Not too long ago, I was shown the topics being treated under the subject called “Sexuality Education” or “Sex Eduation” which tender kids in both junior and secondary schools in Nigeria are now being forced to learn. Mere kids, some as young as ten or even nine, are put in the hands of teachers, who deployevery energy, talent and creativity to saturate their tender minds with every detail about sexual immorality and the use of contraceptives.

When I first raised alarm on this issue in my weekly column not too long ago, a concerned parent wrote me to say that the ‘Teacher’s Guide’ given to the Integrated Science teachers (who handle this subject) mandates them “to teach the children that religious teachings on issues like pre-marital sex, contraception, homosexuality, abortion and gender relations are mere opinions and myths! They are also to teach the students how to masturbate and use chemical contraceptives (designed for women in their 30s). The ‘Teachers Guide’ equally lays a big emphasis on values clarification; this empowers teenage children to decide which moral values to choose since the ones parents teach them at home are mere options.”

It is difficult to imagine that anyone outside a mental home could have the mind to design such a subject even for the children of his worst enemy! In my view, this clearly qualifies as child abuse, which, sadly, has been endorsed by the authorities. I have reasons to suspect that what some of the teachers would be giving out would be targeted more at titillating their tender victims than educating them! I can imagine how easy it would now become for a teacher who has been targeting a female student to use his creative elaboration of this subject, to get the girl so overwhelmed she would become easy meat.

I am told that there are two main reasons for the introduction of this subject in our schools. One is to empower school children with adequate knowledge about their bodies and how to “safely” indulge in pre-marital sex without falling victims to teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. The second reason is to demystify fornication, give it a positive image, as something to be cherished and enjoyed without any fear, as long as it is done “safely” and consensually. The belief is that with the age-long “superstition” built around sexual immorality which ‘stigmatizes’ it as an evil and sinful activity, some kids tend to go into it with fear and dread, and so develop psychological problems arising from the guilt they feel afterwards.

But these reasons are simply hollow and unconvincing. They are built on the assumption that in the present age, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for unmarried people to abstain from pre-marital sex. Instead of emboldening kids to behave like dogs, why not teach them to value their bodies and maintain their self-esteem by abstaining from immorality as our own parents had taught us? The difference between human beings and animals is the ability to reason and determine the consequences of actions, and then exercise discretion and self-control. Why not tell a kid the consequences of an action and use that to dissuade him from indulging in it?

Looking at the earnestness with which this policy is being pursued despite oppositions to it, one is forced to suspect that there may also be a commercial angle to it. Are we sure that substantial profit is not accruing to the initiators of this programme and their collaborators in government from the sales of the several books being written and printed on the subject? Support may equally be coming from the manufacturers of contraceptives who certainly see in this a lucrative venture to promote and sustain.

Now, how far has this subject helped in reducing teenage pregnancies and STDs in the Western nations where it has been taught, assimilated and practiced for many years now? It is a fact that these teachings have, for instance, been introduced in both the United States and Britain for many years now, but as I write now, I have before me, a BBC report saying that Britain has the highest record of teenage pregnancy in the whole of Western Europe. Also, another report has it that the United States has the highest number of teenage pregnancies in the entire Western world. Again, in the United States, it is reported that new infections of HIV are still on the increase.

That naturally leads us to the contentious issue of “safe sex.” So, what is all this fetish about “safe sex” and how “safe” can sex actually be? The truth is that a lot of studies and findings have effectively punctured the dubious confidence built over the years on condom-use. We know that with an effective magnifying lens, it is easy to see that several objects, especially rubber and plastics, have tiny holes through which very minute micro organisms could pass. I read somewhere recently that “HIV virus is only 0.1 micron in size while the naturally occurring holes in a latex condom is of the order 5 to 50 microns in diameter.” So where then is the “protection” we have heard so much about if the deadly virus can indeed pass through the wall of a condom? Is this not why we have often heard reports of people contracting HIV even though they had practiced the so-called “protected sex”? This is the time to rethink all this stuff behind which some fellows have hidden to pollute the minds of kids with ruinous teachings.

Fortunately, we have one precaution that does not fail. And that is the good old abstinence, which has been proven and tested to be the only reliable protection against deadly STDs and teenage pregnancies? We must hasten to realize that what is at stake here is human life, and should not be toyed with, for whatever reasons. It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand this desperation to create an immoral and ungodly society by misleading the youths? Now, if not for reasons that are less than noble and wholesome, why would Nigeria be eager to import a policy that is failing even in more advanced nations?

Okay, here is another point to ponder: HIV is 500 times smaller than spermatozoa, yet research has established that spermatozoa are able to sometimes pass through the wall of a latex condom to cause conception. Now, if this is the case, are we not by this subject leading our youths through the minefield? The example cited earlier of the worrisome rise in fresh infections of HIV in a place like the US where years of successful sex-education has achieved overwhelming attitudinal change in favour of condom-use should serve to buttress this point.

Now, with this policy in place and flourishing, where is this nation really heading to? What is the use living, if one must live like a dog?

I would, therefore, want to advise the school boy or girl reading this piece to please pause awhile and ask himself or herself what the initiators of this policy hope to achieve in his of her life by giving him or her these teachings? Such a youth should wonder how they still expect him to concentrate on his studies after they have saturated his mind with filthy teachings that only fill his mind with distractive lusts. Now, if his instructors (who are mostly parents) are encouraging him to freely indulge in sexual immorality at this early stage of his life, what type of future leader do they expect him to become? After “empowering” him to go on the rampage, wouldn’t they have succeeded in giving him a disease deadlier than even the AIDS they are presuming to save him from – which is the destruction of his moral fibre? What is the guarantee that he would be able to build a healthy family afterwards, by shunning the promiscuity that this subject is surely preparing him for, and which, as we all know, results in the proliferation of broken homes which has become the nightmare of the Western world?

It is instructive that The Guardian on Sunday, July 18, 1999, carried a report that a cross section of American college (mostly female) students are regretting the limitless freedom their parents had allowed them and have resolved to devote themselves to pursue a “no-sex” campaign. But in Nigeria in 2013, sexual immorality has been deregulated and democratized.

Right now, there appears to be some serious regret soaking the consciousness of many in the Western world, because of the moral wreck many children have become. But they are now helpless, because, it seems to have become too late, and things have gone out of hand. They now wish they never gave a perverted interpretation to freedom at some point in their history.

But poor Nigerians, we are always distinguished by our peculiar eagerness to always gobble up everything Western, no matter how rotten or destructive. Go to the people in Nollywood, and ask them why they are going so wild and immoral and the answer you will get is: That is how they do it in Hollywood. See what I mean?

But concerned Nigerian parents cannot afford to be intimidated and just watch helplessly as some fellows whose intentions are less than noble go all out to ruin their kids for them. And so, they should be able to ask: To what extent should the government interfere in people’s lives and families? Where does the government derive the authority to invade somebody’s home with ungodly teachings and inflict them on the person’s kids, just because he gave his kid to the government to educate in their schools? Shouldn’t an open and clear expression of disaffection towards this gross violation by stakeholders lead to its reappraisal and possible removal from the school curriculum?

Again, and very importantly too; most people have strongly accepted and hold very dear to their hearts the teachings they have received from the religious faith of their choice (which we as civilized people must respect) that sexual immorality which is a grievous sin against God attracts eternal damnation; and they are eager to ensure that both themselves and their kids escape this terrible doom; how then can we accommodate and respect this their belief (which is sacred to them) in this current effort to teach and encourage their children to freely indulge in fornication? Should we just dismiss and callously tear down a belief they hold so sacred and dear, and with which they have determined to successfully raise their children to become morally healthy kids? As if it does not matter?

It is time to rethink this policy and remove it from the school curriculum since it denies a large a number of people the option of choice. Many parents are not even aware that such a teaching is being generously forced down the throats of their precious children, thereby destroying all they have taught them at home.
Certainly, there are centres where some NGOs have established to propagate these pro-pre-marital sex teachings. Interested parents can take their children to those centres, while the objecting parents are spared the trauma of watching their kids being subjected to a menu they firmly believe is terribly unhealthy and ruinous. Their right to dissent must be respected.

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Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
www.ugowrite.blogspot.com
scruples2006@yahoo.com;

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye | Lagos, Nigeria | Sept. 26, 2012 - It is a classic case of ‘One Week, One Controversy’!  And the inimitable Dame, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, has been in the news again. She hardly disappoints. Perhaps, before your read this piece, Mrs. Jonathan would have returned from Germany where she had gone “to have some rest,” or receive medical treatment, or both, depending on whom you choose to believe between the media, opposition parties  and Aso Rock spokespersons.  Or her husband, our president, would have decided to come clean about her exact state of health and whereabouts.

But the latter may eventually not happen. Indeed, President Goodluck Jonathan understands this game very well. So, he is not unduly perturbed by all the din saturating the polity because of what his wife chooses to do with herself or not to say about her health condition. Yes, he does not “give a damn” because he knows full well that no sooner than his wife’s plane touches down in Abuja, and she sweeps across the red carpet like the marvelous Dame that she is, than she would stumble onto another controversy which would immediately and effectively kill and bury the present one over which the media and the opposition have raised ear-splitting cries. And so life goes on. Who, for instance, is still talking about her controversial appointment as Permanent Secretary in Baylesa State or the famous purchase, (or is it donation or lending or all three?) of posh cars scandal that embarrassed us all during the African First Ladies Summit in Abuja recently.

But the problem with always refusing to “give a damn” about public opinion and hoping that each controversy would soon burn itself out and be forgotten is that,  like we all know, all postponed evil days only offer temporary relief. They always have ways of returning at very inconvenient times to haunt the person concerned. And so, the best, time-tested option has always been to be open and tackle matters as they come.

 Now, even though the story about Mrs. Jonathan’s alleged ill-health had already appeared in the media, probably, before the president thought about how to manage the information about it, what would it have cost him to immediately confirm it, if it was true? Or summon his wife out of her “rest” to briefly show herself to the nation, to see if that would solve the often intractable traffic situation in Lagos or bring down the price of fish in Oyingbo market? Well, I can appreciate the psychology of the “most criticized president in the world.” I can imagine him wondering what his battalion of implacable critics would do with such information at that time. Would they join him to pray and wish his wife quick recovery or find ways of reaping some emotional and political capital out of his trying moments? Well, while his dilemma is somewhat understandable, it does not constitute sufficient reason for underlining the damaging impression that his paid advisers are incapable of generating a sound response to such a simple development.

Now, let’s see it this way. Assuming the president woke up the next morning after the media broke the news and mustered the will to tell us that his wife was sick, how would that have enhanced some lives at Ilaje or affected the taste of cassava bread? Now, even if he decides to do that tomorrow morning, will that change the colour of his hat? Is his wife a co-president? Would there be any vacuum created by her absence since she does not occupy any statutorily established office at the presidency? Or would she be compelled by any law to hand over to some “deputy wife” – a harrowing nightmare dreaded by many wives – if the nation hears that she is sick?  Who, by the way, is that human being who has never fallen sick? As a permanent secretary in Bayelsa, she is already on a permanent leave, so what is the matter? Why unduly complicate what is otherwise a simple, straightforward matter?

Okay, I think I can understand now. The president may have been worried that he might be asked why his wife was receiving medical treatment abroad while other Nigerians like her patronized local hospitals, more so, when he recently announced that foreign medical travels by public officials and their relatives would no longer be allowed by his administration. If he had no faith in Nigerian public and private hospitals and so had to use public fund to ferry his wife to a German hospital, why should he expect any other Nigerian to? This would naturally remind one of the edifying example of Mrs. Cherry Blair, wife of the former British prime minister, Tony Blair, who was delivered of a baby in a public hospital while her husband was in office, and stayed with ordinary Britons in a public ward. Given her earning as an upper-drawer lawyer, Mrs. Blair could afford the services of any quality hospital anywhere in the world, but she chose a British public hospital to demonstrate to the people that under her husband’s watch, public hospitals in Britain have not lost their value. So, by underlining her preference for foreign hospitals over local ones, what point then was Mrs. Jonathan making about the health of Nigerian hospitals during her husband’s tenure as president?

That may probably explain why the Presidency chose to insist that she had gone to Germany to rest. But that only made the matter worse. How can the wife of a Nigerian president go all the way to Germany at a heavy cost to the country to just “rest” when there are countless very conducive and comfortable spots where she could do that in Nigeria, and at less cost? In a more serious country, this may become a strong campaign issue and might grossly lower the popularity of an incumbent. It may even bring down a government! Now if this information is in very bad taste, what her spokesman said the other day to justify his insistence that Mrs. Jonathan was entitled to an interminable vacation was more outrageous and overly revolting. Hear him: “She is not a regular public office holder who has a specific duration for vacation. Assuming that she has a specific duration for vacation, then we could have said the vacation will end on a particular day and she will return on a particular day. But as it is, she can decide to return anytime she feels she has rested enough.” (PUNCH September 10, 2012).

That should be very strange information to Nigerians, because, to the best of my knowledge, Mrs. Jonathan has not resigned her appointment as a permanent secretary in Bayelsa State, from where she probably still draws unearned salaries.  This statement alone speaks volumes about the chaotic nature of information management at the presidency.

I sincerely hope that Mrs. Jonathan would use this period of her rest and/or medical treatment to deeply ponder the sagging image of her husband’s presidency and determine who between herself and the army of detractors had constituted the greatest problem to the current administration?  Why for instance did she agree to have a street named after her in Abuja or accept the scandalous appointment in Bayelsa when she could have scored a great point by dramatically rejecting them? Why did she publicly confront Gov Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State over the waterfront demolition of structures that affected her Okrika people when she could have achieved better results and avoided undue controversy by engaging the governor privately? What did she achieve by sparking off recently the very distasteful debate about payment of salaries and retirement benefits to wives of presidents and governors, perhaps, for idling away or wallowing in countless frivolities during their husbands’ tenure at our expense. The list is endless.  From Bayelsa to Aso Rock, she has been trailed by overwhelming rumours of ethical problems, EFCC investigations, alleged cover-ups, high-handed treatment of public officers working under husband, excessive gallivanting, shopping sprees, wanton extravagance and the like!    

A measure of how much Mrs. Jonathan is loved or despised by Nigerians was on display recently when she got embroiled in a land controversy with a former president’s wife (and by her aides), Mrs. Turai Yar’Adua. Now, because information about the land tussle was badly mismanaged, public odium had hastily flooded Mrs. Jonathan’s   doorsteps, and many were already out there calling her all the unprintable names in the world until the former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Mr. Bala Mohammed, came out with a convincing clarification which showed that she was not the guilty party in the land-grabbing scandal. But before then she had already taken an excess dose of public condemnation, and in the process saved Mrs. Yurai Yar’Adua the clearly justified public outrage that ought have naturally followed questions about how she had raised the millions of naira required to purchase such a choice piece of land – a question that we still need to ask.  And the last time I checked, no one has thought it necessary to apologize to Mrs. Jonathan for that clearly undue outflow of misplaced aggression. Instead, what I see out there is a sad feeling like: “Oh, she escaped it this time!”

Indeed, whenever Mrs. Jonathan returns to the country, she will do herself and her husband’s political career a lot of good by grossly abridging her ubiquity and distancing herself from those friends who tell her that it is her own time to shine and dance in the open square and so should not “give a damn” about what any other person out there thinks or says about her preferences and preoccupations. Indeed, the less she is in the news, and the less controversies she stirs, the better for her husband’s presidency. I wish her a sound health and her husband better luck.

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By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye | Lagos, Nigeria | Sept. 11, 2012 –

At Victoria Falls, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, where Sata and Mugabe met to sign an agreement with the UNWTO Secretary General, Taleb Rifai, Mugabe must have been surprised and elated to hear Rifai say this about his own Zimbabwe: “I was told about the wonderful experience and the warm hospitality of this country … By coming here, it is a recognition, an endorsement on the country that it is a safe destination.” Following this May 28, 2012 agreement, Zambia and Zimbabwe will jointly host the UNWTO general assembly in August 2013.

Reactions to this development were prompt and unsparing. Human rights groups across the world and government functionaries in EU countries condemned it in very strong terms, just as Canada immediately announced its decision to withdraw from the UNWTO. But while Canada maintained that Mugabe’s appointment was the key factor that inspired its decision to terminate its membership of the global body, UNWTO stated that Canada had already withdrawn its membership two weeks before Mugabe was invited to join the body. According to a report in the Embassy – Canada’s Foreign Policy Newspaper, Canada had on May 12, 2011, “formally communicated to the UNWTO, in a letter not made public, that it wanted to withdraw its full membership in the agency, according to Sandra Carvao, the UNWTO’s communications chief. It didn’t say why. ‘According to UNWTO Statutes, withdrawal is effective one year after the formal notice (12 May 2012),’ wrote Ms. Carvao in an email to the Embassy May 31.”

And while the controversy raged, the UNWTO weighed in with a “clarification” that smells and tastes like an after-thought. It denied that it had made Mr. Mugabe a tourism ambassador stressing that the same letter it sent to him was equally “sent to all heads of state and government worldwide and aims to raise awareness of the potential of tourism for development, job creation and economic growth.” Well, no matter what the UNWTO chooses to say it did or did not do, what cannot be denied is that Zimbabwe and Zambia will jointly host the UNWTO general assembly next year, with Mugabe starring prominently and savouring positive global spotlight.

The world was still trying to come to terms with this development, when by mid-July, the media went to town with screaming headlines that the European Union (EU) has announced its intention to lift sanctions on Zimbabwe, some of which were targeted at Mugabe and his inner circle players. The Telegraph (UK) quoted a Foreign Office spokesperson as saying that changing situations in Zimbabwe had compelled the EU to review its position. “Since these measures were last reviewed in February we have heard a number of calls, including from the MDC-T and their partners in the Inclusive Government, for us to show flexibility in order to support the process of reform. For us what matters is putting in place what’s needed for free and fair elections, in line with the requirements of the EU Measures, and meeting the key points of progress that are promised along the way,” the spokesperson said.

If the EU expected this gesture to provoke jubilations in Harare, it must have been sorely disappointed. Spokesman for Mugabe’s party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), Rugare Gumbo, underlined the party’s suspicion of this move, accusing the EU of harbouring “an agenda to weaken Zanu-PF,” adding rather defiantly that such a move “will not work. We will always get help from the East (Asia).” The party thinks the EU’s real intention is to position itself properly to influence the next election against it.

Now, even though Mugabe has a very fashion-conscious wife whose love for designer dresses and jewelries is widely acknowledged, was it not naïve of the UK and the EU to think that the Zimbabwean president must have been having sleepless nights over his inability to holiday and shop in London or Paris? No doubt, the 88 year-old fox in Harare knows full well that bitterness in the UK towards him is still very deep mainly because of his “land reforms” which had displaced white farmers from their vast farmlands and forced many of them to leave the country. Securely wrapped in his memory, too, is the disastrous fate of his late friend, Muammar Gaddafi, who had allowed himself to be seduced by similar gestures of rapprochement from the West, only to soon realize that it is only the foolish butterfly that hastens to think that by flying like a bird, it has become a bird, instead of a bird’s prey. Indeed, Mugabe knows that the only thing that can assuage the US and EU strong feelings against him is an opportunity to humiliate him out of power, pick him up immediately and parade him helpless, handcuffed and grossly diminished before the world, and then finally liquidate him at The Hague with an overdose of the Charles Taylor treatment.

Mugabe told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in 2009 that the United States and Britain are hell-bent on successfully executing what he calls their “regime change programme” in Zimbabwe which he says, “is aimed at getting not just Robert Mugabe out of power, but Robert Mugabe and his party out of power?” And that “naturally means,” he said, that “we dig in, remain in our trenches.”

Now digging in and remaining in their trenches have been at a very grave cost to Zimbabwe and its people. Mugabe is a man ruled by fear – the fear of tomorrow; the fear of losing power and the great security and grandeur it provides him. And so, whoever he considers, rightly or wrongly, as a possible tool in the hands of his enemies (read the US and UK) to bring him down is visited with the worst kind of ruthlessness. Thus, a reign of terror has become the worst nightmare of Zimbabweans, with human rights violations reaching unprecedented heights. Whether the situation would still have degenerated so badly, if Western powers were not breathing down his neck in their desperation to achieve a “regime change” and teach Mugabe a lesson of his life, would make an interesting study.

But the painful reality is that Zimbabweans have suffered terribly under Mugabe, and his vigorous attempts to explain it away remains exasperating, especially, as it is public knowledge that himself, family and cronies are insulated from the unimaginable suffering Zimbabweans have been through under his watch. In due time, he ought to be called to account, but what many people are not agreed upon is whether that should happen at the International Criminal Court (ICC) sitting at the Hague, which ought to have been named the “Special Court for African Leaders Who Fell Out With the West.”

The problem with this court is that whereas it kindles hope in Africans that there is now a judicial platform with the capacity to duly prosecute their errant leaders and serve as deterrent to others, there is also this unavoidable feeling of sadness and humiliation arising from what the existence and nature of this same court says about them and their place as Africans in the world. Now did Robin Cook, former British Foreign Minister, not say the following about the ICC on BBC Newsnight some years ago: “If I may say so, this is not a court set up to bring to book prime ministers of the United Kingdom or Presidents of the United States.”

Now, one can really understand why this court is circulating serious discomfort across Africa . And one may even ask: Would Robert Mugabe be today hounded by Western powers and targeted for an indictment at The Hague if he did not undertake the Zimbabwean “land reforms” which displaced the white farmers from their vast farmlands, even if he was operating the worst repressive regime in Africa ? Indeed, it is difficult to sell the viewpoint that it is the concern and care about democracy and the suffering of poor black Zimbabweans that are fueling the current global anti-Mugabe strong feelings. Well, Mugabe is even out there boasting that he had to fight a crude, repressive, British colonial regime to bring democracy to Zimbabwe, so who should preach democracy and human rights to the other, he appears to be asking. Postures like these have helped to deepen the estrangement and mutual dislike between Mugabe and his erstwhile friends.

In the Western world, frustration is setting in due to the failure of every effort, overt and subterranean, to bring Mugabe down. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, despite massive Western support has only managed to become the weaker party in a power-sharing arrangement brokered for Zimbabwe by South Africa after the disputed 2008 elections. And with the hope of democratically unseating Mugabe and his ZANU-PF dimming with each passing day, and Tsangirai appearing increasingly uncomfortable with being widely labeled a Western stooge, predictions about the likely situations that may emerge are becoming pretty difficult.

Incidentally, Zimbabwe’s economy appears to be showing signs of recovery, thus denying the West another very potent tool it has so far deployed in its overwhelming campaign against Mugabe. In fact, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in November 2010 stated that Zimbabwe was “completing its second year of buoyant economic growth.”

With many years gone already and the ever defiant Mugabe ageing gracefully, with Zimbabwe and its rich minerals still in his grip, strong yearning for his downfall appears to have given way to desperate expectations of his death. And so, each time Mugabe jets out to Singapore for what his spokespersons tersely describe as “routine medical check up” the Western media would go frenzy with screaming headlines about a sick and dying Mugabe. The most embarrassing happened last April. Following a rumour by an obscure Zimbabwean online newspaper, virtually all the major and minor papers from London to New York and the rest of the world celebrated with screaming headlines that Mugabe was down with prostate cancer “dying” or “fighting for life” in a Singapore hospital. Some even reported that he had named a successor. But as a lively Mugabe flew into Harare a few days later and emerged from the aircraft looking (in his own words) “as fit as fiddle,” the embarrassment was monumental within Western media circles.

When Zimbabwe won independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe was a darling of the West especially, the UK, which promptly awarded him an honorary knighthood. He made enchanting reconciliatory speeches and gestures at the end of the bitter liberation war from which Britain was able to reassure itself that Mugabe would be always be trusted to remain a “good boy,” and would never undertake any measures that would affect British interests in Zimbabwe where a tiny minority of white settlers controlled a greater portion of farmlands to the great disadvantage of the vast majority of black Zimbabweans. (This was despite Mugabe’s claims that at the Lancaster House discussions, they had agreed with the British that there would be “land reforms.”) And for the next ten years, while Mugabe undertook policies that ushered the country into prosperity in manufacturing, mining, agriculture etc., he was celebrated by the global media and feted in Western capitals from where glowing tributes always flooded his doorsteps.

It is widely believed that Mugabe’s land reforms which largely contributed to his present troubles with the Western world were not totally informed by patriotic motives – to let black Zimbabweans benefit from equitable redistribution of the lands. Those who hold this view point to the fact that the recovered lands ended up mostly in the hands of his cronies and fellow war veterans. The belief was that the land reform policy was a desperate political move to consolidate his hold on power at a time it appeared to be slipping from his hands. And this has proved a very costly decision for him and his country. Indeed, Zimbabwe has practically passed through the valley of the shadow of death.

And now that Mugabe’s relationship with the West has further worsened, he has begun to respond to new advances from eager suitors from the East. These have now come in with ideas and projects to stimulate growth in Zimbabwe. In February 2011, Zimbabwean authorities announced that the Chinese will over the next five years undertake in the country massive investments worth $10 billion dollars (£6.19bn). This sounds like a huge windfall, although more discerning minds would rather see what is happening as replacing the much despised British economic domination with that of the Chinese. Reports abound of how Zimbabweans who work with these Chinese are treated like slaves in their own country, while Mugabe is out there boasting that situations are a lot better in his country. Indeed. Although about two years ago, a Zambian friend showed me a 40 billion Zimbabwean dollar bill which he said could not buy a loaf of bread, what is clear is that Zimbabwe appears to have, at least, discovered the path to economic discovery. And with this, Mugabe and his ZANU-PF would even dig in further and remain in their trenches till the bitterest end.

Could it be then that these developments are causing the Western world to rethink its terms of engagement with Mugabe in order not to lose out to their competitors from the East in the mad scramble for Africa? Is this new thinking and attitude represented in the seemingly panic and confused gestures we saw in the UNWTO appointment and the EU’s moves to lift sanctions on Zimbabwe? Is Mugabe then having the last laugh? 

A reader in South Africa posted this comment on an online report about the UK and EU decision to lift sanctions on Mugabe: “The British Government does not act out of charity.
It is scrapping sanctions on Mugabe because Britain needs Mugabe more than Mugabe needs Britain. It may not be about the oil stupid! But it certainly is about the 40 other exploitable minerals sitting under Uncle Bob’s feet.
The 4000 or so white farmers that must be disgusted by this are mere “collateral damage” in the war for Zimbabwe’s resources.
Remember why Mugabe is hated, he gives land and minerals to the black poor. Highly inconsistent with the UK’s extractive multinational capitalist approach.”

Quite interesting, but what then happens to Mugabe’s horrible human rights record over which the Western world has raised ear-splitting cries? Across the world, many regard him as a mass murderer who should be tried in an open and unbiased court and made to pay severely for his crimes if found guilty?

Will he now go free just because the West was unable to extract its pound flesh from him or will he have his day in a Zimbabwean court some day, soon? Or will his eventual successful reconciliation with the West (though he appears to be meanwhile playing Andrew Marvell’s “His Coy Mistress”) simply obliterate those horrible records against him name? When will Africa develop the capacity to bring rogue African leaders to book on its own soil and for its own good? This should provoke a lot of serious thinking in Africa.

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Ejinkeonye is a Lagos-based Journalist, Writer and Anti-tobacco Advocate.

www.ugowrite.blogspot.com;

scruples2006@yahoo.com

Thereafter, Section 308 (3) lists such persons to include any person holding the office of President or his deputy, governors and deputy governors. Should the Senate Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution goes ahead with the recommendations forwarded to it by the sixth National Assembly, the immunity clause may be amended to accommodate to protect the President, governors and their deputies from only civil matters.

With nine recommendations presently before the Senator Ike Ekweremadu-led Constitution Review Committee (CRC), the suggestions on immunity clause states that the: “Immunity clause in the Constitution be amended in such a manner that it can only apply to civil matters and not on prima-facie criminal cases.”
The Deputy Senate President’s CRC commenced a fresh amendment of  the Constitution with an inaugural meeting two weeks ago.

Kickstarting the fresh amendment, the Senate has set a tentative date of July 2013 as the deadline for the passage of a new constitution for the country.
By June 2013, the Senate CRC estimates that the bill would have been passed in the chamber while setting February 2013 for the draft of the amendment bill.
Also next February, the Senate will meet with the state Houses of Assembly after which the bill on the Constitution review will be introduced in the Senate Chamber in March 2013.

An agenda of the Senate CRC, a copy of which was obtained by Daily Sun, showed that the committee will go on two retreats aimed at collating memoranda from the public as well as aggregating public views and input on issues slated for amendment.
A public hearing would hold in Abuja soon.
Under the 1999 constitution, the President, governors and their deputies can be investigated over corruption allegation, but the anti-graft agencies, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), cannot take action until they leave office

-Sun

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, Lagos, Nigeria, March 12, 2012-

But what appears to be seriously in doubt now is whether the National Universities Commission (NUC), could still be considered a reliable ally in this aspiration, either because it has run out of quality ideas, or it is being savagely influenced by some unwholesome sentiments within its ranks to, in fact, brazenly sabotage this grand expectation.  It is tragically surprising that we have had to sit passively and watch a handful of men and women that constitute the NUC churn out a cocktail of clearly misguided policies whose only benefit is their ability to effectively erect uncrossable mountains before otherwise brilliant students and promote devastating mediocrity in the university system, with far-reaching implications to the larger society. While several local and foreign observers are bemoaning the quality of the graduates our universities are turning out these days, the NUC is busy compounding the problem by formulating policies that can only further devalue the degrees awarded in Nigeria. 

I wish to examine one of the most offensive and pernicious of these policies, and I would like to begin with an illustration.  A young girl who chose English Studies as a course of study sat for the last Unified Tertiary  Matriculations Examinations (UTME), and passed very well. She went to her university of choice, sat for the Post-UTME tests and performed brilliantly and was offered admission by the university. But when she packed her bags and went to the university to register in order to commence her programme, she met a brick wall. Even though that university had stated in the JAMB brochure that it required a pass in Mathematics to admit students to study English, she was now told at the departmental office that only a credit in Mathematics will qualify her for an admission. Okay, she would be considered if she had a credit in a science subject.  That is what the almighty NUC had decreed. And so, despite her marvelous performance in English, Literature and other arts subjects, she is at home now, while those who managed to merely crawl above the pass mark in English but had a credit in Mathematics are there now studying English! And if she is unable to get the Mathematics eventually or her parents do not have the resources to take her to a university outside Nigeria whose curricula was drawn up by sane and progressive minds, that’s another great journalist, writer, artist, scholar, researcher, teacher, etc., brutally frustrated out of university education and consigned to the roadside by the NUC and its backers. Needless to add that many other brilliant youths like this girl will suffer the same fate in the various departments of Theatre Arts, Foreign Languages, History, Linguistics, etc., and the faculties of law across the nation just because of this outlandish condition placed before them by the NUC.

Now, are we merely interested in just admitting all manner of students into the universities and giving them degrees after a number of years or do we have the future in mind? Who should be encouraged to study English, the person who is very good in the subject, or the person who manages to obtain a credit pass in it but does well in Mathematics? We know very well that it is only in very few cases that we have people who are very good in Mathematics and the sciences also excelling in English and other arts subjects. We are already complaining that the there are graduates of English and other arts subjects whose written and spoken English are so horrible that one feels very sad reading them.

Newspaper editors can readily tell you the amount of work they do on reports sent in by reporters these days to make them readable. It is no longer shocking to go to even a university and see a secular issued by a high ranking university staff riddled with unpardonable grammatical errors. Some of the young men and women graduating from the Law School these days write and speak semi-literate English. Instead of the fellows at the NUC to help in combating this malaise by encouraging square pegs to fit into square holes, they are, for self-serving reasons, formulating outlandish policies, usually wrapped with attractive covers, to further compound the problem. And if they are allowed to continue having their way, Nigeria may face the embarrassing situation of having judges in future writing court judgments in unreadable English, or law reports appearing in substandard grammar.

And as today’s reporters graduate to tomorrow’s editors, one can only dread to imagine the kind of language that would convey the news, editorials and feature articles in Nigerian newspapers, or whether even literary works from Nigeria will still be intelligible to properly educated people. In as much as we want to encourage the study of Science in this country for very good reasons which we need repeat here (and there are many candidates flooding the faculties of Sciences annually), we must not use that as an excuse to frustrate the emergence of Nigeria’s future men of letters! 

Now this policy is already creating terrible problems in secondary schools, and I wonder how many people are taking note.  I never really knew the extent of the harm already done until recently, when a friend and I visited his son’s school.  My friend was given his son’s result sheet and even though his son had taken the first position in his class, my friend was a very sad man. Why? The poor boy had FAILED. It was boldly written in his result sheet. And the reason is that despite the fact he had scored very high marks in the other subjects which had earned him the first position in his class, he had failed Mathematics by just a few marks. And so, because of that, he had FAILED the examination for that term!  Wonderful!

Now, somebody should please just tell me what on earth this kind of totally bankrupt and senseless policy is meant to achieve? In fact, I was so moved  that  I had to go and confront the principal of the school, and it was then I learnt that almost every school now in Nigeria is operating this policy as a fallout to the NUC policy on English and Mathematics.  Now, it is enough that Mathematics remains a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools, but  to pronounce that  a child had failed a terminal examination merely because he did not do well in Mathematics does grave damage to the psychology of such a child. Assuming the will of the child to continue in school is sapped in the process by such a devastating verdict? Now, time has come for us to agree that we cannot all be experts in numbers, and that it amounts to inflicting grave damage on both the psychology of our youths and the society each time the NUC callously denies a child university education simply because such a child was created to be another Wole Soyinka instead of a Chike Obi! That is why we have various fields of study to cater for individual peculiarities and endowments. So, the NUC must be called to order and stopped from elevating what is clearly a misplaced passion to a destructive superstition. Indeed, I would be glad if anyone can come out to tell me how much Mathematics had contributed to earn Wole Soyinka a Nobel Prize?

What one finds very annoying is that some of the fellows at the NUC and their cousins at the various Faculties and Departments churning out these obnoxious regulations would have ended their careers as roadside traders or artisans if such policies were operational when they themselves were admitted for degree programmes several years ago. I am also reminded that why Nigerian rulers have till now showed no interest in this totally backward policy is because their children are all studying abroad where such needless inhibitions are non-existent. That is really sad. Nothing kills a country like acute selfishness in its leaders.

But, what is all this fetish about Mathematics, by the way? A school principal told me the other day that English and Maths constitute the core and the foundation of all branches of learning, and that once a child excelled in both subjects in secondary school, such a child would be adequately equipped to capture a degree in any discipline any day. Interesting argument, isn’t it? So, why don’t we take it a step further by immediately collapsing the dwarf wall between Arts and Sciences and then start compelling every child to take combined honours in, say, Physics and English, or Pharmacy and Theatre Arts, or even Mechanical Engineering and French,  and so on?

I have also heard that too many candidates are applying for the few spaces available in our universities, and so this policy was put in place to significantly scale down the number of applicants. If at all this is true, then it is very unfortunate. If one million people, for instance, are applying to the read law or English, and the Department or faculty can only admit 300 students, the most sensible way to get the best qualified is to offer admission to the candidates who had performed better than others in the relevant subjects and not the irrelevant subjects! The same thing should also apply in reverse to those seeking admission to the Faculties of Engineering or Medical Sciences. I will be alarmed if these faculties deny admission to somebody who had excellent grades in the core sciences simply because he had a pass in English, but offer admission to the person who managed to obtain credits in the core sciences but had a distinction in English. Then we are preparing the ground for multiple, enduring disasters in this country which the NUC must be held solely responsible.

It is possible that the ego of the nation’s “Mathematicians”, especially, within the ranks of the NUC and their friends, may have been overplayed here. Why the premium place given to English at the expense of Mathematics in the university admission process when both of them are compulsory subjects in the secondary and primary schools?, they may have reasoned. Well, the Federal Government must urgently save the future of this country from the destructive ego of a few men and women. English (for now) is the nation’s language of communication, and that is the only reason we insist that people pass it so that when they are in the classroom, they can at least understand their teacher. That is also the reason foreign universities (in English-speaking countries) insist on candidates obtaining good grades in TOEFL, before offering anyone admission. But what is the argument for Mathematics? Somebody should please tell me.

Indeed, it is difficult not to also suspect that some clearly self-serving reasons are motivating this pernicious policy. In fact, the whole thing smells and tastes like a very clever stratagem for creating a very large market for the countless “Mathematics Made Easy” pamphlets which have flooded our markets. And one would not require a soothsayer to suggest that the advocates of this policy and their cronies may be among the happiest beneficiaries.

The Federal Government must put a halt to this madness and restore sanity to the system by throwing this obnoxious policy into the nearest refuse dump. May be, too, the NUC is fast outgrowing its usefulness. Time may have arrived for its powers to be significantly abridged. Some might even be thinking that it should even be scrapped. Why not? I don’t mind the universities maintaining autonomous existence and formulating their individual admission policies without an NUC breathing down their necks. 

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www.ugowrite.blogspot.com

scruples2006@yahoo.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, Lagos, Nigeria – Jan. 29, 2012

But I must hasten to add that I was not part of the celebratory din that greeted Okonjo-Iweala’s first coming in 2003. Even when Obasanjo, characteristically, introduced high drama to the already noisy scene by electing to pay her salaries in US dollars instead of naira, as a reward for her “great sacrifice” and anticipated unprecedented quality service to the country, some of us were still not impressed.  I had repeatedly urged Nigerians in my newspaper column at that time to moderate their optimism, wondering when the World Bank became so popular in this part of the world that association with it instantly earned one the distinction of possessing the vision, workable ideas and capacity to guide the Nigerian economy out of the woods.  It was shocking that we were actually embarrassing the World Bank by forcing on it and then applauding it for some capacities and goals it neither seemed to possess nor even sought to achieve by conveniently forgetting that this same body had never even attempted to shed its hard-earned reputation as a soulless institution whose prescriptions to developing countries like Nigeria have mostly compounded their economic woes and multiplied miseries among their citizens. Largely viewed as lacking in human face, and often treating the citizens of the affected countries as mere disembodied statistical figures, their “expert” solutions mostly end up distinguishing themselves as great boulders hanging on the necks of countries battling to swim out of the angry deep. 

I must admit, however, that it was most unfair to expect from Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala a creative approach to policy formulation or any new ideas about economic recovery except the same stale, less-than helpful “remedies” the IMF/World Bank had been recommending to developing countries for ages.  She would never dare to deviate from the “approved” script. And so, once she got to her desk as Obasanjo’s Finance Minister and head of the much vaunted Economic Team in 2003, the first policy statement she unleashed was that in a country of teeming unemployed population, massive retrenchment exercise should immediately be undertaken in the Civil Service. That was when she introduced to the national lexicon two innocent-looking but actually spine-chilling compound words, namely, “down-sizing” and “right-sizing” in the Civil Service. At that time, the Federal Service employed only about 200, 000 Nigerians, but as most Nigerians knew, what they took home as salaries would pale to insignificance when compared with the monumental amount squandered to maintain Obasanjo’s battalion of aides, many of whom were saddled with overlapping functions.  But that hardly mattered at that time, since the target always was the long-suffering masses.

The script Okonjo-Iweala was reciting was, however, not new. It had the familiar scent of an IMF conditionality, smuggled through the back door by a licensed agent of the Bretton Woods Institutions, who had taken advantage of the abject naivety of the country’s leadership which had allowed itself to be always overwhelmed by its undue fascination with anything from abroad. And with irresistible vigour, charm, motherly voice and mien and innocent-looking and please-trust-me-I-mean-well face (which have also been deftly deployed since her second coming to make a strong case for the inevitability of the removal of the “subsidy” on fuel), Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala presented the mass retrenchment exercise as our sole hope of saving our economy from collapse, adding pleasantly her now familiar slogan that the hardship it would unleash would only be temporary. And she chose the most troublous and painful period to seek to unleash this policy, namely, the same period her good friend, the then FCT Minister, Mr. Nasir el-Rufai, was rendering many families and peoples homeless in Abuja by wantonly demolishing their houses. Imagine a retrenched husband and wife and their starving, out of school children suddenly having no place to call a home.  Should it then shock anyone that the “fuel subsidy” was brazenly removed at a time the country was in deep mourning and gripped with benumbing fear because of the wanton killings of innocent Nigerians flourishing in some parts of the country, indeed, just few days after the Christmas Day massacre at a Catholic Church at Madalla, Niger State, which attracted global grief and condemnations. Also, many Nigerians who had traveled for Christmas were trapped in distant towns and villages due to the sudden hike in transport fares as result of the new fuel price, with some having no money again to even sustain themselves where they were,  let alone return to their stations.

It does seem that Okonjo-Iweala tends to overstretch the reach of her endowments and appeal, so much so that she fails to notice when she has stopped making sense and so lost her audience.  For instance, as she brazenly presented before audiences abroad the arrest, “trial” and “imprisonment” of the then “Governor-General” DSP Alamieyeseigha (of Bayelsa State) as solid evidence that the Obasanjo regime was conscientiously fighting corruption, I kept wondering whether she actually believed what her mouth was uttering. I also found some of her explanations for the continued deterioration of the economy under her “expert” watch at that time very laughable. In fact, given the widespread reputation of the regime she served in for gross fiscal indiscipline (a regime that neither implemented budgets nor showed noticeable hint of distaste for official corruption) some people were certain that the World Bank would no longer touch her with a twenty foot pole. But those who held this view had grossly underestimated Okonjo-Iweala’s deep understanding of the dynamics of World/IMF politics. Before her tenure expired, she got President Obasanjo to sign away billions of dollars belonging to the Nigerian people (a windfall that had accrued to Nigeria at a time of sudden rise in crude oil prices) to the London and Paris Clubs of creditors as “Debt Relief,” to settle what is still regarded by many informed Nigerians as very questionable debts. Her detractors had reasoned that with such a generous gesture extended to entrenched Western interests which the World Bank is a key custodian, no one ought to be surprised that the World Bank never bothered again to wonder how she was able to feel very comfortable as finance minister and head of the economic management team in a regime largely viewed as a revolting pond of corruption.  She was instead re-absorbed and given a higher responsibility.  

My problem really was whether giving way that money was the best decision any patriotic finance minister and economic manager could have come up with at that time when a country like America was owing trillions of dollars and still holding its heads high? Talk of getting your priorities right, putting your money where your mouth is! Now, of what benefit was that very controversial transaction, done with indecent haste, and in utter disdain for the feelings of many Nigerians, to the long-suffering masses? Indeed, no country gets such a windfall every season, and so it amounted to insufferable prodigality to just throw it away like that. Given the vast oil and gas resources available in the Niger Delta, the thinking in many informed quarters was that such an unexpected wealth that came to us at that time should have been deployed to establish petro-chemical and ancillary industries in the region to power not just the Nigerian economy but that of the entire West African region, to create more wealth, more jobs, abundant prosperity and some comfort for the majority.  But in the face Okonjo-Iweala’s desperation to give away the money (which then inspired serious speculations that she was motivated by some generous commissions coming to her for successfully negotiating the deal), and Obasanjo’s eagerness to always please Western institutions and powers, our position was gallantly defeated. As the price of crude oil reached unprecedented heights and more billions of dollars poured into the country’s coffers, government assured us that since we had been freed from the “debt burden” that the generous earnings still accruing to us would be deployed to undertake infrastructural development. Now, my dear Madam Finance Minister, could you please show us the infrastructure financed with that “wind fall” so we can now believe you that the proceeds realized from the removal of the “oil subsidy” will not as well simply disappear into some dark holes?

Okonjo-Iweala was the major force behind the famous “Reforms” which almost became the second name of the Obasanjo regime. We all were witnesses to how the reforms created untold pain, devalued lives, enriched only a few, and added little or nothing to national development. All we heard was that the excruciating hardship inflicted by the “reforms” would be brief (as we have also been told in relation to the removal of the “oil subsidy”), after which a glorious period of abundance and comfort would follow. But until Obasanjo exhausted his eight years in power and unsuccessfully launched a Third Term Project to perpetuate himself in power, what Nigerians endured was only pain and more hardship, despite the fact that the economy was under the “expert” management of a World Bank economic guru. If there were attempts to diversify the economy and enlarge our sources of revenue by reviving, at least, one proven lucrative but neglected sector, namely, agriculture, which had ably sustained Nigeria’s pre-oil boom economy, such plans either died in the womb or failed woefully like all poorly thought-out policies and half-hearted efforts. Our over-dependence on oil still remained our enduring nightmare, neither bringing us any nearer to the quality of life existing in other oil-producing nations nor drying up to force us out of our chronically lazy, rent-seeking economic system, so we could roll up our sleeves and really work hard to bring back the pleasant cocoa, palm, cotton and rubber plantations, raise again the groundnut pyramids, plant cassava and rice farms in very large quantities with modern implements and put in place reliable storage facilities. With these undertaken in sufficient quantities to serve our local and export needs, growth and development would easily be stimulated. Well, needless to remind us that at a time, even Obasanjo got tired of Okonjo-Iweala’s “expert” services and removed her as finance minister, and later as head of the Economic Team.  Some said she felt slighted. The rest, as they say, is history.

And now, Okonjo-Iweala is back. Although, she is yet to demonstrate that she is in possession of any new ideas, she is talking and walking with even greater confidence, gusto, and, in fact, messianic air, surprised, perhaps, and greatly buoyed by her delicious discovery that despite the dismal testimonial of her first coming, a Nigerian president could still have such confidence and unimaginable hope in her abilities.  And now she has reached into the World Bank Manual for developing countries and what Nigerians found in their hands on New Year Day was an old, familiar live-snake called “removal of subsidy on petrol” whose operational name is “fuel price hike”. 

Although Labour has called off the nation-wide strike embarked upon by an enraged populace to protest the very unpopular hike on the price of fuel from N65 to N141, after the Federal Government had “unilaterally” fixed the rate at N97 per litre, the issues thrown up by that very unfortunate action are still itching for attention. Indeed, no matter the real or imagined merits of the “fuel subsidy” removal, the Federal Government must be willing to admit that the timing of the removal is insensitive and irresponsible.  Why the indecent haste? Why not first conscientiously undertake the much more pressing task of halting the barbaric terminations of precious lives in some Northern states, which was causing untold grief, pain and fear in the land? Did the president and his finance minister see the horrible pictures of the charred victims of the Christmas Day bombing? If they were touched like the rest of us, they would not have compounded the anxiety, trepidation and despair in the land by unleashing such a punitive policy a few days after that act of extreme savagery. By that singular action, this regime lost the chance of being regarded as compassionate and considerate. No matter how lofty our dreams for the nation might be, we must resist the temptation of appearing disdainful of the feelings of the people.

Now let’s briefly look at the issues involved, which have in no way been swept aside by the Federal Government’s N97 “concession,” which, we must admit is still very high. In 2009, Labour reportedly agreed with the Federal Government that the removal of the so-called subsidy on fuel can only be implemented after the existing refineries had been fixed and new are ones built and stable power supply achieved in the country. Why did government violate this agreement? The issue of fixing the refineries to ensure sufficient local production of petroleum products makes a lot of sense. When that occurs, and fuel is refined locally, the cost of the Premium Motor Spirits (PMS) would be affordable to many and whatever government would chose to claim it is paying as subsidy can easily be examined, verified and tackled. The Guardian editorial of January 10, 2012 is very instructive. In it, the paper argued that since government has admitted that local refineries “are working at 38.2 per cent efficiency…,” according several oil experts, including a former Petroleum Minister, “the residual of the non-export crude would attract shipping and refining cost only. Therefore, on the basis of these factors alone, the cost of fuel per litre ought to be N34.03 and by implication, at N65 per litre, Nigerians were already subsidizing the government by N30.97.”   

It is not enough to announce that government “spent” N1.3 trillion on subsidy in just one year. We need to see the details of the expenses, and interestingly the House probe on the subsidy misadventure has opened a can of worms, and everyone is watching to see what would happen to those who had starred in the massive outrageous and insufferably reckless filthy business. If about N1.8 trillion was spent on this same subsidy between 2006 and 2008 – more than two years, how then can this regime justify the spending of N1.3 trillion under one year? It is left for government to prove that Nigerians are not merely subsidizing the corruption and inefficiency within its ranks. Government must always exist to serve the interest of the majority not that of a few privileged citizens. Indeed, it is difficult to believe that the very harsh effect of this fuel price hike on the citizenry was seriously considered before it was implemented. This is a country where social amenities are almost non-existent. People generate their own energy at home and business places and they depend on fuel to do so.  Even with the price of fuel fixed at N97 per litre, the cost of doing business in Nigeria will still go higher, and goods and services will rise above the reach of about 90% of Nigerians whom credible research efforts have already established as living below the poverty level.  Given the very dismal power supply in the country, and the over dependent on fuel it has created, there is no doubt that several more businesses may fold up, unable to cope any more under the very harsh economic climate in Nigeria; and many may trim down their staff strength (thereby, further compounding the already terrible unemployment problem), and companies that can afford it may relocate to more  business-friendly neighbours, like Ghana and others, where they would not need to run their businesses on generators 24 hours daily.

There is no basis for government’s wasteful campaign that without the “subsidy” money it would not be able to undertake capital projects. But like most people are already aware, this is less-than true. This government exports 2.4 million barrels of a crude oil a day. “At the current rate of $110 per barrel,” as observed by Femi Falana recently, “that will give you $2.6billion a day.” Now, when you multiply that by 365 days that make up a year, you will be shocked at the earnings coming into government coffers. Again, how much even will come to the Federal Government from the subsidy money since the fund will be shared between it, the states and local governments? About N400 billion if it got the N1.3 trillion it was asking for. So, without this, the Nigerian economy would collapse? If government were that poor, where then does its officials get the billions they squander daily before our very eyes?

Now, the strike is over, but fierce-looking soldiers are all over the place with tanks and fearful weapons as if the country is at war. One wished the unabated gruesome killings of innocent Nigerians in some states of the federation could attract even half of this kind of response. And as for Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala, although she could not get her full pound of flesh this time, and may ask for more in the shortest possible time, the big loser in this whole matter is President Jonathan who has been misadvised into presenting a less-than edifying picture of himself to Nigerians, which may come to haunt him in the near future.  No reasonable ruler goes out of his way to court the kind of deep disaffection and very fierce, raging emotions one has seen Nigerians freely expressing these days just because he wishes to be seen as capable of taking tough decisions. And as Okonjo-Iweala’s friends congratulate her on her partial victory over long-suffering Nigerians, she ought to be told that she is yet to do anything to allay the growing fears that her second coming might be worse than her first. Indeed, it remains to be seen whether for her there will ever be a third coming, or even whether her second coming will run its full course.

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www.ugowrite.blogspot.com

scruples2006@yahoo.com

By Ugo chukwu Ejinkeonye, Lagos, Nigeria – May 21, 2011 -

“I believe we can return America to hope and opportunity, to full employment, to real security, to an American energy programme, to a balanced budget… We owe it to our children, our grandchildren, our country and frankly to ourselves.  So let’s get together, look reality in the face, tell the truth, make the tough choices and get the job done”, Gingrich said in the video.

Almost twelve years after he resigned as Speaker and his membership of Congress that Friday afternoon early in November 1999 following the dismal performance of his party in midterm elections which was largely blamed on him, Mr. Gingrich has kept himself away from electoral contests. He has, however, maintained an appreciable visibility by writing books, making speeches, producing films, launching vicious (but often uncoordinated) attacks on Democrats through his numerous television appearances and influencing policy formulations for the conservatives.

In the spring of 2008, for instance, he deployed the combined resources of the internet, cheerleaders and a petition to Congress backed with over a million signatures to push forward his advocacy for increased domestic oil production. His slogan: “Drill here. Drill now. Pay less!” helped popularize his campaign for increased domestic drilling, although, this has now come to haunt his presidential run given a 2008 pro-environment ad he did with Nancy Pelosi for Al Gore’s NGO, Alliance for Climate Protection, calling for clean energy solutions and appearing to urge the lawmakers (by shooting the ad outside the Capitol) to deploy serious efforts to contain global warming, a theme that received further mention in the 2007 book he co-authored, A Contract With the Earth.  

But last Wednesday, Gingrich returned with a lot of flourish, media excitement and overwhelming public scrutiny. There is no doubt that among the Republican presidential hopefuls, he, perhaps, enjoys the widest name-recognition in both the party and across the United States. A prolific author, historian and accomplished professor, Gingrich received his PhD in Modern European History from Tulane University, New Orleans, in 1971, and has taught history at both the University of West Georgia and Kennesaw State University. His book, Real Change, spent quite a number of weeks on the New York Times Best Seller Series.

Although the high point of Gingrich’s presidential run is his new-found belief in family values evidenced by the stability, love and faithfulness he claims have distinguished his third marriage to Callista Bisek these past eleven years, (also, his 2007 book, Rediscovering God In America, was   hailed by Liberty University as a sign of his resolve to call “America back to our Christian heritage”), Gingrich will need more than suspicious claims and books to convince voters that he is still believable and that the very serious moral problems which sank him very low in the estimation of several Americans over a decade ago should now be confined to the dustbin of history. And his attempts so far to address these yawning concerns have been, sadly, less than impressive. An outright contrition and sincere apology would have been the best way to start, but for his unduly bloated ego.   

The huge irony of what Gingrich’s critics refer to as his life of hypocrisy is that while he led one of the most aggressive political battles in America to bring President Bill Clinton down for engaging in extra-marital affair and lying about it, he was himself, during that same period, deeply involved in a serious adulterous relationship!

Mr. Gingrich is now in his third marriage. But while married to Wife No1, he cheated on her with would-be Wife No2, and while Wife No1 was still in hospital after a very excruciating surgery for uterine cancer, he reportedly went to her sick bed to present her with divorce papers. After successfully dumping Wife No1, he married Wife No 2, and for six years while still married to Wife No2 (and fighting Bill Clinton for marital infidelity and unduly overheating America in the process), he was having affairs with Miss. Callista Bisek, a Congressional aide, who is now Wife No3. In 1999, Wife No2 was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and soon after, he divorced her and married Ms. Bisek with whom he is now out there emphasizing family values and prefixing all his comments with “Callista and I” to prove the love and loyalty flourishing between them.

Last March, Chris Wallace pointedly asked Gingrich during an appearance on “Fox News On Sunday”: “Did you ever think to yourself [when he was championing Clinton’s impeachment because of marital unfaithfulness]: ‘I’m living in a really glass house.   Maybe I shouldn’t be throwing stones?’ ”

To this Gingrich answered: “No, I thought to myself if I cannot do what I have to do as a public leader, I would have resigned. Now, look, I think you have to look at whether or not people have to be perfect in order to be leaders. I don’t think I’m perfect. I admitted I had problems. I admitted that I sought forgiveness.”  

I am sure you are still trying to grasp what exactly he intended to convey by that answer, although he also added that he fought Clinton for lying under oath, and not necessarily the act of infidelity he had committed.

Questioned again on the same matter on Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) that same March, Gingrich made his now famous claim that he cheated on his wives because of his exceptional passion for America!

Here him: “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.” This response which attracted countless screaming headlines across America and derisory comments from multitudes of readers, makes one wonder whether it was indeed Gingrich, the media-crowned great thinker that actually uttered it.

This, no doubt, will continue to haunt him throughout this race, and may even crash his presidential ambition, because it speaks volumes about the capacity of Gingrich to be truthful and plain, not just on these unflattering personal issues. Now, as US president, Mr. Gingrich would be expected to be more passionate about America and work even harder to improve her lot; so, does it then mean that Americans will yet witness more confessions and half-hearted apologies?

If Gingrich wins the GOP primaries, President Barack Obama would find him a very formidable opponent on debates about policies and dynamics of government business. There is no doubt about that. Great emphasis is often made in the American media about Gingrich’s intellectual capacity and vast knowledge, and he, too, appears to have allowed such undue stress on his abilities to exaggerate his own rating of himself. And so, his critics tend to identify a tinge of arrogance in him and an impression that his audience, sometimes, is merely some secondary school kids he is taking some pains to educate, even when he is not saying anything particularly profound or unfamiliar.

Yet, his life is riddled with memorable history of great gaffes and contradictions. But he is probably always too blinded by his exaggerated view of himself to realize when he has made a really embarrassing mistake, and to find the right words to make amends.  Till now, he is yet to see clearly the enormity of the contradictions betrayed by his popular ad for Al Gore’s climate change group and his equally popular advocacy for aggressive domestic drilling of oil (which is widely and regularly blamed for climate change), which won him the acclaim of fellow conservatives.

Marc Morano, former aide to Sen. James Inhofe (R.Okla.), for instance, is demanding an apology from Mr. Gingrich for the ad he did with Pelosi. “It’s almost like he can’t admit he made a mistake. He needs to say it was a brain fart, at the very least,” he told FoxNews.com  recently. Predicting that this would certainly hurt Gingrich in the primaries, Morano regretted that “Newt Gingrich is arrogant enough to believe that he doesn’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else.  I can’t think of any Republican who hasn’t addressed this in a way that is satisfactory to the Republican base.” 

But Gingrich’s aides are saying their principal is yet to see any contradictions in his stance. “Newt does not apologize for trying to persuade his ideological opponents that his conservative solutions are the best solutions,” his spokesman, Rick Tyler, said recently. “His attempt to work with Speaker Pelosi is another testament to Gingrich’s willingness to debate his conservative solutions with liberals, in this case Pelosi. As it turned out, Pelosi … and Gingrich still disagree about how to best protect the environment. But Gingrich will never shy away from debating those on the left on issues like the environment, education and healthcare that they think they own.”

How this answer resolves the big question about Gingrich’s ideological inconsistency is, perhaps, clear to only him and his aides. In the 2008 ad Gingrich was shown sitting very close to Pelosi outside the U.S. Capitol. Then their dialogue went this way: 

“We don’t always see eye to eye, do we Newt?” said Pelosi. 

“No, but we do agree our country must take action to address climate change,” replied Gingrich.

And yet during an appearance on Fox News after his formal declaration of interest in the presidential race, Gingrich restated emphatically: “I would reverse Obama’s entire pattern of being anti-American energy. I would start by saying drill here. Drill now. Pay less.”

 That’s vintage Newt!  Never afraid to change his positions suddenly while insisting that he is still where he was. Only recently, he publicly opposed President Obama’s decision intervene in Libya, but before Americans could fully swallow that, Gingrich was out there again fully supporting it. Is he very impulsive, always eager to intervene before fully grasping the issues involved? How this casts him as a dependable commander-in-chief American’s would like to elect is what would certainly engage many   Republicans in the days ahead.

 Over the years, Gingrich’s intolerance of opposing views has become legendary, and this has made him a highly divisive character. There is also a strong feeling that he unduly personalized his opposition to Clinton, and anyone that reads Hillary Clinton’s book, Living History, will wonder whether Gingrich is capable of the slightest hint of the mercy he said recently he had sought from God for his ugly personal history.

A popular incident in the Clinton-Gingrich saga comes to mind. After the American delegation returned from the November 6, 1995, burial of Yitzhak Rabin, Newt Gingrich complained that Clinton had snubbed him on Air Force One during the long flight back from Jerusalem. He also did not like the fact that he had to “get off the plane by the back ramp,” with some other guests at Andrews Air Force Base. “You wonder where is their sense of manners? Where is their sense of courtesy?” he queried during a breakfast meeting with reporters on November 15, 1995. This was the time a showdown over issues on the budget between the presidency and the Gingrich-led House had led to a government shutdown. Now Gingrich was probably showing that his grievances went beyond the issues of disagreement over the budget, prompting the New York Daily News to publish the next day a cartoon of him in diapers as “Cry-Cry-Baby.” But the White House, however, put a lie to Gingrich’s claims by releasing a picture of himself, Clinton and Bob Dole sitting in a conference room on Air Force One and seriously engaged in a deliberation. Newt had misfired again.

As Gingrich seeks to become America’s president, he should expect his views to be defeated by superior ones, and discourage his personal character traits from always interfering in his handling of public issues. His ability to convince the Republicans that he is able to do this will largely determine the outcome of his run. He needs to work hard to improve his acceptability, even though, there seems to be a growing impression that with his entry into the race, the GOPs seem to have been faced with a fait accompli. Their choices are limited. Some commentators are already saying: Gingrich may not be the best the Republicans can offer for now, but if not him, then who?

Again, given his decision to give his wife a central role in his campaign as a character witness to his new image as a good family man and one who has lately “found” God, it must occur to him that Americans are also eager to hear his wife’s side of the story of his moral problems in which she played a prominent role, if she hopes to be a credible witness and eventually the first lady. Indeed, her continued refusal to speak on those issues might severely discredit her testimonies, hurt her husband’s ambition and inspire serious doubts about the genuineness of the “New Gingrich” they are seeking to sell to America.

And given the image he came away with after his epic political battle with Clinton, Gingrich must hasten to demonstrate convincingly that he is not merely some dry-as-dust, take-no-prisoner politician, ready to devour and swallow. He should not forget in a hurry that it was the disenchantment of Americans over the vicious nature of his very bitter opposition against Clinton that led to his downfall a decade ago, and severely polarized the conservatives. And given that he has not won any election outside his district in Georgia (not even a state-wide vote), he should not underestimate the current challenge but hasten to realize that his bid for the presidency would surely require a more mature approach, greater respect and accommodation of others and their views, extra humility and plainness. 

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www.Ugowrite.Blogspot.Com

scruples2006@yahoo.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, Lagos, Nigeria – April 17, 2011 -

Or, put another way: the overly simplistic interpretation most of our governors have given their jobs has so much reduced it to such a very unchallenging assignment that it no longer requires any special preparations or endowments to execute; in fact, any fellow can just walk in there and encumber the ground for another four years, and that would be all.

But my hope is that those who will emerge as governors through Saturday’s election will hasten to realize that a growing number of Nigerians are beginning to develop a highly critical taste and greater degree of discrimination in their assessment of governance, and have indeed lost significant patience for the old, perfunctory and uncreative way of doing things.

Every indication shows that more and more Nigerians are no longer content to merely watch their rulers grope and wallow in confusion and directionlessness in the face of humongous problems requiring urgent intervention, and indeed may go a step further with proactive actions to demand accountability from them.

This realisation ought to motivate our new governors to hasten to excuse themselves from any post-election bacchanals and devote quality time to fully appreciate the gravity of the very high office they are about to occupy and the high cost this time around of dismal outing.    

Now, let’s look at what it presently means to be a governor in Nigeria. Indeed, shorn of all the glamour, pomp and noisy convoys, what can we really say is the difference between what housewives do for their families and what State Governors do in Nigeria? The answer, if you ask me, should be obvious, but I am very reluctant, for a very obvious reason, to answer it with just one word: None!

Certainly, I do not want to start this beautiful morning with placard-wielding housewives thronging the front of my office, protesting the grave insult of an unfair comparison. 

And so, I will be fair. But, first, let’s look at one clear similarity: A husband labours, earns some money, invites his wife to one corner of their house, and gives her the “monthly allocation” for the family upkeep. Nigeria also takes its God-given oil, markets it, and then State Governors are invited to Abuja, to cart away their own “monthly allocations” for the upkeep of their respective States. So, is there any difference?

Yes, I think there still is. At least, we now have wives who are no longer comfortable with being just housewives but now go out to work hard to help diversify the sources of revenue for their families, unlike many Governors whose only understanding of governance is, like housewives of old, to sit still and eagerly await the monthly allocation from the Federation Account, a fraction of which they spend to make some impressions here and there, and then call press conferences and buy spaces in national newspapers to showcase their “wonderful performances.” They do N1 work and advertise it with N1000!

It is really a great tragedy. Now, tell me: why should any Governor with any brains in his skull, and the slightest hint of self-esteem, expect me to clap for him for renovating (or even, in most cases, merely repainting) a few school buildings and filling a couple of potholes on some roads? Even if he builds new roads, new schools and hospitals, has he done anything extraordinary? Shouldn’t all those form part of his routine duty?  What special intelligence or endowment is required to do that?

By the way, what is he supposed to do with the billions he carts away from Abuja every month? Hide them in his wife’s bedroom, and then begin to use them to gallivant about town, to increase the number of his girlfriends and leisure spots?

Now, what extraordinary talent is required to pay salaries to workers (out of the money duly packaged and given to a full grown adult) or clean up a few streets? Even my small daughter in Primary School can do better than that! Please, let’s stop turning ourselves into objects of derision before sensible and civilized people out there.

Now, assuming oil was not flowing beneath us here, and so no monthly allocations or “excess crude earnings” to share in Abuja, what then would be the work of a Governor in a Federal State like Nigeria? Or, are we to take it that no one would have agreed to become a Governor if such a situation existed?

Whatever happened to great ideas and insights that inspire well thought-out policies for the creation of jobs, opportunities and wealth with which talented administrators are distinguished? Why has Nigeria reduced governance to mere routine assignments like provision of power, potable water, roads and exercise books for pupils? So, if I pay my children’s school fees or fuel my car, I should expect any person to applaud my “great achievements”, even though I sweat out the money, unlike the Governors that merely receive theirs without labouring for it? Do our so-called leaders ever bother to listen to the vision statements of their colleagues outside Nigeria?

Well, what more can I say? I was making these points the other day and somebody just looked me in the face and bellowed: You should be grateful that there are some Governors who are even willing to spend some bits of the money to fill potholes and repaint school buildings; what about those who don’t bother to do anything, though they also receive the money? What are you going to do about that? So, just praise those who agree to do something.

Can you beat that? Does anyone see what our country has become? Maybe, Nigeria would become better if the Governors are immediately replaced with housewives – even the uneducated, rustic ones. Indeed, most husbands have little or nothing to complain about how their wives manage the “monthly allocations” in their homes.

They return virtually everyday grateful that their homes are in good hands, and that virtually everything that ought to be done had been done. The housewives not only buy into their husbands’ visions and aspirations for the prosperity of the homes, they also generate their own ideas which any husband spurns to his own hurt, and would readily contribute their own lot to ensure the realisation of those ideas.

But what majority of our Governors do is to just sabotage our hopes and aspirations with their boundless greed and callousness. They could be likened to irresponsible housewives who alienate themselves from their husbands’ good dreams, and ensure they never come to fruition. Instead of investing the “monthly allocations” to move the home forward, irresponsible housewives stash them away to prosecute their selfish agendas. This is the situation in many States in Nigeria today.

It is sad that most Nigerians do not think too highly of their governors but regularly dismiss them as mostly wayward and underemployed; fellows that are incapable of thinking beyond how to secure their personal comforts and leisure.

I am not bothered that some people may laugh at my position today, but several of our Governors have failed us so much that I keep wondering if Nigeria’s political class is capable of ever producing more than very few committed, altruistic and visionary leaders with sound, workable ideas.

Some of them appear so blank and unprepared that one is left wondering whether they were just woken up one morning and told they had become Governors. One searches in vain for the slightest hint that many of these governors ever lose any sleep at all because of the enormous problems plaguing their States; men without the gravity of mind to appreciate the enormity and even sacredness of the high responsibility placed on their shoulders.

All these must change this time around. Our new governors should see the building of roads, provision of safe, clean water, electricity, quality hospitals and schools as mere routine duties, just like somebody waking up in the morning to brush his teeth.

From today, any governor that purchases some taxis and buses for public transportation or even tractors to motivate vibrant farming and goes on to buy newspaper pages to advertise them as “great achievements” must be compelled to pay the advert fees from his pocket! The intellectual bankruptcy and mediocrity that classifies such routine efforts as “great achievements” to be applauded should be hastily consigned to our inglorious past.

Governors should be thinking of how to grow the economy of their respective domains by judiciously husbanding the natural and human resources available to create wealth and jobs. They should hasten to identify the mineral deposits in their domains, create enabling environments and the right policies, and engage the relevant agencies, corporations and investors in constructive and beneficial deliberations to see how the deposits and opportunities can be exploited to drive the economy of their states to create prosperity, mass employment and better life for the people.

 We must do away with the old retrogressive style and adopt a more creative approach to governance for the good of all.

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www.ugowrite.blogspot.com

scruples2006@yahoo.com

 It was a most idiotic logic, but it worked like magic. Why? It was powered by that highly inflammable substance called Desperation. And so the mad-rush was flagged off. As one observes countless ladies locked in the mortal combat to out-expose each other, one can only be filled with unqualified disgust, pity and even anger. In this fierce battle, age does not even seem to matter any more. Spinsters (young and old), mothers (young and old), and even grandmothers are all trapped in the indecent exposure craze.  The way these women hop about in public spaces without any bit of shame, in skimpy skirts that barely cover their crotches, and blouses with necks cut low enough to rudely flaunt even sagging boobs mostly decorated with unsightly stretch-marks at everyone’s face, is just sickening, if one must say the truth.

 Why has the world suddenly gone berserk? I have heard such rubbish as today’s woman seeking to assert, reassert and fully realize herself; demonstrate that she is not manacled by any conventions, and prove that her body belongs to her, and so the right to decide which part to cover or expose remains hers, and all such bunkum. We have also heard ad nauseam the unintelligent lie that these ladies dress indecently to suit themselves, and not to attract the lustful attention of emotionally unstable men. Reasonings even more bizarre than these abound.  What one really finds very irritating is the often long-winded, convoluted, uninspiring, clearly unconvincing and overly infantile sentences usually stringed together by these women to rationalize what is otherwise a simple, straightforward case of desperation. There is a sudden surge of desperation for male attention, pure and simple. So, all concerns about decency, dignity and self-esteem can wait for now. The world has truly gone berserk!

But, sadly, this kind of bait, apart from over-advertising raw desperation, can only attract the wrong kind of men, with the most unwholesome intentions. No responsible man falls for very cheap stuff like that. Indeed, any man attracted to a woman because his baser instincts were awakened at the sight of the lady’s exposed delicate parts only goes after her to assuage his lust. Once that is done, he will simply dump her like some disused akra wrappers and move on.   I am sorry if this offends some really responsible ladies out there who may even be as disgusted as I am by all these, but it must be admitted that sometimes, it is difficult to really determine the real problem with women, or what exactly they want from men. One moment they seem to be proclaiming through their actions and appearances: Please, I am too available and too cheap! You can have all of me! Just for the asking! Then the next moment, they are on rooftops grumbling that men do not rate them highly, and do not accord them the respect they think they deserve.

Please, for goodness sake, what exactly are men expected to do in this circumstance when these women seem all too eager to prove that their only endowments worth showcasing are their bodies? Whatever happened to intelligence, exceptional talents, abilities, sterling virtues, self-esteem and sense of dignity with which women once easily earned the respect, awe and admiration of most men? Why should someone insist on being respected even when she, of her own accord, has gone all out to underline the unmistakable impression that she is no better than one of the cheap whores at some dingy spot in town?  Whether we would like to believe it or not, somebody’s appearance remains the first indication anyone requires to classify the person. A prostitute is known by her appearance and lewd, seductive gestures. She showcases her body to attract buyers because her body is for sale. So, my question to those who insist on being referred to as “responsible ladies” is: why showcase your ‘wares’ if they are not for sale?

Visit many offices today, and as you sit opposite the “responsible” lady attending to you, and she leans forward a bit to explain a matter on the document both of you are looking at, her whole chest, the pride of her entire womanhood, would be laid bare before you despite the so-called “corporate” outfit she is wearing. What on earth can we call that if not madness? Not too long ago, a friend went to a bank in Lagos, and was offered a seat by a merry, cheerful, flesh-advertising female employee. He turned down the gesture and offered instead to be attended to downstairs. When asked why, his reply was straight- forward: “I don’t sit with naked women!”  Now, how on earth can anybody distinguish, for instance, between a very “decent” “serious-minded” professional waiting for a taxi along the street after a hard day’s job and a prostitute standing beside her waiting for customers, when both of them are dressed alike? Truth is: there are parts of the human body regarded as “private.” These are not meant to be exposed to every eye that can see. Only women of easy virtue expose theirs, because they hawk them for cash. No one, therefore, can appear like a bird, fly like bird, and then take offence when she is called a bird. Is it that more and more women are becoming too unsure of themselves hence this mass resort to the unhealthy short-cut of indecent exposures? Even grandmothers have allowed themselves to be sucked into this disastrous craze before they could even find time to ponder the self-debasing phenomenon and why they should also star in it. 

 Indeed, desperation has so saturated the air that even those in stable marriages who should have no need for other men’s attention have almost all blindly jumped into the dirty, stinking and self-debasing ring without even stopping to ask themselves why. Tragic, isn’t it?

 Please, can a sane woman out there, please, explain to me what really is going on?

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www.Ugowrite.Blogspot.Com

scruples2006@yahoo.com

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, Lagos, Nigeria – Dec. 31, 2010

Dear Ugochukwu,

I thoroughly enjoyed myself reading the piece you published last week, captioned, “How I Became A Prominent Lady,” written by one of the  greatest and most patriotic daughters of our great nation, a highly placed and well-respected lady who, incidentally, is a very close associate, my very good friend and fellow distinguished member of the nation’s political and ruling elite. Even though you withheld her name (that was very thoughtful of you), I know her very well, and I can confidently tell you that she is a thoroughly groomed and well polished lady, totally above board, whose every action is motivated by an unfathomable sacrificial love for her country.

I am thoroughly overwhelmed by her disarming humility which made her to stoop so low to tell Nigerians without blushing the various ‘sacrifices’ and ‘prices’ she had to pay on her way to join us in the Ruling Class from where she believes she would be able to serve her fatherland very well.  And on this, I can testify that she has acquitted herself very well.

An example of her lack of vanity could be seen in the fact that despite our endless prodding and even harassment, she has bluntly refused purchase more than one house in London or another in the United States or even Dubai , even when some of us had offered to buy them for her. She is such a unique lady that naturally attracts kindness, and knows how to appreciate kind gestures too. She is well loved among us, because she mixes very well, is always very cheerful and vivacious, has an exceptionally generous heart; and that is why she is excelling with incredible speed.  Eternally loyal, she could have dumped the Chief (on whose back she rode to fame and prominence) for a long time now without any fear of repercussions since she now has many other even more powerful political heavyweights around her, but her heart of gold would not let her hurt even a fly.

As we talk now, the leaders of our great party in her geo-political zone have pencilled her down as the next deputy governor of her state, a move we at the national level have readily endorsed because of her profound integrity, moral soundness and our great trust in her ability to deliver with unrivalled speed. I was present recently when she launched her NGO to promote moral uprightness, honesty and hard work in youths. She is equally a very regular face at youth forums and ethical revival conferences where she draws from her wealth of experience and exceptional personal example to admonish her hearers on the dangers of cheating, waywardness and corner-cutting. She is indeed a role model, and it is good that many people, especially the young people now look up to her for direction and mentoring.

Please, permit me to follow her excellent example and also share my own success story before another lady beats me to it again, because, we have among  us many other successful ladies, whose ‘prices’ and ‘sacrifices’  on their way to the top would even greatly diminish my friend’s own. While at the University, which, by the way, I had entered with results obtained through very fraudulent means, academic work held no attraction for me.

I wanted to make money fast and live big. As I saw on television and newspapers these mostly thirty-something olds and early or mid-forty emergency billionaires who I was so certain I was more intelligent and more hardworking than, brazenly seizing the limelight, flaunting their opulence and throwing their weight about in a way that seemed to ask the poor to simply get lost, murderous thoughts welled up in me against anyone trying to disturb me with foolish questions about why I skipped classes or shunned my books.

Soon, I had to leave campus in search of something meaningful to do with my life before others left me behind in the lonely pit of grinding poverty. Fortunately, one day, a friend told me at the joint where we usually congregated to smoke weeds that an aide to a top and very powerful political figure was hiring ‘strongmen’ in preparation for the forthcoming elections.

I immediately jumped at the offer. That singular move was to usher me into an exciting, easy life of limitless opportunities and cheap pleasures that I never imagined could just suddenly come my way. My ‘oga’ later came to know me more closely and to appreciate my special abilities and talents. I had a perfect understanding of my job, and never failed to deliver. I tried hard to suppress the fire of greed raging in me, and accounted for every kobo given to me. Although I was such a ruthless person, I was not foolish and so knew quite well that if I must attain my targeted height in politics, I must school myself to keep my greed in serious check.

Fortunately, I always delivered on all fronts with efficiency and precision, and equally acquitted myself well when in the business of ‘arranging’  very beautiful girls from the neighbouring Universities each time my ‘oga’ hosted dignitaries for top political meetings. Oh, there were always so much to eat, drink and enjoy, but I never forgot myself and what I was aiming at. My eyes were on the top, and any price was worth paying to get there.

My stars began to shine brilliantly when my ‘oga’ lifted me from the scummy pond of violent and murderous existence where I had wreaked tremendous terror as one of his most effective and ruthless thugs and promoted me to his personal aide, which enabled me to follow him to very important political meetings, where I met many other very highly placed Nigerians, many of whom also began to like me as time went on. Although, I could be such a ruthless and implacably destructive beast when any occasion required my exhibition of that aspect of me, I have this very warm, amiable and overly harmless personality that easily earns me the unreserved affection of many people.

Soon my ‘oga’ began to test me with money, several times, but each time, I surprised him by not falling. Unlike my colleagues who always allowed their greed to make them lose his confidence, I already knew I needed to keep mine on leash in order to win the undying trust of one those who decided the direction, future and how the resources of this incredibly rich nation were shared. Already, I had arranged a degree certificate for myself and managed to let it enter ‘oga’s ears that I was a graduate.

Before long, he began to trust me with bigger money, some of which I took abroad to deposit for him in designated accounts. I always resisted every temptation to run away or tamper with even the smallest part of them. My oga wanted to appoint me into the ministerial position allotted to him, but later changed his mind, and instead registered a company and appointed me its Managing Director/Chief Executive. And soon countless juicy contracts I never even knew when and how they were applied for began to pour in, and although we rarely executed any, we were usually paid in full upfront.

And because I had learnt early to keep my greed in check, I shared out the percentages as instructed, and paid them in the various bank accounts I was given, before taking the percentage allotted to me. And because we were so reliable and efficient, and did our business without any risks to our clients’ good names and political lives, business boomed amazingly. I became very rich as the company prospered. Soon, I began to hobnob with the high mighty from the president to governors, lawmakers, ministers, diplomats and fellow business magnates.

Billions of naira were always easily laundered through us without any hassles or incidents that could embarrass our esteemed clients, and we were always prompt to neatly deposit such funds into any accounts supplied by our clients in any part of the world. I have eventually  achieved my ambition of joining the ruling class, and boy, life up there is    just pleasantly exciting and really good!  Although, I am not holding any public office, I am, no doubt, part of the decision-making process since I am a generous financier and prominent member of our great party.

The secret of my success, if I must restate that, was my commendable ability to continue resisting the temptation to tamper with my ‘oga’s money even when a lot of it was always with me and around me. Indeed, I was quite aware that he never bothered to even find out how much each ‘Ghana-Must-Go’ sack contained, or how much had been removed from a particular bag and how much remained, but I kept my cool. Well, if I must tell you also, highly influential and respected political stalwarts like my oga have no time to count money. Moreover, its uninterrupted flow into their houses, offices and bank accounts was always guaranteed, so why bother?

Although, I wanted so much to be rich, I also desperately wanted to also secure the distinguished membership of the ruling elite, where I can help decide the direction and future of this country. And if I must achieve this, I knew it quite early enough that I required much patience, restraint and loyalty to one of the key custodians and sharers of the very sweet, richly garnished National Cake.

I was relieved when my ‘oga’ eventually shelved the idea of having me fill the ministerial slot allocated to him and instead established the flourishing company which I now manage for him. Although with such a highly influential personality of repute like my ‘oga’ behind me, all the Senate would have simply done if I had appeared for screening would be to simply ask me ‘Take A Bow!’ and move on, but I did not want the overwhelming searchlight such an event would most likely beam on my past. Moreover, I don’t trust you, journalists, Ugochukwu. One of you might come up with the crazy idea that I was a University dropout and so could not have earned the degree I was parading, or that I had unresolved cases with the police. So, I was glad to be spared that kind of exposure.

Well, all I can say now is that I am doing incredibly very well. Although I have become very rich beyond my wildest imagination, with properties in countless choice spots in Nigeria and abroad and shares in blue chip companies around the world, I still have refused to do anything to make my ‘oga’ feel I have grown some wings and was now capable of being my own master. I have been very careful. His numerous women (mostly married), especially among the top echelon of our great party devour me daily with undisguised lustful attention, but I have refrained from letting them come between me and my very kind godfather. No, how can I be that stupid when countless women, including top actresses and models are throwing themselves at me?

Former Senator Iyabo Anisulowo was right after all!

Well, right now, I can confidently tell you that I am now and fully and perfectly established as a distinguished member of the ruling class and a stalwart of our great party. I sponsor candidates into high public offices and have continued to reap, in season and out of season, the juicy fruits of my endeavour. I have also taken practical steps to polish my personality and give myself an urbane, intellectual image. Recently, I got a backstreet (some say unaccredited) college in the United States to package an honorary doctoral degree for me at an impressive ceremony attended by highly placed Nigerians.

Do not be misled into thinking we are indifferent to corruption. In fact, my ‘oga’ was one of those who first mooted the idea of setting up very vibrant anti-corruption bodies in Nigeria to cleanse the country of corrupt elements. I can confidently tell you that it was his idea that they borrowed and set up what we have today as the EFCC and ICPC. And to his further credit, he has never failed to seize any forum available to him to denounce corruption and urge the anti-graft agencies to root out the monster that has ensured Nigeria is kept 100 years behind civilisation. All we want from Nigerians is patience; they should give us more time to deliver the democracy dividends. We are on course. We sincerely mean well for this country.

Ugochukwu, I am always amused each time you describe us in your column as a ‘Criminal Class.’ Apart from the fact this betrays your total ignorance of how government business is managed at this level in this country, I also think you are being very unfair to a body of distinguished, credible Nigerians with very impeccable records of invaluable services to their fatherland who spend sleepless nights thinking of how to move this great country forward and usher in an era of prosperity and massive development.

Well, next week, I will be presenting a paper (written for me by a retired professor who is on my payroll) at a high profile seminar in Abuja on anti-corruption and good governance, and I have already despatched an invitation to you. Be our guest and discover for yourself how determined we are to battle this monster of corruption to the ground. Surely, with Nigeria in our hands, the masses of this country would have cause to smile very soon.

Thanks for this opportunity to tell my success story despite your obvious unreserved disdain and fierce contempt for us.

We will eventually prove to you and several others that we mean well for this country.

Chief (Dr.) …… (Name Withheld)

Abuja, Nigeria