Imoohuru

03/05/2024

Corrupt Development and developmental corruption!

17/02/2023

Years after the emancipating Act ending slave trade, some slaves in the hinterlands did not know that slavery had ended. In fact they attacked those that brought them the news accusing them of plans to torment trouble for them in their peaceful slavery.

There are people today whose perception of humanity is so elitist that they cannot see that the end of this era of election buying will usher in a time of responsible governance.

Essentially they are content with being able to afford personal luxuries but will fight every attempt to democratize such luxuries.

Unfortunately the time has come for the liberation of Nigeria!

The rule of darkness will end!

Out of the ashes will rise a new Nigeria where our song will be the same!

Viva Nigeria

05/01/2023

SAVING THE CITADEL - THIS HOUSE HAS FALLEN

-Ebere Okonkwo FCIS

On a Sunday afternoon in 2017, I was headed to Lugbe, a surburb of Abuja with my family. My wife’s bestie in the office had dedicated her child and was holding a reception at their home in Lugbe. We had briefly attended a 50th Birthday celebration in Wuse 2 Abuja and were driving through the national stadium area towards Airport road.

As we navigated the turn to Airport road, I saw this significant billow of black smoke rising into the afternoon sky. The smoke was so large and I concluded instantly that, this has to be a building on fire. As I drove further my mind began the frantic calculation of which building could be located in that axis that could be on fire and I began to have this foreboding that it could be the House on the Rock Church off Airport road as that was the only significant development in that axis at the time.

And yes, as soon as I made that turn into the Airport road, there it was, our beloved masterpiece of a building, The Citadel, on fire! The mixture of emotions I felt in that instant, was further accentuated by my wife’s shrilling and chilling burst of uncontrollable wailing and tears. That I was on the main speed lane and not on the service lane, was not a hindrance as I screeched to a halt, jumped out of the car, ran across the road, jumped the embankment in between into the other lane of the eight lane expressway, jumped over into the service lane of the other lane and across the wide drainage, making a bee line towards the building. Rushing behind me were also a few other persons, while some stood across on my original lane describing the fire.

To put things in perspective, I wasn’t then a member of the House on the Rock Church as we had left and were attending another church at the time. Yet, the rush of a mixture of adrenaline, emotions, anger, pain and disbelief I felt, did not have accommodation for little mundane issues of whether I was a member, or not, whether I had a stake in it or not, I just ran in like a demented fellow.

All of this was happening in the middle of the heavy downpour that seemed to have been prayed down by people who gathered, in hope that the rainfall will help in quenching the fire. Remarkably, members and former members alike who heard the news rushed from wherever they were, to join in both the prayers and the efforts. People you would hardly think would risk soiling their makeup were standing in that downpour praying, carrying water, directing, screaming, crying, consoling, and just being there without one single thought for themselves or for the differences in views, or the dandy things we say to show our spiritual superiority and all worth not.

Those who were there on the day, will recall the miraculous events that also saw a few of us, emergency fire fighters barely exit the auditorium section before it came down, gutted by the flames. I recall that while we fought the fire, in the little ways we could, before the arrival of fire fighters from a renown construction company, no one remembered if they were present or past members, we only had one objective in mind, “saving the citadel”.

I thought hard in making this story the preface of this piece. I am acutely aware of the sensitivity of some persons to that event and probably to other church issues. But todays piece is not even about church or the magnificent citadel in Abuja, but about the state of our citadels of learning littered across the length and breadth of this nation.

What I sought to highlight by allegory is the alarm and urgency with which right thinking people should react to a “burning or falling citadel”. I worry that public citadels of learning whether universities, Colleges of Education or Polytechnics have become completely symptomatic of the much larger and shameful failures elsewhere in our society.

A few days ago, I sat over drinks with friends in a state capital in the east. I was enthused by the presence of my childhood friend who now has a PHD in Chemistry.
I was excited by the prospects of probing his mind to discover whether there is a fertile ground of thoughts to receive some of the innovative solutions I have been thinking up for the overhaul of the education sector.

Generally, my development philosophy is rooted in the stakeholder theory and therefore unrepentantly people centric. I do not regret having to quote myself often that development is not what you do for the people but what you get the people to do for themselves.

An inquisition into the education sector must start from interrogatories with players in the sector. Pity me, when you bear such a burden of being joined in the hip with your nation and you cannot and do not even consider the option of "Japa", or even the option of joining in the plundering of the nation, you must therefore think, breathe and act for the nation.

A few abusive but celebratory munchings of animal protein later, I popped the question, Don, how is the lecturing job going? In truth I wasn’t expecting the normal Nigerian “we dey manage” or the way a London taxi driver will download their entire life history and genuine state of affairs if you made the mistake to ask them “how are you doing?”, but what I got in response was a long tale of woes.

My friend is Head of department of physical sciences which according to him is actually the lumping of several science departments together to reduce costs.
He talked mournfully about the empty laboratories, the lack of scientific equipment of any sort, the lack of any type of autonomy especially financial autonomy in the institution as a whole. He spoke extensively about how a science department from its onset till date has not carried out the simplest of science experiments or studies.

“How then is a chemistry department producing chemistry graduates who have never seen a chemical reaction, or experiment?” I asked. The university Don paused and regarded me briefly with that look of incredulity that makes the Owerri resident say “akwobedighi beans akwo” otherwise translated as “you ain’t seen nothing yet” in colloquial English.

“ Brother” he said to me after recovering from his shock at my unjustified shock, “I am telling you that we have PHD holders in sciences like Physics and Chemistry who have never seen a working laboratory. People send request to far flung universities some in other parts of Africa for tests to be done on their theory and the results sent to them, which they use in their thesis. They neither performed nor observed the tests that they deploy in proof of their hypothesis. And of course the evaluators and external examiners of such works are from the system and the charade goes on.

You see, we are not yet ready, yes, not yet ready to develop local genius and innovation or even to adopt foreign technology. The Citadels have fallen…yes, into the hands of the same crop and type of people who have captured the state.

Nigeria counts about 170 universities, 91 are public and 79 are private. Of the public, 43 are federal and 48 are state universities. The National Universities Commission not only licenses the operation of universities but also oversees their quality assurance by the system of accreditation.

So what exactly happens when NUC comes for accreditation? I asked? “Leave NUC first, let’s talk about the autonomy of public universities” he quipped.

Firstly, he posited, state capture has a lot of consequences. In the same way governors have captured local governments, their administration and funds, they have also captured state universities, funding, administration and all.

All fees paid in universities are paid into the state treasury single account, including departmental fees, and sports fees! The state governor receives the alerts on the IGR portal which most states now have in place.

An IGR portal is a fantastic thing no doubt, and increasing revenue and monitoring it is a good thin as well, but the structure for administration which insists on a single individual micromanaging hundreds of agencies by a strict feeding bottle system is archaic, redundant and absolutely ridiculous.

I am told that simple procurements in university departments of consumables such as chalk, or chemicals for laboratories, has to wait for the governor to wake up and feel good before disbursement. Often, no appropriation system is in place to see to the funding and where a budget is submitted and approved by the lackey and phantom house of Assembly, the actual funds will only be available at the mercy of the emperor governor. Meanwhile some of what is paid into the TSA as revenue is not revenue but payment by students for services at their departments. Those services will now only be delivered or rendered to the students at the pleasure of the governor. Nothing can be more backward than this.

The larger picture is that there is an insatiable taste for control embedded in our politics. I am told that in IMO state, if you want to hold an event and it is not an APC event, you will have a hard time getting any of the more sophisticated venues like the FSP hall at Okigwe road.

This is not even confined to IMO or APC. This has long been a behavioural trend in our politics. Each Party or government wields its authority without regard to the principles of governance, Transparency, Accountability, Responsibility, Fairness, and Reputational preservation.It’s as if our leaders simply read the mafia manager and adopt only the mean principles enunciated there and dump the progressive ones.

But nothing justifies the destruction of citadels of learning and the future of our species by the all corrupting influence of our fouled politics. The implications are grave. Vice Chancellors are not clothed with any executive independence in administration of universities, not even in respect of issues wholly internal to the university! Every institution’s administration is now an outpost of Government House and the oddity of mis-governance that issues from there.

This is unsustainable and counter productive. I recently read Chief Osita Chidoka taking issues with the Igbo translation of University as “Mahadum”. I read all the very robust engagements that followed, as progressive minded people tried to situate the right perception of universities as the ivory tower, the bank of all knowledge, and the fountain of continuously improving thought!

Is it therefore not a danger of immense proportions that professors and top educators upon whom governments should rely on for credible policy directions are now the ones going cap in hand to government houses to massage the ego of mostly unlettered men to release trickles of funds so that the citadels can function?

How can Universities of Technology not tar internal roads on campus, or the ones with River resource not produce small hydropower to power their universities?
How can this even happen when the head that thinks for the citadel is one unhinged political jobber-man sitting at the government house?

Can we now see the real reason why innovation is stultifying in Nigeria even if we are making giant strides in the arts and music?

To tie up this piece, I believe just like in the literal burning citadel at the beginning that anyone who sees the danger this state of affairs portends for our nation, the raging harmattan fire that consumes enterprise and innovation in our nation, fueling the unending brain drain, and the ultimate collapse of our civilization, must weigh in with military urgency.

Again this is the call for every election to become a referendum as to what kind of future we want both at national and sub national levels.

I hope 2023 is the year we begin the rebuild. Happy new year to all progressive minded people, the rest can collect their own from those destroying our citadels!

Ebere Okonkwo FCIS
(Uzo OHURU IMO)
Crest and Waterfalls
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05/01/2023

RING FENCE DEVELOPMENT AND THE SOUTH EAST QUESTION
Ebere Okonkwo FCIS

As I made my way out of the arrival lounge of the Sam Mbakwe Airport in Obiangwu, at about half past One O’Clock, I was hit by the now rare mild Hamartan haze. Right at the entrance, a gathering of 'just arrived' passengers stood forlorn like protesters on one side of a wide chasm, separating them from the taxi drivers on the other side.

The arriving passengers had just been hit with the shock that a taxi ride into owerri would cost at least twenty thousand Naira. Nothing prepared them for such sad and discomfiting news. Many were making frantic calls in last-minute effort to have someone come to the airport and pick them up. The monetary calculations made the NPV of such an option positive.

The fortitude of the drivers and their unity of purpose in this carefully choreographed play act was palpable in their unified defence that fuel was now selling at N340 per litre at the Gas Stations, up from the N240 per litre of last week. The culprit they said was the Petroleum Marketers Association, which had been making arbitrary increases as if petrol was on an exclusive auction of an antiquated artifact with daily increases of 20 Naira from the 20th of December.

I finally got a taxi at N15,000 for a ride that was about 20 minutes into Owerri. I didn’t have any special bargaining powers, I was only lucky I was wearing a knee brace for the fracture I was carrying on my knee cap. the driver said he only pitied me for how long I had been standing with that brace.

Tellingly, as we made our way through the usually busy Aba road into Owerri, there was sparse traffic save at the military checkpoint at Akachi Road Junction. It appeared that many people had made the decision to limit expenses by staying away from the roads. I asked the driver as we slowly wriggled our way out of the long queue, if these soldiers had at anytime at this stop and search checkpoint found any cache of arms or arrested any terrorists by this stop and search? It did appear that the presence of the soldiers was only for toll collection. I had to mind my business as we passed by, mournfully remembering the sad incident involving a colleague in Lagos on Christmas Day.

As you enter any city in the south east of Nigeria and engage the city you find with palpable sobriety that the cost of living is excruciatingly high, the temperature and pressure on life and living is crushing, but what is most damning is the normalcy with which the average resident accepts this reality. It's almost as if you need to be baptised into the South East if you have been away for a few days, talk less of a few weeks.

I had just left owerri on the 20th of December 2022, and the airport taxi was at the then all time high of N10,000, which was attributed to the festive season but to return a week later and find a hundred percent increase in the rates was worth an inquisition.

I recall that last week, fuel was selling at the NNPC filling station somewhere between Enyiogugu and Nguru Mbaise for N240. I recall the joy I had while driving to my village to see an NNPC filling Station with very little queue, and quickly made to fill the tank of my V8 engine SUV, in the hope of an NNPC pump price, only to see the price at N240, just N10 different from what I bought at Ukoromi station at Uratta road in Owerri. I quickly readjusted my joy and bought as I could afford in the circumstances.

As I sat with friends over drinks in Prefab, Aladinma Owerri, I began the inquisition. I had just got off the phone with my friend who works in the succeeding entity of PPPRA, the Petroleum Products Pricing regulator. I asked why fuel will travel in tankers all the way from the south to Abuja and other parts of the North, and be sold for N180 and at the worst in clandestine fashion N220 but be selling in the south for N250 at the pump? The sum total of his explanation was, ’na Naija be that o”. My friends across the table began to tell stories of how the marketers in Owerri kept testing new prices and finding demand elasticity until they reached the ridiculous price of N250 and there is promise of more increases.

One burly fellow sipping comfortably from his glass of Hero beer spoke authoritatively about a marketer, NEPAL, who is being queried by the marketers union for retaining her price at N220. Another marketer, Empire Energy, refused to join in the arbitrary increases led by the COCEAN and Ukoromi stations. I asked some questions, but not all I wanted to ask. To speak openly to our people these days, you have to know where they stand on issues. Otherwise, you could end up in a deadly affair.

You see, this piece could have had a slightly different title. The actual title has ‘Biafra’ replacing, ‘South East’ in it, but discretion they say is the better part of valour and these days, as I get baptised more and more into politics, I get to chose what I say and how I say it, but let’s get back to the discourse.

The question I wanted to ask, which I didn’t ask there, but which I have had the boldness to ask in my own organised boots on ground events is “ is this the Biafra that we will get?” Where do we draw the line between entrepreneurship enterprise and exploitation? And before you judge me for drawing a wide and wild conclusion from a narrow incident, let me clearly state that as a governance professional, incidents and incidences mean pretty little to me compared with paradigms. What you find in the racketeering of Petrol Marketers is the same for Airport Tax Drivers, is the same for every single operator or union in the system including the man at Douglas house, and the Soldier at Akachi junction.
Everyone is there to milk and squeeze the highest arbitrage from the man next to him even if life ebbs away and bodies start dropping right next to us.

The true question is, if we naturally treat ourselves and our people in this way, inflicting maximum damage for gain, and seeking to obtain exit from the pain by passing on our pain in greater measure, what will actually change in the secessionist nation that our people clamour for? The eternally sobering question is, who will the operators of the governance of the new entity be?Where will they be imported from? What philosophy is at their core? Do they have a discernible progressive approach to leading? Have they been shown to be inflicted with empathy, which is the irreducible minimum for progressive leadership? How have they exemplified the Igbo values of Igba mbo, Egbuna ochu, Aku ruo uno, and Ikwuba aka oto, in their public dealings? What will we do with the army of young people who have stained their hands in the blood of brothers all in the name of the exigency required to obtain this our Golden Fleece?

What will happen to our constantly disappointing political leaders of Igbo extraction whose chameleonic abilities are legendary, and who can hijack just about anything to keep the system subservient to them?

All things considered, I have since come to the conclusion that the Igbo intelligentsia must begin to embrace the Biafra of Philosophy. We must begin to define Biafra in its truest and purest sense as the idea that ‘left alone, we can do better”. But then we must go beyond the mundane to understand that being left alone does not need to be physical or locational. We must like our intelligent forbears and sages of our past to understand that our people must journey, first in their minds before they journey with their legs. It is true that people can be lonely in a crowd and people can be joyful in solitude too. Nigeria can be both a burden and a blessing.

Once we begin this inquest, we will do well to be true to ourselves in accepting that even in the areas we have been ‘left alone’, we have not done better than the Nigeria of our spite. We can look at the ricketty and much vilified Nigerian constitution and still find in the concurrent and residual lists the areas where we have been “left alone” and discover that we haven’t done much being left alone. We must tell ourselves the truth that the foundational basis for our agitations have hardly been met, that our internal due diligence of legitimate leadership is not in place and that our struggle must first start with instituting Igbo centric legitimate leadership in the South East.

As we progress in the inquest, we will quickly find that we have been guilty of short term thinking and that since the days of the golden generation of the Okparas, Akanu Ibiams and Mbakwes, we have failed ourselves woefully in articulating any agenda for Igbo development other than our constant substandard politicking of cloak and dagger and high stake betrayal of our collective destiny.

We will also find that we have wasted any miraculous unified mass movements with our lack of strategy and have consistently failed to read the times like the children of Issachar of our jewish similarity. When we are not talking down our greatest opportunity, like in the case of the Mr Peter Obi of divine providence, we are distracting ourselves with a well worn but self defeating campaign of Sit at Home.

The few times we have had any critical mass of Igbo unity, we have frittered it away, chasing emotional shadows rather than taking the strategic steps to move our region forward.

Two examples lend themselves to us readily. We had Mazi Nnamdi Kanu who led what is arguably the greatest aggregation of Igbo consciousness that could easily have translated into a change of guard in Igbo political leadership and governance, since the days of Zik, Okpara and their peers. Many voices spoke about how this success could be managed strategically to mint a new dawn for our people in terms of leadership, and therefore provide us a unified platform for engaging the Nigerian state, but hey, we are not any different, from Nigeria. We completely mismanaged that opportunity of having a people based empathetic crop of legitimate governance in the South East. Rather, we are the ones today in the center of a cacophony of confused commune. One says no election in the South East when our son has a chance at the Presidency!

The second example is the extensive steps being taken by the 'Judases' of Igbo history, the traders of our patrimony, and violators of our ancient Igbo Obi in efforts to thwart the presidential movement embraced by Nigerians in backing Mr Peter Obi, by the usual suspects. These people (now appropriately dubbed “mini Amadiohas”) like the Athur Eze’s the Ihedioha’s, and the Ekweremadu’s of this world would have been retired as our representatives if we didn’t fail with the MNK movement.

Today, Obi's most vociferous opposition are persons from his own household, and once again, it is Igbos who are telling the rest of Nigeria that it is not our turn, even when people who have no turn have turned all turns to theirs.

This piece did not set out with the intent to be heavy on emotive politics, but you have to pardon me. Being Igbo is a burden. Your famed smartness often proves to be your undoing!

Back to our ring fence development. Discerning Igbos must now, therefore, prepare for a future in which our central thought will be to evolve a paradigm for Igbo advancement.
In the book, “Startup Nation” by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Israel the Jewish Nation by introspection constantly sought to turn what is intrinsic Jewish thought and attitude to work in a general way for the benefit of the new Jewish state. Take an instance, the quote “ a nation of immigrants is a nation of entrepreneurs” . It was on the basis of this thought that Israel sought the emigration of Jews of all places back into the homeland. In some cases, the nation of Israel paid to ransom monies to have Ethiopian Jews ferried back into Israel. Israel recognizes the impact of diaspora Jews in the fantastic progress the nation has made in its development.

To bring this home, the Igbo nation must understand the realities of its locational existence, the resource in its people exemplified by the cosmological truth of “Igba mbo” with its attendant expansionist rather than constricted ideology. This means that in the mind of the Igbo, a thriving locational homeland will be a good place to start but will be grossly insufficient for the full expression of his entrepreneurial capacity.

In understanding the similarities between the Igbo Nation and the Jewish nation of Israel, we must also recognize the dissimilarities. We are already part of a larger nation with our people fully diffused into it. We also within that nation, have a fairly clear locational boundary, which means we have a homeland. The competitive thought for the Igbo today is whether we have a homeland to develop or a homeland to liberate.

To be very honest, we have spent an unhealthy volume of time bellyaching about a homeland to liberate. We have described Nigeria’s federal government as a limiting chain and spread the dampening and depressing blanket thought that no progress can be made under this system.

Unfortunately, we have not shown the spirit of Biafra even in our dealings with the Nigerian construct. We have neither been examplary nor done any better than the Nigerian state. Every evil in Nigeria is doubly found in our communities.

If we truly had a “homeland to develop” mentality, we would have jealously guarded our political leadership and prevented the hijack of our states in which the worst of us lead the best of us.

If we had a homeland to develop mentality, we would start from our communities resisting the rise to prominence of people with questionable character and sources of wealth. Yet we are the ones who postulate about a pristine eldorado, which must now be secured with the force of guns and the never-ending blood of our people.

I want a developed Igbo Homeland, and I differ on the route to it. I think that every Igbo must now have a homeland mentality for starters, but that mentality must be development driven. Aku ruo uno must have an altruistic motive rather than an oppressive controlling and domineering one. Igbo land has at this Yuletide period the highest number of sirens and convoys all in an unending competition of imakwa ndi anyi bu, driving the now pliable ordinary citizen into a deppressive state, where he however prays and longs for the day when he will become the oppressor.

We must now ringfence the South East in our minds and endeavours and begin to take deliberate steps to develop it, as an example to the Nigerian construct of what is possible. In fact, this thought and approach holds the key to the development of Nigeria because the nation is sorely in need of positive direction, examples, and values.

The ringfence of my mind is not one of military defense but of political reform. The Igbos must insist on each of the opportunities to choose its local leadership that the best of us must begin to lead.

This fixation with leading Nigeria will hopefully abate with one or two terms of a president of Igbo extraction but the task of developing the south east will be the function of the political leadership and the environment they create for the entrepreneurial quests of our people.

Today, no one in his right senses will bring new business to the South East. This is sponsored by the amorphous security situation, which the political class created to further political ends.

This political leadership in the south east cannot produce the type of environment for homeland development. Yet our people will at each electoral opportunity continue to reinforce failure.

The homeland will only become great, not by war, nor by blood, but by concerted communal consensus of the five governors of the south east pressured by a critical mass of new Igbo development thinkers

I have spoken with a group of Igbo strategists who have a master plan to place rail infrastructure through and round the five south eastern states. With improved quality of political leadership will come improved quality of developmental thought. That is why every election in the South East must now be approached as a referendum. I hope you get the pun.

Our people say no election, only referendum, and I say, use this elections as a referendum for the type of leadership that should take you to the Nigerian table.

Use the elections as a referendum on the people you say are sabotaging Igbo interest! Clean your house first because that’s where charity begins.

When we have the right type of leadership in the south east, our engagements with the Nigerian construct will be more strategic, but much more than that, we can begin the journey of homeland development in such a way that resource from our diaspora community will coincide with opportunities in the homeland giving us the opportunity to show Nigeria what can be.

Other than this route, enjoy the hot air, the conflict, and avoidable blood shed!

Ebere Okonkwo is a governance expert and a public affairs analyst, and he writes from Abuja.