The Nation May 19, 2013

NGF chair: South-South govs dump Amaechi

Achebe was not my enemy, says Wole Soyinka

We‘re not aware –CPS –Page 4

–Page 8

Nigeria’s widest circulating newspaper

Vol.07, No. 2496

TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM

SUNDAY

MAY 19, 2013

N200.00

Emergency: Residents flee Borno war zone 24-hour curfew in Maiduguri

Special forces kill 10 Boko Haram members, arrest 65

Northern govs meet May 28

–Page 4

Azeezat I love talking about love –Page 34

•Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi (left) and his wife, Chief Florence Ajimobi (right) posing with the Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Samuel Odulana Odugade I (centre) shortly after their installation as Aare Atunluse and Yeye Aare Atunluse of Ibadanland by the monarch in Ibadan yesterday.

Rivers PDP: Power has returned to original owners, says Wike

2015: David-West blasts Asari Dokubo, others over comments

Ex-militant ‘generals’ take over venue We want president not VP, former –Page 2 •SaystheyaremakingenemiesforJonathan as new state exco is inaugurated Deputy Speaker Opara tells Amaechi –Pages 24-25

NIGERIA IS HIGHEST IMPORTER OF BULLET PROOF VEHICLES

–Page 11

2

NEWS THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Rivers PDP: Power has returned to original owners, says Wike A

MID tight security jointly provided by armed policemen, operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) and ex-militant ‘generals’ the Felix Obuah-led executive council of the PDP in Rivers State yesterday declared that the state is solidly behind President Goodluck Jonathan for a second term in office.

It said the people of the state are not interested in the vice presidential slot, a veiled reference to the position allegedly being sought by the state governor, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi.

The governor’s alleged ambition is at the core of his current face-off with the Presidency and many PDP members in the state.

It has factionalised the PDP in the state with one group loyal to the governor and the other (Obuah exco) loyal to the Minister of State for Education, Mr. Nyesom Wike.

Even the State House of Assembly is not spared with 27 members, including the speaker on the side of the governor and the remaining five on the other side.

The five pro-Wike lawmakers are officially suspended by the House while the 27 on the side of the governor have been suspended by the Obuah-led PDP for alleged anti-party activities.

Leading the ex-militant ‘generals’ at yesterday’s dedication of the Obuahled ecxo at an elaborate thanksgiving service was Soboma Jackrich, alias Egberipapa.

The venue was the Port Harcourt Club 1928, old Government Reservation Area (GRA), in the state capital.

In attendance were Wike, Obuah, former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Austin Opara and Senator Lee Meaba, and the five pro-Wike State legislators- Michael Chinda (Obio/Akpor II constituency), Kelechi Godspower Nwogu (Omuma), Evans Bipi (Ogu/Bolo), Martins Amaewhule (Obio/Akpor I), Victor Ihunwo (Port Harcourt III) and a member of the House of Representatives from Rivers State, Kingsley Chinda.

Traditional rulers, party men and women as well as cultural groups from different parts of the state witnessed the event.

An anti-bomb police squad car with registration number: NPF 1764 C and an Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) were among the security equipment deployed at the event ceremony.

Policemen frisked every

• Ex-militant ‘generals’ take over venue as new state exco is inaugurated • We want president not VP, former deputy speaker Opara tells Amaechi

•Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola SAN (middle), presenting Life Achievement Award 2013 to Chief (Mrs) Oluwatoyin Ogedengbe of Association of Caterers and Decorators during the grand finale of the 4th Tradesmen and Artisans' Week and Graduation Ceremony for Re-Trained Artisans on Thursday lastweek. With them are: Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Mrs. Olusola Oworu (3rd left), Special Adviser to the Governor on Commerce and Industry, Mr. Seye Oladejo (2nd right), Chairman, House Committee on Commerce and Industry, Hon. Bisi Yusuf (2nd left), Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Mr. Wale Raji (left), President, Lagos State Council of Tradesmen and Artisans, Chief Bola Sanusi (right).

From Bisi Olaniyi, Port Harcourt

one going into the venue.

Former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives (Austin Opara), who chaired the party’s reconciliation committee in 2011, described Obuah as the “real and authentic” chairman of the PDP in Rivers State.

Opara said: “Let power go back to the people. Open your doors and carry everybody along. We do not want vice-president in 2015. We want president.

“We are assuring President Jonathan that Rivers state will vote PDP in 2015.

It is time for change. It is time for emancipation.”

Wike, on his part, said that with the April 15 emergence of Obuah, through the judgment of an Abuja High Court power has returned to the original owners in Rivers.

PDP, he said, remains one united family.

Obuah declared that his administration is for peace and not interested in getting the governor impeached as being insinuated in some quarters.

Wike said: “This is not a rally. This is a thanksgiv-

ing service. We are dedicating the executive to God, because without God, it would not have been possible for them to be here today. I will appeal first of all that we must understand our one family. One big umbrella family that is enough to accommodate everybody. PDP is one united family.

“We agree to disagree.

We disagree to agree. At the end of the day, all of us will still be in the same family, but one thing that is paramount is that power has returned to the original owners. The owners of the power are you and I. The members of the executive are just servants of the party. You are the leaders of this party. Your voice must be heard at all times.

It is what you want that the party will do.

“I will appeal to the executive, led by the chairman, Felix Obuah, as his name implies, go round, let all these things go round everybody. I also want to appeal to him (Obuah), not to be provoked.

“Today, he has become a father. As a father, he must have a large heart. He has to have a forgiving

spirit, to forgive those children, who may not behave the way you have told them to behave. Sometimes, you shout on them. Sometimes, you bring them back.

“Let me say clearly that this party has regulations.

President Jonathan is the leader of the party, as far as Nigeria is concerned. Let me apologise that if not for the tight schedules of Governor Amaechi, who is the leader of the party at the state level, he would have been here in person.

“As my leader, he (Amaechi) has instructed me to tell you that he is a member of the PDP and he will continue to be a member of the PDP. I will also take back the message that you the supporters have sent that he (Amaechi) should be remembered.

That I will do.

“What is important to know, is that the governor of the state is the leader of the PDP in Rivers State.

That is the structure of the party. As a minister, I am not the leader of the party.

“Above all, a leader of the party is a member of the party and therefore, the party is supreme. Supremacy of the party is very

important.

“I thank all of you for coming, to have this thanksgiving. I am really overwhelmed. Let me tell you, do not be quarrelling with people. Do not be replying what people say.

What you must know in life is that change is difficult to accept. When there is change, you do not except people at the same time to embrace the change. Sometimes, they have no choice, but to embrace it.

“What is happening today is a natural reaction, because there is a power shift. Because the mandate has been returned to the people. Those who were occupying it before ordinarily will not be happy.

So, whatever is happening today, do not be angry, then begin to ventilate your anger that people are abusing us. We are human beings. We must be abused. We are not ghosts.

We are human beings. So, we must be abused.

“The abuse cannot remain on our skin. So, you must be able to accommodate it. At the end of the day, you will see that everybody will come back

here. I assure you, from now till December, what you see today, you will hear a different thing. It is not that they do not like Go Round, they like him, but just that they have to react, so that they will know that they are also not happy.

“We are in PDP. We will follow the programmes of PDP. We have no choice, but to support his government.

I am appealing to every true PDP member that we will continue to support the President and Commanderin-Chief, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. That is important.”

The new chairman of the PDP in Rivers state noted that he was humbled and overwhelmed by the mammoth crowd of party faithful, who gathered and joined him and members of the State Working Committee (SWC) of the “great” party, to glorify God Almighty, for his love and faithfulness.

Obuah said: “Since assumption of office, my executive committee has made efforts in moving the party in the state to the next level.

Only recently, we inaugurated various committees, to help reengineer the party in the state. Party members with impeccable character, have been saddled with these responsibilities and by the special grace of God, we shall succeed.

“Another important issue I want to address is the extent governance in Rivers state has been reduced to blackmail. Whenever impunity in governance is questioned, party members and stakeholders are blackmailed, as those who want to share Rivers money. This cheap blackmail is not acceptable to the leadership of this party in the state.

“Let me also advise that there is no need heating the polity with hired demonstrators along the streets of Port Harcourt on a daily basis. A situation where top government functionaries gather and resort to raising false alarms of assassination and declaration of emergency rule in Rivers state.

That only exists in their myopic imagination. It is to say the least, unacceptable.

“This administration is for peace. We want to move Rivers state forward. We have not on any day, anywhere planned to impeach the governor (Amaechi).

That is not our mission. We want to bring everybody together.

“As we prepare to face 2015 elections, the party in the state must remain one family, to deliver PDP in Rivers State, as it has been PDP state since 1999 and must remain PDP state. Nobody, no group of people can change Rivers State from being PDP state.

“The people that make things happen are all here gathered. To God be the glory. The PDP is still the PDP you all know.”

Column

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

An Ambassador's Odyssey: How internal affairs determine external affairs A Review of Lest We Forget: The Memoirs of Ambassador Oladapo Fafowora

I

T is a great honour and privilege to review the memoirs of one of the most stellar diplomatic products of Nigeria’s post-Independence history.

The ambassador is a walking encyclopaedia of that tortured history and perhaps one of its most memorable victims. But despite the occasional bumps and bureaucratic hiccups, it was good and glorious while it lasted.

To have become the ambassadorial representative of one’s country at the United Nations barely at the age of 40 is a rare feat even among diplomatic high-fliers. But to be peremptorily retired and recalled three years after and 17 years to full retirement age must be considered a diplomatic tragedy.

The ambassador’s career illustrates a classic Nigerian paradox which has continued to haunt the nation till date. The very system that recognises and rewards talent and excellence is also the same system that recognises and punishes talent and excellence. It is a Janus-faced system that is capable of good and evil in equal measure.

All human societies are prone to errors of judgement and procedural mishaps in their preferment systems .But civilised societies build and develop institutional frameworks and safety nets to protect their public service against the frailty of human nature and its tendency to arbitrary tyranny. Almost 30 years after the ambassador’s arbitrary retirement, the Nigerian public service remains a Homeric killing field in which the best and the brightest are routinely sacrificed at the altar of mediocrity and mendacity.

One can then understand the occasional bitterness and bewilderment and the abiding trauma that lace the ambassador’s photographic recall of events. But it is not all a tale of woes.

There are happy moments and joyous events recollected with perfect tranquillity. The ambassador is an illustrious scion of an illustrious lineage.

Once he is able to put behind him the trauma of a truncated career, Fafowora takes a hardnosed and insightful view of our failings as a nation and the concomitant foreign policy fiasco. The thesis is simple. In the long and short run, a nation’s foreign politics is conditioned and determined by its internal politics. Chaotic internal politics always lead to chaotic foreign policies. The colour and complexion of external affairs are a reflection of the colour and complexion of internal affairs.

With its rich anecdotes, its hilarious encounters with saints and sadists of power, its unforgettable and finely crafted cameos of living and dead personages, this memoirs is a tour de force of institutional memory.

Only a glutton for punishment would wish to become a victim of the ambassador’s perfectly weighed putdown or his pithy and pitiless summations. A few old heroes are disrobed. Emperors walk naked. Unfortunately, some of them are no longer around to answer to the ambassador’s scathing denunciations. All in all, this memoirs will come in handy for our foreign policy planners plotting a way out of our foreign policy conundrum.

Let me say right away then that this memoirs is destined to become a classic of its genre, a towering contri-

•Fafowora

bution to diplomatic literature and a rich mine for students of cultural history, particularly of the westernised Yoruba elite thrown up by colonisation and christianisation. The old Lagos colony comes alive in this memoirs and through its prism we are able to catch a historic glimpse of its Victorian, Georgian and Elizabethan phases.

My favourite is the unforgettable cameo of the old fabled Lagos millionaire, Pa Da Rocha, promptly appearing on his balcony at 1pm everyday to throw two shilling coins at passers-by. According to the ambassador, there were rumours that Da Rocha was actually long dead and that it was his ghost dispensing the munificence. But this did not prevent Fafowora and his fellow pupils of CMS Grammar School from partaking in the free for all scramble for the old Brazilian benediction.

It is stuff from magical realism. It appears that we have had ghosts for a long time in this country, but this one was a good and generous ghost. There was also the story of the late venerable musical impresario, Art Alade, arriving in school in a gleaming and glistening Jaguar car while his principal made do with an old banger. But the iron-willed disciplinarian would not be fazed by such display of opulence.

Fafowora writes the English language with felicity and facility. There is a fluency and fluidity about his prose which hint at a natural flair for writing. When this is added to a racy and riveting narrative style, it is moveable feast indeed. There is a master story teller, a raconteur of exceptional ability, at work in this memoirs.

If the ambassador’s grasp of historical details is astonishing, his power of recall is a tad short of extraordinary. Fafowora vividly recalls events from childhood, and not even

memorable pounded yam meals at the feet of his adoring and doting grandfather in Ilesha escape his attention. What a great professor of History lost to the Nigeria academy! The utter clarity, the limpid simplicity and uncluttered writing remind one of Norman Stone, the former Cambridge professor of Modern History and the celebrated AJP Taylor, the great historian.

In the event, the loss of the Nigerian academy was the gain of the Nigerian nascent post-Independence diplomatic community. It was a career that blazed forth like a comet resulting in two glorious ambassadorial rescue postings to Idi Amin’s Uganda and later Turkey. It culminated at the UN as ambassador and Deputy Representative of Nigeria’s mission before it was plucked down in orbit by malignant forces.

Fafowora does not mince word about those he felt were responsible for his plight, which saw him suddenly thrown out of the Nigerian Mission at the UN and to the abyss of joblessness in a foreign land. According to him, the main culprit was the late Ambassador Lawal Rafindadi who was a mere cipher clerk when Fafowora was already a top official of the Nigerian embassy in London.

Rafindadi was ably assisted by the late General Joseph Garba who appeared to have coveted Fafowora’s job beyond the bounds of decency and decorum. Mention must also be made of the top Nigerian diplomat and former academic who wrote Fafowora a profuse letter of appreciation and thanks after enjoying the ambassador’s warmth and hospitality in New York. But almost in the same breath, the fellow also wrote a damning letter about the ambassador to the federal authorities.

Although the new military au-

S

3

nooping around With

Tatalo Alamu thorities admitted that a mistake had been made, its ranking echelon was said to have claimed that the government had put the matter behind it. The moral and mortal error of military arrogance is that injustice can never be put behind. It will always surface on the front burner, an open sore of the nation.

It has been said that an ambassador is a person paid to lie for his country abroad. Also, in a famous diplomatic dogfight, General Alexander Haig, the late American Secretary of State, was said to have dismissed Lord Carrington, his British counterpart, as a duplicitous bastard. To which the British earl snootily replied that there was always going to be a problem when you put boy scouts in charge of diplomacy.

This ambassador is neither duplicitous, nor is he a boy scout in diplomacy. Fafowora has refused to lie about the ugly realities of his country.

There is a refreshing candour about this memoirs which occasionally does not sit very well with the classical canons of diplomatic reticence. Anybody on the wrong side of the famous Ijesha tongue would know that it is not an ordinary bruising affair. Future generations of Nigerians will remain grateful to the ambassador for exposing with merciless frankness, the hollow ritual of Nigeria’s foreign policy.

Had the ambassador been a better politician and a more accomplished insider operative, perhaps his fate would have been different. But throughout his career, Dr Fafowora insisted on doing what was right and proper even if heavens should fall. In following the laid down procedures and regulations, he was as militant as he was uncompromising often courting the ire of his affronted superiors and influential subordinates alike.

The chancery is not a place for hostage taking, or for taking chances for that matter.

There is an almost obsessive insistence on honour and propriety which often make Fafowora to sound like a moral crusader rather than a wily diplomat. In fairness to the author, he had the likes of Simeon Adebo to look up to as iconic avatars of the tradition.

An excellent technocrat of immaculate integrity and unimpeachable character, Adebo was often spotted by eagle-eyed superiors who rewarded him with higher portfolios .and each time, the great man turned in an even more superlative performance. But it is unlikely that our ambassador has not heard that the distinguished public servant died a broken and disappointed man.

It is time to examine the cultural and historical milieu that threw up this remarkable diplomat. The family took its name from the ambassador’s great grandfather who is rightly regarded as the modern primogenitor of the Fafowora clan, even though the original lineage could be traced back as far as the 15th Century. Like many contemporary Ijesha family names, Fafowora is a nom de guerre adapted by the modern founding father.

Fafowora distinguished himself as a warrior in the protracted IbadanEkitiparapo war which had drawn in all of Yoruba land. He was known to have been fierce and uncompromising in war. Such was his total commitment to warfare that his own son and the future ambassador’s grandfather was already a twelve year old boy when he was taken to meet his father for the first time at the Ikirun front.

The boy chose to remain with his father at the war front where he tended to his horses.

With the end of war and demobilisation, the great warrior took to farming and business and became an instant success. The son took after the father, even surpassing him in superlative wealth. His entrepreneurial daring and love of adventure took him as far as the Badagry coast and in particular Oke-Odan where he promptly eloped with his sweetheart, a local princess and the ambassador’s paternal grandmother.

Here we see new class formations in process and the modern Yoruba hinterland elite in progress. The old warrior class had transformed itself into the nucleus of the new merchant class. Further travel and exposure brought cultural refinement and civilisation which was almost synonymous with westernisation and the adoption of the Christian religion.

As a son of a wealthy and influential father, the ambassador’s father in 1934 became the first student of Ilesha Grammar School with the magical number 001. He eventually finished at CMS Grammar School in 1938 in the same class as the famous Williams brothers. His son, the future ambassador, followed his father’s footsteps and became a pupil in the same school in January 1954 at the age of 13 and graduated with solid results in 1958.

The inevitable contacts and collisions between the new Yoruba hinterland elite and the old coastal elite of Brazilian émigrés, returnees and recaptives produced its own great social ironies and explosive contradictions which should be of interest to our sociologists and cultural historians. Gentrification, with its hints of snobbery and exclusion and the attendant stratification of society were also underway.

The ambassador’s maternal great grandfather was a Famuyiwa, a hardy Ijesha man who had been stranded on the Ileke coastline as a result of the protracted Yoruba civil war of the late 19th century. His son who trained as a clergyman promptly adopted the name Williams. But when the ambassador’s father, who had by then made his way to Lagos as a promising civil servant, asked for the hand of the beautiful Williams daughter in marriage, it was initially frowned upon by the Williams’ clan as an act of great social temerity by an upcountry bumpkin.

It was the resulting union that was to produce the future ambassador. A blissful and idyllic childhood was brutally punctuated by the death of the mother who succumbed to cancer at the age of 38 in December 1954. The young Dapo, who was barely 13 at the time, was left to provide an emotional shield for his younger sister and infant brother. Far into his manhood, particularly in dire straits, the ambassador recalls the tragedy with pain and an acute sense of loss.

Yet it is also likely that it was this defining event that steeled his character and forced early maturity on him. It probably also fuelled his determination to succeed in the face of all odds. This was to stand him in good stead as he scraped through secondary school without a permanent address. It also saw him through the Nigerian College of Arts and Science and the University of Ibadan where he emerged with top honours in 1964.

•Continued on page 12

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

News EMERGENCY RULE

R

ESIDENTS of Maiduguri and Marte, Borno State, which are hotspots in the battle to dislodge terrorists from the Northeast, are fleeing the areas in their hundreds, as the military operation in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states intensifies.

There is panic everywhere, fuelled by alleged blockade of all entry points to Maiduguri by troops as part of measures to arrest fleeing terrorists.

The situation is not helped by the cut of telephone services in the state.

The military authorities yesterday imposed a 24-hour curfew on 13 areas of Maiduguri, the state capital, after killing 10 suspected members of the Islamist sect, Boko Haram, in the Gamboru Ward of the metropolis and arresting 65 others alleged to be on a mission to inflict terror on Maiduguri.

No fewer than 11 vehicles, four tri-cycles and 24 handsets were also seized by the troops.

Areas affected by the curfew are: Gamboru, Mairi, Kuwait, Bakin Kogi, Kasuwan Shanu, Ruwan Shafi, 202 Housing Estate, Dikwa Quarters, Low Cost Sinimari,505 Housing Estate, Chad Basin Area, 303 Housing Estate, and Baga Road.

A security source said the battle against the insurgents has now shifted to Maiduguri.

He said: “They (terrorists) are trying to invade the state capital but the JTF and Special Forces have resisted them.

“To curtail the plot by the insurgents to use 13 areas of Maiduguri to launch reprisals, a curfew has been imposed on those areas.

“Ten suspected members of Boko Haram have been killed in Gamboru Ward. So, you can see that the JTF is proactive on this curfew measure.”

The military command has ordered security beef-up in states close to Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

Giving an update on the military operation yesterday, the spokesman for the Defence Headquarters, Brig.Gen. Chris Olukolade, said: “In continuation of the mission to rid the nation’s territories of all insurgents activi-

Emergency: Residents flee Borno war zone FROM: Yusuf Alli, Managing Editor, Northern Operation/ Joel Duku, Damaturu and agency reports

ties, the Special Forces have apprehended 65 persons confirmed to be terrorists as they made attempt to infiltrate Maiduguri while fleeing from various camps now under attack.

“A total of 11 vehicles, four tricycles and 24 handsets were also seized in the process. All the suspects are in custody of the Joint Task Force and are currently being interrogated.

“Meanwhile, the camps of the terrorists have been found deserted by fleeing insurgents when troops of the Special Task Force stormed the localities. The facilities have been occupied by troops.

“In another development, troops have engaged and dislodged elements of insurgents groups who car-

• 24-hour curfew in Maiduguri • Special forces kill 10 Boko Haram members, arrest 65 • Northern govs meet May 28 ried out attacks on citizens in localities such as Gamboru ward yesterday.

“At the end of the encounter, a total of 10 suspected terrorists were confirmed dead while weapons such as Rocket Propelled Grenade launchers, assorted ammunition and rifle magazines were recovered.

“The area is being combed to fish out any of the surviving insurgents.

“Also, some of the fleeing insurgents from various camps have been noted to be in search of fuel from neighbouring communities.

“Citizens are advised to report to JTF, any group of persons roaming around the

local communities with large quantities of containers in search of fuel. The advance of troops is continuing in all fronts as scheduled.

“The Defence Headquarters has further enjoined the troops to sustain the intensity of the operations.”

Investigation by our correspondent revealed that the foiling of attempt to invade Maiduguri caused panic forcing some residents to flee.

A source, however, said: “I think there is anxiety following the clampdown on these insurgents. Some are trying to leave the state capital which is not even a major operation area.

“There are some military blockades at entry and exit points to Maiduguri screening commuters. The state governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, has remained in Maiduguri monitoring the situation. I do not think there is any cause for alarm.”

Meanwhile, military and security agencies have been placed on the alert in the neighbouring states to Adamawa, Borno and Yobe to “ ward off fleeing insurgents.”

Another source said: “The military high command took the steps to check likely reprisals from the insurgents.

We have placed all military formations and security agencies on red alert in Taraba, Bauchi, Kano, Katsina and even Kaduna.”

Travellers on the Jos/ Maiduguri highway also spoke of their ordeals on the road caused by the massive security measures on the road.

G

From Osemwengie Ben Ogbemudia, Benin

T

HE declaration of state of emergency in three states in the northern part of the country by President Goodluck Jonathan has been described as long overdue.

Chief of Staff to Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, Patrick Obahiagbon, stated this in Benin City while addressing journalists.

He lauded the president for his resolve to firmly tackle the insurgency which he noted is politically motivated.

He affirmed that the decision by the president to allow political office holders in the affected states remain in power under the emergency rule attests to his respect for the nation’s presidential system of government.

Obahiagbon was, however, quick to point out that the state of emergency only represents more military presence in the states which have been under siege by the Boko Haram sect.

The former House of Representatives member noted that what is most important is for President Jonathan to take more decisive steps to curb the excesses of the sect which he regretted is bent on making Nigeria ungovernable.

US urges respect for human rights

T •Gov. Godswill Akpabio discussing with his predecessor, Obong Victor Attah, at the funeral of late Chief Fidelis Etim at Uruk Uso in Ikot Ekpene LGA at the weekend.

NGF chair: South-South govs’ dump Amaechi OVERNORS of South South states are set to dump Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State at this week’s election of a new chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF).

Amaechi is the current chairman of the forum but the Presidency does not want him back on the seat on account of political differences.

The Presidency, according to sources, is intensifying its mobilisation of support for its anointed candidate, Governor Ibrahim Shema of Katsina State.

Only Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State is said not to be sharing the position of his counter-

State of emergency, long overdue Obahiagbon

• We‘re not aware –CPS

By Remi Adelowo parts on the Amaechi issue.

The Nation reliably gathered that the Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Anthony Anenih, and the Chief of Staff to President Goodluck Jonathan, Chief Mike Oghiadome, have in the last few weeks, put pressure on PDP governors, particularly in the South East and the South-South to support Shema at the election slated for May 23.

A source privy to the plan revealed: “Anenih has visited Cross River about three times recently and may have

succeeded in convincing Governor Liyel Imoke, who is the Chairman of the South-South Governors Forum, to dump Amaechi.

“Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State has also been cajoled to back Shema, but the Presidency’s foot soldiers have not bothered to lobby Oshiomhole because his position to vote for Amaechi has not changed.

For Governors Godswill Akpabio and Seriake Dickson of Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa States, representing, their loyalty to the president is unquestionable.”

In the South East only

Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo is backing Amaechi.

The Presidency, whose points man in the zone is Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State, has been assured of the support of Theodore Orji (Abia); Sullivan Chime (Enugu) and Martins Elechi (Ebonyi).

The South East and South South governors, at a recent meeting in Asaba, Delta State, asked their colleagues and Nigerians to give maximum support to the Jonathan government in the implementation of its transformation agenda.

Oshiomhole was absent at the parley.

A source disclosed that

Okorocha, who had been tipped off on the agenda of the meeting, deliberately came late and only took part in the photo session with his colleagues.

Before the meeting ended, The Nation learnt that Anenih addressed the governors and impressed it on them on the “implications of allowing the president to be humiliated if Amaechi is re-elected as NGF chair.”

In his reaction to the claim that South-South governors have decided not to support Amaechi, the Chief Press Secretary to the Rivers State governor, David Iyiofor, in a terse SMS to The Nation simply, said, "I'm not aware."

HE United States wants Nigeria to respect human rights in the on-going offensive against terrorists in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.

In a statement in Washington D.C, the US Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry, said his country is “deeply concerned about the fighting in North eastern Nigeria following President Jonathan’s declaration of a state of emergency” in the three states.

He also spoke of ‘deep concern’ by “credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalates the violence and fuel extremism.”

He condemned “Boko Haram’s campaign of terror in the strongest terms,” and urged soldiers on the operation in the three states to “apply disciplined use of force in all operations, protect civilians in any security response, and respect human rights and the rule of law.”

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

News

EMERGENCY RULE...EMERGENCY RULE...EMERGENCY RULE...

APGA to Jonathan: Ask governors of Borno, Yobe, Adamawa to step aside From: Gbenga Omokhunu, Abuja

F

OLLOWING the State of Emergency declared in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, the National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Victor Umeh, yesterday asked President Goodluck Jonathan to ask governors of the affected states to leave office.

The governors, Umeh said, should step aside for six months to enable the Federal Government find lasting solution to the bombardment and killings.

He spoke in Abuja after the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) meeting.

Umeh expressed disappointment that some political office holders are sponsoring the crisis in the north, adding that other northern governors will sit up in tackling the security challenges in the north.

He advised Jonathan to take harsher measures to end what he described as ugly trend in the country especially in the northern part.

Umeh accused the governor of being guilty of the security menace.

His words: “Everybody knows that we need collective efforts to save Nigeria. From the measures announced by President Goodluck Jonathan, all the political office holders will retain their positions. What this means is that Jonathan has stylishly provided additional security to the governors and other political office holders.

You are aware that some time last year a Boko Haram suspect was arrested in the lodge of the Borno State Governor in Abuja.

That speaks volumes about the levity which governors treat security issues.

“If governors had been asked to step aside for six months for Federal Government to normalise the security situation in their states, they will become more disparate in the future to ensure that this ugly situation dosn’t continue to appear in the news that their states are under bombardment and massive killing of people. Because the governors are asked to continue with their jobs the other governors may relent in providing security. It is important to underscore a point here today that the entire governor is guilty of negligence to this security challenge threatening the nation.

“That is why we are saying that should this situation persist, Jonathan should not relent from taking harsher measures that will make other governors to sit up. The governors are not serious with security in their states. Politics is also behind the insecurity in the northern part of the country. Some people are supporting these people to continue to kill people.”

State of emergency is misguided, David-West S OCIAL critic and retired university don, Professor Tam David-West, has decried the declaration of state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, declaring it as an erosion of the civic liberties of the citizens.

Although he said the action is constitutional, he is of the view that the declaration would send “a very strong signal to the world that Nigeria is not stable. The state of emergency is also giving a signal to the world that the country is not safe. It will affect the economy.”

He believes that the president should have sent the same troops without declaring state of emergency. He also sees it as a personal indictment of President Goodluck Jonathan. In his words: “The president is the number one law enforcement personality stipulated by the constitution. If as a person holding that position, he declares state emergency in an area because security has broken down, he is indicting himself.”

He insisted that Boko

By Taiwo Ogundipe

Haram problem cannot be dealt with by declaring state of emergency or the use of force. Even in the Niger Delta, he said, the deployment of force through the Joint Task Force has not achieved peace. He said: “I still maintain that the use of force will never achieve peace. The fundamental issue should be addressed. The problem can be solved. We are not approaching the problem with a clear mindset. For every failure on our part, it makes the other side bolder. I doubt very much if state emergency will bring about the desired result. I wish it could.”

Offering suggestions, on how the Boko Haram problem can be solved, “The people are not insane. They are rational. In African culture we respect elders a lot. Instead of staging fanfare on television and display of superior force, why don’t you subtly identify the people in the community whom these people

respect? These respected people should be made to talk to them in camera seriously and sincerely, and point out to them what the country is losing and what they are losing.

“After that first stage of bridge-building though a limited number of individuals from two to start with, then gradually increase the number of people to be involved. Peace can be brokered this way. In fact, the amnesty process can be done this way without fanfare.”

The crisis, he said, is a social trend happening everywhere in the world, pointing out that it has happened in America and other places.

He said the state of emergency rather than scare or check the Boko Haram terrorists would rather embolden them.

“I will not be surprised if they go on to show that their back has not been broken and they do something horrible in the next few days just to prove that they have not been killed,” he said,

“We have great psychologists in the country. Part of Jonathan’s greatest problem is that he does not have good advisers. Most of those around him are there because of money. Some of them are even working secretly for him to fail.”

He further said the declaration of state of emergency would have spiral effects. In his words: “More new groups like Ombatse will come out again.

It has happened with Al-Queda.

Now you have created a common enemy. They will now be united to confront the country.

The advanced countries have structures in place for handling such situations. We don’t have structures in place for such. Recently in Canada, there was a threat to bomb a city. The Canadian government handled the situation without creating any big news. Their intelligence team handled the situation discreetly and firmly. We don’t have the structure to take care of likely consequences or the spin-offs.”

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Bank tax remittance: Reps begin full probe •Recover N100b IGR from fed govt agencies From: Victor Oluwasegun and Dele Anofi, Abuja

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HE House of Representatives has opened a full scale investigation into commercial banks’ tax remittance to the federal government.

Its Committee on Finance said the probe was necessitated by alleged sharp practices by some of the 23 banks involved in the collection of tax for government.

It said prior investigation of some federal government agencies on internally generated revenue (IGR) has led to additional remittance of N100b into government purse.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) See full interview on pages 24 and 25 has, however, continued to defy the Committee on the presentation of the account of its subsidiaries, insisting that they all operate a joint account.

Chairman of the Committee, Abdulmumin Jibrin, who confirmed the investigation of the banks yesterday, said there was no option than to fully investigate them.

His words:”Before, our meeting with bank executives was meant to be an interactive session but now, we have officially opened up a full investigation based on facts and figures from documents available to us from our consultants and Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).

“We had earlier invited FIRS and they have availed us documents that will have far reaching effects on this exercise.

Their presentation was quite revealing”.

Jibrin noted that the dual roles of banks as tax- collecting agents for government as well as being tax payers created some gaps that must be bridged.

• A picture taken on April 30, 2013 shows cars and residents behind sandbags at a Joint Military Task Force (JTF) road block in Maiduguri, Borno State.

AFP PHOTO / PIUS UTOMI EKPEI “As part of banks’ responsibility as tax collectors, the FIRS revealed to us that there has been a couple of challenges. In fact FIRS had instances where they had to delist or blacklist a bank from collecting tax on its behalf because of late remittances.

HE emergency rule imJide Orintunsin, Minna “What we discover in our in the crisis. ing peace will return to the reposed on Adamawa, findings was that some banks The statement also called on gion and Nigeria in general.

Borno and Yobe states Boko Haram sect and help to re- people in the affected states to The forum also commiser- deliberately engaged in delayby President Goodluck store peace to the affected states cooperate with military person- ated with the families of those ing remittance. So, what they in particular and the country in Jonathan has forced the Northnel posted to their areas to avoid who lost their lives in an attack do, as against the guidelines of ern States Governors Forum general. He then urged all secu- unnecessary loss of lives. by gunmen in Daura, Katsina the FIRS, when they collect the (NSGF) to shift its monthly rity agencies deployed for the Commending President State on Thursday and advised taxes, was to delay the stipulated emergency rule to operate by meeting originally slated for the rules of engagement and ad- Jonathan for taking the action, citizens to remain vigilant and period of remitting it to the Tuesday.

Aliyu appealed to members of report any suspicious move- FIRS so that they can keep the It will now come up in Kaduna vised them to respect the sanc- the sect to accept government’s ment or persons to the police money with them and use it for tity of human lives, especially on May 28. other purposes like trading and gesture of amnesty so that last- or other security agencies.

This is enable the forum civilians who are not involved so on. review the effects of the emer“Though eventually they gency rule on the affected states. will remit the money to the Chairman of the forum and that if there is no peace in the government they found it conLATEAU State Governor, From Yusuf Aminu Idegu governor of Niger State, Dr. country, no investors will want venient to keep it beyond the Jonah David Jang, has Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, said to come and invest here, so stipulated period for their own recently declared in Adamawa, pledged to continue to yesterday in Minna that the Borno and Yobe states, he said whatever will bring peace in advantage and to the detriment support President Goodluck postponement of the monthly of the federal government. It is Jonathan and call on all citizens “The President knows better be- our nation, it is a welcome the intention of the Committee meeting by a week is to allow thing, after all political struccause he is the Chief Security to support him to ensure return the governors of the affected to look critically into this, with of permanent peace in the coun- Officer of the nation. What we tures have not been dissolved.” a view of correcting these states monitor the take off of Speaking on what his state need to do is to support everytry. the emergency rule in their dolapses.

He made the call yesterday thing that he is doing, so that stands to gain from his visit to mains and report to the forum.

“For instance, for such acCanada, he said, “we have made we can bring total peace to our at the Yakubu Gowon Airport Expressing support for the counts, it is important that reccontacts with a lot of investors, nation.

Haipang, Jos, shortly after his emergency rule, the NSGF “We went to Canada to go the commissioners that we trav- onciliation be done because of arrival from an overseas trip, chairman said the forum beand talk about getting investors elled together with did very allegation of unnecessary and in company of his wife, Ngo lieves its imposition will to come and invest in our na- well, I think they should give inappropriate charges on such Talatu Jang. complement the offer of amfunds by banks. We are interOn the state of emergency tion and you know very well you details of what we are able ested in that too”. nesty made to the members of to achieve in Canada.”

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Emergency Rule: Northern Governors meet May 28

Jang urges support for Jonathan

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

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EMERGENCY RULE...EMERGENCY RULE...EMERGENCY RULE...EME

•Scenes of devastation following another Boko Haram attack

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HE situation in Borno State commands a compelling narrative. Paths leading into its major townships and villages are littered with burnt cars, houses and blood spatters extending grotesquely through a terrain that has proved fertile for extremist ideologies to take root.

Borno today, pulsate with strife and discordant anguish, no thanks to mindless violence perpetrated by Islamic insurgent group, Boko Haram, whose bombs and bullets are responsible for the carcasses of cars by the roadside, and the defilement of the province's ancient glory.

But to heap the fault solely on Boko Haram would be tantamount to economising the truth according to a traditional midwife and resident of Budum, Maiduguri, Borno's capital city.

While she admitted that the emergence of Boko Haram spelled trouble for Borno, she emphasised that counter violence by the Joint Task Force (JTF) deployed by the federal government to curb the growing violence in the area has only made the situation worse.

No longer at ease Since violence broke out in Borno, residents of Budum, Kaleri, Gwaneri and other volatile parts of Maiduguri have been living in perpetual fear.

Persistent gun battles between JTF and Boko Haram have turned their erstwhile peaceful neighbourhoods into bloody battle fronts.

Residents, families and victims living in various communities, including Gomari, London Chiki, Kaleri, Budum where recent bomb blasts had occurred in Maiduguri have expressed deep-seated fears about the prevalent insecurity in the state.

"Nobody is safe anywhere anymore.

We don't feel safe even in our own homes," lamented Idris, an animal feed dealer resident in Kaleri. True; a harmless stroll across the street or quick dash to the neighbourhood grocer has often times resulted in gruesome deaths of unsuspecting adults and minors in the area.

For instance, residents of Budum community suffered devastation of lives and property when a Boko Haram explosive device was detonated near the palace of Shehu of Borno in Maiduguri recently. In the aftermath of the attack, the residents also accused the JTF of using extreme force on residents of Budum community in reprisal attacks over their hurt colleagues. The bomb blast which occurred around 4 p.m.

Living and dying in bloody Borno Ololade Olatunji takes a deep look into what it means to live in a strife-torn state wounded three soldiers and in response to the attack, JTF personnel allegedly set shops numbering over 42 ablaze and shot directly at shop owners and residents while they were fleeing the scene of the blasts.

Residents alleged that the soldiers conducted a house-to-house search, forcing men suspected to be above 18 years out of their homes before shooting them. Six cars with registration numbers AA495 JRE, AA126KDQ, AM96AMG, AA415NGL, DA314FST, AE437 DKW were allegedly vandalized and burnt by the soldiers.

Although the Joint Task Force (JTF) authorities vehemently denied the arson and killings, a visit to four affected families within the community revealed the interminable grief of families who allegedly lost their loved ones to the JTF's onslaught.

Some of the casualties include the

late Mallam Goni Tijani, (55), the late Babakura Zakariya (18), Eyewitness accounts revealed that the soldiers invaded the home of the late Mallam Goni Tijani, forced him out of his room and shot him to death right in front of his family members and children most of whom are below the age of six. His two shops were burnt leaving his two wives and 11 children with nothing to depend on.

Severely wounded another shop owner at Budum Market had to resort to receiving treatment in his home following a life-threatening gunshot injury said to have been inflicted on him

by JTF soldiers while he was fleeing from the burning market.

Although the Joint Task Force (JTF) authorities vehemently denied the arson and killings, the pattern of executions corresponds to its combat policy of designating any area used by

the sect to perpetrate their operations as military targets.

With its personnel increasingly accused of human rights violations and involvement in criminal activities such as arson, rape and brutal killings, the JTF is struggling with image problems and there are increasing calls for its withdrawal. In all the suburban communities: Gomari, London Chiki, Kaleri, Budum visited, residents unanimously clamoured for the soldiers to return to their barracks.

The predominance of fear The use of violence by Boko Haram to serve as deterrence to adverse comments or criticism deters many of the natives, particularly in the state's fringe townships and villages, from assisting the security forces by offering useful information to them. This means that many people have become too frightened to talk openly about Boko

Haram. Oftentimes, few residents who despise the group are forced to speak glowingly about it even though they actually resent it and its modus operandi.

Many of the residents, however, profess undying admiration for the group. A peasant farmer and his wife told The Nation during a visit to Banki, a Borno border town, that many natives tacitly support the group not because they fear it, but because they truly believe it is out to correct perceived insensitivity and corruption of the country's ruling class.

Recent developments however buttress the couple's disclosure. For instance, 10 of Borno's 27 local government areas including Marte, Magumeri, Mobbar, Gubio, Guzamala, Abadamin, Kukawa, Kaga, Nganzai and Monguno are currently in the grasp of Boko Haram. Government activities have been paralysed in the districts as council chairmen, their councillors and other top officials have abandoned their duty posts in the affected areas and relocated to Maiduguri.

The security situation has jolted Governor Kashim Shettima to buy 200 brand new patrol Hilux vans for the Joint Task Force (JTF) to enable it flush the insurgents out of the 10 local government areas.

In the Marte Local Government Area, for instance, the sect members are reportedly in full control of most villages and they patrol the streets and markets, while they organise public preaching in village markets like that of Krenuwa, the home base of top government officials, including the current Secretary to the State Government, Ambassador Baba Ahmed Jidda, who is a member of the just- established Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North.

Some people have fled their homes, neighbourhoods and even cities following direct threats or for fear of being caught up in the violence. A resident of Maiduguri disclosed that in his area, Boko Haram had warned residents "that if you're not comfortable living there [with them], you better leave."

Intimidation of the general population has undermined people's rights to privacy and family life, damaged community ties and family networks, and consequently significantly impaired

•Contd. on page 7

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LE...EMERGENCY RULE...EMERGENCY RULE...EMERGENCY RULE...

•Contd. from page 6 many people's quality of life.

The climate of fear and insecurity has also forced many journalists, lawyers and human rights activists to scale down or stop their activities, or flee the area entirely. Indeed, the rising spate of insecurity and killings in Borno State has destroyed lives, businesses, deterred future investments, and frustrated important gains made in the realization of specific social and economic rights, especially the rights to housing, education, health, work and food in particular.

However, rather than restore peace and stability in the area, the Joint Task Force (JTF) has been accused of massive human rights violations, by particularly launching direct attacks on civilians as prohibited under national and international law.

Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, founder and executive director of Spaces for Change (SFC), a non-governmental organisation said that this has resulted in a situation whereby "the Boko Haram on one side and the JTF on the other side are now equally yoked in the gory killings and myriad of security challenges facing the state. Their clashes have left hundreds dead on both sides.

The presence of the JTF in Maiduguri has also polarised the state, pitching the haves against the have-nots. While the non-Muslims, persons engaged in formal employment and those living in the formal sections of the city insist on having military presence intensified in Maiduguri and environs, the inhabitants of slum and rural settlements such as Budum, Kaleri, Gomari and London Chiki are equally as vociferous in their call for the withdrawal of soldiers from the state."

Stunted education too Series of coordinated attacks and sporadic gun wars between the JTF and Boko Haram has cast a very dark pall on a state that's supposed to be Nigeria's "Home of Peace and Hospitality." If anything, the current situation in the state has placed it a thousand miles from its fabled state of warmth and tranquillity.

Although not a few pundits have argued that Borno had always been a boiling cauldron sitting on a tinderbox, many more, residents and law enforcement agents inclusive, are contending that the fabled "Home of Peace and Hospitality" has evolved into a living hell courtesy of the advent of Boko Haram militancy and the government's poor handling of the problem.

At the backdrop of the claims and counter-claims of human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings festers a sad development in the state's educational sector; since the violence commenced, dozens of schools have been attacked and set on fire leaving thousands of children unable to continue their education. In most attacks, school buildings were so badly damaged that they could no longer be used. Schools that had been on the receiving end of the mindless include, Gwange One Primary School, Junior Secondary School and Gwange Three Primary School; Success Private School and Sunshine Primary School; Gomari Custin, Kulagumna Primary School, Budum Primary School, Abba Ganaram One and 11 Primary School, Ngomari, London Chiki Primary School and Maiduguri Experimental Primary School.

Boko Haram claimed responsibility for some of the attacks which were perpetrated last year, saying they were in retaliation for the arrest of teachers of Tsagaya [Quaranic] schools by the JTF. "We attacked the schools because security operatives are going to Islamiyya schools and picking teachers.

We are attacking the public schools at night because we don't want to kill innocent pupils. Unless [Islamic school] teachers are allowed to be, we would be compelled to continue attacking schools," the group threatened.

The attack on schools has left pupils without secure and dependable means of learning; it also costs most schools teaching materials and school records.

Some schools have been burned two or three times since 2009. Those attacked in 2009 were just being rebuilt three years later, with pupils receiving lessons

in temporary shelters. In one of such schools affected, of the 1, 300 pupils that enrolled, just about 500 were attending in late 2012, according to the school's headmistress.

The destruction and damage to schools has undermined the right to education for thousands of children.

Even before the attacks on schools began, the widespread insecurity generated by the constant attacks and fighting had led many parents to relocate their children away from the city's most volatile areas or leave the city totally, thus disrupting their children's education. Many of the children that remain are however, traumatised and live in fear.

How violence has changed Maiduguri Recently, there was public outrage over the massacre of no fewer than 185 people during a recent clash between the militant Islamic sect, Boko Haram and the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) in Baga, Kukawa Local Government Area of the state. At least 2,000 houses, 65 motorcycles and 40 cars wereinburnt the attack. However, the MJTF maintains that the inferno that razed the town should be blamed on Boko Haram militants who opened fire on soldiers while using residents as human shield.

A dark pall of fear has no doubt descended on Borno. Nowadays, Islamic faithful observe the evening Maghreb prayer - and then have to go straight on to the Isha, the late evening

pervasive state of insecurity in the state in public.

"You don't know who is who. That is why everybody is being very careful.

Nobody discusses Boko Haram in public anymore because there have been instances whereby some people have been killed for voicing their opinions about the group's activities," said Halisu, a crafts dealer.

It gets even worse; the city's economy which is basically driven by the informal sector and thus has no closing hours is perpetually on the downside as commercial transporters, vendors, shop prayer, because Maiduguri has to live under a strict 7.p.m. to 6a.m. curfew. From the mosque, residents hurry back home to their firmly padlocked houses.

Every resident lives in constant fear in the wake of a series of violent and devastating attacks including drive-by shootings and bombings in their once peaceful neighbourhoods. Very few residents have the courage to discuss the

keepers, property speculators and even beggars no longer engage in business hustle until late into the night. Most businesses close shop by 7 p.m. leading many residents to lament incurring serious losses.

Babban Layi, Maiduguri's longstanding commercial centre, which simply means "wide street," used to be a Mecca of sort for shoppers

and dealers in textile, electronics, clothing, and household items. At the market, Lebanese and Chadian merchants jostled daily alongside lowtech con men and pickpockets all hoping to get a slice of the bulging pockets of money carried around by shoppers and dealers of various nationalities and walks of life.

Before the violence, overloaded trucks, known locally as giwa-giwa, transported goods from Babban Layi to neighbouring countries such as Chad and Cameroon and even to distant places like Sudan and the Central African Republic regularly. However, this once thriving regional trading hub is now almost empty as trading activities have declined due to the incessant bomb blasts and gun wars that have become the lot of the city.

For many months now, merchants, menial workers and the truck drivers among others have been struggling to make ends meet.

Fear pervades the entire city; classrooms have been burnt and reduced to shards of broken glass and pile of cement, but pupils and teachers remain, squeezing into parts of the building still standing for lessons. Outside the school walls, residents who remain push on, worshipping at mosques or churches, including those protected by military deployments and razor wire; many more are visiting markets even as they cautiously avoid malevolent soldiers they accuse of maltreatment.

What roles for governors?

S Nigerians continue to appraise the state of emergency declared in three states of the federation by President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday, the question of what roles the governors of the affected states would play has become pertinent.

This is because of the imposition of a dusk to dawn curfew on Adamawa State by the headquarters of the 23 Brigade of the Nigerian Army, Yola, beginning from 6pm and ending at 6am, allegedly without the knowledge of Governor Murtala Nyako.

Nyako had, apparently piqued by the imposition of the curfew, queried the inclusion of his state in the emergency rule declared by President Jonathan.

Even though he pledged to cooperate with the security agents and also urged the residents to do the same, he described the inclusion of Adamawa in the list of states under emergency as "shocking and saddening".

But yesterday, legal experts and politicians say the governors have no role whatsoever to play in the enforcement of the emergency rule in their states.

Speaking to The Nation a Lagos based lawyer, Fred Agbaje said that they were still in the various Government Houses in the affected states was an aberration. He argued that whoever canvasses any role for them probably does not understand the legal meaning and full import of a state of emergency. " The jurisprudential definition of emergency means a sudden and radical or fundamental change in the administration and per-existing legal structures, which must give way to a new legal order, which, backed by law, is forcefully imposed on the state for the period it is deemed to last. " It means that emergency rule carries with it, inherent automatic paralysis of the existing legal structure including governors and lawmakers, which are automatically made ineffective by the new order," Agbaje explained.

No two captains To that extent, he said the governors have no role to play in the execution of the emergency order, saying it is not possible for two captains to be in one ship as they are bound to give conflicting orders.

A

Under the declared state of emergency what powers do elected governors have? Augustine Avwode asks.

•Shettima He maintained that the governors should not be on their seats by now because their retention has the potential of breeding confusion in a bid to assert the authority to call the shots in the states. He wondered why President Jonathan did not go the whole hug the way former President Olusegun Obasanjo did. To support his claim, Agbaje said Professor Ben Nwabueze went to court on behalf of Plateau State but lost in the case owing to Section 305 subsection 3c and d. " In view of the provisions of this section, President Jonathan is perfectly in order", Agbaje said.

Also, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from one the South- south states, who pleaded for anonymity, said it would amount to being starry-eyed for any governor to expect the military, which had been given a definite command by the Commander-In-Chief to consult him before they carry out their brief.

"Let us be frank, do you think one Brigade Commander will wait to consult a governor before he carries out the express command of his Chief of Army Staff as directed by the C-inC? These are purely military operations, and you don't expect it to be subjected to democratic etiquette in an emergency situation. " I will advise my brother and party member to know that this is a national assignment that is akin to being at war. And in war situation, what roles do you expect civilians to play? Even if it was just the Nigeria Police, does a Commissioner take orders from a Governor? How much more a General in the Army, and given the particular situation on ground?

The best they can do is to monitor development from their corner,

•Nyako review the progress of the situation and give logistic support to the military to do the job they have been saddled with," he said.

Nyako, had in a televised state broadcast on Thursday, described Adamawa as "a peaceful state in the North-Eastern zone as declared by national and international peace groups." His position is a bit different from that of the governors of Borno and Yobe states who whole heatedly welcomed the federal government decision to declare a state of emergency in their states.

Adamawa is said to provide suitable training grounds for the Boko Haram sect who exploit the presence of countless mountain ranges that dot that state. About a year ago, members of the sect attacked and shot dead 20 people at a town hall in Mubi, one of the major towns in Adamawa, where some people were holding a meeting.

On March 23, the group attacked several locations in Ganye, also in the state, killing over 25 persons. The victims included a chief prison warder and a traditional head.

Again, on April 26 this year, members of the sect were reported to have invaded Mayo Belwa, the home town of Governor Nyako, engaging security agents in a gun duel that lasted several hours, raiding police stations and local banks.

The three states are to be under emergency rule till November 14, 2013 when the initial six months prescribed by the 1999 Constitution as amended, will elapse.

In Section 305, subsection 6, deals with the duration of the state of emergency whenever it is proclaimed.

According to the Constitution, a state of emergency declared by the President

•Geidam shall cease to have effect "after a period of six months has elapsed since it has been in force" or if the President decides to revoke it through an "instrument published in the Official Gazette of the Government of the Federation".

However, after the declaration is published in an Official Gazette, it is expected to be ratified by twothird majority of each House within two days, if the National Assembly is in session or 10 days if it is not in session, otherwise, the emergency rule automatically ceases.

More so, the National Assembly can extend the period from time to time for six months as long as it is extended before the expiration of the previous date through a simple resolution.

In like manner, the National Assembly can revoke the emergency rule by a simple majority after the extension has been proved and running.

As it is now, the governors may have to contend with just watching and praying for a quick and successful completion of the operations to rid their states of insurgent elements. To hope for a major role in an operation that is purely military is to expect too much.

Besides, questions are still being asked what the governors have done before now to tackle the Boko Haram sect. If in the past it was conceded that only the military controlled by the federal government can confront the sect, it is only proper that they should be given the free hand to do the job now that they have been formally charged to do so.

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News

Professor, Rev. Sister, four others arrested for illegal varsity From: Yusuf Alli, Managing Editor, Northern Operation

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HE Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission (ICPC) has arrested the Sole Proprietor of Richmond Open University, Enugu, "Professor" Chris Okoro for allegedly operating an illegal institution.

The commission also arrested the son of the university's proprietor, four other staff of the institution and a Catholic Reverend Sister The Head of Media of ICPC, Mr. Folu Olamiti, said in a statement that the suspects were arrested on Friday.

ICPC officials, according to him, have interrogated the Reverend Sister in-charge of the Luminary International Centre for Health and Alternative Medicine which had metamorphosed into Society for Energy Health with its headquarters at Mgbowo in Awgu Local Government Area of Enugu State He said:"After the raid of the premises of the affected university, located at 31, Zik's Avenue, Enugu the suspects were immediately handed over to the Police at Uwani Police Divisional Headquarters, also in Enugu metropolis "Items recovered, among others, were large quantity of WAEC and Diploma certificates, Doctorate, Masters and Bachelors' degrees as well as honorary doctorate degrees.

"Professor" Okoro, who claimed that he bagged his professorship by "convention" instead of merit, said he could not remember the total number of his graduates in each academic session, adding that he could not also recollect the names of the Vice-Chancellor of his university as well as members the Senate committee of the institution.

"Okoro further said that although his university was not registered or any of the courses offered in the institution accredited by the National Universities Commission (NUC), he was not perturbed since the court gave him judgement to run the university as well as award honorary doctorate degrees to members of the public.

"He added that he was just rendering humanitarian service to the people."

The statement quoted Okoro as saying: "I do not have any registration with NUC because I opened this school as a distant learning institution. " This university has been operating since 2005.

The court gave judgement in my favour. The NUC went on appeal and failed.

"The Richmond University has nothing to do with NUC. It was formerly called Institute of Journalism and Continuing Education. I have trained many people in this school and that is why I am a professor. I teach journalism. I am a professor of journalism."

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Achebe wasn't my enemy, says Soyinka N

OBEL Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka, yesterday dismissed the supposedly sour relationship between him and the late world acclaimed novelist, Professor Chinua Achebe, saying the talk of an unhealthy rivalry between them was cooked up.

He blamed 'camp followers' for the misrepresentation of the issue between him and the late Achebe although he admitted that "it would be stupid to claim that relationship" between them "was all constantly harmonious."

Soyinka, in an interview with Sahara Reporters ahead of Achebe's burial, later this week, also spoke on Achebe's place in African literature, his controversial memoirs on the Nigerian Civil War, There was a country and alleged genocide during the war.

On the relationship between him and Achebe, he said: "At this stage in our lives, the surviving have a duty to smash the mouths of liars to begin with, then move to explain to those who have genuinely misread, who have failed to place incidents in their true perspective, or who simply forget that life is sometimes strange - rich but strange, and inundated with flux.

"My first comment is that outsiders to literary life should be more humble and modest.

They should begin by accepting that they were strangers to the ferment of the earlier sixties and seventies. It would be

By Our Reporter

stupid to claim that it was all constantly harmonious, but outsiders should at least learn some humility and learn to deal with facts. Where, in any corner of the globe, do you find perfect models of creative harmony, completely devoid of friction?

"We all have our individual artistic temperaments as well as partisanships in creative directions. And we have strong opinions on the merits of the products of our occupation. But - "rivalry for domination," to quote you - healthy or unhealthy? Now that is something that has been cooked up, ironically, by camp followers, the most recent of which is an ignoble character who was so desperate to prove the existence of such a thing that he even tried to rope JP's wife into it, citing her as source for something I never uttered in my entire existence."

He dismissed those who speak of such as "empty, notoriety-hungry hangers-on and upstarts" who are in search of relevance. He said for him J.P. Clark, the late Achebe and other writers, "I believe we were all too busy and self-centred - that is, focused on our individual creative grooves to think 'dominance'!

"Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others. JP (John Pepper Clark) remains as irrepressible, contumacious and irascible as he was during that

creative ferment of the early sixties. Christopher was ebullient. Chinua mostly hid himself away in Lagos, intervening robustly in MBARI affairs with deceptive disinclination.

Perception of Chinua, JP and I as 'personal enemies'?

"The word "enemy" is strong and wrong. The Civil War split up a close-knit literary coterie, of which "the quartet" formed a self-conscious core. That war engendered a number of misapprehensions.

Choices were made, some regrettable, and even thus admitted by those who made them."

Reacting to widely held insinuations that the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to him in 1986 led to a bitter chasm between the duo he said, "Well then, this prospect that "my 1986 Nobel Prize in literature poisoned my personal relationship with a supposedly resentful Achebe" - I think I shouldn't dodge that either.

Even if that was true - which I do not accept - it surely has dissipated over time.

"Nigerians need to be purged of a certain kind of arrogance of expectations, of demand, of self-attribution, of a spurious sense and assertion of entitlement. It goes beyond art and literature. It covers all aspects of interaction with others. Wherever you witness a case of 'It's MINE, and no other's', 'it's OURS, not theirs', at various levels of vicarious ownership, such aggressive voices, ninety percent of the

time, are bound to be Nigerians. This is a syndrome I have had cause to confront defensively with hundreds of Africans and non-Africans. It is what plagues Nigeria at the moment - it's MY/OUR turn to rule, and if I/WE cannot, we shall lay waste the terrain.

Truth is, predictably, part of the collateral damage on that terrain.

"Yes, these are the ones who, to co-opt your phrasing, "diminished (and still diminish) Chinua's image". In the main, they are, ironically, his assiduous - but basically opportunistic - hagiographers especially of a clannish, cabalistic temperament. Chinua we have to be frank here - also did not help matters. He did make one rather unfortunate statement that brought down the hornet's nest on his head, something like: "The fact that Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize does not make him the Asiwaju (Leader) of African literature". I forget now what provoked that statement.

Certainly it could not be traced to any such pretensions on my part. I only recollect that it was in the heat of some controversy - on a national issue, I think."

He, however, agreed that disagreement among writers and artists was nothing new.

According to Soyinka, disagreements among, "musicians, scientists, even architects and scientific innovators etc. are notorious. They are usually short-lived - though some have

•R-L: National Chairman of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) Alhaji Bamanga Tukur and Special Adviser to the President on Inter -Party Affairs, Senator Ben Obi when the chairman visited Obi to commiserate with him on the demise of his wife, Deaconess Colette Obi...in Abuja recently.

Vacate shut council-NLC, TUC warn Police

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HE Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) in Rivers State have asked the police to vacate the secretariat of Obio/ Akpor Council in the state.

This followed the judgment of the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt.

Justice H.A. Nganjiwa, in the judgment ordered the Police Force to vacate the premises of the council.

The Joint Public Service Negotiating Council (JPSNC) of the two unions at a meeting in Port Harcourt to review the situation at the council directed all workers of Obio/Akpor to return to work immediately.

The JPSNC resolved that " in line with the rule of law and the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Inspector General of Police and the Commissioner of Police Rivers State Command

•Development in Rivers ominous and dangerous - Sagay

By Our Reporter

should immediately direct their men to vacate the premises of Obio/Akpor Council Secretariat."

It appealed to the local government authorities to "pay the workers for the period of the lock out by the Nigeria Police Rivers State Command. We took the position because the workers were ready to work, but were prevented to go to their places of work by the Police."

Besides, it advised the State Police Command to focus on its "constitutional duties of protecting lives and property, instead of tacitly taking side on matters that are purely political."

Meanwhile, prominent lawyer, Professor Itse Sagay (SAN), has condemned the serial attacks on Governor

Rotimi Amaechi by political forces opposed to him as 'a major assault on Nigeria's socalled democracy.'

Recent events in Rivers State, he said, have shown that there really is no democracy or federalism in Nigeria.

Prof Sagay, in a statement said: "The sorts of events that have been occurring recently in Rivers State have a threatening and intimidating effect and are unworthy of any society governed by the Rule of Law. When any Nigerian is threatened and his environment surrounded by the sort of dark clouds and storms being witnessed in Rivers State, it is democracy and democratic rights in the whole country that is endangered."

He said the events in the state following reports that Amaechi might seek to con-

test as a presidential running mate in the 2015 election are 'most disturbing, ominous and dangerous.'

"Whether this rumoured ambition is true or not, it is totally irrelevant. The truth is that every Nigerian over the age of 40 is entitled to aspire to be president or vice president of Nigeria. This constitutional entitlement is not in any way qualified by the party or zonal relationship between an incumbent president and the aspirant.

"Any Nigerian, more so, a high official like a governor, is entitled to have presidential ambition. It is his constitutional and democratic right.

To lay a siege on him and his state because of rumours of vice presidential interest is a major assault in our so-called democracy.�

been known to last a life-time.

This particular episode was at least 20 years ago. Unfortunately some of Chinua's cohorts decided that they had a mission to prosecute a matter regarding which they lacked any vestige of understanding or competence or indeed any real interest. It is, however, a life crutch for them and they cannot let go."

On Achebe and the Nobel controversy he called on those fanning the embers to end it now asking, "What they are doing now - and I urge them to end it shame-facedly - is to confine Chinua's achievement space into a bunker over which hangs an unlit lamp labelled "Nobel". Is this what the literary enterprise is about? Was it the Nobel that spurred a young writer, stung by Eurocentric portrayal of African reality, to put pen to paper and produce Things Fall Apart? This conduct is gross disservice to Chinua Achebe and disrespectful of the life-engrossing occupation known as literature. How did creative valuation descend to such banality? Do these people know what they're doing - they are inscribing Chinua's epitaph in the negative mode of thwarted expectations. I find that disgusting.

"It is high time these illiterates were openly instructed that Achebe and Soyinka inhabit different literary planets, each in its own orbit. If you really seek to encounter - and dialogue with - Chinua Achebe in his rightful orbit, then move out of the Nigerian entrapment.

Chinua is entitled to better than being escorted to his grave with that monotonous, hypocritical aria of deprivation's lament, orchestrated by those who, as we say in my part of the world, "dye their mourning weeds a deeper indigo than those of the bereaved". He deserves his peace.

Me too! And right now, not posthumously."

On Achebe's place in world literature and his description as father of African literature, Soyinka said: "Chinua's place in the canon of world literature?

Wherever the art of the storyteller is celebrated, definitely assured.

"Chinua himself repudiated such a tag (father of African literature)- he did study literature after all, bagged a degree in the subject. So, it is a tag of either literary ignorance or "momentary exuberance" - ala [Nadine] Gordimer - to which we are all sometimes prone."

On There Was a Country, Achebe's last work, Soyinka said it is a book he wished the deceased "had never writtenthat is, not in the way it was.

There are statements in that work that I wish he had never made."

On allegations of genocide during the war against the Federal Government, Soyinka said: "The reading of most Igbo over what happened before the Civil War was indeed accurate - yes, there was only one word for it genocide. Once the war began, however, atrocities were committed by both sides, and the records are clear on that. The Igbo got the worst of it, however. That fact is indisputable.

The Asaba massacre is well documented, name by victim name, and General Gowon visited personally to apologise to the leaders. The Igbo must remember, however, that they were not militarily prepared for that war. I told Ojukwu this, point blank, when I visited Biafra. Sam Aluko also revealed that he did. A number of leaders outside Biafra warned the leadership of this plain fact. Bluff is no substitute for bullets."

xxx

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Nigeria ready for global poverty alleviation From: Olugbenga Adanikin, Abuja IGERIA is prepared to contribute to global poverty alleviation programme.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, disclosed this during his trip to the World Economic Forum in Cape Town.

The minister, who attended the forum with President Goodluck Jonathan, assured that the nation will soon be a major contributor to global food and nutritional security.

Adesina said: "Nigeria is set to become a major contributor to global food and nutrition security and poverty eradication through the creation of the right business conditions and government support to small holder and large scale farmers to significantly expand agricultural."

A statement yesterday by the Ag Director of Press and Public Relations of the Ministry stated that Adesina expressed government's commitment to change the face of agriculture as well as restore the nation's lost glory in global food production.

Adesina enlightened the global policy makers and private sector representatives on government's Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA).

He stated that domestic food supply had increased by more than eight million metric tons, almost half of the target set for 2015.

Speaking on dry season rice production, the minister stated that northern rice farmers had increased productions by more than a million metric tons.

The output, according to the minister, was over onethird of what the country needed to replace tons of what the country currently imports.

"This is the first time dry season rice production support has been done and it has unleashed massive job creation all across rural areas in ten states of northern Nigeria.”

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Group urges govt to empower youths

By Hannah Ojo

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HE World Christian Council Association has called on the federal government to reform young people by creating job opportunities for them. In a statement, Ayoola Omonigbesin, the spokesperson of the group said government had failed to empower the youths who made up a large portion of the population.

He said as the nation gears up to mark May 27th as Children's Day, it should be set aside as "a day of reasoning and planning for self-sufficiency of the youth." According to him, encouraging the youths to be self-sufficient would curb kidnapping and the menace of Boko Haram.

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HE police yesterday uncovered another baby factory in Enugu, just less than one week after the last discovery.

A middle- aged man, who gave his name as Ozo Ben Akpudache of Ogui Eke in Udi local Government Area of Enugu state, is said to be behind the baby factory.

He is helping the police in their investigation over his alleged involvement in the running of the place where young expectant girls were kept and delivered of their babies.

Akpudache told the police that the babies after delivery were given out to those in need of children.

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Police uncover another baby factory in Enugu •Centre to help infertile couples, says proprietor From: Chris Oji, Enugu

He was arrested by the operatives of 9th Mile Division of Enugu State Police Command at his Ogui Eke residence where he has a three-room apartment reserved for keeping of young pregnant girls.

Police spokesman, Ebere Amaraizu, said the suspect's

house was raided following a tip-off.

Six young pregnant girls who gave their names as Chika Nwankwo, Ogochukwu Amadi, Amarachi Sunday, Ugwu Nnenna, Maryann Ani and Ogbu Precious were rescued from the apartment.

Nnenna narrated her ordeals, pointing out she went

to the apartment out of frustration.

She said the proprietor promised to give her some undisclosed amount of money after delivery to take care of herself.

An undisclosed acquaintance, she added, introduced her to the centre, an action she said she regrets.

Akpudache stated that he

had been in the business for five years.

He said the business was geared towards helping childless couples who can afford to buy the babies.

He further confessed carrying out the deliveries in one of the rooms of his apartment where a traditional labour room was set.

He admitted he is not a medical doctor but does his things traditionally.

The rescued girls are now helping the police in their investigations.

How N300m intervention fund tore motorcycle owners apart From John Ofikhenua, Abuja

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• Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission(NCC), Dr Eugene Juwah, in a warm handshake with Mr. Sanou Brahima, Director, Telecommunication Development Bureau of the ITU, Geneva, when the latter visited the NCC recently.

Road construction portfolio hits N1.3 trillion - Onolememen

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HE Minister of Works, Architect Mike Onolememen, has disclosed that the estimated funding portfolio for about 195 ongoing road projects across the country is N1.397 trillion.

The projects are spread across the six geo-political zones covering 6,628 kilometres.

He said with an outstanding commitment of N850 billion, it is clear that the yearly budgetary allocations from the Federal Government are grossly insufficient in funding road projects in the country.

The minister, who made the disclosure at an interactive session in Abuja at the weekend, said ongoing efforts are geared towards fostering alternative sources of funding for road development.

He said: "The Federal Ministry of Works has a total of 195 ongoing projects amounting to a portfolio of N1.397 trillion. As at today, we have about 195 on-going projects in the road sector and there is no way we will be able to finish all that in the next two years.

"So we have to prioritise and that is why we are able to make sense out of the chaotic condition of roads in our country. So, to some extent, we have achieved some of the things we set out to achieve, considering our portfolio spread around the six geo-political zones of this country.”

Giving a breakdown of the regional spread, the minister said: "In the North-West, the total road is about N255 bil-

From Yomi Odunuga, Deputy Editor, Nation's Capital

lion. In the North Central, it is about N262 billion.

"In the North East, it is about 332 billion. In the SouthWest, it is about N236 billion.

In the South-East, it is about N150 billion and in the SouthSouth it is about N159 billion."

He added: "We have to strategise by giving priority to the arterial roads that link city to city which are truly inter-state and those roads that provide access to economic centres like seaport, airport, industrial areas and major areas across the country."

He said the alternative sources of funding adopted by the ministry include borrowing from multilateral agencies, floating of road bonds, conventional public private partnership finance as well as

viable gap funding.

On borrowing from multilateral agencies, the minister said the World Bank has made available $330 million in its first phase funding of the projects, noting the reforms he carried out in the ministry on assumption of duties has continued to yield positive results.

On road maintenance, Onolomemen noted that the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) has been repositioned and equipped with "state of the art" mobile pothole patchers and its capacity enhanced for prompt intervention on federal roads.

"A total of 1, 980 kilometres of road corridors have so far been maintained by the agency. And with FERMA's zero-pothole policy and its preventive maintenance policy, coupled with the road

surveillance campaign, many more corridors will be maintained in the next couple of months."

A breakdown of the road projects shows that that the North Central has 31 roads covering 1, 054 kilometres with a budget of N262.3 billion; North East has 30 projects covering 1, 461 kilometres with a budget of N332.9 billion while North West has 23 projects covering 1, 028 kilometres with a budget of N255.5 billion.

Also, South-South has 34 projects covering 876 kilometres with a budget of N159.4 billion; South East has 40 projects covering 978 kilometres with a budget of N149.6; while South West has 37 projects covering 1, 230 kilometres with a budget of N236.9 billion.

Cassava growers to supply 200, 000 metric tons of garri to refugee camps

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HE Nigeria Cassava Growers Association (NCGA) has signed a pact with the Federal Government to supply about 200, 000 metric tonnes of garri to refugee camps for the next five years.

President of the association, Pastor Segun Adewumi, disclosed this during a meeting with state chairmen of the association at the weekend in Abuja.

Adewumi also said the planed disbursement of N12.3billion loan provided by the Bank of Agriculture (BOA)

•N12.3b loan disbursement reach collation stage From: Olugbenga Adanikin, Abuja

has reached the collation stage.

He hinted that the list of benefiting farmers has been sent to the bank.

According to him:"We have been able to talk to the government to give us 200, 000 metric tons of garri to supply to the government annually for five years.

"Garri will pay us and we have told them that it can easily be sold to refugee camps

to represent Nigeria's contribution just like America is giving rice and some things that will benefit their farmers, and that has been accepted."

About 60,000 farmers screened to benefit from the loan are to embark on massive cassava production on 60, 000 hectares of land.

Adewumi added that 300 tractors will be purchased to support the farmers.

According to him, the loan, which is meant for 2013/ 2014 planting season, is to boost local food production.

HE expectation of N300million intervention fund for the Amalgamated Commercial Motorcycle Owners and Riders Association of Nigeria, (ACOMORAN) has torn the association into two factions.

According to the Chairman, Board of Trustees of the group, Chief Ezekiel Oladapo, some members of the association raised a false alarm that government has already released N100million to the former President, Sanni Hassan.

He said: "Some people said that the Federal Government wants to give them about N300million and they wanted to share it.

"That is why they formed their own group. And we know it is not true. They accused the former president that he has collected N100million from the Federal Government, which was not reported to the association."

But Oladapo yesterday cautioned the Federal Government against releasing any intervention fund to any of its members without the consent of the trustees.

He said:"As the authentic chairman of the board of trustees, I said that government should not deal with any faction or anybody from ACOMORAN without our authority."

Oladapo, who spoke with newsmen during a meeting organised by the different factions of the association to broker peace in Abuja, stated that the two factions were ready for out- of- court settlement.

Hassan and the president of the other faction, Babaginda Maihura, admitted there had been, crisis in the association.

They, however, said they were prepared for settlement for the association to make progress.

They both accepted to end the litigation that followed the crisis by withdrawing their case from the Appeal Court in Abuja.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

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Ibadan stands still as Ajimobi, wife get chieftaincy titles

Rights group blames poverty, insurgency on leadership

By Oziegbe Okoeki

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non- governmental organisation, The

Centre for Better Society in Nigeria (CBSN), has blamed the failure of past and current leaders to provide a policy platform for the total eradication of poverty for the bane of insecurity and insurgency in the country.

A statement by its president, Pastor Vincent Ibhaze, and Executive Secretary, Mr. Obue Ede, stated that eradication of extreme poverty is not in the disbursement of funds to individuals but development of their psychological and emotional stability through education to have a good sense of enterprise.

It said: “Our leaders have long denied the teeming citizens of this country quality education, jobs, good roads, electricity, quality of life and above all security of live and property, and because of hunger the youths have revolted against the authority by the use of force thereby creating a state of high insecurity”.

CSBN maintained that insurgents are vulnerable people whose living condition and economy have suffered neglect and are forced to embrace violence for survival.

The group called on Nigerians to stand up for what is right and reclaim their destiny and freedom among the comity of nations.

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BADAN, the Oyo State capital, practically stood still yesterday for Governor Abiola Ajimobi and his wife Florence as they were conferred with the traditional title of the Aare and Yeye Aare Atunluse ofIbadan land by the Olubadan of Ibadan land, Oba Samuel Odulana (Odugade 1).

Governors, party leaders, captains of industry, royal fathers, family and friends also gathered at the palace of the Olubadan at Monatan area, Iwo Road and the Obafemi Awolowo Stadium (formerly Liberty Stadium) to celebrate the honourees.

The couple was installed at about 12 noon with the monarch declaring that the Ajimobis were honoured because of their outstanding contributions to the state within two years of the current administration.

The eldest son of the monarch, Prof. Femi Lana, performed the installation on be-

From Bisi Oladele and Tayo Johnson

half of his father.

The city was set agog with several official cars lining the road in a convoy from the Agodi Government House through Iwo Road to Monatan.

The National Chairman, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Chief Bisi Akande and several top politicians including Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, his Osun State counterpart, Rauf Aregbesola, former Ogun State Governor, Otunba Olusegun Osoba were at the event.

Others included, Chief Tom Ikimi; Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwan Babatunde Akiolu; Olugbon of Ile-Igbon, Adegboyega Osunbade; former governor of Oyo State, Dr Omololu Olunloyo; the Aare Musulumi of Yorubaland, Abdul-Azeez Arisekola-Alao; Senator Ayoade Adeseun; Wife of the former governor of Lagos State,

Senator Oluremi Tinubu while the governors of Kano, Niger, Cross Rivers, Plateau and Ogun States were represented.

Heads of military and paramilitary formations in Oyo State also graced the occasion.

Ajimobi said he accepted the honour in view of the monarch’s objective assessment of his performance as governor in the last two years.

He described the Olubadan as a highly revered and principled traditional ruler who would not dole out chieftaincy title to anybody who does not deserve it, no matter the person’s status in the society.

He pointed out he had been offered several chieftaincy titles which he had turned down.

The new Aare Atunluse said:” I have no choice than to accept this honour, coming from the highly revered royal father as the Olubadan.

“I know that he doesn’t just dole out chieftaincy titles anyhow. He is a man of no mean

achievement and he is highly principled.

“He has done the sons and daughters of Ibadanland proud.

I am, therefore, very pleased with this title.”

In her own remark, the new Yeye Aare Atunluse, Chief Florence Ajimobi, noted that the recognition will make her and his husband work harder.

She said:” I and my husband deserve this honour because he works tirelessly day and night for the development of this state.

“I really appreciate the Olubadan of Ibadanland for honouring us.”

Evangelist Ebenezer Fabiyi (Obey) and fuji Maestro, King Wasiu Ayinde ,mounted the band stand, dishing out thrilling songs to entertain guests.

Several important personalities, who spoke to reporters at the event, commended Ajimobi for the giant strides he has made to change the face of Oyo State in the last two years.

2015: INEC laments sale of votes

By Innocent DURU

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HE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has called on Nigerians to shun the temptation of selling their votes to any politician or political party.

The commission said many Nigerians engage in the practice of selling their votes because they do not fully understand the benefits of democracy.

Lagos State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Adekunle Ogunmola, made the call last week at a seminar organised by a non-governmental organisation, Youth Empowerment and Leadership Foundation (YELF).

Ogunmola spoke on “Social contract principle and modalitities for grassroot NGOs/CSOs working in national, state and local participation in 2015 general elections.”

He said: “It is sad to observe that some people do not fully understand the benefits of democracy and the need to have competent citizens in positions of authority.

“Hence they sell their votes for peanuts and lose out completely from the gains of democracy.”

•A cross section of tradesmen, artisans, invited guests and other stakeholders during the grand finale of the 4th tradesmen and artisans’ week and graduation ceremony for re-trained artisans by Lagos State Ministry of Commerce and Industry... last week

‘Why Ekiti won’t cancel laptops in schools’ From Sulaiman Salawudeen, Ado-Ekiti

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KITI state government said despite observed irregularities it would continue the laptop per student policy instituted in its secondary schools in 2012.

The administration of Governor Kayode Fayemi last year distributed 30,000 net-book laptop computers to students out of 100,000 targeted.

The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Hon. Kehinde Ojo, spoke at the weekend at a stakeholders meeting organised by Purples Consult in Ado-Ekiti, capital of the state.

According to the commissioner, the overall assessment of the situation in secondary schools in the state regarding the use of the laptops “has been positive and encouraging.”

He assured that“the state could not reverse a laudable policy in the face of fleeting and probable setbacks.”

Ojo said: “In partnership with Samsung, about 30,000 units have been supplied while the processing for another batch of 33,000 is in progress for the current year.

“Teachers in both primary and secondary schools have also been assisted to own laptops to enable them interact, and teach with them.

“To further complement this effort, Samsung Engineering Academy has been established and sited at the Government Technical College, Ado-Ekiti, where students and teachers can have hands-on skills on computer repairs, programming and other related training.”

The Chief Executive Officer of Purples Consult, Ms. Sola Salako, said mishandling and using the laptops to view pornographic films were some of the challenges observed among students.

According to her, some parents had also assisted their children to sell off the computers, noting “such parents should know that the laptops were still the property of Ekiti State Government.”

Ondo riverine community seeks probe of shoreline project R A

‘Why Aregbesola deserves second term’

ESIDENTS of Ayetoro Community in Ilaje coastal area of Ondo State at the weekend protested the alleged poor execution and mismanagement of the shoreline project in the community by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).

The coastal town in Ilaje local government area has lost considerable large portions of land to frequent sea surge and erosion since early 1990s owing to oil exploration.

The environmental challenges have also led to loss of valuables.

The principal secretary of the community, Otunba Dele Kudehinbu, told reporters in Akure, the capital of Ondo State, the initial contract awarded to Gallet Nigeria Limited in 2004 at N2.4billion was terminated after four years for alleged non-performance and lack of technical know-how.

From Damisi Ojo, Akure

According to him: ‘’In 2009,the new board of NDDC cancelled the earlier contract and re-awarded it to Dredging Atlantic Nigeria Limited at a cost of about N6.5b out of which about N2.5b was paid to the new contractor as mobilisation.

‘’It is disheartening to report that about four years after the new contract was awarded and the payment of that work on the project has meaningfully commenced, there was no sign that the job is being done.’’

Kudehinbu contended there was no adequate planning and preparation for the

project before it was awarded, blaming everything on the NDDC management.

The community urged President Goodluck Jonathan to institute a probe panel to investigate the poor execution of the project to end the traumas of Ayetoro residents.

Baker convicted for assaulting NAFDAC officials

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Federal High Court in Osogbo, capital of Osun State, has convicted a baker, Nurudeen Afolabi, for assaulting officials of the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC).

The presiding judge, Justice Babs Kuewumi, sentenced the baker to one year imprisonment with option of N4, 000.

Afolabi, whose bakery is located at the Asubiaro area of Osogbo, was arraigned be-

From: Adesoji Adeniyi, Osogbo

fore the court on 12th of May, 2011.

According to the charge sheet, Afolabi committed the offence under Section 25(1) of the NAFDAC Act, Cap 1, Law of the Federation of Nigeria 2004 and punishable under section 25 (1) of same Act. The charge sheet further said on 15th of March, 2010 at Isale Agbara Street, Asubiaro in Osogbo, the convict attacked an Assistant Di-

rector of NAFDAC, Mrs. Yedunni Adenuga, and other officials of the agency when they found prohibited potassium bromate in his bakery.

Afolabi started crying immediately he was pronounced guilty before conviction.

The defence counsel, Mr. Aliu Adesina, urged the judge to be lenient with his client since he has shown remorse.

He assured that Afolabi will turn a new leaf.

From Adesoji Adeniyi, Osogbo.

socio-political group within the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Osun State, the Dynamic Reformers, has explained why Governor Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola deserves a second term in office.

Its chairman, Dr. Yinka Afolayan, told reporters in Osogbo that since his assumption in office in November 2010, Aregbesola has revolutionised all sectors of the economy.

Listing the administration’s achievement, Afolayan said they include establishment of the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme (OYES), the environmental programmes of the O’CLEAN as well as various agricultural projects under the O’REAP and many others.

Afolayan maintained such transformations were evidently missing before.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

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Ohaneze seeks posthumous award for Achebe

US, Nigeria team up to tackle fake drugs

From Nwanosike Onu, Awka and Odogwu Emeka Odogwu, Nnewi

From Frank Ikpefan and Franca Ochigbo, Abuja

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DIGBO apex cultural group, Ohaneze NdiIgbo, yesterday urged President Goodluck Jonathan to honour the late literary icon, Chinua Achebe, with a posthumous award for projecting the image of Nigeria to the world.

The Anambra president of the group, Elder Chris Eluemuno, who made the call in an interview with newsmen in Awka reechoed that the late literary icon left many legacies on the sand of time.

He said: “Achebe has written more novels and has written more globally accepted novel than any Nigerian.

“He has received more international awards than any writer in Africa apart from the Nobel laurel.

“He never pretended that he never liked the white man in his style of writing.

He was truly a Nigerian, he was truly African and that is why he deserves a national honour.”

Eluemuno said that Ohaneze Ndigbo would support the Federal Government and the South East State governments in giving the late professor a befitting burial.

According to him, many traditional activities have also been lined up to project him as a true Igbo man.

He disclosed that the national body of the group had plans to immortalise the late icon.

Make Ogidi a tourist centre-Ike, Iweka, others

By Evelyn Osagie

P

OPULAR novelist, Chukwuemeka Ike and the paramount ruler, Igwe Chidubem Iweka III of Obosi, have called on the government to immortalise the late author, Prof Chinua Achebe by adding his town to the list of tourist centres in the state.

They argued that the person of Achebe is enough to site the town as a tourist spot in the state.

Describing Achebe a defender of the weak, Ike said his death challenges the government to improve the standard of education.

He said: “Chinua Achebe deserves to be celebrated; more than mere celebration, the government should immortalise him. Even though his death holds no harm for the Nigerian Literature, it challenges the government to improve upon the state of our schools and by extension, the standard of education, which is one of the things Achebe campaigned for.”

Iweka said monuments and roads should be named after Achebe like other distinguished Nigerians.

While advocating that Achebe’s house and other sites in the town be considered for tourist centres, Chief Obi Ezegbo, an Ogidi elder, added that immortalising the writer should be seen as a matter of urgency by all giving the way such projects were abandoned in the past.

The National President, Ikenga Ogidi Union, urged the government to revisit the renaming of “Ugwu Nwasike Road” after the late author.

•Abia State governor, Chief Theodore Orji during a visit to victims of collapsed building in Umuahia… yesterday

Nigeria is highest importer of bullet proof vehicles N IGERIA has overtaken Iraq, Afghanistan and Latin American countries as the world’s biggest importer of bullet proof (armoured) vehicles.

It is estimated that about 30 percent of customers for armoured vehicles worldwide come from Nigeria.

In the last few years, manufacturers of armoured vehicles have exported an estimated 800 to 900 units to Nigeria at the cost of more than N60 billion.

This was made known to journalists during the launch of the Land Rover Defender (AVM) recently in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.

The British car maker said it will provide maintenance training for the Nigerian Defence forces or any institution

By Bukola Afolabi

that imports more than 200 units of Land Rover Defender Armoured Vehicle Modifier (AVM) vehicles.

In 2011 alone, Nigeria imported 600 and 1,000 armoured vehicles, coming behind Iraq, Afghanistan and Latin America.

But recent figures, however, indicate that Nigeria has overtaken these countries on account of growing insecurity, as well as a seemingly love by the elite for armoured vans.

While the position of Iraq and Afghanistan as major importers of armoured vehicles is understandable because of the war situation in those regions, not a few have wondered why

Nigeria should be number one in the world.

It costs between N60million and N80million to armour an imported Sport Utility Vehicle, depending on the different levels of fortification, while the starting price to armour a saloon cars is put at N45million and above, according to manufacturers sources.

Describing the position of Nigeria on armoured vehicle importation rating as no exaggeration, Huan Ka Kyui, a high ranking official of an armoured vehicle manufacturing company in Thailand, said that the first time his company received a request for an armoured car from a Nigerian

was as far back as in 2003.

Since then, he said the number has increased steadily.

John Graham, Brand Manager Armoured, Military and AVM (Armoured Vehicle Modifier) Programme for the Jaguar Land Rover group, said Nigeria is the emerging market for anti-ballistic vehicles.

He added that armoured vehicles are classified into Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) which can be used for military operations, Cash-InTransit (C-I-T), ambulances, mobile clinics and passenger vehicles.

Special Purpose Vehicles are mostly purchased by banks and security operatives, while the passenger vehicles are used by individuals and government at various levels.

Court orders Union Bank to refund N34m to firm

J

USTICE Morenike Obadina of a Lagos High Court has ordered Union Bank of Nigeria Plc to pay N34 million ($217, 381.05) to one Prince Nwokocha Ezikpe and his company Felimex Nigeria Limited, being the total sum of money debited from the claimants’ account.The court held that the money debited from the claimants’ account with Union Bank was not remitted as expected as payment for the series of transactions between the claimants and their foreign business partners.

Justice Obadina held that Union Bank did not supply any documentary proof from its own record of remittance

By Bukola Afolabi

of the funds to the Central Bank of Nigeria. ‘’No bank entries, email correspondence, letter, fax messages or any document to trace the movement of the funds from the defendant to the CBN was pleaded or tendered’’, the court held.

Therefore, Justice Obadina held that the claimant’s established their entitlement to the reliefs sought as the funds debited from their count were meant for remittance to the CBN and to their foreign partners were not remitted.

Obadina stated further that contrary to the submissions of defendant’s counsel in his address, the claimants were not

relying on the weakness of the defence in establishing their claim.

She maintained that the burden of proof of the remittance was on the defendant and that the defendant failed to discharge that burden.

Consequently, the court awarded the sum of N3 million in favour of the claimants for breach of contract and for money received since 1983.

However, Justice Obadina refused the request of the claimants for an interest of 19 percent at prevailing exchange rate.

The case of the claimant is that Felimex Merchantile Nigeria Alliance and Sobatex International operated an ac-

Oyo mega trade fair unveils logo

T

HE Federal Government has been called upon to create an enabling environment for business to thrive.

Speaking in Ibadan while unveiling the logo of the forthcoming Oyo Mega Trade Fair, the president of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN), Mr. Rotimi Adeyeye, said it was the duty of government to create an enabling environment for the players and not to dabble into business ventures.

Mr. Adeyeye said what the government ought to do

was to create conducive atmosphere by putting the necessary infrastructure in place, providing the right social amenities and utilities and instituting independent regulatory agencies to play the role of umpires rather than being an active participant.

Speaking earlier, the president of Oyo Mega Trade Fair, Mr. Delight Owoyemi, said the 10-day trade fair, which kicks off at the Lekan Salami Stadium, Adamasingba, on August 9, is aimed at building brands of major manufacturers, opening up Oyo State business opportunities to inves-

tors within and outside Nigeria, exchanging technical and commercial information as well as showcasing industrial and technological innovations.

According to him, this year’s trade fair, which has the theme, “Manufacturing Opportunities in Sensitising the Nigerian Economy for Investment Evolution,” will attract no fewer than 20 sponsors and 10 partners, as well as over 1,000 exhibitors, apart from local governments. As being packaged, he said, 100 companies will have their special days.

count with the Aba branch of the defendant in the name of Felimex Merchantile Nigeria Alliance.

The two enterprises were later incorporated into a limited liability company known as Felimex Nigeria Limited.

In the course of normal banking relationship the claimants’ account was debited in the sum of $217, 381.05 in seven installments for remittance to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for goods imported by Felimex Merchantile Nigeria Alliance.

It was further alleged that the funds were not remitted to CBN as agreed and the claimant requested for proof of remittance as CBN denied receiving the remittances.

The bank further argued that the funds were transferred to CBN but the apex bank did not provide the foreign exchange applied for and that the funds were later returned to the bank.

The defendant (Union Bank) contended that the suit is statue barred and that the money debited from the claimants’ account were transferred to the CBN. In addition, the bank stated that the non-remittance of the funds was due to non provision of foreign exchange by the CBN and not to any fault of the defendant.

HE US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have intensified cooperation with its counterpart, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), to regulate the amount of fake drugs and food that enter into the country.

Dr. Beverly Corey, Senior Regional Advisor for sub-Saharan Africa, Office of International Programs, (FDA), who spoke in Abuja, observed that globalisation meant that the US can no longer sit at home and regulate products that come into her territory.

She said: “We realised that we need to work more closely with our regulatory colleagues in other to strengthen what we call the global product safety network.

“Globalisation has fundamentally changed on how we do business. We need to work with our regulatory colleagues to ensure that quality is built into products when they are manufactured.”

The Director General of NAFDAC, Dr. Paul Orhii, noted that it makes sense to collaborate with the FDA in the areas of fake drugs and food control since it will help to reduce substandard products that find their way into the country.

According to the NAFDAC boss:”Counterfeit drugs are militarised, globalised and digitalised.

“It is now difficult to fight. Most of our problem is drug regulation. There is a pervasive ignorance in fake drug campaign.”

75 Heads of State for AU summit

S

EVENTY five Heads of States and Governments from AU member states are expected to attend the 21st African Union summit.

The summit is scheduled to hold between from May 19 to May 27 in Addis Ababa.

A statement by the Commission’s Directorate of Information and Communication said 450 journalists had been given accreditation to cover activities of the summit.

The 21 st summit coincided with the 50th anniversary of the defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the 10th anniversary of the African Union (AU).

The OAU was established on May 25, 1963 in Addis Ababa on a signature of the OAU Charter by representatives of 32 governments including Nigeria, while 21 states joined gradually over the years.

South Africa became the 53rd member on May 23, 1994 after the first multi-racial elections that ushered in Dr Nelson Mandela as the first democratically elected black African president of the rainbow nation.

The South Sudan became the 54th state to join the AU after securing independence from Sudan on July 9, 2011.

12

World News

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

French president signs gay marriage into law

F

RENCH President Francois Hollande has signed a law authorizing gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples, after months of nationwide protests and wrenching debate.

His signature means the first gay marriages may be celebrated in France within about 10 days. Hollande's office said he signed the bill yesterday morning, a day after the Constitutional Council

struck down a challenge to the law.

Hollande, a Socialist, had made legalizing gay marriage one of his campaign pledges last year. While polls for years have shown majority support for gay marriage in France, adoption by same-sex couples is more controversial. The bill prompted months of widespread protests, largely by conservative and religious groups. Some were marred by

clashes with police. It became a flashpoint for frustrations at the increasingly unpopular Hollande.

Gunmen kill 9 in Iraq, 8 police kidnapped

G

UNMEN killed an antiterrorism policeman and his family in Baghdad yesterday, while kidnappers abducted eight policemen guarding a post on Iraq's main highway to Jordan and Syria, the latest in a wave of violence to grip the country.

Attackers also shot dead a Sunni cleric in the Shiitemajority south.

The attacks follow three days of bombings and other violence that killed 130 people, targeting a market, a mosque and bus stops in both Shiite and Sunni areas in scenes

reminiscent of retaliatory attacks between the two groups that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006-2007.

The particularly violent recent weeks have raised fears the country may be heading toward a new round of sectarian conflict.

Yesterday's deadliest attack occurred when gunmen broke into the house of an antiterrorism police officer in the southern suburbs of Baghdad, killing five people including him and his sleeping family.

Police officials say the attackers

stormed the house in the alRasheed district early Saturday and shot dead Cap. Adnan Ibrahim, his wife and two children, aged eight and 10.

As they were leaving the area, the attackers killed another policeman who tried to stop them at a nearby checkpoint.

Meanwhile in the western Sunni province of Anbar, gunmen kidnapped eight policemen who were guarding a post on the main highway linking Iraq to both Jordan and Syria, said two police officials.

An Ambassador's Odyssey •Continued from page 3 It was however as a budding diplomat that the future ambassador faced his stiffest test of character. The sparks started flying almost immediately after he joined the Foreign Service. The training officer in the ministry, in what the ambassador described as an act of “deliberate negligence”, locked up all the correspondence pertaining to an earlier admission he had secured to Oxford University and went on leave. The offer lapsed, but when the Civil War broke out some months later, the same officer was among the first to defect.

Secondly, Fafowora discovered early enough to his chagrin that official quarters in the Foreign Service were not allocated on the basis of seniority and rank but on the basis of region and creed. The ostensible reason for this flagrant favouritism and discrimination was that officers of northern origins, being in unfamiliar territory, would find it more difficult to secure accommodation than their southern colleagues. But as the ambassador would later rue, there is no evidence that this policy was reversed in favour of southern officers when the nation’s capital shifted to the north.

It would appear that all the internal cleavages that have hobbled Nigeria’s march to authentic nationhood are reproduced at the level of External Affairs. These are the cleavages of ethnicity, religion, regionalism, gender and class. Those who find themselves outside the magical circle often learnt of their posting or promotion from far junior officers who belong. It was in the same manner that Fafowora learnt of his first ambassadorial posting to Uganda.

During his mission to Turkey, the ambassador was directed by the home office to comment on the desirability or otherwise of Nigeria joining the OIC. Based on his awareness that Nigeria is a secular state, Fafowora urged caution, advising that our observer status be maintained. But an ambassadorial colleague serving

somewhere else was unimpressed, insisting that Nigeria was an Islamic state and that the process for full OIC membership should be expedited.

If Fafowora thought that this was a mere difference of opinion, he was profoundly mistaken. Years later, his ambassadorial colleague could barely conceal his hostility, pointedly referring Fafowora to the original affront as the basis of his intense irritation.

To slight his colleague even further, the ambassador not only refused to vacate the quarters he no longer needed, he handed it over instead to a far junior officer. Such was the nature of political and religious animosity..

Added to all this is perhaps the more fundamental problem of the mode of decolonization. The mode of decolonization also affects the mood and tone of Foreign Policy. Nigeria’s independence was gained on a platter of gold rather than at the altar of heroic sacrifices But Ghana which had a more turbulent trajectory in which Nkrumah moved from prison to presidential palace always had a more robust and vigorous foreign policy than Nigeria. Indeed in the early days Nkrumah viewed Nigeria as an imperialist poodle and there was no love lost between him Alhaji Tafawa-Balewa who was a staunch conservative at home and an imperialist ally abroad.

Almost thirty years after and perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, Ambassador Fafowora’s premature exit from service has a ring of inevitability to it. A Foreign Service already devastated by ethnicity, religious bigotry, gender discrimination, post- civil war stress, regional polarization and the bitter division between career diplomats and political placemen now added the virus of Intelligence officers planted to write damaging reports about their colleagues and superiors rather than mounting external surveillance. An implosion was bound to follow.

It was the last-mentioned virus that proved fatal to the

ambassador’s career. He was summarily retired along with many other illustrious and distinguished colleagues in what he describes as a night of long knives. The climate of national hysteria and confusion that followed the termination of civil rule provided the perfect cover for what is nothing but ethnic and religious score-settling.

Almost thirty years after, the mind still boggles at the scale of mischief and malice. Yet the nation has failed to draw the appropriate lessons.

The ambassador’s subsequent incarnation as the director General of MAN, his foray into Yoruba cultural politics and his political appointment as a Special Adviser to the government of his native state of Osun are beyond the immediate purview of this review. His account of this phase of his life is as illuminating as it is filled with insights. But after his stellar Foreign Service career, it is an anticlimax of sorts. It merely shows that for a man of exceptional talents, there is life after diplomatic death.

This is a powerful book whose pulsating echoes will reverberate in the sanctuary of power for a long time to come. It is a bold and courageous intervention brimming with daring and sheer audacity. Like his Ijesha warrior forbears, Fafowora has thrown his hat in the ring.

But behind every exceptional man there is probably a more exceptional woman.

In ending, I must not fail to single out for particular praise the ambassador’s wife. She has stood like a Rock of Gibraltar behind her husband as an exemplar of self-sacrifice, duty and devotion. The couple was taken to the airport in an ambulance on the day of their wedding which also coincided with the first coup. This is not just an ambassador’s memoirs.

It is also a love story at its most sublime, and at a time of political and diplomatic cholera.

Let us now rise in honour of this exemplary Nigerian nationalist and Yoruba patriot.

I thank you all.

13

COMMENT and ANALYSIS SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

Talakawa Liberation Herald (13)

BY BIODUN JEYIFO

The “commentariat” in a time of present and looming crises: a personal credo [For Dr. Stanley Macebuh, RIP]

It is essential to educate the educator himself…

Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach (From Thesis Number 3) Ko ni su wa; ko ni re wa (We shall not succumb to defeatism; neither shall we become weary) A Yoruba proleptic saying

T

HE question that prompted the musings in this piece is this: Why do I write this column unfailingly every week? To this question, I could respond at a very high level of generality mixed with a desperate hope and idealism and say that I write the column to prevent myself from succumbing to crippling despair. There are two closely linked reasons for this. First is the fact that there is so much that is horribly wrong with our country and the world in which we all live. Secondly, despair is easy, it is tempting because there does not seem to be any forces, any movements on the horizon of the present capable of countering the weight and the direction of the terrible things happening in our country, our continent and the world. In such a historic national, continental and global context in which so much is terrifyingly amiss and so little seems capable of setting things right, writing a weekly column is, at least, a means of keeping hope alive for oneself and one’s readers. Admittedly, this is a very high level of generality for a question as simple and as direct as why one writes a weekly column, but it is - I hope the reader will agree with me on this - a valid, or at least a plausible reason.

However, rather than starting from such a level of generality on the subject of why I write this column every week, I choose instead to start from a very concrete and particular factor, one that, as far as I am aware, has not been adequately engaged. This is none other than the fact that, without consciously ever intending to do so, I have become a member of what, in an arresting and playful neologism, Victor Ifijeh, the Editor-in-Chief and MD of The Nation, calls the “commentariat”. In other words, I write a weekly column because I am part of this new community or brotherhood or phalanx of the commentariat. I shall come back to the frankly idealistic and desperately hopeful reasons why I write this column, but first, I wish to explore this concrete and particular context of the rise and expansion of a “commentariat” as the background for what I write every week in this column.

Now, the business of this “commentariat” is to write, punctiliously and diligently, opinions and analyses that are presumptively intended to add depth and perspective to the news reporting that is the main business of newspapers in particular and all forms of broadcast journalism in general. Now, my central observation here is the enormously significant historic and cultural fact that in the last three decades, this commentariat has emerged as perhaps one of the most important features of

“

One reason for this is perhaps merely circumstantial: the powers that be, the scions of the political and institutional status quo in our country are so bankrupt that it would require a totally unjustifiable level of cynicism and opportunism to give them intellectual and ideological backing

•Living in perpetual crisis

broadcast journalism in Nigeria. In the present context, I shall say only a little pertaining to the factors that gave rise to this crucial development in Nigerian journalism. Definitely, the role of The Guardian was decisive in this development for it was the first newspaper in Nigeria that more or less forever closed the gap between the popular and the scholarly, the “lowbrow” and the “highbrow” in our country’s newspapers and newsmagazines. In this respect, the role of the late Dr. Stanley Macebuh was cardinal for without him, without his visionary acuity and his intellectual influence, The Guardian could never have had the impact it had on the intellectual content and tone of Nigerian journalism. One proof of this assertion is the fact that the further that that newspaper has moved - in time and in perspectives - from the kind of intellectual leadership that Stanley Macebuh embodied and practiced, the more it has lost its pioneering, leading role in our country’s journalistic culture and ethos.

Dear reader, does the neologism “commentariat” evoke the word “proletariat” more than it does “secretariat”? For me it certainly does. This, I would argue, is not accidental. For in general, newspaper columnists in Nigeria tend to be progressive, at least in the broadest definition of the term. This, by the way, is also partly a legacy of Macebuh’s years at the helm of affairs at The Guardian, for he it was who first gave liberalism, especially in its vigorous and ambiguous encounter with radical leftist ideas and activists in our part of the world, an intellectual rationale, a foothold in the popular imagination, and an institutional base in news reporting and analysis.

I am not necessarily saying here that the great majority of columnists and contributors to intellectual and political debates in Nigerian newspapers and newsmagazines are convinced or consistent progressive liberal democrats. Far from this, our community of the commentariat reflects all the real and manufactured divisions in our country – ethnic, regional, religious, ideological and economic.

But at the same time, I think that it is important to acknowledge that it is difficult to find columnists of note or credibility in our country who can mount a vigorous and coherent promotion of reactionary and hegemonic positions that sustain the status quo of power,

wealth and authority in Nigeria.

One reason for this is perhaps merely circumstantial: the powers that be, the scions of the political and institutional status quo in our country are so bankrupt that it would require a totally unjustifiable level of cynicism and opportunism to give them intellectual and ideological backing. But I would also ask the reader to think of this enormously crucial fact: We live in a time of deep and perpetual crises, so much so that Nigerians under the age of forty do not know that at one time there was a fairly stable status quo in this country even if the period – roughly between the decade before independence and the outbreak of civil war – was not without its own crises. But that was then. Now, in the present, we are in a prolonged period of endemic and perpetual crises. This, I contend, is the background for the idealistic and (desperately) optimistic basis for why, speaking only for myself as member of the commentariat, I write this column unfailingly every week, even though I do have a full-time job as a professional academic. I would like to conclude my reflections in this piece by briefly elaborating on this particular issue.

Metaphorically speaking, the malaises of the national body politic are like the diseases and ailments of the physical body: you feel them concretely, existentially. This is what it means to live in a period of perpetual and endemic crises, some of which are minor but most of which are severe and acute. Let me give examples and expressions of these crises, these malaises of the body politic, making them as concrete as possible by giving some instances from daily life at Oke-Bola in Ibadan, the neighborhood in which I live. Here are some of the minor expressions of these crises. First, for a neighborhood that used to be a fairly lowdensity area in my childhood, it is now far gone beyond a high-density area: it is now more or less a ghetto with virtually every inch of available space built up. Seventh-Day Adventist Primary School that I attended as a child now has no playground, no school farm or garden as these have all been taken over by buildings.

There are virtually no municipal services in the area: every household, every family has to make arrangements for water supply, sanitation and waste disposal, and security of life and possessions. The population of the neighborhood is overwhelmingly dominated by youths, the great majority of them not only

unemployed but with no real prospects for the future.

Most of the factories at the nearby Oluyole Industrial Estate closed down more than a decade ago and nothing has replaced this major employment base of the neighborhood and the city.

Public or street night life is now completely gone, for by 9 p.m., everybody is inside their homes. This, in a neighborhood which in my youth had one of the most vibrantly entertaining and recreational night life in all of the southern part of the country. But religion thrives and there are dozens of churches and mosques in the neighborhood: Praise the Lord! If you have no jobs, no prospects for the future, at least you have Jesus, you have Allah, and you have the pastors and the imams.

As nearly every reader of this piece knows, this profile is a microcosm of the rest of the city of Ibadan and the rest of the country. And as depressing as this profile is, what is truly frightening is the feeling, the intuition that the worst is yet to come, heaven help us! And as if that is not bad enough, there is hardly any indication that there is a movement afoot, a movement in its embryonic stages perhaps but that will eventually sweep away all this rot, all this suffering, all this insecurity. Those who wonder how we, the members of the commentariat, find subjects or topics to write about every week without running out of steam perhaps do not know that decadence, suffering and insecurity of life and existence all constitute inexhaustible sources of matter on which to write week after week, ad infinitum! But this is a great contradiction, this conundrum in which, so it seems, the commentariat feeds on and thrives on crises that impoverish and diminish the quality of life on such a vast scale. What is the way out of this contradiction, this conundrum? That is the billion naira question.

Speaking for myself and a few other colleagues within the community of the commentariat that I know well, perceptive and insightful commentary and analysis, though badly needed in our current conjuncture of endemic and perpetual crises, can and will never replace movements of the Nigerian peoples for real and meaningful change in the conditions of their lives. The commentariat is a part within a whole; it is not a substitute for that whole.

Moreover, as Marx observed in the first epigraph to this piece, there is a need for the educator himself to be educated. The very process of commenting on the crises we are all living through, admittedly unequally, is a composite testing ground for our commentaries and analyses. I am not engaging in hypocrisy when I assert here that one of the most productive and useful benefits of writing this column is the fact that I learn a lot from the experience, especially in light of the absence of the mass movements of workers, professionals and intellectuals that were such a vital part of my young adulthood.

Thus, compatriot, I write every week and will keep writing as long as possible in the hope that what I write may provide a little light, a little illumination in the vastness of the enveloping darkness that is a product of the crises we are currently living in. But I have no illusions: if we are lucky, writing may be a spark for the changes we are seeking, but it can never be a substitute for it.

Biodun Jeyifo bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

“

14

Festus Eriye efestus2003@yahoo.com sms only: 08116759748

A

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Comment & Analysis

S is to be expected, the declaration by President Goodluck Jonathan of a state of emergency in the Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states, continues to generate considerable heat for all manner of reasons.

What on the surface seems like a surgical procedure against a cancerous growth threatening national security and unity is open to be interpreted as equally dark political manouver – depending on which side of the fence you sit.

While many have expressed surprise that Jonathan would pull the emergency stunt barely a fortnight after celebrating with much fanfare the inauguration of the Boko Haram amnesty committee, I take the position that his latest action was inevitable. In fact, what is amazing is that it took him so long to take the decision to move against the insurgents in a more muscular fashion.

In the end, the decision was virtually made for the president as before his very eyes huge chunks of the nation were becoming no-man’s land where gunslingers was lords of the manner. In other parts where there was no organised insurgency the fear of kidnappers has virtually paralysed society.

What I get from much of the criticism of the emergency declaration is that it hinders the smooth running of our democratic structures. The harsh truth, however, is that democracy had ceased to function where the insurgency was hottest. Many local government officials had fled their bases, and newspapers were beginning to carry headlines like ‘Boko Haram: Fear of kidnap grips governors.’

It has also been argued that the latest move will not solve the problem. While I agree that the best we can hope for from the military action is pacification of the troubled spots in the short term, I don’t agree that what Jonathan was doing prior to sending in the troops was the right thing.

Thoughts on the emergency Frankly, he was floundering – one day talking tough and denouncing the terrorists as ghosts who needed to show their faces in order to be taken seriously as potential partners in a peace process. The next minute he’s caving in to pressure after a night time visit by prominent northern elders, and accepting to offer amnesty to the same “ghosts” he just refused to do business with.

Rather than make life easier for Jonathan, Boko Haram kept thumbing their nose at the government with series of lethal strikes that embarrassed the security establishment.

While the killing at Baga may have represented a frustrated military straining at the leash to engage the foe, the insurgents sortie into Bama – in which 55 persons were killed – represented an unprecedented display of strength by the terrorists.

The question which critics of the emergency have not addressed their minds to is what other option was available in the short term?

A national conference of whatever hue, provisions of full employment for all the hungry and disaffected youths in northern Nigeria would take a long time to put together.

Something needed to be done urgently. The insurgents were beginning to hold ground – even planting strange flags on territories they had conquered. Senator Ahmed Khalifa Zanna has been quoted in the media as saying 23 of the 27 local government areas in Borno State had fallen to the sect.

Every time the insurgents carried out a fresh and audacious attack, and were greeted with pacifist sermons from Aso Rock, they became emboldened. They never showed either by

their utterances or actions that they were remotely interested in the pack of goods Jonathan was peddling. To have delayed action a day longer while innocent people were being indiscriminately executed would have been a more criminal act.

So much has been made of the brutal ways of the members of the Joint Task Force (JTF) in the conflict zone. The fact that these soldiers are fighting the bad guys does not make human rights violations and extra-judicial killings acceptable on their part. But then Nigeria has shown that it has the capacity to bring to justice members of the security forces who derail. That is evident in the trial of policemen fingered in the killing of the late Boko Haram leader, Mohammed Yusuf.

What is so disappointing in all of this is that thousands of Nigerians had to lose their lives before the president came to the conclusion that the country was at war. No war is every pretty: people will lose their heads and accidents will happen. Sometimes even your friends shoot at you. We should not be surprised therefore if there are more tales of JTF excesses. But that is not enough justification for the government to sit on its hands and do nothing.

Some have argued that if the January 2012 declaration of state of emergency in 15 local government councils failed, there was no reason to expect the latest exercise to be an improvement. I disagree. What Jonathan did at after the Christmas Day bombing at the Catholic Church in Madalla was to give emergency rule a bad name.

What was done was not only badly con-

“What Jonathan did at after the Christmas Day bombing at the Catholic Church in Madalla was to give emergency rule a bad name. What was done was not only badly conceived, it was ill-timed and executed halfheartedly.

The soldiers were so thin on the ground they were virtually invisible”

ceived, it was ill-timed and executed halfheartedly. The soldiers were so thin on the ground they were virtually invisible. It was no hard task for the insurgents to simply drift into surrounding local councils and states and carry on business as usual.

Anywhere in the world where an emergency proclamation is made the intent is to prevail and restore order; not just make an announcement in the vain hope that your tormentors will simply disappear because you made a speech. What Jonathan is doing now is what he should have done in January 2012: go against the insurgents with sufficient force to calm the situation and restore some semblance of order.

In the course of the week, some northern elders led by the increasingly vocal former Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Professor Ango Abdullahi, likened the emergency proclamation to a declaration of war on the region. They would rather the peace track being pushed by the amnesty committee had been maintained.

Unfortunately, while the said committee were roaming around like tourists, the insurgents never let up in their brutal killings.

Should those atrocities have been left unchallenged because we are talking peace? If by the government’s action war has been declared on the region, should we take it then that what Boko Haram had been doing all this while was spreading peace and love?

Ultimately, we need to address the root causes of the insurgency in the North-East and rampant insecurity in other parts of the country. This is not just about poverty and unemployment, underlying the Boko Haram agitation is a battle for the right of some people to live and run their lives in a particular way.

They should not be denied that right. But by the same token they must be made to understand that no Nigerian can be browbeaten into accepting any religion or way of life by force. It can only be through a negotiated settlement. Until they understand that they cannot prevail by force of arms, I cast an unqualified vote for the ongoing crackdown.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Comment & Analysis

15

Nigeria’s baby factories Sex slavery for child breeding and trafficking, now exposed, must stop

T

HE recent discovery of 17 pregnant teenage girls in a so-called baby-factory in Imo State is a sober reminder of just how badly Nigeria has failed to curb the heinous trade in human beings. More than that, it manifests in stark terms the retreat to savagery and plunder of innocence in the Nigerian society.

The girls, aged between 14 and 17, were found in a fake motherless babies’ home where they had been put by the proprietor, nicknamed “Madam One Thousand.”

They were allegedly impregnated by the same man, and their babies were going to be sold off to waiting buyers.For a nation whose indigenes were serially victimised by centuries of foreign and domestic slavery, it is shocking that such practices are still rampant. The case in Imo State is only the latest in a series of discoveries that have included the exposure of similar operations across the country, especially in the south-east.

The cruelty involved in this grim business is all too obvious. Most of the girls are young and vulnerable to the blandishment of those who wish to exploit them. They are often raped in the process of making them pregnant and kept in unhygienic conditions before they deliver the babies they will never see again. They are then paid paltry sums and thrown into the street. As for the unfortunate infants that have been brought into the world so inauspiciously, their fate ranges from adoption to being sacrificed for ritual purposes.

The social consequences of this heartless business are profound and wide-ranging.

Quite apart from the continuous denigration of motherhood, there is the certain rise in ritual killings that is sure to take place when the sup-

Y

ESTERDAY (May 18 2013), the world celebrated another International Museum Day with the theme “Museum, memory plus creativity equal social change”.

Perhaps, the theme is a reflection and also a reminder of the relationship that ought to exist between the museums around the world and the wider society. This relationship should be mutual and of benefit both to the museum as an agent of social change and the public as a veritable partner in that endeavour.

The museum is in the service of society and its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for the purpose of study, education and enjoyment. This definition has conferred on the museum and the public a relationship that should be of mutual benefit to both.

Historically, the origin of the museum could be traced back to 290 B C when a prominent Greek statesman Ptolemy Soter (Preserver) 1, decided to display his own private collections. The word museum was coined from the Greek word ‘muse ion’ which was applied to a sanctuary dedicated to the nine ‘muses’ who were daughters of Zeus.

Today, museums all around the world vary enormously.

They range greatly from international museums that are found in Europe and the Americas to small sized village mu-

ply of hapless victims is guaranteed in this macabre fashion. Genuine adoption procedures are destined to fail in the face of this illegal alternative. Many vulnerable young women will be forced into the baby-factory trade as its promoters seek to ensure the continuity of their business. The family, as the basic unit of society, will be undermined.

To make matters worse, the baby-factory business is likely to enhance the other illegalities that abound in Nigeria. Trafficking in human beings, forced labour, prostitution and other vices will thrive. New crimes like the trade in human organs are also likely to develop. As the promoters become ever richer, they will further distort the already-weakened moral basis of society.

It must be wondered why there is such a profusion of baby-factories in Nigeria. These operations are often set up in urban areas, and are able to accommodate sizeable numbers of girls who are kept on the premises for months on end. Babies are delivered and sold with an efficiency that goes on for months, if not years.

Records are falsified, documents are altered, lies are told. Yet nobody appears to know anything until the operation is smashed.

Clearly, many agencies have failed in their

TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM

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•Managing Director/ Editor-in-Chief Victor Ifijeh •Chairman, Editorial Board Sam Omatseye •General Editor Kunle Fagbemi

duties. The ministries of youth and welfare across the country do not seem to have any idea of exactly how many motherless babies’ homes are operating illegally. The country’s system of birth registration is clearly not strict enough, since it appears to be possible for a baby to be born without the official notice of the authorities. Young girls are able to disappear for months on end without any alarm. Families are seen to have new babies, even though neighbours cannot remember if the “mothers” were ever pregnant. The Nigeria Police is not as assiduous in following up reports of missing people or illegal trade in babies as it should be. In essence, a comprehensive breakdown of the country’s welfare, security and identification systems has enabled this tragedy to occur.

Part of the virtual impunity under which the baby-sellers operate is their seeming invulnerability before the law. It is rare for a case of babytrafficking to appear in Nigeria’s courts; it is even rarer for those involved to be sentenced and jailed. When culprits are allowed to get away with their crimes in this manner, it only goes to substantiate rumours of complicity at the highest levels of society.

The country must come to grips with this crime that targets its most vulnerable citizens.

The procedures for the setting-up of motherless babies ‘homes, maternities and hospitals must be strictly followed. Birth registration processes must be completely overhauled to ensure that the registration of all new-borns is obligatory. The security agencies should be quick to follow up all reports of missing persons or baby-trafficking which come to them.

When culprits are apprehended, they must be made to face the full force of the law. Babies are not for sale.

LETTERS

Museum’s enduring partnership with the public seums. In Nigeria, there are over thirty museums scattered across the country especially the state capitals with the prominent and popular ones found in Lagos and Jos. While the museum in Lagos which was established in 1956 once served as the headquarters for the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), the one in Jos is the most comprehensive and the largest in the country.

From the foregoing, it could be deduced clearly that for the museum as an institution in its role to serve the public, a deep collaboration must exist with public agencies. The reason is that one of the roles of the museum apart from research and

W

ITH the effects of the flooding last year still fresh in our minds, most governments and individuals have started taking steps to mitigate further problems with the predictions that there will more rains this year as compared to last year. It has been discovered that blocking of drainages and channels in our cities and towns that were supposed to allow free flow of water and indiscriminate disposal of refuse are major causes of

collection of artifacts is to serve the public. The museum is of service to the public through exhibition in its galleries which are patronized by the people for the purpose of enjoyment. They also render educational services to all categories of educational institutions.

The museum also provides public enlightenment on the value of historic monuments, which are scattered across the country as part of the nation’s heritage and pride. They serve as a cultural focus and a centre of professional expertise on artifacts and antiquities. The museum also enhances the quality of life of the people by creating a sense of identity for the area in which they are located.

In its economic role, the museum promotes the overall development in the area of housing, service and manufacturing industries. For example, Jos museum has transport and technology museum, with a railway track exhibiting old locomotive engines used during the colonial era, a tin mining gallery and an exhibit of the shunting vehicles that were used in transporting tins from the mines. This is also done along other public facilities such as libraries, theatres, open air museums, zoological gardens, etc. , that are daily patronized by the public. An example is the Museum of Traditional Nigerian Architecture (MOTNA), and the zoological garden in Jos.

Clearing drainages in Delta

flooding. I believe it is this awareness that has prompted the Delta state government at all levels and individuals to rigorous clearing of channels and drainage as can be noticed in Warri and Effurun in particular.

I must say that these efforts are highly commendable most especially as individuals are now taking it up to clear the channels around their shops, offices and homes. Quite commendable as

these efforts are, it may not achieve its ultimate result because poor implementation.

When dirt and garbage are packed from these channels they are simply left at the sides without disposing them immediately sometimes for weeks. Only for one single rain to fall and everything is washed back into the drainages. For me, this is what the scriptures call the labour of the foolish. At the end no

Museums can therefore help to encourage the development of local economies and enhance the well being of the people.

The museum also contributes immensely to the development of tourism in areas with potential tourist attractions. It is on record that millions of tourists visit various museums across the world. Tourists bring in foreign capital in form of hard currency which acts as catalyst to boost local economies.

In Nigeria, the museum is seen first and foremost as an arm of government. In fact and regrettably, there is a pervading ignorance about the very essence of its existence, even among the elites. For instance, in the eighties and nineties, work done, energy is dissipated and no results achieved. This should not be the case. Clearing of drains and channels should be immediately followed with the disposal of the refuse to the appropriate dump sites and not allowing them to stay there.

Most times, residents are helpless in disposing these heavy dumps hence government collaboration is highly needed in this regards.

Alexander Ighoro Warri, Delta State

Lagos Museum was known more in the Lagos area as ‘museum kitchen’ rather than the repository of the nation’s artifacts and valuable collections that reflects the country’s rich historical past and the creativity of her people dating back to several centuries. Obviously, people do not seem to realize that the museum because of the strategic and unique functions, can play significant roles in the economic life of the country.

Therefore, it is important that the relationship between the museum and the public should not be limited to patronage.

The museum and the public can partner in the area of investments by interested individuals or groups in areas such as education, tourism and the hospitality business. Also corporate groups, multinationals, banks, art lovers etc. can collaborate with the museum to sponsor museum programmes or activities and in turn benefit from such sponsorship as part of their corporate social responsibility.

It is a matter of imperative that the museum and the public cooperate in order to elevate the standard of museum practice in Nigeria. As the world celebrates another International Museum Day, the attention of the public must be drawn to its social responsibility towards the museums in the country wherever they are located.

By:Awoniyi, Taiwo Ademuyiwa National Museum, Onikan Lagos

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16

Ropo Sekoni ropo.sekoni @thenationonlineng.net

A

T the beginning of the Boko Haram menace, it was not too difficult to foresee what we now have: emergency declaration in three of the states that had given birth to the country's most lethal terrorist group. If it had not been for the prevalence of the Nigeria Factor, we might not have gone this far before reading the riot act to a group that must have set out to destroy the federation.

As a hydra-headed concept, the Nigeria factor has always included a belief in the capacity of the average Nigerian or Nigerian institution to escape the laws of physics, the type of belief that makes it normal to hope that problems may go away on their own or that problems can get solved by talking them to death or praying them out of existence. Sometimes, the factor encourages us to feel that money can be used to solve all problems. In all cases, the tendency grows among the ruling elite and many of the people they rule that the symptom of a problem is synonymous with the root cause of such problem. In the end, applying the Nigeria factor always succeed in changing the form of (rather than solving) the problem to which it is applied.

When the seed of what became Boko Haram mentality was sown in the first term of Obasanjo's post-

Femi Orebe femi.orebe @thenationonlineng.net 08056504626 (sms only)

‘I

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

Comment & Analysis

F the Arewa North’s resistance to the restructuring of the federation continues to remain immovable, and the rest of Nigeria continues to be impotent to overcome that resistance, then indeed the much-to-be-feared mass uprisings will be more likely to come, and Nigeria will be more likely to break up’ – Prof Banji Akintoye in .

PUBLIC CORRUPTION IN: THE POLITICS AND PROSPECTS OF NIGERIA – a forthcoming book.

I watched Mujahid Asari Dokubo in the U Tube video of his latest braggadocio about Nigeria becoming history if he was arrested for his totally reckless talk on consequences of President Jonathan not securing a second term and I shivered. I shivered not out of fear but because of the sheer audacity of a citizen of this country who believes he is above all and every law. And as I write this, even while a former state governor could be arrested and quizzed over a statement on radio/television, no security agency in the country has had the guts to invite Dokubo for questioning.

But then I have concluded that the north brought all that Asari Dokubo called it in that tempestuous press conference on itself. For a certainty, a day like this was bound to come when the north would be told in plain words how exactly it has held Nigeria down, held power in monopoly while aggressively under-developing its masses which has become the bane of the entire country as eloquently

From Nigeria factor to emergency? (1) ‘Nigeria Factor’ has delayed taking decisive against Boko Haram military presidency, we looked away from the issue. When some northern governors declared their states as Sharia states, President Obasanjo ignored them, saying that the decision was a political fad that was destined to fizzle out with time. Some pundits observed then that the decision was to make governance difficult for Obasanjo while others pointed out that the decision of northern governors to declare their states Sharia units was dangerous for the federation and its commitment to secular government. Obasanjo could not be bothered; he continued with his international travels that he thought would clean up the image of Nigeria that was sullied during Abacha's brutal dictatorship, and the rest is history.

Then came the militancy of youths in the Niger Delta. The root cause of the militancy was the injustice in allocation of revenue from petroleum and gas. Niger Delta youths, who believed that the region was the victim of the country's only extractive business, called for restoration of the principle of revenue by derivation that was part of the constitution upon which Nigeria agreed to be one country at independence in 1960. Obasanjo looked away from the cause of the problem. He was quick to attack Odi which he saw as the community that hosted the killing by Niger Delta militants of law enforcement officers. Consequently, media attention shifted to the sack of Odi and not the cause of the vio-

lence by Niger Delta militants.Obasanjo called a political reforms conference that also avoided paying adequate attention to the grouse of the Niger Delta militants, particularly their demand for adequate compensation for the destruction of the region's ecosystem by oil exploration and exploitation, and the rest is history.

Furthermore, killings of Beroms and other groups in Plateau State came to national attention during Obasanjo's rule. But the government looked away from addressing the cause of the killings that had since become a part of the culture of Plateau State. Suddenly, the federal government declared a state of emergency in Plateau State for six months, but the situation remained the same, even up till today. This was despite calls on the federal government by citizens committed to a federal republic to focus on the root of inter-ethnic violence in a multiethnic federation.

Nothing changed and history rolled on inexorably.

In the era of UmaruYar'Adua, there was a resurgence of militancy in the Niger Delta. Yar'Adua responded to this with amnesty. Militants were given money in exchange for their weapons and their passion for justice in the allocation of revenue to a region that has been de-natured by decades of petroleum exploitation and gas flaring.

Again, the focus was on the symptom, not the cause, as the Yar'Adua government created, in addition to

amnesty, federal agencies to bring development to the Niger Delta, and it appears that the rest is also history.

After Goodluck Jonathan became president, despite the controversy over PDP's rotation agreement that the presidency was still to go to the North after Jonathan completed the term of UmaruYar'Adua, a new group, Boko Haram surfaced. The popular or forced belief was that the group was conceived to make the country ungovernable for the president who had prevented the North from moving power back from the south to the north. Pundit's insistence that the worldview advertised

by Boko Haram was too dangerous for a federation of plural cultures was largely ignored. But whenBoko Haram became very violent and lingered longer than most people had expected, new theories about how to deal with the country's most violent terrorist sect emerged, one after the other.

First was the theory that Boko Haram was restricted to the Northeast where it was born and would evaporate with time. Next was the view that President Jonathan was treating the Islamic terrorists with soft hands. General Obasanjo called for more stick than carrot as the best way to end the menace, reminding the nation of his own style of intervention in Odi. Shortly after, the former chairman of the board of trustees of President Jonathan's party called again for

more carrot or dialogue.

Then came the call by modern and traditional rulers for amnesty.

The whole country was encouraged to swallow any pride and beg the terrorists to abandon their worldview, in exchange for money and promise to bring more development to the North. Northern leaders in particular brushed aside calls for a country-wide dialogue or conference to discuss the issues of Boko Haram's worldview and demands along with those of other nationality and religious groups in the country. Boko Haram waxed stronger by the day. Warnings from international friends of Nigeria about Boko Haram not being just a local group to solve a local problem were also eclipsed by strident calls for amnesty. The result is that we are now at the stage in which President Jonathan believes that the country's sovereignty has been divided, some left to him and his legislature, and some being seized by Boko Haram terrorist group.

Finally, an emergency has been declared in three of many more Boko Haram states. What if the military with additional powers given to it by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces succeeds in keeping Boko Haram quiet? Would that be the end of the interrogation of Nigeria's multicultural federation that has been at the center of Boko Haram's agenda to turn Nigeria into a Sharia country and outlaw western civilization, the source of Nigeria as a country?

Why President Jonathan should convoke a National Conference now A critical look at the complex Nigerian situation makes the convocation of a national conference, under whatever name, self-evident. being attested to by the Boko Haram people and their cousins, the Ombatse cult of Nasarawa and still counting. .

In cahoots with the British, especially from the years immediately preceding our flag independence, the north perfected its plan to lord it over every part of the country and in every respect.

Now the chicken has come home to roost and nobody, not even Mr President, can predict the end of what is currently playing out in our country.

Under successive northern heads of state, civilian and military, scant if any , attention was paid to developmental policies akin to those that were the fulcrum of Awo’s government in the then Western Region, namely: heavy investments in education, modern job training programmes, entrepreneurial development, integrated rural development, development of modern farming , strengthening of our export produce economy, infrastructure procurement, huge industrial projects, capital and micro-credit systems for small business development etc.

Instead, they deliberately inflated contracts, proliferated sinecures and bribes and killed the productive sectors of the economy, Nigerian Railways, inclusive. Nor was their method of political ascendancy transparent. The British, having rigged successive census in favour of the north in order to have overwhelming legislative superiority, public money was then used to corrupt, emasculate, subvert, subdue and control, not only individuals, but

such agencies as the Electoral Commission, the Judiciary etc and when all fail in the political arena, the northern military wing immediately stepped in via a coup to protect northern interests.

It must be interesting to students of Nigerian history, however, that in all these schemes over many years, the South-South, whose fight Asari Dokubo now frontally carries on his head as spokesperson, was a willing tool in the hands of the all-conquering north. Even when Awo fought to the death for a Calabar-OgojaRivers (COR) region to be carved out of the then Eastern region, it was from the smallest region, the west, that the north colluded with its southern lackeys to carve out the Midwest. And now, as I never stop to say, the chicken has come home to roost as we see in this seeming dialogue: First, Alhaji Lawal Kaita, the 81year old former governor of Kaduna state: “Anything short of a northern President is tantamount to stealing our presidency. Jonathan has to go and he will go. Even if he uses incumbency powers to get his nomination on the platform of the PDP, he will be frustrated out. We hear rumours all over that Jonathan is planning to contest in 2015. Well, the north is going to be prepared if the country remains one. That is, if the country remains one, we are going to fight for it. If not, everybody can go his way” (Leadership Newspaper) Alhaji Lawal Kaita (March 29, 2012) And then Asari Dokubo: “What Emeka Ojukwu lived and died for, we will all see it with

our eyes in the coming years because of the arrogance of the people who feel they were born to rule. But if you don’t bend your back, nobody can ride you. For the first time in history, the divide-andrule tactics of those who kept us down have failed. The Igbo voted more for President Goodluck Jonathan than the people of the South-South. Today, if anything will stir me to fight, it is my belief that the idea of Biafra was right.

When I was growing up, we were told a lot of things so as to hate Biafra. Maybe some of us were persuaded but the more I grow up, the more I realise it was the greatest mistake we made for not allowing Biafra to stand. You might not feel the pain I feel, but if an Igbo man does not feel the pain I feel, I am sorry for him. If an Urhobo man doesn’t feel the same pain, I am sorry for him.” -Mujahid Dokubo Asari (May 5th, 2013) Here, you can see the suave and clever demagogue trying to rally the Igbo behind the Niger-Delta people.

Mr President should see what is going on now as far more than the raging terrorism that daily consumes some of our poor, hardworking security men. It is nothing short of a constitutional breakdown and if the President did not see this before, his resort to emergency declaration in three northern states this past week should convince him.

The time has come for serious dialogue among our various peoples. Mr President, the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. A critical look at the complex Nigerian situation makes the

convocation of a national conference, under whatever name, self-evident. If it is untrue, as has been suggested in some serious circles, that this government is deliberately working to make the 2015 elections impossible, then Mr President must be man enough to do the needful now.

Nothing can be farther from the truth than the suggestion that doing so will lead to a breakup of the country. Indeed, a pan-Nigerian desire for a conference has largely been thwarted by only the northwest which, having dominated the country for so long, and in many respects, believes it could lose some of its hegemony. It is obviously an iniquitous structure where you have the Vice-President, the heads of the judiciary, the two legislative houses, the Inspector-General of Police, the Customs-General, the Governor of the Central Bank and so many other chief executives of key agencies of the federal government coming from the same part of a federation where everybody is constitutionally presumed to be equal.

In order to build a peaceful, prosperous and powerful country that will take its rightful place in the comity of nations, there must be a deliberate move on the part of Mr President to structurally rejig Nigeria in a manner that will empower each part to, as much as possible, have autonomy over much of its own affairs, so we can all develop at our own pace, practice whatever religion we like and adopt whatever economic models that will best suit our different peoples.

Comment & Analysis

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Tunji

Adegboyega tunjade@yahoo.co.uk 08054503906 (sms only)

F

OR once, President Goodluck Jonathan did something, at least within the ambits of the law, with his proclamation of emergency rule in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states on Tuesday. This was a decision that was even late in coming, given the havoc that Boko Haram has wreaked on the nation. At this point, we have to call a spade a spade, and not just a farming implement. And we shall do just that today.

If political Boko Haram is real (as I believe it is), perhaps the genesis is in the emergence of President Jonathan as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the 2011 election. I have said it before that I do not believe in zoning; I stand by this. But then, I can say that without the heavens falling because of who I am.

Everything may look good on a fowl's neck, definitely not a rope.

A PDP stalwart cannot say this in all honesty because he or she knows that is not the position of their party. So, when the party chiefs did wuruwuru to the answer to prop up the present president as the party's candidate, saying that zoning was dead or that it never existed, other party chiefs should have cried foul. They didn't. They should have asked when zoning died in the party; where it died, whether it died of natural or other causes; they should have asked who did the autopsy, or when it was buried, where and other matters. They did nothing of the sort.

Postscript, Unlimited!

By

Oyinkan Medubi 07057012862 (SMS only) puchuckles7@gmail.com

I

CONSIDER myself privileged to have grown up in a large family whose habits knotted ties around us all that mercifully still binds us together today. It also keeps our sanity intact. The most distinct for me is not the talking time; oh no, it was the early Sunday morning ritual of kettle tea and bongos coffee. Oooooh, believe me, that sure was a binding tie. There was first the task of filling and placing the only pot large enough to take all our yawning mouths on the tripod-balanced fire, a duty us littler ones were only too delighted to carry out. As a matter of fact, that was the only duty we delighted in.

Listen as I tell you, we eagerly forced that pot of water to its boiling point, either by sitting with and chattering to it, or by the divine will of God; we never knew the difference.

Then the minute our mothers poured out the sachets of kettle tea or bongos coffee, we were lost in the wafts of aromas that just drew out the craziness in our heads. Hums of songs began to escape out of our thin little mouths, dance steps uncontrollably took over our tiny feet as we shuffled ungainly in tea-induced happiness, and finally, stories of the week's schooling experiences buried under hopes of future glory found their ways to the surface. In short, our spir-

17

Jonathan'semergency The question is no longer whether it will come, but how far it can go Rather, they slept facing the same side, with the northern political elite that thought it was their natural turn to produce president feeling marginalised.

Please do not get me wrong; nothing I have said should be taken to mean that the south-south from where President Jonathan hails did not deserve to produce president at that time; no. As a matter of fact, if any region of the country has been marginalised with respect to the presidential office, it is that region from where the money spent in the country comes. But the process should have been tidier; with the party resolving the issue of zoning long before the election and giving zoning a befitting burial once they agreed that it was time to kill it.

But what the PDP did with regard to zoning then is the same fraudulent way the country has been run. The only difference in this case is that it hit some of their own, and that is why we cannot sleep with our two eyes closed ever since. It is for this simple reason of dishonesty, among many others, that it will be easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for this country to make progress.

Americans, as permissive as they come, care so much about who they put in

leadership positions. If any party did what the PDP got away with here in 2011 in the name of politics in a civilised country, that party may lose votes simply on account of such infidelity over little things.

Americans, for instance, would not trust that such a party which can trample on its own clothes would not tear theirs into shreds without batting an eyelid, if voted into office.

Boko Haram may jolly well be the result of the loss of our moral soul as a people. But it is also a case of thunder aiding the bomb.

If the northern economy has not been as bad as it is, that is, if the northern leaderships in the past had done the needful to lift their people from poverty, there may not have been a ready army of suicide bombers that would want to die over nothing. If the people had received the right education, they would not have been as ignorant as they are to want to lose their lives in anticipation of the privilege of enjoying some beautiful virgins if they die in the course of whatever they are fighting for. They would have known that this world is too sweet to depart so soon, and that some of the best of the beautiful virgins fthat they are rushing to heaven to enjoy are theirs just for the

“However, President Jonathan must honour his promise that the wolves in human skin that delight in killing human beings will not go unpunished. I have said it several times that when a leader speaks, his words are like those of the oracle. On this score, I am with him. But when the handshake is getting below the elbow again, it would be 'to thy tent, Oh Israel'!�

asking right here on earth. As a matter of fact, it is in the north that some of these virgins are already being enjoyed, considering the number of under-aged girls put in the family way in the name of early marriage. So, if the men are not having the desired sensation, it is probably because they are not allowing the virgins to ripe before plucking them. With a little patience, these virgins will be ripe and mature with age, and with the appropriate tantalising statistics for the believers in the heavenly virgins to enjoy right here on earth, and without any blood on their hands!

It seems the northern elite know that they are responsible for this whirlwind that the country is paying for, hence their inability to openly condemn Boko Haram but would rather speak from both sides of the mouth when talking about the sect. The only unfortunate thing is that the sinners responsible for this crisis are not suffering as much as the innocents. If we have reaped more bloodshed in the Jonathan presidency, it is as a result of that little unfaithfulness. May be the president himself realised this, hence, his being slow to come up with emergency rule in the troubled states. But if some people support him now that he has proclaimed emergency, it is not because they are unaware of this fact; it is just that they know it is better to first drive away the thief before telling the owner of the stolen property that he too did not keep his property well.

As a matter of fact, there does not seem to be any alternative, especially as the insurgents have

rejected amnesty. It was only in those days when we still had our sanity intact that a thief would run away if pursued; these days, the thief would turn round to challenge the owner of the stolen property and get some of the best senior advocates to argue his case. Emergency rule is good to the extent that it is able to achieve its aim of bringing about peace in the affected states. This is a sine qua non for meaningful development.

But, should there be any Nigerian who thinks power will last forever in any part of the country as it was in the past; that is wishful thinking. And, should there be people behind this mindless orgy of violence in the country, such people will pay dearly for the shedding of innocent blood just to make cheap political points. The mere fact that they had this power which they never used well in the past, leading to where we are today, is enough to convict them in heaven and on earth for the innocent blood they are causing to be shed daily, needlessly.

However, President Jonathan must honour his promise that the wolves in human skin that delight in killing human beings will not go unpunished. I have said it several times that when a leader speaks, his words are like those of the oracle. On this score, I am with the President. But when the handshake is getting below the elbow again, it would be 'to thy tent, Oh Israel'! The fear of many is that the emergency rule is a step towards full blown dictatorship.

Given where we are coming from, that fear is both real and potent.

Family Day Lack of convergence time for the family is allowing people to go their separate ways, often ending in prison cells, rehabilitation, the psychiatrist's chair or the electric chair its found renewal in that blessed pot.

Till this day, I have associated my family with that tea experience. I have even grown to associate the word 'family' with a particular odour, aroma or scent. Children grow up with it, and it congeals into tissues of memories that impact and influence their adulthood actions. If it is an odour, it scars them for life; if an aroma, it keeps them permanently hungry for mama's food; and if a scent ... Ha, Ha, Ha, if a scent, then my friend, you need to be careful. One little boy told his mother that her scent reminded him of the one that was used on his grandma as she lay in the coffin. Once, my son walked in and declared that the house had this... this... this... intangible aroma of fresh baking cake. Thank God, I sighed; better cake than coffin.

Anyway, the Encarta defines family as a group related to each other by birth, marriage or adoption. I'm sure you can see all kinds of faults with this definition. One, it does not quite include all the strays that African families tend to gather onto themselves: 'don't you remember, she is my greatgreat-great uncle's wife's sister's grand-daughter-in-law'. Now, did you catch that, because I sure didn't?

Did you say that's still family? Well then, so is my dog. Indeed, these days, I think I get more family out of my dog. For instance, he recognises me on the street by jumping all over me with muddy paws and all, while my great-great-great uncle's wife's sister's grand-daughter-in-law just nods to me when we accidentally meet on the

road. I think it's so that, presumably, people will not be tempted to associate her with me. Well, she's young, and I'm old; she's hip, and I'm all hip; she's with it (trendy), and I'm without it (good sense).

Then two, it does not include all the sense of family that all blacks seem to share in this troubled world but which makes them all sisters and brothers, a quite political family. My brother, it's no small joke o.

With all this colour persecution mixed with economic strangulation, it's all we can do to stay together.

Family is the key.

Three, it certainly does not include the number of people in your neighbourhood who have given it unto themselves to intrude into your world and even take your personal decisions for you. 'YOU WANT TO BUY A FORD CAR?! ARE YOU MAD?! Let me tell you, you and me, we're practically brothers even if we are only neighbours in this house, so I can tell you the truth. A Ford will take all your salary.'

For ease of reference, let's just put it this way. A family is that group of people who lives in your home and has your best interests at heart. You are lucky if they are also the same people that you make provisions for from your monthly wages. Many times, they don't coincide; but, like I said, you're lucky if they do. For instance, you may find yourself using your provisions for people who go by the name of family but who may just wake up one day to tell you that actually, you

are not related to them; so you can't control their lives. Clearly, the family is no longer what it used to be.

Someone once said that a family is obliged to feed you, even if in Christian charity or because they share ancestry with you, whether you are mad or rich. Truth is that the family is now no longer obliged to own anybody because it does not have the time of day for anybody. Previously, morning time marked the day's departure point: parents went off to work or farm, children to school and the dog stayed at home. Evening time was for convergence when everyone would meet on the family hearth with stories of how 'everybody out there is mad!' Now, parents still go to work but do overtime from evening to morning, children still go to school but do lessons till supper time, while the dog, bored from staying home all day, wanders off into the sunset at sunset. No more convergence time. This is why it has sort of allowed people to go their separate ways; and these ways somehow seem to end in prison cells, rehabilitation, the psychiatrist's chair or the electric chair. Occasionally, the ways end in the CEO's chair.

Actually, I have put it rather mildly. Truth is, the family is now an endangered species. It is dying.

Right now, it is suffering from the assault and battery of new definitions (such as 'partnerships' of two men or two women living together and raising children, or mĂŠnages-atrois). It is also suffering from mod-

ern economic programmes that have left ninety per cent of families in the third world impoverished, forcing mothers to work just to 'keep things together'. This means that the most important contact for a child is no longer there at the right time: the mother. It is incredible that the world is ready to do anything, give anything, to save an endangered species of animal, like a particular kind of snake, yet would not move a finger to save the most important specie in the world: the family!

Worse still, in many families, there is a great deal of substitution going on. Many a father has cleverly substituted himself with money; many a mother has done the same with gadgets, and love is now measured in weights. A gift such as a sponsored foreign education for a child equals a good deal of love; a gift of a house is a lot of love; a car gift is some love. Anything below that is just love, thanks.

This is why many parents do their utmost to please their little 'uns: they dip their hands in the nation's till to show their children a good deal of love. They call it family maintenance.

Listen. Family Day is the day when we are all asked to take our families out of the cupboard for an airing, and to ask ourselves some questions: What have we made of ours and our duties? What truths and values have we imparted to our family? So, dear reader, when is your family day?

18

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

Comment & Analysis

Ladies at war

Granting amnesty to kidnappers N

IGERIA is a blessed nation. Its people are unbelievable. Its leaders are ingenious. Quite very ingenious leaders! From the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to the incumbent Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, our leaders have been incredible.

Take, for instance, the late President Umar Sheu Yaradua. He met on ground a delicate situation in the oil rich Niger- Delta, which, if not well managed, could have torn the nation apart. Niger Delta youths were angry. Perhaps, reasonably so. They felt they were not getting a fair share of the natural resources which nature has endowed their land with.

Consequently, they resorted to militancy to draw the attention of appropriate authorities to their grievances. Thus, began an era of sorrow, tears and blood in the Niger Delta. It was so bad that estimated national revenue from oil started to dwindle since expatriates working in the various oil fields across the region had to flee for fear of the rampaging militants. Sadly, as much as the various security agencies tried, they were no match for the excessively aggressive and determined Niger-Delta militants.

This was, indeed, the situation when the late President Yaradua came into the picture.

Widely acclaimed as the very first graduate president to rule over the country, Yaradua did not disappoint. The scientist that he was, he took the Niger-Delta problem to the laboratory and after series of experiments; he eventually came out with a very innovative result which gave birth to the now famous amnesty programme. The core feature of the programme is for militants, who are willing to embrace the Federal Government olive branch to surrender their weapons, within a certain period of time, in exchange for official state pardon.

Oh, how it worked like magic! Soon, Aso Rock became a Mecca of sort with several leaders of the various militant groups visiting the villa to pay homage to Yaradua as well as pledged their loyalty to the new amnesty arrangement. In a twinkling of an eye, peace returned to the once volatile Niger Delta region.

Of course, it has to be. The leaders of the various militant groups secured diverse mouthwatering deals with the Federal Government while some of their foot soldiers were sent to various schools abroad to acquire quality education aside from being put on good monthly salary packages. Thus, while the oil czars smile to the bank, the militants also have their own share of the proverbial national cake.

The end result is that everybody is happy.

Lucky President Goodluck! At the demise of his late Principal, Yaradua, he inherited a peaceful Niger Delta. But, as it is with

•Amnesty Committee for Boko Haram

By Tayo Ogunbiyi

leadership; he was soon to face his own challenge through the activities of the Islamic insurgence group popularly referred to as Boko Haram. The group, which had been in existence before the Goodluck presidency, for reasons best known to it, chose the occasion of the Jonathan presidency to demonstrate to Nigerians that it could be as daring ( if not more ) as the Niger Delta Militants. Till date, the group has continued to hold the northern part of the country hostage with its numerous acts of terrorism which have led to loss of countless human lives in addition to destruction of limitless private and public properties. The economy of most of the affected northern states, no thanks to Boko Haram activities, is now in shamble.

Like his late principal, President Goodluck Jonathan is a scientist. Perhaps, a better one at that, considering he holds Ph.D degree in zoology. Many, understandably so, looked forward to the President coming up with his own version of another scientific solution to the Boko Haram crisis which has now led to the inglorious exit of many top security officials from office. With the President keeping his battle strategy against the Islamic sect tight to his chest, prominent northern figures began to agitate for the adoption of the now tested and trusted amnesty option to ward off the Boko Haram challenge. Soon, powerful individuals began to put pressure on the presidency to enter into dialogue with the group for the sake of peace.

But the President would have none of that.

How do you dialogue with a faceless group?

He wondered. On an unusual visit to Maiduguri, a city that is perhaps the worst hit in the Boko Haram onslaught, the President foreclosed entering into dialogue with the group by reiterating his earlier held view that it is a group without identity. However, prominent leaders continue to canvass for amnesty with the revered Sultan of Sokoto adding his respected voice to the call. With time, the Federal Government shifted its position on the issue. A committee, as it is always the case, comprising eminent Nigerians, has been put in place to fashion out strategies that would bring about engagement with the Boko Haram. Most analysts see this step as a prelude to the process that will lead to granting amnesty to the Boko Haram group. To those who support this plan, if amnesty is working wonders in the Niger Delta, it should bring about the much needed peace in the crisis- ridden northern states.

Now, as we contemplate granting amnesty to the Boko Haram group, there is another major dissident group in the country that one would

like to draw the attention of appropriate authorities and other powerful individuals to.

Like the Niger-Delta militants and the Boko Haram, this group is equally angry with the country. They are angry that government has not been able to solve the problem of unemployment. Their anger also stems from wide spread corruption that has continued un-abated in the system coupled with other social ills bedevilling the nation. But unlike the Niger-Delta militants and Boko Haram, their operational style is different. It is not really violent in outlook. They just look out for cash worthy individuals who could be kidnapped, for some time, in exchange for handsome sum of money and the circle continues. Welcome to the world of kidnappers!

As it was the case with the Niger-Delta militants and the Boko-Haram, government is yet to come up with the much needed solution to tackle the activities of kidnappers across the country. But, why look for another solution when we already have one that is working well? Is it not true that you don’t change a winning formula? To stem the tide of kidnapping in the country, we need to begin the process that will bring up a national discourse on the need to grant amnesty to kidnappers. Respected traditional monarchs, politicians and other powerful individuals across the country should begin to bring the issue to the front burner. The press should, as well, echo it. Kidnappers, on their own, need to form themselves into one powerful association with functioning web site and other channels of modern communication since the government is averse to discussing with faceless groups.

Before we all become victims of the dastardly act of kidnapping, government should begin to give serious consideration to granting amnesty to kidnappers whose main grouse is joblessness. Like the Niger-Delta militant, they could be sent to good universities abroad and equally place on mouth-watering monthly salaries. As it is often said, no development can take placed without peace. If we are to achieve the much needed national development, we should begin the process of granting amnesty to kidnappers now. Lest I forget, we could also extend the amnesty arrangement to other aggrieved members of the society such as armed robbers, rapists, pipe line vandals, 419ers among others. We must not spare anything in our quest for a peaceful society. This way, our overstretched security agencies would have a break and we shall all live in peace. God bless Nigeria!

Ogunbiyi is of the Features Unit, Ministry of Information and Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja.

By Sola Odunfa

A

FIERCE war is raging in Nigeria, and I do not mean the one declared by militant Islamist group Boko Haram.

It is the “battle of the first ladies” - being fought with political and legal weapons in defence of egos.

Ex-First Lady Turai Yar’Adua is fighting to retain prime land allocated to her in the capital, Abuja, when she was president of the African First Ladies Peace Mission (AFLPM).

The property was taken from her after the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2010 and given to the current First Lady, Patience Jonathan, in her capacity as the new AFLPM head.

African leaders, nearly all of whom are men, have the African Union (AU) headquarters - a stunning building funded by the Chinese in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.

So, in these days of women empowerment, no-one can fault their spouses for setting up the AFLPM. Some critics may argue that such a facility should be within the AU complex in Addis Ababa, but that would not show that Africa’s first ladies are independent of their husbands.

To the delight of the Nigerian government Abuja was therefore chosen as the AFLPM headquarters, as no other country made a bid to host it.

Mrs Yar’Adua was known in Nigeria as a very tough woman who saw her union with the president to include a unity of office.

Many insiders described her as the alternate president, more so when Mr Yar’Adua fell ill and was admitted to hospital in Saudi Arabia in 2009.

At the time, Mrs Jonathan was the unobtrusive wife of Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan, who wielded no power.

Eventually, Mr Yar’Adua died and Mr Jonathan became president. Power shifted.

That saw the natural abdication of Mrs Yar’Adua and the enthronement of First Lady Patience Jonathan.

The battle for the choice piece of land in Abuja started.

Ex-First Lady Yar’Adua’s lawyers said that the land in question was allocated to her for a non-governmental organisation, the Women and Youth Empowerment Foundation (WYEF), which she had launched.

As far as they are concerned, it was never meant to be the headquarters of the AFLPM - an organisation launched more than a decade ago.

Not so, said her successor.

Her spokesman said the property was originally allocated to Mrs Yar’Adua as president of AFLPM, but was later reviewed in favour of WYEF and the decision by the authorities to re-allocate it to the AFLPM was the only “appropriate logical action”.

Mrs Yar’Adua took the Federal Capital Territory Administration to court to reclaim the land. She won earlier this month.

The court ruled there was no evidence to show that the land had been originally allocated to the AFLPM, as claimed by the justice minister. The government responded by saying that it would appeal against the ruling.

Every Nigerian knows that the battle is not one for the courts.

Even the court had advised the two parties to settle the matter amicably.

We lay men say that courts deal with the law and politicians in power make the law.

As it is in Nigeria so it is in every other African country.

Come to think of it, there are scores of properties in the choicest parts of Abuja available for allocation.

I wish I knew what is driving the battle over this one.

So far, other African first ladies have not intervened.

I think they should launch a mission to resolve this dispute, if indeed their objective is to promote peace across the continent.

Culled from be BBC

POLITICS

19

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

APC PDP SWING

F

OLLOWING the confirmation of the merger plan at the special conventions of the three co-operating political parties, namely the Action Congress of Nigeria (AC N), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), the stage appears set for a titanic political battle between the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and the fast emerging product of the merger, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015.

The two political camps are sounding confident about how and where they will get the required votes to win the next general election, but beneath the ongoing political bravado from both sides, there seems to be a rough consensus about the shape the forthcoming political race is likely to take.

Sources say top strategists from both camps have been working round the clock in anticipation of what pundits say will be a close battle between the two leading political parties across the states of the federation, given the current and emerging political scenarios in the country.

While the two parties would be going for broke in the struggle for the presidency of the country, analysts say the real battle lies in the governorship contest in the thirty six states of the federation as the performances of the rivals in the gubernatorial elections, which is likely to precede the presidential contest by a week or two, will make or mar the quest for the presidency.

Given the current situation

APC, PDP and the battle for ‘swing’ states Assistant Editor, Dare Odufowokan, takes a look at how the looming political battle between the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the emerging All Progressives Congress (APC) may be fought and won in 2015 where the allegiance of some governors, especially of the ruling PDP, to their parties are being questioned, some states have emerged as swing states or battleground states ahead of the 2015 general elections.

The implication of this on the forthcoming election is that the ability of the two contending parties to swing victory in about thirteen states that appear up for grabs, as we speak, will determine which of them will control the federal government at the conclusion of political hostilities in 2015.

Given the role of money and state apparatus in the politics of the country, pundits are of the opinion that the political affiliation of the governor of each state as at the time of the election will go a long way to determine which party will emerge victorious in which state.

Consequently, the ongoing crisis within the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), especially among PDP governors has made it difficult to predict the likely performance of the party in some of the states it currently controls. Should some of the governors revolt against the party and or defect to the APC, as currently being insinuated on both sides, their various states will be up for grab in 2015.

PDP states Today, the ruling party has its members as governors in twenty three states, accounting for nearly two-third of the thirty six states of the federation. The situation leaves four other parties to share the remaining thirteen states, about one third of the total number of states in the country.

But with indications daily

emerging that some of the PDP governors may dump the party in search of other political platforms ahead of the 2015 general elections, pundits say President Goodluck Jonathan’s party can only beat its chest assuredly in just about twelve of the said states.

This uncertainty has thrown up about eleven PDP control states as battleground ahead of the 2015 general election, with both the ruling party and the emerging APC ready to do battle for their political souls.

For now, the PDP and President Jonathan can be sure of victory in about the two southeast states of Abia and Enugu where its governors are popular and also committed to the party.

With Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State needing the support of both the party and the presidency to curtail the menacing advances

of his returning erstwhile godfather and former governor, Orji Uzor Kalu, his commitment to President Goodluck Jonathan’s second term ambition has been steady.

In his state, Orji has also managed to become popular as a performing governor largely on the strength of his unending political brawl with his predecessor than for anything else. He appears to have a firm grip of the political machinery of the state and this may help him deliver the state again to the PDP in 2015.

The trio of Bayelsa, Cross Rivers and Akwa Ibom states are also likely to remain in the hands of the PDP come 2015. This is largely due to the loyalty of the governors in the state to President Jonathan, coupled with the fact that little or nothing of the opposition is currently being felt in the states.

Save for Akwa Ibom State where James Akpan-Udoedehe, the ACN gubernatorial candidate in the last election, is keeping the ruling party on its toes, the opposition parties in •Continued on Page 22

20

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Politics

Opposition re-strategises as Gombe PDP backs Dankwambo for 2015 Ahead of the 2015 governorship elections, the ruling People Democratic Party (PDP) has endorsed Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo for another term in Gombe State, but the opposition in the state appears set to stop his reelection. DARE ODUFOWOKAN, Assistant Editor reports

B

Y the time the dust raised by the council elections held in Gombe State last February settled, close observers of the politics of the state were quick to say the outcome of the highly disputed poll is a sign of things to come in the politics of the state.

Coming at a time when discussions about the 2015 general elections were already in top gear, the election of officials into the eleven local government areas of the state was seen as a test case for what the politics of the state is likely to look like in 2015.

Reflective of the state of the political parties in the state as at that time, only two political parties participated in the polls. They are the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). The two parties fought over 114 councillorship seats and 11 chairmanship seats.

And after reports of killing, lynching and threats to life rent the air throughout the day, the PDP was announced to have won all available council chairmanship seats. The ruling party and Gov. Ibrahim Dankwambo thus used the council polls to announce to the world that it has nothing to worry about as 2015 approaches.

Of course the opposition parties, especially the CPC, kicked.

They alleged that the election was far from free and fair and that the PDP was not the choice of the people of the council areas. But the PDP had its way as the elected council executives were sworn in soon after.

State chairman of the CPC, Barrister Audu Baba Kwami, recently revisited the disputed election when speaking on the forthcoming gubernatorial election in the state. The party boss who said the opposition in the state is now more virile and ready to confront the PDP, recalled that the council election were nothing but fraudulent.

“I was personally threatened.

Our people were openly attacked.

The campaign coordinator to the CPC chairmanship candidate in Gombe local government was arrested and sent to prison the same day. All these were parts of efforts used to weaken our candidate’s chances of winning the election,”

•Dankwambo

he said.

Pundits say the last local government elections were approached by Governor Dankwambo as a litmus test of his popularity among the people of the state following allegations by his critics that he introduced several inhuman policies that brought about untold hardship.

With victory in all the council areas secured, Dankwambo gave indication of his readiness to recontest in 2015 with a fundraising programme organised for him by his friends and political associates.

At the event organised a week after the said local government elections, his associates in Malala, Dukku local government area, reportedly raised over N76 million for his 2015 governorship campaign organisation expected to be launched later this month.

Although it is yet to officially announce the governor as its candidate for the 2015 governorship contest, the body language of the leadership of the PDP in the state indicates that it will surrender its ticket to Dankwambo without has-

sles to seek another term in office.

But leaders of the opposition in the state, especially the emerging All Peoples Congress (APC), said the PDP will meet a stiff resistance in 2015 if its plan is to rig itself back into office.

National Organising Secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria (A CN), Abubakar Inua Kari, who is from the state assures the people of Gombe of the readiness of the APC to defeat the ruling party in 2015. The APC leader said Governor Dankwanbo and his people should start preparing to leave the government house.

The merger of three leading opposition parties in the state, namely CPC, AC N and the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), according to some observers of the politics of the state, is likely to alter political calculations ahead of the 2015 general elections.

“Although the PDP is currently the party to beat in the state, the coming together of these three parties can alter the power structure in 2015. This is because the ANPP used to be a formidable force in the

politics of the state before it allowed internal wrangling to reduce it to a shadow of itself.

“Currently, the CPC is well loved by the people. Allegations of rigging always trail any election the party loses in Gombe State. The people looked forward to a CPC victory in 2011. The AC N too is not new to the people. So if these three are now fusing into one to confront PDP, I think the impact will definitely be felt,” a source said.

But the governor’s men and supporters say he will have it easy returning to government house in 2015 in spite of the threat posed by a rejuvenated opposition being led by the emerging APC. Recently, the Minister of Transport, Sen. Idris Umar, expressed support for the re-election of Dankwambo of in 2015. This endorsement comes across as a big one for the governor as the minister has earlier being rumoured to be eying the governor’s job.

Umar, an indigene of Hinna in Yamaltu/Deba Local Government Area of Gombe State, made the call

during his courtesy visit to the Deputy Governor of the state, Mr Tha’anda Rubainu, in Gombe.

The minister said his support for Dankwambo’s re-election was informed by the ‘giant strides’ recorded by the governor in all sectors of the economy in the state.

“Let me take this opportunity to thank the executive governor of Gombe State for the various giant strides that are being carried out in this state. In less than two years, the governor has demonstrated to everybody that he is here to serve the people of this state and that he is indeed serving the people.

“Very cost-effective projects are being executed in the state. I have always attested to this; I am attesting to this and I will continue to attest to the fact that these giant strides are unequalled in the history of this state,” he said.

The minister said the governor’s performance is enough to earn the PDP another four years in charge of the affairs of the state and as such should be supported to vie for office again.

“We are committed that come 2015, Alhaji Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo should return to Government House as governor. I have said this several times and I will continue to say that I will ever support him; I will stand by him.

Your team is a pride to this state; we must support you. I call on every citizen to have no hesitation whatsoever in supporting him to come back as governor in 2015,” he said.

Also speaking on the chances of the PDP in 2015, the Woman Leader of the state chapter of the party, Hajiya Sa’adatu Mustapha, said in spite of the planned merger of some opposition political parties with a view to take over power from the PDP, Dankwambo will keep the party in power beyond 2015 “As far as I am concerned, with the magnitude of work going on in Gombe State now and what Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo and his wife are putting on ground, there is no room for any other party.

It is all under the umbrella of the PDP. As you enter Gombe, even the blind can feel that there are changes. I am 100 per cent sure that there will be no other party except the PDP in Gombe come 2015,” she said.

Speaking further, Mustapha said the youth empowerment programme introduced by the governor has won the hearts of the people of the state for the ruling party.

“It is one of the best things to happen in the state owing to the visionary leadership of our governor not to abandon any genuine project that touches on the lives of the people, particularly the youths. It is really good because it is a continuous programme,” she added.

But this is just as critics of the governor say he is not as popular as his handlers are propping him up to be. They argued that his coming to power in 2011 was largely made possible by the then outgoing Senator Danjuma Goje-led administration.

And now, with Dankwambo and Goje rumoured to be at loggerheads as the 2015 election approaches, it is left to be seen if the former Accountant General of the Federation will surmount the hurdles on his way to a second term.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Politics

21

Ebonyi: Ethnicity colours search for Elechi’s successor Assistant Editor, Dare Odufowokan, takes a look at the factors likely to influence the emergence of the next governor of Ebonyi State.

A

S the 2015 general elections draw closer, the three political blocs in Ebonyi State are neck deep in negotiations and alignments in their quest to produce the next governor of the state. Politicians across the state are back on the drawing board amidst insinuations that Governor Martins Elechi wants the slot to go to the southern senatorial district.

The political permutations in the state suggest that, in 2015, ethnic consideration will lead the pack of factors that will come to the fore in the battle for the governorship ticket of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The argument of the governor and others agitating for the slot to be given to Afikpo is that with Governor Elechi and his predecessor, Dr. Sam Egwu, coming from the central and northern senatorial districts respectively, it is only natural that the south be allowed to take a short at the governorship of the state.

“The governor is only speaking the mind of the people of the state. The people want equity and fairness to be on display in 2015 and that is where the idea of the south being supported to produce the governor emanated from.

“Sam Egwu who was governor between 1999 to 2007, is from the northern senatorial district. The current governor who will be leaving in 2015 is from the central senatorial district. And we have three senatorial districts. The south is yet to take a shot at the governorship since the creation of Ebonyi State in 1996.

“So if the party and the governor are now saying let us give this people a chance to produce the governor for equity sake, shouldn’t that be embraced by all? Those opposing the idea are ethnic warlords and tribal jingoists,” a chieftain of the PDP said during the week.

The Nation learnt that the severe agitation by Afikpo leaders to have the PDP zone its gubernatorial ticket to their zone is based on the fact that the south senatorial zone of the state is yet to have one of its own as governor of the state while the Abakaliki bloc, with its two senatorial zones of central and north, has produced two governors since the inception of the current democratic dispensation in 1999.

Observers of the politics of the state say the southern senatorial district, known as old Afikpo bloc of the state, was carved out of Abia State, while the central and north known as Abakaliki bloc was carved out of Enugu State, when what is today known as Ebonyi State was created in 1996

by Late Head of State, Gen Sani Abacha.

“The politics of the state has been between the Abakaliki and Afikpo blocs but Abakaliki bloc has numerical strength an edge over the Afikpo bloc. So, with the population of the Abakaliki bloc comprising eight council areas and Afikpo bloc which has five council areas, it is a known fact that in any free and fair election Abakaliki will win.

Several efforts by the Afikpo bloc in the past to contest the governorship with the Abakaliki bloc haven’t yielded the desired result. And given the numerical advantage being enjoyed by the Abakaliki people, the belief is that it will be impossible for the south to produce a governor,” Chief David Ayogu, a chieftain of the PDP, explained.

Ayogu also said except for a development like the assurance by Elechi to hand

over power to somebody from the south, it would have been foolhardy for gladiators of Afikpo extraction to even dream of winning the governorship primaries of any of the leading political party.

“But with this promise by the governor to ensure that an Afikpo man emerges as governor, I think the aspirants from the zone can start scheming on how to get the governorship ticket of the ruling party, knowing very well that PDP is the party to beat in Ebonyi State. I think this is one major reason for all these alignments and realignments we are seeing across the state,” he added.

In arriving at his decision to support the southern senatorial district’s quest for the governorship, Elechi said his position is derived from the fact that the people of the zone, having participated equally in the fight for the creation of the state, it would only be in the interest of justice and equity to give them the opportunity to also rule the state.

Elechi, who made the promise during a media briefing to mark the last Democracy Day, said his decision was based on the fact that it was morally right to shift power to the southern part of the state in 2015, since power started from the north and now at the central.

He noted that though there was never a charter of equity as alleged in some quarters, it was the desire of all the founding fathers of the state for power to rotate among the zones which was never written down or signed by any person or group of persons.

He said as one of the surviving founding fathers of the state, it is his duty to keep the dream alive. He, however, added that his decision to shift power to the south senatorial zone was personal which would need both the stakeholders and the party to rectify and finally agree upon.

Naturally, Elechi’s position on the struggle for the governorship has emboldened politicians from Afikpo to venture into the hitherto uncertain terrain of vying for the governorship of the state. Leading the pack of aspirants to have openly declared their interest in the job is the current deputy governor of the state, David Umahi.

The deputy governor, who was former chairman of the party in the state before being picked by the governor in 2011 as running mate, is banking on his influence within the party and his position as the leader of the party in his senatorial district to emerge as the preferred aspirant when the race for the ticket eventually kicks off.

But Elechi’s announcement raised a lot of dust even among his aides. Disagreeing with Elechi on his idea of power rotation, the people of Abakaliki bloc appear not to be relenting on their resolve to ensure that one of their own takes over from him.

The bloc, with its larger population, and political heavyweights, according to sources, is capable of thwarting the ambition of aspirants from the south if it insists on fielding candidates for the party primaries in 2015.

“Elechi’s kinsmen are not leaving anything to chance in stopping him from giving power to Afikpo. And being the leading politician in government from the area, the only threat politicians from Abakaliki see is Dave Umahi, the deputy governor. There is this fear that he is the man Elechi has in mind and they will do everything to stop him.

“They know what Dave is capable of, and if you allow him get his political per-

•Elechi

mutation and calculation right, I bet you, no one from the zone can challenge him. If he gets the PDP ticket, Abakaliki people knows he would become unstoppable in 2015,” a source said.

But pundits have also come to say the factors that will determine which side the governorship will shift to will be more than the mere desires of the governor and the quest for the position by a section of the state.

“It is going to be more of a game of numbers among all the three senatorial districts. Don’t forget that the people of Ezza in the northern senatorial zone are saying they want a shot at the governorship. The Izzi people of the central senatorial district too want to produce a gover-

nor.

“These two clans have more population that the Afikpos. So, even if the governor wants an Afikpo man, unless the zone is able to get support from other clans and groups within the state, it will remain a mere wish.

“However, the Afikpo bloc could benefit from the sharp division and impending disagreement between the two most powerful clans in Abakaliki bloc, the Ezzas and Izzis. So if the Afikpo people can penetrate the other two districts and garner support, then Elechi’s dream of producing a governor from the south may come to fruition,” a chieftain of the PDP said.

22

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Politics

A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Rivers State, Prince Chima Nnokam, in this interview with Bisi Olaniyi in Port Harcourt, speaks on the current political crisis in the state

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HAT is the cause of the deepening PDP crisis in Rivers State?

I have worked with the two main dramatis personae in the crisis- Barrister Nyesom Wike and Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and I can say categorically that the root cause of the problem is greed on the part of the persons fighting the governor. These people are those who have benefitted tremendously from the governor. They are his products.

To which of the camps do you belong?

Obviously, there are two camps. But I belong to the camp being victimised for standing up in defence of injustice from power mongers, which is that of Governor Amaechi.

What do you make of the joining of forces by a former governorship candidate in Rivers, Chief Sergeant Awuse, and an-ex Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Austin Opara, with Chief Nyesom Wike in fighting Governor Amaechi?

These are highly respected elder statesmen, who have brought themselves low by their actions. Should we now refer to them (Awuse and Opara) as Wike’s boys? To say that I am very disappointed in this show of shame is to put it mildly, but I am certain that they will soon realise and distance themselves from this charade.Governor Amaechi is not new to betrayal of this sort from his brothers and sisters.

You said you have worked with Wike, what kind of man is he?

I worked closely with him at the Government House, Port Harcourt, when he was the Chief of Staff. He is regarded as a desperate, covetous and smart political gladiator, who will go to any length to achieve his selfish desire. Wike is somebody who has denied the Ikwerre people a lot of things despite the fact that the governor gave him a free hand as the Chief of Staff.The irony of the issue is that

most of the people now rallying round Wike were the same persons Wike decimated and disconnected from Governor Amaechi’s government in his first tenure. When Wike was the Chief of Staff, no Obio/ Akpor person could get close to the gate of the Government House, Port Harcourt, without his consent.

Those who did, did so secretly.

How will you react to the problem between President Jonathan and Governor Amaechi?

Govern o r Amaechi has denied having any quarrel with Presid e n t Jonathan.

What offence did Governor Amaechi commit as the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) when he presented the governors’ views and decisions to the President, especially on the issues the governors had unanimously agreed on?

On the issue between Governor Amaechi and Dame Patience Jonathan in Okrika, did the governor commit any crime, when he merely pointed out actions that affected his good plan for the people?

On the oil well issue, do we expect Governor Amaechi to just keep quiet, while injustice is being meted out to Rivers people? Governor Amaechi was right in concluding that President Jonathan backed the payment. I also do not see any wrong doing in calling the attention of the Federal Government to the problems occasioned by the delay in the completion of the East-

‘Why Presidency, Wike are persecuting Amaechi’

W e s t Road.

Where will these problems

lead us?

I see the present problem as a way God wants to expose those who do not mean well for the state.

God will put them rightly where they belong. As a lawyer, I expect Wike to ponder on the implication of his action on his people. It is also rumoured that he is using the platform to advance his governorship ambition, believing that it is the turn of Ikwerre South since Governor Amaechi is from Ikwerre North.

It is being insinuated that Governor Amaechi has not done much for his people, the Ikwerre. What is your reaction?

Why will anybody say such a

•Nnokam

thing? It is good to use this medium to set the record straight. Governor Amaechi in this state lobbied for an Ikwerre man to become the Commissioner for Education during the Chief Rufus Ada-George’s era.

Governor Amaechi also lobbied and produced the first Ikwerre man to be appointed an ambassador. He also nominated and secured a space for an Ikwerre man to be appointed as a Resident Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Amaechi nominated and supported the first Ikwerre man to be appointed Vice-Chancellor of the Rivers State University of Science and Technology (RSUST), Port Harcourt, Rivers State. It is also on record that the incumbent governor of Rivers State lobbied and positioned the first Ikwerre man as

the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.It is undisputable that Governor Amaechi is being vilified by persons who had greatly benefited from him. He appointed an Ikwerre man as the Chief of Staff, Government House (Wike), with enormous power, unprecedented in the history of Nigeria. It is common knowledge that he nominated an Ikwerre man, who was made a minister of the Federal Republic, who eventually became the Minister of State for Education (Wike). It is also not in doubt that Governor Amaechi was instrumental to the appointment of an Ikwerre man as the President of the Customary Court of Appeal.

All the persons you see around Wike now are all contractors carrying out various projects in the Federal Ministry of Education.

That is their only reason for supporting this act of treachery and shameful betrayal of trust. Rivers people are aware that this whole thing is not about the good of the average Rivers man, because none of them has accused Governor Amaechi of poor performance or financial recklessness.

How will you describe police’s sealing off of the secretariat of Obio/Akpor LG? The Speaker and members of the Rivers House of Assembly would have saved the state the present problem and crisis if they had not acted in a hurry to suspend Obio/Akpor Chairman, Prince Timothy Nsirim; his deputy, Solomon Eke and all the 17 councillors. All the lawmakers failed to do was to exercise patience for another 24 hours, within which the said petition would have been presented to the House in plenary and the Speaker, given his powers, would have referred the petition to a joint committee comprising the Public Complaints and Petition Committee and the Local Government Administration Committee. Given that the pro-Amaechi lawmakers in the Assembly are in the majority, delaying the process would have yielded the same result and there would not have been the need for all the happenings. I also condemn the invasion of Obio/Akpor LG secretariat by policemen. It as an affront on the Nigerian Constitution.

APC vs PDP: The battle ahead •Continued on Page 19 Bayelsa and Cross-Rivers states have gone to sleep.

In Plateau, Bauchi, Taraba and Gombe states, the PDP is looking good ahead of the forthcoming election. Barring any last minute surprises and or political maneuver by the emerging APC or any other party at that, the ruling party appears set to retain its hold on these states.

Though the governors of Sokoto and Kebbi states are rumoured to be displeased with some actions of the national leadership of the party in recent times, the two are yet to give anybody serious cause to doubt their commitment to the PDP. If the situation remains the same till 2015, the ruling party is likely to win the elections in these states again.

The battlegrounds However, the PDP is most likely to suffer defeats in Rivers, Niger, Adamawa, Kwara, Jigawa and Kano states. The governors of these states have one axe or the other to grind with either the PDP leadership or the presidency. This has led to strong indications that they are no longer comfortable with their

membership of the party and may move elsewhere soon.

Should this happen and the opposition, especially the APC, convince them to move into its camp, their various states will become swing states where any of the contending parties can claim vital victories.

While Governor Rotimi Amaechi has been engrossed in an unending feud with President Jonathan for months now in what many describe as an ego war, Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State’s reported interest in the presidency come 2015 has pitched him against the PDP establishment.

It is this same fate that has befallen Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State. With posters proclaiming his desire to gun for the presidency all over the place, he appears to have drawn the ire of the presidency and as such may have to seek an alternative political platform in 2015.

The supremacy battle between Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa and the national chairman of the PDP, Bamanga Tukur, who hail from the same state, has weakened the party tremendously with talks that Nyako may soon dump the ruling party.

Governors Rabiu Kwankwaso

and Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kano and Kwara states respectively are not known enthusiastic supporters of the President. Kwankwanso specifically has been quite critical of some of the President’s actions in recent past. All these make their states appear as likely political battlegrounds in 2015.

Also, the races in states like Ebonyi, Delta, Kogi, Benue, Katsina and Kaduna will be tight. These are states where the oppositions are quite strong. The 2011 elections were closely fought in these states with the winners emerging with narrow victories. So with the merger of three leading opposition parties coming against the PDP, these states can swing either way.

In Delta for instance, the decision of Senator Pius Ewherido of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) to join the APC and the fact that Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan will not be eligible to seek another term, the race has become very open.

Consequently, the state is a swing or battleground state.

Katsina and Kaduna were states where the CPC and the ANPP had impressive showings in the last election. With the two parties joining the AC N to form the APC, the PDP will definitely be given a

run for its money in these states come 2015.

There are also the two “undecided” states of Anambra and Ondo. The two are currently standing independent of the two leading gladiators. While Governor Peter Obi of Anambra is holding firmly to the remnant of a faction of the troubled All Prgoressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State is of the Labour Party (LP).

But analysts say the two will not remain aloof for long. With the predictions that they will soon pitch their tents with either of the PDP or APC, these two states remain swing states where anything can happen in 2015 depending on where their governors decide to pitch their tents.

APC strongholds As we speak, the APC is firmly in control of eleven states. The AC N came into the merger with six states firmly in its kitty. The states are the five southwestern states of Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Osun and Ekiti.

The party is also in control of the south-southern state of Edo. Given the performance of its governors and the popularity being enjoyed by its leaders across these

states, there is little or no fear of the party losing these states in 2015.

Elections in Osun and Ekiti states next year are expected to further consolidate the grip of the AC N on the states.

The ANPP brought three states into the APC. These are Zamfara State in the northwest and the duo of Borno and Yobe states in the northeast. The party, pundits say, look good to retain its control of the states beyond 2015.

“There should be little or no fear of the ANPP losing its three states because the party is waxing stronger in the north today. The people want an alternative to PDP and the ANPP is one party they’ve known for long. I think the party will win some more states for the APC in 2015,” a source said.

Currently, the CPC has one governor. He is Governor Umar Tanko Al’makura of Nasarawa State.

Given his popularity as a performing governor, he looks good to retain the state for the APC beyond 2015.

The cult followership enjoyed by the leader of the CPC, General Muhammadu Buhari, is another factor expected to swing votes the way of the APC especially in the northern part of the country.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Politics

Home alone Sylva

Political

ripples Dancing on Achebe’s grave?

T

HE recent call on the Federal Government by the National Assembly to give the late world-acclaimed writer, Professor Chinua Achebe full post humous honours is definitely a controversial one.

Since the call, some Nigerians have been accusing the government of planning to mock the writer in death by forcing honours he rejected while alive on him simply because he is now unable to voice his rejection. It would be recalled that the late author on two occasions turned down national honours offered him by the federal government citing bad governance as his reason.

So why are they planning to honour him now when the very things he complained about are still unchanged. It is this same government that gave him the national honours he rejected while alive. I just hope they are not out to mock him in death,” a close associate of the late writer lamented.

The late literary icon is to be buried in a mauseleum being built in his compound at Ogidi in Idemili North Council Area of Anambra State.

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ATCHING Ex Bayelsa Governor Timipreye Sylva standing alone in the dock, it was difficult not wonder if this was not the same powerful man of Creek Haven.

There at the court, there was no crowd of party supporters and loyalists;no retinue of commissioners and special assistants to confer with. No chiefs and religious leaders to offer prayers and blessings.

According to a former aide of the embattled governor, all his supporters have crossed over to President Jonathan’s camp.

No women who sang his praises,no ex militants to hail him to high heavens. Alone, like an orphan, he stood. In this there is a lesson for all of us, even for President Jonathan.

Between Orubebe and Edwin Clark

I

T is no longer news that the Minister for Niger Delta Affairs, Godsday Orubebe, is interested in succeeding Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan as the next helmsman of the oil-rich Delta State.

It is equally common knowledge that elder statesman and self styled Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Clark, is opposed to Orubebe’s governorship aspiration. In fact, the old man has told the minister in clear terms to perish the thought.

What is however, still shrouded in secrecy in the whole matter is the real reason or reasons why clark is stoutly opposing the political aspiration of a man many see as his godson, at least until the current feud between the two.

Before now, the duo were political allies who had fought many political battles side by side. Many will even vow that Orubebe’s emergence as a Minister was not without the help of Clark.

On the other hand, Orubebe has been known to always endorse and support the actions of the elder statesman.

Between them, the duo are regarded as having the ears of President Goodluck Jonathan on matters that have to do with Delta State and the Ijaw nation.

While Clark has been telling those who care to listen that his decision to oppose Orubebe is in the interest of Deltans, those who should know are of the opinion that there is more to the development than that. One can only hope that the truth will soon be in the open.

d n a u k o j a l For O Oyerinde

, dly for them both e line of ‘duty’. Sa t one good thing th in d lle ki s de ra HE two were comt to be found and brought to book. Bu the people. their killers are yell both being fondly remembered byof Nigeria (ACN) is that they are sti , a chieftain of the Action Congress remembered in , it was time to be For Hassan Olajoku killed in May 2005Rauf Argbesola, last Wednesday as w ho w e, at St n i tyr en in Osu n describe as a mar ate governor, Ogb death as Osun St named after the man many in Osu ance, inaugurated a park embers in attend of democracy. ow, children and other family m y tribute to the slain nes to pa With his wid s of Osun indige turn of Olaitan Oyerinde, the nd sa ou th d le a ol as the le of Aregbes ter in Lagos, it w Adams Oshiomho politician. Days laal Private Secretary to Governor agues in the struggle. murdered Principmembered by his friends and colle ur House in Ikeja and Edo State to be re l lecture held at the Textile Labo Femi Falana, the late At a memoria Nigeira (SAN), es from friends and nior Advocate of gi delivered by a Se ive amidst encomiums and eulo find his killers. al to r e m ve re ca fo de ng rin ki life ta Oye the dead back to ondered why it is colleagues who w gesture are not capable of bringingories alive in the minds Though these eping their mem ill surely help in ke physically, they w miss them. of those who truly

T

23

Political Politics turf

with Bolade Omonijo boladeomonijo@yahoo.com

After emergency rule, what next?

T

HE controversy that has trailed the commencement of emergency rule in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States is not altogether unexpected. Opinions are naturally divided over the desirability of the measures announced last Tuesday by President Goodluck Jonathan. Majority, I believe, endorse the proclamation not because it is the best one would wish for, but, because at this juncture, there is hardly any viable alternative. The insecurity and wanton killings in the North since 2011 cannot be divorced from the prevailing political environment.

The North feels aggrieved that it has been outsmarted on the political scene by Jonathan and his kinsmen. The leaders told a bewildered nation after the last general elections that they would make the country ungovernable. That Boko Haram grew confidence thereafter and became more deadly could have been a coincidence, but it is instructive. It is my opinion that the terrorists could not be checked earlier as a result of a combination of the incompetence of those in charge at the centre and the tacit support they got from Northern elders.

Had Jonathan moved fast enough after the election to soother frayed nerves, assured all that he would be working in the overall interest of the Nigerian people and, most importantly, disarmed critics and enemies by governing well, the insurgents could have been isolated and smoked out easily.

Rather, he chose to alienate the people of the North East and their leaders. At a meeting with them while on a visit to Maiduguri, he actually had a face-off with the traditional, religious and political elite. The outcome was that the troops found it more difficult to operate and the battle got fiercer at great cost to lives on both sides.

It cannot be argued that the President has acted within his powers. As he pointed out, he is covered by section 305 of the constitution and he has done very well in at least symbolically keeping the democratic institutions in place. It is fraudulent to argue that the section gives power to the President to whimsically declare emergency in the federation or any part thereof and thus proceed to sack democratically elected governments.

The governors of Borno and Yobe States were elected by their people in 2011 and the process by which they could cease to hold office are spelt out in sections 180, 188 and 190 of the constitution. Declaration of state of emergency is not one of such conditions. The people took a conscious decision to have All Nigeria Peoples party governors and legislators as against the wish of the Peoples Democratic Party to take over. This fact should not be lost on all in this debate.

The logic is very clear. The relevant section on emergency rule says it could be declared in the entire federation or any part thereof. If state of emergency were to be declared throughout the federation, would the President proceed to step aside, while equally suspending the National Assembly? That would certainly be an absurdity. The supreme law also says the governor of the state could invite the President to impose emergency rule and deploy troops. Is it thus intended that the governor would be inviting the President to sack him?

On previous occasions when emergency rules were imposed on regions and states, the federal authorities had seized power not conferred on them to remove the democratic institutions. This was the case in 1962 when the late Dr. Moses Majekodunmi was posted as administrator to the Western Region, in 2004 when Joshua Dariye was sacked in Plateau State and replaced by General Chris Alli by the government of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and 2006 when the Fayose government, too, was pushed aside and replaced with General Adetunji Olurin as administrator of Ekiti State.

Under the Jonathan administration, there has been a limited application of emergency rule in 15 local government areas of four states of the federation. In that case, since it did not involve state governments and Nigerians had become unfortunately used to illegal rule at the local level, there was little protest.

The question to ask is, on those previous occasions when the centre had acted ultra vires by usurping the power of the electorate, how well were the crises resolved? In the Western Region, autocracy was defeated by the Peoples’ Will. Despite Obasanjo’s crude intervention, the insurgency in Plateau has continued. Till date, the governments are still at sea on how to end the sectarian strife that gave rise to such extreme measures.

At this point, what should engage the minds of the political leadership of the country is how to build consensus postemergency rule. All political parties, politicians and patriots must be recruited to restore order in all parts of the country.

The atmosphere appears better now that those who had given tacit support to Boko Haram at the initial period have seen that we would all be losers at the end should the insurrection be allowed to fester. It is therefore time the federal government, while wielding the stick through emergency rule, dangled carrots, too, to check the menace.

President Jonathan and his advisers should realise that the country is greater than anyone and anyone’s ambition. Besides, whatever any leader cannot achieve in six years, would remain out of range in eight or ten years.

It is time real tacticians were invited to put on their thinking caps in this war against terrorism and incompetence.

24

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

THE SUNDAY INTERVIEW

‘Asari Dokubo , Clark are problems for Jonathan’ Former Minister for Petroleum, Professor Tam David –West is a known social critic and political activist. In this in this interview with Taiwo Ogundipe, Associate Editor, in Lagos, he addresses the state of emergency, recent comments by Edwin Clark, Asari Dokubo, Kingsley Kuku and sundry matters.

•Tam David West it will never achieve peace. The Chief of Army Staff also said it. You cannot quell this problem we have with force of arms. The fundamental issue should be addressed. The problem can be solved. We are not approaching the problem with a clear mindset. For every failure on our part, it makes the other side bolder. I doubt very much if state of emergency will bring about the desired result. I wish it could.

But couldn’t he You said a civil approach should be adopted, have sent the don’t you think the amnesty programme, offered by the troops to the states government, which Boko Haram also rejected, is dewithout declaring a signed to achieve that? state of emergency?

I don’t have superior wisdom but like any other By declaring state Nigerian, I pray to my God to guide me. I said Joint Task of emergency in Force would not solve the problem in Niger Delta. The any area, one use of force of arms will not also likely solve the Boko obvious thing is Haram problem. The case of Boko Haram is even worse that civic liberties than that of Niger Delta. In which are Niger Delta you know who you are facing, you know the guaranteed by the target. In Boko Haram you don’t know. The president constitution are himself has indicted himself.

I’m very critical of suspended and Jonathan. One day he will realise that my criticisms are derogated. constructive. I don’t want Jonathan to be destroyed as a leader. I want him to perform as a leader. What

“

“

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HAT is your opinion of the state of emergency declared by President Jonathan in three northern states?

The action is constitutional. There is no doubt about that. But is it necessary? I will say it is not. I have listened to people, even legal experts on the television, saying it should have come earlier or that it is better late than ever.

To me, they are missing the point. It may be necessary because there is breakdown of public order in the three states. But he could have handled the situation differently. Either he or his advisers, or both of them misled themselves. I often quote this Machiavellian statement: “For the Prince or the Leader to be advised wisely, the leader must be wise in the first place.” There is no problem with sending the armed forces to the states. It has been done in America before during the period of integration. But couldn’t he have sent the troops to the states without declaring a state of emergency? By declaring state of emergency in any area, one obvious thing is that civic liberties which are guaranteed by the constitution are suspended and derogated. The president should have sent the same troops without declaring state emergency. By declaring state of emergency, he is sending a very strong signal to the world that Nigeria is not stable. There is emergency and emergency is insecurity. The president is the number one law enforcement personality stipulated by the constitution. If as a person holding that position, he declares state emergency in an area because security has broken down, you are indicting yourself. It is a personal indictment. As Truman said, the buck stops at the table of the president. As the president and commander-in-chief, the buck stops on the table of Jonathan. He could have sent army to the troubled areas without declaring state of emergency.

But up till now, the Joint Task Force had been deployed to the troubled spots without being able to bring the situation under control…

I’ll come to that. I’ve also said that state of emergency is even worse than fire brigade measures. Fire brigade measure addresses sudden unexpected accident but with state of emergency, there is gradual, progressive breakdown of order and security that get up to a crescendo. Even in the Niger Delta, as I’ve said before, the deployment of the JTF has not achieved peace. I still maintain that

would I gain from wishing the president of my country to be destroyed, especially when he is an Ijaw man? Being an Ijaw man is even very irrelevant to me. It doesn’t matter to me whether you are an Ijaw man or not. If you are not doing well, you are not doing well.

Period.

He came up with amnesty. Jonathan is not consistent. Sometimes he says one thing and changes. Sometimes he confuses himself in logic. Was he not the one that said the Boko Haram were ghosts? Can you negotiate with ghosts? He went further to say he would not negotiate with them because they are ghosts, I don’t know them. If you don’t know them and they are ghosts, then why are you negotiating with them? Why are you talking about amnesty? Amnesty is not a blanket thing; it is not one-way traffic. The two sides would sit down to talk and offer some concessions respectively.

He then went further to say that he had Boko Haram in his government. If he has not been able to identify the Boko Haram whom he claimed were in his government, how can he identify the Boko Haram in the larger community? He is always contradicting himself. I wish he puts more thought process before he makes pronouncements.

Recently, some Ijaw chieftains - Asari Dokubo and Kingsley Kuku - issued statements to the effect that Nigeria will experience turbulence if Jonathan does not return as president in 2015. What do you have to say about this?

Absolute nonsense and rubbish! Asari Dokubo is related to me.

He is my cousin. His mother and my mother were of the same father although the two wives were married under different marriage status and customs. Jonathan sees me as an enemy. I told Jonathan that Asari Dokubo and Clark are one million times more problem to him than Tam David-West who criticizes openly and constructively. The problem of Boko Haram is there. And more insurgent groups would spring up if care is not taken. When these people make Jonathan an Ijaw president, not Nigeria president, they create more problems. They are talking rubbish without facts.

They call the Hausa/Fulani people parasites; they call Awolowo a •Continued on Page 25

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

THE SUNDAY INTERVIEW

•Continued from Page 24 criminal. Jonathan as president should not allow his ethnic group to insult other peoples because they are creating enemies for him and no friend. They are adding ethnic dimension to insurgency.

This makes the situation more dangerous. Instead of them to be less belligerent in their utterances, they are making the other people to be more resistant. They are talking rubbish and nonsense. Asari Dokubo even said oil production will stop if he is arrested. He said he is the leader of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force. That group does not exist any longer. Asari Dokubo is leading nobody. The other day when he came to Port Harcourt in Rivers State, he hired people to follow him. I know a number of his former followers. The breakup of the group came when he took all the money from government and never gave them their share, and was rather buying property all over the world. So they left him. The group’s name has been changed but still with the same acronym. He told Jonathan he had 40,000 people. Jonathan never found out if he had four or four hundred people and he gave him millions.

The president should dissociate himself from these irresponsible utterances from his ethnic group. He could send his media outfit to please tell the country and the world that these people are not reflecting his views as the president of this country and of all Nigerians. Jonathan is president today not from only Ijaw votes.

The total vote he had was about 24 per cent from his area. Jonathan is president today of some sort – illegal and unconstitutional. First, the Save Nigeria Group, SNG, founded and headed by a Yoruba man, Pastor Tunde Bakare and his compatriots forced the National Assembly, when it was reluctant to do the right thing as stipulated by the constitution, to do something. The person that said, look, we must take a stand as government because of the vacuum created by the person the long absence of the late President Yar’adua; the person that moved that motion in the then cabinet, is an Ibo woman, Dora Akunyili.

The person that finally moved the motion in the National Assembly to make him acting president was an Hausa man. There was no Ijaw input. So, can’t he sit down as a PhD holder and think and analyse the situation like an intellectual? Though PhD does not make you an intellectual but it makes you to be broadminded in analysing situations. Everything that made Jonathan what he is today as president, 24 per cent of it came from his ethnic group. The other inputs were from other ethnic groups. His being made acting president was illegal and unconstitutional because our constitution has no provision for acting president. The act was branded They call the doctrine of necessity which has no provision in the constitution.

Hausa/Fulani He metamorphosed from acting to becoming the president. people parasites; With all these considerations, it they call Awolowo behoves him as president and an Ijaw man to ask members of a criminal. his ethnic group to please not make things difficult for him.

Jonathan as presiThey should help him to solve the problems he is facing and dent should not alnot add more to them. low his ethnic I’m more Ijaw than Clark.

Clark cannot love Jonathan group to insult more than me. Clark is not even partial Ijaw, he is patch-patch Ijaw. other peoples beWhen you say someone is partial, you are talking about half cause they are creatand half. Only his father is Ijaw. ing enemies for His mother and grandmother are Urhobo and Itsekiri. When him and no friend.

Clark was studying in Britain, he was secretary of the Urhobo They are adding Progressive Union, not Ijaw ethnic dimension to Union.

When Clark and Dokubo insurgency. This talk, they are creating more problems for Jonathan. I don’t makes the situation know Kingsley Kuku. When he more dangerous. accused Buhari of inciting people, he got it all wrong.

Instead of them to Buhari never incited anybody.

He only said defend your votes be less belligerent if they wanted to steal your votes. In fact, I would say elecin their utterances, tion riggers should be killed bethey are making cause they are worse than armed robbers. If you have death penthe other people to alty for armed robbers, election riggers must also have it. Elecbe more resistant. tion riggers are worse than armed robbers because they tarThey are talking get the whole country not just rubbish and nonindividuals. Until the day we take proven election riggers and sense. shoot them, there will be no more election rigging.

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Asari Dokubo, Clark, Kuku and the rest of them are compounding Jonathan’s problem. He himself has been very docile not to stop them.

Maybe the president feels that on the long run, their utterances and actions would help him.

They cannot help him. Look, if in 2011, the Ijaw votes were 24 per cent, they would be less in 2015. And you cannot be president without the support of other ethnic groups. There cannot be any northern, western or southern president. There cannot be any Moslem or Christian president. The constitution is clear. You will not only win majority of the votes but you have to have 25 per cent in at least 24 states of the federation, that is two third of 36 states. So, Ijaw cannot make you president.

With all these crises that are raging in the South-South axis of the country – including the Bayelsa scenario when erstwhile Gover-

were not too critical of Jonathan. And I would explain to him why I was doing what I was doing. I would tell him I was not doing against Jonathan; I’m doing it for us as Nigerians and Ijaw people. If Jonathan messes up there, an Ijaw man would not see that seat for over 60 years in our lifetime. So Amaechi does not deserve what they are doing to him.

The Minister State for Education, Nyesom Wike, who is now fronting for Jonathan, is the closest bossom friend of Amaechi. He was also Amaechi’s Chief of Staff before he became minister. So why are they treating Amaechi the way they are treating him?

Jonathan is tilting at the windmill as Don Quixote in the book, The Man of La Mancha. Jonathan is seeing the windmill as enemy, a giant fighting him. He is tilting at an enemy that does not exist. In fact, he is creating more enemies for himself. Amaechi does not deserve what they are doing to him. Every measure has been put in place to deal with him. They are even planning to institute state of emergency against him. They have even brought into the state a fake mace. They are trying to do to him what they did to Alamieyeseigha. I was reading one book on war strategies. It says it is a bad general that opens war frontiers. He dissipates his I said rubbish, energy. Sometimes, Jonathan is degrees don’t make his own enemy.

Another topical issue is the leaders. Jimmy merger. Obviously, if the merger works, an Ijaw man might not Carter of America become the candidate.

I don’t care if an Ijaw man is had two PhDs in not candidate. I care that a good Nuclear Physics Nigerian is candidate. I’ve said it before and I mean it: If my and Chemistry. father contests against Buhari, I’m not saying that Buhari is Was he a better going to be the president , American Buhari himself has said it, if the APC has more formidable candidate than himself, he would president? Winston step down – I will vote against Churchill was my father.

And talking about the can- among the worst in didacy of Buhari, some people believe he should leave the po-his class in Harrow, litical space for much younger people. What do you think of very dull in school. this?

He was one of the That is nonsense. Mandela (of South Africa) and Ronald greatest leaders of Reagan (of USA) became presidents in their 70s. Mandela was the 20th Century. president up to 80 something.

Yar’adua and So it is not about age. What is the guarantee that a younger Jonathan never person would do better? In Niproved that geria we have this nonsensical mindset that we need a younger degrees make person with degree. When Buhari met with Mandela, the better presidents.

Madiba said, look, you’ll be president. The story was published. He said he should not abandon the ambition.

Mandela and Reagan were older than Buhari when they became president and spent their two terms of eight years. The criteria for candidacy should not be about age. It is irrelevant. Performance should be the criteria. Corruption and indiscipline are our major problems creating setback for us the most. Any candidate that is not corrupt; any candidate that is disciplined; he can be as old as Methuselah, I will not only support him, I will campaign for him to get Nigeria out of darkness. It is not about age or degree. People were jubilating that for the first time we had graduates in Yar’adua and Jonathan as the president and vice-president. Yar’adua has degree in Analytical Chemistry; Jonathan has degree in Hydro-Biology. I said rubbish, degrees don’t make leaders. Jimmy Carter of America had two PhDs in Nuclear Physics and Chemistry. Was he a better American president? Winston Churchill was among the worst in his class in Harrow, very dull in school. He was one of the greatest leaders of the 20th Century. Yar’adua and Jonathan never proved that degrees make better presidents.

The president of Nigeria should be a man of character; a man that can be trusted; a man that is not corrupt; a man that is disciplined; a man that believes in God not by mouth. Some of them go to church on Sunday; some go to mosque on Friday: some to babaalawos to look for miracles. They come into government to rape the country dry. They are not even ashamed. They have houses all over the place. People are suffering. They cannot be pay N8,000 minimum wage. Graduates are looking for driver’s job. Graduates are serving in the restaurants. If we are not yet a failed state, we are fast failing.

Some people believe that Jonathan, a South-south man, should be allowed to for a second term and that the Hausa Fulani should not always expect to always rule the country.

This is another case of what I call lazy intellectualism. First, does Jonathan have the right to go second term? I think the constitution allows him. The interpretation that he had been sworn in second term is contentious. First, he completed Yar’adua’s term. I don’t dislike him. I just don’t like the way he rules the country. I’ve told him I’ll never support him. I don’t need anything from him. What I need from him is good governance and consistency which he is not giving us. He should talk less with some rationality. He can only ask for a second term when the first time is glorious. He should act with clear conscience. He should go to the Redeemed Church and kneel down before the great man of God, and say God, I’ve done well. Can he say that? No! His performance in the first term has been woeful. Another issue is the allegation that he signed to rule for one term. Jonathan has to disprove this allegation with facts and figure.

“

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nor Sylvia was forced out of office, and now the case of Rivers State where Amaechi is under a lot pressure presumably from the presidency ….

It cannot be presumably. It is certainly from the presidency. Let President Jonathan himself deny that his hand is not there. It is the voice of Esau and the hand of Jacob.

Do you think Amaechi has not done anything wrong to bring the pressure on himself?

Not at all. I will come to that later. Every time they talk, they call Edwin Clark elder statesman. One can be an elder without being a statesman. Edwin Clark may be an elder because of biological age but I’m not sure he is a statesman. A statesman doesn’t talk like he talks. A statesman does not make pronouncements that divide the society. Also, Asari Dokubo’s recent statement that Ijaw people are violent is utter rubbish. The Ijaws are never violent people. He gave examples of the fact that we fought tribal or ethnic wars. He referred to the conflict over fishing rights. The Ijaws were never violent. If they were, the white people that came in through the south wouldn’t have been allowed in. All that is happening now in the South-south engineered by these and sometimes with Jonathan’s collusion or encouragement is making things more difficult for him. It is not endearing him to the bigger Nigerian society and the world.

And I’ve said it before: if all this is being done for Jonathan to be president in 2015, then 2015 has been lost in 2013. 2015 has been forfeited by the excesses and irresponsibility of 2013 coming from people close to him or by his acts of collusion or commission. Take the case of Bayelsa State, I don’t know Sylvia but when they had Kangaroo impeachment of Alamieyeseigha and Ladoja, I came out in the papers, saying the impeachments were illegal, unconstitutional, and null and void. I was vindicated by the Supreme Court.

Now, what has Amaechi done to Jonathan? Amaechi is PDP. I had not been in any political party. Amaechi is Ikwerre. I am partly Ikwerre too. Buhari is a Fulani. I’m a die-hard Buhari supporter. I’m also a die-hard Amaechi supporter. I have no apology for saying I’m not in support of Jonathan. I can never be in support of Jonathan because he has not performed well. He has not carried himself well.

He has not been able to control the situation. What did Amaechi do wrong to him? Rivers State gave Jonathan the highest number of votes. If the governor was against Jonathan, he couldn’t have got it.

The child that forgets the hand that feeds him is not only a bad or wicked child, but also one that is digging his own grave. Amaechi is a solid supporter of Jonathan. And I’m close to Amaechi. He always speaks very glowingly of Jonathan. Whenever we discussed together, he would always remonstrate with me whether my articles

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Politics

Birth of Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance FEW weeks after his inauguration as executive governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola sent me a text asking me to set up a centre for the study of Awolowo’s ideology. He also asked me to cost everything pertaining to the new centre except the building which he said was in place on Ikirun Road, Osogbo. I immediately went ahead to write a 17-page blue print for the centre.

In February 2012, the governor called me to find out the name of the centre which I gave as Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance.

The following day, he announced the establishment of the centre, which he said would be headed by me. By that time, we had met only once, and that was when he was in Ado-Ekiti to attend the lecture his colleague, Dr Kayode Fayemi, commissioned me to deliver on Chief Awolowo’s social and political philosophy. I now realise that, as a great disciple of Awolowo, Ogbeni Aregbesola had to attend that lecture. When he became governor, he invited me to his office at Aregbe’s House, Osogbo, where we talked after I had given him three of my published works: Awo as a Philosopher, Awo: The Last Conversation, and Africa Philosophy: The Demise of a

A

By Moses Akinola Makinde Controversy. I did not know what went on behind the scene but I was pleasantly surprised when he publicly announced that I would head the Awo Centre.

Thereafter, I was appointed as Director-General and Chief Executive Officer, effective from 1st of May, 2012, for a period of five years by a person I met only once but whom I had sent a congratulatory text which included my appreciation of his revival of Awo’s legacy as I observed, with a great administration, that the UPN’s anthem was played at his inauguration as Executive Governor of the State of Osun.

It is important to know that Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola’s love and interest for Awolowo was probably influenced by his father when he was a school boy at Ikare- Akoko where he grew up. His father who traded in articulated Bedford lorries on Jubilee Road and his brother, who owned the then popular Aregbesola Motors, were staunch members of the Acton Group and Awolowo’s loyalists in Ikare-Akoko. I was then in Victory College, Ikare. Like the Olaitans and Adagunodos, the Aregbesolas were also from Ilesa as businessmen resident in IkareAkoko. As a son of an Action Group politician, he grew up with it and his

•Awolowo

father’s influence on him has persisted till today.

For a man whose interest and love for Awo started from youth and has grown up with it without a break, he has harboured his interest in Awo from Ikare-Akoko to Osogbo until he became a governor and seized the opportunity to externalise his undying interest in Awo by establishing the Centre in Awo’s name. This, in short, is the genesis of Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance founded by a consistent Awolowo loyalist and disciple.

The Centre becomes imperative at a time the African continent is beset with three notable problems: leadership, management and corruption. Selfish, corrupt, fraudulent, de-

Ohaneze backs Obiogbolu

By Adetutu Audu

T

HE governorship aspiration of Dr Alex Obiogbolu recently got a boost when the former President General of Ohaneze, Chief Dozie Ikedife, Ikenga Nnewi threw his weight behind his candidature.

Chief Ikedife who was speaking when the PDP governorship aspirant paid him a court visit said that Obiogbolu is a very good material for the job of piloting the affairs of Anambra State.

Ikenga Nnewi said as a matter of fact that the state is in dire need of a man of integrity, intellect and courage to consolidate on the achievements of the incumbent governor. He noted that these qualities are personalised in Obiogbolu who be-

ceitful and autocratic leaders have often emerged in most of the African countries, especially Nigeria.

These leaders are known for mismanaging and scandalously squandering the resources as well as looting the government treasuries. Nigeria, which is blessed with all kinds of natural resources: oil, gas, iron, tin, gold, bitumen, marble, coal and fertile land most suitable for agriculture in addition to human resources, is wallowing in abject poverty as a result of bad leadership, poor management and bad governance. Thus, the country is beset with serious social, economic, political and security crisis in the last few decades, but most conspicuously in the last 14 years.

Apart from high integrity, some

cause of his antecedents in the Local Government Service Commission and Anambra State Environmental Protection Agency (ANSEPA) has proved to be a first class material that has the capability to shine even in the midst of gross darkness.

The former Ohaneze boss noted that the Peoples Democratic Party would be stepping into a relative advantage over other political parties if a personality like Dr Alex Obiogbolu is allowed to fly the party’s flag in the forth coming governorship election.

Dr Dozie Ikedife, however, urged the governorship aspirants to make necessary contact with relevant bodies and organisation so as to get the National Working Committee of his party know the true situation of things at the grassroots where he has become a fieldmarshal because of the robust relationship he has cultivated with the people of the state irrespective of party affiliations over time.

In another development, the first female governor in the country, Dame Virgy Etiaba has also blessed the aspiration of the PDP stalwart, Dr Alex Obiogbolu. The former governor described the aspirant as a good man who can be trusted with the responsibility of administering the state.

Dame Virgy Etiaba said this when the PDP governorship aspirant paid her a visit in her Umudim Nnewi country home.

of the qualities associated with good leadership include: self discipline, accountability, transparency, responsiveness, justice, equity, egalitarianism, probity, honesty and high sense of responsibility. This is where a proper study of Awolowo and his philosophy and ideology is in need of special attention. Apart from his resourcefulness in the management of men and natural resources, the above qualities and virtues have contributed immensely to Awolowo’s successes in life, and especially during his regime as premier of the old western region of Nigeria where he demonstrated his philosophical idea of the Regime of Mental Magnitude.

His love for education and socioeconomic development for an egalitarian society (life more abundant, prosperity for all) will forever be remembered by his admirers and foes alike. Hence, after his life, he became “the best president Nigeria never had”, the “main issue in Nigeria politics” and “a great philosopher of 20th century Africa”.

The establishment of Awo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance is one of the best ways by which the legacy Obafemi Awolowo left behind could be preserved and maximally utilized by present and future generations to foster integrity education, Yoruba culture and values, ethics, religious tolerance and, above all, the art of good governance in Nigeria in particular, and Africa in general, especially as Awo believes that Africans must be capable of governing themselves in freedom and virtue.

Also, the establishment of such a centre is long overdue, coming up 25 years after Awo’s death in 1987.

The centre will, indeed, be a great resource centre for academia, politicians, policy makers, administrators, managers both in the private and public sectors. The new Centre will play a leading role in strengthening African Philosophy, especially African Social and Political Philosophy and Ideology as powerful tools of good governance, using indigenous knowledge, culture, models and skills, subsidized by relevant knowledge, culture, models and skills from the outside world.

The broad goal and objective of the Centre is to provide an avenue for the study of the philosophy, ideology, achievements in political engineering, political life as well as public and private lives (physical and spiritual) of Jeremiah Obafemi, Awolowo with a view to understanding the man and the secrets behind his numerous successes and how he overcame the challenges he met on his way.

Some of the specific goals include (1) exploratory work into the philosophy (including social and political philosophy), speeches, lectures, ideology, thoughts and writings of Obafemi Awolowo (2) In-depth study of his philosophy that “every man”, irrespective of caste, creed or colour, is “a potential genius” and its derivation that “man is an instrument of change.”

It is expected that there will be a series of seminars involving internal and external speakers, workshops and annual distinguished lectures, all of which will be open to the public and show-case the life, philosophical thoughts of Awolowo on administrative competence, social and political engineering, the art of good governance, self discipline, education, law and morality, integrity, accountability, transparency in public service as demonstrated by him, especially as Premier of the old Western Region of Nigeria, and his brief services to the nation as Federal Commissioner for Finance and Vice Chairman of the Federal Executive Council in General Gowon’s administration. His track records, his numerous books and other writings, speeches as well as scholarly publications on him and his works will provide research materials for teaching, seminars and workshops in the Centre.

- Professor Makinde is the DG/ CEO, Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance, Osogbo, Osun State.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

THEATRE

With VICTOR AKANDE

t

BIGSCREEN

Tel: 08051101822

SOUND TRACK

plus

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E-mail: victor_akande@yahoo.com

•Wizkid

•Moyo Lawal

GISTS

•Benita Okojie

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Entertainment

Entertainment

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

And for you to always be outstanding, the hair itself will not be what will be easy for anybody else to carry. That was what informed the kind of hair I have been doing. And I also got inspired by an Onidiri (hairstylist) then, from one of her hairstyles. It is all about fantastic hair

AZEEZAT

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Entertainment

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

I want to die on stage

Entertainment

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

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Large turnout at ‘Glo X-Factor’ Accra auditions

Goldspan •Emem Udonquak (middle) with Governor Liyel-Imoke andWife

•Sound Sultan

•Omolola

rebrands

•Eldee

•Biggiano

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Entertainment

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

LAGOS

•Kenny Ogungbe

•Tony Okoroji

•Akinyemi

Collecting Societies:

Who holds the aces?

•Paul play

By Ovwe Medeme

PORT HARCOURT

ABUJA HOME AGAIN Featured ActorsTatyana Ali, CCH Pounder, Dewshane Williams Genre: Drama Running Time104min THE HOST Featured Actors: Saoirse Ronan, Diane Kruger, Max Irons Genre: Action/Adventure JOURNEY TO SELF Featured Actors: Nse IkpeEtim,Dakore Akande,Ashionye Michelle Raccah,Katherine Obiang ,Tosin Sido,Kalu Ikeagwu,Femi Brainard,Femi Jacobs and Chris Attoh.

Genre: Action/Adventure ON BENDED KNEES Featured Actors: Seun Akindele, chioma Akpotha, chet Anekwe Genre: Action/Adventure JOBLIVION Featured ActorsTom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko GenreAction/Adventure Running Time124minACK THE GIANT SLAYER

Featured ActorsNicholas Hoult, Stanley Tucci, Ewan McGregor Genre: Action/Adventure

THE CROODS Featured Actors: Nicolas Cage, Ryan Reynolds, Emma Stone GenreAction/Adventure Running Time98 Mins

IRON MAN 3 GenreAction/Adventure Running Time130min THE BABY MAKERS Featured ActorsPaul Schneider, Olivia Munn,

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Glamour

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Glamour

Social

ADETUTU AUDU (E-mail: crownkool@yahoo.com, Tel: 08023849036)

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

Glamour

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Glamour

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

T

HE platform for international relativity and competitiveness has since shifted from military to economic engagement. As a global trend, therefore, discerning nations have since focused on building impactful, profitable and enduring economic structures for such engagement. To wit, global rating and grading for nations are more than ever before, based on economic indices.

As mentioned in our article last week, the position of World Economic Foruming on conomic growth and development, as the focal point for ratings in Global Competitiveness is based on the paradigm shift. MC&A DIGEST team has, in recent times, decided on concerning itself with the readiness of Nigeria for the new world order, looking from operative policies, symbolic structures and the commitment invested in ensuring the functionality, effectiveness and efficiency of such structures, starting with NIGERIAN EXPORT-IMPORT BANK, NEXIM. Nigeria’s (and indeed any nation’s) economic growth potentials and extent of target actualisation in the face of progressively keen global competitiveness, rests on a tripod of proper trend analysis, articulate policy development and proper, consistent, articulate and purpose-driven implementation. Last week, we mentioned the position of leadership in driving national economic growth process. It must be globally relative, strategic and in competitive. One example we keep throwing up is the trade policies of nations such as China, India, Turkey and the United States of America. These countries have driven their international economic relations to the exent of ‘direct confrontation”, using export trade as platform. So to them, the basic role of EXIM Banks no longer suffices; it has been taken to the level of proactive and aggressive marketing. So, they now compete in form that seem like ordinary BUYER- CREDIT FINANCING. In real sense, Buyer-Credit facility is not designed for global trade support, but to as an instrument for global economic competitiveness, for relative advantage, one versus the other. So, for instance, China will gladly push huge funds through whatever channel open to them in any country that may so request, in form of economic growth and developmen support-funding, while in real terms, the objective or interest is taking advantage of the recepient country or economy for China’s economic advantage, using the ‘support facility’ as an in-road.

NEXIM understands the inherent disadvantage in BUYER-CREDIT FINANCING, and has positioned to structure own-facility for our local market, rather than expose our local resources with enormous export-import trade earning potentials to such exploitation.

But unfortunately, NEXIM is incapacited as you read this piece, due to grossly inadequate funding. May we just put on record here that this initiative is by far a proactive and innovative structure borne out creativity which is frontal among developed nations in global economic engagement, developed by our own NEXIM, yet cannot be implemented due to non-availability of funds. Sad! But that is only a small fraction of the consequence of NEXIM’s financial incapacity. As shown in the pie-chart below, between 2009 to date, NEXIM has recorded appreciable results in its engagement through a careful allocation of available scarce resources in the key areas with very high economic growth potentials of our economy. Within same period, it has invested N12bn in lending to Nigerian Export manufacturers.

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Nigeria’s global competitiveness – NEXIM as an anchor

•President (Dr.) Goodluck Jonathan

Secondly, NEXIM has invested N6.6bn in funding agro-processing for export trade/ business. Thirdly, NEXIM is pioneering the opening-up of the Solid Mineral mining sector (coming at a huge cost – having committed N2.2bn so far), based on a forecast of a sector with very higher foreig earning potentials, projected to far higher than our Oil can generate, if fully exploited.

Fourthly, NEXIM has so far expended huge resources into activating fundamentally important infrastructures to facilitate profitable and efficient export trading in form of its SEA-LINK PROJECT. This is an initiative that has attracted collaborators across the world who have identified with the enormous benefit therein. The big idea here is to facilitate the most efficient sea transportation of export trade

commodities across the regional and global markets, for a more profitable export-import trade, among the target audience.

We must put in perspective that the oil resource that our economy run on now is only 3rd in the rating of contributors to our GDP – after Agriculture and Trade/ Commerce. Suffice, therefore, oil as a resource cannot be said to have the capacity to sustain our economy in the near-future (even if the recklessness attendant upon the present resource wastages), is curtailed. We must, therefore, strenghten our resolve to drive for a more robust support for NEXIM Banth through adequate and appropriate funding, as a nation, considering its enormous potential as a catalyst for economic growth and development.

The thrust for Nigeria in our quest for

global competitiveness and relevance should be seen as founded on proper funding of NEXIM Bank. It psitions as the potent channel for our national investment for enduring economic growth and development, as a nation. Last week, we noted poor funding as the major obstacle facing NEXIM Bank, limiting its ability to explore its potentials. Presently, it will require well over N100bn to attend to attend to applications already approved for their potentials, innovativeness and export trade potentials. In fact, our focus shifted towards NEXIM Bank as a result of the complaint of some of those applicants who are getting frustrated waiting for NEXIM’s support. These are initiatives with huge capacity to generate employment, help our collective position in global competitiveness and drive our economy growth and development, yet NEXIM cannot do anything to get them up and running because of non-availability of funds. We need to look at reviewing the capitalisation of NEXIM, if we are serious about growing our economy through export-import trade.

The promise ahead of us all is that if NEXIM is adequately funded, Nigeria’s industrialisation process will speed-up, our economic development will get a boost, employment will rise considerably and our economy will be diversified in real sense. On the whole, Nigeria will be better positioned in the commity of nations in line with global competitiveness. As a way forward, therefore, NEXIM Bank’s present meagre N39bn paid-up share capital, needs to be reviewed upward by well over 200%. What it now ‘has’ is not comparable to the amount invested by India on a single project in Ghana.

There is need for a rethink!

with

YETUNDE OLADEINDE

molaralife@yahoo.com

?

Princess

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

50

With Joe Agbro Jr. 08056745268

WORD WHEEL Hello children, Your knowledge of words can be powerful as seen by Afolarin’s success as Lagos’ 2013 Spelling Bee. So, do try to learn as many words as you can

SPELLING CHAMP

How many words of three or more letters, each including the letter at centre of the wheel, can you make from this diagram? We've found 41, including one nine-letter words.

PUZZLE •Mrs. Abimbola Fashola (L), first lady of Lagos State with Boadley Juwon Afolarin, an SS 2 student of Omole Senior Grammar School, Omole, Ikeja, Lagos who won the 2013 Spelling Bee Competition organised by the Lagos State Ministry of Education on Wednesday. Boadley, who won by spelling the word ‘Thaumaturge’, was presented with N250,000 star prize and will act as one-day governor of Lagos State

POEM

Words on marble

Mother matters OH dear mother only daughter to her father Like strong wind from afar, So kind, yet quite loud Her calm words form song Her love so affectionate, not numb

By Sola Olowo-Ake

She carries and cares despises the weakness of her arms She feeds us to fill and she her stomach angered by hunger And her husband, her master Via her passionate service to him, their love grew She will always mutter, that it is the love of God that matters •Olowo-Ake, 14 years, is an SS 1 student of Debiruss College Lekki, Lagos PHOTO BY AFOLABI ONI

You will be rewarded for your efforts someday, just work harder as the day goes by.

• Damilola Ipinyemi Winner, Blackberry Nigeria Junior Achievers 2013, is an SS2 student of Debiruss College, Lekki, Lagos

Six pupils get Chrisland Scholarship CHRISLAND Schools recently awarded scholarship to six pupils to who ranked tops at the annual Entrance Examination held in March.

The lucky recipients are: Master Okoko Essien from Straitgate School, Master Owobu Allen Omongidale, Miss. Akinnola Olukemi, and Master Aduwari Anthony, all from Chrisland School, VGC. Others are Master Ponle Bello from Chrisland School, Ladipo Oluwole, and Miss. Funnaya Okey-Ilo from Chrisland School, Opebi.

The Managing Director of Chrisland Schools, Mrs. Ibironke Adeyemi, pledged to make the scholarship awards an annual affair.

Four children weigh different amounts. Figure out who weighs what.

35 kg

45kg

40 kg

.

BIODUN

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.

NKECHI .

TUNDE .

HASSAN

.

1. Biodun weighs more than Nkechi 2. Hassan weighs less than Tunde.

3.Hassan weighs 10 kg more than Nkechi.

4. Tunde weighs more than Biodun.

SUDOKU To play Sudoku: Fill the box with the numbers 1 to 9 in a way that •Each column must contain all of the numbers 1 through 9 •Each row must contain all of the numbers 1 through 9 •Each block must contain all of the numbers 1 through 9 •No two numbers in the same column, row, or block can be the same.

4

5

6

1 5

5

2

3

9

7

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9

2

9

6

6 3

1

1

3

2

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

50kg

7

8

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1 9

2 5

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

Young Nation

CONFERENCE

HEALTH WEEK

• Joel Ogbenevovwere an SS 1 student planting a tree at the Founder's Day of Debiruss College with the theme Securing our environment.

PHOTO: AFOLABI ONI

• Kings College students and parents participating in the College’s Health & Safety Week which held between April 30 and May 4th

COOL FACTS

OCTOPUS OCTOPUSES are sea animals famous for their rounded bodies, bulging eyes, and eight long arms.

They live in all the world’s oceans but are especially abundant in warm, tropical waters.

Octopuses typically drop down on their prey from above and, using powerful suctions that line their arms, pull the animal into their mouth.

THE first sport to have a world championship was billiards in 1873

confusing the aggressor.

The octopus can also change to gray, brown, pink, blue, or green to blend in with its surroundings.

The first internet domain name registered was symbolics.com in 1985 The first product to have a barcode was Wrigley's chewing gum

Octopuses are solitary creatures that live alone in dens built from rocks, which the octopus moves into place using its powerful arms.

The octopus performs its famous backward swim by blasting water through a muscular tube on the body called a siphon.

The largest octopus is the North Pacific giant octopus. It weighs up to 150 pounds (68 kilograms) and measures some 20 feet (6 meters) across from the tip of one arm to the tip of an opposite arm.

Seals, whales, and large fish prey on octopuses. If threatened, octopuses shoot an inky fluid that darkens the water,

Octopuses are mollusks like clams, oysters, and snails. If the octopus loses an arm, no problem—a new one

51

'Uncopyrightable' is the longest common word without any letter repeating Kiwis lay the largest eggs relative to their body size (their eggs weigh about one-fifth of their body weight) fly

The penguin is the only bird that can swim, but not

WORD GAME grows back in its place.

A female octopus lays thousands of transparent eggs under rocks or in holes. She guards the eggs

for four to eight weeks.

Upon hatching, the young drift on the ocean’s surface for several weeks, where many are eaten by fish and other animals.

WORD SEARCH

Fill in the spaces to get the correct word using the clue below

1. C - L -

I

- S

• Unit for measuring temperature

2. - K - R - C - A

Sports

•Governor of a south-eastern Nigerian state

3. -

SPORT refers to a competitive physical activity. Sport is generally recognised as activity based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity. Sports are usually governed by rules to ensure fair competition.

- N - A - P - E

• A sweet fruit

4. - T -

S - L - T

•A telecommunication company that operates in Nigeria

5. - R - A - H - O •A sport that involves swimming, cycling, and running

ANGLING ARCHERY BADMINTON BASEBALL BASKET BALL BILLIARDS CYCLING

,

GOLF HAND BALL HOCKEY JUDO KUNGFU LAWN TENNIS RUGBY

SNOOKER SOCCER SURFING SWIMMING TABLE TENNIS TAEKWONDO VOLLEY BALL

Write for The Nation!

Do you fancy yourself as a writer someday? Stop dreaming and start writing. A topic will be presented here every week and you’re encouraged to send in entries in not more than 150 words. The best original story will be published from time to time, so get cracking!

Entries should be sent to sundaynation@yahoo.com and should be accompanied by the writer’s name, age, school and class.

This week’s topic is : “My favourite subject”

6. N - P - U - E • A planet in the solar system

7. - E - E - A -

- A -

• A person that doesn’t eat meat

8. S - R - B - L •A board-game involving the use of words

9. O - O - B - R •The town where oil was first drilled in Nigeria

10. - O - T - R •Someone who treats people when they are ill

52

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

Etcetera

SUNNY SIDE

Cartoons

By Olubanwo Fagbemi

POLITICKLE

deewalebf@yahoo.com 08060343214 (SMS only)

Standing ovation, please •In tribute to Sir Alex Ferguson

CHEEK BY JOWL

OH, LIFE!

THE GReggs

APPLAUSE! Applause! Speech! Speech! A glass of bubbly in my hand.

Fellow football fans – Red Devils or not – a great one substitutes the dugout for the director’s chair. Here’s to Alexander Chapman Ferguson, Knight of the British Empire and gum-chewing, pacemaker-fitted, septuagenarian risk-taker. 49 trophies in 27 years command reverence beyond your lively statue outside Old Trafford. Lest critics claim that I speak as one punch-drunk with titles, however, I refer them to your humble beginning.

Son of a shipbuilder, you rose from a modest playing career to coaching apex via a football voyage that concludes today with the last match of the 2012/2013 English Premier League season at West Bromwich Albion. As evidence of your rating as the most successful football manager in Britain, nay, the world, your opinion in man management is valued by prime ministers and men of means and power. (Hear! Hear!).

And if any here thinks this tribute overstated, imagine the likely impact of the ‘huge mistake’ – by your admission – of retirement in 2001 that was rescinded after patching up with the club’s board and the ensuing chain of success. Will successor, David Moyes, sustain the culture of attacking football and last-gasp winners? Will he last as long and win as much? Yours is a tough act to follow as Moyes admitted. Didn’t your announcement briefly force down club shares and send fans into a frenzy of conjecturing?

Ah, ladies and gentlemen, wee lads and lasses, it’s ‘squeaky-bum time’. But let none underrate the Theatre of Dreams magic. At your 1986 appointment, who, for instance, would have thought you capable of overhauling the feats, if not mystique, of predecessor Sir Matt Busby and his Busby Babes, who, as some of the greatest talents of the British game, were nearly all claimed by the Munich air disaster which the boss barely survived? In testament to Busby’s enduring effect, he rebuilt a great team with Munich survivor, club legend and England great, Sir Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and George Best, laying the foundation for you to similarly exploit with the Class of ‘92 – the young and gifted bunch of Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Nicky Butt, and the Neville brothers, Gary and Phil. In turn, Scholes and Beckham rehashed their mentor’s exit.

I may have faulted your selection now and then, Sir Alex. “What’s wrong with Baba? The old gaffer must be senile. Why start with Nani and Giggs and bench Rooney and Kagawa?” But that’s all in the past now. In retrospect, as master tactician, you often displayed a knack for fitting selection and substitution for opponents.

Some say a successor could never have emerged from tutelage because of general perception that, as a force of nature, you terrified all – players and officials – in the league. Still, you made men out of materials and coaches out of players. (Take a bow, Bryan Robson; Steve Bruce, Gordon Strachan, Mark Hughes, Roy Keane, Paul Ince, Chris Casper, Darren Ferguson, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Henning Berg too). Note that current old timers, Giggs and Rio Ferdinand seem poised to brandish a trick or two from the mind games manual patented by you. And leave room for Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo. They stayed long enough in the incubator. The days really seem imminent when Old Trafford alumni would dominate league dugouts.

For equal relevance, please stand up and be counted, one-time stalwarts Paul McGrath – son of an Irish mother and a Nigerian father –, Peter Schmeichel, Eric Cantona, Jaap Stam, Dwight Yorke and Ruud van Nistelrooy. Hmmn, the hairdryer treatment. Where are you, Goldenballs, gash above the eye from the boot kicked in your direction après typical hair-blowing rollicking from a smoking Sir Alex in 2003? Och! Who will ‘bend it like Beckham’ again?

But I risk the hairdryer myself, to report that some think you, ever so sly, plotted exit in view of Jose Mourinho’s probable return to the EPL and a likely shutdown of opposition reminiscent of the 2004 to 2007 Chelsea even if you trump loyalty to wife, Cathy, as reason. Did you ignore the Special One as heir because, considering his excellent but flighty reputation, he might not stay long enough to interpret the club vision?

Hang on, though, Moyes may yet orchestrate relentless pulverisation of the opposition after your fashion. That would greatly please us – and followers of the most popular club in the world.

Jokes Humour Love Riddle A LADY shoots her husband, then holds him under water for five minutes and finally hangs him. Five minutes later they both go out together and enjoy a lovely meal. How can that be?

Answer: She’s a photographer. She shoots her husband with a camera and holds the picture under water to develop it and then hangs it on the wall.

The Newlyweds JIM and Kate are newlyweds in the honeymoon suite on their wedding night, and Kate is in the bathroom.

As Jim is getting undressed he says to himself, “How am I going to tell her? How am I going to tell my new wife that I have the world’s smelliest feet?”

Then he throws his socks under the bed. Kate walks out of the bathroom, and Jim, afraid to face her, dashes past her into the bathroom.

Kate sits on the edge of the bed and says to herself, “How am I going to tell him? How am I going to tell my new husband that I have the world’s worst

breath? I’ve got to tell him.”

Just then Jim walks out of the bathroom.

Kate runs up to him, gives him a huge kiss, leans back and says, “Honey, I’ve got to tell you something.”

Jim says, “Yeah, I know. You swallowed my socks.”

Types of Managers A software manager, a hardware manager, and a marketing manager are driving to a meeting when a tire blows. They get out of the car and look at the problem.

The software manager says, “I can’t do anything about this. It’s a hardware problem.”

The hardware manager says, “Maybe if we turned the car off and on again, it would fix itself.”

The marketing manager says, “Hey, 75% of it is working. Let’s ship it!”

QUOTE Look at me – it’s taken 10 years off me today.

It’s these tablets, they’re great!

—Alex Ferguson on Man United’s 20th title •Adapted from the Internet

T

OWARDSA Writer ’s Fountain M O R E ‘I often wondered what happened to Mike.

SATISFYING CLOSE: A good short story or novel must have a coherent form. Of course, absolute Somehow, I doubt that the singing water spirits got finality is not necessary except in nursery tales. Some him. Maybe he’s sitting right now in some sleazy great stories end without explicit closure. It can also dockside bar, swigging from a wine bottle and be a profitable trick for an author to leave behind a reading this whole darn story by the light of a fading sunset. Yes, I reckon old Mike’s alive out there, few loose ends. For example: somewhere. I can hear his laughter, even now.’

Now the reader knows that, the drink Animal odds: •Camels have three eyelids to protect permitting, old Mike will reappear in a sequel. And another. And yet another. themselves from blowing sand.

Note, at this point, that a finale or closure is also •Bees and dogs can smell fear. Bees have five eyes and can see ultraviolet light. They false to life.

In the modern ‘representational’ or realistic kill more people in a year than sharks do. story, comedies do not end with a wedding. Nor do •Crocodiles never outgrow the pool in tragedies begin with one. All is a circle. Nothing which they live.

•Carnivorous animals will not eat another really ends in life, short of death. And even then, we animal that has been hit by a lightning can write a ghost story.

Yet, the appeal of a good story is that it shows strike.

•Chocolate can kill dogs; it directly affects form at work. We hunger for form to make the chaos of our lives meaningful. However it might be their heart and nervous system.

•Cat gut, used in tennis rackets and strings contrived, ‘closure’ satisfies our pattern-seeking mind.

The easiest way to impose closure in a simple for musical instruments comes not from story and, incidentally, sidestep writer’s block, is cats but sheep.

•Catfish from the Nile River swim upside- the Book End structure. The story ends where it starts. Meanwhile, the characters’ lives and down.

•Cockroaches break wind every 15 minutes. personalities have progressed in some meaningful way.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

53

A lucky escape —PAGE 54

•Photographer

•ATM

•Washing_Machine

•Desk top computer

Dying professions I

F there is anything that the average worker worries about then it must be retirement. Many, therefore, make plans for the proverbial rainy day with savings and pension scheme.Unfortunately; there has been an addition to the myriad problems of workers which gives cause for alarm. The fact that a number of professions which hitherto were money spinners are moving into extinction.

Gbemi Osagiede, a social worker and entrepreneur believes that life is about change. People must learn to adapt to new skills and technology to make things better for everyone: “We must give orientation to our young ones especially those in primary and secondary schools to let them know about these trend. We also need to let them know the importance of how to choose jobs that would not extinct. People should learn to be dynamic and start creating better opportunities for themselves. This they can do by going into entrepreneurship.”

For Tolu Daniel, a civil servant the trend is shocking and he believes that many employees live in fear. “You can see that there is so much uncertainty everywhere especially for the common man. If you look at most of the things the average Nigerian worker is going through in their working place, you wonder if there is any need for them to celebrate their day. Many actually spent it at home, because that day is a public holiday”. He adds: “If you check the life styles of the employed, most of them are just still working because they have no other means of income, they are suffering and smiling, this is very bad. It is tough and frustrating living in a country where nobody really cares about the workforce”.

Rallies, seminars and some form of protests have been carried out to get the messages to the appropriate quarters. As you dig deeper into the plight of workers, you discover another nightmare lurking in the shadows. This latest addition is the fact that some professions are under threat. It is indeed a long list that includes such professions as photography, petrol attendants, reporters, laundry personnel and bankers.

Pa Gbadamosi Adewale, 68, whose father was a photographer agrees that the profession is actually on the brink. “My father was a very busy man and had some customers who marvelled at his shots. These days so many people have mastered the tricks and it is already an all comers thing.

Learning a skill or training to be in a particular field for many is an investment for the future. This is what brings income as well as a guarantee of a better future someday.

Unfortunately, experts have raised an alert saying that some professions are on the edge. Yetunde Oladeinde and Olamide Lois Akiode take a look at this trend and the challenges for the future.

As a young boy, I remember that we went to the photo studio to take photographs to mark memorable events. But these days things are different and my grandchildren take all their photos themselves. I wonder what is going to happen to the professional photographer because a lot of people can take the pictures at their own time without any stress.”

Jobs on the line Today, phones, ipad and all other electronic accessories come with camera attached so many people at graduations, parties and all sorts take their own photographs without waiting for any professional. Pictures are hardly printed now since they can be displayed on computers, laptops etc.

The bank cashier’s job also appears to be something the machines can do now thanks to the ATM and other gadgets that have been introduced. Are you still in doubt , then all we need to do is to cross check what it entails .The job description for a bank cashier typically includes collecting money, disbursing money,

•Journalists

and handling customer concerns and issues.

The primary role of a bank cashier, in most cases, involves handling money. The crux of the matter is that these customer needs are now met mostly online and via ATM machines. Like the ATM machine which has taken over from some bank personnel in terms of retrenchments, experts also project that like different parts of the developed world petrol stations would soon be manned by such gadgets.”It is only a matter of time and once people understand it then the services of petrol attendants would not be needed”, Adewale said.

Paul Ibe, 38, is another professional who is worried about these trends. Ibe, who is a marketing manager in a laundry organisation, tells you that he has started thinking of alternatives before things fall apart. “I work for a laundry outfit and over the years I have noticed a steady decline. First the decline came because of the economic depression which made many to adapt the ‘Do it yourself’ approach. In addition, to this you find that the washing machine is cheaper and many have

acquired it to solve this particular need. So, you can be sure that with time the business may go under or receive less patronage”.

The 20th century is the age of machinery, robotics, and computers. This has led to loss of millions of jobs. Now, in the era of the Internet and further automation, a new generation of full-time workers is on the verge of losing their positions to technology. Many jobs have been lost via technological advancement and on a daily basis there are further contractions as workers who were trained to oversee the machines are themselves replaced by new machines and software that manage the old machines.

Marketers, reporters, post office personnel and other creative artists have indeed had a tough time since the widespread adoption of email stole a large part of its consumers and business market share. Increased communication via phone and cloud computing is another contributory factor.

Even in countries where you have some form of postal services going on, there has been a lot of decline because mail sorting is becoming automated, with robots replacing people. Revolutions in technology also continue to cause profound changes in the office and administrative market.

Revolutions in technology also continue to cause profound changes in the office and administrative market. Although it was hardhit by the recession, the industry had in fact already been declining for years due to technological advancement boosting productivity and operational efficiency.

Word processing, voicemail and the internet all make it easier for skilled professionals to do clerical work themselves.

With companies focused on cutting costs, secretaries and file clerks are no longer in demand. In the U.S. alone, word processors and typists are slated to lose 13,200 jobs by 2020 and data entry clerks are expected to lose 15,900 according to a study carried out by a research group.

Interestingly, workers all over the world including Nigeria recently rolled out the drums to celebrate this year’s edition of the Worker’s Day. It was indeed a time to take stock, think about some of the challenges they are faced with as well as find possible solutions to these problems. From campaign for better wages you also discover other challenges such as the engagement of workers as casuals, need to improve facilities to carry out their duties as well as pleas for the eradication of corruption at all levels to enhance productivity.

54

A

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

Life

BOUT 30 metres away from the house, the security man furiously ran towards me. As I sighted the iron rod in his hand with its head wrapped with thread, leather and other strange things I immediately knew he was up to something. He charged at me like a mad dog .The hair on his head stood erect while his blood-shot eyes popped out from their sockets. His veins were visible on his biceps. As he got closer to me he raised the object in an attempt to hit me. Fear enveloped me. I cringed. I was trembling like a leaf on water.

I quickly pleaded“Stop! Stop!! Please don’t hit me with that object!”.

I thought of running away but again if I should dash across the eight lanes of Ikorodu Express road , I could be hit by fast moving vehicles . Again, I thought of exchanging blows with him.

But I decided against it because I’ve never fought in my life. But what could I do among eight roughnecks with him now? I then remembered one of Bob Marley’s songs “He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.”

I summoned courage and I continued begging him not to hit me with the object. But what next? He started kicking me in the groin and rained blows on me. My head began to vibrate! I kept on pleading I was not a thief .

I made a spirited effort to show him my identity card but he ignored it. He was fuming and howling. I begged him to search my bag that I had nothing incriminating on me. Yet he did not listen. By now some roughnecks with croaky voices and nicotine-stained teeth had surfaced from nowhere and in a jiffy they had surrounded me!

Different thoughts flooded my mind: Will they lynch me today?

Did the neighbours hear my screaming ? Why are people not passing by to rescue me? Why is this happening on a Saturday; a non - working day? I was now sweating. It is finished, I thought.

Is this the end?

A fair -complexioned young man in charge of Baba Ijebu lottery machine (Loto lottery) in the area ran up to the gangsters and began to warn them saying: “Stop beating him, ask him to identify himself. I am warning you o. Does he look like a thief?”

I quickly fished out my phone and dialled Dr. Adeneye Marcus who introduced me to the family.

I told him I was in trouble. He asked me to give the security man the phone to enable him talk to him, but the security man yelled, cursing and ranting, “Who the hell is Dr. Adeneye Marcus. Who is he?” He pounced on me again, snatched my designer sun glasses and broke it. He later seized my phone. I asked him to take me to the police station if in doubt ! All my pleadings fell on deaf ears. I refused to resign to fate and kept on shouting, begging and displaying my identity card.

The young man in charge of Baba Ijebu lottery kept warning them. He asked for my identity card and asked them to search my bag. I quickly obeyed and while doing this, one of the Area Boys demanded for money, I begged him to be patient. Another one croaked: “Look at his beautiful rings and his golden wrist watch. I could have that.” Then another interjected and pointing at my shoes said, “Dis shoe na correct.” I listened carefully to their conversations and made sure I could point at them in case we all got to the police station.

REPORTER’S DIARY

A lucky escape

Taiwo Abiodun recounts the day he escaped being lynched while on an assignment.

The great search While opening my bag, the security man removed my cap and flung it away. He gave me another blow. I could not utter a word. I showed them my identity card, iPad, midget recorder, camera, and the Yoruba novel I was reading. These were all the contents in my bag, nothing incriminating. I emptied my bag for them to see but he kept raging “Nonsense, I said you should leave this place or else I will deal with you in the native way!” As I bent down to continue packing my shiff my saviour Dr. Marcus surfaced in a knickers and shirt!

Freedom at last!

Immediately the security man sighted him he became jittery. He started stammering like a two year -old baby who is just learning how to talk. His words became incoherent and his voice

Every time I see Babylon, my blood runs cold, cold, cold -Peter Tosh ( From his album Wanted:Dead or Alive) shaky.

Dr. Marcus sighted the juju iron rod he was holding and challenged him. He asked to know whether I mentioned his name to the security man. He answered in the affirmative. Dr. Marcus confronted him with the fact that he heard all the uncomplimentary comments he made about him on phone.

He was tongue-tied. Now, the ball was in my court, I tried to pounce on him to take my own pound of flesh, but the roughnecks and other sympathisers restrained me.

Only God knows where the energy came from. I was now

charged and energised. The strength in me bounced back and I wanted to act like my favourite wrestler, The Undertaker. I flew at him, raining curses on him Thank God for using tactics: begging and pleading as I stooped low to conquer. If I had argued and exchanged fists with him they could have all pounced on me and snuffed life out of me.

And in the end they could have pushed me into oncoming fast moving vehicles along Ikorodu Express way where my body would be mutilated. They could have put tyres round my neck and burnt me alive , accusing me of being a thief.

Who feels it knows it When the case of ‘Alu 4’, the four students of University of Port Harcourt falsely accused of stealing laptops was reported that I asked why they couldn’t make an effort to defend themselves. I wondered why just one of them couldn’t struggle, fight and escape. Now I know better. It is he that has not been confronted by the storm of life that claims to be a man;, the Yoruba proverb became clear to me. What could the Alu 4 have done among over 200 people?

The road to House 258 Ikorodu Road The story started when I took permission from my editor that I had some stories I was working on that fateful Saturday. He reluctantly allowed me to leave because Saturday is our peak production day.

Dr. Marcus had invited me to go and interview the mother of one Mrs. Olapeju Akanni who was celebrating her 85th birthday. I jumped at the offer because those are my kind of stories. I like talking to old people.

I started ruminating over the questions I would ask. I would ask her how politics was in the

late 40s, 50s,60s and 70s, her love life, her sojourn abroad and so on.

But all these died prematurely when I got to the house and the security man told me the old woman had no knowledge of my coming. I told him the daughter was aware. I called her and she asked me to wait, promising to call me back as she was at a function. I told the security man that her boss asked me to wait, and he should talk to her. He refused to talk to her but ordered me out of the compound.

I obeyed and left the premises.

I waited outside. It was 5.30pm.

The security man met me there and asked me to leave the vicinity. I told him I was expecting his boss to call me or call him for clarification, but he insisted I should leave. I left and walked about 30 metres away from the house yet he came after me and almost set a mob on me.

When I later called Mrs. Akanni on phone in the evening to relate what happened to me, she trivialised it and said: “Ma binu” (don’t be annoyed). I wondered if the casual way she said it was the way to tender an apology.

Although Dr. Marcus has vowed that they must replace all my lost items, I observed that $500 in my bag was missing, along with my silver necklace and other things.

But what occupied my mind was if they had killed me and thrown my body on the express road what would have happened? They could have lied against me that I was trying to escape and therefore dashed across the express road when I was crushed. How many would have believed that I was not an armed robber?

When I narrated the incident to my colleagues in the office, they were shocked. My editors were dumb founded. All my colleagues taunted me and asked “Where did you keep your charms as Babalawo of The Nation?.” Another one screamed “For a whole Babalawo,” as they used to call me, “to have been humiliated like this we are embarrassed.”

All professions have their own hazards, I soliloquised. It would have been so painful to have been killed here in Lagos by an angry mob. I have been to the Forest of Thousand Daemons (Igbo Olodumare) in Oke -Igbo, Ondo State, to Igbo Aiwo ( Forbidden Forest)in Ijeru , Ogbomoso and recently to Igbo Agala (Agala Forest) in Ibadan to do stories, nobody harmed me nor was I attacked physically. I have written stories about spirits, the dead and elves yet I was not threatened with any juju. How will a man threaten me with juju just because I was doing my job?

I have had series of close shaves with death: at the Shaki border in Oyo State , was I was shot at while taking pictures on the okada that took me to the border. I almost drowned in the sea when the wooden canoe engine stopped in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean while travelling from Ugboland to Aiyetoro town to do a story on the collapse of communalism in the community.

In my sober moments I reflect on how I escaped jungle justice while on a legitimate search for stories and it occurred to me that many innocent people have been killed or lynched. The cause of my brush with death has not even thought it wise to apologise.

But what apology do I need when I can thank God for saving my life?

THE ARTS

55

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

‘How I created Saka’

F

OR a long time, Nigeria’s affiliation to the International Theatre Institute (ITI) Paris, France, was withdrawn. What actually happened?

I believe that everything has its time. Things happen for a reason. Things happen for a purpose. There’s time for everything. When it happened, I mean when the relation was broken, we didn’t know. But when it was ripe for us to restore the relationship, we did. For a long time, nobody even knew that we were not recognised by the ITI. If we had known that for a long time we probably would have tackled it immediately or much earlier.

The last impression that I personally had was that it was done when Professor Wole Soyinka was the executive chairman of ITI Nigeria while Professor Dapo Aderugba was the secretary. So, we the younger generation didn’t think that there was much to worry about, if it was those two who were holding the position. So, I am sure that the thinking was also the thinking of a lot of people in the theatre sector. As at the time that I remembered we talked about it, we didn’t think it was really something to worry about.

But the minute we realised that the dues were not being paid, and that nothing was happening and that we didn’t have that official recognition that we deserved as it were, we didn’t hesitate to make the necessary move, to register us back into ITI Paris.

But how did ITI get to the level of deregistering you without your knowledge?

Well, they alleged inaction from our end which would mean that they were not hearing from us. The chairman and secretary who were there were the people we were sure could be there for us. But that didn’t mean there were no actions taking place in theatre in Nigeria. No, far from it. I think it was basically a function of the fact that they had suddenly stopped hearing from us, from our two basic representatives. To me, that was the condition under which that decision was taken. And I wouldn’t blame them, I don’t blame them.

Those were the two people recognised there and the ones to give us any feed back if need be.

Before you restored the relation, was there any penalty you paid to them?

No. There really was no penalty. It was an effort that was spearheaded by the Society of Nigerian Artistes (SONTA) led

by Professor Dandaura who is now the chairman of ITI – Nigeria. Then the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners (NANTAP) was called to be part of it. Then, we thought it was good enough initiative and we started paying back our dues. We then elected board of trustees for it. Today we have about 19 board members that cut across the industry as a whole from NANTAP to SONTA, to AGN to GOND and other guilds including the aca-

Gregory Odutayo is the president of National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners (NANTAP) and the director of Royal Roots Productions, involved in the creation of series of TV soap operas. In this interview with Edozie Udeze, he throws more light on how he discovered and created the character Saka in 2004. He also proffers ways on how to have quality actors and actresses for the sector and lots more

•Odutayo

“Well, to me he is Hafeez Oyetoro. This is a friend. The relationship dates back to our university days. And very early on the life of Royal Roots when we started television productions we thought we could do a comedy. We sat down – myself, Hafeez and Gbenga and created House Apart. In it the character Saka came up. He was the one that played that role. This was in 2004” demics. These are all recognised professionals in the industry.

With the board of trustees we believe we can effectively take NANTAP back to ITI. What is the role of NANTAP to totally restore the beauty of stage

in Nigeria through good books?

Basically, we need writers to write. By this, I mean good writers. There is dearth of writers in Nigeria; people who write the real things. The younger generation do not write what are exactly

good for the stage. But we cannot say it is not totally our forte to bring back good stage theatre in the country, I don’t want to say so. But to say it clearly, it is not really our forte as an association.

Basically, it is the forte of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). Theirs is to write and present good works to us. But because we are also performers, the first stage of the process of performing is writing. That’s how it concerns us.

I know a couple of years ago, we had a play writing completion that was attached to the Festival of Nigerian Arts (FESTINA). But some bigger issues have made us to alter one or two of these programmes. It hasn’t been a direct focus for me, because I feel we cannot totally isolate the place of writing from the theatre. The problem of writing is an even bigger problem. What we have basically done is to scale our problems.

And we said to ourselves okay, where do we start from?

For me, returning audiences to the theatre is of primary concern.

It is a major problem for me and for NANTAP. The writing of plays is secondary to me and so we have set out to ensure that audience participation is done right away. That’s why we’ve been channeling all our energies to the stage. In the process we’ve been having FESTINA even when it was belated. We’ll still have it this year. What we had in January was for 2012. Also, all these are tending towards building audiences. We also have a couple of stage programmes in collaboration with the National Theatre, Lagos. It is about being able to put up productions; being able to ensure that the stage is totally alive.

Our work as an association is not to do productions. Our work is to provide the platform for members to do productions. That’s why we are going into that collaboration with the National Theatre. It is to ensure that regularly there are productions happening at the Theatre.

Then I believe that using the strength of the old and the number of writers that we have now we can tap back into the theatre. After that we can go back to tackle the basic problems that we have; problems that are inherent in each of the guilds in the association.

It is not only with writers that we have problems. We also have dearth of quality actors and actresses both on stage and the screen. I used that word quality deliberately. That also could be a problem in itself. We do not have enough light designers even from the stage to the screen. Even in the area of filmic designers we do not have enough. We need to take and tackle these problems one by one.

For lighting designs we have a project with the British Council to bring in facilitators to teach a couple of basic issues on lighting.

That’s phase one and then we will go into designing too.

You were the first to create and discover the character Saka. How did this happen?

Well, to me he is Hafeez Oyetoro. This is a friend. The relationship dates back to our university days. And very early on the life of Royal Roots when we started television productions we thought we could do a comedy.

We sat down – myself, Hafeez and Gbenga and created House Apart.

In it the character Saka came up.

He was the one that played that role. This was in 2004.

Unfortunately the whole issue degenerated on Facebook and we really did not want to react. We felt it was not an issue we needed to react to from the beginning. He is a friend of the house and someone we value so much. Yet a lot has been said on Facebook concerning who first discovered him or created the character. This is history that is being done and wrong impressions are being given. If we keep quiet and allow it to go on, it will not be good for history.

Some even claimed it was their advert agency that created the character.

That it was Centrespread that created the Saka character for Etisalat. It is so funny and I felt that was wrong impression that needed to be corrected. The reality of it is that I contacted him on Facebook and told him the history of the character. He went on to say oh, they are not the one that created it but went on to develop it. But I said no, that’s not true.

I gave him the history and then expected him to go back to Facebook to correct that impression. That wasn’t done. I waited for about three to four days and I got pissed off. That was why we came out to speak up about it. It is not about taking part of the glory. No. It is all about being truthful and correct with facts of history. It has nothing to do with the MTN or Etisalat or the like.

This has to do with the fact that Saka was a character for our series in House Apart. That even predates the telecom people who are now involved in it.

Even in 2005, Saka won the best comedy award based on the role he played in the series. It was in the African Magic Videos award of that year. And I was the one that entered him for the award. He didn’t play any part in it. We just put in the application for him and asked him to continue from there. And in the end he won. This was so because we believe in him and that he is a star, who should be given his due recognition.

So, if they said Centrespread adopted the character for Etisalat, that would have been better. Although Hafeez went to the University of Ife and I went to the University of Ibadan, our ways crossed and we became friends. That was years back and up till today we still relate as friends.

56

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

Arts/Reviews

‘Kakadu is a musical “A metaphor for Nigeria’

S it is in the 400-metre race, the Christian is expected to keep a steady growth of his love for God. Competitors keep increasing their speed until the last quarter of the race when they run their fastest. There are factors that can encourage such steady growth. One of these is the realisation that our zeal alone cannot sustain our love for God.” (page 6).

With this statement, Bunmi Adedeji set out to encourage followers of Christ to always be ready to be His true apostles. For every Christian, the race to make the kingdom is like a battle.

It is an every day struggle where there should be no room to soft pedal. No winner ever loses hope or steam in the process of attaining the height he has set out to accomplish. Quitters, as it is usually said, never win.

Entitled The Winners, the book is an embodiment of the right ideals to be followed to make a good life both here on earth and in the kingdom to come. This is why Christ usually frowns at those who often allow apathy to dog their ways. The race to make heaven is not for those who cannot be strong enough to encourage themselves thereby making it possible for others to follow in their footsteps.

You do not need to allow sentiments or obstacles on the way to push you aside.

•A scene in Kakadu

With the symbolism of Kakadu, Uche Nwokedi (SAN) has been able to weave the story of the glorious days of the country into a musical theatre that is the rave of the moment. Edozie Udeze encountered him on the reasons for the play and the issues that informed the concept

T

HE story is a metaphor of sort, depicting the glorious days of Nigeria, using Lagos as a mirror. But more than that, Kakadu – The Musical, is hyperbolic in a refreshing dramatic sense. In a way that dazzled thespians at the Muson Centre, Lagos, last week, the show displayed Lagos in a time of infinite possibilities, beauties and unpolluted landscapes.

Written by Uche Nwokedi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), the story sets out to represent major landmarks in Lagos, and Nigeria as a whole, using salient social issues as the primary focus. In an interview, the playwright, Nwokedi said; “Yes the story is used as a metaphor not only for Lagos, but for Nigeria as a nation. Kakadu speaks about an era in Nigeria when things were good and people loved it.”

For a lawyer-turnedplaywright whose love for what is good cannot be disputed, “from the stories I have been told, in those moments in time, people lived happily as one people. It was the period when people saw one another as brothers and sisters and life was generally good.” And so with the cast and crew of over 60 people, Kakadu has come to represent one of the greatest ambitious theatrical ensemble in the country.

The idea, in the reckoning of Nwokedi, was to “weave a story around songs that I grew up listening to, and at the same time using the songs both as a dialogue in the play, and as milestones for the passage of time. Thus the music became a character on its own and in a sense my alter ego in the story.”

In a profound theatrical

sense, the songs as they came in those moments of peace and glory as from the 1960s became pivotal in the assemblage of the stories embedded in Kakadu. Nwokedi explains further: “Yes, the songs helped me bridge the fact that I do not write music.

And my own experience as a child in the civil war and attending boarding school in Lagos after the war, guided me in making the war the backdrop of the story of Kakadu… Well, a really good student is the one who learns from his experience.”

And that, indeed, was what propelled him to dissect the events of the moment and package them into a wonderful stage performance that thrilled theatre audience to no end last week.

Kakadu is best seen on stage where both the artistes and the era they represented appealed to the conscience of the people. With a broad based musical band playing different highlife tunes to ginger the people on, the stage was indeed electrifying to portray the moods of the people. It was so engrossing to see different fashions of the time, the type of people who made waves and what they stood for. It was such a moment of absolute glory, joy and happiness.

A night club in the 1960s, Kakadu now defunct, was for Nigerians a place to unwind, a place to socialise and be at peace with one another.

There was no fear in the air then. People were wont to stroll into the night to have fun, to dance and discuss burning issues of the moment. Although Lagos has since remained more than a melting point for all Nigerians, Nwokedi regrets that Nigeria has not been able to replicate more cities to help

This book of life

By Edozie Udeze

This is so because God is the God of positivism. Those who follow Him should be optimistic all day long, no matter the circumstances.

But in all these, we should not stay away from God – our closeness to Him in terms of prayers, in terms of supplications, in terms of humility and more, help us to be strong in being winners.

In chapter one, the author noted that we need to be steadfast, always unmovable, allowing our lives to grow continuously as we do God’s work first. Here too, patience is the key word for those who want to start the race and win it with abundance of His glory and blessing.

In chapter two, he makes it clear that there is no crown without a cross. As a follower of Christ, you are bound to encounter suffering and can even face imprisonment. After all, those who watered the seed of Christianity suffered thus, but were able to carry on because of their reliance on the powers of the Holy Spirit.

A good Christian therefore needs to see beyond worldly goods and compare the wealth he has in Christ Jesus. But is this easy to do?

That is the question and the author has plenty of Biblical questions to encourage readers to be doers and not necessarily the sayers of work of God. Even in the face of mounting trials and provocations, a Christian should be faithful, strong, and unmovable, up to the point of death. “For in all these, God is full of love towards us and wants us to know that we can be better managers of the future.” (page 36). God indeed does not live in the past, but always in the present. Therefore His desire is to constantly uphold us and keep us attuned to His desires for us. In other words, He doesn’t expect us to give up no matter the difficulty on the way. Like Saint Paul, we need to fight a good fight for the sake of Christ.

Apart from few printing errors, the book is well laid out to encourage the apostles of Christ to do more to win souls and for those who are in the vanguard of ‘conquests’ to conquer more for the sake of the last day. In all these, God is always in control of the affairs of man.

‘There’s knowledge in reading’

O

•Nwokedi

decongest Lagos.

He said: “Let us be honest with ourselves. If we have another city that has as much promises and opportunities that Lagos has for Nigeria, we will be the best for it. People come to Lagos from all parts of Nigeria because of problems and social issues. But beyond that, it tells us to do things right so that the nation will grow and give hope to the people.

Right now, security is a big problem in the country. Policemen are being kidnapped; people are being killed everyday. Ten years ago, if you told me this was possible, I would have said no. That is the major problem and I will throw the question back to everybody – is Nigeria getting better?”

With the music of such quintessential Nigerian icons like Fela, Victor Olaiya, Victor Uwaifo, Rex Lawson, Celestine Ukwu, Bobby Benson and so on, Nwokedi’s Kakadu constituted a broader narrative into time. Some of the musical tunes even became more elegiac depicting the emotive issues they portended.

“Highlife was the main music then in the 1960s and they represent what we are today,” Nwokedi concluded.

N Soul Refreshers Over the years, I’ve realised the importance of using jokes and riddles to get the attention of my audience, particularly the youth. At a forum in London, I talked about the benefits of rumour and I cracked four jokes. That was why I decided to add humour and riddles to this poetry. And I also added smart questions, because I used to be a Bible teacher and youth worker. That was how the book ‘Soul Refreshers’ came about.

The story behind Pleasant Dreams The idea behind it started far back in 2007 when I came to Nigeria from the U.K. I was working then with Chemical and Allied Products Plc in Ikeja and something happened, which compelled me to leave the job. So, I thought of what to do next. With so much free time I had, I decided to put together a new book which I first titled ‘Sweet Dreams.’

So, I merged some things that happened about 10, 20 years ago. I was on this for months, which rolled into years but I never gave up.

Later, I realised ‘Sweet Dreams’ is a common cliché and I wanted to be different.

That was why I changed the title to ‘Pleasant Dreams.’ But then over the years, I said I don’t want to be too traditional, just following the regular pattern. I wanted to be a little bit eccentric, the book is all about some personal pleasant dreams and experiences just to make people know that it’s not only nightmare that occur when we sleep; that it’s not only nightmare they should pay attention to; that sometimes, we have dreams that are very crucial, but we don’t take note of them.

Personal experiences and

A young author, Femi Onasanya, says in this interaction with Remi Adelowo that the more you read, the more you know. This forms the focus of his two new books, Soul Refreshers and Pleasant Dreams

my books These two new books are all about my journey through life. Although when I’m writing, I try as much as possible to be impersonal.

For instance, if you go through my first book, ‘One Missing Ingredient,’ you’ll find out that it’s very impersonal; it’s not about my personal experience. It’s more academic or better still personal development or inspiration. But for the new books, they are about my personal experiences.

Objectives for writing books I’ve always had the desire to be a writer since I was a teenager, but there was nobody to push me. Most times, I’ll start writing a book and would not complete it and at times. I would finish a book, but it would not get published. There were quite a number of books I wrote that

were turned down by publishers. But two years ago, I was encouraged by some people to forge ahead. My books is basically to motivate people; the young and the old, on the importance of persistence in anything one does.

Persistence is one major key to success in life.

Thoughts on poor reading culture in Nigeria When we say people don’t read in Nigeria, we may be right and wrong at the same time. This is because first, most of the people who motivated me to write are Nigerians. One of them is not based in Italy. He studied at the then University of Ife and made a First Class. He was an ardent reader. When he talks, you’ll know he is a man of books.

When I write books, of course I don’t expect that 150 million Nigerians would read it. My book is for anybody who wants to learn. At the early period of my life, I was not an avid reader, but if I could change, then others too can change as well. My philosophy of life is that ‘readers would always be leaders.’

Mentoring is key to success To succeed in life, everyone aspiring to succeed must have a mentor. You can be absolutely brilliant, but you are not free from making mistakes. A person may not be brilliant, but if he or she has a mentor, he or she would be guided properly.

My wish I hope these books would spread wide and change lives. Then my advice to youth is to be persistent.

58

WORSHIP THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

'I dodged God for 27 years' The Presiding Pastor of Kingdom Light Ministries (KLM) Lagos, Pastor Samson Makinwa, spoke with Joseph Eshanokpe on the church's 10th anniversary. Excerpts:

•Makinwa

H

OW far has it been 10 years after?

Having spent a decade in peace, we give glory to God. I must tell you the beginning was rough and tough. Though we started fairly in a big way, there were some problems.

When we started, people were just rushing to us but they later left the way they came.

By the grace of God today, despite our teething problems, we have two services on Sundays. We have branches in Nigeria and abroad. We are about to open a branch in Libe-

ria. We have been able to build a strong workforce and a strong church.

Do you mean there are churches that are not strong?

A lot of churches are not strong. They do not teach righteousness; young ladies are getting pregnant; many adults are committing adultery, etc. But here it is not so. The church is strong morally and spiritually. You know, the church is not made up of the building; it is the people that make up a church.

If that is so, why then

the focus on structures these days among churches?

You are right, the focus is on buildings. Those who do that are not righteous.

They are not doing the right things based on righteous principles. A lot of pastors are leading people to hell.

Christ did not tell us to go and build alone but to raise righteous people. But let me tell you, we built before we started our church. In our church we may not have too many people but we are sure we are going to heaven.

What is your reaction to the over emphasis on prosperity by preachers?

Jesus Christ taught about comfort. He was successful. But today, we give too much time to moneypreaching. I do teach people how to be successful.

But I base my teaching on the Holy Bible. Some pastors have turned their sermons into capitalism - how to acquire money. They are not telling them that they should acquire money through the Holy Spirit the way of the Lord.

How would you assess the impact of Christianity in the nation?

Christianity is strong. It

NEWS

Badejo backs emergency rule

F

ORMER General Overseer of the Foursquare Gospel Church Nigeria, Rev (Dr) Wilson Badejo, has backed the declaration of state of emergency in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno states.

He said the measure will help restore peace in the troubled states and usher in economic prosperity.

He, however, advised that the proposed amnesty deal for members of the Boko Haram sect should be pursued for lasting peace.

Badejo spoke last week ahead of the annual sixth lecture of the Wilson Badejo Foundation (WBF) slated for Tuesday at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos.

He challenged the Federal Government to address mass poverty and unemployment in the land to arrest restiveness and insecurity.

According to him: "Until and unless the symptoms of poverty, namely unemployment, hunger, disease, squalor

By Sunday Oguntola and high crime rate, are addressed, the country will be in for a tough time fighting insecurity for a very long time to come".

He said the foundation has

been bringing succour to many indigent students in higher institutions through scholarship and offer of grants to upcoming business owners.

Badejo informed plans are also on to renovate a primary school in Abatan village around Ajebo, Ogun State,

is pronounced in Nigeria, especially Pentecostalism.

Though there are some vices, it is waxing stronger here compared to any part of the world. I think we are doing well despite the problems - the fake pastors in our midst.

Did you say fake pastors?

Only Christ can deal with them. I don't know if the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) can deal with them. It can talk to them. Even the Holy Bible says there will be false prophets. It didn't say how they would be treated. But we should be able to know them through the discerning of the Holy Spirit. Some pastors will run away from some churches because they can't cope with doctrines or their spirit will not allow them.

How about the PFN? You mean it can't deal with them?

It can't do much. It is just an association which churches join willingly.

There is no position for our leaders in the government.

They can be silenced by the government. They only give advice.

How can churches respond to the Boko Haram which serves 12 villages in the neighbourhood.

All these, he hinted, are to ensure that poverty and lack are tackled headlong in the nation.

The lecture with the theme democracy and the less privileged: Engineering a road map for affirmative change, will be delivered by Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina.

Why kidnapping is thriving, by cleric

C

RAZE for material wealth is a major factor responsible for the spate of kidnappings ravaging the South East and South South geopolitical zones of the country.

The new president of Unity Church of Practical Christianity of Nigeria (UCPCN), Senior Reverend Agbai Agwu, stated this during his investiture at Uzuakoli in Bende Local Government of Abia State.

He said: "Kidnapping is thriving in parts of the country because people are materially- minded. The church is

By Sunny Nwankwo, Aba not helping matters because present day pastors have chosen to be preaching materialism instead of righteousness and salvation."

He said there must be mental reorientation to change the tide, saying military action will not suffice.

According to him: "We have to educate our minds and leave evil, otherwise no amount of deployment of soldiers would solve the problem."

Agwu said the amnesty programme being packaged

for Boko Haram would be an effort in futility unless there was repentance on the part of the sect members.

The best way out of the insurgency, he said, is increased enlightenment to educate members of the sect on the need to live harmoniously with others.

He promised to pursue the capacity- building of existing ministers, teachers, leaders of the church as well as praying together for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to reduce vices in the society.

insurgency?

We can't fight them. But we fight in other waysthrough prayers. We can't fight with guns. That is not our way of doing things.

We are winning in Nigeria. It would have been in flames if not for our prayers. For instance, the Boko Haram people wanted to raze the United Nations building and the Police headquarters.

With prayers, we have conquered. And Christians and Moslems are living in peace. Can you believe it that our neighbours here are Moslems? Our church shares a boundary with their mosque. Yet, we live in peace.

How did you receive your call?

I was called in 1975. I didn't understand it. In 1977, I received the call again. Then in 1999, God called again. Then, I was shuttling between India and China for business. In 2002, when God called again and talked to me, I told Him that my business was doing well; that the church I was attending was doing well, so why should I leave? I asked for more time. God asked me

other questions.

In 2002, in obedience to his command, I started building. I spent millions of naira on the building that I can't recoup. I can say that I have built a good church.

We started the first service with 200 members on February 8, 2003.

So, how has it been 10 years after?

Within the decade, I have been able to lay the foundation of the church.

We are still laying it. It is on this foundation that the church will be built in future. Because where we are going is very far. You need prayers to build a churchthe members and the workers. That is where the problem is. We are still working.

In another decade if we are alive, we would have gone far.

What are your plans in another decade?

The KLM will be 20 years old then. The world would have known about us. We would have some institutions. I can't say we aren't looking for this or that again. If we get them, fine. I am not looking for what will not take me to heaven.

xxx

READ T S U M 50 N NIGERIAAN I CHRIST R S AUTHO Are you a Christian author? Are you bothered about poor exposure at bookshops and limited patronage?

The Nation is offering you an unbeatable opportunity to showcase your books and talk about your passion.

The 2-in-1 project involves an advert supplement backed with a profile story on each participant.

Kindly contact Sunday Oguntola on 08034309265 or shinystarontop@gmail.com for advert details and participation.

You will be glad you did!

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

Worship

59

COLUMNS

Love Fever T

HE following morning, Tosin was taken to her office by her husband, Ladi.

At half past ten, Baba l’egba came into her office, looking worried.

“Baba l’egba, what about my car? Is it ready?”

She asked.

“Madam, I don’t know how it happened but I can’t find the key of the car.

I’ve -” Her face changed as she cut the man off. “You can’t find what?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been looking for it since I got to the workshop this morning. It must have dropped -” “Are you talking about just the car key or the bunch of keys?”

“Yes, the bunch of keys.”

“The bunch?” She asked disbelievingly.

“I think it must have dropped inside the bus that brought me to the workshop this morning.”

“Is there any way you can locate the bus?”

“I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”

Oh God! She muttered under her breath. “What do you want me to do now?”

As she asked the question, she reached out and picked the phone, dialing Joe’s number.

When he picked it, she said, “Joe, can you believe that Baba l’egba has lost the car keys - what did you say? - yes - okay.”

She replaced the receiver and told the mechanic to sit down. “Joe is coming over. What can we do?”

“I wonder if you have the duplicate of the car key at home?” He asked carefully.

“I don’t.”

“I will have to get another one cut.”

“Cut another key? I don’t like the sound of this at all.” Tosin said.

The door opened and Joe came in.

“Baba l’egba, good morning. How did you lose the bunch of keys?” Joe asked, sitting on the chair beside the mechanic.

The man explained

Pastor Taiwo Odubiyi CHRISTIAN ROMANCE SERIES

what happened to him, and Joe asked him more questions.

Finally, Joe turned to Tosin. “Well, he’ll have to get another key fabricated, and the earlier he leaves to do that the better.”

“How long will it take you to do that, and when should I expect my car?”

“You should get it today Madam and I’m very sorry for what happened.”

“It’s okay.” ********** About noon the following day, the telephone on her table shrilled. She picked it.

“Tosin here. How may I help you?”

“May I have the pleasure of your company this afternoon?”

She suspected it might be Joe but to confirm she asked, “Who is this?”

“Joe. I thought you would recognise my voice by now. I would know yours even in my sleep.

And you have such an attractive voice, I must say.

Very cool. How are you?”

“Oh I’m fine.” She drawled.

“I was wondering if I could take you to eat Ikokore this afternoon. I promised you and you accepted.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Okay, you didn’t but…”

“I don’t know. I was thinking …”

“Ple-e-e-ase.”

She shouldn’t be unfriendly when he was only trying to be nice, she thought. “Okay.” She accepted. “What time?”

“I’ll be in your office around half past twelve.”

“Alright, I’ll expect you.”

Joe came in precisely at the time and they left together in his car.

They soon reached the restaurant and Joe had to wait for a car to pull out

before he could park. The place was bustling with activity as people went in and out. Some of the waiters greeted Joe by name and he waved at them in greeting as he and Tosin entered. They were led to a table close to a huge window.

The manager came over and greeted Joe familiarly. Then he turned to Tosin and greeted her.

“She’s here to eat Ikokore. I told her you cook it best.” Joe stated.

The dark short man laughed. “You’re right.”

He summoned one of the waiters to come over.

“Attend to them, please.”

The man in a white shirt over a pair of red trousers took their orders and left.

“So, how are you Tosin?” Joe asked.

He had keen eyes which many ladies would find irresistible, and Tosin found those eyes were now looking at her, intently.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

The waiter came back with their drinks and they began sipping.

“When did you join the bank?” Joe continued to question her.

The waiter soon returned and served the meal which Tosin found delicious, and she felt happy she accepted Joe’s invitation.

As they ate, they talked quietly of things and places, with Joe smiling, and giving her glances which she liked. His eyes carried a message of admiration which she got and to her dismay, liked.

God, what’s happening to me? I like another man’s attention! Tosin’s heart screamed.

They eventually finished eating and Joe checked his watch. “I think we should go. It’s been fun being with you. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your company. I’ll want us to repeat it one of these days.

What do you say?”

“Well, maybe when I’m not very busy.”

Joe paid the bill and they left the restaurant, walking up to the parked car. He opened the passenger door and Tosin entered.

To be continued.

For this novel and other books by the same author, Contact: 08023000773, 08058040949

Living Faith

By Dr. David Oyedepo

Fulfilling your glorious destiny (3)

W

ELCOME to your regular column.

Last week, I showed you how glorious our destiny is, how to access divine vision and two Biblical proofs of vision.

This week, I will be teaching on what makes divine plan glorious and four things that empower the fulfilment of vision.

What makes divine plan glorious: Let me show you some of the things that make divine plan glorious.

•Every divine plan is entitled to divine performance: The Word of God says: Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it (1 Thessalonians 5:24). Every divine plan enjoys divine performance. So, divine performance is always a marvel (Psalm 118:23).

Every time you are on key with divine plan, you enjoy divine performance. Some people may think that you are performing; no, you are simply obeying.

•Divine plan is entitled to divine presence: Jesus said: And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him (John 8:29). Every divine assignment or plan enjoys divine presence and divine presence will always make a supernatural difference (Psalm 114:1-7).

•Divine plan is delivered on a spiritual platform: Just as you have your divine assignment or what I call your natural destiny, you also have a spiritual destiny. This is very important, because the outcome of your natural destiny is a function of your alignment with your spiritual destiny.

Jeremiah 3:15 says: And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. That means,

under your God-ordained pastor, you are ordained to flourish and increase in the land. When you locate your God-ordained pastor, you locate your God-ordained spiritual platform. Then your assignment on earth will begin to flourish.

So, it's not enough to connect with your social destiny, you need to connect very importantly with your spiritual destiny. A disconnection from your spiritual destiny will lead to frustration in the pursuit of your social destiny. Your social destiny has to do with your assignment on earth, while spiritual destiny provides a covering that makes it work.

Your ear will hear a word through your God-ordained teachers saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it" (Isaiah 30:20-21).

For you to take delivery of the fulfilment of your vision, as unveiled by God, four things come to play. I will show you the four things that empower the fulfilment of vision: •Believe it: Every vision delivers on faith. You cannot accomplish divine plan in the energy of the flesh (Habakkuk 2:1-4). It is only the hand of God that can deliver the plan of God, and the hand of God is only revealed by faith.

God's Word says: Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?...(Isaiah 53:1-2).

So, believe it, if you must see it fulfilled.

Your faith must be built to provoke the delivery of divine vision. You are only empowered to become what you believe. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God… (John 1:12).

•Run with it: You don't sleep with vision, you run

with it. Habakkuk 2:2-3 says: And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it... Though it looks like it's being delayed in some instances, you wait, for it shall surely come to pass as you keep running with it. So, you need the grace to keep running. It's not run and then watch; it's watch and run, until it delivers.

You have to run, or it runs off you. Vision places a running demand on your life; if you don't run with it, you lose it. You have to keep running to keep winning (1 Corin-thians 9:24-26).

•Be prompt in your response to the vision: God says it, then you dive into it.

Your promptness of timeliness is of great importance.

It is not just responding. For instance, Paul said: Immediately, I arose and conferred not with flesh and blood (Galatians 1:16). The word, 'immediately' is vital to accomplishing a vision.

Here this: On May 1st and 2nd, 1981 when God delivered the 18-hour mandate of liberation to me, action commenced. On May 8, the first forum, where the vision would be shared with like-minded believers, young people, etc, was established. By May 24, the platform to prove the validity of the vision was established through a weekly Friday fellowship called, Faith Liberation Hour, and a monthly weekend seminars. Prompt response to vision is important.

•Give it all it takes: If you want to make the most of any divine plan, give it all it takes. God's Word says: Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall (2 Peter 1:10). A vision not programmed is a vision shattered; a programme not pursued is a purpose lost. According to Martin Luther King Junior, "If you cannot fly, run. If you cannot run, walk. If you cannot walk, crawl. If you cannot crawl, by all means keep moving."

So, give the vision all it takes to be fulfilled.

I know this teaching has blessed you. Write and share your testimony with us through: Faith Tabernacle, Canaan Land, Ota, P.M.B. 21688, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria; or call 7747546-8; or E-mail: feedback@lfcww.org

Body seeks greater Nigeria-Israeli ties

N

IGERIA stands to gain so much from Israel in the area of religion, agriculture and tourism.

This was the consensus last week at the launch of Nigeria-Israeli Association in Lagos.

The event attracted professionals and clergymen who emphasised the need for Nigeria to maintain cordial relationships with Israel for mutual benefits.

The guest speaker, Prof

By Sunday Oguntola

Dayo Alao, said Israel has become a shining example in tourism and agricultural revolution, stating that it has succeeded in feeding its citizens and exports food despite little arable lands.

The CEO of Babcock Consulting, Babcock University, Ilishan Remo, Ogun State, said: "the State of Israel without sentiment has shown to the world their capability in the area of

mechanised farming development.

"I support the idea of mutual cooperation in these areas because one day the oil well will cease to flow and what would Nigerians fall on?"

The national president of the association, Archbishop Magnus Atilade, disclosed one of the aims of the body is the creation, promotion and sustenance of healthy relationship based on mutual respect between Nigeria and Israel.

He said the body also seeks the exchange of ideas and co-operation in economic, culture, education and scientific fields.

He expressed optimism that with the co-operation of well-meaning Nigerians and, the aims of the association will yield positive fruits for the benefits of Nigerians and Nigeria.

Mrs. Beatrice Ubeku and Rev. (Mrs.) Priscilla Otuya were honoured as patrons of the association.

•L-R: Chief (Mrs) Betty Ubeku, Chief Emmanuel Adisa, Atilade, Prof. Dayo Alao, Cyprian Agbasua, Rev. (Mrs) Priscilla Onya, West Anglican Women Association (WAWA Int.) President.

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THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

INSIGHT

• Niger Delta millitants in their heyday

T

HE origin of militia groups across the country is widely traced to the sense of perceived injustice and lack of equal opportunities which some sections of the country feel have been perpetrated against them. For instance, militia organisations became pronounced in the 1990s, especially after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election.

Described as a child of circumstance, the Oodua Peoples' Congress (OPC) was formed, according to its founders, to address the perceived injustice meted out to the Yoruba nation following the annulment of the election and the subsequent detention of the presumed winner Chief Moshood Abiola (widely known as MKO). Although the election was annulled by Gen Ibrahim Babangida who ruled the country with the title of president, Abiola was arrested and detained by the military regime headed by the late General Sani Abacha. He had toppled the Interim National Government (ING) left behind by Babangida and headed

by Chief Ernest Shonekan.

At the early period of its existence, the modus operandi of OPC was arguably decent and noble. Taking advantage of the concentration of major media organs in the South West, its leaders engaged other stakeholders in important national discourse that enjoyed massive coverage.

Issues bordering on the restructuring of the country along the principles of true federalism, revenue allocation formula, to mention but a few, soon assumed the front burner.

The pedigree of most of the brains behind OPC was also not in doubt. For instance, its National President, Fredrick Fasheun, was a medical doctor and a former presidential aspirant under the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the aborted Third Republic.

Like most good things in Nigeria that started well but later faltered principally on the altar of huge egos, the organisation

Militia nation Against the backdrop of the declaration of state of emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states last week due to unabated mayhem unleashed by the Islamist sect, Boko Haram, concern over the proliferation of militia groups in the country in the last two decades has continued to rise, Remi Adelowo and Sunday Oguntola examine the growing menace.

began to derail from its set objectives.

The resultant effect was the polarisation of the group into a militant arm headed by Otunba Gani Adams and the non-violent faction presided over by Fasheun.

Before long, the widespread support enjoyed by the organisation from many Yoruba turned to resentment, as the OPC began to assume the unenviable image of a thorn in the flesh.

From being an organisation with a clearly defined ideology, it turned to a group allegedly used by people to settle personal scores with real and perceived enemies.

Alarmed by the activities of the group, former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, sometime in 2002, ordered a massive crackdown on members of the group. In addition, its two warring leaders-Fasheun and Adams-were detained for about a year at the Kuje Prisons, Abuja.

At the height of its operations, it spread its wings across the South West and was

always ready to 'correct' any perceived injustice against the Yoruba. In fact, it fought many battles and caused so many mayhem in the region while fighting its cause.

However, of recent, save for its occasional intolerable acts, its unbridled actions have become more tempered till date.

The Egbesu Boys The Egbesu Boys, also referred to as the Egbesu Boys of Africa, first emerged in the early 1990s. It began as a religious cultural group of the Ijaw people but subsequently took up arms to challenge perceived injustice caused by the exploitation of oil resources in Ijaw land and the Niger Delta by the Nigerian state and multinational corporations.

A report prepared by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada titled, "Nigeria: Egbesu Boys; Leadership, membership, recruitment practices and treatment by authorities," described the group as the militant wing of the Ijaw Youth

Council (IYC), the umbrella association of civil and youth groups in the Ijaw Nation.

The Egbesu Boys are active across the six South-South states comprising Ondo, Edo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers and Akwa Ibom.

The group's traditional headquarters was located in Amabulou in Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.

Ex-militant leader, Mujaheed AsariDokubo, according to reports, was acclaimed as the leader of the group. He is also the founder of the Ijaw Youth Council and the leader of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF).

Most Egbesu Boys are members of other ethnic militias drawn from already existing groups in the Niger-Delta region.

Membership is voluntary, and members are, "in theory," free to "disengage" from the group as they wish.

There is no specific age for joining; however, most members first join the militia group at the age of sixteen. A number of youths initially joined as informants and are later initiated into the group.

During militant operations, members of the group generally carry guns and ammunition and wear red or white headbands. Members also wear leaves on their heads or carry them in their pockets or under their hats to protect them in battle.

This is believed to the their charm against any harm.

The rule of militia groups From OPC to Egbesu, different militia groups have sprung up in every part of the country, constituting themselves as sovereign authorities within the state.

Continued on page 61

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013 Continued from page 60

At the last count, about ten of such militant groups are very active. They include Boko Haram (Western education is sin), an Islamic sect which has, in the last two years, unleashed unprecedented violence in some states in the North West and North East regions of the country, with over 5,000 people reportedly killed in the process.

Another northern Islamist sect, Ansaru, with its main operational base in Bauchi State, has taken after the Boko Haram in terms of similarities in their mode of operations.

A few months ago, the group claimed responsibility for the abduction of seven construction workers in Bauchi, threatening to kill them if certain demands were not met by the authorities.

The South East is not left out in the share of its militia organisations. Within the region, two militant groups-The Bakassi Boys and The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB)-hold sway.

While the former was allegedly set up by a former governor of Anambra State to tackle security challenges in the state, particularly incidences of kidnapping and armed robbery, the latter was specifically established to agitate for the secession of the South East from the country.

A failure of the state Not a few Nigerians, in high and low places, have described the worsening security situation in the country due to the activities of militant groups, as a potent danger to its continued unity and existence.

Recently, the Osun State Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, expressed fear that the nation is teetering on the brink. The governor, who raised the alarm at a dinner organised in honour of the President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, Mr. Femi Adesina, and other executive members of the association, stated that unless the Federal Government urgently takes some concrete steps, the nation might collapse.

The basis for such palpable fear, Aregbesola said, hinged on the protracted unrest in virtually all the regions of the country. For the governor, militant groups have thrived due to the perceived deep seated injustice suffered by all sections of the country.

He said: "Crises manifest in different ways but the real causes of the nation's abnormalities have not been addressed. It is not enough to tag the insurgency in the South as militancy or youth unrest and the one up North as religious crisis or Islamic fundamentalism, rather the utmost thing needed is solution to all these unrests."

Explaining why Boko Haram sect killed people indiscriminately in the North-East, Aregbesola said the area had suffered great neglect, which consequently led to social dislocation.

According to him:"The North-East had been so much neglected for several years.

The region has the lowest power supply in the last 50 years. The region does not have power supply for up to 100 hours in a month."

In a telephone chat, renowned constitutional lawyer, Professor Itse Sagay, said while the different militia groups were founded for varied reasons ranging from religious and political factors, the underlying reason may not be unconnected with the lack of provision of social justice to the vast majority of Nigerians.

He pointed out: "There is a deep dissatisfaction with the prevailing political economy, which has become entrenched over the years."

Reiterating his call for the convocation of a national conference to address this perceived injustice, Sagay noted that the over-centralisation of the levers of power in the country has done more harm than good for the people.

He explained: "What we have currently is a suffocating centralism of power. We don't operate a federal state but a unitary state. Our federating units are very weak.

Power must devolve to the other federating units.

"That way, people will look up to the states and local governments for solutions to their problems and not the federal government. We need fiscal federalism and reduce the over bloated powers at the

INSIGHT

61

Armed and dangerous

• Repentants millitants surrendering arms following amnesty in Niger Delta

• Boko Haram leader, Shekau

centre."

Deadly adventures In Nasawara State, the little known Ombatse cult made its first claim to national prominence (infamy?) with the death of over 35 policemen in one operation. The group allegedly waylaid the contingent of a police team sent to arrest its leader in Alakyo village, which lies less than 10 kilometres to the state capital, Lafia.

The policemen were going to raid the shrines operated by the deadly group.

Apparently tipped off, members of the militia group ambushed the operatives in the bush and inflicted them with maximum losses.

Such needless deaths have become recurring decimal whenever the many militia groups in the country strike. They leave in their trails massive death toll and collateral injuries. As President Goodluck Jonathan declared emergency rules in Yobe, Adamawa and Borno states last Tuesday, members of the Boko Haram sect mobilised to attack secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), in Borno State, Rev. Faye Musa.

Musa, who was also the presiding pastor of REME Assembly, Maiduguri, was trailed to his house around the Government Reservation Area (GRA) at about 7.30.p.m and shot dead by two gunmen. Before him, over 5,000 others have been killed by the sect in various attacks that started in 2009.

Last Monday, over 30 people were feared killed in Agatu Local Government area of Benue State after Fulani herdsmen allegedly invaded the venue of a burial ceremony of some of the slain policemen in Nasarawa State who hailed from the council area.

The attack was barely a week after eight villages in the same council were invaded by the herdsmen who left several dead and many injured. In Imo, Kaduna, Adamawa, Oyo and Ogun states, the herdsmen have been killing hundreds over the years on grazing farmlands and sundry issues.

From Egbesu boys, MASSOB, OPC to Ombatse and other ethnic militia groups, the nation has witnessed untold deaths and killings in increasing proportion, especially since the return of democratic rule in 1999. Bottled up ethnic agitations and grievances have suddenly found a route of expression never allowed under military juntas.

All-time low security All these deaths have worsened insecurity across the nation, turning Nigeria to more or less a country at miniwar. In fact, the Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka recently said with the events in the country it could be safe to say it is at war. Security has hit an all-time low as militias easily overrun state forces and violate rule of law. A criminologist, Dr James Alfred, said the development is a disturbing trend capable of consuming the nation.

According to him: "When armed groups free prisoners and orchestrate breaks, then you know anarchy is close by. A country that cannot arrest this trend is heading for the rocks. That is where Nigeria is at the moment and it is a very precipitous state."

Alfred explained that the inability to guarantee lives and property is a clear indication of lawlessness and chaos.

"When people no longer feel safe in any parts of the country, then you wonder if

there is a government in place. It is a dangerous signal really."

He pointed out that all the indices playing out in Nigeria have led to the disintegration of several nations, stating the country may be heading in the same direction. "You look at Syria, Lebanon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Libya and even Iraq and see that Nigeria is where they used to be shortly before they exploded. If nothing is done to address the situation, we may also disintegrate beyond redemption," he stated.

The increasing balkanisation of the nation across ethnic armed groups, experts say, is a clear danger of disintegration that must be arrested. Yet, most of them started as ethnic freedom fighters and agitators for greater federal presence. They rode to public acclaim and acceptance on the strength of their commitment to better delivery of good governance to the grassroots.

A tale of abuses Most ethnic opinion moulders and agitators embraced them as foot soldiers, considering them as comrades in the struggle for better governmental presence in their neighbourhoods. They were adopted more or less as unofficial community police operatives to offer protection. The dismal performances of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) also boosted their wide acceptance.

Unlike state police officials, they are readily accessible and provided visible protection from common 'aggressors'.

With their rise came abuses and bastardisation. Members of the militia groups became intoxicated with power and turned to lords manor. They exploited people and held many to ransom.

In the South East, the Bakassi boys arrested with impunity and engaged in extra-judicial killings. The OPC boys replicated the same orgies in the South West, mesmerising imaginary and perceived enemies. Politicians hijacked the machineries, making the militias pawns in their games. Rather than sticking to regional interests and agitations, they started chasing opposition figures.

Saving Nigeria The militias have also become a veritable source of livelihood for private individuals. The outsourcing of community security has turned ex-militia leaders to overnight billionaires, attracting contracts from even government agencies.

A security expert, Mr. Gabriel Da Silva, said the various militia groups must be disarmed as a matter of urgency to safeguard the nation. "We have overgrown these militia groups and really need to dismantle them to save the nation from disintegration," he began.

"The way things are going, it is easy for a civil war to break out because there are far too many small arms and ammunition in private hands that can harm the nation."

Da Silva believes the promotion of regional armed groups diminishes national interests and runs contrary to Pan-Nigerian agendas. "The sooner we drop our ethnic togas and paraphernalia, the better for all of us. As long as we sustain these structures, we are setting up for a big fall," he explained.

He called on security forces to enforce the outlawing of the various ethnic militias in the country. The security expert also appealed to governors and other political office holders not to fund or promote enforcement groups outside the official police force.

As the militias continue to hold the nation by the jugular, there are apprehensions their activities will become even more dangerous in the runoff to the 2015 general elections.

Observers believe many of them are political creations orchestrated to negotiate for power. Whether or not they are whittled down or dismantled successfully before 2015 will determine the survival of the nation to every extent.

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BUSINESS THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

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‘Public-private partnership drives development’ -- Page 65

Oteh still in the eye of storm T

HE faceoff between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Upper and Lower legislative chambers over the latter’s insistence that the DirectorGeneral of the Commission, Ms. Arunma Oteh, must be sacked, still lingers, even as the presidency has maintained a dignified silence on the matter.

The Nation can authoritatively report that the fate of the embattled DG hangs in the balance as the presidency is yet to reach a truce with the lawmakers.

Presidency sources who spoke with The Nation said the Federal Government is not willing to accede to the request by the National Assembly to get Oteh out of the way.

Confirming this development, Dr. Doyin Okupe, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, in a chat with The Nation over the weekend, said the presidency has resolved “to maintain a no comment stance on the matter.”

At the Ministry of Finance, all attempts to get the official position were futile as nobody was willing to speak on the matter.

However, an official in the ministry who asked not to be named disclosed that the presidency would not like to be blackmailed by the National Assembly into doing its bidding.

According to the official, “the presidency capitulated to the pressures of the Senate when the Upper chamber demanded that the former Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Ms. Bola Onagoruwa, be sacked by the President.”

Not wanting to be pushed around by the legislators, the official said the President “may have adopted a quiet and non-open confrontation with the legislators.”

Reliable sources at the Commission told The Nation that “Arunma Oteh will not resign.”

According to one of the sources,

•SEC/National Assembly settlement deadlock •Zero allocation affecting staff salaries, paralyses other activities •SEC now survives on prayers - Ndanusa

By Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf and Nduka Chiejina

who would be named, “She will not resign; she can only resign based on principles and conviction not on the basis of parliamentary rascality that is driven by greed.”

Attempts to get Ms Oteh to speak to the issue of the faceoff between her and the members of the House of Representatives did not yield any result as she has been directed by the presidency to remain silent on the matter.

However, the decision of the House of Representatives to withhold budgetary allocation to the commission, the source said, is serious threat “to the oversight and regulatory functions of SEC along with its market development programmes and initiatives,” all these the source said are funded by the budget and “this House of Representatives action is threatening these activities, funding is the life of the commission.”

According to the source, “there is knowledge gap which introduces challenges in the market place thus imperiling investments. Investor education has also been affected and as we do not undertake investor education financial inclusion in Nigeria is already in peril.”

The commission, the source added, is being run “on the basis of near paralysis and foreboding of doomsday, the overall gamut of expenditure is suffering, no revenue earned, no cost expended, we have been barred by the apex regulator of the Nigerian society. We cannot

•Oteh

even afford the bare necessities we cannot move or lift a finger.”

Another twist as being added to the SEC crisis, with the chairman of the board of the Commission (SEC), Dr Suleiman Ndanusa, saying the commission has been surviving on prayers in the last four months after the National Assembly refused to appropriate money to it in the 2013 budget.

At the inauguration of the Administrative Proceedings Committee (APC), in Abuja on Wednesday,

•From left: Executive Director, Corporate Banking Group, First Bank of Nigeria Plc; Mr. Kehinde Lawanson, Chairman Barbedos Oil & Gas; Mr. Kashim Shettima and Head, Origination & Client Coverage FBN Capital; Mr. Sanmi Famujide at the just concluded Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston Texas, USA, recently

Ndanusa said: “The capital market is a vital organ of the economy. It is imperative to have a well funded SEC to ensure transparency and accountability. Join us in prayers so that the matter can be resolved sooner than later.”

Another source at the SEC headquarters in Abuja told The Nation that “zero allocation to SEC is a most unpatriotic recourse by people whose interest is at variance with the national interest with intent to paralyse the reforms efforts that have engendered significant confidence in the Nigerian capital market.”

It was further disclosed that “the all share index by 2010 when she assumed office hovered around N5trillion between then and now it has jumped by 65 per cent in excess of N10trillion.”

Trouble between the SEC and the House of Representatives started on Thursday 15th March, 2012, when Oteh accused the Chairman, House Committee on Capital Market and other Institutions, Mr. Herman Hembe, of corruption.

She also alleged that 24 hours before the scheduled public hearing on the collapse of the capital market started that Hembe had demanded N5million from her.

Oteh had also alleged that the committee had demanded another N39million from the SEC to fund the hearing.

She claimed to have turned down both requests because she felt that the requests were inappropriate. She announced to the whole world at the public hearing that “in October last year, Hembe had collected money and a first class ticket from SEC on the excuse of travelling to the Dominican Republic to attend a conference on capital market.”

The committee said it had discovered that Oteh had spent N30million on hotel accommodation in eight months, following her appointment in January 2010.

The committee further raised the issue of the N66.1million the SEC approved to rent an official apartment for Oteh in Maitama. The approval, the committee alleged was to cover two years’ rent, this is after she had spent N30million on hotel accommodation in eight months.

The committee observed that the approval was in breach of the monetisation policy of the Federal Government.

The committee also discovered that she engaged two members of staff of Access Bank to work as special advisers in SEC. The two Access Bank staff were reportedly paid allowances equivalent to those of a director in the Federal Civil Service.

The two officers were also said to have drawn their salaries from Access Bank as at the time of the public hearing.

Reacting to Oteh’s outburst which came as shock to the legislators, Hembe described the allegations as “deliberately made to derail the objective of the public hearing.”

Oteh, however, had the final word which cut the legislators deepest when she said that “this sitting has become a Kangaroo court. Not even in Idi Amin’s Uganda did we have this type of hearing.”

Before proceeding on the 2013 Easter break, the angry legislators had prevailed on President Goodluck Jonathan not to fund the SEC from extra budgetary provisions, threatening dire consequences for the president should he flout the order.

Briefs 350,000 companies not rendering tax returns – FG

T

HE Federal Government has decried the practice of tax evasion by many companies operating in the country and that in the last few years; about 350,000 companies have not filed tax returns. Tax returns are forms used to record income taxes with the Federal Inland Revenue Service. They are used to calculate the tax liability of a company and must be filed every year for individuals and businesses that receive income during the year.

The Minister of State for Finance, Dr. Yerima Ngama, gave the figure in an address delivered at the opening ceremony of the African Tax Forum in Abuja.

The forum with theme ‘Tax coordination in Africa,’ was convened to enable tax authorities on the continent to brainstorm on how to use taxation as a pivot for national development.

Ngama lamented the low tax to Gross Domestic Product ratio in the country, adding that the current rate of about seven per cent showed that most Nigerians were not paying taxes.

He said, “Five years ago, 54 per cent of the business that take place in this country was informal, but today, that has been reduced to 46 per cent. More people are organising their businesses better and registering them, and more importantly, adopting well known accounting principles.

“If you look at Ghana, the level of formality and organisation of business is better than Nigeria’s.

Today, the tax collected in Ghana is about 21 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product.

“In fact, in most African countries, tax collection is about 10 per cent of GDP, but in Nigeria, the total tax collected is just seven per cent of GDP. That shows that so many people and companies are not rendering tax returns.

“At the last count, about 350,000 companies have not rendered tax returns in the country. So, we need to strategise, we need to research and find out what can be done to improve tax rendition and tax collection, and what can be done to encourage accounting for activities.”

Accion holds AGM tomorrow

A

CCION Microfinance Bank is set to host its 7th Annual General Meeting tomorrow at Protea Hotel, Ikeja.

The AGM, according to the organisers, will be an opportunity for the bank’s board to Microfinance Bank to present to its annual report and financials for 2013.

The bank, which has been in existence for over five years, has a clientele base of over 80,000.

The bank which has 18 branches has successfully put over N12bn into the hands of micro entrepreneurs, who are improving their businesses and personal lives.

BUSINESS

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

‘Public-private partnership drives development’ H

OW and why was the partnership with Save the Children

forged?

The partnership is something that has been worked together over the last 15 months. It is something which is been inspired by the opportunity to really try and generate different types of partnerships, bringing together scientific research skills from the private sector, pharmaceutical companies alongside the underground expertise working with Save the Children, to tackle child illness and mortality and general healthcare challenges.

A partnership of this scale gives us an opportunity to do something amazing – to save the lives of one million children and to transform the lives of millions more. At GSK we are motivated by developing innovative life-saving medicines and getting them to the people that need them. By joining forces with Save the Children, we can amplify these efforts to create a new momentum for change and stop children dying from preventable diseases. I hope this partnership inspires GSK employees and sets a new standard for how companies and NGOs can work together towards a shared goal.

How much is GSK committing into the partnership?

We are looking to raise £15million which we will transfer to Save the Children over the course of the partnership, while we will encourage our 100,400 employees to raise £1million in a year, which we will double. Additional contributions will be made through specific research and development programmes.

How will the £15million grow the business?

We have over the years been very fortunate with our shareholders. I think that’s because people understand that we’re a global pharmacy company with the ability, strengths and talents, not just for our shareholders within the rich countries but wherever they are. Our focus at GSK is very much in two strands: innovation and access. And we believe that we can guarantee very sustainable return for our shareholders.

At the same time, we’re very innovative towards strengthening of the developing world, especially in all healthcare arenas, and that has been something that the shareholders welcome. At GSK, we have in the last five years adopted a business model that is more committed to granting access to healthcare, and bring together all business models, develop new products, and make them available to people who need them, where we see potential opportunity to do that. Our goal is long-term and multi-dimensional. It is a collaborative working structure. We have already begun a focus inside the organisation and we are much more interested in impact and results.

Given the high level of

Sir Andrew Witty, Chief Executive Officer, GSK, at a teleconference in London recently, announced a five-year strategic partnership with Justin Forsyth-led Save the Children, a non-profit, non-governmental organisation. Witty declared that his company plans to raise at least £15million as well as encourage its global workforce to help raise awareness through volunteering and fundraising, to save the lives of a million children in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the globe.

Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf was part of the interactive forum

•Witty

INTERVIEW child mortality in Nigeria, which is 90, 000 death annually, what does the country stand to gain from the partnership?

The partnership will initially run two flagship programmes in Sub Saharan Africa – Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya and replicate programmes in other countries in Asia and Latin America.

We will scale-up as the years roll by. Save the Children is currently working in 120 countries including Nigeria.

In Nigeria, Save the Children is helping to improve health systems in northern Nigeria to delivery maternal, newborn, and child health services. It is helping 4,320 children through support for protection and peace committees as well as getting 12,400 children back to school and providing them with clean water.

It has set up and continues to support child protection and peace committees (CPPCs) in 36 communities, benefiting 4,320 children. The CPPCs target children whose lives are affected by HIV and AIDS, exploitation, extreme poverty, family violence and neglect, and discrimination. They liaise with local government agencies and others to improve basic services, and pro-

vide support for the most vulnerable children and families.

Is there a timeline for the partnership?

It is a long-term partnership, at least for initial five years.

What benefits, if any, will this partnership serve ultimately?

We are working together to accelerate the availability of two children’s medicines and establishing a joint R&D board to tackle causes of newborn and infant death. Amongst the key initiatives are the transformation of an antiseptic used in mouthwash into a lifesaving product for new-borns and the roll-out of a powderform of an antibiotic in childfriendly doses to help fight pneumonia - one of the main killers of children under five.

For the first time, Save the Children will be involved in helping GSK to research and develop medicines for children, with a seat on a new paediatric R&D board to accelerate progress on innovative life-saving interventions for under- fives, and to identify ways to ensure the widest possible access in the developing world. GSK will be able to leverage Save the Children’s child health expertise and on-theground experience to reach children in the most remote and marginalised communities with basic healthcare.

The GSK-Save the Children partnership will also focus on widening vaccine cov-

erage to the poorest children, increasing investment in health workers, as well as developing a low-cost nutritional product to help combat child malnutrition.

While good progress has been made in recent years, almost seven million children died in 2011 through lack of access to basic healthcare, vaccines or nutritious food.

Through these and other initiatives, the partnership aims to help save the lives of one million children in the next five years.

Specifically, we are reformulating the antiseptic chlorhexidine – found in GSK’s Corsodyl mouth-wash – for cleansing the umbilical cord stump of new-borns to prevent serious infection, a major cause of newborn death in poor countries. Studies from South Asia suggest this simple intervention could prevent up to 1 in 6 new-born deaths in low resource settings.

Also, we are seeking the accelerated registration and roll-out of a child-friendly antibiotic, used to treat pneumonia – which currently kills 1.4 million under-fives, in countries with a high-incidence of the illness. This will be developed in dose packs suitable for small babies and young infants. GSK will also work with Save the Children to explore the reformulation of an alternative child-friendly version in places where access to water and milk is not easy.

Besides, we hope to widen vaccination coverage to the hardest to reach communities: for example, through greater use of mobile technology solutions, sending SMS messages to remind parents to take up vaccination services and providing health workers and health facilities with smartphones to allow them to record and schedule vaccinations.

We are investing in healthcare workers in the poorest communities, building on an existing GSK-Save the Children collaboration to help address the estimated shortfall of at least 3.5 million trained healthcare workers, who can deliver vaccines and essential medicines to babies and young children, provide health advice and treat malnutrition.

Developing a blueprint for how businesses can deliver better social outcomes by engaging with health and development issues and pursuing joint advocacy efforts to ensure a focus on children’s health and wellbeing are maintained in global health policy discussions.

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Beyond Talent

By Adetayo Okusanya Email: adetayookusanya@hotmail.com

A good day to die

L

EADERSHIP is hard. It is not a walk in the park; not if you want to get it right. Early in my career I looked forward to being given the opportunity to lead a team. It was another rung to climb on the career ladder; another notch on my career belt; another trophy to decorate my resume. I was actually naïve and egotistical enough to believe that I would be a natural leader. After all, I was a bright student in school and an outstanding performer at work so it was easy to extrapolate that I would also be an outstanding leader.

Or so I thought!

Alas! Leadership requires a lot more than cognitive and technical abilities. Human beings have feelings, ambition and a free will. They have attitudes, expectations, personal beliefs, preferences, strengths, weaknesses, biases and blind spots. Guess what… they don’t leave them at home. Scarcely will you find a readymade, fully baked and perfect individual. At best, human beings come with potential, like diamonds in the rough needing some cutting and polishing before they shine. It is the leader’s job to help himself and others sift through all that baggage to focus energy on those things that drive success, while mitigating the risk of those that lead to failure.

Leadership, therefore, is responsibility. The essence of leadership is to get a group of individuals to buy into a collective vision, and willingly work in a complementary and interdependent manner to achieve results that they could not have achieved working independently. Leadership thought has changed dramatically from the early Great Man and Trait Theories, that suggest that leaders are born not made. Research on the great leaders in world history has shown that, though similar in some ways, these leaders have each succeeded leveraging different attributes.

Consequently, it is impossible to come up with a universal list of effective leadership traits.

Later people began to notice that effective leadership was not so much about inherent traits, but behavior. Successful leaders behave in certain ways, while unsuccessful leaders behave in other ways. This school of leadership thought believed that leaders are made not born, and effective leadership can be regarded as patterns of behaviors or styles that can be learned. This view was taken further by another school of leadership thought which proposed that there is no “One Size Fits All” leadership style. Leaders choose the best course of action based on situational variables, and must vary their

leadership style to suit the situation and person.

Today, the theory fast gaining popularity is the Transformational Theory, which proposes that the leader’s role is to transform organizational and individual performance by motivating and inspiring his constituents to see the importance and higher good of their contributions to the collective goal. By signing up to be an entrepreneur and leader of a business with a vision that goes beyond being a “mom and pop” shop, I have chosen to play the transformational leadership game. This means that I have chosen to be responsible and accountable for the success of people who choose to work for and with me. If leadership competence is genetic, I don’t have those genes. So, like many other people who find themselves thrust into leadership positions, I have to saddle up for the long ride on my journey to destination “Effective Leadership”.

The journey, quite frankly, will not be easy or comfortable. It will stretch me and require me to do things that don’t come naturally to me. I know the leader I want to be and I have yet to become that leader, so I find that I die every day as part of the process of my becoming the best leadership expression that I can be. I often quellmy first and most primal reaction to situations and people, and take time to reflect on the best action that will get me closer to the kind of leader I choose to be. If I had my way, I would only be responsible for my own work, but big dreams require big sacrifice, and to achieve my dream I must enlist the support of others, hence effective leadership is a mission critical competence that I must master.

I encourage you this week to think about your leadership, whether of self or others. Are you constantly reinventing yourself as a leader? Are you flexible enough to adapt your leadership approach to fit the situation or person? Do you motivate and inspire others to realize their potential? As leadership thought continues to be refined and re-defined, one thing is glaringly obvious, what made leaders successful yesterday and today will most likely no longer count in the success of leaders tomorrow.

If you are interested in knowing more about your leadership profile, enroll in my “Discovering Leadership Effectiveness” workshop this Tuesday and Wednesday.

Email me for more details.

“Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” John 12:24 Read more of Adetayo’s articles athttp:// readinessedge.wordpress.com/

• Okusanya is CEO of ReadinessEdge

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

66 BUSINESS

Stock market: Consolidating on the gains

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OR many people, the stock market has witnessed moments of mixed blessings. Even though it is a very important part of the nation’s economy, there has been a number of challenges since 2008 and a number of the quoted companies continued to have challenges that dovetailed into 2009, 2010 and year 2011. Just while many were thinking of a way out of the tunnel, some light appeared. And by 2012 the quoted companies were given more stringent conditions that tremendously changed the code for investors.

So does this mean that we are right on track? While some people agree with this, there is another school of thought that believes that it is only cosmetic.

According to an

By Bukola Afolabi

investor, Bosan Omofaye, who has been monitoring the trend for some time, perseverance should be the watchword.

“I think from an analyst’s point of view, there are two things that happened in 2007. The stock market went through a crash following the rest of the world so the Nigerian stock market, the secondary market and the primary market went down. The fact that the stock market is going down does not mean the companies are not doing well because the performance of companies listed on any exchange is contingent on one principal factor of the performance of the domestic economy in which that company is situated.”

Omofaye goes on to

explain: “A company whose share price is going down may actually be increasing its market share.

So you can declare date dividend, but if the general mode of investors is on the down side, then your stock will almost always be on the down side. However you find that Nigeria as the company or an entity or as a souvrenity survived the building melt down because the government was able to put in place in previous years what is called macro economy policy. We had the very huge weapons 22 billion dollars and we have very huge reserves what we call currency reserves. The government in previous years had invested early in agriculture, they have a very serious agricultural intervention by the central banks through the

Guinness Nigeria records N95 bn revenue

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UINNESS Nigeria Plc, has recorded N95billion sales in the nine months ended March 31, 2013.

The results were indicative of a strong portfolio of consumer brands holding their markets whilst gaining significant share growth in a declining overall beer and malt market.

Commenting on the results, Seni Adetu, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Guinness Nigeria Plc, said the strong performance of key brands like Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, Harp Lager and Malta Guinness, and the positive contributions from strategic innovations were major drivers of growth in net sales.

“Key brands continue to leverage their strong equities and connections with consumer passion points

across premium and value segments to drive growth in net sales. This has also translated into significant market share growth for the brands in our portfolio as we extend our footprint in the market,” Adetu stated.

Guinness Nigeria Plc, part of the Diageo Group of companies, listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 1965, and with a shareholder base of over 75,000 shareholders, is one of the foremost quoted companies in Nigeria. In 2010, the company announced an investment of N52 billion in its Nigeria business with the intention of expanding its production and route to market infrastructure.The company confirmed that the first phase of the expansion project has been completed with the commissioning of a first of its kind brewing technology in

2012. This investment looks set to increase Guinness Nigeria’s’ stake in the beverage market with a substantial increase in production capacity and increased consumer access to Guinness brands.

Commenting on the state of the beverage market in Nigeria, Adetu observed that the business is upbeat about the future despite a continuing decline in the beer and malt market. “We know that the beer market in Nigeria is undergoing a general decline but we are confident that there will be a reversal in this trend going forward. The critical thing for the management and board of Guinness Nigeria Plc is the confidence we have that our range of leading brands, our continued focus on distribution and our investment in our brands and people will deliver long term growth for the business.”

commercial bank that was part of what helped us build the fire world around the 2007 golden medal and that is the reason Nigerian companies quoted on the stock exchange were doing better and again we have very massive inflow of investment in the oil and gas, in the telecommunication and into the consumer goods sector.”

He adds that: “For example Coca Cola bottle got about 600 million dollars to invest in coca cola Nigeria.

Guinness, Unilever, Durex, Heineken Nigerian breweries had the same thing. Now, if you look at Nestle they also expanded their factory because your population increases at almost 3 percent every year and you have an average GDP bottle of about 7.5 percent over a 5 year period. The only natural consequence is that your companies will do well but that does not mean the share prices will do well because the problem with the Nigerian stock market was not because the companies placed on the stock exchange were doing badly. It was not because First bank has become the worst bank or that GTB has become a worst financial institution or that Nestle is no longer selling or Cadbury is no longer producing Bournvita. No, that’s because the following investors upon which this market was based down to 2007 from the bank consolidation insurance sector consolidation all are found likely out of the Nigerian market.”

For Alhaji Kafaru Atiku another stakeholder in the sector, there is a need to consolidate on the gains made so far.

“Unfortunately, the typical retail investors were left hanging because we were in the minority in terms of the size of what we hold. Now don’t be surprised at the earnings that Nigerian companies are turning out other banks because the fundamentals of Nigerian economy are right ,you have population not just ordinary population, but you have a consuming population from young, children, adult, everybody consumes . You have some young children who consume Mr. Biggs, Sweet Sensation to adults who drink bottles of Gulder or Stout every day or every weekend with pepper soup. So there’s no class of Nigerians that we don’t have consumption. Now youth are even consuming more alcohol heavily in Nigeria: This includes dry gin, all kinds of beer and it is the same thing that a sixty year-old man is drinking and drinks pepper soup to add to it.

He is also drinking Bournvita, therefore you have a 150 million consuming population whose appetite for goods and services is increasing day by day. “

MARKET FLASH Bukola Afolabi obrijo4u@gmail.com 08094000015

Company News MRS records 67% drop in profit , proposes 23.34kobo dividend

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RS Oil Nigeria Plc, one of Nigeria’s major oil marketers , has reported a profit of N205.12 million for its financial year ended December 31, 2012. The figure, however, represents a drop of 66.6 per cent compared to N615.62million declared as profit in the corresponding financial year 2011..

But notwithstanding the shortfall in bottom-line, the board of directors of the company said it will pay shareholders a dividend of 23.34kobo per share for the financial year.

The pay-out, if approved by shareholders at an annual general meeting slated for August, will mean shareholders are getting a difference of about 67 per cent in reward compared to 70kobo per share dividend they were paid in 2011.

Turnover for 2012, however, grew by 11.53 per cent from N71.49billion in 2011 to N79.73billion in 2012.

The Nation presents: THE SPIRIT OF CHARITY

A special report on EMERGING NIGERIAN PHILANTHROPISTS AND A COMMEMORATION OF 100 YEARS OF THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION

Featuring: •Nigeria’s top 10 men of charity •Africa’s best 10 emerging philanthropists •World’s best givers and foundations •Why people give •Of personal donations, foundations and CSR •Nigeria’s top corporate givers •Philanthropy as tonic for brand value •100 years of the Rockefeller Foundation and why it will last forever Publication Date: Sunday, May 26, 2013 For enquiries and interviews, call Steve (08033124151) or Dan (08033010395)

THE NATION ON SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013 CHANGE OF NAME ONUOHA I formerly known and addressed as Miss Onuoha Florence Oluchi, now wish to be known as Mrs. Obi Florence Oluchi. All former documents remain valid. General public please take note.

UNIGWE I formerly known and addressed as Miss Unigwe Adaora Doris, now wish to be known as Mrs. Mbachu Adaora Doris. All former documents remain valid. General public please take note.

OBI

I formerly known and addressed as Miss Obi Nwakaku Blessing, now wish to be known as Mrs. Ochuba Obioma Blessing Nwakaku. All former documents remain valid.

National Research Institute, Umudike and g eneral public please take note.

COKER I formerly known and addressed as Miss Iyabode Fausat Coker, now wish to be known as Mrs. Iyabode Omotola Omotoso. All former documents remain valid. General public please take note.

FASHOLA I formerly known and addressed as Miss Fashola, Teniade Nimota, now wish to be known as Mrs. FasholaOsoba Teniade Ruth. All former documents remain valid. General public please take note.

BELLO I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. MARYAM S. BELLO now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. MARYAM BELLO ABUDU. All former documents remain valid.

NAFDAC and general public please take note.

OBUKOHWO I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. OGHENETEGA OBUKOHWO now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. OGHENETEGA EMMANUEL ORJI. All former documents remain valid.

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OGOCHUKWU I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. OGOCHUCHUKWU FLORENCE ANENE now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. OGOCHUKWU FLORENCE EGOR. All former documents remain valid.

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EKWEMS I, formerly known and addressed as MISS EKWEMS MARTHA CHINELO, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS KENSOTUZA MARTHA. All former documents remain valid. REGINA PACIS COLLEGE and the general public should please take note.

IHWAKAR

I, formerly known and addressed as IHWAKAR SAMUEL TSEN, now wish to be known and addressed as SAMUEL ANTHONY FRANCIS. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

OPUTA I, formerly known and addressed as MISS OPUTA CHIGOZIE AMANDA, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS OBALIM CHIGOZIE AMANDA. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ONIMOLE I, formerly known and addressed as MISS ONIMOLE OLUWASEUN SHARON, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS ARANSIOLA OLUWASEUN SHARON. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

OMOSEEBI

I, formerly known and addressed as MISS OMOSEEBI RITA ATINUKE, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. ADEKANLE RITA ATINUKE. All former documents remain valid.

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EKWEM I, formerly known and addressed as MISS EKWEM DORIN ONYINYE, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS NWACHUKWU DORIN ONYINYE. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

OKORO I, formerly known and addressed as UBANDU CHIJIOKE OKORO, now wish to be known and addressed as MR. UBANDU CHIJIOKE. All former documents remain valid.

Phillips Pharmaceutical Nigeria Limited and the general public should please take note.

67

CHANGE OF NAME

CHANGE OF NAME

CHANGE OF NAME

CHANGE OF NAME

OJIAKU

ABDULRAZAQ

AKANMODE

ODEYEMI

I, formerly known and addressed as MISS ONYINYE GLENDA OJIAKU, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS ONYINYE ATNADU FAJEMI. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Abdulrazaq Taofeeqah Omowunmi, now wish to be known and addressed as Bello Taofikat Omowunmi. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

OKAFOR I, formerly known and addressed as MISS JOY OKWUDIRI OKAFOR, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. JOY OKWUDIRI CHIJIOKE. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Adeleye Abosede Lydia, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Gbenro Abosede Lydia. All former documents remain valid.

Promasidor Nig Limited and general public should please take note.

ALETOR

GODIYA

ADELEYE

I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. NIKKI OTAIGBE ALETOR now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. NIKKI OTAIGBE WONODI. All former documents remain valid. General public please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as Godiya Yohana, now wish to be known and addressed as Hashimu Musa. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

OWHOR

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Oluwafunmilola Olanike, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Adetunji Oluwafunmilola Olanike. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. JULIET NYECHE OWHOR now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. JULIET NYECHE STEPHEN CHUKWUKA SOLOMON. All former documents remain valid. General public please take note.

GABRIEL I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. BLESSING UYOK GABRIEL now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. BLESSING BASSEY UKPABI. All former documents remain valid. General public please take note.

OGHAYEJU I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. AGHOGHO EGUONO OGHAYEJU now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. AGHOGHO EGUONO OMOBA. All former documents remain valid.

The management and staff of Dansa Holdings Ltd and general public please take note.

AGBAGWU I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. AGBAGWU NWAMAKA now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. IKEDE NWAMAKA. All former documents remain valid. General public please take note.

UMEOFULUAKU I, formerly known and addressed as MISS. PATIENCE CHINAZA UMEOFULUAKU now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. PATIENCE CHINAZA OKOYE. All former documents remain valid.

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ANTHONY

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CONFIRMATION OF NAME I, EMMANUEL PERFECT ZEST and EMMANUEL PROMISE ENDURANCE are one and the same person, now wish to be known and addressed as EMMANUEL PERFECT ZEST. All former documents remain valid. General public should take note.

EGUMAH I formerly known and addressed as SAMUEL EKOJOKA EGUMAH, now wish to be known as SAMUEL EKOJOKA AJOONU. All former documents remain valid. General public please take note.

SABASTINE I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Sabastine, Francisca Amaka, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Irogbeyi, Francisca Amaka. All former documents remain valid. Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education, NYSC and general public should take note.

OKPARA I, formerly known and addressed as Adaeze Salome Okpara, now wish to be known and addressed as Adaeze Salome Ucheokoro. All former documents remain valid.

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CONFIRMATION OF NAME I MR ONI AKINOLA AYOOLA is the same person as MR. ONI AKINOLA GABRIEL. I hereby wish to be referred to as MR ONI AKINOLA GABRIEL. Enterprise Bank Plc. and Ekiti State, Local government Service Commission, Ado-Ekiti and general public take note.

BOLAJI

ANGATIEM

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Notary and general public should please take note.

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ADEBO I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Oluwaseun Ruth Adebo, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Oluwaseun Ruth Afolayan. All former documents remain valid. Ijero Local governemnet and general public should please take note.

AGBAYI

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AFOLABI

YUSSUPH

I, formerly known and addressed as Mrs. Afolabi Alice Modupe, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Akinrinwale Alice Modupe.

All former documents remain valid.

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I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Yussuph Rukayat Omobolanle, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Odunewu Rukayat Omobolanle. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

KUNNUHO

AUDU

I, formerly known and addressed as Mr. Kunnuho Oluwaseun David, now wish to be known and addressed as Mr. Oriyomi Oluwaseun David. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

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AFOLABI

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IBIDUN

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Tolulope E. Odeyemi, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Tolulope E. Babajide. All former documents remain valid.

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BUSARI

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Busari Bolanle Badirat, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Ashiru Bolanle Badirat. All former documents remain valid. AOCOED and general public should please take note.

OKUNUSI

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Oluwabunmi Theresa Okunnusi, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Oluwabunmi Theresa Arowolo.

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OKUNLOYE I formerly known and addressed as Okunloye Lukuman Kolade now wish to be known and addressed as Abudulahi Lukuman Kolade. All former documents remain valid.

General public take note.

ALESINLOYE I formerly known and addressed as Mrs. Alesinloye Adebamike Rofiyat now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Usamat Rofiyat Adebamike. All former documents remain valid.

LAUTECH Teaching Hospital and general public take note.

EDEANI I was known as EDEANI CHIBUIKE, but now wish to be addressed as EDEANI CHIBUIKE DESTINY. this is due to the ‘’Confirmation’’ which I had in our Church dated 9th September 2012.

Air Force Comprehensive School Agbani, Enugu and public please take note.

CHUKWU I, formerly known and addressed as MISS CHUKWU NWABUOKE BLESSING now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. CHIAWA NWABUOKE BLESSING. All former documents remain valid.

General public take note.

EKUEME

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SONAME

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University of Uyo and general public should please take note.

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AKINSUYI I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Akinsuyi Idowu Bosede, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Adenijo Idowu Bosede. All former documents remain valid. Ekiti State Local government Service Commission, Ado-Ekiti and general public should please take note.

OSADARE

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Ekiti State Civil Service Commission and general public should please take note.

ADEBISI I, formerly known and addressed as MRS. ADEBISI MODUPE TEMITOPE, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS. ADEBISI GRACE ENIOLA. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

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

OGUNSEMOYIN I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Ogunsemoyin Hannah, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Adebayo Hannah. All former documents remain valid. Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and general public should please take note.

CONFIRMATION OF NAME I, Arijeniwa Abigail Monisola is the same person as Arijeniwa Aina Monisola, now wish to be known and addressed as Arijeniwa Aina Monisola. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ADESAYO

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Yemisi Augustina Adesayo, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Yemisi Augustina Odebunmi. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

MONYE Formerly known and addressed as Awele Crucifix Monye (male), Dubem Divine Monye (male), Amaechi Saint Monye (male), now wish to be known and addressed as Awele Crucifix SylvesterMonye, Dubem Divine Sylvester-Monye, Amaechi Saint Sylvester-Monye. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

OGUNRINDE

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Ogunrinde Florence Dele, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Akinsehinwa Florence Dele. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

MOSEBOLATAN I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Mosebolatan Modupe Catherine, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Ajibade Modupe Mary. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

RAJI I,formerly known and addressed as MISS RAJI NOFIAT MOTUNRAYO, now wish to be known and addressed as MRS ODOLA NOFIAT MOTUNRAYO. All former documents remain valid.

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ONYEJEKWE I,formerly knows and address as Miss Onyejekwe Anthonia Njideka, now wish to be knows as Mrs Obiefula Anthonia Njideka.

All former document remain valid.

Abia State University Uturu, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and general public take note.

ADEYEYE I,formerly known and addressed as Miss Adediwura Dunni Adeyeye, now wish to be called and addressed as Mrs Adediwura Jacobs Oyadeji. All former documents remain same and valid.

Ogun State government, Abeokuta, and the general public should please take note.

OYADEJI

I,formerly known and addressed as Mr Ayodeji Jacob Oyadeji now wish to be called and addressed as Mr. Ayodeji Jacobs Oyadeji. All former documents remain same and valid. AIICO Insurance PLC and the general public should please take note.

CHANGE OF NAME AKINLEYE

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Akinleye Kehinde Funmilayo, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Adegeye Kehinde Funmilayo. All former documents remain valid. FIRS and general public should please take note.

EZEAMAKA I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Ezeamaka Blessing Adaeze, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Nzeukwu Blessing Adaeze. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

AMOS I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Fibi Amos, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Yusuf Fibi. All former documents remain valid. (NYSC,WAEC, Adamawa State University Mubi) and general public should please take note.

EDUN I, formerly known and addressed as Mrs Edun Isimot Bintu, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Ogundeyin Isimot Olasunbo. All former documents remain valid.

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JEJELOYE

I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Jejeloye Feyisayo Ibijoke, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Nwabunor Feyisayo Ibijoke. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ADEKOMI I, formerly known and addressed as Adekomi Ruqayah Adedamola, now wish to be known and addressed as Abioye Ruqayah Adedamola. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ONYIA I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Onyia Chinyere Clara, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Eboh Chinyere Clara. All former documents remain valid.

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YUSUF I, formerly known and addressed as Yusuf Toheeb Adedeji, now wish to be known and addressed as Yusuf-Eletu Toheeb Adedeji. All former documents remain valid.

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OLAWUNMI I, formerly known and addressed as Ms Olawunmi Victoria Yemisi, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Olowe Victoria Yemisi. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ODHOMO I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Odhomo Hannah Owede, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Agbo Hannah Owede. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

URUNWA I, formerly known and addressed as Urunwa Nwadiuto Cannon Umeonyili Okafor, now wish to be known and addressed as Michelle Urunwa Nwadiuto Okafor. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

NWAMBUONWO I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Anthonia Nwanua Nwambuonwo, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Anthonia Nwanua Ogamba. All former documents remain valid.

General public should please take note.

OWIE I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Stella Owie, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Stella Edomwonyi. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

ADEWUNMI I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Diogbe Ronke Adewunmi, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs. Onibonoje Ronke Adewunmi. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

LADI I, formerly known and addressed as Miss Ati Victoria Ladi, now wish to be known and addressed as Mrs Nwangwu Victoria Ladi. All former documents remain valid. General public should please take note.

RASHEED I,formerly known and addressed as Miss Rasheed Serifat Bukonla now wish to be called and addressed as Mrs Lawal Serifat Bukonla. All former documents remain same and valid. Ijebu Ode Local Government Education Authority(LGEA), Ogun State Universal Basic Education Board(SUBEB), AUD Primary School, Ijebu - Ode and the 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 - VINTAGE PRESS LIMITED Scan the details of your advert and teller to gbengaodejide @yahoo.com or thenation.advert @hotmail.com.

For enquiry please contact: Gbenga on 08052720421, 08161675390, Emailgbengaodejide @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.

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

68

EBERE WABARA

WORDSWORTH 08055001948

ewabara@yahoo.com

Sauce for the goose…

T

HISDAY EDITORIAL of May13 dealt crudely with the English language: “In the first quarter of this year, that is between January to (and) March 2013….” Or from January to March. But, hold on: who does not know that the first quarter of any year refers to January, February and March?

Does the publication think that its readers are daft?

This is too boyish, loose and uneducated for an editorial!

“Local refineries are also springing up with all the pollution that come (comes) with the activities.” “…to serve as a deterrent to other people who plan to stealing (steal) our oil.”

Lastly from THISDAY EDITORIAL under review: “It is therefore time that the authorities took (take) serious measures against these criminals.”

Alternatively: high time…took. Got the point?

Next is THISDAY POLITICS/MONDAY DISCOURSE: “…no other parts (part) of the country is completely safe.”

“Libyan anti-Gaddafi gunmen lift siege of (to) ministries” “ECOWAS condoles Nigeria (condoles with Nigeria) on death of two pilots” THE GUARDIAN of May 14 is the next newspaper on our radar: “For long, Nigeria and US have shared strong partnership in security cooperation except for period (the period) during the regime of late (the late) Gen. Sani Abacha when the ties were strained.”

From the Back Page of the preceding medium come these school-boy howlers: “There should be no preferential treatment for foreign trained (foreign-trained) graduates as what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.” Conscience, Nurtured by Truth: what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Did you know that ‘big brother’—usually misapplied in Nigeria— means a sinister organisation, a bully or dictator?

Last week’s edition of this medium goofed thrice: “…for the burial of late (the late) Prof. Chinua Achebe.”

“Chairman of South East Governor’s (Governors’) Forum….”

“Litigations delay

claims settlements— NDIC” Get it right: ‘litigation,’ like ‘remuneration,’ is uncountable. (This was detected by Kola Danisa/07068074257 & 08179274411) “Baga: Satellite evidence turns army logic on its head” (THE NATION ON SUNDAY Back Page Caption, May 5) A rewrite: Baga: Satellite evidence stands army logic on its head (Thanks to Mr. Ella S./08053025322 for this contribution) The following three observations taken from Vanguard ALLURE of May 5 are from Mr. Danisa, too: “…whose looks belly (belie) her age.”

“When they do well, we praise them but if they ere (err), we march against them.”

Wrong: “If I was you”; Right: If I were you….

This is the subjunctive aspect of grammar. Wrong: “I wrote him”; Right: I wrote to him Avoid circumlocutions: “despite the fact” (although); “owing to the fact” and “for the reason that” (as/because); “in addition to which” (and); (Source: Correct English

by J. E. Metcalfe & C. Astle) National Mirror of May 16 circulated two infelicities: “…the amnesty deal has run into murky water (the murky waters)….”

“Pre-schoolers (Prescholars, you mean?) handling hi-tech with kids’ gloves” Education Today: kid gloves DAILY SUN of May 15 contributed the next three infractions: “Delta swears-in electoral commission for LG polls” Is it the commission or its members that were sworn in (take note of the phrasal verb)? Also note that ‘swearing-in’ is correct as a noun.

“Federation polls: Elected members walk out in protest” An example of half-literacy: ‘walk out’ demonstrates ‘protest,’ among other meanings. So, why the redundancy?

“Back to the second subject matter, white elephants projects dot the construction landscape of the nation.” (NATIONAL MIRROR Back Page, May 9) This way: white elephants dot…away with ‘projects’!

“He described him as an examplary (exemplary) politician and enjoined others to emulate

him.”

“Inspection at (on) the premises of the owners will go a long way in decongesting the ports.”

“Man arrested over wife’s death” The man was arrested for his wife’s death.

“Recently, the chairman of Parents/Teachers Association of Federal Government College....”

Education: parent-teacher association.

“Remember the police are under the control of the Lord of Aso Rock who received no less than thirty million naira, unsolicited, from the A n a m b r a - b o r n moneybag (moneybags) when he contested the presidential election in 1999” “If the university authorities are interested in standards, what have they done about standards in (on) the main campuses?

“I’ve seen too many progressives turn cold turkey in the end in spite of their honest efforts at the onset (outset, in this context) to change the system.”

“The successful bidding process, award of GSM licences and eventual launching (launch) of the services of the operators in Nigeria give cause for celebration.” “…he had to abandon the bicycle that we borrowed (lent) him for that purpose and made a hasty retreat to Jos.” “Niger threatens to hands-off (hands off) sponsorship of pilgrims” “A senator who muted (mooted) this idea had this do say…” “…in their heydays (heyday) they never imagined the time would ever come….”

“The day after the panel’s first meeting with the un-amused president (a comma, please) one of the commission’s counsels....” ‘Counsel’ is unchanged even in plural applications.

“From the foregoing, Japan seems to have learnt it’s (its) lessons from the atomic bomb episode.” “...it did happen leaving immense tragedy and loss in (on) its trail.”

“And I am not just talking about the siege armed robbers have laid on (to) the home of virtually every Nigerian, high or low, rich or poor.”

“That was what I had at the back of my mind when I almost stopped my junior (younger) brother.”

Nexim Sealink project and intra–Ecowas trade T

HE Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was established on May 28, 1975 as a regional trade organisation comprising countries in the West African sub-region. The aim o f setting up the Community was manifested in its original treaty. According to provisions set out in the treaty of Lagos, and later, the revised treaty in 1993, the objectives were to promote co-operation in economic, social and cultural activities towards a desirable establishment of an economic and monetary union through the total integration of the national economies of member-states.

Inherent in the letter and spirit of the Treaty were the ideals to raise the living standards of the ‘ECO-citizen,’ maintain and enhance economic stability, foster relations among member-states and contribute to the progress and development of the African continent in line with the principal provisions of the African Economic Community (AEC) Treaty under the African Union.

Within four years of the operationalisation of the treaty, it became clear that as laudable as it sounded, the goal of achieving total integration of national economies of the constituent countries would require more concerted effort and commitment.

Hence, the 1979 Protocol relating to free movement of persons, goods, services and right of establishment was conceived as an instrument to enable free movement of ECOWAS citizens within the sub-region. Loaded into the protocol were the goals of institutionalising a single regional socioeconomic space, providing ECO citizens with opportunities in memberstates, including the utilisation of arable land by indigenous agriculturists, access to coastal areas by landlocked member states, employment of English and French language experts and, most significantly, unfettered access to natural resources by member-states.

In a nutshell, the Protocol was intended to create a ‘Borderless West Africa.’

Leveraging Nigeria’s Commitment No other economy within the sub-region has been weighed down more than Nigeria from a disconnected West African market. Given the huge size of its population and GDP, the various Administrations in Nigeria had demonstrated ample political will to ensure the Community thrives. Indeed, the country has been the galvaniser of the ‘ECOWAS dream’ and has doggedly de-

•Mr. Orya

By Chinedu Moghalu

ployed human and material resources to keep the trade bloc together in the face of recurring political, economic, socio-cultural upheavals since the days of ECOMOG till the current intervention of its military in the Malian crisis.

What is lacking, according to international relations experts, is for Nigeriato lead the process towards realistically breaking down the trade walls under the Free Movement Protocol and unleashing the potential of free exchanges of goods and services as have been witnessed in similar trade regimes under Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) or the trilateral North American Free Trade A g r e e m e n t (NAFTA).Understandably, the implementation of most of these agreements is being spearheaded by the various export credit agencies of the constituentcountries.

Hence, it behoved Nigerian Export-Import Bank, (NEXIM Bank) - the trade policy bank of the Federal Government of Nigeria - to facilitate the process for the establishment of a dedicated sea link within the ECOWAS region.This is borne out of concernsby the current executive team of NEXIM Bank led by the MD/CEO, Mr. Roberts Orya, on the partial realisation of ECOWAS’ intra-regional trade facilitation and operational objectives, high intraregional freight costs and shipment delays, which make cargo delivery within the subregion to take an average of 45 - 60 days.

At the recent sensitisation and pre-investors’ forum on the Sealink Project on Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 in Lagos,for the entire council

“Most importantly, it will enhance competitiveness of Nigerian exports, thereby improving the contribution of manufactured exports from the current level of under 6%, and enhancing local industrial capacity utilisation and attracting new investments.”

and executive of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, (NACCIMA),Mr. Orya provided an update on the initiative and invited its membership to invest and partner with the Bank and other stakeholders in the SPV and Regional Maritime Company.

He stated the Bank is facilitating the establishment of a dedicated Regional Sealink project as a means of overcoming the challenge of road infrastructure as well as absence of rail links within the region which has perpetually bedevilled intra-regional trade. The appeal for a sealink is further strengthened by the comparative low budgetary cost and short implementation timeline for a sea link-project vis-à-vis either a regional road or rail project.

According to Mr. Orya, the availability of a maritime vessel will significantlyreduce the high transportation costs and excessive transit time which make intra-regional trade non-competitive, with West and Central African transport and logistics costs identified as one of the highest in the World. According to available statistics, these have resulted in low level intraregional trade at less than 12% and 10% for African and ECOWAS trade respectively, compared to other regional blocs such as European Union (EU) andASEAN whose intraregional trade flows are respectively at 50%, 40% and 25%.

Why embrace the Sealink Project?

Inviting the NACCIMA to invest in the project, Orya stated that the funding requirement for the regional sealink project is $60million out of which $36 million will be required to purchase vessels, equipment, office space and other infrastructure and $24 million for working capital to cover general and administrative costs to be raised through equity and debt financing respectively.

Beyond making business sense, the project has some inherent accruable national benefits that further justify its implementation.

•Continued on page 70

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

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70

THE NATION SPORT SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

SPORT EXTRA

Golden Penny sticks with wheelchair tennis

By Taiwo Alimi N what would be a consolidation to its maiden coaches/players clinic and tournament which was held in Kano last year, Golden Penny Noodles is set to host the second edition of the event.

The country has been a dominant force in Africa and one of the top countries in the world, but dearth of competition has hindered the progress of the sport until last year when Golden Penny sponsored a week-long programme which attracted no less than 40 coaches and 200 players to the Pyramid City.

Flour Mills Nigeria PLC, makers of Golden Penny brand of noodles, through its Vice Chairman, John Coumanltaros, are delighted to note the constant progress that the country has been making which is attested to by the acknowledgment of the International Tennis Federation (ITF), which recently donated some high-class wheelchairs to Nigeria to further accelerate the growth

I

BATTLE OF NAIROBI

Atere tips Eagles for victory T HE Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and soccer loving Nigerians have been urged to support Super Eagles' Coach, Stephen Keshi, in his quest to win more laurels for the country.

Speaking from his base in the United States of America, the class of 1985 Under-17 player said Keshi has proved he is a good coach by delivering the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa, hence he needs positive backing of stakeholders in Nigerian football to beat Kenya on June 5.

He stated: “I think Keshi is doing a wonderful job but it is important that he is given support in a positive way. From what he has achieved in South Africa at the Nations Cup it is correct to say that he (Keshi) knows his craft and with God on his side all things are

possible. They should leave him alone to do his thing.”

The licensed-coach, who is also the current commissioner for Nigeria Soccer Festival Tournament in the U.S, added that Nigeria is blessed with great coaches who will deliver given the

C

EPL Sunday fixtures Chelsea v Everton Liverpool v QPR Man City v Norwich Newcastle v Arsenal Southampton v Stoke Swansea v Fulham Tottenham v Sunderland West Brom v Man United West Ham v Reading Wigan v Aston Villa

S

secure a 2014 FIFA World Cup ticket in Brazil even as he hopes for a superb display against Mexico in an international friendly match.

The self-determined midfielder makes Stephen Keshi's 25-man squad for the upcoming international friendly against South American side, Mexico, at the Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas, U.S.A. on May the 31st. And despite his recent rich in form, Ogu believes he has more work at hand to be a regular in the Super Eagles'

Ideye to quit Ukraine

S

UPER Eagles' striker, Brown Ideye, may be leaving Dynamo Kiev at the end of the current season though his next destination is yet unknown.

Last season, Ideye was rumoured to be wanted by Chelsea after Didier Drogba's exit, but that did not materialise and now names like Swansea and Newcastle are being mentioned as potential suitors.

A source close to the player confirmed his exit at the end of current season, but is yet to ascertain his next move in Europe, even though the player is yet to decide a move to England.

Newcastle United is reportedly making a bid of 9million pounds to lure the former Ocean Boys striker to St. James Park in London.

right atmosphere.

“In my days as a member of the national team, our problem was not coaching per se, but administration.

Keshi will do well if they can allow him work instead of telling him

what to do, and moreover we don't have enough quality players like it used to be in the national team. During my days, you had five-star players in one position that would keep you on your toes.

But if there is no opposition you become lazy and complacent,” Atere added.

Obuh names F/Eagles provisional list Nigeria has named a 30-man squad ahead of next month's FIFA U20 World Cup in Turkey.

The squad includes 18 players from the recent African Youth Championship in Algeria, where Nigeria placed third.

These players include skipper Abduljaleel Ajagun, Enugu Rangers' striker Alhaji Gero as well as Olanrewaju Kayode and Umar Aminu, who was Goal King at the

Mourinho may drag Ogu confident on World Cup ticket UPER Eagles' new boy, John team.

Ronaldo to Chelsea “It will be a great moment for me Ogu, is confident Nigeria will RISTIANO Ronaldo is at the centre of a bidding war after it emerged the Manchester United target is wanted by Chelsea.

The £80million Real Madrid forward, who was sent off Friday night in a dramatic Copa del Rey final loss to bitter local rivals Atletico, is on a summer shopping list put together by Chelsea's incoming manager Jose Mourinho.

The Special One was also sent to the stands after arguing with the referee during a bad-tempered match that could turn out to be the last at the Bernabeu for both of them.

United have first option to sign Ronaldo if Real decide to sell and the Portugal star favours a return to Old Trafford. But Mourinho, who has worked with him for the past three years, has added him to his list of premium targets. Wayne Rooney, who would prefer to move to Chelsea, and Napoli striker Edinson Cavani are also wanted by Mourinho.

By Taiwo Alimi

helping Nigeria to qualify for the World Cup in Brazil next year,” said Ogu. “We all know the task ahead of us, and we are equally ready to give it all and achieve our aim for the country, for the coach and for our individual careers. It will be great to be in Brazil next year. We can turn things around despite being on the same level with Malawi.”

2013 AYC. Twelve new players have been picked preparatory to the U20 World Cup. They include Switzerland-based goalkeeper Sebastian Osigwe, Daddy Moses Simon, who recently signed for Ajax Amsterdam as well as Nigeria U17 defender Wilfred Ndidi, who

features for Nath Boys in the Lagos Junior League.

Altogether, there are six players from overseas clubs with the rest coming from the Nigerian League.

The FIFA U-20 World Cup kicks off June 21 and ends July 13

Rangers lament non-release of Mba, Agbim

E

NUGU Rangers are lamenting the non-release of the pair of striker Sunday Mba and goalkeeper Chigozie Agbim by Super Eagles coach Stephen Keshi for their CAF Confederation Cup game against CS Sfaxien.

Rangers host the Tunisian side in Enugu, and are feeling pained the Nigerian head coach refused to release the duo to them ahead of Sunday's clash against CS Sfaxien in the CAF Confederation Cup playoff round. Rangers claimed they approached the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) to impress it on Keshi to release Agbim and Mba for

the tie.

“We wrote to the NFF that they should release Mba and Agbim.

But they did not answer us. We called Keshi and he said he needed the players and that he would not release them,” Rangers general manager Uzor Chibuzor said on africansoccer.weekly.com “The Mexican friendly will come up on May 31st. The Super Eagles travelled last Thursday and what we are saying is that the two players should have been allowed to play the game on Sunday against CS Sfaxien and then join them in Germany.

Maigari basks in glory in Accra

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HE President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Alhaji Aminu Maigari, was on Friday in Accra, capital of Ghana, honoured as the African Sports Development Personality of the Year at the 2nd African Development Magazine Awards.

At an impressive ceremony inside the Ankobra Hall of the Novotel, Accra City Centre, attended by top government functionaries, business executives, academic luminaries and highly-placed civil servants, Maigari was praised for his leadership style and untiring efforts that have seen Nigerian football on a delightful upward spiral in the past 17 months.

“The NFF President, Alhaji Aminu Maigari, has shown an excellent leadership quality that has turned around the fortunes of Nigerian football for the better.

He is also a magnificent team player,” said popular Nigeria stand-up comedian, Gbenga Adeyinka 1st, who anchored the event. Maigari's award was collected by NFF's Assistant Director (Media), Ademola Olajire, as the NFF President was far away in Germany.

The Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Barrister Godswill Akpabio, was named Governor of the Year for the “uncommon transformation that he has brought to Akwa Ibom State.” Akpabio, who is the

Chairman of PDP Governors' Forum, was represented by the state's Commissioner for Information, Hon. Aniekan Umanah.

Professor Walter Alhassan, a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Science, was chairman of the occasion, while Professor Robert Woode, an international energy development consultant, delivered the keynote address.

Professor Leonard Shilgba, a professor of mathematics from the American University in Nigeria, gave the award lecture, titled: Public Service Reforms: Panacea for Economic Development in Africa.

Nexim Sealink project and intra-Ecowas trade Contd. From page 68 These include unlocking opportunities in the maritime sector through effective indigenous participation, thereby stimulating maritime-related employment as well as localising some of the maritime freight payments of an average of $5 billion annually from import / export tonnages.

It will also facilitate the realisation of the various Maritime-related laws like the Cabotage and MIMASA Acts and the implementation of the National Shipping Policy; stimulate and attract private sector funding for the development of key maritime infrastructure with the national benefit of improving the level of intra-regional formal trade, thereby enhancing contribution of trade/exports to GDP. Also, it will assist in palliating the disastrous effects of road/rail infrastructural deficit challenges that affect regional integration and a major cause of the muted growth witnessed over the years in intra-African and ECOWAS trade levels.

Most importantly, it will enhance competitiveness of Nigerian exports, thereby improving the contribution of manufactured exports from the current

level of under 6%, and enhancing local industrial capacity utilisation and attracting new investments.

Additionally, the project will enhance Nigeria’s status as a maritime hub for West and Central Africa with attendant benefits of facilitating Atlantic short-sea trade and development of pool of talent / manpower for the industry.

Furthermore, it has the immense potential to stimulate multimodal transport development to cater for non-littoral regional member countries;hence it will facilitate growth of hinterland haulage business as the market segment is not yet targeted by major shipping lines, thereby offering a huge opportunity to the proposed Sealink Project.

The Transformation Agenda The Sealink project is in line with the Transformation Agenda of the government which projects investments in roads, railways, inland waterways, ports and airports developmentin collaboration with various stakeholders to evolve a multimodal, integrated and sustainable transport system, with

emphasis on rail and waterways, through an effective Public-Private Partnership arrangement. This aims to create synergy and ensure an even and nation-wide distribution of gains from the Administration’s investments in the key sectors, termed ‘main growth drivers’ such as the manufacturing, agriculture, solid minerals, manufacturing, services, trade and commerce, etc.

Affirmatively, the Sealink Project will take the gains of the Transformation Agenda beyond the shores of the country. It will immediately open up our shores and immensely contribute to Nigeria’s march to become the premier economy in Africa through creating a seamless export platform for movement of Nigeria’s manufactured/semiprocessed goods, services, and personnel with a certainty to boost competitiveness and productivity across these sectors. Specifically, it will spur more private sector initiative and innovation, enhance the development of the key sectors’ value chain, create/sustain more Nigerian jobs as the ECOWAS

markets become one and Nigeria’s products and services are brought to the world.

Sponsorships/Collaborations The project has been endorsed by the government of Nigeria. It has also been adopted and is being sponsored by the Federation of West African Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FEWACCI) withother endorsements/collaborations by the ECOWAS Commission,the ECOWAS Parliament, various multi/bilateral institutions including theMaritime Organisation of West and Central Africa (MOWCA), strong private sector support through various trade associations and heightened expression of interest by potential investors (locally and internationally).

In his remarks, the National President of NACCIMA, Dr. H.A.B. Ajayi, lauded Mr. Orya for the patriotic zeal which moved NEXIM Bank to come up with the Regional Sealink Project and the vigour with which he is pursuing its realisation.

He also concurred that the ECOWAS market is huge and has

not been fully tapped as a result of logistical challenges being faced in movement of goods and persons, especially due to the absence of a direct shipping line for the West and Central African corridor. In this regard, NACCIMA, as a member of the FEWACCI, will like to join forces with NEXIM Bank and other progressive entities in actualising the project. According to him, “As the apex business association in Nigeria, NACCIMA is supporting the setting up of the shipping company as we did during the establishment of ECOBANK Transnational which has become a household name in all the West African States and beyond. We would like to also stress the need for chieftains of industry here present to take ample opportunity by participating in the raising of the $36million that would form the equity capital for the setting up of the transnational shipping company.”

Moghalu is Head, Corporate Communication, Nigerian Export – Import Bank

THE NATION ON SUNDAY MAY 19, 2013

71

QUOTABLE "It is desirable that the presidency in a country like Nigeria should move round all the geo-political zones of the country so that everybody will be opportune to taste power; but the downside of it is that it encourages tribalism, sectionalism or regionalism… the fact that a particular person from a tribe becomes president doesn't improve the lives of the people from that area."

SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013 TRUTH IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM VOL. 7, NO. 2496

- Former Presidential Candidate of the defunct National Republican Convention, Alhaji Bashir Tofa, highlighting the pros and cons of rotational presidency.

I

T requires a huge dose of optimism to trust President Goodluck Jonathan’s instinct in declaring a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. I confess I do not have such an endowment, and I am not careful to hold a contrary position on this very controversial issue. Majority of Nigerians, perhaps 99 percent, favour emergency, and either abusively denounce those who don’t or equate opposition to emergency with support for Boko Haram insurgency. They are entitled to their opinion.

The more supporters of emergency work themselves up into a fever over the few of us who see through the president’s manoeuvres, the more convinced I am that both the president and his supporters are misguided and intolerant.

A day after Jonathan took the plunge and committed the Northeast angrily into emergency, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) spontaneously denounced the declaration and pointed out that the president was in fact playing politics with the issue of insecurity. But one day later, after having had the chance to reflect on the delicate matter and to measure the weight of their courage in the face of massive public endorsement of emergency, the party mellowed its stand from asking the National Assembly to reject emergency to asking them to examine it cautiously. I do not pretend to any of the party’s luxuries. I understand the need for the party to cast a wary, indeed longing, eye on the next general elections, and must therefore be careful not to distance itself too inappropriately from the herd grazing on emergency. But I have no vote to seek, and if I wish, I may even have no vote to cast in 2015.

Of course the ACN, much more than any other party, did well to publicise its initial opposition to emergency even before it understood which way the cats were jumping. That it has had to quickly modify its original stand merely reflects that its leaders are realists who must watch the ballot box with a defensive keenness that exceeds its vaunted predatory instincts.

The scale of support for Jonathan’s emergency declaration must have stunned northern leaders themselves into whooping for the measure, I suspect, against their better judgement. Indeed, in the north, whether among former heads of state or among leading politicians, all we hear is a mellifluous chorus of support for emergency. Obviously, at a time like this, discretion is the better part of valour.

The dispute over emergency, it must be reiterated, is not about whether Boko Haram needed to be fought and defeated or whether it should be tolerated and pampered. Everyone, except the sect’s members, agrees that the killings in the north needed to be halted. The dispute, therefore, is essentially about methods, not goals. The southern part of Nigeria never liked Boko Haram for one minute, and minced no words in vociferously deploring its methods and objectives, even at the constant and irritating risk of accusing the north of supporting the sect. A corollary of that assumed convergence between the north and the sect is the south’s dismissive characterisation of every northerner who proposes a different perspective of tackling the insurgency as a Boko Haram supporter. Indeed, in my view, the northern part was at first ambivalent to the sect, even seemingly indulgent, and only belatedly horrified and shaken by the huge scale of atrocities the militants were perpetrating.

Readers of this column will recall my trenchant view of Boko Haram, my opposition to amnesty, except for the sect’s foot soldiers, and only because of the administrative cost of prosecuting every sect member, and my unalloyed support for secularism and democracy. Boko Haram should be fought, and the military should lead the battle. But we must be careful to plan beyond military victory. The question to ask is whether emergency will help the government and the military to explain why they failed to defeat the sect and pacify the region. I suspect it will not. Dr Jonathan’s state of emergency does not only reek of politics, it seems to me a facile and fatuous strategy to divert attention from serious issues pertaining to the long-running campaign against terror in Nigeria, such as the Baga killings. Emergency also conceals the general disinclination of the Jonathan presidency for rigorous thinking and scientific governance and foreshadows a rising dictatorship.

The Nigerian constitution places the responsibility for security squarely on the shoul-

State of emergency superfluous

•Kashim Shettima

•Murtala Nyako

ders of the president, not in the hands of governors. If anyone was, therefore, remiss in his responsibility for security in the Northeast, it was the president. In fighting Boko Haram, there has been no presidential initiative to deploy forces that the states or local governments disagreed with. Dr Jonathan had the unlimited power to add to and subtract from the number of troops deployed in the war front. He took no input from the governors about tactical deployment, and there was no part of the affected states from which federal forces were barred. Does Jonathan therefore need a state of emergency to raise troop strength? What is he doing now that he couldn’t do without declaring emergency? Warrant to search? Suspension of habeas corpus?

Section 305 of the 1999 constitution broadly describes the procedure for the proclamation of a state of emergency. As the ACN pointed out in its initial position, emergency was already in force in many parts of the Northeast, but was ineffective. Nobody ever questioned the government’s deployments and even rights abuses until Borno elders began to notice strange killings. In fact, there are no powers granted by emergency proclamation that the people had not already vouchsafed to the president in view of the drastic circumstances of insecurity in those regions. It is, therefore, necessary for to be cautious about emergency and admonish Nigerians on why the proclamation should be considered carefully side-by-side with Sections 33 and 35 of the constitution dealing with the rights of the people. It may even be necessary to draw attention to the entire Chapter IV of the constitution for the public and the National Assembly to appreciate those rights that, in emergency, are or should be non-derogable.

The proclamation has been sent to the National Assembly, and the two chambers have scheduled a discussion for Tuesday. It is important they remove the fears of the people that Section 305 as applied will not be used inappropriately and narrow-mindedly to derogate the rights of the people under emergency. The legislature must not allow itself to be carried away by popular emotions, nor be blackmailed by the reckless and aggressive support most Nigerians

have offered the president. They must carefully determine whether the cause of peace would be served by the liberty the president wishes to take over a war he has largely bungled and prolonged by his dithering.

By declaring emergency, it seems to me, Dr Jonathan gave the impression that someone else, perhaps the governors of the affected states and their conniving political elite, was to blame for insecurity and Boko Haram. The governors’ economic and social policies probably contributed to the beginnings of the revolt and undoubtedly aggravated it, but it is inconceivable that emergency should be expected to remedy the problem and stamp it out permanently. The president also needed emergency to deflect censorious attention from the alleged atrocities that took place in Baga, Borno State in April. The matter was being probed, until emergency was declared. Not only will the probes now be compromised, it is certain that with emergency, no other probe elsewhere will be entertained.

Frightened by the countrywide unanimity of approval for the president’s extraordinary measures, northern leaders have, against their better judgement, abandoned the hapless people of the three states to be sandwiched between the extreme measures of the Nigerian security forces and the brutal fanaticism and extortion of the Boko Haram sect.

This abandonment is anchored on the indefensible argument, advanced mainly by the south and the presidency, that the people of those states had a duty to expose the sect. In other words damned if they rat on the sect, and damned if for fear of their lives they don’t. I feel for them, and wish we had a more informed, more empathetic and more reflective president. The campaign against Boko Haram failed not because we didn’t have the troops and the logistics to fight the sect, but because the security forces failed to fight a winnable and moral war, and win the confidence of the local populace, as indeed other victorious armies in the world take care to do. It is instructive that while Nigerians were hailing the president’s show of force and firepower in the Northeast, it took a visiting British general, Robert Fry, a former deputy commanding general of

“President Jonathan, I have argued, does not need a state of emergency to take the measures he has just adumbrated. But none in the National Assembly will have the heart to tell him that. I am persuaded that indeed the proclamation reeks of offensive politicking. The Northeast is antiJonathan, and will stay so until 2015 and beyond. The president does not have any emotional attachment to those states, and could care less what they feel, as he said when he reluctantly visited them in March. Judging from his anger as he read his speech in a tremulous voice on Tuesday, Dr Jonathan was evidently tormented by his private demons, and was intemperate, unstatesmanlike and full of unnecessary fury. His supposed fierce mien was not, as some imagined, a ploy to display presidential toughness; it instead betrayed his boyish instinct for sophistry, his rustic impulsiveness, and his burgeoning ruthlessness and dictatorial tendency”

the coalition forces in Iraq, to caution against the use of excessive force in the Northeast. But Nigerians would rather those states were smashed to smithereens, and the local populace blamed themselves for not pushing out the militants in their midst. It seems we have lost our senses.

President Jonathan, I have argued, does not need a state of emergency to take the measures he has just adumbrated. But none in the National Assembly will have the heart to tell him that. I am persuaded that indeed the proclamation reeks of offensive politicking. The Northeast is anti-Jonathan, and will stay so until 2015 and beyond. The president does not have any emotional attachment to those states, and could care less what they feel, as he said when he reluctantly visited them in March. Judging from his anger as he read his speech in a tremulous voice on Tuesday, Dr Jonathan was evidently tormented by his private demons, and was intemperate, unstatesmanlike and full of unnecessary fury. His supposed fierce mien was not, as some imagined, a ploy to display presidential toughness; it instead betrayed his boyish instinct for sophistry, his rustic impulsiveness, and his burgeoning ruthlessness and dictatorial tendency.

Future generations will recall how, on the excuse of battling insurgency and saving the union, we abandoned to the federal rampage our kith and kin in the Northeast, a majority of whom are law-abiding, and for whom sadly and mortifyingly the rest of the world feels more fellow-feeling than Nigerians. By whooping hysterically for war, rather than for a clinical and brilliant campaign to take out the offending rascals destabilising the union, we seem to say that the problem, whose roots are deeper than military defeat can extirpate, can be destroyed with a massive military blow. Nothing can be further from the reality. Military victory may be achieved in the near future, but it remains to be seen whether the fiery and indecipherable logic of the rebellion and the sect’s promotion of borderless war can be subdued permanently by conventional military tactics.

But more saddening are those who argue that the president should have sent the governors and their legislative houses packing either for being the cause of this imbroglio or for worsening it. This is simply senseless. Are we so undisciplined that at the first hint of a major trouble we are willing to whimsically dishonour some of the provisions of the constitution, or select which part to obey and which to ignore or downgrade? Strangely, among those who make this nonsensical argument are lawyers and academics who should know better. But it is not only lawyers who are losing their heads, that is, after Aso Villa’s melodramatic buck-passing, even journalists and editorial writers have gone completely irrational. They have not only endorsed Dr Jonathan’s questionable decision to impose emergency, they, who should be the bastion of civil rights and free speech, have issued dire warnings to opposition parties to fall in line behind the president. Already, of course, and as the brusque declaration of curfew in Adamawa showed, executive, judicial and legislative powers have been abridged by the military. The governors will be ceremonial leaders throughout the emergency, even as the affected states may be coaxed into parting with a part of their monthly allocation to the war effort.

It is necessary for the National Assembly to scrutinise the president’s proclamation very closely and tame it. If, without emergency, the Baga incident elicited so much controversy, what should we expect with the leeway emergency proclamation confers? The legislators must understand that with the events in Rivers State, where federal might is being immoderately and perversely deployed, and the unsupportable and capricious inclusion of Adamawa in the emergency declaration, we are well on our way to a brutal dictatorship. We recall how miserably we fared when we feebly confronted the dictatorship and arbitrariness of the Chief Olusegun Obasanjo presidency; it is up to us if in the face of Dr Jonathan’s political dubieties we begin to prevaricate or, worse, wilt. We should not blame Boko Haram for exposing our poor mettle or northern leaders who failed to rally against the sect. If another president takes us for a ride again, and in the end corrupts and weakens the fabric of our democracy, we have ourselves, our weak legislature and our impressionable press to thank.

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ISSN: 115-5302 E-mail: sunday@thenationonlineng.net Editor: FESTUS ERIYE