The 10 Dumbest Risks People Take With Their Phones

If you think of your smartphone as just a phone, rather than a very powerful mini-computer that happens to make phone calls, you may be cruising for a world of pain.
That’s because the amount of sensitive data many of us store on our phones is truly staggering. A smartphone provides us direct access to our savings and checking accounts. It may store our passwords to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, even our email accounts. The phone numbers and email addresses of all our friends and colleagues are easy to find in our contacts directory.
What chaos could ensue if a thief happens to get his hands on all that data? And it probably isn’t especially hard to steal. Any security system is only as good as its weakest link, and humans are the weakest link of all. Despite our best intentions, how many of us have left our phones — or come dangerously close to leaving them — in the backseat of a taxi, sitting on top of the toilet paper dispenser at our favorite restaurant, in the seatpocket of an airliner, on the bar of a tavern, by the hotel pool, or on a conference table after a meeting?
Equally unpleasant, your phone could be hacked or compromised by a virus while you are doing online banking — or browsing the Internet at your favorite Starbucks, at the airport, in a hotel lobby, or sitting at a table waiting for your date to arrive.
If you’ve taken the right steps to protect yourself, losing your phone will be just an annoyance. But if you’ve failed to safeguard your phone with a password, backing up all your data and installing a program that can wipe the phone’s data remotely, you are setting yourself up for a seriously traumatic event.
To help you prepare your defenses, here are the 10 dumbest things that people do (or fail to do) with their smartphones.
1) No password protection.  
If you could “lock” your wallet, wouldn’t you? Well, why don’t more folks lock their iPhone or Android phone? While it is nowhere CLOSE to being foolproof, a phone password works like the theory of the burglar and the dog: If you take that extra step to protect yourself, most bad guys will simply move on to the next (easier) target. It’s a lot easier for a thief to steal a smartphone with no password than it is to work on cracking your phone.
2) Shop online with an Internet browser instead of a shopping app.
If you have the choice between shopping at Amazon.com using your phone’s browser versus Amazon’s app, use the app! Ditto for eBay, Overstock, and any big retailer that gives you the option of using their app. Unlike browsers, dedicated shopping apps are designed to ward off phishing and other kinds of scams. (Before you download it, just make sure it’s really their official app!)
3) Remain logged into banking, PayPal, eBay, and other sensitive apps.
Would you keep your Macy’s credit card, Wells Fargo debit card or AmEx on top of your desk at work? How about the front seat of your car? I think not. Then why would you keep your phone permanently logged into those same accounts? When you finish banking or shopping, make sure to log out. And NEVER click the box asking the app to save your user ID or password. Yes, it’s a pain in the b*tt to log in every time. We all tend to value convenience over security. But if a thief gets a hold of a phone that is already logged into sensitive accounts — especially if that phone has no password — it could spell financial disaster. And remember, turning off your devices every now and then can be a good idea.
4) Automatically connect to any available WiFi connections.
Whether you are using your laptop, tablet or smartphone, switch off the feature that connects to nearby WiFi networks automatically. Otherwise, hackers with the right software can easily hack your phone, as security experts have warned us for more than a decade.

5) Leave Bluetooth connections open.
Bluejacking, Bluesnarfing, Bluebugging. These are all words that describe a hacker exploiting the open Bluetooth connection on your phone. While this type of hack requires the intruder to be relatively close to you (less than 30 feet away), the intrusion can occur undetected in a busy airport, hotel lobby, restaurant, or at a conference.
6) Fail to properly purge data from old smartphones.
This is a very common mistake. Many people fail to remove sensitive, personal data from their smartphone before taking it out of service, donating it or selling it. Short of physically shredding your device (which is the only surefire way to delete all your data in an irretrievable manner). Deleting data before getting rid of your phone is simple common sense.
7) Download “free” apps that aren’t actually free.
Some Apps that call themselves “free” are actually little more than thinly-disguised data thieves. Downloading one gives the app complete access to your phone, which a fraudster can use to steal your credit card and bank account info. Such apps also can turn your phone into a launch pad from which scammers can attack other peoples’ phones with SMS texts and Smishing scams. Be smart and discreet about what you download. Read reviews first, and make sure the apps you download come from reputable sources.
8) Storing sensitive data on phones.
Many people store passwords, pins, Social Security numbers, credit card or bank account information on smartphones. It may be a document created expressly for this purpose, or it could be an email they themselves from their computers. On a phone, emails and downloaded documents are especially easy for thieves to find and steal, especially if the phone is not password protected. Some people even label the document or email “passwords,” making them especially easy prey for hackers and scammers. Make sure to delete all documents and emails containing sensitive information from your phone.
9) Failing to clear browser history.
Not clearing the browser history on your phone can be just as dangerous as staying logged into the website of your bank or your favorite store (see mistake #3). By retracing your steps, a phone thief can use your history to hijack your accounts, steal your money and wreck havoc.
10) No remote wiping software.
Various apps and services enable you to locate your phone, and also wipe its data clean, if it’s lost or stolen. Tech-savvy hackers may be able to disengage these applications, but it’s just one more layer of protection you can use to reduce your risks if you ever lose your phone.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how many anti-identity theft laws we passed, or how vigorously those laws are enforced. The ultimate guardian of the consumer is the consumer herself. Your identity is your asset. It is up to you to vigorously defend and protect it. You can take major steps toward protecting yourself by avoiding these stupid smartphone tricks.
InformationNigeria

We didn’t do it: 5 men charged for brutal bus gang rape in India deny doing it + PHOTOS

inShare1

• The men were formally indicted in a special court on 13 charges today
•  Lawyer said they signed statements saying they were innocent
• The girl was repeatedly raped and brutalised on a bus in December
• Case caused outrage in India and led to mass protests

Five men accused of brutally raping and killing a woman on a New Delhi bus have today pleaded not guilty.
The group were formally indicted in a special court on 13 charges, including rape and murder
One of the lawyers representing the defendants said they signed statements in the special fast-track court today saying they were innocent.

Five men accused of brutally raping and killing a woman on a New Delhi bus have today pleaded not guilty. The girl’s body is pictured being taken home

Anger: Indian women participate in a silent procession to mourn the death of the gang rape victim

The lawyer cannot be identified under a gag order imposed by the court.  The court will begin hearing the evidence of witnesses on Tuesday.
A sixth suspect, who is 17 years old, will be tried in a juvenile court and could face a maximum sentence of three years in a reform facility if convicted. A conviction as an adult could have led to his execution.
Police say the victim and a male friend were attacked after boarding a bus on December 16 as they tried to return home after watching a movie.
The six men, the only occupants of the private bus, beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict massive injuries to her during an hour-long ordeal, police say.

Fury: A lawyer representing the men said they signed statements in the special fast-track court today saying they were innocent. Activists are pictured following the girl’s death

Horrific: The girl was savagely attacked when she boarded a bus with a male friend after a trip to the cinema in December. An Indian woman holds a placard during a protest

The victims were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died from her injuries two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.

The brutal attack set off nationwide protests, sparking a debate about the treatment of women in India and highlighting the inability of law enforcement agencies to protect them.
Her mother, who told her cherished daughter that if she studied hard she could escape a life of poverty, said her ‘dream has ended’ with her child’s death.
Because of a legal gag order, the victim and her family cannot be identified until the end of the trial of the alleged rapists.

Anger: The savage assault caused outrage throughout India. Protestors are pictured trying to break through a police cordon during a demonstration in New Delhi

A dream destroyed: A man bows his head at a candlelit vigil for the 23-year-old student – affectionately called ‘Bitiya’, or ‘little daughter’ by her parents – who died after being gang-raped on a moving bus in New Delhi

‘I would have been with her all my life’: Friend of rape victim who witnessed brutal bus assault describes their close and complex relationship

She described him as a ‘perfect man’ while he described her ‘as the closest person to my heart’.
But following the brutal and senseless rape and killing of the 23-year-old medical student, their close friendship has been ripped apart.
The 28-year-old IT specialist had been to the cinema with his petite friend to watch Life of Pi on the night of the attack.

Speaking out: The 28-year-old IT specialist friend of the rape victim has spoken about their closeness. This is a file picture of protestors

But after getting on a bus to make their way home, they were both subjected to a violent attack which left the girl dead.
During the attack, he was struck with the metal rod repeatedly on the back of his head and on his legs. But it was nothing compared to the horrors which his friend was subjected too.
Now, less than two months since the attack, the man, who cannot be identified, is constantly haunted by thoughts of that tragic night.
‘I find myself surrounded by the pictures in my mind of the incident of that night in the bus’, he told The Independent.
The couple first met in December 2010 through a mutual friend. From there the friendship blossomed. They regularly spoke on the phone and also started taking trips with each other to holy sites.

Accused: A Delhi police van, believed to be carrying the five accused men, leave a court last week

Despite their closeness, the friends were bound by caste and tradition which worked against them forming a serious relationship. But in every other way they were a couple.
They discussed any problems they had with their families or finances and often took vacations together.
‘She was the closest person to my heart’ he says.
The heartbroken young man is soon expected to relive the horrifying ordeal in front of a judge at the trial of the accused men.
It is sure to be a painful experience.
‘I would have been with her all my life. Even if that meant taking the extreme step of going against the wishes of my family.’
YNaija.com

Super Bowl Ad Controversy Actually Generates Huge Payoff For Brands

By Lisa Richwine and Sue Zeidler

Feb 1 (Reuters) - Provocative commercials for this year's Super Bowl broadcast have scored points before the opening kickoff, with eyeball-fetching teasers nearly as important to advertisers as the longer spots for the actual game.

Even the prospect of bad publicity has not tempered the promotions. Coca-Cola and Volkswagen entries generated complaints about racial stereotyping. A teaser for Mercedes-Benz showcasing a supermodel's body has already drawn the ire of some media watchdogs.

SodaStream scored a publicity touchdown with an ad that will not even appear during the game.

The debates have prompted millions of online views, thousands of social media comments and headlines questioning whether the pitches were offensive - all this before the full audience of 100 million viewers who will watch the San Francisco 49ers play the Baltimore Ravens have seen the ads.

That degree of attention can boost the value for ads beyond the $4 million-plus that agencies pay for some of the 30-second spots. Advance buzz gets people talking and, better yet from a marketer's perspective, searching for the promotions online.

"It's almost a game around the game," said Ammiel Kamon, executive vice president for Kontera, which tracks online brand and content marketing. He says the strategy has been honed in earlier campaigns.

The pre-game scandals have already benefited some companies - including one whose ad was not even accepted. SodaStream, which makes a home carbonation machine, turned its pre-game dustup with CBS into a marketing victory, said Ronald Goodstein, professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

SodaStream revealed that CBS rejected a Super Bowl commercial showing bottles of Coke and Pepsi, two of the game's biggest sponsors, combusting spontaneously as they were being delivered to a store at the moment someone used a SodaStream product.

The company issued a statement saying the ad was declined "because the two Big Soda brands are clearly identified," setting up the image of a David and Goliath battle, with the little guy fighting soda giants. SodaStream posted the ad on its website and said it will run on other TV networks.

"They're getting a lot more out of it than their money's worth," said Goodstein. "If you can create a controversy that enhances the brand to the target audiences, then go for it."

The bright lights of controversy don't always flatter the advertisers. Coke generated complaints and a CNN debate by pundits when Arab-American groups sharply criticized its ad as racist. The commercial shows an Arab pulling a camel through the desert as cowboys, Las Vegas show girls and a crowd of marauders like those in "Mad Max" race by to reach a gigantic bottle of Coke.

Warren David, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, complained that U.S. media portrayals of Arabs are too often stereotypical: "Why is it that Arabs are always shown as either oil-rich sheiks, terrorists, or belly dancers?"

The soft drink giant called the group on Thursday to apologize and held what it called a "productive conversation" but said it would still show the commercial.

The Super Bowl provides TV's largest audience, so advertisers must be at the top of their game. "A certain degree of risk-taking is probably necessary to stand out in the Super Bowl," said Charles R. Taylor, professor of marketing at Villanova School of Business.

Mercedes made a pitch for younger viewers by featuring Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Kate Upton in a car-wash teaser, the camera slowly panning her scantily-clad body.

The carmaker released the video online, and Upton tweeted it to her 697,000 followers, generating headlines and a rebuke by the Parents Television Council.

"We knew it would be polarizing," said Mercedes USA spokeswoman Donna Boland. "If it's not polarizing then people aren't going to talk about it."

Volkswagen's spot, featuring a white American man speaking in a Jamaican accent, drew some complaints but won endorsements from national officials, who said it was a celebration of reggae music and the country's hospitable culture.

Tim Mahoney, chief marketing officer for Volkswagen of America, said pre-release testing yielded positive reactions from Jamaican viewers and others. Online polls show overwhelmingly people liked the ad, he said.

The carmaker didn't expect a controversy, he said, but admitted it "has created more interest. I think that's a good thing."

News coverage of the ad should help it stand out among the long passes and crushing tackles, said Claudia Caplan, chief marketing officer of RP3 Agency in Bethesda, Maryland.

"In a way, that was the best thing that could have happened," Caplan said. "Otherwise, it would have died with a whimper."
HuffingtonPost

Repurposing Ideas: 5 New Uses For Beer

The big winner isn't San Francisco or Baltimore this weekend -- it's a beer! According to the Nielsen Company, the Super Bowl is the eighth highest beer selling day of the year. So chances are you'll probably have an extra bottle (or five) around the house this weekend. Here are some of our five other uses for beer besides drinking, of course.

Stain Remover Coffee may be the cure for too much beer consumption, but reversely beer comes in handy for removing coffee stains. Just pour some beer on the recently stained carpet or garment and rub the spot. You'll be surprised at how effective it is. Just make sure that you rinse the excess beer off afterwards.


Photo by Fricke_K Inside Plant Fertilizer Did you know that plants like beer just as much as people do? Well they do, but for different reasons. The starches and yeast in beer help feed plants. Just pour a little bit of what is left in your bottle or glass into your house plants' pots. Your fern will thank you!


Photo by iriskh Foot Soak Drinking a beer may be one way to deal with a problem, but you can soak your feet in beer to help soothe your aching feet. According to Philly Beer Scene, you can make a great foot soak out of beer, vinegar and acidophilus sachet (which you can get from the local health food store) that will help soothe your stems. Best of all, this treatment takes care of dry skin.


Photo by salpics32 Rust Remover If you have old hardware that is starting to get a little too rusty, let these tools sit in some beer for a bit. The carbonation and the alcohol help beak up the rust. This is especially helpful for rusty bolts; just douse the item in question in a brew.


Photo by frankenstoen Meat Tenderizer Ok, this might not be a household tip per se, but it's a great use for your beer. You can use it to tenderize your meat, thanks to the acidity in beer. Just let your roast soak in the fridge in a beer bath for a few hours and you are all set.


Photo by ShutterStock HuffingtonPost

Reuben Abati: Of power-point technocrats, who open social media accounts and pretend to be voices of wisdom

by Reuben Abati

As part of our governance evolution, most people become public servants by accident, but they soon get so used to the glamour of office that they lose sight of their own ordinariness. They use the system to climb: to become media celebrities, to gain international attention and to morph into self-appointed guardians of the Nigerian estate.

A loosely bound group of yesterday’s men and women seems to be on the offensive against the Jonathan administration. They pick issues with virtually every effort of the administration, pretending to do so in the public interest; positing that they alone, know it all.  Arrogantly, they claim to be better and smarter than everyone else in the current government. They are ever so censorious, contrarian and supercilious.
They have no original claim to their pretensions other than they were privileged to have been in the corridors of power once upon a time in their lives. They obviously got so engrossed with their own sense of importance they began to imagine themselves indispensable to Nigeria.  It is dangerous to have such a navel-gazing, narcissistic group inflict themselves with so much ferocity on an otherwise impressionable public. We are in reality dealing with a bunch of hypocrites.
With exceptions so few, they really don’t care about Nigeria as a sovereign but the political spoils that accrue from it.  And so they will stop at nothing to discredit those they think are not as deserving as they imagine themselves to be. President Jonathan has unfairly become the target of their pitiable frustrations.
Underneath their superfluous appearance, lies an unspoken class disdain directed at the person and office of a duly elected president of the country. It is a Nigerian problem, perhaps. In the same advanced societies which these same yesterday men and women often like to refer to, public service is seen and treated as a privilege. People are called upon to serve; they do so with humility and great commitment, and when it is all over, they move on to other things. The quantity surveyor returns to his or her quantity surveying or some other decent work; the lawyer to his or her wig and gown; the university teacher, to the classroom, glad to have been found worthy of national service. When and where necessary, as private citizens they are entitled to use the benefit of this experience to contribute to national development, they speak up on matters of public importance not as a full-time job as is the case in Nigeria currently.
What then, is the problem with us? As part of our governance evolution, most people become public servants by accident, but they soon get so used to the glamour of office that they lose sight of their own ordinariness. They use the system to climb: to become media celebrities, to gain international attention and to morph into self-appointed guardians of the Nigerian estate. They mask self interest motives as public causes and manipulate the public’s desire for improvements in their daily struggles as opportunity for power grab.
They are perpetually hanging around, lobbying and hustling for undeserved privileges. They exploit ethnic and religious connections where they can or join political parties and run for political office. They even write books (I, me and myself books, packaged as cerebral stuff); if that still doesn’t work, they lobby newspaper houses for columns to write and they become apostolic pundits pontificating on matters ranging from the nebulous to the non-descript. Power blinds them to the reality that we are all in this together and we have a unique opportunity to do well for the taxpayers and hardworking electorate that provide every public official the privilege to serve.
Unsatisfied with the newspaper columns, they open social media accounts and pretend to be voices of wisdom seeking to cultivate an angry crowd which they feed continually with their own brand of negativity. They arrange to give lectures at high profile events where  they abuse the government of the day in order to gain attention and steal a few minutes in the sun; hoping to force an audience that may ‘open doors’ for them, back into the corridors of power. These characters are in different sizes and shapes: small, big; Godfathers, agents, proxies. The tactics of the big figures on this rung of opportunism may be slightly different.  They parade themselves as a Godfather or kingmaker or the better man who should have been king. They suffer of course, from messianic delusions.  The fact that they boast of some followership and the media often treats them as icons, makes their nuisance factor worse.  They and their protégés and proxies are united by one factor though: their hypocrisy.
It is in the larger interest of our country that the point be made that the government of the day welcomes criticism and political activism. This is an aspect of our emergent democracy that expands on the growing freedom of expression, thought and association but there is need for caution and vigilance, lest we get taken hostage by the architects of odious disinformation. Nigerians must not allow any group of individuals to hold this country to ransom and no one alone should appropriate the right to determine what is best for Nigeria. The accidental public servants who have turned that privilege into a life-long obsession and profession must be told to go get a life and find meaningful work to do.
Those who believe that no one else can run Nigeria without them must be told to stop hallucinating. The former Ministers, former Governors, former DGs, and all sorts who have been busy quoting mischievous figures, spreading cruel propaganda must be reminded that the Jonathan administration is in fact trying to clean up the mess that they created. They want to own the game when the ball is not in their possession. They want to be the referee when nobody has offered them a whistle. They seek to play God, forgetting that the case for God is not in the hands of man. One of the virtues of enlightenment is for persons to have a true perspective of their own location in the order of things. What they do not seem to realise or accept is that the political climate has changed.
When one of them was in charge of this same estate called Nigeria, he shut down the Port Harcourt airport and other airports for close to two years under the guise of renovation. The Port Harcourt airport was abandoned for so long it was overgrown with weeds after serving for months as a practice ground for motoring schools. It was reopened without any improvement and with so much money down the drain, and the pervasive suspicion that the reason it was shut down in the first place was to create a market for a new airline that had been allowed the monopoly use of the other airport in the city.
Under President Jonathan, airports across the country are being upgraded, rebuilt and modernized; in less than two years, the transformation is self-evident. Perhaps the greatest hypocrisy from our see-no-good commentators comes from the one who superintended over the near-collapse of the aviation sector who is now audacious enough to claim to be a social critic.
For the first time since 1999, the Nigerian Railway Corporation is up and running as a service organization. The rail lines have become functional from Lagos to Kano; Ewekoro to Minna, and very soon, from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, Abuja to Kaduna and Lagos to Ibadan. They couldn’t do this in their time, now they are busy looking for money that is not missing with their teeth. When questions are asked, they claim they invented the ideas of due process and accountability. They once promised to solve the crisis of electricity supply in Nigeria. But what did they do? They managed to leave the country in darkness with less than 2,000 MW; abandoned independent power projects, mismanaged power stations, and uncompleted procurement processes. The mess was so bad their immediate successors had to declare an emergency in the power sector. It has taken President Jonathan to make the difference. Today, there is greater coherence in the management of the power sector with power supply in excess of 4, 200 MW; a better conceived power sector road map is running apace, and the administration is determined to make it better.
They complain about the state of the roads. Most of the contracts were actually awarded under their watch to the tune of billions! They talk about corruption, yet many of them have thick case files with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the courts and the police on corruption-related charges. One of them was even accused of having awarded choice plots of government land to himself, his wives, his companies and other relations when he was in charge of such allocations! Really, have we forgotten so soon?
These yesterday men and women certainly don’t seem to care very much about the Nigerian taxpayer who has had to bear the brunt of the many scandals this administration is exposing in its bid to clear out the Augean stable. They’d rather grandstand with the ex-General this, Chief that, Doctor this and ex-(dis)Honourable Minister who has no record of what he or she did with the funds the nation provided them to deliver results to protect our interest so that we don’t end up continuing to make the same wasteful mistakes.
It is enough to make you shudder at the thought of any of them being part of government with access to the public purse; but then we’ve already seen what some of them are capable of doing when in control of public money, authority and influence; and to that the people have spoken in unison – they have had enough. Nigerians are wiser and are now familiar with the trickery from these persons whose claim to fame and fortune was on the back of their public service.
Our point at the risk of overstating what is by now too obvious: We have too many yesterday men and women behaving too badly. We are dealing with a group of power-point technocrats who have mastered the rhetoric of public grandstanding: carefully crafted emotion-laden sound bites passed off as meaningful engagements. That is all there is to them, after many years of hanging around in relevant places and mingling in the right corridors, all made possible through the use/abuse of Nigeria. Our caveat to their audience is the same old line: let the buyer beware!
YNaija.com

Jonathan is responsible for Nigeria’s woes – Obasanjo

By Comrade Godwin Ameh

In his usual unclothed and plain assertion, Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo had declared that President Goodluck Jonathan should be held responsible for Nigeria’s many problems.
The retired Military General stated this in an exclusive interview published in the February issue of the pan-African magazine, New African.
He flayed Jonathan for the deteriorating security situation caused by the Boko Haram menace.
According to him, “If the President is the chief security officer of the country and there is a security problem, where do you go for the solution? And if that solution is not coming from the chief security officer, who else inside and outside will get a solution? He has the responsibility to solve the problem, and nobody else should be blamed but him.”

The politician cum Otta farmer also challenged claims made by Nigerian literary icon, Chinua Achebe, regarding the country’s civil war in the 1960s.
Obasanjo debunked Achebe’s claims that successive Nigerian administrations have marginalized the Igbo ethnic group within the country.
He said: “Maybe he is making those remarks because he is not living in Nigeria. If he was living in Nigeria, when I was the president of this country, an Igbo lady was my Minister of Finance, and Igbo man was the Governor of the Central Bank; an Igbo man was one of the military service chiefs. The permanent representative to the UN was also an Igbo person. What more do you want? For someone to say the civil war has not ended, 40 years after its conclusion, that person is living in the past.”
DailyPost

[OPINION] Reuben Abati: The hypocrisy of yesterday’s men

Written By Editor

A loosely bound group of yesterday's men and women seems to be on the offensive against the Jonathan administration. They pick issues with virtually every effort of the administration, pretending to do so in the public interest; positing that they alone, know it all.  Arrogantly, they claim to be better and smarter than everyone else in the current government. They are ever so censorious, contrarian and supercilious.
They have no original claim to their pretensions other than they were privileged to have been in the corridors of power once upon a time in their lives. They obviously got so engrossed with their own sense of importance they began to imagine themselves indispensable to Nigeria.  It is dangerous to have such a navel-gazing, narcissistic group inflict themselves with so much ferocity on an otherwise impressionable public. We are in reality dealing with a bunch of hypocrites.

With exceptions so few, they really don't care about Nigeria as a sovereign but the political spoils that accrue from it.  And so they will stop at nothing to discredit those they think are not as deserving as they imagine themselves to be. President Jonathan has unfairly become the target of their pitiable frustrations.

Underneath their superfluous appearance, lies an unspoken class disdain directed at the person and office of a duly elected president of the country. It is a Nigerian problem, perhaps. In the same advanced societies which these same yesterday men and women often like to refer to, public service is seen and treated as a privilege. People are called upon to serve; they do so with humility and great commitment, and when it is all over, they move on to other things. The quantity surveyor returns to his or her quantity surveying or some other decent work; the lawyer to his or her wig and gown; the university teacher, to the classroom, glad to have been found worthy of national service. When and where necessary, as private citizens they are entitled to use the benefit of this experience to contribute to national development, they speak up on matters of public importance not as a full-time job as is the case in Nigeria currently.

What then, is the problem with us? As part of our governance evolution, most people become public servants by accident, but they soon get so used to the glamour of office that they lose sight of their own ordinariness. They use the system to climb: to become media celebrities, to gain international attention and to morph into self-appointed guardians of the Nigerian estate. They mask self interest motives as public causes and manipulate the public's desire for improvements in their daily struggles as opportunity for power grab.

They are perpetually hanging around, lobbying and hustling for undeserved privileges. They exploit ethnic and religious connections where they can or join political parties and run for political office. They even write books (I, me and myself books, packaged as cerebral stuff); if that still doesn't work, they lobby newspaper houses for columns to write and they become apostolic pundits pontificating on matters ranging from the nebulous to the non-descript. Power blinds them to the reality that we are all in this together and we have a unique opportunity to do well for the taxpayers and hardworking electorate that provide every public official the privilege to serve.

Unsatisfied with the newspaper columns, they open social media accounts and pretend to be voices of wisdom seeking to cultivate an angry crowd which they feed continually with their own brand of negativity. They arrange to give lectures at high profile events where  they abuse the government of the day in order to gain attention and steal a few minutes in the sun; hoping to force an audience that may 'open doors' for them, back into the corridors of power. These characters are in different sizes and shapes: small, big; Godfathers, agents, proxies. The tactics of the big figures on this rung of opportunism may be slightly different.  They parade themselves as a Godfather or kingmaker or the better man who should have been king. They suffer of course, from messianic delusions.  The fact that they boast of some followership and the media often treats them as icons, makes their nuisance factor worse.  They and their protégés and proxies are united by one factor though: their hypocrisy.

It is in the larger interest of our country that the point be made that the government of the day welcomes criticism and political activism. This is an aspect of our emergent democracy that expands on the growing freedom of expression, thought and association but there is need for caution and vigilance, lest we get taken hostage by the architects of odious disinformation. Nigerians must not allow any group of individuals to hold this country to ransom and no one alone should appropriate the right to determine what is best for Nigeria. The accidental public servants who have turned that privilege into a life-long obsession and profession must be told to go get a life and find meaningful work to do.

Those who believe that no one else can run Nigeria without them must be told to stop hallucinating. The former Ministers, former Governors, former DGs, and all sorts who have been busy quoting mischievous figures, spreading cruel propaganda must be reminded that the Jonathan administration is in fact trying to clean up the mess that they created. They want to own the game when the ball is not in their possession. They want to be the referee when nobody has offered them a whistle. They seek to play God, forgetting that the case for God is not in the hands of man. One of the virtues of enlightenment is for persons to have a true perspective of their own location in the order of things. What they do not seem to realise or accept is that the political climate has changed.

When one of them was in charge of this same estate called Nigeria, he shut down the Port Harcourt airport and other airports for close to two years under the guise of renovation. The Port Harcourt airport was abandoned for so long it was overgrown with weeds after serving for months as a practice ground for motoring schools. It was reopened without any improvement and with so much money down the drain, and the pervasive suspicion that the reason it was shut down in the first place was to create a market for a new airline that had been allowed the monopoly use of the other airport in the city.

Under President Jonathan, airports across the country are being upgraded, rebuilt and modernized; in less than two years, the transformation is self-evident. Perhaps the greatest hypocrisy from our see-no-good commentators comes from the one who superintended over the near-collapse of the aviation sector who is now audacious enough to claim to be a social critic.

For the first time since 1999, the Nigerian Railway Corporation is up and running as a service organization. The rail lines have become functional from Lagos to Kano; Ewekoro to Minna, and very soon, from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, Abuja to Kaduna and Lagos to Ibadan. They couldn't do this in their time, now they are busy looking for money that is not missing with their teeth. When questions are asked, they claim they invented the ideas of due process and accountability. They once promised to solve the crisis of electricity supply in Nigeria. But what did they do? They managed to leave the country in darkness with less than 2,000 MW; abandoned independent power projects, mismanaged power stations, and uncompleted procurement processes. The mess was so bad their immediate successors had to declare an emergency in the power sector. It has taken President Jonathan to make the difference. Today, there is greater coherence in the management of the power sector with power supply in excess of 4, 200 MW; a better conceived power sector road map is running apace, and the administration is determined to make it better.

They complain about the state of the roads. Most of the contracts were actually awarded under their watch to the tune of billions! They talk about corruption, yet many of them have thick case files with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the courts and the police on corruption-related charges. One of them was even accused of having awarded choice plots of government land to himself, his wives, his companies and other relations when he was in charge of such allocations! Really, have we forgotten so soon?

These yesterday men and women certainly don't seem to care very much about the Nigerian taxpayer who has had to bear the brunt of the many scandals this administration is exposing in its bid to clear out the Augean stable. They'd rather grandstand with the ex-General this, Chief that, Doctor this and ex-(dis)Honourable Minister who has no record of what he or she did with the funds the nation provided them to deliver results to protect our interest so that we don't end up continuing to make the same wasteful mistakes.

It is enough to make you shudder at the thought of any of them being part of government with access to the public purse; but then we've already seen what some of them are capable of doing when in control of public money, authority and influence; and to that the people have spoken in unison – they have had enough. Nigerians are wiser and are now familiar with the trickery from these persons whose claim to fame and fortune was on the back of their public service.

Our point at the risk of overstating what is by now too obvious: We have too many yesterday men and women behaving too badly. We are dealing with a group of power-point technocrats who have mastered the rhetoric of public grandstanding: carefully crafted emotion-laden sound bites passed off as meaningful engagements. That is all there is to them, after many years of hanging around in relevant places and mingling in the right corridors, all made possible through the use/abuse of Nigeria. Our caveat to their audience is the same old line: let the buyer beware!

Dr. Abati is Special Adviser (Media and Publicity) to President Goodluck Jonathan
PSN