Patitos Post

It is a sad thing that members of the Nigerian armed forces are used to rig elections and intimidate voters on election day. They do this and at the end of the day a government emerges with a fraudulent mandate, but that is only half  the story. One would think that having helped in getting the government of the day elected, members of the armed forces would be the better for it. But is this the case?

The case of the 28 soldiers recently sentenced to life in prison reminds us of the futility of encouraging election fraud. I can confidently say that a genuinely and democratically elected government will never endorse the injustice that was meted out on these soldiers. Punishing them for protesting the disappearance of their allowances while nothing is done to the man (or men) who perpetrated this act. Now consider how many more soldiers will face a similar fate as these soldiers who protested the embezzlement of their wages.

Not only do I feel sorry for these soldiers, I also feel sorry for former president Obasanjo. What has he got to gain for forcing this government down the throat of Nigerians? Not only has the present admnistration reversed his policies including the laudable ones amongst them, the government has gone one step further to cut him to size by limiting his influence in the PDP and national politics. His political enemies are being given sensitive appointments to spite him, and governors who were almost his nemesis in the PDP 2003 primaries and were pursued by the EFCC now form the kitchen cabinet of the present administration and he is gradually fading into political irrelevance.

Now I daresay that had chief Obasanjo allowed for a free and fair election, most of his current travails would have been avoided. He would have been honoured as the father of modern Nigeria and he would sleep easy at night. But what does he face today? This is why it is so futile to stiffle the people’s voice. Yes the people will lose, but you the usurpers partner will lose also because there is no honour among thieves. My readers will notice that what is happening to Obasanjo is also happening to almost all ex-PDP governors. The only ex- governors who are enjoying peace of mind like Bola Tinubu are those who allowed for free and fair elections.

Certainly chief Obasanjo who presided over Nigeria’s exit from the Paris club by paying Nigeri’a debts can not be happy as this government goes willy nilly acquiring more debts. Can Obasanjo honestly say that he is happy that the privatization of Nitel has been reversed. Can he truly be happy that the impressive foreign reserves he amassed are being depleted in alrming proportions? Can he be said to be happy that the NIPP power projects that he instituted are being abandoned with turbines from GE worth billions of dollars rotting away at our ports as we speak? No he can not be happy, in fact it will torture him because his legacy is being torn to shred and if nothing at all chief Obasanjo is a man who is conscious, very conscious of his place in history. This is what you get for aiding electoral malpractices.

Today Nigeria is almost at war in the Niger Delta, but what thinking people must ask is how did we get to this point? The answer again leads us to election rigging. It has been reported again and again and most recently established by the Justice Kayode Eso panel in River State that these militants were armed by desperate politicians mostly from the PDP for the purpose of rigging elections. Now after ‘winning’ their elections these politicians expected these unemployed youths to hold on to their arms and do nothing until the next election. How wrong they were!

Not only did these youths morph into ‘militants’ many of them have turned into kidnappers and their targets are the very politicians who armed them as well as their families. In fact many politicians  have had to relocate their families to Lagos or Abuja for fear of kidnappers! This is sad but at the same time this is poetic justice. This reflects the oft repeated proverb that if you get a tiger to fight your enemies, when the fight is done and there are no more enemies to fight, the tiger will face you!

Now when you consider the traditional institutions in Nigeria, the emirates in the Nirth and the kingdoms in the South, you begin to see how some of these referred royal fathers are treated with indiginity by governors and when you consider the governors treating them this way, one and all they are governors who have questionable mandates. Imagine governors talking down at royal fathers and threatening them with dethronement or withholding of allowances or some other punitive measure.These royal fathers being so treated have my sympathy, but  should also remember that a child allowed to steal by his father does not go stealthily at night to rob, but will march in broad day light and breaks into a house and when he becomes rich from stealing will end up disrespecting his elders.  The fact remains that a governor genuinely elected by the people of the state will think twice before treating a royal father so poorly because he knows this will incur the wrath of the people and he will pay the price at the next election. But where a governor was rigged into office why would he care what the people think.

The same goes for eleder statesmen in our states who are having running battles with their respective governors. Some have even had the indignity of having their houses demolished for the purposes of building non existing roads as a way of spiting them and cutting them to size. Elders have to understand that a she goat does not suffer in her parturition while an elder is in the house.

The bottom line here is that we all pay the price for electoral fraud. One way or the other it will eventually catch up with us because what goes around comes around. It actually pays us more to have free and fair elections.  Anything short of that will keep us perpetually a feeble giant of Africa trying to catch up to a nimble midget like Ghana because as we know, size matters but it is better to be small and called mighty than to be big and called…………. I can not even complete the sentence because it saddens me. My fellow Nigerians we have to wake up and realize that we are our own salvation. God has given us everything we need to stand but we also have the choice to fall and what a great fall we have fallen.

I sometimes am so saddened by the state Nigeria finds itself that I am almost moved to tears. But emotions can not solve Nigeria’s problems, we need positve action from all lovers of Nigeria and we need it now.

Once again God bless Nigeria.

PU.

So much attention is paid to what the federal government does, the corruption and waste that goes on in the centre that we actually neglect to monitor the activities of our governors. While it is true that our Nigerian federal government is very flawed, I dare say that we will not feel the inefficiency of the federal government that much if we can have state governments that work as they ought to. You may say that a state government is too small, and that it is merely one among many small units, but we ought not to underestimate the power of one man to do good. Raji Fashola is one man, look what he has done in Lagos. If all 36 state governors behave as he has done then we would have less people living in misery, but we all know that this is not the case.

What I can not understand is why Nigeria’s federating states allow their governors such liberties to mortgage their future by taking out huge loans which they have no intention of repaying during their tenure. The loans are spent on projects chosen by the governor of the state but the the whole state is saddled with the repayment of this loan. A lot of governors actually pass on debts to their successors. How can this be fair? One governor takes a loan, spends it and expects his successors to repay it. And to worsen matters, most successors of debt ridden states end up piling more debts on their long suffering states.

Now definitely banks are commercial endeavours and one can not expect them to refrain from borrowing to states especially where this is profitable. Also we can not expect the federal government to step in and stop this culture because we practice federalism and at least by the constitution if not in practice the states are meant to be autonomous.

So what do we do, how do we save our states from loan sharks and loan hungry governors? We need to understand that we have the ability as citizens to put a stop to this and since we have the capacity we also have the responsibility.

How can we use our power to achieve this aim? Citizens have to hold their state houses of assembly to account and force them to develop a spine instead of being rubber stamps to thier governors. The constitution gives us the power to recall legislators. This power should be used responsibly to check those legislators who have been compromised by their governors. We should remember that a people deserve the type of government they get. This is true, because if we do not tolerate it, it will not be allowed to stand.

For this reason alone, I am indebted heavily to Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the current governor of Edo state, who has shown us in Nigeria the power of citizens massed together to influence government policies by his courageous stand against the federal government under former president Obasanjo.

In the case of loans, the least the state house of assembly has to accept is thata referendum be conducted asking the citizens if they assent to the taking of the loans. There should be a robust campaign by the state government to convince the citizens of the necessity of the loan. T.V and other mass communication outlets should be used to explain to the people what the government intends to do with these loans and how it will impact the people. On the other hand, opposotion political parties and civil society and interests groups should also be allowed to publicly canvass and campaign publiclyusing mass communication tools against such loans if they feel that it is not in the best interests of the state.  As it is now there is too much license and liberty for our governors to unanimously mortgage their states without even a squeak from the state legislators.

We need to begin to ask questions of our legislators such as why they accept vehicle gifts from governors, or why they accept over seas trips sponsored by the governor or his god father. To put this in perspective, State legislators receiving gifts from governors, is like a judge receiving gifts from a party to a case before his court! Assemblies are meant to check the goveronors and try them when they are in breach of their oaths of office, they are certainly not meant to be receiving gifts of all kind. First of all these largesse are illegal, and they only occur because we tolerate them. Secondly our state assemblies  are meant to be financially autonomous, they are self accounting and as such should be self sufficient and should not require anything from the executive arm.

I have said it publicly and I say it again, without citizen’s advocacy and activism nothing will change for the better in governance in Nigeria. We can not just accept that things will change, we have to do something for things to change. If our governors feel that actions in Nigeria have no consequnce, they will continue to do as they please and governance in Nigeria will continue to sink lower and lower. The price we must pay for a genuine democracy does not stop at voting, we need to go the whole gamut.

First we vote and vote for only credible candidates, then we guard our votes right from the polling booth, then we must resist any attempt to manipulate the results by refusing to recognize any usurper and when the real winners of elections are sworn in, we need to vigilantly watch them. The price of democracy then becomes ETERNAL VIGILANCE, not by the police, nor the army, nor politicains, but by the people, the governed.

So today, I urge all Nigerians reading this, to wake up to your responsibility, lose your docility, refuse to be intimidated and speak up and act when things are not being done as they should be. Expose acts of collusion between the legislature and executive in your state by writing to newspapers, if they publish your material, good, if they do not it is all good. Students, wake up to your responsibilities. The NANS of old should rise up. the National Association of Nigerian Students should resist attempts by politicians to buy their silence. Nothing can be more effective in stopping maladministration at the state level than a peaceful demonstration or rally at your state assembly to check the collusion between legislators and governors. Never should we sit back and allow legislators to receive cars or travel tours from their governors. If they can be so brazen to publicly exchange gifts that violate their constitutional role, imagine what they do behind closed doors.

We as a peole must demonstrate that we care enough about how we are ruled by taking steps to influence government policy for good constantly and consistently rather than make futile complaints under trees and in beer parlours. Talk is cheap, and action speaks louder than words.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU

Recently I have noticed a trend in our youths. With the advent of the Internet and globalisation, Nigerian youths are taking advantage of technology to make connections with youths from other countries. However, what I notice is that Nigerian youths are not connecting accross the Niger as they should. It would appear that we are passing down the  North/ South  dichotomy to our youths.  I recently hosted an interactive session in June with youths in Lagos and asked how many had friends who were of Northern origin, and very few hands were raised.  I had asked this question in Kaduna in March when I had another interactive session there and got a similar response when I asked how many had friends of Southern origin.

If we are to build a united Nigeria where we work as a team, united in purpose and achieving synergy, we need to encourage our youths to make connections across the tribal and religious divide otherwise we would continue using our energies against each other having a Northern agenda, Southern agenda, Middle Belt agenda rather than a Nigerian agenda.

To youths who read this I have this message- The creation of a new Nigeria rests on you. Get to know people of other tribes. If you dont have any friends outside your tribe and religion make some. Learn something about other parts of Nigeria. Tribalism has hindered our growth causing us to spend our energy fighting each other. The cabal thrives on divide and rule.

Perhaps if we had a government that operates in a businesslike manner I could suggest the tightening of the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) programme to make it mandatory for Northern youths to only serve in the South and vice versa, but do we have such a government? This laudable scheme initiated by the Gowon has been bastardized by NYSC officials and anxious parents who manipulate the posting of their wards to their areas of origin.

Nigerian youths should understand that they are the largest bloc in the society. Population wise, most of our numbers come from the youths. If Nigerian youths can enter into the sphere of possibility thinking, they will be able to replicate what youths did in The U.S which brought Obama to power and in Zimbabwe with Morgan Tsvangirai and would gradually be able to bid farewell to poverty as Chief Abiola preached during his Hope ‘93 campaign. How?

By uniting and networking from Nguru in Yobe state to Bonny in Rivers our youths need to make people to people connections and learn about their colleagues from the other divide so that they no longer see them as strangers, enemies. No more should Nigerian youths see other youths as strangers. When there is a meeting point between our youths, it will gradually become impossible for unscrupulous politicians to use them to forment inter tribal or inter religious conflicts as we have seen in places as Jos.

We need to break the so called North-South dichotomy. There should be and there really is one Nigeria. Let me go further and say there should be one Africa and one Black race. The sooner we accept ourselves in Nigeria the sooner we will stop wasting energy in resisting each other and can then harmoniously pool resources and energy into building a country that will be worthy of the title Giant of Africa.

Nigerian youths may look at Nigeria’s recent past and say to themselves that the future is bleak and as such there isn’t much to look forward to but that thinking is wrong. We do not have to be tied to our past. We should rather be tied to our potential and work towards fulfilling them. Nugerian youths have the potential to take Nigeria to greater heights and a great way to kick start this is by uniting with their colleagues across the Niger.

Once again, God Bless Nigeria.

PU

I commend the Government for the unconditional amnesty given to militants who renounce militancy. Its a step in the right direction.  In commending the amnesty initiative let me again reiterate my comments earlier in the week that the amnesty be comprehesive to avoid a backlash from selective resolution of the crisis, and be followed by a sincere commitment to lowering the misery index in the region and the pursuit of genuine programs that create jobs and retraining programs for those laying down their guns. It will, for example, have a salutory effect if the Federal government were to commit a billion dollars to a Sovereign Wealth Fund being considered by the South South states following their economic Summit recommendations. Such a Fund managed by international fund managers with the goal of investing in high return, transparently managed growth inducing projects in the region will be appropriate signalling.

 In the spirit of reconciliation I further call on the government to accept the recommendations of the Justice Uwais electoral reform panel and bequeath to Nigeria an unbiased electoral body.

Many have criticized this administration of not having much to show for its two years in power, however, if president Yar’adua can find the political will to establish a truly independent electoral commission which can impartially conduct elections in which the people’s will prevails, he will have written his name in gold.

For Nigeria to ever make genuine progress we need credible elections free from Godfatherism and the ‘do or die’ syndrome.

President Yar’adua should recall the ordeal of the late Shehu Musa Yar’adua  who participated in the electoral process  only to be short changed by a biased electoral body such as we have now. What better way to honour his memory than to prevent what happened to him from ever occuring again.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU

In my earlier article ‘Rabbit at rest in a global recession’ I made the point to ask if Nigeria was the way it was because we could not see our problem or because we could not solve it. I had intended this to be a rhetorical question, but I was somewhat surprised when recent events answered this question. By this I refer to the Federal government’s reaction to the Electoral Reform Committee’s recommendations. Being mindful of the belief that you get what you expect, I had made an effort to expect that this administration would do the right thing and accept the Committee’s recommendation because I was convinced that those recommendations would go a long way to ensuring that the next election would be largely free and fair and would produce an administration that had the moral authority to begin to make the changes needed to set Nigeria on the right path. I know for a fact that there is a direct connection between how an administration comes into being and its ability to govern effectively.

The president in his first month in office confessed to the world that the process that brought him in was thoroughly flawed and to address it he set up an Electoral Reform Committee headed by Former Chief Justice, Mohammed Uwais. The committee has now come out to say to the government that to have a free and fair election you must have a truly independent electoral body and to have a truly independent electoral body you must have a neutral person heading this body and to achieve this end you must have such an appointment made by the National Judicial Council whose members are independent of the executive. And what has the president who set up the ERC in the first place done? He has rejected this proposal. How then can we have a better election if we stick to the same logic that produced what we saw in 2007? Has this government shown that it has the willingness to change for the better? They have said they want change, but as we know action speaks  louder than words and their action speak very loudly.

As the late U.S president Franklin Roosevelt said, the job of the president is primarily one of moral leadership.  How does a president get his initial moral leadership rights? The very obvious answer is that his initial moral leadership comes from the process that brought him into office. A straight forward process will produce a president who has moral authority and he can then build on this and increase it until his capacity for effective leadership is so strong. But where a leader comes into office by suspicious means how then can he have moral leadership? And when a leader does not have moral authority how can he effectively govern and bring about positive changes in the country he governs? Everything is connected to everything and in Nigeria we can see how the moral issues plaguing our leaders are having a ripple effect on the society. An administration that emerges from a flawed system which is riddled with fraud will not have the moral authority to condemn fraud. An administration that came about via an election where money was used as inducement will not have the moral authority to challenge theft of public funds. And where you have a government that is deficient in this manner this deficiency will trickle down on the society.  A government cannot give out what it does not have. And we are beginning to see the actual results of a failure in moral leadership in the day to day life of the ordinary Nigerian.

For instance, we have been living with some insecurity in Nigeria and have come to accept it as the norm, but never before had we experienced insecurity on such a grand scale as we have today. I am no prophet, but I am almost certain that tomorrow’s headlines will have one story or the other about dare devil armed robbers and kidnappers. Relatives of high profile politicians and civil servants dare not visit certain parts of the country without adequate security and even then they hold their breath. An ever Increasing population is competing for diminishing resources leading to more incidences of riots and ethnic clashes because government is focused on how to cure its lack of moral leadership rather than how to create an environment conducive for the creation of sustainable wealth.

I love the youths as they are the key to bringing about change in any society because they are more flexible, more able to change their ways and are impressionable and a good leader can make the right impression on them and galvanize them in the direction they should go. My love for our Nigerian youths is the reason I feel pains when I watch NTA news. I cannot count the number of times I see the bodies of young people shot by the police as armed robbery suspects. I have trained myself to look at the youth and see them with the eye of potential and I am saddened when I see these scenes on television.  But how do we help our youths to fulfill their potential when the government and our elders are caught in this loop of failed leadership and still causally dismiss measures that can help us break out of this cycle of failed leaders and a failing society.

Yes armed robbery is bad, but in Nigeria it is to a large extent a symptom rather than a disease and to eradicate the symptom we need to cure the disease. Untold millions of unemployed youths read the newspapers and watch the news cast and see politicians who had been arrested by the EFCC for stealing billions of naira and are out on bail being received at our presidential villa, being celebrated at parties and also being recognized and even celebrated in churches!  These are the very people who have a vested interest in seeing that the Uwais Committee’s recommendations come to naught.

As a society we have shown undue tolerance for corruption and intolerance for law enforcement. If you are in doubt of this then consider the haste at which the government acted in handling Nuhu Ribadu’s ‘insubordination’ and compare it with the slow pace of the  trial (or lack of it) of those he arrested. Oh what positive impact the government would have made had it acted with its ‘Ribadu’ haste in accepting and implementing the Uwais committee’s recommendations!

Have we paused to think about the type of subliminal messages we are passing across to these youths when we celebrate looters and punish those who go after them? As the late Fela Kuti sang “Authority man in charge of money, him no need gun him need pen, pen get power gun no get, if gun go steal 2 thousand naira pen go steal 2 billion naira, you no go hear them shout thief their thief”.  I am tempted to believe that if Bernie Madoff where to have been a Nigerian, he would have been out on bail and be making the rounds of government houses and parties.

This attitude we have of celebrating what should be disdained is the very reason why our youths have taken to violent crimes. As Ezeulu said in Achebe’s Arrow of God a she goat does not suffer in its parturition while an elder is in the house. If our youths can see leaders giving national awards to men whose source of wealth is certainly questionable, if churches can give honours to men whose incomes can never justify the large donations they make, if we have heads of law enforcement bodies attending parties and dancing with those whom their own agents have previously arrested, then inevitably we will have the scenario we now experience. We reap what we sow. The failure of our leadership has a more telling effect on our youths and the day we summon the political will to address these failures is the day we will begin to see a reduction in violent crimes, 419, drug smuggling, credit card scams and other ills that plague our youths. Nigerian youths do not have a natural aptitude for crime; a majority of our delinquents are the product of an environment that has conditioned them to act in ways that have brought us shame and scorn all around the world.

So next time we watch the NTA news and see our youths being shot as robbery suspects or kidnappers, next time we are at a Western airport and get the ‘look’ after we produce our green passport, next time our foreign business partners tell us that they cannot extend credit to Nigerian companies and next time our internet friends stop responding to our emails after discovering that we are Nigerian, I want us to remember that in democracies a people get the leadership they deserve.

I do admire Prof. Dora Akinyuli and her achievements at NAFDAC, but as I remarked at a recent event that had Mrs. Akinyuli present, effective rebranding really should be a projection of actions that are already happening and if the Federal Government sincerely desired an effective rebranding of Nigeria what better way to show it than accepting the Electoral Reform Commission’s recommendations?. More of the same will only produce the same old same old. As the late MKO Abiola was fond of saying of his enemies “even if you change the name of honey it would still be sweet”. This rebranding seems to me like staring at a mirror and not liking what you see and then proceeding to adjust the image in the mirror. If we do not like the man in the mirror we have to change the man in front of the mirror. Until we have a government that is willing to change the values we have been forced to live by after years of misgovernance by adventurists in power we will not see any significant change
 despite rebranding projects and ‘heart of Africa’ campaigns.

And how do we change Nigeria? Sometimes I am asked why Nigerians are so passive about the obvious social injustice that pervades the country. The answer I always give is that Nigerians are passive because Nigerians have no stake in government. The key to participation is involvement. Nigerians do not pay taxes and rely almost exclusively on oil wealth to function.

Now imagine this scenario if you will. Imagine that you are an entrepreneur and have formed a company with fellow entrepreneurs but the company is being run by grants given to it by Western donor agencies and no one has invested a kobo. Then imagine if you will that the president of the company is all of a sudden building mansions, buying state of the art cars and throwing wild parties. What would your reaction be? As a member of the company you might be concerned but you are unlikely to take action. You may say to yourself ‘is it my father’s business?’

Now imagine that instead of a grant from the donor agencies , the company was being funded by  funds contributed by each entrepreneur and that after dues were collected you find the president of the company living in this manner. How would you react? Of course your reaction would be different. You would scream blue murder and hold the president to account for your dues. Court actions would follow and the president would not hold his office for very long.

This is the major reason why Nigerians are passive, because they see themselves as beneficiaries of a Father Christmas government that does nothing except collect rent from oil. The key to changing people’s behaviour is in changing their roles. If Nigerians can be made to pay tax they would stop seeing themselves as beneficiaries of government rather they would see themselves as stakeholders or even shareholders and only then would they begin to hold their leaders to account and lose their passivity.

Nigerians should not say to themselves that they would only start paying taxes when the government is being better run. We have the process backwards if we think in that manner. As a matter of fact only when we start paying taxes will government be better run because we will lose our passivity and become assertive and instead of us being afraid of the government, the government becomes afraid of us.

And we need to remember that we have a history of holding governments to account when we pay tax. The famous Aba women’s riot was all about taxes and holding government to account and this happened in 1929. In 1948, the Abeokuta Women’s Union led by the late Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was able to change the native authority government in Abeokuta on an issue of taxation without representation. There were other instances of Nigerians holding government to account, but what you see is that as oil income began to be the source of income for the government and emphasis shifted from tax collection to oil rent collection, Nigerians began to be more passive and the more passive they became the more assertive the government had to become which in turn makes the citizenry even more passive creating  a serious co dependency that has led us to where we are now-an unsustainable system where Nigeria is a cow that everyone is milking and no one is feeding.

In conclusion, I call on all Nigerians of good will and in particular I call on those Nigerians who pay taxes, be it income tax, VAT tax or whatever form of tax to write a letter to the Nigerian Federal Government and state that as a stake holder in Nigeria (by virtue of your taxes) you support the recommendations of the Justice Mohammed Uwais led Electoral Reform Committee’s recommendation and politely (because the president deserves our respect) ask him to reconsider the decision of the Federal Executive Committee to alter these recommendations. The president can be reached by mail at the following address;

H.E Umaru Musa Yar’adua,
President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces,
Federal Republic of Nigeria
Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Three Arms Zone, Abuja FCT.

Pat Utomi

I had to consult the dictionary today to look up the meaning of the word elder today after I saw that the PDP had set up an elders committee to reconcile its aggrieved members. Now to me an elder is someone who is not just advanced in age, but someone who has lived an exemplary life which stands him out as a model to the younger generation.

Now looking at the names on this committee, I am again reminded of a major problem we have in Nigeria and that is that actions seem not to have consequences. What we tolerate is what we appreciate, and what we appreciate is what will grow in value. If as a society we keep recycling people with questionable characters need we be surprised that negative vices are on the rise among our youths?

In Nigeria it seems that justice is only meted out to the weak and powerless.

Take the case of the 27 soldiers (including 3 women) who demonstrated in Ondo state against the non payment of their peace keeping allowances which had been released by The United Nations to the army authorities but which never reached the long suffering soldiers. Imagine the hurt and pain they felt after serving their country and putting their lives on the line only for their allowances to be embezzled. Now empathize with me if you will. Put yourself in their situation, what would you do? Of course they protested and demonstrated against this injustice, which is the natural thing to do, and what was the result? They were court-martialled and sentenced to life in prison.

Now the important question to be asked here is what happened to the man or men who embezzled their allowances? Have you heard any punishment being meted out to him or them? So here we go punishing the victim. Now what message does that send to our youths?  Are we to leave such people in the army to again embezzle more soldiers allowances causing more protest and leading to more life setneces?  Imagine what would happen if we leave this person or persons and he gets promoted steadily until he becomes the chief of army staff.

Only last year Nigerians were again treated to a scene from the theatre of the absurd when a senior civil servant who was caught on tape in far away China stealing his course mates camera explained away his crime with the excuse that he meant to return the camera but did not because he suffers from memory lapses.

Or consider the case of the men who served under the EFCC while Ribadu was in charge. All of them have been sent packing from the EFCC and most complain of being punished by postings to obscure police locations, demotions, or outright arrest without charge as was the case with Ibrahim Lamorde. If we have treated these men so, what level of dedication if any can we expect from the men of the police service currently deployed to the EFCC?  Now consider the manner we treat those who were arrested and charged to court by the PDP. Some of those people are today ambassadors, members of the president’s kitchen cabinet and power brokers in the PDP. Do we now see why we are the way we are? Our tolerance for corruption has grown unchecked while our intolerance for anti corruption borders almost on vendetta.

So when the minister of communications complains in the papers of being humiliated at the airport in the U.S, when our attorney general gets a letter signed by a mid level officer denying his request for assistance in the Haliburton bribery scandal, when president Obama ignores Nigeria in favour of Ghana and the administration complains, we need to tell them that while in Nigeria government has created a culture that corrupt actions have no consequence, people of other climes will show us what they think of us by their actions which though subtle is an open rebuke for a country whose government has turned  turned it into an example of how not to run a country.

Rebranding Nigeria under the circumstances which exist under this administration is a futile effort. While the president might be at heart a good man, he must understand that it takes more than being a good man to lead a nation in the path it must go if it is to bequeath a better society to its youth. The most effective rebranding we can do at this point is to retrace our steps, reform our electoral system and stop the current practice of tolerating corruption and corrupt elements. We must show ZERO tolearnce for corruption considereing that it has made us a laughing stock in the world.

To our youths, I have this message, do not be overwhelmed by the culture of impunity currently reigning in Nigeria, believe that a better Nigeria is possible one where there is social justice and a genuine rule of law reigns. If you have the capacity please participate in the electoral process, remember evil only thrives when good men do nothing.

Once again God bless Nigeria.

PU

I was in Europe recently and met a Dr. on a flight from Brussels who asked me where I was from. When I answered Nigeria he informed me that he had several Nigerian patients. I was curious to know their identities but unsure f he would tell me due to the patient doctor privilege, however when I asked if he knew their names, he proceeded to reel out the names of important Nigerians in leadership positions. It was like a who is who in Nigeria. As I listened to him speak, it occured to me that perhaps the single most important reason why our ‘big men’ politicians have not thought it wise to improve the health sector as well as health delivery is because they do not patronize Nigerian health facilities.

How many governors or president know the state of general hospitals in their domains? Very few if any at all. How can you improve something of which you have little or no knowledge of?

I know of a son of an ex-ruler who publicly (in a Thisday newspaper interview) boasted of flying his polo horse to Switzerland for medical check ups. This at a time when millions of Nigerians do not have ‘paracetamol’ to take when they have aches and pains. This can only happen because there is a disconnect, a disjointedness between Nigeria’s leaders and the led.

I now understand why we have spent so much on defense, security and aviation. These are areas that affect our big men. They spend the bulk of the our resources on defense and security because they have to protect themselves from Nigerians who have been so impoverished that many are frustrated into kidnapping of politicians and high profile persons. But this is only treating the symptoms. The underlying problems are there and can not be wished away.

The same goes for education. Nigeria is perenially listed by The U.N and UNICEF as one of the countries who budget the least portion of their budget on education. Nigerians we have got it wrong. It is not that the cabal does not know the value of education they do. The real reason they do this is because all thier children school abroad. Many Nigerian leaders only visit our public universities when they are to be conferred with honorary degrees which they have not earned but which the university authorities feel compelled to give them as a means of attracting funding. And then the big men proceed to talk down on and talk at  rather than to these intellectuals who have been so impoverished to the extent that they depend on ‘hand outs’ to feed their families.

It may surprise many that a lot of privileged Nigerians actually donate monies to foreign universities especially those thier kids attend. The sad thing is that the schools back home in thier states are desperately in need of funds.

If Nigerian leaders are hospitalized abroad, have their kids delivered abroad, school their children abroad, fly only foreign airlines, wear imported clothes and eat imported food how can they have a stake in Nigeria? And if they do not have a stake in Nigeria, how can they have the political will to fix Nigeria’s problems?

But I never like highlighting problems without talking of solutions.

I sustained my thought process on this issue and then it hit me. You see the only way we can have a better health care system is by enacting legislation that compells all elected officials to patronize only Nigerian health facilites. Privileged Nigerians are not aware of what the masses go through because they fly to Europe at the slightest sign of ill health. Their wives also have their babies abroad and their inner circle of friends do likewise all at public expense.

Similarly we need to legislate that all elected officials must have their own wards and children educated only in Nigerian public shools be it primary or university. They have to be compelled to feel what the people feel and suffer what they suffer. Then and only then would they tackle the problems faced by every day ordinary Nigerians.

We should also stop this practice of the government at all levels acquiring air ambulances. We need to have ambulances on the road to cater to our road accident victims who are aactually victims of Nigeri’a notoriously bad roads. Until we have enough ambulances on the road, we should not have an ambulance on the air. Nigeria is meant for us all, not just for big men.

Ordinary Nigerians and youths as well as midle class Nigerians (if they still exist) who read this should not feel powerless. We can have real change if we begin to be more conscious of how governance in Nigeria works and speak out about its failures in other to make others conscious. When there is a critical mass of people who are conscious of the need to change Nigeria positively more and more will begin to act and progress will ensue. And it is happening already. It is! We have begun to see youths take out their anger on unresponsive public officials. But rather than stone these elected officials with rocks and sticks, we need to stone them with votes, i.e vote them out of office in 2011 and guard your votes and make it count. The people of Iran are doing so, we in Nigeria should take note of this.

I close with the immortal words of John Lennon in the song ‘Imagine;

                                                                  ‘ you may say I’m a dreamer

                                                                   ‘but I’m not the only one

                                                                   ‘I hope some day you’ll join us

                                                                   and the world would be as one”

Once again God Bless Nigeria!

PU.

From: Adedeji John Oduwole
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 12:59 AM
To: utomifornigeria@yahoo.com
Subject: Protecting the Nigerian Producer

Right before our very eyes, we are being treated to a mass action of people power in Iran where people are insisting that their votes must count. People have taken to the streets demanding that the voice of the people be heard. This is again a demonstration of the fact that freedom is not free and people need to enforce their freedom as an inalienable right when an oppressor tries to take it from them. And very symbolically Iran’s elections were held on June 12, the day that Nigeria came together irrespective of tribe and religion and united and defated the cabal at their own game.

What has happened in Iran is not worse than what happened in Nigeria in 2007.   Then, we had several prominent statesmen appealing to the public and the opposition to accept the election results with the plea that with Obasanjo gone, the incoming admninistration will usher in true democracy and respect of the people’s will. But we have been living witnesses to the antics of this administration.

First we saw the president slowly but surely moving against the leading lights of the reform efforts of the Obasanjo administration.  Before our eyes, we witnessed Ribadu being sent on ’study leave’, then demoted and manhandled at NIPSS. As if that was not enough to stun us we witnessed the president receiving the same ex-governors that Ribadu had arrested and arraigned in court for corruption. President Yar’adua received not one, not two, not even three but multiple governors that had been arrested for corruption at the presidential villa. When asked by the Guardian newspapers why he still fraternised with corrupt ex-governors Yar’adua gave what I consider to be the weakest defense ever. He said that he could not abandon them because they were his former colleagues! How does he expect the EFCC to confidently try the president’s friends.

Not only does Yar’adua fraternise with notoriously corrupt ex-officials, he has included them in his kitchen cabinet. How can he justfiy appointing former ministers who could not deliver into sensitive national positions? If they could not deliver in their previous positions and he re-appoints them what motivation do public officials have to perform? The message he is giving them is this-steal and have enough to contribute to the party in power and your future is assured.

But that is not the height of it. This administration that came in via a crooked election and which promised to clean up the system has shown Nigeria what it is capable of doing in Ekiti State. If any election could be worse than the 2007 election it has to be the Ekiti elections. Even the REC who supervised the elections was so ashamed of her handwork that she resigned rather than announce the results only to be declared wanted and summoned to Abuja to change her story after meetings with senior government and security officials.

And how have we reacted to this? We shouted for a while. Talked and talked. We used the refrain ‘God dey o’, but we forgot that God made man sufficient to stand and yet free to fall.

Now just a few months after the Ekiti saga, the whole episode has been forgotten. The media has moved on to something else. We forget that if we accept what happened in Ekiti the government will know that we will accept another ‘do or die’ elections in 2011.

The media and the rest of us have also forgotten about the Justice Uwais Electoral Reform Committee.  Dont we realise that INEC is like a mould and the government that we have today is a product of that mould, and unless we change the mould that is INEC, any election that it supervises will produce a government in in the same mould as this one. The only thing to do is to break the mould and create a new one based on the principles of justice and equity. Since he who pays the piper dictates the tune it follows that as long as the president appoints the chairman of INEC we will never have an independent electoral body, we will only have a padi padi electoral body and the more we look, the less we will see.

If Iranians who live under a totalitarian government can rise up and demand genuine elections, we Nigerians have no ecxuse for not doing the same. If we are tired of crooks ruling us  we are not showing it. We will never change what we tolerate and as long as we tolerate fraudulent elections we will continue to have leaders who have no loyalty to the public and who serve the interests of the corrupt elements that put them in power. And as long as we have a corrupt leadership, we will continue to experience social problems like the Niger Delta crisis, kidnapping, severe insecurity, decaying infrastructure and the like for the simple reason that a corrupt leadership breeds corruption in the governed. This is known as the headship principle.

The world today complains about corruption in Nigeria, this corruption has spread to our youths and outside Nigeria no one trust Nigerians. Because no one trusts us any more, we do not have Foreign Direct Investment, we do not benefit from outsourcing, the few foreign investors we have are leaving Nigeria, our youths are denied visas to developed contries. All these are the multiplier effects of a total failure of leadership in Nigeria. What we fail to consider is that Nigerian youths do not have a natural aptitude for crime but many are the product of their environment which is influenced by corrupt leaders.

An example of how corrupt leadership breeds corrupt followership is seen in what happened in Nigeria from the mid 80s. Because Nigerian leaders were celebrated for their skills at trickery and manipulation and dribbling the public with lies and also getting rich by cunning means many of our youths thought it was okay and cool to be tricky. From that period on we started to hear of 419, obtain by trickery and advance fee fraud. This is because of the headship principle. We can not make progress if we violate this principle. We have to break free from corrupt leadership and no one will do it for us. We have to demand it by resisting electoral fraud.

I salute the Iranian people who have taken their destiny in their own hand, and I call on Nigerians to remember that a people deserve the type of government they get and the day that we refuse to stand for election rigging and ‘do or die’ politics is the day that we begin to see a change for the better in our lives. Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU

A lot of you have sent me emails to get on twitter. As they say Vox populi vox dei. I am now on Twitter and you can keep track with me at http://twitter.com/utomi2011. PU