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Tag: IKEDDY ISIGUZO

  • 2024 Olympics: Nigeria’s sports as circumstantial ceremonies – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    2024 Olympics: Nigeria’s sports as circumstantial ceremonies – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    MOSES Ugbisien, winner of a 4x400m bronze medal in athletics, 40 years ago at the Los Angeles Olympics, called thrice recently. Two of the calls were in the course of the Olympic Games in Paris. Expectedly they were about Nigeria participating in the Olympic Games as circumstantial ceremonies.

    Complaints are legion. Comments have been driven by what we know about the medalless contingent. In most cases, our premises are cast on assumptions, wrong assumptions.

    Money, the way we spend it, cannot win medals. The anger about an expenditure of N12 billion on Paris 2024 is grossly misplaced. The approval of the money was noisily celebrated on Thursday 18 July 2024 when the opening ceremony of the Games was only eight days away!

    Hopes were high that the approved budget would be released quickly, and more importantly, fully. I do not know if “quickly” and “fully” were achieved. What exactly was the money meant to do?

    Pay allowances? Pay outstanding debts? Motivate the athletes eight days to the Games? Buy air tickets?

    When was money for training and other preparations for the Games released? We do not know. Even with the belated release of the money, the tradition is to thank the President for his benevolence to sports and make promises to do better than the Games of Atlanta, 28 years ago, when Nigeria won 2 gold, 1 silver, and three bronze medals, Nigeria’s best Olympics to date.

    This did not start with the 2024 Olympics. There is hardly a clear path to how we win medals at the Games. It will not stop with Paris 2024 unless Nigeria does something drastic and immediate to rescue the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

    Money is not the major issue. If the Ministry of Sports Development gets N40 billion today for the 2028, it is not a guarantee that we would win a medal. There are no structures to run sports in the professional manners that elite athletes billed for the Olympics demand.

    Competence in limited dosages along the Olympic production lines has compromised the preparations for the Los Angeles Olympics. Outright lies should not be central to the future.

    Whoever said that preparations for the 2028 Games had started knew that it was not true. Those immersed in the best global practices for these things would take a few weeks off to recover from the tensions the Games are. They are organised and light years ahead of the remedies that are being prescribed for Nigeria.

    They would hold appraisal meetings. They would audit their post-Olympic assets – athletes, officials, partners, governance issues, and resolve them. Deficits in all areas would be treated and the areas of strengths are enhanced.

    Competitions from 2024 to 2032 would be diarised and aligned to the programmes of the various federations, and budgeted right to the very base of the programmes for different competitions and qualifiers that lead to different engagements.

    Some top performers have retired with Paris 2024. Replacements have to be groomed from a pool of performers who are below  those leaving. Provisions have to be made for injuries, ageing, loss of interest, doping challenges, grading of the athletes based on performances for training grants, rewards and a lot more.

    The pool of athletes for 2028 should be from athletes who have been to the Olympics, top events like the World Championships, Commonwealth Games, All Africa Games with consistent results that when benchmarked against global athletes in that event have our athletes within the top 15, for starts. We should progress to top 8, and top 6 before the Olympics.

    Criteria for the set immediately below the top group would be stated. They would be the top group for 2028, but already part of the Olympic team for 2032 and beyond.

    Olympic Games are not circumstantial ceremonies that can be accomplished on a four-year cycle with filmsy utterance as “we have started preparations for Los Angeles”.

    Nigeria sports officials would spend the rest of 2024 and well into 2025 fighting for positions in the sports federations. They are full-blown opportunities to step into opportunities that sports breed. We call them elections. They are essential meal tickets for most officials who barely know anything about their sports, except maybe the next trips and what allowances they will bring.

    When we are through with the elections, we lose time, fragment the little cohesion the federations have and attend the next Games, usually with a worse management than was in Paris that produced no medals.

    Elsewhere, most elected their federations, including their National Olympic Committees before Paris 2024. The end of the Games also mark a new beginning even where the officials were re-elected.

    Back to the calls with Ugbisien, we joked about the $12,000 scholarship he has been owed since the spectacular victory in the 4×400m relay that keep spectators at Kasarani Stadium, outside Nairobi, on their feet. It qas the 1987 All-Africa Games. Remarkably, Nigeria won all the athletic relay events in Nairobi.

    Innocent Egbunike had won the 400m with a Games record, 44.23 seconds. The Kenyan David Kitur was second and Ugbisien was third.

    Kitur was up against Egbunike in the last legvof the relay. He indulged Kitur who led the race. Kenyans were screaming. From the 300 metres, Egbunike started closing up, and outran Kitur for the gold.

    Daniel arap Moi, Kenyan President told Egbunike during the medal ceremony, “This Innocent is not innocent”. Nigeria had a high volume of athletes to choose from then.

    A year after, Nigeria returned from the Olympics in Seoul without any medals. The most remarkable thing about Seoul was that the luggage of the contingent, on the return trip, was so large that it could not fit into the aircraft. It arrived by ship almost two months after the Olympics.

    We have learnt nothing ever since. How did we win three silver medals four years after in Seoul and the best performance in Atlanta?

    The remnants of Seoul, and athletes who had matured from the American school system, helped. The sports programmes at home were stronger and also had funding, administrations was better than today.

    A lot needs to be done. A National Sports Commission, NSC, which would have  stability through its enabling Act, protected from political interference, shielded from the sluggish bureaucracy of the Ministry, will be the lead to the best direction.

    Maybe a look at the management structure of the Ministry will show how unsuitable it is for sports development and management. The Ministry’s Chief Executive Officer is the Permanent Secretary. At best, he is a sports enthusiast who has been thrown to the vortex of sports management. He is not excluded from the regular shuffle of top civil servants.

    He may not be able to complete his reports on the Paris Olympics before he is posted to another Ministry. The Minister could be similarly changed. The process continues.

    The NSC will aggregate our sports assets, manage them with a rolling plan that would integrate the various top global events that culminate in the Olympic Games. It would  employ staff who have the skills and experience to manage sports on more engaging and sustainable bases.

    What we have with the Ministry are civil servants who take decisions for sports without adequate knowledge of what they manage. Sports management is blighted by lack of competence which in turn drives gross mis-management that affect the federations with the Nigeria Okympic Committee at the apex of the obtuse arrangement.

    There are no plans to work with schools, clubs, communities, and several initiatives that can harness thousands of young Nigerians aspiring to be athletes across different sports. Whether they become elite athletes or not, opportunities abound for them to get sports scholarships and benefit from great education. NSC will do these and more.

    Money for sustainable preparation for our athletes, officials, coaches, doctors, masseuses, psychologists, and other managers will be billions of Naira that the National Lottery Commission, partners, and sponors will provide. There is no structure today for such robust attention to sports management and development.

    We need a body that will employ people with the skill sets for sports development. They can manage resources sports generate for the benefit of sports and Nigerian public.

    Britain in 1996 finished 36th on the medals table, four notches below Nigeria’s 2 gold medals. It was the worst British finishing since 1952. Prime Minister Tony Blair was not just embarrassed but he created UK Sports which distributed resources that UK Lottery provided to sports councils, schools, clubs and community sports centres for the continuous production of athletes.

    Elite athletes were graded and their training funded. More scientific approaches were included. UK Sports did not kill the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, UK’s equivalent of our Ministry of Spirts Development.

    Britain has prospered ever since. The availability of lottery funding gave bite to long term planning, research and training of athletes and officials. Projections of Britain’s finishing as hosts of London 2012 were between sixth and eighth position. Britain won 29 gold medals and were third on the medals table, 16 years after the Atlanta disaster and everyone, including Russia, attended.

    Nigeria won zero medals at the London Olympics.

    Nigeria can lean on the disaster of Paris to set up the NSC. The future is infested with futility and acrimonies without NSC.

    We cannot run sports without anyone to hold responsible. Not even someone to ask what happened to Moses’ $12,000.

    The current situation approximates to elevated confusions.

    Finally…

    THOSE who criticise the number of aircraft in the presidential fleet should change their mind after three of the President’s jets were seized by a Chinese firm, acting on court orders in Paris. Was the President’s three-day visit to Equatorial Guinea hampered? Have you wondered what would have happened if the President was in the seized plane or got to the airport and was locked out of his plane? The Chinese firm has graciously released one of the planes, the Airbus, to, it says, enable President Bola Ahmed Tinubu attend a meeting in France next week with the French President. Hopefully, the size of the Airbus does not indicate the number of those heading to France with the President.

    WAS spicing a $500m investment forum with a porno video the latest in Nigeria being among the world’s best investment destinations? Even if we want to go through that route, a lot of work needs to be done for us to come anywhere close to the world’s best.

    OUR governments must be more serious with keeping to terms of contracts whether with Nigeria or foreign organisations. Ogun State which got into the $81.72 million judgement jam with the Chinese firm has nothing to yield a fraction of that sum. Nigerians are bearing the brunt of the Federal Government implementation of an agreement that Ogun State government needed nobody’s permission to breach.

    ALL those who the Ministry of Sports owes any money, any unredeemed promises, should use the opportunities of the informal inquest on Nigeria at the 2024 Olympics to tell us. If you send the evidence to ikeddyisiguzo@hotmail.com, I will published them.

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues

  • Tenure of excuses: Will President Tinubu ever take responsibility? – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Tenure of excuses: Will President Tinubu ever take responsibility? – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    PRESIDENT Bola Ahmed Tinubu has only a few who love him. Some of them were on the streets in the past days to express their frustration about what their Jagaban has become though many were still not sure what they expected the Tinubu presidency to be.

    Of course, the tinier group whose face the President sees daily loves his Office. It farms out opportunities and patronages it generates which the President’s favourites grab in mindlessness scrambles that point to their purpose. It is also their turn.

    In return, they make all types of excuses for the President. Without meaning to say so, they have consistently implied that the responsibilities were beyond Tinubu. When some said so last year, people thought they were comments made during campaigns.

    His one year has been founded in lack of direction, narrow-minded decisions that cannot provide strong platforms for building a nation that was strangulated during eight years of Muhammadu Buhari. Tinubu said during the campaigns that he would continue Buhari’s good works.

    Tinubu has exceeded Buhari in nepotism. Denied of any “remnants of Goodluck Jonathan’s administration”, Tinubu is drowning in a sea of hopelessness that his policies produce. For the enormity of his assignment, he needs hope more than ordinary Nigerians.

    Where he promised “Renewed Hope” we are left wondering what the hope is, and its unknown “renewed” components.

    Things are really bad for people to compare Muhammadu Buhari and Tinubu. Their telling conclusion is that Buhari is by far better than Tinubu. They point at price of foods and insecurity to drive their conclusion.

    What is Tinubu doing about these? How can people prefer Buhari to Tinubu? How not? They want answers to where we are today. They get excuses.

    Nigerians fill the streets hungry, angry and the President is regurgitating the same promises he has been making for more than a year. Does he realise that the campaigns are long over?

    What did he intend to do as President? Is his presidency all about weekly announcements of appointees who seem, like the President, unable and unwilling to mitigate the troubles that Nigerians face?

    Nigerians are hungry and the President is in search of their sponsors. Those who lost elections, possibly envious of the President’s landmark achievements, mobilise people to the streets. Not an appeal or kind words that provide a direction.

    The President,  the strategist, is distant, and asks people to be patient. He needs time. He is unable to articulate a timeline and what he would do with the time. He has exhausted this time-buying strategy that he used in navigating the national minimum wage.

    Did he need time to fetch two presidential jets? What time did he have to start the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway in less than a year in office? Moving the Vice-President into a N21 billion needed no patience or excuses.

    The verdict is that Tinubu has time for things that interest him. He quickly mobilises the resources to execute his important trips all over the world. We have watched with dismay the tardiness exhibited in these trips that have been famous for the plane load of delegates.

    How does a country deep in debts manage the flamboyance that has indexed Tinubu’s presidency? What does one make of his trips that have consumed billions of Naira? Yes, we should be patient, waiting for what?

    Will the President ever be tired of excuses? When will he take responsibility for his failings?

    His insensitivity is startling. There is always someone to blame for the regression of Nigeria. Never Tinubu who Nigerians have as President. When Nigerians rattle the President, he reminds them that there are Governors and local government Chairmen.

    Is Tinubu admitting that he is not the only one who has failed? Let us share the failure, he seems to say.

    The Governors doubtlessly have failed with only a few doing anything close to reflecting the resources that get to them. Nigerians in discussing the failures of Tinubu do so because he is the President whose decisions got us here. We are not mistaking him for our Governors.

    “Let me state categorically that this is yet another case of misrepresentation of facts. The said funds were part of the World Bank-assisted NG-CARES project—a Programme for results intervention,” Governor Seyi Makinde, said of the oft-repeated presidential achievement of distributing N570 billion to the States.

    “The World Bank facilitated an intervention to help States in Nigeria with COVID-19 Recovery. CARES means COVID-19 Action Recovery Economic Stimulus.”

    Why would the President not communicate this “achievement” clearly?

    Should Nigerians know how bad the economy is? We are not told. We only guess how bad things are. We use rising prices of foods and goods, high borrowing costs, and hardships associated with various aspects of living in Nigeria to judge the state of the economy.

    When one adds the scourge of insecurity and uncontrollable cost of access to medications, medical services, it is impressed on us, that we have more reasons to agree that things are hard for “everybody”.

    Everybody is a useful word to make us feel we are the same. Tinubu does not feel anything, at least, not what we feel. His claims in the needless national address on the protests confirmed it – he had nothing to say.

    The “I know how you feel” in that national broadcast was sheer mockery. His decisions show his indifference to the plight of Nigerians.

    National poverty in the first year of Tinubu is as traumatic as it is thematic. The poverty is unique. It is beneficial to those who use it as a whip to keep the people disinterested in asking the deep questions about Nigeria’s decline.

    When Tinubu removed fuel subsidy, with immediate effect, what did he expect? Why does his government still subsidise fuel and Nigerians buy it at unaffordable prices? The collapse of the Naira is responsible?

    Removal of fuel subsidy was a decision taken before Tinubu thought about it. He talked about it during the campaigns, again, without thinking about it.

    Things are worse than the pictures that are painted. We do not understand Nigeria enough to explain its dilemmas. Comparisons with other countries should at best be contrasts. Nigeria has moved from being a mystery to a mystique.

    Measures used to guage economic situations elsewhere fail woefully in these parts as no scintilla of efforts is safe from the dubity that beclouds what we do.

    Nothing is more opposed to Tinubu than his failures. Protesters retorted that hunger, insecurity, rising prices, high cost of governments, the collapse of the Naira, expensive fuels and hiked electricity tariffs were the sponsors of the protests.

    Security agencies harassing individuals and organisations is not a solution. The poor tailor who was arrested for taking on the business of sewing some colours into a “foreign flag” was doing his work – sewing. He will cobble other colours together when next he gets a chance.

    The President should punish the “sponors” that the protesters identified. They are still with us. If the President arrests them, we would all be better for it.

    Does President Tinubu appreciate that the flagging performances of his administration have consequences? Does he care? Can he care? Has he given up on Nigeria?

    Finally…

    NIGERIA had some exciting moments at the Olympic Games that had not resulted in any medals when I wrote this. I wish the remaining contestants lots if good luck.v

    DEATHS from the protests were avoidable. Our security agencies need more lessons on managing these situations. Lives are important, and those who terminate them should be accountable. Stray bullets as cause of deaths – why live bullets? – is inadequate accountability.

    THOSE busy talking about Tinubu’s second term should help him make the best of his current assignment for the benefit of Nigerians. If he is already done with his first term, they should also tell us.

    PS: If this piece is incoherent, I have succeeded in reflecting Nigeria.

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues

  • Tam Fiofori and his Jamaican gals – By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    Tam Fiofori and his Jamaican gals – By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    Tam Fiofori, who passed away on Tuesday, 25 June 2024, at 82, will miss this. Jamaica’s fiery sprints squad at the upcoming Olympics Games in Paris would have kept him on the phone, confirming schedules, reliving moments of athletic apogees, and making predictions of which Jamaicans would shake the world.

    Fiofori was a former long jumper, which explains the bounce in his steps. He was an  athletics buff and set the pages of The Guardian aglow with his crisp reports and photogenic images that foretold the sprint dominance of “My Jamaicans Gals,” as he titled one of the stories.

    The story was told 41 years ago at the inaugural World Athletics Championships in Helsinki, Finland, 7-14 July 1983. Despite winning just three medals — one gold by Bert Cameron in 400m, a silver medal by Merlene Ottey in 200m, and a bronze medal in 4×100 m from the team of Leleith Hodges, Jacqueline Pusey, Juliet Cuthbert, and Ottey — Jamaica showed it had a bright future in  athletics.

    Grace Jackson, a prominent figure in Helsinki, won a 200m silver at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul behind Florence Joyner of the US. Jackson’s marriage to Hugh Small, Jamaica’s minister of industry, commerce, and production, in 1990 shortened her  athletics career. She quit the  sport two years later, at 31.

    At the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Cuthbert won silver medals in 100m and 200m, and Ottey won a 200m bronze. The Jamaican Girls phenomenon continued with Ottey leading the charge. Ottey won two silver medals (100 m and 200m) and a relay bronze at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Four years later, Jamaican Girls won five silver medals in Sydney, and Ottey won a silver and a bronze.

    Ottey, one of the world’s most decorated athletes, led the era of brilliance and longevity of Jamaican female athletes, being named Jamaica Sportswoman of the Year 13 times in 23 years of racing for Jamaica and another 10 years for Slovenia.

    When Ottey retired at 52, she had logged nine Olympic medals, 14 World Championship medals, and others at the Commonwealth Games and major international events. An Olympic gold eluded her. Ottey was 36 at the Atlanta Olympics when she lost the 100m gold to American Gail Devers, though both clocked 10.98 seconds.

    Fiofori’s “My Jamaican Gals” was a parody of Grace Jones’ 1981 hit, “My Jamaican Guy,” a tribute to Sly Dunbar, whose pelting of drums in ways only he could, left his touch on most reggae hits of the time. Now, 72, Sly is still at it. He revolutionised drumming across different reggae bands before computers colonised the role. Jones warmed her way to filling more dance floors in more spots globally with “Pull Up To The Bumper,” from “Nightclubbing,” the 1981 album, still rated as number two in her repository 43 years after its release.

    A lot of Fiofori was about  music. He started his journalism career as a freelancer in 1965 because he cherished his independence, according to an interview with Taiwo Obe in a 2023 interview. Fiofori reviewed  music and arts for international publications in England and the US, where he also schooled.
    Musicians impressed him if they were literate. He explained that literate musicians could read music, write music, teach music, and play different instruments. The top Nigerian musician for him was Peter King, who met the criteria. In addition, King ran a music school in Badagry, where more than 2,000 students passed through his guidance. Asa was among them.

    Fiofori would often say, “Nigerians don’t know PK. If they did, they would respect him. He won international awards for his jazz and Afro  music decades before people filled every space with noise”. PK passed on in 2023.

    Brodaa Tam, as I called him, was sad at the scant recognition King received, in life and in death, for all he did for  music. He was the one who drew my attention to King’s death, wondering why it was not in the papers.

    On Sunday, Nduka Irabor asked me, “Tam Fiofori gone? And the news is not in all the papers?”.
    Fiofori was a student when he met Peter King, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Wale Buckor, and Adams Dagogo Fiberesima in London. The quartet was studying music at Trinity College, which was a school of the University of London. He was well-acquainted with them, and they remained friends until they all transited before him.

    Back at The Guardian, where Fiofori was sending loads of pictures to Sunny Ojeagbase (may the Almighty rest him), the  sports editor, each package that arrived from Helsinki gave the newspaper, just months on the streets, an advantage that matched The Guardian’s advertisement, “Sooner or later, you will read The Guardian.” It was sooner.

    We stole glances at the pictures as Ojeagbase held them with respect fit and proper for sacred objects. When they were finally splashed on the newspaper, they were at sizes unknown in newspapers then. Ojeagbase created the magazine effect for  sports pages. “These pictures cannot be wasted,” Ojeagbase would say. He was spoilt for choice.

    If photography were a religion, Fiofori would have been its faithful priest, not striving for titles or positions. This priest smoked and drank his beer with a quietitude that could make you a convert or, if you were already one, lead to renewals of the bottles as you discharged them into your waiting throat.
    Once he starts with, “Let me tell you this”, usually prefaced with your name, to get your maximum attention, you would be at the feet of a raconteur who would take you on a compressed trip round the world with stops at major global arts capitals, or where film festivals held.  Sports were not excluded.

    During our 1987 trip with Nigeria’s  athletics team to Burkina Faso, he was as enticed by the egregious young jumper George Ogbeide, more known as Lakayana, who had boasted he would break the national record, as much as arranging his participation in the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, FESPACO, an annual, international film event that has respected a place in the global calendar. Lakayana would win the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA, long jump gold in 1991. The NCAA is the zenith of American university  sports contests.

    Fiofori’s films and documentaries were heavy on the devastation of the Niger Delta, culture, and  music genres across Nigeria. He was good with words and his work. His best boast was to remind a gathering, “shoe get size”. He was right.

    Cast in the general neglect and scorn Nigeria has for the creative industry, Fiofori and his generation got minimal attention as they searched for resources to maximise the reach of their works. He was mainly a self-funder of his works, though there were commissioned ones.

    A simple man who lived for over 40 years in the same Surulere house that he cluttered with his works at varied stages of completion, I would walk in gingerly, careful not to step on a piece of history in some form or format. Before taking a seat, I would wait for him to clear some pictures he was working on overnight.

    I guess the volume of work in that apartment, their security in the order he arranged them, and the uncertainty of how they would fit elsewhere hugely accounted for his long stay. He was not one to meet when he was angry. “Get this done before I blow my…top,” he would charge over delays in completing his productions, rising mannerlessness, or poor electricity, which often wore him out. I left out the expletive, which came sparsely for someone who lived in Harlem in the nuanced sixties.

    Fiofori grew up in Benin City, where Emmanuel, his father, taught at Edo College, but he was from Okrika, Rivers. He attended King’s College, Lagos, and later King’s College London for higher education.

    As the first new music/electronic  music editor for DownBeat and a contributor to many other  art and literary publications in the US and Europe, he was a major player in directing the cultural conversations of the time.

    He served as a film consultant to the Rivers State Council for  Arts and Culture, a director of the Rivers State Documentary Series, a consultant/scriptwriter for Documentaries, NTA Network, and a founding executive of the Photographers’ Association of Nigeria, PAN.

    His works have been exhibited in Africa, Europe, and the US. He had an award from the Pan African Writers’ Association, PAWA International Documentary Film Festival, and  Music in Africa.

    In 2022, he received the IREP Lifetime Achievement Award. Femi Odugbemi, founder of the iREP Documentary Film Festival, praised Fiofori as a monumental figure in the documentary world.

    Some of the books he authored or co-authored are African Photographer J. A. Green Reimagining the Indigenous and the Colonial (African Expressive Cultures) by Martha G. Anderson, Lisa Aronson, Christraud M. Geary, Tam Fiofori, Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa and published by Indiana University Press (2017); Fragile Legacies; The Photographs of Solomon Osagie Alonge by Amy J. Staples, Flora S. Kaplan, Bryan M. Freyer, Kokunre Agbontaen-Eghafona, Eni Ehizibue Ehikhamenor, Tam Fiofori, Daniel I. Inneh, George Osodi, Theophilus Umogba and published by Giles (2017).

    Others include Sun Ra: Myth,  Music and Media by Tam Fiofori and published in 2015 in Delta, Nigeria (Illustrated); The Rape of Paradise by George Osodi, Francis Ugiomoh, Bisi Silva, Tam Fiofori and published by Trolley Books (2011); A Benin Coronation: Oba Erediauwa by Tam Fiofori and published in 2001.

    Thank you very much, Taiwo Obe, for documenting Fiofori last year in My Tori.

    His passing denies the arts community of one who knew his acts and used them generously to ennoble humanity.

    May the Almighty rest, Brodaa Tam.

  • Who will head Nigeria’s Bribe Collection Commission? – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Who will head Nigeria’s Bribe Collection Commission? – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    PUT the Steve Oronsaye Report on hold. We need to create a new Commission urgently. The tentative should be the Nigeria Bribe Collection Commission. There are multiple reasons for the urgency in setting up the Commission, but one should suffice for now – the President should have nothing to do with regulating bribery.

    The mistake he made in Qatar exposed a national challenge that should be tackled quickly. Now that the President has made a promise to an international audience to track bribery, there would be security implications that were not thought through.

    There would be time to ask what the anti-corruption agencies do, aside blocking the street and harassing passers-by as EFCC does. The President by deciding to act personally has given his verdict on them.

    Bribery is just an aspect of corruption though deeply rooted in different manifestations that some forget other planks of corruption that Wikipedia listed as, graft inflating contracts trading in influence or influence pedding, patronage nepotism and cronyism, gombeenism and parochialism, electoral fraud, embezzlement, kickbacks, unholy alliance, and organised crime. We could need a whole Ministry to deal with these.

    How many Qatari businesses would be calling the President to report that a Nigerian official demanded bribe? If one believes reports of how wide spread the practices are, the President could spend his entire tenure answering these calls.

    Other countries would rightly demand that if businessmen from tiny Qatar could speak directly to the Nigerian President why not theirs? How would the President cope? Do we know that when the President is on a private visit to France, these businessmen could invade his privacy with calls?

    If we extend these privileges to foreign businessmen, why should Nigerians be excluded? Has charity ceased to begin at home? Should Nigerians not have the right of first refusal in reporting bribes to the President? Is there proof that our businesses are not badgered with demands for bribes?

    Since we have agreed that the President should not be directly involved in this project, we have to determine allegations that should deserve the attention ofthe Commission. It would have been tough for less experienced business people to understand the challenge and the deep perspectives that made the President to decide to confront it directly, personally.

    Earlier administrations embraced challenges instead of confronting them. Now, we have a President who barely gets any sleep. His Special Assistant, Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale in an interview said the President never sleeps before 2am daily, including Sundays. We can spare the President more time to sleep to avoid him drifting off in public.

    The Commission’s first mandate would be to ensure that every complainant deposits the amount allegedly demanded in a special account. The money would be in the account until the matter is satisfactorily determined. Frivolous reports would thus be avoided. The second would be to retrieve all President’s numbers that could have fallen into wrong hands otherwise people could set up their own Commission.

    Another mandate of the Commission would be to set a time frame for bribe-offering businessmen to conclude transactions that are already in the works. The Commission would ensure that only transactions from the date of the President’s Qatari speech would be entertained.

    For now, the President should be bothered with how to fulfil his promise to the international community. The easiest way is to arrest all those who say a word against the President fighting bribery in line with the Qatari Declaration for they do not wish the administration well.

    Finally…

    NDUBUISI Ekekwe, Co-chair, Abia State Economic Transformation Council, Member, Abia State Global Economic Advisory Council, posted this on X: “As we celebrate the Geometric Power Aba, let me remind everyone of something even as catalytic for the economic development of Abia State.

    Yes, the Enyimba Economic City (EEC, a 9,464 hectare tax and duty free special economic zone in Abia State, is a vibrant integrated city with growth sectors covering Manufacturing, Logistics, Healthcare, Entertainment, Education, Innovation, Technology hub, Commercial, Lifestyle, Residential, Aviation, and more.

    In Nigeria today, there is no comparison, and the world is converging: “Today India and Nigeria do about $11 billion volume of trade and it is fluctuating between $11 to $15 billion. So with this new Economic City, we are targeting towards increasing this trade between the two countries to $20 billion.

    And we are proud to say that there are more than 76 Indian companies, who have registered their interest, setting up their manufacturing facilities inside Enyimba and these companies are from diverse sectors,” Vishal Jhadav.

    The World Economic Forum in 2013 honoured Ekekwe as a Young Global Leader for his professional accomplishments and commitment to society. Jhadav, who he quoted is Enyimba Economic City’s Foreign Direct Investments, FDI, Consultant, India Region. Geometric Power is Enyimba’s Partner with which Enyimba Economic City has a power purchase agreement for 90MW, for the first phase of the City. Ekekwe knows what Je is saying.

    At an award event, Governor Umaru Bago of Niger State agreed with Peter Obi that it was an inexplicable shame for war-torn Ukraine to donate food to Nigeria. His alignment with Obi on the issue was profound.

    He called Obi “my boss”. A trending picture of Bago greeting President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at floor level has raised questions. Was Bago apologising for calling Obi his boss, disagreeing with the Federal Government on Ukraine’s gift, or that is how he normally greets the President?

    PEOPLE pin so much hope on the future that they have a saying for it, “there is light at the end of the tunnel”. Has anyone seen the Nigerian tunnel?

    CHIEF Olusegun Obasanjo seems to have a thing for Zimbabwe. It was in Harare, 31 years ago, during the June 12 election agitations, that he told us that Chief MKO Abiola was not the messiah we thought. Only days ago, he told the government to learn from Zimbabwe’s inflation. Was he saying things would get worse?

    OMOYELE Sowore and Deji Adeyanju became lawyers last week. The first lawlessness the mint lawyers tackled was EFCC officials who blocked the side of the road where their headquarters is located in Utako, Abuja. The horrendous traffic jam their action caused made some people spend hours to get to the Law School graduation ceremony.

    Patients to a federal medical facility in the vicinity were also affected. An altercation ensued when EFCC officials accused the duo, who trekked by the EFFC office of trying to take pictures of the edifice. The officers backed down when they realised who they were up against.

    FOOD security is another buzzword that its users tend not to realise that it means nothing unless insecurity was conquered. Niger State Governor Umaru Bago has boasted that he would soon win an award for increasing food production.

    He anchored his plans on the State which had cleared one million acres of land for farming. Niger is Nigeria’s largest State by land mass. Its 76,363 km², is about 10 percent of Nigeria’s land area. But the intensity of insecurity in Niger State forbids any meaningful agricultural activities.

    SENATE President, His Excellency, Obong Godwills Akpabio managed his tongue a lot better in the past weeks after the humiliating apology he made to Governors over his false claims that they got N30 billion hardship allowance.

    His latest salient contribution to national discourse was to deny being a principal officer of the Senate under the leadership of Abubakar Bukola Saraki.

    The disclaimer was important for Akpabio to praise his leadership which he said ensured Senators got funds for their constituency projects unlike under Saraki. In a rapid response, Saraki Media was short of calling Akpabio the President’s Boy for the speed with which he approves loans for the administration.

     

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues

  • South East insecurity threatens Nigeria’s two-legged tripod – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    South East insecurity threatens Nigeria’s two-legged tripod – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    IS South East still a part of Nigeria? The Constitution says so. Like almost everything in the Constitution that is observed in gross breach, insecurity in the South East is treated as the region’s headache.

    Nigeria is a tripod standing on two legs? Those familiar with a tripod know it stands on three legs. Pre-civil war Nigeria stood on three legs. The war damaged one of the legs.

    Nigeria paid a lot of attention at damaging that leg. In the past eight years, particularly, the Muhammadu Buhari administration made it clear in words, deeds, and indeed, that it would act without concerns for the damaged keg.

    Rogue elements are on the increase in the South East. They spawn because those who are doing nothing to restore sanity in the area are mostly beneficiaries of the confusion. The Federal Government, vested with exclusive constitutional and legal provisions and resources to manage insecurity is unconcerned.

    When a leg of a tripod is damaged, the cook treats the damaged stand with extra care, knowing that without such care, as he stirs, the pot and its contents are at a high risk of being upturned. And there are consequences.

    Mischief makers see the serial unrest as a chance to de-brand the South East such that it is not an investment destination, unfit for human sustainable living. The media optics highlight these opinion.

    A May 2023 report on Nigeria’s security by Abuja-based security outfit, Beacon Intel said of 675 people killed, 5.2 per cent or 35 were in the South-East, making it the safest region in the country. They got a minimal mention in the media.

    What is unique about the South East is the sit-at-home orders.

    Only on 7 July 2023, Mr. Victor Onyenkpa, Chief Operating Officer, KPMG Africa, raised a point about the unease of doing business in the South East at a symposium in Aba to mark the 70th birthday of C. Darl Uzu, a known investor in infrastructure, estates, and lead private sector promoter of the Enyimba Economic City Development. He graphically showed billions of Naira were lost to the sit-at-home orders, and how South East’s GDP was shrinking. The facts cannot be disputed.

    The media, difficult to define in the digital era, are in a race to list the commotion in the South East right to how many markets were in disarray in a day. A colleague who arrived from Lagos on Thursday was shocked to see people on the streets of Aba. There was another sit-at-home that was to last a week. The impressions are that people imprison themselves to avoid the gunmen who have taken over the streets.

    Intensity of the madness varies from State to State, city to city. Our spaces have been conceded to mere criminals with whatever names and causes they choose to glorify their assault on Nigeria.
    Our Governors should be comprehensively ashamed of themselves. Why are they in office? To have convoys? To disperse resources as they please? To ensure that their people are decimated while they firm up alliances that create more turbulences in the South East?

    Are they so afraid to lose their empty empires that they cannot ask questions, the right questions? What fill their days? Debauchery? Meetings? Photo opportunities? The competition to amass more resources?
    Our Governors – just five people – cannot hold a meeting to restore dignity to their cherished offices. They are only visible in agitated competitions to damage the South East more through their utterances or loud silences.

    One of my teachers describes what is going thus: “In effect, we have two parallel governments in each of the five States. And neither is of any benefit to the governed. Perhaps, we should say three governments – the federal manipulating the other two, benefitting from the chaos. The Governors should be ashamed of themselves”.

    The other two governments are the gunmen who order sit-at-homes and enforce them and State governments that do nothing except budget billions of Naira as security votes to extend their comfort. What happens to the people does not matter.

    Some insight from the Owerri Prison break of 2021. According to Dennis Amachree, a former Assistant Director of DSS, “There was enough intelligence, enough actionable intelligence. Actionable in the sense that it allows for space for people to execute it, one week ahead of the event and of course, 72 hours before the event and then 48 hours before the event.

    “So, three times, the Nigeria Police Force was informed by the DSS that this is going to happen.

    “Apparently, nothing was done (to stop the attacks). You can see that the Governor was referring to that particular report that it’s not IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra).”

    If Governor Hope Uzodinma blamed outsiders for the attack, did he know who they were? What was done about them.

    The prison is near the highest concentration of security in Imo State. A look at the places close to Owerri Prison – Government House, headquarters of the police and the Department of State Services, DSS, the army brigade on Obinze is not too far away. The invaders released more than 1,800 prisoners. Was anyone sacked for the breach?

    There have been more attacks in Imo and other South East States since then.

    Our homeland is turning into a wasteland. Deserted, distressed, denied, decimated. Traditional weddings, festivals and funerals used to be our local tourism and funnelled resources into the local economy. They are all gone. Insecurity constantly erodes our culture. Fear has become our living.

    Anything done, or not done about insecurity in the South East affects Nigeria, shrinks the country. There is a poor understanding of the insecurity in the South East when it is treated as insecurity of the South East. It is a Nigerian situation situated in the South East.

    Is Nnamdi Kanu the issue? Not any longer. The Federal Government and those rogues on the streets manipulate his name into the crises. The Court of Appeal freed him. Why would the government still hold him?

    What stops the Federal Government from making a formal complaint to the Finnish government about Simon Ekpa who makes the sit-at-home broadcasts?Has the Federal Government told Finland about the dedicated menace Ekpa is?

    Government’s complicity is too obvious that few seem to expect any solution from government. Is there any part of Nigeria that has more check points than the South East? Outside extorting the people and taking advantage of the young ladies in their locations, what else do they do?

    The promise by the new Chief of Defence Staff to deploy more troops to the South East simply means more militarisation of our spaces. There are enough reasons to know that better uses of troops in place is required.

    We lost the civil war. We did not lose our senses. The challenge is for us to find solutions that we can take to willing partners to secure our spaces. Only our actions would prove that we have had productive meetings.

    The South East must act fast. The contest – global, local – for space keeps intensifying. The same contest encompasses the environment, economics, power, politics, and more importantly, the politics of power.

    Power is never enough. Its dynamics ensure that those who think they are masters of the power of politics still feel inadequate.

    Meetings where more time is spent praising the nuances of breaking the kolanuts than dealing with the killing of our people, our homeland, are no solutions. We must act more purposely. Details of what can be done and how to do them are not matters for public consumption. As Okokon Ndem would say during the civil war, when surrounded by enemies, we must be eternally vigilant; we cannot afford to sleep.
    Next week: More on this matter.

     

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues.

  • Let’s not focus on what didn’t happen in Adamawa – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Let’s not focus on what didn’t happen in Adamawa – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    THE Nigerian delight for inconsequential issues is highlighted again by the indifference shown in the disruption in the Adamawa State governorship polls which can stand as the strongest attack so far on our democratic processes. We saw people denied their right to vote. We heard allegations of the security agencies aiding and abetting illegalities around the elections. Thugs had a field day; BVAS was not used, and worse still lives were lost.

    We thought these were possibly the worst of the elections until Adamawa raised the bars of impunity to unimagined heights. Some called it a coup, executed by civilians to derailed the supplementary election to produce the Governor, an exercise that many experts deemed unnecessary since it was unlikely that Mrs. Aishatu Dahiru, affectionately called Binani, of the All Progressives congress, APC, could have won all the 30,000 votes at stake to over-take Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

    The Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr. Hudu Ari, had no power to announce the winner of the election, a responsibility which by law belongs to the State Collation Officer appointed by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. Mr. Ari announced the winner while the results were being collated.

    Mrs. Dahiru in her acceptance speech said her election as the first female governor in the country would encourage other women to participate actively in politics. INEC was quick to deny the declaration which it termed illegal.

    “You’ve made history in electing the first female governor in our dear country, Nigeria. This will no doubt broaden political participation by encouraging our daughters, sisters, aunties, mothers and indeed the girl child,” Mrs. Dahiru told her supporters in 21-seconds clip the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, aired.

    Since the incidents on 16 April 2023, nobody has been arrested, except some aides of the Adamawa State Governor, and some PDP members, who reportedly assaulted a security officer. Attention has been swinging between the ownership of the private jet that took Mr. Ari to Abuja and his disappearance. Why is Mr. Ari in hiding?

    INEC summoned him to Abuja and asked the police and other security agencies to take him into custody. President Muhammadu Buhari also ordered his immediate arrest for the illegal declaration, which sparked nationwide anxiety. He is still a free man, merely suspended from his duties.

    He insists that Mrs. Dahiru won the election. He had the effrontery to write the Inspector-General of Police, Director-General of the Department of State Service, DSS, National Security Adviser, NSA, and INEC Chairman, accusing two National Commissioners, Baba Bila and Abdullahi Zuru, who assisted him with the supplementary election on April 15, of working with PDP to rig the results. His letter was dated 20 April 2023.

    INEC spokesman, Festus Okoye, said Mr. Ari should turn himself in to the Commission or police, who already have a file outlining the offences he committed in Adamawa.

    “He should report and answer to the electoral infractions and make his allegations, and it should form part of police investigation,” Mr. Okoye said.

    “The commission is not interested in his ‘fictional letters from hiding’,” Mr. Okoye added. “If he has a narration, he should make them to the police. Alternatively, he can report to the Commission and the Commission will take him to the police.”

    Mr. Ari defended his actions in the drivel to the security agencies. “I want to categorically say that my action is within the responsibility vested on me and within the ambit law, particularly of the Electoral Act 2022 as amended.”

    Where is Mr. Ari that the security agencies cannot find him after the President’s orders? Are there no sanctions for Mrs. Dahiru, who read an acceptance speech and filed processes in court asking that she be affirmed the winner of the election? Who are protecting them?

    These grievous matters would be soon forgotten as the focus shifts to the more profitable ventures of who holds what office in the emerging governments across the country. We are pretending that nothing serious happened in Adamawa to warrant a search for Mr. Ari except the “man-hunt” the police have promised.

    It would not surprise many if Mr. Ari emerges a key member of the government being formed when he decides to come of hiding. The President thinks he has done his part by giving the orders. He is tired. Are his appointees also tired?

    Finally…

    NIGERIA continues excelling in making a mess of simple things. Getting stranded Nigerians out of Sudan has set up series of scandals, including festering the insecurity and suffering of the stranded. Most of the stranded are Muslim Northerners, sustaining the point that incompetence of governments is not restrained by religion, and region. With a month to the end of the administration, it would appear that its officials have extended their absence in the affairs of Nigeria. This does not suggest any strikingly remarkable performances for good in their eight years.

    IS fuel subsidy still a scam? President Buhari’s inaction appears to be the final word. Out of office he said it was a scam. For eight years the cost of subsidy kept rising. Every promise to remove subsidy was followed with its retention and higher votes for subsidy. There must be some good scams. Government knows better.

    TUESDAY 2 May 2023 will be a great day at the University of Calabar, according to an official statement by Prof. Patrick Egaga, Director of SERVICOM at the university. The day marks ban of some dresses. “Specifically, short skirts or gowns, above the knee, open backs, crap tops, braless tops and gowns, spaghetti finger, sleeveless tops, handless gowns, bikinis, see through, transparent, apparels and revealing contours are no longer tolerated on campus.

    “Others are handless gowns, bum short revealing laps, slit skirts, body hugs, V-necks exposing breasts, tubes, strip-less, rag jeans, shorts above the knee, sleeveless shirts, singlets, lingeries, sagged trousers and others.

    “All of these will no longer be tolerated on campus with effect from Tuesday May 2, 2023.”
    WE have been reading about the fatal consequences of blind religious beliefs in Kenya. Are we sure similar situations do not exist here? Or what are we doing to stop them?

    HOW important is oil to Nigeria’s economy? One is not calling for a debate. When at official fora it is frequently stated that Nigerian crude is stolen in quantities that damage the economy, and government does nothing about it, there are doubts if we understand these things the same way. Nigeria has lost an opportunity to produce and sell about 65,700,000 barrels of oil in the last one year due to issues bothering on pipeline vandalism and the resultant oil theft. This translates to about N2.3tn loss in oil revenue.

    The Chairman of Shell Companies in Nigeria, Dr Osagie Okunbor, said at the just concluded Nigerian International Energy Summit in Abuja, that the 180, 000 barrels per day Trans Niger Pipeline had remained shut for more than one year – March 2022 to March 2023 due to massive oil theft on the pipeline. Last year, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company said it detected an illegal connection on the Trans Escravos pipeline looped to the four-kilometre Afremo test line. Nothing is likely to be done about the thefts, soon, with these statements that could be invitations to new thieves.

  • Best time to be Onye Igbo is now – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Best time to be Onye Igbo is now – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    NEW Nigerians are emerging who greatly attempt definitions of Nigeria that excludes Onye Igbo. They speechify it, they act it, when all these fail, they problematise Onye Igbo as the defying part of Nigeria. There are no consequences for profiling.

    Muhammadu Buhari, as President, called Ndigbo a dot in a circle, in a June 2021 television interview, he assumed he was the one who conferred importance on people. He has watched the dot expand.

    Two years on, the army of those stopping Onye Igbo from participating in the affairs of Nigeria has grown. And so have those who question whether Onye Igbo’s rights are as a citizen or ethnic.

    All manners of people sprouted to grab campaigns positions that seem to benefit from them saying anything that pleased them in 2023. They have created doubts about the relevance of education to human behaviour.

    Onye Igbo was unimportant. Onye Igbo can’t win an election. Onye Igbo was on the fringes, hardly a major thing that mattered that they would not want to rule Onye Igbo out.

    Among their target had been to get Onye Igbo to accept he was not part of the same Nigeria he is found in every part. His wards gain admissions into federal educational institutions with higher cut off points even when he is a trader. Nobody explains the logic of these ridiculous practices that are criminal, discriminatory, and contrary to the Constitution. This official policy which goes against the Constitution is annually announced.

    Onye Igbo moves on, exploring the few areas where the doors have not been shut. Onye Igbo is toughened daily through these measure. He has gained numbers, among them those who oppose evil, speak out, see the possibility of a better Nigeria.

    When criminals ravaged igbo land they were called unknown gunmen, an admission that government would not tackle them. They have run out of hand.

    Criminals almost over ran the President’s home State, Katsina. The plight of a Katsina farmer Saidu Faskari was captured in media reports of 9 January 2022 as he was taking down roofing sheets of his house to raise money for ransom. “They (bandits) kidnapped my son day before yesterday (Thursday).

    He had gone to pay the ransom money for my release. I spent 13 days in their den. When my children gathered the N50,000 one of my sons was asked to take the ransom but the bandits released me and apprehended him. I don’t even have what to eat not to talk of the money to go and pay ransom,” said Faskari. The kidnappers wanted N100,000 to release the son. Is he too Onye Igbo?

    Elections held throughout Nigeria. Onye Igbo turned out to be the aggregation of those who chose differently. They came from all beliefs, disbeliefs, unbeliefs, religions, regions to shock those who think a different Nigeria was impossible.

    Thugs and touts, parading titles that sustained electoral crimes brutalised people and outrightly stopped some from voting. This was mainly in Lagos.

    Freedom to vote a candidate of Onye Igbo’s choice was ethnicised to mean a move to snatch Lagos from its owners, and run. Security agencies did not protect voters, including non-Onye Igbo, in electoral misconducts in Lagos.

    Jennifer Seifegha was attacked by thugs at the Nuru/Oniwo Ward, Polling Unit 065, in Surulere while she was waiting to vote. The brave woman got treated and returned to vote. Whatever her origins, she became Onye Igbo as those who attacked her so classified her.

    Chief Fred Nwajagu was arrested by the Department of State Services, DSS, over an alleged threat to invite members of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, to Lagos to secure properties of Igbo people in the State.

    Attacks on Onye Igbo continued after the elections. They did not seem to be important enough to gain the attention of our agile security agencies.

    In a 49-second video, Chief Nwajagu allegedly said, “IPOB, we will invite them. They have no job. All of the IPOB will protect all of our shops. And we have to pay them. We have to mobilise for that. We have to do that. We must have our own security so that they will stop attacking us in the midnight, in the morning, in the afternoon’.

    “When they discover that we have our own security, before they will come, they will know that we have our own men there. I am not saying a single word to be hidden. I am not hiding my words, let my words go viral. Igbo must get their right and get stand in Lagos State.”

    These utterances were offensive the security agencies said as they took him away.

    What MC Oluomo, a known chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, said in a viral video before the governorship election in Lagos, “We have begged them. If they don’t want to vote for us, it is not a fight. Tell them, Mama Chukwudi, if you don’t want to vote for us, sit down at home. Sit down at home.”

    He enforced the threat by stopping people who were Onye Igbo or looked like Onye Igbo from voting.
    The Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, Idowu Owohunwa reacted to Oluomo thus, “With regards to this specific video you mentioned, it is currently a subject of a detailed investigation. Of course, we are deploying our cyber security access to solve that. And, I can assure you that nobody is above the law.

    “Anybody that tries to use his position, or his influence on others to deepen hate, or engender political tension which could, of course, snowball into violence, it remains the responsibility and the mandate of the Nigeria Police to investigate such cases.

    “This specific one you mentioned will not be in isolation. It is already a subject of review.”

    Police later said he was joking.

    Weeks after Oluomo’s threat the police have issued what looks like the final words on Oluomo with this 4 April tweet from Force Public Relations Officer, CSP Olumuyiwa Adeobi, “You can take the case of attack up with MC (Oluomo) if you have a case or evidence of attacks against him. Many people and lawyers, even the deputy gov of Lagos, have said it severally. He has no immunity, so if you have a case of an attack against him, take it up.

    “There is no need to pass judgement or do trial on Twitter. Very simple. Many of you just follow others to raise this issue on Twitter.”

    He was replying to a Twitter user @AjammaS who lamented that the police did nothing to protect voters from attacks in Lagos.

    Nobody knows how long it will take police forensic experts to study the video of Chief Nwajagu before charging him to court. They are holding him without shame about their double standards.

    Perhaps, if he had said, “Let them continue attacking us, we would do nothing,” the police would have invited him to dinner. Without protection from the state, he was supposed to have acquiesced so he would be accepted as a great Igbo leader, a peaceful man.

    A community reading of Chief Nwajagu’s comment shows he was talking about Igbo business people protecting themselves, taking measures to prevent future attacks. Was that a planned attack on anyone?

    Some say he shouldn’t have mentioned IPOB. The truth is even if he had said he we would use MC Oluomo’s followers, he would still have been arrested.

    Unlike MC Oluomo, the police didn’t think Chief Nwajagu could crack jokes. Now that I have reminded them, they should set him free to make a new video.

    Then from the blues Prof Wole Soyinka careered into a condemnation of Peter Obi for losing the election because of the attitude of his supporters, the same supporters who Obi has always restrained his supporters from being violent. Datti Ahmed was his next target.

    Soyinka owes Nigerians apologies for his unbridled support for Maj-Gen Muhammadu Buhari which made him President in 2015, and which chiefly accounts for how Nigeria got to this point. His attacks on corruption under Goodluck Jonathan, insecurity, the marches against prices of petroleum products, hardships, all ceased once Buhari became President. Soyinka’s monumental silence over Buhari’s decisive downslope measures are in full public view.

    He ran into semantic debacle last year when he tried to make a distinction between “supporting Buhari in 2015”, and “voting for him”. He asked people to produce proof that he voted for Buhari as if his single vote was more than votes of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians who followed his big voice that Buhari was the better option. His voice thinned ever since until his curious interjection that added to the distractions around the elections.

    Who won the elections? Who didn’t win the elections? The tribunals and courts would decide. There will be no surprises if Onye Igbo is blamed for the outcomes.

    Finally…

    COULD the interception of the said telephone conversation between Obi and Bishop David Oyedepo have been without a breach of their constitutional rights to privacy? We are still run with laws.
    LAI Mohammed should not waste public funds addressing the foreign media abroad. Their representatives are here. If he needs a holiday, he should take one.

    IMMENSE thanks to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo for intervening on Senator Ikechukwu Ekweremadu’s matter. You bi man.

     

    Ikeddy ISIGUZO, a Major Commentator on Minor Issues

  • Thanks Tinubu for not supporting Buhari’s APC – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Thanks Tinubu for not supporting Buhari’s APC – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    WE have to thank Alhaji Ahmed Bola Tinubu for making the choices before voters easier except if they do not want to vote. Wisely? Twenty days to the presidential election, some have not made up their minds.

    Others may be wondering what it means to “vote wisely”? Choices have never been easier.

    Tinubu, the Jagaban Borgu, has on several counts disqualified himself from the race. There were times he was not clear. At other times his not being the top candidate seeped out from his frustration at the poor attention that he gets from the Villa. Tinubu is angry.

    His anger has been a prominent feature of his campaigns and rightly so. Only a few understand the entitlements that Jagaban Borgu expects. He is not about to get them. When he does, he feels the respect that should come with them are lacking.

    Anger before the party’s presidential primary occasioned the first emi l’okan “outburst”. He went overboard. Apologies to President Muhammadu and insinuations that transliterations by non-Yoruba speakers, were to blame, not Tinubu, only escalated the depths of the jabs on Buhari’s inability to win elections without Tinubu.

    All Progressives Congress, APC, threw the ticket at Tinubu. Support has been slipping out of his hands ever since. There is a gross mis-interpretation of what the party should do for Tinubu who in Abeokuta part one was short of saying he would get the ticket with or without Buhari.

    Tinubu’s frustrations are more obvious. He sees only Buhari’s refusal to endorse him. Back to Abeokuta again, he blamed people around Buhari, APC, other forces, for the abiding misery they have brought on Nigerians. Sometimes he lobs his verbal missiles straight into the Villa.

    Which other presidential candidate has asked voters to shun his party? Who has reminded us that APC did not know what to do or how to do it? Did anyone miss Tinubu blaming Buhari for the depreciation of the Naira from 200 to 800 to the US Dollar?

    Cost of fuel has gone up. The change of bank notes had been mis-management to the point that people blame the government for deliberately putting them through the troubles of being unable to access their resources in banks. Businesses are suffering, people are going hungry. They cannot get enough even to buy food, medications, and everyday needs.

    How has Tinubu reacted to these? He has told us several things, among them that the Buhari government, at least people around him, were against Tinubu’s success in the election. Harsh government policies targeted him. He is also a victim; he tells Nigerians. In 2015, Tinubu deceived to vote out President Goodluck Jonathan, an administration Tinubu and company said would bring Nigeria utter ruination if allowed longer in office.

    Tinubu gleefully appropriates accolades for stopping Jonathan from another tenure. The plaudits are due him. He, however, does not want anything to do with the unmitigated failing of Buhari’s eight years.

    He had foreseen the challenges of selling himself through the inattentive Buhari. The approach was no solution to fears that Tinubu would be worse than Buhari on several scores – his poor health that has proven degenerative, coupled with the choice of Shettima as his running mate.

    Shettima came with more luggage than duplicitous responses to questions about Tinubu’s age, origins, identity, educational qualifications and exactly what he did in Chicago where he claimed to have obtained his higher education. A forfeiture of over $400,000 to the US authorities after he could not account for millions of Dollars that passed through his bank accounts are explained away with a different answer each time he is asked.

    Only Tinubu could have added to his burden by choosing Shettima. The 25 December 2011 bombers, knew him well enough to seek refuge in the Borno State Liaison Office, Abuja after bombing the Catholic Church in Mandara, Niger State. More than 40 people were killed. Shettima was the Borno State Governor then.

    The divisions the Muslim-Muslim ticket decision dumped on Nigerians have not been resolved. It was another instance of Tinubu feeling he knew what was good for everyone. He did not care what Nigerians felt.

    In distancing himself from Buhari, Tinubu denied himself a right to benefit from Buhari. As I have noted elsewhere Buhari is unforgiving of slights like the ones that Tinubu make against him in public. Only an entitled Tinubu can probate and reprobate. He is the Jagaban Borgu, known in the North, sure of the votes. He had also said he would win no matter the plots against him.

    Matters get worse when the likes of Governor Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai support claims that there are elements in the presidential villa who want Tinubu to fail. Tinubu’s supporters latch on to such dubious support and Mrs. Aisha Buhari re-tweeting el-Rufai’s message as proofs that Tinubu was right in attacking Buhari.

    Tinubu forgets he had promised to continue Buhari’s policies he now condemns. Sometimes one wonders if Tinubu was still a member of APC. Is he an independent candidate? Has he realised he has lost the election and is bent on drowning the campaign of other APC candidates.

    If you ever needed a reason to vote out APC, listen to Tinubu: he tells you everything wrong with APC, and promises to continue in that path. Tinubu has told you, “Don’t vote for me; my party failed you woefully, and so would I”. He has said it enough for everyone to hear.

    Finally…

    FIGHTS breaking out in banking halls tell a fraction of the stories about trying times that ordinary Nigerians go through to get their own money. POS, ATM, the banking halls, have all failed to provide service. Everything should be done to ensure that these frustrations do not pour into the streets.

    IMPUNITY was evident in the distribution of PVCs. Staff of INEC and their agents impeded the efforts people made to collect the cards. We expect that INEC would sanctions those staff.

    “I TELL you this change does not affect politicians, they have their money and they are prepared, they know how to access the new notes, it is poor don’t have ways, even yesterday we were told one of the governors was given N500 million of the new notes,” Governor Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai told BBC Hausa Service, according to Daily Trust.

     

    Ikeddy ISIGUZO is a Major Commentator on Minor Issues

  • Pele – Passing of Perpetual Legend – By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    Pele – Passing of Perpetual Legend – By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    Pele as humanity knows him was an exceptional human being that put his precocity to use extending the fringes of football from a round object to an object of sounds, sights, sizzling sensations, more shapes, and shades.

    He was Brazilian but belonged to humanity. He played football in the previous century, across three decades, yet people discuss him as if it was yesterday.

    Few have impacted humanity like Pelé with seeming little efforts of playing football. He excelled in things he did.

    We started seeing him as immortal. After 82 years, nobody seems to have had enough of Pelé. He was a permanent presence in football.

    Pelé did more for football than anyone could. Debates about his place in game are a waste of time and tome.

    Three World Cup titles, the first at 17, and rounding up his World Cup career at 29 with the victory at the 1970 World Cup are exceptional. Pelé missed full participation in the 1966 World Cup to injuries from vicious tackles from Bulgarians and Portuguese. Brazil without him was miserable in the competition.

    “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do,” Pelé said. He worked hard beating the horrors of global racism to walk into hearts with forbidden beliefs on colour.

    Recent debates on football’s GOAT may just be another way of diminishing his wondrous football works to enthrone another. Otherwise how can a three-time World Cup winner be compared with someone who won once or has never won?

    Way back in 1961, at 21, the Brazilian parliament had passed a law that declared Pelé a national asset. No foreign club could sign him on. The law was responsible for Pelé not playing professional football in Europe.

    The legend never played in the Olympic Games too, but in 1999, he was one of nine sports people that the International Olympic Committee, IOC, named him the Athlete of the Century on votes National Olympic Committees all over the world cast.

    Why Pelé? Why not boxing legend Muhammed Ali, who as Cassius Clay at 18 won the heavyweight gold in boxing at the 1960 Olympics in Tokyo? Those at the apogee of world sports, not just football, could not be wrong. Football was one of 35 sports on the Olympic programme by 1999.

    Pelé crystallised his place in football for decades. His investments in and commitments to football were beyond the World Cup pitches in Switzerland, Chile, England, and Mexico. He cared for football. He cared for people.

    The experiment that planted football firmly in the United States of America and popularised it, centred on Pele. Former American Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger flew all the way to Brazil to invite Pelé to play in the American league. Does anyone of substance have such high octane interventions for Nigerian sports?

    After his retirement in 1974, Pelé signed a three-year $7 million contract in 1975 with the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League and to promote the game in the United States. He drew the best of the era out of retirement to play in America. Pelé retired in 1977 after leading the Cosmos to the league championship.

    “Football has lost the greatest in its history today – and I have lost a unique friend. Pelé had three hearts: for football, for his family, for all people. He was one who played with the stars and always stayed grounded,” said Franz Beckenbauer, 77, one of those Pelé attracted to Cosmos New York.

    No player went round the world for football more than Pelé. He visited Nigeria twice with his club Santos in January 1969, playing against the Green Eagles in a 2-2 draw and against Mid-West All Stars at the opening of the Ogbe Stadium, Benin City, at the instance of Sam Ogbemudia. Santos won 2-1 but fans were unhappy that Pelé did not score.

    This was the visit that generated the fable that Pelé stopped the Civil War in Nigeria for fans from both sides to watch him play. He did not. By the time of Pelé’s visit, the war was in Biafran territory and too far away for anyone in Biafra to have crossed to Benin City or Lagos to watch Pelé.

    Another visit in 1976 when he was to hold a series of clinics was marred by the 13 February coup that killed General Murtala Mohammed, the Head of State.

    Pelé in figures –

    Won three World Cup titles with Brazil in 1958, 1962 and 1970 – the only player to have won the World Cup thrice.

    Youngest-ever player to win the World Cup trophy at 17, the record stands 64 years on.

    Scored 757 goals in 812 official matches for club and country, a record that stood for decades until Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo eclipsed his tally.

    Brazil’s Football Association, CBF, and Santos say Pelé scored a total of 1,283 goals in 1,367 matches while FIFA puts the figure at 1,281 goals in 1,366 games.

    Netted 77 goals in 92 official matches for Brazil – the country’s all-time leading goal scorer, alongside Neymar, who netted his 77th goal in the 2022 World Cup.

    Scored 12 goals in World Cups.

    Registered six assists at Mexico 1970 – a record for one World Cup.

    Pelé is the youngest scorer, youngest hat-trick scorer, youngest final player and youngest final scorer in World Cup history.

    Pele became the second man to score in four World Cups in 1970. West Germany’s Uwe Seeler pipped him to the record by merely three minutes.

    Scored 92 hat-tricks across official and unofficial games.

    Scored 127 goals for Santos in 1959, thought to be the most goals scored by a club player in one calendar year.

    Finished as Santos’ top scorer with 643 goals in 659 competitive matches.

    Won Brazil’s Serie A six times with Santos (1961-1965 and 1968).

    “My name is Ronald Reagan, I’m the President of the United States of America. But you don’t need to introduce yourself, because everyone knows who Pele is.”

    “To watch him play was to watch the delight of a child combined with the extraordinary grace of a man in full,” said Nelson Mandela who Pelé greatly admired.

    Kings, Queens, Presidents, Popes knew Pelé. He still had those for people who he touched, signing autographs, and taking hundreds of pictures everywhere he went with fans who never believed he was that humble and accessible.

    “Even the sky was crying,” was how a Brazilian newspaper captured Pelé’s 1977 final career appearance in a friendly between New York Cosmos and Santos.

    Pelé’s works with UNICEF, FIFA, United Nations enlisted the frontiers of football in combatting poverty, illiteracy, health, food crises. He set up his own foundation to extend the reaches of his humanitarian efforts.

    Adieu, Pelé you brought flourish, colours, smiles, styles, and strengths that have outlived you to football. There will not be another Pelé, soon.

     

    Ikeddy ISIGUZO, a major commentator on minor issues

  • 2012 – The year that almost wasn’t – By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    2012 – The year that almost wasn’t – By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    FOR a year that nearly did not start, 2012 had its high moments, like Nigerians waking up on January 1, only for their ululations of “Happy New Year” to be abbreviated on learning they might have to sell some of their kids if they wanted to fuel. If you think it was a joke, ask those who pawned their wards to raise the return fares from their villages to the cities after new fuel prices threw budgets – except governments’ – out of control. The more enthralling details of the year follow in order of their irreverent peripherals to the lives of Nigerians who learnt the important lesson that with government, almost anything is possible.

    How has Nigeria changed in 10 years, this piece I did in 2012 grants us glimpses.

    Absences: Dame Patience Jonathan has no constitutional roles, unless amendments sail through, but Nigerians wondered if she had wandered off the Presidency. Was she on holiday? Was she ill? Had she lost interest in living in the Presidential Villa? Rumours swirled until she made a triumphant entry into Abuja to public kisses and embraces from President Goodluck Jonathan, whose versions of his wife’s sojourn still run contrary to public defences by his media minders. Whatever it was has limited Dame’s interactions with her numerous admirers.

    Mrs. Aisha Buhari holds the record for longest absence of the First Lady from the Villa. The President soldiers on. We are not offered any explanations even with her major abode said to be Dubai.

    Blather: Confusion continues over who warehoused $26.5 million plea bargain money construction company, Julius Berger paid on the $180 million Halliburton bribe scandal, a confirmation that Nigerians and their government do not bank their money. The President, like in all things, has a committee to locate the money. Please note, the money – equivalent of what the Federal Government is spending on three of its nine new universities – s not missing, it just cannot be found.

    Also similar is ownership of $15 million in the custody of Central Bank of Nigeria, which former Governor of Delta State, Chief James Ibori allegedly offered to the former Chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu as bribe in 2007. One would have thought the money belonged to Delta State, but the Federal Government and an individual appear determined to take it. Did $15 million earn any interest in five years?

    You do not have to scratch you head to find similarities in 2022.

    Bombing, Bungling: We learnt differences between bombs, explosive devices, improvised explosive devices. Nigerians are still dying from bombing and bungling of the (in)security situation. Hardly a day passed without someone dying from an explosion, especially in Kano and most of the North East that is becoming a vast wasteland.

    We have made progress. The incidents have spread nationwide and Nigerians know the different types and explosives.

    Clatter: You can almost hear the clatter of Governors Danbaba Suntai (Taraba) crashing in his self-piloted plane and Idris Wada (Kogi) shattering his limbs in a road accident. No height is safe for both high and lowly. We wish them quick recovery.

    Safety matters now centre more on insecurity and kidnapping.

    Deaths: Explosions from a petrol tanker in Etche, Rivers State killed 200 people who were scooping fuel. Dana Air’s crash took more than 100 to their grave, some are not yet buried. The killing of four university students in Aluu, near Port Harcourt, remains controversial. Gunmen killed Senator Gyang Dantong, and Gyang Fulani, Majority Leader of Plateau State House of Assembly at a funeral for 63 people attackers killed in Riyom, outside Jos. Deputy Inspector General of Police John Haruna died in a helicopter crash on assignment in Jos. Other deaths from a helicopter – Governor Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna State and former National Security Adviser, General Owoye Andrew Azazi.

    Nigerians are dying in higher numbers.

    Do give a damn, Sir: Panellists infuriated the President over his assets declaration in a televised June media chat. “The issue of public asset declaration is a matter of personal principle. I don’t give a damn about it, even if you criticise me from heaven. When I was the Vice President, that matter came up, and I told the former President (late Musa Yar’Adua) let’s not start something that would make us play into the hands of people and create an anomalous situation in the country,” he said. Even in death, Yar’Adua would be astounded about “an anomalous situation.” His widow and the President’s wife were in a legal combat over an expanse of land in Abuja about this time.

    Did Jonathan set asset declaration standards for Buhari?

    Glitters, grease, glitz: Son of Jigawa State Governor, Aminu Lamido was arrested with $40,000 (N7.5m), an amount in excess of authorised $10,000 for an overseas trip. The money pales to nothing when compared with $7 million (about N1.1 billion) found on another passenger last October. There have been other arrests since. There is no word yet about the owners of the money or why people are moving huge sums of money through the airports. How much would have passed undetected? Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said Nigeria lost a fifth of her oil production (500,000 barrels) daily to thieves, a daily revenue loss of more than N5 billion or more than N2 trillion year, about half of the 2012 budget.
    Oil matters remain oily. Unexplained money still found on people.

    Guesswork: Not even government knows how much it earns from oil. A presidential task force (no committee this time) nearly came to blows while submitting the report on oil and gas. Nuhu Ribadu, chairman, in the report claimed Nigeria lost more than $29 billion over 10 years to low pricing of its natural gas.

    Steve Orosanye, a task force member and a presidential ally rejected the report. The President asked Orosanye to write his own report. Conflicting presidential positions rove from cancellation of the report, to setting up a white paper committee or ignoring it, the preferred option.

    Does this not remind you of the irony of government knowing that billions of dollars are lost yearly to thieves without an interest in finding the thieves?

    House of Gaps: The House of Representatives jumped into the fuel subsidy and got burnt. Its ad hoc committee on administration of fuel subsidy asked the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, and 17 oil marketing companies to refund – N1.7 trillion, paid when supplies were not made. Later a scandal broke with allegations that the committee demanded $620,000 as first tranche of a bribe running into billions of Naira. The matter is in court.

    Herma Hembe, Chairman House’s Committee on Capital Market and his deputy Chris Azubuogu, are in court for allegedly collecting $4,095 (mere N655,200) each as estacode to attend a training abroad, they neither attended nor returned the money. Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arunma Oteh, further alleged she rejected Hembe’s demand for SEC to contribute N44 million to finance a public hearing.

    Honourable Muhammed Gudaji Kazaure, APC member of the House of Representatives, Jigawa State, who speaks as if acting skits, is leading a move to recover N89 trillion from stamp duties. He is hugely ignored.

    If symptoms persist after 12 Month: Solution to persistent symptoms is to ignore the problem, government did that with all areas of its operations. Corruption, the President explains, according to him, as explained to him, stems from ignorance of Nigerians, who have decided to call anything without a name corruption. There is no point fighting what Nigerians do not understand.

    Corruption has prospered ever since. It is now bold enough to fight for a place as a virtue.

    Power Without Energy: A distinction between power and energy must be made. The Minister of Power, in all its ramifications, is the President. Professor Barth Nnaji was the Minister of Energy. His departure has seen the President combining the Ministries of Power and Energy. Promises of more electricity are on going with contracts signed in important global languages: English, French, Germany and Mandarin (Chinese). Someone forgot Spanish; the world’s third most widely spoken language.

    Power is still in the hands of darkness.

    Scams, Scandals, Slapsl: The House of Representatives probed withdrawal of N114 billion from the Stabilisation Account by the President in eight months for certain unbudgeted expenditures. Shall we call that a scam? Two years after government released N5 billion to contractors for police barracks it was discovered the money had been diverted. The Inspector-General’s Special Task Force would find the fraudsters. Is that not a scandal? Some top officials in the Office of the Head of Civil Service are in court for diversion of N32.8 billion from the Nigeria Police Pension Fund. It is a slap on the police.

    The Accountant-General of the Federation is making refunds in different currencies of over N109 billion he allegedly diverted.

    Soon Means: Government favourite assuring lingo that something was being done about a situation is “soon”. The best “soon” is another committee to under-study the situation, another having over-studied it.

    Soon, we will find a better word for soon.

    Spot The Indifference: Nigeria’s 2012 Olympic team won no medals in London, the first time Nigeria did not win Olympic medals since 1988. The paralympians (physically challenged competitors) won six gold, five silver and two bronze. They still do not have training facilities nor do public buildings recognise the fact that some people are physically challenged.

    Government policies have left many challenged in more areas.

    Water Get Enemy: Afro juju musician Fela was wrong with his claim that “water e no get enemy”. Floods, the worst for more than 80 years, swept through many parts of the country. Water became the latest enemy of our long suffering people. The issue was forgotten once its media opportunities waned.
    We had a repeat months ago, it won’t take us 10 years to forget.

    What’s God’s Offence?: If we are unwilling to do our work, we blame God. The Senate Committee on Establishment returned this decision on Chairman of Pension Reform Task Team, Alhaji Abdulrasheed Maina – we have handed him over to God because powerful people are protecting him.

    Maina claimed his team uncovered N3.3 trillion pension fund fraud while the Senate summoned Maina over theft of N195 billion at the Pension Office. Maina ignored the Senate which now wants God to conduct the hearing. Is it God’s money that is missing? Or is God a Senator? Some Senators should refund public expenses on them and go home.

    Maina is an unsettled settling matter, and so is the work ethics of most Senators.

    Who, What We Aren’t: Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Maryam Aloma Mukhtar, took flaks for refusing to administer oath of office on Justice Ifeoma Jombo-Ofo, as a Justice of the Appeal Court. Of Anambra State origin, she married an Abia State indigene. Abia State nominated her to the Court of Appeal.

    Mukhtar ruled she was not from Abia.

    Section 42 (1) of the Constitution states, “A citizen of Nigeria of a particular community, ethnic group, place of origin, sex, religion or political opinion shall not, by reason only that he is such a person: (a) be subjected either expressly by, or in the practical application of, any law in force in Nigeria or any executive or administrative action of the government, to disabilities or restrictions to which citizens of Nigeria of other communities, ethnic groups, places of origin, sex, religion or political opinions are not made subject.”

    The Constitution awards us rights as citizens that we can only access as indigenes: what a contradiction!

    Our rights as citizens remain in abeyance.

    Zipper: The passing year brimmed with potentials, and so did Nigeria. We wasted them in niggles. With all these matters pending and lying in a presidential closet, and his preachment that haste was not a strong point of his, we would have a prospective (not prosperous) New Year. It is up to you to prospect and prosper. If you did not eat cassava bread in 2012, you have at least one great reason for bubbling into 2013.

    Finally…

    How much have we changed in 10 years? How we vote in 2023 will answer that question.

     

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues