276 after Chibok, 1 day after IDP Act Jonathan visit Borno: connect the dots

Far be it that I will impute any unsavory motive to President Goodluck Jonathan visit to Borno today, I am sure he meant well by this visit. What I found curious is the fact that the president embarked on this trip, 276 days after the abduction of the Chibok girls and 1 day after the National Assembly passed an electoral law empowering the so called internally displaced persons to vote wherever they might be. (Possibly at any of the refugee camps in neighboring state ) without any PVC? I am just saying...

And I know the president meant well during this visit as he did not particularly visit Chibok, just as his godfather, former president Olusegun Obasanjo never visited the village of Odi, throughout his tenure. For those who don't know, Odi is one of the villages in Rivers state where Baba Iyabo commanded his private army called Presidential task force raze to the ground during his own regime. Jonathan however visited the place that matters in Borno, I mean at least it start to matter 24 hours prior to his visit, probably after he signed the amended electoral law. Here is the Punch newspaper quote on that visit

"Before leaving Maiduguri, Jonathan was also said to have visited over 900 displaced persons from Baga at the Maiduguri camp."

And here is the news report on the electoral Act amendment :

"Worried by happenings in the political circle as the nation prepares for the February general elections, the House of Representatives yesterday adopted the amendments of the Electoral Act. The Electoral Act Bill, which scaled through the third reading, would be harmonised with the Senate version before it is sent to the president for assent. While adopting recommendation of the ad-hoc committee, the House agreed on the insertion of a fresh Section 26 (1) that caters for the voting rights of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, during future elections in the country...."

Here you go, if only the House had passed that amendment on time, the president would have visited Borno 276 days ago. Look at it this way, The president had no problem going to Hilltop mansion, Abeokuta, even if he is not invited as long as he can convince the occupant of the mansion, Baba Koko Below to vote for him. Every vote counts? Just saying...

Some folks unfairly criticized Jonathan, they say he is always on the campaign trail whenever there is going to be mass killing of Nigerian by terrorist, I just urge the president to ignore them. They said he was on a campaign spree in Kano when Boko Haram kidnapped and maimed people in the Northeast. Just ignore them! They said he was on campaign trail when they killed 2000 people. And he congratulated French people while ignoring the massacre in his own backyard...who are this people...don't they know "lest cest moi!" Well, to satisfy these so called nameless dem say, the president private army chief came out to say only 150 people were killed. What is 150 people compare to rented and paid crowd at Ibadan numbering thousands who could vote? Let them show the president the dead people PVC and see if the president will not acknowledge their death and he may even attend their funeral as part of the bargain.... Just saying...

I just want the president to continue to look for votes wherever they might be, whether at the cemetery, the morgue or the hospital he will need it, that one I know for sure. Every bloody vote counts! At least that is what chief Fanity Firekayode is telling him

In another news, youths from Bayelsa state warned Madam Patience to stay away from their state and not bring her Rivers state "wayo" ways to the president's home state. (I hope my friend the Imolite no catch them. ) What arrant nonsense? Shuo! Can you imagine anyone saying this about about Baba Iyabo 's wife or many of his concubine. Hear them:

“We are matured enough to know what is good for us. Nobody should come and bribe our poor mothers and women with expired bags of rice and some money in the name of politics to mislead our people.”

Expired Wetin? See me see trobulu o! Are they trying to call the current occupant of Aso rock, expired president? Tufiakwa! Dem go Hear wien! Just wait until the godogodo bring in the landslide vote like 1983!

Merry Christmas and

Happy New Year.

Imminent collapse of Nigeria power Privatisation

Guest post: the imminent collapse of Nigeria’s power privatisation is a good thing 

guest writer | Oct 21 12:33 | 

By Timi Soleye of CRYO Gas

Seated on the dais at an investment conference in one of Lagos’s posher hotels are the luminaries of the Nigerian power sector: the minister of power, the head of the national electricity regulator, the chairman of the presidential task-force on power and chief executives of the newly privatised electricity generation companies and distribution companies. They are desperate for the money of the reluctant foreign private equity managers and local investors who mill about the room.

It is a tough call. On November 1 a year will have passed since the effective privatisation of electricity generation and distribution in Nigeria and it must now be acknowledged that the privatisation is on the brink of collapse. Yet this is a good thing for Nigerians and for future investors.

The flashy pitch books and marketing materials on display in Lagos are deceptive. The reality of Nigeria’s power privatisation has more in common with a chaotic and characteristically Nigerian scene that plays out a scant few miles away at Lagos’s sea port.

Along the dockside are hundreds of unclaimed shipping containers. Either they have been “misplaced” or the “fees” that customs officials demand to let them in are greater than the importer’s profit from their contents. This has given birth to a cottage-industry auctioning off these “overtime” containers. The rules are simple: the bill of lading may be inspected but not the actual contents of the container, and the highest bid wins. As the bill of lading rarely corresponds with the actual contents – this is Lagos after all – venturesome bidders hope that what is actually inside is more valuable than what is supposed to be inside.

Nigeria’s electricity industry has been privatised in almost the same way. When the new owners claimed their goods, they were horrified by the disparity between what had been advertised and what they actually got. They were told, for example, that they did not, in fact, own the buildings in which their equipment was housed. They were aghast to discover that agreements on the supply of gas to their generators due to be signed by the government before hand-over were still in the draft stage – and that they would be receiving less than a third of the gas they needed, yielding correspondingly little electricity for them to distribute.

If the initial privatisation seemed chaotic, things got worse. Two months after the handover, and in the name of “market stability”, all agreements in the industry were scrapped and “Interim Rules” were introduced by fiat. Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading PLC (NBET), the statutory guarantor of payment in the system, was suspended and replaced by a “Market Operator”, a shadowy and vague entity even by the standards of Nigerian government. Capacity Payments to plants were capped at 45 per cent of the pre-contracted amounts, with payment of the balance put off to an unspecified date. Investors found that their financial projections, the basis for borrowing the money they used to buy their assets, were no more than scrap paper.

Since then, things have got even worse. Even the bills acknowledged as owed are being settled in incomplete dribs and drabs. Across the industry there are unpaid bills in excess of $1bn, as the amounts the distributors are able to collect fail to match what the generators are owed. Every day the financial chasm widens.

It was indicated that the “interim” rules would not last beyond February 2014 but they remain in place because of the unanswerable question of how this accounting manoeuvre will be resolved. The truth is that the interim rules will not be ended; they will simply collapse.

The big banks in Nigeria all have deep exposure to the power privatisation and widespread defaults would eviscerate the financial sector. To fix the problem the government must step into the breach, write a cheque to save the banks, relax its price controls and allow retail tariffs to go up. This will be politically unpalatable before the presidential election due in February, so the government will dawdle until then.

Nevertheless, hard as it may be to believe, the crisis will be good news for the people and for the discerning investor. It will compel a restructuring of the privatisation and a reorientation of the electricity industry towards market principles.

For the moment, the urgent gentlemen on the dais in Lagos have a hard job. But Nigeria’s is the irony of a voracious demand for power – a conservative deficit of 20 gigawatts – walled-off from supply by questionable regulation. In the near future, entrepreneurs will invest to provide supply and they will be sure of customers who can and will pay. At this moment of maximum pessimism, everyone knows that the privatisation faces imminent financial collapse one way or another. But the prospective investor is wise to heed Churchill’s maxim – “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Investments in an industry for which demand can only grow will be a good bet in the short and long term. This is why executives from Siemens, Cummins and General Electric are in the audience of every power conference, largely ignoring what’s being said on stage, seeking future business and laying the foundations for the rebirth of Nigeria’s electricity industry.

Timi Soleye is founder and president of CRYO Gas, a natural gas company in Lagos.

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/1 ... ood-thing/

Letter From Compaore to GEJ

Dear Jona,

I write to tell you about my dilemma and why I am on the run, so you won't make the same mistake I made. Power is sweet but when you get drunk with power , it's toxic it is dangerous. I thought I was safe, I surrounded myself with people who dare not tell me what I do not wish to hear. I appointed my "yes men" into power and they made out like bandits on the state treasury. They never tell me that our country men in Bobo Diallosou are unhappy and suffering. Each time I asked about the mood of the country they said all is well. Until recently I never knew there is such a high unemployment in our country.

My advice to you is to eschew all sycophancy and hand over power now! It is not worth it at all. You can only use ethnicity to divide and rule for so long. Now I am looking all over the world for a friendly country that will allow him to live as refugee. Even France where I stacked all my stolen loot will not let me in. Despite all the money I gave Holland for campaign during his election can you believe that he and his gendarme are using my own army against me? Please be careful, don't be fooled no matter what they tell you in Aso rock. Don't run next year, go back to Bayelsa and enjoy your money.

Signed
Blaise Compaore

Between Dimgba Igwe and Sunny Ofili: Who will Stop the Carnage on Nigerian roads?

“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim”.- Gustave Le Bon

I found it extremely difficult to write about Nigeria in recent times. It becomes even more difficult when I lost two dear friends to avoidable automobile accidents in the last two months. Don’t get me wrong, I know death happens. We all have to die one way or another. What irks me most are the avoidable deaths and carnage on Nigerian roads. More so, when some of these deaths could easily have been avoided by deft planning, care for road users and enforcement of extant laws, something now alien to Nigeria as the rich, the wealthy and politicians live by impunity.

The first to die in a ghastly motor accident is my good friend and colleague, Sunny Ofili. Sunny as we all like to call him was first an award winning journalist, a tech savvy United States government technocrat, before he decided to move back to Nigeria to serve his people in Delta north. Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State appointed him as special adviser on information and communication technology (ICT) on September 11, 2011. Before his appointment, he widely consulted some of us in Diasporas who were very close to him (most especially myself and Iwedi Ojinmah). He had established the first Nigerian online newspaper, the “Times of Nigeria” online as a veritable news aggregation website patterned after Drudge and Huffington post (Ojinmah and I blog frequently on that platform).

He also took risk in exposing the corrupt Obasanjo regime at that time. I recalled his late night call for help to pay for document from the Corporate Affairs Commission registry in Abuja. Some of which proved the involvement of the Obasanjo’s presidency in shady oil contract deals in a Portuguese speaking island country in the Bight of Benin. We also pay to have some of the contract document translated from Portuguese to English. I recalled the urgency in his voice as he tried to escape arrest by operatives of the Federal government when they heard he is snooping around. He eventually had to come back to the US through the Benin route-made famous by Uncle Wole Soyinka. He knew well that route, as he took the same route on his way out of Nigeria as he fled the pernicious Abacha regime. As we often say in Nigeria, the more things change the more they remain the same.

I restated all of these to emphasis this point: Most cats with nine lives often died feeding on a drunken poisoned mouse. The obvious irony was apparently lost on Governor Uduaghan in his elegy at the burial of Sunny Ofili on September 5, 2014 when he said: “Over the years, I have learnt to control my anger but on the day he died, I was very angry over the circumstances of his death. I asked myself why Sunny entered that vehicle. He did not need to embark on that journey. When you wake up in the morning, pray not to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, pray against associating with the wrong people and pray against being dragged along with the wrong people at the wrong time.” What an irony! The vehicle Sunny should have avoided was that of his government. The wrong people he should have never associated with are the Ibori/Uduaghan crowd. The wrong time is 2011 and not 2014.

Obviously, the governor’s comment is in reference to the fact that Sunny Ofili chose to ride in a Jeep driven by an heavily intoxicated driver, the Late Agbogidi Henry Ezeagwuna, the Obi of Issele-Uku, (who also happened to be the traditional ruler of his home town and his father-in-law). Granted Sunny should never have agreed to ride a car driven by an heavily intoxicated driver, but the real irony here, is that the same Uduaghan used Sunny’s reach and influence with Delta north first class chiefs and Obis to get his government reelected. This happened even though he and his predecessor, James Ibori had nothing to show in terms of benefit to the Delta people. The vehicle Sunny should have avoided is the disaster prone Jeep called the Delta state government. A government that has no exact policy on road management! A government that sustains itself through bribery and sheer impunity. A government that receives more statutory allocation than any other states and yet primary school students still attend classes under a thatched roof! I could go on, needless to say that the death of Sunny Ofili is no more a sad event than the thousands that died daily on Delta roads while the Delta state and Federal Government of Nigeria looks on. It is also a warning to many of us idealist in Diaspora: Look before you jump!

And then there is Dimgba Igwe, of the Weekend Concord fame! He along with Late Michael Awoyinfa started the demystification of celebrity journalism in Nigeria. They both put the poor on the front page of newspapers in Nigeria through their rich stories on Nigerian masses. Imagine the shock on the face of newspapers literati in Nigeria in circa 1990s, when Weekend Concord published an in-depth story on the travails of “dumpster diving” college graduates in Nigeria in the early 1990s. Dimgba Igwe died this week in the hand of a hit and run driver, in another PDP controlled states, Abia state, with all the federal might at their disposal. Yes, it could have happened in an APC control states, but as long the president continue to go around to gloat in Osun and Ekiti about how he would have love to help the respective states but for the fact that state government is controlled by opposition party, it is fair game to remind him about the carnage in the states controlled by his party! After all, it is the federal government of Nigeria that controls the Federal Road Safety Marshall. The same federal government forbids state government from establishing any patrol on federal roads by statute.

The ongoing divisive and ethnic politics in Nigeria is largely responsible for the inept and corrupt regime stalking our land. You can bribe the traditional rulers to force their people to vote for you and called it democracy. But you cannot protect the people from callous death, in the hands of Boko Haram, Niger Delta militants, OPC, or a random drunk driver. What a shame! We are at a point in our democratic experiment we need to start asking our leaders tough questions, one of Winston Churchill's pithy observations seems appropriate – “however beautiful the strategy, one should occasionally stop to have a look at the results”. Is this the democracy we fought for as student union activist and journalist?

I feel like crying each time i think of how Nigeria was-Prof. Niyi Osundare

Prof. Niyi Osundare, a notable poet and activist shares his experiences in this interview with ADEOLA BALOGUN culled from Punchng.com

Despite working comfortably in the US, why do you still come back home here to work?

Life in the US and Europe is, no doubt, very attractive. All the things that make life and living comfortable are there. You don’t have to battle to get anything. As you can see right now, there is power outage. It is really difficult to be a scholar, writer or even a thinker in a society like ours. Water, good road networks, good medical care are available over there. And there are things around you that show you that the governments there respect their citizens, are accountable and answerable. All those things are absent in Nigeria. I say it all the time: Nigeria is not a country. We don’t have a country yet. We don’t have leaders who respect the people. I used to talk about our leaders only in the past, but I have included the followers. Our people don’t demand respect from their rulers. It is very important, it is a two-way process. Nigerians are in a position where they could be taken for granted anytime, and we are being taken for granted. We are a set of people who just take things as they are and do not protest. You tell the Nigerian populace to jump and the question you will get is, “How high, sir?” and not “Why?” We really need to get rid of the Oba kepe, Kabiyesi (Your Excellency) syndrome. Countries like US, Britain, Japan and Korea, and to a very large extent, Malaysia, are doing well because people ask questions from their rulers. They have a stake in leadership. It is difficult comparing the two places; it takes efforts and a lot of courage to leave a comfortable life in America or Europe to come and face the hardship that we have in this part of the world. But there are also things here that we don’t get abroad – the human touch, for example. I was brought up in a modest background. My material expectations from life are very modest and limited in a way. I have never thought of a time when I will fill my garage with an assortment of cars, or when I will have a house in every important street in Nigeria, and bank accounts that will make Bill Gates envious. This is one place where if I walk on the street, I run into people who know me and we crack jokes, laugh together, and trade opinions about our problems. And you must know that I didn’t leave this country until I was 50 (in 1997) due to some family issues. My roots are here. I owe this society a lot, which is very important. Whatever America or Europe takes out of me, they are just creaming off the broth that has been prepared. I used the scholarships of this country on three occasions and whatever I am today, it is Nigeria that made me so, and I will never forget. And this is one of the reasons I want to sing with Wole Soyinka, “I love my country, I no go lie, na inside am I go live and die. When im push me so, I push am so, he push me, I push am, I no go go.” In my keynote at the Soyinka Conference last week, I cited that stanza. People started singing and they laughed. It is the most serious stanza in Unlimited Liability because Soyinka is a trepid nationalist and a patriot – trying to tell a country that has been trying to destroy him for the past five, six decades that no matter what they do to him, he would bounce back. It is a lesson for all of us. So nothing will ever drive me away from this country. As a writer, too, I know what exile does to people who use their imagination. I have had the opportunity to mention this in a number of places: when you leave your root, you are leaving so much of yourself behind. When you leave that place where people know your name, where you don’t have to spell your name all the time, you are leaving so much behind. How can I write authentically about Nigeria and Africa and don’t have physical contact? Physical contact is very important. I want to be able to feel the smell of this country. I want to be able to see the glory of the rainforest in the season of the rain. I want to hear the noise of the leaves as they crackle under your feet in the dry season. I want to feel the rainbow in the Nigerian sky. I ask myself this question all the time: the moon I see in the United States, is it the same moon in Nigeria? Well, I wouldn’t know. It is important to be part of the struggle and the development of this country. If Americans ran away from their country when it was tough, we wouldn’t have any America to run to today. If the Britons, French, or the Germans did the same thing, those countries would be as poor as we are today. I ask myself all the time: What am I even doing to contribute to America? Those countries are already developed. I know I am doing my best there and they appreciate it, but in relative terms, the little efforts I put up here show more results than what is obtained there. The two places are important to me except that here, there are too many distractions and you can hardly do much because of the challenges, but there, a few people know me, and therefore, I can hide and do many things. I usually refer to Nigeria as my laboratory and America as my hideout.

How would you compare what obtains now with what you experienced in your days as an undergraduate?

You are going to make me cry. It is a terrible situation. I feel like crying each time I think of how Nigeria was. At times I wonder the tyranny of memory, maybe I should not think about what obtained in the 1960s and 1970s and even to the end of the 1980s and what obtains today. Of all the countries in the world, this is one that I know where the barometer of progress and development drops every year. It is amazing. I think I was discussing this with someone on our way to the Soyinka conference in Lagos last week. We are no longer able to do the things we used to do. For instance, our educational system has collapsed. During the Fagunwa conference last year, I made a point that Nigeria could not have been able to produce a Fagunwa right now. Also in Abeokuta last week, I said Nigeria could not have produced a Soyinka. Soyinka wrote the ‘Dance of the forest,’ one of the most complex plays I have ever seen at 26. Chinua Achebe wrote ‘Things fall apart’ when he was 26. Can the educational system of Nigeria really equip us with enough facilities and competence to be able to do such great works now? I was asking myself, D.O. Fagunwa, the genius never went beyond St. Andrews College, formally – what we used to call Grade 2 in those days, but look at the depth and breadth of that man as reflected in his works, the essays that he wrote and the critical works he did. He was proficient both in Yoruba and in English and I said something that many people might have considered controversial in the conference that we held in Akure last year. I said the educational prowess of Fagunwa after he left St Andrews College in many ways surpasses the academic and professional competence of many people today with doctorate degrees and it is really true because when you look at the kind of students we are producing – MBA, BA, MSc – the quality is dropping every year. It is not as if people are not good, but it is the environment that makes a person. There are things I teach my students in the US and I tell them that look, the bulk of what I am teaching you now, I was taught in my secondary school in a little village in the Western part of Nigeria, and they would laugh, but it is true. That was at Amoye Grammar School in Ikere-Ekiti. When I entered that school in 1961, our principal was the only graduate whereas our teachers had Grade 2 qualifications or just finished Higher School Certificates and just getting ready to go to the university, but look at the foundation they laid. Up till today, I still rely on the foundation they laid. In my lifetime, I saw Nigeria at its peak, and then I watched it gradually declines. Now, Nigeria is a nonsensical country. It is a country that cannot get its acts together. It is a country that cannot even protect its own citizens, a country of absolutely corrupt leaders and dishonest businessmen and women. In those days, you could be driving and be stopped by a police officer or a Vehicle Inspection Officer in mufti. They would ask for your papers and that was when there was regulation and sanity. Today, Nigeria is absolutely lawless. Look at the police today, with just N50 or N100, you would be allowed to go even if you were carrying human head in your boot. I really do not blame the police. Look at how they look in their uniform, ask them how much they are paid; the way the society treats them is the way they are treating it back. This is a society that is dismantling itself every time. I hope it is not just possible for a country to destroy itself and disappear from the surface of the earth. Nigeria is not producing anything. Forget about the rebasing of the economy they were shouting recently.

Those people behind it should be brought out and flogged for deceiving the Nigerian people and the world. All of a sudden, you are telling us that the Nigerian economy is bigger and better than South African. Who are they telling this? Have they ever been to Jo’burg, Pretoria, Cape Town or Durban? Do they see the industrial base in those places? They say our telecoms sector is growing, where do MTN and Airtel come from? We forget that for every naira we spend on recharge card and other telcom services, at least 65 per cent leaves this country. They are telling us we are going to have a Nigerian car. We had cars assembled in Nigeria before – Volkswagen and Peugeot were assembled in Badagry and Kaduna. The brains that created these are in France and Germany. Our own brains are not even good enough to know we need good roads to drive the cars. Who are these people deceiving? We don’t even have an iron and steel industry, yet they say “Made in Nigeria” cars. How can you create cars when we don’t have these? We do not even have steady supply of electricity. Nigeria was more industrialised in the 1970s and 1980s. Babangida and his men introduced International Monetary Fund’s Structural Adjustment Programmes in the Nigerian economy. Within a year or two, most of our industries closed down. Most of our hospitals became mere consulting clinics. Our universities started nose-diving. The moment the Nigerian Naira was devalued, the Nigerian life was devalued along with it. This is a country that produces nothing, but consumes everything.

On the rebasing of our economy, mind you that those behind it are technocrats from the Diaspora, for example Dr. Okonjo Iweala. Are you saying those responsible for it are not competent?

I am not questioning their capabilities but I am appreciating the professional pedigree of our Minister of Finance. She brought her experience from the World Bank. The World Bank, the IMF and the developed economies in the world are not our friends. We know we can never be friends. Look at the oil subsidy issue, three years ago, that was President Jonathan’s new year gift to the people of Nigeria. It is pathetic we have rulers who don’t think of their people. Look at the consequence of the action, the economy was shut down for more than a week. The IMF and the World Bank are controlled by America and the big countries of the world. When you go to all these countries, you will see that they enjoy subsidies. Farmers in the US enjoy subsidies, for instance. Most countries in Europe have Social Security welfare programmes. The UK has one of the oldest and well-run National Health Service in the world. If all those services are good for the people there, why do they say they are not good for us? I remember when I was an active member of ASUU in the University of Ibadan, the World Bank came with a report that Nigeria should not lay much emphasis on tertiary education, particularly university education, and we asked them how they could have made so much progress in their own economies if they didn’t pay attention to their tertiary education. It is one thing for these people to come all the way from their country and dictate policies to us; it is our duty as Nigerians to say no to them. Unfortunately, our leaders could not say ‘no.’ Why? Because they are all compromised in one way or the other. When they steal our money, they put it in banks overseas. The Europeans and Americans know their secrets, so they are completely compromised. Nigerians are orphans. Those who rule over us do not really have our interests in their hearts. There is no country in the world where the IMF has introduced all its policies that is not experiencing economic turmoil. The IMF is a doctor that heals its patients by killing them first. So Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala is doing her job because this is the kind of training and orientation she has had. But what has this done for the Nigerian economy?

To be a poet, is it about learning to become it or poets are born.

Often times people say poets are born, not made. I will say it is through the two ways. It is 50-50. Take our creative DNA, they all have their distinctive characteristics. We all have our talents. When I was in high school, for example, I was horrible in Mathematics, I loved Geometry, I was average in Algebra, I was hopeless in Arithmetic, but anything having to do with words, I was on top of the class. So I don’t know if it was the front cortex of my brain. We are shaped in different areas. I had friends who could draw, paint and do sculpture, Moyo Ogundipe is one of them. We were classmates. I had another one, Segun Adeyemi, who could solve Mathematics even in his dreams. I had interests in anything that had to do with acting, metaphor, etc. I come from a family where my father was a drummer, actor, etc. So we all have our different talents. If I am angry at Nigeria, it is because we don’t develop our talents. We have so many hidden talents. If I had not grown and developed my talents at the time when our educational system was good, I would not become what I am today.

In those days, parents used to pray that their children would become teachers. A teacher was an icon, an emblem of intellectual development and the society respected them. I remember my teachers in elementary school that did not have to buy food. Every Saturday, parents would deposit food items at their doors because they appreciated the works they were doing and our schools were well run. I was lucky. I started writing my first script when I was in the grammar school. Before I left Amoye Grammar School, I had already made up my mind that I would become a writer because the teachers had identified this talent in me. In 1958 when I was in Primary 5 and we had a dictation test, I will never forget my teacher. While he was distributing other pupils’ books to them, he held on to mine. He said, “Osundare my boy, professor.” I had never heard the word professor in my life. I didn’t know what he meant, neither did my friends. But somehow I knew what he was telling me was to encourage me. It sharpened my focus and also boosted my ambition. Teachers took their jobs very seriously. I will not forget my principal, too. Even though he was generous with cane, he was good to us. Every week, he would make sure we accounted for a book we read. We had a chart where our names were listed, where we had the number of books we had read in a week against our names. After that, we would do the summary, find new words that we had learnt and go to the dictionary to get their meanings. This was how I built my vocabulary. In 1967, our results were out and my principal told me I had one of the best results in West Africa. I knew it was not my making, but that of my teachers and my parents who wouldn’t take anything for granted. So yes, talent is important but discipline is very important. People believe I am strict but that is the way I was brought up. Discipline is very important. Today, our value system is upside down. When people got to your office in those days, they would look at your books first, but today it is the car you are driving. In those days, we used to read books, these days, we are counting money.

How does the inspiration come to write poems?

If you are just like every other person, you would not achieve anything. In art, if you could not innovate and research, you will not be able to surpass what your predecessors had done. Personally, it means sacrificing my social life to write. You cannot find me at owambe parties because weekends are useful to me. If you want to become a writer, shun frivolities and cultivate the act of solitude. Then think deep. Ideas don’t just come, you have to search for them. And that is where concentration and discipline come in. At times, you tend to forget the people around you when you are involved in thinking. At times, my wife and daughter would not bother to talk to me once they see me trying to tidy things up because they know I would not listen to them at that point in time. They abandon me at such moments and I think that is what Wole Soyinka’s wife, Folake, complained about at a particular time. You would lock yourself in a study for hours. If all those great scientists had engaged in frivolities, they would not have invented anything. There is something about creativity that involves discipline. Planning is involved in creativity. At times you would have to induce inspiration to come because it doesn’t come all the time. Another thing to know is to know yourself. When I listen to good music, I get inspired. At times it could be when I am alone or when I pick up a good prose or poem and I read the first two lines.

But some people get inspiration when they take drugs that make them high.

The body is a temple and it is important to respect it. Some artists tend to reach their highs when they do all that, but not me, due to my upbringing. I prefer to reach my high on my own. All those things have side effects.

Why do people say Ekiti people are proud?

I hope you know in terms of material affluence, we are not there. We are a people that depend on our efforts to eat. My father was a farmer but he was content and proud to be so. My American friends used to ask me what books my parents read to me when I was young and I would laugh because I had no books when I was growing up because I was a farmer’s son. We would come back from the school and go to the farm, but my parents always insisted I had to do my homework, and that was when our educational system was very good. Every Friday, we used to take our report cards home to let our parents know how we were faring. I remember in 1967 when I came top in my exams, I became a hero. The educated ones were celebrated as heroes.

Why do you think the Ekiti people voted out Fayemi, who is more seen as an elite?

That is the striking irony of our lands. That relates to what I said before that things have turned upside down. The educated ones are not being celebrated again, but I saw it coming. In those days, you would never see young people roaming about the streets, doing nothing. That is what we see there today. It used to be work before success in those days, but now almost everyone expects little labour, more wealth. What we need now is education and enlightenment. It appears not many people think far back to how we used to be these days. The Federal Government was too much interested in that election and committed so much ‘atrocity’ too as we all saw in the way the election was run. Was that how to run an election in a democratic society? That is a bad omen for the Nigerian democracy at large, not just Ekiti. Whoever is close to President Jonathan should tell him to stop playing with fire. We all fought the soldiers to get this democracy and he should stop doing the things that would draw us back to where we came from. We have to avoid anything that could lead to something worse. The spate of impeachment rocking the country right now is dangerous and it makes me wonder whether our politicians think at all. How could you run a democratic society without an opposition? Tell President Jonathan to slow down because I have never seen Nigeria stooped so low. The Ekiti election really made me sad because I don’t know whether we are the Fountain of Knowledge again. We should go back to our roots. We should start to put in place leaders who have our interests at heart, who want to improve our lifestyle and do much more for us. Nigeria is passing through a stage of illiteracy despite that we have a PhD person as a president. The politicians should stop deceiving people. It is really a sad situation.

Don’t you think you might have insulted Ekiti people when you wrote in your recent poem that they voted for their stomach?

No, that is a misunderstanding. As you know, I am a very proud son of Ekiti and it is my love for Ekiti that made me write that poem. Even before the election, I heard people complain about the test being proposed by the governor for teachers in the state. A teacher who can not spell the names of his pupils is unheard of and no country survives with that. Teachers should be competent and disciplined. These are the things I had while I was growing up and are responsible for the little I have been able to achieve. This is what Ekiti is noted for, not eating booli by the road side or telling people don’t worry, you will all pass. Miracle centres suddenly becoming the order of the day. Where will that lead a state or a country? What you saw in Ekiti was part of the stage of illiteracy our country is passing through; where people mock excellence. And it is spreading. The PDP candidate in Osun, I saw in the papers where he was holding two cobs of roast corn at a campaign train. Is that the way to the future? Before people misunderstand me, I am from a humble background, I don’t look down on people. Populism is a dangerous game and we should not deceive people. What they are doing now is a gimmick. The person who says he wants to eat booli with Ekiti people still has explanation to make about how over N400m of the people’s money disappeared. I’m so shocked that we are still witnessing this in 2014 and I am doubly shocked that this is happening in a supposedly Fountain of Knowledge.

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Between APC and PDP

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