The Lord helped me to understand that it is possible for one to be loaded and still be grounded. For instance, with a closed mouth, a most anointed believer will live a frustrated life because life and death are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). Jesus, the most anointed personality that ever walked the earth, was oppressed and afflicted when His mouth was closed (Isaiah 53:7-8).

Every child of God is ordained to manifest the power of God, but we have to open our mouth (Psalm 81:10-14).

There is power in our being but it has to be unleashed with

our tongue.

Every believer has an angel assigned to him Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven (Matthew 18:10).

The early church were very conversant with the ministry of angels; they understood that every believer had an angel assigned to him (Acts 12:15). He has given His angels charge over us to keep us in all our ways (Psalm 91:11).

How, Then, Do We Put Our Angels To Work?

•Believe in the reality of their existence: Everything in the Bible is the truth and nothing but the truth. Angels are real; they are everywhere and particularly, there is an angel assigned to you.

•Believe in their mission: They are sent to minister to our interest. Every of our interest is their assignment to deliver. Believe in their mission; and their mission includes: to rescue, protect, take over our battles, to strengthen us, etc (Luke 22:43).

•We make demands for angelic interventions in prayers: In Matthew 26:53, Jesus said: “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” So, we can engage them in prayers by issuing specific faith-filled commands.

•Issue faith-filled commands regarding what you want them to do: Our angels are waiting on our orders; if we don’t give an order, they will be helpless. They are positioned to hearken to our orders and deliver our instructions. Elisha said, “Smite them with blindness,” and the angel went on and smote them with blindness (2 Kings 6:17-18).

•Refuse to be afraid: it takes faith to put your angels to work. God built an angelic hedge around Job, but by reason of fear, he could not get them to work, so he became vulnerable to the attack of the wicked one (Job 3:24-25, Psalm 34:7).

We cannot put angels to work with fear in our heart.

Therefore, refuse to be afraid or you will lose command. The more fearless we are, the greater command of angelic interventions we gain.

•Keep saying what the Word says no matter what is happening around you: Keep saying what the Word says because they hearken to the voice of God. Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word (Psalm 103:20).

When we keep saying what the Word says, we keep our angels on duty. Every time we are operating in faith in the Word of God, we are engaging our angels in the task.

It is, therefore, very important for us to engage the ministry of angels to deliver signs and wonders in our lives. Receive grace to fully engage angelic ministry for a life of exploits in the name of Jesus Christ!

Friend, the power to engage the ministry of angels is for those born again. You get born again by confessing your sins and accepting Jesus as your Saviour and Lord. If you are set for this, please say this prayer: “Lord Jesus, I come to You today. I am a sinner. Forgive me of my sins.

Today, I accept You as my Lord and Saviour. Now, I know I am born again!”

Every exploit in life is a product of knowledge. For further reading, you can get my books: Commanding the Supernatural, Operating In The Supernatural and Walking In The Miraculous.

I invite you to come and fellowship with us at the Faith Tabernacle, Canaan Land, Ota, the covenant home of Winners.

We have four services on Sundays, holding at 6:00 a.m., 7:50 a.m., 9:40 a.m. and 11.30 a.m. respectively.

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

NEWS

Uche pleads with striking doctors to resume

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HE Prelate Methodist Church Nigeria, Dr Samuel Uche, has pleaded with striking doctors to abandon their industrial action to save innocent lives.

He noted that many Nigerians have gone through harrowing ordeals during the action, saying it was high time it was called off.

F

Uche also appealed to all parties involved at the negotiating table to arrive at a very just, transparent compromise quickly in the best interest of Nigeria.

The Prelate, in a statement, called on stakeholders to work together a functional and affordable health care delivery service for Nigeri-

ans.

He told the doctors to accept their services as a sacrifice to alleviate the suffering of the masses. ‘’Please let us give our very best services to all in every human endeavour so that we register our efforts on the sands of time at all times,’’ he pleaded.

Foursquare church brainstorms

OURSQUARE Gospel Church, Orile Iganmu, will hold its annual general membership meeting today.

Various ministries and departments will present their activities and efforts to advance in the course of the gospel in the last one year.

The annual meeting will also witness presentation of

the church audited accounts for the church year 2013/2014.

At the meeting, goals for the new church year and other strategic initiatives to advance the course of the gospel will be discussed.

In a statement signed by the Chairman AGMM Committee, Bro. Eric Ojisua, the programme will be a time of refreshing in the presence of

the Lord and fellowship with one another.

According to the statement, the Senior Pastor, Pastor ‘Femi Akinwande is expected to challenge leaders and workers to re-dedicate their lives to Christ and work for the spread of the gospel.

It holds at the church auditorium 39, Nurudeen Street, Orile Iganmu.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

73

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014 Air Algerie second black box found in Mali

Ukraine fights 'foreign mercenaries' president

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EARCH teams have located the second flight data recorder from an Air Algerie plane that crashed in Mali.

A UN team has been scouring the remote site where the plane came down, killing all 116 people on board.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane early on Thursday after pilots reported severe sandstorms.

France has revised the number of its nationals on board from 51 to 54. President Francois Hollande is due to meet victims' families later.

Among the French contingent on board flight AH5017 was a family of 10.

The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83, had been chartered from Spanish airline Swiftair.

It was flying from Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, to Algiers.

Russia criticises EU sanctions

R

USSIA says new EU sanctions against it over the Ukraine crisis will jeopardise security cooperation against terror.

The Russian foreign ministry said the EU would bear the blame for the move which sees 15 officials and 18 entities subject to asset freezes and visa bans.

The EU and US accuse Russia of backing Ukraine's rebels. Moscow denies this.

Meanwhile 40 Dutch military police officers arrived in east Ukraine hoping to investigate the Malaysian airliner apparently shot down there on 17 July.

Pro-Russian separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine have been accused of downing the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.

The US says it believes rebels shot down the passenger jet with a Russian-provided surface-to-air missile, probably by mistake.

Malaysia, Dutch PMs to discuss access to plane crash site

M

ALAYSIAN Prime M i n i s t e r NajibRazak said yesterday he would meet his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte next week to discuss how to secure full access for investigators to the site in Ukraine where a Malaysian airliner was downed.

Pro-Russian separatists remain in control of the area in eastern Ukraine where the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was brought down last week on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 on board.

Najib helped clinch a deal with separatist leaders to secure the return of the victims' remains as well as the aircraft's two "black boxes", critical to determining what happened to the flight. It was now time, he said, to proceed with the full investigation.

U

•Rioters throw projectiles at French riot police officers, on the Republique square in Paris, during a banned demonstration against Israel's military operation in Gaza and in support of the Palestinian people, yesterday.

AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARD

U.S. evacuates Libya embassy

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HE United States evacuated its embassy in Libya on Saturday, driving its staff under heavy military guard across the border to Tunisia after escalating clashes broke out between rival militias in Tripoli.

Security in the Libyan capital has deteriorated following two weeks of fighting between brigades of former rebel fighters who have exchanged rocket, cannon and artillery fire in southern Tripoli near the embassy compound.

The violence is the worst seen in Tripoli since the 2011 fall of Muammar Gaddafi. The fighting has killed at least 50 people, shut down most international flights and forced the United Nations and Turkey to pull out their diplomatic staff.

F-16 fighters and Osprey aircraft carrying Marines provided security to the U.S. convoy as a precaution, but there were no incidents during the five-hour drive from Tripoli to Tunisia, U.S. officials said.

"Security has to come first.

Regrettably, we had to take this

step because the location of our embassy is in very close proximity to intense fighting and ongoing violence between armed Libyan factions," a U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statement.

Speaking to reporters in Paris before holding talks on the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described Libya's situation of "free-wheeling militia violence" as a real risk to U.S. staff with clashes around the embassy.

The State Department spokeswoman said staff would return to Tripoli once it was deemed safe. Until then, embassy operations would be conducted from elsewhere in the region and Washington.

Tripoli was quieter yesterday after the U.S. evacuation, but at least 10 people were killed and 50 more injured in clashes between special forces and Islamist militants in the eastern city of Benghazi, security and hospital sources said.

Security in Libya is an especially sensitive subject for the United

T

Gaza toll passes 1,000

HE death toll in Gaza soared to more than 1,000 yesterday as bodies were pulled from the rubble during a 12-hour truce top diplomat urged Israel and Hamas to extend.

After the fragile ceasefire went into effect at 0500 GMT, medics began digging through the remains of hundreds of homes, and uncovered more than 100 bodies underneath, medics said.

The grim discoveries pushed the Palestinian toll in Gaza to more than 1,000 as US Secretary of State John Kerry met counterparts from Europe and the Middle East and urged that the truce be extended.

"We all call on parties to extend the humanitarian ceasefire," France's Foreign

States because of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, in which militants killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

The attack also brought political fallout for President Barack Obama, with Republicans saying his administration did not provide sufficient overall security, did not respond quickly to the attack and then tried to cover up its shortcomings.

Ed Royce, Republican chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, told CNN yesterday the administration needed to get "more engaged on the ground with the factions in Libya" to help bring the violence under control.

"I think they're on the right track (now) but late into the game in terms of trying to bring factions together and use U.S. leverage in order to try to work this out," Royce said.

A Libyan militant suspected of involvement in the 2012 attack, Ahmed Abu Khatallah, was captured in

Libya last month and brought to the United States. He has pleaded not guilty.

The clashes for control of Tripoli International Airport are the latest eruption in a deepening rivalry among bands of ex-fighters who once battled side by side against Gaddafi, but have since turned against each other in the scramble for control.

Since the 2011 fall of Tripoli, fighters from the western town of Zintan and allies have controlled the area including the international airport, while rivals loyal to the port city of Misrata entrenched themselves in other parts of the capital.

Heavily armed, they have sided with competing political forces vying to shape the future of Libya in the messy transition since the end of Gaddafi's four-decade rule.

Libya's Western partners fear the OPEC oil-producing country is becoming increasingly polarized between two main groupings of competing militia brigades and their political allies.

Top diplomats in Paris call for extension to 12-hour truce Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters after meeting Kerry and foreign ministers from Britain, Germany, Italy, Qatar and Turkey, as well as an EU representative.

"We all want to obtain a lasting ceasefire as quickly as possible that addresses both Israeli requirements in terms of security and Palestinian requirements in terms of socio-economic development."

There was no immediate response from Hamas, but Israeli public radio cited a senior Israeli official as saying the Jewish state was open to extend-

ing the truce if it could continue to destroy militant tunnels in Gaza.

On the ground, Palestinian ambulances sped into Gaza neighbourhoods that have been too dangerous to enter for days.

Nine hours into the truce, they had found the bodies of more than 100 people in the debris, pushing the death toll to 1,000 Palestinians killed since the conflict erupted on July 8.

On the Israeli side, 37 soldiers have been killed, along with two Israeli civilians and a

Thai worker.

Palestinians ventured onto Gaza's streets after the truce took effect, some eager to check homes they had fled, others to stock up on supplies while it was safe to do so.

In many places they found astonishing devastation: buildings levelled, entire blocks of homes completely wiped out

by Israeli bombardment.

In northern Beit Hanun, even the hospital was badly damaged by shelling, and AFP correspondents came across the charred body of a paramedic as emergency workers searched for more dead.

KRAINIAN President Petro Poroshenko said yesterday his country was not fighting a civil war in its east but was fighting "foreign mercenaries", hailing soldiers for forcing pro-Russian rebels out of several towns and cities.

As fighting raged around the rebel strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk, the Ukrainian leader awarded members of the newly formed National Guard with medals for service.

"This is a real fight for the sovereignty of Ukraine, the territorial integrity of Ukraine, for the independence of Ukraine," said Poroshenko, wearing military camouflage.

"It is not an internal conflict, it is Ukraine defending its territory from foreign mercenaries, from bandits and from terrorists," he told soldiers.

Kiev has accused Moscow of sending the rebels fighters and weapons across its porous border with Ukraine, a charge Russia denies. But some battalions have openly said they were made up of volunteers from various countries, including Russia.

Ukraine's army has forced the rebels back toward the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, where the separatists have boosted their defense, and fighting has raged since a Malaysian airliner was downed last week.

Shelling and explosions were heard around rebel-held Donetsk yesterday, and many shops were shuttered as Ukrainian forces pressed their military campaign against pro-Russian separatists.

Thousands of Pro-Palestinians march in London

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HOUSANDS of Pro-Palestinians march in LondonAt least 10,000 pro-Palestinian protesters opposed to Israel's military action in Gaza marched through central London for the second week running yesterday.

A police source estimated the crowds at 10,000, but an AFP photographer suggested the number could be far higher, forcing the closure of roads around Britain's parliament.

The march started outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington, in the west of the British capital, before passing Downing Street and coming to a halt outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.

Demonstrators held placards reading "Stop Israeli State Terror!", "Freedom for Palestine" and "Gaza - End the Siege."

They also chanted "Shame on you David Cameron" as they filed past the British prime minister's Downing Street office.

The crowds took over Parliament Square, where a series of speakers, including Roxy Music member Brian Eno, took to a temporary stage to call for an end to the military campaign, which has claimed more than 1,000 lives, according to official figures.

74

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

NEWS

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014 CHANGE OF NAME AJEIGBE

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Ajeigbe, Deborah Odunayo, now wish to be known and addressed as Abodunrin, Deborah Odunayo. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ADISA

CHANGE CHANGE OF OF NAME NAME

CHANGE OF NAME

CHANGE OF NAME

I, formerly known and addressed as Bello, Adogu AbdulRahman, now wish to be known and addressed as Bello Adogu AbdulGaniu. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

OWOEYE

I, formerly known and addressed as Christy Folashade Owoeye, now wish to be known and addressed as Christy Folashade Oke. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

EZE

BELLO

AYODELE

ODEH

I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. BLESSING OGHALE ODEH, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. BLESSING O. GBENEKAMA. All former documents remain valid. Delta State University, Abraka and general public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Folakemi Iyabode Adisa, now wish to be known and addressed as Folakemi Iyabode Sobowale. All former documents remain valid.

WAEC, NECO, Bowen University and general public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Ayodele Oluwatoyin O., now wish to be known and addressed as Adeniyi, Oluwatoyin Seun. All former documents remain valid.

Osun State Polytechnic, Iree and general public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Comfort Salewa Adewuyi, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Comfort Salewa Olajide. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Jemilua Folasade Oluwatoyin, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Ojo Babatope Folasade. All former documents remain valid. Ekiti State Ministry of Justice and general public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Shogunro, Titilayo Adeola, now wish to be known and addressed as Kuton, Titilayo Adeola. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

OLOIDI

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Augustina Chiazor Igwe, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Augustina Chiazor Aguziendu. All former documents remain valid. general public should please take note.

TAIWO

I formerly known and addressed as Miss GODWIN BLESSING DANIA. now wish to be known and addressed as MRS ASHAOLU BLESSING OSHUWARE. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

ADEWUYI

OLAITAN

I, formerly known and addressed as Olaitan Maryam, now wish to be known and addressed as Muhammed Sabo Maryam. All former documents remain valid.

NYSC and general public should please take note.

SHOETAN

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Shoetan, Omobolaji Muinat, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Adekunle, Omobolaji Muinat. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

TIMOTHY

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Timothy, Oluwafunmilola Ruth, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Akinsete, Oluwafunmilola Ruth. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ZI

I, formerly known and addressed as Sylvia Yom Zi, now wish to be known and addressed as Sylvia Pali. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

OGWU

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Ozuruoke Ogwu, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Naomi Ejike Mathew. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

POPOOLA

I, formerly known and addressed as Yetunde Popoola, now wish to be known and addressed as Yetunde Owolabi. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ISICHEI

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Isichei Chineye Chiwuzie Eucharia, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Obule, Chineye Chiwuzie Eucharia. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

OKPA

I, formerly known and addressed as Priscillia Ason Okpa, now wish to be known and addressed as Priscillia Brendan Umoiyak. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

IMAGA

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Sussan Ezinne Imaga, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Sussan Ezinne Nkemdirim. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

MOGEKWU

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Mogekwu, Edith Kate, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Nwaogbo, Edith Kate. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

IGBOAMALU

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Igboamalu, C. Obi, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Okonkwo, C. Obi. All former documents remain valid. West African Examination Council (WAEC) and general public should please take note.

NWACHUKWU

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Nwachukwu, Geraldine Oluchi, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Geraldine Oluchi Nnamdi John. All former documents remain valid. Aba State Polytechnic, Aba and general public should please take note.

OMONFUEGBE

I, formerly known and addressed as Omonfuegbe, Ekpen Matilda, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Sodipo, Ekpen Matilda. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ALFRED

I formerly known and addressed as Iyang Clement Alfred , now wish to be known and addressed as Ishmael Clement Samson, also my date birth is 28th of August, 1987.

All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

JEMILUA

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Oloidi, Oluwakemi Sarah, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Salako Oluwakemi Sarah. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Mrs. Oluwaremilekun Oluwaranti Taiwo, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Oluwaremilekun O. Taiwo. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

OWOTOROSE

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Owotorose, Oluwatoyin Love, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Olu-Stephens, Oluwatoyin Love. All former documents remain valid. Ondo State Health Management Board and general public should please take note.

ATAT

I, formerly known and addressed as Edidiong Ezekiel Atat now wish to be known and addressed as Edidiong Dondaniels Inyang-Sam Otu. All former documents remain valid general public take note.

UMANI

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Umani, Julianah Beauty, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Esoso Agbor Julianah. All former documents remain valid.

Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti and general public should please take note.

OMASHOR

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Prest Nkem Omashor, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Prest Nkem Lawrence Elema.

All former documents remain valid.

State School of Nursing Agbor, Delta State and general public should please take note.

SHOGUNRO

IGWE

GODWIN

ADELAJA

I formerly known and addressed as Miss Adelaja Adenike Bukola now wish to be known and addressed as Adeniji Adenike Bukola. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

ADEYEFA

I formerly known and addressed as Adeyefa Festus Tosin now wish to be known and addressed as Taiwo Festus Oluwatosin. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

OMEJE

I formerly known and addressed as Miss Diana Unekwu Omeje, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Diana Unekwu Babalola. All former documents remain valid Aero Contractor and general public should please take note.

ADEEKO

I formerly known and addressed as Miss. ADEEKO OLUWASEUN ADEBIKE. now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. TOMORI OLUWASEUN ADEBIKE. All former documents remain valid.

General Public please take note.

AKINLABI

I formerly known and addressed as Miss Akinlabi Shakirat Omolara, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Ogunbanjo Shakirat Omolara. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

OKUDO

I formerly known and addressed as Miss Okudo Chinelo Ogochukwu , now wish to be known and addressed as Ikegwuani Chinelo Ogochukwu . All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

OSOTA

I formerly known and addressed as Miss Osota Ayodeji Oluwafemi now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Fawunmi Ayodeji Oluwafemi. All former documents remain valid. General public should take note.

ADEBOYE

I formerly known and addressed as Miss Adeboye Comfort Oyekemi, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Olatunji-Ishola Comfort Oyekemi. All former documents remain valid. The Federal Polytechnic, Ado Ekiti and general public should please take note.

NJOKU

I formerly known and addressed as Miss TREASURE OBIOMA NJOKU now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs TREASURE OBIOMA DAMBO. All former documents remain valid. General Public please take note.

EPOLLO

AJAYI

I formerly known and addressed as Bankole Adewale Omisande, now wish to be known and addressed as Adewale Omisande. All former documents remain valid, general public should please take note.

ONIFADE

I formerly known and addressed as Balogun Bamidele Olamide I hereby declare that I am also known and addressed as Balogun Bamidele Holamyde Peter now wish to be known and addressed as Balogun Bamidele Olamide for all my correspondence and dealings. This is required for official purposes. Tai Solarin University, Ijebu Ode, WAEC and general public should please take note.

BELLO

ADAMS

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Odusola, Yetunde Suwaibat, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. OdusolaOlatunji, Yetunde Suwaibat. All former documents remain valid.

Lagos State government and general public should please take note.

AIYEMO

I formerly known and addressed as Miss Onifade Bukola Asake, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Odunoki Bukola Asake. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Christiana Yewande Adams, now wish to be known and addressed as Saidat Yewande Adams. All former documents remain valid. The Polytechnic, Ibadan and general public should please take note.

CONFIRMATION OF NAME I, GEORGE PRINCEWILL K.C and NJOKU PRINCEWILL K.C refers to one and the same person. Now wish to be known and addressed as GEORGE PRINCEWILL K.C. All former documents remain valid.

General public please take note.

I formerly known and addressed as OLUFEMI CHARLES ALADESEYE now wish to be known and addressed as OLUWAFEMI CHARLES JOSEPH-ALADESEYE. All former documents remain valid.

General Public please take note.

I formerly known and addressed as AIYEMO OLADELE OLUDAYO now wish to be known and addressed as ABNER OLADELE TIMOTHY. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

ONYEMAH

I formerly known and addressed as Miss Onyemah Anthonia Ubege, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Ejenake Anthonia Ubege. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

OLUFEMI

BANKOLE

BALOGUN

EZEH

I formerly known and addressed as Ezeh Chizoba Veronica, now wish to be known and addressed as Jude Polycarp Chizoba Veronica. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

OKONKWO

OGUNBANJO

I formerly known and addressed as Chidinma Okonkwo now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Chidinma Margaret Iwundi. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

CORRECTION OF NAMES

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Dio, Jennifer Ebiasoude, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Ebiasoude Jennifer Seipulo. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

I formerly known and addressed as Ogunbanjo Isiaka Tunde, now wish to be known and addressed as Ogunbanjo Ishaq Tunde. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

This is to notify the general public that my name was wrongly written in my West African Examinations Council (WAEC), June 2003 result with Candidate No. 4250103195 Cert. No. NGWASSCS 4576719 as OLADE U RAPHA instead of OLADERU RAPHAEL OLUWATOSIN. That my correct name is OLADERU RAPHAEL OLUWATOSIN. General public should please take note.

NJOKU

I formerly known and addressed as Miss TREASURE OBIOMA NJOKU now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs TREASURE OBIOMA DAMBO. All former documents remain valid. General Public please take note.

UDEARIRY

I formerly known and addressed as Nneoma Chigozie Udeariry now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Nneoma Chigozie Ekeh. All former documents remain valid.

University of Westminister, London, Nigerian Law School, IMSU, WAEC and general public should please take note.

NWOKE

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Nwoke Chioma Blessing, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Ikemba, Blessing Chioma. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

SANGOGADE

I formerly known and addressed as Sangogade Oyetunde Adebambo now wish to be known and addressed as Akinbola Oyetunde Adebambo. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

PERRI

I, formerly known and addressed as Bello Rukayat Olaide, now wish to be known and addressed as Allison, Rukayat Olaide. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

METU

NNABUKO

I, formerly known and addressed as Dr. (Miss) Ingrid Chinwendu Onyinyechi Nnabuko, now wish to be known and addressed as Dr. (Mrs.) Ingrid Chinwendu Onyinyechi Nwandu. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. CHINYERE VERONICA METU, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. CHINYERE VERONICA OBIOHA-AMAMS. All former documents remain valid.

UBTH and general public should please take note.

I formerly known and addressed as Miss STELLA NNONYA OSARO EPOLLO now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs STELLA NNONYA IYKE EJIRE. All former documents remain valid. Oil and Gas Zone Authority and General Public please take note.

I formerly known and addressed as Miss Ajayi Bolanle Folake, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Bamidele Bolanle Folake. All former documents remain valid general public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Linah Perri, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Linah Dan Tamunokuro. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

I,formerly known and addressed as MISS. EZE JULIET OGOCHUKWU, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. ONAH JULIET OGOCHUKWU. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

CHANGE OF NAME

DIO

OIOIYE

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Rita Eninarikpaemi Oioiye, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Rita Eninarikpaemi Kakain. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

GEORGE

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Awoala George, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Awoala Young-Dede. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

UDIE

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Gertrude Udie, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Gertrude Meksley Nwagboh. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

ODUSOLA

ABE

I, formerly known and addressed as Oluwatoyin Oluwakemi Abe, now wish to be known and addressed as Oluwatoyin Oluwakemi Abe Edokpa. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

SHAIBU

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Mariam Shaibu, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Momoh Lanal Mariam. All former documents remain valid. National Youth Service Corps Scheme and general public should please take note.

AHAM

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Chioma Cynthia Aham, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Chioma Cynthia Idika. All former documents remain valid.

MTN and general public should please take note.

OMOTUNMISE

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Omotunmise Funke, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Borisanmi Funke. All former documents remain valid. The Nigeria Police Force and general public should please take note.

ADVERT: Simply produce your marriage certificate or sworn affidavit for a change of name publication, with just N4,500. The payment can be made through FIRST BANK of Nigeria Plc. Account number 2017220392 Account Name V I N T A G E PRESS LIMITED Scan the details of your advert and teller to gbengaodejide @yahoo.com orthenation.advert @gmail.com.

For enquiry please contact: Gbenga on 08052720421, 08161675390, E m a i l gbengaodejide @yahoo.com or our offices nationwide.

Note this! Change of name is now published every Sundays, all materials should reach us two days before publication.

75

Uphold Solarin’s legacy on education, govt told

By Dada Aladelokun, Assistant Editor

T

HE declining standard in the n a t i o n ’ s education sector is a disservice by Nigerian leaders to the legacy of late foremost educationist and founder of Mayflower School, Ikenne, Ogun State, Dr. Tai Solarin, former students of the school have said.

Solarin died on Sunday, July 27, 1994, while his widow, Sheila, passed on 18 years later.

In a joint statement by two medical doctors Wale Omole and Mathew Ogayemi - on behalf of other ex-Mayflower students on Friday, they recalled that Solarin spent his entire life to lay a solid foundation for education because of its strategic importance to national development.

While expressing concern that Polytechnic lecturers recently suspended their almost one-year strike action, which came barely after their university counterparts returned to classes after about six months’ strike, the statement noted the deteriorating state of infrastructure in the education sector, which, they said, had culminated in lower standards and denied millions of Nigerian future leaders of quality and functional education, as well as skilled manpower needed for national development.

They emphasised that the situation called for a deeper reflection from all stakeholders in the country and warned of the grave consequences of allowing the many crises facing the sector to fester.

The statement added that because of the current tough challenges confronting the country, coupled with the need to carry along all the people, the Solarin family had resolved to postpone most of the major activities earlier lined up to mark the 20th Tai remembrance anniversary till January 2015.

According to the statement, the family, accompanied by many former students of Mayflower, guests and the entire school community, will on Sunday, lay a wreath at the late Solarin’s graveyard and receive visitors, during which Corin Solarin, the only daughter of the deceased, will deliver a speech.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

76

Bayelsa investment summit: Random reflections

B

ARELY over a week ago, Bayelsa state government held the state spell bound, with dignitaries all over the world to host the maiden edition of “The Bayelsa Investment and Economic summit”.

With galaxy of personalities in attendance ranging from captains of industries, political heavy weights, ministers and stakeholders of the nation’s economy, the occasion provides yet another opportunity for the people of the state to tell the world their story of the investment opportunities that abound in the state.

Key speakers at the occasion include the immediate past National chairman of the ruling people democratic Party, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison – Madueke, Rewanda’s High Commissioner to Nigeria and that of its Kenya counterpart, while the vice president, Alhaji Sambo represented president Goodluck Jonathan.

Apart from expressing concern over the importance of economic diversification, one common message the key speakers dwelled on, was the need to enthrone peace and security to attract investment to the state and commended the state governor for the bold initiatives at achieving this crucial factor.

The cynosure at the event was the governor of the state, Hon. Henry Seriake Dickson who stole the show, when he mounted the restrum with his admirable huge body frame, with shouts of “countryman governor” rending the air to the admiration of the distinguished guests and the general audience.

Clad in his native ijaw dress known as “Etibo” with a bowler hat to match, otherwise known as “Resource control” hat, symbolizing the Niger Delta struggle for a fair deal and the governor seized the momentous occasion to tell whoever that cares to listen that Bayelsa is now a safe haven for investors as peace and security pervade the landscape of the state.

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By George Fente When the governor described Bayelsa state as the “Nigeria’s investment secrets”, the excited audience burst into general laughter, but the underlying reason for the description later unfolded when the forum collapsed into different topics, revolving around the real investment potentials that abound in the state; these include, oil and gas, clay, sand, economic trees, tourism to that of agro-allied products such as sea food, fish, aqua culture, plantain, rice and several others in which Bayelsa has a lot of comparative advantage.

However one disturbing trend that has become a source of worry to the people is the fact that, successive administrations have been junketing the globe with the same story of searching and bringing investors to the state.

Yet, there is no single foreign investment to point at except the unnecessary waste of tax payers money. This is where the countryman governor must have learnt his lesson.

When he took over as governor of the state, there were a lot of pressures on him to hold the maiden edition of the state economic summit. Obviously he was not in a hurry to do so keeping at the back of his mind never to repeat the mistakes of the past by junketing the globe in the name of looking for investors; believing in the words of George Santayana the Philosopher, who said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

He resisted the idea, not because it was a bad one, but because of the convictions of his restoration mandate; that you don’t just invite investors in the midst of near absence of basic infrastructure, that doing so would contradict the philosophy of George Santayana and the very basic elementary theory and practice of development economy.

Top on the development agenda was addressing the security concerns that heralded his administration.

The problem of kidnap which many thought had been addressed and nipped in the

•Dickson bud by the amnesty programme of the federal government reared its ugly head.

Cases of cult activities was also on astronomical increase, involving vast majority of the youth population. Several local businessmen and women relocated to neighbouring states because of insecurity.

This led to huge capital flight as no businessman would be interested in investing his or her hard earned money in an atmosphere of insecurity.

A security outfit known as “Doo Akpor” was put in place and strategically located in the nook and crannies of the state, complemented by the revival of the local vigilante outfit called Bayelsa Volunteers to tackle activities of oil thieves and Sundry crimes.

A programme of rehabilitation of cultists were rolled out, where cultists were given the option of either voluntarily renounce their membership and embrace the new programme or made to face the new state laws where stiff penalty awaits anyone found wanting.

Interestingly, the narrative

his changed as several cultists have become born-again, while the crime indices have drastically dropped.

This is where the statement of governor Dickson that “Bayelsa is Nigeria’s investment secret” becomes apt, as it is now justifiable to travel and woo investors to the state.

According to Governor Dickson, “The level of insecurity we met was the very first challenge that had to be tackled head on. We have successfully executed and reinforced to create the safe and secure atmosphere we now have in the state, ranking Bayelsa as one of the safest states in the nation.”

On infrastructure, the governor delightfully announced to the audience with a note of emphasis that, “For anyone who had visited Bayelsa state in the last two years, it is clear that the restoration government has indeed matched words with action in establishing a new economy going by our commitment and achievements in infrastructure like roads, bridges and human capital development”, basically to

jumpstart the economic diversification.

Happily, the government has opened offices in London and Johannesburg to facilitate investments in critical areas of the economy. The Bayelsa Investment and Development Corporation (BIDC) is one among other companies incorporated for this purpose. This is indeed a paradigm shift in the economic husbandry of the state.

Therefore, the first ever Bayelsa State economic forum is coming at the most auspicious time the stage is set for investors to explore.

While appreciating the enabling environment created by the state government, one step the government need to further take, is to step up efforts at promoting investment in the agro-allied industry in which Bayelsa, right from time immemorial has a good deal of comparative advantage.

For example, in the BrassAkassa area of the state, a huge volume of sardine fish known as Sungu in local parlance are wasted. In the month of August, production by the local fishermen and women are in its peak where fishes worth millions of naira are either thrown into the sea or buried because of the absence of storage facilities.

This is where government can directly intervene by channeling its micro credit facilities for the fishermen to set up small and medium scale industries in the area of cold rooms and large scale fishing under the close supervision of government.

Moreover, government should beam its investment searchlight in the area of gas flaring, by using its oil and gas company to get directly involved in converting the liquefied natural gas for household use.

There must be also aggressive drive for public private partnership in the area of road construction because government alone cannot afford the high cost of providing roads for its citizens for investors to come in.

Apart from addressing the critical sector of electricity concern, government should as a

matter of imperative establish industrial estates to attract investors. Today, apart from Lagos state, Ogun state has the highest volume of investors streaming into the state because of the infrastructure such as industrial estate put in place.

There is no doubt, the state government has taken very positive steps to turn around the economic fortunes of the state.

Already the dividends of the investment summit is beginning to trickle in. The State rounded off the three-day investment and economic forum by signing a N25 billion SMES development fund partnership with the bank of industry, Mainstream bank and bank of Agriculture.

Memorandum Of Understanding (MOUs) were also signed with Ostentrade for the development of ceramic tiles, glass and tomato paste as well as bean canring industries; while Proton Energy signed another MOU for the construction of 500 megawatts power and banner energy for the sitting of a gas and mini LNG in the state.

Besides that, the announcement by the petroleum Resources Minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison – Madueke that plans have been concluded for the take-off of several petroleum related industries in the state is quite heartwarming. These industries which will open windows of employment opportunities in the state and the Niger Delta in general include, deep seaport and allied industries at Agge, Brass LNG, petroleum refinery at Oporoma and pipeline manufacturing company at Polaku.

These are short term and long term gains of the investment summit which constitutes critical components in the implementation of the economic diversification policy of the restoration government.

What the people need is just the political will to create more enabling environment, so that Bayelsa will become the hub of business and administration. By this way, the story narration will be better in the next edition of the Bayelsa investment and economic summit.

Goodnight, Aturu, defender of the masses

RECALL the glowing narrative of a junior officer in our office on an errand to Bamidele Aturu.

The young man came back with adoring first-time impression of Bamidele. In excitement, he told the story of how the famous lawyer and human rights activist welcomed him. First, Bamidele called him by first name, as if they had known before. Two, he quickly offered him a seat. Three, he personally served him refreshments % when he could have sent the house help to do that. Four, he said Bamidele was so warm and friendly that you would want to be around such a person all the time.

The young man was perplexed, but I was not.

What he was describing was just the typical Bamidele: humble and friendly, no matter the age or class of the people he was dealing with.

He did not hesitate to greet

By Oronto Douglas

you first even if he was meeting you for the first time.

But above his down-to-earth attributes, he was a man of character. He was not a man who would say yes when he meant no. He was not a man who would laugh with you and then stab you in the back.

I have known him for decades and I am in a good position to speak about him.

He practised what he preached, and I am not even talking about his religious commitments as a pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God. I remember when he contested for the governorship of Lagos State in 2007. We thought it was a hard nut for him to crack, but he told me that he wanted to show that politics can be played on the basis of principles. He wanted to prove that it is possible to practise politics of principles.

He did not just want to be a

• Aturu

philosopher; he also wanted to be a king.

Bamidele was a defender of the masses. He devoted a greater part of his legal

practice to defending the downtrodden and the disadvantaged without charging a kobo. He did not see his profession as a meal

ticket. Rather, he saw it as a God-given opportunity to help the helpless, to solve problems of inequality in the society. He defended a lot of people without charging them fees, because he knew they could not pay. If only the rich had access to legal defence, how can the poor get justice?

Bamidele was a crusader for democracy, rule of law and accountability. In the days of General SaniAbacha when it was like a capital offence to campaign for democracy, Bamidele was in the thick of the action. We were all members of the Democratic Alternative, a pro-democracy group that fought for the enthronement of government of the people, by the people and for the people. In those days when some youths were being mobilised to march for Abacha and deny Nigerians the right to choose their leaders through an open, free

and fair electoral system, Bamidele lent his voice to the demand for true democracy.

Bamidele is a family man in the true sense of family. He devoted precious time to our sister, Bimpe and their wonderful children. When ChimaUbani travelled very suddenly to heaven, Bamidele devoted time to Mrs. ChimaUbani and their amazing children. He took time to go on holidays to Obudu and other parts of the world. He worked very hard but never forgot to leisure.

He cares for all. He is a man of community and constituency.

Let me conclude that BamideleAturu is an original. Very original! He is an authentic! Nigeria and all of humanity will miss this great soul even as he travels to heaven at this time. *Douglas is Special Adviser on Research, Documentation and Strategy to President Goodluck Jonathan

THE NATION ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2014

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ANGUAGE, the source of Wole Soyinka’s fame; the reason also for his alienation by the average reader. The Nobel Laureate is a man of complex locution. Besides his political forays, the density and immensity of his literature is perhaps the major thing that trademarks him. The fact is, there can be no indolent or perfunctory reading of Wole Soyinka; his literary rampart is impregnable. You peruse him; then the fortress can give way.

However, the language employed by the playwright in his prison memoir is in a class of its own. Set in the Civil War Nigeria, The Man Died is a riveting account of the atrocities perpetrated by the military regime against the civil populace, in which the author was also a major victim - of solitary confinement without trial for fifteen gruelling months. The abuses fill you with horrors: the flogging syndrome, detention and imprisonment without trial, killing, torture as pastime; sadism and crushing of the civic will; the climate of appeasement against the rule of law, etc.

His critics believe that language and power cannot be placed on the same pedestal.

The former must defer to the latter. Language, in all its ramifications, must kowtow to power, however malevolent is the latter. But the human rights activist disagrees, “When power is placed in the service of a vicious reaction, a language must be called into being which does its best to appropriate such obscenity of power and fling its excesses back in its face.”

The author argues that language is a part of resistance therapy. It must be employed to liberate enslaved public psyche. Those who raise eyebrows on the mode of The Man Died but are silent on the evils that provoked the choice of words do so probably for want of bravery or acquiescence in the unassailability of power, even at its most cynical and tyrannical. “Such criticism,” according to Soyinka, “must begin by assailing the seething compost of inhuman abuses from which such language took its being, then its conclusions would be worthy of notice. When it fails to do so, all we are left with is, yet again, the collaborative face of intellectualism with power that is, the taking of power and its excesses as the natural condition, in relation to which even language must be accountable.”

The Man Died interrogates the silence of the intelligentsia in the face of horrendous human rights abuses, accusing it of criminal complicity through conduct and warning that “the boundaries of the

Soyinka: The Man Lived

By Soyombo Opeyemi

geography of victims of (power) eventually extends to embrace even those who think they are protected by silence.” The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

In any people that submit willingly to the ‘daily humiliation of fear’, the man dies.

While in Ikoyi Prisons, as a prisoner of conscience, the author saw and heard the accounts of the victims of the Gestapo. The Black Hole in Dodan Barracks; the torture and flogging syndrome by soldiers. The picture of sadists who dined and wined and lulled themselves to sleep with the sounds of the tortured was grim and stupefying. Here is a narration of the writer-activist about one of the casualties of the flogging syndrome.

“I went and looked at a back of purulent sores. There was no skin. None at all. It was a mass of sores which no longer had definition as each weal had merged into another... My mind returned to the back I had seen, the still suppurating furrows, dark raised permanent swellings, the potholes where the tip of the whip must have dug more than once. A few scabs that seemed an inch thick. And his neck, even to the base of the head, covered in weals.”

“They were flogged in the open, you said.”

“Yes.” “And they screamed?...

But Gowon lives in those barracks. He must have heard the screams.”

Agu said, “Frankly, I don’t think he knew. He lived far away from the guardroom.”

“Those screams must have penetrated concrete.”

Often, the offences ranged from being from a particular tribe, to a section of the country, to being in their company, a mild protest at injustice, to what was considered a slight. It was an era of lawlessness... Journalists are usually the first victims of any dictatorship Segun Sowemimo eventually died as a result of having been “brutally beaten, he and other colleagues, by soldiers on the orders of a Military Governor.” “These soldiers plunder such commodities as palm wine and even food-stuffs from the pedestrians and cyclists as they pass through the check-points.” “We recall that some time ago... a federal officer on duty in Calabar was similarly flogged and his hair scraped before he escaped to Lagos.”

Soyinka himself was

•Soyinka

framed, said to have confessed to “an arrangement with Mr Ojukwu to assist in the purchase of jet aircraft to be used by the rebel Air Force”, and was later said to have admitted “he had since changed his mind.” He was also said to have agreed with Victor Banjo “to help in the overthrow of the Government of Western Nigeria.

Soyinka further agreed to the consequent overthrow of the Federal Military Government.” But the radical was not put on trial. Although there did exist a Third Force, Soyinka had confessed nothing to anyone. “I was framed and nearly liquidated because of my activities inside prison.

From Kirikiri I wrote and smuggled out a letter setting out the latest proof of the genocidal policies of the government of Gowon. It was betrayed to the guilty men...”

Soyinka believes that “a commitment to absolute ideals cannot plead the excuse of immobilization to turn his back on the fight for an equitable society.” One of the government goons among the academic staff in Ibadan got to know about the letter “made a photostat, and dutifully passed it on to his military bosses.” That was the turning-point in the incarceration of the human rights campaigner and the horrendous sufferings that were to be his lot.

But The Man Lived despite the plot to annihilate him.

The machination: “They argued that the public would believe their prepared story which was: while being flown to Jos, I pulled out a gun, tried to take over the plane and was shot in the at-

tempt. A violent man meets a violent end; the dramatist over-dramatizes himself once too often.”

I agree the story would have been believed.

Soyinka’s past in holding up the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service at gun-point in 1965 would have stood against him in the court of public opinion. He was alerted, hence his attempt to stymie the scheme through an orchestrated riot at Ikoyi prison on the D-day. Smarting from the failed evil plot to eliminate the gadfly, he was transferred to the Maximum Security Prison and manacled twenty-four hours a day. Public humiliation was to follow. Another forgery announced that Soyinka had been caught ‘skulking along the wall’ in an attempt to escape from prison!

The revolutionary was to lament later that he should have indeed escaped! “I fault myself now...recognising that since I had settled within myself all doubts about the bankruptcy of Gowon’s moral order from that moment of his release of the two murderers, it was not enough to send word to a band of emasculated intellectuals. I should have done then what I now stand accused of doing - escaped.”

In spite of his embittered articles in the press condemning the carnage perpetrated or condoned by the Federal Military Government, Soyinka was never under any illusion about the futility of secession, in a context. The loss of his excitable friend, Christopher Okigbo, in defence of boundary was sobering enough. “It is better to believe in people

than nations... And any exercise of self-decimation sorely in defence of the inviolability of the temporal demarcations called nations is a mindless travesty of idealism.

Peoples are not temporal because they can be defined by infinite ideas. Boundaries cannot.” The revolutionary never saw hope in Enugu nor Lagos. So also were Alale and Banjo. It is better to defend humanity, ideals than boundaries. The trio were united on this score: Esta tierra/ Este aire/ Este cielo/ Son los nuestros/ Defenderemos those lines by Castro - This earth is ours/ And the air/ And the sky/ We will defend them.

“In defence of that earth, that air and sky which formed our vision beyond lines drawn by masters from a colonial past or redrawn by the instinctive rage of the violated we set out, each to a different destiny.” A melancholic peroration indeed by the poet: Banjo, Alale to the firing squad, Soyinka to prison...

The book features also the exuberance and excesses of Gowon. On that former, I have always argued, could be located the immediate reason that led to the Civil War. I refer to the youthfulness of some of the gladiators.

Gowon, 32; Ojukwu, 33; Danjuma, 28; Katsina, 33; etc.

Where is age? Where is experience? Some of them were not even married as at the time they held the most important posts in the nation. The fratricidal war, I humbly submit, is, also, a price the nation paid for youthful exuberance.

The encounters of WS with Col. Fajuyi, his philosophy, the complicity of the judiciary in the crisis of the West, especially their last tete-a-tete three days before he met his untimely death... are all absorbing.

To suggest that Soyinka suffered in prison is to detract from what he went through in solitary confinement. No word can describe the tedium of solitary confinement, especially as a prisoner of conscience. He tried to make the most of it within the limits of human endurance. Even death would have been a triumph at a point, as he became a living skeleton. His will was stretched but not broken. It is to his eternal credit that he never accepted a life under an insupportable system as a substitute for his freedom. Unknown to many, every dictator, military or civilian, since then, factors in Soyinka in all they do or fail

NEWS

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to do.

The book also leads us to the belief-world of the poet.

Apart from his position as relates to God, which is widely known, it is plausible to say that the burden of loneliness led to some other discoveries. “Creation,” he says, “is admission of great loneliness. The mind is time - and on that flash he rested now the problem of Infinity at last. The mind is sole coefficient of time and space.”

An academic of distinction, Soyinka’s description of the life of insects and animals, in their ecological splendour, within the prison wall in Kaduna, is superb.

One must praise him for having the vocabulary to do all that - a register of some sort for school children.

In summary, the book reveals the tribulations that are sometimes the lot of those ‘who are allied and committed to the unfettered principle of life’, for which Soyinka is a living example.

His public spiritedness is exceptional. He deserves all the accolades, the encomiums we shower on him on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

The Man Died in the contemporary Nigeria, what lessons? First, we say ‘never again’ to military rule. It is a curse for any people created by the Almighty to be ruled by guns. In the contemporary world, military rule is tantamount to terrorism because what it seeks to do is to drive fear into the populace as a prelude to domination. The military, as it is the practice in developed climes, must subordinate itself to all civil authorities. The army must never be used for political ends by the President. The misuse of the police and armed forces in 1964/65 elections by the powers that be played a major role in the incursion of the military into governance and the attendant wanton depradations.

The rule of law must become an article of faith, any infraction attracting condign sanctions from a truly independent and apolitical judiciary.

No one should ever keep quiet in the face of injustice or tyranny. The police and military must obey only orders that are legal and constitutional. Neither race, tribe, colour nor religion should henceforth define our lives but the content of our character. Those in power must be committed to the welfare of the citizens.

Congratulations to my intellectual avatar, Wole Soyinka, on this grand, momentous occasion of his 80th birthday.

Soyombo, a media practitioner, sent this piece via densityshow@yahoo.com

Wole Soyinka’s white hairs

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INSTON Churchill once expressed his frustration about Russia in an often quoted statement: ‘It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ It is easy for me to re-contextualise that statement as a linguistic ode to the greatness of Professor Wole Soyinka. On this occasion, I employ that statement as a critical challenge to all Nigerians about our ethical and political duty to unravel the significance of WS before he ceases to be among us.

I want to call to our minds Prof. Soyinka’s poem

By Tunji Olaopa

humorous ‘To My First White Hairs.’ Written when WS noticed the first three strands of grey hair invading his dark and bushy hair, he was alerted to his own metamorphosis, and the need to forecast the time while we still have the chance.

THREE WHITE HAIRS! frail invaders of undergrowth interpret time. I view them, wired wisps, vibrant coiled beneath a magnifying glass, milk-thread presages Of the hoary phase.

Like WS’s three white hairs, we have also arrived at a defining moment when we can

no longer ignore what Soyinka portends for the task and responsibility of nation building in Nigeria. Soyinka’s greatness consists especially in embodying the Nigerian Project in his personal and literary evolution as a scholar and social activist. His classic prison memoir, The Man Died, represents one of my initial introductions to the problems with Nigeria. When I first met Kongi 48 years ago, it was at Aáwé when he visited in company of Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade (whose family house adjoined the Olaopa’s).

Their visit was usually in the company of Akin Mabogunje, Femi Johnson, Allison Ayida, Michael Omolayole, and so on.

I remember vividly the task assigned to me of bringing the inevitable kegs of palm-wine from Oje’s brother.

WS would later move from these usually seminar cum social fellowship to a larger, more vocal and more critical and literary analysis of the Nigerian predicament. He would, for instance, later bluntly challenge his generation as a wasted one which refused to deploy its

social capital as a significant arsenal that confronts Nigeria with the image of its own anomie and how to wriggle out of it.

Soyinka’s hairs are all white now; a leonine and willowy testament to the wisdom of his struggle to make us better against our own corrupt inclinations. Yet, Nigeria is still struggling (as I earlier gave expression in the article titled Generational Capital in the Nigerian Project) to turn against its own anomic existence. Reissuing his books today, especially The Man Died, has the significance of

instructing my own generation against a wastefulness that comes from neglecting our own patriotic duties to Nigeria. Soyinka is still very much with us today, but have we all learned anything from the enigma? Is it not time we institutionalise his memorable insights to national rebirth and regeneration (even if we haven’t done enough to institutionalise the legend himself)?

The hero of our time, I say Kabiyesi o, Happy Birthday, kalamu ikowe yin a di abere o – may your pen grow and grow in size to become needle.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014

SPORTS THE NATION ON SUNDAY

South Africa name Mashaba as new coach

EXTRA

JULY 27, 2014

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PHRAIM Mashaba was re-appointed as coach of South Africa's national team on Saturday, the fourth time he has taken the helm of Bafana Bafana.

Mashaba, more commonly known as 'Shakes', has had two previous caretaker spells with the senior team and was the permanent coach between August 2002 and November 2003.

His most recent role was in charge of the national Under-20s side, and is currently in Mali on a west African tour with the team.

The South African Football Association (Safa) opted for a local coach having looked at a number of other options.

Carlos Queiroz, who led Iran at the World Cup in Brazil, and Stephen Keshi of Nigeria were both linked to the post.

Golden Eaglets beat

Les Leopards 1-0 W

ORLD champions, Golden Eaglets of Nigeria opened their 2015 African Under-17 Championship's account with a 1-0 defeat of Congo Democratic Republic in on Saturday.

Haruna confident Kinshasa It was a match the Golden would have won with a despite Cup loss Eaglets wide margin but Victor Y N A M O K i e v Osimhen settled things in midfielder Lukman favour of the Nigerians in front disappointed home fans H a r u n a i s s t i l l of packed at the Tata Samuel confident ahead of the Ukrainian League campaign which kicks-off this weekend, despite losing in the Super Cup. League champions Shakhtar Donetsk beat Dynamo 2-0 on Tuesday in IGERIA coach, the Super Cup and Haruna, Stephen Keshi has who came on as a second said he would "love to half substitute, tells the club site that he feels it is too stay on" as Nigeria manager soon to have concerns despite a difficult three years at the helm. ahead of the new season.

The 52-year-old led Nigeria “We tried very hard and did everything possible to to their third African title in win the Super Cup, but 2013 and the last 16 at the World Cup in Brazil. unfortunately lost.

The Nigeria Football “However, this is only the beginning of the season, Federation, which allowed I believe that this year we Keshi's contract to expire after w i l l w i n t h e the World Cup, has opened discussions with him in the championship,” he said.

It's been five years since hope of persuading him to return as Super Eagles coach.

Kiev won the League title.

Keshi is the first and only Nigerian to lead the country to an Africa Cup of Nations title, as well as to the last 16 of IGERIAN striker Obafemi Martins has been named in the MLS All Star team that will face Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich HE Nigeria Heart at Providence Park on Foundation (NHF) Wednesday, August 6.

C h a r i t y G o l f The 29-year-old will Tournament will return to the continue his partnership 18 hole course of the Ikoyi with Seattle Sounders Club 1938 on August 9, 2014.

This was made known by team-mate Clint Dempsey, which has produced 17 the Organising Director, g o a l s i n t h e c u r r e n t Joseph Abu, while informing that golfing members are campaign. looking forward to Martins expressed his already the annual show of golfing delight to have Dempsey excellence. with him in Portland for the Joseph Abu, over 100 match, where they have players have registered for been picked in the MLS All- the event as the participants' Star Fan XI, which means status would guarantee they get to play from the excitement. “We are looking forward to a grand return start.

"I don't really know how after the tournament went off to explain it," the former the card since 2011,” Abu Super Eagles striker told said.

He noted that the the MLS website in a of participants d i s c u s s i o n a b o u t h i s hundreds would be led by NHF boss, partnership with Dempsey. Dr Kinsley Akinroye, who

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Martins makes All Star team

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Stadium.

In the midst of the enthusiastic local fans was Nigeria's Ambassador to the Congo Democratic Republic, Dr. Grant Ehiobuche, officials of Organisation of Nigerians in Diaspora amongst others.

Les Leopards took the kick off exactly 3:30pm local time (3:30pm Nigerian time) after centre referee 31-year-old Antoine Max Depadoux Effa Essouma signalled the start.

Nigeria soon took over with

Keshi ready to pen Nigeria extension

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a World Cup His previous reign as coach was littered with problems over money, as he experienced a number of delays in receiving his salary, and issues around his control of team selection.

The football authority also failed to provide Keshi with an official car and accommodation as stipulated in his previous three-year contract.

The former Nigeria captain was also burdened with the responsibility of paying one of his assistants from his monthly-salary after the NFF refused to approve the assistant's appointment.

Nigeria Heart Foundation returns to Ikoyi club

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By Taiwo Alimi

interestingly is also an avid golfer.

“Ikoyi golf club has become like a home for NHF and members are eagerly looking forward to the 2014 edition of the tournament. We are indeed looking forward to another successful tournament here and from here we hope to replicate same at IBB Golf and Country Club Abuja and Ikeja Golf Club Lagos.

NHF would also use the occasion to champion the cause of the foundation such as; propagating and encouraging participation in sporting activities beneficial to the development of a healthy heart as well as prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Captain Kelechi Nwakali drilling the ball through the middle to find Usman Abass on the left wing. Abass evaded his marker and wasted no time with an inch-perfect cross for gangling Victor Osimhen to nod straight into the net for the first goal of the match in the 13th minute.

The goal woke up the home team and Nigeria was nearly punished in the 25th minute when Chris Mutomb capitalised on a miss kick by

Lukman Halilu but his wellstruck shot was parry away by goalkeeper Akpan Udoh. It was Congo who nearly scored again in the 40th minute when Rodrigue Masini Dimbua capitalized on a defensive mixup in the heart of Nigerian defence but his lively shot bounced off the post into corner. Two minutes later, Nigeria won a free kick on the periphery of Congolese box but Nwakali's well struck free kick also ricocheted off the goal post.

Nigeria took the restart on resumption of second half but it was the Congolese that showed more hunger as they were buoyed by the home fans.

Thereafter, it was a ding dong affair with near misses on both sides as the game dragged to an end.

"I'm not happy despite the fact that we won this match," Coach Emmanuel Amuneke said afterwards." If we had taken our chances, the story would have been different because we had all the chances but we wasted so much."

Amuneke further praised the Les Leopards for their fighting spirit after conceding a goal, adding that his boys would have to up their game in the reverse fixture in a fortnight.

"We have seen what the Congolese can do and that means more work for us in the second leg but we are positive of going through eventually," he stated.

Arsenal fans dread Drogba return

T

O think Didier Drogba could have joined Arsenal this summer.

There was much speculation that Drogba could do the unthinkable and don an Arsenal shirt until Arsene Wenger distanced himself from a move for the Ivory Coast forward.

Judging by the reaction of Chelsea and Arsenal fans to the news that Drogba has re-signed a one-year deal with Jose Mourinho's side, it is probably for the best that he is back at the Bridge two years after he departed.

For Chelsea fans, it gives Drogba the chance to add to his incredible tally against their club's fierce rivals. He scored 15 goals in 15 games against Arsenal in his first period at the club.

Not that Arsenal fans will be running scared of Drogba. As the news emerged that Drogba had re-signed for Chelsea, some Gunners were busy making the point that he is just a poor man's Thierry Henry.

QUOTABLE “They are nothing but hacks, hired hands who are on the payroll of the PDP and Jonathan.

Otherwise, they should substantiate and mention who in APC is behind Boko Haram.

We know many of them. Once they are out of office and are broke, they are hired by anybody who is ready to pay them… when did Boko Haram start? Was it in 2011?

People like them are broke and are political prostitutes.”

SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2014 TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM VOL. 8, NO. 2923

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ORMER head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, may not have reached mythical status like the eponymous Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, but he has clearly become a genuine hero whose death, had it occurred in last week’s Kaduna blast that claimed more than 100 lives, would have had dire consequences for the country and the Jonathan presidency. Two days before suicide bombers targeted him, the retired general had excoriated President Goodluck Jonathan for insensitively declaring war on Nigeria, a war he said the president could not hope to win for natural and historical reasons. Even if the two incidents were unrelated, majority of the general’s admirers would never allow themselves be persuaded that the Jonathan government did not have a hand in it. All that was needed for conflagration to break out was a spark in Kaduna, and another fuse lit somewhere else in the far North where the stoic and bold general had made his reputation as a friend of the dispossessed.

If Dr Jonathan cannot take counsel from the Buhari incident, then he is probably more unwise than he is globally – as a result of his poor handling of the Chibok abductions – reputed. The president remorselessly exploits Nigeria’s political, religious and cultural fissures, and it is doubtful whether he is sensitive to the implications of a political explosion. If the unthinkable had happened in Kaduna last week, and mayhem had been unleashed, would the president feel confident to exonerate himself and his brand of politics from the catastrophe? A Nigerian president is required to understanding the history of his country, where the dividing lines must be drawn, which boundaries he must never cross, what sentiments he must never exploit, and what defenders he must never permit to rally to his cause, let alone entertain openly and shamelessly. There is nothing to suggest that the president appreciates these lessons, nor does he have the discipline to let the lessons, were he to understand them, constrain his actions and policies.

No one doubts that Dr Jonathan is Nigeria’s most divisive president. He and his aides may think this label harsh and undeserved, but more and more, as if determined to keep flying in the face of providence, he exploits and exacerbate these divisions. For instance, rather than see the opposition as an integral part of democracy, and indeed as an ingredient, if not a fulcrum, for the stabilisation of Nigerian politics, both he

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-National Publicity Secretary of All Progressives Congress (APC), Lai Mohammed, firing broadsides at some PDP chiefs for labelling some APC leaders as being behind Boko Haram insurgency.

Jonathan, Buhari and demonisation of the North and his party, and also his overzealous and uncontrollable aides, believe that the only way to normalise politics in these parts is either to extirpate the opposition like a pest, stigmatise their leaders, or defang it so comprehensively until it becomes unrecognisable and impotent.

This depressing worldview manifests in the rash of impeachment intrigues inspired and instigated by the ruling party, and connived at by the presidency, notwithstanding Dr Jonathan’s half-hearted dissociation from the Adamawa, Nasarawa and other impeachment plots.

In addition, and just like during military regimes when the line between a ruler’s private and public/national interest becomes deliberately and short-sightedly blurred, Dr Jonathan has deployed national security organisations, whose operations are guided by definitive constitutional provisions, to wholly private and skewed interests of the president.

The military, particularly the army, secret service, and other instruments of coercion have been completely reoriented towards the preservation and advancement of the Jonathan presidency. Little thought is spared for the cohesion and operational effectiveness of those security organisations.

Gen Buhari’s poignant and controversial statement also alludes to something more debilitating and truly worrisome about the president’s style. Dr Jonathan’s presidency is not only divisive; it has engaged, more than any other government before it, in the demonisation of the North, the North liberally defined. Taking advantage of the ingratiating style of Nigerian politicians, their sycophancy, their unending greed for power and their impotence in the face of tyranny, Dr Jonathan has either by public statements, body language, or indifference to the plight of the Northeast encouraged or allowed the continuing demonisation of the North. This attitude is unsafe and unhealthy.

For a long time, and even more remarkably so now, the presidency has argued that the political and business elites of the North are behind Boko Haram. Many South-South groups and individuals, and now alarmingly many Southwest groups and individuals, actually parrot the view that Boko Haram, in spite of its beginnings and chronology, was hatched to undermine the Jonathan presidency. Like all other elites in the country, but perhaps more guiltily, the northern elite was at first slow in recognising the danger constituted by

Jonathan’s war, from Buhari’s perspective

FTER observing the ruling party’s open and unremitting war against the opposition, Gen Muhammadu Buhari last week felt compelled to warn President Goodluck Jonathan not to take the country on the misguided path of tyranny and dictatorship. The president will be reluctant to listen to the general, for he would probably think that once he wins the 2015 presidential poll, then he would be in a position to offer concessions and make amends. But even the hypothetical offer of concessions would be a far-fetched idea should he win the poll, for Dr Jonathan naturally loathes the opposition, sees the presidency as an office to be revered rather than respected, uses the words criticism and abuse interchangeably, and is willing to bring every national institution to the service of his private political goals.

Said Buhari: “Our country has gone through several rough patches, but never before have I seen a Nigerian President declare war on his own country as we are seeing now. Never before have I seen a Nigerian President deploy federal institutions in the service of partisanship as we are witnessing now. Never before have I seen a Nigerian President utilise the common wealth to subvert the system and punish the opposition, all in the name of politics.”

The trigger for the Buhari warning was of course the impeachment of Murtala Nyako, until recently the Governor of Adamawa State, in circumstances that were clearly po-

•Jonathan

•Buhari

litical, and also the ongoing impeachment effort against Governor Tanko Al-Makura of Nasarawa State, again in circumstances that are evidently immature and political. Both impeachment plots, as well as a few others in the pipeline, are widely believed to be aimed at crippling the opposition APC and making the re-election of Dr Jonathan in 2015 much surer.

The president and his aides have denied that Dr Jonathan is behind the unsavoury plots.

But Gen Buhari is unimpressed by the subterfuge. He reiterates that, “Whether or not President Goodluck Jonathan is behind the gale of impeachment or the utilisation of desperate tactics to suffocate the opposition and turn Nigeria into a one-party state, what cannot be denied is that they are happening under his watch, and he cannot pretend not to know, since that will be akin to hiding behind one finger.”

Then the general warns apocalyptically: “I, along with many other patriotic Nigerians,

fought for the unity and survival of this country. Hundreds of thousands of patriotic souls perished in the battle to keep Nigeria one. The blood of many of our compatriots helped to water the birth of the democracy we are all enjoying today. Let no one, whether leader or led, high or low, a member of the ruling party or the opposition, do anything to torpedo the system. Let no one, whether on the altar of personal ambition or pretension to higher patriotic tendencies, do anything that can detonate the powder keg on which the nation is sitting. It is time for all concerned to spare a thought for the ordinary citizens who have yet to see their hopes, dreams and aspirations come to reality, within the general context of nationhood.”

Was Gen Buhari unduly harsh, or did he overstate the problem? I doubt very much. Other former heads of state recognise the problem, but have perhaps chosen to engage in private but unproductive engagement with the president. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, even though he was partly responsible for the foisting of Dr Jonathan on Nigeria, has shouted himself hoarse over Dr Jonathan’s poor judgement and lack of wisdom. The alarming fact is that Dr Jonathan is the least sensitive to just how close Nigeria is to fracturing. If the other former presidents and heads of state will not weigh in to compel the president to a high degree of moderation and constitutional discipline, we could soon all discover that there is after all nothing inevitable or irreversible about the peace, stability and unity the country glibly confesses.

Boko Haram. In fact, given its initial silence and knowing winks, it appeared that the northern elite were indifferent to the violence. They probably recall having lost the power stakes midway into the Umaru Yar’Adua presidency, and then to Dr Jonathan after the 2011 general elections.

For a period, they became dangerously inured to the damage caused by Boko Haram and the long-time social, economic and political impact of the sect’s anarchic campaigns. But to conclude they hatched, inspired and funded the insurgency was a little too fanatical and specious.

Surprisingly, even leading members of the Afenifere and some other top Yoruba elite hitherto reputed for deep thinking and calmness in analysing national issues have become converted to Dr Jonathan’s fallacy.

Such conversions in the Southwest must, however, be properly situated within the framework of the emerging ideological and power struggles in the zone. To assuage their guilt for abandoning what is believed to be the mainstream progressive politics in the Southwest, former so-called Awoists and other self-proclaimed progressives have suggested that both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) contain progressive elements, or that at any rate, the APC is not even truly progressive. Having argued thus, it became both desirable and ineluctable for the Jonathan supporters in the Southwest to embrace the silly and unfounded notion that northerners support Boko Haram’s subversive campaign because they see leadership as their birthright.

When Dr Jonathan permitted himself the luxury of visiting the Northeast a few years back, he had accused the elite of harbouring Boko Haram insurgents, an accusation still repeated by many even in the Afenifere. He made no mention of the impotence of his security organisations, which he controls exclusively and deploys as he pleases. He even threatened his hosts with fire and brimstone should one more of his troops be killed by the insurgents. Since then, the militants have killed more socalled ‘northern supporters of Boko Haram’ than soldiers and southerners, and it is not certain how many more northerners they need to kill to persuade southerners to revise their theories. The militants have killed respected members of the North’s military elite such as Gen Mohammed Shuwa, and other members of the political and traditional elites. Yet, neither Dr Jonathan nor his Southwest supporters have felt the need to properly situate the ongoing terror war within the context of the global terror war and international extreme political and even jihadist tendencies.

The PDP’s insistence on blaming the APC for the large-scale insecurity the country is experiencing, in spite of evidence to the contrary, not to say its adamantine resolve to equate the opposition with religious fanaticism, has led many in the opposition to believe that the Boko Haram insurgency is actually nurtured by the ruling party for private and political ends. There will be no end to the accusations and counterarguments. But in terms of misinformation and disinformation, there is little doubt that the Jonathan government and the ruling party are cruelly and effectively exploiting the Boko Haram insurgency to retain control of the political space and to cynically manipulate the minds of the gullible, especially in the Southwest, Southeast, South-South and North-Central.

Gen Buhari has timeously warned the president about how close to the brink his government has brought Nigeria with his divisive and exploitative politics. Given the kind of people he has surrounded himself with, and his own deplorable inability to go beyond the surface in analysing and understanding the dynamics of Nigerian politics, power and peoples, I fear Dr Jonathan is quite unable to grasp the fears that trouble Gen Buhari’s mind. For, as it has long been evident, even the ability to appreciate danger requires some depth of understanding, a quality altogether lacking in the present government.

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Website: www.thenationonlineng.net ISSN: 115-5302 E-mail: sunday@thenationonlineng.net Editor: FESTUS ERIYE