Category: Opinion

Another Look On How To Tackle Unemployment, Dele Momodu

Posted on by The Elites

Fellow Nigerians, let me say that nothing worries me more than the lack of jobs for our teeming youths. I have lost count of how many requests I get daily from unemployed graduates and non-graduates seeking any kind of job. Some have been out of jobs forever and they’ve been out of school for so long that they’ve almost forgotten whatever they learnt. Many consider you wicked and insensitive when you give them the bad news that you can’t be of any help. They are of the opinion that because they see you with the movers and shakers of society you can just pick your phone and get whatever you want at the snap of a finger.
But it is not as simple as that. Knowing big men and women and maintaining relationships with them is often a product of not making demands on them. It actually requires some knowhow. Otherwise, whenever they see your calls they turn into artful dodgers by ignoring you. They will soon see you as one troublesome nuisance who must be avoided by all means, at all costs. Truth also is many job-seekers are not readily employable for various reasons. Some went to school to read the wrong courses. Many barely passed out in poor grades. Many have not updated or upgraded their knowledge since leaving school. These lapses are easily discoverable during interviews. These days many companies are looking for the highest grades because of the collapse of the education system. However, this is not necessarily a solution because high grades does not translate into a competent and proficient employee for several reasons. Looking out for the high academic achievers also has the potential to automatically ostracize majority of the job applicants. So where do we go from here? I have a few ideas to share.

A long time ago, I learnt from my unlettered but intelligent mum that only a fool would find nothing to learn from others. Since I have been on the campaign train of President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana, I have discovered more secrets on how to combat mass unemployment. Addressing Ghanaian youths who often complain that developing infrastructure alone won’t feed them, President Mahama often tells them why he is investing heavily in infrastructure development. According to him, it is a good way to boost the socio-economic status of Ghana. Social infrastructure makes it possible for many artisans to get jobs in the short run during the course of construction typically involved in the provision of such infrastructure. The completion of any infrastructure also helps to provide jobs, directly or indirectly in the long run. For example, the brand new hospitals being constructed between Accra and Tema would provide thousands of jobs because the cumulative bed capacity of those hospitals, namely the Regional hospital at Ridge, The University of Ghana Teaching Hospital at Legon and the Maritime Hospital at Tema should add over 1,000 beds instantly. Just imagine how many doctors, nurses, paramedics, administrative staff and others. There is no other way of doing this. Any politician promising jobs or social welfare would only be deceiving the poor youths for the fun of it. It is one reality we must face in Nigeria urgently.

The other fact is that we must help our artisans to professionalize their art and trade by returning to those days when technical colleges were in vogue. It would be nice if we can upgrade our Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics to degree-awarding institutions. This would elevate the quality of our technical staff and reduce the calamities attached to sub-standard works. This has been successfully done in Ghana by promoting upgrading former Institutes and Polytechnics and by placing more emphasis on professional studies in these institutions in the knowledge that they would be relevant to societal needs and requirements.

For reasons that I fail to understand, the education sector in Nigeria is a much neglected sector. Education hardly commands the attention and allocation that it should and this needs to be critically addressed. Our leaders seem blinded to the possibilities and opportunities that education offers to any economy. In the United Kingdom, tertiary education alone accounted for over £73 billion contribution to the economy in 2012 and this figure has kept growing. There is good reason for this. Apart from direct contributions arising from student and teachers input into the economy there are indirect contributions as well which have a positive influence and impact on the economy. If our educational system were developed to the level that it should be we would have a significant number of foreign students coming from West Africa if not the whole of Africa such as was the case many years ago. Apart from the fees that they would pay, we would expect that they would spend money on their upkeep and maintenance which would have a positive bearing on transportation, housing and even health care. There would be indirect employment of those people who would provide indirect services to teachers, students and administrators alike. In addition, we would expect that when those students returned to their respective countries they would forge relationships with colleagues they had met here as well ass have good things to say about Nigeria.

Once the student complete their education thought must be given to how they would be gainfully employed. Entrepreneurship is a field that requires urgent and particular attention in this regard. Many job-seekers may never find jobs no matter how hard they try. This is because the educational policies have remained stagnant and not moved with the times. There is a need for reorientation and rethinking of our educational values and ethos. The former prevalent attitude that one needed to work in the civil service or even in private companies as a graduate fresh out of school needs to be changed. There is now a need to create a corps of entrepreneurs over and above one of employees.

The better way out to create employment for the great mass of unemployed youths, especially with our humongous population, is for as many of them as possible to be in self-employment. Those with a negative mindset might ask where the unemployed graduate would get the money for the start up required by any entrepreneur. However, for a variety of reasons, this need not be a problem. Firstly, It is not every business that requires millions for start-ups. There are so many original ideas out there that are yet to be tapped which do not require a lot of initial funding. Even the traditional things can lead to great fortune if properly harnessed and marketed. I remember always telling my wife that whoever introduces akara burger to Europe and America would make a kill. Akara is a special delicacy made from beans. It is rich in protein and quite healthy. My children love it and we eat it a lot. We often buy the powder in London from Olu Olu and Ola Ola and my wife fries akara ever so deliciously. Put in a bap or between two slices of bread and you are almost in second heaven. As a vegetarian meal I believe there are few that would surpass it. I was therefore pleasantly stunned when my first son sent me a link only yesterday that some smart guy has started the business I had been procrastinating about. That is it. An entrepreneurial spirit is about to make serious money by refining and uplifting a simple Nigerian meal. There are many other Nigerian traditional dishes that could be refined and exported to the world as well as at home if only our youths could put their fertile minds to such matters.

Government can also play a big role in developing this entrepreneurial spirit. This is already being done to a small extent by the initiatives of Federal and State Governments to create entrepreneurs. However it needs to be replicated nationwide on a massive scale. The Government schemes should aim to produce at least one million such entrepreneurs in the space on 5 years. It is possible given the right approach and the will and zeal to make the programme succeed in great numbers. There only needs to be a diversion of funds to this area of social development rather than to unproductive areas of which there are many. Money saved from cutting down on waste, pilferage and looting can also be channeled into such a venture.

In addition to the traditional business ventures, Government must seize the moment and encourage our youths to open their minds and expand their horizons. Sports, the arts and entertainment are now big business. Our children must be taken away from the nation that you must be a doctor, lawyer or engineer to prosper. Our educational curriculum should include such esoteric subjects that deal with various aspects of sporting, artistic and entertainment endeavours and this must be given pride of place. One way of doing this is to provide incentives in these fields.

The new areas of information technology and computer studies must also be fully integrated into our curriculum from primary school to tertiary education. It is by introducing children to these areas at a very young and tender age that we can fire their creative and virile imagination which will make them successful innovators and thus entrepreneurs. The world is in its infancy as far as new age technology is concerned and there is no monopoly of thought and ideas out there. However, we can only participate as distinct from being mere spectators by engendering and fostering innovation and entrepreneurial skills from childhood. At the moment I do not see these things happening within our current educational and social milieu. I still see and hear parents, teachers and other educationists complain about the amount of time our children spend on their phones, tablets and in consequence on social media. They do not realise that a lot of education, indeed the most relevant present day education, is taking place in these fora. The present crop of entrepreneurs and world leaders are molded and fashioned nowadays from the internet. Role models exist in that space. There are dangers lurking there on the internet too and it behooves us to learn to deal with it as an educational source and tool rather than shut our eyes to it and therefore assume that all is well.

There are so many other things we can do seriously in relation to greatly reducing youth unemployment if government can create the requisite enabling environment for innovation and entrepreneurship. In this respect, President Muhammadu Buhari should assemble a crack team of scholars and practitioners who can help him come up with so many ways of creating jobs and employment opportunities. Information technology, music, acting, comedy, fashion, painting, carpentry, bricklaying, plumbing, welding, sports, and so many other possibilities can help reduce the pain and pangs of unemployment. The denigrated oddjobs of yesteryears are now the fashionable jobs of today. Our leaders must learn to embrace this new way of thinking so that our youths may be guided to the right path and the prosperity that we crave may become a reality after all.

Aso Villa: Abati and Adesina Are Both Right – Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin

Posted on by The Elites

Immediately I saw the writer and the topic i rushed to get into this piece by Femi Adesina. I was sure I was going to be let into a good helping from a wordsmith which Femi is. The contents of the epithet he wrote on his sisters death still stands as the best piece I’ve ever read from him . Maybe because of the emotional bruises of the Topic.
Abati on the other hand too is another certified word engineer. Anytime I see a piece from him I rush to read , except during the dying era of his erstwhile boss, when I couldn’t stomach the spin being dished out to sanitize the stench coming out of the Presidential Palace. I understand a man has got to do his job and I also reserved the right to reject a menu. It is not impossible Adesina too might gradually get to that state of pantomime if the change vessel eventually berths in the port of anomie as we are gradually getting into.
After reading both Abati and Adesina, my summation is that you are both right.
Evil locks in Aso Rock, but those who are spiritually fortified by the REAL God can step over that coffin and emerge whole .
During the Abacha era, I was introduced to the Abacha family by the late Christy Essien Igbokwe. The purpose was to produce TV commercials, in respect of Mariam Abacha’s pet project on women and children, multi camera coverage of the BLACK ENTERTAINMENT AWARDS, and yes documentaries and coverage of the 1 million man match. My crew and I was quartered at a point in the Abuja Sheraton for 13 months,because we had to move the complete studios to Abuja.
I became a regular visitor to Aso Rock for 13 months so
much that my cousin who recently retired at the highest echelon of the Immigration service was given the rare privilege of always driving beyond the designated official car park into the bowels of Aso Rock itself to drop and pick me everyday. This was rare in the security blockade mentality of the Abacha era.
On the day Abacha died I was in Jos with the topmost musicians in this country spread over 4 hotels at the beginning of a 36 state tour for the Presidency. It was the last time I entered Aso Rock.
During this period, I sometimes would stay for over 14 hours just to meet the man or the wife for 4 minutes to
Preview my job or take a briefing. I witnessed topmost Nigerians like Arisekola bring their praying mats along for a meeting that might not exceed a few minutes but which they will have to wait days on end before being attended to.
I always had very very eerie feeling in Aso Rock. I was convinced there was something very very dark and evil lucking in those walls. Late in the night when those Ostriches strolling the grounds make their strange noises I was always having goose pimples convinced I was in a house of horror . I could also add that I lost every material thing I bought , equipment or personal items, post Abacha. My cars, my cameras all mysteriously went to dust. After his death I became penurious, my studios closed down , all my staff who had enjoyed 13 months in Sheraton, left over night and I entered the darkest tunnel of my life. For the first time in my adult life I was taking Commercial vehicles. It was a year of intense spiritual battle that eventually got me out of the hole.
Two Presidents have died in Aso Rock , two First Ladies have died in or out of Aso Rock. Not to mention countless tragedies that have befallen the power brokers who have taken refuge there, some of which were chronicled by Abati. How many tragedies have we read about American White House or 10 Downing Street.
I know why Aso Rock is a quicksand.
I was involved in politics at low levels for a period of 6 years till 2007.
It was an expose for me. Politics in Nigeria is the deadliest enterprise anybody can get into. You are immediately sucked into s world of voodoo, terrifying spiritual experiences and your soul almost torn apart in miasma of sacrifices , late night spiritual cloak and dagger, travels into never lands etc. You enter politics you enter the world of darkness. The experience was so traumatic it led me out of fear and trepidation , to JESUS. I ran to Christ and got saved when I watched my soul descending into the abyss .
Aso Rock is the pinnacle of political power in Nigeria. Both the leadership and even the clerical hands regard the place as next to heaven.
The result, massive and very dark spiritual accruements get buried in those grounds or beamed by spiritual Bluetooth into its grounds.
No President , military or Civilian has occupied that palace without importing marabouts and men with third eye into its grounds and I dare say including its present occupants.
Abati was right , only those who God is kind to will exist un scatted in and out of Aso Rock.
However if I understand Femi very well, you can only fall to its evil spell if you are a spiritual paper weight or you worship the wrong God. I think Femi should actually wait and write his own experience in hindsight . It’s sometimes premature to analyze a life experience when you are still living it. I don’t pray that he will say years from now that Abati was right after all.
However people like Femi and Abati always live to write about it maybe because their mind set in the first place is anchored on the transient nature of that cocoon and a solid spiritual template .
A world ever so complicated.

Public Service Delivery: The Nasir El-Rufai Example

Posted on by The Elites

Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai knows that he has a responsibility to deliver on the hopes the Kaduna people demonstrated in him when they helped him clinch a landslide victory in the 2015 Gubernatorial Elections, and from all indications, this is an obligation he is taking really seriously.
In furtherance of this responsibility, he is currently focusing mainly on improving service delivery, ensuring sustainable infrastructure development and protecting the lives and property of Kaduna State’s citizens. His unrelenting efforts and commitment are important especially in contrast to the status quo in Nigerian politics, wherein politicians typically fall short of delivering and even renege on their most basic obligations. A trend which continues to undermine whatever modest successes the country, and its nascent democracy make. This is why it is refreshing to learn of states like Kaduna which seek implement reform with deliberate policies that achieve all of the above.
In creating an analytical framework that provides for the achievement of the above, the state has adopted a three pronged approach which includes Attitudinal Reorientation leading to cost reductions, Local Government Administration Reforms, and a Public Service Renewal and revitalization project.
The attitudinal reforms have begun with the creation of an environment where every citizen is encouraged to thrive through the creation of equal opportunities and the restoration of law and order. While viable jobs are being created, the state is also focusing on the reasons why people break laws with a view to fixing these reasons before empowering State Institutions like the Kaduna State Traffic and Environmental Law Enforcement Agency (KASTELEA) to enforce strict penalties on Citizens who break these laws. The KASTELEA itself is a model for job creation and has created 2550 jobs for environmental and traffic marshals.
As a show of its commitment to cost reductions, the cuts rightly started with the Kaduna State Government House immediately the current administration was sworn in. Running costs for the Government house as projected by the Mukhtar Ramalan Yero led government for 2015 alone was about N2.7bn, however this was reduced to N684m by the current administration in 2016 just over a quarter of the previous administrations budget. In the same vein, various worker verification exercises embarked on by the administration have resulted in savings of up to N500m monthly due to the establishment of an updated personnel and payroll register, this register has eradicated the payment of ghost workers. In addition, contract re-negotiations on the Kawo–Lugard Hall BRT road has led to a reduction of about N1bn in contract cost that the Kaduna State Government no longer has to bear. All these efforts ensure that more funds are available and can be channeled towards people-oriented projects.
Considering that Local Governments are the closest structure of Governance to the grassroots, Kaduna has begun a review and amendment process of all laws guiding Local Government Administration (LGA) in the state. The aim is to reposition them such that they proffer solutions to localized problems and provide vital support to communities. A major impediment to their independence and operation has been in the control of their finances by the state and in a bid to get them to function effectively, the El-Rufai led administration as one of its foremost policy pronouncements agreed to full financial autonomy for the LGA’s. Kaduna is ensuring that LGA’s control their expenditure and capital projections while encouraging them to adopt cost efficient measures similar to the ones already adopted by the State. And to ensure that this autonomy translates to capital development, a provision has been made in the law for the expenditure of at least 60% of all net revenues on Capital Development.
Above and beyond these measures, the state continues to support those who fall short. For instance, Primary Health Care workers have been moved from the LGA payroll to the State Payroll. Having freed up funds through the above interventions, the state Government will also task the LGAs with more responsibility including Forest Management, Agriculture and even Waste Management.
The will to strengthen the Kaduna State Public Service to position it as a vital organ capable of assisting the Government to meet both its vision for Kaduna State, and contribute to sustainable infrastructural development and service delivery is at the center of the State’s Public Service Revitalization and Renewal project. The project will among other things de-age the service with an aim to ensure that young people between the ages of 22-35 years constitute a minimum 30% of the Public Service before 2018. This will be done by undertaking massive recruitment drives at NYSC camps to ensure young talents are engaged early and improving working conditions to make the civil service more attractive to young people etc. The revitalization project will also include the creation of a database of Kaduna’s unemployed population with an aim to match their skills with relevant job openings both in the private and public sectors, and it will review remuneration with a view to scaling it upwards so that wages and salaries can guarantee a basic living in these current times.
The main focus of the Project is a general renewal of the service that includes improving skills match through transfers and training, cutting manning level overloads where such exist so that the system is more efficient, employment creation and adopting reward approaches that lead to improved remuneration.
In the end, what Kaduna needs is lasting and sustainable change that outlasts individual administrations. The current administration is committed to this effort; to create systems and policies that are effective now but also lead to lasting, trans-generational change. To get where we need to go as a nation, we need to fix the one institution that is the most effective means of taking us there; the government. Our focus should therefore be on making government function more efficiently. And through the reform efforts instituted under the El Rufai led administration, Kaduna is increasingly poised to do so.
Mohammed Abubakar

 

The Unspiritual Side of Aso Villa, By Femi Adesina

Posted on by The Elites

Let me begin with two clarifications. Aso Villa is not my home, I am just passing through. Even this world is nobody’s home, we are just birds of passage. So, let nobody turn up his nose in derision, and say; “he’s writing like the landlord of Aso Villa, defending a place where’s he’s just a tenant.” Yes, nobody is landlord in the Villa, not even rational presidents. They can only live there for maximum of eight years, if Nigerians so decide. And for me, my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels only need to beckon me from Heaven’s open door, and I wouldn’t feel at home in this world anymore.
The second clarification. Let nobody, particularly on social media, begin to insinuate that Femi Adesina is at war with Reuben Abati, his immediate predecessor as presidential spokesman. This piece you are beginning to read is not about Abati as a person, it is about his spiritual ideas and convictions, which I think need some appraisal, as they are rather unspiritual. Abati and myself have been professional colleagues for almost 30 years, we have a lot of mutual friends, and know how to reach each other when necessary. So, this is not a case of Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman being at war with Goodluck Jonathan’s spokesman. What for?
In his piece in The Guardian of October 14, 2016, Abati wrote under the headline, ‘The spiritual side of Aso Villa.’ What were his conclusions? For the benefit of those who did not read the highly entertaining piece (in fact, there were moments I had my two legs in the air, laughing, as I read), let me do a brief summary. Call it ‘gospel’ according to Abati, and you would be right: There is some form of witchcraft, which causes occupants of Aso Villa to take weird decisions. Working in the Villa makes you susceptible to some sort of evil influences, because there is something supernatural about power and closeness to it. Some of those who lived or worked in the Villa had something dying under their waists (for the men), while some of the women became merchants of dildo, because they had suffered a special kind of deaths in their homes. “The ones who did not have such misfortune had one ailment or the other that they had to nurse. From cancer to brain and prostate surgery and whatever, the Villa was a hospital full of agonizing patients,” Abati posited.
Reading the piece through, you would think Aso Villa was nothing but what Godfrey Chaucer called “a thoroughfare of woes.” In fact, Abati submitted that the Villa “should be converted into a spiritual museum,and abandoned.” Holy Moses! Jumping Jehoshaphat!
If Aso Villa was such a haunted house, why then do most occupants like to stay put, right from the first tenant, Ibrahim Babangida, who was virtually forced to step aside in August 1993? And why did Goodluck Jonathan, Abati’s principal, spend money in trillions (in different currencies of the world), just to perpetuate himself in a house that consumes its occupants? Being a literary scholar, Abati would remember the doctor in Macbeth, that work of William Shakespeare, who was detailed to cure Lady Macbeth of the neurosis that afflicted her, after she had been party to the deaths of King Duncan and Banquo, so that her husband would be the king of Scotland. A spiritually troubled Lady Macbeth sleepwalked every night, trying to wash her hands of the innocent blood that had been shed. The doctor was so fed up with the terrifying atmosphere, that he said to himself:”Were I from Dunsinane away and clear, profit should hardly again draw me here.” Did Abati ever say the same of the Villa, a place where men became women “after something died below their waists?” We do not have it on record that Abati showed a clean pair of heels, or that he would not have stayed if Dr Jonathan had won reelection, and had asked him to continue in his position as adviser on media. Or was it the case of eternal fascination for the thing that repelled and terrified you? Mysterium tremendum et fascinas, as it is called in Latin.
For me, what Abati did in the October 14 piece was simply a glorification and deification of superstition, something that attempted to elevate works of darkness above the powers of God. The writer merely fed the cravings and propensity of people for the supernatural, in a way that stoked and kindled the kiln of fear, rather than that of faith.
Let’s take the issues one after the other, and look at them against true spiritual principles. Christianity is the one I am most familiar with, and that would be my benchmark.
In Aso Villa, houses were haunted, people were oppressed into taking curious decisions, they fell ill, died, or suffered the losses of loved ones, so Abati claimed. Are such peculiar only to the presidential villa? Should all those who live or work there automatically enjoy immunity from the vicissitudes of life, simply because they walked the corridors of power? Wasn’t President Umaru Yar’Adua right inside the presidential villa, when he told us on national television: “I am a human being. I can fall sick. I can recover. And I can die.” That was a practical man for you. Abati unwittingly wants his readers to believe that once you operated in or around Aso Villa, you became a superman. No. You are as mortal as can be. The Holy Bible does not even give us such leeway. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man…”(1 Cor 10:13). There are certain things common to man, and they can happen to you wherever you are. At the White House. At 10, Downing Street. Buckingham Palace, Aso Villa. Wherever. “But such as is common to man…” Let no man feed us with the bogey that such things happen because of where you live or operate from. There are some things that are just common to man, and which may happen to you as long as you are on this side of eternity.
I lost my sister in a road crash last year. She was a professor of Dramatic Arts at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife. Abati knew her well, as they both did post-graduate studies at University of Ibadan in the 1980s. Abati was among those who called to condole with me. My sister never visited the Villa in her lifetime. Even if she did, that could never have had anything to do with her death on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. To believe and teach otherwise is to carry superstition to ridiculous level, and venerate the Devil, granting him omnipotence, an attribute that belongs to God only. For the Devil, doing evil is full-time business, and whether you had anything to do with Aso Villa or not, he continued with his pernicious acts. Does that then suggest that mankind is helpless before evil? No. God still has ultimate powers. He can spare you “as a father spares the son that serves him.” (Malachi 3:17). If you are under the pavilion of God, sleep, wake and operate daily in Aso Villa, you are covered, no matter the evil that lurks around, if any. There is a better covenant established on greater promises, and that is the canopy under which you should function. God can spare you from all evils, and if He permits any other thing, it is “such as is common to man,” and not because of Aso Villa.
If houses catch fire in the Villa, how many conflagrations occur in other parts of the city? If some men in the Villa suffered erectile dysfunction in Abati’s time, doesn’t the Journal of Sexual Medicine tell us that about 20 million American men have something that has died under their waists? It is one thing that became prevalent in the last two to three decades, due to modern lifestyle. Causes range from age, to stress, depression, anxiety, alcohol, medication, and several others. Even, a study showed that watching too much television kills something under the waist. So why does Abati make it seem as if it is a copyright of Aso Villa?
Now, another clarification. Don’t I believe in demonic infestation and manifestation? I sure do. I wouldn’t be a student of the Holy Bible if I don’t. Jesus talked of the man who got delivered from demonic possession, and because that man did not yield himself to a better influence, the evil spirit that inhabited him came back with seven more powerful spirits, and the end of the man was worse than his beginning. Abati wrote of persons in the Villa, “walking upside down, head to the ground.” Let me share this story I heard over 20 years ago. There was this young Christian who gave scant regards to demons and what they could do. In fact, he almost didn’t believe demons existed. One day, as he walked along the ever busy Broad Street in Lagos, God opened his spiritual eyes. Some people were walking on their heads! And not only that, as they passed by other people, they slapped them with the soles of their feet. If you got so slapped, you developed an affliction, which you would nurse for the rest of your life. Yet, you never knew where it came from.
As the young man saw that vision and got its spiritual explanation, he began to s-c-r-e-a-m. Was that in Aso Villa? “Such as is common to man…” Evil exists everywhere. Trying to source and locate it in Aso Villa is disingenuous. You need God everywhere. In Europe, Asia, America, Oceania, Aso Villa. There is evil everywhere, and we need not make fetish of any place as being more evil infested than other places. Since Satan got thrown out of Heaven due to his inordinate ambition, evil had resided in the world. “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” (Isaiah 14:12). The Devil lives in the world, but God is never helpless before evil. He will never be. Let the Devil commit suicide if he is not happy about that fact. God rules!
If every principal officer including the President and his wife suffered series of tragedies as Abati claimed, and he himself had breathing problems, and walked with the aid of crutches for months, it was ” such as is common to man” and not necessarily because they were in Aso Villa. But of course, if such people put their hands in evil, possibly to gain some things in power or perpetuate themselves beyond the time heaven granted, then “he who rolls a stone, a stone shall be rolled back to him. He that digs a pit, shall fall into it.” That is what the Good Book says. You can then hardly blame Aso Villa for such payback time, can you?
To avoid getting sucked into what Abati calls “the cloud of evil” that hangs around power, what to do is to hold ephemeral things loosely. Know that they are temporal, and will truly end. Power is one of such things. Will anybody be a permanent landlord at Aso Villa? It would be foolhardy to have such mindset. A couple of times I’d had some private discussions with President Buhari, and he had lamented the state of the nation, he invariably ended with the statement, “while we are here, we will do our best.” It shows a man who knows that he’s not a permanent landlord at Aso Villa, and can never be. He would use the opportunity he has to do his best for Nigeria, and then move on. That is a good mindset, and a safety valve from getting sucked into “the cloud of evil.” Daily, I tell myself that I am just passing through Aso Villa. And while there, just like my principal, I will do my best. It could be long, it could be short, depending on God and the man who appointed me, but one day, it would be over, and some other people would come in to do their bit. It is inexorable. The real treasures are laid somewhere beyond the blue.
Abati says we should pray before people pack their things into Aso Villa. I say not just Aso Villa, but everywhere. Pray before you pack into any place, because there are some things “such as is common to man.” It is only God that keeps from such. And He is sovereign in terms of what He prevents, and in what He allows. Ours is to pray, and believe. Prayer works.
“Aso Villa is in urgent need of redemption. I never slept in the apartment they gave me in that Villa for an hour,” wrote Abati. Well, different strokes for different folks. Hear what the Good Book says: “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows; for so he giveth his beloved sleep.” Here am I. For over one year, I have lived in the house allocated to me at the Villa. I sleep so soundly, I even snore. In fact, I snore so loud that at times, I wake myself up with the sound.
.Adesina is Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari

A Peep Into The Presidential Kitchen

Posted on by The Elites

By Philip Agbese

An African adage says: “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” Whether in Africa, Europe or Asian continents, leaders are burdened. And the support of his family has to come with the full measure for him to succeed.

Leaders of nations battle to contain disparate interests; strive to leave a legacy and unquestionably accept responsibility for acts of commission or omission from subordinates. A leader of any nation spends more time cogitating and less for leisure. He deprives himself and his family the comfort of his presence most of the times. It’s worse when a leader operates in a clime where there is stiff opposition.

In faraway Germany, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari decried the burden posed by a multi-coloured opposition in Nigeria in these words; “It’s not easy to satisfy the whole Nigerian opposition parties or to participate in the government.”

A leader in the words of the ancient Greek Philosopher, Aristotle must be a philosopher King,who must claim superior knowledge over the rest of the ruled, opposition inclusive. He must not only imbibe the virtues of truth, honesty and hard work but, ardently exhibit it at all times in private and public arenas. President Buhari is an embodiment of these virtues,which is the source of his courageous and fearless war on corruption in Nigeria.

The family of a Leader, whether designated as President, Prime Minister or Chancellor or as in the case of Germany, is rightly the first family of the nation. They must exude the quintessence of uprightness and puritanism.

When they pander to debauchery, the nation screams and shrieks; hurl invective at them. Like any other couple, leaders of nations also double as leaders of their families. And the shame of ridicule of a failed first family imposes a heavy and additional burden on the husband and wife to keep an eagle eye on the family.

The temptation of children of leaders of nations to pander to waywardness is extremely high because of the feeling of a paradise on earth. It is fired by the blaze of affluence.

Therefore,President Buhari’s epochal statement that “I don’t know which party my wife belongs to; but she belongs to my kitchen, my living room and the other room,” is humorous; but also pregnant with meaning.

The President was reacting to comments credited to his wife, Hajiya Aisha Buhari in a BBC interview, which had political undertones. Invariably,President Buhari as leader of Nigeria and also head of Nigeria’s first family sought to limit the duties of his wife, to domestic affairs only, which in itself is a herculean burden.

Nevertheless,the statement is the embodiment of the hard truth about the onerous task on the shoulders of the wife of the President in ensuring the proper upbringing of the first family and proper care of the home-front.

It is a sacred duty she owes to the nation. The Holy books prescribed it. It is the unwritten norm in traditions of almost all communities in the world. Families which slide into immorality, resent hard work and embrace odiousness are not only shunned, but loathed.

In Nigeria,with its complexities and a fastidious people,the imperative of an ideal first family is a ministry of its own headed by the wife of the President. And she needs not be burdened any further with the exigencies of politicking.

It is confirmable that women married to high profile politicians are the epitomes of endurance and patience. They spend days or sometimes weeks, without the comfort of their spouse, who keeps moving from one meeting in one location to another.

And since Buhari’s foray into partisan politics, Aisha was automatically elevated from the position of housewife to the lofty status of the Minister of Kitchen and Domestic Affairs. She has lived with the task all her marital life,by ensuring the children, especially the tender ones are properly brought up,in the periods of her husband’s absence for political adventures. Her ministry of Kitchen and Domestic Affairs ensured the children were properly fed, attended school timely, cultivated good social relationships and never deviated from the path of morality.

Now,after exhaustive political meetings,only Aisha knows the delicacy that would revive and energize her husband. It is perhaps, the secret of President Buhari’s strength and agility at his octogenarian age. It is the signpost of excellence from Aisha’s Kitchen and Domestic Affairs ministry.

She cooks endlessly for the teeming supporters or visitors to the house and now Aso Villa,where President Buhari is resident. She plans the President’s menu and outlines what goes for breakfast,lunch and dinner as well as refreshments’.

Aisha is the closest confidant of the President and he confides in her, issues that would ordinarily not be thrown to public purview. Even though President Buhari is endowed with superior knowledge over the wisdom of his wife, but undoubtedly, the shared thoughts give him inspiration to courageously and fearlessly confront the devouring external forces against him.

A troubled house unsettles the head of the family. It inflicts a psychological burden on the leader of the house, which affects him in multiple dimensions. But by ensuring peace in the house, Aisha raises a platform that gives Buhari the confidence to face Nigeria to deliver on his mandate of leadership to the country.

But by far, the most alluring and enduring accomplishments of Aisha’s ministry is her supportive role in ensuring discipline is inculcated in the children of the first family. They exemplify the virtues of truthfulness, discipline, hard work and honesty. In 1983 when Buhari was military Head of State and since his return as civilian President in 2015, none of his children has been caught in public cynosure of haughtiness and waywardness, traits common with children of leaders of President Buhari’s status.

It would, therefore, not be out of place to nominate Hajiya Aisha Buhari as the best performing Minister of Kitchen and Domestic Affairs in Nigeria for the year 2016, as Nigerians look forward to 2017 with more brightened performance of the first family . So, dragging her into politicking would be a distraction designed to diminish this enviable record.

Philip Agbese writes from the United Kingdom.

 

Is Dele Giwa’s Ghost Now Old? By Dare Babarinsa

Posted on by The Elites

dele-giwa1Today is the 30th anniversary of Dele Giwa’s assassination. For us who were with him at Newswatch magazine, it was the day the world changed. Giwa was the pioneer Editor-in-Chief and Chief Executive of Newswatch. He was larger than life and larger than journalism. Henry Kissinger, former American Secretary of State, writing about President Charles De Gaulle of France, said the charisma of the French president was so great that when he enters a room, the centre of gravity shifts. So it was with Giwa. How could anyone who has ever met him, forget his arresting personality and the magnetism of his presence?

It is mere happenstance that my book, One Day and A Story, is coming on the 30th anniversary of Giwa’s death. The book, which is my reminiscences of my Newswatch years, has been ready for at least 10 years. I only hope the book would again re-awake the debate about who killed Dele Giwa and why? Each regime since the assassination had made promises to unravel the matter, but eight governments later, the truth remains elusive like Giwa’s ghost.

What would have been the fate of Nigerian journalism if Giwa had not happened among us? He was one of the several American trained journalists attracted to the old Daily Times by the venerable Dr. Dele Cole. Dr Cole, now a consultant to The Guardian editorial board, was drafted by the Federal Military Government to manage the newspaper empire after the legendary Babatunde Jose was removed from office by the military regime of General Murtala Muhammed. Jose was the newspaper genius who turned the conservative Daily Times, founded in 1926 by some businessmen, including Sir Adeyemo Alakija, into an empire. After the coup that toppled General Yakubu Gowon in 1975, some of the top editors of the newspaper revolted and petitioned the new strongman, General Muhammed who simply seized the paper for the Federal Government. It was the government that drafted Cole, a top civil servant at Doddan Barrack, to manage the Daily Times.
It was Cole who brought Giwa and his intellectual soul mate, Dr Stanley Macebuh, to the Daily Times. Macebuh was to emerge later as the first managing director of The Guardian. I first met Giwa when he was the feature editor of the Daily Times at the Times office on Kakawa Street, Lagos. I was taken to his office by my friend, Waheed Olagunju, now the acting Managing Director of the Bank of Industry. Olagunju was my roommate at the University of Lagos where we shared a large room nicknamed Angola in El-Kanemi Hall. That was the beginning of my relationship with Giwa who was destined to have a long influence on my career and that of many of my colleagues and contemporaries.
As the features editor of the Daily Times, he revolutionised the feature pages of the paper, bringing in such innovations as the Page Seven feature pages. It was part of that innovation that he made me to pioneer the writing of the column, Campus News, in the old Daily Times. By the time he became the editor of the new Sunday Concord in 1981, Giwa had become a celebrity journalist, much a news reporter as well as a news maker. A corps of reporters was already developing around him and he became the leader of a new kind of journalism. Among the new members were the likes of Richard Ikiebe, Amman Ogan, Mike Awoyinfa and May Ellen-Ezekiel.

Though Nigerian noticed Giwa when he was in Kakawa, he was to blossom as the editor of the Sunday Concord founded by that incomparable philanthropist and politician, Chief M.K.O Abiola. It was in Concord that Giwa found his bearing, creating a Sunday paper that re-defined journalism. He was the one who introduced the Concord magazine, a pull-out inside the paper that focused on a major topic of interest. His team did not rely on those of us working with the National Concord, including those of us working in the states. Though I filed a lot of stories on the 1983 bloody riots in Ondo State in the aftermath of that year controversial elections, Giwa still dispatched a team of Sunday Concord reporters, led by Mike Awoyinfa, to do a story for the Sunday Concord magazine. He did not ask me to do it.
He found his destiny when he and three other top journalists founded the Newswatch magazine. The other three, Ray Ekpu, Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Concord Group and former Editor of the Sunday Times, Yakubu Mohammed, former editor of the National Concord and Dan Agbese, former Editor of the New Nigerian. The quartet was a formidable one and it soon proved its mettle when the Newswatch hit the newsstand in 1985. It was Mohammed, along with Dayo Onibile, our former News Editor at the Concord, who invited me and Wale Oladepo, my late friend, to join the Newswatch team.
Newswatch was a great place to practice journalism. We had four of the greatest journalists under one roof and commanding the troops into battle. Then one day, our life changed. In those days, there was no mobile phone and telephone was a luxury meant for the rich. October 19, 1986 was a Sunday. After service, I had gone to the office, as was the practice among us staff of Newswatch, to pick up my copy of the magazine. I was accompanied there by my friend and neighbour, Paul Okomayin, a banker and accountant. We got to the office at 62 Oregun Road, and met an eerie scene.

“Giwa had been bombed!”

A lady from Newbreed, another magazine founded by Chris Okolie, was telling me. She sensed my incomprehension.

“Giwa had been bombed! He is dead!”

Thirty years later, we are still asking who killed Dele Giwa? Thirty years after the tragedy, the world has moved on, but the question remained unanswered. Giwa is now a free spirit. His prodigious capacity, his love of life, his tenacity, his capacity to love and his fearlessness have followed him to the land of the Dead. Can his spirit see this world where we worry about the exchange rate, the kidnappers and the return of the Chibok girls? Does his spirit now know the answer to the question that continues to taunt us: Who killed Dele Giwa?
Occasionally, now I drive pass 62, Oregun Road, Ikeja, and the premises where we expended the energy of youth and sow the seed of future endeavours. I remember always Giwa lying in state in front of that building with throngs of Lagosians waiting patiently to file pass his body. There was Wole Soyinka, grim-faced, numbed into silence. Giwa was in a dark suit, with a white shirt and tie as if the mortician was preparing him for a wedding feast. How we wept!
I have found out many times since then that tears cannot wake the dead. Then later an Okada airline, donated by Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, carried Giwa’s body to Benin on the final journey to Ugbekpe Ekperi. After all these years, has Giwa’s ghost grow old in the land of the Dead? Does the ghost worry about Who Killed Dele Giwa? Or are some of the killers already with him? The world has changed since then with so many unresolved murders on the national score card. Even a sitting Attorney-General of the Federation, Chief Bola Ige, was assassinated in the sanctuary of his home. General Muhammed Shuwa, a Civil War hero and divisional commander, was assassinated. Even whole villages in Kaduna, Plateau, Benue and other states have been sacked by rampaging gun men. Yet after all these years of bloodletting and unresolved murders, I do not know of any other person who has been killed with a parcel bomb apart from Giwa.

Can the dead rest in peace when the killers have not been brought to justice? After the burial in Ugbekpe and the red soil of Edo was piled on Giwa’s body, we travelled back to Lagos. Local priests prayed and cursed admists the wailings and the sober faces and the dropping of heads and the starring into the vast distance. Thirty years down the road, are we ever going to find the answer to who killed Dele Giwa?

30 Years After, Dele Giwa’s Pen Remains Mightier

Posted on by The Elites

By Charles Kumolu

Regrettably brief but inspirationally eventful! This short acclamation best raises the curtain once again on the life of Dele Giwa, who has justifiably refused to die after being gruesomely denied the right to live on October 19, 1986. That Giwa, an ace journalist, has remained a phenomenon in the Nigerian narrative 30 years after dying via a letter bomb, is an affirmation of the import of his life, times as well as the implication of his kind of exit. It was a life sojourn, birthed in humility, expended on national good and cut short by man’s inhumanity to man-apologies to Robert Burns. Having attended local Authority Modern School in Lagere, Ile-lfe; Oduduwa College, Ile-Ife; Brooklyn College ,USA; and Fordham University ,USA, he was princely moulded for the profession that earned him stardom, significance, and death. Late Dele Giwa In his nearly four decades on earth, the late founding Editor-in-Chief of Newswatch Magazine earned himself professional prominence and national significance through the pursuit of professional goals and commitment to societal good. Through the introduction of bold and investigative approach to journalism in Nigeria, Giwa , who was born in 1947 in the palace of the Ooni of Ife, altered social anomalies in manners that held the citizen and the state responsive. Decrees, edicts, boots on the ground Frontally, his pen confronted decrees, edicts, and boots on the ground with the aim of enthroning public good especially in an era that was not guided by the constitution. These, the late journalist, who hailed from Edo State, exhibited as Features Editor of Daily Times, Weekend Concord and Editor-in-Chief of Newswatch Magazine-the position he held at the time the angels of death delivered the deadly parcel through his then 19-year-old son, Billy, who received it on his behalf. Indeed, the major resultant effect of that parcel which was Giwa’s death may have dealt a devastating blow to journalism in Nigeria, it interestingly failed to suppress the ability to espouse and seek the truth. However, the death which took place at the First Foundation Hospital, Ikeja, Lagos, where he was rushed to after the explosion at his No 25, Talabi Crescent, Adeniyi Jones Avenue, Ikeja residence, remains saddening but significant in many ways. On the one hand, many are still appalled at the failure of requisite institutions at clearing the fog surrounding the death in respective of acclaimed traces, while others see such failure as the absence of capacity by the Nigerian state to protect its citizens. On the other hand, the incident emboldened the use of free speech as a weapon against societal ills and tyranny to point that the media stood up to the late Gen San Abacha’s dictatorship. That the nation from that moment, has been boldly asking: Who Killed Dele Giwa? affirms that his death rather than suppressing the right to free speech fuelled the feelings of fearlessness the more. And the event which is still believed to be an affront to press freedom has further amplified the voices for press freedom which many would agree is not sufficiently practicable as enshrined in chapter II section 39 subsection (1) of the 1999 constitution. The constitution highlighted that part thus: “Every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference.” Though some have argued that freedom of expression even with the Freedom of Information Act ,FOIA, does not mean absolute freedom, the fact that journalists perform constitutionally backed duties, qualifies them for state protection. Giwa’s gruesome murder and its unresolved status, testify to the need for that considering that some journalists had also died under questionable circumstances since that incident of October 19, 1986. Certainly, the attendant implications of his death informed the thrust of a colloquium holding today in Lagos in commemoration of the 30 years of his demise. The event which is entitled: Safety of Journalists and Culture of Impunity in Africa, seeks to reflect on the life of Giwa, his contributions to journalism and the implication of his death to the practice of journalism in Africa. With participants drawn from the media, armed forces, the executive arm of government, judiciary and civil society, the choice of attendees can’t be termed inappropriate considering the role the institutions they represent, played in the aftermath of the death of Giwa, who in his time, epitomised excellence and dynamism in Nigerian journalism. Expectedly, today’s exercise may, on the one hand, produce a consensus for an objective investigation of the matter beyond what has been a thirty-year official indifference, just as many would re-echo this three-decade-old question: Who killed Dele Giwa? Govt was interested in Dele Giwa’s case—Tsav Reflecting on Giwa’s demise yesterday in an exclusive chat with Vanguard, a retired Police Commissioner, who conducted the initial investigation into the matter, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav, urged the media to ensure that such cases are satisfactorily concluded. He said: ”There was gross negligence in the cause of investigating Dele Giwa’s death. The negligence was on the part of the instigative authority and the government. I handled the case immediately it happened and sought the permission to search the places I was supposed to but the files left my hand and never came back. Before then I had already interviewed Soyinka, who was Dele Giwa at the time the incident happened, Dele Giwa’s wife and Gani Fawehinmi. The claim that Soyinka knew what happened is not true. When the matter got to Omaben, he started to say that Soyinka was responsible and deviated from my view. That was the end of that case. Any case that the government is interested in will never see the light of the day. That was what happened. The government was interested in the case of Dele Giwa. We saw that happen in the case of Rewane, Bola Ige, and others. That case like Dele Giwa’s case showed that any case that the government has an interest in dies a natural death. As the media remembers Dele Giwa, they should henceforth insist that any murder case is brought to a logical conclusion even if it is the murder of a beggar, it must be investigated with a view to bringing those responsible to book. I handled the case with enthusiasm so that we could know those responsible because that was the first bomb blast in Nigeria but the government was interested in it. It was after then that we started having cases of bomb last like during the NADECO days when the group was wrongly accused of being behind the blasts.”

 

Nigeria According To Personal and Political Ethics (I), By Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú

Posted on by The Elites

 

Obanikoro did not come back home because he loves Nigeria. He came home because America will not let him be Musiliu Obanikoro. He will rather come home and bribe judges or even be in prison for a few months where he gets to renovate his own wing of the prison to taste, have a generator in place and all his comfort while his wife can still come around and pass the night with full cooperation of the Warders.

The return of Obanikoro to Nigeria inspired this article. I have always wanted to take my readers on a journey into ethics and how our lack of it as a country has shaped who we are and what we have become. It is long established that people find resonance in environments, concepts and experiences they can relate to. In like manner, our politics is almost always defined by how state institutions contributes to our successes as persons and how they help us, when we fail as persons.

The Nigerian politician, top civil servant, company executive and many in high public office cannot exist comfortably for long in America, Europe or elsewhere in the West, except in Nigeria. This is because the relationship between their personal and political ethics is at variance with what is required to live peaceably in the countries of the West. An Obanikoro will come back to Nigeria and its chaos because it is where he functions best. Nigeria is the society he grew up in and fouled up. It is where he benefits from ingrained ethical and moral dysfunction.

Every individual’s private, economic, professional and political lives are moral realities. These moral realities have distinct ethical boundaries. Within the context of existence, there exists a code of ethics in everyone’s life, and it has personal, social, political, economic and professional dimensions. The distinction and relationship between personal and political ethics should interest us as a people if we are to grow and compete globally as a people. Living irresponsibly and unaccountably as individuals, and collectively as a nation, is ruining the potentials of Nigeria to attain greatness. The nations we love to holiday in and run to, long understood that the good of humanity is regulated by personal ethics which are, in turn, directly governed by personal conduct. There is congruence between the moral order of life and processes of the political society. The recognition of this relationship and it’s practical application is what made those countries excel.

We can remember when rain started beating us as a nation when we begin to understand that the personal development and ethics of man presupposes certain social and political conditions. In the case of the Nigerian, the constraints of myopic ethnic and religious prisms gets in the way and distorts the fundamental concepts of what is considered the common good. We are in such a hole because we have a few good men. A good man equals a good citizen because personal ethics translates into political ethics. That is why ethical virtues are objectives of political laws. The reason behind our underdevelopment, corruption, mediocrity and impunity can be found in the annexation of our collective morality by materialism and bigotry. We have no unifed concept of the common good, we have no common tradition that is baked in us and we do not have shared ethical paradigms in our polity. We have no grasp of the utilitarian dimensions of our social and political relationships.
We are caught in a moral loop today, because we have no idea of what right is to be done to God, to society, and to us. Our institutions cannot evaluate the relationship between the form that society gives itself and its reason for being, which is the common good.

Ethics is moral knowledge and it is unitary. As Nigerians, our religion influences our personal ethics, familial ethics, and political ethics and each one has its own logic. But what is our religion? Our religion is not Christianity, Islam or any other. Our religion is MONEY! How was Nigeria formed? On what was it built after independence? What are our shared values? Do we have a galvanising ideal? The actions of a nation is the collective actions of the citizens. Personal ethics evaluates the morality and the virtue of justice of any action in private as it relates to the good of human life. Political ethics falls on the society, the actions it takes and how it directs legal, constitutional, administrative, economic, health etc. institutions based on its own goals for the common good. The morality a nation bestows on itself depends on its definition of the common political good. While political ethics cannot determine the morality of our individual actions, the actions of the individual is subject to political ethics, based on its legality.

The civil violations of the Jonathan era went unchallenged. Obanikoro is back in Nigeria and in Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) custody today, given his conduct in the Ekiti elections. Is the militarisation of Ekiti polls in line with political ethics defined as concerned with the proper ordering of the life of a community? Is the abrogation of people’s right to free movement and associations during the said election in line with the requirement that goods and personal behaviour with public interest be protected and promoted by the state? Political ethics demands that personal behaviours which attempt to oppose public interest be declared illegal; how about a Defence minister unleashing sniffer dogs on voters to intimidate them?

Obanikoro did not come back home because he loves Nigeria. He came home because America will not let him be Musiliu Obanikoro. He will rather come home and bribe judges or even be in prison for a few months where he gets to renovate his own wing of the prison to taste, have a generator in place and all his comfort while his wife can still come around and pass the night with full cooperation of the Warders. Obanikoro came back because he is tired of not seeing people at his door every morning begging for crumbs. He is tired of driving himself. He is tired of driving without siren blazing and mobile police escort. He is sick of having to carry his own bags, phones and fetch his own things. He has no respect for political ethics. He, along with many like him in public life, has worked against establishing the illegality of the ethically negative behaviours which threaten the Nigerian common political good.

We are caught in a moral loop today, because we have no idea of what right is to be done to God, to society, and to us. Our institutions cannot evaluate the relationship between the form that society gives itself and its reason for being, which is the common good.

 

Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú a farmer, youth advocate and political analyst writes this weekly column, “Bamidele Upfront” for the PREMIUM TIMES. Follow me on Twitter @olufunmilayo

 

Of Demons, Villa Ghosts and Nigerian Paralysis, By Sola Adeyeye

Posted on by The Elites

img_2065Sadly, acknowledged bright minds are now waxing strong in superstitious theology and pseudo-spirituality. Society is guided by the philosophy it embraces. Because theology is the mother of all philosophy, every society will become what it theologizes!

What ensnared the villa, and indeed the country itself, was corruption in all of its forms. Attributing metaphysical basis to our individual and collective irresponsibility is a shifty way of blaming everything on Satan!

No be Satan’s fault. Na our fault! Forget Lucifer and his demons; corrupt leaders inflict more harm on a country than the beasts from Dante’s Inferno. Every money stolen whether by a president, governor, minister, legislator, civil servant, contractor or judge catapults the fleecing of the land to infernal magnitude.

Let all thieves cough their loot. Roads will be built, environment will be cleaned, schools will be renovated, hospitals will be equipped, airports will be maintained and lives will be preserved.

Mega million naira egunje are commonplace in government offices. Meanwhile, the elevators in the buildings that quarter those offices are not working. The clinics are not equipped, the electronics constantly fail. And those whose dereliction of duty inflicts such disrepair blame demons and principalities! Hogwash!

Consider the fact that Islamic Qatar and Saudi Arabia are working as are Singapore and Pakistan. Christian England and USA are working as are Italy, France and other countries proffering Christianity. Israel has prospered with its Judaism. Hindu India is working. Atheist China and Russia are working. Bhuddist Japan is working. Multicultural Malaysia is working. Does God hate Nigeria so much that he puts half of the demons of the world to live there? Or might it be that the righteousness which exalts a nation is defined by ethical behavior and moral rectitude rather than by theological malarkey?

Our people, especially opinion molders must wake up from this hocus-pocus supernaturalist worldview. You reap what you sow and sleep on the bed you lay.

There was an Orisa edifice in Oregun in Ikeja that prevented the expansion of an important road. Contractors feared moving the edifice which had been erected as far back as anyone could remember. After Governor Bola Tinubu took office in 1999, I offered to help to negotiate with the chief priest of that Orisa to remove the edifice. I proffered that the law of eminent domain, operated worldwide, allows any government to displace private interest for the good of the larger public.

Should the Chief Priest refuse to negotiate, I offered to kidnap the Orisa, burn it and dump its ashes in the Atlantic. I dared the Orisa to visit its wrath on me. Governor Tinubu had a better idea. He and Julius Berger made a better offer to the Chief Priest. The Orisa and its Chief Priest relocated within a month. The road was renovated and expanded. It is now called Kudirat Abiola Way in Oregun, Ikeja.

If there were ghosts disturbing them in Aso Villa, they should long have given others the key. As a friend of mine asserted, he would have lived with all the ghosts and gotten the job done. We must accept no excuses. Anyone who can not overcome the ghosts should leave the job alone; let’s get professional Ghost busters to run the country.

Ghosts always bow to determined humans!

Aisha Buhari’s Interview Is Nothing But Tactical PR For Her Husband

Posted on by The Elites

By Iliya M. Usman

img_2394I watched an interview with Orji Kalu on AIT and he made this statement that “Deviating from our cultural values is the cause of our problems”. You don’t expect an average Hausa man to openly show love and concern in the open.

Aisha Buhari’s interview is nothing but a tactical PR for her husband. It showcased him as he once described himself, that he “belongs to everybody…” All that she said, projected to be a criticism of her husband, only portrayed a favorable image of the man.

It is not an issue that will bring discord between the two except to those willing and wishing the First Family a turbulent period in the Villa which they will never see. They have been together all along with kids and there was never a time when any of them abandoned one another for one reason or the other.

Therefore, for Aisha to muster so much gust to air what lots felt is impossible has testified that her husband is indeed free with her and has given her all the freedom of expression. If you cannot find your wife in the Kitchen or the Bed Room, then she is either in the Bar, Nightclub, Brothel or on the streets.