Revealed: IBB, Not Buhari, Overthrew Shagari’s Govt —Nyiam

In this interview, Col. Tony Nyiam, who was part of the failed attempt to oust the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s military government in 1990, tells Waheed Bakare and Allwell Okpi, how the Orkar coup originated and its relevance to Nigerian politics. Excerpts:

You said what has come to be known as the Orkar coup was not a coup but 'an action'. What is the difference between the two?

I said it was a pro-democracy action to stop a situation where there would have been perpetual diarchy in Nigeria, where politicians in uniform would have put a system in place for them to rule forever. I’m talking about a system similar to what the Arab uprising dismantled in Egypt.

But a more senior military officer, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, referred to it as a coup.
It is because in our setting we misuse words. And because we are used to misusing words, we believe even words that are not really the truth. A military coup would be a coup against an elected government. Our action was not against an elected government. In fact, it’s the responsibility of a military officer to rise up against anybody who takes over power from an elected government, which the government we took action against did. The government we took action against, which was part of the Muhammadu Buhari to Ibrahim Babangida regime, had usurped power from the elected government of Shehu Shagari. If there is a coup that overthrows an elected government, it is the duty of a military officer to do a counter-coup to restore democracy.

Would you have done the same thing if Buhari had remained in power to that time?
If we had seen the same indications during Buhari’s time, the plan by the military to perpetuate itself, we would have done that. But Buhari wasn’t of that kind of mould.

Are you saying your stay in power would have been brief, only long enough to prepare for elections?
Yes. We would have stayed just 18 months to do basically three things, which Nigeria still needs to do. They are: a national census, a proper headcount. I’m happy that as I’ve been saying for years, Festus Odimegwu, the new chairman of the National Population Commission, clearly said there has been no credible census in Nigeria since 1816. The fact is that Nigerians have been so ignorant and have refused to deal with the crucial matter. The census, right from the British time, has always been used to perpetuate the internal colonisers over the rest of Nigeria. The three things we would have done; first a proper national census, so we can know how many we are and how we are spread. If we truly know what the Nigerian population is, over 40 per cent of the constituencies in the North-West and North-East, would not exist. We can only know that if we do a proper census and that is why today, Festus Odimegwu’s life is being threatened because he wants to give us a true count for the first time.

The second thing would have been a conference, which would allow Nigerians to negotiate how they want to coexist. Today, we have a situation where there are abuses of the federal character system. For example, a candidate from say Delta State has to score 170 to pass, while another from another part of the country is required to score eight. Such abuses cannot really be acceptable by a people who have a nation. We are yet to have a nation. The imperative of a conference cannot be ruled out; people need to negotiate. The third thing was to conduct a free and fair election, which has eluded Nigeria for long. In all the regimes, a semblance of free and fair election we see only in a few states in Nigeria basically Lagos and the other states in the South-West. 

I’m not saying they have achieved it, but we see relatively free and fair elections in these regions. It is not surprising why these regions are the most developing, South-West is the most peaceful, relatively compared to other regions and of course it is the region, where there is relative collective governance of the people. I must give credit to this government, led by President Goodluck Jonathan. The Ondo and Edo states governorship elections, which were relatively free and fair, are credit to Jonathan’s government. These are the things we would have done in those 18 months and those three things whether we like it or not, have to be done. First, we must have a proper census and that is why all Nigerians must support Festus Odimegwu to give us a proper census. Two, we must sit down and negotiate our corporate existence. We must stop deceiving ourselves with these fraudulent elections we’ve been having.

There is the argument that we don’t need to have another conference since we have representatives at the National Assembly.It is the most ignorant assumption. Why do I say it is ignorant? With all the political scientists we have in our midst, people forget that what we are practising is what we call indirect democracy. What do I mean? The proprietary right over people’s sovereignty is delegated to people we elect to make laws for us. When it comes to making constitutional reforms or constitution making, you go to what is called direct democracy. Direct democracy means direct voting by the people in the form of a referendum and that is why the universal practice is that a constitution making process that does not go through a constituent assembly, whose decisions are approved by a referendum, is null and void. We see the examples. Look at South Sudan; it’s creation resulted from a referendum. How is it that Nigerians do not understand that for a constitution to be legitimate, it has to be driven by the people, and the people are usually represented by a constituent assembly? And this constituent assembly is usually made up of non-partisan politicians, because partisan politicians are only concerned with the next election. 

They are not concerned about posterity or long-term issues in the country. So, constitution which outlives people and a generation should be driven by civil society, collection of every nationality in the country and clerics. I would cite an example. My second home is in Scotland and in Scotland those who drove for the national conference were the clerics of the Church of Scotland, they were at the forefront. We also saw it in Ireland. Britain has the oldest parliament in the world, why are they allowing a constituent assembly to go ahead, while there are parliaments? It is only in Nigeria that such argument is raised because of the ignorance of the difference between direct and indirect democracy. That’s why I have tried to do an aide-memoir to aid constitution- making. There are certain basic principles of constitution-making, which if we do not follow, would be like building a house on quicksand.

Do you think we would have been able to tackle these problems if the June 12 election had not been annulled by Babangida?The thing is, Chief MKO Abiola, who I had the opportunity to work with when he escaped from Nigeria to UK, was a man that we lost because his plan was to correct the national issues and start democracy in Nigeria. But because some western interests in Nigeria did not want this, they colluded to do away with him.

You once said soldiers could be recruited for a coup without their knowledge. How is that possible?
Yes, there are many instances. You might want to verify this from Gen. Buhari, he was not the initiator of that coup that brought him in as Head of State, it was Gen. Ibrahim Bako and Babangida that initiated it. But because they wanted a credible figure as a face, he was brought in. He did not know the genesis of that coup. He was not quite aware of the original idea behind the coup and that was why when he decided to make a change, he was forced to step aside. So, if this could happen to a whole Gen. Buhari, who was supposedly the leader of a coup, it shows how many soldiers can be brought in that way.

Does that mean overthrowing Shagari’s government was IBB’s idea?
It was the idea of late Gen. Bako and IBB. Buhari was only brought in because they needed a face with integrity.

Can you give other instances?
Gen. Yakubu Gowon was not part of the coup that brought him in. He was a decent man. Nigerians like to play what the Yoruba people call bojuboju; they bring a figure with integrity to cover up their real intention; the real intention of politicians in uniform who have found cheap party. Many elements of them are in our partisan politics today.

That means such heads of states were under the control of the coup plotters that installed them.
Obviously. And these people are still the reason why we are not allowed to have a proper census, they are still the ones ensuring that we don’t have a conference as well as a free and fair election because if you give the people their rights to choose who to governs them, you have freed them and these oligarchs don’t want that.

Could it be a defence in the military to say I wasn’t part of a coup, I was just brought in?
It couldn’t be a defence because at the point you know that it is a coup, you should do everything possible to resist it.

Even at the risk of taking your life?
That was what we did. At the point when we realised that they were going to perpetuate the military government in Nigeria, we took the risk.

Can we say this plan was an Hausa-Fulani agenda, since most of these military leaders are northerners?
We cannot reduce this thing to an issue of a peaceful Hausa-Fulani man or a peaceful Yoruba man or a peaceful Igbo man. I think we are above that. What we see is an interest of oligarchs, who think power and money controls and there are all sorts of people in that fold. For a long time, you may say one ethnic group has a preponderant membership of that group.

It was reported that the late Gideon Orkar wanted to excise northern Nigeria from the country. Was it part of the agenda?The unsung hero, Gideon Orkar, was far from anybody who wanted to divide the country. He was calling all regions of the country to some conditionality that they have to meet, if they want us to coexist. It was because that was an era when certain people were saying that they were superior, and that power was their prerogative and that they had the monopoly of power.

Would that have been due to the ethnic coloration of previous coups?
Sure. It is sad that democrats are missing the issue that we were fighting against, which we still need to fight against. It is a situation where they take over power and give advantage to their people to the extent that today if we count the local governments we have in Kano and Jigawa which are states not up to Lagos in population, the local governments are up to three to five times the number of local government areas in Lagos. Lagos is a place, apart from the Niger Delta which gives us foreign exchange earner. Lagos contributes over 70 per cent of our non-oil revenue generation and the same Lagos gets less than what Kano, which produces less than two per cent, gets. This is why I must say Lagos State made a mistake, instead of relocating the problem where it lies; it is not about deporting Igbo beggars to Onitsha end of the Niger Bridge. Lagos should take the right steps legally or otherwise to assert the rights of the state which is being the owner of the Value Added Tax and the sales tax generated in Lagos. The things we fought against are still structurally within our polity. Today, you cannot pass a bill at the National Assembly, if two zones — North-East and North-West — do not agree. So, two zones can stop four zones — South-East, South-West, South-South and North-Central — from moving forward. The irony of this is that these zones are in the semi-desert areas that are usually less populated going by all empirical evidence. We have problems with our census figure; that is why they have all those constituencies and that is why they planned coups to perpetuate that.

Do you think the action failed because the northerners were not involved and because of the conditions given to them to be part of Nigeria?First of all, our action and Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu’s action were the only actions that were not palace coup. The likes of Bako and IBB’s coup which brought in Buhari wer. The fact is that the government of Shagari was a government that the military was highly involved in because of the ethnic kinsmanship. There was a fight over contracts that broke the coup. It was an in-house thing. So, the coup was driven by people’s selfish interests and that is why I don’t call it a military coup, I call it a politicians-in-uniform coup. Nzeogwu’s action and our action were done by outsiders, who felt this cash-and-carry ruling and stealing would not be allowed to continue.

If the action had been successful, who would have been the head of state?
It would have been Maj. Saliba Mukoro. He was the initiator. They heard about me and they wanted some senior people to be part of the action. When they approached me, I didn’t accept immediately because I wasn’t the type that will go for a coup or any action. But when I heard the strength of the argument, and in line with my insight as to what was happening in government because I was a close aide to Babangida and Sani Abacha. It would have been immoral of me to report the young officers. I was torn in-between reporting these young, overzealous and selfless boys, who wanted certain issues solved and maitaining loyalty to the military government. 

People forget that it was because of the action that Delta State was created. And the system in Delta State today has fraudulently prevented one of the people who initiated it, Great Ogboru, to govern. People forget that Bayelsa State was created because of the action. And that’s why I still find it sad that till today, even with the President coming from Bayelsa, no Bayelsan government has honoured those boys who sacrificed their lives for the Niger Delta. I have said it over and over that these chaps deserve to be honoured. I think the Niger Deltans, President Jonathan and the Ijaw should take cue from the Yoruba and honour those boys. The majority of the boys in our action were Niger Deltans for obvious reasons.

Were you the only colonel in the action?
We were two lieutenant colonels. I was brought in by another lieutenant colonel. But that lieutenant colonel sold out and that was why there was a leakage and we had to rush. The person who recruited me had sold out.

Is he a Niger Deltan?
Yes. His name was Lt. Col. Patrick Oketa.

When you were pardoned, what was your feeling?
First of all, we were grateful to Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar and Admiral Mike Akhigbe, who were the initiators of the pardon. These were two gentlemen who were never part of any coup. Power was just dumped on Abdulsalami and true to his character; he wasted no time in returning power to civillians. The system of returning power to civilians should have been better but because he didn’t want to stay a day longer, he left and this is a reflection of his character.

Do you still relate with your colleagues?
Sure, what we didn’t realise is that most of our colleagues who were travelling were very helpful to us, because they knew what we fought for. If our actions were not taken, you would never have had the chance of having an Igbo man as Chief of Army Staff. No Yoruba man would have had that chance either. Why do I say so? Some of us had insight as to a succession plan in the army for the next 50 years. You would never have had the likes of Gen. Martin Agwai being the Chief of Army Staff and Defence Staff, because he belongs to the northern Christian minority. The army, after General T.Y. Danjuma’s time became an army that was to be led by only an ethnic group. People forget that there is a linkage between our action and the chance that MKO Abiola was given for the election.

Now that we have Delta and Bayelsa states and we have the Ministry of Niger Delta and an Ijaw man is the head. Do you think these are enough to right the wrongs of the past?Those issues are again the usual Nigerian way of dealing with things; rather than go for a holistic tactic. A fundamental thing essentially is to restore power. Once power is restored to the people it is left to them. All these things are just temporal measures. The fundamental issue is to return Nigeria to true federalism. This talk of diversifying our economy cannot happen if we do not have fiscal federalism. People forget that when we had proper federalism, the main foreign exchange for Nigeria was agriculture. So, we have to go back to that.

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A part of us died when Newswatch was sold to Jimoh Ibrahim – Ray Ekpu

 by Nurudeen Oyewole

For close to three decades, Newswatch magazine bestrode the Nigerian media industry like a colossus. Buoyed by the creativity of its founding fathers, the magazine took journalism to another height. But suddenly its shinning light dimmed. Regrets have since trailed its sale to a new publisher.

As it is, the battle has shifted to the courts of law. But as the public wait to know where the pendulum swings, SUNDAY TRUST cornered one of the co-founders and a long-standing Managing Director of the magazine, Ray Ekpu, in Lagos. And in a no-hold-bar interview, he bared it all.

For many years Newswatch magazine held sway as the flagship of newsmagazine in Nigeria. But all of a sudden, the magazine ran into a stormy session that led to its sale. The questions on the lips of many Nigerians are: what could have made you and others sold Newswatch magazine and why was it sold to Barrister Jimoh Ibrahim?
Thank you very much. As at the time we were thinking of expanding the company, we had done 26 years. We thought it was time not only to consolidate on the achievements of those years, but to also expand and do some other things within the broader canvass of communications. We thought we could establish a newspaper, a printing press, establish a video company and run a radio station, among other things. We believed by doing all of these, we would have succeeded in giving the company the most solid footing and that was why we shopped around for investors. We carried out a research study and we have all of these in a document to prove that all we have done are actually doable projects.
During the period, one of our managers, Mr Bankole Makinde, said he knew one Jimoh Ibrahim who was already making investments in the media industry. And we said to him, go ahead and approach him if you can.  He (Bankole) approached him and we had a meeting with him, Soji Akinrinade, Yakubu Muhammed, Dan Agbese and me. We also hired a firm, which led us in this transaction which also assisted us in the preparations of all the documentations. We later arrived at a decision that we could sell 51 percent of shares in the company. And on the 5th of May, 2011 we had a board meeting led by our chairman, Chief Alex Akinyele, and Jimoh Ibrahim came with some of his people and we signed an agreement to sell 51 percent share in the company to his company, Global Media Mirror Ltd. That day, the four of us retired from our positions as executive directors of the company and at the same meeting we were re-appointed as non-executive directors.
Thereafter, Mr Jimoh Ibrahim came and addressed members of staff. He told them we had retired as executive directors but have been re-appointed as non-executive directors. He made lots of promises of what he intended doing to lift the company. And we thought that was a good transaction that was capable of giving the company a new lease of life. But as things turned out, that was not to be.
When you look back at the process that led to the eventual handing over of the company to Jimoh Ibrahim, what exactly would you say you did not get right in all that transpired?
Well, you will not know how a transaction will go at the beginning because as Shakespeare said, “there is no how to find a mind’s construction on the face”. We thought we were dealing with a serious businessman and that was the basis we entered into that agreement with him. As a matter of fact, we went and inspected his premises, the Global Media Mirror Ltd in Lagos. We saw his printing press. We saw rolls and rolls of newsprint, newspaper distributing vans, and that convinced us that he is a serious investor in the media industry. He said to us that he hoped to put each printing press at each geo-political zones of the country and that since he now has a transaction with Newswatch, he hoped to put one of the printing presses in Newswatch. For us, that was a major attraction. And that was how we allowed him to take over the company.
He sent his staff the very next day to take over and we moved out. He ran it for one year and three months, during which we observed that he was not keeping to the terms of agreement. We tried to draw his attention to some of the violations of what we noted are the terms of agreements, written and unwritten, the violations which are not only in letter but also in spirit. He has actually not been able to do those things he has promised to do for the company. The staff union had to write him that quite a number of things were fast deteriorating in the company and I guess that annoyed him and he went to the office, No. 3 Billings Way, summoned the staff, scolded them and shut down the place.
So we decided to serve him a notice, asking him to reverse some of those decisions he took, which we believed were not in the best interest of the company and the partnership. But before the expiration of the notice, he rushed to the court to obtain an injunction, asking the court to stop us from speaking on behalf of other shareholders of the company and stopping us from performing our duties as directors from the court even when there has been no change to our status as directors in the company. Now, we are in court. He took us to court and two of our shareholders also took him to court. The two cases are in courts; one in the Court of Appeal, the other at the High Court. The case in the Court of Appeal was meant to upturn the injunction he had earlier obtained from the High Court but that hasn’t been heard because of the ongoing vacation of judges.
Do you and others have any regret on the sale of Newswatch magazine?
Well, what you can say when you enter into a transaction like ours is that you expect the best. We thought Newswatch will continue to flourish and the magazine will continue to be on the streets. But that is not the case. One does not expect us to be happy at all. An institution we laboured for 27years, you expect it to be standing tall and at a time be able to point a finger that, I worked here. But if that is not the case, it is something that one has to regret. It is something that can never make you happy. An institution like ours is supposedto last and become shinning beacons to other institutions.  We thought, as professionals, we can continue to publish professionally and the company will continue to grow. It should be an institution that other journalists or other similar institutions can come to and possibly build on or contribute to.
How germane was the issue of professionalism to you and others when the magazine was to be established?
The media industry in Nigeria has not really been respected the way it should. In the 1950s,1960s and 1970s, media people were derided.  It was not being reckoned with as a serious profession because many of the practitioners were poorly educated. People do say journalists are people who just found themselves in the newsrooms after the completion of their secondary schools and that is why they write all sorts of things. They really didn’t see journalism as a profession. Some people used to call it a craft. But over the years, some well educated persons have come into it. People who have their degrees, Masters and PhDs, I mean people who didn’t stray into it. Those who came to make a career out of it and have continued to stay in there.  This has given the profession more credibility and put it in the rightful place it belongs.
We now know that there is a body of knowledge called Mass Communication. A knowledge that comes from many disciplines which include Philosophy, Psychology, Social and Physical sciences, History, among others. They all form what is now known as Mass Communication. But it wasn’t like that when we and many others in the older generation joined it. It was a trend that those of us who started Newswatch were determined to reverse. We believed we can start publishing professionally and ethically so that people will stop accusing us of being rumour mongers and sensational writers. It was a legacy we are so interested in leaving behind for the younger generation of journalists. We want journalism to be respected and the people out there will stop calling us “press boys”. We consider that as derogatory and we were passionate about leaving a better legacy for the younger ones. And that was what propelled us to establish the magazine.
Newswatch magazine, during its shinning days, was known for investigative reports, but media critics have alleged that investigative journalism is dying in Nigerian journalism. Do you share this view and what do you think could be responsible for it?
It is not dying. Investigative journalism is still there and it had always been there even before Newswatch magazine came on board. We merely took it to the next level. We thought if we continued to get exclusive stories, week after week, it would continue to make the magazine strong. We believe it will make journalism strong and make the society better, and by that we would have contributed our quota to nation- building. What appears to be lacking now is that we really do not have quite a number of newspapers focusing on it.  But we all know that investigative journalism is not easy to pursue. It needs time. It needs resources. It needs dedication.
I remember there was one story that we published in Newswatch that took us up to a year to investigate. It took us lots of money and resources. And you don’t get to do such stories all the time. It comes once in a while because of the time and resources involved. And not all newspaper organizations have the means and the resources to invest to the extent that they get to the bottom of the stories. Of course there are other stories out there that can make headlines news but investigative journalism can only come once in a while because of the problems I have already enumerated.
Earlier, you made passing reference to how journalism as a profession was once belittled. But some would say that, perhaps, was just one out of many other challenges the media is facing in Nigeria. What are the other challenges you think the media is facing and why have they become recurrent?
One of the challenges I guess, is the issue of inadequate resources. You will see some newspapers quoting from CNN, BBC, New York Times, among others. If they have the resources, they won’t be quoting these news establishments but quote their own correspondents in many of the capital cities around the world. But one can always supplement that because there is no newspaper that can cover all the major cities of the world. That is why the news agencies exist. You have Reuters, AP, NAN, among others.  Of course I’m aware that some newspaper organizations have correspondents in New York, Washington DC, London, among others and they try to fill in the gaps.
But the most pathetic one is that we don’t have more correspondents in other African countries. How do we report Africa to the world if we don’t have our correspondents in most of the continent’s cities? We now have foreign countries reporting Africa to us, whereas we ought to be reporting Africa to Africans and non-Africans.  The challenge we now have is a situation whereby a correspondent from any of these media organizations will simply jump into any African country, spend two or three days and go back to write huge articles which are actually misperceptions of what is truly on ground.  These foreign journalists are coming with stereotype mindset of what Nigerians are and what Africans are. And these stereotypes can actually be eroded by speaking to actual people on the streets. And that is a responsibility we have not been able to deliver over the years and I think the governments in Africa should worry about these things and see how it can be addressed.
I know they started Pan-African News Agency which collapsed. But there are many more challenges, one of which is that African journalists cannot travel freely in Africa because the roads are bad. The airlines are few and not well-connected. So, communication is actually impossible. Though you can say there has been relative improvement in the last 10 years especially with the advent of telecommunication and internet, but there is a greater need to move around these cities with ease. And this actually depends on economy. The economies of African countries are weak, very, very weak.  They are not strong to sustain all of these in a way that will bring about efficiency.
Also, there is high level of poverty. And, of course, Nigeria has about 66 percent of people who are living below one dollar per day, which is about N150 and N160 per day. Related to this is the poor standard of education. That appears to have even worsened everything. UNESCO prescribes that countries should at least dedicate 26 percent of their annual budget to education, but Nigeria puts in about seven percent of its annual budget. That is a huge gap of about 19 percent and that affects the leadership of the newspapers and its readership as well.
While I was the Editor of Sunday Times between 1980 and 1982, we were doing more than 500, 000 copies in a week. It hasn’t happened like that anymore. How many newspapers can do 100,000 copies per day, not to talk of 500,000 copies per week? That shows you the economy is weak. It also shows you that the newspapers might have increased their cover price beyond what an average Nigerian can afford. It also shows that Nigerians are not earning enough to be able to have disposable incomes to buy newspapers and magazines. It also shows that there is probably a decline in the readership of newspaper. It also shows that many Nigerians have other sources of getting their news reports other than the traditional media. These sources might not be as credible and as the well-grounded media, but the truth is that they have sources.
As you are aware, the newspapers, magazines, radio and televisions are set up to disseminate news reports. When a story breaks, they pick it up, clean it and distill it for the people who are yearning to acquire information. But the tragedy today is that many people, who are not well-trained or are not trained at all, have also come into the business of news dissemination, especially with the advent of the internet. And they create problems for journalism profession as well as problems for the society. Many other countries of the world are now creating laws on how to deal with invasion of internet space to publish all sorts of things. But unfortunately here in Nigeria, that is a challenge we just have to live with for now.
Having identified some challenges thrown up by the internet and the new media, how do you think Nigerian media organizations can adequately confront these challenges and how do you think these new technologies can be manipulated to their advantages?
I think the media already appreciated the fact that the internet has indeed come to stay - that the internet is attracting a lot of young people and not only the young people, but also other people who are attracted by its inventions and usefulness. Thus, we now have a situation that whatever that is published in the newspapers or magazine are put on the websites and made accessible to journalists. And in order to meet up with the breaking news reports, the media now try to announce on their websites the latest development, but will not be able to give all the details required until the next day. That is what we call “announcement journalism”. And by next day, people will be willing to get there and get more details.
You can also see a number of television and radio stations referring their audience to Android and iPhone Punch newspaper pioneered the platforms. So for me, that is the way the media has been filling the gap. When the idea of mobile phone news delivery it probably didn’t succeed because internet penetration in the country is still low. I was reading one survey report towards the end of last year and it was reported that internet penetration in Africa is about 25 percent. I’m sure that percentage can only be gotten in South Africa. May be when the internet penetration is high, the country will be ripe for that.
There appears to be an upsurge in political ownership of newspapers in Nigeria and observers are saying this is affecting the quality of news being dished out by these media organizations. Is there any way the media can break away from political control and dominance?
No, no, no. It is a free society. It is a democratic society. Anybody is free to own and invest in the media of his or her choice. It is actually a plus for a big country like Nigeria. It is good to have multiple sources of news dissemination to the people. In that way, there won’t be what I call, “mechanization of news production” coming from one source. It allows you to access information from many sources. That is what I call media plurality. You read news about government in power, so you read news about the opposition, all of which you can get from different sources. It is up to the audience to choose which of the newspaper to read. It is up to you to choose which newspaper to ignore. I’m sure the average reader knows who owns which media and also understands the interest each of them represents. They know what to take as absolute truth and they know what to take with a pinch of salt. So, I will say, let all the flowers bloom. Let everybody come to the space. It is a big space. Whatever you want, you get.
In the 1960s and 1970s, most of the newspapers owned by government always aligned with government policies. Sometimes ago, a newsspaper called the Morning Post which was owned by Federal Government published in 1964 that a general strike that has been on for many days have been called off, whereas the strike was on. That was what killed the newspaper. It never existed again since then. I started my journalism with a government newspaper known as Nigerian Chronicle in 1974. I know what it is to work with government newspaper. Most of government newspapers don’t always last long because those in government and their allies don’t want proper journalism, but only publish what they (government officials) consider as newsworthy. Today, most government newspapers have been out of newsstands while those that are still alive are struggling to survive. This is because, they cannot survive the competition. They cannot deliver in terms of reporting accurate and unbiased reportage and they even lack manpower to prosecute all of these.  I believe as times goes on, all of these will sort themselves out. The strong ones will stay, and the weaker ones will wither away.
After retiring from Newswatch, what have you and others gone into?
Well, my colleagues - Soji, Yakubu, Dan - and I, decided to go into book publishing. You know, while we were at the Newswatch, we were publishing books through what we knew as Newswatch Book Ltd. We have published 30 books through the company. So after we retired as Executive Directors, we felt we could continue with book publishing under a different platform. And that is basically what we are doing now. Already we have published three books and we are working on four and five. Three of them were written by outside authors while the rest were written by us. Though people try to discourage us that Nigerians don’t like to read, but I do tell them that when there are good books, those who want to read, will read.
Already, we are trying to introduce a new dynamism into the industry, one of which is that we plan to meet successful Nigerians, elder statesmen and captains of industries to put into writings their experiences and knowledge which we believe will serve the younger generations. If such thoughts and experiences are committed in newspaper, there may come a time that some of the unsold copies can be used to wrap groundnuts. But if such is committed into books, nobody will dare tear the book or use it to wrap a gift.
And when people complain about the falling standard of education, I do ask that when people do not read, why won’t the standard fall? Any right-thinking Nigerian should be worried about the sharp decline in the education standard in Nigeria. I was reading sometimes last year, the report of a survey of about 100 Universities in Africa and it was only two that were mentioned in Nigeria - University of Lagos that was placed in 21st and University of Ibadan that was placed in 40th position. In a country where we have more than 100 varsities and such a large population, it is a big shame. It simply means no university in Nigeria can be said to be truly global. It’s a shame.
Since you and others have ventured into book publishing, do you really see it as a thriving business?
Well, you have to make it a thriving business. It is true that the reading culture in this part of the world is low. I am told that Segun Adeniyi’s book must have sold up to 5,000 copies. I was told, I do not know. But you see he dwelt on an issue that many people were quite interested in. And that explained the euphoria that went with it because people were actually rushing to buy it. So, it can thrive, especially when you deal with an issue that many people are quite passionate about. I remember when we wanted to start the Newswatch magazine, some people tried to discourage us, saying it can’t thrive and all of that but the first issue we published was cleared off in a number of days. I’m not saying the same thing goes for book publication, but I think if you get it out there, it can thrive. And in this part of the world where it may be quite hard to sell about 100, 000 copies of book, you see people launching it and making donations, all in a bid to make up for the cost of production, so that they can make for the shortfall. In Europe and America, authors just go and sign autographs at the bookshops and people buy. But that is not the culture here. But as time goes on we can actually get it right.
If you had not been into journalism, what other profession would you have got into?
I didn’t know. I can’t say because I went into journalism even at a time I don’t know its full implications. I was in Primary Five which used to be standard five in those days, when I used to collect Nigerian Outlook newspaper from my father to read. The Nigerian Outlook newspaper was then being published in what was known as Eastern Nigeria. Being a member of the Customary Court of Appeal, my father, subscribed to Nigerian Outlook newspaper. I remember that I did use to help him collect it from the vendor at the time and before he comes home, I would have finished reading the paper. And that was when I can say my passion in journalism began to develop. Then I used to read MCK Ajuluchukwu and Dr Nnamdi Azikwe’s articles and it was then I began to make up my mind that I will be a journalist. So, when I got to secondary school,  attended sporting activities like inter-house sports and write for other students to read. That was when I was at Ibibio State College.
Then when I went to a higher school, Holy Family College in the present day Akwa Ibom state, I started the first students’ publication. In those days, before you get to the university after the completion of secondary school education, you must attend a higher school to bag a Higher School Certificate or A’ level. The publication then was called the ‘Nightingale’. We would get it typed and stapled to the board for students to read. So at a time, it drew the attention of the principal and because it is a Catholic school, he actually assigned one of the Reverend Fathers, who was then the English Language teacher, to me to help us with the production. So from then onward, it was quite easy for me to get the production done.
So after the war in 1970 and I wanted to go to the university, I applied to the University of Lagos to study Mass Communication, University of Ibadan for English Language and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria for Sociology. Then, there was no UTME so you can apply directly to the universities. I was offered admission to all the schools but I chose University of Lagos to study Mass Communication. From there, it actually appeared that I was destined to be a journalist.
Though my father wanted me to be a lawyer, apparently because of his law background, but I resisted it. So he refused to pay my fees for the first session which lasted for nine months. But before I gained admission into the university I had worked as a teacher in a secondary school, so I had some money on me and I went to university. So, if there is any other profession I would have loved to practice apart from Mass Communication that perhaps could have been Law. Not just because of my father’s pressure but because it is the other profession that is akin to journalism, because it also dwells so much on communication, the use of words and the ability to express yourself. Maybe I would have been a lawyer but then, I still consider journalism a better option, because in journalism you can’t twist the fact. The fact is the fact. But in law, you can twist the fact for the sake of your client.
What specifically can you attribute as your greatest strength or an acquired skill that has made your journalism experience worthwhile?
Honestly, I can’t say. All I can say is that I just like to write. You know when I was made the Managing Director after Dele Giwa’s death, I wasn’t really a happy man because I really do not like to sit down and be pushing files, trying to run after some staff who may want to steal the company’s money and have to block all loopholes and all of that. I thought that was a distraction to me because all I wanted was to be a writer. That was the attraction that got me into the profession, in the first instance, and it often pumps my adrenaline. But then, I realized that in the Nigerian context, when you have practiced the profession to a certain time, people expect you to be a moderator.
I used to tell the staff that I really didn’t think I am cut out for this and that I was willing to quit this place and relinquish it for anyone who so want it. My abiding interest in journalism is to write. If I had wanted to be an administrator, I would have studied Business Administration or Public Administration. I just wanted to be a journalist and that is why I had my first degree in journalism, second degree in journalism and a diploma in advance journalism.
So, your admirers can’t imagine seeing you in politics?
No, no, no. I have been tempted before but I rejected it. I don’t have the qualities to act as a typical Nigerian politician, because you have to dance on stage and say one thing in the general meeting and say another in the smaller meeting. I am not capable of that. I don’t think I can make a success out of it. Some years ago, some young men from my state came to my house in Akwa Ibom State. They had been longing to see me and they came along with my brother. When I asked him before hand, why they wanted to see me, he said no he didn’t know. They were all successful in their own respective fields. So, they came to me and said they would want me to contest for the governorship seat of Akwa Ibom state. I listened to them. But I didn’t tell them, O! come tomorrow or next tomorrow, I will give you answer. I gave them the answer right in there. I appreciated them and saluted their courage, but I told them I was not interested.
I said I cannot make a successful Nigerian politician because I am too blunt and I am going to have problems with people. They said, ‘yes, that is the more reason we want you’. I said no. How do you win an election in Nigeria? I don’t want anybody to kill in my name and neither am I ready to follow anybody to any kind of shrine to swear to any juju. For many politicians, the end justifies the means, but for me the means must be good to justify the end. So that is not going to work. So they said to me, ‘no problem, we will go and get your picture and paste your posters across the towns and villages’. I said, well, it’s your choice. If you want to waste your money, you can go ahead with it because I am neither going to deny it nor confirm it. I will just sit in my house and continue to do what I am doing. So, if you wish to waste your money, good luck to you.
I told them that in 1998, when Obong Victor Attah was chosen as a consensus candidate, I was contacted by the leader of the party who chose Attah, Chief Don Etiebet. He asked me to come and become Attah’s running mate and I declined. So, if I had taken it, I would have become a deputy governor of the state because Attah went ahead to win that election. It was at that time they were convinced that this is a wrong guy to talk to. So they gave up.
Now, coming back to your years in Newswatch magazine, is there anything you miss about the news organization?
Do you see the paper out every week? If you see the paper out every week, you feel something. And if you don’t see the paper the way I don’t see it, you also feel something. Something you laboured for. Something you nurtured for over 26 years of your life. Something you carried out extensive research on before its establishment. A paper that was able to rank among the best 12 in the world. When we started, we were passionate about it. We loved it. The public loved it. It was something that was so dear to us. When you don’t see it anymore, something in you dies!
When I was tried by Uwaifo Panel after I had written something about Shagari and I was later fined N20 , if you see the number of hands in the courtroom, wanting to pay the fine. Tai Solarin was there, Gani Fawehinmi was there, the public were all willing to pay for me right there. It wasn’t about me, it was about the magazine. When the magazine was proscribed, a group of people came and the whole of Billings’ Way in Oregun was blocked with cars. They were shouting, “our paper, our paper”. Our account was frozen and people were saying, we will give you money. We want to give you money to survive.
When Dele Giwa was killed, a lot of people came out and donated lots of things. Someone donated aircraft. It was a fascination they had. A product like that, which has moved from being a mere newspaper to an institution people so much respected and want to associate with and want it to last. When you do not see it anymore, how do you feel? So it wasn’t about us. It was about what we made possible for the Nigerian public.
Are you thinking of re-inventing the magazine?
Well, we can’t say that for now. Let’s finish with the court cases then, we will know what to do.
…And any memorable event in all of those years?
Our production nights were like festivals but without the trappings of festivities. We were always excited. We were always jumping up in euphoria. Despite the stress associated with where we were compiling the editorial materials and the printing press, we were enjoying it all. I mean despite the enormous work, we were enjoying it all immeasurably. You can’t recreate that. It was the most memorable thing I can think of. When you are through with this production, what you and others are looking forward to was, the next paper, the next paper and that was it. With all the difficulties we were having then, I mean you will do the typesetting at New Nigeria Newspaper then take it to Ikeja for page-planning, then return it back for proof reading. After that you return to go and drop the corrections before the production proper takes place. It was that excitement we shared and I considered it memorable. But most importantly, the excitement of doing what Nigerians love.

SundayTrust 

Medical Strike; President Jonathan Dancing Etighi With Our Lives

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It is a mathematical fact that fifty percent of all physicians graduate in the bottom half of their class -Unknown

 Fejiro Oliver

NewsRescue- Just when I was about getting ready for my afternoon games; an sms rushed in, which got me thinking that the medical war will go on nonstop until the citizen and the president do something about it by laying off the minister of Health, Mr. Chukwu Onyebuchi or acceding to JOHESU request. I wasn’t thinking because it was the first sms of the day over my last write up on the medical strike. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t among the first 100 sms and definitely not among the over 480 mails received at that moment, but because I concluded that I have finally known the reason for the power tussle in the volatile health sector. The message came thus: “Doctors are the academics in the health sector, while your so called health workers-many of them-semi-educated are the non academic staff. In all jobs, only certain cadre of workers become CEO. For instance, the academics in the university, the engineers in NNPC, Judges in judiciary. That is why doctors are CMD in hospitals. You claimed you are a journalist. Perhaps a secretary is the EDITOR of your newspaper! You are one of those jealous of doctors. Your article revealed that.” He ended. This is definitely what they are made to believe during their housemanship and internship.  If this is so; the medical sector is dead. With supposed physicians that think like this, the medical rofession is in peril. Let’s analyze.

All over the world, there are only three group of medical profession(I stand to be corrected) that are ascribed the title ‘doctor’ namely; doctor of medicine, doctor of physiotherapy and doctor of dentistry, but this piece is narrowed down to doctor of medicine. When I set out to write ‘Nigeria Medical Workers strike; let us all die’, I wasn’t expecting the kind of controversy and buzz as it has generated home and abroad. Certainly I was threading where angels fear to tread as revealed by Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) members who have called and sent mails. Their various comment suggested that I was threading on a dangerous path and should not be the one to open the public eye to the politicking in the health. Sorry my dear family members who are part of NMA; the truth must be told. Our dear friend called other medical graduates “semi-educated’, a pitiable summary of their reason for going on strike, so he sees it. Can a pharmacist who manufactures the drugs which they in the doctor category prescribe be a semi illiterate, and yet they ask the public to take the drugs? Can a radiographer who do all the scan work in the hospital be an illiterate and yet they the so called ‘doctors’ begin treatment, while dependant on the scan produced by the radiographer? Is the medical lab scientist an illiterate when he diagnosis the cause of an ailment through his series of test carried out by him that the physicians used in working? Is the nurse truly semi- literate when a patient hope of recovery depends on him/her? Bring them on; is the optometrist a semi illiterate when patients with various eye problems seek his medical solution? Who then is the semi illiterate; the man who calls himself a doctor but cannot begin treatment until a test is carried out, or the man who diagnoses and refers the patient to any of the three doctors? Is it the man who forgets a scissors or cotton wool inside a patient body, stitch it up only for the patient to die later? Let the public judge.

I don’t know the school our doctors went to but the schools in Nigeria and abroad that I have been to bears school of health sciences, faculty of health sciences or college of medicine and all the various medical departments are in these departments. It’s befuddling to say that an insignificant department that cannot operate alone be allowed to be a CMD. A professor of medicine who called from the USA to lend his voice aptly noted that hospitals are left in the hands of health administrator not clinicians. Can someone sing to the heavens to this ‘doctors’ that they have no business heading a hospital and if they should head, that any of the medical profession who is most qualified should head.

That a department of radiology, medical laboratory scientist (which the media erroneously refer to as medical laboratory technologist), optometry etc is headed by a doctor is an aberration, a misdemeanor and oddity. What then is the use of studying such course when the practitioner cannot get to the peak of his career? Let all medical departments be headed by a graduate of such; not a fellow who did only few months of residency in it. You don’t force leadership when a people reject it. The various departments have refused to have MBBS graduate as their heads. Must they shed blood or keep this strike going for all our loved ones to die before their call is heeded?

In the college of engineering, there exist various departments, but the civil engineers have never laid claim that they alone be allowed to head the ministry of works, neither has the building engineers say to the structural engineer that it is their prerogative to head ministry of housing. The petrochemical engineer has not told the chemical engineer or petroleum engineer that they alone be allowed to head NNPC. The land surveyor has not told the estate surveyor that they alone be made minister for land survey? Has the quantity surveyor told the land surveyor that they should be allowed to be made surveyor general of the federation? NO! They all know that they are all engineers and surveyors, but designated differently for the smooth operation of the job. Where therein lies this show of pomposity by a minute member of the medical profession that they are the owners of medicine.

The public may not know it, but now they must! The three profession bearing ‘doctors’ constitute only 30 percent of the entire clinical staff in the hospital with doctor of medicine producing a paltry 12 percent. That a group of 12 percent be allowed to Lord over 70 percent qualified and worthy medical workers is an unforgivable sin and injustice to mankind. The academics which are the brain behind the country do not have only graduates of educational degrees as Vice Chancellors, but anybody who is a lecturer no matter the field of study can be appointed. The Judiciary which the doctors of medicine want to emulate is the most professional field in the world, where universities operate a department as a faculty. Yet they have never fought each other that an international law and jurisprudence judge should not be made a minister of justice. They have never asked the President to allow only law school graduates of criminal laws to be made an attorney general, neither have they argued that only civil law graduate be made a chief judge. Anyone of the law profession is allowed to aspire to be a judge without hindrances. What then is wrong with our MBBS doctors?

No medical profession is entirely independent; all of them are allied to one another; support staff to each other. Let me tell you an experience. Five years ago, my cousin who is a doctor of medicine took me to see his friend who is a doctor of physiotherapy and was about to wed in two weeks time. There in the hospital, I heard his patient, an elderly man telling him that if he can make him walk before his wedding day; he, the patient will surprise him. I don’t know how he did it, but before the end of the two weeks, the man was hale and hearty, walking very well. I bet you can never guess this, but the patient was a consultant cardiologist! Yes, a consultant cardiologist who has given hope on life brought back to ‘life’ by another field of medicine. He did make good his promise as he was a major sponsor of the wedding.

As I write, in Ahmadu Bello University in a unit (which I won’t disclose) lies a consultant pediatrician who has been sustained on physiotherapy for the past ten years, after a successful surgery, with many more in the cue daily for treatment and yet his NMA colleagues will want the world to believe that they are indispensable, when actually they contribute the lowest of medical delivery. I know of hundreds NMA members whose hope of living lies in the nurses, DPT and optometrist; yet they refuse to allow professionalism reign in the health sector.

When doctors of medicine go on strike, they want my likes to pen reports that will cause government to hear and attract public sympathy, yet when other medical unions go on same strike; their national president term it sabotage, urging her members to be on duty. They want the media to be silent about it, forgetting that NMA strike does not affect every patient as there are always skeletal works going on by consultants and house officers. But how wrong he is. In the field of medicine; you are a clinical staff, non clinical staff or administrative staff. If this is so, what manner of argument are they propounding that medicine practice is akin to a house being built, where other staff are laborers’ while they are the engineers. It doesn’t just blend.

Fejiro Oliver is always paid by agents, so they shout. When I wrote advocating for fair trial to Ibori, they shouted to high heavens that I was paid millions by Ibori hatchet men; when I wrote the APC story; APC chieftains screamed that PDP is using me as their new media man. When I wrote against my own constituency, NUJ, for engaging in unprofessionalism; they say Fejiro was being used by disgruntled elements and when I broke the Dafinone’s secret daughter reports, his hangers-on raised the roof that the secret daughter, Elizabeth Dafinone has paid me in pounds since she resides in London. And now that I have written on the JOHESU/NUPTAM strike, NMA members allege that I have been paid and being used by Medical Lab Scientist and Nurses to heat the polity and cause the sack of Minister Onyebuchi. If truly I’m being paid for all the countless reports and stories I have written for over a decade; I should be flying in my own private jet, chartering private planes whenever I go travelling, not boarding a business class.

Reports emanating from various newspaper reports, says that patients are already dying, with many more being evacuated to private hospitals; yet the doctors are there, helpless with no solution to the cure as they are handicapped. Will a doctor of medicine go to the physio department to treat a case he has never seen all his life apart from reading about them (that is if he has ever heard about it). I write with the spirit of truth and the various media publishers in Nigeria, London, USA, Ghana, Vienna, Netherlands etc publish in the spirit of truth. Nigerians have personally asked that I express their gratitude to them for being a vessel of information and making open what the ordinary masses never knew. I do not just write as a journalist, but also an activist, who advocates for the right things to be done and workers given their due benefits.

Mr. Minister, Nigerians are the ones dying not your children, they are the ones suffering, not your immediate relatives. These medical workers you know as I know do not truly feel the pains as the electorate, but must they all die before you tender your resignation honorably? To you Mr. President, we know you don’t give a damn, but don’t you also care that mothers will be made widows, husbands made widowers and parents who probably have their only child in the hospital now will become childless? Dear Jonathan, don’t you care for the loss of loved ones that will occur as you dance etighi with lives of Nigerians who you swore to protect? Is the continous stay of your Minister of Health more important than the hundreds of lives of Nigerians that are already dying? The court appeal made by the Minister is uncalled for, wicked and delay tactics, aimed at crucifying the citizenry. By the way, what were you thinking when you appointed the minister of health and minister of health (state) from the same NMA? Were you thinking the medical workers are fools who you can ride on and get away with? No, dear President! These are professionals who spent years in the university more than you; these are the men when my grandma had back pain that the Onyebuchi group referred us to, these are the men who without them, my late grand dad would have being buried as a blind man. It is these men who I rush to for test and diagnosis when I feel uneasy.  Oh Jona; these are the very people who when our relations have gone to sleep, leaving the sick in the ward; they in their glowing white uniforms take care of them while the NMA members go to the call room, sit on the sofa, crossing their legs, sipping tea and watching DSTV.

They have not asked for much but harmonization in the health sector as is done all over the world. Nigerians are saying, ‘grant them their prayers that we may not die’. Or have they not elected you and should be able to tell you what to do? If you could sack the defense minister and national security adviser, despite the days of Boko Haram insurgence, who then is the minister of health that you cannot show the way out, due to his nepotism, favoritism, high handedness and incompetence.

No, I refuse to be part of a cheated generation a decayed history and a partaker of oppression. I refuse to be tagged a failure by my unborn generation, who will question my role in this moment of history, such as this. Tomorrow, it just may be my great grandchild fighting this; it might even be yours. Mr. President, this azonto dance with the medical profession is enough; this etighi dance has gone on too long. There is blood on the dance floor already and the cries of the innocent patient who may have been saved by your quick action is ascending and your name is being mentioned. When the day of reckoning comes; what would you answer for these blood?

These little things matter…

NewsRescue

Deportation: The Fani-Kayode Debate

By Akin Osuntokun

As the cliché goes, all this would have been laughable if it is not so tragic. In the heat of the subsisting venom and vitriol, it seems nobody now cares that the first set of “deportees” from Lagos were no other than Yoruba indigenes of Oyo and Osun states. I say this because this knowledge is not reflected in the way and manner protagonists have been conducting the debate on the so-called “deportation” of Igbo’s from Lagos. This precedent completely nullifies the presumption and dangerous peg of tribalism on which the mutual trade in personal and ethnic slurs, derision, denigration, demonisation, and hubris has been hoisted. It tells us that governor Babatunde Fashola’s action was not motivated and informed by ethnic calculations neither was it intended and directed against any particular group or nationality. It is a detribalised act but it is not a good policy. It is a joke carried too far. It is a conduct unbecoming of any government that aspires to be taken seriously. It fails miserably on the template of cost-benefit analysis. It is an instance in which the cost-in distraction, goodwill and reputation has far outweighed any conceivable benefit from the forceful relocation of a few pathetic destitute. It also underscores the predilection of Nigerians for political theatre and excitement at the expense of calm and fruitful introspection; for heat and passion over and above light and reason; for mutual recrimination over cooperation and consensus.

In the first place there was no need for ethnic casus belli. The ill-starred destitute were not relocated as Igbo’s but as indigenes of Anambra State. It was done in replication of the precedence of Oyo and Osun states where similar victims were earlier repatriated. They received the short end of the stick not as Yoruba but as indigenes of specific states. It was then left to the government of those states to respond and take up the challenge of accepting or rejecting the folly of the Lagos State Government. I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that any litigation initiative on the case is a wrap up, open and shut case against Lagos State. Rather than political grandstanding, the affected governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, for instance, should have proceeded to the courts and seize an opportunity to make the destitute of today the multi-millionaires of tomorrow – in consequent hefty damages that would accrue to those hapless Nigerians through judicial penalty and sanction. Quite significantly it also poses the unique utility of testing the Nigerian Constitution on the key and basic question of citizenship.

How then did the unbecoming nuisance of repatriating some unfortunate citizens of Nigeria from one state to another transmogrified into a virulent diatribe across the ethnic divide bringing out the worst in the protagonists? It will be difficult for any thinking Nigerian not to admire and identify with Professor Chinua Achebe but it was his grating remarks in the Biafra evocative book, There Was a Country and the debate it spawned that served as the dress rehearsal for the present turn of events. In the book, the civil war was relived all over again with the attendant ripping open of old wounds and injuries. The story was told from a partisan point of view where blames and villainy are liberally attributed to the other side in counterpoise to the exhortation of heroic Igbo exceptionalism. The thematic backdrop was of a martyrdom suffered by a people whose surpassing excellence had incurred the envy and spite of fellow Nigerians. There was the account of how within the decades of the 1930s through to the 1960s, the Igbo’s caught up and excelled the Yoruba’s in education and modernisation.

Yet I do not begrudge Achebe. The indomitable Sir Ahmadu Bello was the one who counselled that if you do not blow your trumpet, nobody would blow it for you. The modernisation rivalry among the component units of Nigeria especially between the Igbo and Yoruba is the stuff of which social progress and advancement is made. Nigeria will be the better for it. But there is also the pernicious strain, which is neither good for the Igbo’s nor fair to the rest of Nigeria. It has been repeatedly stated along the following lines- “the military coup of 1966 presented a pretext to carry out a plan that had been laid out years before. It was a plan that aimed at a total extermination of the Igbo or, at least, their containment. The pogrom and the brutal war that followed was the final solution to the perceived Igbo problems in Nigeria. When Anthony Enahoro travelled round the globe arguing that starvation was a weapon of war, he was following the script for the total extermination of the Igbo. When Benjamin Adekunle boasted to foreign reporters, ‘I want to see no Red Cross, no Caritas, no World Council of Churches, no pope, no missionary and no UN delegation. I want to prevent even one Ibo from having even one piece to eat before their capitulation. We shoot at everything that moves and when our troops march into the centre of Ibo territory, we shoot at everything even at things that do not move’, he was following the same script.”

Could there indeed have been a plan by the rest of Nigeria…laid out years before aimed at a total extermination of the Igbo? Recent political history of Nigeria does not bear out this preposterous and extravagant claim. Such conspiracy would have required at the minimum an entrenched and long-standing political rapport between the government and peoples of the Northern and Western regions. On the contrary, the first lesson in politics and most successful political currency among the Yoruba (until the advent of the nascent APC) is to swear fidelity to the political canon of everlasting defiance and resistance of the Hausa-Fulani standard bearers of feudalism and hegemony. If there was any relationship between the two blocs, it was that of adversity, mutual suspicion and disdain.

Incidentally, it was the NCNC –as it evolved to become the eastern regional denominated party –, that went into alliance with the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC, (haven spurned overtures from the action group, AG, of the western region) to form the Federal Government at independence. And in the post-independence years, the adversity and hostility between the west and the north only deepened with the northern backed factionalisation of the AG and the imprisonment of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. In the century before British colonialism the long-drawn war to checkmate the expansion of the Sokoto Caliphate into the Oyo Empire served as the singular presage to the unhappy relations between the Yoruba and the inheritors of the caliphate within Nigeria. Thus, it is difficult and improbable to impute any logic to the suggestion of a grand conspiracy between the Yoruba dominated western region and the Caliphate-dominated Northern Region. If ever there was such a conspiracy, the Western Region could not have been part of it. Neither, for that matter, could the Northern Region.

If we were not to stand guilty of seeing ghosts where none exists, it was the chain of events set in motion by the western regional crisis of 1962 leading to the military coup of January 15 1966 that culminated in the civil war. It is possible that the coup was not a product of Igbo conspiracy but in politics, perception can be more important than reality. And in the interim between January and July 1966, this perception was reinforced by two inadvertent events. The coup-makers were not tried and punished (court-martialled by the army authorities) as they should; and the Ironsi government, perhaps in good faith, legislated the abolition of the regions and the unification of Nigeria under the unitary rule of the military – whose hierarchy was disproportionately skewed in favour of officers of Igbo origins. I do not need to be an apologist for the Northern Region to propose that no group can be dispossessed of power in the summary and traumatic manner that functionaries and officers of northern extraction were wiped out in the January 1966 coup and not react in a bitter riposte commensurate with its capacity to exact revenge.

Beyond the levelling up of scores in the counter coup, was the subsequent gross violation and pogrom of the Igbo’s resident in the North a product of conspiracy? Without a shade of doubt it was. But it was a conspiracy that did not antedate 1966. As a matter of fact, the original objective (from which it deviated at the instance of the British high commissioner in Lagos) of the July 1966 counter coup was to terminate in a secession of the North from Nigeria and not remain to pursue any hidden agenda. Nothing exemplifies the lack of a Nigeria wide or even a northern conspiracy against the Igbo’s than the incoherence and sheer ineptitude that characterised the conduct of the Nigerian government towards the eastern region in the months leading to the civil war. Remember the Aburi debacle?
Yet, I was not of any mind to join this hoopla until I read a rejoinder by Mr. Femi Aribisala. One virtue I have always urged on Femi Fani-Kayode (a close friend and a brother) is to exercise a sense of proportion and moderation in his all too frequent public interventions. Alas, how successful I have been in this regard is plain to all those who have followed him! Fani-Kayode is gifted at working himself into a storm in a tea cup on virtually any issue that catches his fancy; and has a provocative penchant for overstating his advocacy. Subtlety and diplomacy are not his strong points. And he has been duly admonished and upbraided in sundry responses. Now the other Femi (Mr. Aribisala) is an academic and a pastor and he is 61years old. He took umbrage and has published a rejoinder to the younger Femi and it is a cure worse than the disease. Hear him:

“Power-power, Fani-igbo: I was having private lessons in mathematics at the home of a colleague, Enitan Abiodun, when we heard the noise of a crowd outside. We rushed to the veranda to see Chief Femi Fani-Kayode (alias Fani-Power), then deputy governor of the Western Region, standing on the seat of a moving convertible. He was surrounded by a mob, which was shouting and hailing him. On hearing the noise, Enitan’s mother rushed to the veranda shouting ‘Awo!’ only to discover that the people outside were not supporters of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, but those of his arch-enemies.

“The shout of ‘Awo!’ by Mrs. Abiodun brought the procession to a screeching halt. ‘Who said that? Who said that?’ demanded the mob, enraged.
“‘Fani-power’ turned and looked up at us. His eyes were the usual blood-shot red. At the time, many claimed it was because he regularly smoked Indian hemp. Fani-Kayode pointed to our building and identified to his thugs that the offending shout came from our direction. We did not know that the floor of the convertible he was standing in was loaded with empty bottles. His thugs reached for the bottles and rained them down on us as we all scrambled back inside the house for dear life.
Like father, like son: that was 48 years ago. Today, Femi Fani-Kayode, the 53-year-old son of ‘Fani-Power,’ continues in the mischievous tradition of his father.”

Pray, what civic etiquette does one learn from this kind of admonition reeking as it does of pure and unadulterated malice? To hide under the cover of an opportunistic moment to vent personal animus with reckless abandon? So what was the whole uproar against Mr. Fani-Kayode about if those who criticise are themselves a worse advertisement on the ethics of public engagement?

Mr. Aribisala has published quite a number of peculiar and controversial sermons on Christianity, which many Christians will find grossly offensive i.e. “God is the servant of man”, yet it will not be proper to wonder whether such behaviour might be attributable to what his parent’s did or did not do 50 years ago. The hallmark of a true and genuine man of God is charity and temperance towards all, not unrestrained anger and bile; the measure of good character and learning is sobriety and comportment when others are losing their cool in bitterness and outrage; an elder, according to Yoruba adage, is quick to hear and learn but slow and hesitant to speak and join a cacophony. As a pastor, academic and elder, how does Aribisala fare on each score?

–– Osuntokun is former MD of NAN

ThisDay

Oil: The Conspiracy That Robs Nigeria Of Billions Of Dollars

Nigeria is in dire straits. This statement summarizes the response of a top security official familiar with the large scale theft of crude oil that is going on at the nation’s oil terminals and as well as other locations en-route.

The security official fingered highly placed individuals in a conspiracy that deprives Nigeria of billions of dollars in revenue to the Federation Account. “There is more to what you want to know from me. The truth is that it is a high technology crime and there is a well-built cartel responsible for oil theft in the country and, until you smash their set-up, illegal oil bunkering will not stop,”

“They (the cartel) are highly connected people in and outside government, oil companies, businessmen, retired and serving military officers, including people you never thought could be involved. “Illegal oil bunkering is their means of livelihood and they are bleeding the country. Forget about those you people in the media refer to as oil thieves. I mean those that steal crude oil from well heads with Cotonou boats/canoes, and then hide in the bush to refine and sell to petrol station owners.

“Those are people in the kindergarten section of the business. The main people are the ones you do not see. They do not come to the pipeline to steal crude oil; they do their transaction at the various oil terminals. Whether Forcados or Bonny (terminals), officials can declare that only two vessels were loaded when 10 were loaded. “The oil barons are very wealthy and they mop up the little that oil bunkers are able to steal and sell to them, but they do their real business with oil companies and government officials.

“ Appearing perplexed about the situation, he asked rhetorically, “Do you think anybody will be complaining of stealing of crude oil if it is just the volume that villagers steal and refine to eke a living?” How they operate If the unnamed security official was hard to pin down, the president of the Ijaw People’s Development Initiative, IPDI, Warri, Comrade Austin Ozobo, was straightforward. He explained, “The oil cartel has illegal points where they siphon oil through long hoses into their waiting boats with an understanding with military officials.

“The poor class, who were doing the business to earn a living, have long, quit the business because of the manhunt by security agents, who have continuously destroyed their properties, as they could not afford huge amounts to settle the security agents on daily basis”. According to him, “Military men see the business as a money-making venture. They lobby to be posted to the Niger-Delta area because they know whoever serves in the creeks of the region must buy expensive cars and build big houses.

“Oil cartels lobby military men in oil installations to enable them load raw crude from points and to refine. Sometimes, they pay between N100,000 and N200,000 for loading per boat and local refinery operators settle military men in their operational areas with between one and two million naira per week. “Most of the military men, government officials and oil company workers have big vessels, Cotonou boats, barges, local refinery ports and illegal points allocated to individuals to steal oil and make huge amounts of money.

“The military men are selective in their operations. They only go after people who refuse to settle them”. Kuku’s alarm Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Office, PAP, Mr. Kingsley Kuku, raised eyebrows over the theft of the nation’s crude oil by an unidentified cartel, urging Nigerians to view it as a war against the country. Kuku Kuku Giving his position and privileged sources, Kuku, who spoke while playing host to national executives of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association, led by its vice president, Mr. Adamu Umoru, should know what he was talking about. He warned that unless decisive steps were taken to arrest the ugly trend, the theft could cripple the economy.

He noted that the volume of crude stolen could only be compared to the loss experienced at the peak of insurgency in the Niger Delta, warning that the theft could rise from 400,000 barrels per day to between 800,000 and one million. His words, “The theft of our oil should only be equated with the ‘Blood Diamonds’ in Sierra Leone. This is the greatest act of sabotage against the Nigerian economy.” Kuku, earlier in an interview with State House Correspondents, in July, accused the international oil companies (IOCs), some of their indigenous staff and some oil-bearing communities of complicity in oil theft. According to him, the process of illegally extracting crude oil from pipelines in the coastal areas requires highly technical and mechanical expertise, which ordinary Nigerians or residents of the oil-producing communities do not have.

However, he absolved Niger Delta governors of complicity in the crude theft, saying there was no evidence of their involvement. He insisted that oil theft was an international crime and urged the international community to go beyond coming up with penalising oil theft, and support the efforts of governments across the Gulf of Guinea and other parts of the region in dealing with it. He said, “The best you can find at the level of the Niger Delta people or some merchants of this trade are those doing menial jobs in it. “You will need high-grade vessels and, where you cannot load your illegal or stolen oil, you are definitely going to find yourself in a mess where you will have to pay huge sums for demurrage.

How many Nigerians have the capacity to do that? “So it is an international crime. I have never heard about any governor being involved. I know of one thing and, this is the bombshell, that there are workers in the oil and gas industry who have the expertise, who have the technical know-how, who know about the ways and means of sabotaging the oil and gas industry, who are likely to be involved. “I also know and this is critical and I know that a lot of multinationals will be angered by this, but their being angry does not bother me; what bothers me is the oil theft that is affecting the revenue of this country; that is affecting the environment that I am from.

“So you have a situation where some pipeline protection contractors empowered by the oil companies participate in the theft. This is not about NNPC; not about PPMC. You know almost every oil company has pipeline protection contract, pipeline surveillance contract for local security contractors. The same people who are meant to be securing these pipelines participate in oil theft. So the oil multinationals must look inwards at their contracting process, their procurement process, look at the status of some of their vendors and security contractors, x-ray them, review their processes very well and deal with the issue of oil theft as it affects participation in-house in the oil and gas industry” Sharp drop in revenue The impact of oil theft in recent times has been so devastating that oil giants, Shell and Agip, were losing 190,000 barrels of crude daily from oil fields in Southern Bayelsa State.

The decline was responsible for the drop in oil revenue accruable to the state from N12.4billion in May to N9billion in June, according to figures from the monthly revenue breakdown, echoed by Seriake Dickson, the governor of the state. It also forced the two oil firms to declare force majeure on their crude output from their facilities domiciled in Bayelsa to absolve them of liabilities from crude buyers. Force majeure is a legal notice that absolves an oil firm of liabilities for failure to meet supply obligations to crude buyers due to circumstances beyond the firm’s control.

The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, recently, lamented that the country was losing 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day because of crude theft, illegal bunkering, vandalism of infrastructure and halt in production. In addition, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, said Nigeria might not recover from the negative impact of crude theft and pipeline vandalism in the next 20 years or more. Alison-Madueke stated that the nation was producing 2.3 million barrels of crude oil per day as against its daily production benchmark of 2.567mbd in the 2013 budget.

Analysing the impact of the 400,000bpd loss on the economy, a renowned economist and Chief Executive, Financial Derivatives Company, Mr. Bismark Rewane, said, “If you are doing two million barrels per day, multiply it by the cost of a barrel and you will understand what the country makes or loses. The 400,000 barrels is about 20 per cent of our total production. So, if your salary is reduced by 20 per cent, what impact will that have on you? Therefore, it is a very grave situation for the country”. Unidentified cartel Ex-militant leader and founder of the non-operational Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger-Delta, MEND, High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, revealed, in an interview, that a brawny cartel was behind oil theft in the country. On whom they are and how they could be exposed, he said,

“The identity of those responsible for the theft of crude oil could only be revealed through a high-powered investigation because it is a big business for the rich.” Tompolo is the chairman of Oil Facility Surveillance Limited, OFSL, Warri, Delta State, an indigenous company that was contracted for a pipeline surveillance contract by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, to protect crude oil pipelines in Delta State.

The contract, a pilot project awarded February 2011, expired in February 2012 and is yet to be renewed. Control measures Investigations carried out y Sunday Vanguard concluded that the fact that a cartel, comprising oil companies, security agents, government officials and wealthy Nigerians, are ripping off the nation, is not in doubt. What is troubling, however, is the lack of foolproof measures to monitor pipelines, absence of up-to-the-minute technology to determine the actual oil production and the tepid attitude to the policing of the pipelines.

Oil companies also cry Before Kuku raised the latest alarm, Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, blew the whistle on behalf of the oil companies, sometime in June. The company’s Manager, Government, Community Relations, Mr. Krukrubo Evans; General Manager, Nigeria Content Development, Mr. Igo Weli; and Head, Oil Spill Response, Mr. Pat Agbo, who spoke in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, warned that the negative impact of pipeline vandalisation, oil theft and illegal refineries could affect Nigeria’s economy and environment. Evans, who was represented by Mr. Funkakpo Fufyin, lamented that the activities of oil thieves had forced the SPDC to close oil production in its Nembe Creek Trunk Line in the state.

He said the shutdown of the facility led to the loss of 150,000 barrels of oil per day, adding that the development reduced the revenue accruing to the derivation account. Prior to the shutdown, he said the SPDC discovered over 90 different punctured points on the 90km pipeline, adding that the company had commenced repairs of the trunk line. “Our biggest worries are crude oil theft and illegal refineries. They are bringing down the economy. Nigeria loses 150,000 barrels per day amounting to $6.1bn annually to oil theft,” the SDPC Manager said.

“Illegal refineries are destroying our environment. We are pushing and talking to the government and other stakeholders to do something about it. These crude theft and illegal refineries have to stop” He decried the mode of operation of illegal refineries and said operators only took 30 per cent of the crude oil products and “pour the rest into the environment.”

The official identified the company’s facilities in Bodo West, Imo River, Nembe Creek Trunk Line, coastlines offshore Niger Delta as the hot spots for illegal bunkering, adding that the oil company had taken measures to stop oil theft by monitoring its pipeline through detective equipment and aerial surveillance. Govs intervention, by Uduaghan Fielding questions from reporters, penultimate Sunday night, in Abuja at the venue of the Nigeria Governors Forum meeting, Delta State governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, said the Forum was determined to check the challenge of oil theft in the country and had already taken measures to support the Federal Government, which were already paying off.

According to him, the Forum had to do something after the shutdown of two major pipelines (Trans-Niger and Nembe), which led to the combined loss of about 300,000 barrels per day. “This resulted in the drop of our oil output from 2.5million bpd to 2.1million bpd. But, as I speak today, the two pipelines vandalized and damaged have been repaired and re-opened”, he stated. Uduaghan said that the cooperation and vigilance of all Nigerians was necessary to check illegal oil bunkering.

The point of the biggest controversy over oil theft is the actual loss figure. Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, disagreed with the claim that Shell lost $700 million to oil theft in the second quarter of the year. NNPC, in a statement by its Acting Group General Manager, Public Affairs Division, Ms. Tumini Green, in Abuja, described Shell’s claim as “defective”, pointing out that the loss the multinational oil firm claimed to have suffered was not based on its operations in Nigeria. It said the country was winning the war against oil theft and pipeline vandalism.

Consequently, the corporation disclosed that daily crude oil production had increased to an average of 2.4 million pbd. It said: “Suffice it to say that some vandalised pipelines and flow stations have been repaired and re-opened such that average current national daily production stands at 2.4 m/bpd compared to the average year to date figure of 2.13 m/bpd as at June 2013.” The corporation traced the success to the Petroleum Minister’s directive to NNPC to constitute an industry-wide committee on Security Strategy Against Crude Oil and Product Theft. That committee’s members include representatives from NNPC, all IOCs, NPDC, security agencies and Oil Producers Trade Section, OPTS, of the Lagos Chambers of Commerce and Industry, LCCI.

Naij.com