By Sam Onimisi
If it were possible to cry and curse through the nose or via any other organ of the body, perhaps it would have been better, but human beings are not given the grace to choose by which other means they could express their grief or pain. And so, when it has to be done, you are left with no choice than to employ the mouth – the same channel through which we laugh, eat and pray to the Almighty God! How great the joy of the enemy would have been if they find their victims crying by some other means, other than via the mouth. Thank God they are denied the sadistic pleasure and pristine joy in watching their fellow beings bellowing their deep-seated grief by a bawl via the arse! Life, as it certainly is, consists of a cycle of sadness and joy, mourning and celebration and, laughter and crying in the wheel of a continuum. Whenever one or the other comes your way – and surely come they must – you momentarily lose the power of choice.
Sad news never come but with a rude shock; rude in the sense that it jolts you out of whatever pleasure in which you are engaged and saddles you with the unpleasant task of picking up the pieces. However, if what is un-expected has happened, ruminating upon it over and over again cannot reverse the damage already done. So, the best option which recommends itself and makes for hope is, to look into the future and what you can make out of it. To allow your detractors to meet you on a fallen state is to grant them another opportunity to do what they know best: hitting you at your most vulnerable point so as to deny you a second chance or the possibility of recovery. So much for the preliminaries of the main topic of the day.
It was on the 10th January this year and I was on my dinner table when the phone rang. In the first place, it has been my practice to put off my phone while eating but on that fateful day, I forgot to do so. The caller on the other end was sobbing and talking at the same time and with a munching mouth and unalert ears, I couldn’t immediately comprehend what he was talking about. I thought it was a case of dialing a wrong number but a few minutes later, the phone rang again, and this time the voice was clear and unmistakable. He said the King was taken away some minutes ago by some policemen. Which of the Kings and why? But he started sobbing again and became incoherent while I became fully alert. Who took which of the Kings away?
A convoy of mobile policemen armed to the teeth with an armored vehicle to boot raided the Palace of the Obobanyi of Ihima, Chief Siaka Okaraga Lawal. A guide pointed to him to identify the king as he was on a casual wear in a relaxed mood. The hoodlumish policemen without regard to his age or status pounced on him and gave him a vicious beatings and hard kicks and took him away to Lokoja. On the way, they stopped in a bush, took him out and shot him severally with their A.K 47 riffles but the bullets failed to penetrate. They resorted to twisting his neck, but again to no avail, then the gun butts were used to hit him on the legs, dislocating his ankle in the process. When their prey proved too hot to handle, and without a warrant of arrest or reason to detain him, he was released.
The police was said to have acted on an apparently false report to the effect that the witch-doctor who fortifies armed robbers for their evil operations needed to be arrested. One would have thought that an investigation to verify the authenticity of the allegation ought to have preceded the raid; this was not done, otherwise he would not have been released immediately. When they also carted away his royal regalia, it ought to have dawn on them that they are dealing with a King and not with a robber. Besides, the raid was an act of armed robbery per excellence because of the stealing of the sum of N2.250million from the Palace, apart from some items of electronics. That the raid was to kill him, there is abundant evidence, for a few weeks back, and three other traditional chiefs were killed in similar circumstances. The Ohireba of Obangede, the Ohimozi of Ebogogo and Onomu of Eika were the earlier victims.
Unless the policemen were hoodlums in uniform, and except if they were drawn from police formation of another state, police officers who has the authority to order such a raid ought to have been familiar with a second class traditional ruler and shouldn’t have mistaken him for some other persons. The master-minds of the dastardly act could have been left alone to execute their evil agenda without the active collaboration of the police, who is ordinarily expected to act impartially. The way and manner they carried out the raid is suggestive of a hatchet men’s job. The redeeming feature of the attempted murder was that their guns could not kill the king, nor did he die in their hands. One of those authors of the evil plot was said to have lamented that the mobile police should have thrown the king into the River Niger since they couldn’t kill him by their guns. Enemies are desperately wicked, aren’t they?
When in the early hours of Thursday, 22nd of March, my phone rang again; my spirit told me something worse has happened. “Is the king well?” I asked. “No, the king is dead”. At this news, the rudeness of the news was surpassed only by the shocking news itself. What could have killed the king? There was the temptation to begin to fathom the remote and proximate cause of his death. At least he was not shot dead, not beaten to death and was not thrown into the river – all these has failed to kill him. More inquiries revealed that two weeks prior to his departure, he had summoned home his eldest son and told him his time on earth was coming to an end. Three days before his demise, the King reminded his son that his time was up; and the king died! Medical experts attributed his death to cardiac arrest and diabetic conditions or whatever that means.
To begin to debate the cause of his death is to grant the enemies the liberty to begin to chuckle in triumph. The most diabolic among them may even join the mourning fray, crying louder than the bereaved even though in derision. No one needs to worry about the enemy, for if they are humans, what goes around comes around as the cycle of sadness and joy goes on in the wheel of a continuum. Really, if God doesn’t permit a thing, it cannot happen and so, neither the raid of the 10th January nor his demise of 22nd March was the handwork of man but the will of God as conceived by perverted evil men.
His Royal Highness, Ohinoyi Siaka Okaraga Lawal was born in 1943 into the Ruling House of Edima Lineage (during the reign of Obobanyi Simpa Oduba) one of the seven ruling houses of the Obobanyi of Ihima Stool. At his birth, the oracle foretold that he was going to be a king one day but on attaining adult hood; he took to farming and hunting. Through his hunting proceeds, he was ardent in serving the elders, especially, his royal predecessors such as Ohinoyi Onimisi Agere, and Ohinoyi Bello Chogudo Apana and so, when the stool became vacant in 1983 and it was the turn of Edima Ruling House to produce a successor, several names even of educated individuals came up. However, when the Oracle was consulted, His Highness was the preferred candidate, thus his ascension to the throne on 8th September, 1984.
His reign of about 28 years was fortuitous and fruitful even if tempestuous. The Obobanyi of Ihima stool was elevated to a Second-class status in 1991 and he was inaugurated the chairman of Okehi Local Government Traditional Council in 1994. He was a member of Ebira Area Traditional Council as well as Kogi State Council of Chiefs. He was a benefactor to many through his herbal medical practice. Those who have encounters with him would attest to his generous spirit and humane disposition. When his will was unduly tested between 2005/2007, he gave a good account of his royal forbearers as great men of valor!
Rest in peace, Odimboro Onoru, Adan’Ihima-Ori!!
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Corruption as a Nigerian Factor
By Sam Onimisi
The social virus called the ‘Nigerian factor’ is a killer-disease that has arrested growth and development, and murdered talents and creativity for so long that there is little hope left as to whether the country has the slimmest chance of survival, not to talk of development or growth. The ‘Naija’ factor first killed individual initiative in public office, unless such a move creates enough room for ‘chop’; because, according to a popular parlance, ‘man must whack’. The whole of the country’s annual budget is reputed to be predicated on the ‘chop or whack’ concept, and here is how. If, for instance, N200 billion is needed for provision of portable water in some rural areas of the country, those with the duty to prepare or propose the budget would rather ask for N600 billion.
Now, everyone knows that the budget will go through some process by which several institutions of state will make inputs. Before the budget gets to the Presidency, all manners of exigent scenarios would have been built into the budget to make it iron cast, if not sacrosanct. The objective is to present the Presidency with a fait accompli such that there would be some irreconcilable lacunas if the budget is tampered with as proposed. I am not saying that the Presidency does not provide for exigencies of its own. Of course, it could order or advise the budget department to make room for certain fancies in the proposed budget. However, the public office holder who proposes and implement public budget is the ubiquitous civil servant in the Ministries and so, looking into the concept of ‘chop or whack’, there is no use looking elsewhere but to start with the directors and permanent secretaries or directors-general.
Once the President has presented the budget, the battle ground shifts to the National Assembly where the House and the Senate Committee on Annual Budgets are waiting for their pounds of flesh. Who is not familiar with their scarecrow tactics? First, they would discover a missing loop which must be explained and next, they would uncover a lump that must be disentangled and then go ahead to drill holes in the rationale for the figures allocated to the various sub-heads of the budget. If they are only exercising their oversight functions, it would be understandable. What we are talking about is beyond any oversight responsibility. The thing is like asking: “where is the provision for my chop, or shouldn’t I whack?” Negotiations beings in earnest some parts of which are not meant for public consumption. You see, in spite of the moral decadence of our society, the question of ‘chops’ and ‘whacks’ are often wrapped in utmost secrecy and what is publicly disclosed is for the purpose of our hoodwink, for man must whack!
The general public often blames the ‘politician’ for their woes, for corruption or incompetence. Unknown to them, the politician is more or less co-opted into the corrupt script by the civil servant; but because the loquacious elected representative is the one permitted to speak to the public, he is often held responsible for what is actually the fault of the civil servant. Remember, the civil servant is to be seen and not to be heard. At the end of all debates, everyone would have been ‘settled’ except the public. The water project would now be N500 billion and you would be made to believe that N100 billion has been saved. Whereas, what has been lost to the leaches in public service amounts to N300 billion! That may not be the total loss because; there are some rats along the long chain of officials who would need to be taken care of. The contractors will be left with that burden and so, the actual value of the water project which ordinarily would have cost tax payers N200 billion, will now cost them N500 billion while the practical value may just be about N150 billion!
If our reasoning is correct, it means that the menace of ghost workers is actually the idea of a broad spectrum of the civil service and everyone that should know are aware that there are more ghosts in the public service of the country than humans with flesh and blood. What matters to our civil servants is what accrues to them at the end of the month. (Don’t be daft; we are not talking about their salaries). The ghosts are unlike the living; once an agreement is reached, the ghosts are quick to deliver and they do so either to the coded accounts of their living collaborators, or hire people with flesh and blood to collect the cash on their behalf. Someone out there is talking about the ICPC and the EFCC watching the ghosts to swindle our treasury without reaction. Mumu!!
The EFCC and the ICPC were established some ten years back and we are talking about a phenomenon that is about 30 years old, if not older. What it means is that the practice of ‘chop’, ‘whack’, ‘settlement’ and budgeting for ghosts are part of the ingredients with which those bodies were established! Moreover, it is not in the mandate of the anti-graft agencies to scrutinize or approve budgets. Their scanners – if they have any – are incapable of detecting ghosts and even if they could, their own ghosts within will ensure that it fails – for ghosts don’t fight ghosts! “Ok then, why not go to court and ensure that all budgets are examined or at least are queried before their approval?” When I sought to know who asked the question, I found him to be a recent deportee from the United States for forged visa offence!
If I were to go to court, I would have to hire a lawyer at a fee at my own expense. The attorney and the Judge are lawyers playing different roles in the script of justice. The courts are not known to possess equipments for detecting inflated budgets, but they have the prerogative to ask me to prove my case beyond reasonable doubt. The judge is no doubt a human being but when ghosts are involved, the judge would require from me some specimen of ghosts as evidence to prove my allegations. Pray, where will I go to obtain one or two ghosts as my witness? If the judiciary prepares budgets, it means that there is the possibility of ghost judges in the service of the courts, and if one of them is the presiding judge, my case will not be decided in the open court but at the judge’s chambers, with my lawyer in attendance. Since you are neither at the Bar nor in the Bench, the judgment in the chambers cannot have your inputs as only your attorney or solicitor is qualified to be there. After all, the only learnered people or ghosts on earth are men/women of the Bar and the Bench! At the end, your lawyer will settle with the ghost judge and when he returns to you, he would advise you to let go the matter and warn or remind you that one day, you would be a mementomori. Case closed? Oh y-e-s! C-o-u-r-t!!
“Excuse me sir. I disagree with you that there are ghost workers feeding fat on ghost budgets. We have auditors-general whose duty is to authenticate budgets, costs, expenditures, taxes etc, and there is no reason to believe they are not doing their jobs?” Someone behind me volunteered to answer this question and I obliged him. He said that auditors-general and accountants-general are both civil servants holding one end of the budget rod or the other. He asked to be told or reminded of an incidence of disagreement between the two public officers in the last 30years. He sought to know the role played by the auditor-general in the trillion naira petroleum subsidy scandal or in the billions Naira Police Pension Fund and other jumbo thievery in the civil service. He concluded by calling the asker of that question a mumumu!! I beg to review that judgment and I reduce the sentence to mumu only. However, why can’t we insist on a return to the 1970’s when each government department has a staff list published for public use? With it, we are sure to cut the tail of corruption in public service.
The social virus called the ‘Nigerian factor’ is a killer-disease that has arrested growth and development, and murdered talents and creativity for so long that there is little hope left as to whether the country has the slimmest chance of survival, not to talk of development or growth. The ‘Naija’ factor first killed individual initiative in public office, unless such a move creates enough room for ‘chop’; because, according to a popular parlance, ‘man must whack’. The whole of the country’s annual budget is reputed to be predicated on the ‘chop or whack’ concept, and here is how. If, for instance, N200 billion is needed for provision of portable water in some rural areas of the country, those with the duty to prepare or propose the budget would rather ask for N600 billion.
Now, everyone knows that the budget will go through some process by which several institutions of state will make inputs. Before the budget gets to the Presidency, all manners of exigent scenarios would have been built into the budget to make it iron cast, if not sacrosanct. The objective is to present the Presidency with a fait accompli such that there would be some irreconcilable lacunas if the budget is tampered with as proposed. I am not saying that the Presidency does not provide for exigencies of its own. Of course, it could order or advise the budget department to make room for certain fancies in the proposed budget. However, the public office holder who proposes and implement public budget is the ubiquitous civil servant in the Ministries and so, looking into the concept of ‘chop or whack’, there is no use looking elsewhere but to start with the directors and permanent secretaries or directors-general.
Once the President has presented the budget, the battle ground shifts to the National Assembly where the House and the Senate Committee on Annual Budgets are waiting for their pounds of flesh. Who is not familiar with their scarecrow tactics? First, they would discover a missing loop which must be explained and next, they would uncover a lump that must be disentangled and then go ahead to drill holes in the rationale for the figures allocated to the various sub-heads of the budget. If they are only exercising their oversight functions, it would be understandable. What we are talking about is beyond any oversight responsibility. The thing is like asking: “where is the provision for my chop, or shouldn’t I whack?” Negotiations beings in earnest some parts of which are not meant for public consumption. You see, in spite of the moral decadence of our society, the question of ‘chops’ and ‘whacks’ are often wrapped in utmost secrecy and what is publicly disclosed is for the purpose of our hoodwink, for man must whack!
The general public often blames the ‘politician’ for their woes, for corruption or incompetence. Unknown to them, the politician is more or less co-opted into the corrupt script by the civil servant; but because the loquacious elected representative is the one permitted to speak to the public, he is often held responsible for what is actually the fault of the civil servant. Remember, the civil servant is to be seen and not to be heard. At the end of all debates, everyone would have been ‘settled’ except the public. The water project would now be N500 billion and you would be made to believe that N100 billion has been saved. Whereas, what has been lost to the leaches in public service amounts to N300 billion! That may not be the total loss because; there are some rats along the long chain of officials who would need to be taken care of. The contractors will be left with that burden and so, the actual value of the water project which ordinarily would have cost tax payers N200 billion, will now cost them N500 billion while the practical value may just be about N150 billion!
If our reasoning is correct, it means that the menace of ghost workers is actually the idea of a broad spectrum of the civil service and everyone that should know are aware that there are more ghosts in the public service of the country than humans with flesh and blood. What matters to our civil servants is what accrues to them at the end of the month. (Don’t be daft; we are not talking about their salaries). The ghosts are unlike the living; once an agreement is reached, the ghosts are quick to deliver and they do so either to the coded accounts of their living collaborators, or hire people with flesh and blood to collect the cash on their behalf. Someone out there is talking about the ICPC and the EFCC watching the ghosts to swindle our treasury without reaction. Mumu!!
The EFCC and the ICPC were established some ten years back and we are talking about a phenomenon that is about 30 years old, if not older. What it means is that the practice of ‘chop’, ‘whack’, ‘settlement’ and budgeting for ghosts are part of the ingredients with which those bodies were established! Moreover, it is not in the mandate of the anti-graft agencies to scrutinize or approve budgets. Their scanners – if they have any – are incapable of detecting ghosts and even if they could, their own ghosts within will ensure that it fails – for ghosts don’t fight ghosts! “Ok then, why not go to court and ensure that all budgets are examined or at least are queried before their approval?” When I sought to know who asked the question, I found him to be a recent deportee from the United States for forged visa offence!
If I were to go to court, I would have to hire a lawyer at a fee at my own expense. The attorney and the Judge are lawyers playing different roles in the script of justice. The courts are not known to possess equipments for detecting inflated budgets, but they have the prerogative to ask me to prove my case beyond reasonable doubt. The judge is no doubt a human being but when ghosts are involved, the judge would require from me some specimen of ghosts as evidence to prove my allegations. Pray, where will I go to obtain one or two ghosts as my witness? If the judiciary prepares budgets, it means that there is the possibility of ghost judges in the service of the courts, and if one of them is the presiding judge, my case will not be decided in the open court but at the judge’s chambers, with my lawyer in attendance. Since you are neither at the Bar nor in the Bench, the judgment in the chambers cannot have your inputs as only your attorney or solicitor is qualified to be there. After all, the only learnered people or ghosts on earth are men/women of the Bar and the Bench! At the end, your lawyer will settle with the ghost judge and when he returns to you, he would advise you to let go the matter and warn or remind you that one day, you would be a mementomori. Case closed? Oh y-e-s! C-o-u-r-t!!
“Excuse me sir. I disagree with you that there are ghost workers feeding fat on ghost budgets. We have auditors-general whose duty is to authenticate budgets, costs, expenditures, taxes etc, and there is no reason to believe they are not doing their jobs?” Someone behind me volunteered to answer this question and I obliged him. He said that auditors-general and accountants-general are both civil servants holding one end of the budget rod or the other. He asked to be told or reminded of an incidence of disagreement between the two public officers in the last 30years. He sought to know the role played by the auditor-general in the trillion naira petroleum subsidy scandal or in the billions Naira Police Pension Fund and other jumbo thievery in the civil service. He concluded by calling the asker of that question a mumumu!! I beg to review that judgment and I reduce the sentence to mumu only. However, why can’t we insist on a return to the 1970’s when each government department has a staff list published for public use? With it, we are sure to cut the tail of corruption in public service.
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