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Nairaland Forum / Nairaland / General / Politics / The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED (1449 Views)
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The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by onemopol: 10:39am On Dec 29, 2013 |
[size=20pt]The Canonisation of Obasanjo[/size] 8 Likes |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by onemopol: 10:59am On Dec 29, 2013 |
Suddenly those Anti-Gej forces that have always held Simon Kolawole in high esteem will be dodging this thread. 3 Likes |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by Nobody: 11:09am On Dec 29, 2013 |
Excellent piece. It is exceedingly clear to discerning observers that the APC and its leaders are a bunch of unprincipled, unscrupulous, and power-hungry vultures. 6 Likes |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by naso2(m): 11:25am On Dec 29, 2013 |
pro01: Excellent piece. It is exceedingly clear to discerning observers that the APC and its leaders are a bunch of unprincipled, unscrupulous, and power-hungry vultures. Exactly 1 Like |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by Nobody: 11:29am On Dec 29, 2013 |
Nice description of that discredited and inconsequential slowpoke |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by gramci: 12:55pm On Dec 29, 2013 |
Patiently waiting for the arrival of the evil men of Nairaland 1 Like |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by Amanwulu1(m): 9:16pm On Dec 29, 2013 |
Noise making doesn't win electn and apc knws it. Their strategy is to fool people into believg they hv large folowership, so dat after 2015 electn they'ld b taken serious wen they shout that they've been rigged out. As 4 2015 majority are not fooled by apc noise making. Only politically naive are fooled. 4 Likes |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by BishopMagic: 9:22pm On Dec 29, 2013 |
When it all goes to the dogs and the generations yet to come demand to know how it all came to be , they should recount the same lies told by their fathers about what happened in 1966. 1 Like |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by jamace(m): 9:43pm On Dec 29, 2013 |
Chai, OBJ really disorganised this country in his days o . No wonder Nigeria is so difficult to reorganise by those who came after him. And some selfish politicians still take OBJ serious?. Nigerians be wise. Support GEJ. 2 Likes |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by Goddex: 9:59pm On Dec 29, 2013 |
OBJ the Navigator according to Tinubu. He he he he he I dey laugh oh. . . |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by MAYOWAAK: 10:08pm On Dec 29, 2013 |
Olusegun Obasanjo did not deliberately scuttle the power sector reform embarked upon by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Governor of Lagos state.Nasir El-Rufai dwelt extensively on the issue in his book,@The The Accidental Public Servant.Simon Kolawole's assertions were purely one sided. This is what El-Rufai had to say on the issue,remember he was the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises:One of my most memorable early experiences in BPE was a political baptism of fire - an encounter that put me smack in the middle of ethnicity, politics and policy conflicts, involving a company that became globally notorious for its internal misgovernance and deception - the Houston-based Enron Corporation.Electricity shortages have become a way of life in Nigeria, and Enron saw an opportunity to cash in on that misfortune. They did something similar in India in the 1990s and it went really wrong but they learnt some lessons and came to Nigeria with a more refined approach. What Enron proposed was to supply second-hand, barge-based generators (movable and easy to relocate in case of payment defaults) using diesel initially, to be supplied by Wale Tinubu's Ocean & Oil Ltd.(now Oando) until gas pipelines are extended from Egbin to the barges' location, to provide initially 90MW and expandable to 540MW of electricity exclusively for Lagos State.The Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu, his finance commissioner Wale Edun, budget commissioner Yemi Cardoso, Gbenga Oyebode of Aluko & Oyebode, Wale Tinubu and Tunde Folawiyo, all of them friends or acquaintances of mine, were involved in the transaction at various levels and capacities. There were only three hurdles that needed to be crossed. First was the legal reality of the time: that only federally-owned National Electricity Power Authority (NEPA) could buy, transmit and distribute power so the cooperation of the Federal Government (FGN) was needed. Second was that NEPA was notorious for not paying its bills (even to government-owned companies like the Nigerian Gas Company which supplies it with feedstock), so some payment security arrangements needed to be put in place in anticipation of NEPA's default, and finally Enron would require a sovereign guarantee in the event that NEPA fails to pay and the security arrangement fails to crystallize or is exhausted by multiple defaults. Enron and Bola Tinubu found a way by getting Chief Bola Ige, a fellow opposition AD party leader working in a PDP administration, to get Obasanjo to sign off on the transaction without any cabinet review or rigorous inter-agency discussions. Bola Ige also obtained the president's consent to sign a sovereign guarantee on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria -something only the Minister of Finance was legally authorized to do.There were no loud protests from NEPA management who could foresee the dangers of potential corporate insolvency because they all believed resistance was fruitless since Minister Bola Ige had the ears of President Obasanjo. Everything was signed, sealed and delivered and we all read about it in the newspapers. I was concerned that this could negatively impact the future privatization of NEPA and requested the VP to obtain copies of the agreements signed for our review. This was barely two weeks after I resumed, and then early in December 1999, we received the ‘power purchase agreement’ (PPA) of over 100 pages including annexes, annexures and other attachments. We could not make any sense out of it. We approached Norton Rose of the UK, and two local law firms, A B Mahmoud & Co. based in Kano and George Ikoli & Okagbue of Lagos to undertake a review of the power purchase agreement. Norton Rose needed several weeks, and instinctively I knew we had to figure this out before it got too late, and several weeks might be too late. The local law firms submitted the outcome of their reviews within a short period, but what we got were not very helpful in isolating the potential impact of the PPA on our power sector reform programme.The agreement was highly technical with enough equations and integrals to scare all but the most mathematically proficient of lawyers. At this point, I approached the World Bank country office for assistance. Trevor Byer, the country director who fortuitously had been involved in power sector reforms elsewhere before his posting to Nigeria, was very helpful, proactive and immediately responsive. Within a couple of weeks, we received a summary of the agreement, its impact on privatization, what the equations and annexes meant in terms of tariffs, security arrangements, dollar payments and contingent liabilities. I immediately briefed the Vice President who was alarmed at the findings, and he instructed me to draft a memo for onward transmission to President Obasanjo. Within five weeks of taking over the headship of BPE, I drafted the first of many memos which would be forwarded to the President, drawing attention to surreptitious steps being taken by line ministries to frustrate sector reforms and privatization. The Lagos State-Enron case was particularly dangerous as it would have bankrupted NEPA almost overnight! The president immediately put the transaction on hold and commended the vice president for briefing him on the implications of the deal.The VP set up a ministerial committee chaired by Minister of State Danjuma Goje, with BPE, the Federal Ministry of Finance, and Lagos State Government represented as members, to review the agreement. Enron immediately hired GoodWorks International, the global advisory firm co-founded by former US Ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, to influence the outcome of the review, while Bola Ige and some sections of the South-West media got busy attacking me, the vice president and the BPE for 'depriving Lagos and Yoruba people of steady electricity'. We declined to respond, focusing on fixing what we saw as a potential stumbling block to reforming and privatizing our electricity supply industry. I am glad we truncated the original deal, but even the better and revised arrangement which reduced tariffs from 8.5 cents per kilowatt-hour to just 1 cent a kilowatt-hour ended up placing huge financial burdens on NEPA years into the future – and the undertaking we extracted from Lagos State to share part of the burden was subsequently challenged in court, and remained in dispute until we left office.My Enron experience was an education of sorts. I learnt many new lessons that dispelled my naivety.Well-informed and trusted friends put pressure on me to look the other way because they were advisers or consultants to Enron, or were potential beneficiaries in the transaction. My explanations and passionate representations that the transaction was inimical to national interest, negatively impacts the long-term viability of NEPA and threatened the reforms of the electricity industry were neither important nor relevant to their position. I saw starkly how government officials were willing to pervert the interest of the country to impress foreigners, or obtain preferences for those they thought were their kinsmen. It was an early sobering experience and an appreciation of the reigning dictum of every one for himself, and no one for the country.The hypocrisy of multinational commercial interests that think ‘contract sanctity’ overrode Nigeria's laws, our national interest and the voidability of a contract based on a mistake also came to the fore.The even-handedness of the World Bank officials was commendable; for their efforts however, some of them were moved out of Nigeria, and some reportedly took early retirement due to pressure from the Executive Director representing the US on the board of the World Bank, as a result of complaints filed against them by Enron. It was gratifying (and I felt that it was divine judgment for the sleepless nights and media attacks we in the BPE were put through by their executives and Nigerian collaborators for no reason other than their narrow commercial interests!) that I had to witness the collapse of that evil corporation. I remember vividly I was in Houston, Texas when on December 2,2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy protection.Reading objectively El-Rufai's account will certainly disabuse your mind that the failure of that project was at Obasanjo's behest. |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by Nobody: 10:35pm On Dec 29, 2013 |
Amanwulu1: Noise making doesn't win electn and apc knws it. Their strategy is to fool people into believg they hv large folowership, so dat after 2015 electn they'ld b taken serious wen they shout that they've been rigged out. As 4 2015 majority are not fooled by apc noise making. Only politically naive are fooled.WHAT'S THE MEANING OF AMANWULU BRO |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by ThinkRait: 1:02am On Dec 30, 2013 |
The Enron deal was cancelled in good faith. I think Simon Kolawole should leave politics for politicians lest he loses his credibility and objectivity. |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by dayokanu(m): 1:11am On Dec 30, 2013 |
Simon Kolawole was the former PDP mouthpiece so what do you expect He was the Abati of the FG like 6yrs ago |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by talktimi(m): 2:34am On Dec 30, 2013 |
Honestly speaking, some things cant be sugar coated, glossed over or wished away. This is classic even though some people want us to forget. We knw PDP is wack but is APC any better ? |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by onemopol: 1:17pm On Dec 30, 2013 |
dayokanu: Simon Kolawole was the former PDP mouthpiece so what do you expect Really? you guys cant stop amusing me. 1 Like |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by Akanbiedu(m): 3:11pm On Dec 30, 2013 |
Tinubu is just being wise. Obasanjo's ultimate dream is to be seen as the greatest leader in Nigeria and he would stop at nothing to sabotage anything that promises to outshine him. You have a more serious problem, in OBJ, if you are Yoruba. It is on record that he sabotaged both Awolowo and Abiola. Recent moves by Tinubu into Obj's traditional power base, the northern part of Nigeria, poses a serious threat to Obj's relevance in the scheme of things. I can imagine what it feels like for OBJ having lost significant influence in SW. Tinubu knows very well what the man is capable of, that's why he chose the wise way. If Obj is not going to work with APC, let him not work against at least. |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by onemopol: 3:21pm On Dec 30, 2013 |
Akanbi_edu: Tinubu is just being wise. OBJ has never really had any significance in the SW except in 2003 when AD entered an unholy alliance with him and had its fingers burnt as Tinubu was the only survivor in the dirty blow OBJ dealt them. OBJ is not a small boy hence if OBJ comes into the APC fold and is not dictating things he will know, no matter how much you hail him in public. In Iyabo's words OBJ "KNOWS ALL" hence any attempt to limit the expression of that "knowledge" will be fought with everything he has. Now my question is when APC goes about wooing key players of the "old order" that the average Nigerian expect them to be walking away from then what will be their electoral message? |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by Akanbiedu(m): 3:44pm On Dec 30, 2013 |
one mopol: Well, elections at the presidential level has little to do with electoral message. Nigerian president, at this time, is made by elites' agreement. |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by onemopol: 3:49pm On Dec 30, 2013 |
Akanbi_edu: Hmmmmmmm. I still dey think am |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by onemopol: 8:03pm On Dec 30, 2013 |
still waiting for the anti-GEJ forces to respond |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by doublewisdom: 8:33pm On Dec 30, 2013 |
Respect to the author of this beautiful piece. May neither your ink nor wisdom ever run dry. Infact collect three kpozas from me!!! 2 Likes |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by Nobody: 8:50pm On Dec 30, 2013 |
Make una no worry. Nigeria is expering by midnite of 31st December. |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by 401kk: 1:15pm On Jan 08, 2014 |
Excellent piece. Nigerians are like sheep, they tend not to reason especially on issues of religion and politics. Simon has laid it bare for discerning minds but we are in the minority. In a positive thinking society, OBJ would be an entity of disrepute and disgrace. Lets keep exposing their stupidity. 1 Like |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by najoke: 1:51pm On Jan 08, 2014 |
one mopol:When in doubt..........Google is ur best friend. |
Re: The Canonisation Of Obasanjo By Simon Kolawole---- APC GOOFED by onemopol: 2:13pm On Jan 08, 2014 |
na_joke: What point are you trying to make? google what? Someone has raised very valid points on the need for APC to apply caution in their drive for new members, and someone's lame response is that Simon Kolawole used to be PDP'S mouthpiece and you see that as reasonable in this context? 1 Like |
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