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Continued from Part 11

No scoundrel is so stupid as to not find a reason for his vile conduct (Korner)

We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles (Jimmy Carter)

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere (Henry David Thoreau)

o digress: only in 2014 that a speaker of the House of Representatives would defect to a minority party in the House and still wants to keep his job. It�s never done anywhere! In other climes, where there�s rule of law, the day the speaker defected, is the day he lost the post, the perquisites of that office and the paraphernalia associated with that office. This writer wants to disambiguate the issue here, because, so many Nigerians have blamed the police for withdrawing the speaker�s security after he defected, and for stopping him from presiding over the House. The police did the right thing in each of the cases. The speaker should have respected himself, but, in Nigeria where anything goes, he wants his cake after eating it. Think of what would happen if the United States House of Representatives� speaker, John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, who has been the speaker of the House since January 5, 2011, defects to the Democratic Party. He automatically loses that position immediately. What of the Republican senator, Mitch McConnell, just re-elected by his party as their leader in the US Senate on Wednesday November 19, ensuring him the powerful role of majority leader in the new Congress that begins in January. If McConnell jumps ship to become a Democrat, then, the 72-year-old senior senator from Kentucky, will not take over from the current Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, at the start of the new congressional session on January 3. The point is that Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal is no longer the speaker and has no right to convene the House. He should have handed over to his deputy!

Also in 2014, the Eagles of Nigeria failed to qualify for the African Cup of Nations. The Eagles lost the ticket to Congo after struggling to a 2-2 draw against South Africa's Bafana Bafana in Uyo on Wednesday November 19. The Eagles became unserious right from the start of the qualification series and even under-estimated the South Africans to their own and Nigeria�s peril. The players feel too proud and are arrogant (qualities for failure). The Eagles have a pattern of winning or losing when lest expected. Having defeated Congo over there, nobody expected the Eagles to fumble at home, in Uyo. Prof. Pat Utomi summed it rightly when he said it is a shame that Nigeria failed to qualify for the African Cup of Nations, attributing it to failure in the nation's leadership. In his words: "Can you imagine Germany not going to the European championship? That would mean a loss of a sense of self. I know Nigerians would be dazed by the bad exit. It is an accumulation of the fact that we have not been doing the needful in our administration. Every aspect of our national life is reduced to corruption and quarrel. We cannot even get our FA right. What we hear is FIFA is about to ban us, or they are about to unban us. This is another symptom of the failure of leadership in the country. Everything has been reduced to money and power." Former Nigeria skipper, Segun Odegbami, said "We have always taken South Africa for granted, believing we can have them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but they have now shown us that this is an end of era".

In the same 2014, the government is telling us that Nigeria is broke, emphasizing the need for the introduction of austerity measures and belt-tightening. These were dread words we heard in the late 1980s, when IBB introduced Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) and asked Nigerians to tighten their belts while he, his friends, his cronies and their respective families were loosening theirs. According to Onuoha Ukeh: �Incidentally, about 30 years after austerity measures and SAP were experimented in the country, with the attendant consequences, the Federal Government, as a way of adjusting to the fall in the price of crude oil in international market, wants Nigerians to tighten their belts. Announcing this policy, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said the Federal Government's economic team had proposed measures, in reaction to the low earnings. She stated: "As part of the response, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and the Budget 2015 proposal to the National Assembly have been revised," adding: "Government is now proposing a benchmark of $73 dollars per barrel to the National Assembly, compared to the earlier proposed benchmark of $78." The government should tell us what happened to our money; afterall the price of oil, for so many years, was above the benchmark prices on which the preceding budgets were based upon. Where�s the excess amount made from oil through the years? The facts that oil price has now fallen and that the United States is no longer buying our oil again are not enough reasons to make Nigeria to go broke. Another question the government should answer is why our external reserve has been depleted while our foreign debts are ballooning out of proportion? One of the reasons why Nigeria is broke can be attributed to the corruption with impunity going on in the country. We pay our legislators more than what any other country in this world pays its own legislators. And still, despite the huge salary and allowances our legislators receive, they end up doing little or nothing tangible for Nigerians (Read more at the end of this article). Emmanuel Onwubiko summed it up by writing: �Crude oil asking price per barrel in the international market is reported to have slumped far lower than the budget projection of a little over $75 USD. This, coupled with the unfortunate scenario of the United States of America not buying Nigeria's huge crude oil exports, are said to be the major fear factor why Nigeria's external reserves have plummeted to an all time low since 1999.

Nigeria's foreign debt profile has began the dangerous upward swing to such a height that majority of Nigerians are now unable to afford even a square meal per day. If I may ask, why did the current minister of finance preside over two diametrically opposed policies of paying off the nation's debts and a little over three years to have gone back to our 'vomit' to begin the building up of additional foreign debts profile which will invariably enslave two generations after us? This same minister of finance has again raised national alarm that the steady collapse of the global crude oil price means that ordinary Nigerians should embark on the so called belt tightening measures. Is it not clear to even the blind that most Nigerians have lost their shape to the biting hurricane of poverty sweeping across most homes and therefore it is foolhardy to ask any of these poverty stricken Nigerians to tighten their belts when they literally have no waist to even put these belts on?

I sincerely believe that the reason Nigeria is broke is not because the price of crude oil has collapsed in the international market. Our sudden financial insolvency as a nation did not result from the lack of patronage of our crude oil by the United States which has found shale oil in commercial quantities as alternatives to our crude oil. The major reason for our being broke now as a nation is because of over-bloated political class and the unprecedented quantum of cash that goes into servicing it. Why, for instance, have we failed as a nation to amend the constitution to specifically state that Nigeria does not need more than ten ministers? What is Nigeria doing with over forty ministers some of whom simply move from one state to the other masquerading as public office holders and costing Nigerian tax payers hugely in wages? I doubt if the United States or China, with all their heavy wealth as developed nations have the high number of federal cabinet level officials that Nigeria currently parades. The Federal Government must cut down wastages and close all avenues for wastages that currently exist in government at all levels. Government must create the policy and legal frameworks to make punishable with heavy judicial sanctions such things as engagement of civil and public servants in activities that deplete the resources of Nigeria such as foreign medical trips. There is even this legendary issue of lack of transparency in the extractive industry in Nigeria even as corruption in public procurement regime is massive. What has happened to the $20 billion USD some itchy fingers in NNPC allegedly stole over twelve months now?

If we want to do belt tightening in the face of the emerging economic realities, then we must amend the Nigerian constitution to reflect that we need not more than ten ministers and that these ministers must not engage more than a staff as a technical person and that each of these ministers must be drawn from relevant fields of study and the statutory mandates of these ministries so they do not have the reason to go fishing for jobs for their boys. The next reason we are broke is our wastefulness and our possessiveness by the ghost of consumerism and our lack of productivity. We must as a nation stop this ugly appetite of consuming everything foreign and behave like the Chinese who have developed their domestic economy borrowing from the best technologies that can be found in all parts of the world�.

Also in 2014 had the Katsina State Governor, Ibrahim Shehu Shema, purportedly called for the killing of the "cockroaches of politics� (his political opponents), and still go free. The governor openly advocated violence and hatred during this election period. This is condemnable!

Back to where we stopped in the preceding part of this article: Remember when the Nigerian military told us that it has killed Shekau impostor few months ago (Sep. 21), Cameroon, at the same time, claimed that it was its forces, and not Nigeria�s, that killed the Boko Haram leader. The Nigerian military and its Cameroonian counterpart were locked in a war of words about who really killed the Boko Haram leader. While the Nigerian side said it did, the Cameroonian side said that its soldiers crossed the border into Nigeria and killed the leader of the sect. No matter which side was telling the truth, the Nigerian military has itself to blame for this quagmire, because, previously, it allowed a foreign country to be more active, than it, in its war against the insurgents in Nigeria until these few days. While Cameroonian soldiers fought the insurgents to a standstill and even killed many of them at the border, many Nigerian security personnel were sneaking into Cameroon for safety after they were overwhelmed by the firing power of the insurgents. On Saturday, Sept 6, the Cameroonian government, according to AFP, said its soldiers had killed more than 100 Boko Haram fighters during an attempted incursion by the Islamist insurgents into its territory. Now, Cameroon is where so many Nigerians from the north-east had run to as refugees, since there�s no protection for them in Nigeria.

It�s no longer important who killed the Boko Haram leader or whether he was dead or alive. What Nigerians want to hear is the complete annihilation of the sect. Because, once the sect is wiped out or made to surrender completely, the issue of the leader being dead or alive becomes irrelevant, because, his fate is tied to that of the group he leads. If there�s no sect again to lead, the leader becomes irrelevant and harmless as he derives his power from the people he leads. Most of all, what Nigerians want the Nigerian military to achieve here and now is getting the Chibok Girls freed, and that will be more important than the killing of Boko Haram leader and will resonate well with all people of goodwill all over the world. Why Cameroon claimed credit for the killing of Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, was because of the bounty the United States placed on the killing of Shekau. Cameroon thought that by claiming the credit for the killing of Shekau, that it would also claim 7 million dollars bounty promised by the United States. The US Department of State had in June 2012, designated Shekau a �Specially Designated Global Terrorist� under Executive Order 13224. The US declared Shekau a wanted man in 2013, and went ahead to place a $7 million bounty on Shekau for anyone who could provide information leading to his arrest or killing. But, unfortunately for those claiming to have killed Shekau, the United States is yet to pay the bounty, and that must be because the Americans are yet to believe or be convinced that the character is actually dead, as a video propped up from the blues claiming that the devious terrorist is still alive. Please read about Cameroon�s lying attitude attached at the end of this article.

The Nigerian military personnel horripilate and feel more helpless and weak when facing the insurgents. How can one explain it that the Nigerian military has been unable to rout the insurgents despite the training and wherewithal at the disposal of its personnel. The terrorists have made lightening wins in recent months, taking and holding towns in Adamawa and neighboring Borno State, the hotbed of its five-year-old campaign according to Premium Times. The insurgents have been running roughshod over the northern part of Nigeria and are expanding their onslaught in that region while the Nigerian military has failed to stop them. Who will give Boko Haram its comeuppance for goodness sake? We read that the violence in the north-east has intensified, with Boko Haram reportedly seizing more than two dozen towns and Nigeria's security forces reportedly absent in many areas. Since the breaking of the ceasefire agreement, Boko Haram has doubled its effort in causing deaths, destruction and in perpetrating mayhem of all sorts in northern Nigeria that nobody is keeping counts again of the heinous crimes the sect has wrought over there. About a week ago, the militants seized the town of Chibok, from where 276 girls were kidnapped more than six months ago. Despite government�s vow to secure the release of the hapless girls, their freedom still seems so farfetched. Chibok Town has gone through double jeopardy in the hands of the insurgents; not only that the girls taken from there are yet to be found and rescued, the town was taken over by the insurgents. The BBC's Will Ross reported that the military has repeatedly failed to defend towns and villages in the north-east, allowing Boko Haram to steadily expand the area they control. BBC rightly noted that the crisis in Nigeria is deepening every week, but politicians appear more focused on next year's elections. The correspondent wrote that Boko Haram has changed tactics in recent months by holding on to territory rather than using hit-and-run attacks that have left thousands dead. It was with the help of the local hunters that Chibok town was rescued from the terrorists.

The President claimed that the military had started winning the war against the Boko Haram sect, and that for about a week now; there have been no further reports of the sect seizing more territory. As an addendum, this writer hopes that from now on, the tempo and momentum would be sustained by the Nigerian military until the insurgency is defeated, and then, the north-eastern part of Nigeria in particular and all parts of Nigeria in general regain the elusive peace. These few weeks have been the deadliest for Nigeria. Looking at the havoc wrecked so far by the insurgents in the country, the Nigerian military should have been ashamed that a ragtag outfit gave it such a tough time and even disgraced it even till now. Apart from the missing Chibok Girls, which are pricks on the conscience of all well meaning Nigerians, the insurgents have caused unquantifiable damages in Nigeria. Do we start talking about the lives and property lost to the insurgency or the inconveniences the insurgents put thousands through.

Ezekwe summed up Nigeria�s failure in all sphere thus:

�Our soldiers can't fight
Our legislators can't legislate
Our footballers can't win when it matters
Our administrators can't govern
Our..............................

Pretty sad, ain't it?�

https://elombah.com/detail.php?world=27676

Although this writer disagrees with Dr. Brimah here only on a point or two, but, his write-up below is worth reading:

https://www.nigerianfm.com/cameroon-nigerias-lying-neighbour-by-dr-peregrino-brimah-op-ed/

One of the reasons why Nigeria is broke:

https://elombah.com/detail.php?world=27691

To be continued!

TIT BITS

Can somebody tell Obasanjo to stop criticizing and distracting President Jonathan, by allowing him to do his job. As an ex-president, Obasanjo should be the last person to undermine the President and the office. Let others criticize President Jonathan and not ex-president Obasanjo who said last weekend that Jonathan�s performance is below average. Obasanjo should learn from President Bush, who explained why he almost never criticizes his successor: He feels it undermines the office of the presidency. In an interview that aired Thursday (Nov. 20) night on Fox News' "Hannity," Bush insisted he would not attack President Barack Obama even though he continued to have strong opinions about national politics. In his words: "I don't think it's good for the country to have a former president undermine a current president; I think it's bad for the presidency for that matter".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG8qx4q9hxY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekwy5kdCKFo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TgoFs6Pd7k

THE THANX IS ALL YOURS!!!

Continued from Part 11