Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde honoured with BEEFTA Film Icon Award

For her contribution to the film industry in Africa, Europe and globally, Nollywood superstar, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, has been recognized with a special honorary award, BEFFTA FILM ICON.
BEFFTA (Black Entertainment Film Fashion Television and Arts) award is Europe’s biggest award ceremony celebrating achievements of black and ethnic personalities in showbiz globally.
BEFFTA founder, Pauline Long, praised Omotola’s great talent and commended her for being a mentor to the young ones aspiring to get into the film industry.
Omotola, a World Food Programme Ambassador and Amnesty International activist, started her career at a tender age of 17 and has appeared in over 300 hundred movies, often playing the lead roles.
DailyPost

Is Airhiavbere new face of Edo PDP?

by Vincent Egunyanga

inShare

The Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] in Edo state seems to have gone into limbo since the last governorship election in the state where they suffered a disastrous defeat in the hands of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole of the Action Congress of Nigeria [ACN].

The PDP performed so poorly in the governorship election that it did not consider challenging the election at the elections tribunal. Even when its governorship candidate in the election Major General Charles Airhiavbere decided on his own to contest election at the elections tribunal to challenge Oshiomhole’s qualification to contest the election the party disassociated itself from the petitions, preferring instead to leave everything for God.

Besides the governorship polls the PDP has done very badly in all other elections conducted so far in the state including the 2011 General Elections into the state House of Assembly and the National Assembly.

The reasons for the poor performances of the PDP in recent elections in the state had been attributed to poor performances of the PDP government in the state in the last eight years administration of former governor of the state Chief Lucky Igbinedion.

Of all the four aspirants that wanted to carry the party’s flag to contest the governorship poll odds favoured Major General Charles Airhiavbere. There are many reasons for this. First he recently retired from the Nigeria Army and joined partisan politics, so he had not yet been soiled by the poor performance of Igbinedion in office like other contestants, secondly and perhaps the most important was that the people saw General Airhiavbere as a honest, detribalized and an hardworking man. A personality of an impeccable integrity. In fact during the factional crisis that engulfed the party in the last three years General Airhiavbere was not known to belong to any of the factions. He was at the forefront for the reconciliation of all the different factions and groups in the state.

The PDP was polarized by internal wrangling with two big factions emerging. One of the factions is led by the former Chairman of the Board of Trustee of the party Chief Tony Anenih while the other faction was led a former governor of the state Dr Samuel Ogbemudia. It was a bitter wrangling that has also contributed to the PDP losing all the elections conducted in the state in the last three years.

With the coming of General Airhiavbere into the party and his joining the governorship race, he was able to unite all the factions of the party in the state. Now there are no factions of PDP in Edo state as Anenih and Ogbemudia have come together to move the party forward in the state, thanks to General Airhiavbere’s unifying policies.

Dr Ogbemudia himself attested to the fact that there are no more factions of PDP in the state, he told journalists recently in Benin that the last ward and local government elections conducted recently in the state has helped to reunite the party once again. He said what caused the factions in the first place was the culture of imposition, imposing candidates on the people without given them the right to choose their leaders. He said but with the last ward, local government and state congresses of the party in the state the race was thrown open and people were allowed to elect their leaders freely.

But the outcome of the last governorship election in Edo state and the defeat of the party in the state in the last three years is an indication that the party had been ruled and governed by some fifth columnists, people who are in the party but are not working for the party. The general feeling of party members in the state was that the leadership sold out, in fact it is been circulated that party leaders had already submitted names to Oshiomhole for consideration as commissioners in the next dispensation. It is believed that part of the agreements reached between the leadership of the party in the state and Governor Oshiomhole was that the governor’s election will not be challenged by the party as the governor was said to have promised an all inclusive government that will accommodate PDP members.

The Publicity Secretary of the party in the state Mathew Urhoghide denied any alliance between the party and the governor, he said instead the party decided not to challenge Oshiomhole’s re-election in court to avoid waste of public fund. He said the governor will have to use public funds meant to build roads, hospitals, schools etc for what he called unnecessary litigation.

Many are however of the opinion that the best thing the party should have done after the July 14th governorship election was to sack the entire state executive of the party to pave way for the reorganization and transformation of the party in line with Presidents Goodluck Jonathan’s transformation agenda.

By far the most popular PDP member and leader in Edo state remains General Airhiavbere, during the primaries and the governorship election proper he toured the entire state to solicit for support and cooperation for the party. Even when the party state executive refused to go to the tribunal to challenge Oshiomhole’s re-election, party members at the grassroots and ward levels urged him on. They told him to go ahead to challenge the election and they were ready to rally round him, infact some party members volunteered to stand as witnesses for him against party directive.

The general feelings of the party members is that the new face of the PDP should be built around Airhiavbere. One of the leaders of the party in the state Donald Ehimekpen said Airhiavbere is the only person who can bring the party alive once again in the state.

“Before Airhiavbere joined the party in 2011 the party was dead in the state even the support they got so far was as a result of Airhiavbere’s dexterity and competence”, he said.

The fact that the PDP could not win one single local government in the last governorship polls was because the last nine years of PDP administration in the state was a complete failure and the people were yet to forgive and forget the misrule that characterized that period. With the bad image the PDP already acquired in the state all the characters that played any role in the anti people regime and who are still holding offices in the party should be forced to step down to pave way for a successful rebuilding of the party ahead of 2015 general elections and 2016 governorship election when incumbent governor Oshiomhole would have served out his two terms.

General Airhiavbere had said during the governorship campaigns that he decided to join the race in order to correct the wrongs done by the PDP when the party was in power in the state stressing that he voluntarily retired from the army to serve his people.

While appealing to aspirants to discuss issues during the campaigns rather than abusing fellow aspirants, he asserted that “the state government should stop this continuous campaign that the PDP destroyed the state for ten years. I believe that government should concentrate on how to fix our roads, prioritize projects rather than the window dressing we see every day in the state.

On the future of the PDP in the state a national leader of the party in the state and one time governor old Bendel state Dr Sam Ogbemudia said ‘the future is promising and glaring if the old problems are solved. One of these problems borders on injustice. Injustice produces state of disaffection, inequality, oppression and victimization etc. All these combined weaken the party and could not subsequently be able to provide an effective bulwark to either stem, prevent and weaken any opposition. Once these problems are solved the party will bounce back’.

Dr Ogbemudia however advised that the party must put its house in order.

SundayTrust

Kebbi LG poll: CPC wants tribunal to disqualify PDP candidates

 by Ismail Mudashir

in

The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in Kebbi State says it has filed petitions asking the state local government election tribunal to disqualify the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who were declared winners of the September 15 local government election by the state’s independent electoral commission over lack of qualification.

PDP won all the 21 local government chairmanship seats and 221 councillorship seats while, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) won only four councillorship seats in the last local government election in the state.

Secretary of CPC in Kebbi state, Barrister Shehu Marshal in a telephone interview said his party has filed petitions asking the election tribunal to declare the CPC candidate as winners.

“The PDP candidates declared as winners for Zuru, Koko Besse and Maiyama local government area chairmanship positions by the Kebbi State independent electoral commission are not qualified. They don’t have the required qualification to man the seats,” he said.

He said his party is making arrangements to file petitions to challenge the PDP candidate for Yauri local government area who he said was not qualified to chair the local government area.

“We are not stopping here because the election was marred by irregularities and we are going to challenge all the seats,” he said.

DailyTrust

Hypocrites As Prayer Warriors; How Can God Heal Nigeria (1)

Written by Obinna Akukwe

IN Nigeria, it is prayer everywhere. The churches, mosques, shrines, forests, mountains, rivers, trees and every available space, have been turned to prayer centres and yet the most insensitive form of governance is hoisted on the nation.  Armed robbery, ritual killings, kidnapping, rape and injustice abound everywhere. Poverty,

sickness, despair, frustration and attendant mediocrity and negative tendencies are the results of all our prayers. 

Now, we have the newest addition, suicide bombing and reckless waste of human lives. A lot of people have asked the question: Where is God when all these things are happening?

Nigerians pray all manner of prayers, 70-day fasting, 70-day deliverance, 40-day sallat, Ramadan fast, pilgrimage to Jerusalem, pilgrimage to Mecca and other dedicated sites of worship, and yet you cannot entrust an adherent with your spouse for 24 hours.

During Gen. Sani Abacha’s regime, marabouts were imported from Mali, Sierra-Leone and Senegal, when their Nigerian counterparts failed to kill the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO)chieftains with prayers. 

These professional prayer warriors couldn't tell Abacha that Nigerians were tired of his dictatorship. 

During Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidency, a lot of prayer warriors in the Villa were allegedly busy impregnating NYSC members serving in the Villa in the guise of securing permanent employment for them while the tenure elongation crisis was on the verge of ruining the country. 

Obasanjo saw so much hypocrisy that he had to resort to a combination of Africanism and his faith to survive.

Another group of prayer warriors have held President Goodluck Jonathan hostage in the Villa. They frighten him every time with gory prophesies, while they smile to the bank.

Everywhere, people are praying. All these prayers are hypocritical prayers. The Bible says in 2 Chronicles, chapter 7, vs. 14, ‘If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.’ 

The prerequisite for God to answer prayers and heal Nigeria is repentance. In the Bible, King David humbled himself when Prophet Nathan told him that he had sinned. 

He tore his clothes and wept for many days until God had compassion. His Nigerian counterpart will do the opposite.

Our leaders travel to Jerusalem and Mecca and, in the midst of the solemn ceremonies, co-ordinate how the next round of looting of government treasury will be clinically executed, and then they go back to finish the ceremonies. 

Once the pilgrimage is over the Nigerian prayer warrior comes back to his church or mosque with the aura of answered prayers. 

Then the poverty-stricken congregation will hang around him to receive favours (after nights of fasting and days of sallat for God to touch his heart). 

God must be seriously solicited to touch the heart of the looter of public funds or else his church or mosque members will not receive any crumbs from the loot.

The impoverished parishioner or mosque member knows that he was one of the people who directly or indirectly put him in a state of poverty, insecurity, hopelessness and helplessness and, therefore, he equally begs God to give him the opportunity to partake of the looting of the national wealth, since the congregational leaders have not cared to query the thieving but important looter on the source of his wealth.

The prayer warrior in Nigerian church or mosque is a hypocrite. Let his pastor or imam sermonise against sin, corruption, greed, inhumanity to man and disrespect for the feelings of others and he will get offended and leave the congregation, withdrawing his much needed funds. 

However, call for prayer that all his enemies should die, including members of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and justices about to reverse stolen electoral mandates and you will see all sorts of acrobatics, gymnastics, incantations, invocations and madness all in the name of prayer.

There is no doubt that he that comes to equity must come with clean hands. 

A thousand noisemakers may be in a church but God hears only the 10 who have decided in their heart not to follow the crowd if given the opportunity. 

If the combined prayers of these 10 men cannot move God or ward off the impending evil, then calamity is visited on everybody. 

That is the problem the nation is having with Boko Haram and other conflicts plaguing the nation.

The dynamics of prayer is such that if your prayer is for personal or family matters, you could easily connect into the remote sites where the angels will attend to you on behalf of God. 

However, if your prayer were of general application, corporate in nature and of concern to the masses of people in your territory then other dynamics will apply. 

You must be sufficiently qualified before you can represent a state, region or nation in a prayer bouquet. 

A hypocrite could pray personal prayers and God will still answer because he is stirring personal spiritual space; however, you must have enough locus standi before you stir a communal spiritual space in a prayer session. 

You must be potentially better than those you are praying against.

Let the Nigerian prayer warrior decide to live by the tenets of his faith which is: ‘do unto others as you wish others do unto you,’ and before you raise your voice louder (even in a bush or atop a tree) the Almighty God will answer and drive off those evil rulers who refuse to change for the better, out of our political space on their way to perdition.

Elombah.com

Obinna Akukwe: Hypocrites As Prayer Warriors; How Can God Heal Nigeria (2)

The prayer hypocrisy in Nigeria has been taken to the highest proportion. Nigeria has been variously described as the most religious country in the world. Some describe Nigeria as the most spiritual country while others call it the most prayerful citizens on the earth.

A Nigerian pastor and his wife left the shores of the country about six years ago to do a prayer tour of Europe. At the point of entry to Netherlands, the immigration officials were piqued that a Nigerian missionary came all the way to Europe to pray and while crosschecking their papers, remarked that it was Nigeria and Africa that needed the prayers the more and that they should redirect their prayers back to Nigeria.
The problem is that the numerous prayers and fasting have not produced tremendous corporate results. God have deliberately shut down Nigeria from His list of priorities. Nigerians have dethroned God from their hearts and enthroned the desire for money, power, fame in the very space meant for God. Therefore, God seems to have abandoned the nation to its antics.

During the build-up to the 2011 presidential elections, the President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, went on pilgrimage to the Redemption Camp near Lagos and knelt before the most respected Pentecostal pastor in Nigeria, E.A. Adeboye, soliciting the assistance of God in the upcoming polls. The same scenario was reenacted all over the states and local government areas. Politicians and those seeking public offices thronged the churches, mosques, shrines and everywhere it is believed that God could be found. Those victorious have not shown any act of piety or fear of God in the manner they have administered their respective federal, states and local constituencies entrusted in their care. It is obvious that these politicians have used and dumped God and His prayer bands in the manner they use and dump hapless Nigerians. God had answered the prayers of Nigerians in the past. The endless transition of former military president Babangida led to a heavy prayer outcry Iin the Churches especially after the annulment of June 12 elections and only Babangida knows what hastily pursued him out of State House in August 1993. The military Head of State, Abacha , caused so much tension in the polity that everybody prayed for God to deliver Nigeria and by June 1998, a new leadership replaced him. When Obasanjo wanted to rule Nigeria forever in his infamous tenure extension bid, the highly compromised members of the national assembly suddenly lost their voice on the final day of the deliberations in a manner which suggests divine confusion. This shows that God can step in to draw the line for Satan whenever his people rise in unity and objectively seeks His intervention.
There is certainly the reason why the prayer of Nigerians for an egalitarian society has not been answered. Those praying have abandoned the path of equity, fairness and justice and wants to bulldoze God into fulfilling parochial agenda. Nigerian Christians are quick to command fire on those sponsoring Boko Haram activities but they fail to chastise the incompetence of a Christian born president whom providence have given the opportunity and the apparatus of state to checkmate and prosecute all highly placed personalities who funded the bloodletting. This is hypocrisy. The Nigerian prayer warrior has abandoned the
path of justice, equity and fairness and is following after interests that  serve narrow vision.

The Muslim prayer warrior follows some patriotic  Muslims to solicit the help of Allah to checkmate the activities of suicide bombers and sneaks out at night to provide funds and intelligence to the terrorists . His Christian counterpart in the armed forces follows church members to command fire on all the terrorists in the land and yet corners all budgeted security votes to contain the terrorists into private purse, utilizing same to buy expansive houses in London, Paris and Dubai, while the bandits murder innocent Christians and Muslims unchallenged. This is prayer hypocrisy of the Nigerian brand. Galatians chapter6 vs 7 says ”Do not be deceived; For God cannot be mocked, whatsoever a man sows that shall he reap” Therefore the Nigerian prayer warrior is reaping the results of hypocritical prayers. Their prayers have not checkmated armed robbery attacks, kidnappings, cult activities, witchcraft activities and corrupt system of governance because the prayer is already tainted with double speaks. God does not support the looting of national treasury, confiscation of people’s electoral mandates and oppression of innocent people. God cannot support the derailment of justice and all infringements on people’s human rights.

God cannot support deliberate impoverishment of people He created through the implementation of harsh economic and administrative policies. Therefore, the Nigerian prayer warrior should align with God ‘s agenda and desist from lending support and prayers to evil causes capable of enthroning the reign of terror and poverty in the land. The Nigerian prayer warrior should fight injustice whether the victim is a Christian,Muslim or pagan. The prayer warrior must condemn evil whether it is perpetrated by a church member, mosque member or shrine member. These are part of the foundations which some western countries built; evil must be condemned, no matter who is involved. That a family member looted national wealth does not make it right. The prayer warrior must be objective in assessment of situations and not side by a religious or tribal sentiment in order to cover up evil. This is the root of intercession. Effective intercession involves unbiased assistance, assessment and urgent solicitation for Gods intervention.
The Nigerian prayer warrior should be ready to lead by example especially when given the opportunity to salvage the country in whatever capacity. He must desire to change the corrupt system which had brought oppression on the people. He must not follow in the footsteps of those who created problem for the masses. With this mindset it will not be difficult for God to raise a savior for Nigeria from among those praying for the progress of the nation, who will truly put this county on the path of greatness. Continue praying for Nigeria but get prepared to be used as a change agent who will not disappoint but rather be used to heal the nation.
DailyPost

Prayer Will Not Change Nigeria

Guest Columnist: Emeka Oparah

In their famously controversial book, The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, described religion as the opium of the people which, when taken in right dosage, benumbs the body and soul to suffering, shame and sin. The church, especially in Nigeria, has been so emblematic of the Marxian prognostication and turned otherwise educated men and women into robotic wimps, manipulated by pastor, prophets and prophetesses and recounting sometimes meaningless supplications to a creator, whose methods they hardly comprehend. The same goes for other religions, which have tended to follow a certain pattern that thoroughly negates all the principles of mutual and peaceful co-existence.

Just a few days ago, a friend complained that Nigeria is one of those third world countries where people worship all kinds of supernatural personalities and pray harder than they work yet criminals pervade the land and people perpetrate all kinds of heinous crimes even in the most sanctimonious of places and the country is retarded in growth. Meanwhile, some European countries, where less than 15% of the population recognise the existence of any gods and never bother to go to any place of worship, be it Sunday or Friday, are doing good, showing love and prospering as a people. It is this conundrum, which got so flagrantly played up in some of the media reports credited to President Goodluck Jonathan this week that has prompted this intervention.

Among all the stuff he was said to have said during the Independence Day celebrations, Mr. President reportedly declared a one year prayer session upon which we must now hinge the future and prosperity of Nigeria. First of all, I don’t understand why the president would make such a proposition to the hapless and long-suffering people of Nigeria on such an occasion. Some of us were dying to know how he intends to deal with some of the more pressing challenges facing the country, but not much came through.

Take the example of power. Paradoxically, most people were unable to watch the president’s Independence Day speech due to power outage and those who did paid dearly for it, literally, as the light was gone soon after never to return till the next day, if at all. For power, it’s all contracts, contracts and more contracts-even as we hope the water levels do not recede ultimately to show PHCN for what it truly is.

As far as I know, the Roman Catholic Church has been saying the “Prayer for Nigeria in Distress” for over two decades. Yet, neither the leaders nor the followers have changed. Former Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon (rtd), has led a prayer project called “Nigeria Prays” for over 10 years and nothing seems to have changed.  It is possible that quite a few of the new fangled churches take some time off their busy schedule (of praying for prosperity and such matters) to say a prayer or two for the country. 

There are several hours of video footage and tonnes of press clippings showing several politicians, especially the Christians, visiting one religious leader or another seeking divine guidance or so it seems. Others have also been known to have visited some notorious shrines in the more seedy and dingy enclaves. But even so, and in spite of all of these, things haven’t got any better.

My second point is the rather wrong impression created by the president (by the way I didn’t say our president lied) by claiming that the United States of America made it to greatness through prayers. I reckon Mrs. Hilary Clinton didn’t bother to listen to the speeches, otherwise the Americans would have been protesting such glaring misinformation. Brothers and sisters, the US was built on hard work, passion, vision and an overwhelming quest to be the best. If at all, they must have prayed for longer days than nights so they could get more nation-building work done!

At this point, I pause to remember an anecdote about a protest by world leaders to God over His seeming preferential treatment of Nigerians by blessing them with good weather conditions and abundant natural resources. As the story goes, God smiled at the angry protesters and asked them to go back home and wait to see the kind of leaders He would send to Nigeria.  Fabulous as this story may sound, Nigeria has had a rough ride with leadership since independence, but for one exception (Gen. Muhammadu Buhari’s era) but even so, not much was achieved while seeking to correct past mistakes.

As a country, we have so much natural resources and brilliant and hardworking people, but we don’t seem capable of  feeding ourselves (less than 20% of the population of India) much less maintain a 100km road leading from Lagos to Ibadan! And the president wants us to pray?

Today, Nigerians are wracked by the menace of terrorism, armed robbery, kidnapping and now flooding. What exactly has the government done to deal with these core aspects of their Key Results Areas, aside inexplicable budgetary allocations and platitudes in the media? Yes, these may be inevitable with the gripping high unemployment figures, but what is the government doing to complement the effort of the few surviving private sector companies? Flooding may be a natural disaster, but didn’t we get warned by the Meteorological Agencies even as we all rue Global Warming? Yet, we allow the floods to wreak so much havoc, with the death toll rising from across the affected parts of the country and billions of naira worth of property damaged. 

President Jonathan says we should pray, yet he’s not even been to any of the flooded zones, like George Bush of the same US did during Katrina and Obama has been doing all through the year as the elements ravaged the US.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t said that Nigerians should not pray. As a matter of fact, I am a firm believer in the efficacy of prayers. The only difference between me and some folks is that they believe that prayer answereth all problems. Hell no! For goodness sakes, pray if you want to pray, but do something. So, those who want to pray for 10 years can get on with it, if that’s what they have elected to do but they must realize that there are at least two clear risks in going that route. One, if we sheepishly get down on our knees and pray with our eyes closed, in a manner of speaking, those we have sent to represent us will prey on us (pardon the pun). Secondly, the natural resources we have were fortuitously granted by divine providence. I can admit so much.

However, we have to turn those raw materials into finished, profitably marketable goods, to make good sense of them. There is no amount of prayer that can turn water to wine in Nigeria of today. Even that was then, and in far away Galilee. If we can’t build or maintain our refineries, we will continue to export cheap crude and import expensive by-products, regardless of how long and how hard we pray.

So, I am totally not on this one with the president. I suggest he says just a little prayer to God for dependable, serious-minded and effective lieutenants who will help him take the country out of the dark woods where it is currently languishing clueless. In the meantime, I will say a prayer to God to grant our president the wisdom to see through the sycophancy of many of his assistants and acolytes and immediately appoint men and women of knowledge and passion who will help him make the difference rather than worry about their personal comfort and 2015.

I believe there are too many people telling the president only what he wants to hear and playing politics with the lives of Nigerians and the future of the country. President Jonathan can still make history, for all the right reasons, if he can hearken to the voices crying so bitterly and loudly in the Nigerian wilderness. Prayers won’t change Nigeria; affirmative and honest actions will.
Oparah contributed this piece from Lagos

ThisDay

Fighting corruption in Nigeria

FOR the Nigerian Government, fighting corruption is an uphill task, particularly in a corruption-ridden ethos, which has become systemic in the country. The Obasanjo administration came on somewhat boldly to establish government agencies to fight corruption. The Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) were cases in point. They have been working on the slippery hill to fight corruption since then without any positive effect to show for the all-motion-without-movement efforts. Any attempt that is made to fight the monster creates an opportunity for the cankerworm, which corruption in Nigeria has become, to spread. Some key staff of the agencies are seriously infected with the seemingly incurable disease! The new EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde, would, therefore, seem to be very correct when he lamented that neither imprisonment nor plea bargaining would deter corruption. Given these awry circumstances, the efforts of the government in fighting corruption pale into insignificance.  Not surprisingly, therefore, the 2010 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of Transparency International (TI), rated Nigeria as the 44th most corrupt country in the world, and 28th in Africa! A school of thought is, however, of the opinion that the average Nigerian is not corrupt but that the corrupt system operated in the country (the presidential system and the latter-day robbery gang of a civil service), is the rub. Civil servants prepare for their retirements by brazenly inflating project funds and engaging in sundry manipulations to feather their nests. The Senate, upper chamber of the National Assembly, once alleged that corruption in the civil service gulped up to N3 trillion annually, while 107 Federal agencies had never submitted annual accounts, just as over  N2 trillion was paid to fraudulent fuel importers in 2011 alone!
Instances abound of sources of corruption in Nigeria: A government agency hires ten people for a job designed for two people, resulting in the redundancy of eight of the employees; to compound the scenario, there would be about twenty names for the two-man position on the records. Some government agencies, such as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), donated N100 million to the victims of the Boko Haram mayhem, in February 2012, and about N500 million to yet another institution a few weeks later. This type of unco-ordinated policy is one of the noisome characteristics of Nigerian body politic, definable in terms of want of sprite for the public good. Some schools of thought would argue that numerous government agencies are deeply involved in acts of corporate irresponsibility. With such schools of thought, we could not agree more!
The Government has no business in establishing hotels and such other ventures that fall squarely in the province of the private sector. You would discover that there are no returns from government investments in such ventures.
Refineries were and are poorly maintained, crippling other related industries. Nigeria has been turned into a consumer country, importing energy in spite of the abundance of oil and gas; importing shoes in the midst of hides and skins; importing starch where cassava is in abundance. Textiles industries suffered by failure to utilize the large acres of arable cotton belts, etc.
Ironically, poverty has risen in Nigeria , with almost 100 million people living on less than a $1 (N158) per day, despite so-called economic growth, as statistics have shown. The National Bureau of Statistics stated that 60.9% of Nigerians as of 2010 were living in "absolute (abject) poverty”. This figure represents about 112.47 million Nigerians. It also stated that figure, in 1980, was 17.1 million; in 1985, 34.7 million; in 1992, 39.2 million; in 1996, 67.1 million; in 2004, 68.7 million whilst in 2010 it was 112.47 million.
What needs to be done to minimize corruption? A drastic change in the mindset of the average Nigerian, who sees public service as an avenue to get rich, knowing full well that you do not take or give what is not yours (nemo dat quod non habet!).
It is the duty of Nigerians to give the direction on how to fight corruption to the barest minimum level. That has to start from the classrooms so that lecturers or teachers must  educate the Nigerian youth and inculcate some public-spirited values in them and emphasizing that corruption is evil. There would, therefore, be need to re-introduce the subject of Civics into the school curricula.
Our prayer is for God to make Nigerian leaders, 'straight and narrow, kind and good' , shorn of clay-footed and selfish men, but men of godly character, with hearts of gold, men whose needs are few but whose hearts are large.
NationalDaily