As any housewife in this part of the world will tell you, the only way to determine the condition of any fresh fish is to examine the gills properly. If the gills are reddish and fresh, chances are that the fish is good.  In other words, the condition of any fresh fish is determined by the condition of the head.  This is the now-popular “opercula metaphor”.
 

During the April 2007 elections which produced the Presidency of Musa Yar’Adua and our brother Goodluck Jonathan in tow, one of our biggest fears was that the new Presidency would be a continuum of Baba’s reign.  Reason:  Baba campaigned more aggressively than the incumbents themselves.  Events have proved all of us wrong.  President Yar’Adua is running the Presidency and takes no dictation from anybody.  But over and above all of that, the man appears to be very determined to deliver on his campaign promises. Tall order but achievable all the same.  Goodluck!  Yes, he needs all the goodluck he can find because Nigerians do know how to corrupt somebody.  If you have held any political office before, you should understand what I mean.  Family members, political associates, old classmates – even former enemies all gang up to make sure you are Nigerian enough to know that public money is nobody’s money and should be treated as such.
 

Here in Bayelsa State, the greatest achievement of the 2007 General elections, warts and all, is the production of Chief Timipere Sylva as Governor of the State.  True to the opercula metaphor, Timipere Sylva is as straight as a needle – up to this point, that is.  Those of us who are old enough to remember cannot forget in hurry, the Buhari-Idiagbon era and the attendant results even at the State level.  Nigeria today has a leader who is not in a hurry to stuff his agbada pockets with stolen Naira – and Dollars in foreign vaults!  So it is that, in a bid to prove the opercula metaphor right, we also have a Governor in this State who has no plans to become one of the richest people in Africa!
 

If you listened to Chief Timipere Sylva’s charge to his Commissioners at their swearing-in ceremony I am not sure you would have forgotten the bit about “ lighting a fire which will warm some people and burn others” except that I can’t find anybody in Bayelsa State being warmed by this fire. Just as well too!
 

Nobody quite remembers how it all started, but in the last ten years or so we have acquired the notorious sobriquet of “do-nothing spendthrifts”. For some strange reasons that I am yet to pin-point, Bayelsans found ourselves in possession of so much easy money that everybody appeared in a hurry to offload. If you went to the market place, and you had the misfortune of not belonging to the political class, then God help you. If you did not know your level and you trespassed into the fresh fish area, the market women had a way of showing you where you belong. So it was that it became un-Bayelsan for you to haggle in the market place!  The sooner you paid the asking price of whatever commodity, the better for your sanity.  What a shame!
 

As a young grade level 09 Officer in the Rivers State Public Service in the mid seventies, I still remember, like it was yesterday, that the brand new Ford Cortina Coupe car that I bought became an albatross of sorts. I simply could not drive the car to my office.  Even though I explained to all those who cared to listen that the money was my pay off package from Shell where I worked last, it was suicidal to drive such a car to my office – as a public officer. I would have had to contend with my bosses who had no cars.  I believe the situation is still the same in many States. I do not know of any State in the Federation where a grade level 03 Clerical Assistant can drive a car to his office and nothing happens. But here in Bayelsa, the Honourable Commissioner of a Ministry would be lucky if a grade level 04 Accounts Clerk has not parked his Toyota Prado Jeep smack on the space reserved for the Honourable Commissioner! So how did we box ourselves to this clumsy corner? How come a twenty-year old youth suddenly finds some money and his first car is an SUV?
 

It is for this and a few other reasons that one must applaud His Excellency, Chief Timipere Sylva for measures being taken to “deflate” the economy of the State. For once, political office holders and top civil servants are being told that monies paid to them as overheads are not part of their salaries or fringe benefits.  Frantic efforts are being made to ensure that only living workers earn salaries/wages at the end of the month.  All ghosts should remain where they belong: heaven or hell!
 

 My only grouse with him is that he came to the saddle four year late. Where was he all this while? If he was in Creek Haven in the last four years we would not have found ourselves where we are today. Somebody would have been able to locate the developmental equivalents of the N500 billion or so that has reportedly been allocated to this State in the last nine years of democratic brigandage. Come to think of it, all Messiahs do come late – don’t they?  Another problem I have with His Excellency has to do with payment of monthly salaries. I appreciate efforts being made to sanitize the pay-roll of the civil service, but that exercise can and should be carried out in parallel with the payment of salaries.  My understanding is that whether you pay salaries on the 25^th of the month or you pay on the 15^th of the next month, you are still dealing with a thirty-day window. The sooner you close it the better unless the money is not there – which does not appear to be the case as at now!
 

As a parting shot, let me remind Your Excellency that as soon as you are done with the Civil Service your search light should be focused on our Traditional Rulers.  More than fifty per cent of the problems with our youths are caused by our Traditional Rulers.  This is the only State in the Federation with 24 recognized first Class Traditional Rulers in different names, shapes, sizes and guises. While some of them preside over what can be regarded as Kingdoms in the real sense of the word, there are others whose domains consist of a handful of hamlets and yet happy enough to be called a King.  As if that is not bad enough, these so-called Kings only visit their domains whenever there is a ceremony. It is shameful that more than half of them live in neighbouring States.
 

A First Class Traditional Ruler is supposed to be the fourth-tier of government – next to the Local Government. As a matter of fact some Traditional Rulers are bigger than Local Governments in some States because their domains span two or more Local Government Areas. If these Traditional Rulers were properly established in their domains, it stands to reason that problems of hostage taking, kidnapping, sea piracy and such other crimes would be easier to handle because every such case would belong to one of them.  A Traditional Ruler with a properly constituted Council of Chiefs/Elders, Village Councils/Elders and even Compound Chiefs/Elders should have no problem dealing with any such problem.
 

Your Excellency, what is good for the goose, they say, is also good for the gander.  Any Traditional Ruler who is not resident in his domain is a “ghost traditional ruler” and should be treated as such.  All Traditional Rulers should be forced to occupy their thrones properly and earn their keep.  If any Traditional Ruler, for instance, prefers to stay in Port Harcourt, somebody somewhere should make arrangements to transfer his pay point to the Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers because that is where he works and should be paid. There are too many people in this State who earn money without working for it and this is one group. That is the crux of our problem in this State:  too much easy money in circulation.
 

In fairness, however, there are a few of our Traditional Rulers who can represent us at any forum and we will be very comfortable. That is why one cannot help but applaud the coronation of Professor W.W. Ogionwo, Okun III as Ibenanaowei of Opokuma Clan and Dr. Edmund Dakoru as the Mingi of Nembe respectively.  It makes me proud that these categories of people are Traditional Rulers in my own Bayelsa State where the only newsworthy occurrences are hostage taking, kidnapping etc. However, let me quickly add here that my applause is with one proviso:  they must all reside in their domains!  We have enough absentee Traditional Rulers without adding more to the menu!
 

At the other end of the spectrum there are some of our Traditional Rulers who make me want to puke. Those are the Traditional Rulers who live in Port Harcourt and come to Yenagoa at the end of the month to collect their stipends.  What happens in their domains in between is not part of their traditional brief.  Or is it because our Council Chairmen do not reside in their Local Government Areas – and nobody says anything – that they think they can stay in Port Harcourt and rule over their subjects in Bayelsa? No Sir, this is unacceptable.  The Oba of Benin does not live in Warri just as the Olu of Warri does not live in Onitsha.  If for any reason your domain is not habitable so you cannot stay there then you have one of two choices to make: you either make it habitable through hard work or abdicate your throne let someone more capable take over from you. There are enough security agencies waiting to assist in the job of maintaining law and order.
 

The job of a Traditional Ruler, unfortunately, is not something you can handle by remote control – or should I say, in absentia.  You must be there – physically.   That way you can monitor the activities of all your subjects and hostage takers will have to contend with you. The choice is yours.
 

Disability comes in different forms, shapes and sizes.  Some people consider themselves disabled because they have lost one or two senses, a limb or two, or even the ability to see. I believe they now call them “physically challenged” people.  . The loss of a limb or even your sight does not stop you from living your life, if you know how to cope with that loss. So all these forms of known disabilities pale to nothing when compared to mine. Wait until you hear my own form of disability. I am permanently, irreversibly and totally disabled – for life!
 

When I was born, nobody had the courtesy to ask me where I would like to be born, or the kind of parents I would like to have. So I was born in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria – and that was the beginning of my disability.  Being born in Nigeria, instead of the United States or somewhere else is bad enough, but to be born smack in the middle of poverty, surrounded by disease and squalor, is something else. I have always believed that you can grow above your destiny, but after nearly six decades of fighting poverty, I now know I am wrong.  There is no such thing as growing above your destiny because your environment places a ceiling on your head beyond which you cannot grow!  For want of a better terminology let me call this ceiling your “growth quotient”.
 

You may not know it, but it is because of this invisible ceiling placed on our heads by our environment that people like Robert Ebizimor cannot grow beyond their present levels no matter how hard they try.  If this genius of a man were a Yoruba man, for instance, no musician from this part of the world would compete with him.  It is because of this growth quotient that you can become a millionaire by recording some organized noise and selling the product as music in the United States.  It is because of this growth quotient that a groundnut seller in Lagos will definitely do better than any groundnut seller in Yenagoa.  Let us now examine how the growth quotient operates – in practical terms.
 

Let us assume, for one minute, that you were born in Ukubie in the present Southern Ijaw Local Government area of Bayelsa State.  By virtue of your place of birth, you will inevitably have parents of limited mental endowment. As a corollary, you may not enjoy the kind of medical facilities your peers will enjoy in Lagos.  So your growth will be stunted and you will not be as normal a baby as you ought to be.  At school age, you will have to enrol in the nearby Community Primary School.  As a rural school, the Headmaster of the school is probably a Grade II teacher, with a smattering of teachers, who logically must be below him in rank, status and intellect.  Your academic foundation is therefore laid by teachers who need more education than you do.  However, because your parents know no better, you remain there and at the end of six years you graduate into the nearby Secondary School.
 

This secondary school has no science laboratory, no library and no whatever else.  The Principal of the School is a Business Administration graduate who could not find any job elsewhere so he is using that as a stepping stone.  All the other teachers are drop-outs who have been rejected in the good schools for one reason or the other. Qualified and competent teachers posted to the School merely visit the school and disappear thereafter. Others do not even bother to visit because they know the story of the school.  You spend another six years there and you come out of school unable to write even your own name.  Meanwhile, other fellow Nigerians of your age group are now discussing Website development, E-mail addresses and the latest virus in the IT world.
 

Into this boiling cauldron, the Oil Producing and Prospecting Companies, led by Shell, insist on complicating the matrix. They want to award Scholarships to indigenes of oil producing areas but the recipients must first of all pass an examination to be conducted by them. Emphasis is placed on Science subjects but you never saw a Bunsen burner in your six years in secondary school.  As an indigene you find your way to Lagos – for the first time in your life – and spend two days looking for the Headquarters of the oil company.  On the appointed day you find yourself in the midst of children of your biological age but intellectually old enough to be your grand parents. You have to compete with children whose parents spent fortunes grilling them through International Nursery/Primary/Secondary schools just to prepare them for this kind of show-down. So you spend the two hours pretending to be writing but actually counting and admiring the state-of-the-art suspended ceiling of the examination hall.  The list of awardees is published two weeks later in several national daily newspapers and under your State’s names you find some innocuous, funny-sounding names that you know are not from your State.  No problem. No problem, at all.
 

Five years later, those who wrote the scholarship examination with you return to the country with first class and second class (upper) Degrees from the best Universities in the world.  They are promptly absorbed into the choice positions in the oil companies with ultimate potential of Group General Managers fifteen to twenty years down the road.  Meanwhile, because you failed so woefully, you return to your dear Ukubie and become a Fisherman – the only job you are prepared for in life.
 

For reasons that are not too clear but certainly not altruistic, those who know better start agitating for employment opportunities in the oil companies operating in your area.  The oil companies reply that they do not employ empty heads in the oil industry.  Those who want jobs with them must have a minimum of second class upper degree in subjects or professions related to their line of business.  “If your youths are not qualified to join us then what are we expected to do?”  So when you go to the oil companies operating in your area, all top management positions from Human Resource Managers to Drilling Superintendents are occupied by those who cannot speak your language.  If you insist on finding someone who speaks your language then you have to try the Speed boat drivers, cleaners, security staff and, if you are lucky, some clerical staff.
 

So the catch twenty two game continues, almost like the story of the chicken and the egg! The result is that the Core Delta, as it is now fondly called, is inhabited by people like me.  People, who are unemployable because the Nigerian project is skewed, almost imperceptibly, against us.  People, who cannot make it in business because the environment is too hostile for any business to thrive.  People who end up playing second fiddle in society for reasons they do not understand. People who are primitive because society abandoned and left us stuck in the Stone Age.  What society fails to understand is that the creator of the universe balanced the equation by placing abundant resources under our feet for a purpose.  When I behave like the primitive man that I am, everybody blames me except themselves who made me what I am today!
 

That is why society is in a dilemma.   The International community insists on reckoning with everybody, including people like me. Census figures and national statistics must include me. The Millennium Development Goals must reflect me and my type.   If everybody in Abuja meets the Goals and I still live in the Stone Age in my community, Nigeria has not met the goals.  If all residents in Abuja have modern sanitary facilities in their houses and I still defecate in the slow-running stream which also serves as my only source of drinking water, Nigeria has not met the goals.
 

So, when next you see me in Ajegunle, skimpily clad with the rags I can afford which are probably my entire wardrobe, with rain boots to match in the heat of the January sun, please don’t dismiss me as a lunatic.  Just remember that I am a product of the Nigerian project – a totally disabled Nigerian from the Core Delta waiting for the Federal Government’s Master plan on the Niger Delta to be implemented so that my fortunes may change.  
 

LORD I HOPE THIS IS NOT TRUE
 

The good Lord knows I am not a religious person – and that is understandable. I do not pretend to be righteous either. That is why when I went to Church last Sunday, some people thought they were seeing a ghost – yes!  I went to Church last Sunday to pray to God to grant me one last wish on earth – not that I am about to die yet. No matter how difficult this world may seem, there is this intangible thing called hope that keeps everyone going. I am still hoping that things will get better pretty soon. God knows that being born in this part of the world – the Niger Delta precisely – is like being sentenced to a life of poverty. I have spent nearly five decades fighting poverty.  My only regret is that I have made a mess of it as I do not appear to be succeeding. I don’t know how these things start. All I know is that in the third world – or is it developing world – they now call us, there are these invisible factories that churn out rumours of all shapes, sizes and textures!  As Retired General Muhammadu Buhari- former Nigerian Military Head of State will testify, most of these rumours start from motor parks or intra and inter city transport services popularly called taxis and buses. I have no sympathies for you if by a twist of fate you stopped using these death-traps a long time ago. You don’t know what you are missing!
 So like a bolt out of the blues came this rumour that our amiable and ever-smiling ex –Governor, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan – now Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria left a N40 billion (forty billion Naira) loan for the in-coming administration of Chief Timipre Sylva to settle.  The most interesting aspect of the rumour is that the figure is like a mirage.  The closer you move to it the further it moves away from you.  Some say it is N45 billion, others say it is N60 billion. Whoever started this rumour must have a warped sense of humour.  These are just the screaming headlines of the rumour.  The fine prints have it that the money was used to fund the Presidential elections.  Somebody is playing games with my sanity!
 I am aware that political enemies will stop at nothing to bring an enemy down.  At the level of Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria we may never see him face to face until 2011 but even as a parting gift this is too wicked a joke. So if this is an attempt by political enemies to rubbish the good name of the man set to enter the Guinness Book of Records as the luckiest man on earth, then it is in very bad taste.  But wait a minute.  I believe I know enough about Nigeria to know that every rumour has an element of truth in it. The problem is the element of truth may be inverted, stood on its head, camouflaged or outright embedded in fatty tissue. So unless you know how to look, you may never find the truth!
 Those who knew Yenagoa before 1999 will agree with me that a lot of progress has been made in the last eight years of democratic governance. There may still be no running water, no electricity, no roads, no residential or business addresses, but it is no longer the sleepy local government headquarters it used to be. To that evasive exercise called States creation be the glory. At least our leaders can go to Abuja and bring our own share of the so-called “national cake”.  And bring they do – except that our allocations come armed with wings, ready to fly back to Abuja at the slightest provocation or temptation.
 I do not require anybody to remind me that as a student several decades ago, my worst enemy was my Mathematics teacher. Those signs and equation marks on the blackboard looked like cobwebs to me then. And the man had a way of keeping me standing every morning while others were sitting – just to prove the point that my big head was empty. But you do not have to be a Chike Obi to know that Bayelsa State has consistently received the highest per capita Federal Allocation in this country for the best part of eight years!  We may be third or fourth on the list but given our population and geographical size our per capita receipts cannot be compared to any other state in the Federation!
 This kind of arm-chair Economics may not make sense to people like Charles Soludo but if you travel round this country the way I do, you will realize that there is nothing extra-ordinary happening here that is not already in existence in other States.  Some of the facilities we are crying for are taken for granted in neighbouring States: water, electricity, roads, schools (at all levels), you remind me.  So why would a man of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s pedigree leave a lower office for a higher one with so much muck?  Why, for instance, did he have to swear-in the Vice Chancellor of the Niger Delta University on the eve of the handing-over of the mantle of leadership of the State?  Why was he so much in a hurry to employ several hundred Undergraduates to occupy positions in the State Civil Service on the eve of his departure – jobs which they are not available to occupy? What reasons would a man of his mien have for appointing several Permanent Secretaries to fill even anticipated vacancies on the eve of his departure? The answer is, in my opinion, in our stars.
 That is why I went to Church last Sunday to beg God to please make this rumour a lie!  There is no earthly reason why there should any element of truth in this one. I have a hunch that Chief Timipre Sylva has the political will and desire to do something good for this State. I therefore do not think he deserves to be saddled with a huge debt even before he assumes office. Lord, I hope this is not true!