WHEN GOD WON IN EDO STATE!

At the beginning of June 2020, Adams Oshiomhole was one of the most powerful political players in the land. The former governor of Edo State and former President of the Nigerian Labour Congress wielded power with no apologies to anyone. Upon his election as Chairman of the ruling APC, Oshiomhole was reported to have warned a minister of the Federal Republic that if President Buhari would tolerate the minister's indiscretion, he, Adams Oshiomhole would not take the nonsense.  For most people in the APC, the fear of Oshiomhole was the beginning of wisdom.

Uche Nwosu, son-in-law of former governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha, will not forget Adams Oshiomhole in a hurry. Together, they danced and made merry at Dan Anyiam Stadium in Owerri when Oshiomhole visited Imo State. Nwosu was the crown prince of the Okorocha dynasty, waiting to take over as Governor of Imo State. When push came to shove, Oshiomhole out flanked him, pulled the carpet under his feet and the rest, as they say, is history.

Adams coordinated the plot that brought Buhari back as President at a time when Atiku Abubakar was seriously flexing his muscles. On every APC campaign stage across Nigeria, Oshiomhole, not the tallest of men, jumped higher than everyone else and spoke louder than everyone else.

In the normal order of things, Adams Oshiomhole, National Chairman of APC would never have considered Stephen Oshawo, Chairman of the APC Etsako Ward 10 in Edo State as a powerful man. But when it was time to cut Adams Oshiomhole to size, the real powers that be did not go to the Supreme Court, they went to Oshiomhole's ward and got his ward Chairman to suspend him.

In the normal order of things, if Adams Oshiomhole was looking behind for who would pull the carpet off his feet, he may have worried about the APC Deputy Chairmen or the Vice Chairman. I doubt that it would have occurred to him that it would be Victor Giadom, an Assistant Secretary of his party that would be used to mess him up so badly.

In the normal order of things, Adams Oshiomhole, the sharp player on the political chess board would never have envisioned that the rules enshrined in the APC constitution would be so badly thrown to the dogs and that an APC National Executive Council Meeting would be held with two days notice at the Aso Rock Villa at the instance of the said Assistant Secretary and the very powerful Adams Oshiomhole would be so emasculated in the public glare. Today, there is no normal order of things in Nigeria. Those who gave Oshiomhole the power, have taken it.

As you read this, Oshiomhole's once political godson, Godwin Obaseki, has just given Adams a deadly blow. In last Saturday's election, the result of which was celebrated by Nigerians across the board, Obaseki showed Oshiomhole the difference between "I am" and "I was".

Adams Oshiomhole, the proud man that he is may give the public the impression that what happened last Saturday was one of those things. No sir! It was not one of those things. It was a titanic event from which all of us must learn a lesson.

Officially, last Saturday's election in Edo State was between Godwin Obaseki and Osagie Ize Iyamu To most Nigerians, the contest in Edo was not between Governor Obaseki and Pastor Ize Iyamu. From one angle, it was between Obaseki and Oshiomhole. From another angle, it was between the people of Nigeria and the 'cabal'!

Adams Oshiomhole was not made by his recent convoy of SUVs or his mighty house or his fraternization with Aso Rock or his beautiful wife. Oshiomhole made his name in Nigeria because he was seen as a 'people's man', a relentless fighter for the people against the anti-people cabal. Without that, I doubt that he would have been governor or chairman.

See where we are now. Nigerians are in big trouble. As the NLC flexes its muscle over the irrational increase in fuel and electricity price at a time many Nigerians have been humbled by the coronavirus epidemic, where is our guy, Adams Oshiomhole?  

Can you imagine what would have happened if Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr was said to have joined the Republican party in the US? Nigerians danced on Sunday because there was this sense that God won for them in Edo State against their traducers.

Does Adams know that things have changed? Has he warned his driver to make sure he does not drive on the wrong side of the road or run a traffic light in Benin City? Things are no longer the same and the great Adams Oshiomhole who used to be the emperor of Benin City may now be arrested for a simple traffic offence in Benin.

What has happened here can happen to any of us whether in the church, the mosque, the market group, a social club, a professional association or even in the family setting. Power is ephemeral and transient. It can disappear in a twinkle of an eye.

In my time, I have met a lot of small men intoxicated by power. They think that the power they wield belongs to them without realizing that the power belongs to the office they occupy, the uniform they wear or the chair they sit on. Many understand power to mean the ability to punish or subjugate others rather than the ability to uplift and put a smile on the faces of as many of God's children as possible. Must we wait for the 'cabal' to be done with us before we understand the vanity of power?

See you next week.

I HAVE SEEN TREACHERY IN EVERY COLOUR

May the Almighty be praised. I am an unbelievably lucky guy and I thank the Almighty for the incredible protection He has given me in many trying circumstances and under conditions that would have broken many men. For a guy who does not go to church as often as he should, it is in every way a miracle!

Believe me, I have repeatedly seen the treachery and betrayal of men and how they rationalize their duplicity and all the nonsense they do. When a guy you thought was your guy begins to manufacture a dispute between the two of you when there is really nothing to quarrel about, your antenna should go up. Nine times out of ten, your guy is fabricating a justification for treachery which he is hatching and which will soon manifest. Then the guy you used to eat and drink with will tell everybody how horrible you really are and why he must perch somewhere else. It is all cock and bull! He has found a new chopping center.

The average human being is selfish and is out for where he thinks his bread is buttered, and a good number of such people live in our part of the world. Do not be surprised to find out that the person who has behaved like he would go to the grave with you is in fact praying that you should die quick so that he can grab everything that belongs to you. All the while, your guy has only been using you as his ladder. If he gets to wherever he has been climbing to or finds a better ladder, he will create a scene and dump you like rotten ewedu soup.

I have learnt to be weary of praise singers. If a guy begins to tell me that I am the best thing he has seen since man discovered sliced bread, my antenna goes up! I know that I am a mortal being and no mortal being is perfect. The guy is setting me up for the kill. Have you ever got any telephone call from a guy you do not know from Adam who begins by sweet talking you and telling you how the two of you met at an event you never went to? From there, he will tell you about the huge demand for a special stone in some place that only he knows and which you can obtain and be rich or an NNPC contract that he wants to execute with you as his partner.  

I have seen betrayal upon betrayal and evil men in every colour. I seriously have to restrain myself from believing that there is no good man in the world anymore and there is no reason to do good to anyone. Fortunately, there are still good men left and there is good reason to do good to people. If I cannot do good to people, then the Almighty should take my life. It is a waste.

In my work, I hear all kinds of things. I have written before that there are people who complain that I am 'Executive Chairman' at COSON. Let me repeat that when everyone else leaves the boardroom, I stay back to intensely review with management the decisions made by the board and determine how to give them feet to walk and wings to fly. I simply do not believe in talk without action.

I do not consider my position as Chairman to be to sit and beautify a chair or to wear 'agbada' at big occasions and make meaningless speeches. I am the team leader. My job is to make sure that work is going on and we are executing to the benefit of our members and affiliates. I am the general in front of the army and not behind. I do not ask others to work while I drink pepper soup. I dirty my hands and get the work done.

Take it from me: most people do not say what they mean. You have to read their lips. I have had to learn to understand what people mean and not what they say. They will in one breath tell you that Okoroji is "Executive Chairman" and is doing everything himself. Next minute, the same people will tell you that Okoroji did not do anything, "we are the ones who did all the work"! It does not matter. Let the work be done!

I have always asked the Almighty to give me an opportunity to give. I have written in this column before that if had become a janitor or a security man, I would have dedicated myself as much as I have dedicated my life to being Chairman of COSON.

Last year at Lagos Sheraton Hotel, I stepped down as a Director and Chairman of the COSON Board. My term was up and as a rule, I have never stayed in any position one day longer than the statute allows. Despite a full auditorium of COSON members from practically every state in Nigeria at Lagos Sheraton, no one stepped up to take the position. In conformity with our rules, I was re-elected. In this land full of treachery?

That day it struck me that while there is a lot of evil in the world, there are still good men left and that there is good enough reason to do good to as many people as possible. May the Almighty be praised. Thank you my COSON members.

See you next week.

WHEN HALF BREAD IS BETTER THAN NONE (2)

It was April 2020. Life as we knew it had suddenly changed remarkably. The streets were completely empty. Lagos was on lockdown.

I could not sleep the night before. I rolled over and over thinking of what had happened to me in the last two days of the Coronavirus lock down in Lagos. In the middle of the night, I asked myself: what use really is my life and the position that I occupy if I cannot do anything to change the situation positively for anyone?

Stuck at home the day before, I had received a phone call from a well-known musician and member of COSON, the organization whose Board I chair. His wife joined him on the phone. They told me that they had been drinking garri for days and managing that way. The big problem was that they had run out of garri. There was none to drink anymore! They begged me to send them three thousand naira to buy some more garri.

As highly technology driven as I am, I have refused to have Internet banking facilities on my phone. The reason is simple: too many people have my number and I get too many requests for money every other hour. I am not a Dangote, an Otedola or an Elumelu. I am not a Larry Izamoje who has a printing press. I run a small business which manages to put food on the table for me and my family. I however have another job that gives me no salary, no housing allowance, no medical allowance, no leave allowance, one official car that was breaking down everywhere and many-many court cases, bad press and countless hours of work.

The incredibly surprising thing is that many people scheme and plot to take over my job as the leader of an organization that gets zero funding from any government whether federal, state or local. I very well know that their belief is that something must be happening under the table. In Nigeria, you are supposed to be an imbecile for having a job and not cooking something under the table. I am a good cook but I will rather be an imbecile than be a thief. I do not have the talent to take that which does not belong to me and I have begged the Almighty not to bestow on me such a tatlent. As my brother and friend, Ugo Stevenson otherwise known as "Ndaa Chineke" would say, "there is no successful criminal". I verily believe that ultimately, everyone pays a price for everything we do. I do not steal because I do not want to pay a huge price because I verily believe in the law of Karma. One of my favorite quotes comes from the immortal Dr Martin Luther King Jr, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it tends toward justice"

How much can three thousand naira do for anyone? I started calling round to find someone able to transfer some money on my behalf to my colleague so that he and his wife do not starve. It was more difficult than I had thought because everyone wanted to warehouse whatever they had but I finally found someone who sent five thousand naira to him and his wife. When they called me back, you would think that I had just sent them a million naira!

Not long after, I got a call from another COSON colleague who told me that he was dead broke and that he could manage but did not know what to do about his young son who was just a few months old. I reminded him that I do not do Internet banking and could not transfer any money to him. Despite the fact that this guy lives more than five kilometers from me, he told me he was prepared to come to my residence to get anything to save his child.  I told him not to forget that there was no transportation on the streets and he assured me that he was prepared to trek. 

Trek he did. Luckily, my daughter had made some soup the day before. My guy who was practically gasping for breath ate some eba and drank some ice-cold beer and came back to life. How much did he get from me? Just five thousand naira but he was so grateful, you would think I just saved his life. After some banter, he began his five-kilometer trek in the hot sun back home and called after a few hours to thank me profusely.

Then, I got an angry phone call from a COSON member in Benin City who was completely agitated by the lack of any real support from the government for the citizens who are suffering beyond belief. He asked me if I knew that no musician in Nigeria was earning any income as there was no entertainment activity going on in the country. He asked me why COSON could do anything for the members. I reminded him that COSON accounts in two banks are frozen and we could not access the funds. He sounded more and more angry and said that he was going to rally musicians to petition the President and the Vice President and everyone else so that the accounts are re-opened immediately. I was not sure he understood.

Rolling on my bed that night, it became clear to me that my life was no use if I am not prepared to do something about the glaring anguish of my constituents across the nation. As soon as it was daylight, I called a senior member of the COSON management and asked for a statement showing everywhere that COSON had accessible funds. In a few hours the information came. Then I called back to say that I am thinking of asking members of the Board to approve practically all the money we could find to be distributed to COSON members across the country who were going through unimaginable trial. She gave me a hundred reasons why what I was suggesting was simply impossible and that the logistics at a time when the banks were rendering skeletal services were not possible to execute. She suggested that we should think about it after the lock down. After the lock down? I hung up the phone on her.

I called my driver, Abey, one of the greatest Nigerians I have ever known. I told him that as much as I respect the lock down, we must hit the streets on a mission to save lives. I called several members of the COSON Board on the phone and told them why we must find a way to do something immediately despite the many challenges we face. The support was solid and it was decided that we schedule an emergency meeting on our digital platform to formalize the process.

Ultimately, we found out that by shifting our plans, we could actually send palliatives to the tune of 72.5 Million Naira to our members across the nation. I put so much pressure on our accounts officer at the bank called Seyi. Working on the phone, Seyi and his colleagues set up the digital platform that made it possible  for the COSON management team of Vincent Adawaisi, Isa Haruna and Tony Imusen to send a modest amount of money to COSON members across the country. The money was not much but it may have given members of COSON a chance to buy recharge cards, some drugs, some garri, a few cups of rice and possibly make some soup and have some hope.

When you are rich, you do not know what sixteen thousand naira means. My phone crashed from the endless calls from members of COSON across the country offering prayers to members of the COSON Board in every language spoken in the nation.

I thank my great team for understanding that when you are starving, half bread is better than none. At the end of the day, our lives mean nothing if we cannot use it to lift others.

See you next week.

WHO REALLY DOES BUHARI BELONG TO?

Many -many Nigerians were stunned during the week when another increase in the price of petroleum products was announced together with an almost hundred percent increase in the price of electricity. In the middle of a pandemic! This is a pandemic that has devasted the income of millions of Nigerians leaving many without any income at all. Where are the people supposed to get the money to pay these new prices? Terrible timing!

Everyday, I witness this peculiar economic fallacy at play. The thinking seems to be that the more money the government or the big corporations have, the better the life of Nigerians. So, the government goes ahead to squeeze and squeeze the people to the point of death so that life will be better for everyone!

Elsewhere, it is understood that what makes up a nation is the sum-total of the quality of the life of the citizens. To fight the effects of the pandemic, governments in other climes are raising funds to support their people in several ways with the understanding that a crushed people cannot work, cannot buy any goods and cannot support the growth of the nation's economy. In Nigeria, a different kind of economic model appears to reign.

When you have your personal pipe connected to the NDDC or NNPC or any of the many different agencies of government, it may be difficult for you to understand the anguish real Nigerians are going through. When you live in a good house provided by government and enjoy the perks of office on the bill of government what is happening in Nigeria may appear to you like Nollywood, a video show. It is then easy for you to issue a statement to justify what is not justifiable. My people say that when the corpse of a stranger is being carried along, it may appear just like a log of wood.

The fact that there are no protests on the streets may not be because Nigerians are comfortable with what is going on. The people are dazed, sapped, tired, and confused. What we have may be very dry wood. With a little spark… you know the rest.

"I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody". So declared the former army general on the day he was inaugurated as the democratically elected president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. To me, those words are the most memorable words ever spoken by Muhammadu Buhari. The words are his contract with the Nigerian people. They were expected to set up the moral compass for a presidency many hoped would attack the lack of moral compass in the way Nigeria has been run.

A major part of the crisis that the Nigerian nation has faced since Buhari was elected is that there are many in the country who verily believe that Buhari does not belong to them. That has been accentuated by those who by their actions and body language make it clear to you that Buhari does not belong to you but to them and them alone. These people believe that they are the 'inheritors' of the Buhari mandate and these 'inheritors' walk around with a swagger and throw their weight around like they are conquerors of the Nigerian nation who can share the bounty, the produce of their conquest, as they wish and to hell with everyone else!

At different Federal agencies, I have personally encountered this behavior. The President has allowed these 'inheritors' to mess up the Buhari brand as they have placed under pressure the institutions that ought to be the pillars of our nation and the pillars of a successful presidency.

Suddenly, the indices for measuring development in Nigeria is construction work done by citizens of the Peoples Republic of China at unknown cost to the future of the Nigerian people. Have you noticed that after our struggle to stop being a British colony, we have now with open hands quietly accepted to become a Chinese colony? The Chinese are now funding and building our railway, airports, roadways and everything else! How are we sure that they are not also funding our politics? Our capacity to do anything of value is now in question. Very soon, the Chinese will appoint our ministers.

Things are bad, very bad and it does not matter whether you are a Buhari supporter or you hate his guts. It is that bad. We all know that crazy things happen in politics but to have these things happen right in your face with so much abandon. Wow!

Please pardon me for asking, who really does Buhari belong to?

 

See you next week.