“Something startles me where I thought I was safest,

I withdraw from the still woods I loved,

I will not go now on the pastures to walk…”

– Walt Whitman (1819-1892) in the poem, ‘This Compost’.  

In October 2004, Professor Chinua Achebe told Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s “civilian” ruler at the time, that Nigeria under his watch was unarguably “too dangerous.” That was about five years ago. Today, words would fail anyone, including Achebe himself, to describe Nigeria’s current state. And if by any stroke of misfortune the 2011 general elections still throws up this same band of (mis)rulers, whose insatiable greed and obscene display of unearned wealth now constitute the greatest and most effective incentive for the prolongation of Nigeria’s current nightmare of kidnapping, violent robberies and ritual murders, what this country will become in the next few years from now is better imagined. 

Mid-last month, July 15, 2009, to be precise, The Nigerian Tribune carried a very brief story whose significance may have been lost on many people. At 3.00 am on the Sunday of that week, a thief was caught in the bedroom of Mr. Sule Lamido, the Governor of Jigawa State. The story, according to the newspaper, has been duly confirmed by the Governor’s Director of Press, Muhammad Sanu Jibrin. Before now, who could have imagined that a thief, any thief, would have been able to violate the sanctity of a governor’s bedroom? But that has now become part of our history. I won’t be surprised to hear tomorrow that a governor or his wife has been kidnapped and taken to an unknown destination, from the safe confines of the Government House. Given the horribly complicated security situation in this failed state we call our country today, such a possibility already stares everyone in the face. 

 There is always a huge price to pay when a nation is left in the hands of an irresponsible and wayward elite to do the only thing it knows how to do with it, namely, primitively bleed it pale and callously run it aground. That is today the story of Nigeria. And the situation is becoming horribly complicated. Those outsmarted in the grab-and-plunder game have taken up arms to get their own share of the cake, provoked mainly by the sudden wealth being flaunted by the “lucky few” with easy access to public funds. Now, the smell of blood and death hangs in the air, like a dreaded epidemic! Fear walks on all fours. Yet, the looters are still busy plundering, hoping to use what they have accumulated to purchase safety and comfort for themselves in the midst of death and destruction. What a foolish thought.  

On July 18, 2009, Saturday Independent reported the gruesome murder of two former aides to the Education Minister, Dr. Sam Egwu, at the burial ceremony of the father of a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain in Nnewi, Anambra State. A Federal lawmaker, Paulinus Igwe Nwagwu, who was also hit by bullets from the same gunmen, however, still has his life intact, and was at the time of the report receiving medical attention at an undisclosed hospital. It was even reported that due to “the deadly onslaught of this gang of killers”, Gov Sullivan Chime of Enugu State, and Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who were already set to attend the funeral in Nnewi became scared and retreated indoors. Do you blame them? When a state fails, not even governors or deputy senate presidents can appear safely in the open, despite the intimidating security apparatus at their disposal.  

And make no mistake about it: this can only get worse until the political and ruling elite decides that looting and plundering of commonwealth must not remain inextricably intertwined with governance, and that Nigeria needs to be healed and rebuilt and not continuously gang-raped. Well, the bad (or good) news is that very soon, treasury looters may no longer find any safe ground to ply their lucrative trade. The words of British clergyman, Willaim Inge, may soon come alive to everyone: “A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can’t sit on it.” Indeed, no one can sow the wind, and expect NOT to reap the whirlwind. Nigeria appears to be the only country where people are busy eating and drinking poison, and yet wishing to live. Our rulers live their whole lives destroying the country, and yet wake up each morning expecting to see it flourishing like a May flower. No, you don’t bring home ant-infested faggots, and expect to be excused from the visit of lizards. For goodness sake, Nigeria is too young to die. It has never been this unsafe. And no part of the country is immune.  

A couple of weeks ago, on a Friday, a heavily armed gang reportedly raided two commercial banks in Nsukka, Enugu State; they took their time to thoroughly clean out one bank before moving to the other to repeat the same exercise, killing a Divisional Police Officer (DPO) in the process. While the reign of terror and bullets persisted, no form of resistance came from any quarters. When they were through with the banks, they moved with an even greater fanfare to the Nsukka Police Station, where all the ill-equipped and poorly motivated policemen had fled for dear life. Then they opened the cells, released all the inmates and razed down the police station. After the robbers had finished their operations and gone, the Enugu State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr. Ebere Amaraizu, told Saturday Independent (probably from his hideout in Enugu) that the Police Commissioner had dispatched some more policemen to Nsukka to go and help catch the robbers. Nigeria, Great Nation, Good People!  

Whether we like it or not, the rise of violent crimes is to a large extent being provoked by the massive, unrestrained looting going on in public institutions. Time was when everyone, including criminal elements among us, watched passively as those in government, their relatives, mistresses and errand boys became rich overnight and obscenely flaunted their ill-gotten wealth before every eye that could see. Now the situation has changed. Those without access to government coffers now have access to guns. But in their determination to “make it” like their counterparts in government and politics, they are unable to achieve reasonable discrimination between those who acquired wealth by dint of hard work and those who bled the treasury pale. I have heard it said several times among the populace that if the robbers and kidnappers would direct their efforts solely on those carting away public funds, no one would bat an eyelid. It would then amount to a balance of criminality. They steal from the public; the thieves and kidnappers steal from them! And so long as those outside this godless ring remain untouched in the desperation of the two camps to out-steal each other, no one would complain. Imagine such a reasoning flourishing in supposedly sane country!  

Welcome to Nigeria, a country no one wishes to slave or die for. Nigeria is like a collapsing House, cordoned off by the Ruling/Eating Class, who are busy day and night carting away the much they could before it goes down. No one is interested in rebuilding it so it could remain for all of us. But the marginalized out there have taken up arms to force their own portion out of the looters. There is “war” in the land which might become more complicated, ensuring that there would be no more places to hide. And as 2011 approaches, it is bound to get worse. But why can’t we decide today to halt this massive looting and start rebuilding Nigeria? If graduates get jobs tomorrow, will they steal and kidnap? We better open our eyes to the stark reality of today’s Nigeria and act fast to fix our country for the safety of both the ruler and ruled. But if we continue pigheadedly on this path of perdition, even a blind man can see what this place will become tomorrow.

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 scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

Virtually every Nigerian knows and strongly believes that any day Nigeria is able to make up its mind to end its obscene and ruinous romance with the stubborn monster called “Corruption”, this country will automatically witness the kind of prosperity no one had thought was possible in these parts. Just imagine the amount of public funds being stolen and squandered daily under various guises by too many public officers and their accomplices, and the great transformation that would happen to public infrastructure and the lives of the citizenry if this organized banditry can at least be reduced by fifty percent!  

 President Umar Musa Yar’Adua With Queen Elizabeth 11 of the United Kingdom

Now, is this monster divorceable? Of course, yes. But are there any signs that anyone in the corridors of power is interested in ending the strong grip it maintains on the very soul of the nation? That is the problem. It is sheer foolishness to expect any of them to willingly block the very hole from which great goodies also flow to him or her just because some other persons are also benefiting from there. No, you can neither fight corruption with soiled hands nor retain monopoly of it! It spreads like cancer. And the whole thing has now been horribly compounded by the emergence and empowerment of a very formidable class whose sustenance and longevity solely depend on its ability to continue sustaining the culture of corruption and bleeding the nation pale

This problem began when public office gradually ceased to be a platform for rendering selfless service to the people and transformed into the easiest route to financial empowerment. And since then, several generations of public officers have passed through public office, looting the nation blind with utmost impunity, and retired into abundance and incredible plenty, without any fear of anyone ever prying into the clearly unearned wealth they flaunt with utmost abandon.

          Dinner From A Lagos Dustbin: A victim of the Cult of Corruption

Thus, an ever-swelling Cult of Looters has emerged, whose nuisance value and the ruinous culture they are perpetuating, are now the undisputed headaches of the nation.  And since it is now almost impossible to find any former council chairman, governor (military or civilian), minister, president (military of civilian), army general and several other categories of public officers who is not sitting on boundless accumulation of unearned wealth, it has also become impossible to persuade the current rulers to resist the temptation of surpassing their predecessors in the stealing contest – the only thing that qualifies them for the membership of the great Cult of Corruption.

 Indeed, wealth has become everything and no one cares any more about leaving behind sterling legacies and a good name. And so, virtually no Nigerian governor, for instance, would find it ennobling to wake up every morning, after he had left office, to engage in honest labour to earn a living. That would automatically demean him, and present him as “inferior” to his colleagues; in fact, even his people may begin to call him a big fool for returning from the Government House a “poor man.” And, so the desperation to retire into boundless wealth and comfort is the reason for the mindless stealing going on everywhere.  

Another set of victims:Toiling daily to subsidize the profligacy of their rulers

Who now will break this circle? Well, he must be a person with no inclination to steal! And who is that person – who does not want to retire into billions after public office? Is it the president, governors, ministers, or even the chairpersons of the so-called anti-graft bodies set up to battle the monster to the ground? That’s one question we need to answer sincerely, because, it is difficult to find any person among those ruling us today who is more interested in acquiring a good name than accumulating unearned riches. No doubt, the Cult of Corruption is an attractive assemblage of the nation’s political and economic elite, and the sole qualification for initiation into this elite cult is wealth, boundless wealth, stolen from the public treasury, and ownership of a couple of exquisite mansions in choice areas in Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kaduna, London, New York, Paris, Dublin, Dubai and so on. I doubt if the point being made here should in the least sound strange to anyone who has lived in Nigeria.

Forced to live dangerously in an oil-rich nation

Now, was it not late Sunday Afolabi, who, while working for the irredeemably corrupt Olusegun Obasanjo regime, told us that those who were offered political appointments were actually invited “to come and eat.” At least, the man was sincere about his understanding of the whole thing. Gone were the days when people went into public office to serve the people and make a good name for themselves.  No, not any more! Today, people go there to serve themselves and make boundless wealth. And they usually end up losing the capacity to feel ashamed, so much so, that even if they are called thieves to the faces, they remain unperturbed.

How then can this monster be tamed? How can anyone make all the past public officers to give up all they had stolen and live normal lives with resources whose sources are explainable, in order to make those currently in office to resist the temptation to steal? Where would any one possibly start? And who would lead such a campaign? When will Nigeria be made a functional state so that people would not need to go to great lengths to steal in order to provide for themselves the amenities and comforts they failed to put in place for the entire citizenry when they were in power

Nigeria's House of Representatives in session: Representing whose interest?

With this dreadful cult in effective command at all our public institutions, including INEC, how then can we possibly hope to have a free and fair election in this country? Because, having criminally accumulated so much money while in office, these fellows only enthrone themselves as formidable godfathers and kingmakers, and deploy the billions at their disposal to install and remove governments at will. Many of them can single-handedly found and fund political parties without the slightest impact on their bottomless pockets. They also have all it takes to frustrate any attempt to pry into their slimy and hideous pasts. The very negligible few among them who manage to get “messed-up” in the “anti-corruption war” are those foolish enough to find the trouble of those more powerful than they are, or get into some really complicated situation that it would be difficult to extricate them without a serious backlash that might  threaten the peace and stability of the entire cult. So, he is carefully sacrificed to preserve the whole house from going under.

 The Cult of Corruption also has many quiet and more deadly members. These include “very successful and wise” fronts, errand boys (and girls), thugs whom the ‘ogas’ use (or had used) to prosecute their criminal accumulations, and, also, the countless mistresses, concubines and “state prostitutes” who take care of the leisure moments of the ogas. These, too, in the process of time, acquire their own wealth and clout, and gradually rise in prominence to become “successful business moguls” or “party stalwarts.” Others get into government as Special Advisers, Commissioners, Ministers, council chairpersons, State or Federal lawmakers, or even governors. A nation is judged by the quality of persons leading it. On this score, Nigeria has been most unlucky.   

 Now, with such a very formidable criminal elite controlling the politics and economy of the nation, with many of them even maintaining effective hotlines to the Presidency, how can anyone pretend to enthrone transparency in the governance of the country? How can corruption be rooted out? How can progress be recorded? Do the fellows ruling us even understand what it means to build a country? By the way, where would the person intending to root out corruption even start from?  The sheer number, clout and destructive ability of members of this Cult of Corruption are simply too intimidating. Some have over the years even matured to become refined, patrician “elder statesmen” (and women) with vast “family business” empires, commanding enormous respect, but still doing enormous harm to the nation. Yet the only day jobs anyone could remember they ever did were serving as either ministers or ambassadors, local government chairmen, governors, presidents, army or police officers, special advisers, commissioners, permanent secretaries or just as a “director in the presidency.” 

Tender Victims: Who is considering their future?

But should we give up? No! Never! No society should ever sit passively and watch the scums, scoundrels and dregs in its midst seize its tomorrow and murder it. That nation is doomed which has shameless thieves as its kings.  Ask yourself today: What are the antecedents of my governor, lawmaker or councilor? Can a thief possibly succeed in rebuilding the very house he is busy plundering? It amounts to unqualified foolishness on the part of the majority to  allow themselves to be perpetually enslaved by a criminally-minded minority? A time comes in the life of a nation when the people must rise with one voice and bellow a big NO! And that time is now! Especially, as 2011 approaches.

 scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

While hapless, helpless Nigerian students remain at home, for several weeks now, idling away precious time and wasting their lives due to the indefinite strike embarked upon by university teachers because of the Federal Government’s refusal to implement an agreement it had freely entered with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), and patients are being snatched away every other hour, if not minute, by clearly avoidable deaths because of the ongoing strike by Nigerian health workers, President Umar Musa Yar’Adua thinks that the best use he could put Nigeria’s nearly N4 billion (N3.9 billion) to is to squander it on the furnishing of the corporate headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to impress African leaders converging in Nigeria next year for the African Union (AU) meeting. 

Now, that is not all. If by today, the Federal Government fails to meet their demand for better pay and improved conditions of service by adopting and implementing a Medical Service Scale (MSS) for doctors employed by the government, Nigerian doctors under the aegis of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) will commence their own indefinite strike. This can only compound an already very bad and horrible situation. Last Friday, patients, even those in very critical conditions, at the National Hospital, Abuja, were discharged en masse and asked to go and seek medical attention elsewhere. The same benumbing situation was replicated in almost all Federal Government health institutions across the country. And where else are they expected to seek medical help from after being sacked from the nation’s tertiary health institutions? Abroad? How many of them can afford overseas medical treatment?  

As we are all aware, only in vain can anyone hope that this sad state of affairs would move Yar’Adua and other members of the callous ruling elite. No doubt, their children cannot be found anywhere near a federal or state university. Nor would they allow any member of their families to be treated at any public hospital in Nigeria. Indeed, they have enough public funds at their disposals to treat even catarrh (common cold) in any part of the world. That is why they don’t care if the already rundown universities and health institutions remain closed till the conversion of the Jews

Government would want us to see employees who go on strike to press home their demand for better pay and improved conditions of service as unpatriotic and constituting themselves into a huge nuisance. While they keep appealing to workers to make more sacrifices “in the interest of the nation”, the ruling elite never fails to cart away for themselves huge sums of money every other month for contributing an insignificant little or nothing at all to the development and progress of the nation.

 What can anyone say our federal lawmakers have been able to achieve to make Nigerians appreciate them? Many Nigerians see them as grossly underweight, light-minded and purposeless; individuals who lack the capacity to appreciate the gravity of the assignment they are supposed to be performing in Abuja. Yet, a Senator’s basic salary is: N2, 484,242.50 per annum, while that of House of Reps Member is: N1, 985,212.50. Note that it was much higher than these before the recent reduction.

 But what they “lose” in the so-called salary cut, they triple with countless juicy allowances. Monthly, they cart away millions of naira as Furniture Allowance, Car Loan Allowance, Wardrobe Allowance, Accommodation Cost, Entertainment Allowance and all manner of perks that incredibly swell their bank accounts - just for grossly underperforming, or, as many would put it, achieving nearly nothing. Every quarter, each Senator gets N45 million (N15 million a month) while a House of Reps Member gets N39 million. This is to enable them operate their constituency offices. Yet, most of these constituency offices and staff exist only in the imagination of the lawmaker. And why should a lawmaker be executing constituency projects while there is a governor and council chairman where he comes from? This is one of the countless avenues created for the ruling elite to loot the nation pale.

 A report in The Guardian of last Sunday (July 12, 2009) entitled, “The Bleeding Of Nigeria - Huge Bills, Little Result” contains this stirring lamentation: “At a time when developed economies were looking for ways to cut down on recruitment bills, a new emolument was retroactively passed by the National Assembly earlier in the year, thus increasing the President’s take home pay to N10.899 million; that of the Secretary to the Federation and Ministers was jerked up to N5.907 million. The President/Governor lives in a Government House where they do not pay rent or utility bills. They live lavishly and stupendously. Yet they still collect allowances for services already paid for by the people.”

Councilors earn better money than distinguished university professors. The salaries and allowances of these officers at the 774 local councils in the country for fours years add up to about N2.4 trillion. Many of these councilors may just be lay-abouts or thugs everyone knew in the village the other day who were doing dirty jobs for unscrupulous politicians. And now, having been rewarded with councillorship positions, they earn more money than professors. What of the lawmakers? What qualifies them for all the wealth being poured into their pockets for idling away at our expense in Abuja, while hardworking professionals are left to suffer deprivation because of poor salaries? Are these not the same light-minded lawmakers who confirmed a Central Bank Governor within three hours or suspended plenary to have lunch with a presidential aide?

The issue is that Nigerians are yet to rise with one voice to demand why a bunch of unprofitable citizens, less than five per cent of the population, who only know how to run the country down, should brazenly cart away huge sums of money monthly while hardworking professionals are paid peanuts and asked to tighten their belts. According to The Guardian on Sunday report, before the recent slash announced by RMAFC, salaries and allowances of those at the federal executive arm gulped over N170 billion annually.

Some readers may have been embarrassed by my insistence here last week that using N456 million to merely bring the president to Bayelsa State to “commission some projects” and lay the foundation for an airport project amounted to an unqualified waste. Many may have wondered why I was “making noise” because of such a “small change” spent on “a whole” presidential visit. And here am I again complaining that at this time of crippling crises in two critical sectors, health and education, someone outside a lunatic asylum thinks it is not obscene to furnish an ordinary office complex with nearly four billion naira! Please, pardon my obsession with “small matters.”

But wait: if this office would be furnished with N3.9 billion (about $33 million), what did it cost to build it? Nigerian leaders can spend anything to attract mere smiles from their foreign colleagues, who call them fools at the back. Indeed, if wasting all the money in the treasury would have made President Obama to visit Nigeria instead of Ghana, Yar’Adua, I am sure, would have been compelled to do it.

That is the tragedy of the nation - a nation where N6billion was recently removed from the budget for education and health, two very vital sectors, to build a ten lane road from the Abuja airport, so our rulers can impress foreign visitors with the beautiful, expensive road that leads into their country of benumbing insecurity, boundless corruption, countless starving people and millions of generators.

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scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

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USAfrica and USAfricaonline.com (characterized by The New York Times as the  most influential African-owned, U.S-based multimedia networks) established May 1992, our first edition of USAfrica magazine was published August 1993; USAfrica The Newspaper on May 11, 1994; and CLASSmagazine on May 2, 2003.

BY UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE

A recent visit to the passport office in FESTAC,
Lagos here, did quite a lot to renew my hope that Nigeria may not after all be a totally lost case. Nigerians will always reciprocate with positive responses whenever and wherever there is purposeful, exemplary leadership to show the way and dictate the tempo. Indeed, I never imagined that the Nigerian Public Service still had in its fold such wonderful Nigerians whose industry, dedication and warm, friendly approach to service delivery could constitute worthy, ennobling benchmark even to many private organisations.

My business at the FESTAC passport office was to obtain an E-Passport to replace my old copy which had recently expired. I had arrived very early on the appointed day, as I was advised to, thinking I would wait for ages to be attended to, based on my previous knowledge of what obtained in government offices in Nigeria. But the lady that addressed us before we were ushered to the place we were to sit down to await our turns to take the photographs and complete other formalities was punctual. She was also polite, friendly, but firm and resolute. She simply explained to those intent on obtaining more than one passport or supplying wrong information that the law would naturally take care of them. There was a touch of humour in her speech, but there was no doubt that she meant business. I was impressed.

                                                                         The E-Passport

Inside the building, those smartly dressed men and women worked with a sense of urgency, dedication and meticulousness that was rare, peculiar and hope-restoring. They worked with the gusto, cheerfulness and carefulness of people who enjoyed their work. As they fed the information the people supplied into the computers, they displayed remarkable understanding, patience and accommodation that permeated the entire room with soothing warmth and friendliness, reducing every discomfort arising from having too many people queuing at several tables at the same time and having to stand for a long time to complete all the process. Even though the people were so many, and the lines seemed interminable, these officers managed to convey the impression that they were not bored or tired, but rather derived immense pleasure doing their job. I sought in vain for the slightest hint of irritation or snapping patience towards those who either kept making mistakes or were slow in proofreading their information. I can’t recall ever feeling at home in any government office, but at the FESTAC passport office that day, I really felt welcome and at home. Their seemingly inexhaustible patience was also on display at the thumb-printing and photograph points. Some people, especially children and old people, took their photographs several times before good copies could be obtained. I looked at the faces of the officers to see any signs of exasperation, but saw none. They kept beaming. Even when the persons concerned tried to suggest, after a couple of attempts, that the photographs were manageable and could go in like that, the officers still politely asked them to allow them to try again. And they would help the people to arrange their heads properly until good copies were obtained. Though the work usually dragged through several hours, with   hardly any pauses, the workers remained their cheerful and friendly selves.

But this friendly atmosphere never existed at the expense of thoroughness. They ensured every information is correct before it is posted. They also watched out for people intent beating the system. While I waited for my turn, I observed a scene that would make an excellent comedy. A woman had come with some kids, and one officer who had been sitting meekly on a desk observing everyone insisted on speaking with her before she could be attended to. Suddenly the man was telling her that the kids were not hers. The woman argued furiously, and showed serious offence at such a suggestion. Then the officer asked her to excuse him, so he could speak with the kids. But as the woman went outside, he called the woman’s husband instead, whose number, I suppose, he got from the forms. There and then, his suspicion was confirmed that the woman had come to obtain those passports for the children without the consent of their father, and that the letter of consent she had presented was forged. When the woman was brought back, he confronted her, and as she continued insisting that the letter was duly written and signed by her husband, she was gently led out of the room.

So, today, I wholeheartedly pronounce the workers at the passport office, and their leader, the Comptroller-General of the Immigration (I don’t even know his name), the Heroes and Heroines of this column for this month for keeping hope alive that Nigeria is not a lost case, and that Nigerians are capable of being great models of excellence given the right atmosphere, motivation and leadership. Indeed, with focused leaderships at the highest points of power at both the federal and state levels, Nigeria would easily find its way back to the path of recovery and development. No doubt, Nigerians are ready to be led, but alas, where are the leaders?      

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www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

scruples2006@yahoo.com

]]> http://ugochukwu.blog.com/2009/05/05/how-nigerians-work-at-the-passport-office/feed/ http://ugochukwu.blog.com/2009/05/05/dora-akunyili-this-is-becoming-too-ridiculous/ http://ugochukwu.blog.com/2009/05/05/dora-akunyili-this-is-becoming-too-ridiculous/#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 11:57:37 +0000 Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye by Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

If before the end of this year it becomes clear that the sterling performance of Dr. Dora Akunyili as Director General of the National Agency For Food, Drug Administration And Control (NAFDAC) has been completely erased from the people’s mind and rudely replaced with the clearly odious role she now plays as the ebullient head of President Yar’Adua’s misinformation machinery, she would have no one to blame but herself. And it would be very sad indeed. No doubt, the costly, but naïve decision she took to become the image-maker of a passive and rudderless regime must, without fail, exact an even costlier price. 

Never a one to miss an excellent opportunity to strike when the head is still on the block, Mohammed Haruna has stepped forward with the strange theory that the indisputable and widely acclaimed success of Dr. Akunyili in her determined battle against fake and substandard products may have been unduly exaggerated. “The problem with propaganda is that it almost always leads to self-deception. Akunyili may have succeeded possibly well beyond her wildest  imagination in turning NAFDAC into a well-known brand, but the reality of food and drug administration in the country is that her success has been more of image than substance,” wrote Mr. Mohammed in a March 4, 2009 column. He did not stop there: “The fact is that contrary to the image that NAFDAC under Akunyili has virtually eliminated the phenomena of fake drugs and drug abuse both have hardly experienced any significant decline. In spite of all her efforts, the open and illegal drug markets in the country including the three most notorious ones at Onitsha, Kano and Aba, have never really gone out of business. So also have those who openly hawk prescription drugs on our streets”, Mohammed declared.

                                                                     
Dora Akunyili:Attempting The Impossible?
                  

A few months ago, before Akunyili accepted to work for the very unpopular Yar’Adua regime as Information Minister, Mohammed, despite his sterling reputation in matters of this nature, would have thought twice before launching such an unfair broadside, but now, who would want to fight for a once widely-admired Dora who, for reasons that can only be less-than edifying, has chosen to hasten her self-immolation with her own hands?

As DG of NAFDAC, Akunyili was regularly celebrated in my newspaper column even though I have never met her.  The same way, most Nigerians who had loved her, prayed fervently for her and had pleaded with her to resist the temptation to soil her shinning reputation by accepting to become the spokesperson of this clearly bankrupt regime, did not know her personally.  And they would regard as gratuitous insult Mohammed Haruna’s suggestion that they may have been hypnotized by Akunyili’s successful propaganda and media hype.

No matter how revolting we may find Akunyili’s present engagement, we cannot in all honesty deny that she did quality work, as NAFDAC DG, to restore the people’s confidence in drugs and beverages circulated in Nigeria. So, solid was her work that as not a few Nigerians entered shops and confidently bought fruit juice or other beverages, and left with full assurances that their livers would still be intact after they had consumed them, they gratefully remembered Akunyili and thanked God for her life. As a baby suffered from jaundice, and the mother rushed to a nearby chemist shop and purchased the antibiotic prescribed by the doctor, and the drug saved the baby instead of killing him or her, that mother, depending on how informed she was, more often than not, would remember Akunyili. As drug manufacturing firms which were almost forced out of business (many multi-national drug companies actually closed shop and left the country) because their products were being indiscriminately counterfeited returned en masse and began smiling to the banks with their millions and billions instead of singing tales of woes, they remembered Akunyili, and thanked God for such a rare gift. To most Nigerians, Akunyili meant the return of sanity in a society overrun and made unsafe by heartless counterfeiters; the safeguarding of many lives which would have been lost because of the desperation of some devilish souls to rake in blood-stained millions at the expense of precious lives.

As I read recently the Daily Trust web copy of Mohammed’s March 4 article and saw the comments posted by readers, it dawned on me that Akunyili’s lower descent may even happen faster than I had feared.  But then, it has always been evident that the first thing a public officer acquires in Nigeria is thick skin. That is why the very damaging allegation by one of Mohammed’s readers (which Daily Trust allowed to be posted) may not even bother Akunyili. That may also explain why she is most stubbornly going on with her overly exasperating re-branding campaign despite widespread agreement among the citizenry that it is nothing but a useless and wasteful exercise.  

I have heard that when people enter government they tend to be willingly ignorant and blind in order to survive for too long there. Else, how can somebody with Dr. Akunyili’s intelligence, training, exposure and endowments wake up one morning and convince herself that by attacking my phones daily with the very uninspiring slogan: “Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation,” she will succeed in intimidating me into suddenly forgetting all the indescribable pains tormenting me in this country as a result of the abysmal failure of leadership and character on the part of our rulers, and start grinning from ear to ear? Does a country become great simply because some fellow stood in some cosy office in Abuja and attacked my phones with silly slogans he or she does not even believe?  What do these people really take us for? A population of empty-headed fools? Now, if a father who had wasted his money on wine and women, and, consequently, starved his family sore, suddenly woke up one morning and started reciting: “My Family: Healthy, Well-fed!” won’t his wife and neighbours think he has gone crazy? How can such a useless slogan better the lot of the family he had irresponsibly neglected? How would that secure him the love and cooperation of his family members and make them to stop seeing him as an irresponsible and failed family head?

I seriously think that this is becoming too ridiculous! There is a disgusting penchant in Nigerian leaders to always throw money at problems and expect a magic to happen – a clearly lazy, insincere man’s option that would always be rewarded with resounding failure.  We always want to seek a shot-cut to glory by seeking to purchase a good image. How can any nation hope to re-brand itself in a vacuum, with practically nothing to showcase? Will the potential tourist or investor simply start rushing down to Nigeria because of one meaningless slogan when the verdict of Country Risk Analysts about this same country remains alarming? Why this indecent haste to re-brand? Why not Yar’Adua now set a realistic date to achieve uninterrupted power supply in Nigeria, for instance, and when that has been achieved, use it as a milestone to anchor a re-branding campaign?

To clearly underline the fact that the rest of the world is unimpressed by our infantile campaign of misinformation, Nigeria was recently excluded from the G20 Summit of world leaders which it had before now attended as merely an observer. What it means then is that even as an observer, the global community is sick and tired of enduring the unprofitable company of this perennially sick baby. And when this happened, Yar’Adua mourned in Abuja: “I must say that today is a sad day for me. And I think it should be for all Nigerians, when 20 leaders of the leading countries in the world are meeting and Nigeria is not there. This is something we need to reflect upon,” he cried.

Well, I can only hope that Yar’Adua and his unwieldy crowd will truly reflect upon this, and tell themselves that even if a G40 Summit is holding tomorrow, Nigeria may still be excluded, even if we sink billions to re-brand and re-brand and re-brand.  Somebody should please tell Akunyili what I think she already knows too well, namely, that when a room is horribly messed up with the indiscriminate droppings of a very reckless dog, what you must do is to bend down and carefully wash the place with an active detergent.  Only then would you get back the fresh, pleasant air that makes a room worth inhabiting. But if you take the unhealthy short cut of spraying the dog-shit with heavy dose of deodorant, then you will get a putrid scent that will make the room more repelling than ever before.  Indeed, it is time to discard this unprofitable and ridiculous exercise and roll up the sleeves to work to move Nigeria forward.  Without any re-branding campaign to hoodwink anyone, companies are closing shop here, and relocating to Ghana. Yar’Adua and Akunyili can also reflect on this. A good market, they say, sells itself.

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www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

scruples2006@yahoo.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Although the American media has successfully elevated 83-year old Hugh Hefner to the status of a “legendary icon,” many people loathe him with unqualified contempt, and disdainfully dismiss him as one “dirty old man” despite his great wealth and fame. In an interview with TIME magazine published in its January 26, 2009 edition, Mr. Hefner gleefully celebrated what he considered his paramount contributions to society: “When I first published Playboy [magazine], nice young people did not live together before they got married. Having a baby out of wedlock was a scandal that drove some people to suicide. Oral sex was illegal. Playboy played a major part in changing all that,” he declared. Asked whether he sometimes feels like a dirty old man, Hefner replied: “Not for a moment. I’m on the side of the angels and always have been.” What an affront!

Recently, at the Palms Resort and Casino in
Las Vegas, Hefner, America’s most notorious bachelor, marked his 83rd birthday surrounded by current and ex-girlfriends. “As you can tell I am very, very happy. To celebrate my birthday with new girlfriends and former girlfriends is perfect, it’s wonderful,” Hefner said in an interview in the course of the celebrations, which had received more colour and attention because of the American Country Music Awards holding at the same time and place. During Hefner’s 82nd birthday last year, another symbol of Western depravity and immorally advanced culture, Pamela Anderson, appeared topless to serve the “old, frail playboy” his birthday cake!

Hugh Hefner: icon of moral irresponsibility?

Born on April 9, 1926, in Chicago, Hefner studied Philosophy at the University of Illinois, worked briefly for Esquire Magazine, before coming up with the idea of his own magazine to be known as “Stag Party.” But when he discovered that somebody else had already trademarked that name, he chose another name, Playboy. The first edition, which featured the picture of Marylyn Monroe, and which he was said to have put together on his kitchen table, appeared in December 1953, and sold 50, 000 copies. Encouraged by this initial success, Hefner reinvested his profit in the venture, and by 1959, he was selling about one million copies monthly. With two crashed marriages to his name, Hefner has endeavoured to be a human demonstration of his magazine’s name. He is now known as the “ultimate playboy” – always living with several “official girlfriends” who many believe are flocking around him because of money and fame. Rumour has it that he invites countless girls, many of who are young enough to be his great grand daughters, after a couple of dates, to reside with him, and compels them to star at “the twice a week orgies” he organises with immense relish in that his house of boundless immorality.

Recently, Hefner added a new girl-friend to his harem. She is 22-year-old Crystal Harris, a Psychology student at San Diego State University. Already, he had the 19-year-old twin sisters, Karissa and Kristina Shannon, who had enjoyed the limelight as his newest addition until Crystal arrived. A photograph of him and this “trio of bland way too-young girlfriends” is already being widely circulated to reinforce his playboy image and show the world that at 83, he is still mired in shameless immorality and very unrepentant.  

“Dirty, lecherous old man,” Hugh Hefner, with girlfriends (sin-partners)–Crystal Harris

and the twins –Kristina and Karissa Shannon–: Revolting! Isn’t it?

Now what kind of desperation and lust for fame and wealth would push two sisters, twins for that matter, to agree to become one man’s sin-partners, probably performing threesomes with him from time to time? Given the obscene excitement with which the American, and indeed, Western media, celebrated this unqualified abomination, one is tempted to conclude that most of the Western society have lost the capacity to be sickened by anything, no matter how revolting. But a thoroughly sickened Daily News reader posted this comment: “Doing sisters at the same time – that’s weird and nasty to me. I wonder if he has dates for each? The whole thing seems to be about publicity – I think it is.  It keeps his empire alive if people are talking about it.” Hefner had chosen the beautiful twins to replace Ms. Holly Madison, who had to break away from him, heartbroken, after her determination to tame him, and make him marry her, so she could have the child she desired so much had failed.

Hefner hit the headlines again during the recent US presidential elections when he called on the Republican Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Governor, Mrs. Sarah Palin, to pose nude for Playboy magazine if she failed to be elected. “Palin would make a great centrefold. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about a really sexy-looking woman wearing glasses. Imagine what she’s like when those glasses come off. It would be a new definition of the word vice in vice president,” he told OK! Magazine.  Sometimes, I wonder what human dignity still means to the Western mind. Why would anyone in his right mind be inviting a state governor, vice presidential candidate of the ruling party, wife and mother, and anti-abortion and pro-abstinence advocate to pose nude for a magazine that services the depraved taste of a decadent society? In Nigeria, even with all our imperfections, such a proposal would have provoked a national uproar. And the governor concerned would have considered it a grave insult, and may even resort to legal actions because of the damages her mere consideration for such an obscene pre-occupation may have caused her.

Former Republican Vice Presidential Candidate

Alaska Governor, Mrs. Sarah Palin: Hefner once invited her to pose nude

for his dirty, immoral magazine

What people do in these parts to earn instant and, maybe, perennial isolation from decent society transform them automatically into well sought-after celebrities in the Western world. When the identity of 22-year-old Ashley Alexander Dupre, the high-end prostitute that brought down the former New York Governor, Elliot Spitzer, became public knowledge, Larry Flint, publisher of Hustler magazine, immediately announced a $1million payment to her if she would pose nude for his men’s magazine. The publisher of Penthouse Magazine, Ms. Diane Silberstein, also immediately joined with an offer to put her on the cover of her magazine. There were book and movie offers, and even invitations to appear on such high-profile programmes like Dianne Sawyer’s “Good Morning America” on ABC. I am sure that Monica Lewinsky is now a very rich “celebrity” because of her most outrageously immoral behaviour that shook the American Presidency. And if she would let out the word today that she is ready to pose nude, she would become an instant billionaire! Indeed, something must really be wrong with a society that celebrates its weirdoes, its deranged and the incurably depraved in its midst: a society where the human being has lost the slightest hint of dignity and respect.    But once in a while, however, one also finds a lone voice of reason. The Vancouver Sun titled the Miss Dupre/Spitzer story thus: “Call Girl Could Parlay Infamy Into Payday.”

The fellow that called Hugh Hefner a “media-sponsored paedophilia” may indeed be right. Many in America and other Western nations are already bemoaning the silly interpretation their society had given to freedom many years ago, which has now turned their worst nightmare. Hefner’s Playboy Mansion which first existed in Chicago, but now located in Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles, California, hosts all sort of obscene and depraved shows weekly. There is no stopping the frail, dirty old man! It is said that “he pops Viagra like candy.”  What is the “over-liberated” American woman saying to the unending abuse Hefner subjects her gender to, using little girls as mere playthings to amuse himself? In a more decent clime, a man like Hefner would be abhorred by decent society and labelled a shameless old dog. But he is a rich American “celebrity” and pays huge taxes to the Father of soulless Capitalism, so, why would he not be celebrated by the West? Any hope of reclamation then for this morally challenged old man at 83?

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www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com
scruples2006@yahoo.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Gradually, President Yar’Adua’s health condition is becoming an item for very debilitating blackmail. And it seems to be working effectively!

Just wonder aloud why the president of such a critically sick and sinking country cannot allow himself to be roused from crippling inertia to seek with clear vision, focus and vigour the nation’s healing and revival, and the next accusation that would be laid at your doorstep is: “Oh, there you go again, making fun of the president because of his ill-health.”

And so political correctness now dictates that we all enlist in the confused choir of incurably naïve optimists who seem to derive peculiar animation from continually chorusing the hope that a heavy truck trapped in the middle of a collapsing bridge, because its driver was having a good, refreshing nap, would not soon disappear into the deep waters even though the bridge is already down and about to be washed away.

I think this is sad and most unfortunate.

Now, why would somebody make fun of anyone because he or she is sick? Can the person accurately predict what the state of his or her own health would be tomorrow? I think what most people are trying to say is that there are too many sick persons in the country and Mr. Yar’Adua just happens to be one of them. What we owe all of them are our sincere sympathies, prayers, and help if we are in a position to offer any. But there is definitely no justification for turning anyone’s personal health challenges into a national burden. In other words,
Nigeria cannot continue to just sit still, fold its hands and do nothing in the face of threatening devastating global economic crises on the unpardonable excuse that its president is sick – as if there are no capable and healthy persons in the country?

For goodness sake, this state of inertia has gone on for too long. If the president is not sick, let him wake up, think, roll out his plans and work? And if he is, and unable to perform, as seems to be the case, let him excuse himself from the throne, instead of holding everyone else to ransom. I am quite sure that not many people would object to Nigeria undertaking to pay the president’s medical bills for life, as compensation for the “invaluable sacrifice,” if he decides today to let go and retire to the serenity of his family house in Katsina.

But will the leeches and parasites feeding fat on his incompetence and the nation’s carcasses allow him to make up his mind?

For a nation as badly run as Nigeria is, where decisions and actions that determine the direction and future of the country are mostly inspired by acute selfishness, Yar’Adua would never lack a formidable army of self-serving loyalists hailing his special capacity to sleep through the worst crises, as we are witnessing at the moment. It is not impossible, too, that a President Umar Musa Yar’Adua may reappear in Abuja in 2011. I think that should not shock anyone who has been watching the course of events in the nation’s political horizon for the past few months. This is one nation where people are continually drinking and eating poison with utmost relish, and yet wanting to live; yes, a country where people continue to assure and reassure themselves that no matter how long they keep stabbing their nation and drinking its blood, they would still wake up every other morning to see it standing on its feet and flourishing.

Well, all these acts of self-delusion would in no distant time be forced to evaporate by the grim realities that would soon dawn on this nation. For so long now, Nigeria has remained the best example of how a richly endowed country could look like in the absence of any of form of government. People who found themselves at the seat power merely looted the treasury pale and retired at the expiration of their tenures to enjoy their unearned wealth. So long as there was still oil pumping out crispy dollars for the next regime to loot and put away in coded accounts abroad, no one complained; and no one was asked to give account. Only those foolish enough to die, like Gen Sani Abacha, were branded corrupt, and their loot diligently looted.

And so, at a time world leaders are spending sleepless nights with their economic managers and experts, devising ways to save their nations from the looming global economic calamity, we, in this ungoverned entity called Nigeria are busy debating about our president’s vacation, which, if we must be sincere to ourselves, he has enjoyed with little or no interruptions since May 29, 2007. I once heard that the motto of an association of pensioners was: “Rest Is Sweet After Labour.”

Pray, what has Yar’Adua done since the two years he has encumbered the ground in Abuja to warrant his disturbing the nation’s peace with tiresome talk about vacation? Which responsible and responsive president would allow himself to be caught dropping the slightest hint about a vacation at time oil prices, his country’s   sole revenue earner, was crashing from near $145 to about $30? The earthquake in the nation’s stock market is an economic tsunami that ought to have kept any president alert and worried, but our own man could not just be bothered. He would rather go on vacation, even as major multi-national companies are closing shops in Nigeria, and relocating to functional countries like Ghana, causing countless Nigerians to be dumped in the unemployment market. Mind you, Nigeria remains the biggest market for these companies; they produce in Ghana and sell in Nigeria. What an unlucky nation.

Despite Yar’Adua’s repeated promise to declare a state of emergency in the power sector, power supply has worsened beyond what anyone would have imagined was possible in a nation ruled by a human being. I doubt if there is any community in Nigeria today where anyone can walk to a public tap, fetch healthy water and confidently drink it. Indeed, no one with the means to afford alternatives in Ghana, Cameroon or any of our tiny neighbours, takes the risk of enlisting his children in Nigerian schools any more. I challenge Yar’Adua or any governor to prove that his children are in Nigerian public universities – where many public official had attended.  Nigeria’s health institutions are only patronized by those willing to take a risk with their lives, because they are too poor to fly out for medical treatment; not even the president of Nigeria receives treatment in Nigerian hospitals.

But the worst is yet on the way, in fact, very close to the door.

By the time the devastating effect of President Barack Obama’s New Energy Policy reaches home to us here in Nigeria, there is no doubt that the price of oil may go down to 50 cents. At that time, there won’t even be enough public fund to steal. Maybe, then, and only then, would Nigerians be forced by very unbearable conditions to seek authentic leaders, people with a mind and clear ideas to move society forward, and not a horde of bankrupt creatures occupying offices where they are not even qualified to be cleansers. Today, we are complaining about the rise of violent crime in Nigeria. By that time, it would degenerate to almost an open war.

And until then, some vacuous fellows can still afford the luxury of campaigning for a Second or even Third for Yar’Adua, so he could stay back to “continue the good work he is doing.” What a nation!  

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 scruples2006@yahoo.com 
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

As Director-General of the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof Dora Akunyili captured the admiration and great respect of most Nigerians due to her selfless, determined and very successful battle against fake and substandard drugs and their vile merchants, who, in their most ungodly desperation to make huge profits, succeeded so well in dispatching not a few Nigerians to their early graves. Everybody loved her, sang her praises, wished her well, and prayed for her, except, perhaps, the murderous fake drugs manufacturers and distributors, who saw her as the unshakable obstacle to their most devilish trade. So solid and widespread were her popularity and acceptance that some people began to urge her to run for presidency.  

 
Dr. Dora Akunyili

Akunyili was regularly celebrated in this column. In my most recent piece on her entitled, “The Meaning of Dora Akunyili,” I said: Each time you confidently purchase a drug, fruit juice or any other consumable and go away with full assurance that your liver would still be intact after you have taken it, you should not fail to remember Akunyili and be grateful to God for her life. Akunyili means the return of sanity in a society overrun and made unsafe by heartless counterfeiters; she means the safeguarding of many lives which would have since been lost because some devilish souls were looking for blood money… Akunyili could simply have accepted the blood-stained billions [the fake drugs merchants] were all too willing to give her and allowed them to unleash their lethal products on all of us, but she chose to safeguard lives.  And by that decision, she may have saved you, your beloved mother, father, wife, uncle, precious, tender children and friends.

In
Nigeria today, most people would not hesitate to classify any drug or beverage without a NAFDAC Registration Number as killer poison. And that’s because Nigerians believed everything Akunyili told them. The NAFDAC number on any product clearly represented Akunyili’s assurance to Nigerians that that particular drug or beverage was safe for human consumption. And because it was said by Akunyili whom they had learnt to believe without reservations, they usually accepted it without any fears. But, unfortunately, all these may recede into the dark recesses of a distant past given the acceptance by Prof Dora Akunyili last week to serve as the Information and Communication Minister in the very bankrupt and shriveled regime of President Umar Musa Yar’Adua.  

Indeed, only one reason may have informed Akunyili’s appointment. The Yar’Adua regime only wanted to exploit the enormous admiration and goodwill she enjoyed from Nigerians to shore up its badly battered image. But by accepting to serve as Information Minister in a regime like Yar’Adua’s which by the very nature of its constitution represents a huge lie built and sustained on a foundation of undiluted, poorly, unintelligently concocted lies, Akunyili is, no doubt, overdrawing from the public trust, admiration and goodwill that had overwhelmingly flooded her the moment she began to excel as NAFDAC boss.  It even looks like Akunyili herself is already catching the lying bug, going by the brazenness with which she made the outrageous and overly obscene claim last week that her appointment was divine.   

Now, because I still love and respect Akunyili, my sincere question to her today is: Are you very sure this is really what you want to do? Is it really worth it? What value would your job as the image-maker of a critically unfocused and purposeless regime add to Nigeria? Indeed, I find it very difficult to believe that a person with Akunyili’s intimidating reputation would just wake up one day and decide to allow everything good, noble, edifying and lovely about her to flow down the drain just like that simply because she wants to be in government. Why would she see a clear tragedy and embrace it with beaming smiles?  Now, just how Akunyili would sell the overly unattractive Yar’Adua regime is what beats many of her admirers? What new lie would Akunyili tell us about a regime utterly disgusted Nigerians have, for very good reasons, already written off as irredeemable and a never-do-well? What would she say are the set targets of this regime? What are the timeframes for the realization of those targets?  What exactly is one redeeming point of the Yar’Adua? Television and other media adverts for its totally colourless and bankrupt Seven Point Agenda have gulped incredibly huge funds, but if one may dare ask: at what stage of implementation can anyone place any of the items on the Seven Point nonsense? This regime has done nothing but inundate Nigerians with countless empty promises, bored and over-sickened everyone with overdose of talk-talk and lie-lie. Talk, is cheap. If it was possible, the Yar’Adua regime would have felled countless Irokos with the lying tongues of its countless false prophets.

Nigeria, it’s now very clear, is too sick to be left in the hands of a critically overwhelmed and ever-groping president who is evidently unsure of his next move and grappling with snail-speed some ill-digested ideas he is not even sure would work. So, what would Akunyili tell Nigerians to make them see this regime differently from how it really is? Now, assuming Yar’Adua disappears tomorrow for ‘prolonged sessions of prayers’ in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of some German specialist hospital, and instructs Akunyili to keep feeding us with the most exasperatingly infantile lie that he is in a mosque somewhere in the city praying hard for solutions to  Nigeria’s ever-mounting problems, how would she manage that? Has it occurred to her that from now on, she would be the very ugly and overly revolting face of this very unpopular and irredeemable regime, and that whatever disgust and resentment Nigerians had reserved for the directionless and unproductive regime would automatically be transferred to her each time she emerged to feed the nation with a new set of lies? Now, is Dora very sure this is what she really bargained for after all these years of selfless service to the nation as NAFDAC DG? Is this totally thankless job really what she wanted? 

Well, to be fair, I can appreciate Akunyili’s dilemma. We run a very lousy system where ministerial nominees are usually not informed before hand of the particular portfolio that would be assigned to them. Akunyili, no doubt, could not have imagined that Yar’Adua would eventually saddle her with such a messy job of bearing the horribly cracked Chief Megaphone of this failed and ugly regime and being soaked daily with the undiluted odium and resentment of overly disappointed Nigerians. Like many Nigerians, she may have thought she would be sent to the health sector where her competences would be deployed to the benefit of Nigerians. But, as we all know, the well-being of Nigerians is hardly the concern of this regime, which is so sad.

It is not too late in the day for Akunyili to sit down and quietly count the very high cost of this totally unrewarding misadventure. And one thing she should not lose sight of is that after sometime, when she would have become irredeemably odious to Nigerians and her voice very loathsome to everyone as a result of continuously doing the dirty of job of marketing this hard-sell called the Yar’Adua regime, she would be unceremoniously dumped to quietly nurse her deep credibility wounds alone at the refuse dump of thoroughly discredited yesterday people, while the regime move on with another willing sacrificial lamb. And that is why I ask Akunyili again: Are you really sure you want to do this messy job? Now, Dora, if the answer is NO, do not allow anyone intimidate you with the lie that you have fait accompli before you. You certainly don’t! So, no matter the blackmail they may dredge up (due to some entanglements they may have carefully arranged before now to entrap you), follow your heart, go ahead and call Yar’Adua’s bluff and bolt away. That’s your Hobson’s choice. 

scruples2006@yahoo.com

www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Unless, this is merely another of those statements he usually makes to grab the headlines and circulate the misleading impression that some form of governance is going in Abuja, after which nothing more is ever heard about the matter again, last week’s call by President Umar Musa Yar’Adua on the National Assembly to expunge the irredeemably iniquitous Immunity Clause from the Nigerian Constitution, most surely, ranked, in my opinion, as the most significant thing the man had uttered since he assumed office in May 2007. The Immunity Clause gives statutory protection to the president, his deputy, governors and their deputies against arrests and prosecutions for any unlawful acts throughout their tenure of office. In other words, even if a governor or president empties the whole treasury into his pocket, the much anyone can do (since the  lawmakers are also in his pocket) is to wait patiently until he is out of office before he could be brought to book for such a hideous crime. The purpose of this  odious law, we are told, is to ensure that this  category of public officers are spared every distraction which their arrests and prosecutions could constitute, so they could devote their whole self and time to govern the people well.

But, as we have all sadly found out, this has become the most abused law in
Nigeria. The Immunity Clause may have been added with good intentions, but   given our bitter experiences with successive rulers, nothing now justifies its continued retention in our statute books.  Unfortunately, the governance of our hapless nation has been hijacked by a criminal class whose only mission in the various Government Houses is to loot the places dry. After they had stolen so much and stashed billions in coded accounts abroad, they would abscond once they leave office, and only return to the country to enjoy their filthy wealth after they had successfully used the billions they had stolen to install and sustain one of their own in power, so that no matter the national outcry against their boundless criminal accumulations while in office, the various anti-corruption agencies would endeavour to look the other way once their names are mentioned. “Corruption is endemic in this country,” President Yar’Adua said last week, “and there is no way this country can achieve its potential until and unless this evil is confronted promptly by all Nigerians, and one of the steps and measures that we may have to take in order to entrench this fight against corruption is to look at some of our laws. I today call for the abrogation of the constitutional provision of immunity for president, vice president, governors and deputy governors, and I want all Nigerians to join me in this call … this provision of immunity should be expunged from the Nigerian Constitution.”

With my whole I heart I endorse this most important call by the president. We have always been fed with such bunkum like how irresponsible and unpatriotic Nigerians would use countless frivolous petitions and lawsuits to “distract” the governors or the president from his determination to turn Nigeria into another paradise. And how instead of spending all the time “transforming” the state and delivering “democracy dividends,” he would be in one court or the other where he had been charged for corruption or other criminal activities. Please, spare all such trash for hare-brained fools. Since the immunity clause had protected these fellows from “distractions” what have they achieved? For eight years, 1999-2007, Nigeria enjoyed unprecedented prosperity from oil exports, which sold as high as $135. But despite the total absence of “distractions,” what did our rulers achieve? Nigeria is still battling with prehistoric darkness, with industries folding up and relocating to neighbouring countries, as a result of the total collapse of the power sector. Roads have remained impassable. The school and health systems have since packed up, and no one is even attempting to extend them the honour of an autopsy. Indeed, the immunity clause has only helped the heartless, thieving rulers to mindlessly steal without “distractions.” This just must stop! We require only one quarter of what was stolen by public officers in this country to turn it into another Europe. Imagine what this country of highly creative people would become if we had uninterrupted power supply? No nation where thieves are kings ever survives! The greatest hindrance to Nigeria’s development is CORRUPTION. No more, no less.

So, let the immunity clause go. If it only helps the governor or president to realize he is NOT some emperor to be worshipped, and that state funds are not his to squander the way he likes, that’s okay for now. Whoever thinks he would be unable to take the “distractions” from “frivolous petitions” can simply excuse himself from aspiring to become president or governor.  Maybe, after this, the  genuine servant-leaders, whose mission is to truly serve the people, would emerge to rescue this nation from the resilient criminal class that has held it to ransom for many years now. Every other nation seeks daily to transfer more power to its people to enable them hold leaders accountable, but in Nigeria, everything is done to render the people voiceless and powerless. I see the removal of this immunity clause as one effective way of returning power to the people. By the way, what is all this fetish about “distractions”? Anambra people still retain pleasant memories of the brief tenure of Chris Ngige as their governor, yet, only few people remember that Ngige did all he did to win the love of his people in the midst of a most savage fight against him by Aso Rock-empowered renegades.  So much for “distractions.”

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What is Gov Ohakim Afraid Of?

Mr. Ikedi Ohakim has said countless nice things and did a few things right since he happened in Owerri as Imo Governor, including tarring the road to my village in Umuaka halfway – something previous regimes could not even attempt despite profuse promises. And, although, many people on this side of civilisation recoiled at his suggestion the other day that treasury looters should be stoned (to death, I suppose), such an outburst, however, was construed by many as indicative of the governor’s deep revulsion for corruption. But just a few days after his historic statement, and President Yar’Adua had called for the abrogation of the obnoxious immunity clause, Ohakim thoroughly embarrassed his admirers and Imo citizens by becoming the first serving public officer (in less than twenty-four  hours or so) to voice his public disagreement with Yar’Adua on this issue. “I believe that there are many areas of the Constitution that require amendment to assist Nigeria in fulfilling its manifest destiny, and not the issue of corruption,” he told reporters in Kaduna. Indeed, given that corruption has since distinguished itself as the most destructive enemy of Nigeria’s development, Ohakim’s uncritical stand  certainly cost him countless friends, and placed a halo of doubt over his past media posturing on transparency in governance. Did he see the degrading comments his unedifying position attracted from enraged Nigerians on the internet? But why is Ohakim suddenly jittery? Is he scared of a past to which the removal of immunity clause might attract more discreet scrutiny or a present which when exposed by the removal of the immunity shield might look very scary? Or was he merely, characteristically, dropping another headline-grabbing bombshell? A sad day for Imo indeed!        

 scruples2006@yahoo.com
w.ugochukwu.wordpress.com