As Ambassador (Dr.) Olatokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu gracefully glides into the platinum age of 70 years, it is tempting to overlook the fact that she is a doughty survivor and formidable combatant.

Even if the scars are not visible, she has survived the loss of two brothers. Barrister Olusegun Awolowo (who graduated from University of Cambridge) died in a ghastly motor accident in July, 1963; and Chief Oluwole Awolowo as well as a sister, Mrs. Ayodele Soyode (mother of Mrs. Dolapo Osinbajo - the wife of the Vice-President of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osinbajo SAN). All these in addition to the demise of both parents – the sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1987 and his jewel Chief (Mrs.) H.I.D. Awolowo in 2015.

Rather than indulge in suffocating self-pity, Olatokunbo has opted to be a nimble combatant in the battle to rescue others by caring for the underprivileged; the aged; the homeless and most especially those who would otherwise be denied access to medical facilities (through the aegis of Obafemi Awolowo Foundation/Dideolu Hospital). It is self-evident that it is her caring disposition that influenced her choice of a career in medicine which was interrupted by her sojourn into diplomacy as our beloved nation’s Ambassador at The Hague, in The Netherlands, from 2000 to 2003.

I commend her warmly for her granite steadfastness and exceptional faithfulness which she has consistently demonstrated in sustaining the inimitable legacy of selfless public service and indomitable spirit of her illustrious parents. Having regard to her tenacity of purpose, fierce determination and steely persistence, she is surely already on the march to greatness in her own right in addition to her devotion to the sustenance and reinforcement of the legend and legacy of her father and mother.
In this endeavour, she has the benefit of the support of her only surviving sibling – Rev. (Mrs.) Tola Oyediran who is the wife of Professor Kayode Oyediran, former Vice-Chancellor of University of Ibadan and an old boy of King’s College, Lagos. His father, late Ambassador Oyediran was an old boy of King’s College, Lagos.

Tokunbo deserves kudos for the resilience she has demonstrated in coping with the travails of the Awolowo family together with the triumphs. She is manifestly endowed with robust shock absorbers. At a very tender age, she went through the trauma of witnessing her beloved father in the dock for “treasonable felony” in 1963. The tragedy was further compounded by the betrayal and treachery of former allies particularly the son of a long standing family friend (Dr. Ladipo Maja son of Dr. Akinola Maja, a long-time ally of Chief Awolowo) who turned out to be the “prosecution witness”.

When Chief Awolowo was convicted by Hon. Justice George S. Sowemimo and detained in Calabar prison, it was the personal intervention of Chief Frank Giwa-Osagie, who was the Head of the Nigerian Prison Service and an old boy of King’s College, Lagos who saved him from being poisoned.

In politics, she has played her cards close to her chest, ever ready to welcome whoever wants to pay homage to the late sage and supplicate the blessings of the Awolowo family. Indeed, she has restrained herself through reticence and circumspection from venturing into the vortex of controversy in the affairs of our nation. Not for her the temptation to throw her hat into the ring as a potential first female President or Vice-President of Nigeria.

She is of course entitled to conclude that the family has already oversacrificed and overinvested in the pursuit of a vision which has been thoroughly savaged, bastardised, frustrated and compromised.

At the age of 70, she is welcome to reflect on how her father gravitated from being the humble, assiduous and committed secretary of “Egbe Omo Oduduwa” (a Yoruba Cultural Organisation) with its secretariat at 51, Messina Avenue, West Hampstead, London (the home of Dr. Oni Akerele , an old boy of King’s College, Lagos, who was the President) to becoming the leader of the same group which had transformed from being a cultural organisation into the Action Group, as a fully-fledged political party in Nigeria. He did it by a combination of zeal, dedication, doggedness and force of personality – while preaching the doctrine of “Welfare Socialism”.

Meetings at Dr. Akerele’s residence would sometimes drag on till late at night. However, first thing the following morning, Awolowo would have distributed flawless minutes of the proceedings of the previous evening to the astonishment of other members. He was phenomenal – a miracle worker.

That in itself is a story for another day. It is sufficient to record that our celebrant’s father displayed uncommon leadership as well as sagacity combined with vision and discipline. The followership adored him. A special chapter would have to be devoted to how “Awo” charmed the post Victorian-age elite of Lagos into rewarding him with unprecedented respect and deference. They adored “Awo” their former protégé who was now their charismatic leader with his signature fez “Awo” cap and round rim pebble glasses.

In physical stature, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the Prime Minister; Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (Premier of the Eastern Region) and Sir Ahmadu Bello, (The Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of the Northern Region) towered above Chief Obafemi Awolowo. However, in the political arena and strategic thinking he was more than their equal match. My late father Chief J.K. Randle (an old boy of King’s College, Lagos) was a friend of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, as well as his rivals – Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Sir Ahmadu Bello. In the 1930’s, my father played at centre-forward in Zik’s Football Club and it was his passion for horses and horse-racing that endeared him to Sir Ahmadu Bello.

I am obliged to reveal the other side of “Awo” which is rarely ever mentioned – he had a terrific sense of humour, gaiety and great sense of fun which were only on display when he was amongst a very close circle of friends. It was there for all to see on the few occasions when he visited the Lagos Island Club or Lagos Race Club where my father was the Chairman of both premier clubs. Somewhere in the archives of the clubs are iconic photographs of Chief Obafemi Awolowo looking very relaxed, jovial and savouring the company of friends and foes alike.

Regardless, the dominant trait and enduring legacy were his stern mien, seriousness of purpose and dedication to the pursuit of excellence as well as the upliftment of Nigeria. He made no excuses for being a thoroughbred Yoruba first and foremost but it did not preclude him from his duty to Nigeria and Africa. He was ever ready to work from the crack of dawn till late into the night. The free education policy which was launched in Western Nigeria in 1955 remains his most enduring legacy. Knowledge became the key to freedom and liberty for the many rather than the few – in the pursuit of his catchy slogan: “Life More Abundant.”

He was never awed by intellectuals or scholars. On the contrary, he cultivated them. According to the World Bank report of 1963, under the leadership of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Western Region of Nigeria was destined to surpass Singapore; South Korea; Malaysia; Indonesia and Hong Kong in economic and human capital development. The prediction is yet to manifest into reality.

Time and space will not permit us to dwell on the irony of history when the feud between Chief Awolowo and his deputy Chief S. L. Akintola erupted at Mapo Hall in Ibadan in 1962 and changed the course of history as well as the destiny of Nigeria.

Thankfully, the children of Chief S. O. Adebo (Head of Service, Western Region and an old boy of King’s College, Lagos) are here to confirm that Chief Awolowo was fortunate to enjoy the support and loyalty of dedicated and incorruptible civil servants. Elder Statesman Chief Folarin Coker, former civil servant in the Western Region and Lagos State, is still with us at the age of 95 years.

He is ever ready to remind us that there was a moral dimension to Chief Awolowo’s superlative performance. Mrs. Apinke Coker was Awo’s personal secretary but when she accompanied him on his trip to London to negotiate Nigeria’s Independence, Chief Awolowo as Premier of the Western Region personally paid the fare of Chief Coker so that he could accompany his wife.

The celebrant was a teenager then. Here she is, fifty-five years later – still charming, vibrant, radiant and determined to keep the flag flying at full mast.

She was previously the Co-Chairman of African Newspapers of Nigeria Plc, publishers of “The Tribune” group of newspapers. The mantle of leadership as the sole Chairman has fallen on her shoulders. At the time when the fortunes of the newspapers were dwindling it was the then Chairman, Chief (Mrs.) H.I.D Awolowo, the matriarch of the Awolowo dynasty who engaged the services of my firm, J.K. Randle Professional Services to provide consultancy services which we successfully executed.

The company is evidently thriving and has been restored to the front rank of our nation’s media. At a time when the J.K. Randle family is under threat, assault, invasion and siege by the government (and its demolition squad which is on a rampage) we may have ignored the incisive observation of Chief (Mrs.) Awolowo which she shared with me – no matter the complexion of the government, you must replenish your wealth, your power, influence and your prestige, otherwise you would be in peril.

I remain eternally grateful to her for her well- grounded wisdom and profound knowledge. At close to 100 years old, she was still mentally alert and genuinely concerned about the future of Nigeria.

As Olatokunbo steps into those mega-sized shoes of her parents, we have every reason to believe that she would rise up to the challenge. Poor lady; she has to ride two horses at the same time – one belongs to her mother while the other belongs to her father. Another horse is on the way – it is a birthday gift from the King’s College Old Boys Association!! Happy birthday.

Bashorun J.K. Randle is a former President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and former Chairman of KPMG Nigeria and Africa Region. He is currently the Chairman, J.K. Randle Professional Services.
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On the evening of Monday, February 19th, 2018 Boko Haram terrorists attacked the Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi, in Yobe State and kidnapped 110 out of the 926 students in the school. What happened subsequently was shameful. In the days following the abduction, various conflicting accounts emerged of the number of missing female students, ranging from 50 to 111.

Nigerians were told that that over 40 girls who fled into the bush in the aftermath of the attack had returned in small numbers. The State Governor announced that the girls had been found only for him to retract his statement later creating more anguish in the hearts of parents and relations of the girls. The authorities were unable to give the number of girls abducted and frustrated parents realizing that the authorities were thoroughly disorganized had to step up, organise themselves and do a head count of the missing girls.

Days after the number counted by the parents, the Minister of Information then announced a confirmation of the incident and number of missing girls.

Four years after the massacre of fifty-nine male students at Buni Yadi and as we approach the forth year in captivity for the 112 Chibok schoolgirls, it is shocking that we have not learnt lessons of how to make our schools safe. It was agonising to hear one of the Dapchi girls interviewed on radio say she will never return to school. I cannot blame her if, as is the case, school remains the place where you can be kidnapped and sold into slavery and sexual violence.

How come Boko Haram terrorists in amy camouflage uniforms and trucks were allowed to roam around and carry out an operation that lasted for hours and no help came. According to the girls, the words Allahu Akbar was written on the trucks and the men had no boots, so many of the students were able to work out they were not real soldiers. How come no security personnel could identify the assailants as they drove through many communities to get to the school? How come the army moved out of the theatre of action just a few days before the attack?

It would be recalled that the first decision taken by the SSI was to transfer students in the high-risk areas from each of the States of Adamawa, Yobe and Borno to Federal Unity Colleges (FUCs) to safer parts of the country. Why therefore were almost one thousand girls left in the Dapchi School, which was known to be vulnerable? What happened to the funds made available by the Federal Government of Nigeria, the German Government, the African Development Bank and the Multi – donors’ trust fund of the United Nations? The shock of Buni Yadi and Chibok was so heavy that our Government and the International Community said never again should it be allowed to happen. Why was it allowed to recur again and again?

School abductions have today become a permanent feature of our national life and that’s the scandal. Clear protocols should have been developed and followed. The case of Boko Haram against Nigeria is that we allow children to be educated. It’s logical that they would continue to attack schools. Kidnappers, especially in the Lagos zone have also bought into abducting students for the purpose of extortion. The obvious necessary response is for us to provide adequate security for our schools.

When abductions occur, swift hot pursuit responses are necessary. How come students are abducted today and as was the case in Buni Yadi and Chibok in 2014, there is no hot pursuit to rescue them by the military for days and weeks and the terrorists are allowed to travel hundreds of kilometres to their hiding places. It took over a week after the abduction for the Government to set up a committee to find out what happened. The expectations that lessons learnt from the report that investigated the Chibok abductions should have led to practical response mechanisms is obviously too much to expect.

For me, the most unacceptable trend is the total lack of regard for parents. It is simply wicked to feed them wrong information and raise their expectations on the recovery of their children only for them to find out subsequently that it is not true. In societies where the State knows its responsibility towards citizens that have suffered a tragedy, the immediate response includes establishing a communication line with relations to keep them informed of unfolding attempts to address the situation and providing psychological support for those who escaped the tragedy and their relations.

They are then guided on coping strategies to address the trauma they are undergoing. In Nigeria, we just leave them to their own devises. Why for example did it a take a whole week to contact the parents to establish the list of missing students?

Finally, there is a huge question of State relations with affected communities. In Dapchi, angry community members stoned the entourage of the Governor for misleading them. We do not have the rapid response mechanism of security and intelligence officers moving within hours of an attack and collecting information from eyewitnesses that could lead to addressing the situation.

It's as if they are afraid of doing their work for fear of danger to themselves. Each time abduction occurs, the tragedy is the missed opportunities of taking swift recovery measures that could have produced a solution. We simply cannot continue in this manner.

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, yesterday, dismissed insinuations that restructuring of the country would benefit the South to the disadvantage of the North, urging Northern opponents of the proposal not to kill themselves over the South’s vanishing oil.

Abubakar spoke at a book launch in Lagos where former Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida (retd), affirmed that Nigerians must come together, irrespective of political or ethnicities, to frontally confront the issues that challenge the unity of the country.

They spoke at the launch of a book, “In the belly of vultures,” written by veteran journalist and erstwhile Managing Director of Daily Times of Nigeria, Tola Adeniyi.

The book launch was witnessed by some of the country’s leading personalities, among whom were some former governors, including Aremo Segun Osoba (Ogun), Dr. Olusegun Mimiko (Ondo), Gbenga Daniel (Ogun), Otunba Niyi Adebayo (Ekiti), among several other dignitaries which also included Vanguard publisher, Mr Sam Amuka, and former Concord Newspapers Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Doyin Abiola.

Affirming that restructuring was not a sectional agenda, Atiku, who was represented by Prof. Maxwell Gidado, said:  “Restructuring is not a sectional thing or sectional demand. And it will not benefit only some sections of the country and hurt others. It will benefit the whole country.

“Those who fear that it is designed to hurt them to the benefit of others or to benefit only them at the expense of others are grossly mistaken.

“A country, including its economy, is like an organism. Thus, what affects one part affects the other parts and the country as a whole. The existing structure impedes our progress as a nation irrespective of what specific sections think. “Similarly, restructuring, if properly done, will benefit the whole nation, whatever the short term inconveniences a section or sections may feel.”

Vanguard

CNN anchor, Isha Sesay, is right about what she said on her Twitter handle. The kidnap of the 110 girls of Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi, is not a national disaster as President Muhammadu Buhari had described it; it’s a national disgrace.

The only thing worse than the disgrace is the incompetent response of Buhari’s government and the buck-passing in a moment of national grief.

How do we tell a world that still cannot understand how 256 girls got missing in Chibok, that after four years of trying and managing to rescue 100, another 110 girls are now missing without trace?

How do we explain to the parents and families involved that one week after their children were taken away from school by terrorists neither lawmakers representing the constituency, nor the state governor, nor the policemen in charge of the area, nor the soldiers, can give an account – any kind of coherent account at all – of what happened?

Broken promise

Buhari promised to keep Nigerians safe and secure. How can he look at himself in the mirror today and not think that if the missing 110 schoolgirls is a national disaster, then his personal failure to keep his promise is the father of that disaster? When it happened under former President Goodluck Jonathan, Buhari’s All Progressives Congress, then the opposition party, said it could only have happened as a result of malicious incompetence.

That may have been correct. Jonathan’s government did not make any pretensions about honesty or competence. Army generals were diverting funds set aside for the war on Boko Haram into their private pockets and angry troops, tired of fighting with their bare hands and buying their own medicines at the war front, were shooting their commanders or fleeing across the border.

PDP angry?

One hundred Chibok girls are still missing today because Jonathan believed some of those who were around him, who said the story of the missing girls was a hoax by the opposition to undermine his government.

Have you noticed how the rank and file of Jonathan’s party, the Peoples Democratic Party, has jumped on the bandwagon to flog Buhari?

The same people who said Chibok was a scam and on whose watch Boko Haram grew from a homeless status to become a landlord?

I know that politicians must play, but to play with the fate of children whose lives they endangered by their callous negligence is unforgivable.

It’s surreal to think that we’re right where we were four years ago; that in the same Yobe where 29 boys were murdered by Boko Haram in their hostels, 110 girls were later abducted and Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, is saying the government is taking steps to ensure that this does not happen another time.

Not another time

Well, there’ll be another time for Dambazau and all those who have shamelessly let the country down yet again. There’ll be another time for Army spokesperson Onyeama Nwachukwu; the Yobe State commissioner of police Sunmonu Abdulmaliki, and for their bosses who sent them to rub salt in our wound by trading blames.

There’ll be another time for Governor Ibrahim Geidam who had falsely announced the rescue of some of the girls even before seeing the parents of the girls and hearing their own side of the story.

Sure, there’ll be another time to announce that more billions of naira has been poured into the war on Boko Haram and anyone who wants can now have a picnic anywhere in the North East. There’ll always be another time to deepen our misery.

But there won’t be another time for the 110 missing girls or for the parents and families who are haunted by the bizarre thoughts of just where their girls are or what is happening to them.

There won’t be another time to repair the future of those children and hundreds more like them who will see no point at all in going to school. It is not Dambazau saying that the government is taking steps to ensure that this won’t happen again that doesn’t make sense to me.

It is the fact that the government has not said what it would do to prevent more girls from being kidnapped or more boys from being murdered in their dormitories.

Just like it happened in Chibok, it took Boko Haram one to two days of doing a recce and bedding in before the girls were rounded up and herded away in trucks.

There was a calamitous failure of intelligence between Dapchi and either Geidam or Damaturu – both places where soldiers attached to Operation Lafia Dole had at least not been withdrawn and which are only about 60 kilometres from Dapchi. This failure paved the way for the girls to be taken away with the casualness of a practice match.

What is Buhari going to do about it? How many schools are still open outside the capitals of Yobe, Adamawa or Borno? And why is it impossible to deploy vigilantes or drones or some minimum form of technology to complement the effort of the brave soldiers on the front lines to secure schools and other soft targets?

Unlike Chibok

Unlike Chibok, which happened in the forest area of Sambisa, Dapchi is miles and miles of flat land, stretching all the way up to the arid borders of Niger Republic. I’m lost for words that in a zone that is practically at war, nearly half a dozen trucks plied the major Damaturu-Bayamari Road for hours on February 19, 2018, with distraught schools crying for help and nothing happened. To say there won’t be a next time does not mean it won’t happen because Dambazau said so. Buhari’s government has put Boko Haram on the back foot. Yet, if the rising wave of other forms of violence is a parable of how much work still needs to be done, then Dapchi is a clear statement that the government has been too eager to give itself a pass mark.

And soon we’ll forget. The only reason why we’re still talking about Chibok is because Oby Ezekwesili and members of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign group have refused to give up, despite the odds.

Dambazau and others can say it won’t happen again because they know that, like Chibok, we’ll get used to Dapchi and, as usual, just get on with our lives; leaving the matter to God and surrendering ourselves as willing victims of the next idiocy.

Are we all right?

Caveat: This piece is in no way a comment on the judicial context of the ongoing trial of the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. That is not only outside the scope of my competence but would constitute contempt of the court, which I dare not do. 

Rather this is a journalistic overview of events surrounding the latest appearance of the Senate President at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT, with particular reference to the sudden twist in the fate of the CCT chairman, Mr. Danladi Umar, in the hands of the EFCC and its implications for the wider administration of justice as well as the fight against corruption by the current regime.

But really, so many things have changed. At least, Danladi has unexpectedly cleared Saraki of all charges; it appeared he did not play to script. Also, the Appeal Court has asked Saraki to go and clear himself of three charges from the 18 levied against him by the EFCC and which Umar had earlier struck out, discharging and acquitting the Senate President in the process.

There are many questions begging for answer on this sudden volte face by the EFCC. One of them is, are there new evidences linking Umar to the alleged crime? If so, why has the EFCC, which is noted for promptly revealing links between accused /suspects and their alleged crimes to the media, refused to do so in this instant case?

How does the EFCC wish Umar to feel taking the plea of a man accused of corruption in his own court, when he himself is making his plea on corruption allegations in another court?  If there is new evidence against Umar, why did EFCC write initially to clear the CCT boss when it knew it was yet to conclude its investigations into the allegations against him? And are they sure now they have completed the investigation enough to ensure a conviction? Or, as is being speculated, does the Federal Government want people to continue thinking that setting up Umar before the court at a time he is set to hear Saraki’s case again is a way of mounting pressure on him to ensure a conviction of the Senate President irrespective of facts?

Questions, questions and more questions begging for answers; and the more questions we have on issues like this, the more challenging it becomes to see how our leaders can, come out, take water, wash their hands and say they are innocent of what is being done to a just man.

The anti-corruption crusade of the administration is not only losing steam, it is surely losing its initial esteem. And to be candid, many people have been pointing at this decline only that their appeals seem not to have sunk well into the deliberations of the constituted authorities.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo puts this concern laconically when he said, “there were serious allegations of round-tripping against some inner caucus of the Presidency which would seem to have been condoned. I wonder if such actions do not amount to corruption and financial crime, then what is it.  Culture of condonation and turning blind eye will cover up rather than clean up. And going to justice must be with clean hands.”

We will just continue an unnecessary cycle, if we go on like that. It is the existence of credible institutional framework against corruption of all hues that gives boldness to several agencies in the United States of America to take up the  Donald Trump presidency on sundry issues without anyone seeing himself as an object of personality attack. And it is the absence of such a framework here that makes someone like our dear Maina to approach a court and slam a multi-billion naira suit on the EFCC for libel et al.

It is the absence of such platform that created the unnecessary intervention of the police and DSS in the private affairs of General Ibrahim Babangida and his media aide in the last few days. It is the absence of such platform that made the former SGF to remain in office long after credible evidence had been adduced to warrant his stepping down and facing trial.

But it is not too late; our redemption is still possible if, like Saraki said at the national summit on security, our leaders can summon the political will to actually make the fight against corruption an institutional issue and not an instrument to settle personal scores. That is the real change we desire; that was the change this administration promised us during the campaign in 2015. That is the change we expect from them.

Last Wednesday, the  Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) dispatched two of its investigators to the Port Harcourt International Airport in Rivers State to commence investigation into the Dana Air plane incident at the airport.

The previous day, a Dana Air aircraft which was flying from Abuja to Port Harcourt Airport had overshot the runway.

Happily, however, all the passengers on board and the crew were safely evacuated from the aircraft. In her reaction, the General Manager, Corporate Affairs, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Mrs. Henrietta Yakubu, stated that the incident could have been caused by a heavy rain accompanied by strong wind and storm in the Rivers State capital. Dana Air also toed the same path.

On February 7, the door of an aircraft belonging to the airline fell off upon landing at the Abuja airport. In its reaction, the airline surmised that the door must have fallen off because it was tampered with.

  As noted by Kingsley Ezenwa, spokesperson of Dana Air, the door never shook since the aircraft was “airbone and fully pressurised.” Nigerians would however recall that on June 3, 2012, a Dana Air flight crashed into a building in Iju-Ishaga neighbourhood in Lagos State, killing all the 153 people on board and 10 more people on the ground. That crash was reportedly the second deadliest on Nigerian soil, behind only the Kano air disaster of 1973. Every effort must be made to prevent a recurrence.

To be sure, it is not being suggested here that Dana Air is prone to accidents or that its failure and not the alleged inclement weather condition was responsible for the latest incident at the Port Harcourt Airport. There is as yet no valid reasons for coming to such a conclusion. In any case, it is fair to assume that, as a business, the airline could not have deliberately taken any actions capable of tarnishing its credibility. Our concern is that the latest incident could have claimed lives and, in any case, Nigerians deserve to know what really went wrong.

A thorough investigation is, more than ever, needed to unravel the circumstances surrounding the incident. The investigation should unravel whether the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) provided the necessary instrument landing systems for safe operations during inclement weather and whether the weather report given by the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET) at the time of the incident was accurate and up to date. It must further establish whether or not the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) ensured due diligence on the aircraft and crew, and whether FAAN itself was up to date in the provision of the required infrastructure for safe operations in Port Harcourt Airport and indeed elsewhere.

On a general note, however, we urge the Ministry of Transport to ensure at all times that safety standards are adhered to by all the airlines operating in the country.

Past air crashes cost the nation too dearly and the nation surely needs to do all it can to ensure that avoidable tragedies in air transport are completely eliminated.

Tribune

The clarion call to action against illicit financial outflows and tax evasion/underpayment by multinational companies resonated recently at the Platform for Collaboration on Tax (PCT) Conference held in New York, United States.  Nigeria, at the conference organised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in collaboration with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), expressed profound concern about illicit financial outflows from the country and tax evasion by International Oil Companies. Nigeria’s   worries are understandable, considering the country’s ranking as having the highest annual illicit financial outflows in Africa.    

Speaking on tax issues and revenue leakages in Nigeria, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, noted that illegal financial outflows have continued because foreign countries have placed hurdles on efforts to repatriate stolen funds stashed away in their domains, with the problem worsened by the unwholesome behaviour of some multinational companies operating in Nigeria and other developing economies.      

“There is absolute need,” Mrs. Adeosun said, “for a complete understanding of how these multinational companies behave in Nigeria and other developing countries. Many of them operate a completely different standard in Africa, contrary to what obtains globally.” She also accused the defaulting multinational companies of hiding “behind slow legislative processes” to perpetrate wrong activities in the countries from which they derive significant income.                                                      

Nigeria asked for the collaboration of the global community to designate tax evasion by multinationals across developing countries as a “foreign corrupt practice”, stressing that such an odious label will help to facilitate the Nigeria’s current efforts to sue the erring IOCs in their own countries. Indeed, Africa, in particular Nigeria, has lost a lot in revenue and image to illicit financial outflows and tax evasion by multinational organisations in the country, which are sometimes in cahoots with unpatriotic Nigerian   financial institutions and public agencies.

For instance, the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, told the Federal Executive Council (FEC) at one of its meetings that Nigeria lost about $178 billion to illicit financial outflows in the last ten years. Just last year, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) also disclosed that the country lost N306bn yearly to tax evasion by IOCs. This is 13 percent of the capital budget in the proposed 2018 federal budget. According to the FIRS Chairman, Mr. Babatunde Fowler, the amount resulted from the companies’ failure to file true and proper tax returns to government agencies. According to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Nigeria ought to significantly reduce illicit financial outflows by the year 2030.  

A Washington-based think tank, in a recent report, put illicit financial outflows from Africa and other emerging economies at between $2 trillion and $3.5trn yearly.    Nigeria, the report said, is the most “vulnerable” country in Africa to the flight of capital needed for investment and other purposes. The report further shows that combined illicit outflows and inflows amounted to 14.1 percent to 24 percent of the developing countries’ total trade from 2005 to 2014, the last year comprehensive data were made available.        

While the support of the global community is needed to tackle this problem, Nigeria must take up the gauntlet and move from mere declarations of intent to decisive action to stem the trend. Increased surveillance and tightening of internal controls are necessary. Other measures must include addressing poor governance, weak regulatory structures, which oftentimes aid illegal financial outflows.                        

Nigeria is still having talks with countries where state funds looted by discredited public officials are stashed.  In 2016, Nigeria signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Kingdom on looted assets. Tough legislations that can discourage the movement of stolen funds from one country to the other have become essential. It is also necessary to institute stiff measures against banks which serve as conduits for fraudulent financial outflows. According to the Global Financial Integrity Group, a financial watchdog based in the USA, about $15.7bn illicit funds passed through the Nigerian banking system.                          

They lie about 150 miles apart in the vast brush lands of northern Nigeria, but the towns of Chibok and Dapchi have a tragic bond: both have been targets of large-scale kidnappings of schoolgirls by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram. Following a four-year global campaign to free the 276 girls kidnapped from Chibok in 2014 – an event that brought Boko Haram’s sadistic agenda to the world’s attention – 110 girls in Dapchi vanished this month under identical circumstances.

In both cases, members of Boko Haram, which in the Hausa language translates roughly to “Western education is a sin,” sprayed a school with bullets as they invaded the grounds to steal food and oInline image
ther supplies. The group’s quest to establish a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria has already left at least 20,000 dead and made more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009.

Another commonality between the two attacks is that the fate of the schoolgirls was a source of confusion for days. In Chibok, it was eventually learned that the 276 girls had been herded into trucks and taken away. A grainy black-and-white photo of the group after their abduction, taken by one of the terrorists, incited global outrage, sparking the movement Bring Back Our Girls.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has called the incident a “national disaster”, and promised the deployment of troops and surveillance aircraft to search for the missing girls as a specially convened enquiry undertakes a full review into the circumstances of the raid. The children’s parents – such as the father of Fatima Manzo, who is just 16 years old – have formed their own association to track them.

Four years ago, I was part of the campaign to free the Chibok girls. In a petition that secured one million signatures almost immediately, we called on Western governments to support surveillance and reconnaissance missions, in order to locate and rescue the victims, who were being hidden in Nigeria and neighboring countries.

At that time, the Global Business Coalition for Education published a report on safe schools in Nigeria. The coalition also created a partnership among Nigerian business leaders, the Nigerian government, and international donors, in cooperation with UNICEF, to establish programmes aimed at making schools safe for Nigerian children.

As part of the coalition’s Safe Schools Initiative, community groups were formed; infrastructure reforms were implemented; and girls were provided with safe school options. Last May, 82 Chibok girls were released to the Nigerian government in exchange for five Boko Haram commanders.

After years of being too afraid even to cross a school playground, girls had started to return to the classroom. The doctrine of safe schools – a rare new idea in a region beleaguered by the confrontation with Boko Haram – seemed to be gradually taking hold. Fences and other physical security were built to keep raiders out, and mobile telecommunications were used as early warning systems.

But, sadly, the reality was that 100 Chibok girls remained in captivity, their whereabouts unknown. Moreover, six million of Nigeria’s school-age girls still don’t go to school. The abduction of yet another 110 schoolgirls is likely only to make matters worse, not just for them and their families, but for all whose fears about the safety of schools have now been reawakened.

As for the new abductees, we know their likely fate if they are not rescued quickly. Chibok girls who escaped or were released have said in interviews that abductees were whipped to persuade them to marry. Some were taken as concubines by group members. Many who were married off may never escape captivity.

The international community must do everything possible to support the Nigerian government’s efforts to save the Dapchi girls, including countries providing aerial surveillance to help locate them and their captors. The president has said his government will redouble its efforts to prevent the recurrence of such abductions.

That means we will need to galvanise more international support to help defeat Boko Haram and its destructive ideology. And within Nigeria we need a revamped Safe Schools Initiative, with an eye to ensuring that it is sustainable in the long term. School children deserve nothing less.

Gordon Brown is a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

With barely a year to the next national election cycle, fears have been raised about the continued apathy of many Nigerians. Figures of uncollected Permanent Voter Cards in many states demonstrate this. Despite widespread disaffection towards the political system, Nigerians should not relent in discharging their civic obligations. Democracy is hollow without popular participation: to enjoy its elusive “dividends,” people should shake off their lethargy, demand accountability and exercise positive influence on the democratic process.

Participation starts with registering to vote. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission, 74 million persons were enrolled on its register by the second week of January. This figure is expected to hit between 80 and 85 million before the first round of polling. In the 2011 presidential election, 36,728,992 votes were cast, representing about 54 per cent of the registered voters. But in 2015, only 29,432,083 voted, representing 43.65 per cent of the 67,422,005 names on the roll.

One problem that cropped up then was the non-collection of PVCs by many voters. In many states, hundreds of thousands of the documents were left at INEC offices and collection centres. In this, part of the blame lay with the electoral body. Its logistics, notoriously poor in all its successive reincarnations, failed. Many people who genuinely wanted to collect simply could not, enduring long waits and fruitless, repeated visits to the centres.

In Oyo State, 657,267 PVCs had not been collected by mid-January; most had been ready since 2015. The figures of 49,000 unclaimed PVCs in Taraba and 21,651 in Akwa Ibom pale beside the 460,000 uncollected PVCs in Edo State. By April last year, according to INEC, 7.8 million PVCs were awaiting collection nationwide and 4.23 million were yet to be printed.

Nigeria’s democracy has become what researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, the United States of America, describe as mere “Electoral Democracy,” a system “in which elites and their hangers-on hold elections but citizens have little real influence on the process.” We are paying a heavy price for this abdication of responsibility to a particularly selfish, self-centred and avaricious political class. According to the IMF, 54 per cent of Nigerians were living below the poverty threshold of $2 per day in 1999; but in its 2018 Nigeria Economic Outlook, the African Development Bank says 152 million or 80 per cent of the population now live below the poverty level, 18 years into the Fourth Republic.

Yet, a news report calculated that the country earned about N77 trillion from crude oil and gas between 1999 and 2016. A revelation by Tim Okon, a former senior executive of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, showed that $300 billion oil revenues flowed in between 2010 and 2014 alone. Not only are the people pauperised, elected officials are unaccountable to them.

The National Assembly that should champion the cause of the people at all times has, however, become notorious around the world for appropriating vast sums for its members who, along with the executive arm, live in opulence, promote narrow interests and plunder the treasury at will. At the state and local government levels, governors, lawmakers and LG bosses are handpicked by political godfathers and proceed often to serve those interests with scant regard for the people.

Lack of popular pressure has allowed the political class to deprive the polity of an effective power sector: infrastructure deficit could need up to $1 trillion to propel it to the top 25 economies of the world, while unemployment is rampant and the majority are alienated.

The way forward is clear: since the outcomes of the democratic contests have been unsatisfactory and politicians disdainful of the populace, the people should resolve to live out a one-time US president Abraham Lincoln’s famous description of democracy as the “government of the people by the people for the people.” Democracy imposes a duty on the people to have civic consciousness, beginning with registering to vote. In other climes, political parties would be mobilising the people to register and collect their PVCs.

People should locate lawmakers’ constituency offices and interrogate their supposed representatives: they should stop demanding money or asking them to pay their house rents or children’s school fees, or collecting tokens from them. Public office is about service, not plundering public treasury. The Journal of Democracy, a Johns Hopkins University Press publication, says “people become more effective in the struggle to obtain democratic institutions when they move from emphasising survival values towards emphasising self-expression values.” A study by the Brookings Institution, a US think tank, found that democracies where people demanded and extracted accountability from elected officials tended to be more prosperous than those where citizens exerted little pressure on public officials.

Apart from ensuring that they obtain PVCs, eligible Nigerians should stop the veneration of public officials: they are to serve, not to be served. They should deliver good governance. For all citizens 18 years and above, the voter card is the weapon to keep officials in line, the ultimate exercise of sovereignty; it is an inalienable right and confers a duty on all to use it and do so responsibly.

Punch

A former Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Senator Amadu Ali, says he supported tenure elongation for former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2006 because the ex-President had done remarkably well.

Ali said this in his biography titled, ‘The Many Colours of a Rainbow,’which was launched in Abuja on Thursday.

He said the decision to support Obasanjo’s tenure extension was a personal one and he never used his position as party chairman to manipulate the system in favour of Obasanjo.

The book read, “What happened was that in the previous PDP administration (1999-2003) a number of constitutional amendments – 106 of them – was proposed. The new House took up the unfinished business which had been publicised and gazetted and began to debate.

“One of the proposed amendments was on the extension of the term of the President. The press focused on this one proposal and spawned new emotive descriptions to characterise the proposal as ‘President for life’, sit-tight President,’ tenure elongation campaign and so on.

“Senator Amadu Ali had his personal views about it and in fact, supported Obasanjo’s ‘tenure elongation’ wholeheartedly because he genuinely believed that Obasanjo was an extraordinarily good leader in spite of his perceived failings.”

Ali, who was also a Federal Commissioner for Education during the ‘Ali Must Go’ university protests which left students killed in 1978, said he was wrongly blamed for the incident.

He explained that the protests erupted after the decision to increase the lodging fee from N150 to N468 per session while the cost of feeding was also increased by 50k.

The former PDP chairman said the decision was taken by the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof. Jibril Aminu, and Chief of Staff to the Supreme Military Council, Gen Shehu Yar’Adua, without his knowledge.

Ali, who is the protem chairman of the Coalition for Nigeria Movement, said Gowon, who was 31 when he became head of state, had already imbued himself with leadership skills before he rose to power as he was already controlling a battalion of 1,000 men before becoming commander-in-chief.

Punch