That Molue In the Sky-Dele Momodu's Exposé:

Fellow Nigerians, where and how do I begin this horrible epistle? Only last week, on this same page, I wrote about two unfortunate deaths which had occurred within days apart. The first was the cold-blooded murder of one of Africa’s greatest poets, Professor Kofi Awoonor, in the hands of some trigger-happy Somali terrorists, at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. The second was that of a much younger person, Bunmi Adedayo, who was airlifted out of Nigeria after some health complications but lost the battle for his life.


While both deaths were painful and unbearable, Bunmi’s case was sadder for a simple reason. He was the only child of his parents, the owners of the famous Tastee Fried Chicken in Lagos.

I had spent a chunky part of last Saturday and Sunday with the Adedayos in their home and could feel how difficult it was grappling and reconciling with the reality of the monumental tragedy that befell their great family. The mum was inconsolable as she clutched and hugged her son’s picture as a comforter.
His young wife, Yemisi, just stared on into oblivion as if in a dream world. Their Daddy, Uncle Kunle tried to put on a brave and bold face while bottling up his combustive emotion. I doubt if their little kids realised what the crowd was doing around, disturbing their peace. Life was indeed cruel and brutish. There are things that are just beyond man’s mere comprehension.

We engaged in marathon prayers as group after group of clergymen, family and friends, trooped in to commiserate with a completely devastated Adedayo family. Their pain was palpable even as the hordes of sympathisers tried to help reduce the heavy burden. The faces were naturally and generally forlorn. No one would ever wish for such a gathering on a regular basis. It was beyond description.

Mrs Yinka Adedayo is one of my heroes. Here was a lady who built a super-brand from zero. I had interacted with her and saw the perfectionist she is. Everything she touched was flawless. Her food remains impeccable and tasteful after so many years in the delicate business. Bunmi was her baby and second husband. He was a great and energetic partner in their family empire. The troika made a perfect match and with their powerful team took Nigeria by storm with products of international standards.

Ironically, both Kofi Awoonor and Bunmi Adedayo’s funeral rites climaxed on Thursday, October 3, 2013 in Accra and Lagos respectively. As if I had a premonition of a bigger tragedy to come, I had requested my friends on social media to seek prayers for Nigeria just the night before. I even attached a picture of me and the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, my spiritual father, to the broadcast. I had been feeling awkward since Monday afternoon but didn’t understand why my spirit was so low.

My initial reaction was that I was getting too worked up over Nigeria. As a regular traveller, I always felt the pain of seeing smaller countries with little resources marching forward slowly but steadily. I had spent the last three weeks in seven countries, six of them in Africa. I am constantly saddened that my own country has become a nation of anything goes where we accept every nonsense thrown at us as if we are victims of mass hypnotism. As far as I am concerned, there is no reason whatsoever for our abject backwardness in many spheres of life. There is nothing needed to make us great as a nation that God did not give us in excess.

If it is human beings, we have the largest black population on earth and control about a quarter of it. If it is brains, our medulla oblongata is second to none. That is why an average Nigeria is hyperactive and action-packed like a Chinese movie. If it is education, we are amongst the most brilliant human beings on the surface of the earth. There is no major institution of learning in the world where you won’t find Nigerians glowing with pride and unlimited swagger like Globacom.

If it is mineral resources, we are richly blessed with a very fertile land overflowing with milk and honey. If it is exposure to global outlook and perspectives, Nigerians are world travellers. We know the best and most exotic locations. We love, appreciate and enjoy the good things of life. We know the value and understand the efficacy of good spending and would spare no effort and money to acquire quality products. How come we’ve allowed ourselves to be banished to this squalid existence in our own homeland?

I was becoming depressed in particular because I looked around and realised that all those who used to lead us in battle are either dead or getting tired and frustrated by a people without new heroes. Aminu Kano, a friend of the lumpen proletariat, was long gone. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti had composed endless songs about our catalogue of woes without ever catching a glimpse of his dream Nigeria. Tai Solarin, the socialist, educationist, columnist and critic, had bowed to what was believed to be a blistering attack of asthma.

Gani Fawehinmi, the only Senior Advocate of the Masses, long before earning Senior Advocate of Nigeria, and his comrade-at-arms, Beekololari Ransome-Kuti, had both succumbed to the superior and dictatorial power of cancer. Moshood Abiola had died in solitary confinement without even knowing that earlier his wife, Kudirat, had been assassinated on the street of Lagos. Chinua Achebe had written everything that was wrong with Nigeria until he gave up and wrote about us in the past tense, concluding “there was a country”. I doubt if many of our youths remember most of these icons.

More disheartening for me was our dangerous slide into anarchy deliberately engendered by our politicians through the amplification of religious bigotry and ethnic jingoism. Poverty and ignorance are also combining perfectly to rob many of our citizens of their intelligence. Never in my 53 years as a proud Nigerian had I seen us degenerate to this abysmal level. Every argument is now punctuated with: “you hate the President,” “the President did not create the problems,” “Rome was not built in a day,” and other such unnecessary jargon.

Why should I hate the President? Where were these new loyalists when Nigerians from different parts of the country spilled out like locusts onto the streets to drum up support for the same President on whose behalf they are now throwing darts and dirt at anyone and everyone who dares to ask questions about how we are being misgoverned? True, the President did not create the problems, but he promised to solve them. And even if Rome was not built in a day, Rome did not crawl forever. If it did, like we are doing today, there would have been no Roman Empire. So let’s get these points straight and move to the meat of my sermon today.

For the past three weeks, I’ve been tweeting ceaselessly about our scandalous Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos. Again, the voltrons, as we call them on Twitter, have suggested that I don’t seem to like Princess Stella Oduah. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Let me publicly confess a true admiration for women in power. Without being patronising, I believe they are better managers most times and look forward to a Nigerian lady becoming President, Vice President, Governor, and so on. We shall revisit this some other day.

Back to the Lagos airport, the Aviation Minister should kindly take my advice in good faith, as that of someone who wants her to succeed. I have my reasons for supporting her. If she cleans up the mess at that airport, I will be a major beneficiary as someone who lives practically in the sky. That airport as it is right now is the worst public relations showpiece for Nigeria. Light goes off intermittently on a daily basis. Only on Friday, the power outage threw the entire airport into panic and virtual standstill. People were trapped in the lifts. Airline offices could not function. People now drag fans to work. The putrid smell oozing out of the washrooms welcome you as you walk towards the arrival hall. The roofs leak in torrents when it rains. The conveyor belts cough sometimes like victims of tuberculosis. I was told the new ones are waiting to be commissioned before being put to regular use. If true, we have to stop this archaic culture.

Ghana installed three brand new conveyor belts in a matter of weeks without indulging in frivolous ceremonies. It is the duty of government to perform and deliver it is not a favour or privilege. We boarded a flight last week after walking through a totally dark bridge. There were women carrying babies. What if they tripped and fell? The escalators are erratic and epileptic. I eavesdropped a foreign passenger complain to his friend how he fell flat on his back on his last trip to Lagos. Just imagine an airport without proper and easily accessible car parks. The list of shortcomings is long and almost endless.

I can supply all these facts with pictures. The Minister has done well but should not be deceived by the adulation of those pretending to love her. It is in the character of acolytes to con men and women of power for pecuniary gains. One major problem is the bureaucracy that permeates all section of that airport. There are too many fat cats contending for power and perks. They play God with people’s lives and goods. At the cargo section, they lock up the place at will without any concern for deliveries that are perishable. The different agencies quarrel like babies and sometimes resort to fisticuffs. Someone needs to bring sanity to our aviation sector. There is too much politicking at the expense of performance, security and above all, safety.

The Minister has the capacity to turn the ugly situation around for good. An airport under perpetual renovation is a waste of time and resources. Lagos deserves the services of competent and ambitious contractors. I’m even wondering why such an important gateway to Nigeria has not been concessioned. Say what you will, the Murtala Mohammed 2 is the sanest airport around. The grip of government on aviation needs to be liberalised. Nothing has worked well since Dr Kema Chikwe cleaned up that sector. Princess Stella has shown sufficient promise generally and must devote more attention to making a success of Lagos in particular. That is our flagship Airport.

The latest plane crash has brought back attention to the fears I have expressed over time. Apart from cleaning up the airports, emphasis must be given to air safety. The airlines need to be properly streamlined and regulated. Cosmetic regulations which have no impact on aircraft safety are not the solution. Neither are high costs of using our airports which only supposedly enrich the Government but probably end up in the pockets of greedy officials. If it is expensive to operate in Nigeria, (Nigerian airports are reputedly the most expensive to operate from in the world!) then one can expect our airlines to cut corners in order to survive.

This may be why it is alleged that some of these airlines fly aircrafts with various degrees of deformities. If airlines cannot fix faulty seats that are very visible and obvious, I often wonder if they would service the engines that are hidden and more expensive to maintain.

I will like the National Assembly and the media to take more active interest in the aviation industry before it consumes more innocent souls. Some of these gory deaths are preventable. I still refuse to believe that I have again lost good friends in this latest crash. Deji Falae was too close to me. He was one of the young guys that gave me hope in the future of Nigeria. He worked tirelessly and wanted to excel without relying on the success of his great dad, Chief Olu Falae. A silent achiever, he was stylish, charming, witty, intelligent and imbued with an unusual humility. He was a veritable learned Gentleman.

We all knew the man who brought uncommon panache to matters of death and burial, Tunji Okusanya, the Chief Executive Officer of MIC Funeral Home. His passion was awesome. He perfected the art of making death solemn but nevertheless refined and less painful. He had a dream to hand over the business to his look-alike son, Olatunji just as his own father had done for him. Unfortunately, they both died in that horrific inferno. I wept as I fished out the pictures I took with father and son at a society wedding about four years ago.

I will continue to live in denial that the accident did not happen and I have only been sleeping. Hopefully, I will wake up from this nightmare. That is a dream, but my prayer is, ‘never again O Lord’. We must kill the Molue we seem to fly only by faith before it endangers more lives.

May their souls, and that of other victims, rest in perfect peace. Amen.

Dele Momodu 

My Trillion Naira Letter To President Jonathan By Dele Momodu.

Your Excellency, I’m compelled to write you again today since I don’t have any other form of access to deliver this to you. I’m also not sure you read the other open letters I have written to you, especially ‘My Kobo Advise to Mr President’. If you did I hope that you digested the content and pondered on them as I expected you would. My doubts are due to your continued actions.

You must be wondering why I have chosen the present title. The reason is not far-fetched. Since my Kobo advice seems not to have resonated with you and your aides, and our budgets are now quoted in trillions, this title is ostensibly symbolic and truly emblematic of our latest craze and propensity for mentioning figures that most calculators won’t be able to evaluate.

The decision to write this latest epistle was reached after watching the bizarre movie that was acted by your fellow party men and produced by very senior directors of your seemingly formidable political organisation. Let me confess that no scriptwriter would have visualised such melodrama on any regular day. If anyone had ever suggested that such a humiliating scenario would occur we would have dismissed it as a product of a cruel imagination or lunacy. But we saw this one before our very eyes and became stupefied to say the least.

Let me assure you, Sir that it is in the nature of politics and politicians for such brickbats to occur. We must thank God for little mercies because we are lucky in these parts that citizens don’t pelt their leaders with rotten eggs and juicy tomatoes. You would remember that someone once threw shoes, javelin-like, at President George Bush during a Press conference and his face could have been badly bruised and readily bloodied but for the fact that his reflexes were superbly efficient and automatically responsive.

It is for this reason that I wish you can put the matter behind you as quickly as possible and forgive even if you cannot forget. It is sad that you apparently did not envisage the tragedy that was going to befall your party and tear your members asunder. Those of us on the side-lines knew it was a matter of time before the implosion would ignite and ricochet across the land like an Iraqi bomb. The collapse of a party that had held Nigeria by the jugular for the past 14 years was destined to carry some collateral damage with it.

If you and your aides were politically savvy, you probably would have managed the situation better. And if the truth must be told, most of strategists you parade are nothing but tyros who know little or nothing about the complexities that make up Nigeria. They sit in their gilded cage of Aso Rock and forget you are inhabitants of the place today through the sheer trickery of providence and convoluted collaboration of godfathers.

If your kitchen cabinet understood the rudiments of politics, they would have hopefully averted this monumental disaster by avoiding a war they were bound to lose before it even started. They allowed you to be messed up and tossed around due to their gross incompetence and pomposity. Your rabid supporters are behaving like the peacock or to be more precise like the soldiers of fortune that most political jobbers are often are in Nigeria. Pity is they still can see the handwriting on the wall nor decipher the code of grand conspiracy that is so palpable. They are gloating all over the place and deluding themselves about the power of life and death which you wield as the Nigerian President. But a power misused is a power wasted. Reality is not all wars are won through the use of force or violence.

I will now go ahead to highlight some of the terminal mistakes made by your embattled camp and juxtapose with what I consider to be the practical solutions to these humongous problems. Whether we like former President Olusegun Obasanjo or not he’s a man who truly believes in the unity of Nigeria. I cannot but be very charitable to him on this occasion. As a man who played a crucial role during the Nigerian civil war, I believe this has made him permanently paranoid and terminally neurotic about the likelihood of Nigeria ever breaking up in his lifetime or even thereafter. Obasanjo was therefore the one man God used to make it possible for an Ijawman to ultimately become the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.

It is no longer relevant or important to us if Obasanjo did what he did genuinely out of love for the so-called minorities to have a chance or for very personal and selfish reasons. Even if his decision to install as President and Vice President a sickly Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua and a taciturn Dr Goodluck Jonathan is turning dangerously pyrrhic, credit must still go to Baba Iyabo that he fulfilled all righteousness by handing power to you through the backdoor, thus empowering you to grab the chicken that lays the golden eggs that we all savour today. The essence of this unusual but objective hagiography on Obasanjo today is that you should have done everything humanly possible to tolerate and accommodate his human foibles and overt idiosyncrasies.

The costliest mistake you ever made was to have allowed your relationship with a veteran of many wars to degenerate to the level fisticuffs or what the Yoruba call ‘roforofo’. It is a battle you can’t afford to fight because you have no chance of winning it at the end of the day. Please try and tell those illusionists who typically swarm around the corridors of power like locusts that if they have forgotten how God brought you to the pinnacle of the temple, your memory and gratitude are intact. And that you will never encourage Lucifer to send you on a kamikaze dive.

The second mistake was the manner your acolytes exposed your second term bid prematurely. It was totally unnecessary. As an African, you must be aware of the adage that a wise man always keeps the name of his impending baby to himself until after his wife delivers. The manner they’ve been threatening hellfire and brimstone if you don’t secure a second term has been very rude, crude and outlandishly provocative. No Jupiter can stop you from running if you so desire and eventually decide to try your luck again. It is true that you promised to serve only one term but it is still entirely your privilege and prerogative to change your mind. That can’t be a crime because we all do it most of the time. It is also your Constitutional right and you should not have been lured into dissipating some badly-needed energy on useless rigmarole and semantics.

Sir, if I were you I would have concentrated rigidly and passionately on delivering the dividends of democracy by making life better for the generality of Nigerians. Your greatest armour against real and imagined enemies is performance. If you can make conscious effort to curb the wasteful ostentation and the obsession for pomp and pageantry ascribed to your office I’m certain even your vociferous critics would become your assiduous fanatics. What you have advertently done by abandoning governance on the altar of pecuniary politics is to allow your common enemies to gang-up and have enough time to mobilise their war-chest, assemble their arsenal and fire their long-range missiles.

The third mistake is the commonest in all wars known to mankind. You opened up your flanks by fighting too many people on too many fronts. Only a poor General does that. In the haste to crush the rebellion of some of your former foot-soldiers as well as your implacable enemies, you got sucked in because you were stupendously engaged in too many directions. This was bound to take its toll on you and your combatants. Coupled with that was the obvious fact that you underrated your opponents. That is usually a regrettable strategy in guerrilla warfare.

It should have been clear to you that you had to employ a new, even if temporary, modus operandi once the Governors loyal to you were soundly and roundly beaten by the Amaechi supporters. If I were you Sir, I would have made a tactical withdrawal by sticking to the lie that I knew nothing about the Nigeria Governors Forum crisis and maintain my straight poker face. I would have reassessed the efficacy of those who sold the dummy that all was well but could not deliver the goods after fallen jejunely for the scam of collecting some fake signatures. What I expected you to do was to accept the temporary defeat with equanimity and invite Rotimi Amaechi into a room and embrace him warts and all.  You seemed to have done this at Port Harcourt Airport and expected you build on that window of opportunity. I was one of those who saluted your statesmanship on that occasion but was sorely disappointed when you allowed the opportunists to send you back to the trenches.

I still don’t know who subsequently persuaded you to fall for the self-immolating decision to continue to recognise the Jang faction when it was obvious the man lost the election fair and square. That was the moment you lost all moral authority and rights by allowing some political adventurers to drag you down the depths of their abject pettiness. You should have borrowed a leaf from Obasanjo’s experience with the once powerful Atiku Abubakar who controlled the Governors and practically brought the former President on his knees begging for support. As a veteran soldier, Obasanjo was sufficiently trained in the art and science of tactical retreat.  The crafty General knows that he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.

The example of Obasanjo’s strategic cowardice was very instructive and opulently didactic. As he told everyone who cared to listen: what Atiku did was tantamount to pulling out a loaded gun and pointing it at his head. He knew it was no use arguing with a man who could pull the trigger in a mere matter of seconds. The only option left was to use the power of native intelligence and foxiness by persuading the man not to commit premeditated murder. Once Atiku made the error of pitying his supposed prey and showing mercy, he became a dead man walking himself. Same goes for James Ibori who walked into a similar trap.

Sir, though your case is slightly different it still bears some resemblance to that of Obasanjo. Your infantry men wasted all your bullets without catching an antelope not to talk of capturing elephants, the king of the forests. You should have wooed Amaechi to your side at all cost because he was apparently equal to all your own combined forces. A hunter should always be proud of a brave son. You can do with a few guys like that in the days of tribulation. It is noteworthy that Governors control their states. How do you hope to secure your second term ambition if you control less than half of the states in the country? What is more, Amaechi is capable of delivering one of the largest votes to you from Rivers State or conversely waste most of it if he decides to be vengeful.

Finally, I wish to assure you Sir that it is not an act of timidity to seek peace and tranquillity in a country where everything seems to be going haywire. Whosoever tells you to unleash terror and mayhem on your enemies is not a true friend. Elections are won as a game of figures. The candidate who is able to attract the largest number of voters becomes electable. Rigging may never work like it used to due to several developments in the world. The New Media, otherwise known as Social Media, is breaking down walls of intimidation and oppression. Telephony and the internet combined have become more lethal than most conventional weapons. At the touch of buttons, many wonders can instantly unfold and make it possible to monitor occurrences in distant places. There is also the human factor, like the case of that Kwara man who rejected the fake election that awarded him victory when he knew in his heart that he lost. Mass education is beginning to change how we do many things even if slowly.

Your best bet is to stay on the path of honour, peace, equity, justice and unimpeachable truth. God has been too kind to you. Even if you return to your village today, you have enjoyed what no one has ever attained before which is being permanently in power and high positions since coming into relevance and prominence from relative obscurity. There is nothing more to add. If you work harder on a few of the content of your Transformation Agenda, you may easily end up as a hero. Getting a second term if you stay lucky will then be icing on your national cake. You don’t need all this stress and blackmail in the name of seeking what is not necessarily glorious. I read somewhere that a man is powerful when he controls power and powerless when power controls him. The choice is yours.

Sir, permit me to conclude with a powerful Yoruba proverb: when we are praying not to be put to shame but the prayer is not instantly answered we should start praying that God should at least keep us alive.

This is my story. This is my song.                    

Dele Momodu