Dear Buhari, You Have Broken Our Hearts

Chude Jideonwo, a young business leader in the Nigerian media industry, writes a series on good governance, Nigeria, politics, and how a younger generation can effect change. The OOTC series will run from February to July, 2017.

Two years ago to this day, you brought me to tears.

You were in our nation’s capital, being inaugurated as the first Nigerian in our nation’s history to win the presidency from an opposition party. I was far away, in Lagos; but I had a cherished privilege: to be the one to publish the very first tweet on your account as President of the Federal of Nigeria.

And as my colleague, Oluwatobi Soyombo watched, I threw my head back on the chair, and I began to weep.

I couldn’t help myself. This moment was too big, was too strong; was too much.

They were tears of joy. But they were also tears of relief, personal and collective. Personal relief from the fear of the consequences of my decision – after having readied myself for four years of repercussion for supporting so publicly a man who was hardly likely to win; collective relief that we would not be facing four more years of the triumphal leadership of the corrupt and the reprobate; relief that we had just dodged a bullet.

Barely six months before I had never met you, never stayed in the same space you, didn’t even believe in you. The one thing I knew was that, for this young man, it was anybody but Goodluck Jonathan. But then you filled me with such hope, because you appeared to finally carry on your shoulders the burdens of an exhausted, furious generation.

I was as furious as anyone. Actually, I was more furious than most. Furious enough to burn bridges, risk backlash, annoy friends and family; to cross the divide to vote and work passionately for a man I had voted for reluctantly, even bitterly, only four years before.

It was like a miracle. I never believed this was going to happen. I never believed an opposition leader could win an election in our country; I never believed that citizens could make this change happen in my lifetime.

It was so hard to believe that I continued to argue with my team, right up to time that the incumbent president conceded. Our data already projected your win, but I refused to be seduced, memories of Karl Rove making a fool of himself on Fox News over a quixotic Mitt Romney win in 2012 haunting me. “Push all the votes from the South-East and the South-South to Jonathan’s column,” I said to my colleague Joachim MacEbong. “Assume Buhari gets zero votes there. What we have now is too deceptive. An opposition candidate can’t win with such a margin.”

I couldn’t believe it, until it happened. Some days, even now, I wake up and I almost still can’t believe it.

From 2010, when I became active in civic spaces, this had been the dream: to have a citizen-led movement that could put the fear of God into the political establishment.

I had spent days on the streets, in protest, at risk to life and business. I had sat in countless meetings and strategy sessions. I had spent millions of my own money invested in this vision. I had spent time in private and group prayer, shouting in pain, sobbing in frustration, crying out for all of this to not be for nothing, for some intervention, for some sign from God that our country would be better, even in our lifetimes. I didn’t believe it could be this dramatic, I didn’t believe it could come to pass.

But it did. And when it did, it was enough to overturn my theology of God’s agenda for politics. Because it certainly felt like an answer to our prayers. It certainly felt like divine intervention. It absolutely felt like the heavens had heard Nigeria’s heart cry. It had to be. This was a miracle. You were a miracle. You were a change, desperately sought. A change, desperately won.

But it wasn’t really about you, Mr. President. This was never about you.

You were a symbol of our aspiration, you were an expression of a democratic ideal: that the citizen is the most powerful force in any democracy. You were a symbol that we mattered, that our voices mattered. That if we organized, we could defeat powerful forces. That if we came together, nothing was truly beyond our grasp, no possibility beyond the reach of a determined population. That we, truly, are the ones that we have been waiting for.

For me, after 10 years of nation building aspirations and five years of activist engagement, you presented the unique opportunity for to all come together. For the networks, and the platforms and the reputation and the skills and the creativity that I had to come to a head, to join the effort to make change happen. And there were many Nigerians who took that risk also, because we saw a ray of sunlight.

We thought this was worth the risk. This had to be worth the risk.

The many people who worked incredibly hard to get you into office, but then stayed aside and asked for no benefit in return thought it was worth that risk. It was the reason I said no to an offer to join this administration in its first two years, same as many that I know. We couldn’t dare corrupt this one sacrifice – this gift – with the appearance of self-interest.

But it’s not just about those who can afford to keep their distance. It’s

more about the many whom your inchoate policies hurt the most –

the people you told us you were running for.

Remember that woman who wrapped up her entire savings and donated to your campaign? Do you remember her, sir?

What would you say to her, if you saw her today?

I write this today because I don’t know what happens next.

I don’t know if you are well, or how well you are. You haven’t treated us, your citizens, your voters, with the respect of telling us what ails you, how it ails you and how it affects your ability to do your job. Instead you treat us with the scorn and contempt that Aso Rock seems to breed – the contempt of silence.

Look at the nation you left behind, as you duck for cover in the United Kingdom: Healthcare so shabby even you can’t rely on it for your own well being. Schools still exactly in the state at which you met them 24 months ago. An economy in shambles. An anti-corruption fight running around in circles. A nation fragmented, with the one time since the 1960s where Biafra has become a dominant narrative – courtesy of tone-deaf ethnic-coloured politics. Businesses attacked by a combination of violent tax authorities and ham-fisted fiscal policies, which seem to punish citizens for the failings of past governments and inadequacies of this one. Indeed, the anecdotal stories of businesses folded up, investments dried up jobs lost and dreams shattered have become the defining testimony of your leadership.

You have taken the hopes and the dreams and the faith that we invested in you, and you have shattered them into many tiny pieces.

Is this fair? Is this right? Is this why you ran? Is this what those four attempts were about? Is this the plan you had? Is this the vision you shared? Is this what this was all about – just being president?

It is easy for us to hide under the shadow of your acting president, Yemi Osinbajo, who makes it easy to prove citizens right, that we made the proper choice to vote for change and to upset the old system in 2015. It is convenient to turn to him as justification for our wisdom.

But the truth is that, for me, it isn’t. You are the man with the mandate. You are the man with the ultimate responsibility.

To be honest, there is no regret in voting for you. Even if everything failed, even if your acting president had been a failure, there would be no regret in voting for you.

We had a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. As it turns out, we chose the deep blue sea.

If that time came again, I would make no other choice, even with everything I know now. With everything I have, and everything I believe and everything I hold dear, I am passionate about the fact that, despite the disappointment you have presented to us, voting what you represented for president was a crucial step in re-making Nigeria, in the long term.

I just wish you had made it easier, with your performance, with visionary leadership, with actions and decisions, to justify that choice. I wish we could point to the short term as well as the long term as the vindication of that choice. I wish you had risen up to the occasion, Mr. President.

Yes, you care for Nigeria. I know that. Or at least I think I do. But that doesn’t matter. It’s neither here nor there. Love is not just something you say, love is something you do. And there is no evidence, today, of your love.

We didn’t vote for you to try your best; we didn’t vote for you to complain to no end, no. We voted for you to make change happen.

And no matter what your remaining rabid supporters, either blinded still by anger at Dr. Jonathan, blinded by the comfort of denial or blinded by proximity to power, say, this is the truth: we are disappointed in you. This is not the change we voted for.

Of course, there is still a year to make it happen before the politicking fully kicks in, but not today.

Instead, disappointment, shame, sadness – that has become your legacy.

And it breaks my heart sir.

It breaks so many hearts, home and abroad. Those who believed passionately in you. Those who didn’t believe but decided to give you a chance. Those who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for you but still celebrated the possibility of change. Those who rolled the dice and hoped for the best.

Your performance, your failings, the ineptitude, it has severely broken their hearts. It has severely broken my heart.

I sincerely hope, in your quiet moments of truth, that it breaks your heart too.

Chude Jideonwo is co-founder and managing partner of RED (www.redafrica.xyz), which brands including Y!/YNaija.com and governance communication firm, StateCraft Inc. Office of the Citizen (OOTC) is his latest essay series. He tweets from @Chude.

Doyin Okupe: Despite the drums of war, Nigeria will not break up

In  a post shared on his Facebook page, former presidential media aide, Doyin Okupe, says Nigeria will not break up despite the recent drums of war or the rumors of  a coup attempt. Read what he wrote after the cut.
Yes, again and again there are drums of war, rumours of Coups and heightened cries for separation. Yet Nigeria will not break. I repeat as God liveth Nigeria is not about to break up .
Those who rely on what is seen physically and those who are not too knowledgeable about life may want to hold this assertion in derision.
Yet there is more than meets the eye in matters that controls the affairs of Nations and Men.

True, all the Ingredients required to justify a dismemberment of our union are fully present: inequality, injustice, nepotism, corruption, deception, sectional neglect and lack of inclusivity, mutual distrust etc; fortunately or unfortunately it is not in the manifest destiny of this great Nation to disintegrate.

To anyone who is discerning, it has been crystal clear that God has shown His guiding hand in the affairs of Nigeria since the the June 12 debacle. God does not act in vain but for a purpose. It will be preposterous to assume that the purpose of God's intervention in the affairs of Nigeria in the past 25years is to lead us to a break up.

In truth the Nigerian experiment or marriage is grossly imperfect and obviously not working. The Nigerian union presents some of the outstanding features of a dysfunctional marriage.

There is sustained anger, mutual contempt and distrust, lack of openness and poor communication among it's component parts.

In recent times the health of Mr President has been a source of concern to all. But more importantly, the North is more apprehensive in view of the previous experience with late President Yaradua. But they are not willing to discuss this openly. Official handling of the situation suggests sectional protectionism rather than presenting a national problem seeking for a national solution. Afterall this is a President loved and voted for by nearly a fanatical nationwide followers. Why should his adversity be borne and protected only by a section or just a few disciples?

On the other side are those, mainly southerners who gloat over the President's health challenges and cannot wait for power to be handed over to the Vice president and for the latter to actually assume the full status of the President, almost immediately. They rely exclusively on the provisions of the Nigerian constitution, totally ignoring the main and the central abiding political philosophy of power sharing in Nigeria.

Obviously there are serious and genuine fears across the divide. But as typical of a dysfunctional union, nobody is ready or willing to discuss these fears openly or even within leadership caucuses.

What we then get are heightened calls and counter calls for break up of the country, calls for restructuring and official rumors of Coups.

This is not the way to develop a great Nation. There is need for a unity of purpose, an abiding faith in the Unity of the Nation. There is an urgent need to develop a national platform from which we can nurture the emergence of an elite political consensus from where we can always look at our problems as national problems and bring about unified national solutions. Then and only can our Nation be on its ultimate journey to its divine destiny of greatness

Stunning Femi Adesina's Article To Those Wishing Death On President Buhari

Presidential Spokesman, Femi Adesina has decried false publications about the death of President Muhammadu Buhari who is London for follow up treatment. In a article titled “They learnt Nothing, and forgot nothing” Adesina said it is wrong for any group of people to wish the President death. Below is the full text of the article....

THEY LEARNT NOTHING, AND FORGOT NOTHING By FEMI ADESINA

They showed their pernicious hands again last Sunday, and have been on the prowl since then, roaring like a lion, seeking who to devour. Purveyors of death they are, and they have killed President Muhammadu Buhari many times over, cloned the websites of international media houses to announce the hoax, but their wishes did not become horses, so they remain stranded, with nothing to ride.

Between January 19, this year, when the President first proceeded on vacation, and March 10, when he returned, they had announced his demise many times. They even created apocryphal images and footages to back up their inhuman claims, but God showed them He was the ultimate. The Real Deal, the Special One. President Buhari came back alive, and disclosed that he would still return to London at a later date for medical follow-up. He eventually left on the night of Sunday, May 7. Continue below...

They saw the Deux ex machina, the Invisible Hands of God, between January and March, but they are so steeped and marooned in unbelief, evil wishes and malediction, that they have started all over again. Last Sunday, they cloned popular websites for the umpteenth time, using them to announce the figment of their diseased imagination.

They learnt nothing, and forgot nothing from the immediate past experience. And you begin to ask yourself, just as the Good Book also asked:”Why do the heathens rage, and the people imagine vain things?” Why do they arrogate to themselves the power that belongs only to God? “I can kill, and I can make alive,” says God in His word. But these purveyors of hate possibly don’t know God. That is why they declare a man dead, when God has not said so. Once has God spoken, and twice have I heard it, that power belongs to God.

Millions upon millions of Nigerians love President Muhammadu Buhari. They love his simplicity, his forthrightness, incorruptibility, love of country, and many other virtues. And they are praying. Bombarding Heaven with petitions. Baba o, Baba o, Baba o. Olorun da Baba si fun wa, Baba o, Baba o, Baba o. Olorun da Baba si fun wa. Oh God, spare our Baba, the father of the country. Spare him for us, O Lord we pray. And Heaven is listening to the supplications. We await the full manifestation.
Millions of us can follow Baba blindfolded into battle. We love him that much, and it is within our rights. But have you seen a man ever loved by everybody? Show me. Even if you feed an entire city daily, some people still won’t like your guts.

So, those who are not Buharists have a right to their convictions. But must any human being be hateful to the point of wishing another person dead, and indeed broadcasting a death that never happened? Shame. Shame upon evil wishers, purveyors of lies and wickedness. Do they have blood running in their veins at all? Do they realize that wishing another person dead, is sin before God? Yet they go to churches, mosques, and other worship houses. Who are they worshiping? The Unknown God.

Why do some people, a tiny but vocal minority, wish the President dead? Do they know that if God wills, the man they wish dead could outlive them by many years? There was a lady who was very active on social media in 2015, before the presidential election of that year. She was in the league of anti-Buhari elements. Oh, he was too old. Oh, he was sickly. Yes, he would soon die. The lady was rabidly pontifical in her convictions, parading herself as someone with a charmed life, who would live forever. And then, it happened! Sometime last year, she died! When I saw the news online, I just shook my head, and prayed for the repose of her soul. I did not gloat. No need to. Not in her wildest imagination could she have thought that she would pre-decease President Buhari. But who has the final say? Jehovah has the final say. The breath of man is in his nostrils, and God can decide to extinguish his candle at anytime. Jehovah has the final say. It is not by age, not by how healthy you seem, or how sickly you are. It’s a lesson some people have not learnt. They learn nothing, and forget nothing.

Back to the earlier question. Why do some people want their own President dead? Why do they want the eclipse of a man who is actuated by nothing other than love for his country? Why have they constituted themselves into enemies of national progress, haters of all that is good? Why do they prefer the dark jungle of infamy to the light of a clear and bright day, signposted by freedom from rapacity and lootocracy? Who then are these enemies?

“Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 percent, those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as Ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds.”

Those were the words of Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, after the country’s first military coup in 1966. You may like Nzeogwu, or you may not, depending on how you view his actions and inactions. But you can hardly deny the veracity of what he said. And 51 years later, the words still ring true.

The enemies of Buhari are the political profiteers. To them, political office is not about service, but about making profit. Ordinary people can go to hell, and stay there. Personal profit is the name of the game.

The swindlers, too. Enemies of righteousness and transparency. They swindle man, and even try to swindle God. Of course, they wouldn’t want a new sheriff in town. They’d rather shoot him, and sing the reggae song:”I shot the sheriff…”

Those that seek bribe and demand 10 percent. Enemies. Only that they are not satiated by 10 percent again. They take the entire 100 percent, and leave the country prostrate. But when a Daniel comes to judgment, and hurls them before the law, knowing neither friend nor foe, they wish that he dies. Gerrout, so that business as usual continues, they shout.

Those that seek to keep the country divided permanently. Evil souls. They use all the fault lines. Religion. Ethnicity. Language. Everything. We saw it all in the 2015 elections. They cashed in on all things that divide us as a people. But Nigerians were resolute for change, and they got it. But did those people give up? Did Pharaoh desist from pursuing the people of Israel? Hell, no! Till he ended in a watery grave. The stubborn fly follows the corpse into the grave.

For the greater part of this year, President Buhari has been away from home. But whether present or absent, he still looms large. The mere fact that his shadow hovers over the land riles evil workers to no end. But what can anybody do? Jehovah has the final say.

The old order is giving way for a new one in Nigeria. In just two years, the back of insurgency has been broken, corruption is taking a shellacking, and the comatose economy is turning round. Despite it all, some people still wish the President dead. Sad and sorry. But thankfully, they don’t have the final say.

However, if they refuse to repent, we can repent on their behalf, lest judgment comes speedily on them. How dreadful it would be.

Lord, we are sorry,
We’ve turned around and gone astray,
Your trust for us we have betrayed,
Your power we don’t recognize
Your Lordship we have all despised,
We cannot pretend
We all now repent
Forgive us Lord we pray
Bring down your glory…

May God bless Panam Percy Paul, who sang the song. May God accept our repentance on behalf of evil wishers. May God spare our President, and restore him to full health.
Baba o, Baba o, Baba o, Oluwa da Baba si fun wa.

Lord, please spare our President. Spare him for us, to the glory of your name. Let those who learn nothing, and forget nothing, be purged of all evil. Let them turn new leaf.

Amen somebody!

Some Are Mourning, Some Are Celebrating: A Case Study of the Buharis and IBB By Reno Omokri

This is an article written by Reno Omokri. Read on:
Let me start this piece by congratulating former President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida on the marriage of his daughter, Halima, to her beau, Auwal Abdullahi.
It goes without saying that the wedding would be the talk of Nigeria for aeons to come because of the kind of crowd it pulled.
In case you missed the news, let me inform you that no fewer than thirty private jets landed at Minna airport last weekend on account of this wedding that locked down Nigeria!


Thirty private jets. I do not even know what to exclaim! This is more than wow! Gosh does not even come close to the exclamation I wanted to express when I first read of this private jet convention in Minna! Gobsmacked is the only that comes close, but even it does not quite capture the reaction I had.

Thank God former President Goodluck Jonathan, who was amongst the wedding guests, does not have a private jet, because that would have been the major topic of the day. The propaganda loving All Progressive Congress would have capitalized on that to rubbish Jonathan. Lai Mohammed would have been hyper ventilating with excitement at the character assassination possibilities if such had been the case.

But the lesson Nigerians may want to take from this is that few, very few of those who arrived Minna in private jets have any sort of productive business venture that generates and sustains jobs in Nigeria.

Yes, there were a couple of folks made rich by oil and gas at the Minna private jet convention, but these are not people that did anything constructive, productive or job creating that gave them wealth. Some were given oil blocks or allocations, others were given allocations to import petroleum products. Even a monkey would prosper if given such oligarchic opportunities. But how does that sort of business create jobs or adds value to Nigerians?

Others amongst them are government contractors, supplying sundry items to the various governments at federal, state and local government level. They are basically suppliers. They buy and resell to the government. But how does that sort of business create jobs and adds value to Nigerians?

Yet, they have private jets, private jetties, private yachts and even private body guards!

Nigeria has one of the lowest, if not the lowest, tax to GDP ratio in the world. In a country of 190 million people, only 214 individuals in the entire country pay tax of 20 million naira or more. This is according to the very latest official figures from the Federal Inland Revenue Service.

Norway has a population of just 5.2 million people yet they have more than 100 times the amount of people paying tax of $65,000 of more (the equivalent of 20 million naira).

But the story does not end there. Norway has never had a private party or private wedding or any private celebration that attracted 30 private jets!

The funniest thing is that Norway gives Nigeria financial aid every year!

We have a political and economic elite that that are so rapacious and parasitic and who only think of what they can suck from Nigeria and could not careless that they are surrounded by some of the poorest people in the world according to official figures from the 2016 United Nations Human Development Index released on the 21st of March, 2017.

Norway is number 1 on that list. Nigeria is 152 out of 188 nations. Libya (102) and Iraq (121) both of which are war torn nations, outrank Nigeria. But most embarrassingly, Syria that has been enmeshed in probably the worst humanitarian crisis the world has seen in at least 10 years also outranks Nigeria (149)!

And almost all our elites are involved in this. President Muhammadu Buhari likes to be seen as the only good person in Nigeria but we have not forgotten so soon how, according to Daily Trust (which also happens to be the President's favorite paper) his own daughter, Zahra Buhari, received pre wedding gifts worth 47 million Naira from her then suitor and now husband, Ahmed Indimi. This same Ahmed Indimi likes to fly in private jets, pictures of which dot Nigeria's social media landscape.  I can assure you that Ahmed Indimi is not one of the 214 Nigerians who pay tax of over 20 million Naira.

Yet right there in Indimi's Borno state, right there in Maiduguri where their palatial family house is a sprawling tourist attraction, there are millions of Internally Displaced Persons without food to eat and medicine for their ailments. Perhaps it is this sort of wickedness that Mohammed Yusuf saw and which made him conclude that Boko (book) must be Haram, if it can make people so oblivious to the suffering around them.

It is this same Indimi family that likes to marry and be married to Nigeria's high and mighty (President Ibrahim Babangida was also once their in law via the marriage of Mohammed Babangida, his first son, to Rahama Indimi).

Many Nigerians are not aware that if you isolate Borno state from the rest of Nigeria, that state becomes the poorest region on planet earth BAR NONE!

Borno has the highest unemployment rate in Nigeria and the second lowest primary school enrollment rate in Nigeria. What has her private jet loving, high and mighty marrying elite done to change that?

I was in Anambra once and the type of community spirit I saw there impressed me. They may not have a lot of private jets in Anambra, but in Anambra, they have community associations that give scholarships and business grants to those who are commercially inclined. There is NO poverty in Nnewi, one of the communities where this community spirit is most prevalent.

They build their own primary and secondary schools through community effort. I am dead serious. If you go there you will not believe your eyes! They have well tarred modern roads that were built through their private efforts. All over Anambra, the various towns and villages copy the Nnewi model.

I daresay that there is more evidence of private and community development in Anambra than there is of any type of federal government presence. Anambra does not even have an airport! Borno does. Anambra does not even have a  publicly built federal university! The only so called Federal University in Anambra, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, was built by the state government with  contributions from private citizens and then compulsorily taken over by the military government of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida via Decree No. 34 of July 15, 1992. But in Borno, they have a massive federal university WHOLLY built with Federal Government funds.

If any state deserves to be poor from lack of Federal Government presence, that state is Anambra. If any state deserves to be rich by reason of the existence of Federal Government presence, that state is Borno. But Borno is poor while Anambra is rich! Why?

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are sponsoring immunization and other medical interventions in Borno state. They are together the richest people on earth. Yet their life styles is nowhere near as lavish as Nigeria's private jet loving parasitic elite.

Both Gates and Buffet are known for their frugality. Both of them have shown more concern for Nigeria's poor than any of the owners or leasers of the 30 private jets that converged in Minna last week.

In fact, Bill Gates has personally visited with many of the poorest Nigerians and has administered vaccines to their children with his own hands!

If those thirty private jet owners or leasers could do in their communities what Nnewi people do in theirs, then most assuredly Nigeria would not be in recession today.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon is worth $67 billion, Mark Zuckerberg is worth $55.5 billion. Both of them are young people who made their money by dint of hardwork, yet none of these two billionaires had a wedding as spectacularly opulent as either Zahra Buhari's or Halima Babangida's weddings. Mark Zuckerberg actually got married at a simple ceremony in the backyard of his home in Palo Alto, California in front of 100 guests.

The British charity, Oxfam, recently released a report on inequality in Nigeria. According to Oxfam, the combined wealth of the five richest Nigerians, put at about $29.9 billion, could end extreme poverty in the country!

According to Oxfam, in recent years the number of millionaires in Nigeria has increased by 44% while the number of those living in poverty has increased by 69%!

And instead of the shameless Federal Government of Nigeria to appreciate Oxfam, not just for its years of charity work in Nigeria, but for this new report which distills the issues militating against Nigeria's efforts to increase human development, it turns around to condemn the report and accuse Oxfam of 'inciting' Nigerians against her elite!

It is becoming clearer and clearer that Nigeria, as currently designed, can hardly produce young people with the mindset of Bezos or Zuckerberg.

You see, if we do not redesign Nigeria and ensure that the wealth of the nation is more equitably redistributed, we will find out soon enough that Nigeria, as it is currently designed, is designed to fail.

Nigeria has such a high unemployment rate because the wealth of the nation is trapped in the hands of carpetbaggers, rent seekers and influence paddlers who flaunt their wealth at the masses without even giving them token employment.

And it is not as if Nigerians are not willing to work. We are. Strive Masiyiwa, the Zimbabwean founder of Econet, famously revealed how stunned he was when he found out how willing Nigerians were to work.

When he came to Nigeria in 2001 and wanted to hire staff for his new company, Econet Wireless Nigeria, he advertised for jobs seeking people with telecommunications experience who had electronic engineering degrees and a minimum of five years relevant experience.

Mr. Masiyiwa, a dollar billionaire with experience working all over the world was stunned at the response.

Let me allow him tell his story because I can not possibly tell it better than him.

"I came into the office to find postal bags, piled to the ceiling!

"I only want to see the applications from people who meet our requirements, and not from chancers who aren't qualified," I complained.

"Sir, these are the ones we have vetted."

"What?! You mean there were more than this?"

"Thousands, sir."

Then I came up with an idea: "Why don't you separate for me, the most qualified academically. Set aside people with MBAs, and even PHDs."

A day later, another postal bag of applications was delivered to my office. I was staggered!

There were thousands of people with qualifications in just this one discipline with MBAs and PHDs!  Many had qualified in the best universities around the world. There were also GSM-qualified Nigerians working internationally, including in America and Europe, wanting to return home!

I was blown away by the qualifications. I thought to myself: "You can start almost any business or industry here. I wish investors would one day discover the wealth of this nation."

Whenever I hear people talk about the wealth of Nigeria in terms of oil, I shake my head to say: "You have no idea what you're talking about!"

The true wealth of Nigeria is its extraordinary human capital, and passion for education. Unleash that and no one can stop them!"

The funniest thing is that Strive Masiyiwa,  a dollar billionaire who made his money from a productive industry like the telecommunications sector and who provided enduring jobs for literarily tens of thousands of Nigerians, does not live as large as many Nigerian elite.

No wonder that the exploitative carpetbagging elite of Nigeria chased him out of Nigeria!

Strive Masiyiwa is the antithesis of the exploitative Nigerian elite who epitomize at least six of the seven deadly social sins:

Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Religion without sacrifice. Politics without principle.

The only one they do not epitomize is Science without humanity because that involves work and intellectual and creative abilities which many of our elite lack. If it were cleverness and guile, they would supersede even the best!

Ango Abdullahi

Ango Abdullahi has no basis for saying that the North would not allow Professor Yemi Osinbajo succeed Muhammadu Buhari in 2019. The North does not decide for Nigeria. Nigerians decide for Nigeria.

What Ango Abdullahi seems to have forgotten is that it was Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu that God used to make Muhammadu Buhari President in 2015. If the Northern Elders Forum could have made Buhari President, they would have done so in 2003, 2007 and 2011 when Buhari tried unsuccessfully to become President.

Nigeria has changed. Unfortunately, people like Ango Abdullahi and Junaid Mohammed, who add very little value to Nigeria and exist only to make provocative statements should realize that should their words precipitate crisis today or in 2019, both they and those they represent will be the biggest losers because they have more to gain from a united and peaceful Nigeria founded on the rule of law than others.

Nigerians will famously remember Ango Abdullahi as the liar who said that money from the North was used to develop the oil industry in the South. His exact words in 2014 were as follows:

"It is the North that developed the present day oil industry in this country. It is Northern money; it is the Northern leadership that developed the oil industry."

Since Ango Abdullahi purports to be a professor and since he is from the North, let me use the words of another Northerner who happens to be a professor to respond to him.

On Saturday the 6th of May 2017, Farooq Kperogi wrote thus:

That money from the North funded oil exploration in the South. Professor Ango Abdullahi actually repeated this lie recently. He said this, ironically, while exhorting Emir Sanusi II to “go and read history.” The truth is that not a dime of northern Nigeria’s money contributed to oil exploration in the Niger Delta.

When oil was discovered in commercial quantities in Oloibiri in 1956, Shell bore the financial burden for the exploration. Other Euro-American oil companies later joined in oil exploration. It wasn’t until 1973 that the Nigerian federal government acquired 30 percent shares in oil companies. By 1973, Northern Nigeria had ceased to exist; it had been divided into states.

In any case, colonial records show that the biggest motivation for amalgamating northern and southern Nigeria was because northern Nigeria wasn’t financially self-sustaining and the British Imperial Government said it would never subsidize colonial administration anywhere in Africa. So Lord Lugard amalgamated the two regions and used the surplus from the south to sustain the north. It’s illogical to say that a region that wasn’t financially self-sustaining financed oil exploration in the Niger Delta.

It is a very sad day when a character like Ango Abdullahi is called an elder statesman. I think a better word for his ilk would be an agbaya! Professor (?) Abdullahi can ask Farook Kperogi to tell him the meaning of that word!

Reno's Nuggets

Never marry just because plans are at an advance stage. If there is doubt in your heart, call it off. Embarrassment is better than a wrong union. It is easier to change I dont into I do than to change I do to I don't. And be aware that the sexier the woman, the higher the maintenance. The lovelier the woman. The lower the maintenance. Sexy is expensive. Love is not. Finally, do not be moved by beauty. With fake hair, fake lashes and fake eyes, any girl can be fine. Focus on character. It has no fake #RenosNuggets

Reno Omokri is a Christian TV talk show host and founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center and the Helen and Bemigho Sanctuary for orphans. He is the author of three books, Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God, Why Jesus Wept and Apples of Gold: A Book of Godly Wisdom. His upcoming fourth book, Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years: Chibok, 2015 and Other Conspiracies, is set for release in June.

5 Reasons Why Most Nigerian Beauty Queens are RAPED, Trapped and Blackmailed

5 Reasons why most Beauty Queens are RAPED,  Trapped and Blackmailed.
1. Greed and Selfishness
2. Loss of Direction
3. Lust, Hunger for sex and Obsession.
4. Rebellion
5. Ungodliness.

We have heard many of these Beauty Queens being raped and later Blackmailed. The attitude of greed and selfishness is part of their lives. They go behind their Boss to negotiate shady deals which sometimes turns to be fraud. They did so because they want the money or fortune all by themselves, along the line trapped down and give their body for remedy.

LIKE TO READ THIS? TRENDING: Shameful as video of Miss Anambra 2015 having sex with cucumber and another woman leaks

Secondly, most of the so called beauty queens are never focus or branded with ideas (people oriented projects) instead they keep going from one night party to another. That's why they are tagged to be prostitutes. Although some of their bosses are like them without ideas.

Have you forgotten about Queen Esther in the Bible? If you are not conversant with the story, she saved her people and impacted on the her people. She had opportunity with the king and never dangle her hips and waist on the royal bed instead she strived for the benefit of the poor suffering Jews. What are you doing with your waist, hips and Arsenal? Warming the politicians' bed? Oh no! That's ungodliness. Think of it ain't you destined to change lives? So, every Beauty Queen should learn from Queen Esther, the first ever Beauty Queen.

UNIQUE ARTICLE: Beauty Queen a Fantastic Reader: Freda spicy up Readers and Leaders submit

Queens don't rebel against their Boss instead they humble themselves. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

Ungodliness is the foundation of destruction. It is the TRUTH!

Questions we dare not ask about Chibok

I know you have questions, I do too. But who will ask our questions, who will confront the establishment, who will bell the cat? Who will confront the gods without the wrath of the spirits? Who will dare ask our questions regarding the politics of Chibok?

In April 2015, the Nigerian army, under the “renewed” leadership of former president Goodluck Jonathan, days before he handed over power, rescued 293 women and girls from Boko Haram in Sambisa. When the news broke, there were talks that the girls who had been rescued were part of the 276 girls kidnapped from the famous Chibok school.

I took a trip — funded by TheCable — to Adamawa state, Malkohi camp to be precise. This was where the women and girls were being held by the army and “reintegrated” into society. First, they were not the Chibok girls; second, the facilities were next to nothing, the food was a “no-go”, sanitation was very poor. If not for Oxfam, an international confederation of charitable organizations fighting poverty, the camp  would have been without toilets.

Security was also an issue. I wrote a series of reports on life at the camp, and fortunately got the military to move a good number of these women and girls to better facility.

Some lessons I learnt from that trip will forever stay with me. To be honest, these lessons are the only ones that have helped me make  sense of these whole Chibok issue.

To the first question: Is the Chibok abduction real? Is it just political propaganda projected by the All Progressives Congress (APC), when it was power-thirsty, as Ayodele Fayose, governor of Ekiti state, postulates?

Mahatma Ghandi, father of modern India, listed seven sins he called “deadly sins” in the course of his lifetime, they are: Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, religion without sacrifice, and politics without principle.

The sin Jonathan committed, that Fayose keeps committing on Chibok, is that of politics without principle. It is all right to suspect the opposition for trying to play games to get you out of power. But if they say a part of your house is burning, you do not just see it as politics, you check your house to confirm if the fire is a distraction game or the reality on ground.

Based on my interactions with the girls rescued from Sambisa in 2015, Chibok abduction is real. It happened, Jonathan handled it very poorly in the initial stages and almost throughout his stay as president. It was a deadly sin with deadly consequences.

Question two: How can you say this Chibok thing is not a scam, when SS3 girls who were about to write WAEC cannot speak simple english? Were they going to  write physics in Hausa?

I am sure you may have seen something like this on social media. Here is what I know: In 2015, I spoke to a number of women and girls who  just returned from Sambisa, but the most resourceful of all was Zahra Umoru, a teenager who  revealed that Boko Haram always knew the movement of the military.

Umoru, who was in Boko Haram’s captivity for nearly six months, was in a senior secondary school in Gumsuri, a town only 20 minutes away from Chibok. She could also not speak to me in English, yet she was in school — in fact, she struck me as a very bright young girl without the right education. Based on this assessment, it is possible for many of the Chibok girls to be very poor in communicating in English. It simply meant they were on their way to a probable failure in WAEC. In the north, being a school student does not mean you have a good grasp of English.

This should bring us to the question Muhammad Sanusi II, emir of Kano, has been asking northern elites: when will quality education return to the north? When will the mind of the average northern youth be educated enough to challenge poverty, to face maternal immortality, to upturn poor human development indices?

Question three: Is Chibok return really the end we  seek?

Since Gumsuri is only about 20 minutes away from Chibok, I seized the opportunity to ask the Gumsuri women and girls about Chibok. What they said could not be reported at the time, in the interest of peace. They were not in any means happy with Nigerian authorities, Boko Haram, or the Nigerian people.

First, they complained that while they were with Boko Haram, the girls from Chibok were treated specially, and kept in a very secret part of Sambisa forest, they were treasures. When the military rescued the 293 women and girls, part of their first questions were “Who is from Chibok?”.

When the girls eventually got to the Malkohi camp, the first set of questions they were being asked by health workers and journalists, also revolved around the Chibok girls. They believe Nigeria was fixated on Chibok that it forgets these other people are in need of care too.

With over 100 Chibok girls rescued from Boko Haram, the federal government has been giving them utmost care and attention. And President Muhammadu Buhari has made it clear that the battle against insurgency will not be over until all the girls are rescued. But when all the Chibok girls are rescued, what happens to the likes of Umoru, the women and girls from Gumsuri, the unknown ones who were kidnapped from other villages in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa?

Who reintegrates them into  society? Who teaches and takes them through the training Chibok girls are “enjoying” at the moment? How do we ensure they do not become problems in our future?

There are still questions we dare not ask. But let me leave you with these ones: What happens to the AK-47 wielding girls in the new Boko Haram video? Why did Boko Haram get more vocal and seemingly powerful after the release of the 82 girls?

The 82 Chibok Girls & Other Stories By Reuben Abati

“E ku amojuba awon 82 Chibok girls, o”
“What is that supposed to mean in plain English? You better watch your tongue. It will be politically incorrect and suicidal to start making a joke out of something that serious.”
“Where is the joke?”
“In your tone. I know you when you want to start your mischief.”
“I am a born-again Christian”
“I know. Like Stephanie Otobo telling Apostle Suleiman that she is born-again after maligning the man’s reputation. Don’t just say anything until you have confessed your sins. Confess. Confess, now.”

“I am not a politician. I am neutral. And I won’t reach conclusions based on circumstantial evidence.”
“It’s me you are talking to. Try another mischief.”
“But I say, e ku amojuba”
“Thank you. Politics 101: anybody that says anything other than to commend the Federal Government for rescuing the 82 Chibok girls should be condemned. Don’t forget that the Red Cross is part of this, and UNICEF is also offering help. Everything should not be partisan.”
“I am not saying anything anti-government. As a father myself, whatever the game is, if there is any, whatever political marketing is involved, I actually believe that those young ladies need support, and this may well be their opportunity in life. They have been showcased. I may have my reservations.”
“You see? What reservations?”

“I am just surprised that the whole drama appears to be professionally stage-managed. The girls even looked as if some of them were wearing costumes, I mean aso ebi.”
“Only the enemies of progress will look for things like that.”
“The girls looked as if they were actresses in a script they did not understand.”
“But they are back. So? What are you actually complaining about? The rescue, or the management of the optics?”
“Some people are saying that by 2019, just before the elections, the last batch of the Chibok girls will emerge from wherever they are.”

“Obviously, some people are weaving a conspiracy theory. I think the next time government wants to swap the girls for terrorists they should just swap supporters of the Jonathan government for the Chibok girls. That will settle this matter once and for all.”
“Why Jonathan’s people? I think they should swap Nigerian Senators who have refused to pass the 2017 budget.”
“What?  Saraki’s Senators?  Whoever tries that, ajekun iya ni o je, ajekun iya ni o je….”
“You dey craze. People, and these are Nigerians, are saying they have a feeling the girls have become pawns in a grand political strategy and game.”
“Can you prove that?”

“I don’t need to prove anything. In politics and political science, there is something called game theory and it is real.”
“Billy Dudley. I remember what Professor Dudley said, but you can’t reduce everything to textbook thinking. Get real.  We should join government to thank God.”
“Whatever it is, whatever the truth is, and whatever the post-truth is, I want the best for those girls. And it is not a job for government alone. Take the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) for example. When the girls were first abducted, CAN and the Western world did not allow us to rest. They packaged the Chibok girls’ abduction as an assault on Christianity. They maligned Moslems.”
“I remember that”

“We Christians often theatricalize our religion, posturing that we epitomize what Christ lived and died for. For me there is a metaphorical correlation between the situation of these girls, “dead” as it were for three years, resurrecting now, shortly after Easter. We love to take swipes at the other religion. Now that we have some of the girls back, what plans do the money-spinning, faith-based universities have for them?”
“How? This is not about religion.”

“These churches run educational institutions from crèche to the university. Go and look at the full list of the rescued Chibok girls. They are mostly Christians. Instead of blaming Moslems, can Covenant, Babcock, Redeemed, Salem, Benson Idahosa, Joseph Ayo Babalola, Caritas and similar institutions adopt these ladies, support government, and begin the process of healing the wounds of the past three years?”
 “I am confused. I don’t really know where you stand. You talk this way. You talk that way. Can we talk about something else?”
“My stand is clear. What else, if I may ask?”
“Like #BAAD 2017. Banky W getting engaged to Adesua Etomi, and how the best way to get a wife in this digital age is to slide into DMs. Very soon, churches will start organizing seminars on the value of the DM on twitter as a tool for defeating the demon of being single.  I am sure there are Bible passages that will illuminate that.”
“Congratulations to Banky W and Adesua, then. They may just have started a revolution in the marriage theatre.”

“Or we can talk about Davido and the baby shower with his Baby Mama in Atlanta.”
“How is that an important subject when we are talking about game theory and Nigerian politics?”
“It is a very hot subject among the Nigerian youth”
“Really? Okay, then, let us discuss it when Davido beats Tu Baba’s record, or when he  finally decides to move from friend zone to husband zone.”
“Agba ya ni wo egbon yin ke. Wetin? Je ki awon boys je aye ori won. Okay let’s talk about the Demuren baby bump.”

“No. Can we go back and talk about Nigeria?  How for example, Nigeria can produce its own Emmanuel Macron in 2019? And in case you don’t know, Macron is the 39-year old young man who has just won the Presidential election in France, the youngest since Napoleon.”
“We can do the same thing here.  How old was Gowon when he became Head of State? It is nothing new.  All those people who laid the foundation for modern Nigeria were all young men in their 20s and 30s. In recent times, we have also had young men becoming Speakers of Nigerian legislatures at different levels or even Governors.”

“And what happened? Did the young men perform? What happened to the foundation and the building?”
“The law does not allow anyone below 40 to aspire to become President of Nigeria, but some people have started a Not-Too-Young-To-Run-Movement. We should be optimistic.”
“When you look at the on-going game in the country, do you see the possibility of any age-based revolution in Nigerian politics?”

“Yes. Macron started a movement of his own and the entire country bought into it.”
“So, what are you waiting for? You too can start a movement here as an independent candidate and tell Nigerians to queue up behind you.”
“I am thinking about it, why not?”
“My friend, wake up!  Macron is 39. He is married to a woman who is 64 years old, his mother’s age mate. You think Nigerians will accept that?  He didn’t have to share money to be accepted. He has no known Godfather. Even his opponent, Marine Le Pen does not have a Godfather. Her own father actually gave a pass mark to Macron after their last debate when he said Macron sounded more serious and more assertive.”

“Those are Oyinbo things”
“Say that to those who are saying Macron has won in France. Tell them, they can also have a French Revolution in Nigeria. But tell them to note the cultural differences, and how politics is a game in one country and how it is about the people and their future in another country. When will politics ever be about the people in Nigeria?”

 “We can do it.”
“Don’t just mouth slogans. This is how you people always get Nigeria into trouble.  Tell me what you intend to do about the dinosaurs who are the game makers in Nigerian politics. Nobody made an issue out of Macron’s ethnicity, religion, or age. It was all about issues.  In those countries that we like to use as reference points, democracy has become a science, a social science, but in Africa - democracy is witchcraft. The more you see, the less you understand.”
“What I know is that Nigeria has a Macron out there”
“And a sick Donald Trump out there too, who will get to power because of all the games we play in this country”

“Haba!”
“Don’t get worked up.  You know for me, the most beautiful thing about the French Presidential election is that after the battle was won and lost, Marine Le Pen conceded to Macron and she went to a club to dance.  A few hours after losing, she was in a club singing Hip and Hop Karaoke: “I Love Rock N Roll” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and she spinned around to YMCA by the Village People.  She just lost an election. For her, France is more important. Her life does not depend on political office. When we get to that level, we can start comparing our democracy with others.”
“Hmm”

“When people lose election in Nigeria, it is a kind of bereavement.  Now that suicide is a popular response in Nigeria, don’t also be surprised if our politicians start committing suicide after elections.”
“I am an optimist. We will get there.”
“I am a pragmatist.  In Nigeria, when something goes up, it never goes down. Take Uber taxi charges. Uber has tried to reduce its charges all over the world due to competition with its key rival, Taxify. It is only in Nigeria that Uber drivers have organized protests. They say they don’t want the 40% reduction in tariffs.  They want Uber to reduce its own returns. That is Nigeria for you. The Buhari government promised to fight corruption, but Professor Tam David-West, a die-hard Buharist is now suddenly a whistle-blower. He is now lamenting that President Buhari is surrounded by corrupt persons. Aso Villa demons at work, certainly, I think.”
“God will intervene”
“Yes. God. We end up leaving everything to God and prayers...”

AIG Taiwo Lakanu:  Friend, Officer and Gentleman
I am not a fan of police officers. Over the past 32 years, I have done enough character sketches, caricatures and acerbic commentaries about the Nigeria Police to fill a whole book. But in the process, I have also come in contact with and made friends with many police officers who have proven to be true professionals. Taiwo Lakanu, who has just been promoted from his post as Commissioner of Police in Imo State to Assistant Inspector General of Police in Abuja is one of such.
     Lakanu is essentially an operations man. From DPO to anti-armed robbery squad, to IGP aide, to commissioner of police, and now AIG, he has managed over the years, to build a network of contacts at all levels of the Nigerian society. He is the archetypal police as your friend, he reaches out to the community, he has a forever listening ear and he is fiercely loyal to his bosses. When it comes to his job, he is extremely stubborn and unyielding.  A lawyer and a trained officer, he does not joke with his job.

     He once told me the story of how a certain notorious herbalist-armed robber taken into custody became a chief informant to the station, and who helped the Special Anti-Armed Robbery Squad in Lagos to nail many armed robbers. When the fellow suddenly died as he had himself predicted, Lakanu said he wept. The man had become an asset to the Nigerian state. When Lakanu told me other stories of face-to-face encounters with hoodlums during operations, I often wondered how he has managed to survive. Police work is tough work.

     Lakanu’s elevation is certainly a reward for hardwork, diligence and professionalism. I congratulate him on his achievement. He has not served as Police PRO but he is probably the most influential police officer of his grade among Nigerian journalists.
    I am not surprised that he recently excelled as CP, Imo State where he proved to be an asset to all and sundry by ridding the communities of established crime. Upon his departure, dances were organized to celebrate him.

      The Governor named a street in his honour. He was also offered a plot of land which he was told he could choose as his retirement base in the future, in addition to a sum of N5 million as “fuel money.” He may have rejected the land and the fuel money, but in truth, it is not always that Nigerian police officers are so honoured. Oftentimes, they are chased away by the same people they are asked to protect. Lakanu’s example is instructive. The Akogun of Lagos, thank you for living true to your traditional title. Hearty congratulations.

Of Goodluck Jonathan’s lamentations

Abimbola Adelakun - Of Goodluck Lamentations

There are hardly dedicated presidential historians who set themselves to the task of researching the lives of past Nigerian Presidents, their political ideologies, personal idiosyncrasies and the quirks of history that made or marred them. That lack, therefore, makes one to welcome the effort, which ThisDay editorial board chair, Segun Adeniyi, has made to chronicle the historical events that led up to the 2015 Presidential election victory and defeat.

Adeniyi’s book, Against the Run of Play, accounts for the unprecedented unseating of an incumbent President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, by his contender, Muhammadu Buhari, during the 2015 Presidential election.

I came off the book with four thoughts: First, Nigeria is perennially unlucky in its choice of leaders and the only dedicated activity by politicians is winning elections – by any means foul. There seems to be nothing else that counts in the totality of their actions that is not about electoral victories or power retention.

Second, in this soiled dehumanisation, the so-called conservatives and progressives are barely distinguishable in their policies and politics. Nothing in the way they angle for victory betrays their ideological leanings. Third, party conventions and procedures that throw up candidates in a democracy make the concept of “people’s choice” almost an illusion or at best, a satire.

Fourth, the book’s narration of the 2015 elections, when pitted against the ongoing activities in the Nigerian political scene, tells us that we are about to extend our 56 years of solitude. Current news headlines – Chief Bisi Akande’s doublespeak on Buhari’s health, speculations about 2019, and the President’s aides expressing certainty he would win the election in 2019 – make one conclude that nothing ever changes in Nigeria.

All through my read, I could not help but wonder where and how Nigerians factored in these political calculations that led to electoral victories and upset. There were scant indications that Nigerians themselves were a driving motivation for the politicians’ desire to earn power. It was all about the use and abuse of power.

This disregard for the people, ironically, is part of the hubris that brought Jonathan’s government down. From his post-mortem of his loss and as recorded in the book, the former President does not seem to have considered that in a democracy the people count for something. His personal reflections seemed content to look in every direction and everywhere else to place the blame for his electoral defeat except within his actions. He seemed to have taken it for granted that he was entitled to a second term and that the shoddy and aggressive campaign by members of his own party, along with his wife’s legendary blundering, did not matter to voters.

Whether he admits it or not, Jonathan began his steep descent when he began to mistake the cries of the public for the disgruntled moans of his traducers. If he had paid attention, he would have found that he started to lose the election long before the first Nigerian collected his/her voter card.

I was bemused reading him blame his loss of the election on a web of local and international conspiracies. He appears to believe that the media criticism about corruption in Nigeria was fake news and that former US President Barack Obama wanted a change of government in Nigeria more than Nigerians themselves did. Jonathan alleged that America desperately wanted him out that they pressured both Britain and France to remove him.

While it is a historical reality that Western governments regularly intervene in other countries’ elections, Jonathan will have to work extra hard in the memoir he promised to write to convince us that his defeat was extroverted. It is curious that Obama has such an omniscient influence in Nigeria to the extent that he was able to convince those living in the hinterlands (where some have not had electricity supply for donkey’s years) to vote against their own President.

Almost two years after Jonathan was sacked from power, he is understandably sour and has apparently not given much thought to the angst that built up in the polity against his second-term ambitions. His attitude is not all that surprising. He has consistently failed to acknowledge the power of the people as historical agents who, occasionally, manage to generate the required outrage necessarily to force the hands of their leaders.

In 2012, Jonathan similarly dismissed the fuel subsidy protests at Freedom Park in Lagos, claiming that the passion that drove the movement was paid for by propagandists who did not want him in office. By ignoring the underlying issues that drove the protests, he steeled himself against any prospect of understanding and addressing the people’s fury. He once complained about being the most criticised President ever, probably construing himself as the victim of discontented folks who simply did not want an Ijaw man in office.

Willfully blind to shortcomings, his latest responses suggest that he might never have sincerely inquired if the anger of the people against him was not justified. Apart from the fuel subsidy saga and the frequent allegations of corruption, he probably does not imagine that the death of 16 job seekers at the failed immigration recruitment exercise fuelled resentment against his government, in particular for the lethargic manner he responded to the deaths. The Chibok girls’ abduction and the way his government (and his wife) handled such an important issue made him seem like a weak and indecisive leader. By the time the world media – spurred by the news on the burgeoning of a sect that could kidnap 276 girls in broad daylight – focused their gaze on his shortcomings, Jonathan became entirely undone.

 Since he is going to write his memoirs at a future date, he should do all of us the favour of more reflective thinking about how the common Nigerians he repeatedly spurned perceived him and his government. Rather than persist in arguing that some of the reports about corruption were exaggerations, he should put himself in the shoes of poor and oppressed Nigerians who had enough of corruption scandals and probes that were not meant to go anywhere.

By the way, Against the Run of Play helpfully documents various incidents in our recent past, but all of which have now receded from the public because other scandals have long overtaken them. While flipping through the pages, one is reminded just how the scandal-prone Goodluck Jonathan administration was and how it came to be perceived as irredeemably clueless. One soon realises just how atavistic our government and governance mechanisms are. Virtually everything is done haphazardly; there is neither internal coherence nor philosophical anchor to propel the ship of governance. They just do what they must do to win votes, simple.

One final take-away from the book: I could not but marvel at the genius of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the power and principality who somehow manages to be present where events that define almost all political and historical epochs in Nigeria take place.

At each of those times, Obasanjo has managed to don the toga of patriot and Messiah, while he taints the political space with his hypocritical self-righteousness. Anyone who has carefully followed Obasanjo’s political trajectory in the past couple of decades will not be taken in about his soteriological delusions. Obasanjo is as much a problem as the problems he tries to help Nigeria solve. This man has probably never thought about it but the legacy of illegalities, amorality and endemic corruption he gifted the nation when he was President created a framework that still defines statecraft till now. Like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, Obasanjo will not go away and just let Nigeria be. At some point, we need to exorcise this ghost and banish it into Hades where it belongs so that the nation can be set on a better path.

Source: Punch

Ghost President, Ghost Achievements, Ghost Monies in Apartment Owned by Ghosts By Reno Omokri

This is an article written by Reno Omokri. Please read on..

For the better part of this week, Nigeria has been having much of a to do about the royal snub from the Oba of Lagos to the Ooni of Ife. Such outrage, such consternation against Oba Rilwan Akiolu. The venom vented on him on social media and in real life were as though he had committed some unpardonable sin.
We are angry with an Oba who refused to shake an Ooni, but not at a President who refused to shake his own female ministers on religious grounds but did not remember religion when he shook hands with the Queen of England, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Iara Oshiomhole.
You can see that hypocrisy, rather than corruption is the main problem of Nigeria. A nation that sympathizes with a star's husband for attempted suicide and charges a destitute woman with attempted suicide. No wonder our Presidential Villa had been turned to a retirement home!

ALSO READ THIS: As Lai Mohammed manifests the lie in his name -by Reno Omokri

Strewth!

As a people, we are easily distracted, easily carried away. We are excitable, with hyperactive nerves, quick to run away after fancies while the issues that are at the heart of our survival as a people are left untreated.

While we were tearing our our hair over what might just have been an oversight on the part of the Oba of Lagos, the minister of Information, the eponymously named Lai Mohammed, announced to a distracted nation that President Muhammadu Buhari, who had just missed his third Executive Council of the Federation meeting, would be working from home!

This is the same Lai Mohammed who in December 21, 2009 called for his predecessor, the late Professor Dora Akinyuli, to give daily updates on  President Yar'adua's health.

Speaking as the Publicity Secretary for the now defunct Action Congress, Lai said:

“It is clear to discerning Nigerians that those pretending to speak authoritatively on the President’s health are deceiving the public, since they are neither well informed on the issue nor competent to speak on it. Therefore, a daily briefing by the Minister of Information, based on authentic details provided by the President’s doctors, should start forthwith. As we have said many times, the health of the President, as a public figure can no longer be of interest only to his family and friends. Nigerians have a right to know."

This is the same Lai who told us in January that the President was in perfect good health. Now we know that his health is so good that he has to work from home!

And to add insult to injury, just two days before Lai told us that the President would now work from home, Chief John Odigie Oyegun was hugging the headlines calling for a second term for the stat at home President! Really!

We only see the man every Friday, yet instead of praying for his recovery Oyegun is scheming for his second term! That is how they deceived Abacha and Yar'adua to cling onto power instead of tending to their health. What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his soul?

This is a man that we only see on Friday at Mosque. The man has more or less become a ghost President!

YOU MAY LIKE THIS: Between Tinubu and Buhari: The Modern Day Afonja and Alimi - By Reno Omokri

A ghost President, with ghost achievements fighting ghost workers with an EFCC that goes after ghost monies in apartments owned by ghosts. This is what President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressive Congress have reduced Nigeria to!

It is hypocritical for a government that fights ghost workers to have a ghost President. If the President is sick let him hand over to the more than able Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo!

If you think it is harsh to ask the President to hand over to Osinbajo then ask him if he did not give the same advice to Yar'adua in 2010! Precisely on March 10, 2010, President Muhammadu Buhari called for the impeachment of Yar'adua because his health condition prevented him from performing his duties. For three weeks our President has not attended council meeting. For three weeks the only time we see him is at Mosque. Would he have tolerated this from Yar'adua?

From President Muhammadu Buhari's residence in Aso Rock to his office takes a five minute walk. I have walked that route myself. I know what I am taking about. I have been in his official residence and I have been in his office.

His office and his residence are connected by a corridor. If he cannot make it to the office despite the close proximity between his office and his residence, it suggests he may need something more than resting at home. Remember what Obasanjo said on January 20, 2010 “If you take up an assignment, a job-elected, appointed whatever it is, and then your health starts to fail and you will not be able to deliver to satisfy yourself and to satisfy the people you are supposed to serve, then there is a path of honour and the path of morality. There is path of honour and the path of morality."

IMPORTANT: Reno Omokri blasts Lai Mohammed: Tell us who owns the $43 million?

A 93, President Robert Mugabe does not work from home. Even Pope Benedict XVI, whose home was his office, resigned in 2013 when his health could not handle the demands of the papacy. It is not about age. It is about capacity. President Muhammadu Buhari said the same thing about Yar'adua. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Again, President Buhari, if you cant cope, temporarily hand over to Osinbajo! It does not have to be permanent. Go and take care of yourself. Aso Rock is a Presidential Villa not a retirement home!

What moral justification does the Head of Service or any authority have to query any civil servant for absenteeism going by this recent development?

I urge any civil servant who is being queried or has been sacked for absenteeism to sue the Federal Government. If President Muhammadu Buhari can work from home and still collect full salary, why can't other federal workers? If the man with the most vital job can do his job from home, why can't civil servants with less vital duties follow suit.

And you can imagine that only this week, the State House correspondent of the Punch Newspapers was banished from Aso Rock Presidential Villa by President Muhammadu Buhari's Chief Security Officer because of a story on the President's health. Now we know what the fuss was all about!

And the excuse given by the Presidency that they were unaware of the CSO's action only raises more questions than it answers.

The worst thing the Nigerian Presidency could do in the case of the The Punch Newspapers reporter that was expelled from Aso Rock Villa by President Muhammadu Buhari's Chief Security Officer is to admit that they were not informed before the actions. If the Presidency was not informed about this action done in the Presidency's name then it begs the question, who is ruling Nigeria? Who is exercising the executive powers of the President? Is the tail now wagging the dog? Is this a déjà vu of the Yar'adua situation? No wonder Babachir asked 'who is the Presidency'. We did not know what he meant!

From the way things now stand, I just have to ask that between Nnamdi Kanu and President Muhammadu Buhari, who is actually in prison and who is actually free?

At least we see Kanu in court. How often do we see Buhari? Nnamdi Kanu speaks with authority, can we say the same of an unrepentant blamer who blames everyone but himself for the misfortune of his administration? Nnamdi Kanu has no NTA or a Liar Mohammed yet his words affect more headlines than those who do, proving that leadership is not by position! Yet somebody thinks Nnamdi Kanu is in prison and President Buhari is free! I laugh in Igbo and Fufulde!

And to think that Joe Igbokwe, the Publicity Secretary of the Lagos State chapter of the APC had the guts to say that the Igbo are not interested in Nnamdi Kanu's cause!

If Joe Igbokwe really thinks the Igbo are 'not interested' in Nnamdi Kanu's cause, let him go and say so in Onitsa Market and see if he survives. It is easy to stay in Lagos and say such nonsense, but I have a word of advise for Igbokwe: No matter how much a slave rejects his father's name, his master will still not include his own name in his will.

Hypocrisy has almost become a national pastime under this APC administration. It is not surprising. What more can one expect from a government that was conceived in propaganda and delivered in deceit?

Take the hypocrisy in the case of Mrs. Titilayo Momoh, the failed suicide who attempted the act on the Third Mainland Bridge. Now she has been charged to court.

I do not understand the point of charging failed suicides to court for attempted suicide. Do we want to drive them to succeed at suicide? Failed suicide need counseling, support and understanding. Stress, pressures of life and disappointments drove them to suicide. By charging them to court we are only adding more stress, pressure and disappointment to their life, further pushing them to suicide. This is an archaic law that is against the principles of natural justice and needs to be taken off our statute books.

A government that does not care if Fulani herdsmen kill us has the guts to charge a woman for attempted suicide! Are they angry she cheated Fulani herdsmen off her life? This is a travesty of justice! They have not charged the killers of pastor Eunice Elisha who was killed in Kubwa, fifteen minutes from Aso Rock Villa. They have not charged the killers of pastor Eunice Elisha who was beheaded in Kano in broad daylight. They have not charged the killers of Southern Kaduna minorities. But it is Mrs. Titilayo Momoh who is overburdened by a debt she cannot pay that they can try for attempted suicide. What a hypocritical action!

When Tiwa Savage's husband, Tunji "Tee Billz" Balogun, attempted suicide, nobody charged him for attempted suicide and rightly so. So why charge Mrs. Titilayo Momoh with attempted suicide? Does Nigeria have one law for the rich and famous and another for the poor and unknown? This woman attempted suicide because the economy collapsed and her business was in ruins  leaving her in debt. Let us not fight the symptoms and leave the disease. If the government wants to deter suicide then they should fix the economy instead of trying Mrs. Momoh.

I could go on and on, but I have limited space. You can email me at reno@renoomokri.org to continue the conversation.

Reno's Nuggets:

My nuggets for this week centers on money so that people like Mrs. Momoh, who are overburdened by debt can get some financial intelligence that will see the escaping the debt cycle if they apply these wisdoms I gleaned from the word of God.

The big difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich only borrow money to invest while the poor only borrow money to consume. The rich man gets a loan to build a clothing factory, or a retail mall or a small boutique because he knows that the poor man will go to the same bank to get a loan or a credit card to splurge on new clothes to impress people. You see, many people who look rich are not rich simply because they spend too much money trying to look rich and have little left to be actually rich. The term dressed to kill may mean dressing well but it may also mean spending too much on clothes to kill yourself with poverty. The more the poor continue buying clothes and other accessories they do not need, the more the rich becomes richer and the poorer they become. So break the cycle. Never borrow to consume only borrow to produce.

Those who say money cannot buy happiness act as if being broke can buy happiness. Get money even if it cant buy happiness. Money multiplies your ability to do good. The world is evil today not because money is evil but because evil people control money. Ask yourself how helpful the Good Samaritan could have been if he had no money. Now ask yourself how destructive satan can be if his people had no money. Jesus preached and taught about money more than about ANY OTHER THING. So go out there and make money, do not be afraid of it. #RenosNuggets

Who is Presidency? By Reuben Abati

When last week, President Muhammadu Buhari decided to suspend the secretary to the government of the federation, Babachir Lawal, and the director general of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency, Ayo Oke in order to allow unfettered investigations of both public officers, the most striking immediate reaction was the SGF asking: who is the presidency? State House correspondents had accosted the then SGF as he left a meeting with the vice president. It is standard practice at the State House for correspondents to lay ambush. Babachir Lawal obviously did not know that he had been suspended from office.

If the vice president knew, he did not tell him. Again, that is how the Nigerian presidency works. Once you fall out of line or favour due courtesies may not be extended to you. I was instructed on many occasions to wait until certain persons left the Villa, before issuing their sack statements. I once announced the disengagement of an important public official from the Presidential Wing of the airport, as our aircraft taxied on the runway en route France.

In Babachir Lawal’s case, he was asked to react to something he knew nothing about. When he sought clarifications, the correspondents told him that the presidency had suspended him from office. Anybody in his shoes would have been just as shocked as he was. He was right there in the Villa, and nobody told him there was a knife at his back. Besides, he occupies a very strategic office. The SGF’s office is the engine room of the Presidency.

The chief of staff may be the political, administrative head of the State House, but the engine of the Presidency is in the office of the SGF. He is in charge of council meetings, the ministers must interface with him, the civil service also, and he is directly in charge of more than 30 government agencies and parastatals. No key government event or appointment can take place without that office. Presidential power is delegated and distributed. The office of the SGF arguably has a larger share, in other words, in real terms, that office is probably more influential than every other office in the Executive arm of government.

The problem with privileged people in government, holding political appointments, however, is that they often get carried away. They forget that they are mere agents, exercising delegated authority. The illusion of power and the delusion of agents constitute one of the major threats in the corridors of power. But the delusion of relatives, associates and wayfarers is even worse. I have seen ordinary relatives of the President threatening to be powerful, and mere acquaintances claiming to be in charge of the Presidency. It got so interesting at a point that a colleague, who had a first class and whose only dream was to get a Ph.D. in his lifetime, kept insisting that he would devote his doctoral thesis to a study of the impact of informal agents on Presidential powers and authority. If waka-pass characters in the corridors of power can lay so much claim to power, there can be no doubt that privileged persons with big egos would be worse.

At that moment therefore when Babachir Lawal asked the question: who is the Presidency?, he must have thought of all the powers and influence in his custody and imagined himself as being indeed the main engine of the Presidency. His response to the correspondents was actually a retort: “who will dare take such a decision behind my back? I am the Presidency and I have just held a meeting with the VP. You reporters don’t know anything. You are telling the Presidency that the Presidency has suspended him from office?” By now, a week later, Babachir Lawal must have learnt one basic lesson about power.

The lesson is simply that it is power that gives power, when power withdraws power, what is left is powerlessness. For example, another person has since taken Babachir Lawal’s place in acting capacity and there is nothing he can do about that. Some other politicians are also already being positioned to take over that office eventually, so far three names have been mentioned- Ogbonnnaya Onu, Adams Oshiomhole and Olorunnimbe Mamora and it looks like there is a serious hustle for that office. Nobody is likely to reject the job if Babachir Lawal loses it. Meanwhile, the Presidency continues to move on while Babachir Lawal is under interrogation. In the last week alone, the suspended SGF should also have learnt a few more lessons about human beings. He may no longer ask that question: who is the Presidency? He is more likely to be asking: who is Babachir Lawal?

But that is a private question. No matter how concerned we may be, we can’t answer it for him. It is a kind of question, manifesting in form of a cross which every person must carry at certain critical moments in their lives. When he asked that other question however: who is the Presidency?, Babachir Lawal, beyond his egoistic slip, threw up something anagnoristic, which is of significant public interest. I offer to attempt an answer to the question.

The simple answer is that the President is the Presidency – office, power and system unified in one person. Under the type of Presidential system that we run, the President of Nigeria is more or less a unilateral person. He is Head of State, Head of Government, and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. His powers are derived from the Constitution, under which he is elected and which he swears to uphold and defend, and it is also subject to it, that he is expected to exercise his powers. The idea of our American-styled Presidential system is further hinged on the doctrine of the separation of powers.

This makes the President the custodian of Executive powers and provides constitutional checks and balances on those powers through the legislature and the judiciary. The Constitution requires the President for example to seek the National Assembly’s approval for appropriation and certain appointments, and grants the legislature the powers to impeach the President or pass a vote of no confidence, although this oversight power is hardly exercised. The Judiciary is constitutionally independent, and whereas the Executive approves the appointment of judges, it is not granted the powers to dictate to the judiciary. There are also certain independent bodies like the Electoral Commission, the Federal Civil Service Commission, the National Judicial Council and the Code of Conduct Bureau, which in the eyes of the law are required to be free from partisan control. The President also cannot take certain decisions without consultation. He consults such bodies as the Nigeria Police Council, the National Defence Council, and the Council of State, even if their advice is not binding on him. In making appointments he is also required to respect the Federal Character principle as stated in Sections 14(3) and 147(3).

The sum effect of the constitutional powers of the President under the 1999 Constitution in addition to the residual and implied powers of that office is that what we have in Nigeria at the moment is an imperial Presidency, far more imperial than the imperialism of the American Presidency contemplated and analysed in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr’s book of the same title. Sections 5, 11, 157, 158, 215, 216, 218, 231, 305, and 315 of the 1999 Constitution grant the President of Nigeria enough powers to compromise the authority and impact of the other two tiers of government.

The exercise of so-called residual and implied powers makes the situation worse. The President can hire and fire, enter into covenants on behalf of the country, send police men onto the streets, send troops to war and seek legislative approval later, he can give national honours, grant pardon, spend money and seek approval within a time-frame, insist on the declaration of an emergency, and act as he may wish in the national interest.

This imperialism is a throwback to the monarchical nature of primeval societies. It is sustained sadly by contemporary myths, the thinking that the President is a mythical repository, a superhero- the man who has all the answers and who can do all things. Other players within the system at all levels, be it the legislature or the judiciary, the private sector or the civil society, also actively promote this myth and concede to it. The result is that power becomes centripetal. The people unwittingly submit their sovereignty. The idea of the President as a savior is a sad re-imagining of our democracy, which in full flight over-extends the symbolism and powers of the Presidency and threatens to make the legislature and the judiciary irrelevant and thus displaces the people from being partners into consumers of government propaganda and tyranny.

By regarding their Presidents or Heads of states as super-heroes, Nigerians place them above democracy and short-change themselves. This has been our dilemma since 1960. Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister was the super hero who received the instruments of independence from the British colonialists, but by 1966, he had led the country into trouble. Yakubu Gowon, a soldier, took over. He was the super hero who led the country through a civil war and held it together, but he was soon shoved aside by another super hero, Murtala Muhammad, also a soldier. From Muhammad to Obasanjo, the military held sway until 1979 when the military returned power to a civilian “super hero”, Shehu Shagari. Shagari’s task was to prove that civilians could take charge of their own affairs, but the civilians messed up and the soldiers returned: Buhari, Babangida, Abacha, Abdusalami Abubakar, all super heroes who deployed power in different ways. Fast-forward to 1999 and the return to civilian rule since then.

What seems clear is that the extent to which every Head of State and Head of Government exercises Executive powers is a function of personality and the surrounding myths and circumstances. President Olusegun Obasanjo was such a total embodiment of Presidential powers every knee bowed before him. Those who resisted him regretted doing so in one form or the other. If he had actually insisted on a Third term in office, he could have possibly gotten away with it. He understood the full extent of his powers as President and he was not afraid to put those powers to test. He was succeeded by Umaru Yar’Adua who became President primarily because some powerful persons didn’t want some other people in that office and merely to pacify certain interests but eventually illness and death truncated President Yar’Adua’s potential.

President Goodluck Jonathan became acting President and later President also as a superhero. Nigerians used him to remind the North that in a Federation, no single region is “born to rule,” and that all Nigerians have full rights under the Constitution. The North never forgave Jonathan. In his case, he seemed to have played into the hands of his opponents by refusing to use Presidential powers to their fullest extent. He publicly declared on more than one occasion that power should not be wielded like a whip. He conceded a lot, some say too much to God, and to the opposition, and for this reason, many courtesans of power in Nigeria have also not forgiven him especially for being humble and for allowing power and office to go in the opposite direction.

His successor is a war-hero, a former soldier, who is not shy about being a Nigerian super-hero. He is wielding power and using it. The only problem is that a fully imperial Presidency creates its own contradictions, most of which the subject teaches us, is internal and therefore far more damaging to the system and democracy itself. Under no circumstance should an elected leader appear more powerful than the people, and the checking and balancing systems so vulnerable. The note-taking on this and the long-term dangers in the context of Nigeria’s democratic process and experience is, for now, a work in progress… Babachir Lawal, I hope I have answered your question. I hope you now know who and what the Presidency is.

Dr. Reuben Abati was spokesperson and special adviser, media and publicity to President Goodluck Jonathan (2011 – 2015). He tweets from @abati1990.