‘Wike climbed into the governorship seat over dead bodies’

Rivers State Acting Chief Judge, Justice Daisy Okocha presenting publications of the state judiciary to Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike on Thursday in Port Harcourt during the opening of the 2015/2016 Legal Year

The Head of Presidential Anti-corruption Committee, Prof Itse Sagay, has again voiced his concern over some recent rulings of the Supreme Court on election petitions, particularly those held in Rivers and Akwa Ibom states.
Sagay, who spoke with newsmen at the Olu Palace, Warri on Saturday, warned that the rulings, which allow people who were declared winners without elections in spite of copious evidences of irregularities and heavy human and material casualties, set a dangerous precedent in the history of elections.
“The judgements are very perverse, particularly relating to Akwa Ibom and Rivers. Everybody knows that there were no elections in those two states.
“Everybody knows that people like Wike climbed into the governorship seat over dead bodies and over bloods of human beings. There were no elections, they wrote the results; the evidence is there,” he said.
According to Sagay, what the Supreme Court has done is to set the clock of electoral excellence and fairness and credibility back by, ” I do not want to say a thousand years, but certainly it is taking us back to where we were before Jega came in and sanitize the system.”
“We are going to have primitive and barbaric electoral culture; ‘kill as much as you can, destroy as much as you can, create as much catastrophe, but if you can find yourself on that seat, you are confirmed, regardless of the means by which you got there’.
“That is a very major setback to democracy and the rule of law,” he said.
Similarly, the erudite constitutional lawyer also flayed the present crop of Supreme Court judges, insisting that they have degraded the court from decades ago when the Nigerian Supreme Court was ranked among the best in the world.
“I remember 15, 20 years ago, we had a Supreme Court that is the best in the world – better than the one you have in the US. That was when you had Justices (Kayode) Eso, (Andrew) Obaseki, Anyagolou, (Adolphous) Karibe-Whyte, Bello and so on. Those people brought a culture to the Supreme Court and most of us thought when they left the culture would remain but it hasn’t.
“New people have come, much younger people, and they have different approach to life because I don’t understand why you would have law, which is in conflict with justice and you prefer to apply that law – technical law, which is in conflict with justice. As we have seen in the case of Akwa Ibom and Rivers and a few other cases.
“So I think their orientations are different. I think the older ones who are gone believed that justice was number one. In such a case, you ask where does the justice lies? They now interpreted the law in line with justice.
“But now what we have is a group of people in the Supreme Court, who do not care where their legal interpretation is leading them. Once you have a divorce between law and justice, the whole legal system will break down and that is what has happened,” he added.
Prof Sagay has also called for disciplinary actions against Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) and other senior lawyers who are seen to be encouraging corrupt politicians and looters of the nation’s treasury.
He said, “There are a group of senior lawyers who have totally departed from anything that the calling of the law profession requires; they have thrown in their lots with the looters and have become, I won’t call them fellow looters, but definitely, they have started enjoying and sharing in the proceeds of crimes of these looters and because of that they are absolutely now against the anti-corruption law.
“There is need to have these Senior Advocates thoroughly disciplined and if they would not accept discipline, they need to be removed from the profession before they bring more disgrace to the profession and at the same time drag this country down economically.”
Source:: THE NATION

Aluko is desperate, says governor

Fayose

Governor Ayo Fayose yesterday condemned the statement by a former secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Tope Aluko, saying he does not deserve a response.

The governor spoke through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media Mr. Lere Olayinka.

He said Aluko was beclouded by his desperation to seek revenge against Fayose because of his refusal to make him his Chief of Staff. He (Aluko) is not mindful of committing the criminal offence of perjury, the statement added.

The governor described as “shameful” that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has refused to accept a scandalous electoral defeat they suffered 19 months ago, asking whether it was also soldiers that rigged the 2015 presidential, senatorial, House of Representatives and State House of Assembly elections that the party lost.

He said: “For Aluko to be taken seriously, he must first have to report himself to the police to be tried for perjury and committed to prison for three years since what he is now saying is different from what he said under oath at the Election Tribunal where he was the only witness called by the PDP and Governor Fayose.

“If after giving evidence under oath at the tribunal that the Election was free, fair and credible and that security agents, including soldiers performed their duties creditably, saying something else more than one year after is not fair.

“It is also a demonstration of the fact that given the right offer tomorrow, the same Aluko can also address the press tomorrow to deny all he said today. He can even deny his own existence since he can deny what he said under oath just because he was not made Chief of Staff.

“Therefore, we won’t bother ourselves responding to what a political parasite  chooses to say because he wouldn’t have said what he is saying today if he had been made Chief of Staff to Governor Fayose and it is sure that if he is called today, and given the right offer, he will

begin to sing another song.

“Also, the APC bad losers in Ekiti State should know that it will take more than recruiting and 

paying a disgruntled TKO Aluko to discredit an election adjudged by both local and international observers, including the United States government as free, fair and credible.

They will probably need to pay INEC to tell Nigerians that an election it conducted, in which an incumbent governor lost in his own local government, was not credible.

“As per his claim that $37 million was given to the governor for the election, the governor got financial support from various sources as it is usual of anyone contesting election and it is not for him to begin to advertise in the media the level of support the governor received from individuals, corporate organisations or groups.

“However, if money belonging to the APC is missing and they suspect that the money was stolen by Dr Goodluck Jonathan to fund Ekiti State governorship election, they can approach the EFCC.”

Source: THE NATION

Nigeria ‘imported N20.2tr fuel in five years’

Nigeria spent N20.2 trillion to import petrol, diesel and kerosene between January 2010 and September 2015, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.

Figures jointly compiled by both the NBS and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) released at the weekend indicate that N12, 529, 746, 397, 978. 48 was spent on the importation of 102,374,588,480.91 litres of petrol (Premium Motor Spirit).

An amount of N6,450,576,065,479.43 was spent to import 16,679,065,103 litres of diesel (Automotive and Gas Oil).

Between January 2012 and September 2015, N1,271,500,290,241 was spent on the importation of 9,448,409,070 litres of kerosene.

Source:THE NATION

Budget 2016, Metuh’s handcuff, warts and all

Without any iota of self-delusion, it is easy to say that Nigeria is in a bad shape. Everywhere you go, you meet hapless citizens singing lamentation songs with plastic laugher grafted on their faces. The economy has simply refused to jerk out of a prolonged coma. The dollar, the monetary instrument through which petroleum products’ trading is negotiated, is playing a yoyo game that has defied all measures. The bureaucrats at the Central Bank of Nigeria have developed and redeveloped all kinds of crazy strategies to firm up the local Naira against the international currencies, yet the real value of that piece of paper keeps depreciating as if it would soon go out of existence. We now know that the 2016 Budget, predicated on an ambitious $38 per barrel of crude oil, may have to go for an emergency surgery at the Intensive Care Unit of the Budget Office as crude now sells below $30 per barrel, with prospects to dive further still. Experts’ forecast of further downward slide in pricing with Iran making a re-entry into the oil production market does not in any way help the problem. If you ask those who understand the dynamics of this trend, they will tell you that the road ahead is rough, tough and challenging. The uncomfortable truth is that we may end up waddling in an economic quagmire for a long time to come. That is the crying reality.

In spite of all this, Nigeria is a peculiar country peopled by extraordinary souls. We have mastered the art of using laughter to cover our pains and anguish. What keeps us moving in this country, despite the serial tragic moments that confront us daily, is our ability to be melodramatic. If we were not making light issues out of what ordinarily should irk us, we would be exaggerating issues that should be waved off. Oftentimes, we trivialise the real issues while getting needlessly absorbed in side talks. We are held captive by sentiments, ethnic cleavages and religious bigotry. With pretentious naivety, we display the same fault lines that we hasten to condemn others for indulging in. Fate and faith brought us together but deep-seated primordial dogmas continue to set brothers against brothers. On paper, we are one nation. In mindset, we are different nations. Education has failed to cement that bond and that explains why this country splutters on in circles that lead to nowhere. In unison, we live a life of mutual distrust for one another. And we laugh off even the foolishness of our collective inaction. That is the pathetic irony in the Nigerian story.

Just the other day, the Nigerian Senate roared with a fantabulous tale about how a three-volume 2016 Budget documents totalling more than 1,500 pages and personally handed over to the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, grew wings and took an escapist flight from the National Assembly’s vault. Of course, most Nigerians had initially thought that it must be one of those stunts this horde of over-pampered lawmakers fondly pull whenever they want to divert attention from the humongous fund they appropriate for themselves without any subheads. When the story started trending on the social media, I was prepared to make a wager that it was a rehearsed script by the Senators to announce their resumption from yet another break. Well, it turned out to be more than a publicity stunt. The budget, or some form of it, was actually missing. A committee, which was summarily set up, eventually discovered that alterations had been made on another version of the budget distinct from the ‘original’ which Buhari tendered. Just that no one told us how the two versions of the same budget, which mystifyingly disappeared, were mysteriously found. After all the noise and air pumping, Saraki announced with senatorial majesty that the Senate under his watch would only discuss figures contained in the Buhari’s document. You just cannot but wonder what all the hullaballoo was about. Are these characters not tired of playing to the gallery in times of national crisis? Now that Buhari has written to the Senate, intimating them of adjustments in the document, has the world come to end? Is this Senate doing anything significantly different, judging from the prism through which each member has reportedly dissected the budget based on party lines and personal indulgences rather than what would satisfy the collective?

That laughable happenstance aside, I read, with mouth aghast, the scandalous permutations some folks ascribe to the cuffs on the wrists of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, when he appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja for his bail hearing. Metuh is standing trial for allegedly collecting N400m illegally from the funds meant for arms procurement, to prosecute political campaigns for his party. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the amount was transferred from an account domiciled with the Office of the erstwhile National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, who is also facing trial for illegal diversion of $2.1 billion for sundry purposes other than the procurement of arms for prosecuting the war against the deadly insurgents in the North East.

In his first appearance, Metuh’s so-called supporters turned the court premises into some sort of carnival rendezvous, singing his praises and demanding his immediate release as a victim of political victimisation. A visibly excited Metuh waved back at the hired crowd as if the matter at stake was a popularity contest between him, his apologists and the government. To that ill-informed crowd, it mattered less that the country is still battling with the consequences of the atrocious clannishness of Dasuki’s inexplicable action of which Metuh is facing trial as a major beneficiary. As far as they are concerned, those innocent casualties of the war, including soldiers who are serving punishment for refusing to fight with obsolete equipment count for nothing as long Metuh and any other thieving elite walks free on the street with his loot intact. If not, what was all that partying, shouting and protest at the premises of the court for? Was Metuh receiving a chieftaincy title or was he in the dock for heinous crime against the society?

It is worrisome that otherwise rationale minds could only read ethnic agenda to a matter that is as serious as this. It is one thing to question the rationale behind bringing Metuh before the law in handcuffs and it is another thing to jump into conclusion that he was being deliberately humiliated because he hails from the South-East. By the way, when the elite converge to rape the treasury blind, they pay scant attention to ethnic affiliations. The Dasuki largesse connects all parts of the geographical entity called Nigeria; it was an invidious ‘federal character’ robbery of the commonwealth. So let no one sing the ethnic rant here! Even before the officials of the Nigerian Prisons Service could issue a statement on why Metuh was in cuffs, his allies had already gone to town with how Aso Rock directed the Minister of Interior to ensure that Metuh got the handcuff treatment. Some simpletons would even swear on their ancestors’ graves that they were privy to the conversations.

Question is: what is so special about Metuh that he should be excluded from being handcuffed to a court of law if the prison authorities think it necessary? Was he the first prominent Nigerian that would be so treated? When people parade pictures of Dasuki strolling to the courts in the midst of heavily armed security men, they easily forget that he remains the most humiliated Nigerian in the arms gate scandal. Since his arrest late last year, Dasuki never enjoyed any freedom despite the temporary respite granted by the courts to travel out of the country for medical care. He has never set his foot out of Abuja from the time the security forces swooped on his residence. Yet, no northerner had come out to sing a victimisation dirge neither has anyone accused Buhari of being wicked to a fellow northerner. I doubt if the relevant authorities would waste time in putting Dasuki in cuff if it becomes imperative.

I honestly sympathise with those who feel hurt seeing their local heroes in unfamiliar terrain just like Metuh found himself. However, what bothers me more is the havoc that corruption continues to inflict on the psyche of this nation. Clearly, there are better ways of making heroes outside those who chanced on sudden wealth just because they have the opportunity to dip their filthy hands in our collective pie. With the rate at which those who prefer eating from the crumbs of corruption worship these villains, it would be difficult for them to understand why something drastic needs to be done about a situation where just less than 60 persons stole over N1.3 trillion from the public purse in just seven years of this democratic journey. Yes, democracy confers some freedom on the citizens but it does not include the freedom to loot with sickening madness and expect to get a slap on the wrists! How long do they want the rape to continue before they stop dignifying the play-acting by the killers of our collective dreams for a developed and progressive Nigeria? This is definitely not a laughing matter. Or is it?

Source:THE NATION

Budget 2016, Metuh’s handcuff, warts and all

Without any iota of self-delusion, it is easy to say that Nigeria is in a bad shape. Everywhere you go, you meet hapless citizens singing lamentation songs with plastic laugher grafted on their faces. The economy has simply refused to jerk out of a prolonged coma. The dollar, the monetary instrument through which petroleum products’ trading is negotiated, is playing a yoyo game that has defied all measures. The bureaucrats at the Central Bank of Nigeria have developed and redeveloped all kinds of crazy strategies to firm up the local Naira against the international currencies, yet the real value of that piece of paper keeps depreciating as if it would soon go out of existence. We now know that the 2016 Budget, predicated on an ambitious $38 per barrel of crude oil, may have to go for an emergency surgery at the Intensive Care Unit of the Budget Office as crude now sells below $30 per barrel, with prospects to dive further still. Experts’ forecast of further downward slide in pricing with Iran making a re-entry into the oil production market does not in any way help the problem. If you ask those who understand the dynamics of this trend, they will tell you that the road ahead is rough, tough and challenging. The uncomfortable truth is that we may end up waddling in an economic quagmire for a long time to come. That is the crying reality.

In spite of all this, Nigeria is a peculiar country peopled by extraordinary souls. We have mastered the art of using laughter to cover our pains and anguish. What keeps us moving in this country, despite the serial tragic moments that confront us daily, is our ability to be melodramatic. If we were not making light issues out of what ordinarily should irk us, we would be exaggerating issues that should be waved off. Oftentimes, we trivialise the real issues while getting needlessly absorbed in side talks. We are held captive by sentiments, ethnic cleavages and religious bigotry. With pretentious naivety, we display the same fault lines that we hasten to condemn others for indulging in. Fate and faith brought us together but deep-seated primordial dogmas continue to set brothers against brothers. On paper, we are one nation. In mindset, we are different nations. Education has failed to cement that bond and that explains why this country splutters on in circles that lead to nowhere. In unison, we live a life of mutual distrust for one another. And we laugh off even the foolishness of our collective inaction. That is the pathetic irony in the Nigerian story.

Just the other day, the Nigerian Senate roared with a fantabulous tale about how a three-volume 2016 Budget documents totalling more than 1,500 pages and personally handed over to the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, grew wings and took an escapist flight from the National Assembly’s vault. Of course, most Nigerians had initially thought that it must be one of those stunts this horde of over-pampered lawmakers fondly pull whenever they want to divert attention from the humongous fund they appropriate for themselves without any subheads. When the story started trending on the social media, I was prepared to make a wager that it was a rehearsed script by the Senators to announce their resumption from yet another break. Well, it turned out to be more than a publicity stunt. The budget, or some form of it, was actually missing. A committee, which was summarily set up, eventually discovered that alterations had been made on another version of the budget distinct from the ‘original’ which Buhari tendered. Just that no one told us how the two versions of the same budget, which mystifyingly disappeared, were mysteriously found. After all the noise and air pumping, Saraki announced with senatorial majesty that the Senate under his watch would only discuss figures contained in the Buhari’s document. You just cannot but wonder what all the hullaballoo was about. Are these characters not tired of playing to the gallery in times of national crisis? Now that Buhari has written to the Senate, intimating them of adjustments in the document, has the world come to end? Is this Senate doing anything significantly different, judging from the prism through which each member has reportedly dissected the budget based on party lines and personal indulgences rather than what would satisfy the collective?

That laughable happenstance aside, I read, with mouth aghast, the scandalous permutations some folks ascribe to the cuffs on the wrists of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, when he appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja for his bail hearing. Metuh is standing trial for allegedly collecting N400m illegally from the funds meant for arms procurement, to prosecute political campaigns for his party. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the amount was transferred from an account domiciled with the Office of the erstwhile National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, who is also facing trial for illegal diversion of $2.1 billion for sundry purposes other than the procurement of arms for prosecuting the war against the deadly insurgents in the North East.

In his first appearance, Metuh’s so-called supporters turned the court premises into some sort of carnival rendezvous, singing his praises and demanding his immediate release as a victim of political victimisation. A visibly excited Metuh waved back at the hired crowd as if the matter at stake was a popularity contest between him, his apologists and the government. To that ill-informed crowd, it mattered less that the country is still battling with the consequences of the atrocious clannishness of Dasuki’s inexplicable action of which Metuh is facing trial as a major beneficiary. As far as they are concerned, those innocent casualties of the war, including soldiers who are serving punishment for refusing to fight with obsolete equipment count for nothing as long Metuh and any other thieving elite walks free on the street with his loot intact. If not, what was all that partying, shouting and protest at the premises of the court for? Was Metuh receiving a chieftaincy title or was he in the dock for heinous crime against the society?

It is worrisome that otherwise rationale minds could only read ethnic agenda to a matter that is as serious as this. It is one thing to question the rationale behind bringing Metuh before the law in handcuffs and it is another thing to jump into conclusion that he was being deliberately humiliated because he hails from the South-East. By the way, when the elite converge to rape the treasury blind, they pay scant attention to ethnic affiliations. The Dasuki largesse connects all parts of the geographical entity called Nigeria; it was an invidious ‘federal character’ robbery of the commonwealth. So let no one sing the ethnic rant here! Even before the officials of the Nigerian Prisons Service could issue a statement on why Metuh was in cuffs, his allies had already gone to town with how Aso Rock directed the Minister of Interior to ensure that Metuh got the handcuff treatment. Some simpletons would even swear on their ancestors’ graves that they were privy to the conversations.

Question is: what is so special about Metuh that he should be excluded from being handcuffed to a court of law if the prison authorities think it necessary? Was he the first prominent Nigerian that would be so treated? When people parade pictures of Dasuki strolling to the courts in the midst of heavily armed security men, they easily forget that he remains the most humiliated Nigerian in the arms gate scandal. Since his arrest late last year, Dasuki never enjoyed any freedom despite the temporary respite granted by the courts to travel out of the country for medical care. He has never set his foot out of Abuja from the time the security forces swooped on his residence. Yet, no northerner had come out to sing a victimisation dirge neither has anyone accused Buhari of being wicked to a fellow northerner. I doubt if the relevant authorities would waste time in putting Dasuki in cuff if it becomes imperative.

I honestly sympathise with those who feel hurt seeing their local heroes in unfamiliar terrain just like Metuh found himself. However, what bothers me more is the havoc that corruption continues to inflict on the psyche of this nation. Clearly, there are better ways of making heroes outside those who chanced on sudden wealth just because they have the opportunity to dip their filthy hands in our collective pie. With the rate at which those who prefer eating from the crumbs of corruption worship these villains, it would be difficult for them to understand why something drastic needs to be done about a situation where just less than 60 persons stole over N1.3 trillion from the public purse in just seven years of this democratic journey. Yes, democracy confers some freedom on the citizens but it does not include the freedom to loot with sickening madness and expect to get a slap on the wrists! How long do they want the rape to continue before they stop dignifying the play-acting by the killers of our collective dreams for a developed and progressive Nigeria? This is definitely not a laughing matter. Or is it?

Source:THE NATION

Budget 2016, Metuh’s handcuff, warts and all

Without any iota of self-delusion, it is easy to say that Nigeria is in a bad shape. Everywhere you go, you meet hapless citizens singing lamentation songs with plastic laugher grafted on their faces. The economy has simply refused to jerk out of a prolonged coma. The dollar, the monetary instrument through which petroleum products’ trading is negotiated, is playing a yoyo game that has defied all measures. The bureaucrats at the Central Bank of Nigeria have developed and redeveloped all kinds of crazy strategies to firm up the local Naira against the international currencies, yet the real value of that piece of paper keeps depreciating as if it would soon go out of existence. We now know that the 2016 Budget, predicated on an ambitious $38 per barrel of crude oil, may have to go for an emergency surgery at the Intensive Care Unit of the Budget Office as crude now sells below $30 per barrel, with prospects to dive further still. Experts’ forecast of further downward slide in pricing with Iran making a re-entry into the oil production market does not in any way help the problem. If you ask those who understand the dynamics of this trend, they will tell you that the road ahead is rough, tough and challenging. The uncomfortable truth is that we may end up waddling in an economic quagmire for a long time to come. That is the crying reality.

In spite of all this, Nigeria is a peculiar country peopled by extraordinary souls. We have mastered the art of using laughter to cover our pains and anguish. What keeps us moving in this country, despite the serial tragic moments that confront us daily, is our ability to be melodramatic. If we were not making light issues out of what ordinarily should irk us, we would be exaggerating issues that should be waved off. Oftentimes, we trivialise the real issues while getting needlessly absorbed in side talks. We are held captive by sentiments, ethnic cleavages and religious bigotry. With pretentious naivety, we display the same fault lines that we hasten to condemn others for indulging in. Fate and faith brought us together but deep-seated primordial dogmas continue to set brothers against brothers. On paper, we are one nation. In mindset, we are different nations. Education has failed to cement that bond and that explains why this country splutters on in circles that lead to nowhere. In unison, we live a life of mutual distrust for one another. And we laugh off even the foolishness of our collective inaction. That is the pathetic irony in the Nigerian story.

Just the other day, the Nigerian Senate roared with a fantabulous tale about how a three-volume 2016 Budget documents totalling more than 1,500 pages and personally handed over to the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, grew wings and took an escapist flight from the National Assembly’s vault. Of course, most Nigerians had initially thought that it must be one of those stunts this horde of over-pampered lawmakers fondly pull whenever they want to divert attention from the humongous fund they appropriate for themselves without any subheads. When the story started trending on the social media, I was prepared to make a wager that it was a rehearsed script by the Senators to announce their resumption from yet another break. Well, it turned out to be more than a publicity stunt. The budget, or some form of it, was actually missing. A committee, which was summarily set up, eventually discovered that alterations had been made on another version of the budget distinct from the ‘original’ which Buhari tendered. Just that no one told us how the two versions of the same budget, which mystifyingly disappeared, were mysteriously found. After all the noise and air pumping, Saraki announced with senatorial majesty that the Senate under his watch would only discuss figures contained in the Buhari’s document. You just cannot but wonder what all the hullaballoo was about. Are these characters not tired of playing to the gallery in times of national crisis? Now that Buhari has written to the Senate, intimating them of adjustments in the document, has the world come to end? Is this Senate doing anything significantly different, judging from the prism through which each member has reportedly dissected the budget based on party lines and personal indulgences rather than what would satisfy the collective?

That laughable happenstance aside, I read, with mouth aghast, the scandalous permutations some folks ascribe to the cuffs on the wrists of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, when he appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja for his bail hearing. Metuh is standing trial for allegedly collecting N400m illegally from the funds meant for arms procurement, to prosecute political campaigns for his party. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the amount was transferred from an account domiciled with the Office of the erstwhile National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, who is also facing trial for illegal diversion of $2.1 billion for sundry purposes other than the procurement of arms for prosecuting the war against the deadly insurgents in the North East.

In his first appearance, Metuh’s so-called supporters turned the court premises into some sort of carnival rendezvous, singing his praises and demanding his immediate release as a victim of political victimisation. A visibly excited Metuh waved back at the hired crowd as if the matter at stake was a popularity contest between him, his apologists and the government. To that ill-informed crowd, it mattered less that the country is still battling with the consequences of the atrocious clannishness of Dasuki’s inexplicable action of which Metuh is facing trial as a major beneficiary. As far as they are concerned, those innocent casualties of the war, including soldiers who are serving punishment for refusing to fight with obsolete equipment count for nothing as long Metuh and any other thieving elite walks free on the street with his loot intact. If not, what was all that partying, shouting and protest at the premises of the court for? Was Metuh receiving a chieftaincy title or was he in the dock for heinous crime against the society?

It is worrisome that otherwise rationale minds could only read ethnic agenda to a matter that is as serious as this. It is one thing to question the rationale behind bringing Metuh before the law in handcuffs and it is another thing to jump into conclusion that he was being deliberately humiliated because he hails from the South-East. By the way, when the elite converge to rape the treasury blind, they pay scant attention to ethnic affiliations. The Dasuki largesse connects all parts of the geographical entity called Nigeria; it was an invidious ‘federal character’ robbery of the commonwealth. So let no one sing the ethnic rant here! Even before the officials of the Nigerian Prisons Service could issue a statement on why Metuh was in cuffs, his allies had already gone to town with how Aso Rock directed the Minister of Interior to ensure that Metuh got the handcuff treatment. Some simpletons would even swear on their ancestors’ graves that they were privy to the conversations.

Question is: what is so special about Metuh that he should be excluded from being handcuffed to a court of law if the prison authorities think it necessary? Was he the first prominent Nigerian that would be so treated? When people parade pictures of Dasuki strolling to the courts in the midst of heavily armed security men, they easily forget that he remains the most humiliated Nigerian in the arms gate scandal. Since his arrest late last year, Dasuki never enjoyed any freedom despite the temporary respite granted by the courts to travel out of the country for medical care. He has never set his foot out of Abuja from the time the security forces swooped on his residence. Yet, no northerner had come out to sing a victimisation dirge neither has anyone accused Buhari of being wicked to a fellow northerner. I doubt if the relevant authorities would waste time in putting Dasuki in cuff if it becomes imperative.

I honestly sympathise with those who feel hurt seeing their local heroes in unfamiliar terrain just like Metuh found himself. However, what bothers me more is the havoc that corruption continues to inflict on the psyche of this nation. Clearly, there are better ways of making heroes outside those who chanced on sudden wealth just because they have the opportunity to dip their filthy hands in our collective pie. With the rate at which those who prefer eating from the crumbs of corruption worship these villains, it would be difficult for them to understand why something drastic needs to be done about a situation where just less than 60 persons stole over N1.3 trillion from the public purse in just seven years of this democratic journey. Yes, democracy confers some freedom on the citizens but it does not include the freedom to loot with sickening madness and expect to get a slap on the wrists! How long do they want the rape to continue before they stop dignifying the play-acting by the killers of our collective dreams for a developed and progressive Nigeria? This is definitely not a laughing matter. Or is it?

Source:THE NATION

Budget 2016, Metuh’s handcuff, warts and all

Without any iota of self-delusion, it is easy to say that Nigeria is in a bad shape. Everywhere you go, you meet hapless citizens singing lamentation songs with plastic laugher grafted on their faces. The economy has simply refused to jerk out of a prolonged coma. The dollar, the monetary instrument through which petroleum products’ trading is negotiated, is playing a yoyo game that has defied all measures. The bureaucrats at the Central Bank of Nigeria have developed and redeveloped all kinds of crazy strategies to firm up the local Naira against the international currencies, yet the real value of that piece of paper keeps depreciating as if it would soon go out of existence. We now know that the 2016 Budget, predicated on an ambitious $38 per barrel of crude oil, may have to go for an emergency surgery at the Intensive Care Unit of the Budget Office as crude now sells below $30 per barrel, with prospects to dive further still. Experts’ forecast of further downward slide in pricing with Iran making a re-entry into the oil production market does not in any way help the problem. If you ask those who understand the dynamics of this trend, they will tell you that the road ahead is rough, tough and challenging. The uncomfortable truth is that we may end up waddling in an economic quagmire for a long time to come. That is the crying reality.

In spite of all this, Nigeria is a peculiar country peopled by extraordinary souls. We have mastered the art of using laughter to cover our pains and anguish. What keeps us moving in this country, despite the serial tragic moments that confront us daily, is our ability to be melodramatic. If we were not making light issues out of what ordinarily should irk us, we would be exaggerating issues that should be waved off. Oftentimes, we trivialise the real issues while getting needlessly absorbed in side talks. We are held captive by sentiments, ethnic cleavages and religious bigotry. With pretentious naivety, we display the same fault lines that we hasten to condemn others for indulging in. Fate and faith brought us together but deep-seated primordial dogmas continue to set brothers against brothers. On paper, we are one nation. In mindset, we are different nations. Education has failed to cement that bond and that explains why this country splutters on in circles that lead to nowhere. In unison, we live a life of mutual distrust for one another. And we laugh off even the foolishness of our collective inaction. That is the pathetic irony in the Nigerian story.

Just the other day, the Nigerian Senate roared with a fantabulous tale about how a three-volume 2016 Budget documents totalling more than 1,500 pages and personally handed over to the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, grew wings and took an escapist flight from the National Assembly’s vault. Of course, most Nigerians had initially thought that it must be one of those stunts this horde of over-pampered lawmakers fondly pull whenever they want to divert attention from the humongous fund they appropriate for themselves without any subheads. When the story started trending on the social media, I was prepared to make a wager that it was a rehearsed script by the Senators to announce their resumption from yet another break. Well, it turned out to be more than a publicity stunt. The budget, or some form of it, was actually missing. A committee, which was summarily set up, eventually discovered that alterations had been made on another version of the budget distinct from the ‘original’ which Buhari tendered. Just that no one told us how the two versions of the same budget, which mystifyingly disappeared, were mysteriously found. After all the noise and air pumping, Saraki announced with senatorial majesty that the Senate under his watch would only discuss figures contained in the Buhari’s document. You just cannot but wonder what all the hullaballoo was about. Are these characters not tired of playing to the gallery in times of national crisis? Now that Buhari has written to the Senate, intimating them of adjustments in the document, has the world come to end? Is this Senate doing anything significantly different, judging from the prism through which each member has reportedly dissected the budget based on party lines and personal indulgences rather than what would satisfy the collective?

That laughable happenstance aside, I read, with mouth aghast, the scandalous permutations some folks ascribe to the cuffs on the wrists of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, when he appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja for his bail hearing. Metuh is standing trial for allegedly collecting N400m illegally from the funds meant for arms procurement, to prosecute political campaigns for his party. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the amount was transferred from an account domiciled with the Office of the erstwhile National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, who is also facing trial for illegal diversion of $2.1 billion for sundry purposes other than the procurement of arms for prosecuting the war against the deadly insurgents in the North East.

In his first appearance, Metuh’s so-called supporters turned the court premises into some sort of carnival rendezvous, singing his praises and demanding his immediate release as a victim of political victimisation. A visibly excited Metuh waved back at the hired crowd as if the matter at stake was a popularity contest between him, his apologists and the government. To that ill-informed crowd, it mattered less that the country is still battling with the consequences of the atrocious clannishness of Dasuki’s inexplicable action of which Metuh is facing trial as a major beneficiary. As far as they are concerned, those innocent casualties of the war, including soldiers who are serving punishment for refusing to fight with obsolete equipment count for nothing as long Metuh and any other thieving elite walks free on the street with his loot intact. If not, what was all that partying, shouting and protest at the premises of the court for? Was Metuh receiving a chieftaincy title or was he in the dock for heinous crime against the society?

It is worrisome that otherwise rationale minds could only read ethnic agenda to a matter that is as serious as this. It is one thing to question the rationale behind bringing Metuh before the law in handcuffs and it is another thing to jump into conclusion that he was being deliberately humiliated because he hails from the South-East. By the way, when the elite converge to rape the treasury blind, they pay scant attention to ethnic affiliations. The Dasuki largesse connects all parts of the geographical entity called Nigeria; it was an invidious ‘federal character’ robbery of the commonwealth. So let no one sing the ethnic rant here! Even before the officials of the Nigerian Prisons Service could issue a statement on why Metuh was in cuffs, his allies had already gone to town with how Aso Rock directed the Minister of Interior to ensure that Metuh got the handcuff treatment. Some simpletons would even swear on their ancestors’ graves that they were privy to the conversations.

Question is: what is so special about Metuh that he should be excluded from being handcuffed to a court of law if the prison authorities think it necessary? Was he the first prominent Nigerian that would be so treated? When people parade pictures of Dasuki strolling to the courts in the midst of heavily armed security men, they easily forget that he remains the most humiliated Nigerian in the arms gate scandal. Since his arrest late last year, Dasuki never enjoyed any freedom despite the temporary respite granted by the courts to travel out of the country for medical care. He has never set his foot out of Abuja from the time the security forces swooped on his residence. Yet, no northerner had come out to sing a victimisation dirge neither has anyone accused Buhari of being wicked to a fellow northerner. I doubt if the relevant authorities would waste time in putting Dasuki in cuff if it becomes imperative.

I honestly sympathise with those who feel hurt seeing their local heroes in unfamiliar terrain just like Metuh found himself. However, what bothers me more is the havoc that corruption continues to inflict on the psyche of this nation. Clearly, there are better ways of making heroes outside those who chanced on sudden wealth just because they have the opportunity to dip their filthy hands in our collective pie. With the rate at which those who prefer eating from the crumbs of corruption worship these villains, it would be difficult for them to understand why something drastic needs to be done about a situation where just less than 60 persons stole over N1.3 trillion from the public purse in just seven years of this democratic journey. Yes, democracy confers some freedom on the citizens but it does not include the freedom to loot with sickening madness and expect to get a slap on the wrists! How long do they want the rape to continue before they stop dignifying the play-acting by the killers of our collective dreams for a developed and progressive Nigeria? This is definitely not a laughing matter. Or is it?

Source:THE NATION

Budget 2016, Metuh’s handcuff, warts and all

Without any iota of self-delusion, it is easy to say that Nigeria is in a bad shape. Everywhere you go, you meet hapless citizens singing lamentation songs with plastic laugher grafted on their faces. The economy has simply refused to jerk out of a prolonged coma. The dollar, the monetary instrument through which petroleum products’ trading is negotiated, is playing a yoyo game that has defied all measures. The bureaucrats at the Central Bank of Nigeria have developed and redeveloped all kinds of crazy strategies to firm up the local Naira against the international currencies, yet the real value of that piece of paper keeps depreciating as if it would soon go out of existence. We now know that the 2016 Budget, predicated on an ambitious $38 per barrel of crude oil, may have to go for an emergency surgery at the Intensive Care Unit of the Budget Office as crude now sells below $30 per barrel, with prospects to dive further still. Experts’ forecast of further downward slide in pricing with Iran making a re-entry into the oil production market does not in any way help the problem. If you ask those who understand the dynamics of this trend, they will tell you that the road ahead is rough, tough and challenging. The uncomfortable truth is that we may end up waddling in an economic quagmire for a long time to come. That is the crying reality.

In spite of all this, Nigeria is a peculiar country peopled by extraordinary souls. We have mastered the art of using laughter to cover our pains and anguish. What keeps us moving in this country, despite the serial tragic moments that confront us daily, is our ability to be melodramatic. If we were not making light issues out of what ordinarily should irk us, we would be exaggerating issues that should be waved off. Oftentimes, we trivialise the real issues while getting needlessly absorbed in side talks. We are held captive by sentiments, ethnic cleavages and religious bigotry. With pretentious naivety, we display the same fault lines that we hasten to condemn others for indulging in. Fate and faith brought us together but deep-seated primordial dogmas continue to set brothers against brothers. On paper, we are one nation. In mindset, we are different nations. Education has failed to cement that bond and that explains why this country splutters on in circles that lead to nowhere. In unison, we live a life of mutual distrust for one another. And we laugh off even the foolishness of our collective inaction. That is the pathetic irony in the Nigerian story.

Just the other day, the Nigerian Senate roared with a fantabulous tale about how a three-volume 2016 Budget documents totalling more than 1,500 pages and personally handed over to the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, grew wings and took an escapist flight from the National Assembly’s vault. Of course, most Nigerians had initially thought that it must be one of those stunts this horde of over-pampered lawmakers fondly pull whenever they want to divert attention from the humongous fund they appropriate for themselves without any subheads. When the story started trending on the social media, I was prepared to make a wager that it was a rehearsed script by the Senators to announce their resumption from yet another break. Well, it turned out to be more than a publicity stunt. The budget, or some form of it, was actually missing. A committee, which was summarily set up, eventually discovered that alterations had been made on another version of the budget distinct from the ‘original’ which Buhari tendered. Just that no one told us how the two versions of the same budget, which mystifyingly disappeared, were mysteriously found. After all the noise and air pumping, Saraki announced with senatorial majesty that the Senate under his watch would only discuss figures contained in the Buhari’s document. You just cannot but wonder what all the hullaballoo was about. Are these characters not tired of playing to the gallery in times of national crisis? Now that Buhari has written to the Senate, intimating them of adjustments in the document, has the world come to end? Is this Senate doing anything significantly different, judging from the prism through which each member has reportedly dissected the budget based on party lines and personal indulgences rather than what would satisfy the collective?

That laughable happenstance aside, I read, with mouth aghast, the scandalous permutations some folks ascribe to the cuffs on the wrists of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, when he appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja for his bail hearing. Metuh is standing trial for allegedly collecting N400m illegally from the funds meant for arms procurement, to prosecute political campaigns for his party. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the amount was transferred from an account domiciled with the Office of the erstwhile National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, who is also facing trial for illegal diversion of $2.1 billion for sundry purposes other than the procurement of arms for prosecuting the war against the deadly insurgents in the North East.

In his first appearance, Metuh’s so-called supporters turned the court premises into some sort of carnival rendezvous, singing his praises and demanding his immediate release as a victim of political victimisation. A visibly excited Metuh waved back at the hired crowd as if the matter at stake was a popularity contest between him, his apologists and the government. To that ill-informed crowd, it mattered less that the country is still battling with the consequences of the atrocious clannishness of Dasuki’s inexplicable action of which Metuh is facing trial as a major beneficiary. As far as they are concerned, those innocent casualties of the war, including soldiers who are serving punishment for refusing to fight with obsolete equipment count for nothing as long Metuh and any other thieving elite walks free on the street with his loot intact. If not, what was all that partying, shouting and protest at the premises of the court for? Was Metuh receiving a chieftaincy title or was he in the dock for heinous crime against the society?

It is worrisome that otherwise rationale minds could only read ethnic agenda to a matter that is as serious as this. It is one thing to question the rationale behind bringing Metuh before the law in handcuffs and it is another thing to jump into conclusion that he was being deliberately humiliated because he hails from the South-East. By the way, when the elite converge to rape the treasury blind, they pay scant attention to ethnic affiliations. The Dasuki largesse connects all parts of the geographical entity called Nigeria; it was an invidious ‘federal character’ robbery of the commonwealth. So let no one sing the ethnic rant here! Even before the officials of the Nigerian Prisons Service could issue a statement on why Metuh was in cuffs, his allies had already gone to town with how Aso Rock directed the Minister of Interior to ensure that Metuh got the handcuff treatment. Some simpletons would even swear on their ancestors’ graves that they were privy to the conversations.

Question is: what is so special about Metuh that he should be excluded from being handcuffed to a court of law if the prison authorities think it necessary? Was he the first prominent Nigerian that would be so treated? When people parade pictures of Dasuki strolling to the courts in the midst of heavily armed security men, they easily forget that he remains the most humiliated Nigerian in the arms gate scandal. Since his arrest late last year, Dasuki never enjoyed any freedom despite the temporary respite granted by the courts to travel out of the country for medical care. He has never set his foot out of Abuja from the time the security forces swooped on his residence. Yet, no northerner had come out to sing a victimisation dirge neither has anyone accused Buhari of being wicked to a fellow northerner. I doubt if the relevant authorities would waste time in putting Dasuki in cuff if it becomes imperative.

I honestly sympathise with those who feel hurt seeing their local heroes in unfamiliar terrain just like Metuh found himself. However, what bothers me more is the havoc that corruption continues to inflict on the psyche of this nation. Clearly, there are better ways of making heroes outside those who chanced on sudden wealth just because they have the opportunity to dip their filthy hands in our collective pie. With the rate at which those who prefer eating from the crumbs of corruption worship these villains, it would be difficult for them to understand why something drastic needs to be done about a situation where just less than 60 persons stole over N1.3 trillion from the public purse in just seven years of this democratic journey. Yes, democracy confers some freedom on the citizens but it does not include the freedom to loot with sickening madness and expect to get a slap on the wrists! How long do they want the rape to continue before they stop dignifying the play-acting by the killers of our collective dreams for a developed and progressive Nigeria? This is definitely not a laughing matter. Or is it?

Source:THE NATION

Budget 2016, Metuh’s handcuff, warts and all

Without any iota of self-delusion, it is easy to say that Nigeria is in a bad shape. Everywhere you go, you meet hapless citizens singing lamentation songs with plastic laugher grafted on their faces. The economy has simply refused to jerk out of a prolonged coma. The dollar, the monetary instrument through which petroleum products’ trading is negotiated, is playing a yoyo game that has defied all measures. The bureaucrats at the Central Bank of Nigeria have developed and redeveloped all kinds of crazy strategies to firm up the local Naira against the international currencies, yet the real value of that piece of paper keeps depreciating as if it would soon go out of existence. We now know that the 2016 Budget, predicated on an ambitious $38 per barrel of crude oil, may have to go for an emergency surgery at the Intensive Care Unit of the Budget Office as crude now sells below $30 per barrel, with prospects to dive further still. Experts’ forecast of further downward slide in pricing with Iran making a re-entry into the oil production market does not in any way help the problem. If you ask those who understand the dynamics of this trend, they will tell you that the road ahead is rough, tough and challenging. The uncomfortable truth is that we may end up waddling in an economic quagmire for a long time to come. That is the crying reality.

In spite of all this, Nigeria is a peculiar country peopled by extraordinary souls. We have mastered the art of using laughter to cover our pains and anguish. What keeps us moving in this country, despite the serial tragic moments that confront us daily, is our ability to be melodramatic. If we were not making light issues out of what ordinarily should irk us, we would be exaggerating issues that should be waved off. Oftentimes, we trivialise the real issues while getting needlessly absorbed in side talks. We are held captive by sentiments, ethnic cleavages and religious bigotry. With pretentious naivety, we display the same fault lines that we hasten to condemn others for indulging in. Fate and faith brought us together but deep-seated primordial dogmas continue to set brothers against brothers. On paper, we are one nation. In mindset, we are different nations. Education has failed to cement that bond and that explains why this country splutters on in circles that lead to nowhere. In unison, we live a life of mutual distrust for one another. And we laugh off even the foolishness of our collective inaction. That is the pathetic irony in the Nigerian story.

Just the other day, the Nigerian Senate roared with a fantabulous tale about how a three-volume 2016 Budget documents totalling more than 1,500 pages and personally handed over to the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, grew wings and took an escapist flight from the National Assembly’s vault. Of course, most Nigerians had initially thought that it must be one of those stunts this horde of over-pampered lawmakers fondly pull whenever they want to divert attention from the humongous fund they appropriate for themselves without any subheads. When the story started trending on the social media, I was prepared to make a wager that it was a rehearsed script by the Senators to announce their resumption from yet another break. Well, it turned out to be more than a publicity stunt. The budget, or some form of it, was actually missing. A committee, which was summarily set up, eventually discovered that alterations had been made on another version of the budget distinct from the ‘original’ which Buhari tendered. Just that no one told us how the two versions of the same budget, which mystifyingly disappeared, were mysteriously found. After all the noise and air pumping, Saraki announced with senatorial majesty that the Senate under his watch would only discuss figures contained in the Buhari’s document. You just cannot but wonder what all the hullaballoo was about. Are these characters not tired of playing to the gallery in times of national crisis? Now that Buhari has written to the Senate, intimating them of adjustments in the document, has the world come to end? Is this Senate doing anything significantly different, judging from the prism through which each member has reportedly dissected the budget based on party lines and personal indulgences rather than what would satisfy the collective?

That laughable happenstance aside, I read, with mouth aghast, the scandalous permutations some folks ascribe to the cuffs on the wrists of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, when he appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja for his bail hearing. Metuh is standing trial for allegedly collecting N400m illegally from the funds meant for arms procurement, to prosecute political campaigns for his party. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the amount was transferred from an account domiciled with the Office of the erstwhile National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, who is also facing trial for illegal diversion of $2.1 billion for sundry purposes other than the procurement of arms for prosecuting the war against the deadly insurgents in the North East.

In his first appearance, Metuh’s so-called supporters turned the court premises into some sort of carnival rendezvous, singing his praises and demanding his immediate release as a victim of political victimisation. A visibly excited Metuh waved back at the hired crowd as if the matter at stake was a popularity contest between him, his apologists and the government. To that ill-informed crowd, it mattered less that the country is still battling with the consequences of the atrocious clannishness of Dasuki’s inexplicable action of which Metuh is facing trial as a major beneficiary. As far as they are concerned, those innocent casualties of the war, including soldiers who are serving punishment for refusing to fight with obsolete equipment count for nothing as long Metuh and any other thieving elite walks free on the street with his loot intact. If not, what was all that partying, shouting and protest at the premises of the court for? Was Metuh receiving a chieftaincy title or was he in the dock for heinous crime against the society?

It is worrisome that otherwise rationale minds could only read ethnic agenda to a matter that is as serious as this. It is one thing to question the rationale behind bringing Metuh before the law in handcuffs and it is another thing to jump into conclusion that he was being deliberately humiliated because he hails from the South-East. By the way, when the elite converge to rape the treasury blind, they pay scant attention to ethnic affiliations. The Dasuki largesse connects all parts of the geographical entity called Nigeria; it was an invidious ‘federal character’ robbery of the commonwealth. So let no one sing the ethnic rant here! Even before the officials of the Nigerian Prisons Service could issue a statement on why Metuh was in cuffs, his allies had already gone to town with how Aso Rock directed the Minister of Interior to ensure that Metuh got the handcuff treatment. Some simpletons would even swear on their ancestors’ graves that they were privy to the conversations.

Question is: what is so special about Metuh that he should be excluded from being handcuffed to a court of law if the prison authorities think it necessary? Was he the first prominent Nigerian that would be so treated? When people parade pictures of Dasuki strolling to the courts in the midst of heavily armed security men, they easily forget that he remains the most humiliated Nigerian in the arms gate scandal. Since his arrest late last year, Dasuki never enjoyed any freedom despite the temporary respite granted by the courts to travel out of the country for medical care. He has never set his foot out of Abuja from the time the security forces swooped on his residence. Yet, no northerner had come out to sing a victimisation dirge neither has anyone accused Buhari of being wicked to a fellow northerner. I doubt if the relevant authorities would waste time in putting Dasuki in cuff if it becomes imperative.

I honestly sympathise with those who feel hurt seeing their local heroes in unfamiliar terrain just like Metuh found himself. However, what bothers me more is the havoc that corruption continues to inflict on the psyche of this nation. Clearly, there are better ways of making heroes outside those who chanced on sudden wealth just because they have the opportunity to dip their filthy hands in our collective pie. With the rate at which those who prefer eating from the crumbs of corruption worship these villains, it would be difficult for them to understand why something drastic needs to be done about a situation where just less than 60 persons stole over N1.3 trillion from the public purse in just seven years of this democratic journey. Yes, democracy confers some freedom on the citizens but it does not include the freedom to loot with sickening madness and expect to get a slap on the wrists! How long do they want the rape to continue before they stop dignifying the play-acting by the killers of our collective dreams for a developed and progressive Nigeria? This is definitely not a laughing matter. Or is it?

Source:THE NATION

Budget 2016, Metuh’s handcuff, warts and all

Without any iota of self-delusion, it is easy to say that Nigeria is in a bad shape. Everywhere you go, you meet hapless citizens singing lamentation songs with plastic laugher grafted on their faces. The economy has simply refused to jerk out of a prolonged coma. The dollar, the monetary instrument through which petroleum products’ trading is negotiated, is playing a yoyo game that has defied all measures. The bureaucrats at the Central Bank of Nigeria have developed and redeveloped all kinds of crazy strategies to firm up the local Naira against the international currencies, yet the real value of that piece of paper keeps depreciating as if it would soon go out of existence. We now know that the 2016 Budget, predicated on an ambitious $38 per barrel of crude oil, may have to go for an emergency surgery at the Intensive Care Unit of the Budget Office as crude now sells below $30 per barrel, with prospects to dive further still. Experts’ forecast of further downward slide in pricing with Iran making a re-entry into the oil production market does not in any way help the problem. If you ask those who understand the dynamics of this trend, they will tell you that the road ahead is rough, tough and challenging. The uncomfortable truth is that we may end up waddling in an economic quagmire for a long time to come. That is the crying reality.

In spite of all this, Nigeria is a peculiar country peopled by extraordinary souls. We have mastered the art of using laughter to cover our pains and anguish. What keeps us moving in this country, despite the serial tragic moments that confront us daily, is our ability to be melodramatic. If we were not making light issues out of what ordinarily should irk us, we would be exaggerating issues that should be waved off. Oftentimes, we trivialise the real issues while getting needlessly absorbed in side talks. We are held captive by sentiments, ethnic cleavages and religious bigotry. With pretentious naivety, we display the same fault lines that we hasten to condemn others for indulging in. Fate and faith brought us together but deep-seated primordial dogmas continue to set brothers against brothers. On paper, we are one nation. In mindset, we are different nations. Education has failed to cement that bond and that explains why this country splutters on in circles that lead to nowhere. In unison, we live a life of mutual distrust for one another. And we laugh off even the foolishness of our collective inaction. That is the pathetic irony in the Nigerian story.

Just the other day, the Nigerian Senate roared with a fantabulous tale about how a three-volume 2016 Budget documents totalling more than 1,500 pages and personally handed over to the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, grew wings and took an escapist flight from the National Assembly’s vault. Of course, most Nigerians had initially thought that it must be one of those stunts this horde of over-pampered lawmakers fondly pull whenever they want to divert attention from the humongous fund they appropriate for themselves without any subheads. When the story started trending on the social media, I was prepared to make a wager that it was a rehearsed script by the Senators to announce their resumption from yet another break. Well, it turned out to be more than a publicity stunt. The budget, or some form of it, was actually missing. A committee, which was summarily set up, eventually discovered that alterations had been made on another version of the budget distinct from the ‘original’ which Buhari tendered. Just that no one told us how the two versions of the same budget, which mystifyingly disappeared, were mysteriously found. After all the noise and air pumping, Saraki announced with senatorial majesty that the Senate under his watch would only discuss figures contained in the Buhari’s document. You just cannot but wonder what all the hullaballoo was about. Are these characters not tired of playing to the gallery in times of national crisis? Now that Buhari has written to the Senate, intimating them of adjustments in the document, has the world come to end? Is this Senate doing anything significantly different, judging from the prism through which each member has reportedly dissected the budget based on party lines and personal indulgences rather than what would satisfy the collective?

That laughable happenstance aside, I read, with mouth aghast, the scandalous permutations some folks ascribe to the cuffs on the wrists of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, when he appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja for his bail hearing. Metuh is standing trial for allegedly collecting N400m illegally from the funds meant for arms procurement, to prosecute political campaigns for his party. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the amount was transferred from an account domiciled with the Office of the erstwhile National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, who is also facing trial for illegal diversion of $2.1 billion for sundry purposes other than the procurement of arms for prosecuting the war against the deadly insurgents in the North East.

In his first appearance, Metuh’s so-called supporters turned the court premises into some sort of carnival rendezvous, singing his praises and demanding his immediate release as a victim of political victimisation. A visibly excited Metuh waved back at the hired crowd as if the matter at stake was a popularity contest between him, his apologists and the government. To that ill-informed crowd, it mattered less that the country is still battling with the consequences of the atrocious clannishness of Dasuki’s inexplicable action of which Metuh is facing trial as a major beneficiary. As far as they are concerned, those innocent casualties of the war, including soldiers who are serving punishment for refusing to fight with obsolete equipment count for nothing as long Metuh and any other thieving elite walks free on the street with his loot intact. If not, what was all that partying, shouting and protest at the premises of the court for? Was Metuh receiving a chieftaincy title or was he in the dock for heinous crime against the society?

It is worrisome that otherwise rationale minds could only read ethnic agenda to a matter that is as serious as this. It is one thing to question the rationale behind bringing Metuh before the law in handcuffs and it is another thing to jump into conclusion that he was being deliberately humiliated because he hails from the South-East. By the way, when the elite converge to rape the treasury blind, they pay scant attention to ethnic affiliations. The Dasuki largesse connects all parts of the geographical entity called Nigeria; it was an invidious ‘federal character’ robbery of the commonwealth. So let no one sing the ethnic rant here! Even before the officials of the Nigerian Prisons Service could issue a statement on why Metuh was in cuffs, his allies had already gone to town with how Aso Rock directed the Minister of Interior to ensure that Metuh got the handcuff treatment. Some simpletons would even swear on their ancestors’ graves that they were privy to the conversations.

Question is: what is so special about Metuh that he should be excluded from being handcuffed to a court of law if the prison authorities think it necessary? Was he the first prominent Nigerian that would be so treated? When people parade pictures of Dasuki strolling to the courts in the midst of heavily armed security men, they easily forget that he remains the most humiliated Nigerian in the arms gate scandal. Since his arrest late last year, Dasuki never enjoyed any freedom despite the temporary respite granted by the courts to travel out of the country for medical care. He has never set his foot out of Abuja from the time the security forces swooped on his residence. Yet, no northerner had come out to sing a victimisation dirge neither has anyone accused Buhari of being wicked to a fellow northerner. I doubt if the relevant authorities would waste time in putting Dasuki in cuff if it becomes imperative.

I honestly sympathise with those who feel hurt seeing their local heroes in unfamiliar terrain just like Metuh found himself. However, what bothers me more is the havoc that corruption continues to inflict on the psyche of this nation. Clearly, there are better ways of making heroes outside those who chanced on sudden wealth just because they have the opportunity to dip their filthy hands in our collective pie. With the rate at which those who prefer eating from the crumbs of corruption worship these villains, it would be difficult for them to understand why something drastic needs to be done about a situation where just less than 60 persons stole over N1.3 trillion from the public purse in just seven years of this democratic journey. Yes, democracy confers some freedom on the citizens but it does not include the freedom to loot with sickening madness and expect to get a slap on the wrists! How long do they want the rape to continue before they stop dignifying the play-acting by the killers of our collective dreams for a developed and progressive Nigeria? This is definitely not a laughing matter. Or is it?

Source:THE NATION

Arms Deals: Bank accounts of ex-military chiefs restricted

• Restriction placed on Badeh’s accounts 

The Special Investigative Panel on arms procurement may have indicted two former Chiefs of Army Staff and 14 serving officers of the army in its investigation of arms contracts for the military, The Nation can reveal.

This comes just 24 hours after President Muhammadu Buhari mandated the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to establish the scope of the culpability of the immediate past Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh; former Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Mohammed Umar (2010 -2012) and the immediate past Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Adesola Amosu, in alleged fraudulent arms purchases for the Air Force between 2007 and 2015.

Also lined up for investigation by the anti-graft agency are 14 other retired and serving military officers and 21 firms said to have been awarded the contracts.

There were indications last night that the appropriate government agencies might have placed restriction on the accounts of Badeh and the others being probed along with him.

The military authorities have already recalled two of the officers listed for interrogation by EFCC from terminal leave.

Highly placed sources said yesterday that the second leg of investigation of procurement deals in the army has already been concluded.

This aspect of the investigation, a source said yesterday, “traced some deals to two ex-Chiefs of Army Staff and 14 others.”

“The recommendations on these serving and retired officers have been referred to the presidency.One of the officers even diverted arms funds for political purposes,” the source added.

“So, what we did was just to wrap up the report on the sleaze in the Nigerian Air Force for consideration by the Presidency. We are doing it in batches.”

Other sources said that a restriction order had been placed on the accounts of ex-CDS Badeh and the 17 other retired and serving officers facing interrogation.

Some of those affected are the most senior Air Force officer, AVM A. M. Mamu(the Chief of Administration); AVM O.T. Oguntoyinbo (former Director of Production, Defence Headquarters);  AVM R.A. Ojuawo (Air Officer Tactical Air Command, Makurdi);  AVM J.B. Adigun(former Chief of Accounts and Budgeting in NAF); AVM JA Kayode-Beckley(Director, Armament Research in Air Force Research and Development Centre); AVM T Omenyi (MD, NAF Holdings); four top officers at the Defence Headquarters(DHQ), Air Cdre AO Ogunjobi; Air Cdre GMD Gwani; Air Cdre SO Makinde; Air Cdre AY Lassa and Col. N. Ashinze , who was the Special Military Assistant to the ex-National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki.

One source said: “As part of the investigation of these officers, some of their properties have been identified. These houses will be attached under the Assets Forfeiture Clause in the EFCC Act pending the conclusion of probe into their alleged involvement in the arms deals.

“This is a normal step in any high-profile investigation like the one at hand.”

Sections 28 and 34 of the EFCC (Establishment Act) 2004 and Section 13(1) of the Federal High Court Act, 2004 empower the anti-graft agency to invoke Interim Assets Forfeiture Clause.

“Section 28 of the EFCC Act reads: ‘Where a person is arrested for an offence under this Act, the Commission shall immediately trace and attach all the assets and properties of the person acquired as a result of such economic or financial crime and shall thereafter cause to be obtained an interim attachment order from the Court.’

Section 13 of the Federal High Court Act reads in part: “The Court may grant an injunction or appoint a receiver by an interlocutory order in all cases in which it appears to the Court to be just or convenient so to do.

(2)          Any such order may be made either unconditionally or on such terms and conditions as the Court thinks just.”

Meanwhile, findings confirmed that two of the 18 officers in Badeh’s group have been recalled from terminal leave ahead of their retirement.

Another source said: “Two of the officers, who are on terminal leave have also been recalled until they are cleared by the EFCC.”

A highly-placed military source said: “The handover of these officers to EFCC is a personal matter, not a service issue. “For instance, a top military officer has been in EFCC detention since December 23, 2005 and there were issues that the Nigerian Army has not sent any officer to him.

“The truth is that there was no way the Army can intervene on his behalf because of the issues at stake.  “The officer has been claiming that nothing was found against him but we will leave that to the EFCC and eventually the court. “All these officers are certainly on their own. They have to bear individual cross to clear their names.”

Source: THE NATION

Rhythm of Laughter 5.0 Live in jos Today Sunday seventeenth.

 Basket month n The magnificent DJ steeno.

Governor Lalong of plateau state welcoming the comedy crew in his office .

Messi wins fifth FIFA Ballon d’Or

Argentina maestro, Lionel Messi, on Monday night won the 2015 FIFA Ballon d’Or award for the planet’s top soccer stars.

In a colourful ceremony held in Zurich, Switzerland, the Barcelona superstar brushed aside competition from Portugal and Real Madrid hitman, Cristiano Ronaldo and his Nou Camp teammate, Neymar, to win the biggest individual prize in world football for a record fifth time.

Messi also won the award in 2009, 2010 2011 and 2012.

United States striker, Carli Lloyd, won the Women Player of the Year award, while Brazilian Wendell Lira went home with the Ferenc Puskas award for the best goal scored in 2015.

Source: THE NATION