Patitos Post

As a result of your emails to me in which a lot of my readers asked for a more interactive site, I have listened to your feedback and decided to devote more time on this forum to interacting with you. On my facebook profile, a lot of you ask me questions and I have decided to answer one question here. The remainder will be responded to on facebook, please see www.facebook.com/utomi

Obimma Ambrose Chukwudi asked “How will a President Utomi diversity the economy?”

My response is as follows:

Well first we have to significantly improve on the power situation in Nigeria. In my view the way to go about this issue is to separate it from politics. Irrespective of your feelings on your predecessor administration, there is the need to build on what they have done rather than abandon their efforts. For the short term, we need to get electric barges into our coastal areas and begin to feed the national grid while we continue with the NIPP and work to make it transparent.

Next we need to force the banks to make genuine credit available to regular everyday people and not just to importers of petroleum products and people with political connections. No one should have to pay for his house at once or build it with his/her own money. Banks have to be compelled by legislation first, but ultimately and more importantly by monitoring them to give credit to all sectors of the economy not just to those sectors with easy profits otherwise we will have lopsided economy where some are super rich while most are super poor.

Then we have to privatize all government enterprises and for those that are too sensitive for privatization we have to partner with the private sector. Nigerian Port Authority for example will never be free from corruption even if it is headed by a honest and capable man simply because the structure has been compromised by corruption, so for our air and sea ports, we need to bring in the private sector to partner with government and put their money into these ventures. Once private money is involved, corruption will reduce and efficiency will increase because private investors will not fold their hands and watch their investments go up in smoke.

Also, invariably government will have to stop importing fuel and refine locally. The only way to do this is by forcing the public sector to do so, because if you just ask them, they will not invest in refineries because of the easy and cheap profits of importing fuel. One way you can force them is by immediately placing huge taxes on profits from fuel imports. Now don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying we should tax fuel imports, I am saying we should tax the profits. For instance, if you import fuel for 10 Naira and sell for 20 Naira, the government will tax 7 Naira out of the 10 Naira profit you have made. This will make it senseless for them to pass the cost to the consumer because whatever profit you make, government will tax 70% of it. However, if you refine locally, government will give you a tax holiday (no tax at all). These people like money and when they see this, they will rush to build their refineries. However, you need a capable honest and steadfast leader to accomplish this because they will try to compromise you with bribes and you have to love Nigeria more than yourself to refuse such bribes.

Then, we need to encourage local manufacturing by banning imports of those products we can produce in Nigeria even if we are not producing enough. So Items like Fabrics and textiles, fruit juice and toothpaste, sugar, rice and cement, fish and canned meats will be banned. Nigerians will feel the pinch for a while because this will lead to scarcity, but it is the price to pay. When we are forced to patronize locally made products, our industries will start to improve and their owners will have more profits to plow back into their business which will improve the quality of the product and therefore improve sales which will make them employ more people. But for this to work, we need to face the Customs and Excise Department and rid them of their endemic corruption by getting someone with a passion and the patriotic drive to fix Nigeria like Nuhu Ribadu to probe and audit the place every year if not they will frustrate the goal.

At the same time with these activities, government has to devote massive funds to re building Nigeria’s transport infrastructure. I know we are not keen on statistics, but I carried one out with my funds and found that in Lagos alone, 78% of the working population spend 29% of their working hours in traffic. You can imagine how much we are losing to traffic congestion and bad roads alone in Lagos. Then magnify that nationally with the bad state of our inter state roads. We need to put money into repairing and building new roads nationally and then in Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, Port Harcourt and Abuja, we have no choice but to establish metro and rail lines as an alternative means of transport and in coastal cities like Lagos and Port Harcourt, we need to establish water based transportation like ferries because there is too much road traffic in Nigeria. Doing this will put hundreds of thousands to work building roads and rail lines and then open up the country so that Nigerians can begin to know Nigeria and fully understand and utilize the domestic opportunities they are unabe to utilize now because of inadequate infrastructure.

In addition to this, we need to establish and maintain peace in Nigeria so that foreign investors can come into invest. Merchants who buy cocoa, rubber, gum arabic and cotton from Nigeria will prefer to manufacture their products in Nigeria close to their raw materials and then ship only the finished product to the market, but they will not invest in Nigeria if there is no peace. We need to face those issues that lead to periodic ethnic and religious clashes. The issue of citizenship, settler versus indigene should be settled by making the place of ones birth his or her place of origin. Those who are afraid of outsiders coming in to compete with them should then know that their own kith and kin can equally go to these outsiders place and have the same rights there. But government has to enforce it strictly. We should allow Kano or Sokoto people settle and become indigenes in Jos, but we must also allow Jos and Plateau people settle in Kano and Sokoto too. If we do this, then we will see less of these clashes.

Also, the federal government has to show neutrality in religious matters by refusing to interfere in religious matters. The various pilgrim boards of the Muslim and Christian faiths should be left to the Supreme Counsel on Islamic Affairs and the Christian Association of Nigeria to run. Government should only provide regulations in conjunction with the adherents of the faiths and Nigeria’s constitution and equal funding. If this is done, religious crises will reduce.

Government will also enjoy peace if it can begin to rapidly develop the Niger Delta and work to reduce environmental degradation in the area. The idea of giving host communities a 10% stake in the Joint Ventures between the government and the Oil Multi-Nationals is welcome and should be practiced without politics.

Once there is peace in Nigeria, businesses will flourish.

Finally, in my view, perhaps the most important thing to do is to start taxing Nigerians. Not because we need money. No. But because Nigerians are too apathetic to the affairs of their government and do not care enough about how this country is run to get involved in forcing the government to live up to its responsibility. The reason for this is because we do not pay taxes and our money is not involved and as such we do not consider ourselves stake holders in Nigeria. However, if we pay tax, the discomfort that paying that money causes us will make us pay a closer attention to the government and how it is spending your money. If we are thus concerned, we will become also more concerned in who heads the government and we will insist on electoral reform and vote for the right people because our money is involved. Right now, a lot of Nigerians do not care who leads them or if elections are rigged, because the money that funds the government is from oil and is considered free money. You may understand this better if you think of yourself. If you have a lavish friend who spends money any how, you do not mind him and will even want to enjoy his lavishness. But if this friend borrows money from you and refuses to pay and starts throwing parties where he wastes money, won’t you be concerned? Won’t you begin to ask questions? Won’t demand for your money? Well, your friend is Nigeria and you the lender are the citizen. Nigeria does not own you. YOU OWN NIGERIA.

I could go on and on, but time does not permit me. However, the point I want to make is that it is possible to diversify Nigeria’s economy away from sole dependence on oil and we have no choice but to do it.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU.

LET’S TALK NIGERIA

Imagine the Possibilities: Restoring Nigeria One Village at a Time

Dr. Patrick Utomi invites you to an International Town Hall Meeting to discuss his restoration plans for our great nation.

Date: Saturday, Nov 14, 2009

Time: 1pm - 6pm

Venue: 660 Shrewsbury Drive, Clarkston, Michigan 48348

RSVP: By E-mail: utomifornigeria@yahoo.com ; pat@utomifornigeria.com; utomiforchange@yahoo.com

By Text: 317-748-8749 or 248-393-2233

Pls RSVP no later than November 5. YOUR NAME MUST BE ON THE GUEST LIST TO ATTEND.

Dr. Utomi will open the discussion with a speech on his plans to Restore Nigeria.

COME LISTEN TO UTOMI’S RESTORATION PLANS.

Light Refreshments will be provided.

For those coming from out of Michigan: The following hotels are only a few minutes away:

1. Holiday Inn Express, Auburn Hills, MI.

2. Marriott Hotel, Pontiac, MI

Announcer:

Utomi Political Action Committee

www.utomifornigeria.com

I want to use this opportunity to thank my readers for their support and encouragement via your comments here and my facebook profile. As some of you may have noticed in the past, I regularly devote some space on this blog to your feedback. I recently read your comments on my press release regarding the Baywood Continental saga and one particular comment stood out and I will like to respond to this comment. Please find below the comment and my response .

Jovi Otite says:

That is not true. He is not the right person to lead the country. He is too narrow minded. I’ve heard him speak about the economy a number of times. It would not work. You cannot look at the economy from just one angle. This is not the job for a first class student. I was born and raised in the university campus. I know more about academics than even pat himself and I tell you this. PAT IS NOT THE MAN. If he could not turn VW around, if he could not turn Baywood around then he is a failure. I dont care what policy govt set up. Others survived. Peageut survived didnt they? A leader must face all challenges. Pat has not. (Folks, this is where the comment ended, I have not censored it).

My Response;

Dear Jovi,

Thank you for your comments. It is quite natural that we all will not see eye to eye and I do understand your feelings even though I do not agree. However, one thing I do is to try and learn everyday. I would like to understand why you feel that I am too narrow minded. Perhaps you could give me one or two examples. In each and everyone of us there is room for improvement.

You speak on VW and Peugeot, but are you aware that the German technical partners who started VW, pulled out due to disagreements with the policies of the IBB administration? I went to Germany to negotiate with them and promised to get a Nigerian investor to come in to reduce their risk. MKO Abiola of blessed memory agreed to invest. This was between 1992/93 and MKO soon became unable to come in as he planned due to the series of events which are all too well known now. Peugeot is a completely different arrangement from what VW was and if you do a google search on the topic of VW Nigeria, you should be able to get independent information that would enable you make a more informed analysis.

I recently gave an interview to The Sun where I went into some detail about the VW affair. A link to this interview appears at the end of my response.

On Baywood, You may think the company is a failure, but I do not. I was invited to mentor the board of this company via what is known in the corporate world as ‘personality shopping’ and though I do not have a stake in the company by way of shares, and though the loan was taken years before my entry, I do know of some of the circumstances of the dispute between Baywood Ibe and the bank . Jovi, you may be a young man, or maybe not. But there is no joy to be taken in prematurely celebrating the downfall of an institution. Look at people with the eye of potential. Expect better of people and they tend to live up to that expectation. In my world, a person with a matured mind thinks good thoughts about himself and others. Baywood has challenges, which is precisely why I came in to mentor that company, those challenges are not insurmountable and failure is not an option under the right circumstances.

Your statement that you ‘don’t care’ what policy government set up reveals the mind set that we have unfortunately been saddled with by years of autocratic military rule. Our government at that time just like you did not care enough about policies and Nigeria has paid the price. You can not decree prosperity with immediate effect. You have to care enough to craft policy that will grow and nurture your economy. Intemperate and impulsive policy somersaults have consequences even if the policy makers just like you do not care. They may not care, but the economy will react and the rest of the world will notice and will be careful of Nigeria because some of her past leaders did not care.

I have said publicly and again restate here that though the CBN means well, there is a need to thread with caution. There should not be a rush to judgment and the authorities would do well to investigate thoroughly and conclude their investigations before going to the press. Even when they have carried out their investigations, it is my view that the CBN ought to use some discretion in their current efforts to sanitize the banking sector. The purpose of the exercise is to get delinquent companies to pay up which is a good thing. Now the reason a lot of these companies have difficulty paying up in the first place is because they are facing challenges especially with the prevailing economic climate in the country. However, in their implementation of the current exercise the CBN runs the risk of frightening off investors who have or are contemplating injecting fresh capital into these companies because of the adverse publicity they are getting. The end result is that these companies may end up in a worse state and be even less likely to pay up these debts thus defeating the purpose of the whole exercise.

Now personally, I am of the view that everything that the CBN wants to achieve can be achieved without the sensational headlines. Apart from the panic that the headlines have caused in Nigeria, foreign investors are also watching the situation and are at this minute reconsidering their decisions to invest in Nigeria because one or more of their Nigerian business partners have been mentioned in the debtors list and moreover these stories paint the picture of an investment climate that is at best unstable. But if the CBN had along with the EFCC started doing what they are doing now which is visiting these debtors one after the other with EFCC agents in tow, or even inviting them to the EFCC office, they would have been able to achieve their objectives of loan recovery, plus they would also have been able to rectify any errors on their list without the publicity that might have sullied both the nation itself and the innocent persons who have been labelled recalcitrant debtors. The objective should be loan recovery not sensational headlines otherwise people may become suspicious that all this activity is to divert attention from the myriad of problems confronting the country and the recent verdict on the present administration and the EFCC given by Hilary Clinton in Abuja.

The credit market is very important to the growth of any economy and should be tenderly nurtured, should be above politics and should only be interferred with in a temperate manner. Persons who have given unsecured loans should be prosecuted, people who have employed fraud in getting unsecured loans should likewise be prosecuted. Other than these instances, loan defaulters should be governed by the commercial contract they entered into with the bank that gave out these loans. To criminalizing bank debtors in cases where there has been no fraud and where both the bank and the borrower know the consequences of non performance of a loan is an undertaking that will have long term negative effects on Nigeria and her banking sector long after these headlines are forgotten.

Lest anyone think that I am writing out of self interest, let me restate that there is a record of the shareholding of Baywood Continental in the articles and memorandum of the company at the Corporate Affairs Commission which has been passed on to the authorities and which is also available to the press. The promoter and owner is Baywood Ibe who I know and would continue to mentor irrespective of the negative press, but as I have stated before, I have no shareholding in this company and was invited to the board years after the loan was taken.

Mentoring companies that are having difficulties is a part of management that also overlaps with leadership and leadership experts worldwide including the most renowned expert on the subject of leadership, John Maxwell, have spent time mentoring failing companies with a view to aiding the management nurse these ventures back to life. John Maxwell has spent a great amount of time doing this and wrote a book on this issue based on his experience called ‘Failing Forward–Turning Your Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success’ . The last I will say on this subject is that if we do not improve our record on policy formulation, implementation and consistency and continue with policy somersaults reversals and 180 degree turns, Nigeria will not have that stable economic climate with the predictability necessary for business ventures to make long term plans so as to avoid the pitfalls that cause them to be in the situation where they are unable to carry on as a going concern.

Finally Jovi, I have been in the public eye for over 30 years and in that time I have never been accused of corruption or of lying. God willing, I will be around for some time and it is my intention to continue to live this way. You may if you want exchange emails with me confidentially on utomifornigeria.com or at utomifornigeria@yahoo.com.

Once again, God bless Nigeria,

PU.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2009/sept/26/national-26-09-2009-002.htm

In response to friends who have read the stories of high profile bad debts and my name appearing as director of one such listed company, Baywood Continental, I wish to assure them of a few things. The transaction in question took place years before I was invited to join the board of Baywood Continental.

Without prejudice to the Oil Service Company’s issues on Niger Delta conditions that created its challenges on the matter and assurances from management that the current position is N154 million, I wish to state that I have on several occasions accepted to join the board of challenged entrepreneurial ventures to play a mentoring role. I have had the good fortune of a few successes in that role and a few failures and so cherish it as contribution to economic growth.

As with some of those roles, I am in Baywood Continental an independent director with no shareholding who came to learn of the exposure and challenges generated thereby when I recently joined the board.

I do not expect that current trends will deter me from supporting young entrepreneurs to seek to create wealth and the jobs consequent upon such effort. I would also like to urge would be entrepreneurs not to become frightened of bank credit as that will further damage our challenged economy.

In my long season of economic growth activism I have never been more worried about prospects for entrepreneurship as I have seen in reactions of business people to current trends. They must not despair there is some good intended in current goings-on

It is important therefore to encourage people not to fear the credit system so long as moral hazard is not present in their transactions.

Patrick Okedinachi Utomi

Recently there’s been news reports in the Nigerian media to the effect that the President, Umaru Yar’adua, boycotted the U.N general assembly as a way of paying back the Obama administration for it’s diplomatic stance on Nigeria which the Yar’adua administration regards as unfriendly. This reaction is however counter productive to Nigeria’s interests for various reasons.

First, the U.N is not the U.S and the two should be separated. Even administrations that have received a colder shoulder from this administration are able to make a distinction between the two. For instance, Nigeria’s relations with the United States is certainly warmer than that between the U.S and Libya, or between the U.S and Iran, but both Col. Muammar Gaddafi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were both present at the U.N General Assembly to push for their country’s interest. And more importantly, even at the height of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and The U.S, Soviet Premiers still came to the U.N General Assembly, because The U.N is not the U.S and acting like it is is not an intelligent display of diplomacy.

The Yar’adua administration needs to understand that The U.N is a world body and ideally every nation has a stake in it and boycotting such an August meeting as the U.N general Assembly to spite the U.S is akin to cutting your nose to spite your face. Who has lost in this venture? Certainly not the U.S. With or without Nigeria’s presence the event was a success. I wonder what this administration would do if the president of the World Bank should act in a manner they consider unfriendly? Considering that Nigeria is again a debtor nation under this administration after escaping the debt trap under the previous administration, perhaps we should pray that the World Bank president should cause some offense to this administration. Perhaps the administration will return all the loans they have taken from the World Bank?

Those surrounding the president should find the courage to tell him that these types of reports portray the administration as petty and immature because it will be seen to be reacting to its conditions instead of creating the conditions it would like to exist in. In fact if the administration felt slighted by the U.S, the U.N General Assembly is precisely the place to take the battle to as was done by several nations who had a bone to pick with either the U.S or some other major power.

Nigeria’s foreign policy has to be seen to be driven by intelligent analysis of the issues and not some knee jerk reactionary force. This situation reminds me of the action of the Federal Government in the 70s. As a result of the 1973 Egypt-Israeli war (otherwise known as the Yom Kippur war), the Federal Government in sympathy with Egypt had severed diplomatic relations with Israel. However, after Egypt and Israel had reconciled and that great peace maker, Anwar Sadat, had even gone to the Israeli knesset to address Israel’s government and extend an olive branch in 1980, Nigeria continued to maintain a severed diplomatic relations with Israel. It was not until 1992 that Nigeria restored diplomatic relations with Israel, 9 years after Egypt (in sympathy of whom we had severed the relationship in the first place) had restored relations with Israel. It appeared to the world then that Nigeria was crying more than the bereaved and in truth we were.

There were several blunders of the Obasanjo era, but one thing he bequeathed to President Yar’adua was a vibrant foreign policy which has plummeted under the present administration. As I wrote in my last article ‘Where are Nigeria’s elders?’, smaller African countries appear to have sensed a weakness in Nigeria and are taking advantage of it. I was watching an analysis of the Guinean crisis on CNN and one of the commentators ( a defense analyst) opined that with the manner ex president Obasanjo managed the coup in Sao Tome and Principe in 2003, and the Liberian impasse also in 2003 (leading to Charles Taylor’s exit from power), it would have been unlikely that the Guinean military would have attempted the coup that brought them into power in the first place because they would have been afraid of some consequences from Nigeria. This does make sense because children hardly fight each other when an elder is present, but what happens when they sense that the ‘elder’ is too feeble? Of a truth, power and intelligence are worthless if the possessor does not know what to do with it.

President Yar’adua must be told that a nation’s standing in world affairs is not judged by her population, nor her land mass, but by the uses to which its government puts these resources to use in advancing the civilization of the world. That is the true measure of the worth of a country in world affairs. Nigeria will not increase in diplomatic influence by selling more oil. No! It is what we do with the proceeds how we plant these seeds that will yield a bountiful harvest or a lean one diplomatically. Nigeria can only project her influence in World Affairs when she takes her rightful place on the world stage rather than succumbing to faulty logic. Now if this is the case, President Yar’adua would be advised to do well by putting Nigeria’s resources to good use by living up to the expectations of Nigerians of a country that pulls its weight internationally otherwise we would lose out ( or have already lost out) to smaller African countries who are already doing just that.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU.

I often told my children when they were growing up to avoid lying. As I told it then, one thing about a lie is that it has to be covered up. If you tell one lie, you have to tell another lie to cover the first, then a third to cover the second and it goes on and on leading to a major credibility crisis. Building something on the basis of a lie is bound to bring about instability because no matter how you try to avoid this a credibility crisis must ensue.

This is the case with the present administration. That the election that brought this administration into being was fraudulent and flawed is patently obvious. Even the main beneficiary of the election, the president, has publicly admitted to it. Now having admitted that his election was flawed and making public promises to reform Nigeria’s electoral system, many of us gave the president a chance to prove himself. And now more than two years after he made that promise, it has remained unfulfilled like the promise to declare an emergency in the power sector and the promise to have zero tolerance for corruption. The administration seems oblivious or at best unconcerned that it now appears to the Nigerian public as the boy who cried ‘wolf’. The failure to fulfill or even pretend to fulfill these promises is causing a huge credibility crisis for the administration. But it appears unconcerned.

The president’s lack of concern is even more disturbing given the spate of contradictory statement issued by high profile government officials. First it was the AGF being contradicted by the EFCC, then the Foreign Minister beign contradicted by the Chairman of INEC and then the Police contradicting the Immigration services over Ribadu’s visit to Nigeria.

However, the one that got me was the patriotic statement made by professor Ibrahim Gambari recently which helped to put things into perspective as far as this administration is concerned. According to professor Gambari, president Yar’adua was “mis advised” against attending the U.N General Assembly. This was moreso as the president did not attend the previous year’s Assembly. Perhaps in the diplomatic world, this was the single biggest event for the year, and where was the Nigerian president? He was assisting King Abdallah open a university!

And just like in the wild where smaller animals will attack a huge lion the moment they sense any form of weakness in the lion, smaller African countries that ought to look up to Nigeria for leadership as a big brother are sensing weakness in our leadership and are now actually leading us and lecturing us and talking down at us. Obviously this is to be expected because nature abhors a vacuum, but the speed at which Nigeria has fallen from her heights should actually be a serious cause for concern.

I will give just three examples of incidences that reflect this loss of stature of Nigeria in three very different but vital sectors in a nation’s polity.

In August, Nigeria’s VirginNigeria airlines proudly announced a technical assistance pact with Ethiopian airlines in which Ethiopian Airlines will maintain their fleet, train pilots and crew members. By this arrangement thinking people will read between the lines and conclude that Nigeria’s aviation sector is subservient to that of Ethiopia. Thus Nigeria can not lay claim to leadership in this area and it is even more telling when you consider that Ethiopia is not a rich nor developed country and is actually facing a number of serious challenges which include but are not limited to internal turmoil, a severe famine, a recently ended war with Eritrea which still provokes cross border skirmishes and an ongoing military intervention in Somalia. On the other hand, Nigeria is an oil rich nation at peace with her neighbours with enough resources to feed her population (albeit depending largely on importation) and has double the population of Ethiopia, quadruple her GDP and a per capita income 3 times that of Ethiopia.

The second incidence has to do with the United Nations peace keeping forces in Darfur, Sudan. One would expect that with General Martin Luther Agwai’s brilliant headship of the UNAMID in Darfur and the fact that Nigeria contributes the bulk of its troops, a Nigerian soldier would be picked to replace Gen. Agwai upon his departure. However, Nigeria has sadly lost place to Rwanda and a Rwandan general, Lt. general Patrick Nyanvumba, who was trained in Nigeria’s NDA and who was a cadet when Gen Agwai and some other Nigerian militray officers in the mission were already officers has been appointed to head the UNAMID mission. By the accounts of several diplomats who should know, Nigeria lost the headship of UNAMID due to a ’strange’ failure to lobby for the position.

The final example which shows that we are losing our leadership role in Nigeria is the recent revelation by the Nigerian Senate that it has invited the head of Ghana’s electoral Commision to advise it on the conduct of decent elections. In fact Dr. Kwado Afari-Gyan even took this a step further by visiting professor Maurice Iwu at his INEC office and lectured him on the conduct of free and fair elections and was copiously quoted in the Nigerian media as calling for reforms in Nigeria. Ghanaian public officers coming to Nigeria to lecture us has now become a trend as some of my readers may remember that earlier this year, the Ghanaian deputy minister for energy was in Nigeria to ‘advise’ us on how to achieve uninterrupted power supply. Couple this with the revelation that some multinationals are relocating their business to Ghana and that it is the in thing amongst Nigeria’s elite to send their children to Ghanaian universities and you will begin to have a picture of what is happening to Nigeria under our watch. The case with Ghana is particularly sad especially when we consider that only a couple of years ago, president Obasanjo was giving out interest free loans to Ghana to help her with some urgent needs. And now Ghana is repaying us by giving us some ‘interest free advice’. It is a great folly for any Nigerian leader to discountenance Ghana’s ability to command leadership in Africa especially with the recent discovery of oil in commercial quantities in Ghana.

The case with Ghana is also particularly sad because it appears as though history is repeating itself for the 3rd time. Let me explain. In the early 70s, Nigeria’s Head of State, General Gowon was reported by the press as saying money was not Nigeria’s problem, but how to spend it. Thereafter he gave out interest free loans to the Carribean nation of Grenada to pay its workers. Today, Nigeria has difficulty paying its own worker and Grenada which we used to dole out funds to now has a per capita income of $11,500 which is 5 times that of Nigeria. This act was a historical replay of that of Malaysia which in the 50s came to Nigeria cap in hand to get palm oil seedlings and used these seedlings it got from Nigeria to start plantations that produce palm oil which helped push its economy in the 70s and 80s to the global forefront and eventually became the world’s largest producer of palm oil and (wait for it) has in the 2000s been exporting palm oil to Nigeria! Now both president Obasanjo and general Abacha during their time in office gave out huge sums to Ghana as either loans or gifts, and today, Ghana has celebrated multiple years of uninterrupted power supply while we are producing electricity at par with Ghana even when we have about 8 times their population. This is the 3rd instance in this pattern of history repeating itself from Malaysia, to Grenada to Ghana, all using gifts from Nigeria as stepping stones to national greatness while Nigeria retrogresses.

Now the renowned novelist, Chinua Achebe wrote in ‘Arrow of God’ that “a she goat does not suffer in its parturition while an elder is in the house”.

One elder, professor Ibrahim Gambari has spoken out saying ‘I must say strongly as a very senior Nigerian that there was a greatly missed opportunity in that our Head of State was not advised properly to come to this assembly’. I hereby call, nay I beg our elders in Nigeria to speak up! There is no use pretending that all is well. All is not well! Nigeria is drifting! We are losing our place in Africa and if we do not halt this drift we will be a big ‘agbaya‘ in the international community and the vultures will begin to encircle us. I call on the elders of Nigeria to please come to her aid and add their voice to that of professor Gambari. We have lost the great Gani Fawehinmi and and we need another national conscience to help us get some perspective especially in these days when we are not faced with tyranny as such, but with weakness at the center. We should remember that if evil triumphs because good men do nothing, then mediocrity will also triumph if elders do nothing. The empire is drifting and the emperor is naked we should not see it as the lot of a child to point this out when there are elders in the land. Where are Nigeria’s elders?

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU.

Many had heaved a sigh of relief that things were going to change when Justice Mohammed Uwais’s Committee on Electoral Reform (set up by the president himself) submitted its recommendations to the president in December of 2008. Now after 10 months, what has been heard of these recommendations? Think of the ‘do or die’ elections of 2007 and those who made it happen, then look at those who surround the PDP and the president. A word is enough for the wise. Our destiny is in our hands. Stand up and be counted for electoral reform so your votes can count. Pleases watch the video below, go to the site, sign the petition and tell others about it. Do not think that others will do it. No! Every lover of Nigeria has to take a stand in the peaceful but strong willed struggle for electoral reform.

Nigeria is steadily going down in all indicators of human development. Much as we criticized the previous administration, we must remember that unlike other administrations that handed over debt to its successor, the Obasanjo administration (with all its shortcomings) handed over about $45 billion dollars worth of foreign reserves in addition to $13 billion in the ‘Excess Crude Account’ to this administration, placing it in good stead to begin to trickle down benefits to the masses. But have the masses seen a trickle down effect? No! Life expectancy in Nigeria remains very low at 47 years and life continues to be short and brutish for the vast majority of our people who continue to live on just $1 a day.

And then we have the tendency of Nigerians to confuse cynicism with wisdom. When called upon to join the struggle for electoral reform we say things like ‘abeg leave matter‘ or ‘na today‘ or ‘na dem dem jo, wetin concern me‘. The truth is that cynicism is not wisdom or intelligence but is an act of cowardice that we need to expunge from our mentality otherwise we will keep on manufacturing false justification for the way we are and carry on (as the late Fela Kuti sang) ’suffering and smiling’.

One question we need to ask is why has president Yar’adua not done anything about these recommendations 10 months after receiving them? It has been accepted in the legal world that a man intends the reasonable consequences of his actions. And if the president has sat on the Uwais Committee’s recommendations for this long without any tangible effect being given to them and we have an election due in 15 months time, the conclusion must be that the intention is for nothing to change. We should not be beset by wishful thinking and hope that by some magical act these reforms will be implemented. The only thing that is need to give effect to these reforms is just the political will that must emanate from president Yar’adua.

I urge my readers and all Nigerians not to let this issue die a natural death. Our leaders have been so long used to Nigerians having a short memory. We have to go against this trend and stop them taking us for granted. Our leaders are also not beneath exploiting our ethnic and religius differences and we need to learn to rise above such. Resist the temptation to see this as a North versus South struggle or Christian versus Muslim issue. We are all affected by the scourge of godfathers and cabals imposing leaders on us who in turn do their bidding and not that of the electorate, leading to poverty and invariably the clashes that arise from competition amongst interest groups for ever shrinking resources. Remember poverty has no tribe or religion.

Finally if you are satisfied with life in Nigeria being short and brutish and lasting for an average of just 47 years, then by all means do nothing. However, if you know you deserve better, then please support and push for electoral reform by whatever peaceful means you can. Watch the video, go to the site, sign the petition and tell others about it.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRQmn6F5X-I