——–

WHEN he hurriedly departed from power 17 years ago, he left behind a broken country; its people in stifled rage over his irrational and inexplicable nullification of the freest election ever conducted in Nigeria. He had ceaselessly dribbled the entire nation while denying repeatedly that he had a hidden agenda as was then alleged by the now late Alao Aka-Basorun.

Again and again, he tinkered with the very foundation of the country and experimented with abandon any, and every kind of theory of governance with uniformly disastrous results. His experiments in this opaque style of government failed spectacularly and in the end he left in place a functioning anarchy. Nor did he realise when to stop the dribbling runs and so scored an own-goal.

That singular misadventure in all his years in power left in its wake a sado-masochist, who sought to complete the mindless rape of the country as we knew it. On Aug. 27, 2010, it was 25 years since he violently seized power from Mohammadu Buhari and negatively altered our lives forever.

About 14 days ago, I read in THE PUNCH, an advertorial seeking the support of Nigerians for this thoroughly discredited soldier in contesting the presidency. It was signed by the evil genius himself. He assures Nigerians that ‘we‘ can do it again because ‘we‘ did it before! Do what really? As an individual, Babangida evokes within me a series of very negative emotional reactions all of which have marinated in vitriol since his ignominious departure from power.

He compromised every institution of state and undermined civil society organisations. His Structural Adjustment Programme; Movement for Social Mobilisation; Directorate of Foods Roads and Rural Ifrastructure; Dutch Auction; Modified Dutch Auction; Option A4; Organisation of Islamic Conference; the government-decreed political parties, one a little to the right and the other a little to the left; dictatorship; plutocracy; diarchy; the reforms in the civil service and the politicisation of the Armed Forces did not survive his tyrannical rule.

Instead, they worsened the polity across the board and at an immense cost physically and socially. All of it was a ruse, which the then military president carefully calibrated to keep the people busy while the lion devoured the flock. The mentality was of a vampire guarding a blood bank.

Worse, very weighty allegations levelled against his regime in the coup-day speech by Gideon Orkah in April 1991 have never been addressed by this Minna-born bully who speaks English with an amusing accent. Nor has he ever shown any faith in the country‘s institutions. He subverted its people and their judicial system when he refused to appear at the Oputa Panel in 2000.

Before then, of course, he had subverted the constitution by annulling a nearly flawless election. He abdicated his responsibility to the people of Nigeria, acted in cahoots with the discredited military establishment to endanger our collective security and therefore imperilled our future. With great aplomb, he claimed to know those who would not succeed him, an indication that the result of the 1993 presidential election was known before the vote.

Today, he immorally seeks power by becoming a candidate in another election. It is not surprising for many have often made the fatal error of crediting him with a lot of intelligence. What he has in abundance is animal cunning, a gift for conniving in unholy darkness, for springing the ambush of the predator, in the brutal contest for the attainment of power.

The end-product is a man who would not tell the truth if the lie will serve him just as well. Consequently, his antecedents show him up as psychologically unsuited for the office of president in a democratic and plural society. He is the ultimate anti-democrat who now seeks power by democratic means. That is much the same way that Adolf Hitler legitimately won power but the world saw to what use that power was deployed.

Besides his duplicitous and untrustworthy nature is the pretence to godliness. He would frequently lace important public statements with phrases like Insha allah and Alhamdililah, but it must be evident to all that this is one individual who, despite wearing a toga of religious piety, worships only at the altar of his image.

If he succeeds this time because of our collective personal failings to recognise evil when we see it, Nigeria would have begun a certain journey on the path to irreversible decline. At 69, this slayer of Mamman Vatsa, Gideon Orkah and countless other military officers is well past his prime. Even at his best, he brought much odium and suffering to the people of Nigeria despite having been at the helm for one sixth of Nigeria‘s entire 50 year history.

At his age today we can expect that he will sell the entire nation to a consortium of shady characters, coup plotters and dubious businessmen who will denigrate Nigeria to the level of Haiti. That he succeeded before in drawing rings around us is not surprising, but that he succeeded so regularly and so spectacularly is what is truly astonishing.

The ordinary Nigerian is able to withstand what his latest adventure represents. However, the vehicle he seeks is a dangerous political party that wants to win power at any cost. It is perhaps the most irresponsible political party on the African continent. The largest? Can it claim to come even close to the African National Congress in South Africa in ideology, in size or in organisational skills? Or to the rigorous discipline of the MPLA in Angola?

He had a golden opportunity to become a genuine African hero and he simply bungled it. To this day, his regime remains an exemplar of arbitrariness and immense corruption, a symbol of government by attrition, the very one which brought brilliant economists into the government while its principal officers sauntered into the barn and asphyxiated the economy. His incredulous response? Why has the economy not collapsed?

So if he thinks he is a symbol, it is mostly of what? It will be a sorry return to the politics of a failed past which conspired with emergency intellectuals and imported ideology to negate our natural aspirations to grow physically and economically as expected of the youthful population that Nigeria is blessed with. In societies where the rule of law is upheld to the letter, this non-performer should have been in jail and in those promoting revolutionary law he would have been summarily executed.

But this is Nigeria where anything is possible including the truly bizarre. Nothing is ever the way it appears to be ordinarily, but in the hands of professional politicians such as this re-entrant into presidential politics, who ceaselessly profiteer from power, the cloak and dagger approach to important matters of state would as expected attain a more violent coloration.

We have endured enough bloodshed in this country following the end of the Civil War, enough violence, enough uncertainty and a disproportionate amount of all this is traceable directly and indirectly to Babangida. If the question arose about whether he should be given another chance, even if to improve on his rather sordid record, my answer would be overwhelmingly no.

Sadly, this poorly educated soldier – he does not hold a degree or even a diploma – tells the world that the youths of Nigeria are incapable of leading the nation because of their poor education. Most youths in authority today are much better educated than he is.

Dr. Ikhisemojie writes in from Eyiowuawi Street, Palmgrove, Lagos, via sikhisemojie@yahoo.com

Mary Uduma

NiRA is the body empowered by the Nigerian government to regulate the registration of the .ng Top Level Domain names on the Internet.  At the beginning of the meeting, a one-minute silence was observed to pray for the soul of Ndukwe.  Some heroes pass unsung, but Nigerians should know that the local Internet space and our international recognition which rides on the back of our own domain extension owes a lot to Kalu Ndukwe.  May his soul rest in God’s peace.

Back to the election last week.  The new Vice President of NiRA is Mr. Sunday Folayan and in him my heart finds peace because he is a knowledgeable man.  Those in the industry will recognize him as the man behind Skannet, one of the earliest ISPs based in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Others elected into the reconstituted board of NiRA include Mr. Muhammed Rudman, CEO of the Nigerian Internet Exchange Point.  As head of NiRA’s technical committee, Rudman has been holding fort and literally holding the .ng up all this while.  Kudos to him.

The election went smoothly, but not without showing some traits that make me wonder why we would ever expect to have a free and fair election at the National level, when even at the level of associations, there are dictatorial tendencies that come to the floor with “stuffed ballot boxes”.  This did not happen at the NiRA election, but there were people who (but for the intervention of saner minds) were translating the association’s constitution according to their whims.  I won’t say more, but only to give kudos to Mr. Destiny Amana of Icecool Contracts who decided (against his will I must say) to step down from his aspiration to become NiRA’s president.  Well done Destiny!

About Destiny Amana I can say many things, but suffice it to state that again, those in the industry will recall that back in the days when to register a .ng domain name was akin to writing codes, Destiny stood head and shoulders above everybody, and at a point, he alone had registered almost 80% of the total domain names available on the .ng space.  Simple, cos no one else knew how to!

Kalu Ndukwe (R.I.P Dear Friend!)

We pray the new board work hard to keep things as high as all these great men and women have brought the .ng, and take it higher.  Peace!

The mail and photos is one of the most gruesome ones you are likely to see, though I’ve probably seen worse.  At the end, it did not disturb my sleep, perhaps because I succeeded in forgetting about it.  But it did affect me, in many ways.  On the one hand, was the realization that man is not much different from an animal.  Behind the flesh is blood and in the midst of all that are bones.  If I find someone willing to eat me, there would then not be much difference between me and the steak or mutton I take on my dinner plate.  True, but not complete.

Although it did cross my mind at this point of the mental process to understand why vegetarians hate meat so much, I’m not about to give up the practice.

I also felt an awareness of my frailty as a human being and then a temptation to despair.  If I am all flesh, blood and meat, what is this life all about?  What is the end of this existence, seeing that not much make me different from the animal: dog (I don’t eat that!), cow, goat, etc?

As happens in such moments of passion, reason takes back seat, but thank God (yes Him!), I quickly recovered my senses to realize that while the animal may be my ‘cousin’ as far as flesh and bones are concerned, I have a supernatural soul and the animal does not.  Sure it has an animal soul (which is not eternal but is destroyed at death), but God has wanted to make me (man) [and women for those who wish political correctness] in his own Image and Likeness, and this ‘likeness’ is chiefly in my soul.  My soul is immortal.

In that sense, I recovered my peace.

I am not just human meat, flesh and bone, though I am all of that.  I have something to look forward to, and in looking forward to it, I have something for which to live – and live in a way that will please the landlord of the future spiritual home to which I aspire.

Not so depressing after all.

To use, enter the number and send sms.  It works!

Here is a list of the countries covered.

• Ghana
  Zain
  Tigo
• Israel
  Pelephone
  orange
• Palestinian Territories
  Jawwal
  Wataniya Mobile
• Senegal
  orange
  Tigo
• United States
  All operators
• Zambia
  MTN
  Zain

You’ll find all the details here

He annulled the freest and fairest election in Nigeria in 1993 for reasons best known to him. Some say he didn’t like the winner Moshood Abiola. Others insinuate worse.

When another dictator Abacha died; Abiola died exactly one-month later, and the equation was complete. IBB probably knows what happened but he’s not talking.

He recently lost his wife, Mariam, who is renowned for making the position of “first-lady” a state-recognized one. May her soul rest in peace, but it seems IBB may have made a death-bed promise to his wife to stage a come-back to government.

Below is a report coming in from Sahara Reporters that IBB has gone to Dele Giwa’s colleagues to help launder his image. Money was shared we hear.

—
THE STORY
—

In his latest effort to capture the loyalty of the national press and ensure optimal coverage in their pages, former Nigerian dictator Ibrahim Babangida ferried some of the country’s top media execs to a lavish press conference under the stars at his Hilltop Mansion in Minna, Niger State.

While at it, he praised the professionals for their skill at the craft and invoked his love for the free press. The journalists, overcome perhaps by the kind words, took the bait. No unpleasant questions, like why would he close down newspaper houses and murder a top journalist -Dele Giwa- via a letter bomb? Babangida responded to the question anyway. He told his distinguished guests that his respect for the “sanctity of life” would not have permitted him to kill journalist Giwa. His visitors (mostly editorial board chairs of major media houses in Nigeria) then passed over another opportunity to ask: why would he kill his friend, Mamman Vatsa, over a fake coup plot?

Too good an item to keep this curious meeting under wraps, word soon leaked out that IBB gave these journalists N10 million as “transport fare”. Some of these men and women swiftly reached out to SaharaReporters to debunk the part of our story that they got N10 million each… some honestly admitted that they got a paltry gift of N250,000 from the “Evil Genius. Our accountants have told us that going by the number of 40 journalists in attendance, we are still around the same ballpark of N10 million. Plus, IBB handlers said the general doesn’t pay his bribes at once, so, he considers that with this partial payment, favorable reporting in the press throughout his already doomed presidential campaign should be considered a “layaway”.

Could this be another IBB set-up of the national media chiefs?

source: saharareporters.com

This puts a serious disadvantage on honest Nigerians who want to take advantage of the globalization offered by the Internet. Paypal has joined to make them doubly a parish nation. If you want to open a Paypal account from Nigeria, you will notice that the country’s name is not included in the drop-down list of countries. The company goes a step further, confirming your location through your IP (Internet Protocol) address. It is with this latter tech tool that they catch those who try to circumvent their protection. Well, there’s a way around it.
If you do a search on the Internet for terms such as “verifying Paypal from Nigeria”, “using Paypal from Nigeria”, etc, you will get quite an amount of information, but little by little Paypal tightens its processes to make these more difficult. The method I use, which works for me, and has worked for over two years (I receive and pay from Paypal) is practically foolproof.

First, there is one thing you must never do on Paypal – log into your account from Nigeria! But, how else can I use my account? We’ll answer that later.

To open a Paypal account, you log on to paypal.com, fill a simple form and register. You will then need to link a source of funds to your account. Typically, this is your bank account and your credit (debit) card. This is a further check by Paypal because these latter two are domiciled in a place. Nigerians cannot do this.

I think this article will be shorter if I go straight to explaining what I did, and do.

1) I bought a VPS (Virtual Private Server) from a US-based hosting company. I pay $20 per month for this (paid with my Nigerian Visa/MasterCard). The VPS gives me static IP address located in the US. I installed Ubuntu on it with KDE (graphical interface). I installed NX client on my local system and with this I do a Remote Desktop into my US based VPS. It is from there I browse to Paypal website. To all intents and purposes, I am a US-based user.

I use Paypal for my business (International clients buy my online products with this), so the investment of $20 monthly is worth it.

2) I got a US-based friend to agree to use his name to open the Paypal account. So the account is in his name, the bank account is his and the credit cards are his. He did not need to give any of these financial details to me. I gave him the Paypal username and password and he entered these details himself. Of course we trust each other.

This does not stop me having the Paypal account in my business name. Paypal allows you to use add as business name a name different than that of the account.

3) Now whenever I need to use Paypal for anything, I ALWAYS log in using the VPS.

If Paypal notices an IP address from Nigeria logging into my account, they will block the account and notify ME that there has been a possible security breach by a third person on my account and they had to block it to protect ME! They will then require me to make direct contact with them to confirm ownership.

Now this is obviously a tricky step because I am in Nigeria. This is where my friend comes in handy again. He makes all the calls. But there is a way out of it. Buy MagicJack telephone service for $20 a year. It gives you a US telephone number and free calls to the US for one year. It works on your Internet connection. With this, you can place a call TO the US and FROM the US while remaining IN Nigeria.
With this type of access, I also enjoy the use of EBay (Unfortunately also owned by Paypal) to buy products from all over the world and send to Nigeria.

I admit this is such a laborious process, just to get to use Paypal. But I guess if you’re reading this to the end, you do need to get Paypal. Good luck!

What does the future portend?

Words are a vehicle for transporting ideas, the ideas serve to communicate values. The main point therefore is to communicate, even without speaking.

“The kidnappers collected all the money. If you value what they collected from us in terms of cash and other things, it is almost N5m. We had about N2.6m cash and the car which we bought not long ago valued at N2.4m was also stolen.”

These explanations constitute the first time that professional journalists are admitting in public to have collected bribes, in this case called “seminar bankroll” or “transport fare.” It is leading to a public gasp about the way journalists do their official business, and the legality of carrying such huge funds around in contravention of the Nigerian money laundering law. The men spent eight days in the den of the armed men in deep forests in the Southeast.

Saharareporters had reported that the journalists, in addition to participating in a National Executive Council meeting in Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom State two weeks ago, also visited Governor Godswill Akpabio and gave him a special award tagged ‘Responsive Governance Award’. It is unclear what Governor Akpabio, a notably corrupt governor, may have accomplished to win the “award,” or even whether the award was officially recognized by the NUJ bylaws. 


Akwa Ibom state government house sources told our reporters that each of the journalists that met with Akpabio received bribes aimed at silencing the media. One source told our reporters that in this particular circumstance, each of the visitors individually received N1 million while the national executives of the National Union of Journalists, including the president, Mr. Mohammed Garba, collected a N20 million gratification from Mr. Akpabio.

Our sources further said that the information leading to the kidnap of the journalists emanated from the state, specifically from persons who were aware that the governor had doled out the bribes to the journalists. That may explain why they were trailed as soon as they left Government House, one source said.

Recently, SaharaReporters trained its spotlight on the penchant of Governor Akpabio to use bribery as an instrument of official policy. In a high profile case meticulously covered by SaharaReporters, we demonstrated the “gift” of a bulletproof Mercedes Benz GL 450 SUV worth $500,000 to the chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri. After we concluded the exposé, Mr. Akpabio hired some journalists to visit the state to inspect the vehicle, which he claimed to be a “security vehicle” owned by the state.

Further investigation revealed that the license plate on the vehicle displayed by Akpabio was fake, as it belonged to a different car make which was licensed to one Chief C. Orizu, with an address of Adotolo Nnewi in Anambra State. A few days later the supplier of the vehicle, Charles Ahize, also issued a statement in The Sun newspaper in which he contradicted the governor’s claims, saying he had privately supplied the $500,000 bullet proof car to Mr. Akpabio. This confirmed the car was purchased privately, contrary to Akpabio’s alibi that it was owned by Akwa Ibom state.

The latest jamboree by the NUJ leadership to Akpabio and the granting of a dubious award to the governor was done quid pro quo to help him further evade scrutiny for his corrupt ways. It is instructive that the leaders of the NUJ in Lagos have studiously avoided investigating the source of the car Akpabio gave to the EFCC’s Waziri, even after the licence plate number found on the vehicle displayed by the governor bore a Lagos number. It is even more disturbing that the Lagos press has generally ignored the story even after the Lagos State government declared Governor Akpabio’s licence plate to have been forged.

It would be recalled that in one of our stories last April, following the invitation of selected journalists to Government House in an effort to discredit the Saharareporters story about Governor Akpabio’s bribe car, we wondered why none of the journalists asked any professional questions.

The possession of huge sums of cash by the journalists was already a source of rebuke by a police officer last week, who wondered aloud why the journalists had not traveled by air, given the long distance to their destination. But a Lagos-based journalist told SaharaReporters that his colleagues probably didn’t want others to notice when they returned to Lagos, as a quiet return from such trips enable them to hide the booty from politicians from such colleagues who may want a cut.

Also, a Lagos based attorney said that by their admission the journalists have contravened Section 1 of the Money Laundering legislation of 2004, which prohibits individuals from carrying more than N500,000 on them while companies may carry up to two million Naira.

The kidnapped journalists arrived Lagos yesterday in private jet chartered and paid for by the the Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi.

As expected the revelations by the freed journalists have gingered Nigerians on the Internet. Social networking sites, chatrooms and internet forums are buzzing with the story and people are pressing for answers.

As one commentator asked, “Is the Lagos press going to investigate the obvious issues in this case, or are they going to protect their colleagues? Where did the journalists and their driver get a whopping N3 million that they admitted the kidnappers took from them? Under what conditions does the NUJ go around the country to give “awards” to politicians, and what was Governor Akpabio’s award for?

Are members of the NUJ executive immune to the provisions of the Money Laundering Act of 2004?”
Another commentator asked, “Can journalists who collect transport fare and mobilization fees report a governor professionally? This is a big scandal,” he added.

—source: saharareporters.com—

Cyberspace is a world by itself, offering possibilities that the real world keeps in the hands of a few. In minutes you can self-publish; within minutes your views (good or bad; poor or profound) can be read by many. While this has power, it also means that mediocrity can rule the day. If you doubt this, visit an online Nigerian forum and see with what depth people treat issues that are raised. In other climes, when discussions arise, people give a thought to the matter at hand, and only intervene if they have something useful to contribute. Many Nigerians put in words because they think that they must make a comment, some times poor ones at that.

If nobody loves you in the real world, you can go to the Internet in search of respect and love, even if it means giving up your core beliefs and loyalties, in order not to offend your newly-found cyberfriends. If you are too lazy to fight your daily battles in the real world, go to the Internet to take in some “fresh” air – only an “air” that does not question your beliefs and takes you as you are – lazy, comfort-seeking, compromising and inconstant. The Internet community is understanding because nobody is serious there.

I know this is stretching it, but you do get my point. In fact, I stretch it so that those who differ may differ for good, after recognizing that there is in these sweeping comments some warning of dangers that lurk for every internet user