Govt not fighting corruption, says Obasanjo

By Our Reporter.

Obasanjo

The Nigerian government is not fighting corruption, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said.

He also identified unemployment as capable of creating disorder in the system. 

Obasanjo spoke on Tuesday at the ongoing 100th Session of the International Labour Organisation Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. 

He said unless the person in power is ready to give his life for corruption, he would not be able to fight it properly. 

The former President also said Nigeria is not growing as widely believed, saying the indices did not suggest growth. 

“If you are going to fight corruption, it is not a one night or one day war. You have to be consistent and persistent with it. I haven’t seen that will of persistency and consistency in Nigeria because the people that are involved in corruption are strongly entrenched. Unless you are ready to confront them at the point of even giving your life for it, then you will give in and when you give in, that is the end of it,” Obasanjo said. 

He spoke on the platform of Club de Madrid. The topic was: “Meeting sustainable societies and social justice.” 

Club de Madrid is an independent non-profit organisation made up of 80 democratically-elected former presidents and prime ministers from 56 countries. 

Former Ecuador President Osvaldo Hurtado; ex President John Kufuor of Ghana, ex-Yemeni Prime Minister Abdul Karim Al Eryani and ex-Prime Minister of Netherlands Wim Kok were on the panel 

Obasanjo traced the emergence of corruption and underdevelopment in Nigeria to oil. He said, “rather than a boom, oil has become a doom” 

He described oil as “one of the misfortunes of Nigeria.” 

“Corruption came in initially with politics at independence when our politicians, after giving you contract ; you gave 10 per cent. They thought that was the way to make money for their party. 

“Ten per cent of that contract is taken to develop the party, for the party fund and all that and then of course it went beyond 10 per cent to 20, to 25 and at times, it grew so large that in fact, when you were given a job, you would just not care to do it; you would share the money or whatever they called it. 

“That was very bad; so when I became president of Nigeria, the first thing I did after my election was to establish an independent body to fight corruption. Now, that body was so effective, in fact two bodies; one was a commission against financial crimes and they were both so effective that ministers of government, the head of the police and the heads of government departments were put in jail. 

However, Obasanjo’s fight against corruption during his tenure was criticised as selective.

On unemployment, Obasanjo said: “We have all heard what my brother from Yemen has said about the situation in the Arab countries and North Africa. I want to underline the situation that will signal red alert for us in Africa. I am worried, I am apprehensive about unemployment in our continent that it has not been taken as seriously as it should be. 

“I give example of my own continent in Nigeria where we have about 120 tertiary institutions. When I was growing up, there was only one university in Nigeria. Today when you include the polytechnics to the tertiary institutions, we have over 200 institutions of learning. Each institution graduates about 3,000 students every year. You have well over 600,000 graduates every year but we are not creating 100,000 jobs every year. That is the issue that worries me and why we are all sitting here. 

“The fuse can be ignited at anytime and if it happens in Nigeria everyone will be affected and I will be the first victim.. The point is that Africa must begin to talk more about job creation,” Obasanjo said.

Obasanjo declares... Jonathan can’t fight corruption

Thursday, 16 June 2011 00:00 Francis Okeke, Geneva

Former president Olusegun Obasanjo

Former president Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday said the current regime in Nigeria lacks the will and consistency to fight corruption because corrupt people are deeply entrenched in the system. Obasanjo, who was speaking yesterday in Geneva, Switzerland, did not mention President Goodluck Jonathan by name but said he has not seen the will and consistency required in the present government to tackle graft.

 

He spoke during a debate organised by the Club de Madrid on ‘Meeting Sustainable Societies and Social Justice’ in the on going 100th Session of the International Labour Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland.

Club de Madrid is an independent, non-profit organization composed of 80 former democratic presidents and prime ministers from 56 countries.

Obasanjo was asked by debate moderator Ritula Shah of the BBC if there was political will to fight corruption in Nigeria.

In answer to that, he said, “I haven’t seen that will of persistency and consistency in Nigeria because the people that are involved in corruption, they are strongly entrenched and unless you are ready to confront them at the point of even giving your life for it, then you will give in and when you give in, that is the end of it.”

Obasanjo went down memory lane, blaming over dependence on oil for the corruption that bedevils Nigeria today.

“We didn’t see beyond the oil. That was one of the misfortunes of Nigeria or regrets of Nigeria but more importantly, corruption came in. Corruption that came in came in initially with politics at independence when our politicians when they give a contract to you, 10 per cent, they thought that is the way to make money for their party.

“Ten per cent of that contract is taken to develop the party, for the party fund and all that and then of course it went beyond 10 per cent to 20, to 25 and at times, it grew so large that in fact, when you are given a job, you will just don’t care to do it, you will share the money or whatever they called it.

“That was very bad. So when I became president of Nigeria the first thing I did after my election was to establish an independent body to fight corruption. Now, that body was so effective, in fact two bodies, one was a commission against financial crimes and they were both so effective that ministers of government, the head of the police and the heads of parastatals were put in jail.

“If you are going to fight corruption, it is not a one night or one day war; you have to be consistent and persistent with it,” he said.

Other panellists in yesterday’s debate were former president of Ecuador Mr. Osvaldo Hurtado, former Ghanaian president John Kufuor, former Yemeni prime minister Mr. Abdul Karim Al Eryani and former prime minister of Netherlands Mr. Wim Kok.

In his contribution, Kufour said the world must produce leaders who must look beyond self interest and are ready to use rule of law and good governance to tackle the issues of social justice.

He added that such leaders must be able to multi-task in the areas of fighting corruption as they simultaneously create jobs and provide social security to their people.

All the panellists agreed on the need for government, employers and workers to sit together and fine-tune the existing processes that lead to the creation of decent jobs.

''Awo Family Without Awo'' In Defence of Sam Omatseye....

Monday, June 20, 2011.

Correct Me If I Am Right By Rudolf Okonkwo

By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

In 2006, I had what became my last interview with Gani Fawehinmi. In that interview, he said that what Nigeria needed was a “shock therapy.” I have been trying to interpret that to Nigerians ever since, without success. And I have been trying to integrate that into my commentary, with little success.

Nigerians are the only people I know who love their comfort zone even when the zone provides them anything but comfort.

So if there is any political party that I want to join, it is the one that will administer a shock therapy on Nigeria and get the nation out of its comfort zone. It is under this premise that I am coming out in defense of Sam Omatseye.

For some reason, our paths never crossed. Even though we were in the same media industry for sometime, I do not recall reading his works.

He obviously got my attention and the attention of many others when he wrote, “Awo Family without an Awo.”

Many people have joined issues with him, including HID Awolowo, Ebenezer Babatope, Dipo Jimilehin, and others. His own Itsekiri people came out to publicly disown him. Everyone said that Omatseye had the right to express his opinion. Then, they all went ahead to admonish him for doing that. Fair game, I say.

Omatseye was accused of insulting the Awos. The real insult is the one thrown at Omatseye by those who think the opinion he expressed was bigger than him. In what could only be an act of desperation, these people believed that Omatseye was just expressing the opinion of his paymaster, Bola Tinubu.

I want to believe that Omatseye was expressing his own opinion. I say so because from what I have since read about him, I am confident that he is not afraid to express views that are out of the mainstream. He once wrote that Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was not all that. While I disagree with him, I know that it takes a lot of guts to express uncommon opinion in a society like ours.

It would have been a bit understandable to say that Omatseye took a bite out of the Awos just to sell his three new books than to make it look as if he is incapable of an independent thought.

I am for everyman’s right to be ignorant. I am for everyman’s right to be informed. What I do not support is anyone’s right to be indifferent. There are too many Nigerians who are indifferent. The large masses of Nigerians who are indifferent are the reason it is hard to find the critical mass needed to take effective action.

I subscribe to Oscar Wilde’s argument about books when I assess commentaries. There is no good commentary or bad commentary. A commentary is either well written or badly written. Sam Omatseye’s commentary on Awo’s legacy without an Awo is a badly written commentary.

We, the commentators, do that every day. We fail to give depth to our commentary. We fail to present a sociological base for our analysis. We even censor what is important in our contributions. I happen to know many commentators. And I can tell you that if they write half of what they know, they will ‘shock the nation.’

But they won’t. And that stifles their arguments.

Nigerians love their commentators to chastise those characters perceived to be corrupt or lacking integrity, or those adjudged to be disrespecting values Nigerians hold dear – whatever those values are. Commentators who hit the hardest are hailed the most, until the commentator touches one of our own. That is when we wonder what the commentator has been smoking and demand that he provides concrete proof. If the commentator dares touch any of our infallible, like Awolowo, Ojukwu, Zik or Ahmadu Bello, then we impose a fatwa and declare his or her writing career over.

It is legitimate to wonder what happened to the children of Awo, Zik and Balewa, M.I. Okpala, Ahmadu Bello, Akintola, Orizu, Okotie-Eboh, and Akanu Ibiam. It is legitimate to believe that they are not carrying their weight or that they lost their ways- in comparison to their fathers.

To do that properly, one has to look at it from the other angles. After all, it isn’t really a bad thing. In a country like Nigeria where the playing field is not level, it may be good that these privileged children “failed.” Their ‘failure’ opened the Nigerian space for others. Otherwise, Nigerian space will be dominated by the Belewas, the Aguyi-Ironsis, the Gowons, the Muhammeds, the Obasanjos, the Shagaris, the Buharis, the Babangidas, the Abachas, the Shonekans, and the Abubakars.

Another way of looking at it is that most of these ‘successful’ parents spent their time ‘being successful’ that they forgot to raise their children. And those who squeezed the time to do so, often find that their children are overwhelmed by their parents’ success that they lost any drive to strive. Omatseye touched on that a little bit.

As far as I’m concerned, these children are free to blend with whatever crowd they want. They are free to define their own destinies. We do not have the right to impose our expectations on them. It is not a debt that they owe us. That they chose not to join politics does not mean that they are not contributing.

This larger context is what is missing in Sam Omatseye’s piece. I used to think that lack of space in the newspaper is what stops our columnists from giving this kind of context in their analyses. But David Brooks of the New York Times does it in less than 700 words.

When Omatseye wrote that Obafemi Awolowo would have divorced HID Awolowo, it touched some nerves. Though Omotseye failed to tell us why, other than her hobnobbing with the likes of Alao-Akala, I do not see his suggestion as an imagination gone wild. It all depends on what HID Awolowo has been doing. After all, Nelson Mandela divorced Winnie Mandela. Nobody saw that coming during those 27 years that Mandela was in prison and Winnie was leading the fight against apartheid.

Personally, at 96, I felt that HID Awolowo shouldn’t be blamed for whatever is wrong in the Awolowo family. I have a 100 year-old grandmother. I cannot imagine her being blamed for whatever is wrong in Ezeobidi family. But then again, my grandmother does not appear on T.V. She does not run a newspaper. She does not meet with local and national politicians. She does not run the Ezeobidi family.

On May 25, 2010, 84-year-old Queen Elizabeth II was caught picking her nose while riding in a carriage and wearing the British crown. It was not a difficult decision for the British media. They splashed the picture on their front pages.

And that, my friends, is why the head that wears the crown lies uneasy. To the media, the head that wears the crown is never innocent. And it is always a target for public scorn.

Even The Queen Mother at age 102 was not spared by the British media. They still counted the number of bottles of alcoholic beverages she drank in a week. Neither was Mother Teresa. Her critics followed her around even as she served the poor people of Calcutta. Those who cannot stand the heat have only one place to go- Greenland.

Note to Babatope et al: Admonishing old people perceived to have done wrong does not preclude anyone from attaining old age. Those who want to attain old age should simply start exercising, stop smoking, stop drinking and stop having unprotected sex. Chikena!

Awo family without an Awo, by Omatseye

Wednesday, 08 June 2011 11:25 | Author: Sam Omatseye |  

The Awolowo rebirth in the Southwest has inspired gongs, songs and rhetoric of sorts. But they have missed one point.

It occurred to me in Abeokuta last week amidst the big crowds and euphoria of the swearing-in of Senator Ibikunle Amosun as governor. In all the states from Lagos to Edo, where Awo has witnessed ideological resurgence, hardly a single family member has played a role.

So we have an Awo family without an Awo. That is an irony. But history overwhelms us with this sort of twist. Obafemi Awolowo toiled for his reputation. His roots were lowly, he toiled to school both home and abroad, launched into careers in law, business, journalism and eventually politics. He carved a niche for himself, and became the first methodical and charismatic leftist in our history.  Other leftists abounded but they did not inspire comparable drama and following.

He faced tribulations, went to jail, failed in elections, won a few, but he imprinted his ideas and legacy in the country, and no single mortal has beaten him in the history of this country. His greatest achievement was in the area of ideas, and that was how he fashioned a family. Most families are born of biology but his issued from ideology. That family suffered with him.

In a spoof of Jesus Christ, these were the men who followed him in his teachings, and endured with him in his temptations. So he formed a kingdom for them in the Southwest, in the old Western Region, presiding over his projects, his legacies and people.

 

In all of these, the family he had was not his flesh and blood. In another spoof of Christ, who were his family anyway? Those who were with him must be counted as his family. So, I combed in the ambience of Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), and I found none. I went to Ogun, I frisked the crowd under Amosun’s bower, hardly any. Around Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola in Osun, I could not lay a finger. With Governor Kayode Fayemi in Ekiti, where are the forbears of Awo? Yet, I can hear the chants of Awo. Hardly in any of the inaugural speeches or any of their other public intervention would you miss the philtre and filter of Awo from these gentlemen. To parody Novelist Joseph Conrad, they are the sparks from Awo’s sacred fire, the messengers of the might within the man.

 

Already all of them are pursuing the legacy ideas of Awo: free education, free health services, infrastructural development, urban renewal and economic engineering.

Lagos has posted itself as the John the Baptist. The others are putting up valiant efforts, and the world of course is watching to see how well they will perform. It will call for great work, resourcefulness and cooperation. They are the real Awoists, and Awo was a man of rigour and vigour.

The Awo son that many expected to take after the father was Olusegun, who unfortunately died in a car crash. We shall never know if he could have pulled it off.  But the others have not shown much of the paterfamilias’ brio and depth. In the past decade, under this republic, they have blended with the wrong crowd. Even H.I.D, hobnobbed with Alao-Akala, who brought illiteracy to governance; with Oyinlola who turned the grace of office into a hell-hole of despots; with Daniel who could not arrest his quick fall into megalomania.

I wrote once that this woman whom Awo once described as the jewel of inestimable value has lost value to his cause. If he came back to life, he would have committed the extraordinary act of divorce after death. Even his newspaper, The Tribune, has so stumbled and fallen that it swims in Awo’s vomit.

Groucho Max, one of the funniest satirists in American history, said of a man that he got his looks from his father. Then he quipped, “He was a plastic surgeon.” That means the son is not his real son, or he did not inherit his natural looks. Ideologically, when we talk of Awo’s family, the chief inheritor is Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as the leader of all the others. He was the one who stuck his neck out. He could have lost his life or ended his career in politics. The so-called real Awolowos who bear his surname cannot come up for mention. They are Awolowos but not Awoists. They stabbed their father in the back. They have committed ideological parricide.

The only person that made a real try was Awolowo-Dosunmu in the early 1990s and she lost roundly. She was accused of trying to ride her father’s coattail. Political families are good for democracies. They can exemplify the high ideals of diligence, dignity, ideas, character. We have seen these in such families as the Kennedys, the Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Ghandis. They just don’t claim family. They appeal to the high ideals that endeared the families to their societies.

It’s also an irony that these families are falling into twilight. Some of them have vanished. Enoch Powell, a British MP, once gave us the famous line: “All political lives, unless they are cut off midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure because that is the nature of politics and human affairs.”

Columnist Ambassador Dapo Fafowora adverted to this idea in a recent outing, and I debated it with him afterwards. I don’t believe that a political life should be judged by how it ends but what it means. The quote is often missed by many who mistake “careers” for “lives.” A political life should be judged by its legacies. If we judged Awo by how he ended, we would look at him only as the loser to Shagari. That is why I see an intrinsic mischief in Enoch’s quote. But I would agree that political families end also in failure if you judge how they peter out and not the legacy.

Awo’s legacy is alive and well. Members of other families in flesh and blood can carry on. Immediate families tend to suffer from what an author, Noemie Emery, describes as dynastic curse. The children tend to be intimidated by the standards set by the fathers. So they just don’t want to try. They feel they cannot match them or come even close.  The problem probably comes from the fathers themselves. The Adams, who produced important presidents, later gave birth to moral vagrants and drunks. The Bush daughters showed themselves as party girls when their father was contesting the political battle of his life.

But Joe Kennedy groomed his sons assiduously, and they excelled in politics. They also had a fair share of tragedies. Ted Kennedy regained his sobriety and voice in America after a season of debauchery. In Nigeria, we are seeing the Sarakis fade. A Saraki – Bukola - is wiping out the Sarakis from politics. It is a classic case of oedipal tragedy, something I predicted earlier this year on this page.

It is not late though for the flesh-and-blood Awolowos to join their father’s fold. But they must be genuine. Awo was the most important Yoruba personage in history after Oduduwa. They had stellar men like Oranmiyan, Balogun Latosa, Lisabi, Sodeke, et al. None of them had the unifying vision and organisational acumen that Awolowo gave the race. The wife, children and grandchildren should not watch others glow in his jewel without them.

Sam Omatseye Writes

Source: The Nation

What Nigerians Pay The Federal Government.

Saturday, July 2, 2011.

caption: National Security Adviser, Andrew Owoeye Azazi

By Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai

The syndicated article below was first published on July 1st 2011, in it, Nasir El Rufai wrote that several security agencies combined spend about N2 billion a day with nothing to show for it. The office of the NSA is s reportedly angry about these claims and wants Mr. El-Rufai charged for "incitement, sedition and publication of false news". The former minister and CPC chieftain is currently facing interrogation at the offices of the State Security Services in Abuja after he was arrested this morning upon his return from the United Kingdom.

 

This year, every Nigerian - all 162 million of us - man, woman and child will 'pay' the sum of N27,685 each to help run the federal government. What we cannot afford, government will borrow on our behalf to pay for its activities.

That is why the federal government, on behalf of you and I will spend the sum of 4.485 trillion (over four thousand billion) naira in 2011. This is against the backdrop that our entire oil earnings for the year cannot pay the generous salaries and allowances of politicians on the one hand, and the meagre pay cheques of other public sector workers on the other, while infrastructure and unemployment are barely getting attention.

When you walk into a government office to request for a basic service, the staff you meet may not even bother to reply to your greeting and barely has time to listen to you; the policeman that should protect you on the roadblock, stops you and demands for bribes and has no qualms shooting dead any motorist that refuses to give him twenty naira; the customs officer at the border who is supposed to stop smuggling takes a bribe and actually connives with the smugglers to bring in banned products into the Nigerian market, while harassing the traveller entering Nigeria with two new pairs of shoes; the hospital staff that, contrary to every professional oath, refuses to attend to dying patients because they are on strike; the soldiers who get so bored that they occasionally go on a rampage, using policemen for target practice. With live ammunition, of course; the politician who rigs himself into office then proceeds to loot the treasury: these are all the people whose standard of living we are spending nearly 75 per cent of the 2011 budget to pay for - and borrowing some after spending all our collections from oil and taxes!

It will cost nearly 2.5 million naira this year on average to pay for the salary and upkeep of each of Nigeria’s nearly one million federal public sector workers – in the police, civil service, military and para-military services and teachers in government schools and institutions. Whether this amount justifies the service that is rendered is left for Nigerians to decide. In all, the 49 line Ministries, Departments and Agencies specifically mentioned in the 2011 Appropriations Act will each cost an average of N49.49 billion to run.

We elect a total of 360 members to the House of Representatives and 109 Senators to make laws and enhance good governance by checking and balancing the excesses of the executive arm of government.  For this privilege, the 469 members of the federal legislature and their support staff at the National Assembly will spend N150 billion this year. It is worth noting that NASS only passed 8 bills as at the end of May 2011. So assuming that they manage to pass another 7 bills before the end of this year, it would cost the Nigerian citizen an average ten billion naira to pass a single bill! This implies that to pass the 2011 budget (which allocates N150 billion to NASS), Nigerians paid 10 billion naira. An even more interesting statistic is the cost of maintaining every legislator every year. It works out to princely N320 million per legislator per annum. At this rate, every four year stint at NASS works out at N1.28 billion per legislator. No wonder machetes, guns and thugs are used at will to "win" primaries and the elections. How many new businesses can achieve a turnover of N1.28 billion within four years with net tax-free profit in excess of 50 percent? Is this social justice?

For the NASS, even the amount of N150 billion above is just what we can see easily but is not broken down for further analysis or accountability. There is a bit more hidden all over the Appropriation Act - another N1.595 billion was tucked away for "In-lieu of accommodation for the Seventh Session of NASS" and another N200 million for "Funding of House Resolution Mandates." What these two provisions mean is best explained by those that legislated them and the executive that will release the sums! What is clear is that none of these will ever be accounted for, or audited!

Last week, I wrote about the cost of justice. I got a few things wrong because I did not appreciate fully the unique role of the National Judicial Council (NJC) in the administration of the nation's judicial system. My friend and former classmate Mrs. Maryam Wali Uwais clarified this and educated me, for which I am grateful. The NJC's budget of N95 billion covers the salaries and allowances of all judges of superior courts of record in Nigeria - that is State High Courts and their federal equivalents, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. The NJC also funds the overheads of all the Federal Courts only - the Federal High Court and the appellate courts, as well as the salaries and allowances of all Federal Judicial support staff. The State Governments are responsible for the salaries of all other judicial staff (magistrates, support staff, etc.) and the overhead costs of all courts within their respective jurisdictions. It is therefore slightly more complicated to compute what it costs to keep our entire judicial system running without adding up all the budgetary allocations to the Judiciary in all 36 states. We will return to this sometime soon.

An interesting observation is the fact that the government says the problem of power shortage is a priority, yet the Ministry of Power only got 91 billion naira as total appropriation in 2011, while the National Security Adviser (NSA) controls and will spend 208 billion naira (Recurrent - N51 billion, Capital N59 billion, and another N98 billion for the Amnesty Programme!). This amount does not include the Defence budget. The Defence Ministry will get N348 billion, while the Police will get 309 billion naira. In other words, though Nigerians have never felt so insecure in recent history, the NSA, Police and Defence will spend a combined 865 billion naira - more than 2 billion naira a day, weekends included! This does not include the 36 states’ so-called security votes. Even state assembly members and local government councillors now have security votes. Clearly their security is more important than ours!

The point of these statistics is to show how expensive governance has become and how little Nigerians get in return. And the unproductive portions of our national budget have been rising rapidly in the last 4 years, to the detriment of capital investments in infrastructure and human development. Four years ago in 2007, the entire federal government budget was 2.3 trillion naira; today we are spending 4.485 trillion.  In 2007, statutory transfers amounted to 102 billion naira or 5% of the total budget. Today, transfers amount to 418 billion or 9% of the total.
This year, the federal government will spend 495 billion naira or 11% of the budget on debt servicing compared to 326 billion naira or 14% it spent the year we finally exited from the London Club debt. More telling is the 1.05 trillion naira or 46% for recurrent expenditure in 2007 against the 2.425 trillion or 54% government will spend this year. Just four years ago, capital expenditure accounted for 36% (830 billion naira) of the budget. This year, the amount for capital expenditure has fallen to 25% (1.147 trillion naira - out of which N1.136 trillion is the budget deficit - that is to be borrowed!).

To the uninformed eye, the figures may seem to represent increases in all aspects, but to what cost, and to what effect? Apologists would want us to believe that the astronomical increase in the cost of government services can be explained by inflation, but even taking into consideration the high inflationary trend (thanks to Jonathan’s profligate campaign year spending), statutory transfers in the budget has gone up by a whopping 310%; debt servicing has a 52% increase; recurrent expenditure has gone up by 131% while capital expenditure has increased by 39% over four years. In real terms however, and accounting for inflation, the total budget has increased by 33% with recurrent expenditure going up by 58% while capital expenditure has actually reduced by 6%.

Facts and figures do not lie. Every figure used in this analysis came from official government records. What is the justification for allocating such huge amounts to running the government when a staggering 30 million Nigerians are unemployed? Only N50 billion has been budgeted to create employment, forgetting that money by itself does not create jobs without a well thought out plan to stimulate small and medium scale enterprises and the creation of appropriate regulatory environments. What are the strategies to ensure that these funds are not diverted? How many jobs will be created this year or in the next four years? Are our priorities right?

All these come down to the questions: Will government’s 4.485 trillion naira budget make life any better or even provide security for Nigerians?  Can we feel the impact of this huge spending? Is the cost of governance justified? If we do not have the courage to ask these questions, we will be doing ourselves a disservice and endangering our people's future.

 

The Karenplification Of Africa By Dele Momodu

By Dele Momodu

Fellow Nigerians, I don’t know what you have been watching lately on television but as for me and my house we have been hooked on BIG BROTHER AMPLIFIED. And I’m not ashamed to say it publicly. Permit me to say a big thank you to DSTV and MNET for entertaining Africa and for allowing us to know people from different parts of our continent. This is their sixth edition and after some wobbling and fumbling in the past I think they have succeeded in taking BIG BROTHER AFRICA to the zenith of entertainment. As a media person myself, I know how tough it must have been to come this far.

Even as recent as last year, I was never too keen to watch what I considered an unnecessary intrusion of privacy and a promotion of frivolity. Though I was not as hypocritical as some of our politicians who banned the unedited footage of BIG BROTHER AFRICA from our screens, I was of the opinion that the organisers needed to upgrade their art by creating a more educative environment for the housemates. I wanted to see a platform that would reform some of our recalcitrant youths and mould them into decent members of our troubled society. Despite a few embarrassing moments in the house I’m quite impressed about the spectacular show they have been able to put up this season. I have finally come to terms with the necessity of entertainment as a compelling escapism from everyday stress and the vicissitudes of life. And the fact that some of us display ivory tower arrogance in matters of morality does not make us better human beings than those we see and treat as upstarts and outcasts.

For all you care, it has suddenly taken one erratic girl simply known and addressed as Karen from the petrified city of Jos, Nigeria, to attract most people to BIG BROTHER AMPLIFIED this year. Ironically, the two Nigerian ladies in the competition are both from Jos, a City that is fast becoming the hub of entertainment in Nigeria. The second lady who’s also popular in the house is our own ajebota (butter-fed) girl known as Vina. She is a sharp opposite of Karen. Vina is your typical silver-spoon kid with all the appurtenances of sartorial taste and impeccable pedigree. On the other side is the tempestuous Karen whose image is that of your next door village or street girl with a great knack for verbosity that oftentimes goes over the tops. While Vina makes extra effort to display her effervescent Queen’s English as well as mild mannerisms, our dear Karen struts and frets upon the stage in her natural and chronically native English with an overdose of thick accent and without caring a hoot who’s complaining. Karen is a walking oxymoron. She’s friendly and combative. She’s kind-hearted and bitchy. She’s generous and ruthless. No one messes up with Karen and escapes the rage of this volcanic eruption. Not even the ‘Drama King’ Luclay from Cape Town, South Africa can bully this self-proclaimed gangster. Karen hits her target with the velocity of a thunderbolt and moves on as if nothing has happened. She’s turned the BIG BROTHER AMPLIFIED HOUSE into your typical house of commotion full of sound and fury. There is only one boss here and that is Karen.

I caught the bug of BIG BROTHER AMPLIFIED midway into the cut-throat competition. I was initially attracted to watch by the brief appearance of Confidence, the voluptuous Ghanaian night-club owner and a good friend but lost interest as soon as she exited. The next excitement was going to come from another rambunctious housemate called Ms P but I lost attention when she started a misplaced romance with the Ghanaian fashionista, Alex, whose strategy was to have most of the women swooning all over him like a modern day Casanova. But the unexpected happened to me as the two houses were merged into one and individual talents began to blossom. At that stage, I began to develop more than casual affectation for this highly addictive show.

As my interest increased, I started bonding with each of the housemates. I studied their profiles, knew their countries of origin, checked out their professions, followed their passion and so on. I liked the simplicity and childlike innocence of the Ethiopian girl Hannin who’s a singer. I admired the sophistication of the Angolan Queen, Weza, the well-sculptured lady who’s a presenter with Channel O. I respected the cool mien of Lomwe, the Malawian radio deejay who reminded me of my former teacher and poet from his country David Rubadiri. I enjoyed the hypnotic pranks of the wonderful Kimberly of Zambia, probably the most daring housemate and a guaranteed nominee for the award of the most sensuous. The Kenyan actress Millicent played up her awesome figure even if many viewers thought she didn’t have a pretty face. The only Whiteman from Zimbabwe, Wendall, a commercial pilot, is an epitome of gentlemanliness even if he was not as active as was required. Sharon O, the Ugandan artist appeared more to most people as a beauty queen and she never stopped admiring her fine face.  Zeus, a rapper from Botswana turned out to be one of the most intelligent housemates. His aura was so powerful that he succeeded in melting Karen’s heart and turned her into a lady she never wanted to be. Vinbai, the supermodel from Zimbabwe was considered too standoffish and vindictive but I thought she was smart and intelligent.

But my top four hottest housemates were Karen, Luclay, Lomway and Sharon O. My dear Vina who I rate to be the most intelligent girl in the house would have featured somewhere in-between but her chances were badly dimmed by Karen’s incredible amplification. Karen according to pundits is set to break all-time records in the BIG BROTHER AFRICA’s history. Karen is billed to beat the South African rampaging bull, Luclay, alias Otono, an unstoppable actor to second place. Karen and Luclay are ruling the airways. Even as I write this piece, I’m monitoring messages being scrolled on the screen and the level of support for our own Lady Karen is overwhelming. And it is becoming obvious that those waging a war against the likelihood of a Nigerian winning the $200,000 prize again this year are fighting a lost battle.

I was never a total fan of Karen before her chat-room session last Monday. I was totally for her country-mate, Vina, purely on moralistic grounds. I was opposed to Karen like many others without caring to find out what was responsible for her unusual lifestyle. I had studiously ignored the injunctions of Jesus Christ that we should not judge others from our own myopic standpoint. I also did not recognise the fact that the principal essence of the show was pure and unadulterated entertainment. Some of us saw it as a talent hunt, while others believed it was a quest for expertise in pretensions. While most housemates worried more about Africa’s perceptions of their individual characters, Karen and Luclay broke all rules. Luclay yelled regularly at people and oftentimes at invisible spirits. I was so worried at a stage that he might go stark berserk and bite one of the housemates. But Mr Otono was a damn good actor who knew when to bark but not how to bite.  He bullied all but not our own Karen.

Karen stood up to any man or woman who crossed her path. She spoke with the voice of an African amazon. She never pretended to be who she was not. Her story resonated with those who shared her similar travails. Many saw Karen in them and them in Karen. It was easy to dismiss her as a street-girl, a ruthless bitch, a reckless drunk, a loquacious and shameless impressionist. But she was true to herself. She is a free spirit who’s willing to roam unfettered. She was born to fly and fly she must. She does not care what you and I think of her tantrums; she cares only about what she thinks of herself. The world for her has always been cold and mean to her. And there is nothing more to fear for someone who’s already down. She came here to catch some fun. What will be, will be, and that is all that matters.

Karen was able to penetrate many hearts when she had the honour of being the head of house a few weeks back. It afforded everyone the chance to see her transform from a gangster image to that of a boardroom executive. She dressed serious and was gorgeous. She spoke more eloquently without the usual vulgarity. She led by example and was very selfless. Her caring heart was put on open display for all doubting Thomases to see and applaud. She took a big risk that could easily have backfired when she was up for nomination. As head of house, she had the privilege of replacing herself with one of the housemates but she chose to maintain her nomination. Many of her fans got angry that she had taken a stupid gamble, but this singular act won her fans and fame across Africa. I knew of a Ghanaian woman in her 70s who cried endlessly for Karen’s rare display of love for even her detractors.

I had my own stint at weeping last Monday as Karen took the invisible Big Brother and her captive audience down the memory lane of her tortuous journey through life. I listened to every word she uttered and watched every one of her powerful delivery. Nothing escaped me. As I released torrents of tears, I phoned a friend who told me that I have good company in his house. His Ghanaian wife and mother-in-law were crying their eyes tearless and his wife had just succeeded in ruining her fresh makeup as she was on her way to work. The Karen story was a spellbinder. I was mesmerised by the story of her beleaguered childhood. It was a stuff of thriller. She did not know her father. Her 45-year-old mother who happens to be her role-model was a gangster according to her and she had to live with her grand-mum. She did not really know her father and till this day she’s very bitter about him. For the first time, she spoke about how she was in a marriage for five difficult years for the wrong reasons and decided to quit for the right reasons. She had to take to doing this and that while in Europe. She was a strip-dancer and some of her nude pictures litter the internet. What more do you want to say or write about a child the world had already written off as nobody? I was always angry at Karen anytime she dramatized her madness and behaved like someone totally possessed.

But there lies the beginning of Karen’s story as a metaphor. Hers is a taleof nothing is impossible. There is a lot we can achieve as human beings if doors and windows of opportunities are opened to us. The lesson in this saga is that by the time tomorrow comes one of Africa’s supposed gangsters, Karen, would have become one of the biggest superstars on the continent.  She would be crowned not because she’s the best role model in the house, but because there is a greater testimony to be derived from this quintessential grass to grace experience. Her mother would have to pray and fast for her. It is not always easy to exorcise the demons of street-life. She must conquer her biggest enemy and that is alcohol. I’m perpetually troubled once Karen starts drinking. She is always going bananas. May God redeem this young girl and keep her safe till tomorrow when her life must definitely change for better or for worse.

Culled from Thisdaylive.com

Karen’s Metamorphosis.

Fellow Nigerians, I think it is in order to congratulate ourselves for the way the BIG BROTHER AMPLIFIED was concluded last Sunday in South Africa. You must be wondering what is my own in this matter. A few readers even expressed their shock last week that someone of my status could find time for such frivolities as BIG BROTHER AMPLIFIED. One of such critics wrote that it was so unpresidential to write an article on a supposedly despicable girl as Karen. Their reasoning was that a presidential candidate should rise above the mundane things of life and concern himself only with serious and rigorous issues of life. It is predicated on a fallacy that he is no longer a regular human being and should not attempt to live the lives of normal people.

I beg to disagree. A major source of our problem in Nigeria is the way we idolise our leaders. We see and project them as demigods. Naturally, and somewhere along the line, they start to believe the myths of their hagiographic existence. Whether President or not, a good leader should not be far removed from the people. He must share in their hopes and aspirations. He should feel their frustrations and anguish. He must partake in their triumphs and jollifications. He must be seen to be human in all ramifications. I don’t aspire to be one of those leaders who don’t seem to live on our planet. I believe that is why they can have the unreasonable audacity to do what they do and think how awkwardly they think. I want to be as real as Karen, with all my foibles, warts and all.

As for me, and so many people I know, the BIG BROTHER AMPLIFIED as excellently packaged this season was a welcome distraction from the ugly developments in our dear country. It provided a wonderful escape to remote places like Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the addictive opium we needed to drown our sorrow. And we should be forgiven for seeking great relief from the migraine of everyday life in Nigeria. Response to my last article, The Karenplification of Africa, was awesome. I have been writing newspaper articles since 1986 and I must confess that this one on Karen generated more interests than any other. It broke all records. All you have to do is search for that article on Google. You will be amplified by the number of hits and commentaries. I met so many society ladies who ordinarily were not in the habit of reading newspaper articles who bought copies of Thisday last Saturday.

I was inundated with calls from everywhere. Those who could not reach me called my wife till she began to wonder what this was all about. And the article even trended on twitter. I needed no further proof that the article served its purpose. As usual with some of our people, there must be some conspiracy theory somehow. I was supposed to have been paid by some imaginary ghosts to write the article. Why are we such people of little faith? Trust me, I always write from the heart even my view won’t be so popular. A writer is supposed to possess some power of clairvoyance. He requires a third eye in order to see what many can never see. He is a prophet without honour. And he must never run away from controversy. There is nothing as horrible as not being read. Most times, the problem is not the message, it always about the messenger. That is why, it’s the middle of it all, one must thank those who took the time to read the article and even went to the extent of appreciating what they saw as a masterpiece. I would never have known it was that beautiful if they had not told me. In doing Karen a favour, I also received bountiful harvests. Such is life.

Unless you were one of us, you just can’t imagine the level of boredom that has set in in many African homes since the closure of the BIG BROTHER HOUSE. The final show in Johannesburg last Sunday was an anti-clamax of sorts. As predicted, it was coronation time for the new Queen of Africa, Ms Karen Igoh of Nigeria. But we were all wrong in thinking that the second winner would have been the South African actor, Luclay, alias Mr Otono, who was mercilessly defeated by the most unpredictable housemate Wendall, from Zimbabwe. At the end of it all it was a victory for the underdogs, Karen and Wendall, who snatched victory from the highly-rated contenders like Luclay, Lomway and Sharon O. Wendall, in our myopic view, was never in the equation. Our error of judgment had emanated from the fact that we failed to calculate Wendall into reckoning when he defeated his country mate Vimbai a week earlier to remain one of the seven finalists in the house. At that time his votes had come from Zimbabwe and Namibia. We should have suspected that he had become a major-domo by that spectacular feat.

But in our typical African fashion, we had chosen to belittle the underdogs like Karen and Wendall from the outset. And even when Karen liberated herself from our snobbery we continued to underrate Wendall and gave him no chance of winning the fat prize of $200,000. Wendall had written himself off from all intents and purposes. It was difficult not to have been intimidated by the violent outbursts of Luclay who towards the end began to carry himself with such avuncular swag. His headmaster posturing was an indication of over-confidence. And this affected Lomway who also abandoned his famed taciturnity for a new loquaciousness which was obviously induced by alcohol. He was trying everything to outclass and outpace Karen and Luclay. Unfortunately it turned out to be a wasted effort.

In a race such as this, there is only one major winner. And that was Karen. Most of the viewers were interested in Karen even if they wanted Luclay as the icing on the cake. The emergence of Wendall was therefore an anti-climax. Had Karen lost, we can all imagine what would have happened to BIG BROTHER. But mercifully, the victory of Karen made up big time for the unanticipated triumph of Wendall. By her conquest, the karenplification of Africa was total. Out of 14 countries, Karen had wowed her fans and in a total of six countries. She was able to truncate the conspiracy of those who kicked against the possibility of Nigeria winning a hat-trick by taking home the coveted prize a record third time. Such was the awesomeness of Karen’s ability to captivate his audience. That was the climax of Karen’s transfiguration from a gangster to a superstar.

Karen’s metamorphosis is one of the miracles of our time. Nothing could be more dramatic than the love we all showered on a lady that should have been hated for too many reasons. It is indeed an irony that a self-confessed hoodlum effortlessly became an iconic figure that we all adore. This is what we get when we naturally hand over our lives to the Creator and refuse to give up against all odds. I had wondered what Karen was doing in the house the first time the housemates were introduced. Many of my non-Nigerian friends had asked if someone was out to play a cruel joke on Nigeria. On mere face value, Karen was not the best Nigeria could offer. Her mate in the house Vina would have been more like it. Vina spoke the English better than the original owners of the language. She was smart and intelligent. She belonged to the class of the privilegentsia. But Karen was the exact opposite.  But in her we found the never-say-die spirit of Nigerians, our incredible resilience against all odds and the ability to trudge on in the face of daunting challenges.
Karen was all sprawled out on the floor after her infamous drinking binge a week to the end of the race, begging to be set free from the gilded cage called BIG BROTHER HOUSE. She was tired and drained and was ready to go home without the big prize. She looked really pathetic in her state of abject stupefaction. I was sure the tragic end had come for this young lady who was totally oblivious of her stupendous popularity outside the house. She was topping all polls by very wide margins. Only if she knew how close she was. Such is the ignorance of mere mortals in matters of telling the future.  She was totally blind to what surprises awaited her.  Mercifully, the big Brother ignored her plea to go home and abandon a race that was virtually hers to win.

At that moment, I truly believed some witches and wizards were pursuing this girl from home. How can you explain the fact that Karen was ready to use her own hands to throw away the $200,000 that was sitting pretty in her account even ahead of her induction into the big league? The demonic spirit of self-doubt had crept into her soul and was ready to wreak havoc in the most ruthless manner. But miraculously she rose up to continue the struggle of life. Her grand occasion would come during her final Monday chat session. Karen chose to go for the jugular and killed everyone with her compelling narrative. She combined the skills of the master story-tellers, in the mould of Chinua Achebe, Daniel Oroleye Fagunwa, Akinwumi Isola, Oladejo Okediji, Cyprian Ekwensi, John Munonye, Elechi Amadi, Amos Tutuola, and others in the lucidity of her language. Like an accomplished sniper, she fired her shots with mathematical precision. Many of her viewers were weeping across the continent as they connected with her tales of woes. She chose the right time and the best moment to drop her bombshell. It was just like writing a magnum opus. And she garnished her epic story with drama. She cried and smiled, simultaneously. It was strange but real and believable. We watched rapturously as she reeled out the tapes of her excruciating journey and the graph of her life meandered in a zigzag fashion. And that was all she needed to spin our thoughts towards her. In a jiffy, she had become the most talked about Nigerian the whole week.

The Karen fever was spreading all over Africa. And her worst critics like me became her biggest fans. In that magical week, Nigerians rose stoutly to her defence and votes poured in heavy torrents. We saw what raw determination can achieve as well as what I would love to describe as youth power. The greatest lesson to learn from this is that our youths have what it takes to liberate Nigeria and propel us to the next level.

Last week, they took over Africa and made it impossible for anyone to ignore the raw Nigerian spirit and energy in Karen. They can replicate this mega force in the arena of politics.