Bayo Ogunmupe

Express Yourself! by Laura Day

2012-02-28T04:05:00.000-08:00

“I AM AN ARTIST.” “I AM A DESIGNER.” What is it that inspires someone to say those four words? In my way of thinking, artists and designers do not choose their path, rather the path is chosen for them. Both experience an irresistible pull toward self-expression, but don't we all? Art historians and others debate the meaning of "artist" and some conclude "artist" is ultimately indefinable. For me, definitions just fall short, missing the magic, forgetting the compulsion to create, to put into order. So, I have made up my own definitions...

An artist is anyone who creates a statement in something that speaks without words. An artist is someone who finds a way to say something that has no words. Art takes many forms and we observe it and are affected by it in many ways. One of the best moments to me is when I am struck by a piece of art and upon further investigation, I am even more inspired by the artist herself/himself. For instance, visit the ARTIST STUDIO for an intimate interview with one of my favorite artists (and now favorite people), Marilyn Minter.

A designer is anyone who can't resist the compulsion to rearrange and organize a space over and over again in their head, no matter how many times they have seen it. A designer is someone who establishes a plan to create something and executes it to a desired result. We are all designers. We are all the designers of our own lives. When we get dressed, we create our look for the day, a kind of performance art. When we design a room, we create a new stage. Visit the GUEST HOUSE, to meet my designer crush Kara Mann and her personal sources of inspiration.

When I was putting together this Madison Avenue apartment, I became curator as much as designer. I worked more by instinct than by plan, finding things I connected with and discovering the right place for each piece. I feel like that was a real evolution for me personally and as a designer. In this volume of Laura Day Living, I'm taking a similar approach to developing the rooms of the site. My hope is to create a “salon” where I can introduce more readers to my favorite artisans. So, check out the video of Silas Seandel in his studio in THE LIVING ROOM. And visit THE BEDROOM for tips on curating your own space (and making your own art). Come back often, we'll be adding lots more as the holidays approach.

I hope that as you tour through the rooms, you will be inspired to become the curator of your own space and the designer of your own life in more ways than you thought possible! All you need is a little inspiration and the confidence to do it.

The Journalist Wife, A book Review by Bayo Ogunmupe

2012-02-25T09:28:00.001-08:00

SINCE the craving for information is the natural inclination of man, any wonder therefore, that he goes to any length, even up at the detriment of his life to get informed? That was the craving that led the late Bayo Ayanlola Ohu, the Assistant News Editor of The Guardian on to his death in September 2009.

While the widows, children, siblings, parents and colleagues of slain newsmen lick their wounds and continue with their deflated lives, Ochuko Blessing Ohu, widow of late Ohu, has confronted her agony by scribbling down the thoughts that have raced through her mind in the last two years.

Thus, Blessing has poured her heart out and opened it for all to see. The result is this book, The Journalist’s wife (Jonap Communications Limited, Lagos, 2011).

Her book is in five parts: her life story, interviews and commentaries on the state of the Nigerian nation. From part one: ‘Sunset at Dawn’, the author begins a mental journey into the past to ascertain the veracity of her existence and experience. Jolted from a dream, her mind races through the maze of the Nigerian reality, of her initial meeting with her late husband. Born into the family of an itinerant military officer, Blessing was with her family when it was transferred to Katsina.

Thus at Katsina, two southerners of differing ethnic nationalities were locked in love tango in a most unexpected place – a stadium. And so began a blissful congress of holy matrimony, faithful parenthood and beautiful motherhood and tragic separation.

The life of a journalist’s wife, Blessing was soon to find, is far from being blissful. Beside the simple popularity, ephemeral connections in high places and respect from folks in the neighbourhood, journalism doesn’t turn bylines into money. Often with no time for the family, the journalist sacrifices his home for the public good. For the love of duty, a passionate journalist may abandon his family for months and when he triumphs, he might be neck deep in more devious search for truth, culminating in cases more risky if not down right deadly.

At the receiving end of it all is the journalist’s wife whose heart is always in her mouth, keeping vigil over late nights and long travels. Because the journalist isn’t a regular nine-to-five worker, his home is often manned by a powerful woman who acts both as father and mother to the children. Thus, the journalist’s wife is often the power behind the home.

While journalism poses great challenges to family life, Blessing’s story has come to demonstrate a sincere appreciation of the newsman’s work and his contribution to national integration and development. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the goal of journalism is “to serve the general welfare by informing people”. The Journalist’s Wife makes that purpose abundantly clear to both the author, who is a budding journalist herself and her readers. In this way this book has provided some cathartic relief for a woman who has passed through the gates of hell and has come out triumphantly.

As admirers of newsmen know, The Journalist’s Wife also demonstrates that truth-bearers are no common beings. They are the custodians of the moral values of the society as admonished by the Nigerian Constitution 1999 at Section 22 which says: “The press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media shall at all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people”.

Accordingly, journalists form the ombudsman for the government and a gadfly that stings the people to a lawful uprising in situations of crass ineptitude and injustice.

In a nation where falsehood has become the gospel of governance, truth-bearers would be nailed to the cross. That was what they did to Ohu and those others before him. This is a highly commendable book in for the Nigerian public. Its five parts cover from the meeting, marriage and family life to the death of Bayo Ohu. Part two deals with the life and times of the author: Blessing Ohu. Part three is on the reflections of the author on what it takes to be married to a journalist in Nigeria while part four is captioned ‘Bondage of Lies as the Foundation of Corruption’. Here, Blessing avers that lying has become a cultural thing in Nigeria. Mrs. Ohu believes that there cannot be justice where there is no truth or respect for truth. Thus by Nigeria’s descent into pseudologia, she warns of the dangers the future holds for Nigerian journalists, and warns that the Nigerian environment is dangerous for the survival of newsmen.

In its final chapter captioned ‘Tributes’, Ohu shows gratitude to those who by messages, gifts or attention got in touch with her over the loss of her husband. Those she mentioned include the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Governor Raji Fashola of Lagos State, Ejiofor Abugu and Eno-Abasi Sunday of The Guardian.

Ochuku Blessing Ohu, the widow of Bayo Ohu, is a professional teacher. She is presently pursuing a degree in Mass Communication at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State. She is 33 with five children for her late husband.

Interview with Late Chief Gani Fawehinmi

2012-02-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

Now I am Armed to Fight even More

Gani Fawehinmi, controversial lawyer and human rights activist, takes the silk September 10. In a four-hour interview with a Newswatch team led by Bayo Ogunmupe, Fawehinmi speaks on what the honour means to him, e.t.c.

Newswatch: Recently, you were honoured with the SAN title. Did you apply for it this time?

Fawehinmi: Yes, I first applied for this about 21 years ago. I was turned down. Then I applied again in 1984. You will recall what Justice Mohammed Bello said when this award was given. He said, I rejected the award in 1984. That I was offered, but I rejected. That is not quite correct.

Newswatch: What then is the correct position?

Fawehinmi: What happened was that there was this crisis of whether or not we should attend the tribunals set up by the military in respect to decree No. 3 of 1984 regarding the recovery of public property from politicians. They set up the tribunal and the bar said that we should not appear. I disregarded the bar and appeared, and they put me on the black list. Then, there was a crisis that arose from there, and I sued the big wigs, F.R.A Williams, Kehinde Sofola, etc. And then Sowemimo summoned a meeting as the chief justice then in his office. Present were Justice Mohammed Bello, Rotimi Williams, Sofola, Oyuike, myself and two other persons. Then the chief justice started by saying, well, we want to settle this problem. You have to withdraw the cases you have in court. Your SAN is ready, we will give it to you, but you must withdraw the cases pending in court.

Oh no! Blood rushed into my head in such a way that if I did not control myself I could have gone berserk. I was ashamed, angry, I was surprised. Ah-ah, the chief justice of Nigeria . So I stood up, and said thank you my Lord. I said I am doing this on principle and there is no way I can compromise the principle. I am not fighting the cases to win or lose. But to ensure that certain principles are established. Even as I attempt to do this, if I lose the SAN, so be it. But I cannot withdraw the cases, the SAN can be taken back. They said ok, that’s what we want. It was on the front page of the Tribune newspaper. So, it wasn’t that I just refused. It was just that I refused on principles.

Secondly, I applied in 1990, obviously with the events of 1984 it was just a formality that I will be rejected. Then after that I decided that I was not going to apply again. Then pressure started mounting, mounting. Lawyers, judges of all the courts. I am not saying all judges. But judges of all the courts, lawyers of all shades of opinion, even some of the SANs, etc. They prevailed on me to apply. I don’t know who met my mother again. Days to the close of the submission of the application date, the closing date was the 31st of March. My mother came and said some people are saying I have done something good, others are saying it is bad. This is the highest honour that a lawyer can have. If there is anything, please let me know. If there is nothing, go and apply, because they are saying that they are not going to change the law. How can they change the law because of you? So, with this pressure from the judges, friends and the lawyers in my chambers, I decided to apply.

Newswatch: In the past, you said you were contented with the Senior Advocate of the Masses, SAM title.

Fawehinmi: Well, I have given you the reason. I take the SAM as a major award. After that award, several awards have come even internationally. I got a prestigious award from Austria . Then after, I had the American Bar Association award. Thereafter, the most important award, that is, the entire world bar, the International Bar Association, IBA, in 1998, before the assemblage of more than 3,000 most distinguished jurists and lawyers from 143 countries. You know the IBA has a membership of 5.2 million lawyers across the world. When they brought me to the rostrum and I was introduced by a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, who doubled as the chief prosecutor in the war crimes tribunal in The Hague , and she was pouring encomium on me, I could see one of the lawyers from Nigeria in tears. He is a SAN, but I don’t want to mention his name. He was so overjoyed that he burst into tears. To me, that was a great climax. Then, after that the pressure mounted again that this had to happen, the SAN of a thing. Well, as far as this award is concerned, it has some challenges. I accept the honour but I think it has some challenges.

Newswatch: What are the challenges?

Fawehinmi: The challenges are that one must be more determined, more committed to the ideals of justice. First, justice is in two parts; you have legal justice relating to the courts, and social justice, relating to the masses. Social justice without economic fundamental rights cannot be attained. Nigeria today has no respect for the economic rights of the mass of our people. The Nigerian legal system merely aids the interest of the elite. Until we make economic rights fundamental human rights, we will continue to stumble from one instability to another. Because, you cannot do justice in an environment of abject poverty. So, economic rights that we are talking about are related to the issue of poverty. The right of employment, and if there is no employment, the right to unemployment benefit, so that people will be able to keep body and soul together. So that they cannot be driven to anger, pain, anguish and frustration. Three, the right to have good and subsidised nutritious food. Four, the right to have good home where you can live in. A roof over your head should be an economic fundamental right. The right to good education, health, life and property should be all fundamental rights. Even the right to water and electricity should be a fundamental right.

You see, when you talk of poverty, and that’s the mistake some people make in this country; they want a stable society, they want a democratic process, but they ignore social justice and they are talking of legal justice. You cannot have it. All the civilised countries that have attained stability have accorded economic right, fundamental right to their people. But in Nigeria today, they allow the poor people to come under chapter two of the constitution. What they call social fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy. They direct, but no Nigerian can go to court and say his state or local government or federal government should provide food, accommodation, etc., where he does not have. You all go to the hospital with your children and you don’t have money to pay and you cannot go to court and compel the government to pay. You have no job, and then you cannot compel your government to keep your soul and body together for you by giving you unemployment benefit. There is a distinction between unemployment in Nigeria and unemployment in western democracies.

All these civilised democracies like America, EU countries, Britain, Italy, Germany, etc., when they say they are unemployed, and when they give you figures of unemployed people, it means you don’t have any work to do, but you are taking money from government. So, that should happen in the Nigerian society, otherwise, you cannot have social justice. And if you don’t have social justice, legal justice is a failure. Therefore, the award of the SAN, as far as I am concerned, is to convince my colleagues, either in the inner or outer bar, that our next crusade should be to transfer economic right of the people from a non-justiceable chapter two of the constitution to fundamental rights, so that the government will have the duty, the obligation to give economic rights to our people, so that poverty can be abolished. We have always told the elite that nobody is safe if the poor are not catered for.

Therefore, the award of the SAN on me will now be … I think my colleagues will now take me more seriously. I hope after September 10, the battle for the realisation of economic rights of the masses of our people is a sine quo non for the realisation of legal justice in our society. That’s how I see the award of the SAN, from the angle of the people. It is an elevation, what I will call from persecution, professional persecution to elevation and the need to serve the interest of the people of our country.

Newswatch: Is it because of the absence of economic rights that you think everything is wrong in Nigeria even now?

Fawehinmi: We have electoral democracy, not socio-economic democracy. The fact that you voted somebody into power does not mean that you have a democracy. Electoral democracy is different from socio-economic democracy. The last two and a half years, the poverty that has enveloped our people is more grinding, more dehumanising than the poverty we had before we had electoral democracy on May 29, 1999 .

Newswatch: What makes you think so?

Fawehinmi: Behold! Obasanjo inherited N85 per dollar. Today, one dollar goes for between N134 to N136 and this is reflected in all the things you buy in this country. This is because 99 percent of what we have in Nigeria are imported. Secondly, he inherited N134.50 per one pound sterling, today you go to any bureau de change, you need N190 to buy one British pound. That is the source of inflation in this country. Similarly, the cost of fund of borrowing is so high that nobody wants to start a business to employ people and you are spending 33 to 42 percent to get loan in an atmosphere beset with high inflation. Who do you want to sell to? The man whose purse is deflated? What do you want to manufacture? You want to bear the cost of your own electricity, water, import almost all inputs from abroad, and pay through this kind of exchange rate? And on top of that the cost of funds is between 35 and 42 percent. What business do you want to start? Therefore, people cannot be employed. America , the bastion of democracy has reduced interest rate seven times in the last eight months, they reduced again last night ( August 21, 2001 ). It is now about two or three percent the cost of funds in USA .

In Britain , they have reduced interest rates four times. In Japan , it depends on the business that you want to do. In some places, there is a moratorium on the interest for up to five years. So, you see, democracy works there because they also built into their electoral democracy, socio-economic democracy. Democracy cannot thrive for long in an atmosphere of abject poverty. So, you have to solve the issue of poverty, you have to make everybody comfortable so that you can be inventive in the sustenance of democracy. It is not by electing people. Wait until 2003 and you will see the cutthroat, bloody contest that will attend to democracy in this country. Because of the poverty in the country, those who have stashed away ill-gotten money will come with this ill-gotten money to buy votes. But elsewhere in the advanced countries, you can’t buy votes because everybody is virtually satisfied.

In Europe , unemployed people go on holidays. Every week they are given money. In Germany if you work and later you are out of work, you are paid 65 percent of what you were earning as gross rate for the first one year, the second year 63 percent. Thereafter, if you don’t find any job, the government will be paying for your house, everything until you have a job. So, they do go on holidays, the unemployed people.

But if you are unemployed in Nigeria , your children will be driven out of school, the landlord will knock at your door, you will be starving, if you are sick, you will have to look for babalawo, and you will be given a wrong medicine. So, unemployment in Nigeria is invitation to starvation and death. You don’t succeed in a democracy like that. So, what we have today is electoral democracy, not socio-economic democracy. That is why I want to start the campaign amongst my colleagues after September 10; that for us to sustain this democracy and sustain the legal system in the proper sense of it and proper perspective, it is our duty to champion the cause of economic rights being made fundamental rights.

Newswatch: How will the campaign be prosecuted?

Fawehinmi: Oh! First of all I am opening up next week. I shall go to Calabar to re-unite with my friends at the bar conference. They will see my face for the first time in more than ten years. That’s the beginning. Thereafter, I will move from town to town, from one bar association branch to the other. Even in my preparation of the acceptance speech at the SAN award ceremony, you know I am the one to deliver the acceptance speech, I have been going round meeting the bar leaders, the judges, etc., to know their needs and problems.

Once the conferment takes place, then you will see Gani Fawehinmi moving from one bar branch to another. And I am not going to limit it to the bar. You will see me from campus to campus. The battle has just begun, because they have given me what I need.

Newswatch: Are you going to do this under the platform of your National Conscience Party?

Fawehinmi: Well, that is on the political platform.

Newswatch: You and Rotimi Williams are two foremost lawyers in this country but for some time now, you people have been at each other's throat. Is it a result of professional…

Gani: No, no, no, no, I have no personal hatred for Chief Williams. He is a very good lawyer and I respect him a lot. He is one of the most brilliant lawyers. But you know the way he uses his own law is different from the way I use mine. He is a professional to the core. That’s where he stops. But I imbibed what the first lawyer in this country told us to imbibe. Christopher Sapara Williams, born in 1865, enrolled in Nigerian bar in 1888. He told us that “legal practice lives for the direction of the people and the advancement of the course of the country.” So, my own practice is added with the interest of the oppressed in the society. So, my own practice is from the angle of the masses, who are bearing the brunt of mis-governance of this country and they have been bearing the brunt of mis-governance over the years. That is why I go to prison. He can’t go to prison because he is just elitist in his approach. And I don’t blame him. That’s the way he has chosen. But with all respect, I am people-oriented, I am people-focused. So, he can’t get into trouble with authorities. I mean, there are many things I have challenged which many people are not willing to challenge, so we are poles apart. We belong to the same profession, but you must know quite frankly, the hood does not make a monk. You are what you are before you wore the hood and gown. The hood and gown merely make you to achieve what you want to achieve. If you have the interest of the masses and you want to fight for them, then you use the profession you have, the instrumentality of the law.

Newswatch: You were handling the Dele Giwa murder at the Oputa panel and General Babangida has failed to appear. How do you react to that?

Fawehinmi: Babangida’s refusal to appear at the panel is the greatest assault on the moral integrity of Nigeria . Babangida’s refusal to appear is a slap on the face of justice in this country and it goes to show the extent the ex-heads of state have shown nothing but contempt to the people, whom they have ruled over the years. In 1991 Babangida used the same law that Obasanjo used to set up Oputa commission. In May 1991, Babangida set up the Justice Babalakin commission of inquiry, to look into the religious disturbance in Tafawa Balewa local government area of Bauchi State . He invoked the same tribunal of inquiry act, Cap 447, laws of the federation to set up that tribunal. In 1992 Babangida set up the fuel shortage commission of inquiry headed by Justice Belgore. He invoked the same tribunal of inquiry act, Cap 447. When on the 4th of December, he was summoned by Oputa to come and say what he knew about the death of Dele Giwa, he ran to the court. His argument was that the tribunal of inquiry act, under which Oputa was set up is illegal. If it was illegal, why was it not illegal when he was head of state and he set up the two commissions. It is a moral question. Secondly, I am appalled and dismayed that even Oputa is negotiating how they will come to the tribunal. It is unheard of. Rule of law will collapse in Nigeria , if it doesn’t rule everybody. There should be no law for the rich and another for the poor. No different law for the powerful and another for the weak. Democracy cannot thrive or be sustained on double standards. That is why in America in 1974, they got rid of their president who was involved in the Watergate scandal. He resigned. The Americans say the law must rule by protecting the weak against the powerful. The law rules in India where their prime minister was jailed three years for corruption. The law rules in Britain where Jeffrey Archer, today, the former leader of the conservative party was jailed for perjury. The law rules in Indonesia where Abubakar Wahid is now in detention and is being investigated by Sukanno Putri. The law also rules in Philippines where Gloria Aroyo put Joseph Estrada under house arrest for corrupt practices. The law also rules in Argentina where today, Carlos Menem is subjected to 65 charges. He ruled that country for 10 years. You remember Augusto Pinochet who ruled from September 1973 to 1990, is being subjected to all sorts of investigation. You see, you cannot sustain democracy when you play double standards in the rule of law. Nigeria , if care is not taken, will weaken the confidence of our people in the sustenance of democracy with this kind of thing that is happening. I mean, I am going to be in that tribunal, I am going to come with two pictures of Dele Giwa, when he was in suit and when his body was decapitated. I want Babangida to look at the pictures and I hope Oputa will not stop me. If he does, I’ll pitch Oputa against the masses of this country. Let them decide if this man is just or not.

Newswatch: Closely related to that, AIG Omeben (rtd) alleged that colleagues of Giwa refused to cooperate with the police. But the directors of Newswatch said you were a witness to their cooperation with the police. They said that it was actually Omeben who stalled the investigation.

Fawehinmi: I didn’t read the publication but I knew that when I was investigating, Newswatch cooperated with me. But I also knew that when I came up with a book on the death of Dele Giwa, it was the same Omeben that locked me up at CID Alagbon while he was the AIG. I wanted to ask then why he locked me up. There are many questions to be asked.

Newswatch: You are the leader of the National Conscience Party. What’s your motive of setting up the party?

Fawehinmi: In March 1994, we had the National Conscience, which I founded as a human rights activist and I gave six months notice to the government, that this organisation will transform into a political party. For two reasons: To fight the issue of June 12, and to force the military government to quit for the people to elect their leaders. Also to abolish poverty. They thought I was joking. People were coming to me, Gani they will kill you, they will shoot you and all those things. I said well, I am old enough to die. Even when I was younger I was not dissuaded by the fear of death. You see, let me tell you, when Dele Giwa was killed in 1986, that was the day I started living alone in this house. The other apartment (another duplex) was rented out. I asked the expatriate then to leave the place. I put my family there and paid back his rent. The simple reason was if they had to shoot me or bomb here, I didn’t want my blood to splatter on innocent people. I took them as innocent people because I didn’t want them to be caught in the cross fire. In fact, it wasn’t long that I put these window blinds here. So, anybody could see me reading from outside. I was living here alone and I have been living here alone.

Newswatch: Do you intend to register NCP?

Fawehinmi: Of course, we did not make any case of application during the Abdulsalami regime because I was the head of FACON that time. It would have been wrong for us to do so. Secondly, we asked for a sovereign national conference, Abdulsalami rejected it. So we said, we were not going to participate in the transition programme. So, we didn’t register. But when we saw what is going on now and we have so much apprehension that the people may run democracy aground. It is already happening now. So, we said that in any position, we will get the party registered. We were the first to submit our application. We stormed INEC on June 21 this year. With our application, constitution, programme, logo, flag and everything, we didn’t give them notice. They said it was an ambush. That was what Shehu Musa said.He presided and we addressed each other. We talked for about one hour and he said they will get back to us. So far, they have not got in touch with us. We have our headquarters in Abuja and we have our staff there too. We are eager to contest all elections from local government to the presidency.

Newswatch: Most people consider you as a principled man, someone who is capable of rescuing Nigeria from this quagmire. Don’t you consider it necessary to contest the presidential election in 2003?

Fawehinmi: You see, my basic concern is to have a political platform where decent people, committed people to the course of the masses could use to run for elections. The issue of contesting a presidential election will depend on a number of factors. My health, that’s one. Two, I must see a prospect that there must be no rigging. I must see a prospect that there is fair and sincere election. There are three ways of rigging an election. And the first rigging has actually started. Can you imagine, two years and six months into democracy, the office charged with the responsibility of registering political parties – INEC, has not registered a single political party. Yet, they want to conduct the local government election next year. You are telling us that the already registered parties can go on. And they are organising all over the places. Those who want to get registered in time, you are delaying their registration. It was only recently that INEC submitted a bill to the national assembly. What has INEC been doing all these years? That’s the question. The second way of rigging: You rig during the election by stuffing the ballot box and all the things like that. After election, the declaration of result, by adding zero and that kind of thing. If INEC is capable of doing the first rigging by not registering political parties, by delaying it in order to put these parties at a disadvantage then INEC is capable of rigging during election and after the election. So, when I look at all the prospects, I will decide. But, of course, I am not bothered about failing or not failing. I am not concerned about that. I am only concerned about putting across the programme that will remove the people from the throes of poverty to that of comfort, as long as I am allowed to go round the country, put these views to the electorate. I have no money to give to them, I want to take them out of poverty. I want to give them comfortable life and social justice. If they accept the programmes, so be it.

I think I can win Obasanjo. I mean it very sincerely. If it is fair. That is why I am saying that they should allow the military to supervise it. They should invite the United Nations, who will then call the member countries to send delegations to supervise this election to prevent unfairness. If that is done, I feel very confident in beating Obasanjo, hands down. Because the youths of this country will be at vanguard of those who will go and canvass votes for me. The students in the institutions of higher learning that we have are enough in numbers that they will go to the villages and canvass for a party of their choice. They will vote for the party that I represent. But, if they don’t do that, there will be massive rigging. You can imagine PDP voting N2.2 billion for local government election alone and they cannot vote N2.2 billion to build houses in their respective places that they govern. Can you imagine that after two years, Obasanjo has not put up a foundation of at least 10 million houses? I put up such a suggestion for him, and said look “if this democracy fails, it is you who will be the first casualty." I have never met him. I have never met Buhari, I don’t know Abdulsalami, I never met any of them in my life. I only see them on the pages of newspapers. And I said if the democracy fails you are the first casualty because no military man will go for governor. They just kill the president and go to the radio and say “Fellow country men…."

Save us the agony of another military rule. Call all the governors together, let us try to build 30 million houses in five years. The federal government will bear 70 percent of the cost. You must contribute 30 percent. Let us lay the foundation from one place to another. When we solidify democracy, we can continue with our bitterness. But, for God’s sake, let us solidify democracy. He ignored that. Now look at the health problem in the country. People now go to babalawo to be able to save themselves from diseases. Our people cannot afford money for good healthcare any longer. The United Nations Educational and Scientific Organisation, UNESCO, prescribed for Nigeria 36 percent of fiscal allocation to education, Ghana 28 percent, South Africa 38 per unit. This man is not governing us. Seventy-seven times he has left this country. He does not stay at home to look at the problem of students at the University of Ibadan , farmers in Kaura Namoda, or the fishermen in Rivers State and so on and so forth. He likes being the president of the international community. He was not elected by the United Nations. He was voted for by the Nigerian public and they are suffering. The poverty is too much. I don’t know how he wants to do it to go beyond 2003. There is going to be a bloody election. The money they have stashed away, they will use it and if care is not taken, they will stultify and scuttle this democracy. So, we have a duty to intervene. That is why the National Conscience Party wants to contest. But if they don’t and we are back to square one, please I beg you, I will go to Ondo and take my rest instead of parading the prisons again. To parade the prisons for characters like Tinubu again and when we tell him to bring his certificate…. You know what they did to me on October 13. He almost killed me in the court premises. You have to kill me to stop this case. Now, we are at the Supreme Court. December, we will finalise it at the Supreme Court. Such a man does not have a moral authority to govern Lagos State . That’s why he is messing up with the money of Lagos State . Lagos State is broke. Can you imagine the man taking commercial loans for social services? Commercial loans generate interest. Social services loans do not generate interest. You are taking commercial loans. This man has sold the intestine of Lagos State . He only wants to carry the carcass.

Newswatch: You mentioned contesting an election. It is believed in Nigeria that the problem may not always be the man at the top, but that some of his subordinates may not be as sincere as he is. How are you sure that if you go into politics, the people under you will not mess up your programmes?

Fawehinmi: Oh my God. You have asked a very important question. There is nothing called government without a leader. A government reflects the type of leader you have. If you are the type who condons evil, evil will be perpetrated under you. If you are the type who fights evil, they know that you will throw them out in no time, and you will be ruthless in pursuing it. Obasanjo condones evil, he does not fight evil. That is why his anti-corruption programme is as dead as dodo, completely dead. Cold dead. How can anybody be telling me he is fighting corruption? First, he said Abacha stole. He asked them to return money. Then you are telling me, you stole one million, you return ten thousand and you are allowed to go free. Is that how to fight corruption? What of Gwarzo and others? Are they still not walking the streets? Tony Ani, what has he done to him? Has he arraigned him before any court of law? If you are taking part in a process of illegality, how do you fight that illegality? Then his best friend who sponsored his election – Babangida. What has he done to investigate him? He is telling us, go and investigate him. Did he ask Nigerians to look for facts when he sent the SSS, the DMI, NIA, the police, Interpol after Abacha and investigated the accounts of Abacha? Why can’t he do that to Babangida? This man is not serious about corruption. He is only condoning it.

Newswatch: You suggested a military-supervised election. Don’t you think that might pave a way for the military to try and come back?

Fawehinmi: No, no, no. That’s a very wrong way of understanding it. One, military is part of the Nigerian project. The constitution provides for the military to secure the territorial integrity of Nigeria . If we are attacked, the military are going to do the same. Are you telling me that if you tell the military to go and attack an invader, the military will allow the invader to come because they want to scuttle this democracy? Secondly, are you also telling me that if you put military boys in charge of ballot box, that anybody could come there and stuff the ballot box? It is not possible. Police in itself is weak.

Newswatch: How do you look at the issue of international organisations funding human rights groups in Nigeria?

Fawehinmi: I have always opposed it from the word go. Today, Nigeria has at least 400 human rights groups. Most of them are funded from abroad. There is a danger. Does any Nigerian fund human rights organisations in Britain? Do Nigerians fund human rights organisations in America? Do they fund human rights organisations in Germany? You see, we are dealing with very clever people. Multinationals, they are very clever. I don’t want a second slavery. Some human rights groups are doing very well. By the type of leadership of some of them, they cannot be disloyal to this country. I cannot say the same for many others. I don’t want to go into names, you see they are my friends. But if they have to rely on foreign fund, then the fund must be regulated. I will advocate that there should be a law to regulate the activities of all human rights groups. There should be a law promulgated by the national assembly on how they should be registered, how they disclose their funding.

Newswatch: Some of your past employees say you are a slave driver and do not pay good salary. How do you react to that?

Fawehinmi: That is absolute rubbish. There is no lawyer that I bought a car for that I asked for a payback. I must have bought not fewer than 15 to 20 cars for lawyers. The present person there, is using two cars and one of them is Mercedes. Nobody pays back. All the cars you see parked there by staff, they don’t pay back. I don’t give loan for people to buy cars.

Secondly, regarding salaries, I am shocked to hear that, because I don’t know of any lawyer who is earning less than N20,000 in my office. My deputy earns more than N50,000 a month. My wage bill is in millions every month. I want to know the establishment that pays in millions every month. We reflect this in taxes we pay to the government every year. I operate law, practice law, write law and publish law. We are talking of Nigeria law publication, the chambers and all the people that publish for us. This is a place where the gate-man earns N11,000 to N12,000 a month in our chambers. A place where a messenger earns N12,000 a month. He is given a motorcycle. I mean in our chambers, they serve refreshment free of charge on daily basis.

We have the largest chambers in this country. Look at the secretaries. There is no secretary in the chambers who earns less than N15,000 a month – just for typing. Go there and find out what I am talking of today, the 22nd of August when you are interviewing me. And I don’t default. I have never defaulted in the last 37 years that I have been practising law in this country in salaries, never. So, I don’t understand.

Newswatch: How far does your personal belief and crusade affect the way you run your chambers?

Fawehinmi: Well, I run my chambers on system and I ensure absolute rigidity in the system. I don’t allow people to make costly mistakes. If they do, they are fired. That’s why people say I am ruthless. Yes, I am ruthless on the side of efficiency. When you see a person who brings a case, his life is involved. Therefore, everything must be committed to it. And if you don’t do it, you’re fired. I am pathologically committed to excellence. You know why I say so. If I write a letter, three people must read it. After that, they make correction. We are fanatical about correcting errors. If any error creeps in, that guy is in trouble. If we find anything, I will destroy it. That is why we take pains. Before you discover mistakes in our letters, it takes time. That is why people say I am a slave driver. Yes, I admit that.

Newswatch: Would you attribute your heart ailment to your struggle?

Fawehinmi: That is very obvious. I knew I was sick on the 21st of March when I attended the rally of the NLC. I was sick. I was told not to go but I said even to die in the midst of that struggle is a glory.

Newswatch: Was it as a result of your incarceration?

Fawehinmi: Yes, I started having hypertension 32 years ago when I started going to prison at Gombe.

Newswatch: Some of your children are marked by prison names as you said. How many of them?

Fawehinmi: About 10 of them are marked by prison names. Others are marked by police station names.

Newswatch: You said you do not socialise, so what do you do as a form of relaxation?

Fawehinmi: When I come in, I watch the CNN a lot, gather enough of information, make notes, go through the papers I have not been able to read as a result of office work. I like to drink coffee a lot. A lot of coffee, a lot of tea. I have more than eleven brands of tea. I am a tea connoisseur. I think that’s just it, I listen to some music.

Newswatch You don’t visit friends?

Fawehinmi: No, no, no. I have friends. With all respect to them, they are very good in visiting me. But quite frankly, I have friends here and I don’t know where they are living. Relations that I don’t visit for 20 to 30 years and they come here to say hello. So, that is one thing about me, I am not a sociable person.

Newswatch: So, what is your religious life like?

Fawehinmi: I am a Muslim but I am not a fanatical Muslim. I don’t think I pray five times. I pray but not up to five times. I do that every morning. I put everything together. Five times? Oh my God! I do what God wants us to do. I mean I help my neighbour. My scholarship programme has been on since 1971. I am doing the 30th anniversary of that scholarship this year now and it is going to cost me at least N1.5 million.

Newswatch: As a Muslim what is your view on sharia?

Fawehinmi: I am worried that somebody who stole a cow, his hand was amputated, but a director who stole pension fund in the same sharia (state) is flogged. I think that is pure injustice. If a poor man’s hand can be chopped off, then the rich man, who even stole pension of somebody was flogged. They were even hesitant in flogging him. It took two hours before they could make up their mind. I don’t think this sharia law should discriminate. I think that director should have greater punishment. So, if a commissioner is caught now stealing people’s money, I think in Zamfara, his head should be chopped off. But they won’t do that. In essence, sharia is a way of life for the Muslim. Then the imbroglio on the sharia was caused by the constitution. You have sections that support sharia. You have sections that oppose sharia. So, the confusion is caused by the constitution. If you remember in 1988, when this matter was to be set up, during Babangida regime and the constituent assembly was set up to review the constitution, Aikhomu was sent by Babangida to go and tell them that they must not discuss sharia. He gave them four areas that they must not discuss. I think the controversy was caused by the constitution. Section 10 says that religion should not be imposed on the state. There should not be any discrimination on religion. Sections 175, 178, 265 and others allow states to create sharia courts. In addition, in other sections of the constitution, Sharia Court of Appeal is a superior court of law. So, what are we talking about?

Newswatch: Are any of your children lawyers?

Fawehinmi: Two of them are already practising lawyers and there are two others who will soon come out as lawyers. Two others say they want to follow suit as lawyers but I don’t think they will like to parade the prisons.

Newswatch: Do you find time to eat on a regular basis?

Fawehinmi: Ah! Now you have touched the sore area of my life. Food is my life. I love it. I am an eater, but a very selective eater. Fruits and vegetables have taken over my meal. Not just any food. I don’t know just any fruit that is in season that I don’t insist that it should be bought, and must be on the table. It is for me to pick what I want. That is how I relax

After breakfast on fruits, then my special vegetable must be packed for me to take to the office. That vegetable contains 17 ingredients, All these ingredients are chopped, and they must not stay more than 3 minutes on fire so as not to lose their value. Once I take that, I do not take any other thing. If I have a bowl of Eba, I must have a bigger bowl of vegetable soup. That is how I eat. So, I spend a lot on food.

Newswatch Volume 34 No 10, September 10, 2001

The Nigerian University – An Ivory Tower with neither ivory nor tower; Steve Okeche; Edu-Edy Publications; Owerri; 2008

2012-02-08T09:09:00.000-08:00

By Bayode Ogunmupe

THIS book of 144 pages is an indictment of the Nigerian university system. It describes vividly the decline and decay in the nation’s university system. It prescribes copious ways to halt this deterioration of the sorry state of affairs.
Chapter one of this nine chapter book dwells on the meanings of the words of the book’s title: University, Ivory, tower, and ivory tower. It also gave us a brief history and genesis of the university.
Chapter two peeps into the Nigerian university system. After a survey of the evolution from the Academy of Plato through Aristotle’s Lyceum to the school of universal learning, Okecha taught us how universities were formed in Europe in the 17th century AD. Then, the system by which Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle became obsolete. The second chapter therefore delved into the evolution of the university in Nigeria. The poor rating of our universities is the subject of chapter three.
It has been alleged that the system of branding of Nigerian universities by the National Universities Commission (NUC) contributed to the deterioration in academic standards of the institutions. This is because most of the staff of these colleges lacked the experience and research competence to run the various universities of technology and agriculture which NUC brought on stream in the 1980s.
In chapter five, the decay of the Ivory Tower is discussed in detail. Here, the author enumerated various factors responsible for the decline of academic standards in the universities.
Chapter six entitled Doctorates for Sale, see the vendors in Nigerian universities, educate the tall order of the NUC, that every academic schooled obtain a doctorate not later than December 2009. The problems arising from the enforcement of that directive are highlighted. The author also has suggestions to prevent unrest on our campuses. It is unfortunate that the NUC order will further deepen the deterioration of academic standards in our universities.
For the seventh chapter, the conditions of service in the universities are its main preoccupation. It avers that the remuneration and conditions of service of academics are nowhere comparable to those of political office holders, the private sector and the judiciary. Thus, that academics are poorly paid in comparison to others has been laid bare by the author.
The focus of chapter eight is the academic industry; that is to say creativity and research in tertiary institutions in the country.
The importance of brainpower in the enhancement of growth and development of our economy is herewith highlighted. Thus, we must here avow that the gross underdevelopment of Nigeria has been caused by the neglect of our universities. University dons could not undertake research because of poor pay, absence of research facilities in the colleges and the restiveness prevalent in institutions today.
Chapter nine offers up to forty suggestions on how we can overcome the decline and decay of our university system. This book contains vital information on the Nigerian university system. Moreover, reading it is a rewarding experience particularly for some whose children have to attend a university in the future.
However, The Nigerian University is a must read for private university proprietors, governors as founders of state universities, the presidency to enable them learn how to handle federal universities, and state and federal legislators to enable them enact good education laws.
Steve Okecha, the author was educated at Government College, Ughelli, Delta State, Ahmadu Bello University, and University of Uppsala, Sweden. He was leader, Organic Research Group, ABU before moving to Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State, where he is currently Professor of Chemistry. Also, he had served as Deputy Vice Chancellor and Provost, Delta State University, Abraka, Dean of Graduate School; director of AAU’s Consultancy Services; he is married with five children.

Democracy As a way of life

2012-02-08T09:07:00.000-08:00

Democracy as a way of life, by Bayo Ogunmupe

AS we celebrate the third anniversary of our fourth experiment in democracy, it is pertinent to ruminate about democracy as a way of life. From the facts of history, we can confirm that democracy as a form of government evolved over time. It did not appear suddenly somewhere, complete and perfect. It is always a matter of the degree of democracy extant at a particular point in time. Was ancient Athens a complete democracy? No, because Athens permitted slavery in much the same way the Magna Carta could not guarantee total democracy in England, since serfdom persisted and many rights were still denied the commoners. What then is complete democracy? The answer lies in the fact that democracy is more than a form of government, it is a way of life. This is so because democracy should be at work everywhere in our lives; not just in politics and government, but in our everyday habits and customs. We must exhibit democracy in our treatment of people of other tribes and differing religions'. We must show democracy in our attitude towards our fellow workers and neighbours.
A country may have a high degree of democracy in its form of government and yet a very low degree of democracy in other aspects of its life, such as ethnic relations, religious tolerance, equality of opportunity to find a job or attend college of one's choice. The form of government is an important part of democracy but that is not all. Often the most suitable governmental form for a democracy is a republic. That is, a form wherein the holding of office depends on voting rather than on hereditary succession. But if you stopped to think, you can probably name a country where the government was and still is a monarchy rather than a republic. The nation nonetheless has made great contributions to democracy.
We have just been discussing the case of England in the Middle Ages and in the 17th century. It is called Great Britain today. Also, it is interesting to recall that the democratic republic of ancient Athens did not elect representatives. The number of citizens had chances to fill officers in rotation or by lot. This arrangement is known as pure democracy because all voters were included not merely represented in the law making assembly. It is important, however, to be mindful of the things the majority tells the government to do. Would it be democratic if the majority started telling the government to persecute non-indigenes or certain ethnic groups or some religious minorities? In other words, in addition to having their way, a democratic majority must foster the desire to give everyone equal rights and opportunities.
It so often happens that a group captures the will of the majority at a point in time in a democracy. In the regime of President Shehu Shagari, the aristrocracy captured the will of the majority and ruled Nigeria until the Armed Forces took over. The bourgeousie ruled the United States in the administration of Ronald Reagan. And the plebians in turn wrested power from them through Bill Clinton. That is what happens in democracies. Perhaps you can now see why we must put democracy to work whenever and wherever we can. A complete democracy brings ever increasing opportunities of betterment to the whole people, not only in politics, but in education, ethnic relations, healthcare and all that goes to making a good community in which people are happy to live.
Historically, it is not easy to make great progress in every field of democracy at once. Let us reflect on the fact that the United States started with the fullest, political democracy which had existed up to that time, yet it did not abolish slavery until more than 85 years later and then only as a result of a bitter civil war. However, we must remember that there are honest differences of opinion about forms and aspects of democracy. For instance, many Nigerians sincerely believe that under the present circumstances it is more important to have an Ibo president than to have a great president. You cannot be sure of the truth about any political issue. Thus, your opinion must be given in humility. If you are inflexible, you close the door to learning more truth. One person can be right in a group and others wrong. Voting does not determine the truth, it determines the line of action the most people want in the full spirit of democracy. The French sage, Voltaire once wrote to his more radical friend, Helvetius: "I disagree with every word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it." Even though we cannot attain a goal as full and quickly as we would like, it is good to have a goal to aim at. The best tribute we can pay to democracy is to put it to work.
Ogunmupe is a veteran journalist

Gani, the Icon

2012-01-20T08:32:00.001-08:00

He has always been a thorn in the side of many a government in

Nigeria

. A tireless human rights campaigner and “senior advocate of the masses”, colleagues, ordinary Nigerians pay tribute to Gani Fawehinmi on finally being recognized by his peers and becoming a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN. But who is he really?

By Bayo Ogunmupe

IT WAS A HOT AFTERNOON. THE TEENAGE PRI-mary school boy sat at the bank of a river in Ondo. He had a bowl of gari mixed with water on hand. As he was doing justice to the meal, a senior student came around to bully him. “Get back to school because the bell had just rung,” the senior student said. But the youngster stood his ground. He would not go until he had finished his meal.

While the argument continued, a snake fell on the young boy’s head. Without any hesitation, the boy grabbed the snake and threw it at the senior, who ran for his dear life. The young boy is now the controversial lawyer, Gani Fawehinmi. That radicalism has continued as the hallmark of Fawehinmi, the radical Lagos lawyer who was made a senior advocate of

Nigeria

in July. He will be conferred with the title, September 10 in Abuja .

Nigeria

’s history. The young lawyer sued the secretary to the Benue/Plateau State government, the late Andrew Obeya, on behalf of a factory-hand, Abashia who said Obeya had an affair with his wife, Hannatu,in a car parked along the Jos/Zaria Road , Jos.

Although this should normally be a private tussle between two citizens, the state government got involved on behalf of its official. The governor, the late Joseph Gomwalk made efforts to get Fawehinmi to withdraw the case. When that failed, attempt was made to kidnap him. “That also came to nothing,” said Fawehinmi at an interview with Newswatch last week.

He was later clamped into jail under a detention decree that allows people to be detained without trial. To ensure he was kept away, the military government later charged him to court for illegally bringing arms to a local government area.

“I was not tried but moved from place to place inNorthern Nigeria . I was in prison for seven months. It was when I was in jail that I heard of the birth of my first child, Mohammed. By the time I was released, the six separate suits I had filed against Obeya had been struck out by the courts,” he recalled.

Two years later, Benjamin Adekunle, popularly called “Black Scorpion” during the civil war era and now a retired brigadier-general, caused the detention without trial of one Amos Ayodeji. Again, Fawehinmi filed a suit in a Lagos high court to secure Ayodeji’s release. He succeeded. In retaliation, Adekunle ordered the detention of Fawehinmi himself.

In 1971, crisis engulfed the University of Ibadanover a peaceful demonstration by the students against the excesses of the university authorities. The police invaded the university killing one of the students, Kunle Adepeju. The nation rose against the Yakubu Gowon regime.

Gowon set up a commission of inquiry headed by Justice Boonyamin Kazeem of the Lagos high court. The students hired Fawehinmi as their counsel. When the report of the inquiry was released, more than 80 percent of the students’ demands were met.

Also in 1978, Fawehinmi sued the federal government for banning the National Association of Nigerian Students and detaining its leader, Segun Okeowo. In the course of the case, Fawehinmi was arrested by the police and charged with stealing a camera.

When he obtained bail, he filed an application ofhabeas corpus on behalf of Okeowo. He won and Okeowo was released after 43 days in detention. Of course, Fawehinmi was himself acquitted and discharged of his trumped-up charge by a magistrate.

Again, during the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida,the irrepresible lawyer was detained in a bizarre twist to a case in which he was trying to bring officialdom to book. On June 17, 1988, he was arrested at his Anthony Village chambers together with two old but vociferous men – the late Tai Solarin, a famous social critic and Michael Imoudu, an old trade unionist whose advocacy of socialism in Nigeria has marked him out as a subversive in the eyes of every government since he organised Nigeria’s first general strike against the colonial government at the end of the World War II.

They were arrested at Fawehinmi’s chambers when they turned up at a conference offering alternatives to the government’s structural adjustment programme, SAP. SAP had become very unpopular causing a riot in which 12 people were killed. While in detention, Fawehinmi was flown from prison to prison, “igniting hypertension and ill health for me,” he said.

Fawehinmi also showed himself as a crusader for justice in the murder of Dele Giwa, founding editor-in-chief of Newswatch in 1986. He relentlessly attempted to institute a private prosecution for murder against the nation’s topmost intelligence officers at that time, Halilu Akilu, director of military intelligence and A.K. Togun, deputy director, state security service, SSS. He charged them for the murder of Giwa by parcel bomb. Giwa had been interrogated by the intelligence services two days before his death. Fawehinmi who had been his lawyer and friend strongly suspects that the security agencies sent the bomb. The lawyer is still pursuing the case at the Oputa panel on human rights abuses.

Fawehinmi has indeed faced many trials and triumphs in his crusade for social justice. He toldNewswatch last week that he has been imprisoned 29 times. He has lived in 15 prisons and eight police cells across the country. He has been charged to court 13 times and his chambers searched 15 times.

Because of his human rights crusade for the masses, students of the Obafemi Awolowo University gave him the title of Senior Advocate of the Masses, SAM. All the people who spoke to Newswatch last week said he richly deserves the SAN title now bestowed on him by the Legal Practitioners Privilleges Committee of the Nigerian Bar Council.

Fawehinmi’s mother, Muniratu, in her 80s, supports him. She does not see anything wrong with her son disturbing the government because she believes that if government does what is wrong, he will surely disturb them. She said Gani resembles his father in character and appearance. She told Newswatch that his father was fearless and if anyone did anything wrong and his father got wind of it, he would make sure justice was done.

She added that it was God’s time for Gani to become a SAN. She said they had denied him the title in the past because of his radicalism. “As a mother, I feel worried and bad whenever Gani is detained, I caution him sometimes. But I cannot stop him from doing what is right,” she said.

Adebayo Adefarati, governor of Ondo State said that Gani had not changed much, that Gani was his “boy” in secondary school. He described Gani as a very rascally boy who was very bold. “Where his seniors were afraid to talk, Gani will stand up and tell you what he feels about a situation,” he said.

Adefarati said that Gani had always been fearless, which was why his seniors advised him to study law.

Nigeria

is widely acknowledged,” he said. “All I can add on Gani is to acknowledge his courage and sagacity in public affairs. If more Nigerians had Gani’s courage,

Nigeria

would have been the greater for it,” he stated.

Newswatch watched Gani in his chambers and among his associates for two days. He arrives office at about 11.00 a.m. each day. A deluge of calls, letters and heavy mail are found waiting for his personal attention. Later in the afternoon, political associates, members of the National Conscience Party, clients seeking legal advice and legal assistance stream into the chambers. Despite its remoteness from the city centre, the chambers is a beehive of activities as late as midnight every day.

Yet, Fawehinmi attends to everyone, including foreign visitors, those from the remote corners of the nation, from his native city of Ondo , lawyers from other chambers seeking legal consultation and from people seeking financial assistance from him personally.

In the basement of his chambers are case files of thousands of cases he has handled and the current ones which he is handling. Named litigation section, it also houses bound copies of all the newspapers in circulation in

Nigeria

, including foreign ones.

Fawehinmi told Newswatch that his guiding legal principle was taken from the words of

Nigeria

’s first lawyer, Sapara Williams who admonished every lawyer “to live for the direction of his people and the advancement of the cause of his country.” Because of his passion for justice, having been imprisoned and beaten by the police unjustly in life, Fawehinmi compassionately renders free legal services for the members of his self-defined constituency – the poor, the oppressed, the cheated, the ignored and the persecuted.

He has indeed changed the course of legal practice in

Nigeria

. Never in the history of law has one man done so much for the legal profession. He practises law, writes law and publishes law. His Nigerian Weekly Law Reports, NWLR, comes out regularly with more than 250 pages every week. He is the editor-in-chief and founder of the NWLR. He is author or editor of various law reports and journals totalling 20.

Fawehinmi has also won landmark judicial pronouncements and cases in

Nigeria

. In December 1987, the Supreme Court determined the right of a private prosecutor to institute a private prosecution for murder. The credit went to him. “There are so many constitutional cases, which I am personally the plaintiff establishing so many principles,” he said.

Other notable cases won by Fawehinmi in the course of his crusade for justice in

Nigeria

include:Fawehinmi versus Shonekan; an action which exposed the illegality of Ernest Shonekan’s interim national government, ING, after Babangida “stepped aside.”

Edwin Anikwem, deputy head of Fawehinmi Chambers, told Newswatch last week that “Gani Fawehinmi inspires us very much here at chambers. He is very caring, kind. He gets work done.”

Some people claim that Fawehinmi is a slave driver, but Anikwem denied it. “I dare say, he is no slave driver. But he does not suffer fools gladly. Working with him is an experience. He motivates us to attain greater heights. We have come to imbibe his philosophy of using law for the betterment of society,” he said.

He continued: “This runs in the veins of every member of staff of his chambers. Gani encourages people to succeed as a lawyer. He makes everything available to you, money and materials. There are many advantages in working with him. For instance, we benefit from information on law available in his chambers and his sister companies. Moreover, it is the only place I know where you are considered on merit. He gives you opportunities to excel. He is a driver in the sense of getting maximum efficiency, of obtaining perfection. Gani is very thorough as a professional. He is an exacting leader.”

For Tunde Adeleye, presiding bishop of the Anglican Church, Calabar diocese: “I appreciate Fawehinmi’s contributions to social criticism. I also appreciate his boldness. He has suffered greatly in the hands of government. His defence of the poor, the needy is commendable. I see him as a formidable social critic, man of learning and one who has become an icon and philanthropist.”

Odia Ofeimum, social critic and chairman, editorial board of TheNews magazine had this to say on Fawehinmi: “Whether he gets the title or not, every Nigerian in the law profession knew that Fawehinmi was bigger than whatever he could be given. In fact, the very system of having SAN was doing itself a favour when it finally had Fawehinmi applying to become a SAN. That he is getting it after so many people he is intellectually superior to, actually shows a man who was more prepared to give than to receive. You don’t need to be a lawyer to appreciate Fawehinmi’s genius as a barrister. He has become a personification of radical law in

Nigeria

. Through his law reports, Fawehinmi has advanced the course of law more than any other lawyer in

Nigeria

. He has a strong sense for the defence of public morality.

“But Fawehinmi is not always right. I remember during the struggle for June 12, he took some positions which surely he will reverse today. He was requesting for the soldiers to intervene. That was extremely naive. There are other times when, honestly, you would wish as a social critic, Fawehinmi was a little slower in responding to an issue because that way he would be able to get all the information before acting.”

Ofeimum went on: “Fawehinmi has not been a great builder of organisations. He has built a fantastic law firm tapping the skills of other lawyers. But as a politician, there are so many things which he does which I consider inimical to the survival of his political party. Thus, he is a better advocate than administrator.

“On Bola Tinubu, the Lagos State governor, Fawehinmi over reached himself. His emotions got the better of legal knowledge for not knowing that Tinubu has immunity and that the issue of Tinubu’s integrity bordered on morality not legality.”

Ebele Eko, a professor of English and deputy vice-chancellor, University of Calabar believes if

Nigeria

has had more crusaders of Fawehinmi’s ilk we might have been spared that many years of military rule.

Ugochukwu Egesi, physician at the University Teaching Hospital, Calabar, said “Fawehinmi is the greatest advocate on the lawyers’ roll in

Nigeria

.”

In the opinion of Ogbadu Zakari of the federal inland revenue department, Lagos , “Gani Fawehinmi is truly the advocate of the masses for his penchant to defend the poor freely. But if he wants to rule this country, he must be ready to accommodate other people’s views. He should respect the viewpoint of others because no one has a monopoly of wisdom,” he said.

Williams Adebayo, a legal practitioner based at Ojodu, Lagos , said this of Fawehinmi: “Gani is a very successful lawyer and human rights crusader. His profound knowledge and understanding of the law has enabled him to use the law and the courtroom as instruments of protest and social change. Today, his success has been in the advancement of justice and the enhancement of human rights.”

In 1994, Fawehinmi formed the National Conscience Organisation as a human rights movement. “As an organisation, National Conscience is fighting for the economic rights of the down-trodden in

Nigeria

. The National Conscience transformed into a political party in October 1994 in defiance of a military order banning the formation of political parties,” Fawehinmi told Newswatch.

According to Fawehinmi, the National Conscience Party, NCP, was formed with two main objectives. Firstly, to rally public support for the actualisation of June 12 presidential victory of Moshood Abiola in 1993. Secondly, to provide a platform for the emancipation of Nigerians from economic, political, social and cultural slavery.

In pursuance of his political goals, Fawehinmi promises to be more committed to the ideals of justice. “First, justice is in two parts, you have legal justice relating to the courts and social justice relating to the masses. Social justice cannot be attained without economic fundamental rights.

Nigeria

today has no respect for the economic rights of the mass of our people,” he said.

Henry Akunebu, a lawyer, believes Fawehinmi has built a great name for himself and that politics should be his next vocation. “He has so distinguished himself as an advocate and defender of the poor that no Nigerian can boast of any higher ties with the Nigerian people. If he plans well, the presidency of

Nigeria

is within his grasp in the near future,” he said.

In the opinion of Akunebu, “if Fawehinmi is serious in his presidential ambition, he should reach out to other parts of

Nigeria

. He must establish a newspaper, radio or television in order to propagate his gospel of justice to the masses. It is essential that Fawehinmi reorganises NCP so that people other than Yoruba can take up its membership.”

Ayo Obe, lawyer and president of the Civil Liberties Organsation, CLO, told Newswatch, “that the recognition of Fawehinmi as a SAN is a well deserved honour.” But she doesn’t see it changing his crusading spirit. “I don’t see the honour changing him. I think Fawehinmi will continue to be SAN and senior advocate of the masses together.”

Brady Nwosu, a Lagos-based political consultant commended Fawehinmi for his courage, steadfastness and dogged devotion to noble ideals. “Gani Fawehinmi is a special gift to mankind, particularly to

Nigeria

. He remains a personality in law you cannot ignore. Fawehinmi has long remained a lone voice in

Nigeria

’s devious political firmament,” he said.

Olufemi Adekoya, a lawyer, described Fawehinmi as a brilliant, ferocious and rugged legal practitioner. “You know, it is not enough to be a lawyer, you must be willing to risk your life in the course of your profession. Fawehinmi is the only man in this country that has put his life on the line in the course of practising his profession,” he said.

Adekoya told Newswatch that Fawehinmi was the first human rights activist in

Nigeria

, which was why students gave him the title, senior advocate of the masses. He said he hated Fawehinmi’s excesses. One of which was his recommendation, on television that Obasanjo should reduce the price of petroleum to six kobo per litre, which was unrealistic.

The lawyer also explained that sensational advocacy was unethical and that it should be avoided. But in the opinion of Adekoya, Fawehinmi is always emotional in the matter of Dele Giwa at the Oputa panel which was an unprofessional act. He said the SAN was delayed because of Fawehinmi’s style of advocacy.

Fawehinmi is also a philanthropist. Because of his experience of financial deprivation as a student, he instituted his own scholarship scheme in 1971. Every year 40 students receive scholarship awards from him.

For Fawehinmi’s family life, you need to visit his serene home at Ikeja GRA. His home stands on a large expanse of land covered with flowers. There are three buildings in his courtyard, two duplexes and a guest chalet. Fawehinmi lives alone in the first building. His family lives in the other.

He has two separate areas for rearing chicken and goats. They are about 90.

The walls of his sitting room are covered by glazed newspaper headlines of Fawehinmi‘s travails. He told Newswatch the windows were not covered so that Abacha’s henchmen would not miss their target if they wanted him. He said his desire for the safety of his family informed his decision to live all alone, separate from the family.

Tolulope Fashipe, Fawehinmi’s younger sister, said her brother is a wonderful person. She said Fawehinmi treats her with loving kindness and that he is a good family man. Fashipe said she is very happy for Fawehinmi, for the SAN honour.

For Fawehinmi’s elder brother, Wahid, a general merchant, “Gani is the dean of the family. He is just like our father, hates injustice. As a brother, he is very supportive, a good family man, responsive to our needs at all times.”

Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi was born on April 22, 1938 , at Ondo, Ondo State . He was educated atVictory College , Ikare; the University of London, England and the Nigerian Law School , Lagos .

He was called to the bar in 1965. He has practised law since then. He also wrote columns in the Daily Sketch, the Nigerian Tribune, and The Chronicle.

Fawehinmi won the American Bar Association Award in 1996, and Bernard Simons award from the International Bar Association in 1998. He was given the traditional title of Lomofe of Ondo in 1978. He is married to two wives and has 14 children.

As a Man Thinketh by Bayo Ogunmupe

2012-01-04T04:53:00.000-08:00

THERE are various laws of success. The first for mention is that life is spiritual. “Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven,” Mat 18:18. This means that you have to convince the spiritual powers in heaven that you deserve greatness before you can enjoy wealth on earth. And if you obtained riches by hook or crook, they aren’t going to last, neither would they be enduring.
Two, there is the law of sowing and reaping. It is what you sow that you reap. And yet there is another, ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Because thoughts are things, when thoughts are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence and a burning desire, they become even more powerful. However, if you want to succeed in life prepare well. Any enterprise built by wise planning becomes strong,” Proverbs 24:3.
What happens when you are not prepared? Your hopes wont materialize. The dividing line between winning and losing is preparation. The great Tennis champion, Arthur Ashe said, “The key to winning is self confidence and the key to self-confidence is preparation.” Your wishes of becoming a star wont make your dreams come true. You’ve got to prepare adequately to gain laurels. If you plan to keep growing, preparation must become your way of life. You must never stop asking, Jehovah, what do you want me to do? What will it cost me in time, effort and resources? What obstacles must I overcome? With that mindset, you are well on your way to fulfilling God’s purpose for your life. A good leader thinks ahead, your success in life is determined by how important you regard your goal and your ability to prepare for victory. Alexander Hamilton, a founding father of the United States, said, “Men give me credit for genius, but all the genius I have lies in this – when I have a subject at hand, I study it profoundly.” So if you want to succeed, prepare well.
Besides, your road to greatness lies in having a cause greater than yourself. How could David stand up to a giant? Because his people were being threatened and he cannot run away. A survey was conducted among centenarians, people who lived to be over 100 years. You will expect exotic diets, miracle drugs and strenuous exercise.
But no. the things that all these centenarians had in common was purpose. They had a compelling reason to rise every morning.
God created you for a purpose. At 12, Jesus said, “I must be about my father’s business,” Luke 2:49. Twenty-one years later, dying on the stake, He announced, “It is finished,” John 19:30. Those statements frame a fulfilled, God glorifying life. So ask Jehovah to reveal to you His purpose for your life. Until you find God’s purpose for you, you have not succeeded. As you go through life you discover there are many ways to gain wisdom. One, by writing down, reflecting on what you have learned through experience. Two, gleaning from the collective knowledge of others. “By pride comes nothing but strife, but with well-advised is wisdom,” Prov. 13:10. Three, thinking outside the box. Four, not rushing to closure. Growth is always a work-in-progress. Creativity is untidy and unnerving. The ability to stay focused with faith in the midst of change is the hallmark of maturity.
But the ultimate source of wisdom is Jehovah. A young executive told his secretary he didn’t want to be interrupted. But his boss needed him and walked in. when he found the young executive on his knees praying, he withdrew quietly, and asked the secretary, “Is this usual?” “Yes,” she replied. “No wonder I come to him for advice, said his boss. If you need wisdom ask God. “For the Lord gives wisdom, from His mouth come knowledge and understanding” Proverbs 2:6. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and it will be given to him,” James 1:5. “The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hyprocisy,” James 3:17.
Our champion for today is Mark Elliot Zuckerbeg, the Jewish American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-creating the social networking site. Facebook, of which he is chief executive and president. Facebook was co-founded by Zuckerberg and his classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes while they were students at Harvard University. In 2010 Zuckerberg was named Time magazine’s Person of the year. As of 2011, his personal wealth was estimated to be $17.5 billion.
Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in White Plains, New York to Karen, a psychiatrist and Edward Zuckerbeg, a dentist. He and his three sisters were brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Zuckerberg was raised Jewish, but he has since described himself as an atheist.
In High School, Zuckerberg excelled in classics before transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy where he won prizes in science and classical studies. At a party in his sophomore year, Zuckerberg met Priscilla Chan, a Chinese-American from Boston, Massachusetts. They have dated continuously ever since and in 2010, Zuckerberg invited Chan, now a medical doctor to move into his rented house. By the time he began classes at Harvard, he had already achieved a reputation as a computer prodigy. He studied computer science and built Facemash site. But Harvard shut it down because its popularity had overwhelmed Harvard’s server and prevented students from accessing the Internet.
President Barack Obama had aprivate meeting with Zuckerberg when the President dined with technology business leaders in California in February 2011. Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room in February 2004. He left Harvard without a degree, he didn’t complete his studies. He moved to California with Moskovitz and other friends. In July 2010, Zuckerberg reported that Facebook reached 500 million-user mark, agreeing that Facebook could earn more income from its phenomenal growth. In 2007, Zuckerberg was named by MIT Technology Review as one of the top 35 innovators in the world. A lawsuit filed by Eduardo Saverin against FAcebook and Zuckerberg was settled out of court. In the settlement, Facebook affirmed Saverin’s title as co-founder of Facebook. Saverin signed non-disclosure contract after the settlement. All in all, Zuckerberg affirmed that pursuit of paper qualifications is the purview of employees of industry, that life rewards creative entrepreneurs such as Zuckerbeg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and others, certificate or no certificate.

Sucess Secrets of of Champions

2011-12-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

Ogunmupe: Success Secrets Of Champions

By Bayo Ogunmupe

RESEARCH has shown that people who become champions, the men and women who make it to the top of their career are those who accept that they and they alone are in charge of their own lives. They win by dreaming big, setting tough goals, putting plans on the table and damning the consequencies. Their pedigree is character, dedication and the pursuit of excellence.
Champions serve to demonstrate that winners are ordinary people who never have anything to prove.

So, what is holding you back? Three keys to living without limits are clarity, competence and concentration. Clarity means that you are absolutely clear about who you are, what you want and where you are going. You write down your goal and you make plans to accomplish it. You do something everyday to move toward your goal. Competence means that you are very good in your chosen field. You apply the 80/20 rule to everything you do, focusing on becoming outstanding in the 20 per cent of tasks that contribute to 80 per cent of your results. You dedicate yourself to continuous learning and self improvement. You must realise that excellence is a moving target.

Concentration is the discipline to force yourself to focus single-mindedly on one thing and stay with it until it is finished. Concentration is perseverance without distraction, keeping to your goals, when you apply yourself to your dreams, thinking in terms of possibilities you move ever closer to the realisation of your dreams. However, how badly do you want success? You can achieve anything if you want it enough. It isn’t so much whether you can win, it is much more a question of whether you are willing to pay the price. Paying the price may mean years of low income from part-time jobs, to give you the time to acquire the knowledge and skills that will allow you to live your dreams.

It might mean leaving your family and friend by moving to a new area, perhaps halfway around the world, where your talents are in demand. Whatever the price, you must decide if you are willing to pay the freight. Winners always accept paying prices willingly.

Once your dream is in place, the next step in your championship journey is to develop the dream into a vision. The vision is a more focused concept of how the dream will become reality. All great champions have a clear vision of how far their talents can take them. Goals are the fuel of desire. A winner’s next step is to break the vision down into manageable goals that will create and maintain maximum desire. The first step in creating burning desire is to decide exactly what you want.

Goal setting is essential for success. Goals, unlike dreams, follow a special set of rules. The power of goal setting should never be taken lightly in the making of champions. Setting goals allows you to focus your conscious and subconscious energy on a distant flag keeping you motivated along the way. Smart goal setting follows specific rules. They are: Specific, motivational, attainable, relevant and trackable.

A specific goal is to be the greatest journalist of all time. That is a long term goal. This can be broken down to short term goal of being the winner of the Cable News Network African Journalist of the year. This serves to boost your confidence in winning other laurels.

Two, the goals you set must have the motivational power to excite you enough to enable you invest time and effort necessary to realise your goals. That is why champions set big goals, because only big goals have the power to make them work harder to gain their objective. Three, although your goal must be lofty, it must be attainable given the time required with your dedication. Someone must have achieved goals near to it if it is attainable.

Four, your goal of becoming a champion must be relevant. For example, Nigeria is now in the throes of poverty and unemployment, an ambition to win the Nobel Prize for Economics, in order to pull off an economic miracle of widespread prosperity would be a most relevant ambition.

Finally, for a goal to be trackable you must have a way of knowing if you are moving closer to your long term goal. That is, you must have past champions upon whose achievement you can build on. For your ideas to be on track in the field of economics for example, you must build on the works of development economists such as Karl Marx, John Mayuard Keynes and Amartya Sen.

Our champion for today is Robert Schuman, the French statesmen who founded the European Coal and Steel Community and worked for the establishment of the political and economic unity of Europe culminating in the European Union. Born in Luxembourg in June 1886, died in Metz in September 1963, Schuman was a member of the French National Assembly from 1919 till he was arrested by the Gestapo after the German occupation of France in 1940. He became a minister just before he was arrested and deported to Germany. He escaped in 1942 to France where he rejoined the French resistance.

After the war, Schuman rose to great prominence. He was Minister of Finance, then Prime Minister from 1947 to 1948 assuring parliamentary stability in a period of revolutionary charge and partisan insurrection. He led the Third Force, a coalition of intellectuals opposed to both the Communists and the Gaullists: forces intent on changing the French constitution by intimidation rather than the ballot box.

In the last days of his first premiership, he proposed plans that later resulted in the Council of Europe and the single market-European Economic Community. Become Foreign Minister in 1948, he retained the post in different governments till 1953.

As Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Schuman was instrumental to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Schuman was a signatory to the statutes of the Council of Europe; the Treaty of Washington even though the French National Assembly declined to ratify it. He later served as Minister of Justice before becoming the first President of the European Parliament, which bestowed on him by acclamation the title: “Father of Europe”. He was one of the founding fathers of the European Union.

In 1958 he was given the Karlsprecis, an award by the German city of Aachen to champions of European peace, commemorating Charlemgne, ruler of what is today France and Germany, who resided and is buried at Aachen. Celibate and modest, Schuman was very religious, a Bible scholar and revolutionary thinker.

He was also a courageous political activist. In May 2004, he was being considered for beautification as a prelude to being declared a saint. A social science university was named after him at Strasbourg, France and the administrative headquarters of the University of Limerick is named Robert Schuman Building in Ireland.

His unalloyed testament was that he initiated and implemented the law paying social security benefits to the aged and the unemployed in France from 1947.

Sucess Secrets of of Champions

2011-12-19T07:55:00.000-08:00

Ogunmupe: Success Secrets Of Champions

By Bayo Ogunmupe

His unalloyed testament was that he initiated and implemented the law paying social security benefits to the aged and the unemployed in France from 1947.

Walking In Wisdom

2011-11-28T07:17:00.000-08:00

By Bayo Ogunmupe

OUR true rewards in life depend on the quality and amount of contribution we make. From the scriptures to science, psychology to business, the documentation is the same. As we sow, we reap. You should know them by their works. You get out what you put in. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. These are all sayings of the scriptures—and of the wise.

The way we can build self-reliance is to recognize alternative choices we have in a free society.

Earlier in my columns, I wrote about three great fears, namely, the fear of rejection, fear of change and fear of success. A good way to conquer fear and build self-reliance is to realize that we all are God-created but self-molded. That we are given love, spiritual leadership, divine rules and laws to help us understand how we cause our own effects by our own decisions. To build self-reliance, you must replace fear with knowledge and action.

We are only victims of our own fears. We are victims of habit and group conformity. Indeed, each of us becomes a hostage of our own making. To be self-reliant, we need to be different if it means being cleaner, and better groomed than the others. The greatest risk in life is to depend upon others for your security. The greatest security is to plan and act and take the risk that will make you independent. Carry this motto in all your teaching: Life is a do-it-yourself project. Become role models for your peers and always model yourself after people you respect. Never make excuses for anything. If a commitment cannot be met, always call immediately with the reason. Never make excuses after the fact. Procrastination leads to the rationalization of failure. Never make excuses to the people you are leading.

In ancient Rome being a sculptor was a popular profession. Really, you were not considered a celebrity if your home or office didn’t have several statues of the gods adorning it. As with every industry, there was good and bad quality statue. Occasionally when a sculptor makes a mistake in carving a particular statue, the crack would be filled with wax. Then, sculptors became so good at remodeling with wax that people could not tell the difference with the naked eye.

If anyone wanted quality statue, he would go to artisan market place and look for good statue makers, marked sine cera – without wax. In sine cera booths reside the real statue. Thus, more than any other virtue, we look for in people, we value sincerity – without wax. Previously, I have written about responsibility as understanding Jehovah’s great law of cause and effect. Here, we are dealing with how to walk in wisdom. Wisdom is the combination of honesty, intuition and knowledge applied through experience. Wisdom is honest knowledge in action. The application of knowledge with intuition is known as sagacity – practical wisdom. There is no greater example of the law of cause and effect than that which is demonstrated in the results of a person’s honesty or dishonesty, over a period of time. There can be no real success without honesty. Some day, the person’s house of wax will melt to reveal the fraud inside.

It is not enough to think the truth. You must act the truth and speak the truth. To be able to do this is to succeed in life. To be wise leaders, we also must consider the impact of our decisions on other people in our lives. The ability to anticipate the effects of our decisions on other people’s lives as well as on our own life is wisdom. When we honestly consider the wellbeing of others, before we decide to profit ourselves, we become truly rich and sagacious.

In life, however, knowledge makes the difference. According to the University of California (UCLA) Brain Research Institute, the power of the human brain to create, store and learn is limitless. The great Russian scholar, Ivan Yefremov, has told the Russian people: “Throughout our lives we use only a fraction of our thinking ability. We could without difficulty learn forty languages, memorise a dozen encyclopedias and complete the required courses of dozens of colleges.” However, one painful reason is that people don’t believe they are worth that much. This is why low self-esteem is such a devastating growth inhibitor. It is sad that people have an aversion to doing more than is necessary to get by.

Peter Drucker, the famous management expert, admonishes: “Today, knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement. Scholars are not merely on top, they are on top.” Human engineering research over a century indicates that one of the most important aptitudes for success is that a large vocabulary – which implies broad knowledge characterizes the more successful persons, regardless of their occupations. Brain is becoming more and more the master of brawn. It should please you to know that reading is the best way to gain knowledge and a greater vocabulary.

Our champion of today is Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, the Russian statesman who became the president of Russia in 1990. The architect of Russian Republic, yeltsin became the first popularly elected leader in Russian history in 1991, guiding the new republic into freedom through breaking up the Soviet Union until his resignation on 31 December, 1999.

He was born February 1, 1931, in Russia, attended Urals Polytechnic and worked in construction from 1955 to 1968. He joined the Communist Party in 1961, becoming the first secretary of his region’s party in 1976. Thereafter, he came to know Mikhail Gorbachev then his counterpart in the city of Stavropol. In 1985 Gorbachev chose Yeltsin to clean out the corruption in the Moscow party and elevated him to the Politburo in 1986. As Moscow’s mayor, yeltsin proved an able and determined reformer. But he estranged Gorbachev by criticizing him for the slowness of his reforms.

Gorbachev kicked him out of Moscow’s leadership in 1987 and from the Politburo in 1988. He was demoted to deputy minister of Construction. However, yeltsin staged a comeback. Through his advocacy of democracy and reform he became popular. He took advantage of Gorbachev’s policy to contest and win a seat in the new Russian Parliament in 1989. In 1990, he was elected President by the Russian Parliament against Gorbachev’s wishes.

Thereafter, yeltsin publicly called for the dissolution of the Soviet Union and then quit the Communist Party. His victory in the direct election of Russian President in 1991 he saw as a mandate to assert the independence of Russia from the Soviet Union. He won global acclaim by casting himself as a democrat and defying the August coup attempt in 1991. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union that December, Yeltsin transformed Russia’s socialist command economy into a free market economy by implementing price liberalization and privatization programmes.

In 1994, Yeltsin sent troops into Chechnya, which had seceded from Russia in 1991. The army was unable to suppress the rebellion. This further eroded Yeltsin’s declining popularity. In another spectacular comeback, however, Yeltsin defeated his Communist challenger in the second round of voting for this second term in office in 1996. He spent the months after, recovering from a heart attack. On 31 December 1999, he made a surprise announcement of his resignation, leaving the presidency with his chosen successor, the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, he said Russia deserved new leaders in the new millennium. Yeltsin maintained a low profile after his resignation, making no statements or appearances. Boris Yeltsin died of heart failure in April 2007 at the age of 76.

BEYOND THE SUMMITT FOR NIGERIAN RENEWAL

2011-11-24T03:54:00.000-08:00

By Bayo Ogunmupe
ECONOMIC summits are a yearly jamboree bringing together chief executives, topnotchers of the private sector and senior government officials to discuss how best to develop and monitor the Nigerian economy.
The main focus of the summits is to develop policy directions in the short and medium term, of the priorities of Nigeria’s national economy in the context of the evolving world economy.
The worst recession in a generation is how the Encyclopaedia Britannica online described the recession that hit the world recently. The economic downturn that started in the United States in 2007, so severely affected many countries including Nigeria. It has been given the unique name, the Great Recession.
That was why the 17th Economic Summit was organised. The summit started at Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja on November 10, it ended on November 12, 2011, its theme was: Attracting foreign direct investment through global partnerships. At the confab, delegates were treated to a dialogue with President Goodluck Jonathan, sectoral policy dialogues and a forum for emerging leaders was forged.
Yes, Nigeria should attract more and greater investment. But the incentives are not there. The Boko Haram unrest cannot invite investors, for they are attracted by economic stability, a stable currency and the purchasing power of the people.
The best way out of our impasse is to imitate another emerging economy. For me, I would want Nigeria to ape India. Just as Nigeria is the largest country in Africa, India is the largest economy in the Commonwealth. But in spite of these similarities, both countries have differing development patterns. In the latest global competitiveness report, the World Economic Forum (WEF), placed Nigeria at 127th position in the world. Others are the indices rating by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which do not present cheering news. Insecurity, dilapidated infrastructure and socio-economic paralysis have coalesced to stymie Nigeria’s democracy.
For India, the statistics are bright. Even with a huge population of 1.2 billion, as against Nigeria’s 167 million, India’s per capita income and gross domestic product (GDP) still towers above that of Nigeria. The World Bank ranks India as the 10th largest economy in the world by GDP and the fourth by purchasing power parity. In the midst of such impressive indicators of development, India still has its fair share of poverty like Nigeria.
However, unemployment and public sector corruption define the Nigerian reality. And unlike Nigeria, the Indian government and people, having identified their challenges, are tackling them headlong. How India was conquering their problems was the thrust of a recent confab held at the Lagos Business School.
Though the forum was to seek ways of fostering Indo-African relations, it became a roundtable to share experiences and create a future through competition. As it is, the Nigerian authorities should not sweep aside the lessons the Indian community in Nigeria is teaching us. One remarkable lesson from India is the role of diplomacy in entrepreneurship building. India’s High Commissioner in Nigeria, Mahesh Sacdev, is passionately growing Indian businesses in Nigeria.
Nigerian envoys abroad should borrow a leaf from India and grow brand Nigeria wherever they find themselves. It is obvious from the foregoing that India walked the same path as Nigeria. But unlike Nigeria, this South East Asian giant broke free from the manacles of underdevelopment. The Indian government showed the way by evolving policies, which birthed a regime of free enterprise. Working closely with the private sector, the Indian government promoted investments in technology and education. The result is that New Delhi became the outsourcing capital of the world. Indian graduates in areas of medicine and communication technology compared favourably with global brands like Harvard University, the London School of Economics and the University of Geneva. Complex medical cases are being referred from the United States hospitals to India with amazing results.
Yet another lesson is the fiscal frugality and patriotism, which underline the Indian socio-economic work ethic and value system. Indians buy India. Indian government officials use vehicles made in India. Even with a population of eight times that of Nigeria, you will not find the type and number of expensive and exotic cars on Indian roads as you will find in Nigeria.
Nigeria can imitate India in education, ICT, infrastructure, steel, power and healthcare. But first we must mould our warped value system that promotes ostentation. We must learn to invest in our tomorrow. Government insincerity must stop. Let us sell all the refineries with government retaining 30 per cent of the equities in them. They will certainly perform effectively thereafter. Let us promote import substitution industries by requiring all foreign companies in Nigeria to manufacture their goods locally - within five years or be blacklisted. More than 75 million Nigerians are below the age of 18, we must evolve a means of guaranteeing them a better tomorrow. President Goodluck Jonathan must introduce social security for the aged, the unemployed and all tax payers, our economy can withstand it. We do not need the culture of private jets for bank executives or the exotic jeeps of public office holders. Nigerians must imitate India by buying and using Nigerian products, locally sewn clothes and attires. Electricity is the harbinger of economic and industrial prosperity. For lasting economic renewal in Nigeria, we must fix our power sector. Privatisation is the high road to prosperity. The main focus of the government should be the stabilisation of the power sector. To wit, we should adopt one of several models extant in the world today.
As a member of BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, countries similar to Nigeria were in dire need of power in the 1990s. But by 2010, these countries now generate electricity far more than their needs. That was not by magic but by realistic planning that involved every segment of their societies.
However, each of these countries has her own methods of ownership of electric companies. In Brazil, electrical companies are listed at the Stock Exchange. The state owned 52 per cent, residents owned 22 per cent while the remainder is owned by the Brazilian public funds. For Chile, CORFO, the Chilean National Development Corporation is the prototype of our PHCN. Here, electricity is totally privatised. CORFO was initially financed by pension funds but it is now owned by investors. Thus, we should adopt varying strategies to organise our own electricity generation and supply.

THE COSMIC LAWS OF SUCESS

2011-10-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

N previous articles in this column, I have outlined steps to wealth creation based on the true understanding of the workings of the cosmic. These Cosmic Laws of success, form the essence of this teaching. When you incorporate this knowledge into your consciousness, it will give you the ability to create unlimited wealth effortlessly, as you experience success in every endeavour, success in life is the continued expansion of happiness and the progressive realisation of worthy goals. Success is the ability to fulfil your desires with ease.
Success is a journey not a destination. However, material abundance makes the journey more enjoyable. But success includes good health, enthusiasm for life, creative freedom, a sense of well-being and peace of mind.
The first of these seven cosmic laws is the law of potentiality. The source of all creation is consciousness, or pure potentiality seeking expression from the cosmos.
When we realise that our true self is one of pure potentiality, we align with the power that manifests everything in the universe. The law of pure potentiality is based on the fact that we are sentient beings. How can we apply the law of potentiality? In order to gain access to this law, you have to adopt the daily practice of silence, meditation and non-judgement. Spending time in nature gives you access to infinite creativity, freedom and bliss.
Practising silence means taking time to meditate, to simply Be. Experiencing silence means withdrawing from the activities of speech, watching television, listening to the radio or reading a book. Never giving yourself the opportunity to experience silence for an extended period of time creates turbulence in your personal life. And every once in a while, you should experience silence for such a time as a full day, two days or even a whole week.
What happens with your experience of silence? Initially, your internal dialogue becomes turbulent. You feel an intense need to say something. A sense of urgency and anxiety suddenly comes over you! But as times go on, your internal dialogue begins to quieten. Soon the silence becomes profound, when the self discovers you are not going to speak. Then you begin to experience the stillness of pure potentiality.
The Bible says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Knowing God this way can only be accomplished through meditation. Another way to access the field of potentiality is through the practice of non judgement. There is a prayer that says, “Today I shall judge nothing that occurs.”
Non-judgement creates silence in the mind. Through silence, meditation and non-judgement we access the law of potentiality. Thus, stillness nurtures creativity, which the law propagates.
The second cosmic law of success is the law of Giving. As you give so you receive, so the law commands. The more you give, the more you receive, because the miraculous effects of giving recoups in abundance. Don’t accumulate money in banks or shares. It will fail you as it did to me. My shares in more than 20 companies have been wiped out by this depression we are in. if I had invested them in friends and neighbours, I would have been happier than I am now.
The third cosmic law of success is the law of Karma. “What you sow is what you reap,” explains this law best. Thus, Karma implies the action of conscious choice – making. Bad Karma may be hindering your progress now. Because the law of Karma says no debt in the unwerse ever goes unpaid. There is a perfect accounting in the universe. The way to avoid bad karma is to choose rightly; conscious that if you hurt others you have to pay for it.
The law of Least Effort is the fourth law of success. When you harness the force of harmony, joy and love, you create success and good fortune effortlessly. Least effort is expended when your actions are motivated by love, because nature is held together by the energy of love. When you are motivated by love, you create anything that you want, including unlimited wealth.
To win, don’t struggle against the moment. Two, take responsibility for every thing you do. All problems contain the seed of opportunity, so transform your problems into opportunities by accepting them. Reality is an interpretation. Interpret your world correctly. When you remain open to all points of view, your desires will flow with nature and gain success.
The law of desire is the fifth law. inherent in every intention and desire is the mechanics for its fulfilment. In life, conscious change is achieved through two paths, attention and intention. Attention energises and intention transforms. Whatever you put attention on, grows. Intention organises its own fulfilment. Intention is the power behind desire. Put this law into effect by listing your intentions, wishes and desires and surrender it to your subconscious before you sleep at night. Do not allow obstacles to consume and dissipate your intention.
The law of detachment is the sixth law. In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty. The freedom from the past creates the willingness to step into the unknown. In order to acquire anything, you have to relinquish your attachment to it. This does not mean you should abrogate the intention or abjure the desire. You give-up your attachment to the result. Combining one-pointed intention with detachment enables you to have your desires. Attachment comes from poverty, detachment is synonymous with wealth. Attachment to money creates insecurity. The search for security is an illusion. The solution is to accept insecurity as the essence of life. The search for security is an attachment to money. Without uncertainty, life is just a stale repetition of outworn memories. Detachment accelerates evolution. Alertness in the face of uncertainty allows you to seize every opportunity culminating in good luck. Every problem is an opportunity to secure greater benefit.
Finally, we have the law of purpose, Everyone has a purpose in life with a unique gift of a special talent to give to others. When yen blend this talent with service to others you experience the ecstasy of your own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals. The first component of law of purpose is that we come to discover and fulfil our spiritual self. The second component is that we come to express our unique talents. The third component is that we come to serve our fellowmen. Which is why the pertinent question is “How can I help others?” It is not” what’s in it for me”. So begin to focus on your true purpose in life. That enables you to get what you want, where you want it.
Our champion this week is Felipe Gonzalez, the Spanish lawyer and statesman who was prime minister of Spain between 1982 and 1996. Born in March 1942, the son of a livestock handler. Gonzalez was the only one of five children to attend university.
He studied law at the University of Seville and in 1964 joined the outlawed Spanish Socialist Party. Gonzalez practised law at Seville and by 1974 had risen to Secretary-General of his party. His moderation and appeal to the youth helped him gain a sweeping victory in the 1982 elections. He became at age 40, Europe’s youngest head of government.
As premier, he took Spain into the European Union in 1986, remained in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. His pragmatic policies reduced inflation and integrated the Spanish economy into a boom by 1990. By then he had reduced unemployment to less than 10 per cent. He was defeated for his fifth term in office in 1996. Now, 69, he is married with three children.

Bayo Ogunmupe

2011-08-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

Guardian, Monday,

May 25, 2009 – Page 69 – Reviewer:

Minimizing Political Risk for Sustainable Investment: Ikenna Nwosu: Mooregate Ltd; Lagos 2008

The Book, Minimizing Political Risk for Sustainable Investment has an interesting rider; Global Paradigm Shifts and Nigeria’s Niger Delta. It is a product of the doctoral degree thesis of Dr. Ikenna Nwosu, a solicitor and advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

It however appears timely more so when the Niger Delta imbroglio has attained a dangerous dimension. The volume deals with the risk involved in mining oil from the crises ridden Niger Delta region.

Also, the book highlights the future of private political risk or indeed catastrophic risk in searching for oil in Nigeria. For those who operate in these quicksand of political intrigue, it is pertinent to ask why the transnational corporations are so embroiled or focused their portfolio investments in these risky terrains?

This book gives some insights into the beginning conundrums, bringing into sharp focus those intriguing features of political risk and investment. In its general outlook, the volume cuts a picture of a reformist and a pragmatic exposition of the depreciation theory of oil resources in its revolting reality.

In all, the book has six chapters, 342 pages, two pages of acknowledgements, six pages of abbreviations and a page of cases and arbitral awards. There are also 24 pages of references, four pages of appendices and an index of 16 pages. In fact the book is too voluminous and would be too expensive for an ordinarily reader.

Chapters are and two treat the risks in transnational resources investment and the political risk. These chapters highlight the risks; geological, political, commercial as well as the legal factors shaping investment.

Chapters three and four deal with managing risks and analyzing the evoluting global order expanding the frontiers of political risk.

Chapters five and six regale us with the expanding frontiers of political risk, the tread in the global management of the dilemma of resources control. The concluding chapter six offered a preliminary assessment of political risk and the findings and conclusions of researchers of peaceable means of solving the clamour for resources control in the Niger Delta Region.

As readers plough through the book page after page, one will, but notice its scholastic depth which rubs off on it as a magnificent piece of literary undertaking. It displays the technical virtuosity that is as breathtaking as it is fulfilling. Despite their occasional language barriers, that is to say that they are sometimes incomprehensible, the chapters still come through with erudition and profound effort at learning. It is sympathetic to the Niger Delta Resources Control Militants.

At all events, one finds Nwosu’s epilogue a fascinating reading. In it, he proposes that the solution to the Niger Delta crises will be found through a multi-skateholder engagement process, which he has outlined in the book. Such an engagement process that allows all the interested parties, government, organized private sector, labour, religious groups, environmentalists and others to sit together and solution to the crises.

The ideal way to organize such a forum would be through a public-private partnership that is jointly staffed, organized and funded. An organization such as the World Council of Indigenous Peoples could be asked to organize to maximize its benefits.

However, it is critical that the process be seen as neutral, one in which the government and the oil industry act as participants, not leaders or promoters. To ensure this independence, a secretariat should be created with wherewithal to effectively resist external pressure.

The organizers should focus on developing a policy and institutional support that is consistent with the terms of the conference.

No only that, they should facilitate full public participation in the decision making regarding sustainable petroleum and non-oil development projects.

Moreover, the organizers should facilitate communication between the host communities and the organized private sector tour, the conveners should provide training and capacity building for the militants, the communities, the OPS and all tiers of government.

Five, the organizers should develop a transparent and effective system to measure and report on system performaces.

It will profit the stakeholders too to develop a conflict resolution mechanism whose decision would be acceptable to all and sundry.

The author, Dr. Ikenna Nwosu holds a Ph.D in Law from University of Dundee, United Kingdom. He was called to Nigerian Bar in 1990 and practices law as member of the International Bar Association. He did not divulge his age, and the number of his wives, and children for polygamy is unusual in Nigeria.

Apart from legal practice, Dr. Nwosu is also engaged in consultancy in the energy, natural resources and the investment sectors. His 15 – years research on the Niger Delta crises is reflected in this book. It is resource material for all who are involved in the search for lasting solution to Niger Delta impasse.

Democracy as a way of life

2011-08-22T09:28:00.001-07:00

By Bayo Ogunmupe
AS we celebrate the third anniversary of our fourth experiment in democracy, it is pertinent to ruminate about democracy as a way of life. From the facts of history, we can confirm that democracy as a form of government evolved over time. It did not appear suddenly somewhere, complete and perfect. It is always a matter of the degree of democracy extant at a particular point in time. Was ancient Athens a complete democracy? No, because Athens permitted slavery in much the same way the Magna Carta could not guarantee total democracy in England, since serfdom persisted and many rights were still denied the commoners. What then is complete democracy? The answer lies in the fact that democracy is more than a form of government, it is a way of life. This is so because democracy should be at work everywhere in our lives; not just in politics and government, but in our everyday habits and customs. We must exhibit democracy in our treatment of people of other tribes and differing religions'. We must show democracy in our attitude towards our fellow workers and neighbours.
A country may have a high degree of democracy in its form of government and yet a very low degree of democracy in other aspects of its life, such as ethnic relations, religious tolerance, equality of opportunity to find a job or attend college of one's choice. The form of government is an important part of democracy but that is not all. Often the most suitable governmental form for a democracy is a republic. That is, a form wherein the holding of office depends on voting rather than on hereditary succession. But if you stopped to think, you can probably name a country where the government was and still is a monarchy rather than a republic. The nation nonetheless has made great contributions to democracy.
We have just been discussing the case of England in the Middle Ages and in the 17th century. It is called Great Britain today. Also, it is interesting to recall that the democratic republic of ancient Athens did not elect representatives. The number of citizens had chances to fill officers in rotation or by lot. This arrangement is known as pure democracy because all voters were included not merely represented in the law making assembly. It is important, however, to be mindful of the things the majority tells the government to do. Would it be democratic if the majority started telling the government to persecute non-indigenes or certain ethnic groups or some religious minorities? In other words, in addition to having their way, a democratic majority must foster the desire to give everyone equal rights and opportunities.
It so often happens that a group captures the will of the majority at a point in time in a democracy. In the regime of President Shehu Shagari, the aristrocracy captured the will of the majority and ruled Nigeria until the Armed Forces took over. The bourgeousie ruled the United States in the administration of Ronald Reagan. And the plebians in turn wrested power from them through Bill Clinton. That is what happens in democracies. Perhaps you can now see why we must put democracy to work whenever and wherever we can. A complete democracy brings ever increasing opportunities of betterment to the whole people, not only in politics, but in education, ethnic relations, healthcare and all that goes to making a good community in which people are happy to live.
Historically, it is not easy to make great progress in every field of democracy at once. Let us reflect on the fact that the United States started with the fullest, political democracy which had existed up to that time, yet it did not abolish slavery until more than 85 years later and then only as a result of a bitter civil war. However, we must remember that there are honest differences of opinion about forms and aspects of democracy. For instance, many Nigerians sincerely believe that under the present circumstances it is more important to have an Ibo president than to have a great president. You cannot be sure of the truth about any political issue. Thus, your opinion must be given in humility. If you are inflexible, you close the door to learning more truth. One person can be right in a group and others wrong. Voting does not determine the truth, it determines the line of action the most people want in the full spirit of democracy. The French sage, Voltaire once wrote to his more radical friend, Helvetius: "I disagree with every word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it." Even though we cannot attain a goal as full and quickly as we would like, it is good to have a goal to aim at. The best tribute we can pay to democracy is to put it to work.
Ogunmupe is a veteran journalist

GANI, THE ICON

2011-08-22T09:26:00.001-07:00

He has always been a thorn in the side of many a government in Nigeria . A tireless human rights campaigner and “senior advocate of the masses”, colleagues, ordinary Nigerians pay tribute to Gani Fawehinmi on finally being recognized by his peers and becoming a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN. But who is he really?

By Bayo Ogunmupe

It was a hot afternoon. The teenage pri-mary school boy sat at the bank of a river in Ondo. He had a bowl of gari mixed with water on hand. As he was doing justice to the meal, a senior student came around to bully him. “Get back to school because the bell had just rung,” the senior student said. But the youngster stood his ground. He would not go until he had finished his meal.

His path to greatness as a crusader for the public good started in February 1969. For a moment Nigerians forgot they were fighting a civil war. They became engrossed in one of the juiciest scandals in Nigeria ’s history. The young lawyer sued the secretary to the Benue/Plateau State government, the late Andrew Obeya, on behalf of a factory-hand, Abashia who said Obeya had an affair with his wife, Hannatu,in a car parked along the Jos/Zaria Road , Jos.

“I was not tried but moved from place to place in Northern Nigeria . I was in prison for seven months. It was when I was in jail that I heard of the birth of my first child, Mohammed. By the time I was released, the six separate suits I had filed against Obeya had been struck out by the courts,” he recalled.

In 1971, crisis engulfed the University of Ibadan over a peaceful demonstration by the students against the excesses of the university authorities. The police invaded the university killing one of the students, Kunle Adepeju. The nation rose against the Yakubu Gowon regime.

When he obtained bail, he filed an application of habeas corpus on behalf of Okeowo. He won and Okeowo was released after 43 days in detention. Of course, Fawehinmi was himself acquitted and discharged of his trumped-up charge by a magistrate.

Fawehinmi has indeed faced many trials and triumphs in his crusade for social justice. He told Newswatch last week that he has been imprisoned 29 times. He has lived in 15 prisons and eight police cells across the country. He has been charged to court 13 times and his chambers searched 15 times.

Adefarati said that Gani had always been fearless, which was why his seniors advised him to study law.

Adefarati said after Fawehinmi was named a SAN,he wrote him a letter of congratulations, “where I noted how extremely productive he had been. That Gani had contributed immensely to the practice of law in Nigeria is widely acknowledged,” he said. “All I can add on Gani is to acknowledge his courage and sagacity in public affairs. If more Nigerians had Gani’s courage, Nigeria would have been the greater for it,” he stated.

Fawehinmi told Newswatch that his guiding legal principle was taken from the words of Nigeria ’s first lawyer, Sapara Williams who admonished every lawyer “to live for the direction of his people and the advancement of the cause of his country.” Because of his passion for justice, having been imprisoned and beaten by the police unjustly in life, Fawehinmi compassionately renders free legal services for the members of his self-defined constituency – the poor, the oppressed, the cheated, the ignored and the persecuted.

He has indeed changed the course of legal practice in Nigeria . Never in the history of law has one man done so much for the legal profession. He practises law, writes law and publishes law. His Nigerian Weekly Law Reports, NWLR, comes out regularly with more than 250 pages every week. He is the editor-in-chief and founder of the NWLR. He is author or editor of various law reports and journals totalling 20.

Fawehinmi has also won landmark judicial pronouncements and cases in Nigeria . In December 1987, the Supreme Court determined the right of a private prosecutor to institute a private prosecution for murder. The credit went to him. “There are so many constitutional cases, which I am personally the plaintiff establishing so many principles,” he said.

Other notable cases won by Fawehinmi in the course of his crusade for justice in Nigeria include: Fawehinmi versus Shonekan; an action which exposed the illegality of Ernest Shonekan’s interim national government, ING, after Babangida “stepped aside.”

Edwin Anikwem, deputy head of Fawehinmi Chambers, told Newswatch last week that “Gani Fawehinmi inspires us very much here at chambers. He is very caring, kind. He gets work done.”

Ebele Eko, a professor of English and deputy vice-chancellor, University of Calabar believes if Nigeria has had more crusaders of Fawehinmi’s ilk we might have been spared that many years of military rule.

Ugochukwu Egesi, physician at the University Teaching Hospital, Calabar, said “Fawehinmi is the greatest advocate on the lawyers’ roll in Nigeria .”

In 1994, Fawehinmi formed the National Conscience Organisation as a human rights movement. “As an organisation, National Conscience is fighting for the economic rights of the down-trodden in Nigeria . The National Conscience transformed into a political party in October 1994 in defiance of a military order banning the formation of political parties,” Fawehinmi told Newswatch.

In the opinion of Akunebu, “if Fawehinmi is serious in his presidential ambition, he should reach out to other parts of Nigeria . He must establish a newspaper, radio or television in order to propagate his gospel of justice to the masses. It is essential that Fawehinmi reorganises NCP so that people other than Yoruba can take up its membership.”

Brady Nwosu, a Lagos-based political consultant commended Fawehinmi for his courage, steadfastness and dogged devotion to noble ideals. “Gani Fawehinmi is a special gift to mankind, particularly to Nigeria . He remains a personality in law you cannot ignore. Fawehinmi has long remained a lone voice in Nigeria ’s devious political firmament,” he said.

Adekoya told Newswatch that Fawehinmi was the first human rights activist in Nigeria , which was why students gave him the title, senior advocate of the masses. He said he hated Fawehinmi’s excesses. One of which was his recommendation, on television that Obasanjo should reduce the price of petroleum to six kobo per litre, which was unrealistic.

He has two separate areas for rearing chicken and goats. They are about 90.

Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi was born on April 22, 1938 , at Ondo, Ondo State . He was educated at Victory College , Ikare; the University of London, England and the Nigerian Law School , Lagos .

He was called to the bar in 1965. He has practised law since then. He also wrote columns in the Daily Sketch, the Nigerian Tribune, and The Chronicle.

SEVEN LAWS OF POWER by Bayo Ogunmupe

2011-08-16T08:43:00.001-07:00

Seven laws of power

By Bayo Ogunmupe

ALWAYS dream of power by shooting higher than you can reach. Don’t bother to be better than your contemporaries and predecessors, just try to be better than yourself. This is why I am introducing you to these laws of leadership. To me, leadership, success and power mean the same thing. So, learn to use them interchangeably.

God has built laws into His universe. These laws are no respecter of persons. Often bad people harness the right laws for the wrong purposes, while good people assume that sincerity and diligence are sufficient for success. But while evil people get the right results for wrong purposes, the good fail because they aren’t harnessing the right laws. So, I want to tell you seven laws that are absolutes in the struggle for success in life. Following them assures you a tremendous adventure; you can ignore them at your peril, finding them working against you.

One, learn to be excited about your work. This is an invincible law that upholds work as the progenitor of success. This law isn’t about work as we usually think of it; it is getting excited about whatever you are doing for a living. However, work, wherever you find it, implies only one kind of thing: detail, monotony, preparation, striving, and weariness. That is what we all have to overcome, no matter what our work is.

However, the first law of leadership requires me to get excited about the miserable job I have right now. At sixty years of age, I have been learning that life isn’t doing what you like to do. Real life is doing what you ought to do. There is nothing that can make you more excited about your work than a sense of its importance and urgency.

Fires of greatness in our hearts can be kept burning only by developing this sense of urgency and importance in our work – the work we are doing now.

Two, the second law of power is use or lose. Jehovah gives everyone certain attributes – intellect, talents and then He says, “If you use what you have, I’ll increase it, but if you don’t, you will lose it.” Thus it is use or lose law of success. A way of not losing your God given talents is to be sincere to yourself in every sphere. When you have a job to do, do it. Another rule is to be loyal to yourself, your ideals and be loyal to your family and business partners, including your boss. Loyalty is something you give without getting anything back. And in giving loyalty, you are getting more loyalty. Without loyalty, nothing can be achieved. The biblical servant who multiplied the one naira given him by his master was made ruler over ten cities, whereas the servant who did not put his naira to use lost that which he had.

Yet another rule of retaining your talent is discipline. It is a quality you achieve little by little. You submit yourself to authority, a job, a goal, by discipline you gain greatness through perseverance.

Certainly, there is no other way to get more of what you need than by using what you have. The third law of power is production to perfection. This law says if you are not making something happen today, you would not know much about perfection tomorrow. He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things poorly, only that he will do very few things.

The fourth law of power is give to get. My maternal grandfather was a practitioner of Olodumare, God in Yoruba belief. He was neither Christian nor Moslem. He taught us to give without hope of getting in return. He was more truthful than present day parents. If you give gifts to the well-to-do, you will only receive what you traded out. You will not get anything from God in return, because you are only trading with gifts. If you give to someone unable to help you, then God can repay you for your kindness. If you are giving to get, you are not giving spiritually, you are trading. Learn to give without hope of anything in return. No one was ever honoured for what he received. Honour has been the reward of what he gave. If you give to the one who can not pay back, what you get from God in return is a greater capacity to go beyond where you are. That is a law of success.

Five, the fifth law of success is exposure to experience. In the beginning, God gives everyone a psychological key ring. And He made a law that says, “Every time you expose yourself to experience, I’ll give you another key of experience for your Key ring.” Soon the key ring begins to be filled with experiences, then we begin to know how to pick the right key to unlock the situation we face. The person who has no experience fumbles around trying to find the key. As you accumulate experience you use those keys over and over again, unlocking doors into success and fortune. However, there’s no way to gain experience other than through exposure. So, in all thy getting, get experience in other to gain and retain power.

The sixth law of power is flexible planning. This is another phrase for Napoleon’s extrapolatory thinking. Since whatever can go wrong will go wrong, so plan on your planning going wrong. Be flexible by having alternative plans. A person is nothing until he is harnessed to teamwork and disciplined to guidance. Your situation may be uncongenial but it shall not long remain so if you but perceive an ideal and strive to reach it.

The seventh law of power is prayer, prayer without ceasing. Through prayer you get motivated for success. No one can fight his way to the top and stay there without exercising the fullest measure of grit, courage, determination and prayer. Everyone who wins does so by firmly resolving to succeed in life; he then procures enough persistence to transform his resolution to reality. Without persistence no one ever wins any worthwhile place among his fellow men. Finally, we need to pray so that we can prevent the devil from ensnaring us. Moreover, prayer is God’s appointed way for obtaining things. The secret of all lack is neglect of prayer. We have not because ye ask not,” James 4:2. These words contain the secret of the poverty and helplessness of the average Nigerian – neglect of prayer. Mercy is what we need, grace is what we must have or all our lives will end in failure. Prayer is the way to gain them. Prayer with thanksgiving to Jehovah and the petition for forgiveness is the panacea to winning life’s battles. Many things seem at war with these laws of power. But practice will prove their authenticity.

Our champion for today is Jose Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish philosopher and humanist who greatly influenced the cultural and literary renaissance of Spain in the 20th century. Ortega was born May 1883, in Madrid, Spain the second of four children by Jose Ortega Munilla and Dolores Gasset.

Ortega studied at Madrid University and in Germany. As professor of metaphysics at Madrid in 1910, he published Adam in Paradise; Quixotes Meditations (1923) and Modern Theme. He saw individual life as the ultimate realty, reason as a function of life and for truth he substituted the perspective of each individual. He shared the preoccupation of his generation with Spain’s political problems. He founded the periodicals, The Sun and The Review of the West. He went into exile between 1936 and 1945. He returned from Argentina to Spain in 1945 and in his Revolt of the masses (1929) he characterized 20th century society as being dominated by masses of mediocre who he proposed should surrender social leadership to the minorities of cultivated independent men. He died in October 1955.

The trouble with Nigerian universities by Bayo Ogunmupe

2011-08-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

The trouble with universities in Nigeria

Monday, July 28, 2008 - By Bayo Ogunmupe

THIS book of 144 pages is an indictment of the Nigerian university system. It describes vividly the decline and decay in the nation's university system. It prescribes copious ways to halt this deterioration of the sorry state of affairs.

Chapter one of this nine chapter book dwells on the meanings of the words of the book's title: University, Ivory, tower, and ivory tower. It also gave us a brief history and genesis of the university.

Chapter two peeps into the Nigerian university system. After a survey of the evolution from the Academy of Plato through Aristotle's Lyceum to the school of universal learning, Okecha taught us how universities were formed in Europe in the 17th century AD. Then, the system by which Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle became obsolete. The second chapter therefore delved into the evolution of the university in Nigeria. The poor rating of our universities is the subject of chapter three.

It has been alleged that the system of branding of Nigerian universities by the National Universities Commission (NUC) contributed to the deterioration in academic standards of the institutions. This is because most of the staff of these colleges lacked the experience and research competence to run the various universities of technology and agriculture which NUC brought on stream in the 1980s.

In chapter five, the decay of the Ivory Tower is discussed in detail. Here, the author enumerated various factors responsible for the decline of academic standards in the universities.

Chapter six entitled Doctorates for Sale, see the vendors in Nigerian universities, educate the tall order of the NUC, that every academic schooled obtain a doctorate not later than December 2009. The problems arising from the enforcement of that directive are highlighted. The author also has suggestions to prevent unrest on our campuses. It is unfortunate that the NUC order will further deepen the deterioration of academic standards in our universities.

For the seventh chapter, the conditions of service in the universities are its main preoccupation. It avers that the remuneration and conditions of service of academics are nowhere comparable to those of political office holders, the private sector and the judiciary. Thus, that academics are poorly paid in comparison to others has been laid bare by the author.

The focus of chapter eight is the academic industry; that is to say creativity and research in tertiary institutions in the country.

The importance of brainpower in the enhancement of growth and development of our economy is herewith highlighted. Thus, we must here avow that the gross underdevelopment of Nigeria has been caused by the neglect of our universities. University dons could not undertake research because of poor pay, absence of research facilities in the colleges and the restiveness prevalent in institutions today.

Chapter nine offers up to forty suggestions on how we can overcome the decline and decay of our university system. This book contains vital information on the Nigerian university system. Moreover, reading it is a rewarding experience particularly for some whose children have to attend a university in the future.

However, The Nigerian University is a must read for private university proprietors, governors as founders of state universities, the presidency to enable them learn how to handle federal universities, and state and federal legislators to enable them enact good education laws.

Steve Okecha, the author was educated at Government College, Ughelli, Delta State, Ahmadu Bello University, and University of Uppsala, Sweden. He was leader, Organic Research Group, ABU before moving to Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State, where he is currently Professor of Chemistry. Also, he had served as Deputy Vice Chancellor and Provost, Delta State University, Abraka, Dean of Graduate School; director of AAU's Consultancy Services; he is married with five children.

A book review by Bayo Ogunmupe

2011-08-16T08:30:00.001-07:00

Minimizing Political Risk for Sustainable Investment: Ikenna Nwosu: Mooregate Ltd; Lagos 2008

It however appears timely more so when the Niger Delta imbroglio has attained a dangerous dimension. The volume deals with the risk involved in mining oil from the crises ridden Niger Delta region.

Chapters three and four deal with managing risks and analyzing the evoluting global order expanding the frontiers of political risk.

The organizers should focus on developing a policy and institutional support that is consistent with the terms of the conference.

No only that, they should facilitate full public participation in the decision making regarding sustainable petroleum and non-oil development projects.

Five, the organizers should develop a transparent and effective system to measure and report on system performaces.

It will profit the stakeholders too to develop a conflict resolution mechanism whose decision would be acceptable to all and sundry.

[ii]

Ogunmupe: The Winning Power Of Discipline

2011-08-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

Ogunmupe: The Winning Power Of Discipline

By Bayo Ogunmupe

PEOPLE often ask me if I know the secret of success and if I could teach others how to make their dreams come true. My answer is: you can succeed if you could work and pray. It is persistence in your work that will gain you success. Your persistence as well as other skills you can develop, will enable you to recognize your mistakes and learn from them. Moreover, you can use persistence to dodge the traps laid before you in order to keep you from succeeding. If you don’t quit, you can’t be beaten.

Also, discipline is crucial. Discipline is the learned ability to do the same thing over and over again. It requires discipline to perform tasks you don’t like. Discipline is that ability to form a pattern of making yourself responsible for yourself and forming framework upon which you can build a career. Concentrate on getting by allying with mentors and your master mind group.

Commitment to ideals is the essence of leadership. Aside of persistence and discipline, commitment is one more factor of success in life. Commitment means doing something over and over again until you get it right. It means sticking to something when it would be far easier to let go. Leadership today is to be accessible to supporters. Good ideas as well as talent come from the bottom up. Do not wall yourself off from those who can help you get to where you are going. Every battle needs foot soldiers. However, until you truly love what you do, you will never get where you want to go.

Maybe your peculiar idea of success may entail the ability to develop new methods of doing business, perhaps starting a new career or business or promoting a novel economic policy. Whatever philosophy you subscribe to, the most important thing is to become an expert in whatever it is you do. Be the best you can be. Sometimes, to be successful, you have to break a few rules. Barrack Hussein Obama broke two rules before becoming the 44th President of the United States in 2009. He broke the colour bar. He is an African American. He broke the religious bar, his grand father was a Moslem.

Keith Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers and television channels called him a terrorist during his presidential campaign. But with sheer miracle of achievement Obama not only became U.S. President, he won the Nobel Peace Prize of 2010. Also, he took out Osama bin Ladin.

Happiness through self realization is one of the real attractions for winners, not wealth. Happiness does not just happen to you. It comes through your actions, perceptions and timing. Happiness comes from the realization of your dreams. But to succeed in spite of odds requires the setting of unrealistic goals. Being overly realistic can be the kiss of death to your dreams. The only place to be realistic is about your time-table. The only way to make it happen is to surround yourself with people who share your goals. Then visualize for results, plan ahead for success.

Despite the wonders of the internet age, reading is still the best way to find out how other people live, other systems work.

In reading, you increase your awareness of language and vocabulary. These increase your chances of winning and influencing people. Reading enables you to develop a winning image. In surveys done using photographs of the same person in various attire, the subjects were typified as being blue-collar, executive or not based merely on the clothing they wore. Know this and use this knowledge to build your wardrobe. To make impact, always dress for the occasion. It is not only important to dress well, it is essential to be noticed in a quiet way. People want you to look pleasant rather than be self-confident and authoritative. The rule is that you should never wear more than three colours at one time. Maximise your appearance by being assertive. Being assertive does not mean stepping on toes. It means taking charge of your life. Avoid having others make important decisions for you.

You should always play to win. Only losers say it isn’t important to win. To get your way in anything, you must know and understand the players. Needs must always come first, wants come later. Approach players with playoffs they may be looking for. One may want only to improve his position. Another may want recognition, yet another may want to feel a sense of belonging. If you are dealing with a board, or group of people. You will need to analyse each member. You will need tact and compromise. This situation is much different from being a supervisor. The best way to succeed as a supervisor is to build a winning team. However, part of a supervisor’s job is to criticize. In this, the rule is to praise in public and criticize in private. But if your team member did anything exceptionally well, make sure that as many people as possible knew about it. Always give credit where credit is due, then good creative ideas will never dry from your teammates.

Our champion for this week is Keith Rupert Murdoch, the Australia born American media mogul, founder and chief executive of the global media holding company, The News Corporation Limited, which governed News Limited (Australia) News International (U.K) and News America Holdings Incorporated of the United States.

Murdoch’s corporate interests centered on newspaper, magazine, book and electronic publishing, television broadcasting and film and video production. Murdoch operates principally in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

The only son of Sir Keith Murdoch (1886-1952) a famous Australian war correspondent and publisher. Born in March 1931, Murdoch began with one newspaper in Adelaide, he acquired and started other publications in his native Australia before expanding News Corp into the U.K, the USA and Asia. Although his current media interests are still mainly in print, they are restricted by cross-media ownership rules.

Murdoch’s first foray into television was in the U.S, where he created Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. In the 2000s, he became a leading investor in satellite television, the film, the internet; he purchased a leading American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.

Early in life, Rupert had been groomed by his newspaper magnate father who sent him to the elite Geelong Grammar School. He later read politics, economics and philosophy at Worcester College, Oxford University in the U.K. He supported the Labour Party in Britain. When Murdoch was 22, he replaced his father who died suddenly. As managing director of News Limited in 1953, he added to his family business by buying the Sunday Times in Perth, Australia. He established himself as a dynamic business operator by acquiring Sydney’s afternoon tabloid, The Daily Mirror and the New Zealand daily, The Dominion.

While on an Australian Safari in 1964, he read of a takeover bid for a Wellington paper by the British based Canadian newspaper magnate, Lord Thomson of Fleet. He on the spur of the moment launched a counter-bid which the 32-year-old Murdoch won. Thereafter, he launched The Australian. In 1972 he acquired The Daily Telegraph from Sir Frank Packer, who later regretted selling it to him. That year Murdoch threw his power behind the Australian Labour Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam who later became Prime Minister.

In Britain, Murdoch acquired The Sun; The Times and The Sunday Times. Then his papers supported Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Later Murdoch switched his support to the Labour leader, Tony Blair who in the subsequent election won with a wide margin. Murdoch’s British based satellite network, Sky Television, owing to debts, accepted a merger with British Satellite Broadcasting in 1990. They have dominated the British TV market ever since.

In the USA, Murdoch acquired San Antonio Express – News, founded Star, a supermarket tabloid in 1973. He became American citizen to enable him own media in 1985. He has also expanded to Hong Kong. The Bahamas and Islands in the Pacific. Murdoch has dined with every American President since Harry Truman. He has been married three times, has six children and is worth more than six billion dollars according to the 2010 list of Forbes richest

Decide To Become Rich

2011-08-07T09:12:00.001-07:00

HE world has moved from the period of material limitations into the world that is determined by mental concepts. We have moved from the age of things into psychozoic age, the age of the mind. Wealth are contained more in the person you are than in the assets you have acquired. Your future lies more in your ability to apply your mind and intelligence to your work and your life than it does in your current job or situation.

Because wealth, health and happiness are mental concepts, there are very few limits on how much of them you can acquire for yourself. Here, you will learn many simple, practical, proven methods, techniques and strategies used by high achievers in every field to accomplish even more than they ever dreamed possible. By breaking the bonds of conventional thinking, you expand your desires so dramatically that you will be able to accomplish any goal that you could ever set for yourself.

There are three main forces in our world today. They reverberate and transform everything they touch, creating unlimited opportunities for the creative minority. These forces are information, technology and competition. The information revolution engendered by the speedy computerized information processing the internet and wireless communications has enabled knowledge to double every two years. Thus, 90 per cent of thinkers, inventors and writers that have ever existed are now living today.

The result of their efforts are instantaneously available today to everyone. Thus, with your laptop computer, you can process in seconds at cost of kobos one billion commands per second.

The third factor driving our lives is competition. Every advance in knowledge and technology creates opportunities that fleet footed competitors can grab to create new products and services to leap frog each other in their markets. Indeed, the forces of information, technology and competition are multiplying each other to create the greatest rate of change in human history. And if anything, this rate of change is going to increase in the years ahead.

The point is, change creates opportunities. Change opens new possibilities for you to achieve your goals and make greater progress, faster than ever before. The only decision you have to make is whether you are going to be the master of change or a victim of change. I advise you to ride the wave and stay ahead of the curve of change.

The way to ride the storm of change is to learn from the experts. Making money is a skill, so if you want to be rich, study others who have become financially successful before you. If in the past you have accepted the false idea that you can only be rich by destiny, it is time to give up that idea. It is a false belief. You can be rich if you wish to be so. You can create your own destiny.

The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who lived 350 years before Jesus was born, taught us a principle. He called it the principle of causality. We call it the Law of Cause and Effect today. This law says for every effect in your life, there are specific causes. It says everything happens for a reason. Success is not an accident. What happens to you is not determined by luck. It is the result of this unchanging law. So you can become rich by studying and applying the experiences of rich people.

Dr. Thomas Stanley of the University of Georgia, USA, spent more than 30 years studying self made millionaires. His research studies and reports were compiled into two best selling books: The Millionaire Next Door and The Millionaire Mind. The first thing Dr. Stanley found was that self-made millionaires did things differently from average people. If you are tired of being average, try doing things differently from them today. Success isn’t a miracle. All you have to do is learn how successful people made it and learn doing things the same way.

Get rid of myths. One myth is that you must have a great education to be rich.

Another is that you have to start your business big. Yet another is that financial success depends on getting a lucky break of some kind. None of these myths are true. In fact, a survey by US Forbes magazine found that high school dropouts in the 400 richest people in the USA were worth more than $300 million more than university graduates on the list. A past president of the U.S General Electric Company, Jack Welch, rated a great expert of business, said that the most important quality of business leadership is that you must deal with the world as it is, not as you wish it to be. That means in all things you must be honest with yourself.

Our champion for today is Constantine Karamanlis, (1907-98), the four-time Prime Minister, the third and fifth president of the Third Hellenic Republic, the arbiter of Greek politics whose political career spanned the second half of the twentieth century.

Born in the village of Proti, Macedonia, Ottoman Empire, now in Greece. He became a Greek citizen in 1913, after Macedonia was united with Greece during the second Balkan War. His father was Georgios Karmanlis, a teacher who fought during the Greek struggle for Macedonia in 1904-1908. He went to Athens to obtain his degree in law. He practiced law at Serres, entered politics with the conservative Peoples Party. He was elected member of parliament at 28 in 1936. For health reasons he was not accepted for combat during the Greco-Italian War.

After World War II, supported by his friend Lambros Eftaxias, Minister of Agriculture under the premiership of Konstantinos Tsaldaris, Karamanlis was appointed minister of Employment in 1947. Later he became minister of Public Works under Prime Minister Alexandros Papagos. He won the admiration of the U.S. embassy for efficiently building Greek roads with American aid.

King Paul of Greece appointed Karamanlis Prime Minister when Papagos died in 1955. As premier, he re-organised the Greek Rally party renaming it the National Radical Union. He won three successive elections in 1956, 1958 and 1961. As premier he restored full voting rights to women. Karamanlis invested in industries, infrastructure and promoted tourism. He abandoned enosis: the unification of Greece with Cyprus in favour of independent Cyprus. Negotiations with the United Kingdom and Turkey produced the Zurich Agreement which was ratified by Makarios III in 1959.

Karamanlis took Greece into the European Economic Community in1962. In 1979, he signed the full treaty of Greek accession to the EEC as the 10th member.

In June 1963, Karamanlis resigned the Premiership after a disagreement with King Paul of Greece. He spent 11 years in exile in France after losing the election of 1963.

Karamanlis was a vocal opponent of the Greek colonels who seized power in 1967. However, he was invited to lead Greece to democracy, where it was originally created. Karamanlis was sworn in as Prime Minister by President pro tempore Phaedon Gizikis who remained in power till 1974.

Eventually, Karamanlis with his new party New Democracy was elected prime minister a second time. A 1974 plebiscite abolished the monarchy, a new constitution was inaugurated in 1975.

Karamanlis relinquished the premiership in 1979 and was elected president in 1980 by the parliament. He resigned in 1985 but was re-elected in 1990. He retired in 1995 at 88, having won five elections, spent 14 years as premier, 10 years as president and 60 years in active politics. For his service to Democracy he was awarded the Karlspreis in 1978. He died in 1998 at the age of 91. In honour of his memory, his nephew Kosmas Karamanlis was elected leader of the New Democracy party and was appointed premier of Greece from 2004 to 2009

Ogunmupe: Prayers That Jehovah Answers

2011-08-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

By Bayo Ogunmupe

NORMAL men and women live to make impact in the world. They live to achieve goals so as to realize their human potential as beings on the earth’s plane. There are two ways to achieve these goals. The first is to work to realize goals, making a living therefrom. The other is to pray in order to accomplish your set objectives.

Working is inevitable in life. Even if you want to settle for a vegetative existence, you still need to work. But in order to realize laudable goals, to succeed in your careers, you need prayer. A politician needs to become governor or president in order to reach the apex of his career, the same way a physician needs his own hospital, becoming its chief medical director to feel fulfilled as a successful doctor. To aid you to realize your full human potential is the reason I offer to inform you on how to pray the prayers that God answers.

The belief in one God started among the Jews about 1513 BC. They named that God in Hebrew: Yahweh or Jehovah. They usually use Moses to beg Him in prayer. The English our colonial masters, call Jehovah, God or the Almighty. The Arabs call God, Allah and they use the cities Makkah and Medina, the hills Saffah and Marwa and the great mosque the Kaabah to beg Allah in worship. In the same vein, Christians use the name of Jesus the Christ to beg God so that Jehovah can hasten the acceptance of their prayers.

But why is constant, persistent, sleepless, overcoming prayer so needful? One, there is a devil. He is cunning, he is mighty, he never rests, he is ever plotting the downfall of the children of God. And if the child of God relaxes in prayer, the devil may succeed in ensnaring him. Two, prayer is Jehovah’s appointed way for obtaining things and the secret of all lack, in our experience, in our life and work, is neglect of prayer. This is brought forcibly out in the Bible book of James Chapter 4, Verse 2: “Ye have not because ye ask not.” This is the secret of the poverty and powerlessness of the average Nigerian-neglect of prayer. Three, those men whom God set forth as pattern of what He expected people to be – the apostles – regarded prayer as the most important business of their lives. All the mighty men of God outside the Bible have been men of prayer. They have differed from one another in many things, but in prayer they have been alike.

Four, prayer occupied a very prominent role and played a very important part in the earthly life of Jesus the Christ. Turn, for example to Mark 1: 35. “And in the morning rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.” The preceding day had been a very busy and exciting one, but Jesus shortened the hours of needed sleep that he might arise early and give Himself to more sorely needed prayer.

Five, praying is the most important part of the present ministry of the risen Jesus. Christ’s ministry did not close with his death. His atoning work was finished then but when he rose, he entered upon other work for us his congregation. Six, prayer is the means God has appointed for our receiving mercy and obtaining grace in the time of need. Seven, prayer in the name of Jesus is the way Jesus Christ himself has approved for his disciples to obtain fullness of joy. Eight, prayer with thanksgiving is the means that God has appointed for our obtaining freedom from all anxiety, the peace of God which passes all understanding.

Nine, prayer accomplishes many things. It promotes our spiritual growth as almost nothing else except the study of the scriptures. Ten, prayer brings power into our work. If we wish power for any work to which God calls us, be it preaching, teaching, personal work, or the rearing of our children, we can get it by earnest prayer, 11, prayer avails for the conversion of others. 12, prayer brings blessings to the community and the nation. 13, praying for results is described in few words: “Prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him.” Acts 12:1. In order that a prayer should be really unto God, there must be a definite and conscious approach to God when we pray. We must have a definite and vivid realization that God is bending over us and listening as we pray. 14, another secret of effective prayer is praying without ceasing. We read in Hebrews 5:7 that “in the days of his flesh” Christ “offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears.” 15, a third secret of right praying is also found in Acts 12:5. It is in the three words – of the church. This underscores the power in united prayer. God delights in the unity of His people and seeks to emphasize it in every way. So, God pronounces a special blessing upon united prayer. Jesus said: “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven,” Mathew 18:19. Two people might agree to ask for the same thing, yet there be no agreement as touching the thing they asked. One might ask it because he really desired it, the other might ask it simply to please his friend. But where there is real agreement, where two believers perfectly agree to ask for a thing, such prayer has irresistible power.

But when is it right to pray? In the first chapter of Mark, we read, Jesus chose the early morning hour for prayer. Many of the mightiest men of God have followed his example. In the sixth chapter of Luke, we read, “And it came to pass in those days, and he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.” Moreover, Jesus prayed before and after all the great problems in his life and after his great achievements. He usually withdrew from the multitudes and go into the wilderness to pray.

The first hindrance to prayer is to ask for God’s favours in order to spend them for pleasures, James 4:3. A selfish purpose in prayer robs prayer of power and God’s favour. Sin is the second hindrance to prayer, Isaiah 59: 1-2. Your prayers are not answered because you wallow in sin.

According to Isaiah, God’s ear is just as open to hear as ever, His hand just as mighty to save, but there is a hindrance. The hindrance is your own sins.” So today, you pray in vain if you wallow in sin. The third hindrance to prayer is to keep idols in your heart. “Idols in your heart cause God to refuse to listen to our prayers,” Ezekiel 14:3. An idol is anything that takes the place of God, anything that is the supreme object of our affection. God alone has the right to the supreme place in our hearts. Everything and everyone else must be subordinate to Him.

The fourth hindrance to prayer is to be found in Proverbs 21:13, “Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard.” There is no greater hindrance to prayer than stinginess, the lack of liberality toward the poor and toward God’s work. It is the one who gives generously to others who receives generously from God, Luke 6:38. “Whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight,” 1 John 3:22. And when you stand praying, forgive. Lack of forgiveness is the fifth hindrance to prayer. Sixthly, a wrong relationship between husband and wife is a hindrance to prayer. This enjoins you to deal honestly with your spouse. Finally, prayers are hindered by unbelief. God demands that we believe His scriptures absolutely. To question is to make Him a liar. Let not any man without faith think of any answer to his prayers. “But any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally… But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord,” James 1: 5-7. While work and prayer go hand in hand, worship comes later, when you can spare the time. He prays the most who works hardest.

The Discipline of Courage

2011-08-07T09:06:00.001-07:00

THERE have been constant conflicts in the history of ancient Israel. Whether against brother as Cain and Abel, nation against nation: the Jews versus Egypt, or Adam and Eve of Eden. There have been continual conflicts between God’s Kingdom and the evils of Satan’s empire.

Today, a tremendous struggle rages on the rightful functioning of God’s power for universal prosperity in Nigeria and Satan’s warring against it more than ever before.

The success at Jericho demonstrated that Joshua had taken position as the commander of Israel, with a unique sense of leadership.

There was no question that Joshua was following Jehovah’s command.

One of the ingredients of his sweeping victory was his courage to carry out even the most peculiar strategies. Courage enabled Joshua to see from God’s perspective and know how to receive what Jehovah had promised Moses. God had said to him, “Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee,” Joshua 1:7.

The only way you can accurately determine the direction God is leading you is to encourageously see a situation in Jehovah’s perspective. Perceiving God’s direction through your own weakness will always leave you frustrated. It is God given courage in conflict that brings conquest.

Courage is firmness in the face of danger. The dictionary shows that the English word “courage” is derived from the French word cuer – meaning “heart.” It means having the heart as the seat of intelligence. To be courageous is to be led by your heart, not your reasoning – putting your thoughts and imagination under the control of intuition.

It truly takes courage to follow God rather than the path of least resistance. It means making a decision or taking a stand that is unpopular and may generate criticism. However, loyalty to God even when it costs you the adulation of the people is the most important.

Both Joshua and Caleb took a lonely stand when they returned from the land of promise – with a report of victory. They were rejected and ignored. Yet, they courageously stood on the promise God had made to them. They would not be distracted, rather they remained loyal to what they knew to be true. Their minds remained steadfast and established, they would not be swayed.

Years later, this same courage stirred through Joshua as he approached the city of Jericho. It took leadership above the limits of accepted strategies to entertain the concept of God’s plan that brought the city of Jericho down.

Joshua had to follow his heart, not his mind. The plan God made alive within him was to be followed even though it was not reasonable. Every conquest was not as dramatic as Jericho, but the assurance of victory was always there. When God said go and conquer, they knew the result would be victory. It is the same courage that will enable you to win over the weaknesses and challenges that face you.

Courage can always be understood as having a buoyant spirit – the kind of attitude that just will not be put down or made bitter because of the bumps of life or the attacks of the enemy. A buoyant spirit always comes back up. Hard times and difficulties will attempt to discourage you, drain you of courage, but a buoyant spirit will always take you to the top. All great men and women that inspire us have this buoyancy about them. They will not be distracted from the road God is leading them through.

Cast off the spirit of being forsaken that Satan amplified in your mind. Instead, encourage yourself with the words, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,” Hebrew 13:5. God cannot forsake you. Stir up the forces of God’s treasure within you and face the challenge with the power of God’s inspiration. God will honour your courage in ways He did for Joshua in Jericho, Elijah’s prayer and David at Ziklag.

To encourage yourself is to activate courage. A resilience from within gives you the ability to emerge from and evade discouragement. But courage alone isn’t the total answer. There must be the clear direction from your intuition.

Courage is expressed in many ways. When Elijah was faced with a situation what was less spectacular than dealing with the prophets of Baal, he found himself lacking because he lacked temperance to regulate and direct his courage. Jesus for example, was the most courageous, yet his entire life was marked by temperance. He didn’t hack down for any demon, nor from the religious hypocrites of his day. But he courageously restrained himself in the court of his accusers. Many have cultivated the habit of “speaking their minds,” “telling it as it is,” and in doing so hurt or damage other people. They confuse their careless words for courage and thoughtlessness for honesty. Much of the time, it takes greater courage to give a soft answer or simply to say nothing at all. What we need are men and women who have developed a balanced blend of courage and temperance, who draw their strength from the indwelling of the holy spirit. The sagacity within a person should demonstrate a courage that is actively blended with temperance and that will mix compassion with truth. Armed with that type of stability, you will be able to approach the demands of life with the perspective of courage and strength, seasoned with temperance. “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord,” Ps. 27:14.

A Nigerian leader in the mold of Joshua has been Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, a retired general and former Minister of Defence. Danjuma was a professional soldier who rose to the rank of lieutenant-general and chief of army staff, Nigerian Army (1975-79). A Jukun from Taraba State, Danjuma is now chairman of South Atlantic Petroleum (SAPETRO) based in Lagos, Nigeria. Born in Takum, to Kuru Danjuma and Rufkatu Asabi on December 9, 1937.

Danjuma attended St. Bartholomew’s Primary School, Wusasa, Kaduna State and Provincial Secondary School, Katsina Ala, Benue State. With Higher School Certificate, Danjuma enrolled at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Zaria in 1959. He abandoned his course mid way in 1960 to enlist in the Nigerian Army. He was commissioned second lieutenant in 1962. A year later, he joined the UN Peace keeping force in the Congo. He was promoted captain there three years later. In 1966, Danjuma led the counter coup as the commander of 4th Battalion in Mokola, Ibadan. In 1967, he was promoted lieutenant colonel at the start of the campaign toward Enugu, which he captured in the course of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-71).

In 1970, Danjuma was appointed head of an International Court-Martial in Trinidad and Tobago. Following his promotion to colonel he spent the next two years court-martialing Army Officers proven guilty of corruption and indiscipline. In 1975, he was promoted Brigadier and divisional commander in the Nigerian Army. He became chief of army staff under the then Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo. He retired from the Army in 1979 becoming a businessman.

In 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him minister of defence. In 2010, President Goodluck Jonathan appointed him to chair the Presidential Advisory Council.

n December 2008, Danjuma established the T.Y. Danjuma Foundation with the aim of providing succour to the underprivileged of the country. The foundation operates as a philanthropic organization and as a charity. In 2010, the foundation doled out $500 million as grants to non-governmental organizations working to relieve the poor in Danjuma’s home state of Taraba. In December 2009, Danjuma donated a new state of the art medical centre to the Nasarawa State University, Keffi. Danjuma carved a niche for himself in the annals of Nigerian history as a man of courage who stood against the excesses of President Obasanjo and his third term agenda. For his courage and integrity, Danjuma was the best President Nigeria never had.

Yar’Adua… A historical excursion into Nigerian politics

2011-08-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

By Yemi Olakitan

Nigerian Politics in the Age of Yar’Adua (Strategic Insight Publishing, U.K.; 2011) is a compendium of essays and articles of an award-winning journalist, Bayode Ogunmupe, that spans over forty years
IT is a book of intellectual discourse on the Nigerian nation. It highlights democracy, its meanings, its mission, significance, and problems. It contains deep analysis of democracy, political parties and the role of the press as an institution of democracy.
It also chronicles the annals of international democracy, Nigeria’s democracy and military dictatorship. It talks about the role of the media in shaping the future of the nation, eradicating poverty and fostering prosperity.
The book is an interesting account of the story of Nigeria covering political, and economic issues.
Ogunmupe traces the history of Nigeria through the 11th century to present day Nigeria. He discuses the nation’s political and economic problems and also proffers solutions. Although the book is tied to the age of the late former President of Nigeria, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, it however provides an exciting account of the story of Nigeria. Anyone looking for an engaging and illuminating book on the political history and economy of Nigeria would do well to read this book. It is an account that gives the reader a deeper understanding of the Nigerian state. Although, the title is in honor of the late former President, the book discusses much more than the age of Yar’Adua.
It takes the reader through Nigeria’s economic and political history from the pre-colonial era and to the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates and the various regimes that ruled Nigeria, both military and civilian. It gives insight into Nigeria’s democratic evolution over the years. It discusses the Nigerian Civil War, the slave trade era, the British rule and even the economy of Nigeria in the early years through the age of Yar’Adua.
In the first chapter, the book opens with Nigerian politics in the age of Yar’Adua and justifies the title of the book, which was probably given in honour of the late President’s achievements in the Niger Delta, arguing that the late Yar’Adua brought peace to the region through his Amnesty programme. It details Nigerian economy and Nigeria at 50 commemortaion, her problems and prospects.
In chapter, the author gives analysis of democracy and the concepts of freedom, justice and equality. He agues that justice is the first mission of democracy. He traces the origin of democracy to ancient Greece under the leadership of Pericles who lived 450 years ago and to Athens where democracy originated and matured. It compares the American concept of democracy, the British democracy and that of Nigeria. It discusses the different types of democracy, justice in a democratic state and security in the practice of democracy, particularly in Nigeria.
The author discuses Nigeria’s constitution and how it has developed through the various governments in Nigeria, starting from the Richardson Constitution of 1946 and the Macpherson Constitution which emphasised greater regional autonomy as a means of maintaining national unity. It discusses the 1979 Constitution and the eventual clamour for a sovereign national conference.
In chapter three of the book, the author dwells on the issue of reparation, which was spearheaded by the late business mogul Chief MKO Abiola. It traces the justification of reparation to the era of slave trade, how the developed nations underdeveloped Africa through colonialism and slave trade. He argues that the economy of Western nations was built with the slave labour. The author gives numerous suggestions and ideas on how developed nations can help develop Africa through reparations. It goes further to discuss the role of the press in a developing economy such as Nigeria. It draws numerous examples from other nations.
Nigerian Politics in the Age of Yar’Adua examines the role of the media in shaping the future of democracy. It agues that Nigeria generally enjoys press freedom, except in periods of military rule when journalists and media houses were victimised. The book discusses the use of opinion polls in Nigeria. Also emphasized is the importance of education in Nigerian polity and the need to invest more in education so that illiteracy could be eradicated.
Using Lagos State as a case study, he traces the development of education in Nigeria and the provision of infrastructure by different administrations and governors since the reign of former Governor Lateef Jakunde. It also discusses issues facing the federal character concept.
Chapter Four of the book goes on to talk about leadership and management. The author says that leadership creates prosperity. He identifies courage as the key to good leadership. He goes on to discuss an ideal constitution for Nigeria.
The economy of Nigeria occupies the fifth chapter with emphasis on topics such as: Nigeria’s debt repayment, the curse called adjustment, reviving the economy, the tradition as enemy of progress, the Aquarian age, Gaze into the future, Common currency in ECOWAS, Yunus Banking option and many more.
The author, Ogunmupe is an experienced journalist, economist and literary critic. He was educated at the international School, Ibadan, University of Ibadan, University of Geneva and the London School of Economics, UK. He holds degrees in History, Economics and Business Administration. He has received several journalism awards. They include the Nigerian Merit Awards in 1993 and he also won the Ladi Lawal Journalist of the year in 2010.

How To Boost Your Luck, by Bayo Ogunmupe

2011-07-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

MY inquiry into luck had involved a large number of experiments, pages of interviews and thousands of testimonials. I managed to uncover the true secrets of luck. Luck was not a magical ability or a gift from the gods. Instead, it was a state of mind: a way of thinking and behaving. People are not born lucky or unlucky. They create much of their own good and bad luck through their thoughts, feelings and actions. The revelation was that a lucky life could be explained via four psychological principles.

The first principle explained how lucky people’s personalities help them create, notice and act upon chance opportunities. Principle two revealed how their successful decisions revolve around a willingness to listen to their intuition and trust their lucky hunches.

The third principle explained how lucky people’s expectations about the future posses the power to become self-fulfilling prophecies and make their dreams come true. The fourth and final principle concerned how lucky people’s resilient attitude and behaviour can change bad luck into good.

According to Richard Wiseman in his book, The Luck Factor, research revealed that there are four main differences between the lives of lucky and unlucky people.

One, lucky people constantly encounter chance opportunities. They accidentally meet people who have a beneficial effect on their lives. They come across opportunities in newspapers and magazines.

Two, lucky people make good decisions without knowing why. They just seem to know when a business decision is sound or someone shouldn’t be trusted. Whereas, unlucky people’s decisions tend to result in failure and despair. Three, lucky people’s dreams, ambitions and goals have an uncanny knack of coming true. However, unlucky people are the exact opposite, theirs remain little more than an elusive fantasy. Four, lucky people also have an ability to turn their bad luck into good fortune. Unlucky people lack this ability with their bad luck causing them ruin.

Some writers have speculated that perhaps lucky people might be using psychic ability to create good fortune for themselves. However, after painstaking experiments, results affirm that luck wasn’t due to psychic ability. Other researches also showed that being lucky or unlucky isn’t related to intelligence.

Here is a summary of the four principles and twelve sub-principles of luck:

One, maximize your chance opportunities whereby lucky people create, notice and act upon opportunities in their life. Its sub-principles are that lucky people build and maintain a strong network of luck.

Lucky people have a relaxed attitude towards life. And thirdly, lucky people are open to new experiences in their life.

Principle two: Listen to your hunches, culminating in lucky people making good decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings.

The sub themes of principle two are that lucky people take steps to boost their intuition. Lucky people’s expectations of the future help them fulfill their dreams and ambitions. Lucky people expect their good luck to continue in the future. Lucky people attempt to achieve their goals if even their chances of success seem slim. They persevere in the face of odds. Lucky people expect their interaction with others to be lucky and successful.

Principle four: Turn your bad luck into good, wherefore, lucky people are able to transform their bad luck into good fortune. Through this principle it was discovered that lucky people see the positive side of their bad luck. They are convinced that any ill fortune in their life will, ultimately work out for the best. Which is why lucky people do not dwell on their ill-fortune. Lucky people take constructive steps to prevent more bad luck in the future.

Here are some tablets for your consideration.

One, a vision is God given, no person can give you your vision. Two, every person was created to accomplish a goal that no one else can accomplish.

Three, your gift will make a way for you, enabling you to fulfill your vision. Four, vision is foresight with insight based on hindsight. Five, if you have no dream, the people who are supposed to help you won’t know where to find you. Six, when you begin to act on your dream, it will stir up both your helpers and those who want to hinder you.

Seven, the law of association says that you become like those with whom you spend time. Eight, choose friends who are going in the same direction as you. Nine, vision wakes up opposition. 10, opposition often proves you are doing something significant with your life, 11, marry a spouse that supports your life goals. 12, get to know those whom you want to emulate. 13, prosperity does not mean tomorrow’s need is met today. But today’s need is met today. This concept is in the Lord’s prayer: Give us today our daily bread. 14, those who are willing to work hard, to go the extra mile, are those who get deep into wealth.

Our champion for today is Diosdado Macapagal, the Filipino reformist president of the Republic of the Philippines from 1961 to 1965. Born in September 1910 at Lubao, Philippines, Macapagal died in April 1997.

After receiving his law degree, he was admitted to the bar in 1936. During World War II, he practised law in Manila and aided the anti-Japanese resistance. He continued to practice law after the war. In 1948 he served as the Second Secretary at the Philippine Embassy in Washington D.C. United States. The following year, he was elected member of the Philippine House of Representatives. He served there until 1956. Thereafter, Macapagal became the Philippine representative to the United Nations. From 1957 to 1961 Macapagal was a member of the Liberal Party and vice president under President Carlos Garcia.

In the 1961 general election, he ran against Garcia, forging a coalition of the Liberal and Progressive parties. Making a crusade against corruption as the principal element of his platform, Macapagal was elected President by a wide margin.

While president, he worked to suppress graft and corruption. He stimulated the economy of the Philippines. He placed the peso on the free currency exchange market, encouraged exports and sought to curb tax evasion. He forced the wealthy to pay tax, the evasion of which cost the treasury millions of pesos yearly. Macapagal’s reforms however, were crippled by a parliament dominated by the Philippine Nationalist Party. And he was defeated in the 1965 elections by Ferdinand Marcos. In 1972, he chaired the convention that drafted the 1973 constitution only to question in 1981 the validity of its ratification. In 1979, he organized the National Union for Liberation as an opposition party to the Marcos dictatorship. He died in 1997.

Democracy as a way of life

2011-07-20T10:47:00.000-07:00

By bayo Ogunmupe

AS we celebrate the third anniversary of our fourth experiment in democracy, it is pertinent to ruminate about democracy as a way of life. From the facts of history, we can confirm that democracy as a form of government evolved over time. It did not appear suddenly somewhere, complete and perfect. It is always a matter of the degree of democracy extant at a particular point in time. Was ancient Athens a complete democracy? No, because Athens permitted slavery in much the same way the Magna Carta could not guarantee total democracy in England, since serfdom persisted and many rights were still denied the commoners. What then is complete democracy? The answer lies in the fact that democracy is more than a form of government, it is a way of life. This is so because democracy should be at work everywhere in our lives; not just in politics and government, but in our everyday habits and customs. We must exhibit democracy in our treatment of people of other tribes and differing religions'. We must show democracy in our attitude towards our fellow workers and neighbours.

A country may have a high degree of democracy in its form of government and yet a very low degree of democracy in other aspects of its life, such as ethnic relations, religious tolerance, equality of opportunity to find a job or attend college of one's choice. The form of government is an important part of democracy but that is not all. Often the most suitable governmental form for a democracy is a republic. That is, a form wherein the holding of office depends on voting rather than on hereditary succession. But if you stopped to think, you can probably name a country where the government was and still is a monarchy rather than a republic. The nation nonetheless has made great contributions to democracy.

We have just been discussing the case of England in the Middle Ages and in the 17th century. It is called Great Britain today. Also, it is interesting to recall that the democratic republic of ancient Athens did not elect representatives. The number of citizens had chances to fill officers in rotation or by lot. This arrangement is known as pure democracy because all voters were included not merely represented in the law making assembly. It is important, however, to be mindful of the things the majority tells the government to do. Would it be democratic if the majority started telling the government to persecute non-indigenes or certain ethnic groups or some religious minorities? In other words, in addition to having their way, a democratic majority must foster the desire to give everyone equal rights and opportunities.

It so often happens that a group captures the will of the majority at a point in time in a democracy. In the regime of President Shehu Shagari, the aristrocracy captured the will of the majority and ruled Nigeria until the Armed Forces took over. The bourgeousie ruled the United States in the administration of Ronald Reagan. And the plebians in turn wrested power from them through Bill Clinton. That is what happens in democracies. Perhaps you can now see why we must put democracy to work whenever and wherever we can. A complete democracy brings ever increasing opportunities of betterment to the whole people, not only in politics, but in education, ethnic relations, healthcare and all that goes to making a good community in which people are happy to live.

Historically, it is not easy to make great progress in every field of democracy at once. Let us reflect on the fact that the United States started with the fullest, political democracy which had existed up to that time, yet it did not abolish slavery until more than 85 years later and then only as a result of a bitter civil war. However, we must remember that there are honest differences of opinion about forms and aspects of democracy. For instance, many Nigerians sincerely believe that under the present circumstances it is more important to have an Ibo president than to have a great president. You cannot be sure of the truth about any political issue. Thus, your opinion must be given in humility. If you are inflexible, you close the door to learning more truth. One person can be right in a group and others wrong. Voting does not determine the truth, it determines the line of action the most people want in the full spirit of democracy. The French sage, Voltaire once wrote to his more radical friend, Helvetius: "I disagree with every word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it." Even though we cannot attain a goal as full and quickly as we would like, it is good to have a goal to aim at. The best tribute we can pay to democracy is to put it to work.

Published in the Guardian Newspapers

Justice Is a Soul of Democracy

2011-07-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

By Bayo Ogunmupe

THE most famous definition of democracy was given by the former U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln. While adducing reasons for taking up arms against his own kinsmen which culminated in the American civil war in 1860, President Lincoln said he had to wage war so that "government of the people by the people and for the people may not perish." This Lincoln quotation has come down as the authentic definition of democracy for more than a century. In cognisance of the celebration of May 29, a memorial for the election of Moshood Abiola as president in 1993, it is pertinent to augment efforts to make democracy work by reviewing the ideological foundations of our society.

Democracy, which is the best system of government in my view, consists today of mutually incompatible ideas which originated with the Greeks. These contradictions after two millennia were reasserted either as precursors or as ex post facto justifications for the revolutions in England, America and France. What space and time have been to nature, liberty and equality have been and still are to democracy. More than any others, these two ideals serve as the basic concepts of democratic government. By compressing its meaning: democracy has been summarised as the form of government which combines for its citizens as much freedom and as much equality as possible. Albeit, liberty and equality are mutually exclusive and therefore incompatible. In fact, it is the inherent contradictions in these ideals which make for much of the problems of democracy in the developing world.

Europe and North America have successfully nurtured liberty and equality to be able to domesticate them. However, liberty or freedom, its synonym, is in opposition to equality. Therefore, when equality and freedom are combined, their contradictions are compounded. Discussions on freedom are often negative. Freedom to act. But action affects another person, sometimes harmfully. If so, is not the person harmed justified in demanding that society should restrain or punish the wrongdoer? In the illustration of this dilemma, it is said that the freedom to swing my arm ends where another person's nose begins. Thus, others have the right to be protected from the injury which the reckless swinging of my arm could cause.

Like liberty, equality has varying connotations. Examples of this choice abound in the field of tax policy. Osun State of Nigeria charges car owners an annual registration fee proportional to the market value of their vehicle. Hence, the fee reduces every year where you continue to own the same car. Some states, however, prefer to charge a flat rate for the privilege of operating a vehicle which is the same for everyone and does not diminish as the car's value depreciates. Which version of equality is appropriate in this context?

Thus far, the exploration of the contradiction between freedom and equality leads us to their resolution in the common phrase 'equality of opportunity'. Here, the two concepts are yoked together in a framework of equalised liberties. We often hear it said that all should start equal in the race of life. If so, what follows as a consequence? Do not the different runners display their inequalities? And is not the winner who demonstrates the most superior skill? Or consider what takes place in an election. Everybody we insist, has the right to seek office. In this respect, all are equal, all are free. More precisely, all are equally free. But since one candidate wins, by so doing that person becomes unequal.

Our new democratic concept of equality of opportunity appears most visibly in the economic sphere. Assume a condition of perfect competition, which we do not now have and which contrary to the projection of Marxists, we have never had in history. Under this model of classical economics, all would be equals initially and would be competing freely on the same footing. What would happen?

The manifest superiority of some, due to their skill, cunning, energy or luck - will result in their outdoing the rest. It follows that they will accumulate disproportionately, large shares of wealth. Not only does this gain enhance their status in society, but it augments their power. Power is a capacity to act, unrestrained by others. It is freedom manifesting itself. In other words, freedom becomes a function of power which a materialistic society translates into monetary terms. What is then left of the equality of opportunity proclaimed with fanfare at the beginning? Indeed, it is because of the contradictions inherent in democracy that in contemporary party politics, the Left has appropriated to itself the virtues of equality, while the Right identifies itself with freedom. The process of achieving democracy therefore, is to seek to attain justice in the society. To do this is to strike a mean, harmonious fusion of the two concepts of equality and freedom.

Now, the Left representing or leading the underprivileged, has sought radical changes in the society. It hopes to reduce the inequalities of wealth and social status, employing the powers of the democratic state both to raise the minimum and to lower the maximum. Its philosophy, intended to appeal to the masses, has viewed the individual as a particle within the social nucleus. On the other hand, the Right reflects the attitudes of conservatives who are well satisfied with unequal privileges which they wish to retain. Their emphasis is on the liberty of the individual which they consider threatened by free this, free that, and the graduated taxes needed to finance them. Early in the history of political philosophy, Plato identified justice as the supreme virtue of an ideal state. This identification is very true. But Plato's particular formulation of justice, built as it was, around inequalities maintained by authoritarianism is objectionable. What distinguishes the others, is that justice consists in the pursuit of equality and freedom.

Ordeal on Ibadan Road

2011-07-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

First armed robbers and now those in search of miracles make Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the main artery to Nigeria's economic capital, hell for motorists

By Bayo Ogunmupe

TIME WAS WHEN LAGOSresidents travelled to and from Shagamu without much hassle. It might take a day or two to get through because of the bad conditions of the road. But then came the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Sanity prevailed for sometime after the new road was commissioned.

Then came the armed robbers. Even then, the expressway was a big relief. But suddenly came the report that some deranged businessmen had taken to stealing the metal railings, which demarcated the dual carriageway. Some street lights disappeared. Later, villagers started selling bush meat, fruits, vegetables and drinks by the road side. Snack bars, petrol filling stations started springing up. Then, the churches came with redemption camps, mountains of fire, pilgrimage sites where lost souls looking for peace and prosperity go to receive miracles.

The Redeemed Christian Church of God sets aside the first Friday of every month for a night vigil at the Redemption Camp. The vigil usually lasts until Saturday morning.

At the beginning of these pilgrimages, sanity prevailed but not anymore. The Redemption Camp site on the Ibadan Expressway has become a “detention camp” for motorists.

Fasco Kusamotu, a retired bank executive went to look up his children in Ibadan with the intention of returning early enough to attend a wedding on June 8. He was trapped at the Redemption Camp for that day. “There were so many worshippers seeking relief from the church than the parking space could accommodate. The road was thereby jam-parked with cars that there was not enough space for us to pass to Ibadan or vice versa.”

On July 7, Michael Oladosu, a teacher travelled to Ibadan for a wedding scheduled for 10 a.m. He thought he was early when he left home at 6.00 a.m. He was wrong. He did not reach Ibadan until 7.00 p.m. that Saturday. Worse still, he travelled with the master of ceremony.

On the same day, a programme scheduled for TCC, Ogere at 9.00 a.m. could not hold because participants could not get through from Lagos even though they left home as early as 7.00 a.m. That was a journey that would have lasted only thirty minutes.

Also, there was the case of an ambulance rushing a dying patient to the UCH, Ibadan for medical attention. The patient died because the driver could not get through the traffic. Segun Osoba, governor of Ogun State, caught up in the traffic, abandoned his car.

The traffic jam started at the police-checkpoint before the Redemption Camp where the road was reduced to one lane. That encouraged commuters to multiply the lanes thereby causing a hold-up. According to Moses Otolorin, “from the checkpoint, we could not determine the road because of the multiple lanes. We later saw an exit through a village by the road and took it. The villagers quickly set up a toll-gate demanding fees which we paid gladly. It was total madness.”

Enoch Adeboye, general overseer of the church has warned worshippers to desist from parking their vehicles on the expressway. Despite parking spaces provided by the church, the chaotic traffic situation has become a major problem on the expressway.

Published in the Newswatch Magazine

A socialist's View of Human Rights

2011-07-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

By Bayo Ogunmupe
Published in the Daily Independent Newspaper. Tuesday, April 8, 2003.

In these days of electioneering campaigns it is usual in modern politics for candidates to emphasise their ideological persuasions. Unfortunately, our politicians have not obeyed these rules of democracy. Instead we have been exposed to tales of the El Dorado their tenures will bring.
For us the people, it is better to set an agendum for the incoming administration to follow. To show that the political, the economic and the social systems in any society are intricately interrelated. That is the central insight of socialism and it is the basis of a socialist view of human rights.
Indeed, it is arguable that this socialist perspective arose in the course of the struggle over human rights.
Socialism developed, first in Europe as a militant critique of the 19th century bourgeois revolutions, above all, the French Revolution which proclaimed the universal rights of man and then, in practice, deferred them to the rights of private property.
In its 19th century origins, socialism began as a human rights movement, more than an economic movement. Its initial focus was upon winning minimal liberties for the working class: universal suffrage, trade union right, first and foremost.
In England, the great surge of the people was in the chartist movement, with its demand for universal suffrage.
In Belgium and Sweden, the battle for the vote required general strikes to gain success. In other places notably in Germany, the fight was directed against a discriminatory voting system.
So it was that Karl Marx – wrote in 1848, in the communist manifesto, that the first step in the emancipation of the working class was in winning the battle for political democracy.
Indeed, I have often thought that one of the reasons for the failure of socialism as a movement in Nigeria and elsewhere is that universal suffrage meant that labour did not undergo the critical phase of the fight for the right to vote.
To socialists, the terms human rights, democracy and socialism are synonyms. All pre-existing societies, Marx wrote in the manifesto, had been based upon the rule of minorities. Socialism was seen as the first movement of the majority in the interest of the majority. It sought not the establishment of a new form of authoritarian property right, but the creation of the first system of truly democratic ownership.
Where the means of production are socially controlled and the people have the fullest right to decide the policies and the personnel of that social ownership, there is democratic socialism. Human rights, the liberty to speak, to organise, to oppose-are thus not merely the prerogatives of the individual in a socialist society, they are the essential mechanism of the social and economic power of the population as a whole.
Without them, socially owned property becomes the private possession of the bureaucracy which runs it and human rights are critically diminished.
To the socialist, the current concentration of corporate power in the advanced industrial democracies is a matter of deep concern. Yet, as Marx and other 19th century socialists understood, political freedom offers the means, the possibility of transcending those economic and social influences that are exercised by the modern day corporation.
In contemporary industrial society, with its drive toward centralisation and bureaucratisation, democratic freedoms are the only mechanism by which the people can exercise control through their elected officials. Political rights are not merely individual freedoms, important as they are, they are the only means to the social and economic power of the people.
These inter-relationship of the political, economic and social are also relevant to us in the Third World. However, it is only by the United States aiding economic development in the Third World that the US can also further the growth of human rights.
But the American record has been mixed. The response of the Nixon Administration to the former Salvador Allende government in Chile will always be a bad chapter in American foreign affairs. In Southern Africa, however, the American record changed for the best soon after the Carter administration took office.
There was a positive development within the United States with regard to apartheid South Africa. The factor in that change was the human rights movement of American blacks. That movement made it possible for an African American to become the US representative at the United Nations. The civil rights activities of African-Americans forced the passage of AGOA by the Clinton Administration and caused the eventual appointment of General Colin Powell, an African-American as the US Secretary of State, a position only second to the presidency in terms of power and influence.
The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured people organised the Black Congressional caucus, which has been a major force for a democratic foreign policy on Africa. From here, one can clearly see the international aspects of the fight for human rights.
The socialist view of human rights also applies to the former Soviet Republics. Modern history clearly indicates that property is neither right nor left. Nationalisation was employed in the “revolution from above” by Bismarck in 19th century Germany. It is widely used today by military dictatorships. But that isn’t state ownership of production. Even then, who owns the state?
There is only one way for the people to own the state, it is by the right, freely and without fear, to change the policies and the personnel of the state. That power to change personnel is offered by the elections. When the people are excluded from the exercise of these democratic rights or when human rights are denied, that does not simply mean a violation of personal liberty, it is a mechanism for maintaining the class rule of the bureaucracy.
For the socialist then, human rights are both individual and social because the political, economic and social form a whole in the modern world. In the opinion of Marxists, human rights are the basis of social and economic results and they are the goal of socialism itself.

Allah-De... Grapling with Realities of life: A book Review

2011-07-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

By Bayo Ogunmupe

THIS book, Winner takes all, is a collection of essays, written as newspaper columns, by a veteran journalist Alhaji Alade Odunewu. In it, Odunewu was trying to grapple with the realities of life at the time he was writing the columns. Thus, Winner takes all, concerns itself with events of public interest between 1963 and December 2000. This means that the subject matter of the book is Nigerian politics and society in the 20th century in general and the Republican era in particular.

Odunewu's pen name is Allah DE which means God exists, by innuendo it means God is the final judge. By the book, Odunewu has made his timely comments immortal essays as a new art form. Indeed, journalism which is the report of journalists had to endure the disdain of certain critics who in recent times, believe they are insulting a writer when they describe his work as journalism. Such criticism has aroused writers all over the world to take up arms against destroyers of creativity in historical documentation. This rebuttal led to the emergence of New Writing, a journalism based exposition now prevalent in Europe and North America.

Winner takes all belongs to this classical tradition of exposition as a literary form. Each of the essays has two parts: the leader, arising from the topic sentence and the adjunct which is an elucidation of the topic sentence. Odunewu wrote his essays with style.

Moreover, the author made classical allusions in his pieces. Examples are: "A place of Elysian happiness," which is an allusion to the Elysian Gardens i.e, the Garden of Elysium which in Greek mythology is a place in paradise for the repose of good people. Another allusion is: "The law of Medes and the Persians." This refers to the laws given by ancient empires of the Medes and Persians. These are stories of events which happen in a period before the Christian era.

Indeed, Allah De's prose style or use of language isn't without its charm, his frequent use of innuendoes is particularly entrancing. Alternations and assonances make his style glitter like gold i.e.: "all strut and show," "fussy and foppish," "Paul Pry" and the play on the title of the play: "Look back in anger" on page 144 of the book. Odunewu's essays reminds one of episodes, images and language of Eric Blair, alias George Orwell's book: 1984.

Also, the author's style encompasses the copious use of humour. His use of humour evince perpetual surprise. He causes you to lauch which is the hallmark of a good book and forms the credo of journalism: to inform, to educate and to entertain. Winner takes all is very entertaining.

From this collection, you can imagine Nigeria as a nation of downs and buffoons. Which in my view it is. Imagine presidents who rig and annul elections in the name of Allah, and those who keep saying: "It is no business as usual" and who are more corrupt than their predecessors. Odunewu mocks, ridicules, lampoons and satirises subject after subject or victim after victim.

Indeed, if there is a feature that deserves a niche in history in this book, it is its engaging funniness. In a book like this, it is a mater of priority to seek to find the message of the author. Also, you would want to locate or situate his ideological stand. That task is a little difficult in this case. The book is a reflection of the Nigerian reality, no consuming passion, no ideology: a spirit of live and let live.

Winner takes all contains no explicit ideology, except the expression of opinion demonstrated in its title. Which is a correct assessment of governance in Nigeria since Independence. This title also suggests an age of greed and excess, an age of deception and betrayal in high places.

There isn't any visionary speculation in Winner takes all, the author is profoundly simple, calm and sceptical. He laughs at our politicians and public officials, he does not take their claims seriously. The greatest value of the book is as history. It is a good eyewitness narrative which makes it more authentic as a criticism of the age. In the book, we are guided about an era of history which are very critical in the development of our nation and continent.

These engrossing columns take us through momentous events with wit, calm and an abundance of laughter. It is an effort deserving our attention and perusal. Winner takes all has 476 pages, five pages of index and each column is given the date it appeared in the papers. Winner takes all contains a selection of articles reflecting the range of the thoughts of Alade Odunewu, who hails from Ikorodu in Lagos State. The epitome of his journalism career was as the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Times. His training included a year in the school of Modern Languages in London, United Kingdom.

HE emerged from the school with the Commonwealth prize donated by The New Statesman for the best student. In Nigeria, Odunewu worked as Editor of the Sunday Times and the Daily Times, maintaining their reputation as quality tabloids with the largest circulation figure in the country. In the 1960s, he enhanced his reputation as a critic with the column. The thoughts of Allah De. Then he became the chief executive of the magazine division of the Daily Times.

In the 70s, from 1973 to 1975, Alade Odunewu became Commissioner for Information and Tourism on the Lagos State Executive Council. In 1976 he was appointed a Federal Electoral Commissioner. Odunewu returned to the Daily Times in 1979 as Group Publishers Controller. He was appointed Ombudsman in 1984. He is now chairman of the Nigerian Press Council and a trustee of the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence.

DEREGULATION

2011-06-30T05:09:00.000-07:00

Funso Kupolokun, senior special assistant to the president on petroleum and chairman, presidential technical committee on liberalisation of the downstream sector of the Nigerian oil industry, talked to Maureen Chigbo, Tobs Agbaegbu, Bayo Ogunmupe and Chris Ajaero

Newswatch: Most people think that deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil industry would lead to high prices of petroleum products. Will deregulation really lead to high prices of petroleum product?

Kupolokun: The answer is something like this: When you talk of petroleum products there are several segments of it, you have the crude input, you have the refining cost, you have the distribution cost, and you have a little bit of margin for the business to be sustainable for all the participants. You know as much as I do that crude prices in the international market swing up or down. In 1998, just two years ago, crude price in the international market was something like $10 per barrel. But talking about $10 per barrel for the price of the product will not be quite realistic. If it goes to $15 it is another thing.

All we are saying about liberalisation is simply that democracy is about freedom of participation and liberalisation itself is a subject of democracy. Liberalisation is democracy in business. So, if we liberalise, it means we open up the system and everybody will be able to participate and all the segments or the supply and distribution chain must be opened up for the participants. What we are saying is that they should be able to recover cost and a little bit of margin for them to have a sustainable business. And depending on what crude costs in the international market, which we cannot predict, price could move up or down. So, if anybody says that liberalisation means upward movement of price, that person is less than honest. Indeed, it would be the other way. Another thing is that once you open up, there will be competition. What does competition do? Competition itself might drive prices downwards. So, it does not always mean upward review of prices.

Newswatch: The downstream petroleum industry must operate under well-defined policies and procedures based on modern economic ideas if any nation is to derive maximum benefits from the economy. Does Nigeria have such energy policy? If it does, does such a policy state with regards to liberalisation of the oil sector?

Kupolokun: You have to have a coherent energy policy and there is one. Part of that policy is that the downstream sector has to be liberalised and what we are doing at this stage is to get people to understand what liberalisation means, what are the dividends of liberalisation, and why we should embrace it. But definitely , there is energy policy and one that is coherent. For instance, when you liberalise the downstream, then you find out that gas could come in because products will then move to their rightful place in terms of energy equivalent and you can then promote the development of that. So, all these things are inter-linked. So, there is a coherent energy policy, there is a coherent planning.

Newswatch: You said that liberalisation will open up the downstream sector for all participants. Is it going to be an all-comers affair?

Kupolokun: The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has the monopoly today. Anywhere in the world where there is monopoly, it does not work, it has not worked and it will never work. The home of tight regulation of the economy was the USSR; but they realised much later that the centre could not hold, things fell apart. The government of the Russian federation, what is it they are doing today? Their primary focus is the eradication of corruption and coming next to that is the complete liberalisation of the Russian economy. So, the country has found that monopoly does not work. What we are saying in this case is that we want to open up. NNPC will be free to participate, major marketers, independent marketers will be free to do their business, refiners will be free to participate. You will then find out that the moment you liberalise the system, people will invest in new refineries and there will be a lot of private investors. So we are not going to depend on NNPC alone. You have NNPC on one hand, you have independent marketers who may wish to import, you have major marketers who may also import when they like, you will also have within three years, refineries here and there. Products will be available as and when you need them. Once products are available, and many people are participating, competition sets in and competition itself will force prices downwards and democracy is the right to choose. If you don’t like the NNPC, you don’t buy from NNPC and you will have filling stations all over the place. Some could say my price is N20 plus free gift, the other one could say my price is N22 plus free car wash, another could say mine is N23 plus Christmas presents. So, you decide the one that suits you most. The choice is yours because the consumer in this case is the king and that is what liberalisation is all about; freedom of choice.

Newswatch: Most Nigerians have kicked against liberalisation of the downstream sector because of fear that it would affect the masses greatly. Would you say that government has well-articulated policies on the downstream sector and what measure will government take to ameliorate whatever effect liberalisation will have on the economy and the masses in general?

Kupolokun: That is a double-barrel shot. You say that most Nigerians have kicked against it and then what government is doing to ameliorate the effects of liberalisation. Initially, when people hear the word liberalisation, deregulation, opening up, they do not understand. And people say that with liberalisation, price will go to high heavens. People were apprehensive and it is normal. Today, we have been going about and that is what the Gbadamosi committee said, that we should have an enlightenment phase and that is what we are doing now. And I tell you this, we have been to several different states, so far, apart from the good job that the National Orientation Agency, NOA, is doing. We in the presidential technical committee on liberalisation of the downstream sector of the Nigerian oil industry have been to seven states and after our visit to these states, I will say that I feel satisfied. Everywhere we have gone to make our 90 minutes presentation, at the end of the day, we have found out that virtually everybody will say it is the right thing to do. The moment you enlighten the people, the moment you familiarise them with what the gain will eventually be, the moment you assure them as to how it will be done, they quickly embrace it. Not one state said they don’t want it.

In Borno, the governor of the state said it is not only good for Borno State, but he is sure that is what is good for the north. A few days ago, in Benin , Governor Igbinedion said it is the right thing to do. It should be done. The governor of Cross River State said anyday, anywhere you hardly regulate any commodity and it never works and that it is economic inevitability and should be done. Two days ago, we were in Bauchi, the governor said that it is not only the right thing to do, that it must be done, it should be done now.

We have been to Minna and the story is the same. In Rivers State, the governor said that as soon as we liberalise, he will build a refinery. You know what? 100,000 barrel per day refinery today will involve an investment of about $1.2 billion. Can you imagine sinking $1.2 billion into Port Harcourt? What is the implication? More jobs will be created. We are talking of unemployment. Do you know how many people that will be employed? Now, world-wide the refining margin is an average of four dollars per barrel , so when you compute that it gives you some $12 million a month. That state government will normally have about 40 percent participation. Do you know what that does in comparison to waiting for what comes up from the federation account?

When we talk about generating funds internally, liberalisation will perform the magic. What about social services and the governor did not mince words at all in endorsing liberalisation and there have been applause everywhere we have gone. So, how do you think I feel? I feel satisfied. So that is the answer to that.

Now, let me answer the second part of the question. You talk of the masses, some people are saying that they don’t want liberalisation because they are protecting the masses and I want you to answer this question: My father lives in the village, very humble farmer, comes to Lagos once in a year to visit me. When he is coming, he boards one of these big buses. Between him and me, who do you think consumes more fuel?

Newswatch: You

Kupolokun: Fine. Between him and me, who is the rich man and who is the poor man in relative terms?

Newswatch: In relative terms your father is the poor man and you are the rich man.

Kupolokun: Now that you agree that my father is the poor man and I am the rich, if we say we must give price support to petroleum consumption, who are we supporting more between the two? The man who consumes more, isn’t it? So, you are giving me more of the support. If this support is coming from the same pot which in this case is the federation account, one single pot we have been dipping hands into, they say one man’s gain is another man’s loss. Therefore, you know what you are doing? You are robbing Peter to pay Paul. The 21st century Peter in Nigeria is actually the poor man, the rich man is Paul. Therefore, without doubt in my mind, this arrangement today means enriching the rich at the expense of the poor. So, when people say they are supporting the poor, it is either that they do not understand how these things work or there’s a little bit of mischief.

Newswatch: Can you explain where the subsidy is coming from? Government talks of subsidy, the NLC and some other people say there is no subsidy. Where is the subsidy coming from?

Kupolokun: It is as simple as ABC. Today, crude is given to NNPC at $9.50 per barrel that converts roughly to N5.00 per litre. If you run 300,000 barrels per day for 365 days a year, the crude allocation before now, that means government will get N87 billion. However, if you take an average price in the international market of about $25 per barrel and do 300,000 barrels per day for 365 days a year, the difference between the two is a gap of $1.8 billion.

There are two problems in this. This gap, if available could be channelled properly to other pressing needs. Like I have said earlier, if you keep maintaining this subsidy in the name of subsidising the masses, it is either that one is dishonest or one does not understand that you are subsidising the rich at the expense of the poor. So, you can agree with me that it is unnecessary.

Also, if this remains there, you cannot liberalise the industry. The monopoly of the NNPC will remain there and people will continue to talk about the inefficiency of the NNPC. The day you liberalise, if you do not like the services of NNPC, why should you patronise the NNPC?

Newswatch: What will be the relationship between the NNPC, PPMC, the ministry of petroleum resources and the DPR in the post-liberalisation era?

Kupolokun: We are reviewing the structure of the industry. The fact that we have liberalised does not in any way affect the role of DPR as the regulatory body for the industry. It regulates the marketers, it regulates the upstream companies, and it regulates NNPC as well. The role of NNPC will not have changed as the commercial arm and it will be doing business as usual. The ministry of petroleum resources will always be there to take care of policies and long term plans. It is only that in this case NNPC will no longer be the only participant in the downstream business of supply and distribution; there will be all others and you and I will be free to decide whether or not we want to buy from NNPC. And if NNPC does not shape up, it will slip out because you can only be in business when you do business the way others do business.

Newswatch: When you were explaining the difference under subsidy, you put the price at $25 per barrel in the international market, what of when the price goes up or goes down like we had when oil was selling for nine dollars in the international market and we didn’t get any difference in the price here? It didn’t affect anything. Is there going to be a mechanism for adjusting the price of petroleum products once the price also drops in the international market?

Kupolokun: That is exactly what we are talking about. The reason we are not saying the upward or downward adjustment is because we have a tightly regulated system, so whether price is $9.50, you sell at N22, if the price is $25, you still sell at N22, if price of crude is $50, you sell at N22. That is what you get in a regulated system. The moment you liberalise completely, do you know what will happen? Marketers, refiners, including NNPC and real investors will take crude at international market price, put their refining cost on top, a little bit of the margin and that becomes the price they are going to sell. So, if crude price goes to $10 per barrel, that will reflect immediately at the pump. If you don’t reflect it at the pump nobody will patronise your petrol station. The man who is smart will reflect his own. Let me give you an example. The other day I got to the airport, I told somebody to buy me a ticket from the airline I like to patronise. I gave him N6,000 and he came back to tell me it is now N7,500. I said, ah! since when, then I paid and I got the ticket. Two weeks after, I came back to the same airport, I gave N7,500 to the same person to buy me a ticket from the same airline and when he came back, he said, Oga, it is now N6,000, take back your N1,500. I don’t need to tell you what has happened. That particular airline tried a fast one, when they found that nobody was ready to do business with them, they trotted back. So, the moment you liberalise, the competition will force prices downwards because they will be checkmating one another.

Having said that, it is not as if everything will be left open like that because you could have some areas where you do not have many participants and you do not want them to form cartel. So, there will be a regulatory body, not necessarily to regulate what the pump price will be, but will look at all the developments in the industry and know what is required. Like in Ghana, they have what is called the snake mechanism. The body will determine a channel within which your price can move. So, if you like, you can sell close to the top of the channel but in determining the channel they will ensure that cost will be recovered by all the participants in the chain and there will be some element of profit for all the participants in the chain and for the different participants to manoeuvre, because liberation is about the right to choose. If I have a petrol station that is fine and dandy, you may decide to buy from me even if mine is a little bit more costly. If I have just one pump in one corner outside the town, and sell at one naira less, you may decide that you would rather drive to the place and buy. So, there will be that wide channel for them to move. If you like, you can sell very close to the top of the channel. If you have enough volume, fine and dandy for you. But when you don’t have enough volume, you may decide to sell in the middle of the channel or if you really need volume you can sell at the bottom of the channel. But one thing you will not do is to put any price beyond the top of the channel. Nobody will tell you that it is N22 or N20, but you have a channel which will make sure that everybody is recovering cost.

Newswatch: There is this notion that liberalisation will stop smuggling. Will it eventually stop cross border leakage of petroleum products?

Kupolokun: Interesting. Now, the prices of our neighbours is quite high. For you to completely stop smuggling you must have a price here that is comparable with the prices of your neighbours. But as long as there is a gap, as long as there is commercial incentive, there will be smuggling. Even the US today is still battling with drug trafficking for all the sophistication because as there is financial incentive, people will do the business.

Now, if I tell you that if we liberalise today, tomorrow, there will be no smuggling or tendency to smuggle, then maybe I am not saying it the way it is. The truth is this, the price of our neighbours, 50 percent of the pump price they have is tax. On average, in these countries, the tax element is N30.00 per litre. The Gbadamosi committee is not canvassing that. The government is not canvassing taxing anybody. All that government is saying is, let all the participants recover their costs for doing business and having a little bit of margin so that the business can be sustainable. Therefore there will always be a substantial gap between the price in Nigeria and that of our neighbours. That is why when people say that prices will go to the roof, they are lying. Because price will not go to the roof, there will always be a substantial gap between our price in a liberalised system and the prices of our neighbours because our neighbours are capturing tax as much as N30.00 per litre on average and as long as there is a N30.00 a litre difference between us, what then will happen is that there will be a gap. For instance, if you take a 30,000 litre truck from Nigeria and there is that gap of N30.00 per litre, that is some N900,000 a truck, so that will still be good business for people to do cross border leakage.

For us to say we want to stop smuggling, it means we must take our prices close to where our neighbours are, but that is not the intention of government. And I don’t think there is any Nigerian that is ready to pay N70 per litre. So if I tell you that if we liberalise today, there will be no financial incentive for smuggling, that cannot be correct and I don’t say things that I cannot stand by to confirm in two years from now.

Newswatch: We have in Nigeria, oil-producing communities that are very strategic in the whole scheme of things. How are the interest of the oil-producing communities to be protected under this liberalisation scheme?

Kupolokun: Liberalisation means a win for everybody. As far as I know, liberalisation is one formula I have seen in so many years that means win for everybody. You go to the North, in most of the cities there, take Maiduguri, take Sokoto, they get the product supply at N60.00, N70.00, sometimes N80.00 per litre. When you liberalise that will never happen. Now coming to the riverine areas, there is this same problem. Because of the multiple handling of products in the riverine areas, you find out that if they get it to buy at all, the price is as much as N80.00 per litre. You know the reason? Because, nobody is willing to invest in a floating filling station. The moment there is liberalisation, there will be investment in floating filling stations. Once there is liberalisation, there will be filling stations in riverine areas like Abonema, etc. And they pay a little bit higher but they will not be ripped off the way they are being ripped off now.

Newswatch: In April, President Obasanjo met with the organised labour in Aso Rock and they agreed to set up a committee to harmonise their positions on the deregulation on the downstream sector of the oil industry. Could you tell us what the position is now?

Kupolokun: Let me tell you the good thing. The Gbadamosi committee spent three months going through all sorts of position papers. Experts, non-experts presented their position papers. Having gone through all these, the committee found that there was no other way out except to liberalise. But the good thing also is that labour agrees that liberalisation is the promised land. So, we are saying the same thing. The only slight difference is the modality. And they are talking of certain modalities. Of course, we need to talk on the modalities. But, I am an expert in this business. I have spent the last thirty years doing nothing other than the business of petroleum and we believe that what government is saying is right.

We had this seminar in Lagos recently with the business community. All the experts that came to speak, without exception including, the former special adviser on petroleum in the last government, former managing directors of refineries who have nothing to do with government today, former managing directors of marketing companies, people in business all endorsed the modality which the Gbadamosi committee proposed. And in the Gbadamosi committee, I must tell you, we are 35 in number. Four from NLC and 31 from all walks of life. Eighty percent of these 31 have never earned a penny from government before. But faced with the facts, facts are facts, you can’t slant them. They decided that this is the right thing to do. PENGASSAN, NUPENG, the labour unions in the oil industry have said that they know where the shoe pinches and have said that it is the right thing to do.

The difference between us and the NLC, is not much. They mean well; we mean well. And one thing that pleases me is that we agree that the Promised Land is simply liberalisation but the modalities are slightly different. All we need is to explain things to ourselves. And what we are doing now is to enlighten the public in consonance with the recommendation of the Gbadamosi committee.

Newswatch: How much of petroleum products do we really consume in Nigeria? I have been hearing the figure 300,000 for the past 20 years.

Kupolokun: Crude allocation to NNPC in recent past is 300,000 barrels per day. When the refineries are working, they could refine up to 70 percent of it, sometimes they could refine much lower than that. But even when they refine much lower than that, they sell the crude and use the proceeds to procure products. So, in a way, it still boils down to the same thing. But what is the consumption level? There are different studies. We have two studies done by different experts. One is a consulting firm in Germany looking at the consumption in the whole of Africa and the conclusion in these studies is that if there is no smuggling, if we consume rationally and there is no wastage, Nigeria should not consume far in excess of 200,000 barrels per day. But before now the crude allocation is 300,000 barrels per day and we cannot meet the demand. Currently, we have 445,000 barrels per day consumption. Consumption is growing at an average of 15 percent per annum and quote me on this, there is no where else in the world where consumption escalates by 15 percent per annum. We must pull back and ask ourselves, what is happening? And if consumption continues to grow at 15 percent per annum, five years from now, what do you think we will be consuming and where do we find money for other things? No more schools, potable water, crisis in the NNPC product. Oh! As much as we consume these products, it does not matter whether it is going elsewhere. We wait for manna to fall down from heaven but in the 21st century there is no manna; you have to provide for yourself.

Newswatch: Recently, President Obasanjo said that the price of petrol will not be more than N40 per litre when the downstream sector of the oil industry is liberalised. Does this not suggest that liberalisation is all about increase in prices of petroleum products?

Kupolokun: I do not know what the price will be because like I told you, liberalisation means making sure that all the elements in the market are reflected. So, if prices of crude go down, that will be reflected, if it stays where it is today, that will be the number. But one thing I do know is that crude prices are not likely to go much further to where it got to about a year ago at about $30 per barrel. Therefore, the president is quite right that in no circumstance can I today foresee a liberalised price in excess of N40, it could be less. It would only be less but what the number is, I don’t know, because I don’t cross a bridge until I get there; because these things vary as the crude oil price moves in the market. .

Newswatch Volume 33 No 22, June 4, 2001

Book Review: Civilain Dictators of Africa by Shehu Sani, written by Bayode Ogunmupe

2011-06-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

Book Review: Civilian Dictators of Africa by Shehu Sani
Tuesday, 13 April 2010 23:25
Written by Bayo Ogunmupe
THE book, Civilian Dictators of Africa is a detailed, well-researched document on the evolution and consequences of civilian dictatorship on the African continent and beyond. Bad government caused by the ignorance of democracy has left Africa tottering on the edge of instability for decades. In this book, Shehu Sani, the author has taken a critical look at every aspect of civilian dictatorship in Africa. He concludes that redressing the imbalance of leadership remains the only way out of this sad state of affairs.

Further, Sani redefines steps by which Africa's responsibility can be restored in the comity of nations. In the preface, the author avers that the book was written with the aim of contributing to the promotion and sustenance of good governance in Africa and beyond.

According to him, Africa, believed to be the birth-place of the human race, is supposed to lead and in the process provide leadership in all areas of human endeavours, particularly in governance. But regrettably, this has not been so, and therefore, the continent has been bedevilled by border disputes, ethno-religious conflicts, poverty, corruption and terrorism.

But in the on-going evolution of a democratic culture in Africa, attempts are being made to providing leadership for the continent. Thus, these efforts have become platforms through which the challenges and problems confronting African nation are addressed.

The benefits of democracy make it a preferable system of government. Hence its common adoption in most African countries irrespective of the argument in favour of authoritarianism is being proposed as better suited for liberating illiterate Africa.

Structurally, the book is in three parts with 10 chapters. Chapter one is an overview of the African dilemma. Africa is projected as one of the seven continents of the world, inhabited by 900 million people, and comprises 53 countries. For the purpose of this review, Africa has been broken into six regions.

Geographically, Africa has the highest birth rate among the seven continents. Between 2000 and 3000 languages are spoken with Swahili, Hausa and Yoruba being the most widely spoken. These languages and the associated cultures were not given much consideration in the carving up of Africa by the colonialists.

Consequently, decolonisation could not rise beyond ethnic identities and politics to assume national identities.

African economy, according to the author, constitutes traditional and modern sectors. The traditional sector is largely agrarian and based in the rural areas. It feeds the modern service providing mining and low level industrial sector based in the cities.

Africa's role in world trade and economics remains the production of raw materials for use in the industrially advanced countries. Thus, Africa's trade position has been worsening since the 1960s, with many countries resorting to borrowing from Europe and North America.

Chapter two deals with systems of government in Africa. It examines democracy versus authoritarianism with notes on anarchism, concluding with debates on the weaknesses of democracy.

Dictators around the world is the focus of chapter three. From Asia, we have Chiang Kaishek, leader of China and Taiwan between 1949 and 1975; Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran from 1941 to 1979; and Ho Chi Minh, the president of Vietnam from 1945 to 1969.

Other prominent Asian dictators include Thojib Suharto of Indonesia, Hafez Al Assad of Syria and Pol Pot of Cambodia.

Dictatorial examples from Europe were, Oliver Cromwell of Britain; Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France; Antonio de Salazar of Portugal; and Francisco Franco of Spain. The list includes Leonid Brezhnev of Russia and Erich Honecker of East Germany.

From the Americas, there were Rafael Trujillo of Dominican Republic; Fulgencio Batista of Cuba; Anastasio Somaza of Nicaragua; and Fidel Castro of Cuba. In addition, we have Manuel Noriega of Panama; Juan Peron of Argentina and Augusto Pinochet of Chile.

In part two, we have the civilian dictators of Africa. Here we have Dos Santos of Angola; Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire; Omar Bongo of Gabon, Frederick Chiluba of Zambia.

Others are Ahmed Abdulla of Comoros; Haile Selassie of Ethiopia; Hosni Mubarak of Egypt; Muamar Gaddafi of Libya; and Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia. In all, more states experienced dictatorship in Africa than other continents.

In part three, Sani summarises his conclusions and recommendations. He notes that democracy fails in Africa because of illiteracy.

Also, because of the existing authoritarian political structure, the culture of democracy has not been allowed to take root. Besides, colonial hangovers of manipulation and meddlesomeness have impeded democratic growth in Africa.

Indeed, the restive military have to be taught to respect constituted authority. For the way forward, Sani recommends mass literacy, greater self-reliance among the citizenry through self-employment. The author posits the need to evolve an African brand of democracy suited to our own culture and awareness.

Sani is a renowned civil rights activist and writer. He is the president of Civil Rights Congress (CRC) and chairman of Hand-in-Hand Africa. He is a leading figure in the movement for democracy in Nigeria and had been imprisoned by military government in Nigeria. He has written more than seven books and received several literary awards and honours. He was also awarded a honorary doctorate degree by the Nigerian Institute of Continuing Education.

My Books

2011-06-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

You can obtain my book, Nigerian Politics In The Age of Yar'Adua., by Bayode Ogunmupe at www.amazon.com. You can also obtain it at www.myeexpert.com.
Upcoming books inlude the following:
Visionary Leaders
On the path of winners

Enjoy!

About Bayode Ogunmupe

2011-06-15T10:45:00.001-07:00

Bayode Ogunmupe, journalist, economist and literary critic was bornon 18th April 1948 at Abope, Osun State of Nigeria. Educated at the International School, Ibadan; University of Ibadan; University of Geneva and the London School of Economics, UK; he holds degrees in History, Economics and Business Administration.

Ogunmupe has been Political Editor, Daily Sketch; Production Editor, Nigerian Tribune; Senior Sub Editor, Daily Times; Associate Editor, Newswatch and Economic columnist and literary critic for The Guardian.

He won awards in the Nigerian Media Merit Awards in 1993 and the Ladi Lawal Journalist of the Year Award in 2010

Character: A key To Success

2011-06-15T10:41:00.001-07:00

REPUTATION is what folks think you are, personality is what your physical appearance makes of you while character is what you really are. Before us lies two paths, one of which is paved with character. Wise ones embark on the path of character while the ignorant and uncaring journey on the other.

Before we delve into developing character, we need to define character. Awareness of the definition of character will point you in the right direction but it is up to you to walk the path of character.

Character is the core of what you are. It is what you do, the way you live, how you treat others, your responses and the choices you make. It is who you are in private, when nobody is looking. Character is what governs your life, it isn’t compromising, it is not saying one thing and doing another.

It is more than knowing right from wrong. It is acting on the principle of what is right. People of character live with nothing to hide and nothing to prove. They walk with freedom and security. They think before they act, practice self control, delay gratification, walk their talk, are trustworthy and persevere in tough times. They seek the wisdom of others and apply it in their daily lives. They are not superficial. What you see is what you get. They value themselves knowing that life has no duplicate. Simply, your behaviour is your character, character is living your life by a standard, ideology or principles.
Character is doing what you ought to do whether you like it or not. It is integrity, which does not compromise right. A person of character does not cut corners in life, he is consistent, treats others with respect and follows through with his commitments. Character means desiring to make wise decisions, willing to learn, being aware of the consequences of his actions.

Also, character is a choice. And choices determine where you go, what you get, who you become and the success you make. When you think, plan, create, hate, build or help, you are making choices. In life, every step you take is a choice you make. Life is about choices which is why character is a choice.

You may have made some mistakes in your past. Today I offer you a fresh start and opportunity to walk with me and grow in ways that you have never imagined. I want you to imagine for a moment that you are starting to build the house of your dreams. Now, you don’t want this house to cave in on you while you are sleeping, or when the first storm comes. This house is your home. You are going to live there the rest of your life. So you will want to build it with strong materials, because you want this house to be strong.

In essence, this is a metaphor for your life. You are going to be in your body for a lifetime. Do you build your character, which is the core of your being with unstable materials? The choice is yours. So, making better choices in life starts with asking better questions. Great wisdom comes from the counsel of others. It’s taking the time to ask your peers about the choices laid before you. Make sure you asked someone who is willing to give you the best advice regardless of how you feel, or whether you will get mad at him.

Take the time to the think about your choices.
Character starts with personal responsibility. Soar with the strength of your own wings. When I think of my life I think of the words: personal responsibility. We are responsible for our lives. I can’t tell you how many times people come up to me complaining about their lives. What they are really doing is blaming others for their problems or lack of success. There are so many people in this country who lack character. This is true of the world we live in, so watch out!

When they disagree with you, some of them would want to hurt you. They will revenge for your success, throw mud at you. Others could do worse, slandering you without reason, out of jealousy. They do so out of lack of character, they don’t know what personal responsibility is. Their beliefs about responsibility are jaded by falsehood and compromise. People of character accept personal responsibility for their lives. People of character know that even sometimes they have to claim ownership to something that wasn’t even their fault. Being responsible is being a giant when it comes to having solid character. If the archer missed the target, he has no one to blame but himself. You are the archer, you have no one to blame but yourself if you are not succeeding. No one owes you a single favour, not the guy next door nor your parents. You were born with your own set of wings designed for the purpose of soaring. If you are not using your wings, no one is to blame. You have to take responsibility for your own life.

For our champion of today, let us visit the face-off between Mr. Justice Isa Ayo Salami, the President of the Federal Court of Appeal and Mr. Justice Katsina Alu, the Chief Justice of Nigeria. The late Chief Gani Fawehinmi foresaw these problems when in a 2001 interview I anchored for Newswatch, he said our judiciary was poorly managed. He argued that judgements of both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court were minority judgements, that the entire membership of the court should be judging the cases, not committees of them.

Surprisingly, Britain dumped that committee system when Tony Blair, the British Premier created the Supreme Court for Britain in 2001. Britain adopted the American judicial system which Gani advocated during his lifetime. The architect of the American system is our champion for today. He is John Marshall 1755 – 1835. He was born near Germantown in Virginia, USA the fourth chief justice of the United States and founder of the U.S. system of constitutional law, including the doctrine of judicial review. During his tenure, he participated in more than a thousand decisions, writing 519 of them himself.

Educated by tutors, John Marshall was the eldest of 15 children of Thomas Marshall and Mary Keith Marshall. John was licensed to practise law in 1780 and was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782 and 1784. He established in Virginia both a brilliant law practice and a home after marriage to Mary Ambler in 1783. He was elected delegate to the National Convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution. In 1795, President George Washington tendered him appointment as Attorney General, which Marshall declined Marshall however accepted membership of commission by President John Adams. Thereafter, he was elected a member of the House of Representatives from Virginia.

In 1800, President Adams appointed Marshall as the Secretary of State but due to a vacancy at the Supreme Court he was nominated for Chief Justice which senate approved in 1801. At the Supreme Court, Marshall set out for reform. From the committee system he inherited, he adapted court to judgements by all the members. Thereafter it became the general rule that there was only one single opinion from the Supreme Court. This change of practice contributed to make the U.S.
Supreme court a more effective institution. It is this kind of change we need in our dispensation of justice. Let all members of the Supreme Court decide each case that reaches it instead of a committee of cronies chosen by the Chief Justice.

Read more:http://www.gbooza.com/page.html#ixzz456 http://www.gbooza.com/profiles/blogs/ogunmupe-character-as-key-to#ixzz1PMqzwHiD

The Miracle of Discipline

2011-06-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

NOT all of us know and want the same things. But we all know what to do to achieve them. Sometime we need to take a vacation to a wonderful fantasy place called Someday Isle. We say that someday we will read that book. Someday, I will upgrade my computer skills to earn more money.

Probably 80 per cent of the population of this country live on someday island. They dream and fantasise about all things they are going to do “someday.” At someday Island they come down with the disease of excusitis which is invariably fatal to success. But the first rule of success is to vote yourself out of the Someday Island. No more excuses. Stop using your brain to think up elaborate rationalisations and justifications for not taking action. Do something now. Do anything. Get on with it. Losers make excuses, winners make progress. It has been said that if people put as much energy into achieving their goals as they spend making up excuses for failure, they would actually surprise themselves. But first you have to vote yourself out of the Someday Island.

Basically however, it is self-discipline that enables you to vote yourself off the Someday Island. This is the key to the success life. Without it no lasting success is possible in life. My development of self-discipline changed my life. It will change yours too. By continually demanding more from myself, I was able to catch up with my schooling. I took a master’s degree in my forties – which required thousands of hours of determined study. I discovered you can achieve any goal if you have the discipline to pay the price, to do what you need to do and to never give up.

The most important success principle of all was stated by Elbert Hubbard, one of the greatest historians of the USA, at the beginning of the 20th century. He said, self-discipline is the ability to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not. There are 99 other success principles I have found in my reading and experience, but without self-discipline none of them work. With self-discipline nothing is impossible for your attainment. Thus, self-discipline is the key to personal greatness. It is the magic wand that opens all doors for you and makes everything possible. Which is why a person without self-discipline, even though with every blessing of background, education and opportunity will seldom rise above mediocrity. Just as lack of self-discipline is the major cause of failure, so are the two biggest enemies of success are first, the Path of Least Resistance and second, the Expediency Factor.

The Path of Least Resistance is what causes people to take the easy way out in every situation. They seek shortcuts to everything. They arrive at work at the last minute, position themselves and their cars to depart at the first opportunity. They look for get rich quick schemes and easy money.

Over time, they develop the habit of always seeking easy, faster ways to get the things they want, rather than doing what is hard but necessary to achieve real success.

The Expediency Factor, which is an extension of the law of least resistance, is even worse in its power to lead people to failure and under-achievement. It says, people invariably seek the fastest and easiest way to get the things they want, with little or no concern for the long-term consequences of their behaviour. Thus, most people do what is expedient rather than what is necessary for success. So, everyday, you must fight and win this battle with the Expediency Factor by resisting the pull of the Path of Least Resistance if you truly desire to become everything you are capable of becoming. Thus, you are what you repeatedly do, which is why excellence is a habit.

Another definition of self-discipline is self-mastery. You may only attain success when you can master your emotions, appetites and inclinations. People who lack such self-control become weak, dissolute and unreliable. Self-discipline is also defined as self-control. Your ability to control yourself, control what you say and behave consistent with your long-term goals is the hallmark of the superior person. Also, discipline has been defined as self-denial. This requires that you deny yourself of pleasures, the temptations that lead many people astray. Thus, self-discipline requires delayed gratification, the ability to put off satisfaction in the short-term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term.

In the 1960s, Dr. Edward Banfield, a Harvard University sociologist conducted a fifty-year study into the reason why some succeed where others fail in the United States. In his study, he found that the most important single attribute of people who achieve great success in life was, “long term perspective.” Banfield defined time perspective as “the amount of time an individual takes into consideration when determining his present actions.” In other words, the most successful people are long-term thinkers. They look into the future as far as they can to determine the kind of people they want to become. In fact, they set their role models as Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi or Thomas Jefferson. This practice of long-term thinking applies to work, career, marriage and personal conduct. Successful people ensure that whatever they do in the short term is consistent with where they want to be in the long term. Perhaps the most important word in long-term thinking is sacrifice. Great people have been found throughout their lives to make sacrifices in the short-term, so as to assure greater results and rewards in the long term.

Our champion for today is Norman Ernest Borlaug – A central figure in green revolution, Borlaug was born in a farm near Cresco, Iowa, United States in March 1914 to Henry and Clara Borlaug. Norman is a plant pathologist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1970. He is the one who laid the groundwork of the Green Revolution, the technological advance in agriculture that promised to alleviate world hunger.

He studied plant pathology at the University of Minnesota, earning a doctorate there in 1941. From 1944 to 1960, he researched for the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico. There, he developed strains of grain that dramatically increased crop yields. Wheat production in Mexico multiplied three-fold at the time he worked with the Mexican government. His methods were responsible for a 60 per cent increase in wheat harvest in Pakistan and India. He also created a wheat-rye hybrid known as triticale.

Borlaug served as director of the Inter-American Food Crop Programme (1960-63) and as director of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, Mexico City, from 1964 to 1979. In constant demand as a consultant, Borlaug has served on numerous committees and advisory councils on agriculture, population control and renewable resources. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition for his devotion to the abolition of hunger from the globe. He is still alive and kicking at 97.

How To Win Happiness

2011-06-15T10:37:00.001-07:00

THE fact that we are of the common lot of mankind is no hindrance to greatness. It only serves to remind us of the mighty power of God, accomplishing His purpose in men who are fully yielded to His control. After all, His power resides in your subconscious mind. It isn’t who we are but who God is that makes the difference. Allah would not cast His pearls before those who did not want them.

Besides, unless you grasped the meaning of prayer and learned how to practise it consistently, not much would ever come from your life. In practical terms we live by what we do. Which is why learning by doing is the ultimate school of life. Emerson Fosdick said, “No life ever grow great until it is focused, dedicated and disciplined.” Thus, your ability to win happiness is the true measure of your success in life. Happiness is the ultimate goal of life. If you accomplish every material particular in your life but you are not happy, you have actually failed at fulfilling your full potential as a human being.

It is only when you are in complete control of your life that you are truly happy. Brian Tracy in his book: Maximum Achievement, taught the importance of the Law of Control, which states that, “you feel happy to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your life. You feel unhappy to the degree to which you feel you are not in control of others. Psychologists call this locus of control. Fifty years of research on this subject concludes that stress and unhappiness arise when you feel controlled by others or outside circumstances. This explains the difference between an internal locus of control meaning happiness and an external locus of control, which means unhappiness.

When you have an internal locus of control, you are happy, you feel you are in charge of your life, you are behind the wheel on the driver’s seat. You are determining what happens to you, thus, you feel strong, purposeful and happy. An example of external locus of control is when you are controlled by a bad marriage or relationship from which you cannot escape. You may feel controlled by your bills, by the money you owe and your obligations to maintain your standard of living. The key to replacing an external locus of control with an internal locus is for you to decide today to take complete charge of your life. You must accept that you make your own decisions and that you are where you are and what you are because of yourself. What to do is for you to discipline yourself to do whatever it takes to change the situation. The essence of happiness is found in the old saying: Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get. When your income and life are consistent with your goals and expectations and you are content with your situation, that is happiness. However, happiness is a by-product that comes to you when you are engaged in doing something that you enjoy. Happiness isn’t a goal that you can aim at and achieve of itself. Thus, happiness is the systematic realization of a cherished goal. Whenever you are moving step by step towards achieving a goal, you automatically become happy. Here are five ingredients of happiness.

One, having good health and energy; two, maintaining harmonious relationships. Three, meaningful work, being able to keep an active and fulfilling job. To be truly happy you must be engaged in some form of work. Four, financial freedom, our greatest fears are of being destitute and dependent on others. The happiest people are those devoid of financial worries. Financial freedom cannot be left to chance. It has to be planned and achieved. Finally, self actualization. This is the feeling of self satisfaction, of achieving what you are capable of becoming. The famous sociologist, Abraham Maslow is best known for his Hierarchy of Needs. People strive either to compensate for their deficiencies or to realize their potentials. Deficiency needs are safety and survival. Others are security, belongingness and self esteem. But the highest human need is self actualization. Maslow concludes that less than two per cent of the population ever reaches their height of personal fulfillment.

Our champion today is Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi Arabian politician who was minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources from 1962 till 1986, a minister in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for 25 years.

Yamani was born in Mecca in June 1930, one of three children of his father, Hassan Yamani, a judge in Hejaz and a respected Islamic Scholar. His father also worked as appeal court justice in Indonesia and Malaysia. Yamani’s grandfather was a justice of appeal in Turkey. The Yamani surname originates from Yemen where his paternal grandfathers came from.

At 17, Yamani entered Cairo University and earned a bachelor’s degree in law in 1951. Inspired by his father and grand father, Yamani sought to become a teacher of Sharia. But on leaving college, Yamani got a job at the Ministry of Finance in Mecca, teaching Sharia law in his own time.

Later, the Saudi government sent Yamani to study Comparative Law at the New York University Law School and in 1955 he received the LLM degree in Comparative Jurisprudence. While at NYU, Yamani met his first wife, Laila, from Iraq. Thereafter, Yamani spent a year at Harvard Law School, earning his second master’s in 1956. Then he returned to the Ministry of Finance. The same year he founded his own private law firm where he practiced.

Yamani married his second wife, Tammam in March 1975. In 1957, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, Faisal bin Abdelaziz invited Yamani to work as his legal Adviser. In 1962, King Saud appointed Yamani Oil Minister, replacing Abdallah Tariki, the founding father of OPEC. Although the suave Yamani is distinguished from his fiery predecessor, he had a common goal with Tariki in moving towards the nationalization of Aramco Oil Company, the operating oil company in Saudi Arabia at the time. Thereafter, Yamani established the Petroleum and Mineral Organisation (Petromin) as a state oil company. Further in 1964, he established the University of Petroleum with the aim of producing Saudis with the skills to manage Saudi oil resources. Following OPEC negotiations in 1972, the Saudi government bought 25 per cent ownership of Aramco. In 1974 Saudi participation increased to 60 per cent and in 1976 total Saudi ownership of Aramco was agreed upon.

As Oil Minister of oil rich Saudi Arabia, Yamani was noted as having a moderate oil policy. Faced with the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Yamani opposed the Arab oil embargo, to the displeasure of Israel’s Arab neighbours and Iraq. The oil embargo was ineffective, this led to the formation in 1968 of the organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries comprising Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Libya. Egypt, Syria and Iraq joined later.

Following the humiliation of the Arabs by the Six Day War, demands for the use of oil as a weapon of war intensified throughout the Arab world. In October 1973, six Persian Gulf Oil Producers met in Kuwait and raised oil prices by 70 per cent, that was the first time oil producers would set the price of their oil. Thus, Arab oil producers in unison cut back oil output, forcing the U.S., the EEC and Japan to call on Israel to withdraw from Arab territories. The embargo was lifted in 1974 following Arab disengagement agreements with Israel.

However, in March 1975 Yamani’s friend King Faisal was assassinated by Faisal bin Musad, the King’s nephew. Buoyed by his global pre-eminence, Yamani remained oil minister for another eleven years. But in December 1975, Yamani survived as a hostage of the terrorist Carlos the Jackal in Vienna, Austria. In 1979, the Iranian Revolution resulted in the 1979 energy crisis. Saudi Arabia increased oil production to replace that lost from Iran. The panic buying of 1979 led to oil glut in the 1980s. Then King Khaled died in June 1982, then Prince Fahd became King and Premier. King Fahd’s rule was marred by reduced oil income making him to demand the increase in the price of oil. Yamani refused to acceed to his request and on October 29, 1986, King Fahd dismissed Sheikh Yamani as Saudi Oil Minister. He was replaced by Hisham Nazer. Yamani is still alive.