US media and Charleston shooting

I refer to the extensive postings in theHuffington Post and other news outlets on the many related stories and sub-plots surrounding the recent killing of nine blacks at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Granted that no sane observer had attributed religion (Christian or otherwise) to the underlying issues surrounding the massacre, I find it most unhelpful giving that FOX-News/Conservative slant of the tragedy any further credence by even discussing it.

The murderer (please, forget alleged) Dylan Roof, told all his friends, victims and survivors that he came to kill blacks. Period.

Media platforms like Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and Larry Wilmore’s Nightly Show both on The Comedy Channel, and others have taken time to show the futility of that narrative invented by conservatives, flying in the face of evidence and facts. Shame on Fox Inc.

Earlier while campaigning in California, frontline Democratic presidential aspirant, Hilary Clinton, gave a speech that may well turn out to be landmark. She boldly took on the ugly monster of race relations. She took no prisoners and dispassionately addressed the historical, institutional (Jim Crow), moral and very personal aspects (red lining and differential policing) of race relations that routinely result in such outcomes typified by the outrage in Charleston, SC. It should be more profitable analysing that speech rather than dwelling on the absolute rubbish put out by Fox and company.

Perhaps, we have finally come to a tipping point. For those Republicans who insist on deluding themselves (and nobody else) on the issue of race, the current sad development is akin to having ants in their pants.

How on earth does an old school conservative deal with this? Confusion in their presidential slate has come from a most unlikely source.

What with the likes of Mitt Romney weighing in and openly calling for the lowering of the confederate flag flying from public buildings in South Carolina?

This flag has for years been an open insult and affront to the sensibilities of all blacks and the decent segment of the white population. It seems like everybody now has to stand up to be counted.

The huge turnout of white Americans at the first Sunday service at Emanuel AME Church following the killings speaks volumes. Nobody appears to be pretending to sit this one out on the fence.

I foresee the momentum sustained with the final endgame remaining a matter of pure speculation. It seems obvious that things just cannot remain the same going forward.

Yes; Why CAN'T Rachel Dolezal Be Black? | The Daily Caller

I had searched to find out what Ta-Nehisi Coates  had to say about the controversy surrounding the white NAACP leader Rachel who had for years been passing as black. Coates is my favourite columnist at The Atlantic. I couldn't  immediately find his post but what I found, excerpted below, briefly alluded to his earlier published works on the nature and structure of racial identity. 

Consider these:

"In recent interviews with Dolezal, reporters have tried to trap her, asking “Are your parents white?”

This is the wrong question. We shouldn’t be asking if Dolezal’s parents are black, or if she looks black. The only question that matters is: Does she feel black?

We have accepted that Caitlyn Jenner, despite being born in a male body (named Chris) and having a Y chromosome and fathering six children, was actually a woman all along (OMG!) and simply forced into a male role by a sexist, patriarchal society held back by quaint notions such as “people with penises are men. . . etc” 

America, their America! 

I gave up writing an opinion on this matter when I read the above article. What more could I have added except the biblical aphorism credited to Christ namely that "those who are for us cannot be against us". 

Race Relations in the United States - Going Forward In Charleston, South Carolina

I refer to the extensive postings in the Huffington Post and other news outlets on the many related stories and sub-plots surrounding the recent killing of nine blacks at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Granted that no sane observer had attributed religion (christian or otherwise) to the underlying issues surrounding the massacre, I find it most unhelpful giving that FOX-News/Conservative slant of the tragedy any further credence by even discussing it. The murderer (please forget alleged) Dylan Roof, told all his friends, victims and survivors that he came TO KILL BLACKS. Period. 

Media platforms like Jon Stewart's Daily Show and Larry Wilmore's Nightly Show both on The Comedy Channel, and others have taken time to show the futility of that narrative invented by conservatives, flying in the face of evidence and facts. Shame on Fox Inc. 

Earlier while campaigning in California, frontline Democratic presidential aspirant Hilary Clinton gave a speech that may well turnout to be landmark. She boldly took on the ugly monster of race relations. She took no prisoners and dispassionately addressed the historical, institutional (Jim Crow), moral and very personal aspects (red lining & differential policing) of race relations that routinely result in such outcomes typified by the outrage in Charleston, SC.  It should be more profitable analysing that speech rather than dwelling on the absolute rubbish put out by Fox and company. 

Perhaps we have finally come to a tipping point. For those Republicans who insist on deluding themselves (and nobody else) on the issue of race the current sad development is akin to having ants in their pants. How on earth does an old school conservative deal with this? Confusion in their presidential slate has come from a most unlikely source. 

What with the likes of Mitt Romney weighing in and openly calling for the lowering of the confederate flag flying from public buildings in South Carolina? This flag has for years been an open insult and affront to the sensibilities of all blacks and the decent segment of the white population. It seems like everybody now has to stand up to be counted. The huge turnout of white America at today's first Sunday service at Emanuel AME Church following the killings speaks volumes. Nobody appears be pretending to sit this one out on the fence. I foresee the momentum sustained with the final endgame remaining a matter of pure speculation. It seems obvious that things just cannot remain the same going forward.    

Re: The Dallas Texas bikini-pool party and the McKinney Police

Re: The Dallas Texas bikini-pool party and the McKinney Police

Like just about everybody else I have read the report and watched the video of the incident at the McKinney, Texas bikini pool party. Teenager Dajerria Becton, 15, was dragged by the hair and pinned face down in the dirt and kneed in the back by a most unruly policeman. 

In subsequent reports of the incident, " . . one white woman, (who declined to be identified on camera), told the Fox affiliate "They were just doing the right thing when these kids were fleeing and using profanity and threatening security guards. . ."

Note the word: "fleeing".  Not approaching,  not threatening. 

Was it not The First Amendment that guarantees free speech? It has ensured the freedom to engage in the following negative activities:
    
    a) Anti-semitic hate speech,
    b) anti-black hate speech and other racial slurs,
    c) anti-islamic hate speech,
    d)KKK publications and posters,
    e)The new Nazi movement publicly denouncing the jews and denying the holocaust,
    Etc  The list goes on. 

With the above background, I fail to see how the free use of "profanities" by a 15year old girl wearing only a bikini, abused and traumatised, cannot be accommodated by a supposedly trained police officer. Notwithstanding his resignation, as opposed to being fired, officer Eric Casebolt has an expensive civil suit staring him in the face. Some people never learn. When he loses his retirement nest egg and throws in (in the Nigerian parlance) the family land, then he would have learnt the hard way. 

There was this then decried apartheid-era law or concept of Common Cause which should hold culpable those adult white males who stood by unconcerned while the outrage lasted. Their behaviour was simply despicable. The responsibility goes way beyond vicarious. For goodness sake, it could have been their daughter in a different circumstance.

Allison-Madueke's sing song

Reading the answers given by former petroleum minister Allison-Madueke to questions put to her by Ms Ijeoma Nwogwugwu of Thisday newspapers was extremely tedious. It was as if she made every effort to use up the two or so hours which she so "graciously" allotted to the interview now that she has so much time on her hands. 

I believe that I know Ms Nwogwugwu enough having seriously decided to follow her scholarly interventions starting from 2007 the eve of OBJ imposition of President Yar'Adua on us. I would be damned if Mrs Allison-Madueke, outside of matters already common knowledge, convinced her or any of her readers about anything else. I dare say that very few of us have put much stock on this belated effort from an otherwise aloof minister to meet the public halfway to address its concerns. 

Who told the minister that the issue of gas gathering, gas monetisation, unassociated gasfield and gas pipeline infrastructure development, had any direct bearing on President Obasanjo's NIPP project? One tragic series of omissions simply collided with a new one. That's the typical story of failed governance and service delivery in our unfortunate country. 

In 1982 I had stepped into the Ekpan offices of the new Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) to discuss a wide range of issues with the management. Before long, I had told the Managing Director (I think) that the NGC was a misnomer since it owned no gas assets, just the pipelines to Lagos. In over 30years, we have hardly moved one single step from that sad situation. 

In my widely published article "Gas to Power Conundrum," I had alluded to my public exchange with a former GMD of the NNPC, Chief Chamberlain Oyibo, on the need to immediately address the establishment of a national gas pipeline network/grid. For a man with his background not to have seen what I saw then remains a mystery. And now the otherwise wordly-wise operators of our energy sector have proved unable or unwilling to plan for the gas supply pipelines to the new NIPP plants and others. Meanwhile the nation is being sold the dummy that the problem just sprang on them by surprise. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

I often remind anybody who cares to listen that outside of Lagos, Kano is the next major industrial centre in Nigeria. I could not fathom why as far back as 1982 natural gas was not being piped to Kano and by the same token to Minna, Abuja, Kaduna, Zaria, Sokoto and Maiduguri. 

Gas is almost synonymous with electric power. The people at OBJ's NIPP certainly did not invent the concept. However they deliberately undermined their own undertaking by refusing to do their homework. 

It is a no-brainer that the valiant efforts of companies like Ashaka Cement to stay in production over the years in Gombe State would have been a much simpler proposition if they had natural gas supply.  

For the above reasons I am deeply incensed by the gloating by Mrs Allison-Madueke that the NIPP-NNPC activities under her watch successfully laid a paltry 500km of gas pipelines. That comes to less than 1.5km/week over the eight years of the Yar'Adua-Jonathan administration. I will never cease wondering if actually we are in any hurry as a nation. Will Mrs Madueke please check what the Chinese, Brazilians or the Indonesians achieve in a good month or quarter. Her projections going into 2018 are in no way impressive. 

In conjunction with her boss and many subordinates, the former petroleum minister had failed woefully to provide reliable service to Nigerians. This is beyond dispute. With this background one fails to get the exact point in the very long dribble in the interview where the Mrs Madueke strived to justify her refusal to co-operate with the legislators who had attempted to probe the purported leasing of aircraft by the minister. For good or ill, our "elected" representatives reserve the right to investigate any matter under the sun. That includes what our president had for breakfast especially since we are footing the bill. To prevent our reps from doing their job is a mark of lawlessness and crass irresponsibility. What revelations she belatedly made to Thisday's Ms Nwogwugwu could and should have been made to the proper authorities in a timely manner, on demand and at the appropriate forum.  Outside of her media handlers and immediate family, Mrs Madueke cannot expect sympathy from the citizenry. 

It would be counterproductive to try to debunk many of the issues raised by the former minister in this patently self-serving interview. Many of the conclusions of observers like this writer were arrived at over a long period of time. It is highly unlikely that a hitherto reticent and unapproachable minister of a badly-run government agency will suddenly come up with new "facts" for whitewashing her tenure ten days after leaving office. Attempy to engage her point by point, issue by issue, will only aid to keep her in the public eye and may be unwittingly be deployed in aid of a revisionist script of her (dis)service. 

As a numbers person, I cannot without facts malign the ex-minister with any direct accusation of theft be it $10b or $20b. However like very many Nigerians, having dealt with NNPC and its subsidiaries, I know enough to conclude that the place is rotten through and through. Anytime we seem to forget or are in doubt, the NNPC, synonymous with the oil & gas sector, provides us with one more mind-boggling scandal. Mrs Allison-Madueke can claim to be a saint, even a Mother Theresa, but the house from which she has just been ejected reeks like an abandoned mortuary. 

Re: Africa at the coalface of development

A few months ago I came across the above paper written by Tariro Kamuti, a consultant with Consultancy Africa Intelligence. The notes accompanying the paper constitute a treasure trove for students, academics, economists and policymakers in government.

However the paper bemoaned what it termed “The dilemma of coal as a necessary evil on the (African) continent”. I do not share that view, hence this rejoinder.

The paper says in part: “However, coal is now a fuel that is difficult to brush aside as it contributes to 39 percent of the world’s electricity production and is expected to remain so over the next 20 years, while it is also an important component of 64 percent of world steel production. Nevertheless, coal has detrimental environmental effects, such as air pollution and acid rain, which have been felt since the peak of the Industrial Revolution. The question then arises: should Africa continue using coal for much-needed development despite its negative environmental consequences?”

The truth is that apart from the Republic of South Africa, the rest of the continent hardly applies coal to the solution of its many problems, the major one being power generation. Hence the “negative environmental consequences” are actually unknown to us. Yes, we read about them.

For Nigeria and indeed the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, there is no dilemma involved here. Africa should in the short term increase its consumption of coal perhaps a hundredfold. I challenge anyone to prove that this quantum leap (from a very low base of per capita energy consumption) cannot be accommodated by a mere 5 percent reduction in the (over)usage of coal by the advanced economies of US, Europe, China, India, Brazil and South Africa. As I have stated in a previous essay, Nigeria and other energy-poor countries mainly in Africa have no business joining in the discussion and debate over global warming. Apart from the criminal flaring of natural gas associated with oil production, Nigeria as an “industrial nation (?)” currently contributes next to nothing towards the CO2 load in the ozone layer. The kind of commitments foolishly made on our behalf at Rio, Kyoto and other fora by Prof Aina and his successors were uncalled for. Nigeria must be industrialised first, thus earning a place at the table.

One other section of the above paper states as follows: “For example, South Africa possesses 11 percent of the world’s coal reserves and contributes about 6 percent to global production. The country has economically recoverable coal reserves of between 15 and 55 billion tonnes, of which 96 percent of reserves are bituminous coal. South Africa relies on coal for 92 percent of its electricity production.”

Isn’t that great? I would like to rivet the reader’s attention specifically to the 92 percent! One should compare and contrast with the situation in Nigeria.

The paper continues: “Nigeria too has vast unexploited coal resources. Consequently, the government has placed a high priority on resuscitating the coal mining industry in order to increase the country’s power generating capacity.”

My own observation is that there is no indication that the government of Nigeria (and my own colleagues ensconced comfortably in it) have any serious plan to develop the coal industry which is vital to the great leap forward in our power industry. I now state publicly that I am very much ashamed of them. Thus the above statement that “the government has placed a high priority on resuscitating the coal mining industry” is at best a rumour which is never a basis for economic planning. Coal mining, like copper, bauxite, iron ore, etc, is big and dirty business. It is not for the faint-hearted. It cannot be profitably done on a small scale or in secret. I have followed with subdued excitement the many press releases by and on the Eta-Zuma group. I am impatiently waiting for the coal and the coal-fired power plants.

Permit me to dabble into some enlightened estimation. For every quantum of electricity generated or projected (say, 20teraWhr), it will be quite easy to deduce the standard cost of the various major inputs. On the fuel side, not only will the cost of coal be much lower, it will be sourced domestically. A lion’s share of the fuel spend will be labour, i.e., mining labour. Only a fool will not see the jobs embedded in such an enterprise. There has been some rather infrequent but politically correct talk in the media on this score by people in government. We must go beyond that, and fast too.

The coal mining members of COSATU in South Africa probably constitute the largest and most powerful bloc in that nation. Their contribution is immense. So also is their well-deserved political clout. Without the coal and the electrical power derived from it, all other industries including gold, platinum mining and agricultural processing would not have had a fighting chance.

For balance, I have to state the obvious in the case of the natural gas-fired power plants. Nigeria has abundant deposits of gas which it has unfortunately and quite inexplicably been unable to develop and harness. Development of gas fields and processing the output has always been an expensive and technically challenging activity. In this case a disproportionately large part of the cost structure is for offshore-based engineering activity and (eventually) lightly manned processing equipment, i.e., far fewer jobs. The likes of General Electric and Nuovo Pignone and others are the major beneficiaries of the requisite large capital outlay. . .

In contrast, for the design and delivery of coal-fired power plants, it is possible in the short term to develop some sizeable local capability. This should include coal handling and preparation (crushing, slurrying and pumping), boiler design, fabrication and repair (including the relevant physical metallurgy for material specification, welding & inspection), and feed pump and steam piping design & installation.

In addition, we would expect our engineers to be involved in all aspects of condenser design and fabrication, sizing and specifications for forced convection fans & motors, cooling water pumps and airflow & water mixing baffles. The highly visible retaining structures common to all big thermal power plants are essentially reinforced structural concrete which should hold no mysteries for Nigerian engineers. We have been involved in constructing some dams here.

We do not exactly lack high-end manpower. I must mention only one name here, Josephat Okoye of Water & Dam Services. After UC Berkeley, he is said to have cut his teeth over four decades ago in the jungles of Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea during the construction of the then most prolific copper-gold mining and processing operation in the world by Freeport Inc.

I nearly collapsed when I read two years ago that a certain minister of state (Power) publicly admonished Dr Okoye and argued with him over the delivery schedule for the Mambilla Hydroelectric project. This minister’s outburst is akin to my presuming to offer an opinion to the late Albert Einstein on the finer points of the Theory of Relativity. The very ignorant are truly much braver than the rest of us. That is why we are the way we are. It is also on record that no outsiders constructed the controversial cooling tower units at Pyongbon in North Korea. 

Various levels of coal pollution abatement techniques and technologies are competitively available from more mature economies worldwide. If need be, these can be grafted onto our own indigenous planning processes. While we unavoidably pollute just a little, the advanced economies will and should continue to advance the frontiers of CO2 capture and re-injection. They owe that much to the survival of the global ecosystem, having been polluting unchecked for the past 400 years!

On the other hand, in the next two decades, I do not expect my professional colleagues (and our children) to make much of a dent in the business of ultra high speed and high temperature gas turbines, which is actually next to rocket science for which we have to date shown no interest. In this business, coal-fired power plants remain the low hanging fruits which we must pluck first.

Just about anybody in government who can read glibly talks about alternative energy sources, solar, wind and often biomass. Others will add wave and geo-thermal. My advice at this stage of our (under)development is to stay close to these scientific developments so as to be able to jump on board in the future when it will finally make sense for us to do so. Even now, there are a few niche applications where alternative energy is the only available option. Anyone who disagrees with this should kindly show us where in the world a steel rolling mill and/or an aluminium smelting plant is run on the so-called renewable energy that is not hydro. I rest my case.

With the clueless gerontocrats who studied History, Classics and Greek philosophy still hanging around offering technical advice to this and previous governments, it is clear that my generation of technocrats (can I really claim that?), who are not getting any younger, may die out without the opportunity to make any meaningful contribution to the development of this nation. It is so sad sounding as if one is looking for a job. Perish the thought! For our own sanity, there is so much many of us can do for free for this our Nigeria. Time is running out. There is general agreement that if we take care of electrical power a whole lot of things will fall into place.

One parting shot. I have just learnt from one of the news networks that the current power supply woes of South Africa’s ESKOM are being eased by import of 200mW from Namibia of all places. Will Nigeria be able to achieve self-sufficiency and comfortably export power to our neighbours in my lifetime? I wonder.

Re: The need for true federalism in Nigeria

A former President of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Raph Uwechue, writing in a two-part article in The PUNCH sometime last year on the above, stated as follows:

“A truly strong and prosperous Nigeria has, of necessity, to be a politically stable Nigeria. Greater strength does not necessarily lie in the outwardly impressive but inwardly brittle togetherness such as binds the particles of a piece of rock but in the less obvious and more supple cohesiveness holding together those of a lump of rubber. Tested under pressure, the former cracks up; the latter bulges but does not break. Nigeria’s ultimate strength and chances of stable progress in sustainable unity lie in her ability to hold together in times of stress the various and divergent elements of which she is composed. They do not lie in setting up an over-centralised constitutional straight jacket with insufficient allowance for her varying angles and curves.”

I must extol our eminent brother for this most apt analogy. For all I know, Uwechue would make a very good material scientist.

However, I beg to disagree with the imposition of one particular “no-go area” as proposed by Gen. Yakubu Gowon 50 odd years ago, namely that a total break-up of Nigeria should not be considered or discussed at all. Pray, how then do the conferees come face to face with the true cost of a break-up? That is the only thing that will force all parties back to their senses, to make the necessary compromises towards bringing about a viable peoples’ constitution for Nigeria. Otherwise, statements like, “The unity of Nigeria is a settled issue,” will continue to be bandied around to the detriment of true dialogue.

The expression, “forever,” is also often used with triumphal certainty by some segments of the Nigerian society. Pray, how long is “forever”?  Ten years, 50, a hundred? Ask the Russians. Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, quoting Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “Tout empire perira.” All empires, kingdoms and hegemonies sooner or later come to an end, meaning, perish! Emperor Constantine’s efforts ultimately came to naught. So much for “forever.”

Just like in the case of Nigeria, the British planted the seeds of disunity among the people of Sudan, making no effort to unite them in equity. See where it has led them. Several commentators have recently reminded us of the dissolution of once powerful nations, starting with the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, etc, and ending with the Sudan. Indonesia hung on to East Timor right from the departure of the Portuguese but eventually had to let it go. Heaven did not fall. Indonesia is today a happier and more secure and prosperous country. It even has spare financial resources to invest in Nigeria, money that would have been wasted chasing the likes of the late freedom fighter,  Xanana Guzman. Here in Nigeria, we waste resources tracking Raph. Uwazurike when he is not at large, while the country is going to the dogs.

If, in the very unlikely event, the Nigerian peoples were to decide to rather go their separate ways and live peacefully as neighbours as opposed to the ongoing tearing into one another in a fractious marriage, heaven will not fall either. Nations and kingdoms do evolve.

So, let’s get on with an open-ended, free and unfettered dialogue over the national question. Nigeria will definitely be the better for it. Fear mongering, about the negative outcome of a long delayed but most necessary conference that has not yet taken place, is actually criminal. We have missed several opportunities in the past to set things right. Please God, guide us to succeed this time around.

PHCN sale: Matters arising

NOVEMBER 26, 2013

I have followed with dismay the protracted cliffhanger of a negotiation that went on between the Federal Government and erstwhile Power Holding Company of Nigeria workers’ union in the run-up to the sale and eventual handover of the electricity monopoly to the new investors.

I know for a fact that ships are routinely sold in mid-voyage, with assets, liabilities and pending litigation duly assigned. The PHCN or any such organisation was meant to remain a going concern. Why then did the discredited workers seek to hold the nation to ransom? The companies, by whatever new name called, were not about to leave town.

It is instructive to note that at no point did anyone suggest that any entity other than the government, in exercising its control of one of the pinnacles of the commanding heights of the Nigerian economy, was owing the PHCN workers, whether fired or retained. Why then did the government appear to allow the union of unproductive workers to dictate the terms of the discussion? It is conceivable that the government could have accepted to pay off every single ghost on the bloated PHCN payroll. However, the very fact that the management and staff, beneficiaries of the unsustainable status quo, had deliberately created a convoluted paper/electronic trail, would have still made it impossible to pay off everybody on a specific date, any date.  The distribution companies and generation companies must go on with their newly acquired mandate. I imagine that one year from now, there would still be a few “PHCN staff” not yet settled because they were never employees of the PHCN ab initio!

The real tragedy is that the unproductive and unteachable management and staff of the moribund PHCN essentially ran their very own company aground. They even made no plans or provisions for their own retirement, defying the notion that people would normally act in their own enlightened self-interest. Then, we, the people, have had to appropriate money earned elsewhere to pay them, after their stealing us blind. Following this template, I shudder at the thought of when (not if) we decide to sell off the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. We may then have to trade in half our oil fields and throw in whatever crown jewels that we may still own in order to see off our very “hard-working and productive” brethren at the NNPC.

I imagine two alternative scenarios for dealing with this situation:

The first is to declare the PHCN insolvent and allow the courts to take care of the evolving situation. The labour union would then have something really serious to worry about, not the current feast-for-all. Will the workers go on strike? Who cares? What difference would that make to their “very happy” customers?

The second is to value the DISCOS and GENCOS prior to sale and injection of fresh capital and allocate shares to our “hard working” brethren equivalent to 40 to 60 per cent of what is being owed them. Those who survive the reorganisation would either work hard to see to the profitability and growth of their investment, or see it vanish into thin air. Those that don’t will take to prayers and offering all manner of encouragement to their erstwhile colleagues to ensure that this new experiment works, so as to save their own investment. As it is now, it is a win-win situation, no matter what, for the former PHCN staff. Not fair at all.

In short, I recommend that our state owned monopolies must from now on be run with limited liabilities. The absence of such limitation engenders the “which-one-concern-me” attitude that led to the current mess under discussion. The laws governing bankruptcy must be modified to accommodate state monopolies.

Lessons Nigeria can learn from Lee Kuan Yew

I happened to be sitting in front of the television in the two hours following the official announcement by the Singaporean Prime Minister’s office of the passing of Lee Kuan Yew, widely revered as the founding father of Singapore. Despite the time difference, leaders from all over the globe were outdoing one another with statements of profound admiration of and respect for the late Prime Minister. There was no let up over the next several days as governments expressed condolences and announced their intention to send high powered delegations to grace the funeral held on Sunday. All these admirers could NOT be wrong, including China whose late leader Deng Xiaoping had consulted with Yew in the run-up to its great opening to the outside world. Even President Barak Obama, as brilliant as they come, has publicly acknowledged the premium he placed on the advice he received from Yew.

A couple of years ago, I came back from a brief absence from Nigeria to meet a raging positive controversy. The news headline was that a certain book, FROM THIRD WORLD TO FIRST, authored by Lee Kuan Yew, was going to redeem Nigeria. From the reports, I gleaned that the Presidency had just declared the book, which had been available for quite a while, required reading for the heads of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies. I was highly scandalised because I had assumed, it now appeared wrongly, that the typical minister, or permanent secretary must surely have read that book. There has been more than enough prompting over time from the voracious literati in our midst who routinely make several executive summaries available to those of us less endowed or plain lazy. People like Prof Pat Utomi immediately come to mind. Left to my own devices, I may never have come across writings such as Francis Fukuyama’s. As for Yew’s From Third World To First, Utomi and many others had dutifully made a song and dance of it. Only the deaf and blind could claim not to have noticed.

That was exactly why I was embarrassed since I couldn’t imagine that a serving minister or permanent secretary would need his boss to REQUIRE him to read Yew’s book. What exactly did they then read outside recommended texts while at Harvard, Stanford, Wharton and Insead, etc? Is it that they completely stopped reading once they returned to Nigeria with their higher degrees?

The truth is that what made Lee Kuan Yew to stand out were his intellect and tenacity girded by uncompromising ethical standards of meritocracy and a brutal stance against corruption of all kinds. For a tiny country lacking every single natural resource, including land and fresh water, Yew recognised very early that the one thing Singapore had was its people. Hence, all that Yew and his successors achieved in the past five decades can be summarised thus: He developed and properly harnessed the human resources of Singapore, turning everything that they touched into gold. How many Nigerians are aware that Singapore was actually expelled from the Malaysian Federation almost immediately after independence from British colonial rule, at about the same time as us? This happened because Singapore looked like a basket case and was the very poor cousin in that federation. And here we have busied ourselves with the interminable squabble over oil-derived revenue.

Everybody, including advanced western economies, have over the past two decades expressed immense amazement at the success of the Singaporean model and the tenacity with which it has been pursued.

Other commentators, in reporting the passing of Yew, have drawn attention to some lessons that Nigeria can and should take from his methods and achievements. One writer has pointed out that “a notable lesson for Nigeria is Lee’s tendency towards home-grown solutions as against imported ideas.”

I must at this point recall a statement made at a forum by my friend, Ajulu Uzodike, a renowned Nigerian manufacturer, on manpower issues. He stressed that no foreign country or company sends its best people overseas, no matter what. This writer has had the experience of being asked routinely by government outfits and other companies in Nigeria, “Who are your technical partners?” My stock answers typically ruffled feathers, a development that I enjoyed so much. I could stress that if we had any knowledge gaps based on the complexity of the job at hand, we would know well ahead of the client. In addition, if the client was smarter than my organisation, then they should have solved the problems by themselves. Or again, I would remind the client that our erstwhile bosses in London, New York. San Francisco or Tokyo CANNOT come down here to fix the problem. As for our colleagues over there, we were more often than not smarter than them!

That explains why a President Olusegun Obasanjo would go all over the world wooing Nigerians in the Diaspora to come home without realising that a good many of them were already home of their own accord, pleading for challenges commensurate with their training and experience. The best salesmen of Nigeria’s effort to invite home its brightest and best in foreign lands are those who are already here!

The story of how Obasanjo encountered Dr Emmanuel Egbogah, PE, who routinely tells the likes of Schlumberger what to do in difficult circumstances, is truly worthy of a book. I understand that he was recommended to the President independently by both the then Libyan oil minister and the folks at Malaysia’s Petramina. Nigerians at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the Presidency either didn’t know about this world renowned petroleum engineer OR pretended not to know. It is about time Egbogah wrote his own account, in the national interest.

This writer can swear that there is no documentary evidence in Nigerian government records that he actually came back to the country more than three decades ago. If this is true of a Federal Government scholar like me, one wonders about the rest. On this score, Nigeria has so much to learn from Singapore, and also Malaysia, Indonesia, pre-Gulf War Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Other examples abound. These countries keep track of their manpower. It pays.

Out of frustration, many Nigerians readily latch onto what they perceive to be the real reason for Nigeria’s one step forward, two steps backward development trajectory. I have written extensively on our various mis-steps in the power and automobile industries.

Nigerians blame Islam. Really? Nobody seems to remember that Indonesia, which has mostly got its act together, is the largest Muslim country in the world. It also provides a sizable chunk of the direct foreign investment flow into Nigeria.

Next, Nigeria was ruined by long term military rule/dictatorship. Yes, that is true. But the story does not have to end that way. For whatever is wrong with dictatorship, other dictators like Lee Kuan Yew and General Surharto (of Indonesia) had used the period of restricted plural political expression to set their nation on the path of irreversible progress. So, also did the Chinese leadership which was and still is anything but democratic. The problem then has to be strictly Nigerian. General Yakubu Gowon and his many successors, with their limited education and narrow world view, just couldn’t get it. Was he not the one who announced decades ago that money was not our problem, but how to spend it? Our politicians, both military and civilians, had dutifully obliged him. That is partly why we are the way we are.

Nigeria has too many tribes and languages. We are too many. Is that true? How do we compare with India, or China? I was shocked to learn that India had joined our usual source, Thailand, to export rice to Nigeria. Thankfully, the Agriculture  Minister, Akinwunmi Adesina, and his team are currently addressing that issue.

I have endeavoured to use a broad brush to highlight the prodigious output and achievements of this remarkable man Lee Kuan Yew in the service of his people. I can only hope that I have been able to point out that it is not too late for the Nigerian leadership to turn over a new leaf and start with renewed resolve the march to national greatness. It is clear that we have all that it takes. Clearly, I am not referring to oil, gold, tin and columbite.

May Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew rest in perfect peace!

RE: CUSTOMS AGENTS CALL FOR AUTO POLICY REVIEW

The National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents has again called for a review of the National Automotive Policy which has only recently and quite belatedly been formulated and passed into law. These traders have shamelessly and most stridently opposed any move by ANY government to advance the technological development of this country and the creation of proper jobs for our teeming masses.

I advise that the association relents and gets involved in auto dealership for new cars, both locally assembled and imported. Or perhaps they should invest in the manufacturing of components. These are new lines of business staring them in the face. The group should not be seen to be making policy and indeed legislating on industrial and developmental matters. I hope that the association encouraged enough of its membership to run for the House of Representatives and the Senate seats in the forthcoming elections. That is the right way to go, by joining others to democratically argue how best to take care of the interests of the vast majority of our citizens.

Since the Customs clearing and forwarding industry works on a cost and reimbursibles basis, the membership should step aside and allow the importers to argue, if they want, about affordability. The importers know when to stop importing items that are not comparatively affordable or do not make sense. In fact, 50 per cent of the middle class Nigerians that own or aspire to own cars have no business driving anything bigger than a Kia Picanto. However, they covet a big “Jeep” and want the government to subsidise the implied self-deceptive fake lifestyle.

Another sad aspect is that funds that should be applied towards a modest family home end up gobbled by a fast depreciating item, a bogous car.

Because of the politics of this year’s general election the government has on several occasions more or less shot itself on the foot by shifting the date for the commencement of its new tariff plan. This only emboldened the clearing agents the more! They will not stop until they have successfully scuttled the entire automotive policy. The government must steadfastly stand its ground and call their bluff. The truth is that if the customs agents win, we lose. Simple. The death of the many new automobile assembly plants that are currently springing up in the wake of the policy will be a certainty.

If the members of the National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents have been so patriotic and altruistic in their contribution to the affairs of the Nigerian nation, I would want them to advise the nation about their positive impact, if any, on the rice front. The evidence speaks for itself.

RE: Sepp Blatter Resigns!

Sepp Blatter of FIFA is gone. 

Immediately after last week's election, I had predicted that the firestorm surrounding the ongoing allegations of corruption and arrest of his underlings in Zurich at the behest of the US Department of Justice, would make it impossible for him to conclude this term of office. I even imagined the US and some other countries declaring Blatter persona non grata. 

The scenario of Blatter in the dock being cross-examined appears most frightening to all concerned. From all indications Blatter has been confronted by all this and more and hence decided to jump now rather than later.

Who was that Nigerian representative on the FIFA assembly fingered and recorded on tape demanding money for votes? I will not be surprised if he is still in recorning in sports administration in Nigeria. But he shouldn't be. These are kind of issues we should have taken care of instead of reserving it once again for President Buhari. Perhaps that would be expecting too much from the past PDP administration. 

Meanwhile, VIVA FIFA! May the beautiful game grow unhindered.