THE recent passage of Dr. Stanley N. Macebuh closes a chapter in Nigeria’s golden age of journalism, inspired by two New York imports. Macebuh was one, Dele Giwa the other.
Macebuh and Giwa were both hired from New York to work in Daily Times.
In his tribute to Giwa, who was assassinated in 1986, Macebuh revealed how Dr. Patrick Dele Cole employed him, how he was subsequently sent to New York to recruit Giwa, and the difficulties he had convincing Giwa to return and take up the job.
Macebuh and Giwa were soul mates.
Macebuh was the intellectual. He loved life, was kind to people, and stood behind journalists whenever their works ruffled the feathers of the powerful and mighty. Giwa, was the professional, with his prior experience in the New York Times. He also loved life, action, and the pursuit of journalism excellence. Their newsroom panache inspired a new generation of media freedom fighters when they created two of the best known and most powerful media institutions in Nigerian – The Guardian and Newswatch.
Those who learned at the foot of these masters have since fanned out and planted their editorial footprints in the sands: Almost 80 percent of the great media institutions that came after Guardian and Newswatch were either founded or editorially directed by their protégés.
Through their tutelage and the force of their ideas, the Nigerian media came to the battle, armed with lucid and powerful editorial arguments and investigative reports that exposed inept and corrupt leadership, as they fought to wrest Nigeria from the iron grip of military rule.
Their efforts stung the military which lashed out viciously, beginning with the jailing of Messrs Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson when Macebuh was at the helm in The Guardian, the assassination of Dele Giwa himself, the CEO of Newswatch, and following with a spate of detentions, closures, jail terms, and other physical abuses of journalists and their media.
Macebuh was in this warfront. It was barely a year after he assembled his Guardian team that the military began its onslaught on the newspaper. Dele Giwa was a warrior, and eventually paid with his life for his editorial daring.
The panache and fact-based methods that were used to press the case for democracy won them many admirers. Both Macebuh and Giwa were to end up earning the admiration and friendship of military top brass, although they never allowed such friendships to intrude on the editorial independence of the newspaper and magazine that they managed.
Macebuh counted among his friends the late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo. All three offered to assist him stand on his feet when he left The Guardian. Through late Gen. Yar’Adua, he briefly relocated to Kaduna to found a weekly magazine, Sentinel; the venture lost steam through a combination of poor funding and internal management wrangles.
Through Gen. Babangida, he briefly tried his hands at sugar importation, but this business also did not fly due to what was described as deadly local competition. Through Gen. Obasanjo, he became a public servant, serving at the highest levels of government. This was after his innovative Rapid Response (Media) Team packaged the General, just released from prison, and successfully sold him to Nigerians as “the leader we can trust” in 1999. Unfortunately, his puritanical beliefs and spartan disposition at Aso Rock pitched him against the power mongers, and he recorded the distinction of being the only one that was appointed and sacked twice by his friend, ex-President Obasanjo.
It was after his second sack from the Aso Villa, that Dr. Macebuh became disillusioned and dropped out completely from the social circuits. Aided by an illness that took him to a major surgery at the National Hospital in Abuja, his life experienced a radical transformation.
Although he was my boss at The Guardian, I never met Dr. Macebuh face-to-face until I came to work in the State House Abuja in 2003. He was then Deputy Chief of Staff to the President and I was a consultant in Mr. Ad’Obe’s State House Public Communications Unit. I requested to see him when I learnt that he held a grudge against me for “refusing” to take up the editor position in the Post Express.
When I told him my side of the story, he was shocked and saddened. It became clear to him that his friend, who was asked to, did not reach out to me. As it turned out, this friend wanted someone else, and so went back after a few days to lie to Dr. Macebuh that I was not interested in the position.
I got to know and appreciate him a lot better after that, and I can say that Macebuh lived and died with two “weaknesses”.
He remained till the end the ethical professional, in a country where the worth of a man is sometimes measured by the millions that one is able to shave off from the company till, combined with what one begs, blackmails, or coerces from those stealing public funds.
He trusted everybody, most of all his friends. This gave some of them room to stab him in the back, or to snatch his ideas and appropriate them as their own. He did not get used to the “Nigerian way”, where those with less abilities tag along with the man of ideas, and, at the critical moment, snatch the ideas, proffer it to those that need them, and thereafter insist to the world that this was their “baby”.
In that sense, Dr. Stanley Macebuh was not a “Nigerian”, thank God. Men of goodwill in the profession must pray that the ideas that he and Dele Giwa introduced to Nigerian journalism will not die with them.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The British Virgin
RICH and powerful Abuja businessmen are in love with the British Virgin.
There are 60 such “virgins” but the affluent in Abuja are attracted to only four of them. These four do not bear British-sounding names: Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada, and Jost Van Dyke.
Of the original 60 virgins, 44 can still claim to be “virgins” in the real sense of the word – no man has touched them or lived in them up till this day. The remaining 16 are not virgins in any sense – they make their services freely available to local and international businessmen, including the well-heeled from Abuja, FCT.
We are introduced to the British Virgin each time a big international financial transaction takes place here in Abuja. At such events, including the BPE privatisation and the oil blocs licensing rounds, we invariably find one or two rich and powerful Nigerians submitting a résumé that shows, among other things, that they visited and made use of the services of Tortola, Virgin Goda, Anegada or Jost Van Dyke.
Oftentimes, this may turn out to be an omen. For example, one of the consortia that bid for the recent final(?) sale of ailing NITEL is Omen. Ordinarily, an omen can be a sign, a portent, a prophecy, a warning, a forecast, or a premonition. In this case, however, Omen International Limited (BVI) powered through when it was announced as reserve winner with a bid of $956.98 million, beaten to second place by New Generation with its generous $2.5 billion bid.
Tongues have been set wagging ever since, particularly on the antecedents of the winner, New Generation, and its subsequent denials and truth somersaults. But I was not concerned about New Generation. However, the company that interested me was Omen, not because of the name, but because of its appellation, BVI – which announced to the world that some rich and powerful Nigerians went to make use of the services offered by the “virgin”, before they came for the bid.
In case you are wandering, British Virgin is not a woman. If she is, she would have been the worst kind of whore alive. The British Virgin is rather a collection of 60 islands, annexed and colonised by Britain, which has thrown her arms open to responsible and shady world businessmen (and women) who want a haven to protect their wealth. The British Virgin Island is located in the Caribbean Sea, 90 miles east of Puerto Rico.
There are two things that make her very attractive to rich business people from around the world – she can help you salt away wealth for your children, and she can help you register and run a company that no one would ever find out who the real owners are, and you can run without paying any form of tax.
There are over 500,000 IBCs registered in the British Virgin Islands, the bulk of which come from drug-riddled Latin America, and from Hong Kong, another British entity that operated as if it was a no man’s land, before China took it over.
For the Abuja rich and powerful, avoiding taxes is not the only thing that makes the British Virgin Islands attractive - rich and powerful Nigerians have always avoided or evaded most taxes in Nigeria, before the coming of Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru to the Federal Inland Revenue Service. The BVI offers rich Nigerians an opportunity to establish trusts for their children, and ensure that they do not pay taxes on them. Above all, the identity of the persons establishing the trust is never revealed. Except for legislation designed to avoid money laundering and other criminal activity, the laws are crafted to conceal and protect the real owners.
The BVI law requires those who come to register to name at least one director and one shareholder (who may be of any nationality), there is no minimum capital requirement, one does not need to open bank accounts, and if one does, no one requires one to carry out an audit. The law does not require the filing of annual returns, and the owner(s) can hold directors’ meetings anywhere in the world, including by telephone. Only the company’s memo and articles of association is kept as a public record – and even then, their confidentiality is guaranteed!
In the beginning, the rich and powerful used the BVI Trust system to save money for their children, but today, they have found it convenient as a general asset protection strategy. There are neither requirements nor restrictions to the registration of trusts, information about trusts and trustees are not disclosed to the public, and those who register trusts are not required to file annual returns or engage in any other reporting requirements.
International business companies (IBCs) set up in the British Virgin Islands are both exempt from local taxes and stamp duties, after paying registration and annual license fees. Trusts, like IBCs, are also exempt from all forms of tax: capital gains, capital transfer, inheritance, sales tax, VAT, income tax or stamp duty.
The question that must be asked is: If Nigerians appear as fronts to consortia whose ownership and the nationality of the owners, are not disclosed, why is it difficult for our laws to frown at it? What type of due diligence could possibly be carried out on those organisations before they are prequalified for bidding?
By the Way: Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada, and Jost Van Dyke are the most popular of the 16 islands that are inhabited in the British Virgin Islands.
There are 60 such “virgins” but the affluent in Abuja are attracted to only four of them. These four do not bear British-sounding names: Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada, and Jost Van Dyke.
Of the original 60 virgins, 44 can still claim to be “virgins” in the real sense of the word – no man has touched them or lived in them up till this day. The remaining 16 are not virgins in any sense – they make their services freely available to local and international businessmen, including the well-heeled from Abuja, FCT.
We are introduced to the British Virgin each time a big international financial transaction takes place here in Abuja. At such events, including the BPE privatisation and the oil blocs licensing rounds, we invariably find one or two rich and powerful Nigerians submitting a résumé that shows, among other things, that they visited and made use of the services of Tortola, Virgin Goda, Anegada or Jost Van Dyke.
Oftentimes, this may turn out to be an omen. For example, one of the consortia that bid for the recent final(?) sale of ailing NITEL is Omen. Ordinarily, an omen can be a sign, a portent, a prophecy, a warning, a forecast, or a premonition. In this case, however, Omen International Limited (BVI) powered through when it was announced as reserve winner with a bid of $956.98 million, beaten to second place by New Generation with its generous $2.5 billion bid.
Tongues have been set wagging ever since, particularly on the antecedents of the winner, New Generation, and its subsequent denials and truth somersaults. But I was not concerned about New Generation. However, the company that interested me was Omen, not because of the name, but because of its appellation, BVI – which announced to the world that some rich and powerful Nigerians went to make use of the services offered by the “virgin”, before they came for the bid.
In case you are wandering, British Virgin is not a woman. If she is, she would have been the worst kind of whore alive. The British Virgin is rather a collection of 60 islands, annexed and colonised by Britain, which has thrown her arms open to responsible and shady world businessmen (and women) who want a haven to protect their wealth. The British Virgin Island is located in the Caribbean Sea, 90 miles east of Puerto Rico.
There are two things that make her very attractive to rich business people from around the world – she can help you salt away wealth for your children, and she can help you register and run a company that no one would ever find out who the real owners are, and you can run without paying any form of tax.
There are over 500,000 IBCs registered in the British Virgin Islands, the bulk of which come from drug-riddled Latin America, and from Hong Kong, another British entity that operated as if it was a no man’s land, before China took it over.
For the Abuja rich and powerful, avoiding taxes is not the only thing that makes the British Virgin Islands attractive - rich and powerful Nigerians have always avoided or evaded most taxes in Nigeria, before the coming of Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru to the Federal Inland Revenue Service. The BVI offers rich Nigerians an opportunity to establish trusts for their children, and ensure that they do not pay taxes on them. Above all, the identity of the persons establishing the trust is never revealed. Except for legislation designed to avoid money laundering and other criminal activity, the laws are crafted to conceal and protect the real owners.
The BVI law requires those who come to register to name at least one director and one shareholder (who may be of any nationality), there is no minimum capital requirement, one does not need to open bank accounts, and if one does, no one requires one to carry out an audit. The law does not require the filing of annual returns, and the owner(s) can hold directors’ meetings anywhere in the world, including by telephone. Only the company’s memo and articles of association is kept as a public record – and even then, their confidentiality is guaranteed!
In the beginning, the rich and powerful used the BVI Trust system to save money for their children, but today, they have found it convenient as a general asset protection strategy. There are neither requirements nor restrictions to the registration of trusts, information about trusts and trustees are not disclosed to the public, and those who register trusts are not required to file annual returns or engage in any other reporting requirements.
International business companies (IBCs) set up in the British Virgin Islands are both exempt from local taxes and stamp duties, after paying registration and annual license fees. Trusts, like IBCs, are also exempt from all forms of tax: capital gains, capital transfer, inheritance, sales tax, VAT, income tax or stamp duty.
The question that must be asked is: If Nigerians appear as fronts to consortia whose ownership and the nationality of the owners, are not disclosed, why is it difficult for our laws to frown at it? What type of due diligence could possibly be carried out on those organisations before they are prequalified for bidding?
By the Way: Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada, and Jost Van Dyke are the most popular of the 16 islands that are inhabited in the British Virgin Islands.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
The Resolution that Became Law
Abuja is a city divided since penultimate Monday when the National Assembly made its famous resolution, urging Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to seize power, as acting president.
There is palpable excitement in many offices and ominous disquiet in many others.
You get into some offices and immediately feel the excitement in the air, a feeling of satisfaction and expectation about good things to come. People in those offices commend the National Assembly for installing an acting president through a resolution, expect government to roar back to life once again, and congratulate each other for escaping an untoward happenstance.
“The army would have taken over if the National Assembly did not act fast,” one top government official told me. How did he know? “I heard; it was all over the place,” he said.
You get into some other offices, and there is disquiet; the sort you could slice with a knife.
I went to see another top government official who has for some time now been accusing me of “abandoning” him. Abandon is a word frequently bandied about here, especially when the user wants to target and blackmail an important person. “You’ve abandoned me o,” you accuse, and stay back to watch the poor fellow squirm and deny it vigorously. As he is defending himself, you quickly chip in something that he will agree to do, in order to prove that he is still a good friend!
But abandon was far from my friend’s mind Friday last week, when I visited his office.
“I was about to perform my ablution and go to the Mosque,” he apologized, as he stood up, removed his babanriga, and brought his hands out in supplication. I quickly moved to the door, but not before asking when I could see him next week.
His hands in prayer mode, he apologized that next week is filled up in his calendar. “Perhaps, sometimes in March?” he asked.
I got the message. These are not the best of times for chit chat, in some Abuja offices.
The excitement building up in some offices in the Federal Capital over the temporary change of guards was somewhat overshadowed by the reported visit of an Otta General to the man of good luck. What could be the subject of their three-hour nocturnal chat?
“What is he coming to do here again?” I heard someone complain at a business centre in the Sky Memorial, Wuse Zone 5. “He will come and pollute this one again!”
By the time someone finishes making the rounds of government offices in Abuja, one goes away with the feeling that the last may not have been heard of this National Assembly Resolution that became law in Aso Rock.
There is palpable excitement in many offices and ominous disquiet in many others.
You get into some offices and immediately feel the excitement in the air, a feeling of satisfaction and expectation about good things to come. People in those offices commend the National Assembly for installing an acting president through a resolution, expect government to roar back to life once again, and congratulate each other for escaping an untoward happenstance.
“The army would have taken over if the National Assembly did not act fast,” one top government official told me. How did he know? “I heard; it was all over the place,” he said.
You get into some other offices, and there is disquiet; the sort you could slice with a knife.
I went to see another top government official who has for some time now been accusing me of “abandoning” him. Abandon is a word frequently bandied about here, especially when the user wants to target and blackmail an important person. “You’ve abandoned me o,” you accuse, and stay back to watch the poor fellow squirm and deny it vigorously. As he is defending himself, you quickly chip in something that he will agree to do, in order to prove that he is still a good friend!
But abandon was far from my friend’s mind Friday last week, when I visited his office.
“I was about to perform my ablution and go to the Mosque,” he apologized, as he stood up, removed his babanriga, and brought his hands out in supplication. I quickly moved to the door, but not before asking when I could see him next week.
His hands in prayer mode, he apologized that next week is filled up in his calendar. “Perhaps, sometimes in March?” he asked.
I got the message. These are not the best of times for chit chat, in some Abuja offices.
The excitement building up in some offices in the Federal Capital over the temporary change of guards was somewhat overshadowed by the reported visit of an Otta General to the man of good luck. What could be the subject of their three-hour nocturnal chat?
“What is he coming to do here again?” I heard someone complain at a business centre in the Sky Memorial, Wuse Zone 5. “He will come and pollute this one again!”
By the time someone finishes making the rounds of government offices in Abuja, one goes away with the feeling that the last may not have been heard of this National Assembly Resolution that became law in Aso Rock.
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