29 Dec 2008 |
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Intro: Note that this is just my record of what happened in 2008. I may have left out important events, embellished a bit here or there or may even accepted 'egunje' to polish the records of one or two people. So feel free to treat this as a living document by posting your own comments and setting the record straight. Or if you feel I've done a good job, you can say so too - I don't want be accused of blowing my own trumpet. :)
Oh, it's you again. Back from... erm... erm... don't tell me - Kunustan - that's right, yes? Oh, I consider you important enough to remember these things. Anyway, I know why you're here again... you liked my synopsis of 2006 and 2007 so much that you want to find out what's been going on in 2008 in Nigeria, right? Well, I should tell you right out that it's been a verrrrrrry uneventful year. So I'll forgive you if you doze off during my narrative, as I hope you'll forgive me if I doze off myself.
Enterprise of the EFCC OK, I need to add in some late breaking info that happened at the tail end of 2007. Remember Nuhu Ribadu, the crusading chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) who was making things hot for various politicians last year? Well, on December 27, he was asked to go on study leave to the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies. There was all kinds of confusion about what this actually meant - was he being sacked? Was this to 'upgrade' him for higher things? Supporters of Ribadu fretted. Opponents of Ribadu exulted. Meanwhile, Ibrahim Lamorde, the EFCC Director o Operations stepped in as acting Chairman. Things became clearer on May 15, when it was announced that Farida Waziri would be officially replacing Nuhu Ribadu as the Chairman of the EFCC - meaning that he would not be returning after the completion of his course. Ribadu's star appeared to be dimming even further when on August 5, it was announced that he was to be demoted from Assistant Inspector-General to Deputy Commissioner - a drop of two ranks - because his promotion hadn't conformed to due process. Ribadu decided to sue various police bodies and personalities for this humiliation. But he must have been feeling very panicky, because in presenting his suit in court, he declared that his life was in danger as he had made enemies from the work he did while at the EFCC. Wow, Nuhu. I bet you never thought that could happen, did you? Unsurprisingly, his lawsuit just seems to have made the Police Force madder at him, because he was first of all prevented from taking part in the graduation ceremony at NIPSS on November 22 (allegedly for not conforming to dress code). Then he was summoned to appear before a disciplinary panel for not turning up at his new posting. But after failing to appear before this panel, his fall from grace was complete as he was dismissed from the Police Force on December 23. Of course, it would be too bad if a whole EFCC (Ribadu-less though it may be) didn't continue to strike terror in the hearts of evildoers in order to make the government look serious in its war against corruption. So on March 26, it announced that it was arresting and charging to court the Minister of Health, Adenike Grange, and the Minister of State for Health, Gabriel Aduku on allegations of corruption. Needless to say, President Yar'Adua gave them the big boot, since he could not be seen to be consorting with ministers who had the whiff of corruption about them. (Later on, the EFCC would drop the charges on Aduku. And re-arrest him again. I guess the EFCC like to toy with their prey like that.) The story behind the arrests was that there 300 million naira which had been allocated to the Ministry but which hadn't been used up. So contracts were quickly issued so that the money could be spent and not returned to the Treasury instead. It turned out that one of the beneficiaries of the distribution of the unspent money was Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, the daughter of ex-President Obasanjo who allegedly received 10 million naira in her capacity as the head of the Health committee in the Senate so that she could attend a seminar in Ghana. Mind you, that's a nice new phrase there - the next time a policeman stops you and says that he wants to attend a seminar, you'll know what he's talking about. Anyhow, Obasanjo-Bello began to feel the heat of the EFCC breathing down her neck, and she cried out that she and her family was being witch-hunted. After playing a cat-and-mouse game for a several weeks, she finally appeared before the court on May 19. And on July 31, it was decided that yes - she did need to stand trial for the 10 million naira she'd received. But Obasanjo-Bello wasn't the only prominent person the EFCC was after. On July 31, it arrested ex-Adamawa State Governor Boni Haruna and slammed a 21-count corruption charge on him; and on August 7, it arrested Bode George, a PDP chieftain and former chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority on charges of awarding contracts totalling billions of dollars without due process. Even the Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Ndidi Okereke-Onyiuke wasn't exempt from their zeal. It turned out that on August 11, she had led a group called 'Africa for Obama' who were purporting to raise money for the election campaign of one Mr. Barack Obama in some faraway country or other. Anyway, they raised around N100 million, but not only did this Mr. Obama not want to have anything to do with her, the EFCC decided to quiz her about her actions, following petitions about the propriety of raising money for this course. It turned out that, according to her, she never really planned to donate the money to Mr. Obama anyway - she gave some convoluted explanation that I can neither remember nor want to remember. Unfortunately, the EFCC didn't seem to have continued its zeal in prosecuting the various ex-governors who were under its spotlight last year. Orji Kalu, ex-governor of Abia State, was arraigned at the Federal High Court in Abuja on April 30 by the EFCC on various charges, including the charge of money laundering. Perhaps the only real result - if you can call it that - was the conviction of ex-Edo State governor, Lucky Igbinedion on December 18. His punishment? A fine of 3.5 million naira - and this for a man who was alleged to have embezzled over four billion naira. If embezzling were a business, I would say that the return on investment was pretty good. Anyway, the EFCC say that they will appeal. As for James Ibori (the ex-Delta State governor who was arraigned in court last year), don't ask - I guess the EFCC must have lost the case files, because I haven't heard a thing about his case all year.
A Profusion of Probes and Other Legislative Shenanigans On other matters, President Yar'Adua announced on January 14 that even though $10 billion had been invested in the power sector, there were no tangible results. However, there seemed to be some dispute over the exact amount spent. Mr. Foluseke Somolu, one of Yar'Adua's special assistants said that the figure was actually around half of that amount (and got fired for his pains). Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker of the House, said that the figure spent might even as been as high as $16 billion. I guess we'll never really know - but one thing that we do know for sure is that candle and lantern sellers have never had it so good. But that wasn't the end of the story. On March 11, a panel of members of the House of Representatives, led by Ndudi Elumelu, started to hold public hearings as part of a probe of the power sector - and all kinds of unsavoury details began to emerge: billion naira contracts being issued to blacklisted and unregistered firms; payments being made on contracts that had not passed through the Ministry of Power; contracts not passing through the Due Process office; and the revelation that projects which were supposed to have been completed had only just started, or not even started at all. It makes you think that Yar'Adua may have been wrong after all - there must be some contractors and politicians who must have felt the very tangible results of the expenditure of those billions of dollars. The panel ended up completing their report on July 3, but strangely enough, the details weren't published. Then a rumour began to circulate that perhaps the representatives had collected a hefty bribe to embellish the performance of various contractors, and - in what you might call pure Nigerian political drama - calls went up from their fellow legislators that the probers themselves should be probed. The members denied taking bribes, even though they said they'd been offered - and you know what? The word of an honest Nigerian legislator is good enough for me. However, it wasn't good enough for their fellow legislators, and on September 9, the probe of the probe was begun. It seemed the probe of the power sector had given the lawmakers an appetite for probes. The Senate committee on the Federal Capital Territory announced that they would be holding hearings starting on April 9 on how land was sold and allocated during the Obasanjo administration, and they would be inviting the past FCT ministers to give evidence. As happens with these probes, all kinds of interesting information began to surface, like how properties had been illegally demolished on the orders of Nasir el-Rufai, the ex-FCT Minister, and how El-Rufai himself had 17 plots allocated to him. El-Rufai, on his part claimed that the demolished properties had in one way or the other violated the planning restrictions of the FCT, and he claimed that he only had 2 plots allocated to him. Perhaps the senators didn't like El-Rufai's defiance, because on July 10, the panel presented an interim report recommending that El-Rufai be banned from holding public office for life. But El-Rufai wasn't going to take that lying low, and he sought a court order to quash the report. Naturally, the Senate weren't going to be cowed, and said that they wouldn't back down. And as if El-Rufai wasn't in enough trouble, in November, the EFCC decided that they wanted to talk to him over the misappropriation of 32 billion naira worth of public funds. El-Rufai declined to honour their invitation, and on December 21 they declared him a wanted man. Evidently, the legislators felt that it still wasn't enough to probe doings in the power sector and the FCT. So on April 28, the Senate instituted yet another probe led by Senator Heineken Lokpobiri to look into how the billions of naira given to the Ministry of Transport had been spent on transport infrastructure. The hearings in the probe began on June 23, with various past ministers being summoned to appear before the Senate panel. Unsurprisingly, the same old stories of money collected for partially completed or uncompleted projects began to surface again. There was some drama on June 30, when as part of the hearings, two former aviation ministers, Femi Fani-Kayode and Babalola Borishade appeared at the hearings. After their first appearance when they were leaving, lo and behold - the almighty EFCC showed up and arrested them in connection with the disbursement of a 19 billion naira fund which was to be used to rehabilitate aviation infrastructure. As is the way with the EFCC, Borishade and Fani-Kayode have since found themselves going in and out of detention as EFCC have proceeded to release and re-arrest them. Perhaps the EFCC does this as some form of psychological torture so that the victim eventually breaks down and confesses all? There was more corruption wahala for Bankole when on October 19, Festus Keyamo, a lawyer, alleged that the House had bought cars that were worth less than the amount paid, leading to questions about what had happened to the difference. So another probe was instituted to get to the bottom of this. There were allegations flying around that Keyamo was part of a wider plot to get rid of Bankole (who, if you'll remember, only took up the post last year after Patricia Etteh was forced from office). So many probes and counter probes, eh? Of course, nobody knows whether the paper that the probe report is printed on will end up being used to wrap guguru and epa. What a pity that the legislators haven't actually been concentrating on their main role - passing laws, like the Freedom of Information Bill which is still languishing in some drak recess of the legislative machine. {mospagebreak} Party Parley On March 8, the People's Democratic Party held its national convention. Amongst other things, it chose Vincent Ogbulafor, its former national secretary as a compromise candidate, rather than choosing ex-governor Sam Egwu (who was seen as ex-President Obasanjo's man) or ex-Senate President Pius Anyim (who was seen as ex-President Obasanjo's anti-man). It seems that even almost after a year of leaving power, Obasanjo still seems to excite so much passion and division in people, huh?
The Healthy Head and his Cabinet Changes At this time, President Yar'Adua went abroad to Germany on April 15 for a health checkup and returned a few days after. Well, if you remember the hoo-ha over Yar'Adua's health in early 2007, you'll not be surprised to hear that a rumour arose that he was very ill, this persisted to the extent that the had to give interviews the following month in which he asserted that he was hale and hearty. But the rumours wouldn't go away, and when news broke in late August that he had gone to Saudi Arabia for some tests, they resurfaced with a vengeance, with some variants even saying he had died. It was only when he returned on September 6 that they were put to rest. But it looked like showing up in the flesh wasn't going to be enough to quash these rumours once and for all - yet another one surfaced again about a week later, saying that Yar'Adua was going to resign on health grounds. This time it was distributed to various media houses via an e-mail purporting to come from the News Agency of Nigeria. Unfortunately, one TV station, Channels broadcast the news, and this caused the full force of the State Secret Service to fall on it, as it was shut down. Now you'd think that Channels would have picked up the fact that this was a hoax from the poor spelling in the message and the fact that it came from a yahoo email address. But perhaps those are the kind of mails that Channels are used to getting from NAN - who knows? Anyhow, after all this gra-gra, the station was reopened a few days later. But Yar'Adua wasn't finished o. On November 8, he sued the Leadership newspaper for libel after they published a report saying that he was sick again. The paper apologised for the report, but to the best of my knowledge, Yar'Adua hasn't withdrawn his suit. I'm pretty sure that the media is right though about Yar'Adua being sick - he's definitely sick of people saying he's sick. Perhaps it would have helped to give Yar'Adua the image of an active, non-dead Head of State if he had acted more quickly in reshuffling his cabinet. He had said he was going to do this when delivering his anniversary broadcast on May 29, but as things turned out, he really took his sweet time. He started on August 24 by making changes to the military top brass, making Air Chief Marshal Paul Dike the Chief of Defence Staff. Then on September 8, he replaced the Secretary General to the Federation, Baba Gana Kingibe with Yayale Ahmed. Then finally on December 17, after being confirmed by the Senate, the new cabinet was sworn in. There were 16 new faces, like Mansur Muhtar who moved from the Debt Management Office to become the Minister of Finance, and Dora Akunyili, who moved from being the Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control to become the Minister of Information and Communications. There were many who were unhappy at Akunyili's acceptance of her new position; they felt that she would turn into a government mouthpiece who would tell lies about how well the government was doing. But despite the furore surrounding her redeployment, Akunyili may have been happy about it, especially because of the wearying, never-ending battle against fake drugs. For example, on November 25, she announced that as a result of the ingestion of 'My Pikin', a paracetamol teething mixture, there had been up to 25 deaths of children. She came in for some criticism for even allowing the drug to be sold, especially because it had been registered by NAFDAC. But back to Yar'Adua again. Remember that constitutional reform panel that I told you about last year? The one that he set up in the wake of the condemnation of the flawed elections? Well after nearly 16 months of sitting, the panel, headed by Muhammadu Uwais, submitted its report on December 11. Amongst its recommendations were that independent candidates should be allowed to contest elections, and that proportional representation should be used in electing members of the legislature. It also had a recommendation that no individual should be allowed to donate more than 20 million naira to a presidential campaign. I don't think that should stop individual donors from donating in kind... by offering professional electoral intimidation services, for example.
Delta Destruction Remember all that militant action from last year? Well, it hadn't gone away... in fact, it had become pretty much the norm. One of the more significant attacks took place on June 19 when militants carried out an attack on an the Bonga oil installation in Bayelsa State. It was revealed that the militants were pretty much able to waltz in and attack because the facility had no warning system to speak of, and military protection was absent. Of course, the President and the military chiefs threatened fire and brimstone... but it's easy to threaten from the safety of your air-conditioned office, no? Somehow, I don't think that the militants were trembling in their creeks and canoes on hearing this threat - about a week later, they struck again, attacking the Oloma flow station in Bonny. So on September 10, Yar'Adua decided to create a new Ministry of the Niger-Delta, which he hoped would be the channel through which he would deliver enough goodies to jam the restive voices and the twitchy trigger fingers of the militants. This didn't seem to impress the militants, who kept on launching attacks in the area, pausing to declare a brief ceasefire about two weeks later before resuming attacks again. It got so bad that in mid-December, Julius Berger, the unofficial subsidiary of the Ministry of Works, declared that they weren't going to continue road building works in the area because they were scared of the militants. But things weren't going so well for one of the leaders of militant action in the area. After being deported from Angola in February to Nigeria, the secret trial of Henry Okah (also known as Jomo Gbomo) began in May 2. There had to be an adjournment on September 19 for two weeks, because the defendant had a kidney ailment. Evidently, the ailment was pretty serious, because at the end of October, the High Court decided to grant Okah three weeks bail to receive proper treatment. {mospagebreak}
Territorial Transition and Political Pillage On 14 August, there was the culmination of a process that had been triggered by an International Court of Justice verdict given nearly six years ago - the final handover of the Bakassi peninsula from Nigeria to Cameroun. Ahhh - doesn't it give you a warm feeling to know that these things can be done in a civilised manner without unnecessary bloodshed? Speaking about bloodshed, I'm sure you must be relieved so far not to have heard me talk about the kind of religious or ethnic riots that we've experienced over the last few years. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but just when it looked like we might make it through this year without any such riots, on November 28 there were reports of violence and killings in Jos. The cause centered around the result of local government elections that had been just been held, and in which the PDP had been declared the winner. The losing party - the All Nigeria People's Party protested the result, and the protest turned violent and assumed an ethnic/religious dimension, since the ANPP were supported mostly by the Muslim Hausa and the PDP were supported mostly by the Christian/Middle Belt ethnic groups.
Judicial Judgments The judiciary was very active in 2008 churning out court decisions on the petitions arising from the gubernatorial, legislative and presidential elections held last year. However, in many cases, it was all energy and no movement. For example, on February 25, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the elections tribunal nullifying the result of the Adamawa state elections, and it ordered Governor Murtala Nyako (remember him of the 'four wives' palaver last year?) to vacate office, pending a re-run of the polls. Well, the polls were re-run on April 27, and guess what - he won. And the same story was repeated for Liyel Imoke (of Cross River State - nullified on July 14, won again on August 24); Ibrahim Idris (of Kogi State - nullified on February 6, won again on March 30); Timipre Sylva (of Bayelsa State - nullified on April 15, won again on May 24); Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko (of Sokoto State - nullified April 11, won again on May 24). Oh, you're wondering how all these governors won their elections on the re-run? Who knows? Perhaps nullifying the elections was really just fixing the symptoms instead of the root cause. It could be that the factors that caused the elections to be null in the first place (and that helped these governors win) were still very much around. You know, factors like the electoral officers being Incompetent, Weak and Unfit for the job of monitoring an election. Other governors, like Mahmud Shinkafi of Zamfara State and Ibrahim Shekarau of Kano State were even more fortunate - they didn't have to be subjected to the indignity of an election re-run, because the cases against them were thrown out by the Appeal Court on Apri1 10, as were the cases against Jonah Jang of Plateau State and Mamman Ali of Yobe State (on February 25), Danjuma Goje of Gombe State (on June 5) and the case of Sullivan Chime of Enugu State (on July 11). While all this was going on, the battle by Atiku Abubakar and Muhammadu Buhari to reverse the election result of last year was still going on. On February 26, the Court of Appeal in Abuja dismissed the petitions made by both men. Of course, knowing Nigerian politicians, they weren't going to take this lying low and declared that they were going to take the case all the way up to the Supreme Court. To nobody's great surprise, on December 8, the Supreme Court decided in favour of Yar'Adua, although it was a narrow decision, with four in favour and three against. But in a rare departure from the trend of incumbents remaining incumbent, on November 11, the Appeal Court not only nullified the election of Oserhemein Osunbor of Edo State, it also declared that Adams Oshimhole, the AC candidate was the lawful governor of the state. I'm surprised that not only was Oshiomhole not made to participate in a re-run, but that Osunbor accepted his fate with equanimity. Perhaps someone knew that the 'wrong' judgment would have caused Edo State voters to express their disagreeement in a full and frank manner - who knows?
Money Matters I don't know if I told you, but two years ago, the national carrier, Nigerian Telecommunications was sold to the Transnational Corporation, a conglomerate that ex-President Obasanjo is said to have investments in. Anyway, on February 18, the government announced that the sale of NITEL was to be revoked. The ostensible reason given was that Transcorp (the company that NITEL had been sold to) was not running the company well. If you ask me, I think it's crazy - how can you revoke a sale of a company because the new owner isn't running it well? Surely it's his company to run as he pleases? Anyway, shortly after, the government and Transcorp announced that they were bringing in a joint investor to help to run the company better. Anyway, it transpired that the government was thinking of divesting itself of all it shares in Transcorp... but it was still keen on having a nationally owned carrier. The plan would be that it would use the satellite that had been launched into space last year to deliver the voice and data traffic. Unfortunately, these plans now need to be put on hold, because in the middle of November, it turned out that the satellite was no longer able to obtain power and was now falling back to earth, spent and useless. Well, at least it had performed its main role of allowing a juicy contract to be issued, so who really cared what happened to it after that? Still on finance, and it looked like the era of ever climbing stock prices had come to an end. Since March stock prices had been falling, but they really began to crash in August - so much so that a Presidential Advisory team was assembled to stem the fall. They implemented measures allowing companies to buy back their stock, and they placed limits to daily downward movements. But after a brief respite only, the prices still continued to head south. In the end, the limits were removed and the prices continued on their merry way. I'm not really surprised, given that most of the people buying stocks didn't have a clue about their actual worth, and their purchases just fuelled a stock market bubble. And the naira seemed to want to join in the fun. In early December, it began to depreciate so that by mid December it had fallen from around N120 to the dollar to around N135 to the dollar. Lastly, that chameleon of phone companies - no, not Econet, not Vodacom, not Vmobile, yes, Celtel - decided on August 1 that it was changing its name again to Zain. Well, Zain had owned Celtel for a while, so was just a branding harmonisation exercise - but if it changes its name one more time, I supect Nigerians are going to come up with their own 'permanent' name for it like 'The Telephone Company Formerly Known as Zain'.
Diary of Deaths I would be failing in duty as National Amebo if I didn't reel off the names of notable Nigerians who had passed on, so here goes: Theophilus Olawale Sobowale Benson, politician, aged 90 on February 13 Solomon Giwa-Amu, soldier and ex-aide-de-camp to ex-President Obasanjo, aged 48 on 18 February Idris Kuta, politician, aged 65 on March 1 Wole Amele, actor and traditional ruler, aged ? on March 9 Chike Ediozien Umuezei Obi, academic and mathematician, aged 86 on March 13 Abraham Aderibigbe Adesanya, political activist, aged 85 on April 27 Jadesola Akande, academic, aged 67 on April 29 Hyacinth Azu "Haz" Iwendi, police officer, aged 53 on May 5 Sonny Okosun, reggae musician and evangelist, aged 61 on May 25 Aloysius Atuegbu, footballer, aged 55 on May 25 Wahab Iyanda Folawiyo, industrialist, aged 79 on June 6 Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu, politician, aged 80 on June 11 Sunday Akanite, also known as Oliver de Coque, highlife musician, aged 60 on June 22 Babatunde Jose, journalist and newspaper editor, aged 82 on August 2 Joseph Omotosho Adeyemi-Bero, civil servant, aged 83 on August 16 Funso Adeolu, actor and traditional ruler, aged 76 on August 23 Olayinka Babasanya Craig, TV presenter, aged 61 on September 23 Oladipupo Owomoyela, also known as Orlando Owoh, highlife musician, aged 72 on November 4 Shehu Musa, traditional ruler and civil servant, aged 73 on November 20 Amzat Beyioku Adebowale, industrialist, aged 84 on December 3 Haruna Ilerika, footballer, aged 59 on December 5 Yahaya Gusau, politician, aged 93 on December 15
And that's pretty much it for 2008 - which probably not as uneventful as I thought. I guess you'll probably decide that it's not yet uhuru, and you'll need to return to Kunustan again, eh? Hello? HELLO? Are you SLEEPING? You meant you haven't heard a word I've said???? Well, as long as you don't expect me to repeat myself, that's fine. Now make room... I also am quite sleepy after that long recitation...
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