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Soludo: Your time starts now!
From the outset, let me confess that I was not one of those who celebrated the victory of Chukwuma Charles Soludo, former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) as the would-be governor of Anambra State. I was even not excited about his politics in the first place. I’ll explain! But first, let me digress.
A governor friend of mine, once dismissed me as politically naive. You don’t know politics, he once told me with wave of the hands. How, why? He was actually reacting to my view on a move he intended to make, which I told him would backfire.
You see, this particular governor, before he ventured into the foray of politics to contest the office, which was his first, was a good friend of mine. Okay, let’s say we became friends because he wanted to contest elections and he felt I could help his ambition because of my field experience. So, he came and we hit it off. In most cases, our meetings, either in his house or my office, were so stormy that on occasions, he walked out on me, accusing me of disrespect, because, as a typical Nigerian Big Man, he couldn’t fathom some of the things I told him during such heated moments.
But he kept coming back and we kept reconciling and kept on it until his election and subsequent victory. In fairness to him, we kept our friendship through the wait until he was finally inaugurated. It was then he made me an unofficial assessor and advisor. The deal was that we would meet each day to review the activities of the day, his reason being that I was the only one that could look him in the face and tell him the truth. Of course it was a pro bono affair. I didn’t get paid. Nothing was offered, nothing was taken.
So, for a very long time in his early years, I was a constant face in his residence. Virtually every night, unless on the occasions he was out of town, I was around. I even travelled with him on many occasions, not in any official capacity, but as a friend of the governor. Remember that man with the unique title – Friend of the President!
It was in one of these friendly moments that I told him how people were praising him in town. Yes! This was true, because, he actually hit the ground running and because of the dismal outing of his predecessor, the difference he made in sharp contrast of the past drew him accolades, not only from the state, but all over the country as a demonstrable example of what a working governor should be.
But guess what? My friend’s reply shocked me. You see all these, he quipped, they’re going to be for just about two years and we’ll prepare for the next election. If it means importing soldiers from North Korea, we shall do so. Haba! Completely bemused, I reminded him that he needed no soldiers and that if he continued at the rate he was going, his second term was guaranteed like a walk in the park. That was when he waved me off with – you don’t know politics comment.
My friend, had obviously begun to listen to politicians who told him how the game was played. Needless to say that he travelled that dangerous route and of course ended up disastrously. Even though he got his second term, but it was with blood on the floor, a development, which blighted what otherwise would have been a momentous era where he could have become a political hero. Today, my friend’s career, has entered voicemail.
Again, I had an occasion to also confront a Senator in the same environment. It was in the heat of his election and I overheard him talking to his supporters about inflating figures, when he was already coasting home with a clear sign of even a landslide. Again, it was the same reply. My friend, you don’t understand politics.
Obviously, getting outrageous figures, even unearned and diminishing that of his main rival, so as to reduce him to obvious mockery was his idea of knowing politics. That’s why you often hear them celebrate that their opponents lost their wards, not minding whether the loss was contrived or real. Imagine the late Ikemba Nnewi losing Nnewi and Anambra during his presidential and even, before that, Senatorial election contests!
These two scenarios are instructive. I could now wrap my head around the activities of the new governor-elect of my state in his journey to his political victory. But who could blame me earlier? May be I didn’t really know politics.
I had always taken the former CBN boss as pure technocrat and academic and therefore held him to certain pristine standards. How was I to know that he had been a politician all his life, until he said so and provided the historical background on Wednesday, in his first post-victory interview with Arise TV?
Hear him: “Don’t forget that I have also been part of the political process all my life. I was a senior prefect in my school. In the university, I was a students union leader. I was elected by my colleagues as chairman, students wing of the party in my local government in the university and then coordinator of then Anambra and Imo, the current south East, during the presidential campaigns in 1983, coordinating the students and so on and so forth. I understand the art of bargaining, politicking and compromise.”
If I knew this much I wouldn’t have assailed him for accepting the treatment his camp meted out to Chukwuma Umeoji in the primaries that gave him the ticket of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), which actually did it for me. My point of departure was that the Soludo camp, which included Governor Willie Obiano and National Chairman of the party, Victor Oye, had the entire structure to defeat the lawmaker democratically, why disqualify him and therefore creating bad blood. I didn’t believe he would accept that. Now I know it was to rub it in and ensure that he’s punished adequately, so that others would learn in future – Politics!
That interview also made another revelation. In the run to the 2017 campaign, Soludo had said that Anambra was not broken and needed no fixing under Obiano. Now this statement was made before the Anambra International Cargo Airport and the International Conference Centre, the two legacy projects of the governor. I was one of those completely aghast by such an audacious statement. At least, if it were today when those project could be pointed at, it would have been more understandable. But now, with the revelation that the governor actually marked him as his successor a clear five years ago, the reason for the infamous comment has become very clear. Again, politics!
But now that the jigsaw puzzle has fallen in place, it has become incongruous for the same Soludo to claim that he was conscripted into the race by my people. No! It is clearly his desire and ambition to be governor. For a decade, he had sought for it, and now it is his.
In fact, the only person that could make such a claim is the Akpokuedike of Umueri, who was practically pulled out from the poolside in his Houston home, in the US, where he was lounging leisurely and playing his guitar, by vested interests to come and be governor. That was why I was one of those reticent about commenting on his performance in office, because he never had the ambition himself. He virtually promised nothing and people like me expected nothing and therefore excused him. If we had or habour any complaints, we rather direct them to those who made him and many have since done that.
But not so for Soludo. In fact, with Soludo, the stakes have increased in manifolds. Anambra can’t accept Obiano standard, not even Peter Obi’s. Of course, we could have held him down to the African Dubai or Taiwan he promised. But let us consider that too as politics. We could settle for a quarter of Dubai. But even if that is a tall order, a Pretoria or Accra or even Abuja, which is far beyond an airport or conference centre. Everyone knows what these cities look like.
Happily, he said so himself that he is not going to learn on the job. Two things in that interview excite me – his focus on value creation as opposed to just filling space as in his recruitment. I also like the part of adopting the school and providing for those school children. It shows the governor-elect is not lacking in what has come to be known as emotional intelligence.
“You’re going to work with everybody, work with different groups, but keep focused on the ball, which is the greater good for the greater number of the people of Anambra State.” Those were his words. Exciting too!
I see the scavengers, the hyenas, the vultures and the hawks hovering over the kill that has just been made. His emergence as the next governor, is certainly another opportunity for the greedy, the gluttons, the thieves and all manner of undesirable elements to descend on the commonwealth and pillage it to their fill. They will always be there. But keeping the state safe from such official roguery is what would make the difference towards the New Anambra that Soludo is promising. That is his call. The time starts now!
Igboanugo, a journalist, wrote from Lagos
Posted by Sunny Igboanugo | 29 November 2021, 01:07pm
By Sunny Igboanugo
“If you woke me up today and put the question – who is the most patriotic businessman in Nigeria in recent history – the answer will pop-up out instantly – Mike Adenuga! I won’t even have enough time to wipe my drowsy eyes or clear my head out of the sleepiness. It is an answer that has lived in my sub-conscious for years.”
These were my exact words last year. I wrote those words out of a thankful heart to celebrate the multibillionaire, whom, I have just learnt, also goes by the sobriquet – The Chairman or The Great Guru – thanks to Uche Nworah – Ezeudo Ozonmkpu of Enugwu-Ukwu na Umu-Nri – a guru himself in many respects – who has just delivered a heartwarming dissertation on the telecommunications magnate from an insider’s perspective.
I also wrote those words out of great pains and immense regrets that The Great Guru doesn’t own a refinery – just yet – because if he did, Nigerians would not be subjected to the hellish, harrowing and nightmarish experience they are forced to undergo today by the present-day shylocks playing in that field. I won’t name names. Take your tongue and count your teeth.
Just as I commented on Uche’s emotion-laden essay on his ex-boss, if Mike Adenuga owned a refinery today, Nigerians might not be buying petrol above N300 per litre. Reason is he would have found some magic to get around all the arguments offered by the shylocks that have made them continue to see shege banza as the cost of the product, which has remained central to their very existence continue to soar.
You might dismiss this as foolhardiness or ignorance. But I have my reasons. As I wrote last year – Mike Adenuga, has done what I have never seen any other Nigerian do in my long years on earth – sacrifice profit for the benefit of the masses. The introduction by GLO of per second billing in Nigeria, years ago, is the reason you and me are not swimming in the pool of our own tears today.
It was the game-changer that actually put telephony in the hands of the ordinary people – the reason that you could be calling your mother in the village from as far as the UK, US and even China, outside Nigerian cities of Sokoto, Osogbo or Umuahia.
Else, were it not for this move, GSM, would still remain a big luxury like the days of the 090 – naught nine naught – days – telephony will still be a status symbol in Nigeria today – not because of the actual global cost implications – of course neighbouring countries like Togo, Ghana and Benin Republic – far less endowed – had been using it for years – but simply because the shylocks had cornered it.
Remember all the excuses they had offered on why per second billings were impossible in Nigeria. Don’t they sound similar the arguments being made about fuel today. Aren’t they same as the reason for why the cost of owning and maintaining DSTV is higher in Nigeria than any other country the services exist?
Now don’t get it twisted. I was one of the highly privileged here. For one, I wasn’t subjected to some of the hard experiences some people went through. Sampler! Less than a week GSM came into Enugu, I was sitting at 23 Edinburg Street, office of The Guadian, when some gentlemen walked in and handed me a package containing a GSM handset, SIM card package and scores of N1.500 recharge cards.
This was at a time anyone who wanted to key into the new status symbol would go to the courts to swear affidavits, return to the banks to pay a whopping N25,000 – close to N1million in today’s reckoning before being allowed to purchase a GSM SIM card. I didn’t go through the riguours. That was even long before GLO made it to the scene.
So, as a typical Nigerian, I ought to be grateful having a place in the “I better pass my neighbour” list in this regard. But the sheer thievery that followed would not allow that. You know in those days, these shylocks configured their billing to the model that if you generated a call you paid and if you received a call you also paid. This was the level the got. That was until the advent of GLO that changed those thieving models.
I had been wondering why Adenuga chose that game-changer model, which had been declared IMPOSSIBLE before then. Recall that it took the other networks some months to adjust to the per second billing which they must have taken more out of the force of business losses than compassion for the people or change in their original business environment to adjust. For all the variables and excuses they had cited for their shylock behaviour were still in place when they began to copy GLO.
So, I could relate with Uche when he wrote these words: “The Guru is the most kind and greatest benefactor that I know. He gifts, gives, and ‘dashes’ staff, friends, associates and others cash in naira and foreign currency, cars, watches, jewelries, choice drinks and other items. No wonder Dele Momodu uses the phrase ‘the spirit of Africa’ to describe him.
“I am a great beneficiary of his magnanimity as a staff. Not only does he pay above market salaries, he also gives staff money ‘under the table’. The special word for this is in Globacom is ‘stoning’. It is common to hear staff saying; “Mr Chairman ‘stoned’ A & B’. When you are ‘stoned’, you are not expected to tell the other person. It is frowned at in the system to avoid unsettling those who were not ‘stoned.’
Mr Chairman is famous for giving people gifts, even people he doesn’t know, but reaching him to thank him becomes impossible. He does not expect a thank you and also usually doesn’t expect any return favours. He once told us a story during a meeting, of how when he started making money newly, he started buying Rolls Royce cars and other luxury cars.
“He said after sometime he began to realize the vanity in such purchases, so he distributed the whole collection among traditional rulers nationwide. It is a known fact that many people have become multimillionaires just from Mr Chairman’s stoning alone.”
Who else could have chosen that route rather than teaming up with the shylocks to make mega bucks than a man with such a large heart. Without him, Nigerians would probably still be paying as much as N300,000 for SIM cards and cost of calls would still be hitting the rooftops for such mundane, obtuse and criminal reason(s) like – telephony is an international business.
Or haven’t you heard so in DSTV, in petrol and other commodities – as if Nigeria is a different world! So, thank you Uche Nworah. Now we know! I hear it is The Chairman’s birthday, Today, Wednesday, April 29, 2026. May I join the world in saying to the The Great Guru: Hhappy 73rd! We won’t forget.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
All over the world the media are always among the first line of victims whenever and wherever democracy dies and dictatorship or autocracy is enthroned. Through the emasculation and asphyxiation of free speech and or freedom of speech, the media become the immediate target in such circumstances.
From the look of things, I don’t think Nigerian journalists are at home with this reality. No! Not just yet! I don’t know why it seems so. But I could hazard some guesses and build up some scenarios which I believe could suffice in assessing the situation.
Perhaps, it is because many of those who lived this reality in the last days of military dictatorship in Nigeria, have since exited the profession, climbed to higher grounds or just receded to the background, as consequences of natural sequence of events where the old is supposed to give way to the new.
Perhaps, it could be the direct result of the evolution in the profession – one of them – the introduction of electronics – if not the substantial or even total reliance on it as news-gathering instrument, which has made the job less cumbersome – thus introducing a pattern of ease in this regard.
Perhaps, it could be the direct consequences of the dearth, diminished impact and even subdued relevance of the print media, which led in the past, now taking a back stage in the new reality of the dominance of the electronic media.
Most probably, the influence of the social media has played a fast one in determining the direction of the industry to the extent that it is now the main source of news even for the traditional outfits, as much as it serves substantially as a distracting, if not distabilising factor.
But whatever it is, either singularly or by a collection of these factors, there is evidence of a demonstrable detour or bypass of the traditional role the media played in Nigeria that helped to shape its history – including dragging it out of the dungeon of military rule into the globally-acceptable arena of what is supposed to be democratic ethos.
Tempered by the new realities of the current generation, the Nigerian media have not only lost the fight in them but had their fangs and claws so smoothened that they now end up as instruments for caressing the patrons and purveyors of bad behaviour the tore at and clawed deeply in the past.
In other words, they have lost the plot. Otherwise, how could the media watch Nigeria suffer this level of degeneration after its chequered history of practically fighting with a million dark spirits and other anti-democratic forces to extricate itself from the vice grip of military rule?
It takes the Nigerian media which has degenerated into an insufferable degradation and complacency to watch the country gravitate towards a one-party state and pretend that they have no role in stopping the drift. Such never happened in the past.
Before 1999, the Nigerian media fought a bloody war against the military, beginning with the brutal era of the late Muhammadu Buhari, who after emerging the Head of State in 1983, launched the most draconian rule that had journalist caught in the crossfire, accentuated by the infamous Decree 2 of 1984, emblematised by the ugly fate of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor.
Then came the eight years of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) nicknamed Maradona fashioned after the immense dribbling skills of the Argentine legend, Diego Maradona, which ended with the disastrous June 12, 1993 presidential election saga. Again, the Nigerian media marked the gap-toothed General, man to man and never allowed him breathing space.
Then came the most brutal of them all – the Abacha era, where the war assumed a cataclysmic dimension with Sani Abacha, the merciless military despot that took over from IBB, receiving an equal amount of blitzkrieg as he unleashed on the media even with the clear mismatch of the arsenals on both sides.
It was this media that made Abdulsalami Abubakar, who took over from Abacha to bail with his feet, completing the transition programme that in chaos after 12 years in just one year and handed over to Olusegun Obasanjo, rather than share in the experience of his predecessors.
Even Obasanjo, throughout his eight years, had his feet under fired by a watchful media, culminating in another internecine war that saw the third term agenda, one of the features of that era, crumbling under its own weight and by the force of massive onslaught launched against it.
Today, where are the same media? They have turned out – at best – some beggarly, acquiescing and insipid entities – and at worst – some undiluted, unapologetic and rabid enablers of the same anti-people, anti-democratic forces they fought in the past at the risk of tears and blood. How tragic!
What do you see today? Rather than attacking the bad behaviour that threaten the polity, it is rationalisation. So, in 2023 when a totally staggered nation was reeling in pain as the courts churned out some of the wackiest, basest and most confusing reasons to support the mindless heist against the people’s mandate, it was a that told his bemused audience – public opinion is kilometres away from law.
Today, victim-blaming has become the answer to the clearly dangerous and life-threatening crisis of Nigeria’s drift to a one-party state where President Bola Tinubu could even emerge as a monarch, with limitless powers, if not limitless tenure.
Now, where is the agenda-setting function of the media? It is the function of the media to ferret out malfeasance, maladministration, and bad behaviour, without which governance will degenerate into an irresponsible cabal or a syndicate that perpetrates its actions in darkness. Unfortunately, that is where Nigeria is today. Else, when the media launched the fierce battle against the military, was it for the absence of the mistake on the opposite side. When the media joined the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) in its battle to revalidate the June 12 election and enthronement of full-blown democracy led by Moshood Abiola, was it that the patrons of that war were all blameless.
Yes! In spite of the large baggage Abiola, an acolyte of the military, this ugly record was pushed to the background in the interest of the bigger good – democracy. Going by today’s standard, Nigerian media would have focused on the Abiola’s association with the military and other faultlines as a basis to blame him.
Had that happened, where would Nigeria have been today? But because the media were focused on the larger picture, they in the realization that whatever touches the nose is already close to the mouth, they fought relentlessly. That is how we got here. Could that be said of the situation today.
Joseph Pulitzer once admonished: “There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy. Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.”
How much has compromise – imbued by pecuniary, ethnic, religious and other primordial sentiments allowed this work? For how long do you blame INEC and the judiciary without blaming the media? There you find the danger – the TRAGEDY.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m the Tiny Voice!
By Sunny Igboanugo
The kite swooped on the herd of sheep and picked a lamb, soared above the skies onto its nest. The father asked one question – what did the parent say when you took their child. The kite replied – nothing father – they were just gazing at me in silence. Then the kites father made an order – return it immediately. Any parent that keeps mute when its child is in danger, has a more sinister intention hidden in his heart. The kite obeyed and returned the lamb.
The next day, the same kite swooped on a brood of chickens and picked one of them. Then the mother went hysterical flying from pillar to post in frenzied movements. On return, the father again put the same question. This time, the kite presented a different picture, describing the shrieking cries of the mother-hen and how it tried to attack and failure to retrieve its chick, went into a frenzy.
Let’s have dinner, the father quipped excitedly. Danger is over. The parent has displayed every weapon in its arsenal. That is the reason chicks remain the main dish of kites till date. My father told me this story decades ago, which of course is one of the anecdotes that is as old as minds could picture. My father probably picked it from his own father.
Yet, the implication in terms of central message has never lost its texture, despite its longevity. Rather, it has become truer with time – be careful of that man with few words – refrain from attacking a man that has not offended you – never bear false witnesses. These are standard cautionary and globally accepted natural edicts, which when observed in breaches, could result in highly disastrous consequences.
Is it not intriguing how this reality has stung Omoyele Sowore like those wicked agbisi – only those who sat on the bare floors would relate with the brain-twisting, sharp and excruciating pains those black ants delivered through the bare buttocks of children – in our mother’s kitchens in those days?
Have you been watching Vincent Otse, alias Very Dark Man, recently? What do you make of the multiple arrows he has been aiming at the heart of the Revolution Now exponent? I have my people and both the optics and the import derivable therefrom could only taper towards a central reality – cow wey no get tail na God dey drive am fly!
It was a song, sung by the popular Prince Nico Mbaga – that legend of the 1980s, whose epic – Sweet Mother – still resonates centrally in the Nigerian music history even till date, long after he was gone. I think it was the flipside of that legendary outing that dominated the airwaves at the time.
Never had that song, which you heard in those days blasting from the record shops at Achapo Street – in Ajegunle – the popular centre for music records business or through the windows of privileged homes in the face me I face you compounds in the days when even the poor afforded stockfish – now a delicacy you could only enjoy the aroma from a distance if your income is not in six figures – days when even the local women looked at ice fish with disdain and derisively related it with the “poor” as Ozu Nwada. O! What memories! But I digress!
But before I walked too far and disappeared into those days when me, as a child sleeping on a mat at a one-room apartment at Number 14 Uzor Street, but still ate lavish meals which I must now struggle to offer my wards, I return to today’s reality to ask myself why this is happening before my eyes. Why must it be VDM that is now waging a war against Sowore – with whom he was only too cozy – just yesterday!
For months now, this selfsame Sowore, had launched a massive blitzkrieg against Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), in the 2023 presidential election. In what is more of a cocktail of bits and pieces, odds and ends set of drivels rather than any form of articulated reasoning based on facts and figures, this same man, actually came out with what has now become his catchphrase – Obi is a packaged fraud!
Don’t bother to ask him for facts supporting his conclusion. The only one he supplied was that the former Governor of Anambra State, was hobnobbing with supposed thieves and brigands responsible for Nigerian woes.
Yet, this selfsame Sowore, conveniently left out his central role, and incestuous relationship with the same people at an auspicious period, which ended up in watering the ground for what he now complains about from the rooftops. Were it not for Sowore, there might not have been a President Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu as APC governments – the worst era Nigeria has ever endured and currently cursed with!
Videos even showed him being celebrated nationally for this singular role. Yet, this is the same man, assailing Obi for keeping bad company! But that is what happens with the purveyors of anti-Obi sentiments. They inevitably meet a drought and are left with nothing more to rely on but contrivances. Where the well is dry, they import water tankers to try a rescue.
Where deceit fails, they try illogic, then subterfuge, half-truths, outright lies and then mischief as they meet more frustrations. Imagine a Sowore saying that Obi packed Northerners in lorries and sent them back to their homes. In Nigeria? At what period? The same Obi who built his personal and state security architectures around northern people – Northern Aide De Camp (ADC) and Norther Commissioners of Police throughout his eight years?
To Sowore, nothing is good enough! He even mocks Obi for saying that he owns only one house in Nigeria – a development, which elsewhere defines absolute personal contentment. Elsewhere, the fact that Obi could prove this claim is demonstrable evidence of reduced propensity for induced stealing and absence of hunger for corruption and therefore a call for celebration. But what do you have here? Spite, mockery and contempt.
Now, it is not like Obi’s records – public and private are hidden. This was a man, who even as a university student, had become so successful in business that his chain of buildings were used as bank branches – that at a point was one of the 10 richest men in the UK – in fact, one of the 8.000 richest men in the world – so the source of his wealth is not suspect.
In office as governor, this was the same Obi who took schools in Anambra State from number 26 to number one, starting from his second year in office by sheer dint of visionary leadership anchored on self-denial – the only governor in history that left a whopping N75billion in the coffers – capping it all with emerging as the best in the implementation of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs).
Now, if a governor attains the first position in this globally-accepted measurement instrument – covering all indices of developmental – physical infrastructure and policy frameworks for human capital development, what else defines excellence in leadership? Yet, people like Sowore will never be persuaded.
Now you know why! VDM has supplied you with the answer. Sowore is in business. His activism is business – his Revolution Now – business – attacks on Tinubu – business – Obi is a packaged fraud – business – presidential ambition business.
Not that the world didn’t know this. But coming from familiar quarters – given the relationship between the two – both erstwhile friends – it is only gotten clearer and better. It is even moreso when the further and better particulars is not coming from Obi, but a more virulent voice!
Now, what is said about fate? What does the law of Karma say again? How does a tailless cow deal with flies again? Sowore has given us the lead and VDM has given you the answer.
But hear the philosopher! Beware of your thoughts, lest they become words; beware of your words, lest they become actions; beware of your actions, lest they become habits; beware of your habits, lest they become character; beware of your character, lest it becomes your destiny! Nigerians, think!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
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