Tag: change

Posted in Prose

Change and credible criticism

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

by

Noel Ihebuzor

  1. The possibility of alternation is one of the biggest benefits of democracy, but meaningful alternation is reason and cost benefit analysis driven.
  2. Change is often mistaken for a “replace with anything” sell & mindset. That is not change. Change is value adding & positive.
  3. If it is not value adding, then it is not and cannot be change.
  4. Some folks believe that the surest way to market themselves as change agents is to engage in endless criticisms of those in power.
  5. They criticize, trivialize and oppose whatever it is that the person in power does.
  6. Such an attitude and mindset soon give rise to a malignancy which I call serial opposition disorder, SOD.
  7. SOD as a malignancy leads to the spawning of mindless and non-credible criticisms.
  8. To be credible criticisms must be context sensitive and more importantly provide valid and feasible alternative lines of action.
  9. Non-credible and invalid criticisms are usually driven by spite, ignorance, ambition, bias, arrogance and selfishness.
Posted in Politics, Prose

The APC’s Joke of a Scarecrow President

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor


by

Shehu Dikko

shehuspen+paper at gmail dot com,  December 2014

Buba Galadima has given a world record twelve years of his life full time to the ongoing Major General Muhammadu Buhari campaign for president. He has been loud and often bombastic as the most audible voice of the campaign, and you must question his effectiveness, but he has taken on its critics frontally, directly. He has provided loyal support to Buhari: first in the erect ANPP of nine elected Governors; then in the limping ANPP reduced to just four Governors; then in the crippled CPC of a lone Governor; and now in the APC on crutches that has already lost one of its Governors since Buhari showed up there. Scratch that. Galadima is not there alongside Buhari anymore.

In radio interviews in Hausa and in a letter sent to the editor of the Daily Trust and published on 10th November, Galadima has said that “no interlocutor ever stood between him and [Major] General Buhari.” He has revealed that after the 2011 election, Buhari personally informed him that after three failed attempts at the presidency, he was not going to contest again, only for him to hear on the radio that Buhari had gone back on his word. Here is Galadima in his own words:

“Whatever anybody may say, the fact still remains that I contributed my widow’s mite towards the projection and promotion of [Major] General Buhari as a politician at a time when those ‘yan kwanta kwanta [highway robbers who command their victims to lie face down while they rob them] who for personal reasons hover around him today felt that he was an aberration and poison that could not be touched. . . . There are people who worked with [Major] General Buhari when he was in the military, public service, politics and school. Where are they in his political project today?”

They are nowhere to be found. All the politicians that were its publicly visible backers at the commencement of the campaign a dozen years ago, and the many others who gave their all to it in the sincere belief that it held a promise of a better governed country have all abandoned it. Buhari has been unable to lead a political project team and to command and retain the loyalty of its executives. He was unable to do this even as a military dictator. This is why his military regime was short-lived and why his retired military colleagues have not been found near his political project. Now aged seventy plus, it has become too late to transform him into anything other than what he is: proven incompetent as a political leader.

Galadima tried harder than most to stay committed. But it was all in vain for no interlocutor ever stood between Buhari and his zero programme for his cult following.

No interlocutor ever stood between Buhari’s backers and a misplaced hope of leadership by example. Major General Buhari has provided no true inspiration to his frenzied crowd of followers. He has failed to make them disciplined. When they took to violent protest after the last election, he neither took to the vanguard of the protest nor did he call them to order. He fled. He claimed that he too was attacked. Leader? No.

No interlocutor ever stood between Buhari and his zero ideas on what to do about the problem of corruption in a democratic setting. In twelve years of campaigning, he offered nothing at all.

Alas, no interlocutor appears able to stand between those so determined to see to the triumph of proven incompetence sure to lead to disaster, likely to end in tragedy, and the fantasy that all you need to do to make corruption fly away is to erect a scarecrow in the presidential villa. Where has a scarecrow ever scared away dark nighttime creatures like the bat that lies in bed at noon?

All the creatures that belong to the day who have seen the scarecrow president project for the joke it is and abandoned it have been replaced by distressed-project managers and asset liquidators that were its critics and political enemies who have seen in Buhari’s leadership incapacity and in his fanatical following that has been used by many other opportunistic politicians before them opportunity to further their own calculated objectives which, going by their records, are far removed from the blind expectations of the fanatical poor.

As devious distressed-project managers well aware that they would have recouped their investments by the time there is any buyer’s remorse, they have spent so much on imported dangerous stage-managed promotion gimmicks, scrubs, deodorants and washing up liquids in an effort to conceal the fact of his leadership incapacity so as to make him marketable to necessary but hitherto wary buyers, most recently in a scrubbed speech broadcast to a national television audience to conceal a dismal performance in an un-shepherded television interview conducted a couple of days before.

Give them this article to read and they will see in it ways to come up with more stage-managed gimmicks and they will be sure to do so by lunchtime tomorrow, perhaps even show him sporting a tattoo and sagging his sokoto as he rebukes an errant area boy; they are that shameless.

As flagrant as any asset liquidators that we have seen they have also since proceeded to ridicule him and to disrobe him of any pretended garments of integrity. They have done so on the public highway, most recently in getting him face down to issue them a dud cheque and to “just keep a straight face” and ring up his bank manager to honour it after they had left the scene, and in getting him to give a written undertaking that he will employ the resources of persons alleged corrupt in furtherance of his campaign for the presidency.

What more do you need to be able to see that Buhari is a sad joke and that any expectation that he will make a positive and lasting impact as president is fantasy?

Buhari is not a simple man. He is a simpleton. He has spent years complaining that the PDP rigged him out of victory in previous elections. It’s on his bitter lips right now. Give him the office of the president and I can assure you that he will try to kick out at those who he believes did it. Yet the architect of the 2006 PDP plan to use the security forces to its electoral advantage is his replaced Galadima, Nasir el-Rufai, the man alongside whom he cried in 2011 and who made him renege on his verbal pledge not to run again. Yet one of his managers today, Audu Ogbeh, was the Manager of the PDP of President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar men to whose homes he was led, supinely, spent, twelve years late, to beg for a piece of the action.

The desperate Major General has truly been reduced to taking commands from any and all comers. His current commanders are only the most venal of the lot: they are pitiless what’s the polite euphemism for bastards? He will try to kick out without any realisation that his long walk from failing to beat them to joining them has severely damaged his legs.

Waylay him on the private jet tarmac of his commanders and ask him to give you a written undertaking that he will kick out at el-Rufai, Ogbeh, Obasanjo and Atiku with the hard metal crutches you will supply if he wants your vote. Ask him to give you a written pledge that he will issue no cheque nor authorise any payment to any Alpha Beta or Alpha Beta disguised as Alpha Bravo or Charlie Delta if he wants you to echo a clear radio signal around the country that no Foxtrot will be issued a dud cheque either.

If he falls short of meeting these demands just laugh and dismiss the would-be scarecrow president as the joke that he is; but do help massage his legs and tuck him away in bed if, unlike his users, you are apt to pity the scarred and disfigured old man.

Posted in Politics, Prose

Shehu’s reply – On OBJ, GMB and GEJ – what does available evidence say?

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Thanks for sharing Dan Agbese’s 2000 article about Haroun Adamu’s probe
of the Petroleum Trust Fund. It seems that people are digging but I can
tell you that left to himself alone Buhari cannot device ways of being
dishonest but in league with others, he has never had any problem
partaking in dishonesty. That, in fact, is his current situation.

Any expectation that a Buhari government will make an impact in dealing
with the problem of dishonesty in government is fantasy as I have
consistently maintained. Headline making stories are only a minor
reflection of the scale of the problem of dishonesty. Buhari knows
nothing about relevant policy formulation and it is not a priority for
his current leader, Asiwaju.

Buhari didn’t run the PTF. He left it to the late Salihidjo Ahmad who
came from his circle of friends and family, and went to sleep. It was
run just like any old corrupt Nigerian government venture. No difference
whatsoever. Its officials took bribes, awarded overinflated contracts
and the like. As a result of this, one of the men on the board of the
PTF, the late Group Captain Usman Jibrin who would have none of it
decided to resign. Buhari stayed put.

I also see you paying attention to Obasanjo’s self-serving talk.
Obasanjo has zero credibility. Not many are seeing this right now but it
is to the credit of Jonathan that he has actually grown the balls to
refuse to continue to take dictation from him.

If truth be told, it is easier to point to where Jonathan has spent
money in his four+ years than it is to show where Obasanjo did in his
first term. Let us be concrete. Obasanjo faced turbulence, Sharia riots,
Odi. Obasanjo failed to punish the perpetrators of the Sharia riots,
that served to embolden others including the Haramites; he was
high-handed in dealing with Odi, that served to further militarise.

Jonathan has had to deal with the consequences of Obasanjo’s failures,
in addition to the BH which is now a problem with a serious
destabilizing foreign dimension. This has provided a very tough
environment for the government. Worse, owing to the circumstances in
which he came into office and the sense of betrayal felt by the many
Northerners who consider their turn to rule as having been hijacked, as
well as his failure to properly reach out to the disgruntled, he has
been unable to win the confidence and support of influential sections of
the North. This failure is what I foresaw in 2011, and warned that it
could lead to division.

That North is also suffering from another problem which is a direct
consequence of the Babangida privatisation programme which was
accelerated and completed by Obasanjo. I have a problem with the
privatisation of vital social services but that is irrelevant here.
Recall the old days. There was a time when people looked forward to
Board appointments, First Bank, NITEL and the whole battery of other
huge government owned enterprises. Membership of those boards afforded

people the opportunity to use their influence to serve the interests of
their immediate communities, and because of the Federal Character
principle, this patronage was widely spread but always what were seen to
be the choicest positions were invariably occupied by Northerners.
Federal Character also ensured that there was a spread of offices of
those companies occupied by local employees thoughout the country.

That disappeared completely under Obasanjo. The persons who bought the
privatised companies were mainly persons from outside the North, ditto
those who stepped up to fill the vacuum created by the disappearance of
NITEL who have only been driven by market considerations which cannot
overlook employee competence. It’s not been noticed by many but the
handful of companies bought by Northerners, like Nigerian Ropes and
Steyr, have floundered or have been comatose since they acquired them.

For a North used to widescale patronage, it has been hard to deal with
new realities, which is why so many there are intent on doing whatever
they can to to ensure a return to the old comforts. One new reality from
which there is no escaping is that Jonathan has actually shown a
commitment to making and fulfilling promises which is why he has been
running for re-election on his record, something which Obasanjo did not
do in 2003.

Obasanjo could not have done so. He built a stadium in Abuja, and its
Games Village. That’s it. He channeled a lot of money towards power
generation. Liyel Imoke has yet to account for what became of that
expenditure. The rest of the time, Obasanjo was away from his desk on
extended visits abroad. He left Atiku to run the government. He provided
no account of the proceeds of privatisation. Obasanjo and Atiku were
later to build their own private schools and universities.

By contrast, Jonathan has built new government schools and universities;
built a major new railway line, Kaduna-Abuja, for the first time in a
hundred years; built a road between Abuja and Lokoja that is the finest
in the country; is building a metro line in Abuja; empowered Innoson
motors of Nnewi to manufacture transport buses that are visible on our
highways. All these are things he committed to doing in the aftermath of
the oil subsidy saga, and he has managed to do them despite the major
challenge of BH.

I have not dismissed the view that aspects of the complex BH problem are
the work of persons working to return to that which they had grown
accustomed. But what’s your general take on the election campaign so

far? I honestly fear it may all end up being of only “academic
interest.” The stakes are very very high. There are operators with ugly
records who will stop at nothing. There is trouble on the horizon. I
have sent out warnings. I hope they are heeded.


shehu
===

Posted in Prose

What Buhari and his image polishing team should know

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

The Mr Clean image sell is not working and will not work. There are too many pointers that suggest GMB’s complicity and or connivance in not too clean deals. Check out the NNPC deal. Check out the “APC” deal whilst He was with PTF. (APC means Afri-Project Consortium. Amazing coincidence in the two acronyms!)

The Mr Fair Guy image will not work either. There is damning evidence of nepotism and influence of region and religion in his decision making in the past.  Check the apportioning and location of PTF projects in the country. Check out disproportionate treatments meted to different civilians under his watch.

The Disciplinarian image is not working. There is a difference between a disciplinarian and an unfeeling and uncaring dictator! Remember decrees 2, 4, Irabor, Ogendengbe, Papa Tai Solarin, Pa Ajasin, Lateeef Jakande and some other respected politicians from the south-west!

The Corrective leader image is not working too. A corrective regime is not the same as one that tramples on human rights.

The Democrat image is not working either and will not work. Anyone who can promulgate decrees 2 and 4 can never and will never be a democrat.

The Honest Military leader image is not working. Anyone who can backdate a decree to “catch” someone is cruel, callous, dishonest and lacks humanity.

The Caring Civilian image is not working. Anyone who refused to speak up in the 2011 post elections violence is a cruel and driven person with a callused conscience.

A media strategy revision is required and urgently. The current spins are not convincing.

Posted in BIBLICAL EXEGESIS, Prose

Readings and Reflections -26th Sunday ordinary time – on Sin and Death

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By

Noel A Ihebuzor

The readings today deal with sin and its consequences, the first reading in particular. Sin leads to death. Iniquity leads to death, some slow on-set, some instant and some others gradual, and yet some others death by increment and accretion, often times invisible to the eye. And by death here, I mean death in its several forms – physical, emotional, spiritual, economic social and communal death. There is also the death of the conscience, a death that then unleashes other forms of deaths and which spawns unimaginable deviance. Sin and vice in whatever form lead to destruction, decay and death. In communities, they lead to a decline in social capital, the destruction of bonds, the extinction of trust, the erosion of values and the suffocation of good sense, decency, equity and balance. Bad becomes good, good is mocked at and derided, social pressure draws more converts to evil, evil is praised and sin and its proceeds are celebrated.  Man, “homo superbus” reaches for the dial on the control box and dims the voice of God, snuffs out the light of truth and puts shades on the candle of love. The voices of victims of violence and violations are choked, the innocent are injured by the mighty and impunity is unleashed and struts around a demoralized world.  Look around you for proofs of these very broad statements that I have made. The wages of sin is death. Whilst sin is a violation of God’s statutes, its immediate consequences are always social and are felt in the here and now in this material earth. For every sin, there is a spiritual loss followed by a socio-economic debit. When you sin you offend God and hurt man.

Righteousness redeems a nation and a people. It leads to life. Righteousness is simple. It simply consists in knowing God and in living His living and life giving words. The sinner who renounces his/her life of sin, of cruelty, of stealing, of lying, of defaming, of distorting, of purveying partial truths, and packaging opinions to the unwary as if these were truths and returns to God is readmitted to God’s favors and God’s love and to Life. But this return, repentance and reconciliation must go beyond theatrics and verbal display. Words accompanied by action, action driven by the spirit of God and His laws. Love God, Love your neighbor. If you love God, you will not break His commandments. If you love your neighbor, you would not cheat him/her, you would not tell lies against him/her. If you love God, you would not commit idolatry. Demoting God from the top of your value system is a form of idolatry. Putting money and power at the pinnacle of your value system is a form of idolatry as these become your new gods. These new gods lead you to all forms of aberrant and emptying behaviors – they lead you to things like election rigging, graft, rent seeking behavior, cronyism, grabbing public assets, false declarations, looting, importing sub-standard items, free-riding behavior, contract inflation, unprofessional project monitoring/evaluation, biased audits, skewed and dishonest Op-Eds etc. Let me give a very trivial example concerning love of neighbor – If you love neighbor, you will not drive in such a manner as to push him or her off the road, but most of us who come to public podiums to sound off on the ills of society do this on end! When last were you polite to the other road user? If you loved your neighbor, you would demonstrate courteous road behavior. In the work place, you would be polite and fair to all your staff, you would deal with an even hand with all. The second reading contains a listing of attributes that conduce to a life free from sin – humility, kindness, compassion, mercy, saying no to selfishness, resisting vainglory behavior and recognizing the needs and the rights of others.

Christ reminds us in very strong words of the need for a return to God in word, in truth and in action. His strong words underlie the importance of true repentance. The truly repentant reap the rewards of paradise. Let this assurance challenge and drive us to turn away from the evils and iniquities of this world.  Let it challenge us to reject the false and cheap values of the devil and to embrace the eternal and life giving values and laws of God, the summary of which are – the discipline and mastery of self based on and driven by a love of God and neighbor.  May we set about achieving this critical, live saving and spiritually elevating behavior change from this Sunday – and may God’s spirit guide, strengthen and animate us in this venture, Amen!

Posted in Uncategorized

The SLS’ TEDx Lecture

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

By 

Noel A. Ihebuzor

SLS’ TEDx youth platform lecture which he gave in August 2013 showed up on Twitter last week and was roundly shared. The timing of the appearance might not be accidental. SLS’s sympathizers may have deliberately chosen to put it up to present their principal as a good outspoken technocrat who could be trusted to convey hard and inconvenient truths as a counter to the view of him as someone who could leak an official letter which was gaining ground. The technocrat who speaks hard truth view is positive. The government official who leaks a letter view is negative and damning.  

I listened to the man. He is a good communicator, he spoke well and clear. His NVC was perfect. He got and retained the attention of his audience. The use of stories with his children showed him as a man who tries to connect with his children and young people but he goofed in not knowing the precise age of one of his children

He found a connection to his audience and maintained it – coming back to the gap between actual and potential, between aspiration to greatness and refusal to do things that lead to greatness was a good one. He told the youths what they wanted to hear. He then challenged them. But he also blew his own trumpet – how under him, the CBN took on and brought defaulting bankers to book. He stressed what they did in the area of asset recovery.

Was he marketing himself as a good presidential candidate in this lecture? Was this speech brought up at this strategic point in time so that the APC would notice and approach him as a possible presidential candidate now that Tambuwal has almost blown his chances by his “body language” talk and reports of his displaying fawning obsequiousness immediately to the president? I am sure that the APC is also “clueful” enough to know that El-Rufai is a “no-touch/ba takpa” on this one.  Sule Lamido wavers in his defection aspirations. The former EFCC boss, Nuhu Ribadu, is poorly perceived since he is seen as having virtually sold himself down the river when he succumbed and fraternized with a GEJ led administration!  Aliyu Babaginda has so far acted as a man who is unsure on which side his bread is best buttered.  The hunt for a northern presidential candidate for the APC is still on.  And this is a season defections! Is the airing of this TEDx then a well timed publicity piece for someone seen as a good candidate? Or were SLS and his handlers/sympathizers using the speech to try to redeem his image after the gaffe of his politically motivated but poorly packaged missing funds accusation where he had played to a certain political gallery and to the tune of its vested interests? Recall that after the confutation by the NNPC, SLS had come across as a loose cannon who could speak at times without either bothering to consult or verifying his facts? Was the timing of the replay of this TEDx part of efforts then at damage control and image redemption? I am still struggling to unravel this one.

Now back to the TEDx lecture and its content. SLS was spot on in lambasting us for our grab-grab mentality and the immorality of our leadership class, be they in the private, public or political sectors. Kleptomania “rules OK” and we are proof that the law of diminishing returns does not apply to the hunger and consumption of the proceeds of graft and corruption. He blasted our rentier state mind set and showed that it applied even in the private sector. Here again, he was spot on.

He was also subtly critical of GEJ’s approach to corruption – but in pointing out his (SLS’s) successes against corrupt bankers, he was indirectly agreeing that GEJ’s administration was also acting against corruption. The success of the CBN boss is the success of his boss!

I had hoped he would say something on cronyism and nepotism and the extent to which he had worked and succeeded to bring these two manifestations of corruption under control during his headship of the CBN – but he did not! People are usually taciturn when it comes to talking on areas where they have not succeeded! Did his listeners fail to pick up this gap in his speech?

He also indirectly criticized previous CBN governors for failures in regulatory and oversight functions and for being slack. He made reference to 2009 as the watershed year – year when he came to power and began to change things. I expect a reply from his predecessors in office to show that they too were not sleeping on duty.

He scored major points on the fuel subsidy saga and sham.  He was scathing in his comments on oil theft and bunkering, placing the blame squarely on the Navy and agencies charged to protect our pipelines. But he was silent on the correctness of the decision to remove the subsidy, the non-removal which fuels and sustains much of the corruption in the oil industry. The technocrat stepped down here and the political animal knew that it is politically incorrect to be seen as recognizing/admitting the merits in oil subsidy removal in public. His silence on this touchy issue was “politically correct speek” taken to perfection.

He challenged the youth to come out and challenge “vested interest”, this very elusive beast which always acts with “circumstances beyond our control” and the devil to frustrate all our best plans and intentions in this country. Clearly, he must believe very strongly in the young generation to ask them to take on such a formidable foe. He must have a lot of confidence in them.

Have they lived up to this confidence? Have they shown that they are different from their fathers and mothers? The fuel subsidy protests presented this young generation with an opportunity and a structure upon which they could truly organize and become a credible political platform and vanguard for real change. But did they pick up this opportunity? I am not sure that they did. Rather than build/consolidate this platform, rather than form a viable and third political force in politics in Nigeria, rather than seek to reach out and extend beyond Lagos, their leaders chose self aggrandizement on social media and to align themselves with differently garbed members of the same political class whose excesses have kept this country on her knees and made her unable to rise to claim her destiny and a place in the sun. I am not sure that these leaders got more than measly bowls of porridge for this unfortunate affiliation.  I hope they decode SLS’s message, return the bowls and redeem themselves. They were severe, and correctly too, in their judgment of the failures of their parents. History will judge them even more harshly for betrayed hopes unless they act now to redeem themselves.

By the way, is this TEDx speaker not the same controversial SLS who, gossip has it,  promoted a lady ahead of her time to protect a personal and vested interest? After listening to him, I concluded that all those tongues that tried to rise in judgment against this fine son of Nigeria for promoting a lady at his own will, whim and speed, were doing so out of envy and “pepper eye”.  A good man like SLS has a right to certain interesting vested interests which he can then divest or unvest at his want and will. Anyway, having being held spell bound in his lecture by the fire in his voice and the flawlessness in his English, I now believe that those accusations were baseless envy-driven gossip.

Oh, I forget – I liked his dressing and his build – I wish I was that well dressed and good looking. Nature can be unfair!

Noel

 

Posted in Poetry

A song of rejoicing and hope – celebrating the demise of FGM

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

 

Noel Ihebuzor

No more shall a million songs be dimmed

and muffled by the shutters of tradition,

no more shall we remain silent

before the stunting of the living

to humor the dead

 

no longer shall we remain mute 

in drunk like obedience

to hollow and hollowing echoes from the past  

before the snuffing out

of ten thousand and one voices,

 

no longer remain silent accomplices

when rich possibilities are denied

in deadening numbing initiations,

where blind tradition visits violence

on the present, 

dulls, dumbs, blunts

and limits it 

no more be partakers of a tragedy.

 

 

For is it not tragedy

when the crusted boney hands of the past

trap and choke the present

and deny its petals and potentials

from unfurling and feeling?

 

We sing the voice of hope,

we sing a new dawn,

our voices affirm the present

unbind it from the rusty manacles of practices

that hurt, humiliate and harm,

our voices tear down blinding practices

as we shake ourselves free

from the shackles and tyranny of  some past imperfect

 

we sing, lips full, voices now vibrant

rejoicing the beauty of petals that will bloom,

the radiance of the bud of the flower

that embraces the open skies

free to feel, unfurl, unfold as endowed

 

“tragedy is defeated,

the present lives and heaves

rescued at last from the choking grip

of an ossified past

the present celebrates the joy of living

the future unchained”

 

 

Our daughters’ voices take up our cue

and sing your demise,

their full voices and lips

announce and chant your death,

chanting it to the four winds

on the four market days

in the gentle glow

and soft smile of each passing moon, happy

the stars winking, decorating the skies above

with a thousand sparkling flowers

 

our daughter dance,

they dance in agile steps,

limbs and life freed

of the weights of your deadening

heavy lead bangles,

they leap and prance as the melodies

from  their full lips and uncut voices explore,

explode with joy, celebrate

and drown the pains we felt”