Efandion, a rural community in Uromi Kingdom, Edo State, came alive recently when the MD/CEO of Intercontinental Distillers Ltd, Engr. Patrick Anegbe, an indigene of Efandion, constructed four blocks of classrooms, staff room and Principal’s office, equipped and donated same to the Edo State Government.

AMID lingering controversy over the proposed Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, which is currently before the National Assembly, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr Uche Nwokedi, has stated that there was nothing PIB would do for the country that the Petroleum Act was not doing at the moment. The senior lawyer who socialises in the Oil and Gas Law spoke at a media interactive session in Lagos. According to him, “What is it suppose to do that is not being done at present by the petroleum act?”

IT is amazing nowadays the extent many of us can get in the blatant defense of ‘wrong’ or even in selectively moralizing about what is ‘right’. We seem to have ‘good reasons’ always why the right thing must not be done and we are prepared every time to array our might in defense even of what is palpably wrong.
When we say that ‘justice in the land must be done no matter whose ox is gored’, what we actually mean is that ‘it matters really if it is our own ox that is gored’. And often we make such a show of righteous indignation about a particular ‘wrong’ you’d never imagine we could also be the worst culprits of that of that very offence.
Those who once strained logic to disprove the ‘good’ inherent in the equitable principle of zoning’, were the same ‘pious priests’ of ‘geo-ethnic balance’ who vilified Buhari for not applying ‘federal character’ even in the appointment of his ‘personal’ presidential aides.
Yet you dared not to remind them that Buhari’s predecessor, Jonathan had in fact only one Northerner of note –namely his Principal Secretary- on the entire team of his own ‘presidential aides’. Yet you are the ethnic bigot who dares to bring this up and not ‘they’ who choose selectively to moralize about it.
Many have cited Jonathan’s ethno-centric appointments as worthy grounds to justify retaliatory measure even from a Buhari that is not known to be malevolent. But it’ll not be right to ‘trade a Rolland for an Oliver’!
In fact my grouse with Jonathan’s appointments was not so much for its geo-ethnic bias as it was the gross non-performance of his appointees and the brazen theft of our common patrimony which they had made the very purpose of governance. Baring that it should not have mattered that they all came from a section of the country.
Commanding heights
Jonathan’s team of presidential aides was virtually an ‘all-South-South’ list mostly of his Ijaw kinsmen with some gratuitous sprinkling perhaps of a few South Easterners many of whom now feel obligated to play the vengeful mourners-in-chief of his lost bid for a second term.
I have not the vaguest recollection that those who cried wolf over Buhari’s so called ‘sectional’ list of presidential aides had batted an eyelid over Jonathan’s all-kith-kin-and-kindred list. The English call this ‘straining at a gnat and ignoring a whole camel’.
Nor do I have any recollection of other geo-political zones splitting any hairs about the Jonathan tribe-team, or even the subsequent list of heads of forty key federal parastatals and agencies in which there were only four South Westerners and one Northerner.
The rest were virtually all South-South –mostly of Ijaws extraction- put deliberately at the commanding heights of key economic sectors of the nation –ranging from the Sovereign Wealth Fund, Bank of Industry, Nigerian Content Development Agency, Consumer Protection Agency, Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Railway Corporation, Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation, Surveyor General of the Federation, Statistician General of the Federation, Accountant General of the Federation and Auditor General of the Federation and others like NIMET, NIMASA, PENCOM, FERMA, NCC, NAMA, NCAA, FAAN, NCAT, NAFDAC, FIIRO, NESREA, NEPZA, NOA, MDG, NAN, NERDC, SON, NBC, ITF and NUC .
And now an NNPC Board list of eight members comprising five Northerners and three Southerners is made a point of by these same ‘pious priest’ of geo-ethnic balance, as an example of how incorrigibly ‘sectional’ Buhari is in his appointments. But if memory serves right, the same NNPC Board of eight members under Jonathan had only one Northerner on it. Yet you are the ethnic bigot who dares to bring this up and not ‘they’ who choose selectively to moralize about it.
Many have cited Jonathan’s ethno-centric appointments as worthy grounds to justify retaliatory measure even from a Buhari that is not known to be malevolent.
But it’ll be right to ‘trade a Rolland for an Oliver’! In fact my grouse with Jonathan’s appointments was not so much for its geo-ethnic bias as it was the gross non-performance of his appointees and the brazen theft of our common patrimony which they had made the very purpose of governance. Barring that it should not have mattered that they all came from a section of the country.
Equal opportunity
In fact, the irony of it is that it is those who make a creed of de-campaigning ‘quota system’ as retrogressive that are also preaching ‘federal character’ now as the veritable political correctness. Yet ‘quota system’ seems to me to be more morally justifiable for the reason that it ensures ‘equal-opportunity’ in the allocation of an inadequate resource and thus requires to be equitably –if not equally- allocated.
Federal character merely imposes a ‘duty’ strictly of service via appointment into public office, and therefore must not necessarily be squared up equally or equitably by tribes and tongues, religion or geography.
May be it was necessary in the past for political appointees to double as ‘dogs of hunt’ for their respective sectional or ethnic enclaves. But that should not be necessary any longer, especially with a Buhari in office who has sufficiently proved in just a year that governance will no longer be ‘business as usual’.
Nonetheless even that psychogenic foreboding of being left out because your ‘personal person’ had not been brought near the ‘cake’ was largely misplaced because in reality politicians brought near the national cake did not necessarily return home to share the loot with their people. It had always been ‘to every dog its day, and to every dog its bone’!
The justice we must seek should be the ‘equitable’ distribution of national resources and not necessarily the ‘equal’ appointment of those who distribute the resources. By the way what does it matter if ethnic groups are ‘equally’ represented in appointments but do not get an ‘equitable’ share of the common resource? Or what does it matter if they are ‘un-equally’ represented but are ‘equitably’ provided for from the common resource?
In any case if we are to distribute appointments ‘equally’ instead of sharing resources ‘equitably’, how do we go about it? By regions? Why not by zones? -to achieve balance. By states? Why not by local governments? -to achieve spread. By ethnic groups?
Why not by tribes? -to create a sense of belonging! Why don’t we do it by household? -to achieve the utopia of ‘EQUALITY’ we always wanted! That way, in no time we’ll get to a higher state of nirvana when every individual can claim a right to be his own representative as a political appointee of government.

The wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari, wife of the Vice President, Mrs. Dolapo Osinbajo and leading African businessman, Tony Elumelu, have signed a call-to-action through partnership with The Tony Elumelu Foundation and Africa’s global bank, UBA, to empower Nigerian women.

AWKA—A two-storey building under construction at Ndiagu in Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State has collapsed, killing three workers.

ABUJA—THE National Executive Council, NEC, of Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, in the early hours of yesterday, suspended the strike it embarked on over unresolved issues in the oil and gas sector. The suspension by the leadership of PENGASSAN was made possible after the association, the government team and international oil companies, IOCs, entered into a compromise for the recall of over 2,000 sacked workers.

Organizers of the Maltina Teacher of the Year initiative have announced the extension of the deadline for submission of entries for the innovative award to Friday, 22nd July, 2016.

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC in Edo Central Senatorial Zone, Comrade Matthew Emiole has said that the reconciliation of Governor Adams Oshiomhole with his deputy, Dr. Pius Odubu was the tonic needed by the party to win the governorship election slated for 10, September 2016.

Lagos—The President of the African Public Relations Association, APRA and Managing Director of CMC Connect Group, Mr. Yomi Badejo-Okusanya, has received the Dr. Kwame Nkrumah Leadership Award of Integrity and Transparency as the Most Outstanding African Personality of the Year.

LAGOS—A 27-year-old man, Oluwayelu Adeboye, has been arrested by the Lagos State Task Force, for allegedly posing as a 2nd Lieutenant of the Nigerian Army.