Records are continuously
being created and broken all over the world, even though a good number of them are not recognised by the Guinness
World Records( GWRs). The upcoming Muo
Book of Records will address this gap in due course. In Netherlands, one of our sisters (whether Senegal or SierraLeone, she is our sister!) on
her way to work met and exchanged
pleasantries with the PM., Mark Rutte,
who was on his way(trekking!!!) to the hospital. He had neither a
one-kilometre long motorcade nor an
intimidating entourage with kill-and-go overzealous security details . She is from an
environment where even an ORDINARY Local Government Chair has sirens and
outriders. In Sweden, sex was recognised as a sport, and the first championship
was scheduled to last for 6 weeks, in which
participants were to engage in sexual activities (real time, online) daily
and be scored by the panel of judges and the audience on the basis of, endurance, thrusting strength & speed, chemistry,
styles et al(don’t quote me; It has been denied!). In Senegal,
there is a culture of flogging a corpse for
infractions which the ‘owner of the body’ committed while on earth. The flogging is
done by the offended parties including side-chicks, unpaid creditors, those he
broke their hearts, etc. Camerounians also created a record when they protested
against the removal of fuel subsidy in
Nigeria; which is akin to A taking
Panadol for the headache of B. Or is it so?
We have also broken
records in the manufacturing of indigenous words and concepts, which are trending all over the world and earning us
foreign exchange. One of the most cited
is Iberiberism. This
is a political ideology based on
corruption, corporate greed, mediocrity, banality and lack of substance. It is
also characterised by shortsightedness, Machiavellianism, transactional
paradigm and excessive self-serving tendencies. We have Gandollar as well as Obicracy,
Obimania, Obinomics OBIphobia, and Bala blu, (which means-just
bala blu). We are also speedily moving towards kakistocracy- even
though we did not invent that term
Our latest invention,
which will soon be chronicled in the GWRs is in the field of governance, where
we have over the years designed and are currently fine-tunning the last-minute model of governance and
dividends of democracy (DoD). There was this story of the
crafty tortoise who was on a business trip to a far country when he received
the news of his mother’s death.. Surprisingly, he crawled, crawled and crawled
but as soon as his compound was within sight,
he started doing a Ben-Johnson; to create the impression
that he came back in a haste. The trip, which usually took 3 days, lasted 2
days longer than it should have. Our people also say that the Onye-Igbo will
not run from when the rain is drizzling or when it is in little droplets. He will only run when he is
FULLY drenched, when the efforts will no longer create any value. There are also some people, the 11th
hour people, those that we call ‘ogba na-eje enwudei’(
those who only run when they are about
to be caught; when it is too late) . These anecdotes are the philosophical
foundations of the Last-Minute( 11th hour) Model of Governance.
A governor or president who has been in office
for 8 years will be acting as if he has
till eternity. And then suddenly, the end-time arrives! At that
time when he should be parking his
things and writing his hand-over notes, he jumps up like one stung by a vicious
female scorpion and starts doing this
and that, all in efforts to provide
the much touted and elusive DoD
for his beloved people. Bills are rushed, contracts are awarded, some paid for
upfront, people are promoted, uncompleted projects are unveiled all in order to
create last-minute impression of finishing strong with so-called legacy projects! They will not tell us (but we know) that all
these deceptive activities are aimed at
hurriedly settling some people, or
further padding their pockets through last
minute lootocracy. In Kaduna State, it was about settling scores!
And most often, because they did ‘that thing’ standing or in a terrible hurry,
they beget imbeciles as in the case of Nigeria Air.
The Federal Executive Council under PMB
passed 83 memos and contracts with
unparalleled supersonic speed : within
one week. He unveiled the uncompleted Second
Niger Bridge, the original design of
which was short-circuited. He also launched the uncompleted Dangote Refinery, a product of incestuous relationship between
Dangote and FGN, which facilitated the
refinery project but shamefully could
not repair its own refineries. As he was
preparing for his departure from Aso
Rock, he approved N32bn for National Library Headquarters, inaugurated
VIP Wing Of State House Medical Centre, sacked
and replaced the MD of FAAN, swore in 7 RMAFC commissioners appointed a
new DG for NACETEM, sought senate approval to pay $556m, £98,526,013,N226bn
judgement debts and approved N128bn for FERMA. His engagement in his last one
week was record breaking and was the most intense per unit of time since 2015. On 11/5/23, Muazu Sambo, the departing Minister of
Transport, defended the multi-billion contract bazaar saying this government was elected to function
from 2019 to precisely 29th of May 2023. Should we now stop because we are
coming to the end of the tenure? “This government must (continue to) work! And
all these were based on borrowed funds which jumped from N46trn to N50trn
between December 2022 to March 2023, excluding the N22.7trn sacrilegious ‘ways
and means’( printed Naira), which Emefiele must have been induced to oblige
through remote-control( native-medicine)!
His apostles also followed suite, with the champion being the Sirika 1 of Aviation worldwide, who in April 2023 bought 10 firefighting trucks at N12bn. You can go and verify the prices of such trucks from anywhere in the world and let’s compare notes. He also launched the Air-Nigeria or Nigeria-AIR a few hours to the expiry of the PMB administration in a very record-breaking way. He borrowed and repainted an Ethiopian aircraft, brought it into Nigeria and had it launched as Air-Nigeria! He is even bold enough to defend the chicanery, claiming ‘only’ N3bn, was released for the project, that it was unveiled, not launched and that the Chairman of House Committee on Aviation, demanded 5% of the shares of the non-existent carrier from him! That was after the Houe had declared the whole show as a FRAUD! It is interesting to know that the Charman of Ethiopian Airlines, Girma Wake was booted out or booted himself out two weeks after this Nigerian Air charade was made manifest. I am not sure that there is correlation between the two events but even though his name is Wake, he was not awake when he did this deed with Sirika, who was also central to the sacking and replacement of the heads of various aviation agencies, and renaming of airports, one of which is Osubi Airport and for which Okpe people are now up in arms, after the horse has bolted.
On 17/5/23, Dr Okowa presented N71bn supplementary budget to the
Delta House of Assembly ‘to fund
ongoing projects and pay for important government policies and programmes’.
But I think he did better than former
Gov Oyetola who borrowed N180bn after he
lost the Osun Gubernatorial elections. Oyetola
also gave employment letters as
many people as wanted it, and handed out crowns with reckless abandon, all at the 11th hour,
which was why the dancing governor started with mass-sacking and dethronements.
On 20/5/23, the spirit of urban renewal
fell on Wike and he
suddenly realised that Bayelsa Government buildings at Akasa Road, Old
GRA, were embarrassingly dilapidated, a
global eyesore, a hideout for criminals
and the greatest hindrance to Cleaner-PH
agenda. Consequently he demolished the buildings and two days later (22/5/23),flagged
off the construction of Judges quarters there. He informed those who wanted to
hear how good the relationship was between him and Diri was, how he (not the
state government) spent 5.3bn to build hostels and auditorium at Bayelsa Law
school, donated 500m to their medical university donated
to Law School and other projects in Bayelsa.
Umahi on his own part. launched
the Ebonyi Airport in April (cost,N30bn), and swore in 4 new commissioners in May 2023. Sadly,
no commercial airline has patronised the airport since then and it has turned
into a car-park and a sightseeing,
amusement park for Ebonyians. Some wicked people say that he built the airport where he would
have been landing as a president! I
suspect that it was under this last-minute model that the Ebonyi Chief Judge
appointed his wife and daughter as Magistrates. I will confirm from Odimkalu
who has done a detailed study of hopeless incidence of judiciary-capture in Nigeria. Ortom
swore in the new Chief Judge and 5 permanent
secretaries and employed 1001 people
into the civil service on the eve of his departure, which was also why the new
Reverend-Fr Governor, Hyacinth Allia started with mass disengagements. It is
one of the ironies of life that PDP-Benue was crying FOUL over this development
but forgot to take note of what Adeleke did at Osun!
On 28/9/23, El’Rufal proscribed the Atyap Community Development Association in Southern Kaduna. But this was the least of his onslaught against the people of S/Kaduna. At a time he should be thinking about his place in the history of Kaduna state, he demoted His Royal Highness the Etum Numana (General Aliyu Iliyah Yammah (rtd) and reduced him to the Chief of Arak, and then deposed him, deposed the paramount ruler of the Piriga Chiefdom, His Highness Jonathan Paragua Zamuna; Sacked three district heads of Aban, Abujan Mada and Anjil in Arak Chiefdom and engaged in an orgy of mindless demolition of homes, businesses, and churches in Gbayi Villas community. The NSAs( Non-State Actors), as if in consonance with Rufai, also upped their game, ‘blessing’ the people with blood, sorrow and tears while the Governor was busy extracting vengeance. That was a time that Ganduje was busy selling off government properties to his FAFs (family and friends) in addition to properly hiding the Dollars that were initially stuffed under his cap years ago.
The most worrisome of these developments was that as a staunch
member of OAU( Old Aguata Union), I had planned to attend the convention of
Aguata-Orumba Union in the US. Lured by Lai Mohammends assurances and the enticing lower prices, I booked with
Air-Nigeria! Unfortunately the trip was not to be because Air-Nigeria has been
blowing in the wind. It flew up and away but never returned. Like online
transfers in Nigeria, it is still hanging But I have learnt my lessons. I will
not miss the 20th Anniversary of Igbofest-Houston coming up on
7/7/23 because among other things, it is being organised by Ndi-Ichies. To
avoid the Nigeria-Air experience, I will join the transatlantic night-bus at
least one week in advance!
You see, whatever we do,
we do it very well. This model has been
developed, finetuned and is now ready for export to other parts of the
world, starting from Africa. Harvard
Business School will soon mainstream it into their public sector governance and
policy programmes, just as they had done
to the Igbo apprenticeship entrepreneurial
model. SURE, we are moving and by reporting these ground-shaking
developments, I expect to receive the National Honours next time around.
However, it should not be CON because I have
not conned anybody!
Meanwhile may I seize
this opportunity to congratulate our mutual friend, Lagbaja on his appointment
as Chief of Army Staff. I now understand why he went underground for sometime
now. My intelligence report reveals that he abandoned his musical instruments
and went for training at Sandhurst, where
he earned triple promotion because of his unexceptional brilliance. But now
that he is the COAS, I fear that a conflict of interest may occur when his presence is needed at Borno and a show is
going on at EKO Convention Center in Lagos. Anyway, when we get to that bridge, we shall cross it!
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Interesting and entertaining read as usual, although replete with very sad tales of impunity and recklessness.
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