The Nation Newspaper

Category: Friday

  • Aribisala: In the prison of a closed mind

    Locked in a mental prison Lately, when I read Femi Aribisala’s (FA) weekly intervention in the Vanguard every Tuesday, I cannot help but see the picture of a man behind bars noodling away in his quiet, lonely world. No, not quite like Kirikiri, Nigeria’s hell-hole misnamed maximum security prison, but a windowless semi-lit enclosure where a self-imprisoned, languid inmate finds peace and liberty. This is the inescapable image that forms in my mind when I read FA, especially his recent un-nuanced barrage against Bola Tinubu, leader of Nigeria’s main opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Let me confess upfront that by my humble estimation, FA is among the best newspaper columnists today. He pens in the manner I would love to: unencumbered, simple and straight to the point. He calls a spade by its name and does not seem to enjoy the luxury of working up a sentence or stringing adjectives. He stands akimbo on the rock of his conviction; never to equivocate, but not keen to other premises.

    But the danger in this manner of writing, in resting inexorably on the strength of one’s strong convictions is that sometimes, unbeknown to us, we may just be sitting on the wrong rock; or worse, we may get locked up in our own maximum prison. Consider the mirthless incongruity of having to tear down a prison door to save a prisoner from himself.

    Reading FA’s installment last Tuesday, one could not help but make this rather demure intervention whatever it may be worth. The issue is the Between a phenomenon and a conundrum Tinubu phenomenon or conundrum if you wish, in the milieu of today’s Lagos/Southwest and Nigeria’s politics. FA’s titles his piece: “Time to get rid of Tinubu’s cronies in Lagos,” and let me quote the second paragraph of the article, which encapsulates FA’s viewpoint and mindset.

     “Enough is enough. The domination of Lagos politics by one man has gone on for too long. Lagos must be wrested from the control of Bola Tinubu who has enslaved the politicians in the state and privatised its resources in the last 16 years.”

    It is true that Tinubu has become the most influential politician to emerge from the Southwest, if not Nigeria, in this dispensation and I also agree with FA that he may have profited immensely from his political activities in the last 16 years. However, FA will be living in denial if not self-imprisonment not to acknowledge that Tinubu’s politics has imbued the Southwest and indeed Nigeria with rich positive influences that the entire national treasury cannot buy.

    If we must admit, he is probably the most pragmatic political thinker of this arid time. FA will agree that he is on the verge of winning his place in history as perhaps the most influential personage in Nigeria’s post-independent democratic evolution. By his solo effort and single-minded doggedness, he has reworked the politics of the Southwest of Nigeria and introduced a new equation in the unfolding national politics.

    He has given a fresh impetus, a new meaning and if you like it in the parlance of the day, a new swag to the Southwest; he has given them a peek to the wonderful opportunities and possibilities that are beyond the federal incubus. Though still at infancy, his effort has opened our eyes to the inherent richness of a truly plural political environment that imbues peer competition and quality benchmarking. Imagine Nigeria without APC Recall that the ruling PDP had become an ogre gobbling up every opposition before the coming of AC, ACN and currently APC. APP, ANPP, APGA and the like did not flounder and hit the rock by chance, they were worsted and decimated by the ruling party. There are so many erroneous summations to be highlighted in FA’s full page treatise but we will stick with the main issue.

     FA is particularly piqued by the recent Lagos State governorship primary in which Tinubu’s preferred candidate emerged. He said that “Tinubu’s “godfatherism” means candidates for public office of his political party are not elected by popular vote, but selected from Tinubu’s bedroom on Bourdillon Road and then imposed on the party. They are then held under his tight leash by the Jagaban and are required to do his bidding on pain of being summarily replaced or impeached.”

    Hmm, one feels FA’s deep pains but perhaps a bit of understanding will ameliorate his despair a little. First, solid democratic institutions far transcend transient political offices. Let’s not drown in the small matters of now; let us imagine what might be if we grew a robust APC over the next 50 years for instance, when it will be sturdy enough to throw up its candidates without a ‘visible’ godfather.

    Then again, imagine what would be if there was no Tinubu and ACN/APC? Does FA honestly think Lagos and Southwest would have fared better under the current PDP crowd? Talking about imposition, has anyone in PDP won any primary anywhere in Nigeria today without the nod of Papa and even Mama in Aso Rock?

     FA tells the story of how Tinubu recently rigged in John Odigie-Oyegun as chairman of APC, causing Tom Ikimi and Ali Modu Sheriff blow the whistle and to back-flip to PDP. Now this must be a laugh; in the first place, these fellows can now flagellate up and down like a stalwart phallus because someone took the pains to create an alternative. But really, would FA allow any of these men to be chairman of a party that he leads? Not likely.

    Anoint me or be damned Finally, he also cites a certain Muiz Banire spewing the banality that “APC people must shine their eyes this time around.” Great, what about ‘the last time around’ when he was favoured and anointed and he made good enormously? By the way, don’t we all know that party politics all over the world, without exception, suffers some form of imposition/anointing? No one walks off the street and becomes a candidate anywhere in the world, none.

     As we say in my place: ana enwe obodo enwe, obo anaghi atogbo ka ogbogoro; that is to say, every town has its principalities and over-lords, you don’t find any town lying around the bush path like a pumpkin. That is the wisdom of elders. Let’s nurture APC and not kill it.

    A love letter to Mrs. Juliana Godwin

    I love this woman. The more I look at her photograph, the more my admiration for her grows. There she is dressed in girlie, long skirt-and-blouse school uniform with sandals and a white pair of socks to match. You would never know she is a 42-year-old mother of four grown up children unless someone revealed that fact to you. Lean, almost wiry, an infinitesimal smile defines her lips, complemented by a bright glint in her eyes. Her mien, half defiant, half triumphant radiates her will to live.
    Sunday Vanguard, December 7, 2014, page 25 had the amazing story and picture of Mrs. Godwin from Ryom in Plateau State. Last year, she chose to return to school, 30 years after she left primary school in 1983. Now 42, she did not enrol for evening classes or part-time study; she started from junior secondary school class one. “I am the oldest person in the class of 80 students. I participate in every school activity and I am happy with that…, but I do behave myself as an adult,” she says.
    If you thought returning to school was an act of courage, how about the fact that she made four children, learned dress making and hair plating; she hawked ‘pure water’ in the market; sold tomatoes and pepper and roasted corn. She also trained in soap-making. At a juncture, she was the breadwinner and even today, she is paying her way through school.
    Most daunting, she is in a marriage. Hear her: “My husband was against my decision and quarrelled seriously with me. But I didn’t give up on my decision.” I send my love and goodwill to Mrs. Godwin and to millions of Nigerian women in her situation. Women whose lives have been quarantined in marriage; women ruinously condemned to family, husband, children and dusty existence; women who have ‘lost’ their lives for the sake of others. I recommend Mrs. Godwin to them and I say to them, it’s never late to reclaim your life.

  • Riddle: What’s Ogwuche doing at Orisunmbare?

    Riddle: What’s Ogwuche doing at Orisunmbare?

    Don’t attempt, dear reader, to unravel this riddle; you will never be able to even if you spilled your gray matter. You must know Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche of course? He is the mis-guided army officer’s son who allegedly masterminded the bombing of Nyanya, Abuja’s bustling bus terminal last April, killing about 75 persons and injuring twice as many. Loving his own life so much, he had escaped to Sudan immediately after the bombing incident, but was extradited to Nigeria a few weeks after.

    Now what on earth is Ogwuche doing at Orisunmbare? Where on earth is Orisunmbare? Or has that wily fellow escaped to this tongue-twister of a place? Again not in a hurry dear reader, this will have to unfold at its own pace. An old Igbo wise saying often wonders why we tend to leak our finger so rapidly while at meal; are we ever going to file away the fingers by any chance?

    Ogwuche is not anywhere near Orisunmbare. One would be surprised if he ever had heard about this little obscure place. Orisunmbare is a little seedy community under Egbe-Idimu Local Council Development Area in Alimoso, which is the largest local government area in Lagos State. The only other way to describe this rustic side of Lagos is that it is the fringe community dotting the perimeter fence of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) – the less urbane side of a long fence.

     Apart from sharing the back fence of an illustrious behemoth, MMIA, the only other claim to fame for Orisunmbare is an Air Force base (Electronic Maintenance Division), which is successfully alienated from the people. Well, there is another government facility, a small power plant; one of those 33kva substations under the Niger Delta Integrated Power Plants (NIPP). The contract for its construction was awarded in 2004 during the reign of President Olusegun Obasanjo when he had his infamous skirmish with Nigeria’s power sector.

    The Orisunmbare IPP was announced to have been completed after some 10 inglorious years in the making and billions of naira allegedly paid the contractor. The residents were relieved having lived in a state of semi-darkness all these year and having paid one exorbitant bill after another upwardly reviewed exorbitant bill. It was a Federal Government facility built through the instrumentality of the Federal Ministry of Power and the now rested Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).

    Today, the facility has been ceded to its new owners, the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC), lately Ikeja Electric (IE).Now thousands of consumers who are hooked to far-flung sub-stations who had lived with residual and rationed power supply thought it was time to jump for joy upon learning about the completion of this IPP. But there may never be light at the end of this IPP tunnel.

     After ten years in the making, it has been determined that inferior materials had been used therefore the plant cannot be powered-on due to the feat that it would meet a dreadful fate in just few weeks – the new owners think it might just go up in flames! Gee! Ten years, billions of naira of tax-payers money yet hapless consumers are condemned to indefinite darkness, daily use of generators and upwardly-reviewed electricity bill.

    Yet what is this long Orisunmbare jeremiad got to do with Ogwuche, the suspected terrorist? Well, nothing directly except that last week, the court sitting in Abuja struck out the case against Aminu Ogwuche on grounds of ‘want of diligent prosecution’. According to report, there has been a mortal turf fight between the Nigeria Police and the Department of State Service (DSS) on whose case it is. Not a few Nigerians were scandalized and incensed over this development on the Ogwuche affair.

    Can you see the riddle now? Well the point of it all is to show us how our country is being run or not run. In a far-flung little community of Orisunmbare a small power plant could not be actualized in ten years with all the waste and harm it has caused. Be sure that nobody will be made to account. And in Abuja at the seat of power, what is probably the most important and most sensitive case in our terror war cannot take off after seven months.

    The Ogwuche affair ought to give you sleepless night dear reader because it concerns hundreds of lives; it concerns the integrity of our presidency, the integrity of the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), the Minister of Defence, the Inspector-General of Police and the Director-General, Department of State Service (DDSS).

    Dear reader, these are the most powerful positions in the land; these are the most sensitive positions in the land; these are the people we have trusted our lives in their hands. Yet they have revealed to us that we have misplaced our trust. By this singular act, they have revealed to us that the affairs of our motherland may well be on auto-pilot. Nobody, it seems, is thinking or working or both. Imagine for a moment how the Ogwuche case would have been treated in the United States or South Africa or even Ghana? Can you see the connection now, from the mundane (Orisunmbare) to the very sensitive (Ogwuche) – zilch.

  • Congratulations President Diezani

    Congratulations President Diezani

    Not to be accused of anything, let me join the numerous contractors, Nigerian oil sector jobbers, gawkers and worshippers of mammon to felicitate with the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Her Excellency, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, upon her appointment as the ‘first ever female’ President of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. The media have been inundated with messages of this great triumph. And gee, Nigeria is now blessed with two president!

    Without seeking to spoil their fun however, I am quick to admonish that they are celebrating a whited sepulcher that has little or no significance in global scheme of things. OPEC today, is no better than a whale stranded by the shore gasping for breath; it is only but a short time before the behemoth passes out. Smart countries as busy hedging against the turbulence ahead and acquiring capacity for gas and alternative fuels while laggards are hankering after the presidency and scribe of a moribund OPEC bureaucracy. P is for PETROLEUM and petrol is passé, stupid.

    What with the US pumping about 8 billion barrels of crude oil per day into the market? What with an overabundance of gas and shale oil in the US? What with Saudi Arabia no longer interested in cutting production to help shore up oil prices (for the sake of wayward countries who have mismanaged their oil wealth)?Have you wondered why the 166th Meeting of OPEC held in Vienna last week couldn’t be bordered about cutting production?

    While we felicitate with President Diezani, we need to remind her that having failed to build even simple modular refineries; having supervised Nigeria’s crude export, massive importation of petroleum products and a dubious ‘subsidy’ regime, she had better braced for the catastrophe ahead. As crude price falls radically and our currency crashes dramatically; soon enough the pump price of petrol will push up to about N150 to N200 per litre because we can no longer afford the current products importation binge. What explanation would she give Nigerians?

    Jude: When a great soul takes flight

    It still seems surreal that Jude Isiguzo is no more. A member of The Nation family, his sudden demise last Saturday still leaves many of us in shock. Death comes to us all but some people are so alive you assume they have transcended death. So Jude could die, some of us still wonder. If Jude could die…yet some more still wonder. He was young, vibrant, master of his news beat and chairman of our chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). Adieu smiling comrade; beke oji ochi eme oji, gaa nke oma o!

  • Unwilling or unable?

    Unwilling or unable?

    Having been subjected to the mental torture of an insurgency run amok in the last three plus years, as madmen and insanely indoctrinated women dismember their fellow human beings in a country with an elected government, one question keeps nagging me: is our government unwilling to deal with the crazy Boko Haram insurgents or is it incapable of crushing them for good?

    If it is capable but unwilling, we must ask why? And if it is willing but incapable, the “why?” question is still appropriate. What makes the “why?” question a reasonable one?

    First, what has been going on is so strange that it strains our understanding of social life and our lived realities even in the worst of times since the beginning of the republic. Go back half a century and we are in thick of a political turmoil that ultimately resulted in the civil war. We lost more than a million lives and the war lasted three years. That was our first trauma as a nation. It was at the morning of our day. And we vowed not to have anything close to it again. This one is close, isn’t it? Why do we have to repeat a sordid history?

    Second, the totality of our experience and the enormity of the weight of emotions that we carry since the beginning of this insanity has been damaging to our mental and emotional well-being as individuals and as a people. The experience of others—Somalia, DRC, Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc—are so distant and alien that we never entertained having to share the same. “Why has Nigeria come to this?” we ask with heavy hearts.

    Third, what is happening would be understandable if we were still in the stone age of existence, but not when we have severally and collectively put to shame the skeptics of the world regarding our intellect and our capacity for excellence. Nigerians are all over the globe doing great as leading scientists, innovative technology giants, global thinkers and economic and entrepreneurial achievers. Why is this happening to us at the noontime of our being?

    If you approach this occurrence of sectarian insurgency from a political perspective, which sees every issue from the prism of political and electoral advantage or disadvantage, you may be tempted to downplay or ignore the “why?” question. You may dismiss what is happening in any number of ways: it is the problem of northerners; the insurgents are sponsored by the president’s political rivals; the country is divided along ethnic and religious lines, etc. All these amount to playing the ostrich; it is an attitude that leaves the matter unresolved. For even if they are all true, the challenge remains how the insurgency can be eliminated, failing which we all get crushed.

    So why have the insurgents not been eliminated? Is the government unwilling? Is it incapable?

    To suggest that the government is unwilling to end the insurgency is to accuse it of deliberately shirking its responsibility to protect the lives and property of innocent citizens, a foremost function of any government. What is more, such a position also invariably implies that the government is in complicity with the criminals to terrorise its citizens. But in their frustration, many Nigerians have not only thought this, but also voiced it out. And if you think about it, they are not irrational elements.

    One pertinent rationale for such a radical appraisal is the incomprehensibility of the situation that we find ourselves in—that a bunch of criminal militants have taken Nigeria hostage up to the point of claiming territory. How many are they compared with the number of Nigerians? What weapons do they have that Nigeria cannot boast of multiples of the same or better? If these questions make sense, then we can also make sense of the theory of governmental unwillingness.

    But why would the government be unwilling? It cannot be that it doesn’t care about the people of the Northeast, though this uncharitable suggestion has also been voiced. Former Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State would probably still be in his position if he didn’t offend the sensibilities of the Jonathan administration with his memo to the Northern Governors Forum, accusing the administration of genocide in the North. It is logically valid to argue that if the government doesn’t care about the victims of insurgency, it has the option of withholding effective action to root it out.

    A second reason has been given in support of the theory of governmental unwillingness. “Politically”, the argument goes, “it is safe for the Jonathan administration to do little or nothing about the insurgency as long as it does not spread beyond the Northeast.” The reasoning here is as cynical as it is political. “The Northeast is not a particularly friendly zone to Mr. President and he does not expect to carry the zone in 2015. The more turmoil there is in the zone, the better for the President. This accounts for the unending Emergency Rule bills that he has been sending to the National Assembly. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has now hinted that security situation will determine the conduct of elections in the Northeast. If it is possible to avoid elections in the zone in February 2015, the President’s chances are improved dramatically. Why would he be willing to end the turmoil?”

    There is a third reason in support of governmental unwillingness, but a friendly one as such. According to this third reasoning, governmental unwillingness is not really an unwillingness to confront and root out the insurgency. Rather, government is unwilling to kill a fly with a sledge hammer. Mr. President is a cool-headed gentleman who is averse to the Odi treatment. This reasoning was recently rehashed by Governor Fayose of Ekiti State at Ile-Ife where the President was hosted by a section of the Yoruba elite. The Presidency has not reacted to this analysis.

    The theory of governmental unwillingness, whether because of a lack of care or because of politics, or because of the “cool-headedness” of Mr. President, is alive and well. Its challenge is the difficulty of proving the motive behind an action or inaction.

    The theory of governmental inability to deal effectively with the terrorists is an empirically validated one. For three plus years, the Jonathan administration has not defeated Boko Haram. Why? What accounts for the inability? Is it weak or absent political leadership? Does it have to do with military, police and state security weakness? Is it a matter of strategic or tactical incompetence? Does it have to do with corruption? Or is it all of the above?

    It is a bit of all and no credible alibi is available to the administration in the matter of its proven inability to confront and defeat terror. It has not even been able to degrade the capacity of the terrorists. The leadership has been inept and confused. For a long time, it refused to declare the sect as a terrorist organisation. Then it flipped flopped about strategy—military or political, negotiation or confrontation, etc. And when negotiation was embraced, our government was swindled by an impostor negotiator, raising the nation’s hope that the nightmare over the abduction of our innocent girls is over, only for that hope to be dashed, without any further information from government.

    That the terrorists have a superior weaponry advantage over our military can no longer be denied. That they have a better motivation and unalloyed commitment to their cause is not in doubt. Assume that Stephen Davis was wrong and military leadership is not guilty of a treasonable connivance with the enemy, this administration owes the nation an explanation for its inability to deal with a band of terrorists. Why is it that every time Mr. President or his designee reassures us of our safety, the terrorists strike harder with palpable disregard? Why?

  • ‘Political Red Herring’

    ‘Political Red Herring’

    Today’s article in this column is not through the pen of yours sincerely. It is written by a well known Nigerian journalist and front line human rights activist, Richard Akinola, of the Christian faith.

    The article which is originally entitled ‘Pastor Bosun Emmanuel: The Political Red Herring’ was first published in The Sun earlier this week. It is being republished here because of its relevance to the current situation in the country. However, it had to be sub-edited to reduce its length and get it accommodated within the limited space in this column. Thus, the sub-headings in it are as a result of editing. Every other thing is quoted verbatim. Here it goes from the horse’s mouth:

    “In the long term, we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars”

    Richard Nixon (the 37th American President, January 1969-September 1974)

     

    Preamble

    Richard Nixon was being futuristic when he made this statement several years ago. He apparently never knew that there would come a time in the history of one country called Nigeria, where political actors, buoyed by some of their friends in cassock, would be fanning the embers of religious war.

    I am not by any stretch of imagination, discounting the several human and material losses of Christians in several sectarian crises in the Northern part of the country over the years, accentuated by the Boko Haram insurgency, which unfortunately had been used to misinform people as being programmed against President Jonathan, being a Christian. Boko Haram did not start under President Jonathan. As a matter of fact, late president Umaru Yar’Adua had a running battle with this bunch of demented terrorists. The insurgency actually gained prominence with the killing of its leader, Mohammed Yusuf by security forces in 2009 under the government of Yar’Adua. In 2009, following various assaults in Yobe, Bauchi and Borno states, the security forces killed over 1000 of the insurgents. It would therefore be false, to claim that Boko Haram insurgency is as a result of Nigeria having a Christian president.

    As l have always argued, the Boko Haram variant of Islam is antithetical to the mainstream Islamic teachings, just like Uganda’s terrorist group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), purporting to be fighting for my Jehovah God, cannot be representative of Christians.

     

    Satanic CD

    There is this CD that is being well-circulated among Christians in various churches. It’s a political message by a pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Bosun Emmanuel, where he launched into an Islamophobic tirade against Muslims and the All Progressives Congress (APC), which he declared as the Islamic Brotherhood of Nigeria.

    The General Overseer of Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor E.A. Adeboye had denounced this divisive message and directed his church members to discountenance the message. Unfortunately, the message has gone viral. It was soap-box rhetoric, using the pulpit as a campaign platform for President Goodluck Jonathan, urging Christians to vote for Christian candidates.

    Using the pulpit to campaign for either PDP or APC or any other party for that matter is an abuse of the pulpit. We need to be careful and circumspect, particularly religious leaders in their association with politicians. Religious politics is dangerous, like Roger Ebert once said: “Lebanon was at one time known as a nation that rose above sectarian hatred; Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East.

    All that was blown apart by senseless religious wars, financed and exploited in part by those who sought power and wealth”.

     

    Religion in the Southwest

    Over the years in the South West, religious politics had never been an issue. When Chief Olagunsoye Oyinlola was the Governor of Osun State, Erelu Olusola Obada, a fellow Christian was his deputy, in a state that has a preponderance of Muslims. In Edo State, both Governor Adams Oshiomhole and his deputy, Dr Pius Odubu are both Christians in a state where there is a substantial percentage of Muslims, particularly in Edo North. But because religion had never been an issue in electoral contests in Edo State, it was difficult for anyone to make a political capital of a phantom marginalisation of a religious group in the state.

    Due to their cosmopolitan nature and level of political awareness, Lagosians have never really bothered about the religious faiths of their governors, until the politics of 2015 crept in. Yes, in fairness to the proponents of this move, there has been the preponderance of elected Muslim governors in Lagos State. However, my take is that l would rather prefer good governance, bolstered by a didactic leadership, than pander to religious sentiments. And l say this with due respect to the proponents of Christian governor.

    Come to think of it, if we look at it from the time of Alhaji Lateef Jakande, till now, with the exception of the lackluster government of ‘Baba go slow’, Chief Michael Otedola, (a Christian) of blessed memory, the state has witnessed remarkable developments and giant strides. And this has nothing to do with the religious persuasion of Tinubu and Fashola but the product of good leadership.

    The current magnificent edifice of TREM headquarters at Anthony, Lagos, could not have been today if not for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a Muslim, who overruled his ministry of environment which had wanted to stop the construction based on the discovery that the property stood in the path of a major drainage.

     

    Use of Hijab

    Interestingly, it’s another Muslim governor, Raji Fashola that banned the use of Hijab in Lagos public schools, a move that irked the Muslim faithful who dragged the governor to court on the issue but the court ruled in favour of the state government. And this is despite the fact that both the Governor and the Speaker, Adeyemi Ikuforiji are both Muslims. Of what use is having a Christian governor while it is possible to have a Muslim-dominated House of Assembly which if it wants to push for Islamic-inclined laws can easily do it and the Christian governor would have no choice but to implement? Since the tenure of Tinubu till date, Lagos State’s annual thanksgiving service, organised by the governor every January, has always been anchored by Pastor E.A. Adeboye. Yet, Tinubu and Fashola are Muslims. Pastor Emmanuel uncharitably branded APC as ‘Islamic Brotherhood of Nigeria’. I am not a member of APC. But by using the pulpit to preach hateful politics, he had removed whatever credibility that may be attached to his said message. I would have taken the same position if he had used the pulpit to promote APC and demonise PDP. And his premise for labeling APC an Islamic party was so puerile, disingenuous and downright illogical. He went on to authoritatively state that the chairman and all other officers of APC are Muslims….”

     

    Religious Politics

    “If we assume for the purpose of argument that APC is a Muslim party, are we then to assume that PDP is a Christian party led by an Alhaji Mua’zu, a Muslim. Isn’t that preposterous? I ask because Pastor Emmanuel said that in 2015, Lagos Christians should vote for a Christian candidate for governor but with a caveat that they should not vote for a Christian candidate from an Islamic party!

    We are playing a very dangerous religious game here. That was how the Hutus and Tutsis pogrom in Rwanda started in 1994, leading to the extermination of over 800,000 Rwandans, to the extent that even the priests became victims- massacred by fellow Christians inside the church….”

     

    Problem of religion

    The problem of Nigeria is not the religious persuasion of our leaders but that of leadership deficit. It is only when you have nothing to offer that you resort to religion and ethnicity. No government has raised the bar of religious politics like the current Jonathan government and some pastors and Christians unfortunately fell for this bait. That is why Pastor Emmanuel can state with temerity in the CD that President Jonathan was not elected to fight corruption or tackle the economy but there to fulfil God’s mandate. Really? What balderdash! No wonder he went on to declare with magisterial candour that the best leader this country ever had was General Sani Abacha because he deposed the Sultan! Can you imagine such gibberish?

    So, as long as you are a Christian by name, we should support you. It doesn’t matter if you had used a seven-day old child as ritual to get into office. Or was it not in this same country that a Southwest governor(now an ex-governor) forced all members of the House of Assembly into a ritual process which was done with all of them naked before a shrine, just to extract oath of loyalty and allegiance from them? And this same governor would always grace the Holy Ghost night at the Redemption Camp with his plastic permanent smile for the cameras to show that he is Christian. If just being a Christian is a yard stick to win election, how do you situate the case of a prominent Christian woman banker, who was convicted by the EFCC for fraud and had to do a plea bargain with the EFCC to return N191 billion to the government coffers?.

     

    Boko Haram Insurgents

    When the demonic Boko Haram insurgents entered Mubi and people were running out of town, nobody asked the drivers if they were Muslims or Christians. All they were after was to get out into safety. Both Muslims and Christians are victims of the scourge. Or how many air travellers, upon entering an aircraft, insist on knowing the religious persuasion of the pilot and the co-pilot, whether Muslim, Christian or Atheist? How many Christians and Muslims have resigned from their jobs because their bosses are of different religious faiths?

    If we stretch the argument further, are we saying Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by a lunatic called Joseph Kony, who had waged over 20-year war of attrition against Uganda, raping, maiming and terrorising people, are fulfilling God’s mandate just because their creed is to rule by the Ten Commandments? These brigands are like the Boko Haram of Nigeria. (Yet, Muslims did not say they were fighting for Christ).

     

     

    Neither Cross nor Crescent

    It is not about the cross or crescent but about leadership qualities.

    The Dubai that many of our Christian brethren go and spend holidays, are they being ruled by Christians? In 1991, Dubai was just bare. But with visionary leaders, it has been turned into a tourist haven. North Korea, China and Russia are advanced technologically but they are not Christians. Many of them don’t even believe in God. Moammar Ghaddafi turned a desert country into a well-irrigated country. After the first Gulf War in 1990 and despite all the massive bombings by the allied forces, there were still street lights working on the streets of Baghdad. Go to Egypt, Morocco and other North African countries, they look like Europe. Yet, they didn’t carry the Bible to build their countries. Please, don’t get me wrong. Being a good Christian with leadership potentials is an added advantage. Core competence should override any religious or tribal consideration.

    Our problem is that we are so religious but not godly. Our values are warped and upside down. We go to churches and mosques but our hearts are very far from God. On December 31 of every year, we fill up the churches for the cross-over night to the New Year but by the 1st of January, we start plotting the downfall of our fellow human beings.

    The fact is that our hearts are very far from God. Most times, we shift our responsibilities to God. I believe so much in prayer. I do pray a lot but there is a time to pray and a time to use your head. To whom brain is given, sense is expected….”

     

    By God and not by Man

    “The truth of the matter is that from being a deputy governor, to governor, to vice president, to acting president, up to being a president, God went ahead of President Jonathan. He didn’t fight anyone before he got there and nobody then talked about him being a Christian or a southerner. But now, out of desperation, his Christian cheer leaders are deceiving him as the anointed, using the religious mantra. But the man himself knows that God is not in this his current agenda, irrespective of what his spiritual consultants tell him; because his current endeavour is all by flesh. That is why just like when God left Saul, he went to seek the witch of Endor when the Philistines came after him. Our dear president too, surrounded by his Philistines, this time the opposition, has resorted to self-help by also seeking from his own variant of witch of Endor- police and other arms of security forces, to fight his opponents through dictatorial tendencies and resorting to religious and ethnic sentiments, which he did not do before he got to the throne….”

    “God is still God. He can use anyone to accomplish His purpose. What

    we need are visionary and competent leaders, and being a good, God-fearing Christian would be an icing on the cake. But insisting on a Christian president or governor, even if he is a cultist and the most corrupt person, would be stretching it too far. And mischievously labeling a party as an Islamic party is pure hogwash.  Fela Anikulapo-Kuti once titled one of his albums, l would tell Pastor Bosun Emmanuel, ‘Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense”.

     

    • Akinnola is of Christians in Politics Initiative.

  • The face of a pseudo democracy

    The face of a pseudo democracy

    “This is a pseudo democracy pretending to be genuine.”

    So what?

    “It is a counterfeit pretending to be original.”

    Yes? What else?

    “We have been duped with an imitation that we take for real.”

    “Who are you including in the “we”? Speak for yourself, man.”

    “At best, the dummy that has been sold to us is what political scientists euphemistically refer to as “competitive authoritarianism”, which in the words of one of its theorists is “a civilian regime in which democratic institutions exist in form but not in substance”, “a regime that is democratic in appearance but authoritarian in nature.” This is because all the institutions of the “democratic” state—are deliberately or inadvertently arranged to promote the interest of whomever, or whichever political group currently holds power.”

    “Who cares? Call it whatever you want, if it works, it is fine. People like you don’t appreciate what we face in this country. We need a heavy hand to deal with us. We are a bunch of ingrates. Government goes out of its way to help us and what does the President get in return? Abuse! When will it stop? We need a strong security operation to deal with us. That is what the government has finally realised. It is no longer Mr. Gentleman President. Don’t you understand?”

    “Surely, this is not a new thing. It has been with us since the inception of the republic. There was a time when we were treated to raw power when the police—both federal and state—were used to torment the opposition. The practice led to the collapse of that era of gangster democracy when election was a do-or-die matter and incumbency was elevated to the rank of an imperial monarch who must eliminate his rivals or to the realm of the gods who have the monopoly of wisdom.”

    That the president is not a king but only an office holder elected by the people to work in their interest is a political fact that we still need to imbibe as part of our political culture. We must come to terms with the constitutional separation of powers which prevents one arm of government from dabbling into the affairs of another. The constitution does not give the executive arm the authority to supervise the legislative arm or the judiciary. It invests the power of interpretation in the judiciary as the arbiter between the other two branches.

    The Inspector-General of Police is the security officer of the republic. As such he is accountable to all. But time and again, since the beginning of the republic, every holder of this neutral office has seen himself as the errand boy of the ruling party or the president. This is a major defining feature of a pseudo democracy or competitive authoritarian regime. And it has to be identified as such. If that is what the nation wants, so be it. But we cannot continue to pretend that we operate a genuine democracy when the security operation is nothing but authoritarian.

    Within the last 12 months, three episodes are worth recalling. The Divisional Police Officer for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) ordered the police invasion of G7 Governors’ meeting on November 3, 2013 in the Kano State Government Lodge. The DPO himself led the invasion. While the then Inspector- General of Police claimed that he did not order the disruption, he nevertheless defended it on the grounds that “the DPO, as the officer in charge of the area, had the right to know what was going on in his domain.” In other words, the DPO is like the king who must know every movement, private or public, of his subjects. When we have such a preposterous interpretation of our constitution and we keep silent, we deserve whatever we get. This is what has been going on.

    Without a challenge to that kind of mindset, we should not be surprised that it is being replicated all over the country. The police were drafted to disrupt the lawful assembly of the APC in Ekiti shortly before the June governorship election. And following the election of the PDP candidate, the Police has demonstrated its loyalty to the ruling party with gusto, the latest being its provision of protection for seven PDP members to “impeach” the Speaker who enjoys a 19-member majority in the House. It is not the first time that the ruling party has elevated a minority above a majority. It happened with the Nigerian Governors Forum election. The Ekiti Speaker and his 19 APC lawmakers are currently self-exiled from the state living in fear of their lives.

    The height of security impunity was the invasion of the National Assembly to prevent Speaker Aminu Tambuwal from conducting the House session on the President’s request for an extension of the Emergency Rule in the Northeast states. Unlike the private meeting invasion a year earlier, this act was actually defended by the current IGP on two grounds. First, the IGP chose to pre-empt the courts with his own interpretation of the constitution. As far as he is concerned, Tambuwal is no longer a member of the House and therefore cannot be the Speaker because he had defected from the PDP. The inference was that if he was no longer a member of the House, he had no business around the premises of the National Assembly. This was why the Police unilaterally withdrew his security aides. Second, however, a “motley crowd” accompanied the Speaker and Police Intelligence suggested a possible breakdown of law and order.

    That there are reasonable Nigerians who supported this clearly partisan police intervention in a political tussle is telling. If we don’t agree on substantive policy issues because of ideological differences, at least we should have a united approach on procedural issues that impinge on the deepening of our democratic norms. The first of this is that no matter its sensitivity to crime and infringement of the constitution, the Police is not invested with the authority to interpret and adjudicate. It is important to agree on this and respect it because in a competitive political landscape that has emerged since November last year, no one political party can be sure of an absolute control of the centre and the apparatus of the state. What goes around will eventually come around.

    The latest example of police and security politically motivated action is the invasion of the APC office in Lagos. Again, this was defended in terms that make the stomach turn. There was an Intelligence Report that the office was being used to clone PVCs, we were told. And presumably there was no need for a court granted search warrant. It was sufficient that the Police and State security had the means of violence, could harass innocent workers and turn the place upside down with impunity. For all intent and purposes, security agents arrogated to themselves the raw power to act even when, in doing so, they trampled on the rights of citizens.

    I hope that unlike Opalaba, my cynical friend, every lover of democracy, including those who still bear the scar of the fight to have it restored, no matter what political association or party they belong to, no matter how the current corrupted variant of democratic institutions work in their favour, would stop and think about the long term implications of this trend.  I hope that those who must speak out now before it is too late would lend their voice to the chorus of those concerned citizens asking for a stop to imitation democracy or competitive authoritarianism.

    Happy Thanksgiving to all!

  • The Malabu malfeasance

    NMMA winning entry (1): Below is one of the four entries sent in for the award. The Malabu story still reverberates across the globe today – from London to Rome and New York. This peculiarly Nigerian bogey must rank among the worst corruption cases in modern times. The real story, however, is that while it gives the rest of the world sleepless night, not so for Nigerians and her leaders who are marinated in it. It was first published Friday June 21, 2013.

    MOUTH-WATERING OIL BLOCK: It is a 15-year-old story showcasing Nigeria’s oil sector at its messiest, successive Nigerian governments at their puerile best, multinational oil companies at their shadiest and why Nigeria remains among the poorest countries in the world despite huge oil resources. It has gone on for so long in the hushed manner of Nigeria’s oil business until The Economist of London removed a bit of the veil on it last week (June 15, 2013 edition). It is a story of greed, brigandage and the grand-scale pillaging of a country as probably has never been witnessed in modern history. The sordid story concerns a mouth-watering oil block, OPL 245 awarded to a fictitious firm, Malabu Oil and Gas, which had no records, assets or staff.

    According to the report, Malabu was ‘established’ only a few days before it was handed this oil block estimated to have a possible 9 billion barrels of oil! A certain fellow called Dan Etete who was Nigeria’s Petroleum minister in 1998 must have awarded the oil block to himself and of course fronting for fellow rogues in government then including members of the Abacha clan. The dictator, General Sani Abacha, was Nigeria’s head of state then. This matter has dragged for so long because in the conclave of thieves, there is no speaking in low tones over a big loot; and this one is humongous. Therefore, the fight over it has been protracted between Etete and his gang; Shell/ENI and NNPC/the Presidency. The news today is that Shell/ENI after plodding through the murky tunnels of OPL245, finally shelled out the sum of $1.3 billion, verisimilitude of a bribe if not the real thing, to pay off all petty thieves, fraudsters and government officials who have cottoned on to this deal for 15 years.

    SHELL-SHOCKED AND UNASHAMED: Though Shell pretends to have dealt with the government of the day and also pretended that it paid out such huge sum to the Nigerian government, but the oil giant was well aware that it was dishing out slush fund into a “black hole”. It was a ‘pay’ brokered by (don’t be surprised) Mohammed Bello Adoke, Nigeria’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. Shell’s bounty, according to The Economist, may have been “round-tripped” back to bank accounts controlled by Nigeria’s public officials. The magazine says further: “Of the $1.1 billion, $800 million was paid in two tranches to Malabu accounts. This was then transferred to five Nigerian companies that appear to be shells. One of these, Rocky Top Resources, received $336.5m, some of which seem to have been passed to unknown “various persons”, according to the EFCC’s reports. Some $60m went to an account controlled by Mr. Etete who has said that he received $250m in total for his role in the deal…”

    Global Witness, the NGO that trails official corruption across the world, sees the OPL 245 affair as “a lesson in corruption.” If ever one had any doubt as to the ethical status of Shell, this singularly desperate deal has exposed it for what it has always been, a roguish multi-national.Shell remains the detestable British Empire still trading in Nigeria only by another name. It is a Luggardian behemoth that is divisive, corrosive, corrupt and corrupting. Over the years, Shell has been leveraging on Nigeria’s weak governments and lack of institutions to get away with mass murder, so to speak. Its home government seems to be hand-in-glove with her trading outfit making no efforts to rein it in. Unlike what obtains in the U.S. lately where multinationals are bound by corporate governance rules and laws of the U.S. (which is why many officials of multinationals operating especially in Nigeria have been convicted and jailed), it does not seem to be so in Britain and many E.U. countries.

    Shell which for more than 50 years has controlled over 60 per cent of Nigeria’s oil wealth was reprobate even in its dealings with the Niger-Delta environment in which it operates. After so many years, the region remains desolate, retarded and damaged. In cahoots with Nigeria’s renegade governments, Shell never made any comprehensive effort to lift and develop even its immediate vicinity of operation. It is acute deprivation that led to the restiveness and militancy which erupted in the last decade. Unfortunately, Shell is deeply engrained in the Nigerian morass that there seems to be no stopping it or changing its mindset – well, perhaps until the oil is drained.

    ETETE, NIGERIAN ELITE, NNPC AND A COUNTRY WITHOUT GOVERNMENT: The Economist’s report avers that Nigeria is “arguably the most complex environment of all,” to transact business. Please read the most corrupt environment of all. Nowhere else would a serving minister of petroleum award itself a juicy oil block using a ‘nonexistent’ company yet he is allowed to benefit immensely from such crass corruption helped by the country’s chief law officer, the attorney-general. Ratty Mr. Etete, typical Nigerian elite, had been convicted of money laundering in France; the huge sums being bribe money from foreign investors while he was in office. In a serious society, Etete ought to have been arrested, prosecuted and jailed, instead, he was allowed to profit hugely from a grand fraud he hatched and executed as a public official.

    Why has Nigeria grown into a banana republic? Because it ranks among the most corrupt countries of the world having maintained its position in the top five of the most corrupt table in the last decade. In the Malabu affair, those who ought to sanction the culprit became the chief beneficiaries; top government functionaries scrambled to get a share of the loot. Consider the list of Nigerians mentioned in this deal aside Dan Etete, there is notoriously corrupt Diepriye Alamieyeseigha who is the acclaimed boss of our sitting president. There is the Abacha family, Abubakar Aliyu and Adoke. Nigeria’s oil industry has become an elaborate fraud where serving government officials including heads of government scramble for and award oil blocks to themselves through proxies. Nigeria’s chief resource which ought to be developed for the good of all are handed to a few who become stupendously rich to the detriment of the populace.

    For a long while, Nigeria has lacked patriotic and purposeful leaders thus the country has been running literally on auto-pilot; without governments. This explains why the country has become so imperiled with a mass of jobless youths threatening to upend the ship of state. Sadly, those at the helm even now are so enamoured of immediate gains they are blind to the imminent danger. They seem to have lost any sense of right and wrong too. In other countries, this Malabu affair that has brought us so much international odium would have elicited judicial enquiries that would shake up the entire nation. Not so here, it has long been swept under the carpet because everybody is involved. Everybody, what a shame!`

    Would Okonjo-Iweala bite the bullet now?

    “Time for Okonjo-Iweala to go” is the title of a short piece in this column on January 31, this year. It was an early warning that Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had reached the end of her tether and therefore, should take a bow.

    The reasons adduced were: unduly high level of corruption in the system; over-bloated recurrent budget and subsequent poor formulation and implementation of annual budgets. Last Monday, the chief manager of our economy unilaterally declared something she termed “austerity measures” on the wings of our declining oil revenues. And she backed it up with the usual grandstanding and chest-thumping, speaking about a well-managed country and competent teams crafting a set of right policies to respond to shock.

    Well, it is our duty to remind her that in her Obasanjo days, her song was REFORM and in this era it has been TRANSFORMATION and see where we are today. She has been doodling with our economy for nearly a decade now and all she seems to have been doing is disbursal of monthly allocation. Today we face imminent damnation because she had no grand vision to revamp basic infrastructure like power, transportation, agriculture and even our oil and gas. None of these things that would have helped us diversify and grow the economy was put in place.

     Worst of all, she never was able to cut bloated government expenditure; we still import most of our petroleum products and most of our food and household needs. She has added no significant value to the economy over these years. All she has done is to sell crude and share proceeds. Even the production and merchandising of that sole product – crude oil has been such a messy affair in her time. Now crude prices are falling, a phenomenon that was long-foretold; Nigeria faces imminent doom and she tells us about crafting austerity measures, what a joke!

  • A straight tree is felled

    A straight tree is felled

    Probably his greatest joy and legacy came from teaching, mentoring and counselling hundreds of children of relatives, friends, neighbours, workers, church colleagues and community at large to attend school and get career head starts.

    A straight tree is gone from the forest. The supreme gardener just harvested a beautiful flower. And we are left to mourn our loss, left to make sense of the divine imperative that we are all sent here to deliver a message; that the sender has the right of recall, and that our loss is the gain of the heavens. Oh for the grace to understand!

    As earthlings, our dilemma is real. We are endowed with a nature to love and cherish, a disposition to cling to one another, to keep hope alive despite dire prognosis, and the wish to never separate or be separated. Collective immortality is our dream. This is our endowment at creation. Yet the objective reality of our being is clearly different. Separation at one time or the other is the reality. Mortality is also our insuperable endowment. Truly we need the grace and the wisdom to resolve the dilemma.

    Without the grace and the wisdom, we are prone to affirm the rationality of the question “why?” Why did a gentle soul who exemplified the best of humanity have to succumb to the cold hands of death at a time he should be getting ready to enjoy the fruit of his labour? Why did it please the creator, whose purpose for all we know is to promote the greatest good in the world, to take away one of those tried and tested in the business of doing just that and more? Why was the life of a loving husband, father, and grandfather not spared for the sake of his loved ones? Why, indeed, was it acceptable for an aged mother to mourn a loving son?

    Those were the questions that agitated my mind when I received the sad news of the passing on of Oyewumi two weeks ago. On that fateful Thursday morning, I was in the process of writing the column for the following Friday. My mind was troubled. I called Dele, a dutiful son in the thick of rallying family and friends. On hearing my voice, he broke down, and I was moved. I was not able to continue the column. I needed the grace to fathom this.

    With the grace to understand comes the wisdom that the answer to the “why?” question resides in the ungrudging acceptance of that which we are unable to change. That may appear defeatist. But there is more. Indeed, while death appears unkind, it is probably one of the most misunderstood realities of our existence. We may not agree with Steve Jobs that death is “very likely the greatest invention of Life” but it is true that it is “Life’s change agent.”

    It appears to me that the many African cultures, including the Yoruba, have a keen understanding not just of the inevitability of death, but of its meaningfulness. One of the three goods that Yoruba wisdom would have us aspire to is immortality (aiku pari iwa). The other two are children and wealth. Immortality is the crown of existence. This does not mean the avoidance of death. To be immortal is to remain in the heart of the living. And this is possible to the extent that while alive one was able to touch many lives and to promote the greatest good. Incidentally, this idea is also shared by classical cultures. Thus, Cicero once observed that “the life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”

    There is no doubt that the rich and selfless life of Samuel Oyewumi Oladeji has been placed in the memory of the living, beginning with Toro, his loving wife, his five dutiful children and doted grandchildren, extended family, friends and colleagues. His was an extraordinary life.

    Born on March 27, 1948, Oye, as he was fondly called, was an exceptional young man growing up in the back corners of the Old Western Region. He had his education at the L.A. School, Okeho before proceeding to Olivet Baptist High School in Oyo where he had a smashing result. He proceeded to Government College Ibadan for the Higher School Certificate and later obtained a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nottingham, UK in 1972.

    Upon returning to Nigeria, he married his sweetheart, Felicia Adetoro Akadi and set out on a career in management as the Production Manager, SCOA Motors, Lagos from 1973 to 1976 where he got comprehensive training in automobile business and general branch management, served as the Acting Branch Manager in three branches and then as the Production Manager over about 150 auto-assembly workers at the SCOA Peugeot Assembly Plant, Apapa, Lagos. He also worked as Branch Manager, later Divisional Manager, Holt Engineering in Maiduguri and then Yamaco, Lagos, both of John Holt Holdings, Lagos, from 1976 to 1979. He was General Manager, Fagbamigbe Publishers, Ibadan, from 1979 to 1981, where he compiled and edited copious materials from the speeches of the sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo to produce the three “Visions” (Voice of Reason, Voice of Courage and Voice of Wisdom), which publications today remain the company’s original products in the market.

    Always focused on self-improvement, Oye obtained a Master of Business Administration, MBA, (1978) from the University of Lagos, and M.Sc. in Economics/Operations Research, (1986) from the University of Ibadan. While he had a successful career in the world of business, his heart was really in the world of academics and scholarship. At the time he made the move from corporate Nigeria, many did not understand or appreciate. But he knew that happiness doesn’t come from the amount of wealth that you make, but from the satisfaction you derive from what you do and its impact on you and your family and friends. He was contented with himself.

    Thus, for the rest of his career and to focus on dedicating his time to his growing kids, Oye moved to academia and at various times he served as Head, Department of Business Administration, Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, and Head, Consulting Unit at The Polytechnic, Ibadan, and later as lecturer in Industrial Engineering at the University of Ibadan,  where his focus was on Systems Dynamics. An avid Mathematics tutor and a keen student of literature, economics and management, up till one month before his passing on, he taught Mathematics at the Gwinnett Technical College, Lawrenceville, GA.

    An officer of the Okeho Progressive Club and Kajola Club 80, Oye received  commendations from the community for his selfless efforts in the spread of education, especially Mathematics, among youths and for integrity in public and corporate appointments and services, such as board membership of Okeho Community Bank and as church treasurer for over three years.

    Probably his greatest joy and legacy came from teaching, mentoring and counselling hundreds of children of relatives, friends, neighbours, workers, church colleagues and community at large to attend school and get career head starts. Easygoing, honest and funny, Oye was the olori-ebi (family head) of the Oladeji clan. A devoted father, he saw to it that all his children pursued excellence.

    In the final analysis, we may not be able to answer the “why?” question to our satisfaction; therefore it is not quite helpful to entertain it. What is more beneficial is to celebrate a life that was lived to the fullest because it was dedicated to the good of others.

    And so, today as friends and family members head for Atlanta to honour the memory of a good man and a kind soul, we recall the wisdom of the elders: Ka rin gbedegbede, ka lee ku pelepele, komo eni lee fowo gbogboro gbe ni sin. (Oh that one may live a gentle life, so as to die peacefully, that one’s children may joyfully bid one farewell).

  • Iwuanyanwu’s 2027 prognosis: debasing Ndigbo

    Igbo, emasculated and castrated:For Ndigbo, the valiant race by the Niger River, Southeast of Nigeria, this must be the worst time in their history. Not even during the genocidal Biafran war which saw the structured extermination of over a million of their kind were they so emasculated and seemingly castrated as now. Once a sturdy leg of the tripod that made up the entity known as Nigeria, today Ndigbo are relegated, unclassified, made anonymous and irrelevant in the political equation of today’s Nigeria.

    Examples abound to corroborate this proposition and we will never be tired of reciting them: Ndigbo have never headed the government of Nigeria since independence in the true sense of it; Ndigbo are the largest tribe in the land and pre-independence censuses and population projections upheld that fact. But by a cruel sleight of hand and through dubious post-independence censuses, the population of Ndigbo of the Southeast zone of Nigeria has been finagled with and made inconsequential. The rest of Nigeria is at peace with itself to downgrade Igbo population for the purpose of domination. But a nation can live a lie only for so long.

    There are more examples of deliberate decimation: Igboland is one of the most densely populated areas of the country yet by a criminal political machination, the least number of states and local government areas were created in the Southeast zone, thus ensuring that the most people get the least of the national resources. For instance, the three Northwest states of Kano, Jigawa and Katsina have more local councils than the entire Southeast. You can guess what this translates to in terms of revenue allocation.

    Since after the civil war, population censuses and state and local government creation have been deliberately deployed as weapons of socio-economic stagnation of Igboland. The vicious effect of these obnoxious state policies targeted at Ndigbo ring true in areas of revenue allocation, federal appointments; enlistments in the armed and paramilitary forces to name a few. Such is the injustice a people have had to endure in a polity called the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    Heaping salt on Igbo injury: In the midst of all these, one is terribly troubled to hear people who are supposedly Igbo leaders speak in manners that seem to heap red-hot coal on the injuries of Ndigbo. Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu is one of such Igbo leaders who have become disconnected and disoriented about the situation of his kinsmen in the current Nigerian milieu. He has over the years missed the opportunity to emerge as a veritable voice of Ndigbo, having never at any turn, upheld the interest of Ndigbo.

    Speaking to newsmen in Owerri, Imo State, last weekend, he showed the stuff he is well known for when he suggested that Ndigbo should wait till 2027 before they can aspire to Nigeria’s number one seat. According to Iwuanyanwu, if the elections of 2015 are not properly handled, situations could deteriorate to a point that it may be difficult to control. He therefore appealed that, “My people of the southeast who are legitimately demanding for the presidency of Nigeria should subjugate this ambition to the unity, peace and stability of Nigeria by supporting (the) south-south.”

    He said further: “After south-south has completed its tenure of eight years, the presidency will naturally go to the North…After eight years of the North the presidency will come back to the south. When it comes to the south, it will automatically be the turn of southeast since Southwest and South-south have taken their own turns.” Wow! What baby babble! The grist of his thought is that Ndigbo are donkeys required for hefting difficult political garbage in Nigeria. Two, there is a simplistic supposition that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is the only party in the land destined rule forever. Third: that the turn-by-turn; chop-i-chop syndrome of his class as opposed to merit and performance will continue to hold sway. Lastly, how could an elder tell us that if one man does not have a second term of office the country would perish? If that be the case let it perish by all means! No individual or group must be allowed to hold the country to ransom; not from the north or south.

    In the first place, it is most discomfiting to us that an Igbo leader of Iwuanyanwu’s age and standing still holds an appointment. Which contemporary of his from other ethnic groups holds such silly appointments; as chairman of board of a third generation university at that? Then again, why does he keep demeaning and aggravating us? Even if it were meet that Ndigbo would wait in serfdom till the next 50 years to be president, we do not need him telling that to the world.

    Again, one is sorry to note that Chief Iwuanyanwu may be living in a time warp. Ndigbo, the real Igbo people have moved on and left him behind with his power-mongering ilk. The average Igbo has been living his life in spite of government, irrespective of Nigeria’s oil wealth and without Aso-Rock. These commodities are the stock-in-trade of Chief and his fellow rapacious elite; since after the war, they have sat atop our commonwealth making sure it only trickles down to the people. When therefore he speaks about Ndigbo vis-à-vis the presidency, he speaks only for himself.

    Tell us something else: We, Ndigbo want to hear his opinion on the dilapidated federal roads in the southeast like the Enugu/Onitsha and the Enugu/Port Harcourt highways. He should tell us why there is no power generating plant in the entire southeast? We want to know his thoughts on the situation in the northeast where every third person killed must be an Igbo. How many Ndigbo have been killed, how many injured and displaced? How many luxury buses burnt and how many businesses damaged? What succor for his kinsmen, innocent victims whose only crime is that they are law-abiding citizens?

    Why on earth is our elder telling us to seat pretty and be canon-fodder in this sham republic? Can’t he see that this is a lost republic where cowards and opportunists who live off Aso Rock and want power by all means have thought their ill-bred rascals how to make bomb? Once they have started hiding bomb under the hijab, it becomes a pastime, they never stop. It’s a historical fact. Why should Ndigbo remain in this republic of murderous people who serve bomb for breakfast, serve bomb for lunch and serve bomb for dinner? If we had elders, they should have reclined into the ime obi… Igbo wu Igbo unu mu kwa anya? Lee nu ariri!

    There is no doubt that Ndigbo suffer leadership vacuum since after Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ikemba Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. There is need for the current crop to rise to the occasion. Governor Theodore Orji, chairman of Southeast Governors’ Forum has been quietly at work on the Igbo cause since he ascended the office a few months ago just as his predecessor Governor Peter Obi tried to do. Senator Uche Chukwumerije has also represented Ndigbo well as one of the true Igbo whose strident voices ring loud from the exalted chambers of the Senate.

    But there is need for a rebirth. Ohaneze Ndigbo has become compromised and diminished thus the need for a new forum to lead the rebirth of Igbo nationalism, the Igbo state, the Igbo persona and the Igbo ethic in the emerging states.

    And the winner is… EXPRESSO!

    Last Saturday in Owerri, Imo State, yours truly won the Nigeria Media Merit Award (NMMA) Alade Odunewu Prize for Columnist of the Year, 2013. It was particularly exhilarating to have lifted the bronze gong man before a cheerful crowd of my people in Owerri. I owe it to the greatest Writer of all, God and to you dear reader for always charging me on.

    A body of four articles were entered and since none has been singled out by the assessors, I will try to publish one or two here in the weeks ahead.  The articles are: “One billion women…put down by men,” “The Malabu malfeasance,” “The Agric. Minister’s rice conundrum,” and “Five things Gov. Fashola aren’t getting right.” This award will be considered a call to arms – to shoot sharper for you.

  • Oke-Ogun matters

    Oke-Ogun matters

    As Oke-Ogun converges on Okeho this weekend, the Psalmist comes to mind: What is Oke-Ogun that thou art mindful of her?What matters about Oke-Ogun?

    Surely,Oke-Ogun indigenes would respond that everything matters, following the Yoruba injunction that a true born doesn’t point in the direction of his/her birth place with the left hand. As a left-handed soul, I have always wondered why this instruction singles out the left hand.  It’s an unkind reminder of the teasing that I experienced growing up and the merciless reaction of my otherwise dedicated teachers to any attempt to write with the left.The wise words simply mean that it is morally and socially unacceptable to ridicule or mock one’s origin.  But why identify the left with ridicule, mockery, moral incongruity, etc.?

    So, I got distracted a bit in the last paragraph because I still have some scores to settle, not just with my former teachers and right-handed childhood friends, but also with the source of that old wise-crack. But that task has to wait for another day.

    Oke-Ogun matters to its indigenes for every reason that a source of being matters to a human being. Without the source, one never is. And when one is, the source also ensures that one doesn’t just exist but thrives. The effort to raise, sustain and promote the welfare of everyone of its own has been a collective one for the villages and towns that make up Oke-Ogun.Appreciating this explains the voluntariness of our communal ethos. I enjoyed the benefits of the sacrifice of others. Therefore, I am obligated to sacrifice for others. It is a Yoruba, indeed, an African ethos.

    But if Oke-Ogun matters to indigenes, why does it or must it matter to others? Why, for instance, must government be cognizant of Oke-Ogun? Why must the development of the area matter as a policy priority of any government, including federal, state and local?Is it because of the land? Or is it the people?

    A self-interested government that doesn’t give a damn about the people still has a very good reason to care about Oke-Ogun, considering the potentials of the land to yield bountiful output. It is for good reason that Oke-Ogun earned the title of the food-basket of the old Western Region and why it was chosen as the home of the Oyo North Agricultural Development Project (ONADEP). The land is well suited for all year-round crop-farming with a moderate investment in irrigation and it is certainly well-suited for livestock-farming with its expansive savannah.  A simple matter of institutional commonsensical self-interest, you’d say. But commonsense is a rare commodity in this clime.

    Not so fast, a government sympathiser responds. “We discovered oil and it is more profitable and so we went for it. We intended to use oil revenue to develop the land and the people.” Besides the obvious fact that this gives too much credit to governmental thinking regarding cost-benefit analysis, it is also true that in the more than 50 years of neglect, neither the land nor the people has been an object of focused development efforts. ONADEP became OYSADEP. Ikerre Gorge Dam, initiated more than 30 years ago to provide water and irrigation for the entire region has become not simply an eyesore but also a danger of immense proportion to the entire zone. There have been dire predictions by experts that a slight breach of the dam can trigger a Noah-like flood that may consume the land and the people from Iseyin to Kishi. Meanwhile, the Southwest became dependent on the North for its food supply. Does anyone care?

    What is it about the people that should matter to anyone, especially government? First, they, like others for who government cares a lot, are human beings, who gave up on individual and group egoistic pursuits, which only breed anarchy because government promised to coordinate their activities and moderate their interactions. They had earlier established their credential as brave and courageous people who did not brook tyranny. Recall the Iseyin and Okeho peasant riots against British colonial officers in 1916.

    Colonialism gave up and republicanism replaced it with its promise of life more abundant. Oke-Ogun embraced the new ideology, with absolute loyalty to the progressive dispensation. But cycle after cycle, government after government, theirs have been an unfortunate case of uncompensated cooperation and unrequited loyalty.

    Education is the greatest leveller. But in spite of the pre-eminence of the West in education, the first High School in Oke-Ogun was established by the Church in 1958. That was Shaki Baptist High School.  Government only established secondary modern schools and teacher training colleges in the area. That was how many Oke-Ogun indigenes ended up as trained teachers. Still they excelled! Professor Dibu Ojerinde is one of many who, with hard work and perseverance, successfully made lemonade out of the lemon that place of origin handed them.

    Communal spirit, hard work, dependability and progressive inclinations are embedded in the DNA of these people. But there is more. I have not encountered a more self-effacing people for whom the politics of self-promotion is alien; and this, in spite of those other positive qualities, could be their albatross. The world is an unrepentant exploiter of innocence.

    Politics is a game of number, we are told. What is also true is that if you have the numbers but not the strategy to take advantage of it, you are sure to be passed over. And being passed over has been the experience of the Oke-Ogun collective since the beginning of times. They have been loyal to a fault. But loyalty to one implies that others are spared bothering or caring about you. Worse, absolute loyalty doesn’t compel a passionate desire to please on the part of the object of loyalty. Without a cold calculation of political self-interest by a people, there is no warrant for a politician to make any serious effort to gratify.

    This takes me to the recent Oke-Ogun tour by Governor Abiola Ajimobi. First, I think it is a good thing that the Governor took time to tour the area. He must have opened his eyes to experience the many challenges of life that the people experience on a daily basis. He passed through the Iseyin-Okeho road, abandoned by the Federal Government for more than a decade. I have information that when the state government made a move to reconstruct the road, a Federal Government contractor preempted it by moving to site. The people are being swindled again and they remain silent.

    The governor must have seen the agony of life without clean drinking water over the entire area. And as I mentioned above, Ikerre Gorge Dam, almost completed and then abandoned since the 1980s, has the potential of supplying drinking and irrigation water for the entire area. The governor saw the dearth of higher institutions, the paradox of an area good enough to produce the country’s JAMB Director but not good enough to have a federal or state university.

    Second, the interaction with the people, including traditional rulers, office holders and political activists was commendable. They made their requests on the basis of their needs and the governor listened and made promises.

    Third, the important question now is “what next?” That government relocated to Oke-Ogun for three days was a good gesture. But there must be a follow-up and there must be some tangible results. And this cannot be left in the hands of politicians alone. Indeed, it is an opportunity for the organisers of Oke-Ogun Day to take over and challenge the Governor to make good on the promises that he made to the people.

    Oke-Ogun doesn’t need a third-party to liaise between her and the government. It only requires a strong determination to lay the ghost of a self-loathing and self-denying attitude to life. Oke-Ogun has learnt the hard way that politics is nothing but self-regarding calculations of quid pro quo. To receive, you must be prepared to give, and to succeed you must calculate wisely. It is the responsibility of its indigenes to impress on a world that appears disinterested that Oke-Ogun really matters.