John Needs Your Prayers by Mimi Mogeni

Yesterday I spent my whole morning with the police trying to locate a young Kenyan man who went missing. The fellow had developed hallucinations a few days ago after a friend told him that his young girlfriend in Kenya was seen with another man. He soon started complaining of seeing snakes, could not sleep, woke up the following day and later came home dropped by an ambulance. He has two other roommates who are rarely at home and no one knew the extent of this condition. 

On Thursday night, he had asked one of the roommates to take him to a church to get a Bible but they ended up at Wal-Mart where they eventually bought the Bible. On Friday morning, no one knew where he had left his car, and he had not gone to work either since Wednesday.

Yesterday morning one of the roommates called me and said John is missing. Apparently, they had stayed up till 3 in the morning guarding him from leaving the house but they fell asleep. Then he then got the chance to escape. The roommate who called me had just returned from work only to find their apartment door unlocked and John was missing. The other one was still asleep and had no idea. They decided to check him around the neighborhood and they found his clothes in the middle of a nearby street next to a highway. They called the police.

By the time we got there, the police had arrived and were asking questions as well as searching along a perimeter in the neighborhood. They found his wallet and his two phones. Things were not looking good at all. We feared for the worst.

By the way, we knew John through one of the roommates who is a cousin to my hubby and had lived with us prior to moving. John is around 23 years old. He had moved to states last year after winning a Green-card. He is very quiet and humble. My kids like him a lot as he has occasionally stayed at our house while I'm away. 

Back to the story. John had no immediate family member here in the states apart from an uncle who lives in Boston. We called the uncle and explained the situation but he quickly denied that he left Kenya when John was very young and has no idea if he had mental issues. 

About an hour later, the police informed us that a state trooper patrolling last night picked up a man who was running naked on the highway and dropped him at the nearby hospital. We were so relieved that he was alive and immediately went to see him. He was in ICU though and he had spent his first few hours in the emergency room. He was sober and when he was told he had visitors, he asked who we were. They told him our names. And then John said it's okay to see him but one person at a time. We were about 8. When I went to see him, I could not hold my tears because he was saying things out of the ordinary. He narrated how strange people were chasing him and how he ended up naked. I prayed for him and briefly talked to his doctor who said they are still evaluating his state of mind. 

Please pray for this young man. Whatever has happened to him is only God who knows. 

John needs your prayers.

 Mimi Mogeni

Prayer of Giants by Omoruyi Uwuigiaren

Prayer is a cordial and orderly interaction between a man and his Creator. You are at liberty to discuss whatever you feel is urgent or important with God during the exchange. As you grow in this dialogue, your friendship with God grows. You can only interact with God for your own good and benefit. The lesser you communicate with God, the farther you get from His divine supply. Men who tag along with God are larger than life. 

God earnestly desires to talk to us and spend time with us through prayers. When we come to the Lord we can be certain that he is not reluctant to help us, but He is ever ready to bless us. Luke 11 verses 9-10: “So I say unto: Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

In this process, one pours out his mind expectantly and with the assurance that God is listening. God approves by granting our requests and disapproves by turning away. God not answering our prayers at a particular time does not mean we are no longer in His plans. Most times the result we get during prayers is determined by God’s plan for us. He answers our prayers base on what is best for us. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end,” Jeremiah 29:11.

God is larger than life. He has the capacity to grant our request at the speed of light. “Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established,” Proverbs 16v3. Yes, a straightforward answer. Without any delay. Nothing more, and nothing less. 

               

         With God’s nature in man, we are almost independent of how we pray and what we want God to do for us. When we appear before God to pray, we are expected to express our feelings, weakness, strength and even doubts. You have leverage when you present yourself humble before God. Communicating from that low esteem makes Him feel fatherly and creates an atmosphere of miracles. 

        Involving God  is all you need to have all your needs met. For instance, the resurrection of Lazarus who had died in the book of John 11 v 1-45 was a reflection of how we should present ourselves before God. Jesus Christ did not present Himself as a conqueror or an equal before God even though He said “my Father and I are one”. He appeared at the scene like every man who was in need. The Bible said He even wept after the people showed Him the tomb where the body of Lazarus was kept. Prayers from a humble man are of great effect. He looked to the heavens and honored God and the rest was history. If you need miracles, approach God from the table of humility.

           You cannot keep God a distance in your life and expect heaven to react for your sake. Heaven’s reaction to your call is determined by the level of your relationship with the forces in heaven. In the realm of prayers, nothing happens by chance. They are planned. So plan your prayers before you appear before God. Don’t pray because it is mandatory to do so. Pray because you need an answer.

      

MY FRIDAY ARENA : Yet I See A Great Nation by Usman Rayyanu Dabai.

Nigeria, a potentially great country with abundant resources. The land is vast with different tribes and languages. A great country, pregnant with the solution to the predicament of many African nations and the world at large.

Once upon a time giant of Africa, the country that have brought peace to many African country, a country with a great treasures but eaten up by a deadly canker-worm called poverty, corruption, bad governance, impunity and hopelessness. I am optimistic, patriotic and yet realistic enough to know that the canker-worm has eaten deeply into the fabrics of this country.

A country though blessed, but yet not satisfied. A great man lamented vehemently in the following lines:
"Our inheritance is turned to stranger.
Our houses to aliens. We have drunken our water for money.
Our wood is sold unto us."

This is the condition of this country. We lack what we have and want what we need. Though we have raw materials, we cannot produce. And what we produce, we cannot buy. What a tragedy.

Nigeria is a promising baby, though her mother has refused to breast feed her. Her father has enriched himself with the ornament God decorated the child at birth. Can a child be an orphan when both parents are alive?

Nigeria was adopted by her uncle, but her uncle sold her into slavery and used the benefits for his pleasure.

Oh Nigeria! Though everyone that comes your way always use you to his or her gain.

But with a great leader who concentrate on issues that have been have destroyed before, on what we will build, on where they have failed you, on where we will excel I see a ray of hope, I see a future- a great future, provided everyone attach to you see you as a project to work on and develop. Not a cake to share and loot as the vagabonds did before.

Usman Rayyanu Dabai

On LGA Autonomy in Nigeria by Tony Osborg.

In 2014, during the attempted constitution amendment process, NASS granted autonomy to LGAs, however, 23 states and their state governors and house of assemblies opposed LGA autonomy. Only Oyo, Ogun, Anambra, Adamawa, Nasarawa, Plateau, Kogi, Lagos, Ebonyi, Benue, Abia, Niger and Kwara supported the idea. That was how LGA autonomy died. I am sure by today, if the process is repeated, many of the previous supporters above will oppose it too.

More than 90% of the thirty-six states will likely collapse if LGAs are granted the kind of autonomy they desire. What do I mean?

The reason why states like Kano, Rivers, Delta, Sokoto, Imo, Ekiti and in fact a majority of the Nigerian state governments are still surviving today is because of their access to LGA funds. The reason why many Nigerian states can still pay salaries and execute projects is because they have been able to strangulate the LGAs within their domain. This is wrong but it has become our reality.

The LGA as a third tier of govt has already collapsed. Granting them autonomy will not necessarily revive them. In no distance time, the states will also collapse despite their strangulation of the LGAs, and later on, the federal govt might follow! This is by the way.

Kano state for example receives an average of N4billion in monthly allocation, the 44 LGAs in Kano state receives 4.2billion monthly. Making it a total of about N8.2billion for Kano state. If Kano state have not been having access to the N4.2billion LGA fund, it would have collapsed long ago. The reason why Kano is still alive is because of the LGA funds. This anomaly has become a standard practice in the 36 states of Nigeria. The governors argument is that their recurrent spending and capital projects cut across the LGAs so therefore they should be allowed to have access to the LGA funds.

Now, if you grant autonomy to LGAs, state governors will no longer have access to this fund and that could be the end of many states in Nigeria.

What then is the solution?

First, I agree that LGAs need to be autonomous (that is if they must still continue to exist), however the kind of autonomy that President Buhari and the National Assembly wants to give them is not the kind of autonomy I think they need. The kind of autonomy that LGA needs is the same kind that state governments need.

First, it was wrong for the federal govt (through the 1999 federal constitution) to create LGAs. It was also wrong for the federal govt to fund the LGAs through allocations. This needs to be corrected first. If LGAs must exist, they must solely be the creation of the state governments. It is states that should create and fund LGAs, not the federal government.

The federal constitution needs to dissolve the 774 LGAs and make room for the states to create and fund their own LGAs or community govts through state constitutions. States can then create as many LGAs as they wish but as long as they can fund them internally.

Attempting to grant autonomy to LGAs without resolving the root issues of true fiscal federalism will only compound the Nigerian problem.

Be rest assured that whatever the National Assembly has done in the past few days in the name of Constitutional Amendment will not get the support of the state houses of Assemblies when the chips are down.

At the end of the day, we are all trapped!

Boko Haram attack on Nigeria oil team killed over 50.

Details emerging from Tuesday's ambush in northeast Nigeria suggest the death toll is higher than initially reported.

More than 50 people were killed in a Boko Haram ambush on an oil exploration team in northeast Nigeria earlier this week, multiple sources told AFP news agency on Thursday, warning the death toll could rise.

Tuesday's attack in the Magumeri area of Borno state on a convoy of specialists from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was the group's deadliest in months.

It underscored the persistent threat posed by Boko Haram fighters, despite government claims they were a spent force, and also the risks associated with the hunt for crude in the volatile Lake Chad basin.

Details of the ambush, which was initially thought to be a kidnapping attempt, have been slow to emerge and an exact death toll difficult to establish, as the military strictly controls access to rural Borno.

Telecommunications and other infrastructure have been severely damaged or destroyed in the conflict, which has left at least 20,000 dead and more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009.

The army said on Wednesday that 10 people were killed in the attack.

But one source involved in dealing with the aftermath told AFP news agency on Thursday: "The death toll keeps mounting. Now we have more than 50... and more bodies are coming in."

"It's clear that the attack wasn't for abduction. They (Boko Haram) attacked just to kill."

Missing university staff

An aid agency worker in Magumeri, which is 50 kilometres northwest of Maiduguri, said 47 bodies were recovered from the bush as of Wednesday evening.

"Eleven of them were badly burned in the attack. They were burned alive in their vehicle, which was stuck in a trench," he added.

"We buried them here because they couldn't be taken to Maiduguri.

"This evening (Thursday), six more bodies were recovered, including one soldier, and many more could be recovered because search and rescue teams are all over the place."

A medical source at the Nigerian Army 7th Division headquarters at Maimalari barracks in Maiduguri said: "So far we have 18 dead soldiers. Ten were brought yesterday and eight more today."

At the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), a medical worker said: "We have 19 bodies at the moment of civilians.

"Fifteen of them were vigilantes (civilian militia) and four were staff from the university. They have been taken for burial."

The head of the academic staff union at the University of Maiduguri, Dani Mamman, confirmed they had received four bodies and said two of them were academics.

"We got the impression our staff on the team were rescued because that was what the military spokesman said yesterday," he added.

"But we were shocked when we were given four dead bodies. This means it wasn't a rescue. We still have other staff that are yet to be accounted for."

Hospital and army officials told the local Punch newspaper that the corpses of 18 soldiers and 30 others had been brought to a facility in Maiduguri following the incident.

The bodies brought to the hospital included 18 soldiers, 15 members of the Civilian Joint Tast Force (JTF), a group of fighters to help oust Boko Haram, five local university staff and four NNPC drivers, Punch reported.

An ongoing threat

In a statement, Nigeria's junior oil minister and the former head of the NNPC Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu described the attack as "unfortunate" but did not give a death toll.

OPEC-member Nigeria is looking to find new oil reserves away from the southern Niger Delta, which has been blighted by attacks from rebels wanting a fairer share of revenue for local people.

With production hit by the attacks, there has been a shift in focus to explore inland basins, including around Lake Chad in the northeast, where Nigeria meets Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Both Chad and Niger are exploiting reserves on their side of the freshwater lake.

Activities on the Nigerian side had to stop in November 2014 because of Boko Haram violence but the military gave permission to resume exploration in November last year, according to Kachikwu.

Work is centred on a triangle of hotly contested land stretching from Gubio in the west of Borno to Marte in the east, and Kukawa, in the far northeast corner near the shores of the lake.

There has been no serious suggestion that Boko Haram is motivated by a desire to control oil in northeast Nigeria.

But fighters, squeezed out of captured territory by the military counter-insurgency, may have been keen to make a show of force against the soldiers and civilian militia guarding the NNPC team.

In recent months, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group affiliate has been forced to rely on guerilla tactics, particularly suicide bomb attacks, against the security forces and civilian militia.

Women and young girls in particular have been used against civilian "soft" targets such as mosques, as well as the university in Maiduguri.

Source: News Agencies/Aljazeera

Military and Political Heavyweights by Eddie Iroh.

I just wonder how many Nigerians have taken their tongue to count their teeth lately? If they did, calmly and dispassionately, without the emotive effusion that often beclouds the intellect of even ordinarily reasonable men and women, they would find that if care is not taken soon and i mean very soon their country could become a toothless bull dog. The unthinkable would happen Nigeria would disintegrate. The Not Negotiable would be negotiated.

While the focus is on Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB and Ndigbo and their agitation for or against Biafra, a geographical minority in relation to the rest of the country, the Northern Elders Forum, a behemoth led by stalwarts beside whom Kanu would be a small boy, have declared the "readiness of the North to break up Nigeria." 

From the cowards and docile elements, the Facebook pontiffs whose stock in logic is the easy resort to insult and abuse, and the others who find Kanu, IPOB and Ndigbo a soft and easy target, I have not heard a whimper or a whisper against the Elders of the North and their threat. Nor have i heard a squeak from the pips of the serving and retired Army Generals who would threaten to crush any threat against the unity and sovereignty of the Federal Republic. One is then left to resort to conjectures. One such is that this conspiracy of cowardly silence is almost certainly because the true geographical, political and military heavyweights of Nigeria have spoken. 

The politicians and "we the people" have scurried under cover even though their Kaduna Declaration, alongside the Quit Notice to Ndigbo in the North, and the sudden jettisoning of Restructuring, pose a far greater threat to the unity of Nigeria than IPOB can muster. No one is calling the Northern Elders idiots, albinos, demagogues etc, as Kanu is often excoriated. No one dared! Just because a cat looks like a tiger does not make it a tiger. Indeed a cat knows a tiger when it sees one and dares not tweak the tiger's tail.

One does not have to belong to IPOB or Ohaneze to expect equity and even handedness in dealing with any issue that goes to the very heart of the corporate existence of Nigeria. But when it comes to dispassionate examination of critical national issues, there are as many positions as there are ethnic groups. That is because Nigerians are very strange animals. And any inference to the Zoo here is totally unintended.

Eddie Iroh

MAY YOUR ROAD BE ROUGH By Tai Solarin, (Jan. 1, 1964.)

I am not cursing you; I am wishing you what I wish myself every year. I therefore repeat, may you have a hard time this year, may there be plenty of troubles for you this year! If you are not so sure what you should say back, why not just say, ‘Same to you’? I ask for no more.

Our successes are conditioned by the amount of risk we are ready to take. Earlier on today I visited a local farmer about three miles from where I live. He could not have been more than fifty-five, but he said he was already too old to farm vigorously. He still suffered, he said, from the physical energy he displayed as a farmer in his younger days. Around his hut were two pepper bushes. There were Coco yams growing round him. There were snail shells which had given him meat. There must have been more around the banana trees I saw. He hardly ever went to town to buy things. He was self-sufficient.
The car or the bus, the television or the telephone, the newspaper, Vietnam or Red China were nothing to him. He had no ambitions whatsoever, he told me. I am not sure if you are already envious of him, but were we all to revert to such a life, we would be practically driven back to cave dwelling. On the other hand, try to put yourself into the position of the Russian or the America astronaut. Any moment now the count, 3, 2, 1, is going to go, and you are going to be shot into the atmosphere and soon you will be whirling round our earth at the speed of six miles per second. If you get so fired into the atmosphere and you forget what to do to ensure return to earth, one of the things that might happen to you is that you could become forever satellite, going round the earth until you die of starvation and even then your body would continue the gyration!

When, therefore, you are being dressed up and padded to be shot into the sky, you know only too well that you are going on the roughest road man had ever trodden.

The Americans and Russians who have gone were armed with the great belief that they would come back. But I cannot believe that they did not have some slight foreboding on the contingency of their non-return. It is their courage for going in spite of these apprehensions that makes the world hail them so loudly today.

The big fish is never caught in shallow waters. You have to go into the open sea for it. The biggest businessmen make decisions with lighting speed and carry them out with equal celerity. They do not dare delay or dally. Time would pass them by if they did. The biggest successes are preceded by the greatest of heart-burnings. You should read the stories of the bomber pilots of World War II. The Russian pilot, the German pilot, the American or the British pilot suffered exactly the same physical and mental tension the night before a raid on enemy territory. There were no alternative routes for those who most genuinely believed in victory for their side.

You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs, throughout the world, there is no paean without pain. Jawaharlal Nehru has put it so well. I am paraphrasing him. He wants to meet his troubles in a frontal attack. He wants to see himself tossed into the aperture between the two horns of the bull. Being there, he determines he is going to win and, therefore, such a fight requires all his faculties.
When my sisters and I were young and we slept on our small mats round our mother, she always woke up at 6a.m. for morning prayers. She always said prayers on our behalf but always ended with something like this: ‘May we not enter into any dangers or get into any difficulties this day.’ It took me almost thirty years to dislodge the canker-worm in our mother’s sentiments. I found, by hard experience, that all that is noble and laudable was to be achieved only through difficulties and trials and tears and dangers. There are no other roads.

If I was born into a royal family and should one day become a constitutional king, I am inclined to think I should go crazy. How could I, from day to day, go on smiling and nodding approval at somebody else’s successes for an entire lifetime? When Edward the Eighth (now Duke of Windsor) was a young, sprightly Prince of Wales, he went to Canada and shook so many hands that his right arm nearly got pulled out of its socket. It went into a sling and he shook hands thenceforth with his left hand. It would appear he was trying his utmost to make a serious job out of downright sinecure.
Life, if it is going to be abundant, must have plenty of hills and vales. It must have plenty of sunshine and rough weather. It must be rich in obfuscation and perspicacity. It must be packed with days of danger and of apprehension.

When I walk into the dry but certainly cool morning air of every January 1st, I wish myself plenty of tears and of laughter, plenty of happiness and unhappiness, plenty of failures and successes. Plenty of abuse and praise. It is impossible to win ultimately without a rich measure of inter mixture in such a menu. Life would be worthless without the lot. We do not achieve much in this country because we are all so scared of taking risks. We all want the smooth and well-paved roads. While the reason the Americans and others succeeded so well is that they took such great risks.
If, therefore, you are out in this New Year 1964, to win any target you have set for yourself, please accept my prayers and your elixir. May your road be rough!

Tai Solarin (1922-1994) was one of Nigeria’s foremost social activists and front line educationists, his evergreen legacy includes the famous Mayflower School, Ikenne and Molusi College Ijebu-Igbo Ogun state. This article was first published in Daily Times Newspaper of January 1st, 1964.

The Etisalat Example by Dr. Kazeem Bello.

The Abu Dhabi Government that owned Etisalat pulled the company out of Nigeria last week and gave the Nigerian ex-partners 7 days to change its name and drop its Trade name. That has been complied with. Etisalat Nigeria changed the name this past week. The news information about this I monitored on my travel to Dubai on the local news which indicated that the Nigerian Etisalat claimed it invested over $20 billion on equipment and facilities in Nigeria. The news Analyst from Dubai Business New Network TV insisted that it is not possible. The parent company invested $13 billion in Gulf Area to attract over 40 million subscribers, with high world class services , how can Etisalat Nigeria invest $20 billion for 22 million subscribers with epileptic services and a debt ridden company?

The Abu Dhabi home office is struggling to remove the negative effect of the news on the company's stock market performance. It is being very difficult because the numbers are not adding up. The questions in Abu Dhabi is what does Etisalat Head quarters know about the mammoth fraud that prevailed in Etisalat Nigeria? How can the company claim to have spent so much in investment and infrastructure and yet come out with huge debts?

While Etisalat Group is facing serious backlash at home over this monumental fraud, in Nigeria, our CBN is not even asking any question to unravel why the company suddenly went bankrupt. Instead, our CBN and Ministry of Finance from the above are struggling to take over the company's debts and pass it to the unsuspecting tax payers under the umbrella of the debt ridden AMCOM.

The Chairman of the Board and all Board members of the defunct Etisalat Nigeria resigned and walked away free leaving Nigerians with another private sector mismanaged debt ridden company.

Actually, the major reason for my worried contribution here is on the Banking System in Nigeria and the financial mess we may have found ourselves in. Many Nigerians may not know this for a fact because the authorities will never tell you the truth, just like it took several years of noise for the NNPC to admit that the corporation is debt ridden and bankrupt. The Government of Nigeria will not admit it that the CBN of Nigeria is currently running at a Deficit Financial Model. This is called a DEF Model operations in Central Banking structure and practice. For references, you can google " Greece Monetary Collapse" and also the great fall in Brazilian financial system in the 90's. The CBN is almost at those crescendo from all indications going by several body languages, utterances and news from the international financial circle.
The CBN may not be able to cover import bills for more that 15 days from now as we speak which is a huge red flag! The CBN is currently not in any position to bail out the Government in any form due to distress in its liquidity-money creation matrix. CBN cannot perform its role as lender of last resort to the Government of Nigeria as we speak, a major function of Central Banking system. This may be the reason why last week, the Hon Minister of Finance addressed a press conference to tell Nigerians that they are in trouble but most Nigerians just did not understand how to interpret her unspoken words. She said clearly that Government will have to aggressively borrow money from abroad to implement the 2017 budget. Her reason was predicated on the wrong and super inferior analysis that Nigeria has a low debt-capital ratio hence there are rooms for more external debts. We better find a way to stop her from running a huge debt that OBJ was able to clear up during his regime but was kept low during Jonathan's regime due to oil windfall which makes borrowing unnecessary then.

Now with disappointing and falling oil prices, low income-revenue generation by Government, NNPC totally broke running at huge deficits, CBN's inability to bail out Government, we seem to have no choice than to go back to external borrowing at premium at all cost.

Something is pathologically wrong with the Nigerian system. I have written about this in early December 2016 when the budget estimates came out. I pointed to the totally wrong budget appropriation and tagged it a budget of " Economic Contractions". I mentioned that by 3rd quarter of the year, the bubble will burst if something is not done and the Economy may slide into a full blown depression far worse than recession. It is not known what the facts are right now because there are various attempts to hide facts and give erroneous figures to the unsuspecting public. The situation is really bad based on International Analysts facts and figures especially with perceived not admitted dire financial crises at the CBN. We may see an Economic Emergency Bill very soon showing up at the desk of the Senate President but with the current face off between the Acting President and the Senate leadership, it is doubtful if such required bill will ever come to surface. That will be an instrument for the " hawks" in the Senate to roast the Acting President and blackmail him further of incompetence. In the fight between two giant elephants, the grass will have to pay dearly and suffer for it. Nigerians will grow in more poverty, no power, no infrastructure, high inflation, and low economic activities and no salaries for work done.

Back to the Etisalat case, this is the fact of the matter and CBN has not deemed it fit to raise any probe on the huge bank lending to one single company without adequate collateral. Indeed what asset does Etisalat own aside from its license that will be worth the amount of debts being cited? I don't live in Nigeria but at least on my visits, I have not seen any such assets except power masts all over the place.

The same Nigerian Banks gave billions to all the debt ridden GENCOs AND DISCOs with no collateral and yet we have no power. Again, I have written on this issue before. How the power system in Nigeria was defrauded by the collusion of the so-called investors, Nigerian Banks and some officials in the defunct FGN. Nigerians are very prayerful people, we are still trooping to the worship places to pray for steady power supply when some are swimming in billions from the fraud in the sector. Our dream for steady power supply is daily becoming a mirage, to say the least.

The other day, I was having a discussion with a Chinese group of investors on telephone and internet network projects. They mentioned that with about $5 billion dollars in investment in highly powerful telecom equipment and satellite infrastructure, they will supply over 120 million in Nigeria with highly efficient phone and internet network service with super easy, small and latest technology. So why is Etisalat with $20 billion in investment not able to supply good phone and internet network service in Nigeria? Yet poor Nigerians are paying for poor services and will again pay the company's debt through our taxes.
The same way the same people buy and pay for banks and goes around to liquidate the same bank while the tax payers takes over the debts through AMCON. 

Nigeria's Solution to the Problem of Electric Cars By Pius Adesanmi.

Scandinavia, Britain, France, Netherlands, India, China, the US - everyone is in a scramble to announce the end of fuel-powered cars by 2040 and so on. Everyone is announcing that every car on their roads will be green by 2040. Only electric cars. No more petrol and diesel cars.

Many of my friends, who still are yet to come to terms with just how terrible the psychology of Nigeria's political elite is, have been agonizing. They are worried about what happens to an oil-dependent, monocultural economy like Nigeria when all the buyers of her oil go green and her oil pretty much becomes useless.

Well, I can tell you for sure that from Aso Rock to the National Assembly, to Governors, down the ladder to the most inconsequential member of the political class - you can add the socioeconomic elite too - they are already thinking and planning ahead for the advent of electric cars in 2040.

They are just not thinking the way you are thinking.

If you do a laundry list of the solutions they have found as a class to the challenges of modern living in the 21st century, you will gain an insight into how they are going to handle the transition to electric cars.

Problems of space in their built environments in Ikoyi, VI, and Maitama? They destroyed master plans, built on green areas and public parks, built commercial ventures in residential areas, commandeered communal rail track areas for parking lots of private schools, etc. Other elite in tight spaces in Hong Kong, Singapore, etc, will experiment with innovative mastery of space by applying engineering and architectural genius to achieve vertical derring-do in building design. The Nigerian elite will visit violence and aesthetic chaos on her own built space because she has too much money and too little culture.

Bad roads and death traps? They are buying more and more helicopters; their jeeps are getting bigger and sturdier. The other day, I saw Senator Ben Murray-Bruce and a group of other pregnant male Senators inspecting Federal roads in worse condition than the farm paths used by Askia the Great in the Songhai Empire in the 15th century.

The Senators say they are members of one of these useless Senate committees and they had come to do a firsthand assessment of the roads. This was some expressway linking Edo state to the deep south. As the Senators granted TV interviews, talking rubbish, you could see their jeeps in the background. I shook my head in anger. Useless people. They have now seen that the roads have gotten worse. They will return to Abuja to suggest bigger and sturdier jeeps capable of coping with the roads for all Senators in the 2018 appropriation.

Poor health facilities? Well, you have been witnesses to their nakedness and utter shamelessness on display in London this week as a political class. Foreign hospitals will remain their only answer to Nigeria's health issues.

So, how do you think an elite that has handled its own lived environment, roads, and health in this manner will handle the question of electric cars and the imminent end of the fuel economy?

Well, by now, I can bet that some of them are already making inquiries from the innovation sectors of Scandinavia, Britain, France, the US, China, and India. When can we start to place individual orders for these cars of the future? When can we start to queue up for customized versions of these cars? How many can you deliver to me in Lagos or Abuja on January 1, 2040?

How can they be attempting to place orders for cars in 2040 when they cannot guarantee that they will be alive even tomorrow? Never mind. Members of Nigeria's political elite are not intelligent enough to think like that. Their singular focus will be to be the first elite in the world to use cars they cannot manufacture.

And by the time the electric cars are being delivered over their dead bodies to their children in 2040, their own goal of being able to manufacture pencils in Nigeria sometime in this 21st century may still not have been realized.

If the owner of morning says it shall be well with the leaders of Nigeria, the owner of evening will disagree.

Pius Adesanmi

IPOB, MAZI KANU AND MYSELF By JOHN DANFULANI ,Ph.D

On Sunday the 23rd of July 2017 I paid a courtesy call to the supreme leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra(IPOB) Mazi Nnamdi Kanu in Umahia, Abia state. The thick mushroom cloud that my visitation engineered is still permeating the political skies of Northern Nigeria. The empire dogs are jeering while lovers of freedom and liberty are cheering. It's hard to predict when the rumbling cheers and jeers of my solidarity visit to one of the most courageous and foresighted Nigerian and leader of IPOB will cease.

The ultra-conservative elements and oligarchic beneficiaries of a skewed cum dysfunctional unitary system baptized and labeled a federal system are hysterically yet unsuccessfully trying to throw the kitchen on me and divert attention to most mundane issues. Their bait is too pedestrian for me to swallow like brainless turkeys happy for Christmas.

IPOB's takes are:Nigeria is an unhappy matrimonial home full of ruckus;colonial masters that engineered the political wedlock called amalgamation in 1914 did so for economic and political reasons; and that, Ndigbos be allowed to conduct a United Nation Monitored referendum to decide whether to stay in the marriage or divorce.

IPOB's mission, strategy and tactics has local,regional,and global protocols and laws backing them under the broad "principle of self-determination".In post Cold War era,many climes withdrew from the bank of this collective rights without hindrance from the state. It was the spirit of this principle that nationalists in the colonial world(including Nigeria) triggered in sinking colonial rule. Through the magnanimity and global acceptability of this philosophy Nigeria lowered the Union Jack on 1st October 1960.

The political geography called Nigeria was created for heinous reasons by the colonial masters. It is an established realism that economic and administrative reasons guided their decision to amalgamate extreme strange bedfellows in 1914. And refused to demolish the political babel they mischievously constructed before their departure in 1960 despite the knowledge that the amalgams never solicited for it nor showed any interest of staying together. The country's many constitutional conferences in Nigeria and in United Kingdom, and threats of secession by regional leaders before 1960,was a clear indication of Nigerians unwillingness to glue as an indivisible and indissoluble entity.

In 1967 South East region declared a Biafra Republic.It sparked a 30 months civil war. Fifty years down the lane,we are still getting colliding versions of the quantum of human and material lost. Because history is written by victors, war crimes and other inhuman treatment of the Biafrans have been refused a ventilating space in the narrations of the war.

The 1967-1970 war only suppressed the Biafra mission- a fact the federalists are blatantly refusing to accept for a very protracted moment. The rise of IPOB and its complete acceptance by day-to-day Biafrans is a pointer to that. Solomonic wisdom and sagacity are not required to know that it will take God's direct intervention to neutralize IPOB's advocacy of a referendum for Ndigbos.

The state, through its official information channels and sundry propaganda outfits are equating IPOB's call for a referendum to a call for war. Hell no. We saw how similar calls peaked with peaceful referendums in Eritrea, Kosovo, East Timor, South Sudan,Scotland, and Crimea. All those referendums came to force under the globally acceptable principle of self-determination. Is Nigeria not aware that self-determination cardinal principle of international law? Sheer mischief,right ?

Truth be told,this 1914 Lord Lugard's political contraption and Apartheid-like state has outlived its usefulness. Its existence is only serving the interest of ethno-religious supremacists whose anachronistic and barbaric ways of life is not in tandem of contemporary socio-cultural cum political order.

This European created upper caste placed their spiritual books above our 1999 constitution- hence their constant chopping-off of peoples heads under the pretext that some basic tenets of their religion had been violated.Or launching of some terrorist groups whose aim is to shove their beliefs down our throats. Or a cattle rearing Militia that keeps destroying peoples villages and running down their farmlands with impunity.

It's clear that most ethnic nationalities are comfortable with this slave and master political setting,except Ndigbos. As a lover of freedom and liberty,and a hater of dictatorship and other form of discriminations- I support IPOB's struggle against the evil system and its actors. I support their attempt to pull down the pillars of this satanic political order through a referendum.

This brings me to the question of the geography of the struggle. Yes IPOB is a South East based organization struggling for the emancipation of their people from the yoke of a backward system and actors. But their freedom will also set-free other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. Ndigbos going will make-way for others to peal-off from the remaining entity. And stand as independent entities or form a commonwealth of independent states or a confederation.Sequel to that,my support for struggle stems from the positive "unintended consequences" I/we will benefit from it.

Aside what might be our collective decision to also end our existence as a single entity, individuals can migrate to the new nation of Biafra and acquire citizenship. The new nation(like most nations) will permit citizenship by naturalization. It is better to live in a nation where your name and religion is not placing a limit to what you can aspire and potentials.

My prediction:Biafra shall be a shining city on a hill. And a place where the black race shall be proud of.
ISEE!
ISEE!!
ISEE!!!

APC: The Obstinate Journey to Shame via London by Pius Adesanmi

Those interested in the dustbin of Nigeria's history will one day find APC inside the rubble, among the putrefaction, just beside PDP, and bring out her carcass for examination.

Such students of the dustbin of history will likely conclude that APC's signature contribution to the Nigerian tragedy is not in the empirical failure to deliver on measurable electoral promises in virtually all areas of national life but in the deadening of the Nigerian mind.

A nation's mind is lost when the capacity for ironic sentience dies. And no group of Nigerians, at any moment in our chequered national history, has contributed more to the assassination of irony than the confederacy of parochial interests in the leadership of APC.

If blindness to irony stopped within the ranks of APC's leadership, if it was limited to Governors, Senators, Reps, and other political figures within her ranks, I wouldn't be so worried. It would be their funeral. I am not in the habit of shedding tears for members of Nigeria's political elite over their intellectual impecuniosity.

My worry lies in how the leadership of APC has democratized blindness to irony, especially among their followers so effectively. If irony hits you like a Dangote truck and you are unable to recognize it as a citizen, you wear that condition of ignorance like a badge of honour and hit social media for celebration in this APC era.

Chief John Odigie Oyegun fired the first bullet to assassinate irony. APC had just won the election. She was still in that period of grace when the people could excuse anything. Euphoria was still in the air. One message of change that APC could send early and effectively in order to write her name in gold was in the retirement of campaign funds.

The notion of retiring campaign funds is a complete stranger in Nigeria. We have at least two adult generations who have never heard of it because it has simply never been practiced. No Nigerian has ever retired campaign funds. After elections, you privatize the leftover funds, campaign vehicles, and other resources. You keep everything for yourself and distribute some to your cronies. This, of course, is a crime routinely committed by every Nigerian who has ever run for public office: there is no separation between their bank accounts and campaign contributions.

President Buhari, especially, most especially, had a moral and ethical obligation to inaugurate a monumental paradigm shift in our polity by being the first politician to ever retire his campaign funds, especially after making such a show of seeking a loan for the nomination form. He lost that golden opportunity to inscribe his name in gold - as he has frittered away every other opportunity since his election. To this day, President Buhari’s campaign funds have not been retired.

Enter Chief Odigie Oyegun with an early press interview. APC, he assured the nation, was not the party that should retire campaign funds. The onus, he continued, was on PDP to retire her campaign funds. I gasped and nearly had a heart attack when I read such ignorant comments from the Chairman of the President's party. To this day, Chief Oyegun has not explained the sources of his sick political theory of campaign finance retirement to Nigerians.

The irony was supremely lost on Chief Oyegun and APC. They had campaigned on a mantra of change but were telling Nigerians that the change ought to start with the party they had vanquished! Did PDP promise change? This was the beginning of a history of criminal blindness to irony that has led APC to the dustbin of history.

More tragedy was to come from APC. The party promised financial prudence and frugality. President Buhari held on to the most visible evidence of the long history of financial irresponsibility by the Nigerian Presidency - the harem of presidential jets. No change here. The irony was supremely lost on the changers.

President Jonathan was a junketing President. He traveled the world so irresponsibly that Reuben Abati was forced to pen a funny piece on the gains of President Jonathan's foreign trips. However, Reuben could not possibly have believed the nonsensical claims he was making in that essay.

Did President Buhari change the paradigm of fruitless and irresponsible presidential trips? For where? He doubled down on it, determined to cover in a few months the air miles that Jonathan covered in five years. But for the unfortunate illness that has largely truncated his trips, President Buhari was approaching a point where he could very much have offered to build an airport for a country without an airport in order to be able to visit such a country. No change here. The irony was supremely lost on the changers.

Fast forward. Roll over two years of daily evidence of blindness to irony on the part of APC and you arrive at restructuring. Suddenly, APC has a committee led by my friend, Nasir El Rufai, whose mandate is to help her understand restructuring and frame her position accordingly. APC's entire electoral manifesto is a promise of restructuring by other names. They called restructuring all sorts of names in various parts of that document but they cannot possibly pretend not to know that restructuring is what they promised. In some places, they called it devolution. In other places they used other names but it all still comes down to the fundamentals of restructuring: empowering the margins, de-centering the centre, putting an end to Nigeria's obnoxious financial feeding bottleism from the centre.

All of a sudden, nobody in APC has ever heard of restructuring. They now need a committee to study it, help them understand it, and, Allah be praised, the committee just must comprise all the Governors in their ranks who have declared war on restructuring recently one way or the other! No change here. The irony was supremely lost on the changers.

The most difficult part of APC's tragedy is the part of their manifesto and agendas pertaining to health and health care delivery in Nigeria. Nigeria would become the Dubai of health facilities within five years and progress on the road to Dubai would start to become noticeable within the first two years. You must, of course, read APC’s manifesto on health in tandem with President Buhari’s campaign statements vigorously condemning foreign medical safaris.

All of these promises have led to the sorry and tragic spectacle of APC Governors and the Party Chairman at a medical safari breakfast table in London. During President Buhari’s first stint in London, it had been the entire leadership of the National Assembly. It is painful to see what these leaders are doing to themselves. I take no pleasure in watching their naked dance in the marketplace. At various times, the President of Nigeria, the Senate President of Nigeria, the Speaker, Governors, and the Acting President of Nigeria have all gathered in London. No sense of shame. No trace of the understanding of irony in their demeanor.

I wager that they are doing it because there is a sense that they have so battered and clobbered the people into intellectual submission that the ability to engage and vigorously examine the empty ethical and moral proposition of their actions is no longer available in the land. I wager that they are doing this because their spokespersons, supporters, and foot soldiers have so battered and clobbered the people into submission and silence that nobody is going to even dare to ask: who funded APC’s jamboree to London?

I wager that these Governors are going to say that the London trip is a working visit, hence the deployment of public funds on such a woolly-headed jamboree at a time when, from Lagos to Port Harcourt and everywhere, Nigeria is showing the world a spectacle of flooding and salaries are not paid. If the Governors considered this trip to London a working visit and expended public funds on it – I suspect they did – this would be another tragic nail in the coffin of the changers.

From the same political party, the Acting President made a cameo appearance in London a few weeks ago, assured the nation that the President was in great condition and was primed to return to the country very soon. If we are to believe a Pastor of the Redeemed Church, what could have been so urgent that the APC Governors couldn’t wait for the President’s arrival? Could it be that they did not believe the reassurances of the Acting President?

Whatever be the case, this London trip is a tragedy on so many fronts. On that medical safari breakfast table was assembled those who promised to change the paradigm by putting an end to medical tourism. The supreme irony was lost on them.

Also lost on them is another supreme irony – and this one is a tragedy for Nigeria. Wait for it: the only two instances of leadership by example on the issue of foreign medical trips that we have come to us from the cancerous stables of PDP. Idris Wada is one of Kogi’s worst Governors. He was also very accident prone. He never went beyond Abuja for his medical woes. All the broken bones he sustained from his many convoy accidents were treated in Nigeria. And His Excellency Chief Otunba Dr. Peter Ayodele Fayose (Jerusalem Pilgrim) has been doing a lot of chest beating about his own medicals in Nigeria.

Wada and Fayose as the best examples of the change promised by APC? Nothing makes sense any more. APC has turned Nigeria into a Yeats-ville where:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

When the best lack all conviction and, blind to irony, fly off to London to waste public funds in defiance of the very principles they swore to uphold, you can see the worst running riot all over the land (Fayose, FFK, etc) with passionate intensity.

Yet, the irony is lost on the changers.

And their followers. And their defenders.

Pius Adesanmi

Iya Biliki's Plight By Pius Adesanmi

Three failed attempts so far to pick up a few things I need at Shoprite.

Each occasion, I see a sea of shoppers massed at the pay points. The queues are so so so very long, with orbs of Nigerian chaos in places along the way. It's almost like the faithful circling Kaaba. I am not going to spend an hour or more waiting in line to pay for items I can still pick up from Iya Biliki of Alanamu in her roadside store.

I am not thinking of the killing that shoprite is making in this land. I am thinking of the sociology of the crowd that has abandoned Iya Biliki of Alanamu for the aisles of Shoprite.

You look at those very long lines waiting to pay: 99.9% are single-item shoppers. One loaf of bread, you go to Shoprite; one pack of Indomie, you go to Shoprite; one apple, you go to shoprite; one tomtom, you go to shoprite. At the pay point, the two-kilometre queues are a wonderful spectacle of red shopping baskets and shopping carts containing a single item.

Although I have thus far yielded to the supremacy of the one item shoppers and embraced Iya Biliki's provision store rather than subject myself to time on that punitive Shoprite queue, the student of Nigerian sociology in me cannot let go of what I believe is happening.

As they wait in that tortuous queue, their single-item red baskets on the floor in a long serpentine formation, they are selfie-ing away with reckless abandon. It is a mass selfie process: click, click, click, upload to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter instantly.

It is all about a class struggle for the atmospherics of modernity and gloss. Nigeria is peopled by the most atrociously class conscious social and political elite in the world. The identity and the psychology of this elite is fed by and dependent on a gulf that must exist between them and the lower classes. Only this class must have access to the glossy atmospherics of modernity and civilization. The lesser classes must be in squalor.

It is precisely this atmospherics of modernity, which used to belong exclusively to the elite, that Shoprite has banalized and brought within the reach of the lower classes. If Kasali needs to buy a tin of Peak Milk at N400 from Iya Biliki, he will spend a week saving an extra N100 to be able to afford that same tin at N500 in Shoprite and take selfies as empirical evidence of his access to the atmospherics of modernity.

Iya Biliki has been abandoned by majority of her customers who now go to Shoprite to buy one bar of canoe soap. At this rate, her source of livelihood is threatened. In fact, she doesn't even know what to make of me since she started seeing me stop by. She's convinced I belong in the Shoprite class. Yet, for some strange reason, I keep coming to her roadside provision store.

I don't blame Iya Biliki's customers for migrating. They are telling an elite whose lives have meaning only when there is a gulf between them and the people: you may go to Macy's of New York for your shopping all you want; you may stop over at Harrod's in London on your way back. Don't worry, we dey here for Shoprite. It's the same gloss, the same modernity, the same mall culture. Your exclusive ownership of access to the atmospherics of modernity has been demystified.

But the Nigerian elite would have none of this. The democratization of gloss by Shoprite and the consequent accessibility of mall modernity to the little people means that the political elite must steal more and more to increase the social distance.

The worst thing that can happen to Oga is for him and his driver to be rubbing feet in the same Shoprite queue.

Oga will have to steal more to raise the level...