Yesterday was former military ruler Ibrahim Babangida's 65th birthday. He attended a seminar with his son, who had just been released by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission after 48 hours questioning over his ownership of shares in a telecoms company.
When I heard this I asked if anyone had gone up to him and asked him about his son at the meeting. I was laughed out of court.
"Security agents will arrest you!"
"It is not possible".
Today the BBC Hausa service reported that Reuters and the Financial Times had 'an exclusive interview' with IBB. Now both those organisations are capable of organising their own exclusives, I'm sure. But I'm willing to bet they button-holed him after the event. And we were left getting the story third hand.
Someone I spoke to said: "Nigerian politician's have total contempt for the local press... They would much prefer to speak to the international organisations."
I'm sure this is true, but isn't it a two sided relationship? Why should Nigerian journalists allow this to be so?
"Well there was a time a few years back we wanted to get an interview with IBB, we went to Minna, nothing, we tried every angle, and then he's on the BBC talking about the very same issue we wanted to ask him about."
But isn't there room for a single Nigerian journalist who has the integrity and the chutzpah to talk to these people? I'm sure if one did, the IBBs of the world would respect them for it.
"Its a heirarchy. They are very elitist and look down on us."
I don't know... isn't this the knee jerk fatalist reaction that's infecting me too?
"You're right, there should be, but this situation arises out of their contempt for the press, from their continued grip on power. Babangida is a former dictator and a very powerful man. He himself is very gracious and well mannered, but he surrounds himself with a security net of people who could be very dangerous. Because he knows that one day people will come asking questions he cannot answer. The arrest of his son is a warning to him. It is targeted at him. Its generally known that the shares aren't his son's. The EFCC would be right to ask 'where did you get the money for all these shares?' And the answer is that it came from his father. Now where does his father get it from? There was a story going around the polo crowd that when his son graduated from univerisity he went to his father and said: I want to get into business, I'm not doing anything at the moment' and the father said 'Son with all i have accumulated your children and your children's children will not finish it. you like playing polo? Do that if you want.' Its one of those stories that has been around for a while. One of those that just might be true."

The rain was so hard this morning neither I nor the driver Alhassan could see more than a few metres in front of us. Crowds of people, busses and okada motorcycles crowded under bridges.
The okada –motorcycle taxis- we passed on the road looked miserable. Passengers making themselves small in the pillion seat, drivers muttering to themselves for strength, driving on despite the heavy rain.
Heavy ruddy water lay in foot deep pools around roundabouts. It was churned up by the cars and sprayed over the okada as they hovered round the outside of the bends.
Last week a flash flood poured through the satellite town of Kubwa, tearing through houses at about 6 am, catching people unaware.
The water level of a small canal rose over six feet, engulfing the houses built close by. Many people lost everything they had, and now the government has banned them from returning to their homes, and will demolish them soon.
The residents blame the flood on the engineers of a nearby dam. They say the spillway must have been opened to reduce the pressure on the dam. But engineers say they did not let any water out. If they had, they say, the whole town would have been obliterated and everyone there killed. They say that people blocking the canal and restricting the flow of the water is responsible for the flood.
People in the village say that the flood water receded while it was still raining, and that there has not been as high a flood here in the 20 years they have lived there.
Now I can’t say what caused the flood exactly, but I remember from my geography lessons that it is possible for flood water to recede while it is still raining. And that it flash floods can occur once in thirty, forty or fifty years. It is also not possible to judge exactly how heavy rain is with the naked eye. I’ve seen a river flood after the rain has stopped, and had to move my tent.
But the most pertinent point to me is not exactly what caused the flood. It’s that the people who live around the dam, even helped build it, instantly blame the authorities who run it for their ills. In this case they may be wrong about the origin of the flood (they could also be right, I don't know), but it’s a miniature version of the relationship that Nigerians seem to have with their government, as they see it a remote dictatorial authority absorbed with lining their own nests.

The day after we had been castigated by the CEO for running unbalanced stories, we ran a story on the front page from a press statement from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission chief, Nuhu Ribadu. He claimed that a conman had been going around telling governors that they could buy protection from investigation for N1million (about £4000).
Ribadu said one governor, Ahmed Sani Yerima of Zamfara state paid the money, and another Mohammedu Bafarawa of Sokoto called the EFCC and arrested the man.
Now, we couldn't reach either for comment.
Governor Sani's people said he'd travelled to his village and was out of telephone reach. Bafarawa's people couldn't be reached.
But we went ahead anyway.
No writ in the post this week from Gov. Sani's people, so it might have been true. The editor's line on it was "If Ribadu says it, its reliable". But I'm sure he must have a political agenda too.
Oh well.

Talk is still of the Funsho Williams murder. "He's dead and buried" said Charles. "Lets forget about it." But I'm still not sure about it. I'm told that the PDP has virtually no chance in taking Lagos state in the next election. Charles and Labaran told me that the feeling at the last election was that large scale political violence would break out if the PDP were announced to have won either Lagos or Kano.
"It would have been a death sentence for the winner," said Labaran. So the losing PDP candidates retired happy, having squeezed some money out of it. If that is the motivation for getting the candidacy of Lagos, not to win but to squeeze all you can out of it, the murderer must have been someone who had relatively little power in the PDP, or they would have just pushed Williams out by the back door.

Two days ago the Federal Capital Territory authorities evicted an elderly judge fromhis grace-and-favour home in an upmarket area of Abuja.
They kicked him out on the street with all his belongings, locked up the house and put it under guard.
Shehu one of the most experienced reproters went down there to speak to the man, Justice Bashir Sambo. He said he'd paid for the house after he retired, but the FCT minister wrote to him saying the house had been offered to him by mistake, and they needed it for another person.
It looked like a straight case of cheating. Justice Sambo said he had not been refunded the money that he paid.
The copy, as I saw it said: "Officials at the FCT ministry said the minister was too busy to comment on this matter". I didn't think much of this, as public relations officers in Nigeria will do anything to avoid relating to the public.
I was told by the publicity man at the Central Bank that "I had really ruined his evening" by calling at 6 pm. Many have simply slammed the phone down as soon as they hear I'm from a newspaper. Public relations officers must be the best paid people in Nigeria because when we try to get hold of them, their colleagues allways tell us "they have travelled out of the country".
So I let it through.
Any other journalist I would have questioned closely on exactly what they said to the authorities. Many come back and say "they would not comment", but when you question them it turns out they haven't actually spoken to anyone.
The FCT sent a press release saying they had paid back the money in three bankers drafts. They gave numbers and dates. They said they paid it to an agent acting for the Judge. They also said he had broken the rules of being sold the house, because he had sold it in order to pay the final instalment of the payments he had to make.
Of course once they had agreed to sell the house, they should have honoured the contract, it was their error. And to throw out a elderly man who has dedicated his life to serving the judiciary is intolerable. But we could have brought out these points in the story a day earlier.
The CEO was not pleased. "We need two people working on these kind of stories." And he's right, but I got irritated, because I've come to know how difficult to get hold of people when you're in the Nigerian press. An old Nigeria hand at the High Commission told me "Oh thats rubbish, its just crappy reporters making excuses." She said she never had that problem, but she's a diplomat.
I think if they do refuse to comment we should say so, and not allow them to kill the story just by stonewalling us. But the point is that by their press release they even hang themselves.
The reporter told me he went to the office of the special adviser on media, and it was locked. He asked some of the other people in the office and they said they didn't know when the minister would be around. My heart sank when he told me this.
"But you must understand" the reporter said, "these people smetimes put the phone down when we call." But this time you didn't even bother. "The BBC Hausa service did the same as us". That doesn't matter. I couldn't get through to the reporter to make him see that what he had done was wrong. The only thing I could say was that he had misled me and the reader by saying he had spoken to officials, and made them aware of the nature of his query.
The fatalism of not getting in touch with the authorities runs deep, and is starting to affect me. I don't want to come into contact with the authorities, because of their ability to stymie things, simply by putting the phone down. the frustration gets into you like dirt, rubbed in and hard to remove.

A muscular youth ran in front of our car toward the tight group of uniformed mobile police. Half his face was painted white. He looked straight out of one of the pictures I’d seen of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. It was only then driving past the row of shops that were scheduled to be demolished in Gwarimpa that I had any nerves about going there.
Staring out of Austin’s Mercedes I could see the two bulldozers parked right in the middle of the line of shops. All around there were piles of merchandise taken from the stores waiting to be picked up into heavy duty trucks. Shop keepers were in the process of stripping their shops of all salvageable fittings, building materials and stock, leaving chipped concrete shells. The crowd was gathering around the bulldozer and we had to nudge our way through.
Lola was sitting next to me in the car. She was coming back to pack up all her belongings before the bulldozers came to her door. This is the second time she has had her home destroyed. Last year her home on the Airport road was demolished. I’ve spoken to people who have been bulldozed out of their homes three times in the last two years.
Leaving Austin’s car the street we walked down was filled with trucks, busses, okada motorcycles, boxes, bags, mattresses, piles of wood, corrugated tin, scrap metal. Groups of women stood clustered in the street, looking at all the fleeing masses. We spoke to a few people who were packing all their things into cars.
The muddy street was churned up by the traffic. Vegetables, fruit, unfortunate chickens, rats, and piles of dry gari were crushed into the copper coloured mud by the trucks.
The estate of Gwarimpa sprang up around the village which was there before Abuja existed. Labourers and office workers arriving in Abuja rented shacks built by private landlords given land title under the military regimes of Babangida and Sani Abacha. The administration of the Federal Capital Territory did not pay any attention to the original “masterplan” of the city. The current administration of Nasir el-Rufai has been determined to return to the original zoning contained in the 10-year-old plan. Unplanned villages are being torn down. The land is being parcelled up and sold for residential, office or commercial use. Or maybe a road was supposed to go through it. But in Gwarimpa the tribal villagers have a copy of the original masterplan. There is no road coming through the area, no residential houses planned for it, no commercial district. There is simply a space market “village”.
Yakubu the village English speaker said the city authorities had come the day before and begun marking houses for demolition. “They claimed our chief knew about it, but he didn’t. We chased them away. They only marked the houses of latecomers, but we are worried they will come back and demolish ours too.”
The city authority has termed these people “indigenes”, and has started a resettlement programme for them. But “non-indigenes” are angry.
“I’ve heard they have turned down the apartments they were offered because they all have three wives and the rooms are too small” said one.
“Aren’t we all indigenes of Nigeria?” said another distraught civil servant.
We tried to get to the indigene chief but could not. He was required by the city authorities to show them which houses they could pull down, and which belonged to his people. The director of the Federal Housing Association was there. But police prevented me from approaching her to ask questions.
Coming up to one of the bulldozers I stopped to take a photo. I looked at the screen of the camera, It was a white out. I’d missed it. I stuck my hand up again and took another shot. Too late, the police noticed me this time. They came to me and tried to take my camera. But a man who had earlier interrupted our interview with the indigenes to ask my name, came up and told the police to go. This worried me slightly. My colleague Abubakar said there were many Secret Service agents around.
The police clambered over one of the bulldozers and it departed to the next village. The village chief had bought the residents of Gwarimpa a day to collect their belongings by offering to help demolish the neighbouring village shops in Kado.
We followed on.
When we arrived at Kado, we could see the huge fat wheels of the tractor ramming through the row of shops. A huge crowd had gathered, more shopkeepers ripping out anything they could, standing on the grass verge with their things in piles. Looters grabbed what they could from the wreckage. We walked in form the back of the village. I saw a man in his late forties or early fifties carrying a heavy oil-drum barbeque up the hill. He placed it down next to a group of women in wax print dresses, and returned with a table that must have weighed 200lbs balanced on his head, his face contorted with pain.
Trying to get pictures of the bulldozer close up was difficult. Abubakar worried and fretted at my side. “Don’t snap now!” he said “they are watching you!” But I didn’t want to leave without a good close up.
We jumped in a cab and drove past where the piglike tractor rammed through the shops, I snapped a man who had grabbed the only thing he could from his shop, or looted from another, a desk fan.
Its taken me a week to write this, as I haven’t been able to straighten it all in my mind.

We had an interesting discussion in afternoon conference today; how should we report alleged assassination attempts on major political figures. What are the ground rules for coverage?
On the face of it this shouldn't be an issue. A politician's life is threatened, its news.
But this is Nigeria, and things may not always be as they seem.
Political assassination is almost a monthly occurrence. But it’s possible that what they claimed to have happened might not be all they say it is. With armed robbery such a high level, there is an explanation that doesn’t involve politics. In extreme cases, it can’t be ruled out that the report is entirely false.
But two weeks ago Funsho Williams, the People's Democratic Party aspirant in the Lagos State primary was brutally murdered in his home. It seems his assassins came in through a hole in the roof. Two of his four-man police guard did not report for work that day, which didn’t stop the national police spokesman saying Williams was “adequately guarded”. Presumably right up until the point he was murdered…
Funsho never had a chance. He was hog-tied, strangled and stabbed by his killers. In the days after the killing every political figure in Nigeria came to his house and tramped through the crime scene to commiserate with his family. People have seen this as being the first political assassination of the “election season”, and are beginning to fear the worst for the elections. More political violence may be on the way.
But there are other cases that are not so clear cut.
Emmanuel got a call from a public relations officer of an Advance Congress of Democrats party chief. There’s been an attempt on his life, and a telephone threat of another. The only evidence of it is the man’s own word, not in a crime report, but a petition to the Inspector General.
During the Third Term business in April, the head of the constitutional review committee, Ibrahim Mantu claimed his house was bombed by people trying to assassinate him to prevent any amendment being made to the constitution that would allow Obasanjo to run again.
The editor Azeez says: “Let’s not do the politician’s work for them! If there is no evidence then we are not obliged to report anything they say”.
And he’s got a point. In general the press just reports blindly what the big men say, as if its fact, without checking or balancing. There’s a reason for this, in some cases the big man has paid for it to be so. Checking and balancing can be hard in a place with such poor communications systems. The big men also like to insulate themselves from the local press entirely, making accusations difficult to square. In a place where reliable information is so difficult to come by, and all the players have an angle they are pursuing, its difficult to know what is fact with any degree of confidence.
Emmanuel remained confused: “But what do we do? Tell them it’s not news? How can we get to the truth unless we absolutely witness it? It’s unlikely!”
Azeez: “We are not obliged to do their work. Let them go to the police first, show us some evidence.”
Two weeks ago the ACD chief claimed in a press release he was attacked on an Enugu road, stripped naked, beaten and his car stolen. All this, his publicist said, was within yards of a police roadblock. The police did nothing, which led them to claim it was a politically motivated hit, not just a simple armed robbery.
But even if he did report it to the police, it’s not guaranteed that the police would investigate it, or even admit to receiving the report. Most of the times we go to the police publicity officer he says he knows nothing about it.
We couldn’t confirm the attack on the ACD chief with the police, and the publicist didn’t give us details of exactly where the attack took place. We don’t have the resources to go to Enugu and check it out, but we published it. So what we’re left with is no way of really verifying attacks on politicians -at least within the timeframe of our deadlines- if they don’t offer up some physical evidence of their own, like a bullet-ridden car. Or unless they die.
Why would anyone falsely claim to have been attacked? I suppose falsely claiming to be attacked may be a way for the under-fire politician to put pressure back on his enemies. He may benefit from the publicity. It may give credence to claims he might have of a wider conspiracy against him, helping to explain the barrage of petitions from opponents claiming he is corrupt. It paints him as the victim, like most assumed was the case with the Ibrahim Mantu bomb attack.
As a gambit, I’m not convinced it’s a very smart one when the stakes are so high.
I think the answer for us must be that we provide the information, with the caveat saying none of it could be verified. Then we have to pursue the case for more evidence. This isn't easy.

Its funny where you get stories sometimes. Emmanuel and I were buying a schwarma at the lebanese snackbar in Wuse, trying to avoid the heat pumping out of the shack, when a lady recognised Emma. She turned out to be a former president of the National Council of Women's Societies. Their national election was just cancelled by the minister for women's affairs yesterday.
How can the government interfer so blatantly with an NGO? Well apparently the current president has been in a battle with the government and anti corruption agencies for years. The government investigated her, found evidence of fraud and took her to court, using the ICPC. The case failed, and the president of the NCWS held a meeting in her home state, Nasarawa, calling for a year's extension of her tenure -because she's spent so much of the previous year in court. Thats Chutzpah. Anyway, the government cancelled the last election, according to our friend, becuase the president only entertained candidates for the positions from seven states, held a quick meeting in Nasarawa (its against the constitution of the organisation to hold a meeting in the same place twice), and told the candidate from Kaduna that if she stood, the president of the NCWS would sue her.
We asked she could go on the record with any of this, and she was hesitant, but ended up saying, "I am the perfect person to go on the record of this... but let me ask the minister."
Apparently she's had a year long battle with the current president. The politics of gender is the same as any other politics here, obviously.

I don't think that Shekarau did what he did out of spite. He has no personal beef with me, I'm sure, but I do think that it marks a turning point in my stay here.
I've been here five months now, and I suppose Shekarau thought that meant I could look after myself, or at least he was not going to go out of his way to protect me, because I've been here long enough to look after myself. Which in a way is quite flattering if you look at it like that.
Interestingly enough this kind of thing is coinciding with my itchy feet. I want to travel round the country a bit, get to know it a bit more because I've just been in Abuja for five months.
I'm regretting not starting this blog sooner, as I think it would have been good to capture all the things that I've had to learn as they happened.
But there is still much to learn.
Yesterday Barak Obama said Nigeria was comeng close to collapsing as a failed state. My reaction was "coming close?", but Hameed was quite angered by it.
"He is just one of those close minded people who can't think that Africa is anything but terrible," he said.
"But isn't it a failed state already?" I asked.
"No we are very sucessful. The people are very strong!" Hameed countered.
"But Nigeria has all this oil reserves and yet it cannot provide 24-hour electricity. State failure is about the state's ability to provide services, not about the resilience of the people."
"Yes," Hameed said, "But this man is talking from his own point of view, about America's need for Nigerian oil. His country took a long time to get where they are now. Through a painful process of reform. We are going through that now. It is painful, but it doesn't mean that we are near collapse. It is a process of becoming more developed. We know the need for better discipline in leadership, and it may happen. When Buhari came in with his people they were disciplined, and the people saw that and corruption was stopped."
"But it didn't last long." I said. I have to say I'm a little sceptical of the nostalgia people have for Buhari.
"No but it is a process. Through time we will change and leadership will improve. Even in the developed world, there is corruption, just not so much. It will happen eventually."
"I hope you're right Hameed, I hope you're right."

Last night the car was out of action so Shekarau gave me a lift. He and Alfatah talked about the problem of affording a home in Abuja.
"I have applied for the home assistance loan from the company, but I did so weeks ago, and I still have not heard anything. It was with the company secretary, now its with the managing editor. I don't know whats happening." Alfatah said.
"Even with the loan, it is difficult to find a place big enough. It is impossible to find a two bedroomed house in town. This is why I live outside in one of the satellite towns." said Shekarau. "Even then cost of rental is up to N300,000 per year."
I thought I should probably kep quiet on this subject.
"Isa says your new apartment is very nice" said Shekarau looking up into the mirror.
"Its fine, yes." I said.
"How much is it?"
"Weeellll... the list price was N12,000, but I don't think we even paid half of that. We negotiated something else but i don't know how much."
"12,000? A month."
"No. A day."
"A DAY?"
I did not want to tell them that my hotel room had cost more than that. Relocating to the apartment I am in was a step down in terms of price.
Shekarau took in the information. We talked a little more and then We came to Wuse motorpark, busses pulling up, their doors flying open, people boarding them with sacks and pallets. Okadas waiting. Chaotic motorpark.
"You will leave us here," said Shekarau. I did not want to get out, but I didn't want to be rude, I didn't want to seem as if I was scared either.
"I don't want to lose my bag" I said, getting out.
As soon as the door closed five men took an interest in me. They tried to say they were taxi drivers and I should go with them, off into the dark. I stepped out into the road and a car pulled up. I jumped in and said "Take me to Garki II". The men crowded around the window and tried to reach in and take my laptop bag. The driver sped off with one hanging from the window, still trying to get my bag. I shoved a crumpled banknote out of the window and he let go.
Shekarau called moments later. "I was going to advise you to be careful" he said. I asked him what he had expected to happen.
Angrily I rang off before I could hear his answer. I sent him a text explaining what happened. "Thank you very much for dropping me off there. It was very thoughtful of you," it ended.
He replied: "You're most welcome, and be more careful."