Tag: #Dominic Kidzu

A rash of accusations, counter accusations, and bush-shaking grandstanding about who did and did not pad the Cross River payroll have headlined premium news coming out of the state for two weeks without end. Take a front seat, folks, and watch the rollercoaster from the edge of your seats. Hollywood is knocking at the door.

Hydra headed John Odey fired the first shot, which was suitably responded to by his ubiquitous targets, Uko Inaku, Ogbang Akwaji and Joseph Adie, all very senior state officials and close associates of former governor Ben Ayade, having been Chairman Civil Service Commission, Head of the Civil Service and Accountant General respectively.

John Odey himself was no less awesome during the dark ages, bestriding the three-fold world like a giant collosus, having corralled the three critical offices of SA-Salaries, Auditor-General, and wait for it, Chairman IRS to himself alone, all at the same time! But sudden greatness comes along with a goatskin bag of hubris. As Brutus soliloquised about his friend Caesar, “the abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.” He has sang the swan song (?) and everyone else in the room is taking the bath of the hornbill.

Iwara Iwara of Hit FM broke the water pot, Beatrice Akpala tried to pick up the broken shards, leaving everyone else in perplexity about who the real heroes and villains are in this tragic tale. And as the intriguing narratives unfolds, what is no longer in doubt is the unconventional template and blatant impunity with which our poor state was run in the last eight years. And the sickening haemorage the public patrimony endured.

The governor has been looking for a plug on the leakage like a needle in a haystack, trying to put a disheveled state together like a feather pillow bust asunder in a gale. I hope to God that John Odey is right and forthright with his bold accusations so that he does not become like the saying among my Irruan people “Olom ntseh ji Okpor, Okpor oji Olom” which translates to something like “The devil went to kill Okpor, but now Okpor has killed the devil.”

The simple enigma is that the more people retire from service, the more the wage bill grows, like a thing of magic. Are mssrs John Odey, Uko Inaku, Ogbang Akwaji and Joseph Adie responsible for the mutant growth of the payroll, or is there a more sinister, well oiled criminal conspiracy under the rocks in the seabed? Are the four ‘accused’ and ‘accusers’ mere puns on a grander chessboard of power, money, more money and greed? As Mahatma Gandhi said “The Earth has enough for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed”.

Where are the fifty-two or fifty-four thousand civil and public servants in Cross River State? Where do they stay, where do they work? This racket appears rather massive to me. Have we even scratched the surface yet, I cannot say. What is certain is that the boat has already been rocked. Heads are inevitably going to roll as well. Even entrenched denizens and crocodiles may have to swim in shallow waters because one cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs.

The other day I heard that the Cross River House of Assembly is recovering heavy duty construction equipment belonging to the state from private persons. Then yesterday, the House upended the lease of our 100-room facility in Abuja for N6m per annum. Who knows what bizzare repossession is next. To create a new narrative, Governor Bassey Otu, it seems, has his work cut out for him. It’s already one day, one story now, and the beat goes on and on and on.. … …

(Dominic Kidzu writes from Calabar)

Disclaimer: The opinion expressed in this article is strictly that of the author, Dominic Kidzu and does not represent TheLumineNews or its agent.

Is money important? Yes, mighty important. Is money the key to happiness and fulfilment? Not really a core value or essence, only a means to an end. Is money the gateway to the eternal verities such as love, honour, patriotism, truth, hope, conscience, temperance, prudence, wisdom and justice? Definitely not, being only capable of enabling material contentment, not nearly a compliment to true essence. What then is the greatest value that money can bestow? Money creates access to material comforts, pleasure and the easy life. What is beyond the power of money? Money lacks access to fulfilment, to contentment and true peace of mind as an ethical end in itself.

Of all the things that man could be blessed with, which is the greatest? Love. Mahatma Ghandi says that “there only is life where there is love. Life without love is death. Love is the reverse of the coin of which the obverse is the truth”. It was Ghandi’s firm faith that one can conquer the whole world by truth and love. There is no doubt that money gives physical and psychological pleasure to the owner, which some philosophers would even consider dangerous from an ethical point of view. Socrates for instance, disdained pleasure that sought to delight and gratify, which money can provide, preferring pleasure eventuating from deep contemplation and inner harmony.

Like Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas asserts that contemplation is man’s highest activity, but while Aristotle leaves it open as to what the art of contemplation concretely consists in, Aquinas specifies that God is the last end of happiness. He argues that whatever happiness may be, it cannot consist in such imperfect, finite things as material wealth, public honour and acclaim, political or social power, since man cannot find his final fulfillment in any created, finite good, neither in things outside him. While Aristotle agrees that Happiness is man’s highest good, he stipulates that it’s attainment comes both from the satisfaction of all human needs and a sharing in the divine activity and bliss of contemplation of eternal truths.

One of the most respected Islamic philosophers and mystics, Imam Muhammed Al Gazali specified that the purpose of wealth is for the upkeep of one’s self and family and for extending care to others with love. Jalal Al din Muhammed Rumi, also an Islamic philosopher and poet wrote
“When we are dead,
seek not our tomb in the earth,
but find it in the hearts of men.”
To Jalal Al din as to Mahatma Ghandi, the ultimate fulfilment consists in doing good, as Ghandi confesses: “I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again”.

We ought therefore to be careful about the choices we make, less we end up as the concrete statue of Ramesses the great, one of the greatest pharoes of ancient Egypt, which the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley records as declaring haughtily : “My name is Ozymandias, the king of kings, look on my works ye mighty, and despair. While only two vast trunkless legs of stone remained sunk in the desert, near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies..” All his conquests and the cities he built were gone, only the boastful statue remained burried in the sand with an amputated head. When all the mansions and cars and jets and high offices are gone, as they meet must go, what will live forever is the good name or the bad name, and the just reflection that must ultimately abound, about the choices we made whilst we thrived.

Dominic Kidzu writes from Calabar.

THE RISE OF HOUSE-HUSBANDS IN NIGERIA

BY DOMINIC KIDZU

Interestingly, more husbands in Nigeria are now at home, while their wives are either at work or in the shop. No thanks to the voodoo economy that has put them out of work and denied the avatar his conceit. My son taught me how to bake chicken pie in the oven yesterday, and I was excited to accomplish the task myself. But sour grapes came upon me as I munched the stuff because I realized that I was actually eating humble pie in the hot afternoon..

Daddy wasn’t the man to be found at home during the day because he was always either at work or on a business trip and everyone came to him for their needs like chicken go home to roost at sunset. Now he is almost always at home with the TV remote control in his hand flipping from one news channel to sports and back again. While the children try very hard to be of good behavior while he is home, even though the very act annoys them quite a bit.

He no longer goes out in the evenings regularly, and could be heard murmuring to himself from time to time. Something about the price of fuel, garri, or beer, or indeed all of them. He now complains about the volume of music from the children’s room and the number of unwashed plates in the kitchen. His unhappiness is spreading all over the floor like spilled kerosene. “Honey, please help me iron my blouses if light comes in the afternoon” madam cooed, giggling. He grunted as she departs for work.

The rise of House Husbands is really not a sweet story to tell, because the very telling of it dries saliva in the mouth and leaves the furrowed brow drenched in sweat. About two decades ago, I and my cousin, Prof. John Small went to visit our now late uncle, J. B. C. Atteh Abang in Kuje one hot afternoon. He had just retired as a Director of Forestry. We met him ironing his wife’s clothes, madam was of course at work. He told us that there had been a role reversal in his home, since he had no where to go to, he was now quite happy to do the house chores.

The big issue with contemporary Nigerian house husbands is that they are neither retired nor tired. Young and energetic men are being confined in their homesteads by unemployment. The ones who are politically exposed are the worse for it. They believe they have worked for the now “elected”, (whatever that means) and should justly be appointed. But the appointment has failed to arrive, keeping them still at home in the afternoon and ultimately adding hermlock to their temperament. Say a little prayer for husbands. They are going through a lot

“The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi

For many years after I began working, some friends, family and community members regularly came to me for financial assistance and I obliged the ones I could, gladly, while appealing for more time to those whose requests I couldn’t handle immediately. In the end I was always able to touch elbows with most without necessarily undermining my own affairs.There was no money transfer by telephone then, so my personal assistant maintained a notebook of account details of many, many people. He was for a long time a regular visitor at many banks as a result of that.

Today, whenever someone sends me their account details requesting for assistance, I find myself promptly irritated and even sad, because I am also looking for someone to send my account details to in the hope of getting a lifeline. And I know that I am not alone, because my colleagues, peer group and friends are going through the same pangs of want and social relegation to a lower, shameful class. Mid-level civil servants, assistants/advisers in state and local governments, lecturers, senior teachers, accomplished journalists and entrepreneurs were all members of the middle class who could take care of their immediate families and a few others besides.

But the middle class has at last been wiped away by brainless politicians, unbridled corruption and the wrong headed advice from Breton woods institutions, the apostles of globalization whose eternal diagnosis, year in year out, is the devaluation of currency, removal of subsidies and slavish acceptance of foreign loans. The living conditions of Nigeria have plummeted in such a way that it has become a grim task for members of the deceased middle class to buy fuel for their second-hand cars and electric generators or feed their families adequately without requesting for help from the few big men and sending them their account details.

In Nigeria today, there are two socio-economic classes – the very rich, who number about 1℅ and the very poor, about 99℅ and the two classes of people are mutually irreconcilable. They do not live on the same streets. Don’t drive the same type of vehicles. Don’t eat at the same restaurants. Don’t go to the same hospitals. Don’t share the same drinks. Ironically, most of the super rich have neither conscience, character, morality, nor principles or humanity. Mahatma Gandhi might indeed have been postulating about these ones, because they lack industry or high education and are quite simply pests on the nation’s life spring.

In every state you have the minister, the governor, some members of the National Assembly, one or two federal appointees, a judge or two in courts of appellate jurisdiction and one or two “connected” portfolio businessmen. They are the nouveau riche, the new authors and givers of life itself, feasting on the patrimony of the people, government provides them free houses and cars, the Central Bank gives them differential foreign currency rates. Their children study overseas and they themselves treat their malaria overseas as well. Lazy, unintelligent, bereft of conscience and foresight, beholden only unto the god of money and power. They represent only themselves and their families and look at the miling 99℅ with disdain and scorn, while scoffing at the studious and brilliant who ‘waste’ so much time in school studying how to be poor and beggarly men.

It’s a new world, a strange country, where intelligent people are silenced so that the stupid ones won’t be offended. Where those who attempted GCE without “winning” are presidents, governors and ministers while professors beg for their meagre earned income. And people who were in the middle class are only too happy to run errands for the stuffed turkeys with large torsos and little heads, and violent gang members who have ‘transformed’ into political leaders, driving the nation safely down to its knees. The bank executives rebuff creative ideas and innovations and the preachers cross the social Rubicon with their families in tow. Here is George Orwell all over again as ” the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, and already, it was impossible to say which was which. ”

The middle class, that great engine of production and growth has been replaced by “our party” and it’s jaded flock is perhaps too smitten even to say a word in protest. That is why I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. That vital buffer between the people and the wealthy has been demolished and one day, just one day, they will meet and the grapes of wrath may be unleashed.

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At this point, all men of goodwill who still have the ear of former Governor Ben Ayade have a responsibility to whisper to him that his tenure is over, because the man himself doesn’t seem to realize the fact.

After eight long years on the saddle, with the political calendar hanging everywhere like a signpost, the former Governor should have packed his personal belongings out of Perigrino House at least a week before the inauguration of the new Governor, to allow him redesign the place after his own taste.

To still return to the official residence of the Governor of Cross River, to still hold unto the convoy of official cars and throw himself about as if he was still Governor belittles the office and offends the culture and tradition of that respected institution. It also unfortunately personalizes the office in a way that seems to suggest that Governor Ayade believes that he owns the place or does not understand the democratic transition of power.

Only yesterday, there were unconfirmed rumours in Calabar that the former Governor and his Man Fridays were still haemoraging Cross River State bank accounts, still pillaging, still plundering the scanty bank balances that were still left there and the IGR instruments were still in the hands of the former Governor, three clear days after his tenure ended.

It is shameful and pitifully disgraceful that we are talking about one of the most paper-learned governors Nigeria has ever had who should be counted among people like professor Ambrose Ali and professor Zulum who became governors from the apogee of the intellectual tree. To continue to act in the way that former Governor Ayade has done creates deep suspicions about the depth of his much vaunted intellect and sophistication.A word is enough for the wise.

POSTSCRIPT – I have never read any of Obi Ojage’s essays to the end.

No one who has something to do, anything, will read Obi Ojage’s lengthy, boring regrets to the end. For all his body of work is on his regrets about what ought to be that is not and where he should be that he is not, and his imagination about how lofty his brain and art are, even when the general consensus among those who know him is that he is a well managed man who is unwell.

Obi writes for a living and that should take you directly to the heart of the matter. For anyone who writes articles for and about people for a living must first relinquish his self respect and then disavow the truth, because doing otherwise would take away the bread or reduce it substantially. When you are not even a good writer in the first place, the penalty is worse. You become an intellectual dandy, a fop, living life entirely in your inevitable loaf of bread and the breathless substitute of yourself which you alone have created and which you alone can see.

Such is the story of Comrade Obi Ojage, a reptile that is neither fish
nor animal, neither APC, nor PDP, neither Ejaham nor Efik, neither Nigerian nor Camerounian. He has
created a picture of himself as a stirling intellectual, frothing at the mouth and cannot see that all the members of the community are standing at the village square pointing at him and shaking their heads in pity. Anyone who takes Obi Ojage seriously nolonger needs to take themselves seriously heretofore.

Comrade Obi Ojage took on Senator Sandy Onor yesterday when his blackmail was called off. Senator Onor had met him in his undergraduate days in the early eighties through his uncle and some kind of affinity developed. While Obi remained chained to the floor in his mother’s house in Big Quo Town socially and politically, Sandy became a local government chairman, a commissioner, a Senator and now a possible Governor. Many years ago he implored the Senator to come to his humble quarters and the Senator obliged him. After that visit the Senator was moved to place his uncle’s friend on a monthly stipend of N50,000 which he still collects till date.

But recently Obi demanded for a pay rise but was reminded that he was receiving the money gratis, since he was really not capable of doing anything for the Senator. He asked for one of the buses Governor Wike graciously gave the Senator or another car for him to use. Unfortunately, he was told that his demands could not be met at this time. Obi got angry and threatened that Senator Onor was going to hear from him. Yesterday, we all heard from him.

Last Sunday I went to buy fruits at Mobil by MCC Junction and I saw Comrade Obi Ojage trekking with a packet of biscuits in his hand which he crunched on noisily. He complained to me that “tell Sandy that he is being too arrogant and greedy “. When I reminded him that he was in APC and working for Bassey Otu, he said to me ” that one is an incurable Efik tribal jingoist who has surrounded himself with Efik people only. You people will see wonders. Just wait and see”. I could not offer him a lift him in my car because I was driving in an opposite direction, but I said a little prayer for him and drove home.

Comrade Obi Ojage is incapable of relating with people or sustaining his relationships and those are two of his many problems. When the quintessential Donald Duke made him a board member of Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) Obi went there and fought every member of the board. In fact the board had to be reconstituted, leaving Obi out before the end of its tenure. That is where the comrade would have baked his own bread and save himself from his present
‘kpenklemess’ but the black spirit following him would not give him respite.

He has abused Donald Duke too, Liyel Imoke also and Dr Pius Tawo who he claimed he grew up together with in the Cameroons, not to talk of his lawyer, Paul Erokoro (SAN). He could have been a genius if he had taken the trouble to go through school properly, but Obi does not have the patience to do anything properly. The little muses in his head remind him all the time that he is a genius and a great man, far above the mortals who hold or aspire to lofty offices today (at his expense?). The tragedy is that he listens to these mobid spirits and does their bidding. We all need to say a prayer in church today for Comrade Obi Ojage’s possible redemption even though he has strayed rather too far into the bush.

My apologies to Senator Sandy Onor for this response, because he told me clearly ” Dominic, don’t respond. Obi does not matter “.

DISCLAIMER: The opinion expressed in this article is clearly that of the author, Dominic Kidzu and does not represent the represent TheLumineNews or it staff.