Born In 1885, World’s Oldest Woman Dies In China

Luo Meizhen

A woman who Chinese officials said was 127 years old – although international authorities never recognised the claim – has died, relatives said on Tuesday.

Official documents said that Luo Meizhen was born in 1885, which would make her the oldest person ever to have lived, but she died at the weekend after months of illness, her son Huang Youhe said.

“She was 127 when she died, it wasn’t unexpected,” her grandson Huang Heyuan said.

Luo’s declared birth date means she may have been the oldest person in the world when she died, ahead of Japan’s Jiroemon Kimura, who records say is 116.

But Luo’s claim met with little recognition internationally because China did not have a reliable birth certification system until decades after she was born.

Scepticism was further fuelled by reports of the youthfulness of her sons, one of whom she was said to have given birth to at the age of 61.

According to Guinness World Records, the oldest person ever to have lived was Jeanne Calment of France, who was 122 years and 164 days when she died in 1997.

Luo’s 1885 birth date was quoted on her official residency permit and identity card, both issued in recent decades, and was confirmed by a state-sponsored research institute in 2010.

China’s official Xinhua news agency ran reports of her 127th birthday celebrations on its website in October, describing her as China’s oldest person.

“She was a kind person but at times had a very bad temper, she had a strong character,” Huang Heyuan said.

Luo, who worked as a farmer all her life, and gave birth to five children, is survived by several great-great grandchildren in the remote village of Longhong, in China’s southern province of Guangxi.

The village is part of Bama county, a poor region that officials say is home to more than 80 centenarians.

Her relatives gathered in her simply furnished brick house Tuesday to light red incense sticks in remembrance.

Relatives said they had stored her body on a mountain close to their home and were waiting for an auspicious date later this month to bury her. [AFP]

The Speech That Rattled Pres. Jonathan: "Political Engagement- A New Approach" By Mallam Nuhu Ribadu

Mallam Nuhu Ribadu

Protocols…: I confess to feeling inspired with every visit to this institution that shaped my perception of life and grounded my entire intellectual development. This intellectual development is not only a debt I owe to my teachers who have formed me but achallenge to me to go out there and influence society for the benefit of those to come.
For this, I must say thank you! I thank my teachers, of the academic, the moral and even the political, who showed me the virtues of honesty and commitment to serving humanity. And for the students who consider me a model worthy of their time and regard today, my gratitude to you is as large as our great institution. We are gathered under this shade today because somebody found the wisdom to lay the foundation for this institution. Ahmadu Bello University is an institution with a weight of history that challenges us to do justice to whatever comes our way. We learn, from this, that at any time in history, someone has to make a sacrifice for successive generations. Our diversity in this prestigious institution, across ethnicities, religions and regions, stimulated by remainders of the legacies of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, after whom our institution is named, instills an all-inclusive spirit in us such that we end up as tolerant and understanding wherever we find ourselves in private and public engagements. You must consider yourselves lucky for being a part of these distinguished Nigerians as among you I see future political leaders, advocates of change, captains of industry and technocrats—the hope of our country!

As philosophers teach, everything changes. So we don’t need a political philosopher to spell out that there is dynamism in our politics. Our politics is an interpretation of who we are, what we are and the things we stand for. The presently unclear phase of our political disharmony is the issue we must reflect on today—and that we must do together. The dynamism of modern politics is one further excited by the reality of the internet and a consequent increased participation of the youth in political and civic matters. But the place of the youth in our democratic space is jeopardised when the elite in our State decide to model our government after a gerontocracy—a government by the old and for the elderly. Ours is a system in which new and modern ideas are denied a chance to grow and mature. The tragedy of our democracy is that it is one in which the yearnings of the youth are stamped down in order to perpetuate a tyranny of interests. Tyranny it is when acertain slim range of people impose their private interests on the majority; tyranny it is when the agents of change are left on the cliffs of unemployment, poverty, insecurity, substandard education and, worse still, policies destroyed by our heritage of corruptions.

It is, however, understandable that our youth have lost hope in the leadership of this nation; a sane society is known by the opportunities it provides for the youth. But I must offer that the youth should not allow themselves to be drawn into any campaign that attempts to colour the internal borders of our country. We are doomed as a nation the moment the youth get hoodwinked by the bickering of bitter politicians who ride to relevance on sentiments that only inspire distrust among citizens. My experience so far in politics has taught me that age does not guarantee maturity to responsibly play the role of a patriot in an atmosphere of tensed political antagonisms. Thankfully, this is the Age of the Internet; borderless interactions in and out of cyberspace have opened a new door of social and political influences for the youth and the oppressed. This age of information has revealed that no people can ever be entirely wrong at the same time; the evil among us are so because of certain disorders in their superficial orientations, education or even mental state. That Boko Haram insurgency was launched in the north does not incriminate the entire northerners or Muslims; neither is kidnapping and the previously ill-famed militancy in the south crimes of the entire people of Niger-Delta. Similarly, the recent massacre of our security officers by certain elements of the largely good-natured Eggon people of Nasarawa state must not be adopted in interpreting the ethnic identities of these people. There is no man on this earth who smiles at the injuries on his body. And these militants, kidnappers, extremists and other agents of exclusions among us are injuries on the collective body of the nation. These events only call out loudly for careful and people-centered leadership. This is our call, and we must be fair to our history.          
 
Who we are… in Democracy
The biggest illusion we have lived in as a people is believing the cry heard from various corners that Nigeria is an unnatural entity coerced together—a sort of Frankenstein state. I have no doubt that this is a very, very inaccurate judgment. The truth is far simpler—there is not a single region in what is now Nigeria that was home to just a single ethnic group living all by themselves before the coming of the colonialists. Exclusive ethnic identities are inventions of our political advocacies and relevancies. Nigeria was a stretch of land hosting many city-states and cosmopolites, where in the south-west the Ijebu and the Egba people didn’t consider themselves as one, talk less of as Yoruba. In the south-east, it was a taboo to infer that the people of, say, Arochukwu and Onitsha were one—none accepted identification as Igbo. The Hausaland too was not monotonous as today’s Hausamen from Kano and Katsina would rather identify with their city-states than with any corporate ethnicity. But while they each had their distinct identities, they also welcomed anyone who could come and contribute to the city or state, they welcomed anyone who desired to be a citizen. So why these unnatural and suddenly insurmountable walls of ethnic exclusivities? We live in the saddest form of self-deceit, that this or that region of Nigeria favoured by someone or the other would remain one if we allowed the secessionists and ethnic irredentists get their cartographers working against our country’s map.
         
There is no country in this world whose borders simply surrounded a people of the same identities, wishes and desires. Our ability, in spite of the divides, to come to a consensus or sacrifice a cause or compromise a stance, is what makes us anation. But we have chosen to play the politics of exclusion where the trust of the people is first for their kinsmen or religion before alignment with the nation. This dangerous departure from patriotism, which saw to rise in ethnic advocacy, nepotism, bigotry and militancy, has been used by enemies of change to subdue and destroy any quest for the Nigeria of our dreams—a Nigeria where we abandon our bloodline in our service to the nation.

Who we are in a democracy is not ambiguous; it is a single identity vested with the same rights for all, rights of equal citizenship! We are citizens, just citizens, not Hausa-Fulani, not Igbo, not Yoruba, not Jukun, not Ijaw, not northerners, not southerners, and no matter our protests, no matter our influence and affluence, we all must have just a single vote in a participatory democracy.

What we are… in Democracy
What are we? We are Change! We are the scattered, and mostly unfamiliar and unrelated citizens, in who lie the same purpose, in who lie the hunger for a functional society, in who lie the dream of a new Nigeria. Change, in this time of political anarchy, is the wisdom to see through the propagandas designed to destabilise the country. Change, in this trying time, is the strength to stand together despite the blowups of bombs-per-meter-square in our land.
Change, in this time of distrust, is the maturity to disregard the theories of stereotype artists who heap the failure of a nation to a particular region or people, to an “other”, a “someone else” who is not “one of us”. Change, in this era of internet evolution and revolution, is the maximisation of the privileges offered by the internet in which every man with a laptop or tablet or mobile phone has a valid voice that must be heard.

The debate has always been that online representations of Nigeria in cyberspace do not capture our social realities in the actual world. While I agree that cyber-Nigeria is not our absolute portrait since our non-literate fellow countrymen in their teeming millions have been left out of its political exchanges and interactions, we must recognise the power and influence of the internet users on the psyche and struggle of the nation. Globalisation is not just a word, and as slow as it is in Third World Nigeria, it has interposed unimagined twists of events we have only been reading in foreign tabloids in Nigeria. Globalisation is a teacher of the good and the bad, and today the influences are no longer passed just through the privileged bourgeoisie. The increase in internet access enhances the speed of dispersion of ideas. It happened in Tunisia. It happened in Egypt. It’s happening here… But, we must be devout apostles of change to realise our dream of Change!    

 What we stand for… in Democracy
Democracy loses its allure when it is perceived as a forte of the rich—through oligarchic eyes. With such a mindset, the people themselves make democracy expensive and destroy it. The moment you task your candidates with paying to earn your votes, you lose your moral right to question his excesses. I agree with the Australian political theorist, Professor John Dryzek, when he explains the essence of democracy, thus: “Democratization… is not the spread of liberal democracy to ever more corners of the world, but rather extensions along any one of three dimensions… The first is franchise, expansion of the number of people capable of participating effectively in collective decision. The second is scope, bringing more issues and areas of life potentially under democratic control… The third is the authenticity of the control…: to be real rather than symbolic, involving the effective participation of autonomous and competent actors”.

To democratise Nigeria, we must understand the powers we refuse to explore. The “tyrants” in democracy are actually individuals from amongst the people, but when they become agents of electoral malpractices and political dishonesty, the dice turns up against the people from which they have come. When I say “people”, I don’t mean just the voters. The electoral officers who comply to rig a fair election abuse their chance at creating a saner nation while damaging the trust and hopes of an oppressed people of whom they are members. Politics is not magic; it’s a calculation of the good and the wrongs we do in the quest of power.

Here is where we need to come together to make our democracy work; let us drop any form of identity that introduces us as something other than “citizens”, and let us drop any citizenship that asks for anything other than “Change” for the better. Let us destroy any institution that preaches divisions and exclusions. Unless we put our patriotism away from greed and any undemocratic advocacy, our collective struggle to install a popular government will remain a mission impossible. 

Approaching the Modern Democracy
Traditional political engagements were, until the coming of the internet revolutions, carried out largely by the civil societies and opposition political groups. But the internet has introduced a medium not only for instant dissemination of information and broader based interaction, but one that has also offered us a new space for the gestation of political ideologies, mobilisations and revolts.
         
The trigger of this internet-based political revolution is, perhaps, the suicide of Tunisia’s Mohamed Bouazizi, a young vendor whose singular act to protest repeated harassment by the local police punctured the overstayed dictatorship of that North African country. Bouazizi’s death would not have been noticed without the internet, and social networking sites from where cell phone photograph of the dead vendor stirred up the anger of fellow citizens. The defeat of Ben Ali by the protestors sent a message to other similarly oppressed people, a message that went beyond the North Africa territories.

What has this got to do with Nigeria, you ask? The Bouazizi Effect is not only an instigator of Arab Spring, it taught disgruntled citizens worldwide a way to take their anger beyond cyberspace. It taught the loudest way to condemn anti-people policies. It taught Bahrainis to demand for a freer political clime… It taught the Egyptians to demand for a new president… It taught the Libyans to take up arms against their president whom they not only overthrew but killed… It taught the Yemenis to oust their president. And, welcome back home, it inspired Nigerians to take to the street in their revolt against the removal of fuel subsidy in January 2012.

While the decision to challenge unpopular policies is laudable, absolute orderliness is not expected from angry young men on the streets. This is where we must rub minds, like family, to find a way out of this mess; how do we end this reign of corruptions and insensitivity to the plights of the common man without subjecting any of us to the bullets of those asked to send us back to our houses in which we find miseries and hopelessness? How do we tell our political leaders that a thing is missing without getting shot? I use “we” because I’m just as passionate and concerned as you and YOU! I use “we” because if we allow ourselves to be divided into “Us” and “Them”, the possibility of winning this war is null. The exclusionists who invented “them” to stop us from forming a formidable political “we” are the people we must fight, and there is just one way to achieve this: Citizen Engagement!

The Meaning of Political Engagement
My commonsense understanding of engagement in a democratic polity is the realisation of one’s rights, having studied and understood the deficiencies inherent in a system from which expectations of satisfaction have been unsatisfied. Political engagement is inspired or justified by one’s decision to discharge his or her constitutional responsibilities in an attempt to either react to an unpopular reform or policy or merely embark on a personal quest to contribute one’s quota to agovernment found wanting.
         
In our response to the dynamism of present politics, the traditional engagement that tasked the civil societies and opposition parties with engaging incumbent governments and their reforms or policies, we must pander to the non-violent form of citizenship mobilisation popularised by Bouazizi Effect. Mind you, I do not mean setting oneself ablaze to register a grievance. I mean exploring the power of our numbers, from the internet to the physical landscape, to investigate and challengea political injustice; I mean defying attempts by exclusionists to tear us apart in our campaign for an ideal candidate; I mean understanding that for achieving impact, an engagement in cyberspace is not enough until it is propounded and taken to the actual world. Here again, we have a task before us: Citizenship Mobilisation.

Nigeria: Engaging the Modern Politics
In 1999, we welcomed a democracy with a hope of building a civilian government in which every citizen is an active participant. A decade later, our democracy was led into chaos where the “Who” and the “What” of our identifications are colourfully worn to pronounce our differences and divides. This is a masterfully orchestrated bang that opened the Pandora box we have tightly secured since the unfortunate events of the Nigerian Civil War—in fact, since before then! We have existed as a nation struggling to forgive itself of the mistakes of yesterdays, but while we struggled with this, our democracy has become modelled into an avenue where sentiments are highlighted by pro-exclusion politicians to corner the votes of their kinsmen because they cannot do so on grounds of their individual reputation or records. This careless stratagem is a pathway to self-destruction begging for our collective, and very immediate, effort at snatching our future from the hands of those who ride on such ethnic and religious and regional sentiments towards self-enrichment.
         
The challenge ahead is enormous. The challenge is for us to form networks that will engage and destroy the evil missions of the exclusionists and agents of anarchy among us. In a time of anarchy, everybody is a politician. This is a time of anarchy. In a time like this, we should have no identities other than ordinary Citizen. We are citizens of a world challenged, a people confused and abused, a nation whose resources is misused by leaders whose major worry is the amount of dollars in their bank accounts. The situation is one of psychological abuse, existential abuse. My antidote for this monstrous reality is also psychological:

First, while it has become really difficult to set aside our ethnic identities in discharging our civic responsibilities, we must know that in a democratic space, our only identity especially when we gather around ballot boxes and in the service of the nation is our citizenship: “Nigerian”. We must be conscious of this identity, it defines a patriot.

Second, always have in mind that politics is not magic. And that people are responsible for the governments that happen to them. If the electorates wear their patriotism to vote in a popular candidate, the electoral officers too must know that their manipulation of figures is a betrayal of trust and their fellows awaiting them at home. No candidate can rig an election without complicity of the people.

Third, offline and online political engagements are compulsory ventures of every citizen of a troubled country. Though, I have always maintained that Nigeria is a Third World country and, for this, we must not be carried away on the social media.A percentage of Nigerians who have no internet access is important. In every decision, and agenda, we aspire to pursue, they must be in the know.

Fourth, membership of social and political groups and networks including community volunteerism is the surest way of fixing our weakened bonds and salving our rivalries. The more we meet to discuss personal and public issues without pandering to the designs of the exclusionists, the more we understand and forestall propagandas fashioned against us. The new Nigerian, irrespective of his origin, must be a part of any network that analyses and tries to influence public policies or government.

Lastly, let us have in mind that we are now in a sinking ship in which we alone understand, and can reestablish, the hydraulics of our statecraft. Let us have in mind that we are all politicians in this storm.     

Conclusion
The reality of modern Nigeria is one that challenges us to drop any other identity aside from that of Citizen in our effort to rescue the ship of state from this stormy sea of chaos. All the destructions in the guise of inter-ethnic, inter-religious and inter-regional clash are traced to politics and this supports my earlier declarations that every citizen of a troubled country must become a politician. A politician is a conscious citizen of a country, a politician is first known by his citizenship, apolitician is young and old, a politician is poor and rich, a politician is a thinker and volunteer, a politician is employed and jobless, a politician is a humanist and patriot, a politician is a teacher and student, a politician is you and I.

Thank you very much.
  
BEING AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC LECTURE ORGANISED BY THE STUDENTS REPRESENTATIVE COUNCIL (SRC), AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY (ABU) ZARIA WITH THE THEME “YOUTH: THE FULCRUM OF EVERY SOCIETY”  ON SATURDAY JUNE 8, 2013
Saharareporters

Abati In 2009: I Saw Ribadu In Rwanda By Reuben Abati

Reuben Abati

I ran into him at the reception lobby of the Hotel Des Milles Collines in Kigali. He had just arrived and was trying to check into the hotel: Nuhu Ribadu, the erstwhile Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission who lost his job under rather controversial circumstances, and who is regarded as having been unfairly treated by the Yar'Adua government. I hugged him. He had lost nothing of his humility, his sense of humour and his humanity. He didn't look like a man who had just been rough-tackled by the unpredictable Nigerian state whose moral compass is subject solely to the whims and caprices of whoever is in charge, and not necessarily principles and values.
The following morning, we sat together on the same long table, and I slipped a note to him. I wanted an interview with him for The Guardian. It is about time he told his story at great length. He read my note, and picked up his pen. I noticed that he is a Southpaw, and I chuckled remembering how so many southpaws tend to find themselves in the hot corners of history. In his response, he had said "we would discuss." We were both attending a conference organised by UNECA in collaboration with UNDP to assess the efficiency and impact of anti-corruption institutions in Africa. There were anti-corruption chiefs in attendance from various African countries.
Ribadu wouldn't grant an interview, but he was ready to discuss. "I think it is better for me to remain silent now", he says. "I am using this period to reflect on what we did. You know when I took up the job in 2003, I resolved that I will try my utmost best. And walahi, I tried. I took the assignment seriously. Maybe I failed, but at least we proved that it is possible. So, I have been thinking and trying to figure out what further should have been done or could have been done differently." We were soon asked to introduce ourselves. When it was Ribadu's turn, he told the meeting: "I am Nuhu Ribadu, former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of Nigeria, currently recuperating from a bloodied nose". The hall cracked into laughter. But the other anti-corruption chiefs and operatives would not laugh later when Ribadu took part in a country case studies panel.
There has been so much speculation about Ribadu's whereabouts in the Nigerian press. But the fact is that he is currently a Senior Fellow at St Antony's College in Oxford University in the United Kingdom, working with Professor Paul Collier, the leading authority on African economies and politics. St Antony's College has become the sanctuary for many progressives who get into trouble in the developing world. Ribadu stays in a residence that was recently vacated by Anwal Ibrahim, the embattled former Prime Minister of Malaysia whose only offence was that he fell out of favour with his boss, Mahathir Muhammed. "Such a nice man", Ribadu says. "he left me his plates and cutlery and kitchen utensils." One of the persons Ribadu met on arrival at St Antony's is John Githongo, the Kenyan newspaper columnist and anti-corruption campaigner who had to flee from Kenya in 2005, after he discovered that the majorly corrupt persons in the country are his own colleagues: Ministers and the big men of Kenyan society. Githongo got their confessions on tape, but they told him bluntly that they are the ones milking Kenya dry. One fateful day, Githongo packed his bags and fled to London, from where he sent a letter resigning his position as Permanent Secretary for Ethics and Governance in Kibaki's NARC Government. He has now returned to Kenya where he enjoys massive media and civil society support, and his book, written by Michela Wrong and titled It's Our Turn To Eat will be released in London on February 23. It will go on sale in Nairobi the same day.
Unlike Githongo, Ribadu did not run away immediately he discovered that he had fallen out of favour. He stayed and tried to fight the system. He was sidelined and sent to a course he didn't ask for in Kuru near Jos. Behind his back, they gave his job to someone else, without regard to the security of tenure. Then, they demoted him in what looked like a routine administrative exercise, but the political undertones were writ large. When he tried to resist the system, they shoved him out of the graduation hall at Kuru, and his employers, the Police sent him to Siberia: what Nigerians would call the Ogbugbuaja treatment. Ribadu got lawyers and again tried to fight back. He refused to report for duty. He refused to wear the uniform of the new rank.
One day, assassins trailed him and pumped bullets into his car. Having served in the Nigeria Police for more than two decades, he could spot a warning shot if one was fired in his direction. So, Ribadu succumbed to the logic of Bob Marley's lyrics: "He who fights and runs away, will live to fight another day." He is not likely to come anywhere Nigeria for a while. Those who do not like his face and his work have effectively driven him out of town. But he is a determined man. "What has happened to me is just a temporary setback", he concludes. "I am a fighter, I don't give up. I don't believe the people who think they have dealt with me will have the last laugh."
Like Githongo, Ribadu is spending his period in exile to think and write. "I am working on two books", he told me. The working title for the first book is "The Problem of Corruption in Africa: The Nigerian Experience." He explained: "You know corruption is the biggest problem we have in Africa. It is so central to the problems we have. But to fight corruption, the biggest man in government, the President or the Prime Minister must be honest about it. That is where it starts. Americans talk about Obama. We need change in Nigeria more than America does. What I discovered is that we have a challenge to give power to ordinary Nigerians, to ordinary people, to take it from the politicians. And we don't have time. Change is important." He didn't have a working title for his proposed second book. But he offered an outline of its posssible contents.
"When I look back, I realise that some of the people who liked what I did also have issues with some of the things we did. I plan to do a second book to address some of their concerns. I intend to show for example that we deliberately went after grand corruption because that is where the problem is. We interrogated the Governors, the Senate President, the Vice President. I put a Bank Director, Bulama in handcuffs. The moment we did that, the banks knew immediately that there were no sacred cows. We needed to send a strong signal that corruption will not be condoned and the cleansing process had to start from the stop. The day I took the job, I knew that it could end up like this. I knew that I could be victimised or dismissed or killed. It could have been worse. That I am alive today is by the Grace of the Almighty and I am grateful. But my position is that some people just have to make the sacrifice to save our country. I swear by the Almighty that wherever there are people who are trying to make Nigeria a better country, I will be among them. Walahi."
Another objective Ribadu intends to achieve in the second book is to comment on a number of case studies. "People go about saying that Obasanjo used me to go after his enemies, Obasanjo didn't use me, in fact may be it is the other way round. If you check, you will notice that the people we went after were actually Obasanjo's people. Alamiyeseigha was very close to the President. Odili was also very close to him. Saminu Turaki was an Obasanjo man. I deliberately did not go after the opposition. Yes, we investigated Orji Kalu. We also investigated Bola Tinubu. I know the President's people would have wanted the EFCC to go after a man like Ken Nnamani. But we needed to start with the Obasanjo people to make a point that nobody is above the law. And that was why we investigated the President himself, And we went after his daughter. I was in Kuru then, but I knew about the Iyabo case. If we want to clean up our country, then let us do it. And that was why I went after Atiku. Atiku is from the same village with me. But Nigeria is more important. It belongs to all of us, not some powerful people."
Ribadu's book is also a response to questions about due process and the rule of law. "People complain that we didn't obey the rule of law, that we violated due process and they use specific instances to criticise us. I plan to respond to all those criticisms. Take a man like former IG Tafa Balogun. I didn't like what happened myself. I was against putting him in handcuffs. But I have to be sensitive to the people who work under me. They came to me and accussed me of double standards. When I accepted the job, I was inspired by the example of Jerry Rawlings of Ghana who went after the big fish and changed his country for good. So we decided that if we could put a Bank MD in handcuffs and follow that up with an Inspector General of Police, then Nigerians would realize that we meant serious business. That was what happened. I am a human being. I make mistakes. I admit that. But I was honest about what I did. So they say we abused the rule of law? What is rule of law? The same rule of law that has now been used to recapture Nigeria?"
I told Ribadu I can't wait to read and review his books. When are they coming out? "This year. By July. We have to keep the anti-corruption campaign alive. For me personally, there is nothing left for me other than to dedicate myself to the struggle. I am not seeking to be an Obama. But people must be prepared to make the sacrifice. We need change more than America." How is he these days? "I sleep well these days", he said. "My needs are minimal. Look at this pair of slippers". I checked: an over-abused pair of slippers with worn edges and threatening holes. "I have been wearing this since 2003 and I am okay. But I must tell you I have enjoyed a lot of goodwill since I left office. I was offered jobs by many international organizations. I receive invitations to attend conferences and to write books. I came here for example from Lusaka. I am happy to know that there are people out there who have faith in human progress and integrity."
It was soon the turn of Ribadu to participate in a panel discussion focussing on country case studies. There were contributions from representatives of Nigeria's EFCC and the ICPC, but Ribadu's comments had a special accent which struck a chord among the participants. He said: "If you fight corruption, it fights back. If you go after petty corruption nothing will happen to you, But if you go after grand corruption, you'd be taking on the politicians and they have the money. And they will come after you, But you can choose to go to bed with them and you'd continue to be Chairman or Director, and you can go to conferences and enjoy tea and collect estacodes. But I made a choice, I decided to go after the big ones, even if they were the ones that put me there, I investigated President Obasanjo, I took his statement myself. I went after his daughter, a Senator, I went after Governors, I charged all of them to court. One of them offered me $500, 000 US and a house in Seychelles and an aircraft, but I rejected all of that. By the time I left EFCC, I had 275 convictions in a country that never had one on cases of grand corruption, I charged the Vice President to court - somebody from my village. I proved that it can be done.
"It is the most difficult work to do. To confront it will require people who make sacrifice like Mandela, like the people who fought for independence in our various countries. It requires people who have courage, people who do not think that they want to enjoy. If you want to enjoy, it is not the kind of work you can do. I have no regrets. It requires a strong will to make sacrifice. You have to make a fundamental decision. It can even mean you lose your life. They will try to compromise you, They will try to blackmail you. I survived an assassination attempt. I have bullets in my car. I intend to keep that car for life. I have no regrets. You have the media. You have to carry them along, be open, be accountable. I have never given a penny to anybody in the media, But there is no newspaper in Nigeria that has not made me Man of the Year, even though I charged some publishers to court and even threatened to close down newspapers. Which shows that people are good. If they see that you mean well, they will support you. I am out now, but Nigeria has changed. You need international co-operation. You also need to build capacity.
"We built a Financial Intelligence Unit, you have to be in control of Financial intelligence in your country. because money is at the root of all forms of corruption. If you track the money, you can stop the corruption. Be on the side of your own people. Don't be on the side of the leaders. A President will go, but the country will be there, Those who are in control, it is only temporary. History will judge you and you will never regret."
Saharareporters

June 12 1993: A Historical Necessity For Nigeria By Joe Igbokwe

Alhaji Bashir Tofa, the Presidential candidate for the National Republican Convention (NRC) in 1993 Presidential Election who lost woefully and miserably to the late Chief MKO Abiola was in the news recently concerning that historic election. Tofa said that “the June 12 1993 Presidential election was a fiction and its anniversary not worth celebrating.” According to Bashir Tofa: “Only those who don’t have anything to offer to this country to move forward can still be talking about June 12 Presidential Elections…. I am not one of those people that celebrate fiction that is more reason I don’t like to be talking again on June 12 presidential elections.”

Reading through Tofa’s scurrilous drivel and political dishonesty, my mind at once ran away with this thinking that Tofa cannot get it. The crushing, humiliating and debilitating defeat Alhaji Bashir Tofa suffered on June 12 1993 is still haunting the amateur politician the way that historic election is still haunting Nigeria 20 years after.
The June 12 1993 presidential elections may not mean anything to Bashiru Tofa because he has no sense of history, he remembers nothing and hears nothing, but the world knows about June 12 1993 presidential elections in Africa’s most populous country, the crisis, the pains, the agonies, the tears, the killings, the deaths, the chains of events that followed the annulments of that election, and the price Nigeria has paid for this mistake for 20 years.
Tofa and his like may not know this but the trouble of June 12 will ever continue to haunt us until we come to terms with what transpired in those years of locusts. June 12 1993 will continue to remind us of how IBB and Abacha used the full weight of the Federal Military Government and the instrumentality of State power and machinery to destroy Chief Abiola, his wife, his business and nearly five thousand other Nigerians between 1993 and 1998.
For the avoidance of doubt June 12 1993 presidential elections was symbolic in many ways:
·         The most peaceful election ever held in Nigeria since Independence
·         The man who won the election and his Deputy are both Muslims
·         It was the freest and fairest election in Nigeria since independence
·         It was celebrated and extolled by local, national and international observers
·         For the first time in the history of this country Nigerians jettisoned both ethnic and primordial sentiments to elect leaders of their choice
·         There was no record of violence, intimidation, snatching of ballot boxes, multiple voting, rigging etc.
·       There was no protest from any Part of the country until IBB and his cohorts started brandishing ethnic cards to stop the silent revolution.       

I can go on and on.

20 years after the election and 14 years into our renascent democracy, Nigeria is getting into deeper troubles everyday. Militant organizations have been continuously putting knives on things that held us together and the center cannot hold. But of all these ethnic  organizations: OPC, MASSOB, MEND, BOKO HARAM etc only OPC was historically thrown up by the forces of history to defend their people when IBB and Abacha decided to decimate Yoruba leaders for refusing to accept the annulment of June 12 Presidential elections won by their illustrious son Chief Moshood Abiola.

We may not remember this but IBB and Abacha descended on first class Yoruba leaders, sending some to their untimely graves, put some in jail and chased others to seek asylum abroad. At a time Abacha planted bombs in various locations in Lagos, had them exploded and many were killed and property destroyed. The ploy was to blame the Yoruba leaders for planting the bombs and then get them arrested. Abacha did it. It was in the peak of this intimidation and humiliation that OPC came on stage. Today we may never know the names of hundreds of South West youths killed on the streets of Lagos and Ibadan who fought Nigerian soldiers deployed by Abacha with bare hands. I saw many of them cut down in Mushin, Lagos. These were the real heroes of democracy some of us are bastardizing today.

For MASSOB, MEND, BOKO HARAM, these are cowards and lilly-livered opportunist who did not raise a voice during the reign of the maximum dictator, General Abacha. The moment Abacha died these opportunists rose up to distort history. Today others can take MEND, BOKO HARAM or MASSOB seriously, I do not. They are historical cowards and people looking for five minutes of fame.

Fraudulent Nigerian politicians and destroyers of our history books will continue to make mockery of themselves by denying that the June 12 1993 ever existed but those who know the facts will continue to set records straight for posterity and generations yet unborn. June 12 1993 will not go away until Nigerians learn to live a decent life and do things properly. June 12 1993 will not go away until the rulers of Nigeria recognize the monumental, awesome, fearsome and maximum sacrifice made by Chief Moshood Abiola, his wife and hundreds of others to earn democracy for Nigeria. Until wise Nigerians advice our leaders to look back and put things in order, peace will continue to elude us. Case rested!


Joe Igbokwe
Lagos

SaharaReporters

Finally, APC formally applies to INEC for registration

Festus Owete

All Progressives Alliance

The APC filed the application of Friday.

The All Progressives Congress, APC, announced on Tuesday that it has formally applied to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for registration as a political party after months of perfecting its application process.

Tom Ikimi, a leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, one of the merging parties forming the APC, announced this to reporters on Tuesday in Abuja.

He said the application was made to the electoral umpire on Friday last week and was signed by nine people as required by the electoral law. Mr. Ikimi named the nine people as the National Chairmen, Secretaries, and Treasurers of the three merging parties, the ACN, CPC, and the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP.

The APC, once registered will be Nigeria’s main and largest opposition party.

More details later…

PremiumTimes

Azazi blames Boko Haram attacks on PDP

The National Security Adviser, Andrew Owoye Azazi has blamed the rise of insurgence by the fundamentalist sect, Boko Haram in the country on the internal wranglings of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and other political parties.

The retired General made this known during the second day of the South-south economic summit where the collapse of the nation’s security challenge was deliberated on.

Tracing the rise of Boko Haram’s attack, the chief security adviser to the president stated that “the extent of violence did not increase in Nigeria until when there was a declaration by the current president that he was going to contest.”

“PDP got it wrong from the beginning, from the on-set by saying Mr A can rule, Mr A cannot rule ……according to PDP’s convention, rules and regulation and not according to the constitution and that created the climate for what has manifest itself, this way.”

He added that there is some level of political undertone to the problem.

He also noted that the bombings, suicide attacks and jail breaks that have been raging the northern part of the country “could be traced to the politics of exclusion of the PDP in the region.”

Blaming the notion of anointing candidates and the ‘do or die’ attitude of the political party, Retired General Azazi asked why “is it possible that somebody was thinking that only Mr. A could win, and that if he could not win, there would be problems in this society?”

“Let’s examine all these issues to see whether the level of violence in the North East just escalated because Boko Haram suddenly became better trained, better equipped and better funded, or something else was responsible.”

“It takes very long for somebody to be a sniper,” Mr. Azazi said.

He affirmed the level of sophistication of the group but also gave assurance that the government is aware of all their doings in a bid to addressing the issue. “I can assure you that Boko Haram can garner that level of sophistication over time, if it has not got it already. There are a lot we know that they are doing, and there are a lot that could be done to address the problem.”

“But, then I must also be quick to point out that today, even if all the leaders that we know in Boko Haram are arrested, I don’t think the problem would end, because there are tentacles. I don’t think that people would be satisfied, because the situations that created the problems are not just about the religion, poverty or the desire to rule Nigeria. I think it’s a combination of everything. Except you address all those things comprehensively, it would not work” he added.

On a final solution, the security adviser discourage just the use of force but called for a collective effort to address the economic problems of the north saying “it is not enough for us to have a problem in 2009 and you send soldiers to stop the situation, then tomorrow you drive everybody underground. You must look at what structures you need to put in place to address the problem holistically. There are economic problems in the North, which are not the exclusive prerogative of the Northerners. We must solve our problems as a country.”

He noted that the relationship between national security and development is inseparable, because “one cannot do without the other” the NSA said.

ChannelsTV

The Coming Collapse Of The PDP By Bayo Oluwasanmi

I am not a fan of any political party in Nigeria. The political parties are carbon copy of each other.  They do not adequately represent or address the needs and interests of Nigerians.

Nigerians are at a great disadvantage when choosing a party that will fight for them. The choice before them is between Satan and Lucifer. Really, they have no choice.
The opposition parties will not be responsible for the ultimate collapse of PDP. After all, they have never been a credible alternative or effective opposition.
The PDP is its own worst enemy. The party lacks the refreshing resolve to steer the nation’s drowning ship safely ashore. Under the PDP central administration, freedom decays as material acquisition and corruption of the ruling class expand.
The danger of political amnesia is that the PDP’s failure to govern in the present is often a direct link with a failure to remember the lessons of the past.
It may sound like alarming exaggeration to say that the witch hunting and persecution of real and imagined enemies of President Jonathan and the PDP will prove a fatal plot at a fateful moment.
No one therefore, should be surprised about the withering opposition and seemingly insurmountable absurdities that have literally drenched the party.
The close minded attitude that excludes any possibility of learning, forms the bane of PDP’s undoing. I’m persuaded that there is absolutely no limit in the absurdities we’ll continue to witness.
I have said it elsewhere and I would like to restate it here again that the PDP has been fooling the majority of Nigerians to believe that two and two are three, that water freezes when it gets hot and boils when it gets cold, and with other nonsense that might seem to serve the interest of the PDP-led federal government.
Of course when these beliefs were distilled, bottled, packaged, and sold to Nigerians by the army of PDP image makers and publicists, the people still won’t put the pot in the refrigerator when they wanted it to boil.
Against the prayers of the PDP, Nigerians will continue to reject PDP’s Sunday truth being peddled in sacred, mystical, and in awed tones that cold makes water boil.
Because of PDP’s bizarre and eccentric strong arm tactics, political persecution of individual liberty, intolerance, and disrespect for dissension within the party, its demise is assured.
Samples of absurdities from PDP archive:
•    Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi suspended from PDP.
•    Governor Aliyu Wamako suspended because he didn’t pick up call from the party’s chair, Bamanga Tukur.
•    In spite of the spate of armed robbers, death squads of different stripes, abductors, rapists, kidnappers, and general lawlessness in the country, the PDP controlled National Assembly rejected the establishment of state police.
•    Nineteen northern governors shunned the Northern States Governor’s Forum.
•    Godsay Orubebe, Niger Delta Affairs Minister suspended by the Burutu Local Government chapter of the PDP.
•    United Action For Democracy (UAD) described PDP’s regime as “14 years of looting and political brigandage.”
•    Mbu Joseph Mbu Rivers State police commissioner withdrew police orderly and escort detail for the state’s Speaker of the House of Assembly.
•    Bamanga Tukur remarked “You see, if there is any security threat, the security people will take care of it, you could not link it up with the president.”
•    Two journalists of the Abuja based Leadership Newspapers – Tony Amokeodo, news editor, and political correspondent Chibuzor Ukaibe were arrested for allegedly forged the bromide of a presidential order.
•    PDP reintroduced Chief Richard Akinjide’s electoral voodoo mathematics of two thirds formula by declaring Governor Jang of Plateau State as the new chair of NGF even though he received 16 votes out of the votes of 35 governors. Governor Amaechi who garnered majority vote of 19 was declared the loser. 
•    Mahmud Tukur, son of the PDP chair Bamanga Tukur, charged with N1.2 billion subsidy fraud.
•    First Lady Patience Jonathan lost 1.84 hectares land case to former First Lady Turai Ya’radua.
•    FG grounded Governor Amaechi’s aircraft from flying in Nigeria.
 PDP is fast becoming the largest redundant and persecuting party in Africa. If the PDP can claim superiority in anything, it is not in moral values but in morass.
Everything the PDP claimed it has done to improve the lot of Nigerians is at present, totally and utterly false and futile. Examine Mr. Jonathan’s midterm score card.
PDP’s spending habit is ruthless and harmful. Last week it was widely reported in the media that the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) collected N1.5 trillion in four months. Nigerians can’t see the visible proof of what the PDP led federal government did with the money.
In a shipwreck the crew obeys orders without the need of reasoning with themselves, because they have a common purpose and trust which are not remote. The means to the realization of their purpose are not difficult to understand.
But if the captain were dishonest and full of lies, in order to prove his commands wise, the ship would sink before his lecture was finished. Nigerians don’t trust the PDP.
PDP policy makers are not men and women of exceptional talent. They lack the emotional attitude, the empathy to connect with the sufferings of Nigerians.
The old mechanism of hatred against those critical of its inept policies and barren programs outside the PDP, renders the party backward and primitive.
Because of its bankruptcy of ideas, the pursuit of personal political ambitions, internal acrimonious rancor, the PDP has submitted the nation to long years of unspeakable anguish like children who are compelled to look on while their mothers are being raped.
There have been pestilence of violence, ranging poverty, famine of insecurity, misery, and folly for all of the 14 years the PDP has been in power. These morbid miseries have been fostered by gloomy creeds of the PDP.
All these and other tyrannical and repressive policies have led Nigerians in profound inner discords that made all outward prosperity of no avail.
I find the PDP central government to be in love with misery. The party grows angry whenever hopes are suggested to them.
The PDP enjoys declaring social and economic wars on the people provided their immediate family members are not victims.
If your head is cut off, it immensely diminishes your thinking power. I believe most of the heads of the members of PDP’s have been cut off. The PDP as the majority party is indifferent to Nigeria’s problems.
It is remarkably astonishing that PDP remains calm and urbane and humorous to the torments and hardship our people go through. The party is dishonest and sophistical in arguments why things remain the way they are after 14 years in power.
There is something smug and unctuous about the PDP: the treachery to the truth. The PDP needs a long residence in a moral and ethical purgatory.
When a wounded bull has spent all his last energy, he’ll often scrape at the ground with his horns. The PDP sensed it is doomed, shows agony of defeat. This is the pathetic picture of a defeated party with its head buried in the dust!
*** Perhaps the most distinguishing mark of a great thinker is his foresight to see the inevitable before it happens, to see what lesser minds cannot vision. – Bertrand Russell
byolu@aol.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters