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HomeNewsNigeria: A National Dialogue With Ghosts - By Sogbeye R. J. Douglas

Nigeria: A National Dialogue With Ghosts – By Sogbeye R. J. Douglas

The erudite Journalist Olusegun Adeniyi, on the back page of The ‘ThisDay’ Newspaper of 3rd August, 2016, published a state by state catalogue of the plague of Ghost as a recurrent item in Federal and state government payrolls. The title of the article is: ‘when the Ghost goes marching in’. The question is; how did the ghosts – fictitious workers created by politics penetrate our payroll systems across the country, when most government payroll systems are digitalized and e-payment compliant?

Whether in the north or south, the answer is in our political- economy. There is no longer any distinction or separation between politics and economics of misguided altruism, such that politics is the economics and economics is the politics of idiotic altruism that plays ostrich politics -the crisis of delusive hiding of the head by exposing the body to danger of self destruct altruism.

The easiest way to understand this specter is in the spectrum of self inflicted crisis of political patronage and over generous altruism. Manipulation of the social and political environment while overlooking the political complimentality of cause and effect. However, before I assume a universalistic analysis; allow me to particularize with critical examples of how politics is played in parts of the country; especially the contribution of Ghosts, underage voters to electoral victories of states in the northern parts of the country to the detriment of states in Southern part of the country. This phenomenon of fiending entities, never to be seen or beholden, now nationally holds us hostage in our march towards change and a corruption free Utopia of a republic.

Rationally, my sympathy goes to the struggling people of every state in Nigeria whose fiscal resource is spilled on the altar of politics in critical times of lull oil price. However, my sympathy for the northern states, with some reservations will be interrogated first with no bias intended- because when we talk of political misdemeanor, the south is even more notorious than the north. Politics in the North is very Machiavellian and cynical especially when victory against the South is seen as an imperative political ideology. This mindset is a legacy of dislike and distrust- call it invented politics of cut throat competition that British colonial politics bequeathed to us to divide us with geography and ethnicity to prepare the grounds for neo – colonization.

A Politics of cut throat completion, to take hold and perpetuate itself, must breed a political class of thick skin bigots and proselytes of divisive politics on both sides of the divide. The 2015 presidential election has come and gone, but it is still history in the works because we are still living with its divisive consequence. During the campaigns leading to the presidential election a nascent polemics of political thoughts of national discourses ensued between the North and especially the COR states of the south- south that saw the election as a symbol of equity but were largely misunderstood. Both parties threw their trump cards and claims to the presidency of Nigeria. For reasons of space I will only dwell on two proponents and their prepositions; Ann Kio Briggs, the COR State non violent Indira Ghandi and fiscal nationalist admonished the nation in very patriotic stance that it will not augur well for the nation should Pres. Jonathan lose the election. Her fear was that Pres. Goodluck Jonathan was too exposed politically to the vagaries of the game of numbers in which the British fixed the odds in the 1963 national census in favour of the north. Ann Kio was largely misunderstood and dismissed as a Niger Delta bigot. The truth is now we are contenting with the fulfillment of her premonitions and she is one of the Niger Delta elders relied upon to help pacify the oil region.
On the opposite side of the polemics was the political class of the north, impetuous, cold blooded, ruthless and cynical in the quest for Aso Rock. The stake was high. He who wins and controls Aso Rock controls the oil wells .There mouth piece was one Kwankwaso. His most cherished taunting tool against southern politics is the awesomeness of the Animajiri declass, as a special purpose electoral vehicle capable of taming oppositions be it from the North or Southern parts of the country. Politicians from- Awo, Aminu Kano, Zik, Waziri, and Goodluck Jonathan with perceived opposition against the entrenched conservative ( now left of the center) political interest of the North were served the political hemlock of the Animajiri. In a region where the pitiable urchins and dregs of humanity have been fashioned into a viable political tools, it will be ironical in every objective perspective for the governments of the states in this region to complain about finding the Animajiris registered as underage ghost workers in the payrolls, siphoning vast sums of money they did not work for every month? The answer to the underage ghosts in the payroll is in the underage politics of the region. Here is a system of politics that is propped by underage voters as an integral part of the regional political armanda. Underage voters are not socially and politically incidental to the system. The system created them as a political caste to service itself. More creative members of the system have attenuated them to an economic caste. As economic caste, the most appropriate abode for them is to habit vital part of government financial ecosystem-the payroll. Ghosts once created, they become larger than our mechanisms for control. What is apparent here is the nemesis of our politics past be it south or North. Can we recount that the existence of Ghosts of the game of numbers in our polity is what has prevented us from keeping an accurate payroll, voters register, accurate census and a national civil registration (ID) scheme. Those who live by ghost will die by ghost. In Nigeria we only complain of evil when we are not benefitting from evil. It is a delusive hypocrisy to think that nectar will not lure bees.

If former President Jonathan had a nemesis in the 2015 presidential election, it was Kwakwanso. In my intellectual assessment, Kwakwanso is an irredentist majoritarian demagogue, blind to the nexus of the deeper life of politics; that the majority and the minority, the strong and the weak exist side by side in politics to complement each other. His brand of politics is the number one culprit in the invention of underage voters and payroll ghost in northern part of the country. When it comes to recounting the political prowess of the north, Kwankwanso is unsparing. That is why he used every opportunity to taunt the President Jonathan in unmistakable terms about the supremacy of his ‘fathers’ in the Nigerian political space. He reminded Pres. Goodluck Jonathan with every available opportunity that the choice was his; abdicate the presidency or be defeated out of the Aso rock by the awesome Nothern political machine whose foot soldiers were the Animajiri. The defeat of the President using the Animajiri and the Talakawas was an article of faith. After the election, Kwakwanso gave an interview of invincibility to glorify, according to him ‘the work of our fathers” (colonialism and later northern political conservatism) have finished the work. The work; an allusion to demographic manipulation and the use of underage voters (the ghostly Animajiri now transformed into underage payroll ghost) in elections. He continued; we (the North) asked Jonathan to go, that it was our turn to produce the president; he refused. So we came home and mobilized our Animajiris, our Talakawas and street beggars to vote and remove him from office. Is Kwankwaso so inured to the plight of the socially indigent toddlers in his society? Can’t he find other profitable uses for them like Pres. Jonathan who was building schools for them other than expose them to the dangers of political violence as underage voters? What a way to exploit the weak and vulnerable of his society? After the election, what happened to them? The Kwakwansos have morphed them from underage voters into underage ghost workers in payrolls. Let us not imagine that underage and illiterate children will have the guts and imagination to “occupy” government payrolls without help from those who use them for political purposes. What a transition in irony. The ghost of voters registers transiting to ghosts of payroll. There is a proverb of northern extraction that those who ride on the back of the tiger to achieve power will one day end in its belly. I wish the underage voters turned ghosts workers can find more common grounds to torment the system that created them; alienated them from their humanity; the system they are used to work assiduously to sustain with their flesh and blood as perennial zombies. The system that deprived them education, parental care and made humanitarian crises out of them as a form of retributive justice.

There are more ominous resonances of Kwamkwanso’s political slur on minority sensibility and confidence in the Nigerian republic. The political history of the present sections of the South-South geopolitical Zones consisting of the COR States of the former Eastern Nigeria was that our pristine neighbors were our mortal detractors and devils that were insistent on our annihilation while the North was accorded a messianic status as saviors. The exclusive politics of the time and the manner the civil war was organized and fought did not support inclusiveness and confidence building, hence the bait was taken hook line and sinker that our salvation- the COR states, will be better served with our flag tied to the northern mast. This was the tale that was used to propel Northern alliance in COR state (ijaw) politics. Earnest Ikoli Chief Harold Dappa Biriye, Chief Melford Okilo , Chief Nabo graham Douglas, Chief Wenike Briggs etc were able to market the prospective messianic role of the North. The first litmus test for the Ijaw – North alliance was the creation of states in 1967 when the three region structures ware to be balkanized into twelve state structure. Northern militricians under General Gowon were not keen on creating the former Rivers State, citing demographic reason and land mass and not wanting to create a state that will steer a new wave of pre Willikin’s commission of inquiry type of minority agitation for the creation of more states. The Idea of Gen. Gowon and his Supreme Military Council SMC was to create a COR – Calabar, Ogoja, Rivers state that will lump present day Bayelsa and River States with Present day Akwa Ibom and Cross Rivers State into the COR state. It took the brilliance of a Yoruba man in the Person of Chief Obafemi Awolo a believer in true federalism, social and political justice to convince Gen. Gowon and his Supreme Military Council that it will not make any sense to create another minority problem (lumping the Efik, Ibibio, Ogoja with Ijaw in a COR state; with the delusion of solving the minority problems. Awo encouraged Gowon to create the old Rivers state by fiat. Awo was visionary and politically clairvoyant. Oil has been discovered in Jonathan’s Ogbia town of Oloibiri( Ijaw). Exploitation has started through Bonny (Ijaw). There is a civil war inspired by who controls the oil, Biafra or the federal government? The North led federal government needed the oil money to prosecute the war. The federal government also needed the support of the Ijaws to showcase to the world that the owners of the oil in Oloibiri were fighting on their side. Awo understood the strategic role oil will play in a post civil war Nigeria and the world at large. He knew with the oil, the Ijaws have a compelling bargain power in the emerging post civil war Nigerian project. Again the Ijaws have mobilized under the leadership of a Major Issac Adaka Boro imbedded in a 3rd marine commando led by the Yorubas- Lt. Col. Benjamin Adenkule, Major Alabi Akirinade, Major Alabi Isama and later Col. Obasanjo (as they were then) that risked their lives in our swamps to liberate us and blockade Biafra from having access to the Atlantic, the oil and the loading terminal in Bonny. As compelling as these arguments and our illusory love for northern politicians, northern politician have always left us in the lunch in our times of need and support. The north – South-South political alliance is now an illusion, of a feudal master servant relationship. The North it is who is appropriating Ijaw oil and gas and throwing paltry crumbs at us. If we cry for resource control they block us, if we cry for fiscal justice they call us militants. When we needed a second tenure for a presidency a Yoruba- Chief Obasanjo gave us, they betrayed us. In the pre independence constitution, the recommendations of Willinks commission of Enquiry were entrenched. The North led federal government implemented it in exception and diverted the money meant for the development of the special Natural ecological disaster Niger Delta into branding and funding gull erosion footprints as River Basins. I am highlighting the above points to support how the North has become an unreliable political partner; A political Liability. When they need us, we are always there for them. When we need them they betray us. In the second republic, Chief Melford Okilo carried our infatuation with the north further. He betrothed four Ijaw (Ogbia (Otuake?)) virgin to President Shehu Shagari in marriage to seal an IJAW- North political blood tie in the fashion of European royal houses. So that by filial political implication, the Ijaws are inlaws of the North.
The least the COR – State South-South, can demand from an inured North and Nigeria is fairness and respect. We have invested too much into the political ascendancy of the north; in the 1979 and 1983 elections, the votes from the COR South- South gave Shehu Shagari and his NPN victory. In 1999 till 2015 when President Jonathan was defeated, we were scions of Northern conservative politics. The network of arteries of tributaries, waterways, creeks and swamps in our delicate and oil polluted ecology coalesced into Nigeria’s umbilical cord for her sustenance. If these are our sacrifice, why are Kwakwanso and his ilk paying us in derision instead of political dividend?

In the political mind set of Kwakwaso or what political scientists call political thought there is no yesterday and tomorrow in politics. There is only today. Kwakwanso and whatever he represents are so blind folded by majoritarian bigotry, paranoia and the politics of disaffection that they seem to be playing the proverbial elephant that broke the water pot in the rainy season thinking the dry season will not come. The dry season came and it came as a ghost of famish and taste to hunt the delusive elephant. Even, in politics there is compassion for the weak and indigent in the politics of number which translate to equity, affirmative and inclusive action to sometimes ignore the obvious to prop the weak. If the politics of number is the exclusive prerogative of the North, the politics of resources is domiciled in the Niger Delta. Number and resources have to compliment each other for mutual political benefit. Essentially presidential politics in Nigeria is nothing but the exercise of control over the resources of the Niger Delta. COR state politics is shell shocked, South East politic is shell shocked, the PDP, the Party of Pres. Jonathan is shell shocked. However, politics nowadays is more of a pecuniary ideology than the pursuit of a people and history driven nationalism: the ingredients a spited political community needs to take the bull by the horn to reset their relevance for a day of reckoning. But has the COR state what it takes, the political temerity and cohesion to look at the Kwakwansos in face to call them Dr Frankenstein, creators of a divisive ghost of betrayal that must come back to haunt them in their season of political need?

It is instructive to note that it took the singular efforts of a Yoruba man Chief Olusegun Okikiolu Obasanjo to make an Ijaw (COR STATE) man a Governor, vice President and a president. It is compelling g here to provide valid arguments with reason why we should stop relying on the North as a reliable political partner. It is time we begin to rethink were our interest is better served. Certainly, not with the Kwankwasos anymore. Now, profoundly is it East or West? Is it on Biafra (with the South East) or Restructuring (with the Yoruba) or do it alone at HOME? We cannot continue to remain on the fence to be distracted by a vain gaze at the northern star and the ignominy of the militancy and pipeline surveillance contract seeking elites and elders? Let political relativity and flexibility inform our core politics- No permanent friend no permanent enemy only permanent interest.

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Senator David Mark mobilized the senate and the conscience of the nation in a doctrine of Necessity to make Vice Pres. Jonathan the substantive president and Pres. Obasajo who made Gov. Goodluck Jonathan a vice president had a common purpose; they were all pursuing justice in the creeks of Niger Delta. That justice was beyond Pres. Jonathan. Jonathan was only a personification of that justice. Jonathan was not politics in their eyes he was equity; when certain established democratic norms taken for granted were waived for inclusive precipitation. The amnesty program of Late President Yaadua is magna cater for peace in the oil wells. Now Nigerians are faced with the propaganda of money stolen in the amnesty Package. Nobody is talking about the peace it brought to the oil wells and the trillions it generated. When Gen. Gowon created the old Rivers he was informed by equity. If it is for only political logic of the time, the state wouldn’t have been created. When Gen. Abacha created Bayelsa state with only eight local governments, he was pursuing justice. When Gen. Abdulasam Abubaka compromised majoritarian bigotry and born to rule mantra and handed over to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as President after the June 12 imbroglio, he was looking for justice to unite the nation. To look for peace without justice is recourse to anarchy. This is where the Pres. Buhari’s approach to the Niger delta disturbances differs with the Pres. Yaadua -Jonathan approach. Pres. Buhari is infused with a majoritarian mind set that says the oil in the Niger delta belongs to the North. That is why he destroyed everything Pres. Yaadua, Pres Jonathan and all critical stake holder had erected for peace so that he can access oil with a philosophy of peace without justice. On a personal ground, I am not supporter of Pres. Jonathan (for six years Pres. Jonathan could not construct road to his state capital, He could not galvanize the core investors in the Brass LNG project to sigh the final investment decision. A Yoruba man Kukpolapo has put in everything in this world so that the project takes off without any support from Pres. Jonathan) though Pres. Buhari cannot not be his alternative. Whoever is vested with the Justice for the Niger Delta or the ijaw ethnic nationalities, I will defend that justice. Jonathan was only the trustee for that justice courtesy Pres Obasanjo a Yorubaman. For example Mr Kukpolapo is not an Ijawman but he is fighting to bring justice for the Ijaw people in the Brass LNG, to bring development and internally generated revenue to Bayelsa State. Indolent Pres. Jonathan wasted our six years in sedentary slumber in Aso Rock. Oil is land in economic perspective. If the arable land in the north doesn’t belong to the Niger Delta, there is no way the oil in the Niger delta will belong to the North. Oil wells can be a national asset but they don’t belong to the North. The president should discountenance the Ahitophels? The Kwakwansos, The El Rufais, the Yakassais, those he said rule Nigeria with him and seek peace in the Niger Delta. Peace in the Niger Delta is beyond dialogue with criminal groups funded from Aso Rock. Peace in the Niger Delta is a sustainable developmental template. The Niger Delta ghost of MEND , AVENGERS and new Avenger and there motley cult of conflict entrepreneurs are ghost of politics past now paneling us as bearers of odiferous odour. In the words of William Shakespeare: The evil that men do (The ghost men create) lives after them and the good is often interned with their bones.

For the sake of oil innocent villagers in the Niger Delta are being branded militants and bombed in a pacification for oil. A motley collection of hoodlums and miscreants cannot frustrate our oil production without the ghost in ASO Rock past and present assuaging them. The Aso rock ghost of oil in its desperation for oil is now orchestrating a dangerous game of divide and rule to set the resurrected ghost- New MEND against the Avengers’ ghost as New Avengers. Because, the Okah? Brothers have sold the dummy that Pre. Pres. Jonathen is the sponsor of the Avengers. Ghost are ghost once you unleash them, they grow beyond your control. The true source of our frustration is that we have deviated from the wisdom and path of our fathers, being deceived in bad politics as a nation and the ghost of that politics is hunting us in every sphere of our national life. Good bye the Ghost of Kwankwanso and the ghost of Jonathan past.

Welcome our creative ghost of the politics of budget padding present: recently the house of representatives was embroiled in a budget scandal that divided the house leadership and some Hon. members. It was obvious the house officers connived and created holes in the 2016 budget for personal benefit by inserting items that are not in the original budget that was presented to it by the executive arm of government. The intended forgery leaked to the public domain and an interesting drama of public debate ensued as to the culpability or innocence of some house officers who were privy to the intended malfeasance. The Chairman House committee on appropriation was sacrificed and relieved of his post. He then went public with the true fact of the heist intended to steal from the budget by what he called padding- increasing the cost of specific items in the budget or adding fictitious projects that will never be executed but the money attached to the project will be removed through paper works in special arrangement with the staff of ministry of finance, the budget and due process offices.

The debate that followed is a tell tale dent on the integrity of public probity, accountability and a derisive culture of appropriation impunity and moral atrophy in the conduct of legislative business in our beloved country. According to a lawyer (SA#) padding is not a crime because it not in our criminal code. He is correct just that his intention was self mockery and mischievous legal gymnastics. Can the criminal code of any country contemplate every imaginable crime citizens are capable of? Padding is a self help semantics innocently used by Mr. Jibrin that watered down the gravity of the offence of forgery or obtaining by false pretence (S.419) of the criminal code?). The appropriate charges applicable are forgery- willful falsification of public document (the budget) to steal public funds through false pretence (OBT) by presenting the forged (Oluwale copy) as certified true copy to deceive, to steal money. No prosecutor can make prosecutorial discretion like padding which is not in our criminal code. All institutions with prosecutorial power decided to look the other way for reasons of political correctness and the house Speaker and his party have passed a ‘not guilty’ verdict in their own case. The rest is now history. The truth is the ghost of legislative impunity you create today will hunt us tomorrow as a nation. Let me ask the learned SA#, if somebody points him with a toy gun and robs him; is robbing a with toy gun in the criminal code? There were some notorious robbers that were waylaying early morning traders going to Aba at the Abali park in Port Harcourt. The report got to police and the police trailed the robbers one early morning and shot two of the robbers dead and arrested two. The police then discovered that there were no bullets in the guns used for the robbery. If the learned SA# is asked to prosecute the robbers, what charge will he press against the robbers? Toy gun armed robbery or robbery with guns without bullets? Of course, the drafters of any criminal code will never contemplate a sane person robbing with a toy gun. Robbing with a toy gun induces the same gravity of fright as the real gun and the facts of unlawful and forceful dispossession of others of their properties constitutes robbery. The SA# is saying that padding is not in our criminal code is tantamount to posting a notice to the robbers in Nigeria that robbery with toy guns or with guns without bullet is condonable in criminal justice because it is not in the criminal code. It would have been more appropriate if the SA# had gone before a Judge in the confine of a court room to apply that the charge of forgery and OBT be changed to padding because his clients in the national assembly committed a crime called padding which is not in the criminal code than to appear on AIT to aver in the public court that there is an alibi for thieves called padding because it is not in our criminal code. The law they say is an ass. But there is a limit o flogging and manipulation it can endure when notary advocates of law, of public morality and legislative decorum spuriously conflict the law before their publics because pecuniary gain is involved.

I am not a politician but I can describe myself as a freelance publicist. This is necessary to clear the air because of conspiracy pattern of interests in the industrialization of politics in Rivers State by previous administrations. In Rivers state, commenters on public policy must conform to a bias pattern of mass communication- where you know the wrong thing but squeal it as the right thing in comments or analysis to appease your political benefactor. There is no informed objective paradigm in appraising public investment and policy issues. Government and governance was the prerogative of a certain individual. His support base and social network attack dogs are very active and ever ready to steer conversations along parochial lines as if those we support or love are infallible to mistakes. Commenters don’t ever see issues on account of objectivity; but either you must belong to us or we are against you. The two past successive governors of the state from 1999 were merchants of ghostly schemes and deceit. I am not sure government payrolls and ghost workers meant much to them considering the amount of IGP and federal allocation accruing to the state. This enabled them to ruse with public expenditure by concocting bogus and phony projects without needs assessments and intended derivable to the people of Rivers. The former created a white elephant ghost of gas turbine schemes that only fired up his personal pocked to open an airline company with billons stolen with the scheme while Rivers people are still in darkness. The latter went out of character with a monorail scheme that will never move an inch. From inception this monorail project was flawed in design and execution. The econometrics of the project is flawed in commonsense and elementary economic viability, no sustainability parameters; the project will never pay back any return on investment as it is laying waste like a comatose dragon, an immitigable public nuisance and an eye saw. The monorail project is a ghost that has gulped up vital public spaces and rendered them irretrievable and unusable. This project is now a grandiose ghost tormenting the psyche of informed people of rivers state as we drive from Lagos Bustop to UTC Bustop . When you put a child in a China shop, this is what you get-DISTRUCTION. Now, to think of it, this ghost has consumed more than N150 billion of scarce public fund, six years in execution, still not completed and abandoned. There is no ghost of wastetage of government resources more shameful than this. This nuisance is impossible to abate as it is well rooted to the ground. The project will take an equal amount of wastage in public money to abate.

The ghosts of floods past of Bayelsa state: Bayelsa state presents a peculiar and an unholy romance with ghosts that occupy government payroll. The state is reeling on the Burden of over padded payroll of ghostly public servants. A biometric review of the particulars of public servants is yet to yield the expected results as most of the civil servants that showed up for the exercise said they lost their documents during the flood of 2013, seeking alibi in an act of God. The State government is still contending with solutions to tackle the issue of money paid to ghost workers every month. Politic is causing more problems than it is solving. If not politics and politicians conniving with dubious civil servants since the state was created, who created the ghosts that are now sucking into government finance as recurrent specters?
The national encompassing complain about ghosts of payroll, ghost of corruption, the ghost of the politics of the ghost of Chibok girls, Boko haram- an intended ideological vehicle created to prop politics now turned the most dreaded terrorist group in the world after ISIS are tormenting us because we are political sorcerers. We breed ghost for selfish reasons; in due time they grow or multiply beyond our control. If we seek justice first we will have our peace with ghost. In his tragic Drama of three witches (ghost) Macbeth; William Shakespeare’s dialogue in his tragedy is very relevant to us; “ May this fiending sisters (ghost) never be believed. To win us to our arms, the instrument of darkness tells us truth; to betray us in double consequence”

SOGBEYE R. J. DOUGLAS
(sosodogi@yahoo.com)(08099252690) text only)

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