Waking up this morning, I remember my former boss, Bayo Onanuga. I will forever be grateful to him for absorbing me as a green horn, to work with him at The News. And not to him alone, but his erudite colleagues in the management team of the magazine, like Dapo Olorunyomi, now CEO, of Premium Times; Senator Babafemi Ojudu (now Special Adviser to President Buhari on Political matters); Kunle Ajibade (still with TheNews); Seye Kehinde, owner of City People Magazine; Idowu Obasa, our General Manager then, and of course one Kabir or so, who I never met throughout my days with the magazine.
Remembering Bayo Onanuga today, is not only for the tradition of risking the hire of a green horn like me in such a dynamic media organisation, but more for some key principles with which we were moulded then as raw clay.
Bayo taught me to always do my job with my conscience well guarded.Once upon a time, a very close friend of his who operated a travel agency had issue with Nigeria Airways. The matter was heading for the court and the man wanted to use his closeness to the Managing Director of the radical publication, to sell his side of the story to the world.
The man had written the story personally, with a very loud headline akin to calling the management of Nigeria Airways a fraud. Bayo called me and handed the story over to me to investigate and work on. My discovery was directly opposite the contents of the story I got from my boss. I decided to jettison the whole story altogether, until after about a month, when my MD (Bayo) called me to know why the story of his friend had not been published. I told him, “Oga my investigation brought many facts against your friends”.
I told him the man belonged to a syndicate of travel agents who had consistently defrauded Nigeria Airways. “Really?” Bayo exclaimed. “Go and publish your findings, we can’t mortgage our conscience because of any friends”. I stormed the newsroom to put my story together for AMNews which was a daily publication of our organisation. Trust me, the headline was louder: “Fraudulent Agencies Dupe Airways”
Whether Bayo and the man still continued as friends, I can’t tell. The conscience of men is nurtured by truth.
I grew up professionally by this principle which is today deeper in me than the thickness of my skin. It is a central and fundamental principle of journalism as a profession, which was probably why The Guardian Newspaper has its motto as: “Conscience Nurtured by Truth.”
I was not privileged to watch live, the TVC interview of the Director General, Media and Publicity to Kogi State governor, Kingsley Fanwo.
Someone just forwarded a clip of that assemblage of lies to me last night, and I have not ceased to wonder why a journalist like Fanwo would go on that ignominious errand, leaving his conscience bare.
At a point, I began to think that the Fanwo on the screen was cloned or may be a robot. I did not see any resemblance of someone who had been within the four walls of a newsroom.
Any man who calls what we have in Kogi State today as a ‘monumental success’ should have either his head examined or his conscience taken to the laundry or even both.
Fanwo called this hunger-ridden state a ‘monumental success’. How he came at the conclusion that, what is happening today is the change that people are yearning for, remains dumbfounding.Among the epileptic lies of Fanwo was that the state government, in this sense of it, is not owing workers any salary; that Judiciary workers are owed only six months; that the local government operates autonomously, having full financial independence; that, this Dishonourable Assembly is independent of the Executive.
I will come back to each of these lies one after the other.
It is obvious Kingsley Fanwo did not rehearse his lies well before he left Lokoja for TVC in Lagos, or before entering the studio to meet Ayo. His eloquence in the studio was the best show of contradiction I have watched in a lifetime.
To start with, he said the administration of Governor Yahaya Bello is a silent achiever, who does not believe in the commissioning of projects. Yet, he could not mention one project that the administration has completed in three years.
The best he reeled out (which are even contestable) are at various percentages of completion. So why not just come out to tell the word that his projects are ongoing?
It is dubious to say he does not believe in the fanfare of projects commissioning, when we were all witness to his deceptive commissioning of the already commissioned project of his predecessors, some of which were executed and commissioned when the governor was probably in primary or secondary school.Another contradiction is the self ego thrust on the unending staff verification exercise, which Fanwo claimed led to the elimination of thousands of highly paid ghosts, saving the state of monthly drain of billions of naira. He however forgot to imagine the big question that singular mouth apollo will bring to people’s mind. How were his so-called “corrupt” predecessors, who were paying so much to ghosts still able to pay salary that Bello could not pay after eliminating the ghosts? Fanwo need to return to TVC and tell the world, where the money is going. We need to know, maybe this administration only substituted the ghosts with bigger ones.
Another contradiction, Fanwo said the government is a continuum, ( true talk) but how do we explain the refusal of their government to pay for services rendered to the government before he came to office, just because the services were rendered to PDP government? It is on that same strength that Fanwo posited that the government of Governor Bello is not owing salary because it met five months arrears when it assumed office.
I wish to correct Fanwo, Wada government was owing workers only two months when this administration came in. Wada deliberately refused, to his own discredit anyway, to pay the months that followed his loss at the poll.
I remember the issue of salary that was prevalent during Wada was the contention on the non payment of the approved minimum wage at the Local Government.
If the Bello’s administration is insisting on not taking responsibility on the liabilities of past administration, it should cover its face with both hands for collecting the financial assets that the past administration worked for, like Paris Club refund and several billions of naira this government received from the Federal Government as refund on federal roads constructed by past administrations.
Why can’t Bello pay the debt he met from the money he met?
Closely related to this is his lie on the autonomy of the local government. Does Kingsley still remember the meaning of autonomy? Kogi State is the only state where local government has been manned by governor’s appointees for a whole term of almost four years. And we know that the subvention of the local government is managed by the governor.
I had a personal experience with a particular local government in Kogi West. I did a media job for the local government, the payment was approved before Governor Bello brought in his mal-administrators. The total sum for the job is a little less than half a million naira. Such a little sum cannot be paid by the local government because the governor must approve it first. And the governor has refused to take responsibility for liabilities of past governments. He is only interested in their assets. At a point someone disclosed to me, that whenever the governor wants to pay local governments, he usually sends a template to the administrators spelling out how to utilise same. And it is normally for payment of salary arrears in very funny percentages. That is Fanwo’s definition of autonomy.
On security challenges, I don’t want to play ‘foul’ like Fanwo. I will give it to Bello that he did credibly well until the months preceding the last elections when, the proliferation of firearms procured for election purposes took over the state. Today, cases of armed robbery and kidnapping is more pronounced than it was four years ago.
It is in the news that on daily basis, between 8-14 cases of kidnap are recorded on Kabba-Obajana-Lokoja road. People in fake army uniforms armed with Ak-47 and pump-action, a reminder of those used to prosecute election violence across the state recently, carry out these dastardly acts.
Fanwo’s Kogi State is the same state where a Local Government administrator allegedly hung a pump-action on his shoulder, parading polling booths. Ours is surely an abnormal state. So, before Fanwo hails this administration on security, he should remember that the boys they kitted are back on our roads.
Where Fanwo played another foul was on the independence of the legislature. Perhaps he said that to impress Ayo the anchor of the programme ‘Stand Points’, We in Kogi know the truth. Even Ayo was not deceived. He was only playing along. A case of “Oba irepe, maa tan mi kin maa tan e”.
Why did Fanwo not mention one decision the legislature has taken against the interest of the executive in the last three years? Is it the same legislature that we all know sleeps in the left pocket of the governor? Could Fanwo probably be talking of the legislative arm where the governor determines who holds what office? Is it the same legislature that is made to line-up like kindergarten school boys for table payment by the governor’s men?
If that is the kind of autonomy Bello wants for Kogi judiciary, that is generating the ongoing imbroglios, I will encourage the Kogi Judiciary not to give in.
In Kogi today, we have two arms of government: the Judiciary and the reckless Executive. The Judiciary should please keep up the fight, resisting every instrument of blackmail.
Well, my talk on Kogi legislature is for another day. At the beginning of this administration, I saw what was happening and I wrote about the Dishonourable members of Kogi Assembly.
It was about three years ago, I remember after releasing the write-up, the current speaker called me in fury to dissociate himself from the blanket of a name. Anyway, another stuff on our dishonourable members is loading…
I was literally ashamed to hear Fanwo’s submission on the last election. He said the result of the state assembly election, reflects People’s mind towards Gov. Bello. Well, Fanwo may be right if he is talking of the actual figures and not the dubiously announced results. It is a common knowledge that it is only the Speaker, Matthew Kolawole, that truly won his constituency. I will now want to dwell on this subject of litigation.
My big question to my brother Fanwo is why he wants to eat his future and lick the plate now? I don’t know if Fanwo has a child that is of age, who can independently access information on this state. I can imagine such a child and his or her mother sitting back in their living room, shaking their heads with mouths open as they watched a lying daddy and husband on TVC.
After watching that unfortunate clip, I have continued to wonder if Fanwo’s conscience was in the back pocket of the trouser he sat on during the TVC’s engagement.
– Stanley Ajileye writes from Lokoja.
