Nigeria Content Online

It is Africa’s season in the spotlight. This is especially remarkable because it is for reasons far removed from the negative news that has come to define the continent’s image. South Africa is busy doing the continent proud. For a people who have grown used to dealing with the disabling challenges of daily life, the next one month promises much excitement.

There is however the looming danger that this excitement will cross over into distraction. If this happens in Nigeria, it will be a tragedy. With the kind of government we have, we can ill afford a distracted population at any time; much less so at a period like this that is not only politicking season, but also corruption scandal season.
Information freshly emerging from Germany reveals that senior Nigerian government officials took bribes from Daimler AG of Germany, to influence the award of inflated supply contracts. These revelations have further lengthened Nigeria’s already long list of unresolved corruption scandals – Halliburton, Siemens, Securency, to name a few.

With Nigerians focused on their TV sets and the swirl of emotions that comes with the World Cup, we fear that the Daimler scandal will be easily swept into oblivion by the authorities. It is bad enough that these scandals do not move the government even when there is a public clamour for it to prosecute suspects and make sure there are no sacred cows. Nigerians must not allow the authorities to think that matters like these can be subsumed by the excitement of the World Cup.

Even as Nigerians are caught up in cheering or mourning in front of their TV sets, we must make the effort to connect the World Cup with the state of affairs at home. We must realise that our journey to South Africa, marked as it was by a disgraceful hotel booking blunder, is a reflection of the incompetence and mismanagement that pervades every aspect of our national life.

It is the same culture that encourages public officials to receive bribes from multinational corporations that allows them to bungle a task as uncomplicated as finding a decent hotel for the Super Eagles, and that ensures that no sanctions are meted out, despite the fact that Nigeria lost thousands of dollars as penalties.

Many of our senators and governors have relocated to South Africa for the World Cup, lost on them is the irony that Nigeria barely managed to pull off last year’s much-smaller Under-17 World Cup. We recall that FIFA President Sepp Blatter openly expressed his reservations about Nigeria’s preparedness to host that tournament.

Perhaps there is no better time than now to resurrect the matter of the big scandal that dogged the tournament, involving the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA). Everyone seems to have quickly forgotten that a controversial multibillion naira contract was awarded for the upgrade of the NTA’s outside broadcasting vans, ostensibly for the Under-17 tournament, or that the vans were never used for the tournament because they did not arrive in the country on time.
This is also the time to ask what Nigeria is doing about the prosecution of the bank chiefs implicated in the near-collapse of the sector. Almost one year after the noise that accompanied the sack of several executives, and the succeeding high profile trials, everything seems to have fizzled out, as is the custom.

A long list of unresolved assassinations, un-investigated corruption scandals, and half-hearted corruption trials is overwhelming evidence that we are a country lacking the political will and determination to see projects through to completion. We make all the right noises, only to allow everything disintegrate into a whimper.

The recent sentencing of James Ibori’s collaborators in London is an unambiguous indictment of our law enforcement agencies and our justice system. We insist that on no account must the ongoing World Cup be allowed to provide an opportunity for Ibori to gain some respite from the heat that he should be facing in far-away Dubai. The EFCC should step up its efforts to get him extradited to face judgement in Nigeria or the UK.

Our authorities need to be reminded that nothing significant gets done on the basis of intentions or rhetoric alone. If in doubt, ask the world-hosting, kudos-deserving South Africans.

It is the shame of the century: The fact that Lagos, a city of fifteen million, is without a proper National Museum. If you think the “National Museum” at Onikan is a museum you’ve got another think coming – that place, dusty, dimly lit, supremely depressing, is a disgrace to this country. It is a disgrace to the legacy of Murtala Mohammed, whose official car (in which he was shot and killed) lies forlorn in a padlocked garage. It is a disgrace to the memories of all of those great empires that once made up this “geographical expression” now called Nigeria. Disgrace, period.

If Lagos is serious about becoming a city to be reckoned with, then the government needs to pay a lot more attention to making history feel at home amidst the enchanting dysfunction that is Lagos. Following therefore, is a proposal to kick start a reinvention of Lagos. The proposal revolves around the iconic Lagos yacht known as the Sunborn (Sunburnt?). But a little history first:

The Sunborn was once a proud resident of the city of London. In 2003 it won an award for ‘Best Kept Hotel in the United Kingdom’. Twice (2005 and 2006) a London newspaper group awarded it the prize for ‘Best Hotel in London’ in the ‘Food and Drink’ category.

But that was then. The floating hotel soon became a victim of its own success. Unable to cope with a rapidly expanding clientele, it had to be replaced by a bigger boat. That was the first misfortune. The second misfortune was even more overwhelming: the hotel caught the attention of the Lagos State Government. The state Commissioner for Tourism, Tokunbo Afikuyomi thought the Sunborn would look good on the Lagos skyline. In 2008 the yacht arrived in Lagos.

Afikuyomi was ecstatic. He boasted that the Sunborn “would put [Lagos] in the league of the first five major cities of the world with similar hospitable facilities and tourism earnings capabilities.” He spoke too soon, too loudly. Two years after the Sunborn berthed in Lagos waters, it has become a museum piece. It lies derelict, an eloquent monument to the inimitable ‘Nigerian factor’; its trans-Atlantic trip now clearly a drawn-out journey to Death Row.
My proposal seeks to take drastic measure to salvage the yacht.

I hereby propose that the Sunborn, the “Pride of London” that has become the Shame of Lagos, be converted into a Museum: The Floating Museum of Folly – a testament to the infinite ability of Nigeria and its people to energetically inflate ambition with foolishness; to complicate good fortune with bad luck; to transmute child’s play into rocket science. The idea of the museum will be to serve as a one-stop shop for the patently irresponsible legacies of Nigerians and their leaders.

First in will be Ayodele Fayose, swashbuckling former Governor of Ekiti State, who ‘chickened out’ into the hands of the EFCC. The man sunk billions of state funds into a poultry project that never took off. The money did however succeed in taking off, crash-landing well out of sight.

Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, men whose administrative style can be justifiably summed up in one line: “if in doubt, set up a government agency!” will be prominently represented in this Museum, with the relics of MAMSER (Babangida), and the National Reconciliation Committee and War Against Indiscipline and Corruption (Abacha). Obasanjo will make it in with the tricycle-buying NAPEP.

Ojo Maduekwe’s famous bicycle, the one he almost committed suicide on in Abuja a few years ago will be on display, as will Patricia Etteh’s (proposed) 98 million naira massagers. There will also be famous “Star of David” from the monstrous carbuncle that Timipre Sylva inflicted on the impoverished face of his oil-rich state. Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke’s legendary ‘Obama Dinner’ will be recreated full-scale within the Museum. On display will be thousands of national identity cards, bankers’ pay slips from a few years ago, and margin loan documents.

It is not only our leaders and who will be memorialised in the Sunborn. Ordinary Nigerians will have a section devoted to them; to the mindless spending culture that sees weekend after weekend transformed into naira-burning orgies. That section will feature embossed invitation cards and hypnotisingly patterned, horribly overpriced aso-ebis.

The idea of the Sunborn as a Floating Museum of Folly will serve a number of purposes: It will in some ways redeem the Sunborn dream. That yacht was built to be a crowd-puller; if, in Lagos, it cannot draw the crowds as a luxury hotel, it surely will as a museum.

It will create jobs and provide income for guides, souvenir dealers, and tour package firms.

In a land with a curious predilection for amnesia it will ensure that the past and present never fail to walk cheek by jowl. The hope is that the past will eventually shame the present into sensibleness.

Take this piece as an open letter to Mr. Afikuyomi (representing the Lagos State Government). I volunteer to be an unpaid consultant to the project. In my mind I can already see the Floating Museum of Folly, its rich red carpets worn out beneath the feet of the tens of thousands who will visit annually.

And I can picture scenes at Nigerian embassies across the world, as foreigners hustle for visas to enable them pay obligatory pilgrimage to what Aunt Dora will inevitably refer to as “Africa’s biggest museum!”

Africa has often been dismissed as a lost cause. Our mockers never acknowledge that a great deal of our predicament lies in the fact that our heritage has been stolen. According to the UN, a trillion dollars of looted funds from Africa are lodged in Euro-American banks and various investment outlets. The EU estimates that such looted funds exceed 50% of the continent’s total external debts. According to James Henry, former McKinsey Chief Economist, over US$6 trillion from low-income countries have been illegally stashed away in foreign coffers; thefts that have been estimated to be ten times the annual package of development assistance that Africa receives.

Writing in the March 2010 issue of the African Development Review, ADB economists Hippolyte Fofack and Léonce Ndikumana suggest that Nigeria alone may have lost as much as US$248 billion to such financial haemorrhage. Over the last four decades, we have earned an estimated US$450 billion from petroleum exports, much of it having been frittered away, according to the late Pius Okigbo, in projects of doubtful value. Foreign and local contractors have often connived with politicians and bureaucrats in squirreling away funds meant for capital projects. Kickbacks are the norm. Outgoing Revenue Commission Chairman Engineer Hamman Tukur also recently lamented the fact that only the oil majors know precisely how much they have been stealing from our country. We are familiar with the over-invoicing and other accounting shenanigans that multinational firms have deployed for decades. It’s a very murky business.

Astonishingly, someone once attempted to convince the Federal Government to make all statutory transfers to state governments in dollars. Why waste their time paying them in naira, when American dollars are easier to launder abroad? And come to think of it, most of our state and local governments have never indicated what they planned to do with the windfalls from the Excess Crude Account. Over the past year alone, that account has been depleted from US$18 billion to the current pathetic US$3.5 billion. Nobody is being held to account for how these funds are being used. Nigerians would be forgiven for believing that a good part of these funds have already developed wings and flown in the direction of the whoredoms of Dubai and Lebanon.

Yesterday I had a one-on-one with a brother who was visiting from the United States, distinguished Professor Horace Campbell of Syracuse University, New York. He was anxious to prove to me that the stature of a national currency does not derive merely from so-called ‘economic fundamentals’, but from politico-military capability. He gave the example of the United States, where the supremacy of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is largely a factor of American hegemony more than anything else. Considering the current Greek tragedy, he believes the dollar will triumph over the Euro because Eurozone countries do not have what it takes.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that a poor country is not one where the people cannot afford the internationally defined minimum of US$2 per day. Rather, it is one where the elite have no confidence in keeping their assets in it; where local and foreign entrepreneurs cream off whatever surplus they can, leaving nothing behind. As a consequence, capital accumulation is non-existent, feeding the permanent syndrome that development economists have often described as ‘the vicious cycle of poverty’.

How can we break from this vicious cycle? The answer lies, in my humble opinion, in finding a credible mechanism by which looted funds could be freely repatriated. Legal prosecution on its own might prove to be a nightmare, given that a good part of the funds are tied up in blind trusts and complex securitized assets. The actuarial reality is that most of those who have committed rapine against our people might not be around in the next 30 years. As happened to Mobutu of Zaire, we may lose the funds and not even their children may have access to them.

Politics, as they say, is the art of the possible. At the end of the day, public policy often has to settle for second-best outcomes. One of such would be the declaration of a one-year amnesty on all looted funds, backed by effective legislation that guarantees that no questions shall be asked now or in the future. After the one-year amnesty has elapsed, government would then launch a massive campaign to recover all looted funds, within the framework of a comprehensive programme of restoration of stolen assets.

From current trends, we are not likely to meet most of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, due to the yawning financing gaps that exist in certain crucial sectors. Our ambitious Vision 2020 project also requires massive investments in the infrastructure and power sectors. Our economy could do with a massive infusion of capital. The repatriation of stolen funds would bring a new lease of life to our economy while restoring our collective self-confidence in our country and its destiny.

The calm and coolly
articulate man once dubbed ‘No Drama Obama’ chose some surprising
profanity this week to demonstrate a different side of his personality.

Facing criticism
that he hasn’t been involved or emotional enough about the oil leak
that is now the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, President
Barack Obama insisted that he’s working closely with experts on a very
particular goal.

“We talk to these
folks because they potentially have the best answers,” he told our
colleagues at NBC News, “so I know whose ass to kick.” Obama may be
angry the same way that millions of Americans are. An oil-rig accident
that started out bad – with the deaths of 11 workers – has gotten much
worse. It’s become a national catastrophe and media obsession that’s
dragged on for nearly two months.

Polls suggest it’s also now a political problem for the president and that may be a factor in his show of anger as well.

After the
infamously slow emergency effort that followed Hurricane Katrina in
2005, an ABC News/Washington Post poll that found 62 per cent of
respondents thought poorly of the Bush administration’s response.

The same poll now
finds that even more Americans – 69 per cent – have a negative opinion
of the Obama administration’s work since the spill.

There may be something larger happening too.

Americans felt optimistic when they elected Obama president more than a year and a half ago.

Now, under the
pressure of a still sluggish economy and stubbornly high unemployment,
Americans tell pollsters they are angry about the state of the country.
Is it a coincidence that the president’s own persona is beginning to
reflect that?

Obama is not
turning into a ranting populist railing against the oil industry. But
America’s sour mood is being darkened further by the oil coming ashore
on its south coast.

The president clearly doesn’t want to look too cheerful about the challenge.

By midnight
tomorrow, the seven-day ultimatum which a group of ten lawmakers in the
House of Representatives gave the Speaker, Dimeji Bankole to resign
would have elapsed.

The ultimatum was
yet another of several plots to dethrone the Speaker by his colleagues
since 2008. Describing themselves as “Progressive Members” of the
House, the representatives told the Speaker to resign or risk being
disgraced out of the office for alleged high-handedness,

corruption and
ineptitude, among other things. They also claimed they have
incriminating documents with which they will nail Mr Bankole if he
fails to heed their advise. But so far, there are no indications that
Mr Bankole is packing his belongings or getting ready to leave.
Similarly, there are no signs that the “warring” progressive members
are planning to extend the ultimatum.

Rather, both
parties are reaching out for new and deadlier weapons to prosecute the
impending battle at the expiration of the ultimatum or, better still,
on June 22 when the House reconvenes from its two week recess. The
young Speaker, reports say, has been holding meetings with loyalists
and aides on how to contain the fresh threat to his office.

It will be one of
the miracles of the new millennium if Mr Bankole agrees to throw in the
towel. Such decisions are not common in this part of the world.
Resignation from office is alien to us. Therefore, the so-called
progressives may be daydreaming if they think that Mr Bankole (though
educated in the climes where leaders resign over such allegations) will
go just like that. The 41-year-old Speaker is enjoying the fame and
wealth that come with that office and it might not matter to him if he
is delivering democracy dividend to his people or not.

Now to the ten
lawmakers: There is a common thread that holds these men together. They
are aggrieved over the reshuffling of committees in the House. Even if
they don’t want to admit that, Nigerians know. Nigerians know that this
struggle is not about bettering their (Nigerians) welfare.

Nigerians know it
is selfish. Yes, they all lost out in the various committee
reconstitutions undertaken by Mr Bankole since 2008.

Independence
Ogunewe, for instance, lost his chairmanship of Aviation Committee and
later that of Cooperation and Integration in Africa.

His constant
battles to regain any of them for close to two years now have not
yielded any fruit. Ehiogie West-Idahosa has been battling to regain his
headship of the Committee on Interior in the last two years. Dino
Melaye lost his Information Committee chairmanship post and all efforts
to retrieve it have proved abortive. Asita Honourable has just lost his
number two seat in the Committee on Anti-Corruption. The others are
equally angry because they have found no place in the committees.

And so, it is
normal that they protest. We have seen that in the past. Close watchers
of the National Assembly in the past 11 years know that two major
things threaten the jobs of presiding officers, whether in the Senate
or in the House. They are issues relating to reshuffling of committees
and lawmakers’ welfare. It is as simple as that. It is not about the
passage or non-passage of bills that will improve the living standard
of Nigerians.

Incidentally, Mr
Bankole, whose head is the most sought after in the country at the
moment, has touched on the two. His refusal to accede to the demand to
increase their allowances to N42 million from N27 million each is an
“offence”. Secondly, in reconstituting some committees two weeks ago,
he sacked some leaders and may still sack some more. It is like
touching the tail of a python.

Long on emotion

Incidentally, the
men asking Mr Bankole to leave office are not long distance runners.
Only last year, Messrs Melaye and West-Idahosa gathered a few lawmakers
to demand the resignation of the House leader, Tunde Akogun; Deputy
leader, Baba Shehu Agaie and the Chief Whip, Emeka Ihedioha for
allegedly pocketing monies they were given to organize some events in
the House.

At some point, Mr
Melaye told newsmen that a total of 241 members had signed up for Mr
Ihedioha’s removal. But on the day the House reconvened, Mr Melaye ate
his word. Even when Mr Ihedioha came by order dealing with privileges,
none of the 241 legislators, including Mr West-Idahosa could speak up.
In fact, Mr Melaye apologized for inducing tension in the House.
Exactly, one year after, the lawmaker is at it again.

Mr Ogunewe and
Solomon Awhinawhi, alongside five of their colleagues, floated a group
known as Transparency Group about two years ago to canvass the exit of
Mr Bankole for his alleged involvement in the N2.3 billion car scam.
Apart from addressing a press conference once, where they made their
demand publicly, there was no concerted action by the group to take
their struggle to the next level.

So, if we go by their antecedent, it is almost certain that this
fresh battle to oust Mr Bankole will fail. But then, maybe they can do
that by the grace of their external sponsors who we hear are bent on
seeing the back of the Speaker whose popularity is reportedly waning by
the day.

Certificate of
Occupancy alias C of O is a title document issued by the authorised
government signifying its consent to ownership of land by the occupant
of the land. C of O is not only the recognised/ accepted title
document. Deed of Assignment, Deed of Transfer and Purchase Receipts
Agreement are recognised title documents upon registration.

Every instrument
affecting land must be registered with the Registrar of Title. An
instrument is any document affecting land whereby one part confers,
transfer, limits, charges or extinguished in favour of another party
any right or title to, or interest in land, and includes a certificate
of purchase and power of attorney under which any instrument may be
executed, but does not include a Will.

An instrument duly
registered with the Land’s Registry becomes a public document and
searches can be made at all reasonable times in the register book in
which upon an application, a certified true copy can be obtained.

Registration constitutes notice to the whole world of the title or interest the registered instrument conveys.

A prospective
creditor or purchaser of a property must be prudent to avoid buying a
law suit. It connotes that a reasonable creditor or purchaser must
conduct a search at the Land Registry. A search at the Land Registry
should be propped up with further investigation that should include
site inspection. Apart from the searches at Land Registry, it is
advisable to conduct search at the Surveyor General’s Office to
ascertain the status of the property.

However in practice
these days, there are indications that Title documents are cloned
(forged) and used as collateral without the owner’s consent. It has
become the trade of chronic debtor to use cloned title documents as
collateral. An unsuspecting creditor will accept a cloned Title
documents assuming the presenter to be the owner and later encounter
problem either at investigation stage or enforcement stage. These
chronic debtors have even stepped up their game by ensuring that cloned
documents are reduplicated and substituted for the original at Land’s
Registry; please do not ask me how! We conducted a search on a property
lately and the search report confirmed the presenter as the owner. Our
further investigation at the Surveyor General’s office showed
inconsistency. We decided to follow the information we received at the
Surveyor General’s Office that later revealed the search report and
Title document from Land Registry was cloned.

While I am not
pointing fingers, Title documents owners must ensure the safe custody
of their legal documents at all times. These documents when in the
hands of wrong persons can be used to the detriments of its owners.
Owners of Title documents should, once in a while, conduct searches
too! This will save any unforeseeable embarrassment in future.

I implore the Lands Directorate to please investigate the incessant cloning of Title documents and ensure its extinction.

The
Central Bank of Nigeria recently issued a 76-page “Prudential
Guidelines for Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria”. Effective May 1 2010,
the guidelines are a key part of the apex bank’s efforts at
strengthening the financial services industry, in the wake of several
shortcomings that have come to light since the global financial and
economic crisis set in. On one measure, the CBN has made a good first
of this goal. The document replaced by the new rulebook,

“Prudential
Guidelines for Licensed Banks”, was only 10 pages thick. So, in terms
of sheer reading effort, the new guidelines do call for considerable
expenditure. Beyond its heft, though, the new guidelines include
provisions on other dimensions of the industry’s operations (risk
management, corporate governance, anti-money laundering, etc.) that
were not even alluded to previously.

One could quibble
at the fact that a number of the additions to the new-look prudential
guidelines are a re-hash of policies the CBN has enunciated of late in
respect of its concern to ensure that banks in the country are properly
run, i.e. in the interest of depositors’ funds. Besides, if the
assignment of ensuring the safety of depositors’ funds and the
stability of the financial system is constructed narrowly enough, then
the main task for prudential regulation is to set proper limits on the
risk appetites of deposit-taking institutions. And this, the old rules
did with some success. So what new things have the new guidelines put
in place?

Basically, the new
guidelines recognise two loan loss provisioning regimes, where before,
there was just one. The “Other Loans” category essentially replicates
the provisions of the old guidelines, with 90 days remaining the
cut-off period for recognising facilities with unpaid principal and/or
interest. However, the new guidelines ease financing conditions for
specialised lending purposes.

Outstanding
obligations are now expressed as proportions of the amounts due, and
the loan-loss recognition periods have been considerably extended. In
this sense, the CBN has only acted to recognise the peculiar life cycle
of the project types that fall under its specialised lending category –
project, object, SME, agriculture, and mortgage financing. All of these
have long gestation periods between when investments are made, and when
they begin to earn revenue, with which they may rightfully meet their
loan commitments. Incidentally, these are also sectors in which the
country has the greatest need, and whose successful financing could
have the greatest multiplier effect on the economy.

That said, I’m not
quite sure the apex bank intended an additional outcome of the new
prudential rules. It would seem that risk managers in the industry had
hoped to obtain some gain from the new guidelines. This would have
happened, if for instance, the apex bank had extended the period for
recognising loan losses across all risk asset classes. Then, a number
of current provisions done in the spirit of the tougher old rules may
have been written back in aid of banks profits. Given the many comfort
arrangements that the CBN has put in place to help banks’ balance
sheets, and the fact that the industry still labours from a liquidity
glut, this was a fair hope. But it turns out that “specialised loans”
are a small portion of the industry’s current loan portfolio. So, the
hoped for gains from extending the period for recognising impaired
loans would be a lot smaller.

Nonetheless, would
these easier terms, not boost the flow of credit to these sectors of
the economy? A re-balancing of credit in favour of project financing
would be consistent with the economy’s need for new investment in
infrastructure, while better mortgage and agriculture financing should
ultimately address needs that are peculiar to the more vulnerable
segments of the economy. Still, it helps to consider why banks have not
felt a need thus far to put their monies in these very useful sectors
of the economy. When a market fails for the provision of any good or
service, it is often because the neighbourhood effects arising from
investing in the provision of such service or good are too dispersed to
generate useful returns for the investing entity, or that too large a
portion of the externalities arising from the investment are negative.

In this case, we
should worry about two things. A legal and infrastructure environment
that remains unhelpful to business, and the banks’ capacity to lend to
these sectors.

Parliamentary squabbles are universal, a sign of a thriving
democracy. Anywhere in the world where the rule of law is monitored by a few
citizens instead of one dictator, the lawmakers can sometimes seem to behave
like a bunch of school children in a playground.

Words of disagreement can degenerate to fist fights, and when
blows are not enough chairs or the sacred mace come in handy to drive a point
home. Elsewhere in the democratic world, lawmakers’ points of disagreement are
usually in the interest of their citizens and country. Here in Nigeria, when
our lawmakers fight, the citizens’ welfare is usually far from the reason. It
is a fight by themselves, of themselves and for themselves.

Nigerians do not have a dog in the current imbroglio that has
engulfed the House of Representatives. The fight between the Speaker, Dimeji
Bankole, and a group that call themselves the “Progressive Minded Legislators”
is a public display of a house that is divided against itself, and if we are to
go by the news of ineffectiveness and corruption coming out of the House, it
has long fallen.

These newly minted progressives, about ten lawmakers from the six
geo-political zones, say the Speaker is corrupt, inept and high-handed. Really?
Did they just wake up to realise this or this is a case of when there is war,
any weapon is legitimate?

These so called progressives and the embattled Speaker of the
House do not appear to care about the people or the country, reserving their
passion for issues that concern their personal welfare. The laws that receive
prompt and undivided attention are those that fatten their already
budging-from-the-seams bank accounts.

All we have to do is lift the veil and peep behind closed doors
to see the true reason for this disagreement in the House. This ultimatum given
to the Speaker to resign or “be disgraced out of the office” reeks of
disgruntled elements. The row boils down to who is getting what and who is not.

The Progressive Minded Legislators claim to have incriminating
documents that will nail the Speaker and they are threatening to send these to
the EFCC. The ultimatum is clearly a bluff, and Mr. Bankole knows it too. It
will be interesting to see how the Speaker is the only corrupt lawmaker in a
House that has had numerous allegations of corruption leveled against it.

What we ordinary citizens would like, even after this rift is settled, is to
see the purported evidence against the Speaker sent to EFCC, ICPC, NSA and the
SSS, as threatened. Until then, from where we sit, they are all birds of the
same feather and what they have embarked on now is nothing short of a child’s
play.

Tomorrow
will be the 12th day of June two thousand and ten. It will be just
another day. You will observe that the sun will rise from the East in
the morning like all other days. The traffic on your way to work won’t
be any lighter. You will still see that checkpoint and that skinny
policeman who has made himself a tollgate. The beggars at the street
junction won’t look any different. There begging bowls will be no
different from today. I suspect that at this time tomorrow, there will
be no power. . I suspect that right now, your generator is even getting
in the way of your comprehension. It will just be another day in our
country. The air will smell the same.

But take time off to read the dailies. They will
all be screaming with similar headlines. They will talk about a day
gone, of a time past, of a paradise lost. They will scream with
memoirs, with pictures, with tales: Tales of a lost mandate, of a lost
opportunity, of a failure of reasoning, of the ill fate of a man and a
people and indeed their failure to learn from the past.

It’s June 12. The political editors are jumping
over each other. It’s a good day for maximum sales. Who gets the best
feature out? Who paints the best gloomy picture, a seventeen-year-old
picture, a reminder of what’s been called our best shot, a sad recall
of what could have been? It’s like our Good Friday without the eventual
Easter. A commemoration. A memorial.

For some it’s now an obsession. Like a religious
feast, marked year in year out with rallies and paid advertorials; with
outlandish interviews that progressively twist history; with press
conferences and Television talk shows by people who were either victors
or villains of the day but who all claim today to be democrats and who
wave their democratic credentials in our faces. The credentials are
made of party identity cards and stolen naira.

One of them, the most notorious of all by many
estimates recently experienced a brain wave. He not only has become so
democratic that he fancies ruling the nation again, he also think we
should, as a nation immortalise the Man the day is about. The Man, his
friend who he robbed and who like Brutus he stabbed in the back and
disappeared, claiming to be stepping aside. But he ran off to the
hilltop mansion he built with our common wealth to hibernate for a
while.

And there are those who have ridden on the back of
this day to many political victories. What did they do while in office?
They stole their bit and left us the ghost of the day. Now, they are
not sure on which part of the divide they stand. They are scared we
don’t trust them any more so today they jump into our faces again with
eloquent speeches about democracy, about how they had been persecuted
for standing behind the Man and the Mandate.

It’s June 12 again and nothing has changed. The
Political uncertainty seems even more obvious today. Flip further down
the pages of the daily and it becomes apparent that in all the talking
about 1993 the same things are being said today. The constitution
review is dragging on. There is no electoral Act. We have no voters
register. Even INEC is not sure about holding elections as scheduled.
There is indeed no schedule neither are there modalities.

Doesn’t it feel like we are in rewind mode? Like
déjà vu? Like a widening gyre? Don’t you feel the emptiness? Don’t you
see the same expression on their faces, the same deception in their
words? Aren’t we tired of the noise and the much ado about the day?
Aren’t we now bored sick of it all?

There is probably still no electric power where
you are and the generator is dying out. The potholes on the road are
getting wider, the shame and despair deeper. Poverty is still at 70%
and unemployment is weighing heavily down on us.

Tomorrow will be the same as today and yes, the sun will certainly
set in the west like on all other days. But perhaps what is different
today, is that there is a yearning like never before among our people
world over for change, and it is our duty to maintain that pressure in
what ever way we can, adding our voice to public discourse, joining a
political party, registering to vote, getting others to get involved
until the desired change comes.