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Ex-Accountant General begs for time to refund looted funds

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A former acting Accountant-General of the Federation, Anamekwe Nwabuoku, on Wednesday, pleaded with Justice James Omotoso of the Federal High Court in Abuja to give him more time to conclude the refund of the public funds allegedly looted by him and his co-defendant.

Nwabuoku and his co-defendant, Felix Nweke, are facing 11 counts of money laundering to the tune of N1.6bn.

They are being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

The defendants were accused of committing to the act while Nwabuoku served as the Director of Finance and Accounts in the Ministry of Defence between 2019 and 2021.

While Nwabuoku is the first defendant, Nweke is the second defendant in the charge marked FHC/ABJ/CR/240/24 dated May 20 and filed on May 27 by EFCC counsel, Ekele Iheanacho.

Nwabuoku was appointed acting AGoF on May 20, 2022, under ex-President Muhammadu Buhari after Ahmed Idris was suspended as AGF over alleged N80bn fraud.

He was, however, removed in July 2022, a few weeks after assuming office.

When the matter was called on Wednesday, the defendants prayed the court to halt their arraignment until another date to perfect the refund.

Nweke’s lawyer, Emeka Onyeaka, informed the court that there was a new development in the case.

He told the court that his client had taken steps towards settling the matter.

The lawyer said Nweke had made substantial refunds of the money traced to him by the anti-graft agency.

“The second defendant has taken steps, as there is a communication to the commission via-a-vs the alleged offences on making a refund.

“The commission is in receipt of the money and promised to communicate to us,” he said.

The defence counsel said upon being served with the charge, “We communicated with the commission and we were asked to tarry for their administrative procedure.”

He said since a substantial amount had been refunded, if his client was arraigned, such action would affect the trial.

He, therefore, prayed the court to grant them an adjournment to take further steps on the administrative procedure.

Maduakolam Igwe, who appeared for Nwabuoku, aligned with Onyeaka’s submission.

Igwe said his client had equally taken the same steps and that a substantial amount had been refunded.

“We have written to the commission on this. The first defendant has also made some refunds.

“May I adopt the submission of my learner friend to tidy up the administrative procedure,” he corroborated.

Responding, counsel who appeared for the EFCC, Ogechi Ujam, acknowledged that though the commission was in receipt of a proposal letter, she said, “No negotiation has been made, no settlement has been done and no agreement has been reached by parties.

“In the circumstances, we urge this honourable court to allow us to arraign the defendants.”

After hearing the parties out, Justice Omotosho adjourned till October 14 for arraignment.

KARIMI AND THE REALITY OF OUR COLLECTIVE VULNERABILITY

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By Tunde Olusunle

Commuters on the “Trunk A Road” as it was labelled, traversing Kabba-Aiyetoro Gbedde-Mopa-Isanlu-Egbe communities in Kogi State must have observed frenetic construction activities at the Egbe section of the road abutting Kwara State. I’m told vehicular movement is infrequent these days because of the decrepit condition of the road, its attendant loneliness and its susceptibility to the murderers rascality of criminals. Travellers to parts of Kwara, Oyo and Osun, from parts of the North notably Nasarawa, Benue, Kogi and the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT) these days, prefer the Kabba-Omuo Ekiti road which is marginally less degenerate. Okun-Yoruba people domiciled in their traditional abodes desiring to conduct business in contemporary Kwara State to which they once belonged, however, are left with no option but to ply the road under discussion. For them it will be easier to catch glimpses of ongoing construction in the area I previously alluded to.

There is a signpost with the inscription Ido Egbe in the part of the expansive Egbe community where the said development is proceeding. A luminous perimeter fence covers the generous hectarage being developed at the said site. One particular structure rises sky high above the several others all capped with lemon-green aluminium roofing. The buildings vary in shape and size even as they are at various stages of completion. A long vehicle rests around the ongoing development, obviously one of many others feeding the project with its needs. You cannot but ask yourself whether the complex is a creation of the federal or state government, or a private investor desirous of doing business in the community. Or could it be a model residential estate?

The project under reference is a Military Foreward Operating Base, (FOB), being developed by Sunday Karimi, the Senator representing Kogi West Senatorial Zone. Over the years, parts of the district have come under premeditated attack by armed robbers, kidnappers and unfeeling herdsmen. At various times, cold-blooded robbers have attacked banks operating in several communities in the zone. In every instance, they left behind a trail of crimson blood, sorrow and tears. From Kabba to Aiyetoro-Gbedde to Isanlu, to Odo-Ere and Egbe in Kogi West, the pattern of the hoodlums have been pretty much the same. They launch surprise attacks on the police stations in each community. They thus neutralise the capacity of the law enforcement agents to engage them when they eventually swoop on their major targets, the banks.

First Bank, Mainstreet Bank, United Bank for Africa, (UBA) and Access Bank at various times have been robbed by the hoodlums, during banking hours. The callousness of the nonessentials was so grave on every occasion that it spiralled down the subsistence economy of the locals. The banks shut down for long spells ostensibly to rethink their continuing operation or not in the district vis-a-vis the losses they incurred. They equally evaluated the costs of rebuilding decimated structures and facilities in each instance relative to whatever fiscal trickles they earned, juxtaposed with the costs of providing services to their predominantly low income customers. We are talking about farmers, small scale entrepreneurs, school teachers and local government employees mainly.

More recently, kidnapping for ransom a trend hitherto heard about from very distant ecologies, has become another dimension of criminal pastimes by faceless groups. Sleepy communities in Yagba East and Yagba West local government areas basking in their rustic innocence and quietude, have been rudely violated by harbingers of grief and lachrymose. In January this year, six people were kidnapped within a space of 48 hours, around Isanlu, headquarters of Yagba East. Three of them lost their lives trying to escape from their abductors. Two women were picked up from Ejiba in Yagba West last May, by a gang of one dozen gun-toting brigands. Okunland which previously epitomised the purest innocence, calmness, serenity and safety, has been grievously intruded upon. This is not forgetting the impudence and insult of having irreverent Fulani nomads marching their herds through our farmlands destroying the subsistence investments of the people.

As a fairly regular visitor to my home community for sundry events and programmes, I’ve often been very concerned about the inadequacy of the capacity of security operatives at the local levels. I speak here about insufficient personnel and armament wherewithal in our localities. Isanlu for instance is the headquarters of Yagba federal constituency which aggregates Yagba East, Yagba West and Mopamuro local governments. It is host to the area command of the police and oversees the three local government areas in question. I will be amazed, however, if there are up to 150 officers and men, or half that number of serviceable armaments in the armoury of the area command. I had reason to request for police cover for a family event we hosted about six years ago. The police apologetically replied and alluded to the inadequacy of manpower. I resorted to the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, (NSCDC) as backup plan. I was told straight up that the entirety of my local government area was served by 15 civil defence personnel.

Critically, I was informed that most of the men had indeed been taken up by traditional rulers in our parts. The kings as it were desire that their royalty be heralded at every stop, courtesy of state uniform-wearing operatives functioning as human furniture, who sit on the front seats of their vehicles The royalties resorted to civil defence staff in the absence of police personnel to serve in as orderlies. Such are the confounding statistics and realities of the security architecture in our sub-urban communities. Let’s be reminded that hoodlums perfect their operational strategies before they take on a target, institution or community. This of course includes distilling the prevailing personnel and armament strengths of their targets. This explains why police stations in rural communities are almost always first targets where security personnel are neutralised and the armouries accessed and looted to strengthen their own capacities.

Against the backdrop of such embarrassing and condemnable state failure at the very centre to protect and secure its citizens, this very basic constitutionally non-negotiable responsibility has had to be taken up not by subregionals, but private individuals. This is the new normal as we find in the example under interrogation. One has heard elsewhere of privileged Nigerians or organisations partnering security and intelligence services in the provision of operational needs and infrastructure. The Military Forward Operating Base in Egbe, however, is one hundred percent privately funded by Sunday Karimi. He has taken a broader view of the concerns of his people, with the aim of assuaging their overwhelming security worries. It is definitely a tall and ambitious project daring to conceive and build from foundation, a complex which can probably pass as a modern military barracks, but Karimi has confronted the challenge headlong.

The “Foreward Operating Base” project under review is without doubts a visionary concept. It has the “observatory,” the tall structure which dwarfs the rooftops in the upcoming premises, where soldiers on guard duties will get a good view of the area and sensitise ground troops in the event of a possible threat. There is a security post and a mini-administrative block. There are also two blocks of 12 rooms each all ensuite, which come to 24 rooms for the “rank and file,” the junior officers. Boreholes have been drilled and will pump water to overhead tanks which will service the facilities and premises, downstream. Two units of three bedroom bungalows are provided for officers, while there is also rendezvous spot, an “officer’s mess” as is tradition with the military. Hopefully, a skeletal “mammy market” for the junior officers will spawn when the facility in its wholeness is operationalised.

Expectedly, Karimi has either engaged with the military high command for the adequate manning of the facility, or has prioritised this now that the Egbe project is nearing completion. This again is part of the systemic dysfunction consuming our nation and we the citizenry. Why should government departments have to be begged and lobbied to do their jobs? This again beggars the question of either unthinkable complacency or pure lack of capacity in statecraft. On account of his present effort in helping to secure the lives and belongings of his people, Karimi deserves our collective applause. Like Leke Abejide his colleague in the House of Representatives who has championed impactful causes for his people, Karimi in this instance, has chosen to deviate from the despicable practice by some of our representatives, who have gleefully weaponised poverty. These are the mindless politicians who waylay our hapless rural folks with sachets of salt and packets of pasta on polls day.

Tunde Olusunle, PhD, is a Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA)

My Teacher Kongi Strikes 90

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By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

When I broke the world exclusive news of Nobel Laureate publishing his latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, one of my critics asked me: “When is that your teacher ever going to stop?”

I simply replied: “There is no stopping!”

Wole Soyinka strikes 90 years of age on Saturday, July 13, 2024, and I cannot but put down some verbs and nouns to mark the feat.

Nobody could have guessed that the man called Kongi could have reached the ripe age of 90 given the dangers he packed into his lifetime.

I can’t forget in a hurry that Soyinka threw a party for my class on graduation, declaring us the best class he has ever taught.

A beer for me, and choice wines for my more serious classmates!

I remember back then at the University of Ife, I was with my Dramatic Arts classmates in Soyinka’s house for practical lessons and I told Soyinka’s steward, the Ghanaian lad Francis, to get me a cool Star lager beer from the refrigerator.

I was nursing my beer gloriously while Soyinka taught my classmates, and then he saw me and asked why I was drinking beer.

I promptly told him: “Prof, Sir, that’s how I get my inspiration.”

Soyinka just cast a fatherly benign look at me in the manner of “some fathers do have them” and continued with his teaching.

After my degree exams, I was totally out of cash and I ran to the godfather in his office with these words issuing from my mouth: “Prof, I have no money to go home.”

He gave me all the money he had, but in a show of bravado I told him I would pay him back his money when I came for convocation.

Soyinka had a healthy laugh and said: “How am I sure you will not run through the cash and come back with another sob story?”

The truth of course is that I only came to Ife because Soyinka was there as the Head of Department.

Okot p’Bitek, the inimitable Ugandan poet of Song of Lawino fame, was also in Great Ife in the literature department.

Our first experience of Soyinka as a teacher was, yes, very dramatic when he came to teach us Shakespeare.

We had all come from secondary schools where Shakespeare was read line-by-line and explained by the class teacher.

In Soyinka’s case, we were all seated in the Pit Theatre at Ife when he strolled in, and distributed sheets of cyclostyled paper in which a speech taken out of Shakespeare’s play was printed.

Soyinka asked us to pick out the unnatural word in the speech, and none of us could understand this kind of teaching.

He then said we ought to have still been in high school, and that was the end of the class, dramatically!

The West Indian lady, Dr Carroll Dawes, had to come to our rescue by teaching us Shakespeareline after line at Oduduwa Hall for weeks and months on end.

Much later, we had to read up all the plays of Bertolt Brecht as our Special Author.

We found to our chagrin that Brecht was a rival of Shakespeare in the large number of classic plays written.

My classmates and I had to confront Soyinka with the charge that he was making us read for a Ph.D when we only applied to earn a bachelor’s degree!

Soyinka asked us to arrest Dr Yemi Ogunbiyi as the culprit who gave us more books to read than doctoral candidates.

Soyinka took us on a course in Humanism, and it turned out a class war all the way because most of us in the class were Marxists.

We asked Soyinka to join us in the bush of guerrilla struggle instead of being an arm-chair humanist!

He was never angry with our youthful ebullition, only advising us that we would get to understand society further as we grew in life.

Interestingly, Soyinka asked a Polish lady who barely spoke English to take us in the course of Aesthetics in his place which put paid to our dialectical materialism debates!

Soyinka’s professionalism and devotion became manifest to me whilst watching him directing Biko’s Inquest, a play on the South African martyr Steve Biko, which he took to the United States.

His intervention on road safety happened before our very eyes whilst at Ife as he had no stomach whatsoever for dangerous drivers.

After leaving school, I tried my hands at peasant theatre, and I sent the play I wrote then, A Play of Ghosts, to Soyinka.

It was only much later that I got to know that he sent the play to the American director Chuck Mike for production.

Much later, when I ran into Soyinka at poet Odia Ofeimun’s birthday party he wondered aloud where I had been all these years.

I replied him that I had all along been in Nigeria “doing a great battle with Nigerian poverty”.

At the time Soyinka published his memoirs, You Must Set Forth at Dawn, I learnt from Prof Okey Ndibe in the heart of Victoria Island, Lagos that Soyinka was to do a reading for an organisation of white ladies.

When Okey and I got to the venue, Soyinka asked me to select the passage that he would read.

I told him I did not have a copy of the book ready to hand, and he off-handedly told me that his publisher, Bankole Olayebi, was my friend, in which case I would not have much trouble getting a free copy!

My teacher Kongi shook the world when he became the very first black man to win the coveted Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986.

For reasons no one can really explain, the name “Kongi” has stuck with Soyinka, but behind his back, some of us call him “Langage”, pronounced as “Longaj”, taken from his Inaugural Lecture at Ife entitled The Critic and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy and Other Mythologies. 

It’s such a joy for me that I share global anthology space with my lionized teacher in the big book featuring poets from 60 countries, The Second Genesis: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry.

Keep on striking, Teacher Kongi, beyond 90 and more!

Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, a renowned poet, journalist and author

PRESS STATEMENT BY THE NORTH CENTRAL PEOPLE’S FORUM (NCPF) ON THE PASSAGE OF NORTH CENTRAL DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION (NCDC) ESTABLISHMENT BILL INTO LAW BY THE SENATE

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The North Central People’s Forum(NCPF) received with tremendous excitement and deep appreciation the news of the successful passage of North Central Development Commission (NCDC) establishment bill into law by the senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
This highly laudable and landmark bill has come at the most appropriate time, to assist towards rapid socio-economic development of the North Central zone of Nigeria, which had suffered great setback and neglect in the past.


North central states, made up of Plateau, Nassarawa, Kogi, Benue, Niger, Kwara, and Federal Capital Territory(FCT) is naturally endowed with arable land for agriculture, huge solid mineral deposits, oil and gas, long stretch of rivers Niger and Benue, as well as huge potential for tourism with beautiful and attractive sites such as Zuma rock, waterfalls and forest reserves, found in several locations in the zone.
In spite it’s huge potentials, the North central zone has remained largely underdeveloped due to insecurity problems that has bedeviled its landscape, such as farmer/herders clashes, banditry/kidnapping, flood disaster, etc. which has hindered its people from engaging in productive economic activities, such as farming and trading.


Similarly, as a result of constant violent killings due to farmers’/herders clashes, communal conflicts and other forms of
insecurity, millions of its inhabitants were forced to live in IDP camps spread in school buildings and temporary structures.
Therefore, the establishment of the North Central Development Commission ,with funds to be received from the federal government and international donor agencies , offer great opportunity for resettlement of displaced persons ,reconstruction of roads, houses and business premises of victims of farmers/herders clashes and communal conflict, tackling developmental challenges of poverty/illiteracy, as well as creating enabling environment to attract investments into socio-economic sectors for rapid transformation and progress of the North Central zone.


In view of these huge benefits from the establishment of the NCDC, the NCPF wishes to express its huge gratitude to the minority leader of the senate, Senator Abba Moro and other senators from the North central states, who persistently sponsored the establishment of the bill since the 9th senate until it was finally passed by the 10th senate. Similarly, the NCPF appreciates the leadership of the senate led by the senate president Godswill Akpabio, and other senators who supported the passage of the NCDC bill.
The NCPF also wish to appeal to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, to expeditiously give his assent to the bill, after its anticipated concurrence by the House of Representatives, to enable speedy constitution of the North Central Development Commission, to fulfil its mandate for socio-economic transformation of the North Central zone.
Engr. Sani Ndanusa
National Chairman, NCPF

MESSAGE TO MY FRIEND, GOVERNOR DOUYE DIRI OF BAYELSA STATE, ON THE ANAMBRA STATE EXAMPLE

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By Iniruo Wills, Esq

I wish Governor Douye Diri’s Bayelsa State Government would take a cue from Governor Soludo’s Anambra State Government and also implement key recommendations of the commissions it set up, especially the Archbishop John Sentamu Commission on environmental pollution.The commission was set up 19 or 7 years later than it should have been, depending on how one looks at it.

Due to constraints traceable mostly to the state government and not to the panel, it then took 4 years to probe pollution in the state and produce its report, which with the right support could have been done in 2 years max.After a lot of waiting and pressure from various quarters, the report was finally released at a room in the House of Lords premises in London (like many things Nigeria) on 17 May last year.

Over a year later, not aword of the report has been implemented nor (if we must follow ourobsession with ceremonies) formally launched in Bayelsa State, the oil pollution epicentre of the world, and the state with the largest share of over one billion litres of petroleum equivalent spilled in Nigeria from 1956 till date.

If you can reach my Governor please beg or demand by any lawful means that he implements that report of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission (https://report.bayelsacommission.org/).

And please remind Archbishop Sentamu and his fellow multinational panelists that they owe pollution-choked villagers from Ikarama to Otuabagi to Gbarain to the Nembe communities and Aghoro, who now feel like tired guinea pigs in frequent seemingly academic sorties, a duty to apply their moral capital to insist on full, faithful and immediate implementation of the report.It is time for Niger Delta people to ask their leaders to stop blaming “others” only and start cleaning their hands before coming to equity.Over to you all, @AnnaZalik, @MichalWatts, @IsaacOsuoka, @EmesehEngobo, @KathrynNwajiaku, @LuckyWorika et al.INIRUO WILLS6 July 2024

Okoloba, Akugbene & Okuama Crisis: CP Abaniwonda of Delta State Meets With Leaders of Communities

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By Ebinum Samuel

The Commissioner of Police Delta State, Mr Abaniwonda Olufemi on last weekend met with leaders and members of Okoloba, Akugbene and Okuama communities. The meeting became necessary due to the lingering crisis among the three communities. The meeting took place at the Area Command office in Warri with the Delta State Director General security Hon. David Tonwea, also in attendance.

The Abaniwonda, in his remark stated that the meeting was not to pass judgement over the land dispute, but to look for a way forward to bring peace among the three communities. The representative from Okuama community Hon. Belvis Adogbo in his remark appreciated the effort of the state Government and the Police for their effort in ensuring that the lingering crisis comes to an end. He further stated that they have been living together in peace for many years until the recent land and fishing right dispute ensued. His remark was also buttressed by the representative of both Akugbene and Okoloba communities. The CP further noted that all the Command want is to find a way of resolving the dispute and stop the continuous crisis that has been leading to loss of human lives.

He said that having listen to all the leaders, it will be fair to say that the crisis is due to failure in leadership of the various communities (inability to control the youths) and communication gap. The DG security who represented the state government during the deliberation in his remarks stated that the conflict is not new to the state government, he itemized the way forward as thus; “The boundary issues, and the fishing right issue and thirdly leadership issue”. He acknowledged the effort of Dr. David Akpovokeme of Okoloba community and Professor Actor Ekpekpo of of Okuama community in the effort to address the lingering crisis. The DG security mandated the representative of Okuama community to provide their leadership to enable fruitful discussion with the government to bring the crisis to an end.

Northerners Plotting Against Tinubu Unpatriotic – Matawalle

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The Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, has criticised those he tagged “unpatriotic politicians in the northern region” for allegedly plotting against President Bola…

The Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, has criticised those he tagged “unpatriotic politicians in the northern region” for allegedly plotting against President Bola Tinubu ahead of the 2027 elections.

Matawalle, a former Zamfara State governor, accused such politicians of lacking grassroots support and having an “entitlement mentality.” He asserted that northern politicians with strong bases firmly supported Tinubu.

His comments came shortly after Salihu Lukman, a former national vice chairman (North-West) of the All Progressives Congress (APC), rebuked northern politicians in Tinubu’s administration. Lukman, who recently resigned from the ruling party, claimed that northern politicians had been reduced to mere sycophants.

In a statement issued on Matawalle’s behalf by the spokesman of the Ministry of Defence, Henshaw Ogubike, the minister expressed confidence that the alleged plot would fail, citing the region’s substantial benefits under Tinubu’s leadership. He urged northern political leaders to unite behind Tinubu to further his Renewed Hope agenda and improve the country’s economy and politics.

Matawalle highlighted key appointments of northerners in Tinubu’s government, including his own role as Minister of State for Defence, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar as Minister of Defence, Atiku Bagudu as Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Muhammed Idris as Minister of Information and National Orientation, Ali Pate as Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Abubakar Kyari as Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Jamila Bio Ibrahim as Minister of Youths, Shuaibu Audu as Minister of Steel Development, Joseph Utsve as Minister of Water Resources and Sanitation and Yusuf Tuggar as Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as several ministers of state.

In the security sector, Matawalle mentioned the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, Director-General of the Department of Security Service (DSS), Yusuf Bauchi, Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ahmed Rufai, Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, and Chief of Air Staff, Hasan Abubakar, with the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, and the Managing Director of the Nigeria Ports Authority, Bello Koko also being northerners.

Obasanjo visits South-East Govs, moves for Nnamdi Kanu’s release

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The South East Governors, on Tuesday, hosted former President Olusegun Obasanjo who paid the governors a solidarity visit while they decided to meet President Bola Tinubu to press for the release of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.

Addressing the media, after over seven hours of marathon meeting, the Governors of the region who were all in attendance also set up a burial committee by Former Senate President, Anyim, Pius Anyim, for the late minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu.According to the Chairman of the South East Governors Forum and Governor of Imo state, Senator Hope Uzodinma, “The Forum commiserates with the family of Ebonyi, Abia, Imo and indeed the entire South East region and entire the family of Ogbonnaya Onu on the demise of His Excellency Dr Ogbonnaya Onu.“

The Forum received a delegation of the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, Chief Emeka Anyaoku and His Royal Majesty Igwe Alfred Nnaemeka Achebe, who came on a solidarity visit to this Forum.“The Forum deliberated on the reviewed report of the South East security and economic summit held in Owerri Imo state on the 28 September 2023 and agreed to implement the aspect of the report about security and economic integration of the South East region and affirmed its desire to put actionable plan on the key issues agreed.“The Forum resolved to visit Mr. President to discuss all pressing issues concerning the South East region. The Forum also deliberated and resolved to interface with the Federal Government to secure the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.”Other members of the Ogbonnaya Onu burial committee included the former Governor of Rivers State, Chibuike Amechi who serves as the Secretary of the committee, and other Igbo leaders drawn from the Igbo-speaking states.

Let Kenyans enjoy their Kenya

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By Lasisi Olagunju

(Published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 1 July, 2024)

Hugh Gaitskell became Britain’s Minister of Fuel and Power on October 7, 1947. Soon after taking that office, because there was an energy crisis, the minister told his countrymen and women to save fuel by reducing the number of baths they took. Gaitskell said: “personally, I have never had a great many baths myself, and I can assure those who are in the habit of having a great many that it does not make a great difference to their health if they have less.”

Winston Churchill, who had by then become the opposition leader, heard him and said no wonder the government smelt so badly. He replied Gaitskell on 28 October, 1947: “When ministers of the Crown speak like this on behalf of His Majesty’s government, the Prime Minister and his friends have no need to wonder why they are getting increasingly into bad odour.”

Nigeria is an unwashed country. It stinks. It needs deliverance but won’t get it. The fire we have on our mountain is uncontrollable and unquenchable. At least, it is not the type you kill with thunder claps of anger. Some people demolished their own Wall of Jericho with noise. In case you believe that story and think you can replicate it here, you are wrong. What Kenyans did on their streets and achieved in one day last week, you can not have here. We have enough shock-absorbers and fissions to take all shocks and frustrate all enemies of frustration.

You’ve lately been reading of unbelievable in-your-face sad acts of our democratic government. You’ve heard rumours of expenditures that you would pray were not true. You’ve been watching circus shows on a new minimum wage for public and private sector workers.

You watched the Kenyan parliament with its President William Ruto thoroughly whipped by their angry children. You wonder why our own king and his lawmakers are not as worried about all this as they are concerned about the purchase of new presidential jets. You’ve also been hearing sermons calling for more sacrifices from you, the people. You’ve wondered why it must be you who must always tighten your belt while the pilot eats to explosion.

You are hearing rumours of four budgets in one country by one government in one year. The government wants to operate, in 2024, the 2023 main and the 2023 supplementary budgets plus the 2024 budget while preparing another supplementary budget. You don’t understand? The government wants to eat yesterday’s pounded yam with today’s in addition to a supplementary one in preparation. It won’t matter that some projects and their votes are duplicated in the various budgets. They must appear in all the budgets because they are tagged ongoing. Money here (2024), funding there (2023) make the smart wealthier.

Why are people quiet? What should they say and what will their talking amount to? Felix Adler (1851-1933) was a German-American professor of political and social ethics. In an address to the Society for Ethical Culture of New York on Sunday, 6 February, 1898, Adler spoke on what he called “the wisdom of mute lips”. In the speech entitled ‘The Moral Value of Silence’, he counseled that “reticence should be observed when the likelihood is wanting that what is said will have its due effect.” Those of us who write the ‘rubbish’ we write daily or weekly know that no one who should care really cares. We know that regime-backers’ passion for power or belly won’t let them accept the truth just as the regime won’t. But we also know that truth, even in silence, has its own unique way of asserting its supremacy no matter how long the night lasts.

So, let Kenyans of last week enjoy their Kenya of today. It is not our challenge. Our street is silent and withdrawn because it cannot believe that today has truly manifested itself in worse details than the horrible past. People who should be afraid of the people’s silence are not. They are happy that those who suffer suffer their deprivations in the quietude of their holes. You remember that city, Ègbin (the filthy) with its peculiar inhabitants, in D.O. Fagunwa’s Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irunmole. We can locate it in today’s Nigeria. The government has made itself smell so badly that no one wants to contest the soup pot with it. Its operatives can have everything – and they enjoy having everything. The filth and the ugliness of their character have won for them permanent residency in our vaults. It didn’t start today.

You must have come across an old August 11, 1956 newspaper story with the headline ‘Nigerian MPs’ pay.’ The story reads: “Chief (S.L.) Akintola, the official leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives, described as a scandalous waste of public money a government motion providing for advances of £800 to each member of the House, except Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries, to enable them to buy cars. The motion also provides for a consolidated travelling allowance of £140 a year for each member. The present salary of a member is £800 a year. Denouncing these measures, Chief Akintola said that the financial benefits accruing to members were unduly generous for their part-time service, compared with the whole-time members of the British House of Commons who were paid only £1,000 a year. He said many members had earned less than £300 a year before they became members of the House of Representatives.”

You see that? In 1956 (four years before independence) full-time British lawmakers were paid £1,000 a year. During that same period, part-time Nigerian lawmakers were paid £800 a year. Chief Akintola was lucky. If he says of our Senators or Reps today what he said in 1956, he would be suspended indefinitely from his legislative duties.

Wise people always know that anything that can fester will eventually get rotten. And, it actually got worse for Nigeria immediately after independence. The second republic perfected whatever heist was inadequately staged in the first republic. Dafe Otobo, Professor of Industrial Relations, in his ‘The Political Clash in the Aftermath of the 1981 Nigerian General Strike’ (1982), tells the story: “Typically, the more disadvantaged in society are requested to make sacrifices in difficult times: the legislators and bureaucrats jettisoned all previous (minimum wage) agreements in the name of ‘austerity measures’ after they themselves had stoutly opposed a cut in their pay and allowances! In fact the federal government’s 1981 approved estimates have confirmed that legislators collected a total of 15.1 million naira as remuneration and allowances for their aides for the year; 450 members of the House of Representatives received 13,673,700 naira or 30,386 each; and the 95 senators collected 1,462,240 or 15,392 each. Added to these sums were ‘constituency allowances’ which amounted to eight million naira (18,652 for each senator as against 13,840 for each representative), and then a vaguely titled ‘consolidated allowance’ which enabled each senator to collect another 5,000 naira and 3,000 for each representative. All this amounted to the tidy sum of 24,925,000 naira, apart from the 1.2 million naira spent by all the legislators on foreign travels when only N656,250 was actually approved for the purpose.” Note that one dollar officially exchanged for 61 kobo in 1981.

“What cannot be cured must be endured” is a phrase in Robert Burton’s 1621 book, ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’. Burton says Melancholy is that feeling which “goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit…” As negative as its character is, Burton says the melancholy of the world he lived had “grown to a habit” and so “will hardly be removed.” I recommend continued endurance to our millennials and their Gen Z cousins. They should read our history and calm down. Nigeria’s bald-headed vulture has been in the rains since it was created. They should stop dreaming about its salvation. The rain won’t stop

THE PRIEST AS POLITICAL PROVOCATEUR

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By Tunde Olusunle

When Hyacinth Iornem Alia, a priest of the Catholic church declared his intention to contest for the 2023 governorship in Benue State, his interest resonated with the people of the state. Back in 1991 under the eternally endless “Third Republic” transition programme of the General Ibrahim Babangida administration, an older priest of the same denomination, Moses Orshio Adasu, contested the governorship of the same state. Adasu ran on the platform of the Social Democratic Party, (SDP) one of the two political parties established by the Babangida regime at the time, won the election and was inaugurated on January 2, 1992. He was barely two years in office before the famously ruthless army General, Sani Abacha abrogated the Third Republic in November 1993.

Adasu, nonetheless left positive and enduring fingerprints on the face of the state. He is credited with changing the character of education and industrialisation in the state. He founded the renowned Benue State University, (BSU), Makurdi, perhaps one of the best run state-owned universities in the country. Adasu also upgraded the Benue State College of Education, Oju. He initiated the Benue State Fruit Drink Company to take advantage of the abundant agricultural potentials in the state. To be sure, the hybrid aroma of mangoes and oranges, forever drench your nostrils in the afternoon air, even on a casual drive through the state. Adasu similarly launched the Roof Tiles Production Company, to support the development of the upcoming construction industry in Benue State. Adasu passed at 60 in 2005.

Memories of Reverend Father Adasu’s imprimatur three full decades before Alia’s declaration to run for the topmost position in Benue State, easily recommended him to the predominantly Catholic polity. In May 2022 shortly after he made his intention public though, he was suspended by the Catholic Bishop of Gboko, William Avenya. Alia was pointedly reminded that: “The Mother Church does not allow her clerics to get involved in partisan politics on their own.” Alia, however, was somewhat popular amongst sections of the common folk. He regularly held “healing masses,” where miracles were reportedly wrought. This reason, and the many politically muscular shoulders which availed themselves to Alia to rest and ride on in his first ever political venture, smoothed his pathway.

Alia assumed office in May 2023 and launched out gestapo style, against perceived enemies of his new government. His agents prowled the streets and mechanic workshops of urban areas in the state, ferreting for automobiles presumed to belong to the state government and impounding them. Alia’s milieu was already logging litigations as early as its first weeks. He fell out with his benefactors, notably George Akume, the first governor of Benue State this Fourth Republic. Akume, the incumbent Secretary to the Government of the Federation, (SGF), has long been a major political force in the state, hailed for having good nostrils for the identification of politically marketable candidates.

Akume it was who backed the candidature of Alia’s predecessor, Samuel Ortom and availed him the gubernatorial ticket of the All Progressives Congress, (APC), late 2014. Ortom felt done in, at the governorship primary of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, (PDP) and Akume was there for him. Alia has also been at daggers drawn with Dickson Tarkighir, the Member Representing Makurdi/Guma federal constituency in the House of Representatives, of the same political party with him. Apart from committing his own personal resources into the enthronement of Alia, Tarkighir reportedly leveraged his goodwill to advance the latter’s political ambition. In one instance, Tarkighir we understand, structured a whopping N500 million, ex-gratis support for Alia from a former governor of one of the northern states. All of these to give Alia’s quest a push. The last time I checked though, Alia’s agents had marked Tarkighir’s popular entertainment hub in Makurdi city centre, for possible demolition. Alia indeed reportedly has issues with a number of other Benue representatives in the green chambers including Philip Agbese, Deputy Chairman of House of Representatives Committee on Media and Public Affairs.

If Alia’s interactions with fellow members of the same party with him is this discordant, his relationship with members of opposition parties is more cantankerous. He has accused Ortom of leaving a liability of over N350Billion for him, on workers salaries alone and will stop at nothing to investigate the Ortom circa. Under Alia, a commission of inquiry was set up to interrogate the deployment of funds, (income and expenditure) of Benue State Government, from May 29, 2015 to May 28, 2023, encapsulating the Ortom years. A Benue State High Court on May 29, 2024, however, restrained the incumbent administration in Benue State, from probing Ortom’s government. The court order stopped the Commission of Inquiry from sitting, pending the hearing and determination of a motion on notice filed by Ortom. Such are the several fronts Alia is fighting against.

More recently, Alia purportedly put a call through to the Och’Idoma, the paramount ruler of the Idoma nation, Agabaidu Elaigwu Odogbo Obagaji John, CON, ahead of a reception for distinguished Idoma sons and daughters. The event was scheduled for Saturday June 29, 2024 and Alia allegedly ordered the removal of the name of the Ortom era Commissioner for Finance, David Olofu, from the list of honorees. If the Och’Idoma wouldn’t do his bidding, Alia allegedly threatened not to attend the event where about two dozen Idoma pathfinders including the Benue State deputy governor, Sam Ode, were also to be celebrated. Since traditional rulers have lately been the butt of contempt and irreverence by the political class, the Och’Idoma applied wisdom.

David Olofu reportedly set aside his thriving business concerns to oblige the call to serve his state as member of the state executive council as finance commissioner under Ortom. He was found worthy of retention so he served a stretch of eight years in that capacity without blemish. His friends swiftly redirected their energies from celebrating a singular event, to emplacing a more enduring legacy. Rather than a single day revelry therefore, Olofu was encouraged to launch a support scheme for indigent students from the nine local government areas in Idomaland. A seed sum of N50million was spontaneously polled for the purpose. Renowned academic and former Secretary to the State Government, (SSG) in Benue State during the regime of Gabriel Torwua Suswam, David Salifu, a professor, will chair the board.

While almost disrupting the investitures in Otukpo at the heart of the Idoma country, Alia was stoking trouble elsewhere in the state. George Akume one of his predecessors and until recently his mentor was to be honoured by the NKST Church in Daudu-Mbawa, Guma local government area, on Sunday June 30, 2024. A radio announcement on the eve of the event, on the state radio placed by the Caretaker Chairman of Guma, Unongu Simon, an Alia loyalist, however, advised a cancellation of the event citing security worries. David Iorhemba, erstwhile Speaker of the State House of Assembly and Chairman of the Central Planning Committee of the event, countered Unongu’s advisory, assuring that the incident would be hitch-free. Such is the “cat-and-mouse” entanglements between Alia and the political class in Benue State.

As we speak, Alia is most probably brawling with all his three predecessors in the persons of Akume, Suswam and Ortom in that order. Many leaders across political persuasions will tell you matter-of-factly that if Alia were to face a referendum today, he will be clobbered and mercilessly bloodied. True, he is paying workers salaries and the pensions of retirees regularly. But he is almost totally estranged from the critical mass of the political class, the structure which helped him into office. He was, not too long ago, indeed accused of running government as though he was managing a church parish! His recent interference in the sociocultural affairs of the Idoma people has not helped his public rating. The Idoma nation of David Mark, Audu Ogbeh, Chris Abutu Garba, Lawrence Onoja, Sunday Idoko, Monday Morgan, Wilson Inalegwu, Stephen Lawani, Abba Moro, Godwin Obla, SAN, Paul Harris Ogbole, SAN, Usman Abubakar, (Young Alhaji), don’t find Alia’s meddlesomeness in their affairs, funny at all.

It is yet to be seen if Hyacinth Alia can boss and disregard the Tor Tiv, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, an Emeritus professor and former Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, the same way he just did to the Och’Idoma. But Alia truly, really needs to keep a cool, focused head if he is to make a success of his present term in office. Whether he will get a second term like his three predecessors this Fourth Republic will be determined by the way he manages his office and interpersonal relationships in the coming weeks, months and years.

Tunde Olusunle, PhD, is a Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA)