A CAUSE FOR HOPE

So I was thinking of ordering some electronics from Ali Express as they have some cool Android products, both my cards got canceled even though I can use them just fine anywhere else on the net so I emailed them to ask them what was going on.

They email me back asking for a scan of my passport, credit card and full bank statement....

Since when is China the new Nigeria?

While still grieving over the needless loss of lives of those on the Dana airplane and wondering why we Nigerians keep killing one another through our various deliberate and inadvertent actions and inactions, I came across the above quote posted by an American in my circle on Google+. As can be imagined, coming across it did nothing for my already somber mood.

I had in fact copied the quote to write someday about Nigerians’ notoriety in the world. As it turned out however, that write-up is no longer likely to see the light of day and you will see the reason why shortly.

I had gone about three Saturdays ago to buy fresh pepper and tomatoes from a place I usually buy them somewhere in Alagomeji. I made my purchases and headed from there to Sabo market where I bought some other things only for me to discover at the place that was supposed to be my last stop that I had somehow lost N1,000 and so would not be able to buy the last things on my list without first getting back home to get more money. I was both irritated by my carelessness in not taking my wallet and unhappy at the thought of having to make a second trip back to the market to complete my purchases but it was something that had to be done.

Sometime last week, I had to go again to Alagomeji to buy some more tomatoes and lo and behold, the two sales girls (both around age 17 to 20) immediately on seeing me excitedly told me that they had helped me to keep my N1,000 which fell from my hand when I was there two weeks before!

How happy I was on being re-united with my lost money can only be imagined. The reason for my happiness went way beyond just getting my money back. It was more because of the fact that those two girls could have kept the money (mind you, it was the exact note that fell from my hand) for me for the two weeks it took me to go back there without convincing themselves to spend it or at least for successfully battling whatever temptations they might have faced to spend it.

That thought, more than any other lifted my spirits and gave me hope that perhaps, it’s not all bad, perhaps, the tiny ray of light can after all defeat the big blanket of darkness in form of lost values that threaten to overtake our country particularly Lagos State. And so now, I can proudly lift my head and tell the American in my circle on Google+ that while it is true that we have people in Nigeria who have scams as their only occupation (as no doubt, there are in America as well), but we also have people who are upright and honest as well and perhaps he just has to walk in the right circles!

FAROUK LAWAN/OTEDOLA: QUESTIONS AND MORE QUESTIONS

When Femi Otedola reportedly broke the news that Farouk Lawan, the very same Farouk Lawan that a majority of the people almost deified in the wake of the release of the subsidy probe, demanded and collected bribe of $620,000 from him to keep Zenon’s name out of the report, I was one of the, I’m sure, many people who felt Farouk Lawan was only being framed. I believed after all the years he has spent at the House of Representatives without any (obvious) stain on his name, he must be one of the clean ones. I believed it when he said the image of him in the video being circulated was a caricature. I believed him. I so desperately wanted the story to be untrue, how can Farouk Lawan be the same as the rest of them?

Alas, the day after he denied receiving any money, he recanted, but said he wanted to use the money to expose Otedola and that he gave the money to one Jagaba Adams, the chairman of the House Committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes. He also said that he wrote a letter to police to report the bribe.

Otedola on his own part, I believe, very much in an attempt to whitewash his image claimed that there was no reason for Zenon to have been in the report since it was never a recipient of the oil subsidy as a diesel marketer, and that the dollar bills given to Farouk Lawan were marked and provided by the State Security operatives in a “sting” operation.

On the side of Farouk Lawan, things look really bad. It will be indeed very difficult to continue to believe that Mr “Integrity” Farouk Lawan himself still has any integrity left. First, Lawan was said to have made about three nocturnal visits to Otedola to collect the bribe money. Channels TV made Farouk look even worse when they replayed the session of the House in which Farouk sought to amend clauses 5 & 6 of the report to remove the names of Zenon and Synopsis. Things moved even from bad to the ridiculous when it was reported in the newspapers that a source who watched the video recordings of Lawan receiving the money said when his pockets were filled with the money, Lawan had opened his cap and stuffed the remaining wads therein!

Now, a number of questions beg to be answered in the whole sordid episode, from the limit of the information I have and my understanding of same, the questions are:

 If it was Otedola that offered the bribe to Farouk Lawan to not include Zenon’s name in the probe report, why was it that it was Lawan that went to Otedola’s house to collect the bribe money? And not once or even twice, but as reported, three whole times? There is a proverb that says that it is the man with thorn in his foot that limps to meet the man with pin for help. Since it was Otedola that was supposedly looking for a favour, why wasn’t he the one going to meet Lawan?

 If Lawan collected the money in order to expose Otedola as he claimed, why did he not officially report the matter of the bribe after the report was laid at, and adopted by the House of Representatives?

 Did Lawan, as he claimed, write a letter to the police to inform them of the offer of bribe? Why has the Ahmadu Ali he mentioned not been quizzed to find out what he knows about the matter?

 Did Lawan report the bribe to the members of the House or at least the Ethics committee as claimed? If he did, at what point did he report it to them? Was it after the bubble had burst or at the time the bribe was offered?

 How many members of the fuel subsidy probe committee which Lawan chaired were aware of the offer/acceptance of the bribe? What are the members of the committee saying about the bribe affair? Have they been thoroughly quizzed?

 If as Lawan claimed, he only collected the bribe with the intention of exposing Otedola, why did he move the motion to remove Zenon’s name from the report?

 What role, if any, did the Committee member that seconded Lawan’s motion play in the whole bribe affair? Did the other committee members have fore-knowledge of Lawan’s motion to apply through a motion to remove Zenon’s name from the report? If they did, on what basis did they agree that Zenon’s name be removed? Is it because they are privy to the bribe thing? Is it because Zenon really did not belong in the report as Otedola claimed? If Zenon’s name never should have been in the report, how did it get there?

 If Lawan did not intend to spend the bribe money, why did he keep quiet for so long to the point that it was Otedola that broke the news and not him?

 Knowing how close Otedola was to the former President Obasanjo and the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, was Farouk really that greedy and idiotic as to solicit for a bribe from of all persons, Femi Otedola?

 If the money is not with Adams Jagaba, where is it?

 Was Zenon, a company into diesel which has been deregulated, really supposed to have been part of the report? If so, why?

 On Otedola’s part, was the operation really a sting operation as claimed? If it was, why did the State security operatives allow the money to get out of their sight to the point where no one seems to know its whereabouts now?

 If it was a sting operation as claimed, why was Farouk not arrested immediately after collecting the bribe money by the security operatives? This is especially important because as reported, the money was collected in tranches of two $250,000 and a $100,000.

 I don’t remember having heard any official or unofficial statement from the SSS yet, but if they were really involved from the start, why has there been only silence from them so far on the whole saga?

 If it is indeed a sting operation, having let the money out of its sight, how did the SSS intend to identify the actual dollar bills given to Lawan if he has spent it?

 Why did it have to be Otedola and not the SSS that broke the story if indeed there was a sting operation?

 Why the long delay and silence even after the report had been laid and adopted with Lawan ‘performing’ by removing the name of Zenon and a certain Synopsis with no action taken by the security operatives until Otedola broke the story?

 Why have the tape recordings of the bribe taking not been made public?

 If Otedola doesn’t own Synopsis as he claims, who does? And how much did the owner have to pay to have the company’s name removed from the report? And how many other companies paid to have their names omitted?

So far, in my opinion as limited by the information I have, it appears that Lawan’s greed got the better of him and he really wanted to spend the money. Although, after an appearance at the House on Thursday the 21st of June, Farouk Lawan attempted to maintain his innocence by saying his silence so far on the matter is strategic and that he will with be vindicated having maintained a record of probity and accountability as a member of the House in the past 13 years.

My opinion on his appearance at the House is one I will rather keep to myself for now. Or maybe not completely. I do know I wouldn’t have been able to show my face among my colleagues so soon after my fall from the pedestal of “integrity” to the disgusting pit of corruption. Especially when I have not been able to successfully clear my name. But then, maybe he finds it so comfortable because that is the way they all are in the house. And well, of course, this is Nigeria, a country where the bigger a criminal you are, the more “honour” and awards you are given. At least now, going by the caliber of most of the other “Honourables”, it appears he is now more than ever before qualified to be called “Honourable” Farouk Lawan!

As for Otedola, though I do not know the true story, I think the whole sting operation thing was an afterthought. There are just too many questions screaming for answers. I fear though, that the answers might never be fully known because we are in Nigeria where the most confounding, unbelievable things happen on a regular basis without any sanction whatsoever attaching.

A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property - Thomas Jefferson.

In the course of answering questions during his presidential media chat on Sunday (24th June, 2012), president Goodluck Jonathan in an ill-conceived expression of irritation when asked why he had not publicly declared his assets responded that he did not give a damn about declaration of assets and that he felt doing so would only be playing to the gallery. He said also while still responding to the issue of his refusal to declare his assets that it wouldn’t be right and it would force all other public office-holders including Ministers to do same. He admitted that the now late former president Musa Yar’Adua’s public declaration of his assets had forced him as the then Vice-President to declare his assets also, while at the same time wondering what the curiosity was all about since the time lapse between the time he declared his assets as a Vice-president and now is not much.

There ordinarily will be no problem with Mr President’s ‘principle’ and hard stance against declaration of his assets, except for just one snag; he is the president in a country where not to be corrupt is regarded as an abnormality. A country in which probably hundreds of lives are lost daily to corruption and lack of infrastructures.

When former and now late President Yar’Adua declared his assets, he sent a very important message that he was a president who was willing and ready to stand up to scrutiny. I am not sure the thought of the former president choosing to publicly declare his assets as a way of playing to the gallery came across the minds of many people, even more doubtful is the possibility that any person or group of persons capitalized on that in an attempt to bring the then president or his presidency down.
On the contrary, if memory serves me well, the declaration gave a lot of us some hope that perhaps that was a government that was willing to lead by example and show some level of probity.

President Jonathan said his declaring his assets publicly would have forced other public office-holders to do so as well. Disappointingly, none of the people on the panel of interviewers thought to ask the president how public officials declaring their assets would have been a bad thing.

The implication of Mr. President’s blatant refusal to declare his asset is that he is not ready to lead by example and by extension, that the supposed ongoing fight against corruption is at best only being waged by words of mouth.

With the president being so adamant about declaring his assets, is it any wonder that in one year under his watch, the fuel subsidy amount went from just over N200 Million to almost two trillion naira? Is it any wonder that Nigeria’s corruption industry keeps flourishing while we can hardly get any other thing to work? Is it any wonder that no really big fish has been convicted of corruption under his watch? Is it any wonder that the Attorney-General of the Federation is better known for freeing big criminals as opposed to prosecuting them? Is it any wonder that in the 3rd consecutive Presidential media chat, Nigerians were not able to ask the president questions through the phone numbers provided and nothing will happen to those responsible for making the phone lines work?

The residents of Lagos who have presence on twitter and facebook can now, all thanks to a young (?) man (?) who calls himself Gidi_Traffic avoid trouble spots and traffic and therefore minimise the time and energy spent in traffic. Gidi_Traffic led the way by devoting his time and energy to keeping people informed about traffic on Lagos roads and now, not only is his (?) the account to follow on twitter, a lot of people also provide helpful information through his account about the routes that are free and those that are gridlocked. That is leadership by example. I am in fact almost positive that Gidi_Traffic set the example that led to Lagos State government’s creation of 96.1 Traffic radio.

Mr. President said his refusal to declare his assets is a matter of principle. Somebody should please ask him, what manner of principle is it that can only further deepen the corruption tendencies of the people in a country has been held under for so long by corruption?

AND, MOVING ON…

I listen to the radio quite a lot in the mornings while preparing for the day’s work and while driving to and from work. One of the programs I always try not to miss is Smooth 98.1’s “Freshly Pressed” which had as one of its presenters, Demola Sadiq. The presenters of the program spice the review of newspaper headlines up by inviting one or two people to analyse the day’s stories.

Whenever any unpleasant story was being discussed and Mr Demola Sadiq got uncomfortable, he was always very quick to say ‘and moving on…’ in order to get the unpleasant story to be dropped and to get whoever was supposed to take the next story to do so.

I have related the above story because I believe it aptly describes the average Nigerian’s attitude to matters of immense importance. We, as the now late Odimegwu Ojukwu wrote in his book BECAUSE I AM INVOLVED, conveniently suffer from and practice selective amnesia, selective recalls, and selective visions. Rather than stick with an issue until we are able to get to the root of it so as to prevent a recurrence, we choose to quickly move on to other things hoping, (as the very religious people that we are) that it will somehow miraculously disappear if we ignore it.

We see a small porthole. We complain. We move on until the road becomes so bad it starts consuming us in form of auto accidents; our cars make warning noises. We ignore it and move on until the day the tyres pull out while we are in motion; we throw our hands up and accept our “fate” as a country that will always have bad rulers and we very promptly move on while conveniently forgetting about our own complacency in the whole affair. We move on and continue to live life as usual; we accept our fate as a country where even when you are ready to pay for quality products, you just can’t get them because we have successfully persuaded manufacturers to lower quality so we can make more profit and of course we move on to other things, we are quick to agree that we are a consuming nation that produces nothing and we move on. We grumble but quickly move on to less uncomfortable things or topics of discourse. We move on, leaving behind a trail of unaddressed problems which sooner than later confront and even consume us as much bigger problems.

After a little reflection, I admit that quickly moving on is the simplest of the options before us. It is the easiest because there are always an abundance of things to move on to. Before you finish discussing a particular problem, two or three other problems would not only have poked their heads in the door, they will actually accompany the heads with the rest of their bodies! Even the most focused of people can easily get distracted and be forced to “keep moving on” to other problems while not actually tackling or solving any of the previous ones.

We move on from probe to probe and committees to committees, dropping the reports that could help to forestall future disasters in the trash as we go. We’ve become so adept at moving on that even if pushed to the wall, we’ll refuse to turn back and face our pushers, we’ll rather break the wall and hope there’ll be abundance of space to take us in there. And if there isn’t, oh well, we’ll just squeeze in and manage! That is after all, another thing we are very good at.

We grumble, and move on. We pray and move on. We manage and move on. But every time we need to take crucial nation-defining actions, we always manage to find reasons to move on to other things. We move on and the things we refuse to address later come back to consume us. We acknowledge ourselves as a consuming nation but the joke is on us because we unwittingly produce things that later rise to consume us. When the crashes of ADC, EAS and Sosoliso airlines happened a few years ago, we cried, we prayed, we shouted, the accident bureau investigated but by the time the reports got ready, we had moved on and so failed to insist on the implementation of whatever recommendations were made by the accident bureau and whatever other committees were set up to look into the immediate and remote causes of the crashes. With each killings and slaughters in Jos we quickly set up committees to look into it but we move on long before the reports are prepared until the next slaughters. Even as I write, we are gradually moving on from the “temporary” shock of the Dana crash to the scandal of the Farouk Lawan/Otedola scandal and of course, before too long, something else will happen to shift our focus from the Farouk scandal to yet another scandal and or tragedy. If we want to redefine ourselves as a nation which will not have to perpetually grapple with tragedy after tragedy, we have to stop quickly moving on and take a break to deal with our problems one at a time.

NON-PRESIDENTIAL

“

I was quite thrilled about what was going on in the church and when I got the information that while we were here, there were explosions in Kaduna and since I don’t even know the casualty rate and what is happening; I have been quite sad and I didn’t even want to say something,but when the priest orders you, you must say something,”

- President Goodluck Jonathan, on being asked to make a statement after being told about the explosions at three churches in Kaduna and Zaria on the 17th June 2012.

For one reason or the other, when I saw the above quote used by at least three of my facebook friends as their status update on Sunday evening, I didn't notice it was by Goodluck Jonathan speaking on the slaughter of people trying to worship their God on Sunday. I remember wondering vaguely though, why three different people used the same silly-sounding quote as their status update and promptly forgetting about it.
I was surprised to say the least when the following morning, I heard the same quote spoken by GEJ's voice on the six o'clock (morning) news of the 99.9 Beat FM. I was even more surprised when a few hours later, I saw the video clip on Channels TV, with Mr president making the speech with a trace of a smile on his face, no doubt, congratulating himself on his 'presidential" sense of humour. No matter that this newfound humour was discovered at the same time that scores of the people, quite a number of them children, he swore to protect, and because of whom he allocated an extra-ordinarily and obscenely huge of amount of money to himself as security vote had just reportedly been murdered while in the act of worship.

As if that was not bad enough, the president jets off a day after that to Brazil for an earth summit!!! I normally use exclamation marks sparingly in my write-ups because I sometimes find them too dramatic for my liking, but please, if you are like me, excuse my using it here, I think the situation calls for some raised voice and that is why it is necessary in this piece. An earth summit?!!!! While his house was on fire especially in the wake of the reprisal attacks which necessitated a 24-hour curfew on Kaduna!
I had to ask myself what happened to the minister of environment and why he/she could not lead Nigeria's delegation to the summit if it is so important that Nigeria attends. And if the president did not consider the minister competent enough to lead the delegation, why make him/her a minister?

I do not lay claim to always being right, or even always doing the right things, but if I know I am not ready to shoulder certain responsibilities, I never offer my shoulder. The message Mr President is passing by proceeding to the summit even while a country he heads burns is that he is really not concerned about the people that were killed. Either that, or that his presence or absence makes absolutely no difference to the state of things in the country except that as the Condoler-in-chief of the Federal Republic, his absence will not allow him to condole with the people of Damaturu who suffered attacks from the satanic elements perhaps even while he was airborne en route to Rio de janeiro.

And as if to buttress the latter supposition, the Vice-president reportedly said this morning that the president's absence makes no difference to the situation of the country. If that is so, can someone please help to tell Mr Goodluck Jonathan to get the heck out of office? Would he have gone for the summit if one of his children had been among those bombed? Is he in office just to enjoy the perks and not to shoulder the responsibilities that necessarily come with the office? Does he even know that his statement that the evil boko haram will be a thing of the past by June is responsible for the increased slaughter of innocent people by the group? If the president doesn't know he should get out of office, it's time we the people tell him we are tired of having a president whose only strength appears to lie in his ability to consume a million naira meal per day!

A NATION IN CONSTANT MOURNING

The recent spate of killings and the June 3rd Dana crash have affected me in recent times more than I'm even willing to admit to myself. The way we murder ourselves daily with the way we live, the needless deaths that occur daily makes me feel deeply sad. I penned down the few verses below to express my feelings about the crash and the country in general.

While I may not write any poem in a year, of course I am not like my last brother Akeem who, almost effortlessly churns out really great poems almost daily, I don't remember having struggled to write a poem like I struggled with this one. Not that I didn't know what message I wanted to pass across, if anything, I had too many, but I struggled more with how to put my thoughts together. I hope you like it, and reflect on it, because I believe if we really have a desire to change this country for the better, it has to start with each one of us doing our parts. Here goes...



My spirit is low
My thought refuses to flow
My words unafraid to take flight
Unlike a certain Dana plane of ill-fate
Which took flight of failed descent
Plunging hundreds to mental distress
Crushing those on the ground
With their rooms not out of its bounds
And the nation thrown into mourning
Praying its effects will fade with the morning
A crash preventable by precedents
Of EAS, ADC and Sosoliso antecedents
A people with murdered shock values
This fact we’ll quickly dispute and argue
With an over-abundance of regulators
Whose successes lie in non-regulation
Getting their palms greased to un-regulate
And thereby stamping what we term our ill-fate
A people too quick to forget
Pretending that is how we progress
Covering our forgetfulness with brilliant humour
Even while the nation thrives on true rumours
When a nation adopts the god of money
Do you wonder that there’ll always be mourning?

Adenike Abimbola Oyalowo
©June 2012.

Time To Make Those Changes

I love reading and sharing jokes and although I don’t always have time to watch movies, but my preferred choice of movie is a really nice comedy. I love anything that will give me a good laugh. I really cannot stand people without a good sense of humour. To be my friend, you must be able to take a joke and understand jokes too. It is precisely because of my bias for things humorous that Nigeria is not a subject I enjoy discussing. Nigeria is a subject I find depressing even at the best of times, because when you really think of it, there isn’t a single sector in the country that is doing well, except of course the corruption industry which is the biggest and most thriving industry we have right now.

Unfortunately for me, in spite of my personal preference for sunny topics and subjects of discourse, Nigeria is a subject I am very passionate about and cannot seem to avoid talking about. The reason is very simple, I know it is simply not possible for us all to pack our bags and leave the shores of this country because of the ever-worsening problems of the country. The only option thus available to people like me is to stay and think of how I and others can turn things around for everyone to live a little better.

Believe me, trying to do anything the right way in this country especially in Lagos is a very frustrating venture. We have become so comfortable doing things upside down that we rather see anyone trying to do things right as crazy, a fit person to occupy a special room at Yaba left-side!

The terrible tragedy of the Dana Air crash of 2nd June 2012 which killed all 153 people on board and a yet unknown number of people on ground is just a manifestation of some of the things wrong with us in this country. And we should make no mistake about it, we are all of us equally culpable, or at least if not equally, almost as culpable as the rulers we daily condemn.

We have almost all found solace in a new god, other than the God we openly claim to worship in our churches and mosques. Our rulers on the other hand, have found twin-gods that they worship. While most of the rest of us worship money, our rulers worship money and the god of power.

A lot of people have been calling for prayers for the country since the news of the tragedy broke. I am fully in support of prayers. But of what good are prayers if we refuse to change our attitude to maintaining infrastructures, our get-rich-at-all-cost attitude, if the driver continually ignores the warning signs from his vehicle…of what use is prayer to a student who refuses to attend class and study for examinations?

And the irony of it really is, we pray a lot in this country. We cast and bind and shout to high heavens right before proceeding to China to persuade the manufacturers over there to lower the quality of the generators, stabilizers, blenders and all other goods we import into the country, even as we proceed to India to get the manufacturers of drugs to remove an important ingredient in order for us to make the maximum profit, right before a gang of robbers proceed on operations to rob and probably kill, right as the politicians divert money meant to build roads, equip hospitals, provide water and power to their private bank accounts, right before the policeman “accidentally” discharges his gun at the errant idiot that refuses to pay N100 toll to him, right before and even after an official who is supposed to check that a particular plane/car is safe to be used collects money to look the other way.

There is surely no shortage of prayers in this country. What there is shortage of however, is us all playing our part to ensure that we do things right. I always say, you can’t go wrong if you always do things right.

Now is the time, if we want to avoid a recurrence of this kind of tragedy, to examine ourselves and see what changes we can make, because if we carry on as we always do, the next thing that happens might just be even more calamitous. I pray (oops!) it doesn’t get to that!