Dangote donates N430m to flood victims, women in Kogi

Africa’s foremost industrialist and President of Dangote Group of Industries, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, at the weekend donated N430million to victims of floods and women in Kogi State.
The state is home to Dangote’s Cement factory, said to be one of world’s largest. It also hosts Dangote Academy of Learning and Development, where young local talents are trained to boost the manpower needs of the nation’s industries.
At a ceremony attended by top government functionaries in Lokoja, the state capital, Dangote said the contribution was administered by his foundation to complement the effort of the government in providing materials to flood victims and resettling them as soon as possible.
The renowned industrialists said foodstuff and relief materials worth N50million would be donated to the victims and N150million would be given in cash.
He said N230million would be shared to women at N10,000 each to boost their businesses.
Dangote said he was touched by the pains of the flood victims, adding that the floods caused the death of some residents and the destruction of property.
According to him, it may lead to the spread of diseases and epidemics.
He said: “Obviously, the government alone cannot shoulder this onerous responsibility of bringing relief to the victims. The private sector and public-spirited individuals should join hands with the government to assist the victims of this national disaster that has ravaged about 21 states of the federation.”
Dangote said his foundation was increasing its philanthropic profile across the world.
Dangote, who was accompanied by his daughter, Hajia Halima, hailed Governor Idris Wada for quickly taking measures that reduced the suffering of the victims.
He praised the Federal Government for its intervention through the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), saying the agency dispatched a search and rescue team to Ibaji Local Government Area to rescue victims and donate drugs, clothes and other items.
With the governor, the philanthropist inspected some of the flooded areas of Lokoja and visited some victims at their temporary camp at St. Luke’s Primary School, Adankolo.
Wada described the gesture as overwhelming.
The governor noted that it was the largest donation the state had received for the victims.
He said the floods were of historical significance to the people because many of them took things for granted.
The Nation

Gowon, Awo behind genocide –Col Achuzia

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…Says his coming book will lend credence to Achebe
By CHIDI OBINECHE
A participant and apparent living encyclopedia of the events that led to the fratricidal civil war in Nigeria between 1967 – 1970, Col Joe Achuzia (Air raid) has joined issues with critics of celebrated novelist, Prof Chinua Achebe, who in his latest work “There was a country,” blamed former head of state, Gen Yakubu Gowon (retd) and the Yoruba political leader, and vice chairman of the then National Executive Council, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, of formulating policies that led to the horrendous genocide against the Igbos of Eastern Nigeria.
Achuzia yesterday told Daily Sun that the duo were squarely responsible for the genocide, while dismissing critics of Achebe. Pointedly, he accused Gowon of playing the ostrich while brazen murders of his military superiors and massive genocide were being perpetrated under his watch. He also accused Awolowo of using his position after his release from prison to extract a pound of flesh from his perceived enemies, whom he believed, unwittingly, through the NPC/NCNC Accord (Northern Peoples Congress/National Council of Nigeria Citizens) contributed to his imprisonment.
Achuzia, who is putting finishing touches to his own civil war memoirs, said that when released, it would finally settle the issue, and put the duo in vintage position as prime perpetrators of the genocide of more than three million Easterners who were said to have died during the strife. He went down memory lane to exhume salient facts to buttress the professor’s stand: “I landed in the country from overseas on the day of the July 29 coup. I had known the late Murtala Mohammed and knew he was one of those involved in the crises at the time. He met me at the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Lagos and arranged accommodation for my family and me for two days before we departed for Benin.
There was intense struggle for power between Murtala Mohammed and Gowon before and during the Coup. The middle belt who had more numerical strength in the army supported Gowon.” He continues, “When Gowon took over, he relied more on Awolowo and the permanent secretaries – Allison Ayinda, Phillip Asiodu, in formulating policies. Immediately Awo was released from prison, which Ojukwu was instrumental to, thinking he had a friend, strong anti-Igbo sentiments welled up in the government. Unfortunately Awo never forgives nor forgets.
The events that led him to prison were never lost on him and somehow, the NPC/NCNC accord was the issue. He became the minister of finance and went after the Igbos through his policies. I was in prison when Gowon held the so-called security meeting that declared police action. The strategic studies institute was originally planned to be located in the Mid-West then. Gowon, at the meeting,directed that I should be released from prison and head the institute. The then head of prisons, Giwa Osagie divulged the information to the late Anthony Enahoro and Awo. He suggested that instead of sitting down in a house for the discussion, since walls have ears, they should drive about and talk in the car, so that his secrets would be secured. He forgot that the driver of the car was an Igbo man, who later ran to the superintendent of prisons at Kirikiri and squealled.
The prisons superintendent summoned me and asked the driver to narrate his story again. Thereafter, I demanded to see Barrister Okuzo and the late Chief Collins Obih of ACB (African Continental Bank). They came in the morning to see me and I narrated what I heard to them. Later, they reached out to the military hierarchy including Gowon. Four days after the incident, Osagie was sacked and it caused a lot of commotion. That was in 1970.
Achebe got to know about these and he reflected them in his new book. These two people were responsible for the formulation of policies and execution of the civil war including the genocide. When I release my own book which is in the making, many things will come to the fore. I remember that after the declaration of police action by Gowon, I urged those who used their position to unleash horror and death on innocent people, before and during the civil war, advising those that are still alive among them to seek for forgiveness and atonement of their sins against humanity.
The Sun

The little proxy war in Lagos

By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor
The court verdict on the outcome of last October’s local government election in Ikoyi/Obalende Development Council Area of Lagos State is a tonic for the long suffering opposition PDP in the state. Is it sustainable?
Justice Dolapo Akinsanya’s reputation as a fearless and courageous woman in the judiciary was not achieved recently. As a High Court judge in the Lagos judiciary she came to national limelight in 1993 when she delivered the judgment that removed the legal framework under which the interim national government contraption of Chief Ernest Shonekan had vainly sought to legitimise itself.
Now retired from the bench, Justice Akinsanya as head of a five man local government election tribunal in Lagos State, again came to fore last Thursday with a judgment on a nationally watched proxy political battle in Lagos.

Tinubu: ACN National Leader; Justice Akinsanya and Obanikoro: PDP leader

In its judgment, the Justice Akinsanya led panel overturned the declaration of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN’s Adewale Adeniji as the winner of the local government chairmanship election conducted last October. Going more, the panel in a landmark 4 to 1 decision declared the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP’s Ibrahim Obanikoro as the winner of the election.
The reverberation of the judgment was of serious consideration and cause for celebration for the long suffering Lagos PDP which until now had not made any electoral impact in the state since the advent of the Asiwaju Bola Tinubu phenomenon. What is even being celebrated by the Lagos PDP is the fact that the Ikoyi/Obalende council is the registered home of the national leader of the ACN, Asiwaju Tinubu.
“We commend members of the panel for being bold to declare the judgment in favour of PDP in an area where the residence of the national leader of the ACN, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is and our councillor candidate was also declared winner in the ward where former Governor Tinubu resides,” Barrister Taofeek Gani, the PDP’s state publicity secretary told Vanguard at the weekend.
Remarkably, the PDP’s candidate, Babajide, is the son of Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, Nigeria’s current High Commissioner to Ghana and a former Local Government Chairman in the State. Senator Obanikoro was also at one time a commissioner in the Tinubu cabinet before he went to the jumped ship to the PDP.
After cancellations of alleged illegal votes and other deductions, the Akinsanya led panel declared that Obanikoro won the election by 6780 votes to 6,248 votes attained by his ACN counterpart.
The local government election of last October was the first one that the PDP had participated in since the creation of the 52 local councils by the Tinubu administration. The PDP had before last October boycotted the council polls on the premise that the councils were illegally created. in other national elections, however, the ACN in almost every case overwhelmed the PDP.
when the PDP, however, decided to participate in the local government elections last year only few could have given the party any hope of success despite the internal divisions that bedeviled the ACN prior to the polls on account of alleged imposition of candidates.
At the end of polling the PDP claimed to have been cheated out of some chairmanship positions it claimed to have won, notably the princely Ikoyi/Obalende council and Badagry.
Protests by national and local officers of the party were followed by admonitions from ACN leaders that they should go to court. The outcome of the court battle in the Ikoyi/Obalende council was Justice Akinsanya’s remarkable verdict.
The Lagos ACN was quick to rebut the declaration declaring it an impossibility for the PDP to ever win in Lagos .
“It is not possible for the PDP to defeat ACN in any council in Lagos . ACN is the most popular party in the state,” the ACN’s Assistant Publicity Secretary, Chief Funso Ologunde declared shortly after the judgment.
In a more comprehensive rebuttal, the ACN through its state publicity secretary, Comrade Joe Igbokwe declared that the declaration was a vindication of the fact that elections truly took place in the state and the willingness of the ACN to open up the democratic space unlike the trend in PDP controlled states.
“We challenge the PDP and its allies to allow for such credible process in the states they govern. A situation where it is only in Lagos that a different party from the one that controls the state can lay claim to victory and go to the tribunal to have such claim affirmed should worry the PDP, which delights in closing the democratic space in all states it control through fair and foul means and striving to employ all means to control local government councils in states it does not control.”
“We want them to learn immensely from the Lagos State process and give other parties fair chances of contesting and winning elections in the states they control,” Igbokwe said as he disclosed that the party was still considering an appeal.
“We acknowledge that we may not win it all and that if we eventually lose the case at the appeal, it is no big deal to lose one out of 57 LCDAs. We urge our members to remain form and steadfast in their support for our great party.”
The notice of an appeal was being received with ominous signs in the PDP at the weekend as Taofeek feared the worst.
“The State Chairman of ACN, Ajumolae said that our victory will not last and that they will get it back. I don’t know what he means because it was a verdict of 4 to 1 and for him to say that the victory will not last it means that they are up to another Salami style at their own level here but we will resist it.”
“The people of Ikoyi/Obalende have spoken, they voted and their votes must count and the court has also confirmed that we were voted for and that we won. So, if they come up with any thing that will prcepitate violence, they should be held responsible.”
Vanguard

Omatseye: The brotherhood of Cain

by Sumbo Ajirire

The Yoruba have a word for all renegades: Omo osan n ii ko ba iye e. Amunibuni, the Yoruba say of the one-eyed goat whose owner is also one-eyed, eran Ibiye.

Right now as we speak, the local government executives in the 57 compartments of the abundantly-blessed yet chronically-exploited state of Lagos State are said to have been asked to contribute N15 million  each to prosecute the battle of Ondo State, so that “the only oil-producing state’’ which the chameleon himself mentioned in his “Brother today, gone tomorrow,’’ can come under the control of fraudsters from an illegal state, a band of criminals who define existence by the rustle of stolen currency.

The people of Lagos, the masses of Oworonsoki, Ajegunle, Epe, Ikorodu, Mota, Isiwu, Oke Abiye and the entire Agbado Ijaye neighbourhood will never taste good governance until their resources come under the control of their own brood, and until the tyranny of an irredeemably-corrupted, one-eyed media is dealt a devastating blow and the myth of Lagos explodes in the face of the traitors of the race.

Sam Omatseye, attack dog of a born political robber who lusts after but cannot obtain the Awolowo name written in gold, is here again with the doggerel which will consume him and his masters.

Rehabilitated from a wasted time in the United States and recently disowned by his own people the Itsekiri, Omatseye will abuse anybody who refuses to worship his lord and master, and will tell anyone who cares to listen to him that the villain is the saviour of the race, since he does not credit the Yoruba race with common sense, the ability to sift falsehood from truth, and he does this by heaping half-hearted praise on Awo and then gunning down the sage’s very heritage in the manner of the foolish fly which follows the corpse into the grave.

His entire existence is woven around sycophancy and boot licking: it is a job implanted in his blood. Even when given the errand of a slave, the Yoruba expect you to deliver the message as a free born. But that is where the matter of the intricate word (oro sunnukun) which must be untangled from an equally intricate perspective (oju sunnukun la a f ii wo) lies, because the ancestry of the gnomes in question is shrouded in mystery: their certificates were Chicagoed from unknown universities, the money pushing them to certain doom belongs to a people perpetually betrayed and held tight by political demons in gates of brass, they live and sleep in drugs and the embrace of loose women and suffer from debilitating diseases disguised by flowing agbada.

The road to hell is more beautiful than Los Angeles, classier than Paris and holier looking than Jerusalem. The date of their doom and the beginning of a long-earned journey into political eclipse: October 20, 2012. Their waterloo: Ondo. The husband of their mother (oko iya won) : Iroko, the man who defines his existence by the comfort of the people, the man whom the United Nations has just given a crown beyond the contemplation of the carnivores currently eating the flesh of the South-West and exulting in its blood, the agents of darkness.

The ACN is so pained by the Mimiko anti-thesis to their fraudulent and visionlessness : oro na dun, say Yoruba children, o fe ke. Ekun egbere (tears of a ghommid) flow freely from the eyes of the fraudsters whose forefathers Mimiko has castrated with good governance.

When he poured venom on the matriarch of the Awo family, Chief (Mrs) H.I.D. Awolowo, he almost went out of circulation. But the high and mighty prevailed on the heritage of the sage and the dunce was spared further wrath from an incensed race. Now, he is attacking another true Awoist recognised and honoured by the Tribune family, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, the fear of ACN, the real issue in Nigerian developmental rather than media-megalomaniac politics, the only governor in today’s Yorubaland who demonstrates true Awoism, the only governor who has improved on the benchmark set by the sage, no matter what the likes of Sam Omatseye and their colleagues in Jagabanic malady may say. And hear this: slaves may dance with brooms, but authentic Yoruba sons and daughters dance with the horse tail.

“The markets he built are for local governments, and is that how to account for the money he collected in three and a half years as the only South-West oil-producing state,’’ wrote Omatseye in the doggerel inspired by envy.

Dr Mimiko built state-of-the-art neighbourhood markets at zero cost to the market (wo)men, markets where you will see a crèche, a fire station, a police post and sheer splendour of architectural excellence, at zero cost to the traders (As we speak, even the N50 the traders pay per week is for the maintenance of the world class markets).

Can Omatseye mention any such market built by any of his brothers in perdition? If he were not so naive, he would have noticed the place of markets in Yoruba culture, as centres of civilisation, which is why they were always located close to the palace. Markets are so important in the Yoruba  cosmology/cosmogony that even human existence is termed a market interaction (aye loja) while heaven is the eternal home (orun nile).

In Eye of Earth, Niyi Osundare writes : “temporary basement/and lasting roof.’’
This temporary basement is a market in the Yoruba world, which everyone must leave some day, which is why the Yoruba enjoin the wise “not to strap the world to their chest’’ (e ma wa ile aye mo aya).

The target of Omatseye’s venom is the masses of Ondo State, including the members of the NURTW for whom the governor built a driver’s airport, again what you will not find anywhere in the world.

What Mimiko has done is to leverage on culture, to harness the gains of culture driven by technology and contemporary commerce. Yes, Mimiko is a market governor.

“He set himself to build a model school, on whose dream he has not delivered.’’ Indeed, Mr Omatseye? With 54 mega schools?

Omatseye is obviously jealous, because his god, while being inaugurated in 1999, promised 50 millennium schools but only managed to build three, which are really no schools when compared to the mega schools in Ondo.

He also promised a Fourth Mainland Bridge and many more projects, but, like his certificates, no one knows where they are situated.

Like other jejune writers banking on a heritage of fraud, Omatseye cannot fail to mention the ACN theory of integration : “He has cast himself a pariah to the story of brotherly love in the South-West with the cold eyes he casts on the cooperative spirit of the Southwest.’’

Bravo, Mr Omatseye, but that is the “brotherhood’’ of Cain, a brotherhood by which the resources of Ondo State would be harnessed by foreign gods like they have done in the ACN states.

And, by the way, would Mr Omatseye kindly tell Nigerians what the “cooperative spirit’’ of his ACN gods have achieved for the South-West?

Where are the joint education, rail, etc, projects executed by his lovely brothers, the self-confessed Omoluabis who are intolerant of dissent?

And, by the way, was it not  the Judases of the ACN that robbed the region of the speakership of the House of Reps? With brothers like these, who needs further enemies?
Oro sununukun again: if the death of the home does not kill one, the one from outside cannot.

Mr Omatseye, sorry, we cannot accept your theology: we have seen what  timeless your “brothers’’ are capable of doing.

Well, we understand why Mr Money, whenever, he has a dirty job at hand, sends only disowned dunces from another race on those errands. A Yoruba proverb unlocks the mystery:  only a stranger’s child is sent on midnight jobs (omo olomo (a stranger’s child) lan ran nise de toru toru,’’ particularly if that child is a greedy fool.

Omatseye, like many before him, makes a singsong of Mimiko having belonged to different parties---he even has the temerity to talk about ideology. But your god destroyed the AD, then formed the AC (later ACN) with a band of renegades?

Omatseye is a one-eyed writer writing for a one-eyed paper and even that one eye is cataract-laden. We say once again: Ondo State will never come under the grip of political lepers and bearded fraudsters, no matter the colour of their beard.

Nigerian Compass

Teacher, Don't Teach Me Nonsense

PENDULUM By Dele Momodu, Email:  Dele.Momodu@thisdaylive.com


Fellow Nigerians, I remember the prodigiously gifted Fela Anikulapo Kuti today, as always on occasions like this. I had searched for an appropriate title for this column since I read the first of the staccato attacks against my simple-and-straight-forward piece on our thunderous Central Bank Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. Not that the sporadic reaction was unexpected after-all one would expect the CBN and its Governor to at least have some cronies. What I didn’t bargain for were the scurrilous interventions of two particular columnists who should apparently know better, Ethelbert Okere and Pini Jason.

If they must write, for whatever reason, I would expect them to do so seriously and not ignore leprosy to treat eczema. To call the CBN Governor a bully is not an abuse, it is a character-analysis of a controversial public figure. It does not warrant the crocodile tears being shed by town-criers who are weeping louder than the bereaved. Mallam Sanusi is enlightened enough to know I merely expressed an opinion. From every indication, he has put it behind him .But those who profit from confusion must hype it out of proportion. The question is, who did we slap and who’s complaining of headache?

I will ignore the other writers and concentrate on just these two, Pini Jason and Ethelbert Okere, because when you carry an elephant on your head, you should worry less about ants on the floor. To be quite honest I know Pini Jason well but Ethelbert Okere I didn’t know at all. Thanks to Google, I found some scanty reports about Ethelbert and was indeed shocked that he had passed through Thisday as Chairman, Editorial Board without my noticing his tenure.

I could not get his full bio-data but a peep into his writings led to the discovery that he is notorious for writing all manner of junk in newspapers. He has also been accused of writing fiction about Champion newspapers being sold off to former INEC Chairman, Professor Maurice Iwu. This invited the wrath of media baron, Chief Immanuel Iwuanyanwu against Thisday newspaper. (See Champion, March 18, 2011)

Ethelbert clearly used his artcles to disparage people who are not in the same political boat with him. His last port of call was the Imo State Government House, where he worked as media aide to former Governor Ikedia Ohakim. He did well as an attack dog such that he wrote an acerbic piece and rubbished the Owerri tribe of Imo state thus: “The steadfastness and cohesion for which Owerri people were known flew overboard and in their places took over envy, pettiness, jealousy, greed and even avarice…

“According to pundits, it was because the manipulators, who were recruited mostly from outside the state, saw that Owere people had compromised that gave them impetus to carry out their acts of perfidy.” Please, help me here, how many people actually go out to vote in any community that a writer would hack down an entire people for not supporting his candidate?

Ethelbert’s hatchet man’s role extends to other states where he’s often hired to help men of power. I stumbled on his column on former Governor Chimaroke Nnamani: “…the state government under Nnamani was able to execute projects which even regional government could not, and which states whose resources are far bigger, then the Enugu enigma becomes total.” (Daily Sun, June 30, 2006). Was he writing about the same Enugu state or a different state on Planet Mars?

This is the same man casting aspersions on me for merely describing Mallam Lamido Sanusi as a bully! Hear him: “Momodu lived up to his bidding namely, to use his weekly column to lambast one notable Nigerian or the other. And when he was not doing that, Momodu, former Presidential candidate, was boring Nigerians with his trite rehash of their collective history. In the article under reference, he combined what he knows bests to weave together hyperboles in painting a picture of an immitigable national hopelessness.”

These are weighty words to use against me for daring to call someone a bully. I wish to state categorically that I use my column to attack useless policies of government or its agencies and not its notable individuals who may be affected by the slipstream. I don’t know when he did an opinion poll about the popularity of my column, or if the Thisday publisher complained to him that his paper was not selling on Saturday, or if he wants to solicit for my page to restart a column. What does Ethelbert want me to rehash if not our depressing history in a country where our kids hardly know anything about their origin. I do not know of Nigerians who don’t feel a sense of acute hopelessness about our country today except the likes of Ethelbert who flood the corridors of power.

Ethelbert said I lacked intellectual rigour for quoting Wikipedia. Holy Moses! What should I have done, plagiarise, and get sued like someone has done to Sanusi lately? I was taught in elementary school to quote my sources, no matter how trite those references may be. Finally, he accused me of “probably doing an unsolicited biography on Lamido Sanusi.” May I ask, who solicited Mr Ethelbert Okere to do his jaundiced piece on me?

More revealing, but extremely pitiable, is the article written by Uncle Pini Jason, a man I hold in the highest esteem. We must thank God always for small mercies because if not for the hasty intervention of this gentleman in my matter, I would not have uncovered more damaging things he had written about me and others in the past using subliminal codes. I discovered that he had assaulted us mercilessly during the fuel subsidy saga. He had this to say about a famous man of God: “At the Ojota, Lagos, rally the politician, Tunde Bakare, a born Muslim who found a lucrative business marketing Jesus, said “this revolution has started and will continue…”

If you think that was bad enough, please wait for the vituperations he poured on those of us who demonstrated against the subsidy removal at the Nigeria High Commission in Ghana, in his article titled Hypocrites in Ghana: “The most pathetic hypocrites are those Nigerian “Andrews” who demonstrated at Nigerian embassy (sic) in Ghana…It was (therefore) pathetic watching utterly shameless Nigerians disturbing the peace in Ghana… Why in the first place is Ghana a haven for Nigerians…

“Every Ghanaian who lives abroad worked to send money home. That was the major fillip to the recovery of the economy of Ghana. Ghanaians are very disciplined and orderly people who let things work out as they should.

“But in Nigeria what do we do? It is fashionable to steal in order to own property and fat accounts abroad.” Here is a self-professed patriot fighting innocent Nigerians living in Ghana as if they have no stake in Pini Jason’s Nigeria. When did it become a crime to migrate? The Chinese are conquering Africa, why can’t Nigerians rule the world? Our brilliant brother reduced the change in Ghana to Western Union remittances sent home by Ghanaians. He forgot there was a bloody revolution expertly executed by Jerry John Rawlings, aka Junior Jesus! 

If Ethelbert accuses me of using hyperboles, none surpasses that of my boss, Pini Jason, who like Ethelbert incidentally worked as media aide to the same Ohakim in Imo State. I quote his sugar-coated opening: “I wonder how many people whose jaws did not drop in horror as they read the pummelling of Sanusi by Otunba Dele Momodu…I’m expressing my horror publicly because we must want justice not just for ourselves but also for even our enemies!” Great advice, if you ask me.

Before I’m accused of impersonation, let me quickly note that I’m not yet an Otunba. In fact, I was horrified to read that dramatic intro in Pini Jason’s The Mugging of Sanusi (Daily Vanguard, October 2, 2012), but I managed to pick a few salient points.

For example, he wrote: “Dele Momodu is the publisher of Ovation, an international magazine and a former presidential candidate in the 2011 election. And when you vie for the highest office in the land, you become a senior citizen, even if you don’t believe it. You are not expected to demean the high office you vied for or diminish yourself and your generation.” As the Yoruba would ask, Mr Police, why are you cursing?

Why is Pini Jason cursing me over an article? Is it not in the character of Presidents to rise stoutly to call their troublesome staff to order? I did the job President Jonathan should have been doing, to protect the rights of every Nigerian, saint or sinner, from the hands of dictators and aspiring tyrants. I enhanced that office by being boldly decisive. It is consistent with my belief that the same kangaroo system used to deal with sinners and bad guys would be employed someday against innocent people and saints. This was what I told Nuhu Ribadu in 2007, and it came back to haunt him, as the hunter later became the hunted.

I had received spirited attacks from Nuhu’s aides at that time but I remained committed to my views that Nigerians must determine what they want, democracy or militocracy. My position has not changed since then. It is in the nature of man to abuse power, especially absolute power. So, I didn’t set out to abuse Sanusi but to help him apply the brakes as he hurtles down the slopes to ruination in his cataclysmic approach to policies. There must be method to madness, as they say. It did not matter if I would be called names for standing on a long-held principle. Nothing can be worse than not being able to express yourself freely in a democracy others and I passionately fought for. Mba!

Mr Jason said I went physical with Sanusi but did not say how.  “Dele Momodu who cannot be described as an inexperienced journalist resorted to body punches and even ear biting.” That’s so unfair. I’m not a relative of Mike Tyson. He didn’t end the assault against me there, he continued: “Going down the literary brutalisation of Sanusi one could only put a finger on Sanusi’s sacking of some bank chief executives and his putting down General Obasanjo as a bad economist as the source of the provocation.”

No matter Pini Jason’s conspiracy theory, I wish to state categorically that I was never provoked by considerations of any sacked and/or humiliated bank executive and certainly not by his cynical remarks against Obasanjo. I was by the over-the-top aggression of Sanusi’s Central Bank to every issue they are interested in.

Someone should go back and study television clips of Sanusi’s speeches, especially during the fuel subsidy brouhaha. Those who are fascinated by the kill-and-go style are on their own, they can’t drag me into their fray.

The man who accused me of getting physical with Sanusi has written worse things about people in the past. If indeed I mugged Sanusi in my article, Pini Jason murdered Femi Fani-Kayode in cold blood, in his own article titled “A Presidency Debased”, Vanguard,

February 03, 2004:
“…But what we have been asking since Femi Fani-Kayode’s crude, vulgar, inelegant and desperate reply to Col Umar is when did the presidency descend to this cesspool where area boys bait citizens to bolekaja fight?...

“Nigeria is a secular Republic, not a monarchy or a theocracy. Nigeria must be moved away from the “folksy “ medieval state governed by the whims of “babas” based on some archaic “African culture” of obeisance to autocratic chiefs and patriarchal elders to a contractual Republic governed by the rule of law as set out in our constitution. Anybody so enamoured by his primordial social order should seek such from his village, and not in Aso Rock….”

Pini Jason wasn’t done as he went for Femi’s jugular: “Femi Fani-Kayode gave himself away as a shallow mind when he questioned Col Umar’s June 12 and pro-democracy credentials…What else does Femi Fani-Kayode have to his name except his surname?” The master of abuse then descended on President Obasanjo himself:

“When did Aso Rock become a mountain of fire and brimstone? When did we substitute sound policies with Holy Ghost Fire?..

.We should be spared the hypocrisy of those who, with one corner of their mouth spew forth incantatory testimonies of “what God has done to my life”, and from the other corner issue incendiary curses and damnation!”
Is this HOW Pini Jason wants me to tackle issues? Fela, pls come to my rescue:

ThisDay

Sorrow, Tears and Flood…

Simon Kolawole Live!: Email: simon.kolawole@thisdaylive.com

Let’s be honest: something is fundamentally wrong with us in this country. One month ago, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) issued a statement warning about imminent flooding. The agency said the dams in the North had recorded their highest water levels in decades and asked for the immediate evacuation of those living along the Niger River. I can’t say if the warning served any purpose, but what we have witnessed in the last two weeks is a complete devastation of several states in the country. Hundreds of lives have been lost, including those of a traditional ruler and a whole family. Tens of thousands have been displaced. Property worth hundreds of millions of naira, belonging mainly to poor people, was washed away or destroyed.

Permit me to reproduce the NEMA press statement, signed by the head of public relations, Mr. Yushau Shuaib, and dated September 10, 2012: “The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has ordered an immediate evacuation of citizens living along the River Niger plains. This alert comes because the dams have attained their highest water levels in 29 years which is unprecedented in the history of Jebba and Kainji hydroelectric power dams. The threat has created a high risk of imminent flooding in the downstream of the river. The residents of the communities are urged to move to higher grounds for safety. The states at risk of the flood are Niger, Kogi, Kwara, Kebbi, Anambra and Delta.

“Already the agency has notified the affected states to take the necessary precautionary measures by relocating people from the flood prone areas and activated the National Contingency Plan as well as alerted all stakeholders to take necessary actions in line with their various mandates. The states are to ensure compliance with the threat in order to avert imminent loss of lives and properties that would certainly arise in the event of flooding. Furthermore, information available indicates that the gauge for monitoring the flow of water in the river has already exceeded the maximum height by over one meter. A rapid assessment team comprising officers of NEMA and the stakeholders has left for Jebba and Kainji to inspect the situation.”

To be sure, the events of the last couple of weeks are not that fresh. Before the NEMA warning, 137 persons had been reported killed and 120,000 persons displaced in the flooding that occurred between July and September this year across the country. I am not aware that any steps were taken to prevent further loss of lives. It would appear it is not the duty of government to prevent the loss of lives and property. What we have always witnessed in Nigeria is that government acts best after a disaster. By that, I mean government quickly releases money for settlements to be built and “relief materials” to be distributed. It is usually done in the full glare of the press, with impressive photo opportunities of boot-wearing governors showing sympathy by walking inside the flood.

I don’t mean to be rude, but after NEMA released the flood warning in September, what steps did the Federal Government, state governments and councils take to save lives and property? I am not talking about the distribution of mosquito nets and blankets AFTER the flood, but public enlightenment, relocation of potential victims and emergency plans BEFORE the disaster? This is a country that distributes ecological funds like cornflakes every year, yet the environmental problems that these huge budgets are meant to address continue to hamper human and economic activities. One of the biggest scandals rocking Nigeria, aside fuel subsidy, is ecological funds. It would be interesting to know how many states can convincingly account for the billions of naira collected over the years in the name of “ecological funds”.

Overall, there are three issues I want to raise over the flooding. The first is that it has become all too glaring that nobody cares about us in this country. The politicians and those we call our leaders devote too much of their energies to politicking than governance. The meetings in Abuja are always geared towards distribution of excess crude revenue, 2015 presidential election, increased allowances for members of the National Assembly and all that crap. When the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Nigerians are at stake, the attitude is always nonchalant. All over the world, global warming and climate change are issues taken seriously by governments, not just in terms of holding conferences but in applying practical steps to protect the lives of the citizens. The flooding is inevitable but loss of lives and property can be minimised or prevented altogether.

Two, it is becoming clear day and night that we are not in any way ready to manage disasters in this country. We should just continue to thank God that the country is not prone to earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes. I wonder if anything would be left. In 2002, there were bomb explosions at Ikeja Cantonment, Lagos. It was so poorly managed that more than a thousand persons lost their lives trying to run away. They ended up in a canal. The real explosions did not kill up to 10 persons! Japan had a tsunami that affected its nuclear plants last year. Imagine if it was Nigeria – we would have been wiped out completely.

Three, for those who think the latest flooding affects only the poor people, they are probably wrong. There is serious implication for food security. Farmlands have been destroyed along the Niger River. Some Nigerians just go to the markets; they don’t even know where the food comes from (some may think food falls from the skies, and I won’t be surprised). Vehicular traffic is affected, and this means a lot for commerce and transport. When the Lokoja-Abuja road was shut in the wake of the flood disaster, some travellers actually spent days on the road. Do the math for tonnes of rotten tomatoes.

This disaster affects everyone one way or the other, but even if it doesn’t affect everyone, those affected are also Nigerians. Every life is important. We may not be able to prevent a natural disaster, but we can show that we care – not just AFTER the disaster, but BEFORE it happens. Of what use is distributing mattresses and paddling canoe in the full glare of cameras to show that you care?

And Four Other Things...

MUBI MASSACRE
Have things gone so bad in Nigeria that gunmen would just invade a polytechnic campus in Mubi, Adamawa State, and kill dozens of persons without a trace? The police were initially quoted as saying suspects had been arrested, but a rebuttal quickly followed, further compounding the mystery. It would have been easier to explain if it was a Boko Haram attack; at least, that is their stock-in-trade. But talks about students’ union elections and victims being called by name before being killed actually sent chills down my system. Hopefully, there would be no copycat crime in other campuses. It’s very scary.

CYNTHIA’S MURDER
Talking about copycat crimes, I think some Nigerians have taken their love for globalisation to the extreme, with the drugging, rape and murder of Miss Cynthia Osokogu, who was buried yesterday. The 25-year-old post-graduate student at the Nasarawa State University was allegedly killed by her facebook friends in a hotel room. This is the stuff you read in foreign newspapers and snigger, telling yourself it cannot happen in Nigeria. Well, it is happening here now and the law enforcement agencies must develop speciality in tackling this kind of crime. And Nigerians must wake up to the new reality.

LAST FLIGHT TO LONDON
To Lohnan Joseph, a 26-year-old Christian from Plateau State, all flights lead to London. He was recently arrested at the Sultan Abubakar III International Airport, Sokoto, as he tried to board an aircraft scheduled to convey Zamfara State pilgrims to Saudi Arabia. Quizzed by the police, he reportedly said: “My mission is to go to London, like Herbert Macaulay did. We are Nigerians and we are the same by birth and citizenship.” In his travelling bag were the defunct French francs (since replaced by the euro) and his credentials. No passport, no visa. No problem, then.

TIMID TERRY
After admitting mouthing “f****** black c***” to Anton Ferdinand but only as a question, John Terry was set free by a Westminster magistrates court on the ground that the prosecution did not prove it beyond reasonable doubt that Terry meant it as a racial insult. The cowardly Terry got away, OJ Simpson-style, with a good lawyer. But the English FA has fined Terry £220,000 and suspended him for four matches for the same offence because his defence was “improbable, implausible and contrived”. The logic is simple. If Terry actually said the words as a question, he would have said: “Did you think I called you FBC?” Did he even need to repeat those words? Lies, lies, lies.

ThisDay

A birthday cake for impunity? (1)

 by Chidi Odinkalu

L–R: President, Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor; Vice-President Namadi Sambo; President Goodluck Jonathan; Senate President, David Mark; and a former VP, Dr. Alex Ekwueme at the cutting of the 52nd Independence Anniversary cake, in Abuja ... on Monday, October 1, 2012.
| credits: State House

Nigeria is in the throes of an epidemic of violence and impunity much unlike anything the country has witnessed before. Violence in its multi-faceted forms is by most understandings the biggest single law and order and public health problem in the country today. For the first time in our collective consciousness, such acts of violence now routinely include indiscriminate mass killings of civilians caused by Improvised Explosive Devices.

As disparate as these forms of violence seem to be, one thing unites them: our mechanisms of legal accountability seem inadequate to address them or to apprehend the perpetrators. Clothed with effective impunity, therefore, those who unleash this violence feel able not just to repeat it as often as they wish, but also to recruit many followers into the enterprise of seeming to make violence worthwhile. For many Nigerians, another Independence anniversary could feel very much like cutting a birthday cake for impunity.

Fifty two years after Independence, this crisis of violence is the principal metric of the state of evolution and disrepair of our institutions of legal and judicial accountability. The verdict they encapsulate is an unhappy one. So, what then is the relationship of violence to the evolution of Nigeria’s judicial and legal institutions? Simply put, an epidemic of violence is the opposite of a state of rule of law. It is evidence of failure of institutions of the rule of law and of a widespread lack of trust in them.

At Independence in 1960, Nigeria inherited colonial institutions that had not been tested by a free people. The Police Force bequeathed to the country in 1960, for instance, was an expeditionary institution with a century of the wrong kind of traditions and history. The judiciary, for all the admirable men (they were all men then) that administered it, was institutionally younger than the Police at Independence, but essentially also not much different in its essential philosophies. The governing organs of the legal profession were wholly owned by government. With over 28 of our 52 years of post-colonial government lived under military rule, the institutions of the rule of law were fated to suffer considerable diminution in both their efficacy and authority.

The defining landmarks in the unraveling of the post-colonial legal system have been captured in symbolic moments and snapshots. From 1961 until 1963, there were three such moments in the civilian interregnum that preceded military rule.

First, Shortly after Independence, the Nigerian legal system faced its first major test in the Treason Trial of J.S. Tarka in 1961. Tarka, firebrand leader of an opposition party, the United Middle Belt Congress, was charged with the serious crime of levying war against Her Majesty, the Queen of Nigeria – treason. This was two years before Nigeria would become a Republic in 1963. The trial somehow conveniently coincided with the elections into the dissolved Northern Nigeria House of Assembly, controlled by the then ruling Northern Peoples’ Congress. The effort to crush the UMBC failed in the short term as forces loyal to Tarka prevailed in his beloved Tivland during the elections and he was acquitted in the trial. However, the ruling party had learnt not to be outmanoeuvred on strategy.

Next, in 1962, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the Opposition in the Federal Parliament would subsequently be tried and convicted of treasonable felony in proceedings in which the then Federal Minister for Internal Affairs, Usman Sarki, denied his counsel of choice, Mr. Gratien QC, entry clearance into Nigeria. This was to precede a takeover of Chief Awolowo’s Western region.

Thus, in 1963, dis-regarding a pending Privy Council appeal (which it subsequently lost) in a dispute over who was the lawful Prime Minister of the Western Region, the government restored Chief Awolowo’s ambitious former deputy, Samuel Akintola, as the Prime Minister of the Western Region. Following the Privy Council decision in this case [Adegbenro vs. Akintola, (1963) A.C. 164], the then Federal Government established the Supreme Court, abolished appeals to the Privy Council and proclaimed Nigeria a Republic. The civilians had laid the foundations of what would define post-colonial institutional politics – that the decisions of courts which prove not to be malleable can be dispensed with at the whim of the rulers of the day.

The military would take this lesson to heart when they took over the reins of power following the coups of 1966. When the then Supreme Court ruled in 1969 in Lakanmi’s case that the events of January 1966 were not revolutionary in a constitutional sense, obliging the then military regime, therefore, to subject itself to the niceties of the written 1963 Constitution, the soldiers simply promulgated the Federal Military Government (Supremacy and Enforcement of Powers) Decree of 1970, eviscerating the decision and lobotomising the courts. Despite episodic stirrings to judicial imagination since then, our judicial institutions have never quite recovered from these grave errors by men who were inevitably limited by their youth.

The tendency of the post-colonial regimes to respect only legal advice that they liked and obey judicial decisions that favoured them would catch up with both its authors and the country. Taslim Elias, who, as Federal Attorney-General, presided over the developments narrated above, would himself become a victim of his own precedents when, as Chief Justice, he was summarily relieved of his position in 1975 with no need for justification.

A major victim of this arbitrariness was Nigeria’s criminal justice and penal system. Bola Ige, the story of whose life is well known as counsel to J.S. Tarka in the treason trials, and later as governor, political detainee, Justice Minister and himself victim of an assassination, notes in his work, People, Politics, and Politicians of Nigeria, 1940-1979, that “Nigerian authorities have become more inhumane, more intolerant and more callous in their treatment not only of those standing trial but also of those detained for months without trial….”

By the outset of the third decade of Nigeria’s independence, the consequences of this history had percolated into judicial decision-making in the first evidence of what would become a gangrene of allegations of judicial corruption. In 1986, the report of the Babalakin Commission of Inquiry into the then Federal Electoral Commission, found, in relation to judicial decision making in the 1983 elections that “allegations of corruption in high places were freely made.”

•Odinkalu chairs the Board of the National Human Rights Commission.
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