The crazy journey to Lampedusa

The world is sounding appalled and thoroughly shocked by the gory news emanating from Libya about the return to the slave trade era ended centuries ago, which specifically reigned from the 16th to 19th centuries. As it was when it began, Africa is the butt of this inhuman trans-Atlantic trade, but now, there is an intra-African slavery. Jolt was the word when footages in media across the world detailed how Africans, desirous of escaping the harsh economies of the continent and seeking to flee through Libya, got trapped in a slave trade that reportedly has Libya as its base. One of the footages shown by the CNN and subsequent investigations conducted by it revealed that human beings were being sold as cheaply as $400. Apparently embarrassed by the currency that the report had generated, some leaders of Libya, France, Germany, Chad and Niger were reported to have agreed on a plan to ensure that migrants entrapped in Libyan detention camps were evacuated forthwith. Indeed, thousands were said to have died on the Mediterranean and hundreds more in the desert in the course of searching for economic liberation in Europe.

This writer was on an Ibadan, Oyo State radio programme during the week and listened to a woman who was tricked to Libya in her quest to seek greener pasture in Italy. She recounted stories of deaths on the route and how girls were subsequently turned into prostitution and instruments of cheap labour inside Moammar Gaddafi’s Libya.

Majority of immigrants who are transported on this slave trade route are youths who could not continue to bear the scorching economies of their countries. Why does Libya readily become the hub of this trans-Mediterranean trade? First is the extreme closeness of its West Coast to Europe’s southernmost outposts of Malta and the Italian island of Lampedusa. Indeed, it is just an about 350km journey. Because of this closeness, Libya is always a transit country for this migrants hoping to “hit it big” in Europe. It was reported that in 2009, just about two years before the assassination of Gaddafi in 2011, Libya had 2.5m migrants. Between 2003 and 2012, 180,425 migrants and asylum seekers were also recorded to have arrived Lampedusa and 16,445 arrived Malta. In 2015, a figure as high as 500,000 migrants were said to have escaped death on the Mediterranean.

Gaddafi was said to have encouraged this migration while he was the Libyan leader. The first was due to his pan-African ideology. He had thrown open his doors to fellow Africans and granted generous visa waivers to his black brothers. Second was the attractiveness of the Libyan economy under him which was about one of the best on the continent. This encouraged Africans whose leaders were running a converse of the good life provided by Gaddafi, to migrate en-masse into Libya. While alive, Gaddafi used to deploy his country’s proximity to Europe as a bargaining tool against the leaders of Europe who were forced to do deals with him. One of such was the 2008 Friendship Treaty he signed. In many of the treaties, his scoff against the European leaders seemed to be, ”yes I am a pariah but you must deal with me to curtail the influx of migrants into your country.”

However, since the killing of Gaddafi, the story has since changed in Libya, especially now that Libya is an ungoverned space which comprises revolutionary brigades called militias. The civil war of 2014 led to the collapse of the Libyan central government and now, in lawless Libya, there are pockets of governments with no one really in charge of the country. There is a high rate of insecurity today in Libya where peace and tranquility once reigned. In the process of the war, the route to Europe which seemed easy during the era of Gaddafi, has suddenly become complex due to the ongoing fighting. The migration pathways that were once unmanned are now serpentine as many land borders have been closed and there is a massive deployment of foreign armies at the borders. Now, trans-Mediterranean migration has become an extremely lucrative business even for Libyan neighbours who colluded with corrupt security officials to accentuate this illicit economy. While this transit is ongoing, African migrants are put in what they call “safe houses” for weeks and months so that they are not caught by security forces and they are always there for weeks without food, water or food, with some dying in the process. While on the Mediterranean, racial hierarchy is said to also come into place as the boats that carry them have Arabs sit on the upper decks where they are able to breathe fresh air, while sub-Saharan African travelers sit on the lower deck close to the boat engines where many suffocate to death.

How did Africa get to this sorry pass? It is the wanton leadership of successive governments and the radicalization of African youths into thinking that Europe is paved with gold and easy money, with a happy future that lies ahead of them. The migrants are also being misled by the Eldorado painted by the social media. President Muhammadu Buhari has expressed outrage at this African calamity and wondered how his people were being treated “like goats.” He has since ordered 242 Nigerian migrants out of Libya back to Nigeria. However, the question is, how has Buhari and his predecessors ensured the colossal deaths of these migrants and their preference of the harsh life of Europe to their fatherland? It is because cumulatively, the leaders of Nigeria, especially from the Second Republic, have ensured a Nigeria that is not worthy of existence. Many of the migrants were quoted to have said that they preferred to die on the Mediterranean than stay back to endure the harsh life in Nigeria. The blood of the dead would surely be on the heads of leaders who made Nigeria this difficult to live for its citizens.

Gwarzo’s SEC and Adeosun

Mounir Gwarzo, the suspended Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is one of the freshest issues being discussed in the polity today. He is held as the pendulum whose shift will determine where the Muhammadu Buhari government stands on its highly-burnished anti-corruption war. Let me joggle your memory a bit. Gwarzo hopped into the news a little over a week ago when Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, ordered his suspension over a chain of allegations that sounded like the Nigerian breakfast menu during the Goodluck Jonathan era.

The first was that, about four days after being appointed on May 26,2015, he allegedly requested to be paid the sum of N104.8 million as severance package over the expiration of his resignation of appointment as Executive Commissioner of same SEC. He had been for two years and four months.

The question that called for determination was, how could an appointee who served for such a meager number of years be entitled to severance pay? When the issue was referred to Mrs. Chukwuogor Frana, acting Head of the commission’s Legal Department for consideration and advice, she had reportedly advised against granting the request made by the exiting DG. Her main argument was that since Gwarzo was still in the employ of SEC, it was imprudent for him to collect a severance package. She also countered Gwarzo’s quest for the pay because he merely resigned from SEC as Executive Commissioner to assume the role of DG in the same commission, maintaining that “resignation and retirement” appeared a lien against collection of severance pay in the circumstances. You will agree with me that even an ordinary man on the street’s interpretation of the words assumes that resignation contemplates/assumes that the beneficiary had completed his or her service and had thus been completely disengaged from the commission. However, Gwarzo wangled his way through and collected the severance allowance.

Other allegations have also been detailed against him in the course of holding the position of Director General of SEC, chief among which is the allegation of sleaze in the purchase of cars for the commission which runs into millions of Naira. Other allegation was one which involved contract procurement. The minister was said to have been inundated with another round of allegations of Gwarzo cornering SEC contracts for himself, family and other directors of the commission.

With the tome of allegations hanging on the former DG’s head, only an irresponsible organization would sit akimbo and allow this to go on. The only organizational pattern known to accountable society is for the man on whose head dangled this cache of allegations to stand aside and allow a proper investigation to be conducted into them. To make things easier, virtually all these allegations are easy to prove. The identities of the companies that were alleged to have been used for the SEC contracts could be confirmed from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) which would determine who the real directors are.

For all you care, at the end of the probe panel which the minister has ordered, Gwarzo could be acquitted of all the allegations and returned to his seat. Bringing into the equation a very unrelated matter where Gwarzo alleged that he was being which-hunted because he refused a “verbal” order from the minister to discontinue actions on OANDO on can be likened to what lawyers call hearsay which is not a material fact in the allegations against him. In any case, the new Acting DG of SEC has promised to go ahead with ongoing actions against OANDO.

Perhaps, in Gwarzo, this administration can prove its critics wrong that it had merely concentrated on investigating former administration officials and neglected to probe its own current officials who are alleged to be embroiled in huge sleaze. While the reported attempt of the Senate to probe the ongoing activities at SEC is commended, Nigerians are watching. Hope the Senate is not again about to queue behind an obvious national iniquity?

Idiocy and bailout fund

Bailout funds to the 36 states have attracted so many commentaries. They have also provoked salient issues that tug at the core of the Nigerian state. Chief of these are corruption and practice of federalism in Nigeria. A few weeks ago, the Federal Government again approved the sum of N28 billion to the states, which is to be shared N800 million each. This Naira rain didn’t come as a surprise as President Muhammadu Buhari had expressed disgust that governors were diverting bailout funds earlier collected, asking how they slept with the jarring cries of unpaid workers and pensioners.

Recently, the discourse was further deepened when the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum and Governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Abdulaziz Yari, deplored the Federal Government’s withholding of the remaining $3.4 billion (approximately N1.2 trillion) predicated on the fraud that dogged the earlier release of N522.74 billion.

It is good that Yari now realizes that Nigeria is not practicing true federalism due to the withholding of this fund. Of a truth, in a true federal practice, what belongs to the autonomous states/regions should accrue to them without let. However, same Yari should know that state governors have turned the bailout funds into private patrimony, an unprecedented heist in the history of Nigeria. This has numbed the call for the true practice of federalism as it pertains to these accruing funds.

Methinks Nigerians would not mind another violation of the tenets of federalism if the Federal Government tarries awhile in releasing the funds to states, so that due diligence could be conducted on previously collected funds. Come to think of it, how come Yari was not previously cross with the violation of federalism which ensures that VAT collected in Lagos is paid to hypocritical “liquor-phobic” states of the North?

Lessons from Joke Silva

Respected actress, Joke Silva-Jacobs stunned the world recently by revealing that she was an adopted child of the Silva family. According to her, she was adopted decades ago from a foster home by reputable lawyer and late Bobajiro of Lagos, Chief E. A. Silva and wife, Dr. Abimbola, a home which was then run by the Red Cross in Lagos. The story of the actress rebounds on Nigerians where such humility she exhibited had literally gone off the window, to be replaced by a cold-bloodedness that has no place for the other person.

This writer was not surprised at the candour of Mrs. Silva-Jacobs. She had bent over backwards in 1988, at a time when she had become a common feature in many homes, to pick up an undergraduate course in the department of English, University of Lagos. Attending classes with small urchins like this writer who happened to have been her classmate, lectures conducted by now Professors Okoro, Erubantine, Dr. Babalola and Karen King-Aribisala, only those who recognized her face then would realize that her classmates were lucky to have sat in same room with such a literary phenomenon.

In Joke-Silva’s story should be a lesson to Nigerians. Let us return to the old time when our constituency was not our wife/husband, children alone. Let us pick all over again our associational lives and lifestyles and indeed the concept and philosophy of being our brother’s keeper which we only glorify today by mouth when we read the holy writs.