May Day Speech By President Muhammadu Buhari

SPEECH BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI PRESIDENT AND COMMANDER – IN - CHIEF, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, ON THE OCCASION OF THE 2016 NATIONAL MAY DAY CELEBRATION HELD AT THE EAGLE SQUARE, ABUJA ON SUNDAY, MAY 1, 2016

President Buhari

Great Nigerian Workers!
Great Nigerian Workers!
I bring you greetings.

It is with great pleasure that I honour the invitation by the two Federations of Trade Unions, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to attend the 2016 National May Day celebrations. As you all know, this is my first outing in this forum which has a long and historical tradition that are noble and progressive. The efforts of all the heroes past who had fought for the workers of all nations to have a ‘voice’ in determining the course and direction of both national and international issues affecting the state of their being, are commemorated today, the first day of May all over the world. Labour remains unarguably an important element in any policy, programme and project propagated for national development.

This year’s celebration is significant in a number of ways. First, it marks the first May Day celebration under the All Progressive Congress (APC) Administration which brought an end to the sixteen (16) years of national squander, bad governance, unbridled corruption and economic woes by the previous administration. Second, it is coming at a time when the whole world is experiencing some form of economic crisis or the other.

For us whose main foreign exchange comes from oil, the global decline in the price of oil has further exacerbated our economic crisis. The resultant effects of this are noticeable in government dwindling resources, reduction in operational capacities of most companies especially in the Oil and Gas Sector, threats of workforce reduction by multinationals and the escalations of volatility amongst others. These developments no doubts, have socio-economic implications for the economy as well as the working class. I therefore appreciate the theme you have chosen for this year’s National May Day celebration – The Working Class and the Quest for Socio – Economic Revival. A quest it is, and the realization of the revival is not farfetched. It only requires reasonable time to remedy the maladministration and put forth a change so desired by all of us.

I make no excuses as this Government of the APC is determined to tackle headlong all socio – economic ills that have troubled our nation and we shall evolve solutions to emerging threats to our well being and the realization of sustainable development as well as growth anchored on equity and social justice.

Development must be sustainable for it to benefit society in general. It is therefore the responsibility of those in the citadels of power to align themselves with the working class who make development possible by generating and sustaining the momentum of positive change. That is why the present Administration has sought and will continue to seek the hands of Labour so that together we can attain the enviable heights of progress in our beloved country.

It is for this very reason that I aspired to become President which the Nigerian people have now made a reality. This Administration shall effect positive Change in the lives of average Nigerians, to ensure that the downtrodden are elevated and most importantly to fight the intense pain of corruption which has enriched the very few to the detriment of the majority of Nigerians who groan under the overwhelming weight of poverty and all the superstructural and infrastructural maladies resulting from corruption.

In this fight against corruption, I need you all to be very willing partners. Fighting corruption in the Public Service in particular, requires the workers to play major roles by cooperating with the Government.

I have listened to the speeches made by both the Presidents of the TUC and NLC. By the speeches, you have without any equivocation affirmed your faith in the greatness of Nigeria as a nation. The challenges facing Nigeria have been highlighted and I assure you that they shall be accorded due consideration. It is worthy to note that solution to some of those issues and requests are already being considered and would be made public in the near future. The times may be tough, but we Nigerians are by nature resilient and strong and it is that nature that propels us to overcome adversities and still thrive as a nation.

Let us use this National May Day to celebrate the workers and Nigeria as a Nation. There will always be challenges in the life of a man and what defines greatness is the way and manner such challenges are tackled and overcome. I assure you, great Nigerian workers that this Administration is able and willing to constructively handle the challenges.

In so doing, I request your cooperation and understanding, as partners in progress. The need to ensure a conducive atmosphere devoid of incessant industrial actions becomes paramount to ensure no loss of man – days and accordingly promote high productivity which is perquisite for sustainable development based on increased investments, creation of jobs as well as protection of jobs. I further assure you that working together, this Administration protect workers rights and shall promote incentives for great productivity and hence greater prosperity.

Thank you and I wish you all happy May Day celebrations.
God Bless.

#PanamaPapers: How ex-Nigerian Minister Gbadamosi Bought Two Penthouses In Panama For N837million

Chief Rasheed Gbadamosi

A former Minister for National Planning, Rasheed Gbadamosi, owns two expensive and luxurious penthouses in Panama, a notorious tax haven, documents retrieved by PREMIUM TIMES from the leaked Mossack Fonseca database have shown.

Mr. Gbadamosi, writer, businessman, and bureaucrat, who was recently appointed co-chairman of the Lagos at 50 planning committee, bought the two properties in 2008 while serving as chairman of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).

The septuagenarian shelled out a staggering N836.8 million ($2.6 million) for the penthouses located in a swanky tower in Panama, PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively reveal.

Apart from its notoriety as a tax haven, Panama is famed for its modern skyscrapers, casinos and nightclubs that dot its capital, Panama City.

An official of Mossack Fonseca said in one correspondence, seen by this newspaper that Mr. Gbadamosi was so enamoured, and in so much haste to acquire the exotic properties that he once offered to fly to Panama in a private jet to inspect them.

Details of Mr. Gbadamosi’s luxury acquisitions were part of the internal data of the Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, obtained by the German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with PREMIUM TIMES and over 100 other media partners in 82 countries.

According to the documents, sometime in early 2008, the former minister approached Gilberto Aleman, a Panamanian real estate broker, to help him secure two posh penthouses owned by Nicolas Corcione, owner of Ciclones Corporation Inc and Cosmopolitan Corp, the companies under which the properties were registered.

Valued at N436,800,000 ($1,365,000.00), Penthouse 1, the first penthouse Mr. Gbadamosi bought, is located in Ocean Park Tower 2, and consists of a surface area of 537.33 square meters, on floors 35 and 36 of the Tower.

The property is registered under the ownership of Ciclones Corporation Inc.

The second Penthouse, Penthouse 5, is located in the same building as the first, Ocean Park Tower 2. It consists of a surface area of 479.88 square meters, on the 39th floor of the building. It is registered under the ownership of Cosmopolitan Corp.

Ocean Park Tower 2, which was completed in 2006, is one of the most expensive residences in Panama City. Located within the lush, Punta Pacifica area of the city, Ocean Park Tower 2 is a 44-floor glassy skyscraper that stood at 463 feet tall.

According to Panama-guide.com, an English Language website in Panama, the building, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean, comes furnished with controlled security, high-end luxury finishing, internal jogging/walking, football field, basketball and volleyball courts.

Apart from its 70 apartments, the high-rise has seven penthouses including two master penthouses. Penthouse 1 is one of the master penthouses.

Owners of apartments in Ocean Park are exempted from paying property taxes for 20 years. 

According to the purchase and sale contract, Mr. Gbadamosi was expected to pay for both penthouses via wire transfer.

The contract stipulated that Mr. Gbadamosi was required to pay $10,000.00 as a guarantee of purchase of each of the penthouses plus 30 percent of the value of each of the houses at the time of signing the contract.

The contract further stated that he was required to pay the balance of the value of the properties within 60 days of signing the contract.

“A very influential figure.”

In order to process the purchase, Mr. Gbadamosi sent a scanned copy of his international passport at the time (with number A23418785) to Ramses Owens, a lawyer working for Mossack Fonseca, as part of the Know Your Customer (KYC) and compliance and identity verification process needed for drawing up the contract.

The law firm and the real estate brokers are also required to do a due diligence research on Mr. Gbadamosi before the deal could be finalised.

In an email from address pppra_org_1@hotmail.com, on April 3, 2008, Mr. Gbadamosi also requested the real estate dealers to proceed swiftly with the transaction.

However, pending the conclusion of the due diligent research, Mr. Owens also suggested the creation of an escrow account in either Bahama or Panama to warehouse whatever funds Mr. Gbadamosi transferred from Nigeria.

“Basically, we receive money in escrow accounts in the Bahamas, Miami and Panama. We prefer to use Bahamas or Panama. Generally, 1% is charged for the money that is handled in Escrow, plus a figure of approximately US $500 processing of contracts,” he wrote.

Also, in order to assuage some initial concerns raised by Mr. Corcione over the background of Mr. Gbadamosi as a politically exposed person, Mr. Aleman sent an email to the seller on April 3, 2008, describing the former minister as a “very influential figure” who should be treated with respect and care.

“I understand that we must be very careful in such a large transaction, but we must not scare off customers and lawyers who often get us, patrons,” Mr. Aleman wrote in Spanish. “The Lord Gbadamosi is a very influential figure in Nigeria who has been Minister of State, and today is chairman of the regulatory body for oil in Nigeria and has so much influence,” he wrote.

Attempts to get Mr. Gbadamosi to comment for this story was unsuccessful. He could not be reached on his known mobile telephone number. He also did not reply an email sent to him on the matter.

Mr. Gbadamosi and the Code of Conduct law

Mr. Gbadamosi was chairman of the board of PPPRA between May 2003 and December 2009.

He was chairman of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Committee (PPPRC), PPPRA’s predecessor, from March 2001 to May 2003.

Under Nigerian law, acquiring assets abroad is not illegal, but according to the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, chairmen and members of the Boards or other governing bodies and staff of statutory corporations and of companies owned by the Federal, State or local governments councils must declare their assets on assumption of duty and on leaving office.

Apart from declaring their assets, appointees are also expected to justify the sources of income for whatever additional assets are acquired in-between commencement of duties and departure from office.

It remained unclear on Saturday whether Mr. Gbadamosi declared his interest in the two penthouses to the Code of Conduct Bureau.

When contacted Saturday, officials of the Bureau declined comments on the former minister’s assets declaration.

One of the officials only said, “The law does not empower us to reveal details of the assets declarations submitted to us. But we are following PREMIUM TIMES’ reporting closely. And we will press charges against anyone found to have broken the law”.

BY NICHOLAS IBEKWE (PREMIUM TIMES)

Ben Murray-Bruce and the Glamour of Favour By Pius Adesanmi

Senator Ben Murray-Bruce

A national teachable moment happened recently on Twitter between Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, Nigeria’s Area Father Plenipotentiary of commonsense, and Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, who needs no introduction. There is a background to that Twitter spat that most commentators have not critically examined. The said background is wholly rooted in the tragedy of our collective definition of Nigeria and our stubborn persistence to clinch to an understanding of nationhood and statehood in the 21st century that is inferior to how Askia the Great understood those notions in the late 15th century.

We must sympathize with Ben Murray-Bruce before exploring the background of his spat with Mrs. Ezekwesili. These are not the best of times to be Ben Murray-Bruce. The Bayelsa Senator is finding out in a very harsh way that it is impossible to be a national crusader for ethics, morality, and commonsense from the belly of the cesspool that is Nigeria’s National Assembly. Nigeria’s NASS is one of the most corrupt and irredeemable political institutions ever to bestride the African continent. In the two chambers of NASS are the most execrable African humanoids. As Senator Ben Murray-Bruce is finding out, nothing good can come out of the Nigerian National Assembly.

NASS is constitutionally and statutorily set up to be a crematorium of good ideas and great intentions; an unforgiving graveyard for the angelic reputation. Consider the example of Ben Murray-Bruce’s commonsense crusade. It is crumbling under the weight of its own contradictions for a very simple reason: when you are a member of Nigeria’s National Assembly, commonsense is the very first victim of your situation. You may be honest; you may not have stolen a dime (very unlikely though); you may not have rigged your election, however, your legitimate earnings, allowances, and sundry perks put you above the pay grade of Barack Obama. Does this make sense? No, it doesn’t.

Your legitimate pay puts you above the pay grade of parliamentarians and congressmen and women in any part of the developed world. Yet, they do much more work than you and are answerable to constituents who are citizens in full civic sentience and will therefore not tolerate the rubbish that Nigerians take from you. You are basically the highest paid parliamentarian in the world and you put in the least hours for your constituents. Even the hours you put in are useless for being a Senator or a Rep does not require any cerebral effort from you in Nigeria. You need no intellect to be in NASS. You just wear your agbada and go and yawn and sleep for a few hours every day and watch your account swell every day. Does this make sense?

To be in the position to talk about commonsense at all, our friend from Bayelsa would have to remove the speck in his own eyes. That speck is the context from which he connects daily with Nigerians. That speck, NASS, is wholly corrupt and indolent. That speck, NASS, is Nigeria’s greatest theatre of legitimate corruption, legislating immoral and amoral allowances which defy commonsense.

Has the Senator done anything about this speck beyond the perfunctory inaudible noise? No, he hasn’t and I do not expect him to. I am just trying to show him the inherent contradictions of his situation. That is why he is salving his conscience by promising Osun workers a cut and riding Okada from time to time to distribute pure water and Tetmosol to his constituents in line with the loot trickle down philosophy of Nigerian politicians.

You will notice that I have concerned myself only with the legitimate earnings of our Bayelsa friend which automatically exclude him and anyone in NASS from being in the same bracket with commonsense. Whatever is legitimate about him disqualifies him from being a spokesperson for commonsense for that role cannot be anchored from within the existential contradictions and ironies of NASS. NASS is antithetical to commonsense. NASS negates commonsense. You cannot crusade for commonsense on the platform of its existential negation.

Now, we all know that the part of the role and functions of a NASS member which devolves from legitimacy is less than 5%. The remaining 95% space in your life as a Senator or a Rep is occupied by everything we associate with politicians and government officials in Nigeria: corruption, patronage, and prebendal avarice. If the 5% that is even legitimate about you and NASS stands commonsense on its head, what does that make of the remaining 95% which falls in the province of the Nigerian way?

The second part of Senator Ben Murray-Bruce’s problem is the mediocrity of his context. He wants to be seen as Nigeria’s answer to Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau, and co: an urbane and cosmopolitan politician powered by 21st century cutting-edge ideas and ideals. Yet, as someone famously puts it on Twitter, his Obanikoro predilections are in tandem with the overall Baba Suwe level of his peers in the Senate. Hence, his attempts at cosmopolitanism are constantly overwhelmed by the prelogical mentality of the Orangutans who dominate the two Chambers.

This is why Senator Ben-Murray Bruce is heehawing for commonsense from the platform of a National Assembly where the predominant opinion is that granting gender equality to women in marriage will make of them lesbians and prostitutes in the 21st century! And the same week they emit these pre-Medieval ideas, they go on a spending spree like demented demons, buying jeeps in an orgy of spending which defies commonsense and the only thing we have heard from the commonsense Chief Priest is the feeble noise that he did not accept his.

By the way, I saw a photo-op of Senator Shehu Sani with his own jeep. This is the man donating donkeys and camels to his constitutents. May Sango thunder Shehu Sani’s jeep!

It is in the context of all this turbulence on the commonsense front, when the Area Father of Commonsense had wisely crawled underground to contemplate the ruins of his crusade – ruined by tragic contradictions – that Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili decided to call him out. The wounded Senator, a master of the knockout repartee, promptly advised the Bring Back Our Girls crusader to occupy her own Senator and stop bugging him. You are making your own Senator lazy by focusing on me, he opined.

On the surface, Senator Ben Murray-Bruce’s response to Mrs. Ezekwesili would appear to be a brilliant uppercut. I was even tempted to think that Mrs. Ezekwesili deserved it for not allowing a man to mourn the ironies and contradictions of his doomed commonsense crusade in peace. Doomed not because Nigeria does not stand in desperate need of commonsense but by the contradictions and hypocrisy attendant upon the Senator’s context and platform: right message, wrong bearer, diseased platform.

However, if you look at it closely, the Senator’s response is silly and irresponsible. A man who has spent an entire year trying to curate a national image for himself as a pan-Nigerian spokesperson of commonsense is suddenly scurrying under the cover of representing only his constituents in the National Assembly when called out on the very basis of his own national crusade! Mrs. Ezekwesili made it clear that she was calling him out on the basis of what he has been projecting. Has he ever projected or given the slightest hint that his crusade was exclusively addressed to his constituents?

This is part of the hypocrisy that has undone Ben Murray-Bruce’s crusade. We must also advise him that it is called the National Assembly for a reason. If he wants to be answerable exclusively to his constituents, he is welcome to go to the Bayelsa House of Assembly – if Mama Peace approves of such a move. In Abuja, the laws and bills you are making (or not making as is the usual case) have a national purview. Besides, not all of us have Senators representing us.

In my own case, Senator Dino Melaye has made it clear that he is representing only Senator Bukola Saraki in the Senate till death does them part. Okun people have no Senator currently representing them so don’t tell me to call my Senator. At any rate, I’d sooner call the boss, Saraki, than call his self-styled slave, Dino Melaye.

There is a second aspect to the exchange between Senator Ben Murray-Bruce and Mrs. Ezekwesili. There is a certain patronizing and condescending tone in the Senator’s responses. You’d be right to surmise that he believes he is doing her a favour by even responding at all.

This brings me to my earlier point about our tragic understanding and definition of Nigeria. We define and understand Nigeria as a chaotic association of favour doers and recipients of favour. It is not an accident that Nigerian Pentecostals constantly disturb God with endless requests for uncommon favour. They are taking to the spiritual domain how they have been shaped and defined by Nigeria.

We have conceptualized the social contract as a terrain of favour-doing in Nigeria. Nobody does anything for you because it is their duty and obligation. Rather, every secular transaction in Nigeria is a favour done for you by somebody drawing a salary to do precisely that task. Every Nigerian politician, from the President down to the Local Government Chairman, considers every aspect of what he or she is elected to do a favour rendered to the people.

That is why your politician tars a road, digs a borehole, builds a gada or a culvert or a gutter and his aides gut the airwaves with noise, demanding acknowledgement and appreciation from the people for the uncommon favour.

This national mental malaise is not limited to politicians. Interactions among the ordinary people are also subject to the same affliction with civil servants being the worst culprits. There is no service you receive in any office in Nigeria that is not conceptualized as a favour by the service provider. Try obtaining any document from a Ministry or a local government office in Nigeria. Everyone you come into contact with sees what they are doing in the delivery of that document to you as a favour.

Go to shoprite and the attendant who accepts your money is doing you a favour.

Go to Mama Put and Sikira who serves you amala and abula believes she has done you a favour.

Go to your ‘forganaiza’ and he is doing you a favour by fixing your tire.

Go to WAEC or JAMB, they give you your results as a favour.

There is no sphere of life that is free from this disease in Nigeria.

This is why Ben Murray-Bruce did Oby Ezekwesili a favour by sending her to her Senator.

This is why I have done you a favour by writing this!

Iya Kii S’Omi Obe. By Prof Pius Adesanmi

Prof. Pius Adesanmi

“Hello Prof, I apologize for my email intrusion. I am one of your young avid readers and followers in Nigeria and I just wanted you to clarify something I saw recently on your Wall. If you are hosted in what you call “capitalist restaurants” by some of your wealthy friends when you come home, are you not betraying the cause?”

I receive hundreds of messages from self-declared “avid readers and followers” every day. It’s a challenge managing the daily chaos in my Facebook and Gmail inboxes, especially as I can only randomly respond to, maybe, five of such messages per week. On occasion, a message comes in and I decide that it provides an excellent excuse for a public teachable moment, for an extended public rumination on how, where, and why the rain began to beat us as a society. The email I received today from the above “avid reader and follower” is one such occasion. The reader is reacting to my recent Facebook update in which I confessed to being spoilt in posh, capitalist restaurants in the Lekki – Victoria Island axis by my friend, Mrs. Kike Akin-Davies, whenever I’m in Nigeria.

I will return to this matter presently but permit me some latitude to digress into this business of poverty and suffering – the habitat of an expansive majority of Nigerians. We may have to inquire from Opapala, the deity that is in charge of the Ministry of Throat, Belly, and Gourmandizing Affairs in the Yoruba pantheon of gods why the vocabulary for the expression of suffering and poverty is derived exclusively from his domain in the Yoruba language. To suffer is not a condition you experience in Yoruba. Suffering is not a particular state of being. Rather, to suffer is a condition you eat, literally, in Yoruba. The English, “to suffer”, literally translates to the Yoruba, “je iya” (to eat suffering).

However, the Yoruba are not done. In their ancestral wisdom, they endowed “iya” (suffering) with the possibility of being in the object or subject position. In essence, in Yoruba, you can eat suffering, “mo n je iya”, or suffering can eat you, “iya n je mi”. What you want to avoid by all means and at all costs is that ultimate existential condition of abjection where you have a double whammy, a combo of suffering which forecloses the possibility of minimal human worth and dignity.

In most parts of the world where I have studied and observed suffering and poverty among the 99%, I have always conceptualized that particular socio-economic problem in terms of one, just one of the expressive possibilities of the matter in Yoruba. If I’m in Southside Chicago or Barbès in Paris; Hillbrow or Soweto in Johannesburg; Jane and Finch in Toronto, my first mental inclination is to capture folks in those places (usually black people) in one of the possibilities allowable in Yoruba. I either think, “iya nje won” (they are suffering), or I think, “won nje iya” (they are suffering).

However, the thought of applying only one of these possibilities to the 99% in Nigeria never occurs to me whenever I have full visual contemplation of Nigerian society. Outside of the 1% in Nigeria, what you encounter is the Yoruba combo of people eating suffering and suffering eating people. In contemplating suffering and poverty in Nigeria, I always say to myself: “oto ni ki iya je eyan, oto ni ki eyan je iya, ewo ni iya nje mi mo tun nje iya?” In Nigeria, this combo of people eating suffering and suffering eating the same people at the same time is the prevailing tragic situation.

This combo, this double whammy of eating suffering and being eaten by suffering in Nigeria is made all the more damning by the fact that that nation-space sits on one of the richest geographies on earth. Yet, all she has been able to democratize for her people in nearly six decades of independence are poverty, suffering, and indignity. Nigeria is one of the most hostile territories to human dignity on earth.

Our struggle for a fair and just Nigeria, where the most fundamental reason for the existence of that country shall be the non-negotiable right of every citizen to human dignity, is therefore a double-pronged battle. In many societies, activism and the broad struggle for social justice, fairness, and equity, are premised on the fact that the 99% is suffering while the 1% is consolidating and getting richer by buying up politicians to make and pass laws in favour of their world.

In Nigeria, our struggle confronts a slightly different and far more intractable situation. The 99% is eating suffering and suffering is eating the 99%. What is more, at every stage in our postcolonial history, the 99% has aided and abetted the perpetuation of this situation by being the primary instrument for the perpetuation of the privileges of his oppressor and the most vociferous defender of his oppressor’s right to steal from him – once the ethnicity and the religious boxes are checked.

There is an added dimension to these scenarios. The 1% is pernicious in practically every society but there are usually multiple ways and paths through its doors. In Nigeria, the only path to the 1% is access to the public treasury. Stealing massively from the state and the people is the exclusive path to climbing in Nigeria. This explains why there is practically no member of the Nigerian 1% who isn’t an illustrious thief either as politician, political appointee, or civil servant. This singular mode of climbing and succeeding in Nigeria has had decades to crystallize into societal mores and values. The status quo in Nigeria has had over five decades to uphold looting and stealing as the only path to progress and success. That is the national example that generations of Nigerian youth have been exposed to.

Consider this example from Okun land. Our sociopolitical landscape in Okun land has been dominated for more than a decade by three despicable humanoids: Jide Omokore, Smart Adeyemi, and Dino Melaye. Omokore is a billionaire who built his wealth by being one of the most corrupt fronts that Goodluck Jonathan and Diezani Alison Madueke manufactured to loot Nigeria blind and produce the citizens now eating suffering and being eaten by suffering, many of whom would largely open their mouths today to serve as Jonathan’s and Diezani’s toilet. The other two became extremely wealthy in the National Assembly – and we all know the ways of the Nigerian National Assembly. My contempt for NASS and her thieving membership is well-known.

Now, if you were born in the 80s and the 90s in Okun land, it means that these three crooks are the only examples of “success” that have defined your formative years. They are the only “role models” who have made it. As an Okun undergraduate, you are dreaming of making it like these three. You are not dreaming of making it like my friend, Philip Adekunle, the founder and publisher of Nigeria Village Square who operates out of Chicago. He is from Ponyan in Okun land. You probably have never even heard of him because you are focused on the three gbajumo crooks and you aspire to be like them.

Now, multiply this tragic situation in my own Okun land by every ethnic and sub-ethnic nation in every nook and cranny of Nigeria and you will come to understand the enormity of the tragedy in terms of how we have raised folks born in the 80s and the 90s. The Okun situation is present all over Nigeria. We have presented the youth with no other model of wealth building and success than stealing and corruption and state patronage.

This explains why wealth has such a bad rap in Nigeria. This explains why affluence has such a horrible reputation in Nigeria. This explains why the youth who wrote me above has criminalized wealth. This explains why he misunderstands and misapprehends the essence and underlying philosophy of the struggle for justice and fairness in Nigeria. This explains why he believes that whoever has any presence as a voice in that struggle – he calls it the cause – should not be eating in highbrow restaurants in Victoria Island. This is why he thinks that “the cause” is synonymous with the glamourization of poverty.

No, my young friend, poverty is not a cause in and of itself. If there is any such cause, I am not part of it. Poverty is not a cause. There is a global cause against it and I have explained the double dimension of that cause in Nigeria: people are eating suffering and suffering is eating people. We are saying that we will not accept a Nigeria in which the only way out of this existential cul de sac is via access to and presence in Nigeria’s corruption industry. This is the fundamental premise of my membership of and subscription to the cause against poverty and social injustice in Nigeria.

Because we currently run a country whose public sphere is peopled by political crooks, corrupt government officials, and thieving civil servants, upheld for the youth as role models and examples of “making it”, we have built a national philosophy premised on stealing from the state as the only path to success. Worse, you don’t even need to work hard to envision your path to looting the Nigerian state. Your pastor is always there to predict your miracle.

What we are saying, young man, is that we categorically reject a society where you spend the most productive years of your life running from one pastor to another in the hope of securing the miracle of making it one day like the Governor, Senator, Rep, or Minister who is currently stealing billions from Nigeria because Nigeria has been impressing it upon you that such is the only way out of poverty.

What we are fighting for, young man, is a fair and just society where you can elect to eat in Okokomaiko or Victoria Island and the sky will not fall. What we are saying is that for every one thousand thieves eating in such restaurants, you encounter the one Nigerian who made it in the good old fashion of industry, innovation, and hard, very hard work. We are saying that such Nigerians should be your role model and should define aspiration and possibilities for you – not the thieving politicians you always glamourize.

Young man, whenever I am in Nigeria, I enjoy myself terunly in highbrow restaurants. Either I am paying because I have worked hard and can afford it or my friends such as Mrs. Kyke Davies and Mrs. Bamidele Ademola-Olateju are paying because they have worked hard and can afford it. I am saying that these two present alternative paths and conceptualizations of making it – evidence that we don’t always have to go the way of the corrupt to enjoy life.

Finally, young man, I am saying that if you work as hard as the 99% works in Nigeria, the system should not be permanently rigged to sustain you in a situation where you eat suffering and suffering eats you whereas looters who hardly do any work continue to amass billions. Consider Dasuki. Whereas there are rural farmers who still average hundreds of yam mounds per day using hoes in that country, he spent four years writing and signing one-paragraph memos to move billions from the Central Bank into private pockets. We are lucky he wasn’t even moving billions from the CBN by sending text messages.

Who should be in poverty – the farmer who hoes from 5:00 am to 7:00 pm every day in the village or Dasuki who worked less than an hour per day, just signing notes and memos? Nigeria says it is the farmer. We are saying we disagree with that version of Nigeria and all those who uphold and support it. We are saying that such people and their version of Nigeria shall know no peace and have no rest for as long as we live for we shall never accept the finality of their Nigeria.

Young man, do not glamourize poverty. Poverty is not a cause.

Iya kii s’omi obe.

Nigerian Army Discovers Boko Haram Bomb Making Facility...

Photo Credit: Nigerian Army

On Friday 30th April 2016, the ever hard working troops of 3 Battalion, 22 Brigade of Operation LAFIYA DOLE,  have again succeeded in bursting a secret Boko Haram terrorists’ Improvised Explosive making Device factory in Ngala town, north eastern Nigeria.

Photo Credit: Nigerian Army

It will recalled that despite their defeat, the terrorists continued to attack innocent citizens, military and soft targets through vehicular and human borne Improvised Explosive Devices (IED). Despite ongoing clearance of the remnants of the Boko Haram terrorists, they persistently hid the IED manufacturing factories location.

Photo Credit: Nigerian Army

However, that would be no more, thanks to the efficient intelligence and resilience of our troops. It was based on this that we got credible and timely information  that made troops to  swoop on  one of such factories in Ngala town and destroyed it and killed some of the Boko Haram terrorists.

In addition, they recovered 20 gas cylinders of various sizes prepared  and ready for explosive insertion, primers, gun powder, electric wires and tape recorders, amongst other items.

It is heart-warming to inform the public that troops in various parts of the theatre of operation LAFIYA DOLE are doing well and their morale remain very high.

Please disseminate this information to the public through your medium.

Thank you for your kind cooperation. 

Colonel Sani Kukasheka 
Acting Director Army Public Relations

SaharaReporters has not independently confirmed the authenticity of information contained in this press release