The Nation Newspaper

Author: Sam Omatseye

  • Why Trump won

    Why Trump won

    The victory of Donald Trump has been described in many ways by many pundits. Some say it is a triumph for the working class when others are saying it is the failure of the Harris campaign to make the case. Some are saying it is immigration while others are battening down the logic of hyper-inflation. Some highlight the moral anathema of the LGBTQ folks while the Christian evangelicals hail a born-again Jesus at the polls.

    Of course, a loud voice hypes racism and gender bias while others are stoking the argument of Joe Biden’s fumbles as president. Before I went to bed on election night, it looked like a toss-up at about 4 am Nigerian time. By the time I woke up about three hours later, the battleground of all battleground states was smiling at Trump. Pennsylvania had broken for the con artist, lecher, liar, felon, fraud, racist, egotist, fear monger, impresario. The other battleground states, in the end, were an anticlimax.

    For the evangelicals, they are right. For those who say it is Joe Biden’s stumbles, they are right. Who says it is working class rebellion? They are right. They are not wrong who stress race and gender. Anyone is right after an election victory. They were right the last time. They are right this time. What they have not said is what one of America’s iconic football coaches of all time said about competition: “Winning is everything.” What Vince Lombardi said about American football years ago was right for Donald Trump.

    It may be simplistic to say it is racism. Not all simplistic facts are wrong, though. They just have to be proven. Trump knew his society, and he knew how to snatch power. He understood the zeitgeist of America. When he entered the race for 2016, he announced himself as the voice of the forgotten part of America and identified a bogeyman: the immigrant as a leech and moral scum. It flattered the hope of not just the forgotten part. He appealed to who Sarah Palin called “the real America” that had masked itself under the concept of neo-liberal accommodation.

    That America prospered. Its workers, educated or not, enjoyed what we call the American dream: a living wage, a car, a house, medical care, a vacation, etc. Then came globalization. Some of the worker’s privileges were going abroad, the jobs atrophying and the wages dropping. As Harvard professor Michael Sandel argued over 26 years ago in his book, Democracy’s Discontent, now vindicated, globalization was undermining the majority of the American worker and society. One area stood out: education. Many have always equated democracy with enlightenment. But it is often not so. Almost 70 percent of Americans do not have university degrees. So, when the jobs were scaling down wages, it was an attack on the suffering majority.  Nigeria and most of the world is no different.

    These people loved their country, accepted immigrants, hugged the idea of tolerance. But standard of living was going to change all that. This is not just the story with the United States. It is the case with the United Kingdom, Italy, Hungary, Sweden, Germany, France, et al.

    Rather than attack the pain, the liberal elite started urging the less educated to go to the university, and that was the story of the future. The Ideal will collapse in the face of realism any day. Meanwhile, the same jobs that paid their big mortgages was funding many people in India, Mexico, the Philippines for far lower wages and higher profits for the corporations. The result was a gaping inequality. This has been the worst chasm between the rich and poor in history as demonstrated by the French economist Thomas Piketty in his book, Capital in the 21st century.

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    This has generated resentment in the country for a long time, and a clever Trump saw this and exploited it. As I stated last week, Michael Wolff wrote in his book, Fire and Fury, that Trump said the “white trash” – that is the poor Caucasians – were like him except that he was a rich man and they were poor. There is a part of America that is called traditional red states. They are Republicans. They used to be Democrats until the 1960’s. Lyndon Johnson flipped their love when he signed the civil rights bill that allowed blacks to vote. After President Johnson signed the bill, he told many people, as recorded by historian Doris Kearn Godwin, that the Democrats may have lost the south forever. Republicans like Richard Nixon exploited the moment and they crafted a platform that would transform American politics: it is called the southern strategy which broadcasts, “God, guns and gays.” Guns for evangelicals. Guns for gun rights, a special part of the culture and hacks back to large American swath from south to west as delineated in the novel Lonesome Dove by Larry Mcmutry. Gays as a fight against LGBTQ. That was a cultural tour de force. They combined that with conservative view of economics centred on tax cuts.

    After Nixon, the other man who exploited it was Ronald Reagan, and he had the Soviet Union and American power, prosperity and hubris to brandish. The difference between him and Trump was that America working class was still happy. The other was that while Reagan had the Soviet Union as the enemy, Trump had immigrants.

    Over the decades, the state of the American middle class has worsened. The consequence of this decline is a sense of the besieged. The person who thought he loved immigrants started to see them as the problem. They are the ones taking the jobs, taking away their peace. They are the criminals. Is it not an irony that it takes a criminal to tell them that they have criminals in their midst? It is the paradox of human civilization. Even God chooses the sinner to evangelise the sinner, Paul of Tarsus to Apostle Paul. Trump the sinner became the preacher.

    So, why did the evangelicals stand with him even though he lies and is convicted? Why do the workers cohabit with a crooked billionaire even though it is the people of his class that took away their jobs and prosperity? It is because he is the one who made the pitch and told the story, and flatter their secret hopes. The majority of blacks, men and women voted for Kamala, but they feel the economic crunch the most. Why? They say elections are about three Cs: condition, candidate and culture. Trump had all three working for him.

    Hence, they voted for Trump. It is about race because they need someone to blame, and it is what Jean Paul Sartre described as “hell is other people.” If they say it is  inflation, or the economy, at least, Trump would have made the case. How was a majority non-college educated class to understand the ins and outs of economics. Nobel Laureates  said Harris plan was better. On the border, why did they not listen when Biden came with an immigration plan but Trump stopped it from passing the Congress so he could use it as a campaign ruse. Why did that not resonate?. It is not because Harris did not make the case. Sentiment, especially of race, had made the case for trump.

    It is the unravelling of Jacob and Esau story in the Bible. The first time Jacob was asked who he was, it was the father who asked. He said he was Esau. That was not what he was. He grew rich but had to face the facts later when he wrestled with an angel. When the angel asked who he was, he confessed he was Jacob because he was desperate to live and escape the wrath of this brother who was coming after him. that was who he was.

    Americans said who they are in the last election. When things are fine, they can abide the outsider. When it comes to the crunch, identity matters. Hell, as Sartre wrote, are the immigrants. What of the minorities who went for Trump? They are bonding with their oppressors, the so-called Stockholm syndrome. It is basically the Hispanic who have crossed over and deny that Trump called them murderers and rapists. Trump knew how to talk to them, He knew how to win, and he is a true follower of Lombardi.

     Life is Hobbesian and Machiavellian. The end justifies the means. Jacob took Esau’s birthright. Yet, he got away with it and even was embraced by Esau, who forgave him. It is better, as Trump has shown, to be Jacob, steal, prosper and win, than Esau,  who is cheated, spends all is life waiting to exhale and revenge but accepts the victory of the cheat. It is the perennial pattern of history. It belongs to the cynic.

  • Ofone!

    Ofone!

    At the best of times, he always looked like a man who did not sleep last night. But at 4.40 am on Sunday, Godwin Obaseki had murdered sleep, his own sleep. He could not prepare for church. His eyes were alert enough for sermons but not his spirit.

    Sitting at the INEC office like a regular citizen, he crouched over his phone, his face quizzical. He did not lose a wink, did not doze or snore, was not tired. He lacked the ennui of a loser. He still nurtured hope.

    He sat alone, and confused. He was suffering from a territorial crisis. Where was he to be? He was not supposed to be at an INEC office. It belonged to umpires. He was probably mistaking the word umpire for empire. His – an empire – was crumbling. INEC office was not his gubernatorial territory. But there he was; he, an interloper. He was supposed to be in bed. He banished his pillows. He was not antsy for a snooze. He could not nap because he had been caught napping at the polls. He should be at his party’s situation room, or at home as a receptacle of updates.

    But he was at the situation room. However, his situation cut a pathetic pose. He stood, paunch forward, face morose, alone among people. He was looking at the last clock of a pride ticking away into oblivion. He witnessed it after he overstayed his welcome at the INEC office. The governor, amidst his police guards, was ushered out of the office like a regular tout, booed until he turned his scowl into a toothy smile, the most embarrassed smile in Edo. From the video camera, his cameo of a smile revealed some of the whitest teeth you could see anywhere. He might have wished the polls rewarded his dentition. Which is a contrast to one of his term-expired governor neighbours who tormented the television set with his set of broken incisors, neither white nor set but unsettling.

    This was Obaseki, the peacock of Edo State. He was getting his comeuppance with his people on whose back he had betrayed, he had puffed, he had a subpar performance, capsized democracy with a rubberstamp house, tossed about his deputy, undermined the monarch in a revanchist plot, desecrated Bini symbolisms.

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    The people just gelded this same Obaseki. He had exhibited nervousness in the runup to the polls. He borrowed a book from his party’s notorious patriarch when he belched out the lingo of desperado. He promised do-or-die if his Asue Ighodalo did not win at the polls. But he had a bluster unlike the patriarch at Ota, who had an ex-soldier’s braggadocio and an appeal to the muscular use of force. Bravado is not enough for a third-world election.

    You could use Bravado in the west, like his counter in the United States has done. All he did was say the word, and the army beat its chest and they stormed the Congress. And ever since, Trump’s army has been agile, angry and at war with the rest of America. And the others are afraid. The Owu chief had raw muscle, men, thugs, police and soldiers. After Obaseki’s little huff, the IGP pulled Edo State police commissioner and that was the beginning of his castration. He tried to recalibrate the phrase after a backlash, and that showed that he did not have his mentor’s mettle. The Owu chief never ate his words. He spat fire instead.

    At the night of the election, APC top brass had begun to stir with pride. I called one of them, and he quipped, “Are you calling to congratulate me?” I wasn’t. Just wanted to confirm a video. Then I asked about the word Ofone, and I had not finished my sentence when he broke into pidgin, “Ofone naim be the song for Edo now.” He was too ecstatic for dialogue.

    Ofone means it is finished. They mean it is finished for the arrogance of a man who did not know that democracy has an expiry date for every office holder. That he knew he commanded awe but he would be awe-struck by the time he was up. That real majesty is democracy but more so is time. Time does not respect anyone. As the bible says,”I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and lo, he was not.”

    Fate is telling him that the Edo servant for eight years now departs, if not in peace, according to the laws of democracy and the people. His eyes have beheld the humiliation of the polls.

    Today, he would be thinking many things, and perhaps for the rest of his life. He may not forget agony but he probably will outlive it. He will not forget Adams Oshiomhole. Why did he not show more humility or even understanding to the man who picked him from obscurity in Lagos, but he decided to pooh-pooh him. An act of betrayal.

    He will not forget his deputy, Phillip Shaibu, who worked for him like a little boy, as a point man and even a bull dog. He did not afford him the courtesy of humane discussion even if he decided to pick someone else as his successor.

    He might also contemplate the phrase “Edo no be Lagos.” He rallied his people against an outsider. Does he know that he was a Lagos pick? Now, for irony, he might also say to himself that Asue Ighodalo, like himself, is a Lagos boy, too. He beat Lagos but Lagos beat him back in the last laugh when he picked a Lagos boy like him. This time, Okpebholo the homeboy wears the crown. It is the pirouette of destiny, a revenge of history.

    It is the way things end, a certain sense of destiny seems to work things to oust persons who always believe they know it all. He thought he could control time. But only God can. As Shakespeare said in Hamlet, “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.”

    He will also think about the election day. The failure of rational expectation. He could muse about how men plot festivals and end up with funerals. Like a sour dawn, like another line from Hamlet, “The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” It is this air of ironies that will plague Obaseki. Epic collapses are ironies. Federico Lorca’s play Blood Wedding was a nuptial mirth of dance and feasting until the tragedy. But Obaseki’s story is often comic.

    When you saw him in public, he had an air of glory without purpose, a man who thought he had love everywhere but not enough. Now he leaves power after thinking himself a godfather. He realizes he is neither god nor a father of the throne. Okpebholo, who did not show any assumption of arrogance, has now bested his best man.

    He will contemplate another line from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: “But man, proud man/Dressed in a little brief authority/Most ignorant of what he’s most assured—His glassy essence../Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven/As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens/Would all themselves laugh mortal.”

    Vincent Akanmode, deputy weekend editor of The Nation, characterized the moment like a poet. Hear him. “Okpebholo won at the polling booth, Akpata in the social media and Obaseki in none.” I should add that Obaseki won in his fantasy.

  • Elupee candidate

    Elupee candidate

    It still baffles me, the video clip. Is it a work of artificial intelligence or a temporary loss of intelligence. I saw the clip of Labour Party candidate Olumide Akpata while lamenting his prospect. He was referring to a poll as his buoy of hope. It was not a poll by a university or funded by even a political party, not commissioned by his own party or any other one. But by who? A TV anchor. And he referred to it as a reason he thought he was headed not just for victory, but a landslide.

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    I like to think he was not the one. After all, he is supposed to be a man of evidence  as a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association. For him to stoop to fiction, gives one a window on how the rabble of that party thinks. It is the sort of delirium that works that crowd.

    They performed so poorly in Edo guber poll that I wonder why TV stations present the numbers as though it were a three horse race. The third horse has not hoofbeat and cannot neigh.

  • Fintiri, it’s finito

    Fintiri, it’s finito

    If anyone challenges an election before INEC announces, it should not be Fintiri, Adamawa State Governor. He it was who survived the impunity of Hudu Ari, who did the same thing against him.

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    The man is facing the consequences of his action. Fintiri is doing same to challenge Edo governorship elections. He is acting like a gangster who is becoming one because he was made by one. He should know that once the process says it, the only other option is the court. Not freelance impunity. For now, it is finito.

  • Like father like fraud

    Like father like fraud

    A tweet went viral last week from the fingers of lawmaker and son of former Kaduna State governor, Bello El-Rufai. I did not see it until quite a few people forwarded it to me. A former minister also sent it to me with a comment, “This little prick needs to be put in his place.” What did Bello, a member of House of Representatives, write? “Thanks. I left the office early to see him off at the airport. I just told him a lot of you do love him and have been supportive. I shared some tweets to him. We also laughed at a shameless idiot, Sam the houseboy at 70, of the Toilet Paper called The Nation.” He accompanied the tweet with a picture of the back of his father, the former governor who bleeds rather than talk.

    So, that is the quality of a lawmaker in today’s democracy of the 21st century. A father is accused of stealing over N400 billion, the son goes to the toilet to defend him. Is that the sort of family that should spill into the public square? So, if father is an accused thief, son is a liar. What a combo of family.  Who is shameless if not a thief or a liar? The Nation is toilet paper but it was not so when it defended him in the past, when he made headlines against his enemies. It is because he has a toilet imagination that Bello’s father can be accused of stealing and he does not hide himself in the shadows.

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    He calls me 70, where is his fact? His father returned to Atiku, the man he betrayed for OBJ. he has returned to his own vomit. So, it is a case of a traitor cohabiting with a defector. What a marriage. And they say they love this country? Bello himself has been pampered by his father. He never had any real job in this country before he became lawmaker, except a stint at a Chinese firm his father helped him get. He schooled outside this country. I recall challenging his father at Sheraton sometime ago in front of my editor colleagues when he wanted to advertise his integrity. He said his salary was small. I asked him how he funded his children, including Bello, from a government salary that could not pay more than a month’s rent abroad. He could not answer me then. Now I know why, and why his son must defend his father.

  • The stingy party

    The stingy party

    The Labour Party must be showing us what it means not to be stingy this season. We just read that its Taraba State chairperson has been shown the door, if for a while, for stealing money. She didn’t show a stingy finger. A whopping N21 million out of the coffers. Before that, we know what Doyin Okupe is doing with his Ogun State fellows who said he was too stingy in keeping the money in his pocket when they were supposed to give them to million man marchers. To buy a crowd, you don’t want a stingy guy. Okupe, they say, was not stingy to himself. They want to give him to boot. Even before that, there was the national youth leader who went digital and was robbing the party’s threshing floor until they floored him and sent him packing. Everyone has their version of being stingy, including their leader and presidential candidate who, as governor, kept his stingy hand in an offshore account.

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    There is enough “stingy” to go round for labourers.

  • Messi’s emilokan

    Messi’s emilokan

    Lionel Messi always inflicted me with a binary disease. I love him, but not his country. Any time I saw him play, he revived the maestro of my boyhood fancy: Haruna Ilerika. He is small, just like Haruna. He is a leftie, just like Nigeria’s former number nine who clutched Africa player of the year honours twice. He enjoys the dribble run, cuts through defences like a tailor through satin (fans often called Ilerika Tailor), browbeats marque defenders, executes an economy of schemes, pearls passes that even his opponent envies, takes the game like a writer cherishes poetry.

    I wanted France to beat Messi’s country, if I had a heartbeat for Messi’s game. It is a nation that never liked blacks. While Brazil is content to place its dark people in its ghettoes and salve its conscience by cultivating its Peles, their southern cousins decided to wipe them out. In a whitewashing sweep, they removed every trace of black people from their soils.

    They did not only cleanse the blacks out of their lands, they whitewashed its telling. They do not want even their forbears to know what happened. Today’s argentines do not learn that aspect of their butchery. They were the ancestors of Hitler. But no one can deny the story. Some of their leaders are even proud of it. One of their former presidents, Carlos Menem once quipped: “In Argentina, blacks do not exist, that is a Brazilian problem.”

    Blacks worked in the plantations of Argentina as they did in Brazil. At one time, half the population of Buenos Aires was black. They envied the human landscape of their European fellows, and so killed black after black. There was no mercy. They still love their country that way. It is the only country in Latin and South America that does not even feature a black player. It is the continent’s rampant bigot, an oasis of prejudice. It deprived itself the opportunity to discriminate, to kill blacks on the streets or even to dump them in slums and confront a moral crisis of immiserating them like we see in Europe and North America. Its ancestors committed the iniquities so as to sanctify them.

    When Nigeria beat Brazil in the Olympics decades ago to meet Argentina in the finals, a newspaper printed a headline that read, “Let the monkeys come.” A BBC broadcaster replied, if the Nigerians are monkeys, then the Argentines are bananas. In the end, Nigeria ate them up for gold.

    We are not going to see Argentina apologise soon for its pogrom. Its citizens don’t even know enough of it to apologise. It is not the debate front burner. But history haunts like a witch. Nero wanted to do same to Christians. When asked how history would judge him, he said by the time he was done with the followers of Jesus, history would not be sure they ever existed. Just like Nero, the Argentines were wrong. They are not even aware that their tango dance has ancestry in the rhythms of slave dance. It was what Dereck Walcott, a Caribbean poet wrote, “I met history, but it didn’t recognise me.”

    Yet I celebrate Messi. It gives me a schizophrenic bump, though. But it is the way it is. I accept his humanity. I adore his talent. He has also put paid, with this one act, his rivalry with Ronaldo. Both guys are hard to throw up in a generation. One a Portuguese, the other an Argentine. One feisty, the other shy and unobtrusive. About a week, I discussed it with my colleague and friend Femi Macaulay, and I was wading in favour of Ronaldo. But Ronaldo can never win a world cup. 2022 is an EXCLAMATION point for Messi. It is the culmination of struggles. Messi is lucky. He has a team fiercer than Ronaldo’s. As Conrad wrote in a Heart of Darkness, “Our strengths are accidents arising from the weaknesses of others.” Messi entertained and fate gave him a last hurrah.  If Portugal paraded a cast like Messi had, maybe both would have squared it off in the final. Not to be.

    Ronaldo shed tears when Morocco seared his dreams. Was he thinking of Messi? Did he wish Messi lost against France? That was all moot as Messi clutched the cup and his teammates hugged him because it was at once a collective dream as it was Messi’s.

    Speaking of teammates, he shared the spotlight with Kylian Mbappe whose presence and a hat trick gave us a rare moment in football. Messi hoisted the cup, Mbappe wears the golden boot. Mbappe becomes the second person to score a hat trick in a world cup final. He scored four if we count the penalty shootout.

    This is no time to weep for France. France does not have a glorious history of racism either. It is a colonial giant. Macron almost leapt when Mbappe touch equalised the scores. But an Mbappe outside of soccer might not be accepted in a middleclass suburb in France. Their colonial history of assimilation treated Africans with malignant contempt, like children who must be taught how to wear their panties and button their shirts.

    The final was an apotheosis of a career and the handing over of the baton. Exit Messi. Enter Mbappe. Few moments in history give such emilokan moments.

    When the World Cup began some Nigerian sports pundits handed it to Brazil. I was wary. They had disappointed me too often. And when the game began, their show was anaemic triumphs. They had grace but not speed. They had talent but not chemistry. They displayed flashes but could not blind the sky like a threatening storm. They passed as though to pass the time.

    Argentina wins its third World Cup. It seems when they have a world class player, he must have his emilokan hour. Kempes did it in 1978. Maradona dribbled his way to the crown in the 1990s. Messi today.

    Morocco gave me a pride and confusion. Was I going to support my black folks in a white man’s land or my Arab neighbours of Africa? It was a dilemma only resolved by the result. I was proud to see an African team best many a giant even if they could not be the best.

    An unsung hero of the World Cup is the Croatia fellow called Luka Modric. He is a technician of the game and one of the best ever to place foot to ball in any colour.

    Well, this was a fiesta without Nigeria. Nigeria ought to be there. But we are not there because of so many things that are not there in our history. Croatia has about four million people and placed third. We have to ruminate and develop first and not wait for accidents to make us great. A nation does not win with talent alone. It fights with a spirit. Mbappe and company may not have won, but we witnessed the spirit of their fight, their heroic joust with Messi and his kaleidoscope of go-getters. Until we mint the Nigerian spirit, all the big-name players we have in Europe will be only careerists, not nationalists on the turf of play.

  • PERSON OF THE YEAR 2022: PROLOGUE

    PERSON OF THE YEAR 2022: PROLOGUE

    To be the best is often more fantasy than fact. Shakespeare’s phrase “to be or not to be,” tends not to be. Not for our own Tobi. Young, audacious, sprightly sprinter. To be the best. Tobi the best.

    She hurdled, she hugged the finish line and hummed in our souls. She had been at it for years. When Tobi Amusan began, cheers came but did not erupt. It was the first time. It inspired a local accolade. A Nigerian medal. Could any good thing come out of her homeland? The prophetess was known save by her own people.

    Not satisfied, she leapt onto the continental stage. She cut the tape of the 100 metres hurdle. Once was not enough so she snatched it again for double glory. The cheers may not have been mute but they were not loud enough. It was as though her feat was moot. But not so her mood. An upbeat Amusan looked ahead like Archimedes. Give her a track and a row of hurdles and she would conquer the world. A Commonwealth miracle lay ahead. The post-colonial stage that the British set up to expiate their sins of over a hundred years was a good place to show that she, a grandchild of a colonial subject, was going to master their stage. She clutched the gold medal to a big applause. An imperious black, African and Nigerian loomed over a shadow play of an empire in its rump.

    Though the cheers were erupting, her greed had not attained its acme yet, and she was going to do more. Then the real test came, all countries of the world, all ideologies, tribes, races, colours, all continents, all geniuses, a kaleidoscope of greed, brawn, muscles, cunning and training. The athletes all converged for one prize. All of Amusan’s talent, will, gallantry, training, reflexes, ambition massed against the others. Amusan against the world. Amusan engaged the world. Amusan prevailed. Her heart raced as her feet, and she emerged the top athlete on God’s green earth.

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    So, in one body frame, in one flush, Amusan condensed the following: Nigerian Champion, African champion, Commonwealth champion, world champion, and world record. In spite of the technical absurdity that wind assisted a record of 12.06 seconds, she still beat the elements in her semi-final. She was queen, and the world genuflected.

    Yet, she performed this act amidst our search for a collective hero. While she streaked like a human lightning, the nation was on track to pick a person who will breast an electoral tape. If it is about vision, there is no race without it. Amusan saw the hurdles. If it is about surmounting our obstacles, Amusan scaled them. It is about timing. We have 2023. Amusan knew that, in 2022, it was about time for her. Time squelches reflexes. She was in her prime. Nigeria cannot wait to move forward. Amusan’s story also foreshadows the electoral race that we anticipate in 2023: free, fair, shorn of the hobgoblins of race or faith, without violence, without rigging – forget the wind-assisted gibberish. Amusan is a dream on the track. We want same in a series of polls that will happen in a few weeks.

    She ran the race not as a Yoruba or citizen of Ogun State. She flourished as a Nigerian spirit and Nigerians cheered her as one. In an election season, her world record buried our centrifugal impulses of tribe and faith and united us in one thunderous roar. For that, Tobi Amusan is The Nation’s Person of the Year. Her story inspires and chastens us, asking us to abandon what divides us and embrace what stitches us into a commonwealth.

    The second runner-up goes to the All Progressives Alliance (APC) northern governors for setting aside regional hubris and the politics of entitlement for national harmony. Their competing rival, the People’s Democratic party (PDP), installed a headwind in our body politic by choosing a northern candidate to represent them against a consensus. They knew that a Fulani man had been president for two terms and should precede a person from the south. Yet, they bejewelled Atiku Abubakar, another Fulani man, as their point man. It has presented a problem in the party, with factions that hark back to the birth pangs of the APC. The northern governors of the APC had a choice of one among them. They could have rallied behind one of their own. Rather, they glided over the maelstrom of the primary campaigns and threw it open to the southern aspirants. They opted for the north to lose so that Nigeria could win. This was against the background of the meetings of southern governors in Asaba in which they issued a statement that all the southern governors wanted the presidency to go to the south. It ruffled northern governors before they reconciled to its nobility. They became courtiers in a vision of a cooperative politics. They bowed to the accord of one nation.

    Another important category was the public servant of the year, and it goes to the man in charge of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, (NDLEA) Buba Marwa. This has been a year of the drug bust. Whether in the lowbrow interstices of Ikorodu or the highbrow precinct of Ikoyi, or the wayfarer who wanted to fair in life through the airport, Marwa’s agency worked the work. He shares this prize with police officer Daniel Itse Armah who turned down a fortune of filth. He rejected a bribe of $200,000. It is no mean feat in a nation of Ghana Must Go, snakes swallowing millions and politicians in cahoots with civil servants. Scandals did not encourage him. He wanted no such scent on his name.

    Other categories cover the wide gamut of our society from business to culture and included as flimsy a gem as the emoji of the year, musician of the year. We also looked at scandal of the year, controversy of the year. It is a tableau vivant of a turbulent year.