Obama Associate Got $100,000 Fee From Affiliate Of Firm Doing Business With Iran.

EZRA IJIOMA WITH AGENCY REPORT.

David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser who was President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, accepted a $100,000 speaking fee in 2010 from an affiliate of a company doing business with Iran’s government, Washington Post reports.
A subsidiary of MTN Group, a South Africa-based telecommunications company, paid Plouffe for two speeches he made in Nigeria in December 2010, about a month before he joined the White House staff.
Since Plouffe’s speeches, MTN Group has come under intensified scrutiny from U.S. authorities because of its activities in Iran and Syria, which are under international sanctions intended to limit the countries’ access to sensitive technology. At the time of Plouffe’s speeches, MTN had been in a widely reported partnership for five years with a state- owned Iranian telecommunications firm.
 There were no legal or ethical restrictions on Plouffe being paid to speak to the MTN subsidiary as a private citizen. But for a close Obama aide to have accepted payment from a company involved in Iran could prove troublesome for the president as the White House toughens its stance toward the Islamic republic. In recent weeks, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has accused the administration of being soft on Iran.
The White House declined to make Plouffe available for an interview. Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, said Sunday that criticizing Plouffe would be unfair because MTN Group’s role in Iran was not a high-profile issue when he was invited to speak to the affiliate.
“He gave two speeches on mobile technology and digital communications and had no separate meetings with the company’s leadership,” Schultz said in a statement to The Washington Post.
White House officials said in an e-mail that Plouffe referred the proposed speech to his lawyer for review before accepting the invitation. The e-mail said Plouffe’s lawyer advised that MTN’s business dealings did not raise any issues “that would weigh against acceptance of the proposed speaking engagement.”
White House officials said it was not unusual for Washington figures to receive similar fees for speeches. They noted that senior officials in the George W. Bush administration had been paid for speeches by companies doing business in Iran.
Plouffe has had no role in administration discussions on whether MTN Group or other companies might be sanctioned because of its activities in Iran, the officials said.
 MTN executives denied violating any sanctions but acknowledged that they have been in discussions with administration authorities for months.
Paul Norman, a spokesman for MTN Group, said that the company sought Plouffe’s participation “because of his expertise and his knowledge of the U.S. political scene.

Fuel Subsidy Suspects May Flee The Country, Immigration Warns.

CHIKA ODITTAH.

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has raised the alarm that suspects being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for alleged involvement in subsidy fraud may jump bail and flee the country if the commission does not forward the watch list of the suspects to the NIS.
A source close to the NIS, who sought anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, disclosed this during an exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP yesterday.
The source added that unless the watch list comprising suspects being tried is forwarded to the NIS, some of the suspects might jump bail and escape from the country through the use of multiple identities.
He  explained that there was no way the NIS would know  persons standing trial for any particular offence, unless relevant agencies handling such cases issue it with full details of such individuals.
According to him, the development will guide the NIS to be on the lookout for indicted persons who may want to flee the country using any of the seaports and airports in the country.
When asked the propriety of how some individuals obtained multiple copies of Nigerian international passports, the source said unless the visa pages were exhausted, the NIS would not issue any holder a new passport.
He however linked the possibility of suspects jumping bail and fleeing the country un-detected to a situation where such a criminal has dual citizenship. According to him, the development enables such a person to hold international passports other than those of their native land.
He said, “I can tell you that the Immigration does not issue passports to anybody by proxy. You have to be physically present, showing vital documents which we require to issue any Nigerian a passport.
“So when you talk about a suspect facing trial for subsidy scam being denied bail because he jumped bail and fled the country, it cannot be that he has more than one Nigerian passport. Don’t forget, some of these people carry dual citizenship status, in which case they not only carry a Nigerian passport, but they also have foreign passports with which they can travel at any time”.
He also confirmed the existence of a special desk within NIS for collaborating with agencies of government to carry out surveillance on fleeing suspects with their full identities, saying that the measure is a tactical way to forestall a situation where suspect will abscond.  He added that this development would better guide the service to scale up its surveillance.
One of the fuel subsidy suspects, Oluwaseun Ogunbambo, was denied bail last week.  Justice Adeniyi Onigbanjo of a Lagos high court had denied Ogunbanbo bail on the grounds of his criminal antecedents. Prior to the commencement of the subsidy trial, Ogunbambo was alleged to have failed to service huge debts totalling N230m and N430m respectively which he secured from StanbicIBTC Bank. The suspect was reported to have fled the country, despite the confiscation of his international passport and all other vital documents by the EFCC. He was said to have immediately obtained another international passport to evade the IBTC loan scam.
It took the collaboration of the EFCC and Interpol to track and arrest of Ogunbambo at the Dublin Airport in Ireland months after. He was reportedly caught with huge sums of foreign exchange which contravened the law in Ireland.
Further investigations by the EFCC also revealed that Ogunbambo allegedly operates multiple travel documents obtained with fictitious names. For instance, he is said to be popularly known and addressed as “Benson Adekunbo” and at other times “Aladapo Sobowale” in the United Kingdom.

When optimism is no longer enough.

By Pini Jason.

LAST week, while receiving the report of the Alfa Belgore-led Presidential Committee on the Review of Outstanding Issues, President Goodluck Jonathan said: “Our enduring sense of brotherhood, unwavering desire for freedom, unique resilience and abiding faith in Nigeria, have seen us through sundry challenges over the past 52 years of nationhood.
I am confident that these innate attributes will provide us the requisite fortitude to persevere and overcome in the face of new challenges”.
My fear about this somewhat overstretched platitude is that it lures one into a temptation to say let us all go to sleep, by the time we wake up, all our national challenges would have been resolved by our “enduring sense of brotherhood” and our “unique resilience”.
First, can we truthfully say we have “overcome” one challenge since independence? Anyone who truly appreciates the severity of our present challenges would rightly doubt if the mere expression of this type of optimism is enough to see us through these times.
The truth is that our “unique resilience”, another way of saying that Nigerians are long suffering, and an excuse for the cowboys called politicians to brazenly ride roughshod over us, has worn thin. That weariness is what is manifesting as the general and seemingly intractable violence in our land!
Let us contrast the above sophistry with the latest statement reportedly by the violent Islamic sect that there is not going back in its jihad  in Nigeria.
In a refutation of the information that the new National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) was in contact with them, the sect, after gloating about the continuing bloodbath in Plateau State, said, “Like we said earlier, Christians  in Nigeria should accept Islam, that is true religion, or they will never have peace. We do not regard them as trusted Christians as some illiterates are campaigning because it was Christians that first declared war on Muslims with the support of government”.
After some other dilatory rambling, the sect concluded: “We do not have any agenda than working to establish Islamic Kingdom like during the time of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), no matter what will happen to us”. The general attitude has been to dismiss this kind of threat as unserious. But such ostrich posture has flooded the land with the blood of innocent Nigerians.
Last week, while presenting two books on Nigeria’s foreign policy to President Jonathan, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Secretary General of the Commonwealth and Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on Foreign Relations said that the current insecurity in Nigeria is a drag on the nation’s foreign policy.
If you remember the pedigree of Chief Anyaoku as an international diplomat, you would know that he had carefully chosen his words. Anybody less diplomatic would have told you that Nigerian’s global image has been grossly diminished! Every little country is now kicking the butt of Nigerians from Oliver Tambo airport in Johannesburg to the local markets in Ghana!
As if we needed to be reminded, Baroness Lynda Chalker warned us that investments will soon dry up if we did not act quickly. We can only wish away the ominous signs that our country is unraveling at our greater peril. The National Youth Service Corp, an institution that symbolises “our sense of brotherhood” is now falling apart. As I always remind people, no country sits down at a conference to decide to go to civil war. Countries simply drift into civil war and disintegration. With our resilience wearing  thin, “innate attributes” of the past may not be enough to get us out of the wood right now.
The discussions since the appointment of Sambo Dasuki as the NSA, sound as if he alone can resolve  the current problems.
It is good to repose confidence on his abilities, connections and experience. But in fairness  to him, I don’t think that he has any magic wand, especially if other institutions fail to work. He will only succeed to the extent we  honestly want him to succeed.
We now need to reexamine our approach to the solution of the current crisis. Could we be  tackling the symptoms instead of the root causes of the crisis?
Honestly, I am not surprised that the Islamic sect can boldly declare war on Christians. Yet, I hear people making “politically correct” statements like; the terrorism is not religious; it is as a result of poverty; it is because of revenue allocation! Now the sect, in its own words, has put the lie to all that diversionary posturing.
We sowed the seeds of the violence we are reaping today. I give an example. When South Africa was emerging from apartheid, there was a serious debate about the form of government.
The Inkhata Freedom Party wanted separate regional governments. But knowing that such arrangement would afford the retreating apartheid a window for neo-apartheid intrigues, the ANC put its feet down for a strong central government with a very liberal constitution.
Turkey, we all know, is 99.9 percent Muslim. But Attarturk built a modern secular state  that is today a competitive European country. I don’t think the Turks are less Muslims because of that. The Turkish Military has an abiding duty to protect and defend the secularity of the state and has had occasions to step in and abort any threat to Turkey’s secularity and thereafter go back to the barracks.
As we say, a constitution is the biography of a country, capturing its history and experience. But we have simply refused to accept the reality of either our history or our experience as a people aspiring for “brotherhood” in a heterogeneous country.
A nation at war with self
Our equivocation about secularity of the country has come home to roost. If we did not drag religion into partisan politics, looking for who is a Christian and who is a Muslim or animist, instead of looking for who is competent, we wouldn’t be where we are today, a regressing nation at war with itself!
There is even another dimension of the religious dichotomy silently rearing its head today in Igbo land. There is a simmering inter-denominational war waiting to happen, if some clerics are not called to order to restrain themselves from a provocative expansionist intrusion into partisan politics.
The new struggle today in Igbo land is which denomination will own and control the states. And politicians are using holy water-carrying clerics as battle rams in a quest to confuse and dupe the people. The pulpit has become a platform for political campaign with all its vulgarity!
We must reach deep down to find out the basic truth about us. What is it that preoccupies us when the masses in an oil rich country spend all day to queue for kerosene and hundred are roasted trying to scoop fuel from the ground? What is that more important thing we are doing for which we cannot protect lives and property?
Why does a country that preaches so much about “brotherhood” and unity be a land of hate and strife? Why are two religions that preach peace at each other’s throat? Is it that the razor blade is blunt or the barber is incompetent? We must ask ourselves these questions!

When is an election credible?

By Pini Jason.

“When the President and Commander-in-Chief puts the country first and conducts himself as a statesman, credible elections are possible”
THE above hubristic statement was credited to His Excellency, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, Governor of Edo State, as he savoured his re-election on Saturday 14 July. Comrade Oshomhole also tried to rationalise his false alarm against INEC and the PDP. He would not admit that he was hasty in condemning INEC’s conduct of the Edo election.
I disagree with some of his reasons for raising an alarm which was intended to preemptively rubbish  the election were he to lose. He and his party the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, even cried foul over the deployment of soldiers and Police to maintain peace during the election. But now that he has won, all is well. I don’t think that we should accept the doctrine that the only credible election is the one won by the opposition. That is pure blackmail.
Make no mistake about it; this is not strictly about Comrade Oshomhole. All the political parties are guilty of this shenanigan. During election campaigns we hardly hear a political party’s position on issues that can advance our nation. No. Party “A” cries out that it has unearthed a plan by party “B” to rig the election. Party “B” in turn accuses party “A” of planning to print fake ballots. Party “C” accuses others of buying and selling voters’ cards. And when that is not enough to catch attention, a joker cries out about a threat to his miserable life!
The joker does not take the proof of the threat to the security agencies. No. He goes to the media. Unfortunately, these fictions deliberately concocted to put opponents on the defensive find believers who often prime themselves for mayhem on election day.
All these played out in the Edo election and Comrade Oshomhole was at the centre of it. Two months to the election, he wrote a petition to the Chairman of INEC detailing “plans by his opponents to use underhand tactics with the help of some officials (of INEC) to try and disenfranchise eligible electorate”. Late arrival of voting materials is one of the plans, according to Comrade Oshomhole.
The Comrade Governor commended President Goodluck Jonathan for “allowing” democracy to take its course. Here again, I do not subscribe to this idea that democracy has to be “allowed” by the President to take its course. The implication is that when the President chooses not to “allow” it, we won’t have democracy.
Such seeming benevolence is exactly the rule of one man and we should not encourage it. What we all should insist on is a democracy in which the electoral process belongs to the people, not to the government or to the President.
We have serious challenges in conducting free and fair elections. INEC under the chairmanship of Prof. Attahiru Jega has tried its best to restore credibility to the process.
Agreed, he has received the support of the President in the relative success he has achieved so far, but overcoming some of the outstanding challenges lies squarely in the hands of ordinary Nigerians and the political parties. One  major problem we experience in every election  is  late arrival of electoral materials at polling stations.
Nigeria has a vast landmass and treacherous terrains. Anybody who thinks that we can overcome the logistical challenges of distributing voting materials in the morning of election day should tell us the magic formula! Even to achieve that in a local government without a  hitch is  impossible.
Let us look at the reality
Why do we forget that those people used in conducting elections are Nigerians; human beings like us? They wake up on election day; a day we have decreed “no movement” and are confronted with the problem of getting to the LG Headquarters to collect voting materials.
Let us assume they get there in time. They now wait for the security men and the Electoral officer in charge to sort out the materials, ward by ward and polling booth by polling booth. The earliest this can be completed is ten o’clock. Let us also assume that the vehicles contracted to convey the polling officers turn up in time.
They first dispatch those going to the farthest polling booths in order to give as many electorate a fair chance of voting at the same time with others. So Governor Oshomhole’s observation that materials got to more remote villages before places ten minutes away was correct but it was not a deliberate plan to disfranchise anybody. INEC does this in every election as far as I know.
It was simply trying to solve a problem the best way it could. If we insist on sorting and distributing election materials (we call then “sensitive” materials) on election morning, those materials will continue to arrive polling booths late!
In November 2008 I was in Accra Ghana. As at that November, all the materials for the general elections of January 2009, which was acclaimed by the world as the best, and earned Ghana the honour of hosting President Obama’s first African state visit, had all been distributed all over the regions of Ghana! Yet, Ghana is smaller than two states in Nigeria in landmass.
The Chief electoral officers for various Regions and constituencies were able to crosscheck the materials and conduct trainings for the polling officers with the materials before election day. The only complain I heard about the preparations was by a Resident Electoral Commissioner who lamented about the shortage of manpower but added that he was training personnel and would be able to address the shortage before the election.
But if INEC distributed materials nationwide, three months ahead of elections, party “A” would scream to heavens that it was a plan by INEC and the opponent to rig the election! If the Resident Electoral Officer attempts to crosscheck and sort the materials out in advance, that would amount to secret thumb printing and stuffing the ballot boxes in favour of the ruling party!
Every loudmouth would invade TV stations to mouth obscenities until the election was discredited before it even took place! I am not naïve to believe that politicians are not capable of electoral fraud but I cannot accept that the only credible election is that won by the opposition.
For sure, if ACN had lost, there would have been a querulous  cry that the election was not free and fair, not because the opponent rigged but more likely because ACN had prepared the ground to discredit it. As it is, our politicians are more concerned with winning than helping our electoral process to evolve. I think it will make a huge difference if our politicians also put the country first and conduct themselves as statesmen.

Power is nothing without control

By Pini Jason.

MY caption today is borrowed form the pay off of the Pirelli tyre advertisement. I find it very profound whenever I contemplate the appeal to importance and the relish of power by people. Nigerians love their power and always like to wield it exclusively.
For example, during the days of police check points, if you queried a policeman for standing dangerously on the middle of the highway to flag down a vehicle hurtling down at the speed of 160 kilometres per  hour, he simply retorts: “You want to teach me my job?” Nigerians at every opportunity exhibit this type of infallibility in exercise of their power. That is why many things go wrong for us!
In recent times, members of the National Assembly have shown us that they are not in the mood to brook any opinion from us who presumably “elected” them into office. The mood has been to crack down on anybody and any institution that stands in their way.
They summon anybody at the slightest provocation. Even the President of the Federal Republic is not spared! They order the sack of any member of the executive that crosses their way, and once the fatwa is pronounced on you, you become un-person, unfit to attend a seating of its committee. As someone said, we are witnessing the emergence of an executive legislature!
Nobody is in doubt about the National Assembly’s power of oversight, except, perhaps the National Assembly itself. The three prominent Investigative probes of the House of Representatives—the Elumelu power (no pun intended) probe, the Herman Hembe Capital Market Crash probe and the Farouk Lawan Subsidy probe—have all been tainted by corruption allegations.
he disgraced Hembe Committee yielded way to the Hon. Ibrahim Tukur El-Sudi Committee. On 17 July, the El-Sudi Committee submitted its report to the House of Representatives. The report did not surprise a few in its observations, conclusions, tone and acerbity. Its inelegant language, grammar  and  syntax did not do justice to the powerful Committee, either.
From the preponderance of submissions by various stakeholders, it was clear why the Capital Market crashed. But what was rather surprising was what the Committee chose to make of the submissions. It seems the Committee only heard what it wanted to hear, from whom it wanted to hear it, took only what submissions it wanted to take and peremptorily dismissed those that seemed to run counter to preconceived conclusions.
If we remember previous encounters between the National Assembly and the Governor of the Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, it could not surprise anyone that those who had previously stepped on the toes of the National Assembly were made to taste the powers of the House.
There seems to be an old boy network in operation. I was not surprised that Sanusi and Mustapha Chike-Obi were treated in the report  like hostile witnesses. I chuckled when I read Femi Otedola’s submission to the Committee.
Perhaps ,if he appeared before the Committee after his saga with Farouk Lawan, it was predictable what reception he would have got, given that another House Committee chairman had called him “stupid”. So, nobody expected that Ms. Arunma Oteh, the embattled Director General of the Security and Exchange Commission, would be recommended for a National Award after her encounter with Hembe!
Well, we don’t have to teach the Committee its job! But a few things were very puzzling in the report. One was the ease with which the Committee deprecated institutions and individuals in obvious de-marketing terms without sparing a thought to the possible consequences to the future of the very institution it set out to save!
The report gave weight to what it called the CBN Governor, Sanusi’s “contradictory regulatory policies”, “the overbearing posture of the CBN”, “injection of unearned cash into the economy by the CBN”, AMCON’s bonds based on “dubious valuations of NPLs” and “the roles of NDIC, CBN, AMCON, CAC,” as the reasons for the crash of the Capital Market.
The report described the nationalization of Afribank, Bank PHB and Spring Bank as “contrived in misrepresentations of monumental proportions” and “built on forgeries, with presentations and appearances of fraud and corruption”! My God! It appears no institution connected with the financial sector in the country has any credibility! Why would any foreigner not de-invest?
Some of the reasons adduced by the report for the crash of the Capital Market were correct, in fact pretty obvious. But we cannot ignore the role of a general and persisting uncertainty in the political and economic environment in capital flight. Moreover, high incidence of corruption, especially among the highest institutions in the land is one of the greatest catalysts for capital flight.
Differentiating Sanusi and Chike-Obi
Honestly, reading through the report one gets the impression that the Committee hurriedly ended its assignment. Going through the list of documents demanded from the CBN and AMCON, the conclusion would be that had the Committee received all of them, it would still be purring through them by now.
If those documents were as vital to the probe as it made us believe, then it should not have wound up sitting leaving the report with such a huge gap. The frustration of not getting the documents led the Committee to lash out at AMCON and CBN to the extent of not differentiating Sanusi and Chike-Obi from the institutions they head.
One did not expect the report of a serious and highly controversial probe to resort to mere conjectures and speculations or to draw conclusions from taking some expressions literally. For example, we all know that Sanusi shoots from the hips and sometimes rustles feathers.
But when he likened the capital market to a gambling casino known as ‘kalokalo’ and Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, former Governor of CBN likened it to a game with snake, they were merely saying that “investors are ultimate risk takers”. Is there any investment that is without risk, or that is not a gamble? Prof. Soludo said that Stock Market crashes are never permanently prevented.
The Committee has the powers to reject that, depending on its belief or not in the nature of boom and burst. But it was an absolutely embarrassing imputation for the Committee to say that Soludo’s was implying that “once he (Soludo) is not the one in charge that no one else knows what to do!”
In another conjecture the Committee said: “The CBN had not done anything within itself. This, perhaps, could be reason why the former Governor of the CBN felt that the capital market crash would continue to occur in Nigeria”.
Another conjecture: “Since the CBN does not account to anybody, but to itself, one could only infer at best, that the CBN has a lot to hide regarding its contribution to the fall in the financial assets’ prices”. A speculation: “Since SEC gains from increased trading volumes, it may relax regulatory actions that have the potency of reducing trading volumes”.
There were a few contradictions in the report. In one breath the Committee said that “AMCON remains an institution that is under no effective regulation as it accounts to no one”. In another breath, it admits that “yet it is regulated by the CBN”. There seems to be a mix up about the roles of the CBN and AMCON and who among them is a regulator of what!
The Committee lamented that “The CBN also made it impossible for the Committee to verify allegations that the various capital verification exercises conducted by it were based on allocation of figures that do not represent actual capital levels of the (intervened) banks…” In other words, CBN used cooked evidence to intervene in the banks in 2009. But in paragraph 13 “the Committee findings revealed” some of the same reasons for which CBN sacked the management of Afribank, Finbank and others.
When the Committee observed that “The apex security body SEC looked the other way” while the banks in Nigeria were going to the capital market frequently, one is compelled to ask under whose watch in SEC and NSE did that happen?
It is curious that throughout the report, Musa Al Faki was mentioned only once; in connection with alleged wrongful termination of some staff of SEC! After her voluptuous appearance and high voltage presentation, the report only mentioned Prof. Ndi Okereke Onyiuke in parenthesis in a line and half pleading that allegations against her are subjudice!
One good thing is that the report is still to be debated by the House. The House should thoroughly look into it and give it a facelift. Reading the report is like eating a plate of rice with a lot of stones!

How did the Farouk/Otedola saga end?

By Pini Jason.

WHEN last did you read about Rep. Farouk Lawan, Femi Otedola and the US$ 620,000 thriller? Where is Farouk Lawan? Where is Femi Otedola? Where is the 620,000 dollars bribe money? How did the story end?
What has happened to the Farouk subsidy probe report and the companies first deleted and re-inserted in the list of culpable companies? What has happened to the House Committee of Ethics etc probe into the bribe saga?
Why is the House of Representatives silent on this but rather prickly about the implementation of the budget?  Why has the story slipped out of our minds and out of the news pages? So what we have to debate now is what percentage of the budget has been implemented or how much of the budget allocations have been released? Is there a conspiracy of silence?
Honestly, this amnesia was predicted. On 10 July 2012 I wrote here that: “My prediction is that at the end of the day, this case will become another Ibori case. Rep. Farouk Lawan will walk away free and the nation may need to apologise to him!” This pattern of anti-corruption war has been with us. When the government’s back is pushed to the wall, it simply leads us through a charade while it waits for the matter to flip out of our minds. For effect another sizzler is introduced to effectively sedate us.
Meanwhile alleged oil subsidy thieves are being charged to court and granted bail for N20 million! If you can steal N4 billion, why would it be difficult to post bail for N20 million? Just forget the trials. They get their bail, trial stalls for  years and we forget and move on to another movie slide.
The list of those charged at least confirms one fact. Nigerians are right that political cronies are holding the oil industry, and by extension Nigerians, to ransom. Nigerians are very much aware of the corruption campaign contributions have created in the oil industry.
A few years ago it was alleged that one of the richest Nigerians raided banks in Lagos for billions to contribute to a presidential election.
Immediately after the election, the individual allegedly got five waivers from the Federal Government as the government slapped a fuel price increase on Nigerians! There can be no doubt that campaign contributions are closely linked with the sleaze in the oil industry.
The United States puts a limit to campaign contributions to avoid inherent corrupting effects. This type of limit is in the INEC laws but is hardly enforced. But I believe that we can, if we put our minds to it. Again, there is always a concern about the influence of lobbyists in US politics and government. For us, the question is how much space we can give oil lobbyists in the management of our economy.
It is a mark of Nigeria’s un-seriousness that the dreaded oil mafia and avaricious monopolists constitute our economic management! With that, it should not surprise anybody that the Farouk/Otedola tango would go the way it has. But such behaviour sets Nigeria on the path of destruction and diminishes our standing in the eyes of the world.
When things happen this way, especially at the highest level of the government, corruption is no longer an isolated disease to be dealt with but a pandemic that requires a concerted mass action to uproot it.
Therefore, if the Federal Government continues to equivocate in taking firm action to rid Nigeria of corruption and instead continues to play on our collective intelligence, it risks unwittingly inviting an unorthodox solution to this national plague! As I wrote this (last week Wednesday morning) I was watching a TV clip of thousands of Nigerian children (ages five to 17) being trafficked into slave labour.
These children are enslaved by poverty, poverty induced by corruption! These children are enslaved because a greedy few among us continue to pocket the billions belonging to all of us! I really do not know for how long this will continue before something monumental gives!
As we continue this fuel subsidy bellyaching, the big question is: why should we be importing what we should be exporting? Nobody seems to have the answer. Nobody sees this anomaly as a national disgrace.
Obasanjo and oil industry corruption
When General Olusegun Obasanjo was being foisted on the nation in 1999, he was touted as the greatest nationalist that ever walked the soil of Nigeria. He also believed the dubious ascription and it showed in his swagger (I dey kampe!).
That this nationalist looked corruption, especially in the oil industry, eyeball to eyeball and blinked, then looked the other way, and anointed some of the present day fuel subsidy thieves is the greatest leadership failure of all time for Nigeria. Obasanjo was oil Minister for almost all of his eight year tenure.
He chose not to repair our refineries. He could have built four refineries in eight years, but he chose not to. Rather he created a bureaucracy, PPPRA, to superintend a fraud called fuel subsidy. And a bunch of ruthless cowboys who organised presidential birthday parties ran riot on the economy while Obasanjo’s EFCC chased shadows.
Today, Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida who so bastardised the economy so much that he wondered why it had not collapsed are panicking. Last week fretted about the threatening collapse of Nigeria! Obasanjo and IBB represent the tiny elite for whom Nigeria works. When they claim that Nigeria’s sovereignty is not negotiable, on whose behalf are they speaking? If Nigeria breaks their tiny club will be the losers.
Things will not be worse for us the downtrodden. They better put on their military fatigues again “to fight” for the survival of Nigeria and, maybe, atone for their sins and in the process, if lucky, with only their sweat and nothing else. Nigerians are really, really angry.
President Jonathan must hasten not to continue on the economic path trod by Obasanjo. The National Assembly must realise that whining over constituency projects, insisting on legislating for us the way only they deem fit, summoning and throwing out Ministers, conducting probes that expose their clay footing and dismissing us as “a vocal minority” do not impress hungry Nigerians and do not ease the sufferings of the children trafficked into slavery by poverty.
Let me sound a note of warning; if nothing urgent and convincing is done to wean Nigeria of impunity and obsessive corruption, Nigerians will take to the streets again and when they do, the January 2012 outing will just be a mere rehearsal!
 On Osun Chief Judge, Aregbesola has my vote!
I READ in Thisday newspaper of Sunday 29 July 2012 of the seeming controversy in Osun state over the intention of the Governor Comrade Rauf Aregbesola to appoint a Lagos Judge, Justice Oyewole, as the Chief Judge of Osun.
These agitators did not quote the part of the Constitution the Governor would breach if he appoints an Igbo man as his Chief Judge. Have Nigerians Judges not served as Chief Judges in other African and Caribbean countries?
I think Aregbesola is on a firm ground, being himself a beneficiary of the appointment of people in a state other than theirs. Check this out: In Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government, Alhaji Lai Mohammed from Kwara was Tinubu’s Chief of Staff; Comrade Aregbesola was the Commissioner for Works, Kayode Anibaba from Ogun State was Commissioner for Environment, Bamidele Opeyemi from Ekiti was Commissioner for Information, Dele Alake from Ondo was Commissioner for Information and Strategy before Opeyemi.
Lagos state people did not protest. All of these people made their fortunes in and from Lagos State to advance their political careers. Nobody is clear  where Tinubu himself comes from, but people say he is not a Lagosian. What else qualified these Dick Wittingtons (apologies to Brigadier Mobolaji Johnson) to invade Lagos other than that they are all Yoruba? Tinubu appointed an Igbo a Commissioner and they made a singsong of it as if he is less entitled to it than these other non-Lagosians!
Incidentally the Justice Oyewole in question is reportedly from Ila in Osun State and was made a Judge of Lagos State in May 2001 by Governor Tinubu. So, why should what is good for Lagos not be good for Osun State? People should not open a Pandora box.
Last time, politicians in Lagos protested against the nomination of Mrs. Tokunbo Awolowo Dosunmu as an ambassador from Lagos state where she had lived and paid taxes almost all her life. The protesters included those who made their political careers by invoking her father’s name! Of course, the inimitable Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, then Senate President, ignore them and, in his words, “confirmed Mrs. Dosunmu as Ogun candidate via Lagos State”!
Politicians and some greedy civil servants must not form an alliance to retard the progress of Nigeria towards a common citizenship; the type of thing that has caused blood to flow in Plateau State. Governor Ohakim’s Commissioner for Housing, Mr. Tito Asakheme was originally from Edo state, but had lived in Imo for more than 25 years! Ohakim had Advisers and Assistants from Abia and Anambra.
Gbenga, a Yoruba who spoke better Igbo than many born in Owerri worked in the Accounts department of Ohakim’s Government House. He still lives in Owerri. The only thing I know that can stop Aregbesola from appointing Justice Oyewole as Chief Judge of Osun state is the hierarchy of seniority!

Sharia Law: Endless violence against women.

By Chinonye Ndeokwelu.

Amina Lawal with her child

It shook the world. International organisations were involved. Ambassadors of various countries discussed safety measures, Oprah Winfrey mobilised more than 1.2 million people to protest and Human Right Watch was under severe pressure to act.

It was an exclusive story published by Daily Mirror on August 24, 2002 about the case of Amina Lawal, a 30-year-old woman from Kastina in Northern Nigeria who was sentenced to death by stoning on August 19 of the same year, by an Islamic court for adultery and conceiving a child out of wedlock.  She was to be taken, buried to the neck in the earth and left to perish beneath a hail of rocks.

The story was that of oppression by one gender upon another. Even though Ms Lawal’s case was overturned, the issue of stoning to death still exist in countries like Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Somalia. 

Professor Hauwa Ibrahim, the pro bono lawyer who handled Ms Lawal’s case ten years ago, confirmed that this form of violence and injustice never existed until 2000 when religious cleric feared for the effects of globalisation on their women. She said: “Globalisation through Nollywood, Hollywood and Bollywood was exposing women to nudity, so the Sharia Law was introduced to protect women which ended up destroying them and introducing a huge form of violence.”

Furthermore, there are misconceptions surrounding the fact that stoning to death is supported by the Holy Book of Qur’an. This is untrue. The only part of the Qur’an that describes punishment for adultery or fornication is Qur’an 24:2 which states that: “The [unmarried] woman or [unmarried] man found guilty of sexual intercourse- lash each one of them with a hundred lashes, and do not be taken by pity for them in the religion of Allah and the Last Day. And let a group of the believers witness their punishment.”

While the law provides that women are stoned to death, the father of Ms Lawal’s daughter was not prosecuted for lack of evidence. He was deemed innocent by the court without any DNA tests.  However, the punishment for men in the Sharia Law is based on three proofs. One is confession, the second is pregnancy and the third is that four witnesses must see the sexual act before a man can be convicted. How possible is that?

Professor Ibrahim confirmed that the law is in the book but the judges in Nigeria no longer pass judgement of stoning. One obvious reason is the international interest which Ms Lawal’s case attracted and the other is the notion that corruption has crept into the system. Judges in Northern Nigeria whose children get pregnant fly them abroad to avoid conviction and open disgrace. The Professor of Harvard University also said she is working with Nigerian lawyers and other countries especially in Pakistan, Palestine and Iraq to see that the law is abrogated.

Ms Lawal who lived in a tiny room made with mud and a thatched roof in 2002 was arrested in her home. She could neither read nor write. She didn’t understand the law. Her first marriage was at the age of 14. She had five children after which she became divorced. Two years later, she had a daughter for another man who had promised to marry her but denied her in court.

Her case is a typical example of religious violence existing in developing countries. Women worldwide face different forms of injustice. They are vulnerable to abuse, domestic violence and rape. In Northern Nigeria where Ms Lawal comes from, when a boy is born, friends and relatives exclaim congratulations! A son means insurance. He will inherit his father’s property; get a good job to help support the family. When a girl is born, the reaction is different. Some women weep when they find out their baby is a girl. Her place is in a man’s house and when she is between ages 12- 14 she is given out in marriage.

Some of these women end up being used as machines to produce children. Professor Ibrahim recollected a case she handled in January. It was a case of a well known man [name withheld] in Nigeria who married his first wife and for several years she couldn’t produce children. “So, he had to marry a second wife. The second wife was more productive. In six years of marriage they had five male children. When he knew he had what he wanted, he started maltreating her and he decided to divorce her. We couldn’t get the settlement out of court but now the case is before a magistrate court.”

In some countries, deliberate attempts are made to reduce the female population. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates that around 5,000 Indian women are killed in dowry-related incidents each year. The gender ratio across India has dropped to an unnatural low of 929 females to 1,000 males due to infanticides and sex related abortions. Also, the Chinese government claims that sex-selective abortion is one major explanation for the staggering number of Chinese girls who have simply vanished from the population in the last 20 years.

UNICEF in a press statement on violation of women rights in developing countries said “A combination of extreme poverty and deep biases against women create a remorseless cycle of discrimination that keeps girls in developing countries from living up to their full potential. It also leaves them vulnerable to severe physical and emotional abuse.” 

Injustice against women is a devastating reality. UNICEF continued: “It results in millions of individual tragedies, which add up to lost potential for countries. Studies show there is a direct link between a country’s attitude towards women and its progress socially and economically. The status of women is central to the health of a society.”

Professor Ibrahim recollected that Ms Lawal’s case officially ended in 2003. By 2004, she was remarried and again faced maltreatment from her husband. He beat her up and when she was six months pregnant, he divorced her.

Ms Lawal, alone again with a child kicking inside of her struggled through life until she had the baby who she named Miriam. In 2010, she remarried again but this time Mrs Ibrahim says; “I can’t tell if she is happily married or not.” 

While the Human Right Watch and Amnesty International claim they have grip of violence against women around the world, Senior Researcher on gender in Open University Oxford, Dr. Tina Wallace  said nobody has the true data of how much domestic violence, religious violence or discrimination women endure.  She said: “I don’t think anybody has that kind of data. Who are these women going to tell?  Who knows what goes on behind closed doors? I don’t think there is a significant difference between religious and domestic violence against women because a lot of domestic violence are based on religious understanding of men being superior to women and women owing men allegiance. You can’t separate religion from domestic violence.” 

Dr Wallace, whose research is mainly on women in Africa, added that: “These are really difficult issues that go to the heart of marriages, their culture and the way they have been brought up. Even here in the UK, it is a very difficult subject to tackle; we have loads of homes with domestic violence a lot of which is not known.”

However, Sarah Haynes, grassroots campaigns officer, Women for Women International; said they work extensively with women to address violence when it is reported. She said: “We are helping women deal with the trauma in African continent especially in Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan and Nigeria where gender crisis is ongoing. These women are sponsored for one year to equip them with the skills to contribute to the society without bearing hangovers from their past hurt.”

Head of Centre for Gender and Violence Research Bristol University, Professor Marianne Hester says gender injustice has increased in various dimensions. She said this increase has a link to decreasing services in the most countries.

In her view, the injustice melted on women especially in developing countries would tremendously reduce “if men begin to address their violent behaviour and also there should be a measure to call for equalising of gender.”

Researcher and director of Tilda Goldberg Centre for Social Work and Social Care, University of Bedfordshire, Dr Sarah Galvani said: “It is totally unacceptable to abuse women in any way because it perpetuates the subjugation of women and convey messages to young and old that women are not men’s equals and deserve to be treated as lesser beings.”

To reduce or eradicate this form of injustice, she said: “a start would be to introduce and enforce laws that suitably punish those that abuse women. More so, services and support for women in need of protection should be intensified.”

Mrs Oby Okonkwo, Nigerian gender activist and a lawyer for about 30 years said progress has been made through organisations like International Federation of Women Lawyer (FIDA) and Women's Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA) in Northern areas to educate them of their rights as women.

She however lamented that most “women are scared of speaking out as a result of the stigma they could face after bringing their problem to public eye.”

As for Ms Lawal, who represents the voiceless, poor, powerless uneducated woman, 10 years on, she is still struggling to endure life.

Professor Ibrahim who also escaped marriage at the age of 12 but ‘accidentally’ became educated said “Education is the tool that can help break the pattern of gender injustice and bring lasting change for women in developing countries.”

UNICEF 2011 report says, nine million girls than boys miss out of school every year. 

Chinonye is currently studying for an MA in International Journalism at Cardiff University, U.K