Sports Minister SPENDED allocated funds.

I just saw a short video clip where the Hon(?) Minister made the above statement. That immediately erased any reticence I had in widely sharing the following argument that I had with a friend earlier today. Obviously, relative mediocrity apart, the Federal Executive Council is definitely a mixed bag. Before Solomon Dalung attracted this unpleasant attention to himself, other ministers have faced or are still facing their own deserved inquisition.

My friend Ike Ezugwu had posited as follows:

" . but we should learn to trust people in authority . . to do what they consider best for us. . " Hmmmm!

MY REPLY, exerpted:
Ike Ezugwu, I beg to disagree with the first part of the above quote. Many people, myself included, do not feel inferior to those "we elected" or who forced themselves on us. That we have mostly allowed them to decide "what is best for us" explains our current national predicament. I never allow false modesty to prevent me from weighing in on issues. I am sure that I am not alone here. And when I do comment, I do so with the firm knowledge that either the people in authority are probably capable of standing toe to toe with me or as is more often the case are not even competent to open their mouths when I speak.

For example, did we or did we not elect Buhari as our president? Following your thesis we should just follow his stumbling without a whimper. It is one thing allowing your inferiors into positions of authority. It another matter altogether attributing to them superior wisdom that they obviously don't have. Why on earth should we lionise the inept only to go home and complain behind closed doors?

You would have easily deduced that I refuse to ascribe good faith to our rulers on an issue that is amenable to rational analysis. We have been led by the nose for too long.

PS: Where do the likes of Dalung fit into all this highfaluting discourse? I wonder.

WHY I ATTENDED REIGNERS BIBLE CHURCH

WHY I ATTENDED REIGNERS BIBLE CHURCH

According to the report, "Akwa Ibom State governor, Udom Emmanuel, has explained why he attended the ill-fated Reigners Bible Church.

Emmanuel said, though some had also questioned his rationale for going to the church, but he had no regret because his presence in the church was DIVINELY ARRANGED."

Pray, when does a governor or indeed a private citizen need a justification or is it approval for going to a church or indeed a mosque? The above explanation, which is uncalled for, is the most stupid postscript to this sad story of an engineering failure made more unfortunate by the human tragedy involved. And the governor had the temerity to add the notion of The Divine Will. There is absolutely no need for that. He should stick to aleviating the pains of the bereaved and wounded while the regulators in the engineering and building industry are allowed and prodded to do a proper forensic investigation to avert future occurence.

PS: Those who have never been professionally involved in Failure Analysis, may find it difficult to understand that a structure made almost entirely of steel could be both faulty and weak. That is why the Reverend gentlemen must stay out of engineering specifications. The Synagogue was one failure too many. And now this!

RE: THE PAINFULLY OBVIOUS REASON CHRISTIANS VOTED FOR TRUMP (THAT LIBERALS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND) By Jonathon Van Maren

MY TAKE:

As the lawyers will say, it is trite to observe that the apparently simple matter of the Americans electing a president, in this case a Trump, has consequences that go beyond the wishes, needs and fears of its 300million citizens. We are all involved in this plot.

I have compared this opinion by Jonathon Van Maren with the analysis by Dr Ozodi Osuji.

Most interesting. 
The strange thing is that some of these "Christians" easily differentiate between lives that are worth saving and those those that don't count. Not to mention Native Americans and other minorities. Black adult lives mean nothing to them. Very dispensable especially in the hands of the white police force. Christianity is kept as an amulet under the pillow to be retrieved only at Easter, meawhile living a life of extreme hedonism. Forget Christmas. Church? That day is spent indoor completing the commercial ritual around Christmas Gifts - the unwrapping.

Married or not, a "Christian" couple lives together for twelve years with no offsprings, indicating either miraculously perfect non-arbotive birth control OR life as serial closet abortionists, but with no stigma. America stinks, whichever way you look at it.

These "Christians" will cheat on their taxes, keeping back money that should be applied to solving social problems. They vote against local and statewide propositions to provide more extensive mass transit, lest it allows poor and unwanted types into their neighbourhoods. Hence inability to get cheaply to work and back sustains the vicious cycle of poverty. These folks lavish love and money on their dogs but are resentful when a minority takes a walk in their neighbourhood. Remember Zimmerman. I am sure he is a Christian. If such specimens are Christians, then I am most probably Shinto.

I am amazed that the writer Vam Maren found it necessary to acknowledge that Donald Trump, who apparently "doesn't care much for religion or abortion issues", may turn out to be quite a gamble. That's thoughtlessness. The very future of the world as we know it may hinge on that faux pax. The Republican party had ample opportunity to chart the path to a much more rational candidate, a real adult, without the obcene baggage that Trump still carries with him. All this talk about "our better angels" must be strange to them.

If Hilary Clinton is actually as unpopular as she has been potrayed, then a Mitt Romney or John Kasich would have been able to beat her hands down. We would not have had to deal with this cliffhanger with the Russian hacks thrown in.

But no, the GOP chose to go down the path it did in an inexplicable readiness to sign a pact with the devil. Oh, the many things bad people do in the name of Christ. Verily, verily, I say that He will deny many of us come judgment day.

CIA DIRECTOR UNDER FIRE FOR LEAKING FINDINGS TO NY TIMES & W POST.

John Brennan is under fire for a reason that runs counter to the current popular demand for openness in governance. The US is struggling to put behind it the matter of supposedly Russian hack into the DNC and the surprise election win by Donald Trump. Most people, with the exception of a few diehard Republicans, are prepared to go to any extent to "connect all the dots."

Did Brennan keep Congress in the dark while lavishly briefing The New York Times and others? And so they want his head. It probably didn't mattered since Trump claimed that the CIA was f**ked up anyway and didn't know what was going on. The worst aspect of the tragedy was that what limited information the GOP controlled Congress received was hardly ever acted upon. They sat on it in the bizarre fear that something sinister could crop up to upturn Trump’s inauguration, a most unlikely event in every scenario.

Come January 2017, Republican members of Congress may take the step of ensuring the "safety" of US intelligence operations by 
1) relocating to Moscow, and 
2) contracting out future CIA spooking activities to the KGB.

That should settle the dispute for good. And put Obama and the crazy Dems finally in their place.

The North Carolinans have taught us what you can do with a legislative majority, haven't they? For that we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

Michael Moore, filmmaker, begs Donald Trump to attend Security Briefings !

YOU THINK THAT THIS IS A UNITED STATES HEADACHE? . THINK AGAIN. 
Many young Americans who never heard the words Iwo Jima, Saipan, Borneo or even knew that Japan, (wherever that was), had an Emperor, fought a brutal war and gave up their lives in a dispute they could never have understood.

Clearly what you do not know or understand can kill you. It is not unlikely for Trump to be severely tested just after his inauguration. Nobody, I mean no nation, is immune from the worst possible global outcomes of a potential strategic misstep by a President Trump. Not Mongolia. Not Central African Republic. 
This is not an American problem.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/michael-moore-donald-trump_…

RE: WHERE IS THE COMMITTEE ON "FULANI" HERDSMEN'S MURDEROUS IMPUNITY ? ?

I must state that the university teacher and frequent commentor on national issues, Dr Ik Muo has again got me going on this topic. We thank God that Chief Olu Falae is still alive. He cannot but be committed to the final resolution of this man made problem.

If this menace was checkmated in far away Agatuland, Sen David Mark's strange silence notwithstanding, we would not have had to address the massacre at Nimbo and other places further down south.

Now can anyone explain to me what business the Inspector General of Police has with the committee just mentioned? Police in any guise does not make policy. They endeavour to implement policies made by civil society. That is when they do not take sides and join the fray as is usual in this polity. It is up to us to take our powers back. That includes firing the top cop who begins to imagine that he is bigger than we his employers. We have our work set out for us. The abiding chase for daily bread does not exonerate us from delivering on our responsibilities. Take away IPOB and many of our countrymen cannot imagine any other serious matter worth agitating for or against. However when they get home, their wives and children will not hear "one" for them as they rave and rant in front of the television. Everyman is a lion in his home!

It must be obvious that announcing the formation of the so-called committee was meant to be a master stroke of PR. Convince the populace that a president who has been hard of hearing has finally deigned to look in their direction. That should calm them down for a while. Committee on "Fulani" herdsmen? Which committee? . That's it folks!

There are enough laws in our books to take care of all classifications of violent criminal activity. Even the extant provisions concerning self-defence is being deliberately undermined by a combination of all the state apparatus of coersion. Victims are prevented by the authorities from defending themselves. It is a fact of life that fear of one's potential victim often provides a vital input in the balance of terror. . Si vis pacem, bellum pera!

Why should anyone bother to go to Yazidi-land, Rwanda or South Sudan, for illustrations of genocide? Nigerians are living that reality right now. That being the case, what will a committee set up by a complicit party, consisting of the Federal Government, the Nigerian Army, Police and DSS, do? Meanwhile the Legislature slumbers on. Lord have mercy.

I dare say that the activities of the "Fulani" herdsmen can be brought to a brutal halt in a forthnight if and when the government decides to do the right thing.

One other possibility is when the masses take up arms against both the herdsmen AND the government. I cannot imagine anyone who would want this horrible outcome. Instead of negotiating our way out of the current morass, the country will then go to pieces. The damage will not be collateral but direct. Do we want to prevent that?

Our future is entirely up to us.

IS THE NORTH FEEDING FAT ON NIGERIA?

Funny that Prof Ogunleye does not seem to have a first name. There are so many professors in that part of the world that I would very much love to know who I am dealing with.

It has been quite tedious following the presentation of revenue data by Ogunleye. I am reluctant to take him on point by point since I disagree with most of what he wrote. Hence I will fast-forward and answer the primary question that he posed, "Who said the North is feeding fat on Nigeria?"

I do. 
I have to make one clarification though. The North is feeding BUT NOT GETTING ANY FATTER. The North looks like a bedraggled poor cousin. This is neither acceptable nor safe. Hence the emergence of Boko-Haram.

Some individuals are fat, but they do not constitute the North. The impoverished, uneducated, marginalized, abandoned northern masses cannot by any stretch be described as fat. They have not been prepared to benefit from the rightly touted investments by the likes of Dangote. Why are a majority of his investments outside the North? That is a true disaster.

Prof Ogunleye should advise us regarding which states can survive on their own without the injection of petroleum funds derived from the Niger Delta. Apart from Lagos State.

OHANEZE NOW WANTS BIAFRA.

You must be kidding me!

What is the origin of this strange news report? Or is the Ohaneze and probably the Southeast Caucus at the National Assembly throwing it's weight behind the recent call for a plebiscite on the demand for Biafra BY PROMINENT POLITICIANS AND ACTIVISTS FROM THE SOUTH-WEST? I hope that the Ohaneze is prepared for what it is inviting onto itself. It should ask IPOB. Those who put their hands to the plough cannot afford to look back.

While we are still on this topic, who and who were on that delegation that recently paid a solidarity visit to President Muhammadu Buhari? Do we have some turncoats here?

ON COLLAPSE OF BUILDINGS:

Hello Nigerians, 

About 45years ago, one of my professors at UNILAG warned us as follows,

"Doctors bury their mistakes, but engineers are buried by their mistakes."

I cannot comment on the doctors part.
However as regards the one concerning engineers I cannot but wonder. Does it still hold? Did it ever? 
I have over the years been involved in a number of projects where the design and construction dealt with large static and dynamic forces. These don't come naturally to the everyday layman. That is why the structural engineer is avoided like a plague by project developers. And that includes churches, with disastrous consequences.

It is only when a N100m structure collapses that one realises, belatedly, that a design/advisory bill of N5-10m is actually on the cheap. The campaign to use professionals should not belong just to the NSE and other stakeholders involved in the construction industry. Government should play it's own part by a readiness to pay Nigerian engineers the going rate as opposed to the current practice of forcing them to cut corners, something it would not try with Julius Berger. That's called setting trends. Similarly the insurance industry should include, as part of its coverage, a requirement that a building construction project must have had a least a minimal structural engineering backup.

IN INDIA, STATE SPONSORED RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE:

In Rahendra Modi's India, all is not as cool as it seems. Outside the mordenity illustrated by the flashy Suzuki Vitara and other automobiles, steel mills, petroleum refineries, computers, software and telecoms, aviation, armaments, agriculture and pharmaceuticals, India remains trapped in its Hindu past.

I recall reading an account more than a decade ago in The Economist titled THROWING OLD STONES of the destruction, (related again in the following narrative), of a prominent mosque based on a centuries old claim that IT USED TO BE A HINDU TEMPLE. It is most amazing and downright unsettling that in India, and many countries like Nigeria, nothing is actually ever settled. What a pity.

The coming to power of Prime Minister, Modi, a fundamentalist Hindu politician, with such an intolerant bent and large but unquestioning following, has forced me to seriously reconsider my earlier belief that the Indian model presents many good lessons for Nigeria.

End-time religion adherents may interprete these trends, inclusive of Brexit, Trump in the US, Marie Le Pen in France, other far right and fringe movements in what remains of Western Europe, with the Putin bear looming in the background, in strictly apocalyptic terms. Adding the iconoclastic Boko-Haram in Nigeria's northeast does not give any cause for comfort.

THEY SAY THAT ATIKU IS AGING. SO?

I have addressed the corrosive concept of government of limited objectives on these pages in the past with particular reference to the election of President Buhari. While many of us voted for him in the (vain) hope of improved governance, many of our northern compatriots voted JUST TO GET A NORTHERNER INTO OFFICE. I have challenged Buhari's brother named Gov Aminu Masari on this very matter since he couldn't help but gloat that, hey Buhari a northerner won. To which I retort: And so what?

Many who would not dare test the political waters themselves waste time arguing that, Oh Atiku is this, Atiku is that. We take Obasanjo's word for it? Excuse me. We have wasted Atiku's time and our own by trying an old, apparently unfit and unteachable Buhari with a world view that can fit into a small exercise book. We have ourselves to blame.

Now we suddenly realise that Atiku is aging. So? Who exactly are those waiting in the wings? Anyone who waits to be anointed by the mullahs is not a northern or Nigerian politician but a religious opportunist. The north, if indeed we are discussing a northern president, does not lack people. You don't have to have equal number of PhDs with Ekiti State to lay claim to intellectualism.

I still insist that among all those who HAVE COME FORWARD, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar remains the best bet.

Where is Usman Bugaje?
Etc .

Did you hear me talk about an "Igbo" predident? Most of my compatriots would have thought that that is what this is all about. Nigerians KNOW for a fact that the day a Nwafor-Igbo takes over the reins of office, this nation(?) will take off like a rocket. Meanwhile the discussion that we are having now is about the various levels of comparative mediocrity.

Or can we dare draft Prof Bolaji Akinyemi?

I tire for Nigeria!

I am ready for your fireworks!

NDIGBO DON'T WANT BIAFRA - SAYS IWUANYANWU Oh yea?

Oga Iwuanyanwu please speak for yourself. There is a multiplicity of opinions out there. . .

Ok, here we go:

1) Agunze Azuka Onwuka
Here Is the Reason the Presidency Still Eludes the Igbos – Writers War Room
http://writerswarroom.com/…/here-is-the-reason-the-preside…/

2) ..Oduche Azih's Blog.....: Re: Buhari on WHAT DO NDIGBO WANT?
http://oducheazih.blogspot.com.ng/…/re-buhari-on-what-do-nd…

There are a whole lot of other opinions written even by non-Igbo interests.

Chief Iwuanyanwu has been speaking in soundbytes as befitting an unprepared individual suddenly confronted by a microphone. I advise him to settle down and use the extra time that the good Lord has granted him to do a proper job on what the Youth of Igboland, (not the discredited gerontocrats), want. He should present his analysis to the kind of enlightened fora where he should expect fireworks, not groveling obeisance which he may imagine that his name and status have earned him. 
Ndigbo have long passed that stage.

Igbos don’t want Biafra! – Iwuanyanwu reveals what they are really after.

DOES THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT REALLY WANT TO END CHILD MARRIAGE?

The following is a very nice story attributed to the wrong person, Vice President Osinbajo. Hence it is entirely suspect. The opposition has been strong from the northern parts of Nigeria, where Islam is falsely presented as an excuse to retain such cultural practices. The dire medical consequenses to the girl child have been routinely ignored and it has been impossible to domesticate The Child Rights Act. There is no way a Christian priest, pastor or bishop can eliminate child marriage in Nigeria even if he tried. To even preach against it would be deemed insensitive by the main perpetrators.

To succeed in this venture, our Muslim President must lead the charge with the close support of other collaborators in the Islamic faith up north. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the former governor of Zamfara State stepped forward as a repentant crib poacher in support of this campaign?

https://www.channelstv.com/…/nigerian-government-moves-to-…/

SO, GAMBARI DISAGREES WITH PRES OBAMA

I wonder if there was ever a time that Prof Ibrahim Gambari was not serving any government (of Nigeria). Even at the UN he served at the pleasure of the nominating administration at home. I cannot then understand what he would have lost if he had directly confronted President Barack Obama on the issue of strongman/strong institutions dichotomy. If anything he was never on the US payroll, or was he? It is because of such anti-people stance that I had recommended in private circles that Prof Gambari be sent as a permanent envoy to the Military Government holding down the people of Burma/Myanmar in a stranglehold. He would have found the leaders of the junta very pleasant company indeed. Fortunately Prof Gambari does not seem to have garnered much support towards his antiquated position.

Now, we have a new strongman in the person of President Buhari. Forget the niceties of his accession to power through the last election. So did Hitler. Same applies to Donald Trump. A strongman is a strongman. I bet that the amiable professor loves PMB, foibles and all. Mark this down: what we have here is one less critic for Lai Mohammed to worry about.

SOUTH-EAST SENATORS ON THE 2016 BIAFRA DAY CARNAGE:

Our shameless South-East senators have come again. They want to GET Pres Buhari to investigate the six month old Biafra Day massacre of unarmed pro-Biafra demonstrators. That's very ambitious of them. Whatever prompted this turning of an apparently new leaf will probably be the subject of a major dissertation going forward.

Will someone kindly say "Good Morning" to these distinguished(?) individuals who seem to have been asleep all this while. Really? They want to put their imprimatur on an investigation meticulously carried out by Amnesty International? That's too little, too late. If anything they should have been asking for indictments and trials. The time for investigations, exploratory or judicial, has long passed. These senators must have been living under a rock or in a cave while the world moved on.

Please, please Senators, spare us this contrived sense of indignation and outrage. . It is too belated. You will do well to advise the officers of the death squads and their commanders to retain good lawyers. They will be needing them at the International Criminal Court, ICC in The Hague.

The truth is that the prospect of a Pinochet-type trial does not fill me with any joy. It will be a case of an injury self-inflicted. Old man Buhari should endeavour to spare himself and the nation such indignity. 

I HAVE AN URGENT ASSIGNMENT FOR GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN LAI MOHAMMED:

Kindly debunk the following assessment by Amnesty International. Amnesty must be wrong. There must be something that it did not consider. Over to you Lai.

Meanwhile I must commend the large army of concerned citizens who have risked life and limb, reputation and business opportunities, and gave up friendships in their efforts to keep this nascent pogrom on the front pages of the newspapers and the electronic media. I wish to single out Dr Pius Adesanmi for special mention. Meanwhile the hottest place in hell is reserved for those sitting on the fence on this matter or Zakzaky etc.

One does not have to be a Biafran to raise an outcry against extra judicial murder. I have never been anywhere near Australia or Indonesia but I have faithfully followed the story of the massacre of citizens of Portuguese East Timor then agitating for their right of self-determination. In the fullness of time many errant Indonesian army officers indicted for these offences were tried. With the ICC in place, there is hardly anywhere to hide anymore. How our elite, crooked or straight, love to travel.

Even keeping Nnamdi Kanu in indefinite detention, with the best of comforts, for no just cause, is a crime. Mark this. Otherwise put him on trial.

I HAVE AN URGENT ASSIGNMENT FOR GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN LAI MOHAMMED:

Kindly debunk the following assessment by Amnesty International. Amnesty must be wrong. There must be something that it did not consider. Over to you Lai.

Meanwhile I must commend the large army of concerned citizens who have risked life and limb, reputation and business opportunities, and gave up friendships in their efforts to keep this nascent pogrom on the front pages of the newspapers and the electronic media. I wish to single out Dr Pius Adesanmi for special mention. Meanwhile the hottest place in hell is reserved for those sitting on the fence on this matter or Zakzaky etc.

One does not have to be a Biafran to raise an outcry against extra judicial murder. I have never been anywhere near Australia or Indonesia but I have faithfully followed the story of the massacre of citizens of Portuguese East Timor then agitating for their right of self-determination. In the fullness of time many errant Indonesian army officers indicted for these offences were tried. With the ICC in place, there is hardly anywhere to hide anymore. How our elite, crooked or straight, love to travel.

Even keeping Nnamdi Kanu in indefinite detention, with the best of comforts, for no just cause, is a crime. Mark this. Otherwise put him on trial.

TRUMP TO CHOOSE UK ENVOY TO WASHINGTON DC?

Mine is a most unreliable source. Hence do not take my word for it. However it takes a Donald Trump to try to pull such a stunt as this. 

The great Donald wants to nominate the ambassador of The Court of St James, a.k.a. the Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to these United States of America. He has none other in mind than his longtime presidential campaign surrogate Mr Nigel Farage. Television viewers will recall seeing Mr Farage on the stump with presidential candidate Mr Trump. This bizarre choice of a preferred ambassador is most unprecedented. But then again, this reinforces his predilection to repay loyalty above anything else. Even to foreigners. Does anyone then know the preferred KGB hacker in line for Soviet, sorry Russian ambasdador?

Yes, we already have a flavour of who the president elect is or can be, but like an onion he keeps peeling off to show inner layers. Everyone, citizens, governments, allies and foes should brace up for new revelations as we go forward to the impending inauguration.

As one potential conflict of interest piles on top of another, I would say, "A penny for the thoughts in the minds of the politicians and career ambassadors in Whitehall." . Wow!

WE ARE INTENSIFYING OUR SEARCH FOR OIL IN NORTHEAST - NNPC. . ARE WE?

This cock and bull narrative has been offered up to the gullible public, mainly targeting our "brothers" in the north who have been made to believe that they have no future without crude oil. Sorry for them. Now listen to this: 
"The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has confirmed that the search for crude oil in the North-East has commenced in earnest."

Really? We have heard at least ten variants of this report in the last two decades. Often the Arewa Consultative Assembly or any of its offshoots berates the Federal Government, irrespective of who heads it, to intensify the search for oil in the north. The government then promises heaven on earth, allocates funds to the exploration arm of the NNPC to be spent by well connected natives, millionaires in the catchment area. Things quieten down for a while until the next round of agitation. Dear readers, if anyone told you that he spent half a billion Naira doing Seismic Survey inside Sambisa Forest, will you believe it? Yes, that is how we have been searching for oil in the north.

Now, let me review some very old comments I have put out on this topic.

The standard procedure is for the DPR to map out acreages, otherwise called Exploration Blocks. Some people may call them oil blocks. These are put out for bids. Using best practices, (including scant geological information, statistics, political and other risk factors), interested organizations estimate the potential of the block. They then make a bid. After they may have won, the best they can get is an exploration license. The granting of an oil mining licence becomes a possibility in the future. Meanwhile the oil has to be found first.

Why has is then not occurred to all, especially northerners that, none of the oil companies belonging to our northern behemoths, like SAPETRO to name just one, has ever put in a bid to search for oil IN THEIR OWN BACKYARDS? Strange, isn't it? They prefer to hang on to the low hanging fruits of the Niger Delta, where proven oil fields are handed over as political patronage to a list of Nigerians, (naming them is not the purpose of this exercise).

Meanwhile a youngman from Ogoja who studied geophysics at University of Ibadan, is sent out with an NNPC team on a quixotic foray into Boko-Haram infested Chibok-land, just to prove that NNPC has not abandonned the north. This is a bad and dangerous lie. The oil majors, which have a million times more reliable data and estimating capabilities than the NNPC, have so far refused to touch the Nigerian North-East. Why then does the puny and incompetent NNPC think that it can do it, especially when everybody knows that eighty percent of the budget would have been pilfered even before the crew sets out from Lagos, Benin or wherever? Where else in Nigeria is the NNPC actively involved in searching for oil? Handling proven marginal fields farmed out to it has to date been quite an undertaking.

It is most insensitive, but now normal to obtain huge foreign loans in the name of WE THE PEOPLE, to be applied for ONLY projects in the north. Hence it may now seem moot raising the issue of the FG ie the NNPC, preferentially spending our scarce resources pretending to be searching for oil in the north. Irrespective of where one stands on the many sides of our social, economic and political faultlines, there are many lessons to be learnt from the unending drama of the search for oil in the north.

Finally, I sincerely wish that oil will be found in the north. That will be when the future will catch up with our northern brothers. We have been wailing about the negative impact of their children not going to school following the injunctions of the Boko-Haramites. I just can't see my grandchildren taking up the slack, risking life and limb. God forbid!

TRUMP, PUTIN'S RUSSIA & CHINA: THE MILITARY BALANCE.

Some commentators, saddened by the victory of Donald Trump at the polls, have extended their projections regarding global economic and military matters. I have tended to disagree with the notion that Russian will be a net gainer in military terms. Everyone knows that in terms of the economy, Russia remains a basket case with few prospects for improvement in the coming years.

The issue of Russia achieving global military dominance is untenable. Short of nuclear brinkmanship, which anyone with ten nuclear warheads can engage in, Russia has consistently relegated itself to be a third world economy. These are defined as countries which, like Nigeria, earn most of their income by selling raw commodities like crude oil and gas. Hence the Russians cannot afford a conventional arms race with the US and China. That is why Putin keeps beefing up Russia's nuclear arsenal despite the existing Arms Limitation Agreements.

The Russian economy is tiny compared to China's, not to mention the US. No matter what happens in the US economy in the aftermath of Trump’s surprise election, the big winner is China on all fronts. As it is, Russia is almost an economic vassal of China, with its position becoming more dire as it wastes more money that it doesn't have on its military - Ukraine, Syria and any other stupid front Putin's may want to open.

It has taken China the better path of a century to regain respect for itself among the comity of nations. I do not see China relinquishing it's hard won position to Russia in the name of world communism. Russia is in soup, and will remain there. Trump will not be of much help despite the rhetoric.

GE CORNERS RAILWAY DEAL IN NON-COMPETITIVE BIDDING. I SMELL A SCAM.

The Senate suddenly wakes up from it's long self-induced slumber. On Tuesday it directed five committees to probe the concessioning. Should we cheer? Hardly.

A railway project without competitive input from the world leader in railway infrastructural work, the Chinese, must be fishy to say the least. That concession to GE should not just be probed. It should be thrown out.

What's the hurry? We have wasted four decades and did almost nothing to develop our railways, but for the little achieved by Pres Jonathan in his final hurrah. Why then should the government regulatory agencies shackled with the responsibilities over the issues at hand be brusquely shunted aside, TO SAVE TIME! Really? This is most disingenuous to say the least. What is an extra one year in a project with a 25 to 30year horizon? As we speak, the average FG landmark project is behind schedule by 5years. That includes many that are unencumbered by a contentious agreement or contractual disputes. So, who is fooling who?

According to the report, the office of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) also warned the ministry of transportation against backdoor concessioning because of the procurement laws. Was anyone listening?

Meanwhile, the BPP has been directed to issue a “certificate of no objection” as part of the fast-track approach. By who? Note that the key word here is DIRECTED. According to the law, nobody directs the BPP. Has Pres Buhari now decided, as most of his detractors and critics suspect, to run a one man administration? Like during the OBJ reign, the Senate and House of Reps have their job cut out for them. Sitting on the fence is not an option. Feigning indifference also implies criminal complicity.

LABOUR MINISTER NGIGE, SENATORS AND JOB CREATION; THEY JUST DON'T GET IT!

The report said, "Senator Sabu Abdullahi in support of the motion (raised by Senator Duro Faseyi, representing Ekiti North), lamented the poor financial backing to budgetary allocations of agencies such as National Directorate of Employment and Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria."

It is amazing the kind of human beings from all over the federation with which we have populated our legislative chambers at Abuja. I am so ashamed that a good number of these are supposed to be my agemates and colleagues in the professions who lay claim to even better education than my not-so-humble self. They have consistently let us all down. Not to know how the world works is inexcusable from those who thrust themselves in our faces and presume to lead.

Let me pick on just one of them. I hope he doesnt mind. It's nothing personal. Here we go: Engr Senator Barnabas Gemade, erstwhile Managing Director of the defunct Benue Cement Company Ltd. His administration, working hand in glove with the then Benue State governments, ran the company aground before handing over to Engr Solomon Nyagba, another colleague of mine. The rest is history. The intervention by the Dangote Group saved the day, not without initial long drawn out resistance from Benue State stakeholders. Gemade cannot claim not to know how jobs are created and maintained. There are hundreds if not thousands of other examples across the nation. If I stick to the Cement Sub-Sector, then I can mention The Nigercem Cement factory at Nkalagu. The endless controversy between the major investor, the Ibeto Group and the Ebonyi State government remains a serious scandal to this day.

How on earth then did Sen Sabu Abdullahi deduce that it is the financial allocation to the Ministry of Labour and Productivity, miniscule even in the best of times, that will lead to the creation of jobs for our teeming youths? He and his colleagues just don't get it.

Whatever template for job creation that we adopt must include the following headings with the overlaps:

1) Electrical power availability. Note that I never mentioned the word "cheap." Nobody can plan on cheap but unavailable electric power, or petrol, diesel, kerosene (aviation and domestic) or gas for that matter. It is trite to say thst plant location and even the basic investment decision is more often than not predicated on availability of steady and reliable electricity. We do not need to dwell on roads and railways here.

2) Mining. Everybody talks glibly about solid minerals as if it is another magic wand, like crude oil. The good thing is that even in advanced climes, mining is labour intensive and will be much more so here in Nigeria. Hence jobs, jobs, jobs!

The mining of coal at the appropriate scale, among other minerals, will provide one leg of the energy diversification triad or quad, that we talk about but have never lifted a finger to implement. We shortchange ourselves if we do not move away from total dependence on natural gas fired hightech turbines for electricity generation.

Listening to Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun lament the refusal of the US to bankroll our proposed coal power plants indicated that our leaders have not been reading newspapers and following the trends. What exactly did we go to do at the definitive Paris Climate Conference? Did the Nigerian delegation imagine that it was another jomboree, without consequences? Was the minister not privy to our pivot to Asia, meaning China?

3) Hydroelectric Potential: 
With the extended confusion, spanning four administrations, over the Mambilla Hydroelectric project, it is doubtful if this administration has the stomach to continue with the necessary studies to identify and define our hydro potentials, with reliable cost/benefit analysis. The intellectual work, designs, the dam constructions, power plant, irrigation works, agricultural estates expansion, etc, all lead to millions of jobs.

I have written on the posture that our governments must adopt in dealing with direct foreign investors in our country, stressing that these have no duty to look out for our interests. We must look out for our own without locking out potentially useful engagements.

I am actually tired of hearing my own voice, especially after having expounded on all the issues that I mentioned above and more. I hate repeating myself. If our Senators and Representatives have run out of ideas and moreover cannot learn, then it's about time they threw in the towel and head for home. Our National Assembly is not a place for passengers. Readers can follow my contributions on all the headings and more as they wish on my blog.