Abuja — "As far as (Amadu) Ali was concerned, the party that foisted Etteh on Nigeria had a duty to sustain her in position.... Anything is permissible, provided one knows not to go against the whims of the venerable PDP.

The party is supreme, not only over its members, but over all Nigerians. It is infallible, without blemish. None should easily forget that the party gave Nigeria a new father, a man who brought the country from the Dark Ages straight into the modern era. And he did it in eight years." -OKEY NDIBE

Doctor Okey Ndibe's column on the back page of the Tuesday edition of DAILY SUN, is a must read for every patriot. He never conceals his indignation about the way that the nation's political elite fritters away all the resources that could have been put to good use in the struggle against underdevelopment. But like all patriots, Doctor Ndibe could not hide his anger about the way that the contract scam in the House of Representatives, otherwise known as ETTEHGATE, has played out in recent weeks. That much was the thrust of his piece this week, "LET'S RIDICULE Nigeria"!. It is a tour-de-force, which reflects the rising anger in Nigeria, at the height of arrogance of h the PDP leadership and their estimation of what is good for Nigeria.

Over the past two or three weeks, the goings-on in the House of Representatives have been very central to discussions and analyses at meetings of our editorial board as well. It appeared to many of our members that despite the mantra about "due process", "rule of law" and "separation of powers", President Umaru Yar'Adua, seemed to be caught in the eye of a very controversial storm. He might genuinely abhor corruption as he has continued to claim, but he is also trying to be a good party-man, who believes in toeing the line of the party leadership. By extension, it is clear that those who shout about the party's interest are also bent on saving Obasanjo's skin, because Patricia Olubunmi Etteh had been foistered on our country in the first place, by former president Olusegun Obasanjo.

When Doctor Amadu Ali was reading the riot act to members of the PDP in the House of Representatives, he was merely underlining the mindset which has been dominant in that party over the past five years especially, that the PDP is far more important as a vehicle of the ambitions of its top leadership than the overall interest of the Nigerian people. Of course, as a party leader, Amadu Ali is a creation of the dictatorship of general Olusegun Obasanjo. He was invented by the despot and got his investiture as an enforcer, the hacker-in-chief and superintendent by Obasanjo. It has therefore been difficult for the man to re-invent himself, in the new setting under Umar Yar'Adua.

The process of re-invention has not been helped by the laid back attitude of President Umar Yar'Adua, and the moral baggage which he carries, arising directly from the legitimacy challenge which faces the man. In the circumstance, it is better to hold onto what you know, and for President Yar'Adua, it seems safer to stay within the sureties of the rigging contraption called the PDP. It's a classical case of the devil that you know! But in the process, President Umar Yar'Adua has also betrayed a fatal flaw of character. He has also shown us, that he would rather Nigeria suffers, than earn Obasanjo the opprobrium of disgrace, through working to ensure that the imposed speaker of the House of Representatives, Patricia Etteh, is eased out of office.

The way that the Etteh scandal has been handled speaks volumes about the political and moral capital which our rulers possess. It is clear that the dominant ethical posture is that of conquerors, who owe the conquered people of the country, nothing but contempt. Not only has party chairman, Dr. Amadu Ali spoken, without care about the moral and political damage which Etteh's sleaze has brought on the political system, the body language of Patricia Olubunmi Etteh also betrays the mindset of a woman of a lowly origin, desperate to protect a turf she occupies, not out of any form of competence, but the anointment of a godfather and party hacks.

To shore up the "sit-tight-at-all-cost" attitude, Patricia Olubunmi Etteh and her defenders in the House of Representatives have attempted to make a myth of the numbers that they allegedly control on the floor of the house, and in recent times, they have even lapped up Presisent Umar Yar'Adua's phrase about "due process". The irony is not last to Nigerians, that a morally damaged speaker of the House cannot plead numbers and she does not have the basis to sit in judgement in a case which involves her.

The chaps around Etteh deceive themselves that it is a fight against members of the "integrity group", while by extension, the PDP elements believe it is a crisis that has been engineered by the opposition parties, the ANPP and AC. Even if the leading lights of the "integrity Group" had exposed the sleaze to satisfy their own personal agenda, the truth is that the crisis has taken a life of its own. The two sides of the divide can no longer paper over the cracks, and the "revelations" about committee positions do not cut ices with the Nigerian people.

The Nigerian people are scandalised by the depth of insensitivity of the chaps who run our national institutions, especially the length they would go to indulge a taste for wasteful spending. The original source of surprise had been that a woman without any edifying levels of qualifications such as Patricia Olubunmi Etteh had been made speaker of the House of Representatives in the first place. It is equally true that leading members of the "Integrity Group" had been at the forefront of the packaging of Etteh's candidacy for Obasanjo's eventual imposition on the PDP and the House of representatives.

The mass democratic movement has taken the position that the PDP cannot turn this issue of corruption into another "family quarrel". They cannot toy with the determination of the Nigerian people to cut down the incredible amount of corruption which has contributed to the deep levels of underdevelopment which haunt our country. The Nigerian labour movement, the students' movement and other democratic organisations have put on notice the PDP, the members of the House of Representatives as well as Malam Umar Yar'Adua, that this country belongs to the people. This will no longer be the play ground of bandit elite. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh might be the anointed candidate of the disgraced despot Olusegun Obasanjo; she might need to be kept in office because the PDP apparatus does not lose face what so ever; Malam Umaru Yar'Adua might be hiding behind the fig leaf of "separation of powers" so as to continue to defend the interest of his mentor, Olusegun Obasanjo. But Etteh must go, because that is precisely what meets the interest of the Nigerian people. Those who would rather shred Nigeria's democratic process just to save Obasanjo's blushes must know that we do not share their awe of Obasanjo. Eight years of the most incompetent, uncaring, corrupt and kleptocratic rule, cured the Nigerian people of any delusions about the place of Olusegun Obasanjo in our nations' history. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh must be sacked, so that we can rub extra salt into the injuries of her mentor, the disgraced despot, Olusegun Obasanjo.

JOACHIM CHISSANO: A WORTHY SON OF Africa

"The (Mo Ibrahim) prize celebrates more than just good governance. It celebrates leadership. The ability to formulate a vision and to convince others of that vision; and the skill of giving courage to society to accept difficult changes in order to make possible a longer term aspiration for a better, fairer future." -KOFI ANAN (former UN scribe)

The quotation above comes from Kofi anan's statement which announced Joachim Chissano, the former president of Mozambique, as the first winner of the Mo Ibrahim prize for African leadership. All around the African continent, there was near unanimity, that a very worthy African has become the first winner of that huge award. Chissano will receive $5million over ten years and then $200,000 a year for life; with another $200,000 annually for "good causes" that he might espouse. When he was interviewed on the eve of this announcement, Joachim Chissano had replied modestly, that he would be able to live a better life, if he won the award.

I am very happy that a truly modest human being and a fighter for African liberation, that Chissano is, has won such a hefty "pension payment", Chissano was for many years a member of the leadership of FRELIMO, the party which led the struggle for national liberation in Mozambique, after 500 years of colonialism. For many years, he was the foreign affairs spokesman for the liberation movement, and with independence he became Mozambique's foreign minister, delighting the international diplomatic circuit with his mastery of languages: Kiswahili, Portuguese, French and English amongst others. When president Samora Machel was tragically killed in 1986, he became the president of a country that had been brought to its knees by a combination of a destabilization campaign financed by apartheid South Africa but implemented by bandits of RENAMO and an economic regime that had over centralised the economic system under the control of the party, when the newly liberated country lacked the necessary expertise.

It was to the credit of FRELIMO and President Joachim Chissano, that they were able to institute a national reconciliation process which allowed the RENAMO criminals to become a legitimate political party. The country was also nudged in the direction of new economic choices and a general domestic openness which allowed the relative flowering of Mozambiquan society. But what was remarkable, was that Chissano trusted the people and FRELIMO enough, to vacate power, even when he had the constitutional backing to run another term. I met Chissano in Bamako, Mali in June 2005, during the African Statesmen initiative, which brought a group of ex-African heads of state together to explore their experiences for continued relevance in the development process on the continent. Joachim Chissano came across as a man at peace with himself, and one who was sure that his place in history could not be doubted. There was so much calm dignity abut Chissano, which stands in sharp contrast with what one sees around some of the despot that litter the African continent. I think Joachim Chissano is a very good choice for the premier award of the Mo Ibrahim leadership. He represents the positive which Africa can and should replicate.

SOCIAL SECURITY: BACK ON THE FRONT BURNER

This week, the Nigerian social insurance trust fund (NSITF) has been hosting a national conference on social security. I had participated as one of the discussants of the papers presented at the well-attended conference. It is very significant, as labour activist, Issa Aremu, posited, that the NSITF had brought back to societal reckoning, the concept of the "social citizen". We must understand the conference against the background of the eight years of the Obasanjo regime. Those were years of neoliberal, market fundamentalism, which wrought so much destruction on the product base of our country.

Obasanjo was especially hostile to any mention of social security, according to many accounts, and the NSITF itself as an institution went through very difficult times under the kleptocratic despot, who wanted to sell everything Nigeria had to the so-called private sector, which offered him the opportunity to off-load Nigeria's national assets to himself and a select group of cronies. As society's pains deepened and poverty ravaged the land, the need for social security did not come within the purview of Obasanjo and his team of reformers, who were religiously committed to the dictates of the Washington institutions.

It is very clear today, that Nigeria needs a very comprehensive and all-encompassing national social security regime to be able to remove some of the stings associated with existence in a capitalist society. It is also a departure from the regime of market fundamentalism which thrived over the past eight years under Obasanjo. What is also clear is that the nation must be put to work, with the re-invigoration of the real sector of the economy, such as definitive perspectives in manufacturing and infrastructural development, especially power sector improvement and the creation of a nation-wide, modern railways system. I think it was very worthwhile that the NSITF has found the opportunity to remind us all, that the state has some basic obligations to the people of the country. That is what the state does, even in the most advanced capitalist countries. It is one of the features of our times that those who teach our ruling classes to impose regimes of market fundamentalism, an uncaring form of neoliberal capitalism on our country, ensure the legitimacy of their own states by being socially relevant to their own people.

Just as I was about to commence my intervention at the conference, I recollected a story in SUNDAY TRUST of 21st October, 2007. It was about a six month investigative report, by a Greek journalist, which studied the phenomenon of Nigerian girls taking part in the sex trade in Athens, Greece. The girls had appeared on the streets during the 2004 Olympics and had not left; a total of 50,000 girls, who the report said almost all came from the "Edo region" of Nigeria. The story added that they had been sold by members of their families into the sex trade, and had incurred 4000 Euros each, which they would repay, by selling their bodies on the streets of Athens. The report added further, that they had transited through Italy to get to Greece.

Over twelve years ago, I was supposed to go to Benin city to make a package for the BBC on the transportation of young girls into the sex trade in Italy. The story was that the sex trade had become the "social security" for many families in the Benin City area, and mothers would rejoice when the story gets back to them that their children had safely arrived in Italian cities to begin to prowl the streets. In fact, I was also told, that there was an entire neighbourhood of homes built from the proceeds of prowling the streets of Europe as sex slaves. Unfortunately, I did not get to do the report. But in 2003, as I transited in Cairo on my way to Baghdad, Iraq, I saw a group of twelve Nigerian girls with two minders, who were on the way to Rome, Italy. You guess right, they were all from Edo state!

The philosophy of removing the state from the provision of a social net for the Nigerian people has had a lot of negative consequen-ces on our lives since the middle of the nineteen eighties; consequences that destroy the capacity and legitimacy of the state; have strengthened non-state actors, and not always in positive directions. By its nature, the conditions engendered by these philosophies are very anti-intellectual, unpatriotic and authoritarian. They often lead to the expulsion of the best brains from the national scene to greener pastures abroad. If we look around, we shall see the amount of destruction which those who took away the state from our lives have brought on Nigerian society and its peoples. That is why I think it is praise worthy that discourse on social security has come back on the front burner in Nigeria.