LEONARD LAWAL REPORTS

Millitants burlesque

2011-04-16T19:51:00.004+01:00

NIGERIA A trap for the juggernaut by Africa Confidential

2011-04-16T17:53:00.001+01:00

The governing party has taken a hit in the National Assembly but Goodluck Jonathan remains favourite to win the presidential vote

Parliamentary elections on 9 April showed that Nigerians are no longer willing to be taken for granted by the People’s Democratic Party, which has towered over the political scene for twelve years. Indeed, the PDP’s dominance of the National Assembly was the main casualty. Most observers think this a good start in moving towards greater accountability. The PDP could well lose its overall majority in the Assembly but many results will be disputed. In the 2007 polls, the PDP had won 87 of the 109 Senate seats and 263 of 360 in the House of Representatives: that will be sharply cut.

Logistical problems meant the polls had to move from 2 April; in 15 senatorial districts and 48 federal constituencies, the vote will be on 26 April. Yet the Independent National Electoral Commission emerged with credit. The European Union’s Chief Observer, Alojz Peterle, commended INEC for a job well done, as did Johnnie Carson, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.

The presidential poll is on 16 April but many who voted against the PDP in the legislative elections may still vote for PDP candidate Goodluck Jonathan, according to independent opinion polls, which forecast that the President should get about 60% of the national vote. Certainly, Jonathan will top the poll but, after a lacklustre campaign, he may not win the minimum 25% in two-thirds of the electoral districts needed to avoid a second round.

Jonathan will be strongly challenged by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Labour Party (LP) and the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the south, and by the All-Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) and Congress for Progressive Change in the north. His probable second-round opponent would be the CPC’s candidate, the former military leader Major General Muhammadu Buhari, with strong support from the ACN. Unlike his predecessors, Jonathan has so far proved willing to give INEC’s Chairman (the democracy activist Professor Attahiru Jega) the independence to do his job thoroughly.

There were last-minute talks about an ACN-CPC alliance this week, and there was some basis for agreement between Buhari and ACN candidate Nuhu Ribadu but the negotiations may prove too late in the day. The anti-corruption enthusiasm of both Ribadu and Buhari worry the northern elite such as the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, and former President Shehu Shagari, who was ousted by Buhari in a military coup in 1983.

Kaduna problems for the PDP
The PDP did well in some northern states, such as Sokoto and ANPP-governed Kano, which has long been a flashpoint for election disputes and political violence. Yet in Kaduna, from where Vice-President Namadi Sambo hails, the CPC appears to have trounced the PDP, a worrying sign for Jonathan’s support-base before the presidential vote.

President Jonathan is the frontrunner and Nigeria’s first Ijaw and Niger Delta leader. High oil prices are helping him and he has plenty of money with which to bolster support. Business magnates, keen to profit from the sale of oil blocks, are backing him, as are some foreign investors. They like power supply reform and the sovereign wealth fund, both recently passed into law. Passing the long-delayed Petroleum Industry Bill will be harder, however, given the PDP’s weakness in the Assembly. Strong US and British endorsement of Jonathan in May 2010 has weakened over the past year, as progress on greater accountability and economic reform has faltered.

The power behind the throne was another ex-President, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo. He hails from Ota in Ogun State in the Yoruba-dominated south-west, where economic and demographic power will concentrate in coming decades. In the 18 districts of the six south-western states, the PDP held on to just one senatorial seat. Indeed, Obasanjo’s daughter, Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, failed in her bid in Ogun State to get into the Senate in PDP colours amid bitterness from the party’s Gbenga Daniel faction there. The sweeping defeat of the PDP in the south-west could weaken Obasanjo’s influence over the party, yet he will still keep his authority as a trusted advisor to Jonathan on foreign policy and military matters.

For the south-west, the new king-maker is Obasanjo’s sworn enemy, Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ACN. Tinubu, who had a chequered career as a businessman in the US, is a sworn enemy of Obasanjo and inspires loathing and respect in almost equal measure. Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola of Lagos State is highly rated for his work there but has also had differences with Tinubu. Sweeping victories for the ACN in the south-west challenge the PDP seriously but it will struggle to present itself as a national party. That seemed to be the logic behind selecting Ribadu, from the north-west, as ACN presidential candidate, with his running mate from Lagos, tycoon and democracy campaigner Tajudeen Afolabi (‘Fola’) Adeola.

Even after a year in office, Jonathan is yet to acquire the presidential gravitas that would make it easier to deal with Nigeria’s insistent and well resourced vested interests. His emergence as presidential candidate for the PDP juggernaut and his defeat en route of four rich and powerful northern contenders suggested that many had underestimated him. Nevertheless, he is one of the least experienced politicians to have held the presidency: for some, his lack of status as a professional politician may be part of his attraction, for others it may conjure a vision of a naive or malleable figure who won’t be able to stand up to powerful political and business lobbyists.Whoever wins the presidential vote will face strong lobbying by groups such as the Arewa Consultative Forum in the north and the South-South political organisations under the tutelage of veteran campaigner Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, from the Niger Delta, whose access to some of the militants has helped Jonathan to subdue some of the festering unrest in Nigeria’s main oil-producing region.

A big question is whether the winner will follow the example of Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the former military head of state who presided over the enlightened ‘no victor, no vanquished’ policy after the civil war in 1967-70 and appointed a cabinet of the most able, possibly future presidential, politicians, alongside technocrats. On all sides, that would mean a president who was prepared to break with precedent and not allocate the key ministerial portfolios such as petroleum, works and housing, water resources and internal affairs to close political and business associates.

IBB and OBJ fear revenge
Former leaders such as Ibrahim Babangida and Obasanjo will seek to win over the successful candidate to ensure they are not called to account. Of the two leading candidates, Buhari looks more likely than Jonathan to delve into allegations of impropriety. Babangida overthrew Buhari in a coup in 1985 and Buhari believed Obasanjo had cheated him of victory in successive elections.

The new president will have to balance such imperatives as dealing with demands for justice and accountability along with pressure for economic reform. After the election, there will be growing pressure for the presidency to cut state patronage and to push ahead with critical reforms in the oil industry and financial services. A key partner here will be the radical Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, with whom all the candidates say they want to work. Already Mallam Sanusi is speaking of a second round of sweeping reform in the banking system; the last round in August 2009 resulted in the sacking of six bank chief executives.

Cleaning up the political system may prove tougher still. The habits of rigging, vote-buying and intimidation still abound but pressure from the ballot box should make the PDP more amenable to change. Nigerians are generally fed up with the party and a more aware and vocal civil society, aided by technology, could keep the excesses of the politicians in check.

All the same, says a leading politician, ‘blood will flow’. In the south-east, Akwa Ibom and Delta states are vulnerable, with police clamping down hard on activists. The heated election competition has thrown up dangerous operators such as Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State. During the governorship electoral rerun in Delta State, Chief Great Ogboru was leading until polling officers in Koko, near Warri, were forced at gunpoint to thumbprint extra ballots.

There were disturbances and ballot-snatching in the Delta, bombings in the outskirts of the federal capital, which left 13 people dead in Suleja, Niger State, and two bombings in Maiduguri, Borno State, home of the Boko Haram sect of Islamist radicals. Yet even after the initial problems that caused the postponement of the poll, INEC Chairman Jega looked heroic for organising what many believe to be credible National Assembly elections. The comparison starts with a low base with the 2007 elections, when only 20% of votes are believed to have been counted and less than a fifth of the names on the electoral register were genuine.

A big loss for the PDP was that of Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker of the House, in Abeokuta, Ogun State. Governor of Abia (and publisher of The Sun newspaper) Orji Uzor Kalu lost the Abia North senatorial constituency to the incumbent, Uche Chukwumerije. Maryam Yar’Adua, daughter of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, lost her House of Representatives contest for Katsina to the CPC candidate, Mohammed Tukur.

For political insiders in Abuja, developments after the elections could see a trade-off between political reform and democratic freedom on one hand and the sense of a strong, national, political direction from the centre. The devolution of power, helped by four years of a relatively weak presidency and more strident national legislators and state governors, has been happening for much of the past decade. This means a more pluralistic and less predictable polity: it will also accelerate the weakening of the PDP’s national muscle. For those business people who have attached their banners to the PDP, there may be efforts to build new relations with other parties. Foreign companies which had lobbied the PDP will have to handle the new government with more sophistication.

The growth of the ACN in the south-west, the CPC and ANPP in the north, the LP in the south-centre and the APGA in the south-east will weaken the PDP nationally but open up new avenues into politics for the non-PDP elites. Under the evolving electoral picture, the south-west will become once more an enclave of regional opposition, since the ACN and LP swept the board there, far into mid-Delta. The region had previously voted PDP because Obasanjo was one of its own. That might reduce the region’s muscle at the federal centre but some argue that Lagos and Ondo State are rich and can carry the other south-western states along. The revenue base of Lagos alone is bigger than that of ten northern states put together.

Bombings and political instability continue in the Middle Belt and the north-east, as well as the Delta. None of the bombers has been caught since Jonathan became President and he may not be able to rectify that. The President visited the hospitals for photo-opportunities with Suleja bombing victims but there are worries about the police’s lack of capacity to make progress with the investigations.

In Maiduguri, two bombings on the same day targeted INEC collation centres and Boko Haram is believed to have links with local politicians. The bombings in the north could continue over the next two weeks of elections and even after the presidential inauguration. A raft of issues infuriate the militants: the conservative elite feels cheated by the unresolved north-south issues in the PDP and the talakawa (working people) face higher prices, lower wages and rising unemployment, amid often bitter disputes over land.

Those grievances are repeated in the Middle Belt in confrontations in states such as Plateau and Benue, with added polarisation between Christian and Islamic fundamentalist sects and opportunist politicians seeking to exploit the divides.

Other parties and their candidates are manoeuvring for position. Ndutimi Alaibe, formerly of the PDP and former Special Advisor on the Niger Delta, is now in the LP and running for the governorship of Bayelsa State, Jonathan’s home ground. He joined the LP less than seven months ago, when the PDP found it awkward to dump Governor Timipre Sylva. Some believe that if Jonathan is elected, he will welcome Alaibe back into the PDP family. Such scenarios may unfold in many areas where the PDP has lost ground. If Jonathan wins, politicians in smaller parties will defect to his PDP. No fewer than 45 parties have endorsed him for president.

The holding of this election is the first step towards reintegrating the people of the oil-rich Delta into mainstream politics since the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995 and the start of militant insurgency there. Now Jonathan, one of their own, is set to win a presidential election.

Nigerians have a new bounce in their step as they realise that their votes actually count, giving credibility to the democratic process – and keeping the military in their barracks for now. However, Nigeria’s complexities and deep social inequities mean that no one, least of all the victors after the current round of elections, can afford to be complacent.

LEONARD LAWAL REPORTS: Stop sending girls to Europe to be sexually used and abused

2011-04-14T15:55:00.000+01:00

LEONARD LAWAL REPORTS: Stop sending girls to Europe to be sexually used and abused

Stop sending girls to Europe to be sexually used and abused

2011-04-14T15:37:00.002+01:00

Friday, 08 April 2011 09:02

It is shameful to see how families in Nigeria collude voluntarily in a new slavery

Barcelona August 2002: A long, lonely, lingering illness in a Spanish hospital, a once beautiful young body, wasted and emaciated by contagious diseases, a recent past that had included horrific sexual mutilation of her genital and anal areas and finally, death alone one morning and burial by strangers in an unmarked mass paupers grave on the outskirts of Barcelona. This was the fate of one of the hundreds of young Nigerian girls who have flocked to this part of Spain over the last 10 years.

Who was this young woman? Why did an educated 23 year old Nigerian woman end her too short life in this manner? As I sat, looking at the pitifully few personal belongings the hospital handed me - a pair of small silver earrings, two cuddly toys: a pink elephant and a grey dog, I wondered. She was, of course, someone’s daughter and granddaughter. Surely also, someone’s sister, cousin, aunt or niece. She would have had friends and schoolmates. Was she mourned? Did those who encouraged her to come to Europe care that she is dead? Or have we become so dehumanised that the death of one of our children, our relatives, our friends, as long as it happens in Europe, happens in the struggle to make a living, is now acceptable?

What did I know of her? She had been admitted to the hospital six weeks before, suffering from Tubercular Meningitis. When I was contacted by the hospital and went to see her for the first time, she was painfully thin, emaciated and so weak that I had spent a large portion of the time scratching her head and moving her legs to a more comfortable position, because her muscles were so wasted she could not move any of her limbs. Her eyes were always unfocused – seeing into a distance that I couldn’t begin to understand or reach. She cried out often that she just wanted to die. She was confused and disoriented.

Sometimes her name was J, another, E and then again, M. She couldn’t say where she had been living before she was brought to the hospital, or remember phone numbers of any friends or the people she had been living with. She spoke sometimes in English and sometimes in Bini. She couldn’t remember or wouldn’t give the address of her family in Nigeria. The hospital was concerned that someone so ill appeared to be so alone and were hoping I could help to find some family or friends who would visit her.

I returned a few times with some Jollof rice and fruits like mango and pawpaw. Eventually, the hospital told me she was cured of the illness and should be moved to a rehabilitation centre to undergo physiotherapy to help her regain use of her limbs and build up her strength. She was beginning to have more confidence in me and told me her surname and the secondary school she had attended in Benin City. With this information, I contacted our Embassy in Madrid, hoping they would have the resources to put an announcement in a newspaper in Benin, so her family could be informed. But they seemed to be inundated with similar cases and were impatient: “How did she come to Spain? How can a 23 year old not know her own address in Nigeria? Was she registered with us? Tell the hospital to contact the Ambassador.”

The last time I saw her, she promised that the next time I came she would tell me more about herself and her story of how she came to be here, so I hoped I would be able to make contact with her family myself.

But here was to be no next time. As I was preparing some more food to take to her one morning, the hospital Social Services telephoned. “We’re very sorry, but X died about an hour ago. Can you come to the hospital to see the doctor and help with the paper work?” I saw the doctor who told me they would have to do an autopsy because they really did not know why she died. She was cured of the Meningitis and they were planning to discharge her once they had found a centre that would accept her. This was when I learnt of the terrible sexual mutilation she had suffered.

So why did she die? Had she been so abused and degraded that she had lost the will to live?

I have to admit I am angry. I am extremely angry with those in Nigeria, especially in the Benin area, where the majority of young women walking the streets of Barcelona come from (some who appear to be as young as 13). Do not pretend you do not know that when you send your daughter, your sister, your niece to Europe, you are sending them to be sexually used and abused. Do not be fooled by talk of training in hairdressing or fashion design. There is no training other than learning to say the price for sex in Spanish.

It is shameful to see how families in Nigeria are now colluding voluntarily in a new slavery. The worst kind of slavery - sending young women to be the sexual slaves of the same people who enslaved our ancestors all those years ago.

What a waste of the future of Nigeria. This young woman is not the only one, nor the first. Many die in the desert on their way here. Others die as she did, in a hospital, like chickens, with no names, having been given all kinds of diseases by the men who pay them about the price of a drink and a packet of cigarettes to have the freedom to do all kinds of practices their wives or girlfriends would not condone. Is this why you had children? Was it for this that you sent your daughters to school?

Perhaps even worse is the unbelievable, degrading type of prostitution they are forced into. They are not even worth the price of a room in the cheapest hotel. Not even worth finding somewhere slightly private or hidden from view. No, men have sex with them in full view of anyone on Barcelona’s most iconic street, Las Ramblas. Men simply drop their trousers and underwear for quick oral or full-on sex. See some terrible, degrading and distressing images here:
http://www.elpais.com/fotogaleria/Prostitucion/calles/Barcelona/elpgal/20090831elpepunac_2/Zes/4

The police have responded recently to resident complaints and now many of these young women are forced to ply their trade outside towns, on the highways. They sit all day on white plastic chairs waiting for passing motorists or long-distance lorry drivers to stop and take them by the side of the road – again in full view.

It takes great courage for these young women to say NO, to resist being forced into this sexual slavery perpetuated by their own people. Many do believe in the power of Juju and are told that a Juju spell has been put on them and so terrible things will happen to themselves or members of their family if they refuse to be prostituted.

Three years ago, I met another young woman, J, who refused to be intimidated and managed to have herself accepted as a refugee. I was able to help her with a six month apprenticeship in a hair salon. During that time she told me that the people who had brought her here were still trying to force her into prostitution to repay the $60,000 they insisted she owed them. They threatened to kill a member of her family in Benin if she continued to refuse. Sometime later, her father was murdered on his way back from his farm, by persons unknown. Brave J went to the police believing her traffickers were responsible. Her apprenticeship finished and I lost touch with her, but a year later I was summoned to court to give evidence on what I knew. The case continues as I have now been recalled to court next month, as a witness against two named people, F.O and M.J. However, the brave young woman herself has disappeared.......

Let me tell you how it works. A sexual pyramid system has been created. Your daughter or your sister is brought here. She already owes money to the mafia that made the arrangements. Once here, she finds that what she earns is not enough to live on and to pay the mafia that brought her. So she is encouraged to find friends who also want to come to Europe. She is promised a small commission for putting friends in contact with the mafia who will then bring them to Europe. Her friends, having to pay her commission and the mafia, find that they also can’t make enough money, so they try to get more friends to come, in order to also earn some commission.... And so the pyramid is created. Meanwhile, with all of this, the market becomes saturated so the price of each sexual service goes down - your daughter needs to work harder, more often. To attract customers, your daughter has to offer either more or more way- out practices, or provide them for less money. Who benefits? Not your daughters, but the men who can demand more sex for less money and the mafia who can demand more money for less ultimate income.

Back to the young woman who died. As I began to get to know her, I saw that as she got stronger, there was a certain strength and determination in her eyes and voice as she expressed frustration when she wasn’t understood; there was a beauty in her face the few times she smiled. She was a young woman who, in another era, could have contributed to Nigeria economically, politically, socially. Although I didn’t really know her, I mourn her passing and the waste of her life and of all the others. Do you?

Judi Oshowole

Lagos law says :Wear crash helmet

2010-04-15T09:20:00.002+01:00

2009-10-14T20:00:00.001+01:00

2009-09-12T20:24:00.001+01:00

2009-09-12T19:57:00.002+01:00

Lagos Dog Day Afternoon 2

2009-08-15T15:18:00.003+01:00

sunny..sunny .. Lagos afternoon …

Lagos dog day afternoon

2009-08-15T13:40:00.004+01:00

Good old Lagos Cathedral..

A 12 year old "okada","alalo" rider in Lagos..

Maybe he should be in school..

Some agreed we don't need more Prof .Soyinka's .maybe more of ..this fare monger..

Democracy in trouble...Guinea Bisau,Guinea ,Mauritania,Madagascar...........

2009-04-03T20:38:00.011+01:00

A Cönakry street after Dadis Camara's coup d'etat pic by Leonard Lawal

"Man is capable of justice, hence democracy is possible; but man is inclined to injustice, therefore democracy is necessary". - Reinhold Niebuhr

or maybe we just want food on our table first or the Chinese way or whatever.......

..........Do you think the guy in the picture is a hero or he didnt pay for a risk assessment consulting.........or just a fool.......

Alexis de Tocqueville ,Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and President Obama

2009-04-03T20:20:00.002+01:00

::::::::::::::::::remember the passage from Alexis de Tocqueville that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev cited in his Monday oped in The Post, written in anticipation of today’s meeting with President Obama. Now a friend has helpfully sent me the passage — which both confirms Medvedev’s account and explains why he may not have wanted to quote it in full.
Here’s what Medvedev said:
“Long ago, Alexis de Tocqueville predicted a great future for our two nations. So far, each country has tried to prove the truth of those words to itself and the world by acting on its own. I firmly believe that at this turn of history, we should work together.”
In “Democracy in America,” de Tocqueville did, indeed, single out America and Russia as “marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.” But he also saw them rising in very different ways, with this being the starkest distinction: “The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude.”
I do not believe any nation’s future is absolutely determined by its past, nor by its culture. I think Russia will be a democracy someday. But with today’s presidential meeting in London coming just hours after the brutal beating in Moscow of yet another human rights activist, the courageous Lev Ponomaryov, 67, it is hard not to think that de Tocqueville was on to something 170 years ago. And despite Obama’s hope that today’s meeting represented “the beginning of new progress” in US-Russia relations, there’s no question that the potential for progress is inhibited by Russia’s steady regression from its democratic reforms of the 1990s.
Here, for you de Tocqueville buffs, is his passage on the United States and Russia:
“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and while the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.
“All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path to which no limit can be perceived. The American struggles against the obstacles that nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained by the plowshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”

Nigerian banks have gone global, now what?

2009-03-12T10:50:00.000+01:00

Nigerian banks have gone global, now what?
By Leonard Lawal
Published in PUNCH : Friday, 8 Aug 2008
It was just four years ago this June, when banking in Nigeria was still basically a mom and pop boutique operation, with a maximum “big man” who had leveraged on his close contacts in the corridors of power to secure himself a position as the chairman of the bank’s board. He probably never run a business before; he might as well be a brain surgeon, but he got himself a license to run a bank all the same.
Then we had 89 banks whose combined total assets base were less than the total asset base of South Africa’s Amalgamated Bank of South Africa; but after recapitalisation which saw the 89 banks morphing into 24 through mergers, acquisitions and outright liquidation, Nigerian banks have suddenly gone global. And investors, as usual, are following the money. Many foreign banking behemoths are already circling a couple of Nigerian banks for dinner.
The banking consolidation, one of the 13-point agenda for change in the Nigerian banking policies enunciated by Chukwuma Soludo, a university don and the Central Bank Governor, was brought forth to redress the challenges of low capital base, to solve the recurring problems of distresses, failures and to prep up the banks for global challenges in a post new economy world.
Soludo saw Malaysia and South African central banking as role models, and the last regime bought into this vision.
Largely, it seems to have been successful, if you can cash money from the nearest ATM on a Friday night; its genuine progress, if you still remember where we were prior to this.
Further to the post- consolidation gold rush, Nigerian banks had done more deals than the man on the moon, with BNP Pari bas, Morgan Stanley, Fortis Investment, Bank of China, one of the largest banks in the world and with the healthy ratings by Fitch. But then can she fly?
Their total assets base had gone up by over 1000%; our banks had taken over the West Coast of Africa, from Ghana to Gambia, and some are listed on London Stock Exchange, though some Pollyanna analysts had opined that banking ethics are not one of their strongest points.
I asked Bayode Adeogun, a banker with one of the big five banks (regarding the size of our banks, the numbers keep changing as audits reports of these banks change faster than we can keep up with).
“Nigerian banks have come of age; even those of us who can be considered industry insiders never believed the consolidation can be this successful. We are awash with funds to do mega deals and big ticket transactions, though that in itself had posed bigger challenges,” he said.
To understand the scale of this particular transaction and the new mindset in the Nigerian banking sector which has become extremely bullish and proactive, Nigeria’s population of 140 million people can count on only 15 million people with a bank account, which is just a little over 10 percent of the population. Most of the savings are still being stuffed in old pillow cases. Therefore there is great potential for tremendous growth in the sector.
Nigerian banks growth is also being fueled by runaway oil prices as the Nigerian government oil receipts grow. Hitherto, foreign investment banks had managed our foreign reserves, but Nigerian home-grown banks are doing that now. Our 24 banks are among the highest performing stocks in the world last year.
Early this year in February, Afribank Nigeria Plc, one of the leading financial institutions, earned N11.04bn profit before tax in its third quarter ending December 2007. That’s some 207 per cent increase in profit from the N3.59bn posted the year before. She also earned significant increases in other parameters. She grew by 82 percent from N122.72bn to N223.10bn.
Each and every one of the banks are recording and posting amazing profits, but analysts said that “these figures are intriguing,” as the real sector such as the manufacturing sector and every sector of the economy are posting record losses.
Though the West also had tightened their anti-money laundering operations so that thieving politicians are forced to keep their loot at home under various aliases, the recent sanctions of three of our top banks in the United Kingdom for money laundering related crimes confirmed that old habits do really die hard.
Pre-consolidation Nigerian banks cut their teeth on round tripping (buying up foreign exchange at discounted official prices and selling at premium in black market) during the military era. They have also employed and poached slew of top talents from western financial institutions to executive positions. A leading Nigerian bank recently advertised for Chinese speaking Nigerians as they forged eastward. Analysts who are paid to worry about these things are doing just that. “Can the momentum be sustained?” they asked.
One of the major concerns in the West is that our banks may rush into complex retail banking deals without adequately understanding the fundamentals. Even some analysts question the jumbo profits of the banks against the prevailing Nigerian economic fundamentals. Soludo thinks it’s no big deal. He said, “returns on investment in the banking industry were relatively small, compared to the funds invested in the industry.”
For its size, Nigeria is still largely underbanked; even the symbol of Nigerian banking emergence on global scale like the ATM is still only deployed in Lagos and a few cities. It’s still a novelty.
Other schools of thought claimed that the performances are “a bubble,” especially in more bearish circles; and there are unsubstantiated reports of our banks’ involvement in high-risk margin lending–– meaning lending money to other institutions or individuals for stock market speculations; while they are thought not to be strong enough to withstand external unpredictables like a sharp drop in oil prices or serious political instability.
Whatever, may be you should buy (into) Nigerian banks now; this may be a long rally.
Lawal, an analyst, lives in Lagos.

Guinean diaspora to meet junta in Conakry

2009-01-06T17:43:00.000+01:00

Paris, France - The Coordination of the Guinean Associations of France (CAGF) will February, send a delegation to Conakry to meet the military junta which took over 23 December after the death of President Lansana Conté, a representative of the Guineans living in France, Cissé Campell told PANA Monday."We've just decided to send, around 15 February, a seven-people delegation to Conakry, to meet Head of State Moussa Dadis Camara and Prime Minister Kabinet Komara. Because this time, we wish to bring our contribution to the process in our country," said Campell, president of CAGF, a grouping of about 150 Guinean associations.

Over 100 Guineans last weekend met in Paris to appraise the political situation created by the take over of the National Council of Democracy and Development (CNDD)."The participants globally welcomed the army's takeover. We must even recognise that this coup did not come as a surprise. No organised force could aspire to power after the death of Lansana Conté," said the president of CAGF.The head of the military junta has invited the political parties and the civil society to support the transition which will end by the holding of general free and democratic elections."As it's our country, we want to participate actively in its future. We put our expertise at the disposal of the junta. We'll go and meet the soldiers with a memorandum that will specify the position of the diaspora about each of the issues to be discussed," Campell said.

Lekki :Nigeria most prized real estate development

2008-12-04T17:33:00.000+01:00

Dear All,

Though not in the trade myself ,alas i am a hack,but this just came in .

A detached duplex with a servant quarters at the back for Madam's retinue of flacks.

Asking Price:Call.

Rgds,

Leo

Obama"s family members from Kenya enroute to Washington DC early for the inauguration

2008-11-13T19:54:00.000+01:00

Benin -Sagamu Highway to Hell

2008-09-13T13:38:00.000+01:00

2008-06-06T14:30:00.000+01:00

2008-06-06T14:20:00.000+01:00

Analysis: Nigerian militants plan attack

2008-06-06T14:02:00.000+01:00

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes onlyby Carmen GentileAbuja, Nigeria (UPI) Jun 01, 2008Nigeria's leading militant group warned that it is planning a full-scale attack on military bases and petroleum production centers in the oil-rich Niger Delta to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the president's inauguration.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said that it would use car bombings and other forms of terror Thursday, marking one full year in office for President Umaru Yar'Adua.
"To commemorate the one year of failure by the government of Umaru Yar'Adua, MEND will carry out a string of deadly attacks and car bombings," the group said in a statement e-mailed to media outlets.
The advance warning, according to the group's statement, was to ensure that civilians avoid milling around oil pipelines so as to "minimize civilian loss of life."
Military officials in the delta said they are ready for a major assault by MEND, and foreign oil firms operating in the region said they would bolster their security as well.
Efforts by the Nigerian president to reach out to the militants, who are calling for a more equitable distribution of oil wealth among the nation's poor, have received mixed reviews over the last year.
Soon after his May 29, 2007, inauguration, Yar'Adua reached out to the militants and called for a truce, during which he promised to work on the problems plaguing the impoverished delta.
However, MEND and other armed groups soon lost patience with the president and waged an assault on the de facto capital of the delta, Port Harcourt, in September.
Since then, several efforts to broker a peace deal with the militants have been largely short-lived and ineffective, with attacks on oil and gas installations and pipelines increasing in recent months.
Nigeria, Africa's No. 1 oil producer, has pumped more than $300 billion worth of crude over the last three decades from the southern delta states, according to estimates. High unemployment in the delta, environmental degradation due to oil and gas extraction, and a lack of basic resources such as fresh water and electricity have angered the region's youth, who have taken up arms, many times supplied by political leaders, and formed militant groups and local gangs.
Despite the continuing unrest, there have been some positive reviews of Yar'Adua's first year in office.
"There is increasingly political stability. We are seeing an emphasis on rule of law and due process, because democracy and rule of law go together. It is very important," Jerry Gana, a leading member of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, said earlier this week.
Gana did note, though, that the Yar'Adua administration still needed to improve social services like water and power supplies in the delta and throughout Nigeria.
But others have less than glowing reviews for the first year of Yar'Adua's presidency.
"Our assessment of the one year of the Yar'Adua presidency is that we are still waiting for him to start," said Victor Umeh, national chairman of the opposition All Progressives Grand Alliance.
"We have not seen the major policy shift that has been geared toward alleviating the sufferings of the ordinary Nigerian."
Criticism aside, Yar'Adua did surprise a number of Nigerians last week when his administration announced it intends to employ the very same militants often blamed for attacks on oil installations in the Niger Delta to guard the region's oil pipelines.
In a surprising and certainly controversial move, defense officials said they would negotiate a possible protection agreement with militants.
"We will engage them to police oil pipelines, but they must first form themselves into limited liability companies for us to discuss with them," Nigerian Defense Minister Yayale Ahmed told federal lawmakers earlier this week.
The initiative, said Yayale, not only would help curtail attacks on oil installations in the delta carried out by armed groups, including rival militants, but also would prevent foreign oil companies from illegally "bunkering," or tapping into rival oil reserves.
"This will check the activities of even oil companies who cleverly engage in oil bunkering. We must fight criminality wherever it exists," the minister said.
Whether that proves true, Nigerian leaders will soon find out.

Big energy consumers to gather in Japan as oil prices soar

2008-06-06T13:38:00.000+01:00

June 5, 2008Eleven nations that guzzle nearly two thirds of the world's energy will hold talks in northern Japan this weekend, seeking ways to secure enough supply and reduce consumption as oil prices hit record highs.
The June 7-8 ministerial meeting in Aomori, some 600 kilometres (370 miles) north of Tokyo, brings together China, India, South Korea, and the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations.
Russia is the only big energy supplier among the 11 countries, whose total demand accounts for some 65 percent of what the world's needs, according to data by the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA).
Oil prices reached record peaks of 135.14 dollars a barrel in London and 135.09 dollars in New York on May 22, soaring five-fold since 2003 amid turbulence in the Middle East and rising demand in emerging economies.
The Aomori meeting will start Saturday with talks among five nations which consume half of the world energy -- the United States and Asia's largest economies of Japan, China, India and South Korea.
"As crude oil prices continue to rise abnormally, it will be an important opportunity to discuss how we should cope with the situation with a shared sense of crisis," Japan's industry minister Akira Amari said this week.
The five-nation meeting will discuss mainly "energy security," he told reporters.
Climate change will also be on the agenda for the 11 countries, which together release 65 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming.
The climate will be a major issue when the leaders of the G8 hold a summit from July 7 to 9 in Japan's northern resort of Toyako.
A senior government official said that Japan, as the host of this weekend's meeting, hoped to encourage greater IEA cooperation with China and India, which both lag behind in emergency oil reserves despite growing consumption.
The official also said Japan hoped the meeting will note the importance of countries setting oil prices based on markets, rather than lowering them with subsidies.
"Developing countries such as China and India have been giving subsidies, which doesn't send a message of energy-saving and burdens their state coffers," the official said, requesting anonymity.
India's government on Wednesday hiked fuel prices after its state-run oil companies said they had been hit hard by the soaring global prices while having to sell fuels at heavily discounted prices.
The G8 energy ministers' meeting is set for Sunday, which will be followed by another round of talks later in the day with participation by China, India and South Korea.
The G8 groups Britain, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Besides energy security, the agenda at the 11-nation meeting will also include an initiative for international cooperation on energy saving and developing clean energy.
Japan, Europe and the United States have been discussing creating an "International Partnership for Cooperation on Efficient Energy" as a framework for exchanging information on energy-saving practices.
Amari earlier this month said that he wanted oil producers to share in the sense of crisis.
He voiced hope that "oil-producing countries not take an easy-going stance that the higher the prices are the higher their revenue is."
The meeting comes on the heels of a high-level summit in Rome on addressing rising food prices, which have triggered riots in some countries and which experts blame in part on higher energy costs and the growing reliance on biofuels

FARIDA WAZIRI TO PROBE THE GOVERNMENT AND FIGHT CORRUPTION

2008-06-06T13:28:00.000+01:00

WAZIRI TO SENATE: I WILL PROBE THE GOVERNMENT AND FIGHT CORRUPTION
Presidential nominee for the office of the acting Chairman of Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, EFCC Mrs. Farida Waziri has pledged that “there will be no sacred cows in the fight against corruption” during her tenure.
The retired Assistant Inspector-General of Police stated this Wednesday, when she answered questions from members of the Senate Committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes, who screened her today in Abuja.
Mrs. Waziri said that if confirmed by the Senate, she would focus on government ministries, agencies and the local government areas to ''nib corruption in the bud''.
“We will prevent our money from being misappropriated. We will start by preventing crime but when we fail, we will go into prosecution,” she said.
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Waziri said that she would work within the ambit of the law and would consult widely both locally and internationally in order to fight corruption in all its ramifications.
"We are not the ones to prove guilt but the court of law. We will work within the ambits of the law and God will help us never to step on innocent toes,'' she said.
“EFCC under me will never allow the pull-me-down syndrome. We will be transparent and work in accordance with the law.”
She said that she would set up a Monitoring/Intelligence Unit where officers would be trained to nib corruption and other crimes in the bud.
“The monitoring agents would go round to get information. We are going to go on a campaign to sensitise Nigerians on the need to fight corruption,'' she said.
She also commended the former EFCC Chairman, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, noting that the commission under him was a success story.
Other members of the commission also screened by the committee included Mr. Basil Anagoh, Mr. Paul Ogbole, Mr. Banjo Olaniyi, Alhaji Mohammed Jibo and Mr. Emmanuel Akomaye.
The committee is expected to submit the report of the screening to the Senate on Thursday.

Online scams create "Yahoo! millionaires" in Lagos

2008-05-01T15:35:00.000+01:00

Online scams create "Yahoo! millionaires"
In Lagos, where scamming is an art, the quickest path to wealth for the cyber-generation runs through a computer screen.

By Leonard Lawal, FORTUNE
June 1, 2006: 9:43 AM EDT
(FORTUNE Magazine) - Akin is, like many things in cyberspace, an alias. In real life he's 14. He wears Adidas sneakers, a Rolex Submariner watch, and a kilo of gold around his neck.
Akin, who lives in Lagos, is one of a new generation of entrepreneurs that has emerged in this city of 15 million, Nigeria's largest. His mother makes $30 a month as a cleaner, his father about the same hustling at bus stations. But Akin has made it big working long days at Internet cafes and is now the main provider for his family and legions of relatives.

Call him a "Yahoo! millionaire."
Akin buys things online - laptops, BlackBerries, cameras, flat-screen TVs - using stolen credit cards and aliases. He has the loot shipped via FedEx or DHL to safe houses in Europe, where it is received by friends, then shipped on to Lagos to be sold on the black market. (He figures Americans are too smart to sell a camera on eBay to a buyer with an address in Nigeria.)
Akin's main office is an Internet cafe in the Ikeja section of Lagos. He spends up to ten hours a day there, seven days a week, huddled over one of 50 computers, working his scams.
And he's not alone: The cafe is crowded most of the time with other teenagers, like Akin, working for a "chairman" who buys the computer time and hires them to extract e-mail addresses and credit card information from the thin air of cyberspace. Akin's chairman, who is computer illiterate, gets a 60 percent cut and reserves another 20 percent to pay off law enforcement officials who come around or teachers who complain when the boys cut school. That still puts plenty of cash in Akin's pocket.
A sign at the door of the cafe reads, WE DO NOT TOLERATE SCAMS IN THIS PLACE. DO NOT USE E-MAIL EXTRACTORS OR SEND MULTIPLE MAILS OR HACK CREDIT CARDS. YOU WILL BE HANDED OVER TO THE POLICE. NO 419 ACTIVITY IN THIS CAFE. The sign is a joke; 419 activity, which refers to the section of the Nigerian law dealing with obtaining things by trickery, is a national pastime. There are no coherent laws relating to e-scams, the police are mostly computer illiterate, and penalties for financial crimes are light.
No penalties for breaking the law
"The deterrent factor is not there at all," says Thomas Oli, a Lagos lawyer, citing the case of a former police inspector general who was convicted of stealing more than $100 million and got only six months in jail.
"What do you want me to do?" Akin asks in pidgin English, explaining why he turned to a life of Internet crime. "It is my God-given talent. Our politicians, they do their own; me, I'm doing my own. I feed my family - my sister, my mother, my popsie. Man must survive."
The scams perpetrated by Akin and his comrades are many and varied: moneygram interceptions, Western Union hijackings, check laundering, identity theft, and outright begging, with tall tales of dying relatives and large sums of money in search of safe haven. One popular online fraud often practiced by women (or boys pretending to be women) involves separating lonely men from their money.
Attempts to speak to government officials about Internet crime were futile. They all claimed ignorance of such scams; some laughed it off as Western propaganda.
But last November the Economic Fraud and Financial Crimes Commission won a high-profile case that had dragged on for years against Emmanuel Nwude, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years for bilking a Brazilian bank out of $242 million using an Internet scam involving phony bank drafts. The commission is also pursuing a case against 419 kingpin Fred Ajudua, a lawyer and businessman accused of using the Internet to steal $1 million from a victim in Germany.
Some officials, who asked not be identified, said young people are drawn to Internet crime as a way of getting back at a society that has no plans for them. Others see it as a form of reparation for the sins of the West.
Or as Akin puts it, "White people are too gullible. They are rich, and whatever I gyp them out of is small change to them."
Editor's note: The term "Yahoo Millionaire" is frequently used by scammers in Nigeria. They are not affiliated in any way with Yahoo! the company.

A Lagos Bank

2008-01-01T10:22:00.000+01:00

Pictures from Nigeria :Oil-rich Niger river delta

2007-12-30T13:14:00.000+01:00

Another gas pieline explosion...

Earth in balance..um

Drying casava by with the great benevolence of gas flares...community spirit at her most charming

A farmer in the oil rich niger delta near a ruptured pipeline.......

LAGOS UNPLUGGED

2007-11-27T16:57:00.000+01:00

LAGOS:THE AFGHANISTAN NEXT DOOR

Leonard Lawal

My employ is as a hack with a major foreign media .
I get to meet many foreigners both online and otherwise.
They often asked me"where do you live?"
Depending on the time of the day ,the person asking and if i had had a tiff with Charity,my other half
that day.
I may say Lagos,Nigeria but most time i say somewhere in Kabul as in Afghanistan .
Violence and Afghanistan and the Green Zone in Baghadad of my lavender nostalgias are Mark Knofpler in guitar harmony.

But what about the forgotten violence of Lagos,Nigeriia?.
14 million people.
25 traffic lights.
200MW of electricity.
15 kilometers of filth।

Lekki Pennisular।Lekki Corridor.ShopRite.Chevron Texaco building .Exxon Mobil regional headquarter.
Where three -wheeler bajaj tricyle take a one-way street at 120mkp with one eyed driver.

Where Richard Ogunmakin,CEO of Velosis Supritended,an American oil servicing company was shot dead.
A bank robbery every tuesday after noon.
Armed Robbery?
A needless population control of the most violent type.
Expats move about in armoured convoys.Think again Kabul.

Local bigwigs owned their own armies.
The "jirga loya" is a money sharing ceremony of the most solem kind.
A ritual of a thousand years from blue bloodlines of the commercial recklessness of our republic.

Lagos is Oshodi in dog day after noon and New York in 1800
Leonard Lawal .

...................

Writers’ delight: Ekiti is still miles off Times Square.

2007-08-31T12:36:00.000+01:00

Writers’ delight: Ekiti is still miles off Times Square.

The first Americans I met were Gwendolyn Brooks: “we jazz June we die soon”,Mark Twain,Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou and other writers that I have no clues as to what they were really up to .

I was seven and had completed Mary Lamb’s Shakespeare.

Years later as an undergraduate in MBA 201 class, I was lost for good in dull dynamics of basic book keeping; I sincerely believed I was in Dante’s inferno.

I didn’t quit but found freedom in the confines of the mammoth library with her tomes of my regular companions like Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and other American classics.

I bought novels, cheap two a cent drivels, hard reads and comics.

I read them all, Times, Fortune, Newsweek, GQ, Esquire, I don’t know why Ronald Reagan was shot, but it was all over the dailies. I read about it

That was basically my youth.

I had always wanted to be a writer,; you wondered what I was doing in accounting school.

Since no one will elect me to captain our soccer team anyway.

And it was mutual.

Left for me David Beckham will have no employ?

Looking back I guess it was a power point presentation gone awry.

I figured if I get a business degree, worked in a high paying job, I could retire to the South of France and write.

I don’t need to be rejected for like 700 times ala Sidney Sheldon to have my piece published; I thought I would publish my self and tell the world another Shakespeare had arrived.

It may interest you that those plans went south like the French and the Maginot Line.

I don’t take instructions easily, meaning I am not exactly cut for 9-5.

Another thing was that I saw a mafia movie where accountants were depicted as grey soulless number crunchers.

It was just a movie; somehow I took it to heart.

Whatever, the knowledge of accounting would later serve me in future endeavors, well….not so fast.

I went into a partnership in a business venture, a mining enterprise but then I love the environment, it was a success initially.

By know we have driven the length and breath of the entire country looking for mineral bearing veins among numerous rock outcrops .We were no geologists but we were a quick study and you can always buy expertise on the cheap here.

I kept my notes, kept reading and writing anything; I mean anything from Tzu Szu to the Bible to Koran to stupid answers to silly questions to Awake magazine.

The mining gig later went sour and we lost our shirts.

My partner later migrated.

I was to hold forth and handle the winding up process.

Beeb had made a life for himself and invited me over.

I could not get a connecting flight.

Really, I got a visa with a work permit and just couldn’t get a flight out.

I then decide to start writing commercially.

A journalist friend publishes my stuffs but never credits me.

Oops, he did once.

I wasn’t given a dime for my efforts, but who cares I was in print.

I was ecstatic.

I had always written from opinions on fleeing NAZIs to paeans to an exgirlfriend.

I wrote opinions on everything.

I thought O.J. killed his wife.

I won’t forget my miracle friends.

Sting, Bono , Mellisa Etrheridge, Joan Osborne, Alanis Morrissette, Dire Straits,I love strong lyrics.

Bono goes “the corner of her lips

“the orbit of her hips”

Or when Sting goes

“without the voice of reason,

Every faith is it own curse”

These were no ordinary singers to me, they were poets and writers and I found a kindred spirit in them.

As well I acquired my own PC.

By the way, this is not Marin County, getting a PC here is still a rite of passage.

I wrote but the rejection slips piled up.

I had no money to self publish, although I could have done that on lulu.com and I am too pompous to self publish, someone just have to publish my writings and tell the world I am worth their troubles and I should be remunerated.

I even insisted on writing for the best news agencies.

My friends rolled their eyes.

I had people look up my poetry collections and they advised me to get a job with my accounting degree.

I was told I could market pension funds, no- tell motels, speculate on real estates, flog golf courses do anything but except making a living on writing.

The Internet allowed me to mail editors, publishers and they all told me to get real.

With Melissa Etheridge blasting, well, I am writing.

90% of the world is stuck on jobs they don’t like, whatever kept them there, I won’t begrudge them, do what you like to do and pay the prices.

You may not win a gold medal at the winter Olympics in Gstaad but you will be fulfilled.

Eventually you will find a way.

Mine came in person of Robert Friedman, the international editor of Fortune.

He knows himself.

What is the worth of an Iraqi life?

2007-05-16T18:46:00.000+01:00

$50? $100:00 $500:00

Maybe Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair will know.

Americans are "loosing" the war in Iraq because they cant just stand body bags?

Over 3,000 kids from Marin County dead?

and on the Iraqi side?

50,000 dead.

75,000 dead

Who cares?

I thought it was a war.

Americans get real ,people die in war?

Forgotten IwoJima.Saigon?

You may understand or better still overstand my points ..

In Africa,West Africa in particular..

Lagos.Nigeria in particular..

Malaria kill over 250,000 people yearly ..

Leonard Lawal

Lagos,Nigeria

questinvest.quest@gmail.com

OIL PIPELINES OF DEATH IN NIGERIA.

2007-02-27T11:31:00.000+01:00

Within a 10km radius in the Onne, a popular oil port in the troubled Niger Delta oil rich region of Southern Nigeria, is the Petrochemical Industries, the refineries and the biggest fertilizer plant south of Sahara,Benebule, a fisherman lived in Onne and has never seen a night fall in all of his 30 years on earth .It is daylight all around him 24/7.
Gases are flared off from the oil wells abutting his village.

This is not about gas flaring, pipelines crisscrosses nook and crannies of the creek, where he made fishing his trade albeit polluted streams and degraded earth.
I wont take on a mammoth like Shell or Chevron Texaco, you may ask the widow of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the late environmentalist and writer who was judicially murdered in 1995, for standing up to the government and her collaborators in the oil game.

Regarding those pipelines, they bring oil as far as Kaduna some 1000km up North in Nigeria, Lagos and other Nigeria major cities are served by these thousands of kilometers of oil pipelines.
The designs are that all reaches of the republic should have oil at the next gas sation, right.
Wrong.
The pipelines are dilapidated, poorly maintained (for a sector that is so obviously profitable. it is almost criminal, the level of neglect) although monies are allocated each year, powerful cabals with ties to authorities vandalize the pipelines with armed escorts and siphoned off oil to be sold in bourses of black markets all over Nigeria and beyond.

That may have been alright ,since corruption and sharp practices are taken in these shores, but the vandals never properly fixes the pipelines after taking their fill, they leave it leaking and the hapless citizens ,for whom time have stood still for a thousand years, the artisan who makes $30:00 a month with 10 children as dependants, moped rider known locally as ”okada riders” who makes about $50:00 per month ,a lucrative employ after deducting rebates to policemen ,highway officials ,the local council, Vehicle Inspection Officers ,name it and an army of unemployed citizens coupled with an ever present fuel crises. Nigerians like other citizens the world over likes to make the odd fast buck, he pilfers from the leaking pipelines.

Through the grapevines, another pipeline has broken, come one come all and siphon oil, women abandon their wares in the markets square, commercial drivers double parked their vehicles on the highway, pastors abandon their flocks and seers stopped seeing for a while, they are all going to take from the national cake as oil and related matters are known in Nigeria.
They make brisk business selling petrol from jerry cans, open bowls, bottled water bottles, empty jars of salad cream, buckets and even polythene nylons (yes….) ,they will make enough in one hour ,what they wont make in a month selling on the highway to motorists ,who cant get fuel to buy at the gas stations.
Nigeria is the fifth largest producer in OPEC.

The temptation is too great, they will take their chances, after all it is a nation of risk takers, our number one risk taker is the average Nigerian leader, possibly a coup plotter now made good.

It is not rocket science to know that someone somewhere among the hopeless multitude will strike a match or light a cigarette, the result is a conflagration of atomic proportions (pun intended).

Charred bodies, women with kids on their back burnt to death, those at the epicenter of the conflagration will never have the honour of even their ashes buried by their loved ones, take a gander to the picture of the charred corpse, people are so unconcerned, they could have been at the beach watching beach volley ball, life is cheap here .
The masses have been so traumatized by the neglect and looting of their country by their leaders, that they have lost their inate humanity.
They are too busy looking for the next meal.

This piece hasn’t been concluded ,you can help conclude it.

40,000 STOCKS OF MICROSOFT SHARES AND AN ESCALADE.

2007-02-27T11:08:00.000+01:00

Ali Ahmed ,his real name ,made picking pieces of scrap metals ,which he takes to a weighing center for less than a cent a kilogram ,I cant do the fractions any longer,, his employ, he has two wives and 11 children, his poverty is so overwhelming that it is surreal ,there is beauty in that bent back ,where all hope seemed to have lost, welcome to a typical family life in sub-Saharan Africa.

Why are we like these, living on less than a dollar a day?

Black, African Americans, African in sub-Saharan and wherever they are in the Diaspora are bellyaching about effects of slave trade on our being the most backward of all the races on earth, this weekend like most weekends in the past 400years .

They want reparations, simple, sort of 40,000 stocks of Microsoft shares and an Escalade.
I am an African living in sub-Saharan hell, I am actually at loss at this calls for subsidies in our life.

Slavery ,I need to state categorically was and probably the most banal of atrocities committed in the last 2000 years, at least Jesus Christ had the power to resurrect after 3 days ,the blacks has been relegated to the background of humanity forever ,if current events are to be projected.

There are less than three black countries on earth that is being properly governed, aside Botswana, South Africa and Namibia, tell me a country where there is a black man in power and the economy is not a basket case.

Even the three countries afore mentioned, their economies are held in trust by their Caucasian citizens. South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki is a professional president and a first rate leader, he might as well be leading Belgium as 90 % of the economic activities and monies are in the hand of Caucasians and other races except the black peoples of South Africa, remember these other races forms less than 10% of the population.
Why is this so in South Africa?
The legacies of apartheid?
Well…

Nigeria is a basket case if ever there was one. An oil rich country with abundant human and natural resources, her leaders are bandits who ordinarily should be in jail, they had bled the country dry.
With huge oil receipts but it is still one of the poorest countries on earth with less than $500 as per capital income, down there with Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau.
What account for Nigerian problems?......slavery? Apartheid? Colonialism?...

Definitely not slavery or apartheid nor even colonialism, because she got her independence on a platter of gold and the colonialist never touched her oil receipts, it was stolen by her leaders to financial institutions in the West.

Every other decade, Bob Geldolf and other rock stars stage some feel good concerts, smoke pot and generally try to revive fading careers, claiming drawing attentions to Africa and other black people’s problems of debts, ,AIDS,corruptions,malaria etc.
It is absolute baloney.

African problems are much deeper than some handouts from some receipts from rock concerts.

It is corruption in a holy wedlock with stubborn cultural overtones.
Our culture is designed and built around corruption, the Balogun “the war general:” in Yoruba mythology marries the finest woman, love had never had any part to play, the man needs a large family to till the land, sort of enslaving his own household.

Any wonder why he sold his own brothers to slavery in the new world.

And they were the lucky ones, Muhammed Ali, the boxing legend, at the height of his prowess visited Africa and thanked his Allah, that his grand folks caught that ship.
Our intellectuals, doctors, engineer and whoever can purchase a visa and pay immigration experts are fleeing the continent in what has been described as the second slavery, it is the same during the first shipments some over 4oo years back,it is the most physical sound ,that can make the voyage across the Atlantic, now it is the
most intellectually sound.

The West will always win.

Why are our best brains fleeing our continent? Our leaders have made our continent unlivable.

Anthony Daniels writing in The Telegraph of London said “why is Africa alone of all the continents poorer per capital now than 20 or even 40 years ago, despite the fact that it had received about $500billion from the rich countries” He continued “why is it always hovering on the brink of chaos”?

Reasons and excuses are never in short supply.

· Colonialism
· Slavery
· Bundling together of different tribal groups to form a country
· Poverty
They are all excuses, Africans and black people need to shed that toga of culturally imbedded corruption.

The average African official from the lowly clerk to the Head of State is a very corrupt person, take Nigeria as an example, the President probably has over 60 children, which is a very conservative estimate, his Vice President has over 40 children, all living at state expenses, how can any nation move forward with those kinds of leaders?

They will defend their shortcomings as it is African and their culture permits it, in the age of internet, in an age of people going to the moon, it is how we can procreate and spend public wealth for our pecuniary benefits that is our culture.

How many children does Lee Kuan Yew, the Singapore modernizer had?
What about Bill Gates of Microsoft, the richest man in the world?

The African man in authority is not to be trusted; he will amass wealth and cling to power till he is disgraced.

Africans are poor because we are very corrupt, we expect our officials to be corrupt too, Africans don’t build institutions, we have no regard for legacies.
There is no institution we cant corrupt, be it democratic form of government, autocracy, military juntaship, market economy, command economy.
Name it, we will corrupt the system and it will become an albatross to us

A point of instance, in Nigeria ,Ikoyi neighborhood was a first class high brow island developed by the British colonialist, it has sweeping boulevards, well tended gardens, good road networks ,most of the houses were on an acre of land, as soon as the British left and we Africans moved in ,it became a ghetto ,the sewers are now open ,the roads were not maintained ,arbitrary development took over,Ikoyi is now a ghetto of misshapen houses ,where a mechanic workshop rest next to a 10 storey motel.

That is Africa, chaos, disorderliness and it is from the top.

Our leaders don’t even obey traffic lights.
The most rudimentary measure of good citizenship, obey just traffic lights, we are not saying file your tax returns or other arcane rocket science like separate the public funds from private funds ,no just stop and obey traffic lights, check out Lagos on a dog day afternoon.

Bono and gangs may stop making music and harassed all the world leaders about African debts, Bill Gates may donate all his fortune to Africa, the G8,may forgive our debts and advance us a trillion dollars, let oil reach $200:00p/b we will waste it at the altar of corruption and bad governance and call it a conspiracy by the West against our race.
Failures are never wont for excuses.

Equatorial Guinea has over $3.8 billion in oil receipts last year, her less than half a million people are still one of the poorest people on earth, take a minister of Agriculture earning the odd $60,000:00 per annum salary, how was he able to purchase a Malibu mansion for $35million .Effects of slavery?
Colonial hangover?

It is pure and unadulterated greed and this our lot here.
Teodoro Obiang Nguema is the minister and son of the president of that country.

Even where there are ray of hope, they are steps too slow and insignificant to make any impacts on the world stage.

The best of our society are in the West, take the former Nigerian Finance Minister,Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,a Harvard trained economist, she did not stay a night in Nigeria after resigning her appointment, she fled back “home” to the West, every first class brain or street smart scammer is finding his way to the West or even Uzbekistan ,as far away from Africa as possible.

The first official corrupt action of an average African leader is to buy a mansion in the West and relocate most of his sibling, he has no confidence over the country he presides, most Nigerian leaders say it with pride the number of their children schooling in expensive institutions in the West and we know the salaries of civil servants.

By the way, what about that 40,000 MS share and that Escalade?

Leonard Lawal is genuinely pissed at our people.

Lagos,Nigeria.
+234-8033274465

questinvest.quest@gmail.com

Can history help us define British identity today, or is it part of the problem?

2006-12-20T21:13:00.000+01:00

Who do you think you are? Can history help us define British identity today, or is it part of the problem?

South Africa Rainbow Coalition seems to be working …….so far

President Thambo Mbeki of South Africa has consistent grown the economy for the last five years…. even after the Doomsday prediction that was the fashion then ,that the economy will collapse and the usual hurrahs from the Enlightened Right ,who always prevails with the status quo…Well so far..they are wrong. But really that is not the point.

This other weekend another bomb went off in Baghdad, some thousands of Iraqis died, 5 Americans and 2 Britons died, and the last two deaths is the news item. Iraqis body counts don’t matter in these things, but that is not the point, it is the pointless war, the(C) Prime Minister Tony Blair has dragged the British into in solidarity with her “senior” cousin across the ocean.

After the madness that was 9/11, The United States of America needed a war,any war, Afghanistan will not do, a big profile 4^th of July dance parade kind of War,Saddam walked into it, we all know that there were no weapon of mass destruction ,Saddam was just a two bit dictator with a bad p.r. department… heck what do you expect with clowns like “Chemical Ali” but Britain went into the War and are still bogged down in Iraq, with her master.

How times has changed. Britain the Empire that ruled over half the world at the height of her glory ,is now reduced to the lapping dog of neocon buffoons in Washington,DC ….

Britain was the last refuge of freedom loving people for the better part of the last 300 years, the Indians sent out of Uganda, the Hong Kong change over in 1997,the asylum seeking future prime ministers, the dissidents fleeing Russian now dismantled gulag, even the obnoxious French during Hitler’s War, name it ,Britain gave them succor and promptly betrayed them ,that obviously goes with the territory….

What about the colonies?

From Nigeria to Zimbbawe, Britain handed over to the parasitic elites in those countries, they empowered scoundrels, illiterates, unpopular candidates with the hope that they can always pull the strings of economic dictates from London (they still do); no colony was truly free of British manipulations

Take Nigeria ,a country of over 200 nations ,that had no reasons being together, with shoe strings it was bonded together and formed the largest black country on earth ,within seven years after her independence from Britain she fought a war and she has never been the same gain, her leaders (the ones agreeable to the British) were encouraged to loot the country blind………that may not be the point.

The Beatles were just four working class lads from the seedier side of Liverpool, they had to go to America to become royalties ,John Lennon, the Beatles front man was eventually gunned down in New York, not a few still think that he is a bona fide American hero…..even those who hadn’t seen Elvis in a while.

Britain in all fairness has done so much for the modern civilization as we know it more than any other people on earth ,she gave the world football and had only won the World Cup once ,Brazil where half the population go hungry daily had won it a record four times, a free country where human rights and the rights of individuals are a paramount pillar of the society but she runs a monarchy ,which is the basis for all inequalities on earth ,that people are not born equal …A lucky sperm and you are the Prince of Wales ,an unlucky sperm you are doomed in Finchley for generations, in Britain it is all about the rule of law but she has no written constitution.

by the way the Magna Carta was sealed by King John and his barons on a manic Monday of June summer of 15,1215

Her Oxfam has done so much for the Third World poor, but really they are poor in the first instances because the 3^rd World leaders are encouraged by The City to loot their treasuries in the first place, their leaders lived in the best neighborhood in Britain, but we give our widows mites to starving kids in Sudan, we encouraged Pinochet because he helped in the Falklands, but we hate oppressions and we cherish the rule of law……

Before the July bombings ,terrorism wasn’t such a big deal here, we somehow appease the Fundamentalists, we know some of those mullahs in those mosques were preaching intolerance, we were well aware that Heathrow was the gateway to the training grounds of Kabul, Sudan ,Yemen and other nearly failed states, but we believed erroneously and naively that by not antagonizing the fundamentalists ,they will never attack Britain ,we were wrong ,they attacked Britain.Afterall Maggie had Ronald Reagan to take care of such inconveniences ala Gadafi et al ,Blair now his Bush.

A nation that went to war in 1939, because some lunatic overran Poland, that lunatic would have been reined in much earlier if we had not been so British and wanted peace in our time, an ally that was aggressed, on her word of honour, to have descended to the depth of Clintonian speak politics, of polls and spins, where the end always justifying the means, we lost our moral banner as the leading light of the civilized world.

If Estonia overran Warsaw today, we would expect the US marines to help us with our press release, meaning waiting for George.W. mood swing and George W’s mood is an inverted fraction of Dick Cheney ,Laura and the twins and the old man in Kennebunkport.

We are really in a mess.

Britain couldn’t publish an ordinary cartoon ,which Denmark with lesser might militarily ,economically and politically did, Denmark choose honor over political expediency of the moment, if you must live in the West ,you must uphold the basic value structures of that society.

What exactly is our moral fiber as a people?

What has defined us most especially in recent times?

Maybe because of our need for unencumbered oil flow, Saudi Arabia, can annex the Cotswold.

Tony Blair will find a spin for it. We value our material comfort more than our spiritual and moral compass.

In recent past, Britain has acted like the 52^nd states of America, it has towed every policy double speak from White House, it might be more comforting if the politics of the present occupants of The White house has had the minutest tinge of statesmanship,but it usually diatribes of ill-thought ideas ,might is right WASP Virginia country state of mind of spoilt aristocratic oil capitalists, whose vision of the World is so narrow ,that they think Connecticut is West Of England. When Britain was under massive blitzkrieg of Hitler’s Army, she needed America but she still had values and respects, the World was readily behind Britain, because she stood for something, something intrinsically valuable to any civilized people of conscience and breeding, but can we say the same for today, even with having the Fourth largest economy on earth. Even with the FTSE doing so well, with the acceptance of Beckham and Posh Spice in high society, with Madonna speaking with an Etonian accent and being married to a local boy.

Something is still missing for such a matured civilization, we all agreed America is damned too young and too powerful ,Britain would have easily acted as a well mannered Uncle ,who has seen it all ,chaperon the mighty Joe around the china shop politics of oil ,two faced robbery of financial manipulation of Breton Woods and the obvious subjugation of every other race on earth, but she chose the role of a poor cousin ,always eager and ready for hand me downs .

Agreed most nouveau riche’ hardly listen to voice of reasons and restraints as the only World Super power is acting now, always towing the path of self destruction, but a firm word from most decent uncles has been know to do some goods, so if by 2050, China becomes the dominant power,we will all rush to learn Mandarin or Cantonese and our guy in 10 downing street say Euan Blair .will hurray every yeah of China?

The future look so near and it is ours to right it, if only ………… maybe that’s not the point.

Leonard Lawal,

Lagos, Nigeria.

+234-8068722749.

I AM NOT COMING TO DAVOS.

2006-12-15T14:26:00.000+01:00

I AM NOT COMING TO DAVOS.

Those who know me will have a fit, laughing regarding the title of this piece.

He can’t afford Davos and possibly couldn’t get a corporate sponsor to get him to Davos.

So, they will say my not coming to Davos is not by choice, heck I am not even sure of a visa.

I am an African, from sub Saharan hell, those are people who actually need to network at Davos, but we are the orphans of the world.

Really.

Maybe really Davos has lost it lustre.Gone were days when Davos gathering were the Holy Grail, the mecca of the faithfuls of economic shamans, the Lourdes of hump backs and cripples looking for miracles in their country’s economic emancipation.

Who can forget the battle of Seattle so soon? No logo? Remember?

Statistics has shown that most of the WASP, Western English speaking nations dominating parley has consistently posted less economic growth than the behemoth of Asian erupting Mount Etna of economic growth. Most recently.

China has posted consistent growth in the last five years, Japan is not sleeping.

Take the Arab countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and others, they hardly rate mentions? But they provide the energy that fuels the economy of the West.

The norm amongst the uppity economic Moses of the West is that they still expect them to arrive on camels.

The United States of America is still building gas guzzling SUVs every year, without any obvious plan for alternative energy.

At Detroit car shows year in year out, Japan car makers keeps unveiling the next generation of cars fueled by alternative energy, I make bold that they already have a 10 year lead over the cars makers in the West.

I wonder how many countries they will have to invade in the next decade to keep the oil flowing from the Persian Gulf, because China consumption is getting insatiable daily, they too need to secure their oil supply, get the drift?.

By the way Osama Bin Laden has not been caught, Osama,he is no longer a spring chicken ,it is the Osamalets in suqs of Bagdad,Cairo ,Lahore that should be the worry.

If China energy consumptions continue at this rate, they may be a new Cold War along the faults of who controls the energy producing nations of the Gulf region, it is taken that United States dominates the scene for now, something tells me that it wont be so in 10 years.

Davos, World Economic Forum, which world? , how many companies and partners are represented from Africa?

Africa with her dubious huge debt burdens?

In the last 5 years they have been increment of over 1000 percent in number of people using mobile phones, of 51.8 million people ,of course mobile penetration is still higher in other regions of the world,15 per 100 people in Asia,48.8 in US ,55 in Western Europe, but Africa is still a very large market.

Nobody is thinking of putting of factories manufacturing the components of these devices in Africa like Nokia in Finland.

We are taken for granted, it is the same condescending and snobbish treatment apart from excruciating poverty and politics of divide and rule that turned Arabs to suicide bombers.

Africans may not continue to be so complacent very soon and it is not about installing some half baked “democratically” selected leader.

At Davos ,African poverty which we all know requires a new Marshall Plan size initiatives is not really on the agenda, people protest about “Cocacolarization” of the world, the whole world wearing the uniform of Gap, produced by 10 year old kids in sweat shops of Asia, Bill Gates Microsoft software dominating the computer word,(Bill gates has since done a lot of charity work in health care in Africa thru his foundation, thanks a lot ,Africa doesn’t need charity they need developmental loans ,aids in the real sense of it, this is what Europe and Japan got after the 2^nd World War ,when their economies were basket cases, the British Prime Minister ,Tony Blair may never have had an elementary school education ,if not for the thoughtfulness and generosity of those Plans.

In Davos,most of leaders from 3^rd World nations that got to attend at all ,are lackeys of the West ,who haven’t got the foggiest idea, why they are there at all.

Maybe the snows ,the good food according to Phillip Bowring in his article in International Herald Tribune of January 2005, (Africans especially are never comfortable with snows and cold,blackmen don’t really ski, we play soccer and box, how else can you let out a millennium of oppression),skiing and other social interaction has turned noble ideas on it head.

Davos has become a feel good reunion of old boy network groove ,where financial cartel leaders of the West come to trade stories about how they are ripping the rest of the off ,the well born, ,the privileged and a few outsiders who got lucky , coming to nearby Gstaad to ski and to sleep with their secretaries ,while the wife takes care of Mark 111 in New Hampshire suburb.

According to Bowring, check out the stats:

2000 participants in 2005:

Only 450 are not from non English speaking nations.

80 corporate partners: Only 10 from non English speaking world.

Obviously these companies are not Davos compliant, Toshiba , Acer ,Canon, Samsung, LG ,Toyota, Nissan,DocoMo ,MTN,etc .

Or may be those powerful companies from east Asia are frankly not interested, or the executives have no desire to ski or cheat on their wives.

The West has done a lot for the progress of mankind, really but somehow it has always been thru underhand tactis.Look at the enslavement of black people in America and the diasporas, look at the divide and rule of the oil politics of the Gulf, the colonization of Africa and Asia, the absurd pricing regime of primary products from Africa and the rest of the 3^rd World, if not for OPEC ,oil would still have been selling at $3:00 p/barrel, then they still find ways to rip off the producing nations ,come to Niger Delta in Nigeria ,a gold rush of bandits in safety boots .

During the cold war, legitimate leaders from Africa were overthrown to make room for lackeys of the West, remember Patrice Lumumba of Congo. Congo is still a basket case till the present day.

All of these are legacies of the greed and arrogance of the Western world that Davos has come to symbolize.

My take is that a Davos should hold in different locations yearly like in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil,Ajegunle in Nigeria,Kibera in Nairobi, in Calcutta….in Hillsbrow in Johannesburg…so that the rich elites will see for a week ,the direct and immediate consequences of a 26 year old WASP bond trader bailing out of Kaula Lumpur.

Leonard Lawal.

Lagos, Nigeria.

+234-8033274465.+234-8068722749

PAT UTOMI’S BURLESQUE

2006-09-14T21:35:00.000+01:00

PAT UTOMI’S BURLESQUE

Pat Utomi should ordinarily be called a patriot, he seems to love this country passionately, I mean this guy has over 1,500 articles published, in most of these epistles he spoke earnestly about leadership and generally how to move the country forward.um.

But Sam Omatseye, a radical columnist with that tabloid, the Sun newspaper doesn’t think so.

Senor Omatseye thinks Pat Utomi is an intellectual fraud, one of those cheap opportunists brought up by the idiosyncrasies of the Nigerian state, which elevates opportunism into fine arts worthy of a Caravaggio painting. He remembered Pat Utomi as one of those young Turks of NPN era.

Very few Nigerians will ever attend the Lagos Business School, where Pat Utomi holds forth; he teaches Nigerians how to do business albeit the upper echelon, that’s very commendable.

For me, I wish he will just stick to that.

Now he wants to be the next Nigerian President in nine months time, that’s another racket entirely, of course it is probably the most lucrative racket in town, especially in a town of rackets.

The Nigerian Presidency is for a prestidigateur, a sleight of hand performer, now you see me, now you don’t kind of artist, a Maradona.

Business 101, on how to become Nigeria President used to be, wake up in the morning, say your prayers (we are a religious lot), take your breakfast and kiss your wife goodbye, go to the next radio station and announce you have taken over the government, it helps if the incumbent is on some junket outside the country .Ask IBB.

But that is seriously old school.

The latest deal in town and as a Professor of Business, Pat Utomi should know, is to get some “businessmen” to fund your campaign, divvy up the lucrative parastatals and corporations and you are in power. What did President Obasanjo have in 1999? .He had just left jail; I mean this guy was broke, but he’s got miracle friends, they made him President.

Utomi need miracle friends, those fabulous Uba brothers of Ngige brokerage deal gone sour in Anambra state will invest, those rich bankers of “don’t ask questions, just bring the money fame”, those generals with oil wells and Alhaji Adedibu, that Harvard trained Professor of “Amala Politics” in Ibadan should be contacted.

Those are the guys that can make him President.

He doesn’t need my vote ,I don’t count votes, voting is a different employ from counting the votes, counters of votes makes Presidents and Adedibu count votes, the Uba brothers count votes. The Nigerian populace don’t count votes. Like sheep they are, they just vote and go home to their sorry lives.

Writing in some newspaper columns is just a waste of ink; power brokers don’t read those things. They read dollars, naira, pounds etc.What are the Emeritus Professor of Politics Adedibu’s takes on bicameralism?

Moreover Guardian probably publishes less than 20 thousand copies, what’s the point?

By the way, Pat Utomi can expand his base and start writing his articles in Ikebe magazine or City People; at least he will get attention of the women folks, especially those idle Lagos women looking out to become the next councilor’s wife.

A tip (do I get anything for this? What wont I do for this Professor?), go to Maiduguri and tell them you will prospect for oil in their backyard and they will have 100% derivation, tell them in Ondo State, that you have found a futures market for their bitumen in Canada and the money have been paid upfront,(Allah praises on Sheik IBB of Minna),but sound ideas? Get real.

Sound ideas will never get him anywhere; ask Abiola’s widows, his children and they are plenty.

Nigerians don’t like ideas, IBB, Abacha, Abdusalam, Shagari et al, what are their ideologies?

So I think he is better off with the Uba brothers and those who invest their funds in politics and not in the Discovery Funds of ARM Ltd.

Truth be told ,these South South chaps are never really serious about power, take the Very Reverend Chris Okotie of Oregun, he spoke so much grammar on TV and this was even a guy who had an advantage ,HE TALKS TO GOD DIRECTLY. He blew that chance to Obasanjo who can’t even tie a Windsor knot.

Okotie told us on primetime TV he’s got God on his speed dial, but God complained “I can’t understand his English”, “to the tangential exploration of the consequential inanities of the bourgeoisie interpolation of the welfariast separatism”.

Meanwhile, this is what I gathered Obasanjo told God in 2003 “God, Olodunmare, whatever moniker you call yourself, I have commanded Pastor Adeboye, Pastor Oyedepo, Ibrahim aka IBB, Danjuma (they will provide the funds) and I have Tafa Balogun take care of the police, I am winning this elections and you know you divined it moreover I am an Owu man, I will never forgive you, God, never, if I don’t win this election, bye bye”.

I gathered he stormed out on God. God knows all; He knew trouble when He sees one.

Obasanjo won with a landslide, no hands.

And you want Him to answer some pastor speaking in argots He can hardly comprehend. Get real.

Professor Pat Utomi have done well for himself, I don’t really think it is too bad to ask him to vie for an elective position in Ibeju Lekki constituency, he has empowered the neighborhood with his businesses, maybe a House of Rep membership or the Senate, I actually like that Prof, I don’t want him engaging in this charade, he wont win.

By the way the Alhaji Atiku camp haven’t paid me for this pseudo-endorsement (as if it matters),Atiku wants to be President and he has been on it since 1992,even before the June 12 saga.

He lived, breathed and spent becoming the Presidency; he has been an issue for a while now almost 15 years that is courage to me, that’s consistency.

But with 9 months into the game and Utomi now wants to become President.

Firstly, it shows value of the currency pegged against the Presidency in his mind and that is not good enough.

As well it smirks of these anything can happen mentality of the herd instinct of Nigerians, of which Utomi should not be, he is well traveled and well read.

Also, I would have loved it better if he declared his candidature at the height of 3^rd term elongation debates. It was the time Presidential materials were made. Those who have cojones took stands. We can begin to look forward to his Presidency in a bit far future not in nine months time.

On that score, you won’t push Atiku away, but this is not about Atiku.

But then in a city of miracles, anything can happen, the God answereth by fire, I wish I was really a man of faith.

In nine months time, I would like to see a Senate with an Utomi, maybe a Falana, a Chris Okotie, an Agbakoba and some other supposedly serious Nigerians.

I chose my words carefully, “supposedly serious”, don’t blame me, Abdullahi Oroh was a popular anti bad government crusader eons ago………..need I continue?

Jokes aside, debates in our Senate will be robust, hopefully “Ghana must go bag” will be a thing of ugly past, quality debate will ensure and somehow ,some of these professionals have friends outside we can report them to.

I can’t imagine Pat Utomi not voting in favor of, say a Freedom of Information Bill, we will remind him about those articles he wrote etc.

LEONARD LAWAL

questinvest.quest@gmail.com