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Ambassadorial Appointments:
In what circumstance, considering our
capacity for diplomatic effectiveness, was people like respectable (Dr.)
Christopher Kolade appointed the High Commissioner of Nigeria to Britain? If you
are interested, check his antecedents and tell us where he is connected with
foreign service, international relations or diplomacy. This man could be more
useful to the nation in the area of manufacture and trade, a vital aspect of our
economy, considering the role and interest of Cadbury as a major business
conglomerate in Nigeria. The appointment of retired Justice Bola Ajibola to
Britain before Christopher Kolade's was sensible and acceptable to the
diplomatic world. Retired Justice Ajibola was a practicing lawyer, a former
president of the Nigerian Bar Association, a former Attorney-General of Nigeria
in Babangida's dictatorship and last a Judge of the International Court of
Justice in The Hague. As a political appointee, Mr Bola Ajibola fits perfectly
well enough into diplomacy.
A few years back, Obasanjo's presidency
argued and justified the issuance of 'national identity' cards for Nigerians. A
huge amount of money which could have been used to create more jobs to reduce
un-employment, build a greater capacity to produce more potable water for our
people, maintain the federal highways in order to reduce unnecessary motor
accidents and provide other social services to the people, became squandered
without accountability. How many Nigerians carry identity cards provided by the
Federal government today or at any other given time? If they do, where and for
what purpose are they required to be used? Aside from exposing our gross
incompetence, in terms of our absolute failure, to provide the much hyped and
publicized production and distribution of the so-called identity cards, the
entire policy and all its celebrated execution was a huge waste of time and
money resulting in a compounded nullity. Today, the idea is dead and no one is
asking any questions or raising any dust. The tax-payers money that went into
the officials and contractors hands can no longer be accounted for. What a
government? The federal government should think of embarking on issuing a social
security number series to Nigerians for economic security purposes. No contract
is required to effect this kind of program. All our federal government has to do
is to rigorously promote data collection, its security and its back-up system.
This kind of developmental technology is over-due in today's Nigeria but our
leaders are too busy stealing the tax-payers money, wasting public resources,
laundering millions and billions of naira overseas, and depriving our huge poor
population their fair share of Nigeria's wealth.
Is it not worrisome to
learn that some of our Navy men could afford to collude with robbers on
high-seas to steal our nation's petroleum? Is it not depressing enough to also
learn that some army officers and some Police personnel relate with the Niger
Delta militants, and highway and bank robbers respectively to break ours laws
and oppress the society they are trained and professionally obliged to protect?
This is the current situation in the nation that the present political leaders
are building. Can they succeed? Kindly attempt to answer the question and
suggest what is to be done. I do not hesitate to identify most governors and
chairmen of Local governments throughout the length and breath of our country as
money launderers, thieves and criminals who steal public money put in their
trust without regret. Those who benefit from their governors' largess sing their
praise and vehemently defend their masters' political interest and ego
everywhere. Allegedly, most of these evil doers who pose as political leaders
have killer squads, who are adequately maintained and employed to take the lives
of their political opponents or perceived political enemies who are seen as
obstructions to their inordinate ambitions.
But for reasons of irresponsible
exuberance and successful mass brain washing, why would poor people of mean
economic conditions joyfully welcome criminal governors who have been tried and
convicted in law courts or are being tried. It is amazing to see governors
Alamieyesiegha, Ibori, Odili, Ogbemudia, Fayose, Kalu and several others who are
protected by the constitutional immunity clause being given hero's welcome in
their various states. Have people been so much brain-washed to the point of
acquiring Alz-heim-er's disease? Is n't this an example of the people paying
the wages of bad governance, corruption, indiscipline and ignorance? What else
could it be? Are they happy for being made miserable by these
governors?
Until lately, the Judiciary had not distinguished itself as the
last institution for hope and justice for Nigerians. Some Judges could be
trusted to deliver justice without fear or favour while others were unreliable
like the weather. But since Justice Modibbo Belgore was appointed the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, the Judiciary has changed for a better
and bolder delivery of justice to our nation. Otherwise, is it conceivable that
the presidency of Obasanjo could lose as many cases to Abubakar Atiku, his Vice
President, in their series if political skirmishes.? Chief Justice Alfa
Belgore, the recently retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, seemed to have
opened the judicial doors wider for greater responsibility, reliability and
composite justice without fear or favour. Chief Justice Belgore who assumed the
Chief Justice position less than a year before reaching the retiring age, would
not accept an extension of his tenure on principle when freely offered. In spite
of this laudable leadership example, there are still bad judges and magistrates
on the Nigerian bench. They exist in Oyo, Anambra, Enugu and several other
states where politicians push them around like football or baby toys. They run
political errands in dispensing their constitutional duties to the detriment of
our nation's growth and development. They receive kickbacks and fail in their
duty to honour and respect the tradition associated with the judicial arm of
government as the final arbiter of justice.
A good number of members of
the National Assembly, that is, the Senators and members of the House of
Representatives are empty heads who have no idea about what they are there to
do. The empty heads among them rely on the ability of the few who are well
educated and competent to bear the responsibilities of legislation for a
developing national society. One would discover that despite the existence of
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, there is racketeering of
certificates of educational qualification in the House of Representatives. They
made up a list of meaningless and senseless allowances that one wonders who is
looting the National treasury between them as investigators in their various
committees and the people they are probing. What is the logic behind taking ten
million naira (N10m) from a ministry (Ministry of Health); the operational
extension of the Executive arm of government, which oversight the Senate
committee must execute with diligence and with its highest sense of
responsibility, to make sure it does its work according to the prescribed
legislation that passed its responsibility into law. The money exchanged between
Iyabo Obasanjo's committee and the Ministry of Health cannot be fairly
extricated from a primary sense of corrupt tendencies. The court is left to take
its position. We are willing to wait and see. In 2006, the ex-president was
alleged to be distributing the PTDF money to the legislators for a hidden third
term presidency. Chief Obasanjo, who supposedly wanted to eradicate corruption
knew the character of his PDP legislators. He knew they would accept illicit
money if offered, especially from him, the President; the crusader of
corruption. He had his surrogates in the persons of Ibrahim Mantu and Jubril
Aminu in the Senate working hard to influence other members to support a
constitutional amendment that would allow the President a third term in office.
When the whole surreptitious scheme suddenly collapsed in the Senate under the
Chairmanship of Ken Nnamani, the entire population of Nigeria had a great
psychological and mental relief. The evil night-mare had suddenly
vanished.
There are indications that a good number of state Governors
induce state legislators with money to pass certain bills into laws for reasons
personal to them. Corrupt and strange political ideas which violate the norms of
economic and political development of our country are promoted with unequal
devotion and passion in Nigeria than in other developing nations. All the
financial wealth available to Nigeria today are good enough to eradicate
unemployment, promote social welfare, build and strengthen all basic
infrastructures but are being squandered recklessly on questionable contracts
without due process. President Umaru Yar'Adua and his men must be living in a
fool's paradise to ever imagine that this country of ours, that is, Nigeria will
be economically viable enough to become one of the top twenty (20) economies of
the world by year 2020. Considering all available evidence and un-repentant
attitude of the average Nigerian elite, in terms of corrupt practices and all
evils associated with them in their political, economic and social orientation,
Nigeria has the least chance to become one of the leading economies of the
world. It is not going to happen unless all the charlatans, demagogues, liars,
thieves and a whole class of dishonest leaders who currently rule Nigeria can be
removed by having them charged, tried and put behind bars. We have leaders who
cannot suffer or endure discomfort or hardship to provide meaningful leadership
and record marked economic and political progress for us as a people. They lack
adequate and modern knowledge and vision to build a better Nigeria. All that
matters to them are, money in-quantum, stolen directly or indirectly, political
power acquired legally or otherwise for ego satisfaction. No nation ever grows
in a similar un-ordered mess like we have in Nigeria. If you do not mind, ask
any Nigerian political leader from the local to the federal level a question
such as ' per capita' income of Nigeria. He would have no answer for you because
you are trying to measure his knowledge. Ask once again what is meant by
political development. He is totally lost. You need to be careful not to make
him lose his temper. Won't you be astounded to realize suddenly that your
governor is not familiar with issues like economic development, political
development, infrastructural development and the need to maintain them
adequately and how to combat un-employment. Governor Fashola of Lagos state
needs to be emulated by the rest of his colleagues. The man assumed office in
2007 and evidence abound that he is totally equipped for the political office he
is now holding. The effect of his education is apparent and the utility of his
acquired experience over time is un-disputable. I just pray that he does not
join the old regular stock of shameless leaders we have always had to live with
as time progresses.
The Federal Ministry of Health scandal should not be
treated in isolation. The substantive minister Professor Adenike Grange is
obviously naïve and permissive as the political head of the ministry. She should
not have been there as a minister considering her training and background which
this writer happens to know. She is not cut for the kind of corrupt office she
was appointed and which is habitually surrounded by hounds. She cannot afford,
by her nature, the corrupt environment that subsists in Nigerian life. I was not
surprised to read that when her marked share of ten million naira (N10ml) was
offered her, she directed that the money be shared among the junior civil
service cadre in the ministry accordingly. That is the kind of person she is. If
she is not naïve and permissive, she would not have allowed the corrupt and
hardened professional civil servants to influence her judgment, since she was
responsible for decision-making in the ministry. She should have followed the
Executive directive of the president and returned the three hundred million
naira (N300ml) to the treasury. Though born and bred in Lagos, her father; a
respectable and popular pharmacist located on Nnamdi Azikiwe street in Lagos for
very many years was known as Adebowale Commercial pharmacy. Nearly, if not, all
that had to wear prescribed glasses in Lagos and elsewhere from outside Lagos
had to obtain their pair of glasses from her father's pharmaceutical company.
The family is the well known Adebowale family from Ita-Osu, Porogun, Ijebu-Ode.
The grand-father was a business tycoon in their days and the huge family house
the old man built from his hard work, tears and sweat, still exists in its
original place. I feel sorry that Professor Adenike Grange unfortunately and
suddenly became a victim of the wide spread carnage of corruption which had been
spread all over our helpless and hapless nation by politicians of mean
consequences. I wish her God's grace.
Incidentally, Senator Iyabo
Obasanjo-Bello is making a drama of the situation at the ministry over the three
hundred million naira, out of which her committee took ten million. As a law
maker and as a Senator that is responsible to sovereign Nigeria, she owes it to
common sense and her calling to submit herself to questioning, either at the
EFCC or at the appropriate court of law where she is supposed to appear. Her
father should tell her to do that because that is where responsibility and
honour for her and family lie. As rightly put by Femi Falana, there is no
hereditary immunity that could apply to her. Her father, the ex-president, no
longer enjoys any kind of immunity because he is out of office for good. Nobody
is after her life. Nigerians neither want nor need to see her killed. People
just want justice because there is too much corruption in our land. Her father
set up the EFCC as president and to allege that her life is not safe because
EFCC wants to investigate her role in the Ministry of Health scandal is totally
preposterous.
The Senate should conduct their business with a high sense of
reasonableness and should not digress into native, cultural and unnecessary
traditional sentiment about Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello's whereabout. If the Senate is
responsible enough to avoid meaningless sentiment among themselves, the issue of
ten million from the Ministry of Health and Iyabo should have been left alone
without interference since the EFCC is investigating it. Why should the Senate
engage in any findings to clear Iyabo of any wrong doing before the EFCC
completes its work? Are n't there other members of the Senate that have problems
with the EFCC? How about the former governor of Enugu state? Are you people up
to the task of the high expectations and standards expected of you as Senators
without favours or any type of bias? It should continuously occur to you that
the Senate or the Upper legislative Chamber, in any democracy, developing or
developed, consists of WISEMEN of impeccable bearings and qualities. I am not
suggesting that you should not show concern or care to your members when
involved in problems but when the problem borders on morality and law, the
Senate's integrity should not be dragged along. It is better for you people to
appeal to your colleague, Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello to submit herself to the law of
our land and wait to see what happens.
As a people; a national plural
community that wishes to develop to appreciate its natural gifts, talents and
resources, and all that God has bestowed on us, but have been abused and
bastardized since independence by its cadre of bad leaders, we are therefore
unfortunately, saddled with paying the wages of elusive economic and political
development which the corruption of our leaders, military and civilian, have
imposed on us. May God help our land by creating liberators among us for our
dear nation. Amen.
By: Bankole Okuwa Ph. D. (Professor of Political Science
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Posted by Robot| 02.05.2008 00:27