The Nation Newspaper

Category: Friday

  • Super Eagles: Flying on a wing

    Super Eagles: Flying on a wing

    alse sense of magnitude:

    You can only walk so far facing backwards; that is an Igbo street saying. Stretching that a little, you can also only fly so high on a wing and that applies to our senior national football team, the Super Eagles. Even though the team managed to snatch a win from four matches last Wednesday, this team of ours cannot go much farther even if it faced forward. This team is not yet the great Nigerian team. If the truth must be told, it is still a patchwork; a tapestry of worn, tattered old pieces of clothes.

     Never mind that they managed to win over the Sudanese in the last match and  wiped off the murk of humiliation from our face (and their own faces too); never mind that they may even go on to qualify for the African Cup of Nations (AFCON), it is still not morning yet for the current African champions. And talking about champions, this column is of the opinion that that victory in South Africa last year was a fluke that has only compounded our problems. The chance winning of that trophy has only afforded us a false sense of magnitude and importance on the African and world football arena.

    Bringing some perspective on the matter, our senior football team has been dismal for quite a while. Before the coming of the current coach, Stephen Okechukwu Keshi, the AFCON trophy was 19 years in coming. That meant a span of almost 10 tournaments without lifting the coveted silverware. That is thoroughly dreadful for an African giant and continental football powerhouse as we used to be known in the 80s and early 90s.

    By the time Keshi arrived about two years ago and started getting some results with an assortment of not too talented foreign crew and a sprinkling of home based players, a famished mob of Nigerian soccer-crazy fans went over the moon with ecstasy. And when the AFCON trophy came eventually, we simply cracked up.

    This team is wrong: Who can convince Nigerians that there is still a lot wrong with its senior team or that in truth, we do not have a team yet. What is the trouble with Nigeria’s team and by extension, its soccer? Plenty: first, Nigeria is unfortunately in an era in which it is not blessed with first rate soccer talents. As many commentators have noted, we are in an unexciting age that boasts of no Jay Jay Okocha, Rashidi Yekini, Kanu Nwankwo, Segun Odegbami or Christian Chukwu.

    Yes there have not been exceptional talents around which teams are built and to compound it, we have not been able to hire a quality coach either, who can imbue an average team with discipline, sound technical and tactical know-how. That is what Congo has today, a good coach who can get results even with mediocre players.

    Third, the harsh truth that we do not want to hear is that most of our players are jaded, aged and far out of their prime. No matter what they may claim to the contrary, I wager that 70 to 80 per cent of our Super Eagles’ players are way beyond 30 years. What this means is that no matter how experienced and skilled they may be, once they are matched against any team of young and fit boys, the Eagles huff and pant aimlessly on the pitch for 90 minutes! They are often lucky to win or not to lose.

    Why do we always do well at the age-grade level yet flop at the top. Simple, we are serial, incurable cheaters. And we are smart by half all the time. For instance, the so-called under-17 boys who won the world last year are mostly in their 20s and they ought to form the crux of our Super Eagles today. But they will never get a chance to feature in the senior team until they are almost 30 and wasted. This has been our vicious cycle. Those days we used to be certain the super Eagles would maul some national teams; today, even the least teams in Africa like Namibia, Rwanda and Benin give us hell. Monkeys in the Glass House: Another ill of the Super Eagles is that the nation’s football house, the Glass House, has long become a monkey colony where all manner of primates engage in all sorts of monkey business. Though not unlike we have in all segments of our national life, it is a glass house of woes from where no good report emanates. We never hear about long-term strategic football development; we never hear about programmes to develop youth talent or the local league; our referees are perpetually pariahs, despised and ineligible for CAF and FIFA football fiestas. Our coaches are treated with disdain even by so-called administrators in the Glass House, preferring to go into dubious schemes with cheap, mercenary white skins they call expatriates.

    The so-called Glass House comes across as a place of intrigues, touting, gangsterism and skullduggery. It surely is not a place where the beautiful art of soccer can thrive. So long as our football is run by a semi-illiterate mediocre gang who neither have integrity nor care about it, our football will remain an abiku.

    Playing football under a rubble: Football is one of the largest sub-sector of sports in more organised places, not only for its immense capacity for employing the youths but for engaging them and veering them away from trouble. But football is a joke here because it is in the grips of charlatans. One pointer to that fact is our football facilities across the country which are in ruins. All the six federal stadia have been long dilapidated. A visit to our premier national stadium at Surulere, Lagos, will evoke tears.

    The stadium in Calabar is probably the worst of all the stadia in countries playing the AFCON qualifiers. And we deign to be playing football like the rest of the world; but if we must face it, we are not. We are merely clowning around yet. Not until governments at all levels hands off football and allow it run on its own steam; by private individuals, like the business it is and the way it is done in other serious climes.

    Until then, we can fool around all we want pretending to be playing football. We are not.

     Hassan Lawal: Adoke must answer

    IT is perverse and criminal for the state to abort a criminal case in a matter relating to the stealing of huge taxpayers’ money. The use and abuse of plea bargain under this administration has reached a level of utter brigandage and psychological assault on the populace. The current matter of former Minister of Works, Dr. Hassan Lawal is a test case.
    Mr. Mohammed Adoke, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, must explain to Nigerians how and why the trial of Lawal was discontinued.
    Lawal and 11 others were under trial by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for the past three years for stealing N6.4 billion. It was a 47-count charge for which over 130 exhibits had been tendered. This sum was part of the fund for constructing a bridge on the Benue River to link Nasarawa and Kogi States.
    One day late September, the counsel to the EFCC, Mr. Wahab Shittu, simply walked into the court and announced that: “Without prejudice to the merit or otherwise of the matter, I have firm instruction that the case against the accused persons, all of them, be discontinued.”
    Several other criminals have been sprung from facing the law in the recent past and under Adoke but this case is singularly preposterous and an assault on the collective psyche of the people of this country. It is an assault on the judiciary and it is utterly unjust to all other denizen of the land standing trial under the EFCC today.
    Since the EFCC is supervised by Adoke, he must explain. He must also tell us why any other Nigerian must continue to stand trial before the EFCC.

  • Mazrui: A falcon flies

    Mazrui: A falcon flies

    Surely, man becomes a subject of talk after his demise; therefore, endeavour to remain a good talk among those you are leaving behind”.

    By an Arab poet

    Preamble

    Life is a pilgrimage from the unknown to the unknown. No one knows whence he emanates or whither he is bound. As humans, we only found ourselves on the earth without being able to retrace our steps back to where we were coming from. And we just discover that we are on a journey without being able to pinpoint our destination with precision.

    For people who can ponder, the journey of life is a mystery which only Allah can unravel. And the cycle continues ad infinitum.

    In the introduction to his autobiography entitled ‘My Odyssey’ published in 1970, Nigeria’s first President, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, made an allusion to this mystery in his highly philosophical theory about human life as follows:

    “Man comes into the world and while he lives, he embarks upon a series of activities absorbing experience which enables him to formulate a philosophy of life and to chart his causes of action. But then, he dies. Nevertheless, his biography remains a guide to those of the living who may need guidance either as a warning on the vanity of human wishes or as encouragement or both”.

    Observation

    Perhaps no other African intellectual of contemporary time exemplifies the above philosophical quote as much as Professor Ali Al-Amin Mazrui who died in Binghamton, United States of America early last Monday (October 13, 2014) and will be buried at the 900-year-old Mazrui family graveyard near Fort Jesus in his home town of Mombasa, Kenya, in accordance with his Will. His corpse is expected to arrive in Kenya today.

    For African men and women of letters and intellectual prowess, the name Ali Mazrui cannot sound strange. This household name was a super star that dominated the intellectual orbit of Africa like a colossus in the decades of the 70s, the 80s and the 90s. His vertical stance against the horizontal posture of most of his academic colleagues depicted him a role model of rare stature. He was Africa’s darling intellectual to which the literary world of the 20th century beckoned with impeccable historic laurels. He was the answer to many questions about Africa while alive and he will remain the question on the lips of many lettered African generations in death. In a nutshell, Mazrui was an issue of substance alive and he will remain so in death for many decades.

    Who was Ali Mazrui?

    Since his profile may look exaggerated in the writing of a distant journalist like yours sincerely, the real identity of this African colossus is better left to some other African journalists who knew him more closely. One of such journalists is BBC’s Frenny Jowi who, in reaction to Muzrui’s death just looked back at how the Kenyan academic and political writer influenced a post-colonial generation. Here is what he said:

    “Mr. Mazrui has been a household name in Kenya and beyond. Born in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa on 24 February 1933, some 20 years before the Mau Mau uprising against the British colonial rule (in that country), he always portrayed himself as a true patriot. In his series of essays On Heroes and Uhuru-Worship, he wrote as an African scholar deeply involved in the fight for the freedom of his people, expressing empathy with those on the front line of the battle against colonialists.

    “….Mr. Mazrui’s writings, though embedded in history, still resonate because he talks about the need to recognise national heroes, without worshipping them. They also gave insight into some of the greatest concerns currently facing the world as he wrote about terrorism and Islam”.

    Literary Works

    “In one of his books: ‘Islam between Globalisation and Counter Terrorism’, he explained how the religion was entrapped in the danger of rising extremism. “Even the very vices of Western culture are acquiring worldwide prestige”

    Throughout his career, he wrote numerous books and expressed strong opinions in widely published papers. In the 1970s, Mr Mazrui’s sharp criticism of the then-Kenyan and Ugandan regimes – led by Daniel Arap Moi and Idi Amin respectively – displeased the ruling class, leading to his exile in the US.

    Ali Mazrui lamented the growing influence of Western culture. At the time of his death, he was an Albert Schweitzer professor in the humanities and Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University in New York.

    And to complete Jowi’s historical perception of Mazrui, another journalist (a female) and a columnist, Evelyn Musambi of Nation Media Group of Kenya   had the following to say:

    “He (Mazrui) wanted to become a jurist in Islamic law, as his father was the Chief Kadhi of Kenya in the 1940s. Though his father died when he was only 14, Prof Mazrui’s dream to follow his (father’s) footsteps was hindered by his poor results after secondary school in Mombasa, with other students going to Makerere University for further studies while he was left behind.

    His first job application was for a bank teller at Barclays, where he failed the urine medical test in 1948, though the diagnosis was later proven to have been wrong. Prof Mazrui was then hired by a Dutch multinational company, the Twensche Overseas Trading Company in Mombasa, as a managerial trainee, though his tender age denied him an opportunity to be employed after the training.

    He later was employed by the Mombasa Institute of Muslim Education (Miome) as a junior clerk and rose to be a boarding master”.

    Scholarship

    “His speech in 1952 in celebration of Prophet Mohammed’s birthday earned him a scholarship. Prof Mazrui, while still working at Miome, spoke at an event attended by the governor of colonial Kenya, Sir Philip Mitchell. He was later invited to chat with the governor, who asked him about his educational plans.

    He (Mazrui) spoke of his interest in legal studies and though the governor discouraged him from pursuing law, he recommended him for a scholarship, first at Huddersfield College in the UK to finish his secondary education, then to a British University to study for a bachelor of arts degree. He developed his writing and public-speaking skills through the media. He worked as a local correspondent for the Mombasa Times and the Arab Guardian along with hosting a weekly half-hour radio show in Sauti ya Mvita.

    In search of the Golden Fleece

    He (Mazrui) left Kenya in 1955 for Huddersfield College, where he met his first wife, Molly Vickerman. Prof. Mazrui and Molly met in a literature class and later married, siring three sons together. Prof. Ali Mazrui, as Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, was conferred with a doctoral degree (Honoris Causa) at a graduation ceremony. His first son, Jamal, was born in the year when Kenya became independent.

    Though Prof. Mazrui and his wife had moved to Uganda where he was working at Makerere University, his friends insisted that he had to name his son “Jamal” because it was close to “Jomo”, the first President of Kenya. His third son, Kim Abubakar, adopted his wife Kay Forde’s name to become Kim Forde Mazrui and has professional links to his father.

    The adoption of a wife’s family name was common in British culture, where a man from a lower-status family who married the only daughter of a higher-status family would adopt her family name.

    Kim wanted to be a lawyer like his father while still young, but he went into the scholarly world, rising to become a professor at the relatively tender age of 32 (in the year 2001). Ali Mazrui rose to the rank of full professor at exactly the same age of 32 (in the year 1965). Both father and son have never been assistant professors since they rose from lecturers to professors.

    And in 1986, he produced a nine-hour TV-series, “The Africans: A Triple Heritage”, which The People Magazine in its September 1986 edition described “as one of the most controversial series ever seen on American television.”  Incidentally, that was the programme that gave him the greatest fame of his life.

    Ali Mazrui married his second wife (Pauline Uti, a Nigerian teacher) while he was on a sabbatical leave at the University of Jos, Nigeria.

    Together, they had two sons, Farid and Harith. After their marriage, Pauline travelled to Mombasa in 1999 to meet Prof. Mazrui’s family.

    This was years after their marriage, as she had not acquired permanent US residence that would have allowed her to join her husband in that country. Mazrui lived with his grandson, Little Ali, who is Al’Amin’s son, after Little Ali’s mother, Jill, died of cancer in 2004.

    Professor Mazrui was awarded the national title of Commander of the Order of the Burning Spear (CBS), First Class, by the then President Kibaki because of his profession as an educator. Earlier, in 1986, he produced a nine-hour TV-series, “The Africans: A Triple Heritage”, which The People Magazine of Kenya, in its September 1986 edition described “as one of the most controversial series ever seen on American television.”  Incidentally, that was the programme that gave him the greatest fame of his life.

     Tributes

    Since the death of this legendry personality a few days ago, many tributes have poured in from various parts of the world, foremost among whom is His Eminence, The Sultan of Sokoto, and President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, (NSCIA) Alhaji Muhammad Sa‘ad Abubakar CFR, mni. But only a few can be accommodated here. Please, read on:

    The Sultan of Sokoto:

    “I followed very closely, Professor Ali Al-Amin Mazrui’s academic brilliance for years. His ingenuous contribution to African cultural development through political history from Islamic perspective made such tremendous impression on me that I became convinced that an African can reach any height in human endeavour after all, given the right environment. As a professor of Political History and a product of Oxford University, London, this academic colossus stood out of the pack even among his Western colleagues and changed the hitherto perception of the Western intellectuals who believed erroneously that nothing good could come from Africa.

    In the three decades of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, he was the dominant academic towering stature of reference not only in Africa but also in Europe, America and Asia. His BBC programme of 1986 entitled ‘Africans: A triple Heritage’ which was copied by many other television stations around the world exemplified his ingenuousness in intellectualism. He was a teacher of teachers, a Professor of Professors and an intellectual of intellectuals, a rare academic feat that earned him the appellation of ‘Nwalimu’ by which he was well known. It is delightful that despite growing up among non-Muslims and interacting closely with them throughout his life, Professor Mazrui never deviated from the right path of Islam. His death on Monday, October 13, 2014 at the age of 81 has left a big vacuum not only in the African intellectual realm but also in the global social-cultural sphere.

    I heartily condole with the government and people of Kenya, his family and the academic community of Africa and pray the Almighty God to grant them all the fortitude with which to bear the agony and to maintain the footprint which he left behind”.

    Professor Ishaq O. Oloyede (a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Nigeria and former President of Vice Chancellors of African Universities):

    “He was a passionate scholar who devoted his entire academic life innately to Islamic scholarship. Unlike many of his colleagues, he did not see Islam as a mere religious dogma meant for worship and rituals alone. He rather saw it as a profound philosophy divinely formulated to guide the way by which its adherents live on a daily basis.

    Though Professor Mazrui was not a specialist in Islamic Studies, his intellectual analysis of the religion vis a vis the contemporary Western  way of life came to open the eyes of his Western colleagues in the academia to the reality of Islamic religion. He was not a mere academic theorist as he lived by every word he expressed in the hoisting of Islamic banner as embedded African culture. We thank the Almighty Allah for endowing him with an Islamic life and for enabling him to die as a Muslim.  We pray Allah to repose his soul in eternal bliss”.

    Professor Oloyede is the current Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA).

    Toyin Falola, a Nigerian Professor at the University of Texas, Austin, United States:

    “….Mazrui’s intellectual assembly was a combination of the plurality of issues, the plurality of subjects, the plurality of perspectives, and the plurality of languages. But that plurality of languages was enfolded in what I have identified as the recourse to orality, the constant references to fragmented histories and memory. But as Mazrui deployed the English language, he needed to fracture and fragment himself, that is, his own being and body; his presentation of the past, grounded in orality, sometimes became “mythical.” Indeed, he often took the Islamic as “indigenous,” thus casting its impact in mythical ways as well.  This is where Mazrui not only betrayed his preference but his transparency: the Western and the Christian became patriarchal and masculine, in opposition to the innocence and femininity of the mythical.

    The dominance and status of the English language in Mazrui’s work are clear. The English language was used to present Africa to Africans and to the world, and to re-Africanize Africans in drawing from lost traditions. A blended language, the “Englishes” with doses of Swahili and Arabic revealed creativity but drew attention to curiosity as well. Creativity and curiosity raised questions not just about intellectual innovations, but the content of ideas. A language has such a powerful linkage with culture that writing in English does not mean a rejection of one’s cultural immersion. Let me illustrate this point with a citation from The Power of Babel…”

  • Between Adamawa and Ekiti

    Between Adamawa and Ekiti

    This is a tale of two recent events.  The All Progressives Congress (APC) Governor of Adamawa State, Murtala Nyako, was impeached by the House of Assembly. His deputy, Bala Ngilari, purportedly resigned. Therefore the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Speaker of the Adamawa House of Assembly, Umaru Fintiri, was sworn in as Acting Governor. The deputy governor, who purportedly resigned, went to court and recanted his resignation on the ground that he did not legally resign because his letter of resignation was wrongly addressed to the speaker instead of the governor, a violation of the constitution.

    Early this week, the Federal High Court agreed with Bala Ngilari and he was sworn in on Wednesday as Governor for the remainder of the term of his joint ticket with the impeached governor. The speaker, who had become Acting Governor, was let go. He has also appealed. These all happened in Nigeria’s Adamawa State. The political process as enshrined in the constitution played out in the impeachment of the governor. The rule of law prevailed in the appeal of the new governor. All the players and contestants on the opposing sides of this conflict are PDP. There was even a directive from the PDP hierarchy for its members to maintain the peace. After all, Adamawa is still in the grip of the party.

    Here is the second event that is still playing out. Ekiti State had an election and a winner emerged. The loser, the incumbent APC Governor Kayode Fayemi, conceded as the final results were announced. He even pledged to set up a transition committee for a smooth transition. The winner, Ayodele Fayose, is a member of the PDP. APC, the defeated governor’s party, decided, independently of its candidate, to challenge the result. This is only following the provisions of the electoral law.

    E-11, a social-cultural organisation of Ekiti indigenes had its own beef against the elected candidate. The organisation had approached the court to challenge his eligibility in view of his alleged perjury. The candidate and his party, PDP, won’t have any of these. The court cannot be allowed to adjudicate in the matters. With a retinue of followers, the governor-elect also approached the court, not to respond by way of a counter suit. Rather his was a Mano a Mano challenge to their Lordships. His die-hard followers descended on the Justices like hungry lions face to face with raw flesh. They had their feed while the governor-elect and the police watched with glee.

    What stands out between the two contexts of political action and inaction? What is the difference between Adamawa and Ekiti? Where the PDP is in charge and its interests aren’t radically impacted, justice may take its course. But where it feels threatened by the law, and its interests may be adversely affected, the Temple of Justice is desecrated. Why is it able to do this with impunity? It controls the fetters of federal power with the monopoly of force.

    To be sure, this is a new development. In 2007, both Governors Aregbesola and Fayemi challenged the victory of their PDP opponents in the courts and won. There was no sponsored violence. Governor Oshiomhole also challenged the victory of his PDP opponent in Edo State and won. Again, there was no violent eruption thereafter. What is different this time? Does it have to do with the high stakes of the 2015 general and presidential elections?

    Since the 2007 elections and the court victories that saw PDP lose the two state houses in Osogbo and Ado-Ekiti to rival ACN, PDP has vowed to win back those states and in its calculation, it needed to field notoriously “popular” candidates, no matter what baggage they bring to the ticket. So it was that Iyiola Omisore and Ayodele Fayose, despite their despicable antecedents and controversial backgrounds, received the enviable gubernatorial tickets of their party. Of the two, however, Fayose has a legal albatross dangling over his neck. He had occupied the seat once and was legally impeached. Or was he not? He had to answer this question truthfully in the governorship election form for INEC. And he allegedly lied, committing what amounts to, if true, a grievous perjury.

    How is the truth or validity of the allegation to be determined? This is what the courts of law are designed for. And this was where E-11 headed in May, 2014, before the June, 2014, election.Unfortunately, due to a variety of unforeseen events, including the strike of judicial workers, the court could not go on with the case before the election. Fayose won the new election. But that fact does not negate the preexisting fact of the case pending against him. That you win an election does not mean that you are eligible to contest and you cannot become governor by default. But Governor-elect Fayose cannot trust the courts and he must turn to self-help.

    There was the second matter of the election tribunal. After the 2007 gubernatorial election in Ekiti, Kayode Fayemi challenged the victory of PDP candidate Segun Oni. The PDP and Segun Oni fought the battle in court from 2007 to 2009 and eventually lost. It now appears that the party’s takeaway (apology to Governor Fashola) from that experience was not to trust the courts and to frustrate the right of the aggrieved party to seek relief in the court. Even when the defeated candidate doesn’t appear to be a party to the suit, the victorious candidate is not confident of his case against the opposition party.

    It appears to me also that 2015 has a lot to do with this edginess on the part of the ruling party and its attitude to the law suits against the governor-elect. The president is counting on winning a substantial portion of Southwest votes. With Ekiti in the corner of his party, he appears close to that dream; therefore losing Ekiti to a court judgment cannot be countenanced. This calculation wasn’t in contention in 2007.

    In 2007, President Yar’Adua, himself severely bruised from the credible allegations of rigging in his favour, had pledged a more transparent and credible electoral system. Therefore he would not have been favourably disposed to blocking the access of the opposition to the courts. And in 2011, Goodluck Jonathan had the goodwill of the Southwest intact, winning in all but Osun State. There was, therefore, no pressure for him or the PDP to be obdurate. Now it is a different calculation.Based on the strength of the opposition party, the reversal of the gain the party has made in Ekiti cannot be allowed.

    In the circumstance, what gives? We have come to embrace the courts as the hallmark of the civilising process. We abandoned the settlement of rifts and conflicts by duel and fisticuff for resolution by the courts and we are all better off. If some party to a conflict decide that duel is a better alternative because they have control of the means of violence, the other party would not rationally cow in or be cowed. They would also seek their own means and then a Hobbesian anarchy prevails. It is not difficult to predict that in such a situation no one wins.

    There is a more baffling aspect to the Ekiti story. If one can understand the self-interested perspective of the governor-elect and his party, it is difficult to understand where the unusual intervention of traditional rulers with their recent communique fits in. Surely, it is understandable and commendable that they do not want violence in the state. But are the Royal Majesties also canvassing that the courts not perform their constitutional responsibilities? As keepers of our traditions, one would think that they are, or at least ought to be, in the forefront of the necessary advocacy for the observance of and respect for the rule of law. This is a sacred responsibility that must not be undermined by other considerations.

  • Dasuki, Hassan Lawal and Peter Obi – a pot-pourri

    What a week that was, a week that has presented us with a salad of very important personalities at the dinner table of history; sublime history stealing through the life of a nation like a thief. The dramatis personae are the National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd.), former Works Minister Dr. Hassan Lawal and former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi.

      Dasuki’s umbrage and Nigeria as ‘money miss road’: The ignorant world out there not conversant with the shenanigans of international politics and power play would see Nigeria today as a cash-crazed country of people bereft of sense or even sensibility. Why else would a country this size haul cash all over the place shopping for arms and ammunition in dark alleys in this digital age?

    And why has the NSA, Col. Sambo been bungling serially, basic arms acquisition routine since his appointment? The first time, he was reported to have disbursed $3 million to some shadowy Pentagon go-betweens early in the year to procure arms for prosecuting the terrorism war. That deal hit a dead end.

    Three weeks ago, Nigeria’s ‘raw cash’ of $9.3 million was intercepted by the South African authorities as some official ‘touts’ of the federal government tried to offload it at an obscure airport ostensibly for some black market arms deal. The dust from that odious scandal was yet to settle when the South Africans landed Nigeria another killer blow with the interception of another sum of $5.7 million in very strange and unsavoury circumstance.

    Dasuki’s outburst: It is bad enough that Nigeria flunks her critical intelligence transactions; being imperceptive and making elementary mistakes; Dasuki’s angry outbursts threatening retaliation against SA’s business interests in Nigeria is, sorry to say, primitive and negates the rules of decency in international corporate ethics. He must realise that SA’s law, like in all properly ordered places, is no respecter of personalities. It is no respecter of ‘big man’; not even the president can escape investigation and trial when he contravenes the law.

    Second, in procurements of such sensitivity, why was the diplomatic channel ignored; why were the intelligence and military channels not co-opted?

    Third, do we need any extra-sensory perception to figure out that if the West (for reasons best known to them) would not sell you arms, it would ensure that you would never be able to procure from areas of its spheres of influence. It cannot be by chance that Nigeria’s efforts to get arms from South Africa’s dark corridors are not only being frustrated but exposed. Get wise Mr. NSA and look East if we truly seek for arms.

      Finally, it is a mark of Nigeria’s acute debility that her Defence Industry Corporation (DIC) cannot produce basic arms and ammunition, the type that would have been sufficient to tame a minor insurgency like Boko Haram. Its contemporaries in Brazil, India and Malaysia are producing fighter jets. What gives Nigeria the impetus to contest for a permanent UN seat with SA and Egypt when we cannot manufacture basic rifles? When is a nation? Who is thinking? As Dr. Lawal coolly walks away from a N6b fraud charge: A time would come very soon when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) would completely lose the moral authority to prosecute anyone. Why for instance should I submit myself for prosecution over say a measly N10 million matter while government officials who have purloined billions of naira are daily allowed to march gleefully into the sunshine with their loot intact under their belt?

    Consider this sordid Nigerian story. Late in September, EFCC counsel Wahab Shittu must have felt like a circus clown at the Federal High Court, Abuja, as he told the court to throw out the 47-count charge suit of N6.4 billion against former Minister of Works Dr. Hassan Lawal.

    Lawal and his co-conspirators practically walked away with this sum meant for building a bridge across River Benue, linking Nasarawa and Kogi states. This matter had been in court for about four years; over 130 exhibits had been tendered, enough to nail the rogues and put them away for a very long time. But Lawal was dragged to court in the first instance because he must have brought trouble upon himself by repudiating the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. The Federal Government does not have that rather tacky habit of prosecuting its thieving members; where are you gonna start from if almost everyone is in on it?

    But my sympathy goes out to my brother, Shittu, who was yeomanly in carrying out the dirty job. Hear him: “Without prejudice to the merit or otherwise of the matter, I have firm instruction that the case against the accused persons, all of them, be discontinued.

    “To assure you that I did not make the application out of my own volition, I asked them to put it in writing and they did. So, as an obedient servant, I have no other choice than to carry out the instruction. I hereby apply that the charges be discontinued and the accused persons discharged.”

    It is obvious that Lawal must have made up with PDP. There is no doubt that this order must have come from our formless Minister of (no) Justice, Mohammed Adoke. His has been a glittering legacy of saving corrupt officials from going to jail. Apart from Lawal, there is a long list of highly corrupt officials he has sprung from going to prison. Adoke has a large FMCG (Fast Moving Corrupted Goods) factory and its hot product is called ‘pleabargain country cakes’. They will plea-bargain the country at the least opportunity the rate they are going at it.

    Have you ever wondered why Nigeria is currently afflicted with so much carcinogenic corruption yet no public official ever gets convicted? Since Adoke captured the EFCC a few years ago and put it under his armpit, the commission has suffered fatal asphyxiation. Those damaging the soul of this great nation will surely face the harsh judgment of history.

    The coronation of Peter Obi

    Woe alas! Peter Obi finally bit the bullet. It was bound to happen. In fact it was only a question of time. In deed the former governor of Anambra State was on Tuesday crowned the de facto Igbo leader at a very complex period of both Nigeria and Igbo epoch. It was at his private residence in GRA, Onitsha, that the cream of Igbo elite gathered ostensibly to persuade him to jump ship from his party APGA to PDP. It is a formidable roll call: Ike Ekweremadu, Ayim Pius Ayim, Gov. T.A. Orji, Gov. Akpabio, Emeka Ihedioha, Hope Uzodinma, Ben Obi, Uche Chukwumerije, to name a few. If there ever was a powerful delegation to a man’s house in our generation, that was one. If there was a quality representation of Igbo leadership, that was one. Is the Onuiyi Haven being remade one better? One hopes the crowd realised that they had just anointed a leader? One hopes Obi has acquired the grit, the political maturity and the sense of history to wear this flowing robe. One regrets that he had to jettison APGA and join the black-hearted PDP; but APGA remained a stillbirth, an ogbanje that is doomed from conception. One regrets that he had to emerge at a point when Ndigbo are weak and prostrate; are a negligible quantity in the Nigerian political equation. But the years ahead will tell. The unlikely politician with the effeminate voice, Obi, turned out the pleasant surprise of this era, acquitting himself wonderfully well as governor of Anambra State. However, the job at hand is expanded, term-less if not lifelong, thus terrifically onerous. It requires the sagacity of a Cicero and the guiles of a Machiavelli.

  • Lesson from history

    Lesson from history

    Preamble

    Let me start today with a Qur’anic admonition which I have frequently quoted in this column but which has consistently meant nothing to the rulers of Nigeria. It goes thus: “…Beware of a calamity that may descend not only on the perpetrators of injustice amongst you; and be warned that Allah’s retribution can be very severe on the unjust…”

    Q. 8:25.

    History is an invisible teacher. It teaches the experience of the past to the inexperienced people of the present with a view to guarding them towards a safe future. Some people perceive history as the best teacher because it warns against the vanity of human wishes as much as it encourages the emulation of impeccable exemplariness of the past.

    Others call it a bad teacher because it does not practically prevent people from falling into the quagmire of life.

    From whatever angle it is observed, however, history remains the undisputable teacher of all teachers which can be described in any way by anybody depending on the side of the divide to which each observer belongs. Thus, for as long as human beings remain in existence, passing through the coast of history will never cease to serve a meal of lesson.

    In the past couple of years, Libya stood out as a bastion from where the smoke of history was oozing out into the firmament of Africa and the Middle East for some misguided African rulers to inhale some scents of experience from. Of all the Middle East countries so engulfed in political turmoil, perhaps the least expected to join the fray was Libya. And that assertion would have become an axiom if (Gaddafi) the then 69 year old despot of that country had heeded the warning of history by reacting sensibly to the premonition coming from the neighbouring Tunisia.

    Misconception

    There had been a general but erroneous belief about the trend of the foraging revolts in the Middle East which started in 1979 with the fall of the imperial monarch of Iran, Muhammad Pahlavi, who styled himself the Shah-n-Shah (King of King). But the truth is that the revolts actually began two years earlier (1977) in Egypt. It was called ‘Egyptian Bread Riots’.

    The two-day riots of January 18 and 19, 1977 were a spontaneous reaction by hundreds of thousands of peasants to the World Bank and IMF mandated removal of state subsidies on foodstuffs. The then President, Anwar Sadat, had, in response to IMF’s recommendation, increased the price of a loaf of bread by just one Piaster (an equivalence of one Nigerian Kobo). The policy was the height of insensitivity, on the part the government, to the murderous plight of the masses at that time.

    By the time the dust settled, about 79 people had been shrouded for burial while over 800 others became patients in the casualty sections of many hospitals in the country. The riots ended only after the reversal of that obnoxious policy and the restoration of the removed subsidies. That singular incident, added to the general discontent in the land hitherto caused by the evident class dichotomy, eventually led to the assassination of President Sadat three years later (1980).

    From thence, Egyptians became conscious that the only language understandable to their government was violent revolt. Thus, in 1986, barely six years after the death of Sadat and the assumption of office as President by Hosni Mubarak, another major riot broke out in Egypt.

    On February 25, 1986, about 17,000 Egyptian conscripts of the Central Security Forces (CSF), otherwise known as Egyptian Para-military Force staged a violent protest in and around Cairo city destroying two major hotels and targeting the properties of the upper and the middle classes. The riots caused by a rumour that the government had decided to increase the then two-year compulsory national service to three years without any commensurate remuneration lasted three days with official casualty figure put at 107 while over 2,000 people were said to be terribly injured.

    Unlike Sadat who quickly reversed his foodstuff subsidy policy, the only lesson that Hosni Mubarak could learn from that experience was the use of force against the protesters. Ever since, Egypt had become a delicate gun powder waiting to explode anytime. If there was any surprise about the recent Egyptian revolution that ended Mubarak’s 32-year regime ignominiously therefore, it was the delay of the time of that explosion.

    With the Iranian and the Egyptian experience, one would have expected other rulers in the region to learn a lesson but as a Yoruba adage goes,” a dog that would die in perdition will never respond to the whistle of the hunter”.

    Tunisian experience

    In Tunisia, the protests leading to the flight of the tyrannical President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia were instigated by the gruesomely symbolic suicide of one Mohammed Bouazizi on December 17, 2011. The 25-year-old College graduate had used his University certificate as a collateral to obtain a bank loan to venture into retailing some farm products having realised the futility of looking for job in a country where about 14 per cent of the populace was unemployed.

    But when his consignment of farm products were confiscated by government officials for not obtaining permit to sell farm products, the young man concluded that his country didn’t need him anymore and decided to commit suicide by setting himself ablaze. He died in a hospital a few days thereafter.

    The public reaction to his death was unimaginably spontaneous.

    Violence erupted across cities and towns as already aggrieved youths trooped to the streets burning whatever could be burnt and maiming whoever could be captured among government agents. The demand was no longer for reforms but for the removal of the President. By that time, the President tried to address some of the issues against which complaints were made. But then, it had become too late for such efforts to yield any sensible result. When the coming signals were no longer positive he knew that the die had been cast and decided to flee the country thereby ending his 24-year-old regime with historic ignominy.

    The case of Bouazizi who set himself ablaze and was nationally pronounced a martyr as well as the father of the revolution was just an atom in the complex story of longstanding discontent in Tunisia.

    There were many other cases of the like but three main factors can be said to be the immediate precipitates of the Tunisian revolution.

    These were corruption, unemployment and insensitive affluence publicly displayed by government officials.

    Gaddafi’s reaction

    While those revolts were going on in Tunisia and Egypt, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s impression was that the Presidents of both countries were mere jellies who could hardly manage their matrimonial homes. It was far from his imaginary dream that the surging political tsunami in the Arab world could come near Libya let alone consuming him. After 42 years of unbridled despotism, Gaddafi reopened the film of Pharaoh’s history for the world to behold. Like Saddam before him, he lost all that he lived for, including most of his children.

    The story of the Tunisian, the Egyptian and the Libyan revolutions, cannot be relayed in isolation. There seems to be more of the like to tell in the very near future. That story is not in any way dissimilar from that of Syria or Yemen. And if the hanged President Saddam Hussein of Iraq had not met his doom in the hands of his imperial friends turned enemies, he would have probably met a Waterloo in the hands of his own people.

    In virtually all the Arab countries, education is free from the primary school to the university. There is no problem of electricity, water, roads, rail system, food and housing. The only two areas in which the people of those countries have problem with their governments are unemployment and lack of freedom to partake in governance.  And for those two reasons, a political tsunami swept the length and breadth of what is called the Middle East like a hurricane.

    Morocco and Algeria

    The Moroccan monarch and Algerian President were only lucky to have heeded the warning tune of that tsunami in time thereby escaping its consequences. The lesson they learned from the experiences of their colleagues quickly served them in good stead. Otherwise, they would have ended up like Gaddafi or Mubarak.

    Here in Nigeria, where none of the above mentioned infrastructures is available despite the enormous material resources with which the country is naturally endowed the rulers’ stock in trade is to ferry the scarce resources of the country illegally to some other African countries under the guise of arms purchase. Rather than utilising those resources to boost the general standard of living and thereby uplift the status of the country, the priority of our government is to squeeze the citizenry dry through the removal of a non-existing subsidy on oil and callous imposition of frivolous increase on the tariff of electricity in even when it is evident that Nigeria has no stable electricity despite the so-called privatisation of the public power sector.

    While the Tunisians became restive over 14 per cent unemployment figure, Nigeria is proudly grappling with about 72per cent  of unemployment rate even as the government keeps drumming the tune of becoming one of the 20 most economically viable countries in the world. What a grand self-deception?

    The warning here is for the doubting ‘Thomases’ who are still in the dream land in Nigeria and the rest of Africa to open their eyes and clearly see the vanity of human wishes in the cited Arab nations. Such tendentious talks as: “IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE IN NIGERIA” only belongs to parochial people who still live in the primordial time. To avoid becoming like flies dying in the bottle of wine, men of reason had better learn from the experiences of others before some others begin to learn from their own experiences.

    The role of justice

    Justice is fundamentally sacrosanct in the reckoning of Allah. It is the scale with which good governance and pious leaders are measured.

    An unjust nation ruled by an unjust leader is Hell in which just peasants are roasted. But where you have people who are educated enough to know their right; where you have people who are conscious of their common affinity; where you have people who believe in God and His capability to bring justice to an unjust nation, let no one think that such people can be exploited indefinitely. Those in power in Nigeria today who think they can live perpetually on injustice should remember that the likes of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak never thought that nemesis could afflict them one day. Their episodes are now part of history. Prophet Nuhu (Noah) never prayed for the destruction of his nation and people even after many centuries of preaching to the deaf. His prayer only came when, one day, a small child carried on the shoulder of his father asked for a stone to be thrown at him (Nuhu) just as most people in the nation had been doing to him for several centuries.

    He then concluded that with the example of that little child it became evident that even the great grand children of that generation would continue atrocities in the land and remain hostile to God just like their parents. Thus, when he prayed to God for the change of the generation, it was divinely accepted with ‘automatic alacrity’.  The rest is history.

    In history, we also learn how the people of Prophet Lut (Lot) were destroyed by divine order for indulging in homosexuality and the people of Prophet Shu’ayb were subjected to ruins for commercial cheating. We are also told in the Qur’an about the plight of the people of ‘Ad and Thamud who transgressed in the land. Each of these people was punished for a particular crime following their refusal to repent and show remorse. Thus, they came to serve as a lesson for others after them. Unfortunately, all the crimes that led them into ruins are committed in Nigeria today and the so-called leaders are the champions of those crimes.

    Nigeria for instance

    The current situation in Nigeria is by far worse. Here is a country where corruption has graduated from a crime to a pride, and both conscience and shame have taken a permanent flight thereby decimating the future for the generations yet unborn. Here is a country where vices are tied to the aprons and ethnicity and religion while ministers and some criminal merchants (masquerading in the cloak of religion) are audaciously stealing public funds and ferrying them to other countries for keep with no regards for any consequences. Here is a country where well known unremorseful criminals are granted state pardon and rewarded with national honours at the expense of conscience and shame. Here is a country where the so-called privatisation policy is being formulated not for the growth of national economy but for the benefit of the formulators who see themselves as the inheritors of the nation’s wealth. Here is a country where pseudo-clerics serve as suppliers of arms and ammunition of crooks even brigands enjoy patronage of the government in the perpetration of atrocities. Here is a country where official insurgency against the citizenry is a political instrument for silencing the voices of dissent and for self-perpetration in public office.

    When such vices as mentioned above are perpetrated in a society, religion is often seen as the last bastion to which the populace look for solution. But when religion itself becomes the haven of crimes as in the case of Boko Haram and various forms of fraud in religious sanctuaries in the country what else remains as hope for the innocent few in that society?

    To think that such crime can be committed without nemesis is to live in a fool’s paradise. Therefore, let those in Nigeria who refuse to learn from ancient history try to learn from the recent one. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. A word is enough for the wise.

  • Foreigners to the past

    In The Better Angels of our Nature, Steven Pinker, the Harvard University professor of psychology, tells us, consistent with his subtitle, that our world has seen an increasing decline in violence over the years and we are now in an era of a long peace compared with six or seven decades ago, even compared with the pre-historical era. It is a conclusion that many find shocking and for many more, hard to accept but for the array of powerful arguments and incontestable facts marshalled in its support.

    Pinker observed that it is hard for us to believe the conclusion because the past looks now to us like a foreign country which we know little about. One of the merits of his book is to open to us the elements of that foreign country which, in anthropological fashion, leads to a positive comparison with our contemporary world. Not bad; the latter, that is.

    The moral of Pinker’s research conclusion is that “the civilising process” has reduced violence in the world. Two forces combine to make up the civilising process. First, through the invention of the rule of law by the state, acting as a Hobbesian Leviathan; and second, through the evolution of reason from a partial to an impartial mode, the process has enabled the development of our human second nature, the better angels, featuring moderation and consideration for others.

    Assume that Pinker is right and violence has declined in the world. It is still possible, indeed probable, that what is true for the world as a whole is false for certain of its parts. I do not have the data, but it is difficult to imagine that Africa in general could have had a more violent era than it experienced in the last two centuries, even with the ubiquitous nature of its Leviathan. But I raise this possibility only to set it aside because it is not my focus for today.

    Having felt that nothing human is foreign to him, Pinker is amazed at how human minds could have devised such an “orgy of sadism” as in the practice of crucifixion. My interest in Pinker’s finding is to raise and address, from the opposite time slot, a different issue relevant to our situation 54 years after Nigeria’s flag independence.

    One take-away from Pinker’s research is that the human race has experienced a steady improvement in the area of violence with the establishment of the state and this is good because after all, if we buy into the contractarian justification of the state, its main rationale is the protection of life and property. But the state is also supposed to create the basis for liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness for its members by providing good education and employment opportunities for those who take advantage of it as well as deterrence against those who selfishly exploit the state through corrupt practices, as this takes away from what is available for all to thrive.

    If we are to use Pinker’s approach to violence for evaluating how we have done in the areas of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we have to limit our focus to state actors. Non-state actors don’t promise anything. Kings and queens, as Rousseau elegantly quips, use subjects to fight their battles, with no promise of a worldly reward. My question, then, is this. Assume that Herbert Macaulay and other fathers and mothers of Nigerian nationalism are able to look back, what would they see? Sure, they would perceive our modern bridges, network of roads and skyscrapers. But material development apart, what would be their judgment of our moral capacity in light of “the civilising process”? Would they understand the psyche of the Nigerian leadership? Or would this country appear too foreign to them to comprehend?

    For all of its 54 years as a country, and for all the upheavals, the ups and downs, Nigeria, or rather the leadership cadre, has manifested a consistency in two key areas that have come to define its identity. While corruption is upbraided in public; it is privately embraced and lauded as the grease that moves the political engine. And while leaders openly assail ethnic and religious division, and appear on television screens as the most nationalistic and patriotic humans on earth; they never let go of a chance to strategically mobilise religion and ethnicity for political advantage. In at least these two areas of our national life, the present is an alien from the viewpoint of the past. Think of Herbert Macaulay and the NNDP.

    With eyes wide open to the next elections, political leaders flirt with corrupted minds and hands because they need them for good electoral showing in their strongholds. There was a time, not too long ago, when politicians acting as statesmen disown their colleagues who have soiled their hands. In so doing they knew that they risked the backlash from a population that paid obeisance to the corrupt. But they didn’t mind because they believed that the integrity of the system must be maintained. In the present era of a mentality of winning at all cost, the game of number supersedes considerations of dignity.

    The most unfortunate aspect of the present from the point of view of the past is that corrupted politics has found an ally in the corrupted religiosity of prosperity. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is trapped in a can of controversy. It is not one that its millions of members have anything to do with. But it is tempting to smear them with the same dirty brush that is arguably crafted by and, to many observers, well-deserved by its leadership.

    It is not just the stinking matter of the allegedly laundered $9.3 million that has been a source of embarrassment to the country in far-away South Africa. The orientation of our contemporary leaders of religion of all persuasions, but more so,  Christians, is towards the gospel of prosperity. Most of them go into the ministry because churches appear to have become a cash cow, a veritable source of wealth. This is unfortunate because it detracts tragically from the gospel of the Master that the poor will inherit the earth. Contemporary religion would definitely be an alien territory to the likes of James Johnson, Mojola Agbebi, Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther and a host of other pioneers who suffered deprivation for the sake of the gospel.

    In the wake of the current self-inflicted injury, CAN issued a defensive statement in which it accused the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) of being an Islamist political party. It was an ill-advised, shockingly insensitive diatribe, the harmful consequence of which should have been foreseen. Clearly CAN knows or at least ought to know that APC has millions of genuinely spiritual Christians in its membership. Is CAN insinuating then that PDP is a Christian party?

    Let me finish by going back to Pinker and his theory that the past is like a foreign country to us because much of what happened there is hidden from us. By the same token, I argue that what is going on in the present, especially in the area of politics, is alien to the past. In this area, it doesn’t appear that the “civilising process” has succeeded in the enablement of the better angels of our nature to overcome the worse demons in us. We have a great lack of moderation and consideration for others, certainly in our politics, and yes, rather painfully, even in our religion. In this, we are foreigners to the past.

  • Buhari, Atiku and Kwankwaso: How APC can win

    Buhari, Atiku and Kwankwaso: How APC can win

    OPPOSITION POWER President Goodluck Jonathan is beatable in 2015; let us start from that premise. But it’s so very disheartening that the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) displays a bit of dithering and unsure-footedness at this early stage of  its existence and prior to a major election. While one may want to blame it all on teething stage syndrome, the unpalatable truth may well be a lack of institutional capacity, the same disease that has plagued the ruling party from the outset. There may also be the question of shortsightedness and a lack of fidelity to the party.

     In the case of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), former President Olusegun Obasanjo ingested the original copy and remade it in his own excrement. So what we have today is a smelly, malleable and irredeemable lump. PDP is an amoeba that lacks both body and soul. It is a house that seems bound to implode unless a true leader comes along soon and completely remakes it from foundation.

    It is sad to note that APC seems to suffer from the same PDP ailment. Why, for instance, would anyone in the APC be raising the question of adopting a consensus candidate now? That argument ought to have been rested over a year ago if not from the outset. This suggests that like PDP, there are no ground norms in APC too. We speak of basic, immutable rules that ought to have been established from the beginning and taken for granted now.

    EAT THAT FROG: Let’s not despair for it is still early in the day, but APC must eat its frog and rework some assumptions. First, it has done increditably well in mid-wiving a large, alternative party. It may not know it but this is no mean task; it is indeed a historic achievement and the task now is to nurture and sustain it into an institution. I wrote here not quite long ago that Bola Tinubu and Muhammadu Buhari were our greatest democrats today and not a few readers wrote in to say “Expresso e be like say you don colo” (are you going out of your mind?) And I simply told them to try establishing a large opposition party from the scratch.

    Second, nation-building is not a short dash, it is a historical journey. APC minders must always remember that they are building an institution that will not only stand the test of time but will last forever. For instance, if PDP is the Republican Party, they must aim at founding an equivalent of the Democratic Party. In other words, they are the frontiersmen in a great historical epoch that will define Nigeria’s future.

    Having noted these points and in order to achieve this glorious destiny, APC must always, dutifully identify all those viruses that plague the PDP and be rid of them with clinical dexterity. And this brings us to the juncture we are now: the CPC candidate in the 2015 presidential election. We expect nothing less than the great democratic tradition of a primary election to prevail in the selection of her candidates. Let this process be adopted from the outset and for always. This is internal democracy, the hallmark of participatory governance; the antidote to one-man domination.

    Having said that, let all aspirants throw their hats in the primary election ring. Yes we are not entirely naïve about the role of money and personality cult in the primary poll but whoever heard of a totally flawless election. Transparency of the process is what is important for now.

    THE BEST ASPIRANT IS: Four persons have so far shown interest in the CPC’s presidential ticket viz: Isaiah Ndah; Abubakar Atiku; Muhammadu Buhari and Rabiu Kwankwaso. This is in the order they had indicated their interest in the race. Though amiable Ndah, the successful publisher of Leadership  joined the fray much early on, he is far out of his league here and would have to await another opportunity or try a lower position. He is not in contest here.

    Atiku: Turakin Adamawa’s last chance? There will be ample time for this column to take a critical look at the aspirants before the December 2 primary date, but it seems this may well be Atiku’s last shot at the top job of the land. Having tried in 2003 (yes!), 2007 and 2011 without success, age, ennui and geo-political factors may work against him in 2019; but who can foretell tomorrow?

    Let it be noted, however, that different dynamics govern party primaries and general elections so we are considering here the capacity to cross the first hurdle, the party primary. He has gone through this grueling, if not punishing and exorbitant road many times before; but he has deep pockets so he is likely to sweep the APC primary, especially if it is a closed delegates’ election. But if party delegates are looking beyond the primary and if they care about victory at the general election, then it will not be such an easy ride for Atiku.

     Is Buhari still a force? Yes, he still is; a strong moral, religious and geopolitical force – Mai Gaskiyya he is fondly called by die-hard followers. But primary election in Nigeria is money election and you are lonely and indeed alone if you have no money. One wagers that it will be nigh impossible for a Buhari to win an Atiku in a closed primary election in Nigeria. Not oblivious of this fact, Buhari had let out what seemed like a yelp last Tuesday when he noted that he is the poorest presidential aspirant in the line-up. Well politics is a vicious game, isn’t it? And people are saying the forces against Buhari are still alive and well; why won’t he adopt/anoint a candidate from his camp? Debate for another day.

    Would Kwankwaso pose a counterpoise to Atiku? There is a good chance that the challenge of the Kano State governor would be formidable. His ‘movement’, Kwankwasiyya, has taken over the politically influential state and is spreading. Kwankwaso can play the ‘fresh’ card; he can raise the cash and he has impressive work in Kano to show off. Carefully chaperoned, he could change the game both at the primary and even presidential election.

    Jonathan is beatable? Yes indeed he is; and any of these three candidates could pull a surprise if APC gets its strategies right. Though it has been lax in mobilising the Southeast and Southsouth, it is never late to push in that direction and there is so much difference six months can make.

    APC can indeed win, but the bigger victory lies in sustaining a virile alternative party and to understand that if it keeps at it, surely it will get the top job one day but it may also take a bit of time.

     Forbes’ certificate of infamy

    Now we know Forbes for what it truly is: an American public relations jobber adept at propping up unscrupulous Third World public official. Sometime ago, it was Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, Nigeria’s minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, who got awarded some worthless piece of paper called leadership certificate, which he dared not present in Nigeria.

    Last week in New York, Forbes made another ‘killing’ when it handed Petroleum Minister Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke what it calls Forbes Best of Africa Award in Leadership. It is common knowledge that Diezani has grossly under-performed as a minister, having superintended over a chaotic oil sector riddled with malfeasance in the last three years. No new facilities, inability to fix old ones, IOCs divesting with urgency, unprecedented high sea oil theft and a regime of sleaze and phantom subsidy that has left Nigeria’s economy prostrate. That is her legacy.

    You would think only African concerns are involved in award scams but here is a clear case of criminal collusion with politically exposed persons by a US firm. Forbes must spare us the psychological trauma of beatifying our worst public officials who seek validation from foreign lands. Forbes hurts itself too mortally when it dishes out dubious awards.

  • Ebola and human nature

    Ebola and human nature

    The reality of the health challenge that the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) poses to the West Africa sub-region in particular and the world in general has been substantiated beyond doubt. The virus, now transmitted via body fluid, can mutate and get transmitted by air. Then we would have a disaster of immense magnitude as the virus crosses borders without the restriction of thermometer screening at ports of entry. This is probably why the richest and most powerful nation on earth has decided to take the lead in the fight against the disease. It’s an act of charity but also an act of self-preservation. Individual and national responses to the outbreak of Ebola have demonstrated the pluralistic character of human nature.

    Thomas Hobbes famously or infamously described human nature as egoistic, acquisitive and competitive. In other words, if there is morality at all, it is a morality of self-interest with each perceiving his or her survival as a prerogative. Where this is a generalised motive of conduct and there is no overall authority to moderate action, it goes without saying that life in society will be a hell; hence his characterisation of such a life as nasty, brutish and short. And that is why, in his view, rational human beings would want a political authority to moderate the conduct of egoistic human beings.

    What has EVD taught us about human nature? Does it disprove or affirm Hobbes? Is there one human nature or several? If there is one, is it as selfish as Hobbes portrayed it?

    In the past several months since the outbreak of EVD, there have been notable events, episodes, interventions and actions that may help us answer this important question. I refer to the conduct of Patrick Sawyer, the intervention of Dr. Adadevoh, and every other action or inaction—public and private— around this particular episode. We should also consider the action of families and relations of infected persons.

    Starting with the conduct of family members, my attention was drawn recently to a front page Washington Post article on Sunday, September 14, 2014. The article was titled “Out of options, the dying sit and wait.” Beside the sadness of the narrative, which depicts how people in need of help were being turned away because the facilities available cannot cope, the featured picture of a mother lapping here sick infant and watching him helplessly captured for me not just the severity of the tragedy but also the anguish of a loving mother. In this particular case, the woman’s husband had died four days earlier from the disease. Her two sons are ill with the disease. Given the nature of the virus and how it is transmitted, she will most likely get ill in a matter of days. She was probably aware of this. But it didn’t really deter her from caring for her baby in a way that put her at risk of contracting the disease. That was by no means an egoistic nature.

    Next is Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian American who carried the virus to Nigeria after knowing that he had contracted it from his sister who had recently died from the disease. Apparently, Sawyer had also cared for his sister. Was Sawyer a selfless caregiver or a selfish killer or a mix of both? What motivated him to leave Liberia against the instruction of his government and health agencies? Did he really desire to spread the virus or was he trying desperately to get cured as his wife believed?  Was it a flight from death or a calculated effort to have others suffer his predicament?

    It is difficult to peer into human motives, and this was one grievous error with the Hobbesian theory. How do you know what motivates a person? Now, there was another side to the Sawyer story that was less difficult to figure out. According to the government, even after it was disclosed to him that he had the virus, he still tried to force his way out of the hospital and Dr. Adadevoh had to physically restrain him because she knew what the consequences might be for the population.

    Why did Sawyer try to leave the Lagos hospital? Was it to try to get treatment somewhere else? Was it to deliberately spread the disease so he wasn’t the only one that was going to suffer death? Weird as this may sound, it is not an uncommon human motivation. A practice is attributed to a tribal group. According to that practice, one of the subjects of an emperor must mourn the loss of the emperor’s relatives so that the emperor does not have to mourn. So upon the death of the emperor’s relative, a subject’s relation would be killed. The subject is thrown into mourning and that pleases the emperor. It is unclear whether Sawyer had a similar mentality.

    Other less clear cases, in terms of motivation include the nurse that fled to Enugu and the diplomat that fled to Port Harcourt. It would appear that fear of death was primary in these cases. At the beginning of the crisis, it was not difficult to understand the confusion that surrounded its management. Though the Lagos State government clearly put its resources where its mouth was, and though the authorities were actively in charge and information was disseminated appropriately, relatives of the first victims were not pleased and naturally anxious. Their complaints on the various media suggested that their relatives were being abandoned and this may have influenced the actions of the nurse and the diplomat to try and seek help outside of the government clinics. These cannot be attributed to anything but fear of death.

    The acknowledged hero of the EVD crisis as it pertains to Nigeria is Dr. Adadevoh, and rightly so. Here was a woman professional who appeared to have turned Hobbes on his head. Adhering strictly to her Hippocratic Oath, the doctor did no harm to others but cannot, albeit with no suicidal intent, avoid harm to herself. She prevented Sawyer from leaving the hospital and in the process got infected. Call it professional responsibility. The point is that she could have done otherwise. With the knowledge that if she struggled to prevent Sawyer from bolting out into the public space, she could get the dreaded disease herself, she didn’t pull back. That is the very opposite of an egoistic character.

    Compare now Dr. Enemuo, the Port Harcourt physician who treated a diplomat suspected of having Ebola. The doctor later developed symptoms of the disease and died. Ironically, his patient survived. What motivated Dr. Enemuo? Was it the principle of beneficence inscribed in the Hippocratic Oath? But in benefiting the diplomat, was he exposing others, including himself, to the potential risk of infection with the covertness of his intervention and failure to report the symptoms to the authority? Observers have attributed a more sinister motive of greed to the late doctor. I am not sure that this was the case since he must have known the risk he was taking. I would like to believe that he wanted to help but did the wrong thing by not helping to curtail the spread of the disease.

    There are other actors and agents including the Lagos State government, Federal Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Health in the various states, especially those at the frontline of action. While giving credit to the effectiveness of the intervention of these various agencies, one cannot ignore the fact that some aspect of human nature in the Hobbesian conception might have entered at strategic points creating the semblance of tension between individuals and groups.

     In the final analysis, however, whatever the motivation of individuals and agencies, Nigeria as a whole, and Lagos State in particular, deserve a pat on the back for stemming the spread of the disease. Now, we need to keep it up and avoid any self-regarding action that might reverse the gains. The original plan for a delayed opening of schools wasn’t a bad idea after all. It is hoped that reason prevails and states, rather than the Federal Government, have the last say in this matter. After all, it is the states that wear the proverbial shoe and they know where it pinches most.

  • BH: More questions America must answer

    The logic of the loony: The raging war in Nigeria’s Northeast borders and the role of the U.S. and its allies remind me of the logic of the loony in the village market. In his peregrinations, he would often tell anyone who would listen how he did not start the great fire but saw bonfires everywhere in the village and not to be out-done, torched his own father’s house too. His ‘logic’: let all the burning burn together so that all the quenching would be quenched together.

     On August 29, on this space, I raised questions the United States and its allies must answer concerning our five-year-old Boko Haram insurgency that has now morphed into a full scale military encounter with the Nigerian State. When I wrote that piece, BH had captured just one town (Gwoza) in Borno State. Today, in spite of the best efforts of our military, including aerial bombardments; BH threatens to overrun Maiduguri, the capital of Borno.

    In brief, I had asked why the incipient crumbling of this bumbling behemoth called Nigeria has coincided with America’s prediction about 10 years ago. I had wondered why the efforts of the U.S. and its friends to rescue the abducted Chibok girls and help stem the tide of Islamist insurgency in Nigeria petered out with the same intensity with which they rushed into the fray a few months ago. I asked how come the rascals suddenly got better armed and emboldened after the intervention of the U.S. I queried how America and Britain could intervene in Iraq and Syria, states of near-anarchy, but found it difficult to do same in Nigeria. Numerous other questions were raised in that piece. And one wonders, are we confronted with the loony logic here: let it burn so we may pick the pieces later?

    Lame and fantabulous excuses:Since then, one has been able to glean what might seem like a blanket answer to these posers from various sources but one still thinks they are unacceptable and, indeed, very lame excuses from our Western friends. Their response only reinforces the conjecture of many that there may be more to this BH affair than meets the eye. Those who have been suggesting an international conspiracy may well have something.

    The fantabulous excuse U.S. officials have mooted for sneaking out of the Sambisa forest and out of the country is that Nigeria’s military establishment has been deeply infiltrated by the BH group, therefore, the Americans feared they would be badly compromised working with the military. It sounds preposterous that the U.S. actually came in, mapped the forest, determined the location of the abducted Chibok girls, got other intelligence that might help end the insurgency yet, they simply walked away on account that they can’t trust Nigeria’s military? This is difficult to believe.

    Pressed recently by the fast-rising quality Sunday newspaper, The Niche, a U.S. embassy spokesman confirmed that: “U.S. assistance to Nigeria amounts to $626.9 million in fiscal year 2012, $699.8 million in fiscal year 2013 and an estimated $705.9.million in fiscal year 2014.” This converts to a total of about N329 billion in funding assistance over three years to the Nigerian government to tackle the BH insurgency. The most critical question for the day, therefore, is: which Nigerian government officials are the U.S. dealing with in disbursing these enormous funds in the last three years? If the U.S. can trust Nigerian officials with cash, how come they cannot be trusted with vital intelligence to break the back of the insurgents? Why has the Nigerian military remained ill-equipped in spite of such inflow of U.S. dollars? Why was the support not in the form of quality weaponry and ammunition instead of cash? Its air force is still grappling with 40-year-old Alpha jets which at 20,000 feet above sea level may pick out the difference between a praying ground and a military training ground. Going by Monday’s clandestine South African arms purchase debacle, why are  the U.S. and the West delaying delivering government’s arms order?

    Again, where are BH’s heavy weapons coming from? Where are they stockpiled? Who is paying for them, through which means? Where are their training bases? We are talking about an area of operation that is just about one-tenth of the country and we insist that between the U.S. and its allies, they can answer these questions and quietly cap this small eruption. If they can operate in such states of chaos and anomy that Iraq and Syria now represent, Nigeria is no doubt an oasis of serenity in comparison.

    Parable of the wimp and his abducted wife: to set the record straight as was done in the first article, this is actually a Save-Our-Soul (SOS) cry; it is by no means a suggestion that the U.S. and its allies owe us a duty to intervene in matters purely internal and sovereign; not in the least. It is indeed an admission that we have failed and in no position to help ourselves. We have become like the wimp in the tale whose abode was invaded by a band of marauders. They had carried off his dear wife and instead of chasing after them, he  cried to his friend. His friend set off in hot pursuit of the rascals and found the poor woman violated and dumped not too far away.

    The ‘kindly’ friend had taken the traumatised woman to his house ostensibly to stabilise her. After a few market days, the wimp knocked on his friend’s gate to retrieve his wife. But his friend announced to him from over the fence: hold your peace dear friend, your wife is in no condition to return to you just yet; besides, if you were this anxious when she was hauled off by those rascals, she would be in your house now. Moral: what you cannot stand up for you may not lay claim to.

    In other words, yes, the sovereignty may have buckled under but we insist that we cannot apply the loony logic either to let it all burn so we may pick the pieces later. And to insist that there is none in Nigeria who can be trusted with useful intelligence is to mock the entire Nigerian universe. That would be a terrible mistake. A fallen Nigeria will make a catastrophic splash across Africa. Or is anyone for a juicy clean-up contract?

    Tread softly, Prof. Jega

    I do not subscribe to the call for the resignation of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, over the proposed restructuring of polling units (PUs). It is rather inchoate to do so besides the fact that one thinks he remains one of the few shinning lights in our much-debased public service. One is actually taken aback reading the usually intrepid Dr. Alex Ekwueme joining a band-wagon of raucous elders to call for Jega’s resignation.

    First, the so-called PUs restructure is still a proposal, a framework for states’ INEC to review. It is true that the new structure is inordinately skewed against Southern Nigeria and worse so, the Southeast. We must all study it carefully and make our input and not seek to sack Jega yet.

    It does not add up that the South would have only 30 per cent of the proposed PUs against 70 for the North. It is even preposterous that the entire Southeast would be allotted almost the same number of PUs as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). This negates all logic as the five states of the Southeast are larger than the FCT in terms of land mass and population. Again, regardless of the results of Nigeria’s voodoo population censuses, it is a fact that the Southeast is among the most densely populated areas of Africa.

     We therefore urge INEC to shelve the restructure for now until it has achieved a foolproof electronic voters’ capture. Jega must be experienced enough to know that most of the voters’ lists he premised the new PU structure upon are spurious. We understand that INEC seeks to achieve logistical convenience and smoother election-day results but all that can wait till post 2015.

    Tread softly, Prof. Jega

  • Letter to Chibok girls

    Letter to Chibok girls

    Fear a calamity that may afflict not only those who caused it but also the (innocent) ones who had no hands in its cause. And be warned that Allah’s retribution can be severe (on evil doers)” Q. 8:25

    Dear innocent (Chibok) victims of evil,

    This letter is coming to you at a very precarious time of your lives with the understanding that you may not be privileged to read it due to your current state of predicament. However, for posterity sake, it is being written to you with sorrowful tears rolling down the cheeks of the writer. Those tears are an evidence of heavy mind encapsulated in implacable agony. Your current fortuitous plight is, no doubt, an unprecedented calamity not for you or your parents alone but also for the entire country called Nigeria. That calamity was precipitated not just by those agents of evil (called Boko Haram) who callously hold you captives in an unbearable environment but also by those who facilitated the plight through endemic corruption and misrule in the name of governance.

    At your bracket adolescent age generally deemed innocent, you had been perceived as today’s dream that would fetch tomorrow’s reality. Each of you had been seen as a potent arrow in the hands of your parents with which those parents could hopefully shoot through the iron gate of life. Thus, from your infancy to your present adolescent age those parents had been full of prayers and hopes for your brighter future just as they had seen you as their footprints that would become their worthy legacy. In a nutshell, each of you had been seen and treated as the chief asset of your parents either in their lifetimes or after their demise or both.

    When hope turns despair

    Unfortunately, however, your dreams as well as your parents hopes for you are now being turned into a paroxysm of despair not out of your own making or that of your parents’ but out of the making of some satanic forces, in our country, who are evidently nonchalant to the lives and plights of others. By that making, those forces have enabled the Lucifer to hijack your destiny in a manner never envisaged in Nigeria.

    In retrospect

    When you started to write the West African School Certificate Examination early this year, you were the delight of your parents and your parents’ well-wishers who had fervently prayed for your success in that exam. Which worthy parent would not do that anyway? Your mere writing of the examination did not only heighten your parents’ hopes for your greater tomorrow. It also served as an impetus for you to further tighten your belts for rising to higher pedestals in life. The anticipation was that by July this year, you would have obtained the needed results of that examination to be combined with the Joint Admission and Matriculation examination results that would qualify you for admission into higher institutions and pave your ways towards greater heights in life.

    But alas! Man proposes and God disposes. Against all thoughts and premonitions, there you are today in the gulag of unforeseen machinations of life. It was unimaginable, even after writing your examination papers on April 14, 2014 (when you were anxiously engaged in group reappraisal of that exam) that a misfortune was lurking around the corner to assail you all together at once.

    Incidentally, in the early morning of that same day, a dare devil group allegedly working as an organ of Boko Haram had caused a calamitous havoc in Nyanya, Abuja, through bomb explosions that claimed 77 innocent lives. That globally condemned barbaric incident which you might have heard about after your exam on that day was enough a premonition. But who could have imagined that, far away in a remote town of Chibok, in Bornu State, some hundreds of innocent girls like you had also been earmarked for a devilish abduction?

    Stories and rumours

    Ever since, the story has been changing in contents and in essence depending on the source of the overwhelming rumours generating it. For instance, we have been told that following your kidnap, you were taken straight to a forest called Sambisa, near our border with Cameroon, which is mainly inhabited by dangerous animals, reptiles and poisonous insects. Then we were told that some of you were lucky to escape the kidnap when one out of about 25 vehicles used by the insurgents to convey you broke down. Then we were told that you were divided into smaller groups and distributed to different neighbouring countries such as Cameroon, Chad, Niger Republic and Central African Republic where you were being sold into slavery. Then we were told that some non Muslims amongst you were forced to convert to Islam while some were dead through snake bites and malaria. Then we were told that some or most of you were daily being raped by the ‘beasts’ who are now criminally keeping you in custody. Then we were told that some or most of you were forced into illegitimate marriages with those criminals.

    The stories were many that came in form of rumours. And we had no means of confirming or verifying any especially when those who are primarily charged with the responsibility of providing security for the citizenry did not even initially believe that you were indeed abducted. Rather, they resorted to heartless politicking and buck passing. It took the foreign media and foreign human rights campaigners to whip them onto the line of action. And by the time they claimed to believe and reluctantly started their ineffective action it was too late to plan strategy on your rescue as your abductors had perfected their evil plans for what to do with you. All these were happening despite a so-called state of emergency in some parts of the country where a government is supposed to be in place.

    Agony of parenthood

    Today, your parents are in as much anguish as you are. Most of them cannot eat to satisfy their fill. They cannot sleep according to nature. They cannot work as usual. They have lost total confidence not only in the so-called government but also in the country called Nigeria even as they wish that they were never created as citizens of this country. Your case is a vivid reminder of a Yoruba adage that “it is better to lose a child to death than to be declared missing indefinitely”.

    Yes, your case has also brought us back to the era of slave trade when the Europeans and Americans came to our land, captured and chained our ancestors who were loaded into their ships like merchandise wares and sailed them as labour slaves to their plantations. If anybody ever doubted what we read in history books about that agonising enslavement episode that eventually created Diaspora for Africans in Europe and America, here today, face to face with a practical experience. Who knows where your own Diaspora will eventually be as your destiny now remains in the hands of those who are not bothered about other people’s lives?

    Who could have thought that in this age of internet, when civilisation is almost at its peak, an evil occurrence like slavery could rear its ugly head again in Nigeria in our very presence while we remain helpless? It is very shameful that with a population of close to 170 million people only an infinitesimal group of insurgents could render us so helpless while your lives are put on the line. It is shameful that by such docility we simply lost our claim to parenthood under a government. As a matter of fact, it would have been better not to be endowed with such innocent girls like you who could not be protected against danger than to continue to claim to be parents while you remain where you are today.

    Reactions

    For weeks after your abduction, this writer could not sleep. My constant thought was based on the imagination that one or two of you could have been my daughters. And it could not be imagined that any sane parent or family who heard of the criminal abduction would sleep or live a normal life for weeks thereafter. But incidentally, both the thought and the imagination were discovered to be an error as some people were totally and insensitively indifferent, an indication of heartlessness or insanity on their part. Such people who openly described the incident of abduction as a diversionary tactic which they alleged to have been fabricated by certain fellow politicians were rather concerned with the continuity of the current rot in the country.

    Their show of shame was such that portrays anything different from such continuity of rot as criminal. In other words the story of your abduction, no matter how painful, and the subsequent public demand for your return were considered criminal especially when the children of none of them were part of you. It even got to a stage where the campaign for your return with the slogan ‘Bring back our girls’ was ridiculed and countered with a similar slogan coded in political language.

    At a time, the Nigerian press, in collaboration with the ‘Bring back our girls’ campaigners called on Mr. President to visit your parents and people of Chibok as the Commander-in-Chief of the country’s Armed Forces if only to empathise with and console those parents and other towns men on your plight. But the hawks in government would not hear of it. But yours is a case of a turbulent life to which the Almighty Allah had alluded with admonition thus:

    “And We will most certainly try you somewhat of fear and hunger and loss of property and lives as well as farm crops but give good tidings to the patient ones. Those who when afflicted by a calamity only say ‘we are of Allah and to Allah we shall surely return…..”Q. 2:155-156.

    America for instance

    It will be recalled that Presidents George Bush Jnr and Barack Obama visited the American forces in far away Afghanistan as a symbol of courage in leadership and as a morale booster to the American troops in that country just as they visited the parents and families of some of those troops who lost their lives in battle. But in the case of Nigeria, this is a taboo as far as the national lotus eaters are concerned. Rather than doing same internally here in Nigeria, it was preferred that your parents pay a visit to Mr. President in his Abuja Presidential palace called ‘Aso Rock’.

    And when this was reluctantly done by some of your parents, under pressure, the story oozing out of it was also unpalatable. As usual, some token amount given to those parents as transport became another subject of controversy in a way that further confirmed corruption as an endemic ailment in our country. Such example as mentioned in respect of two American Presidents is never seen as relevant here in Nigeria. What is rather relevant is abnormal increase in taxation as well as in tariff on social amenities like petroleum and electricity.

    Information

    Perhaps you may wish to know that the genesis of Boko Haram which caused your current painful plight was an audacious injustice perpetrated about two decades ago (before any of you was born) through the annulment of a popular presidential election won by the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, a colossal business mogul, who was eventually clamped into prison and killed therein. Prior to that episode was the case of General Musa Yar’Adua who was also clamped into prison for an alleged phantom coup and was killed therein without trial.

    When a country is globally known for this kind of injustice with impunity anything including an emergence of the likes of Boko Haram insurgency could be expected. Thus your case is one of the results of injustice in the land.

    Dear innocent girls, it may interest you to know that recently, an Australian (Dr. Stephen Davis) who was allegedly hired by Nigerian government to secretly negotiate with Boko Haram insurgents over your release from the latter’s enclave has made some shocking revelations.

    He has not only disclosed the identity of some well known Nigerian figures as the sponsors of that insurgent group; he has also named them openly. But do not be excited about this because justice is dead in Nigeria and what remains of it is influence. Thus, the named untouchable Nigerians are deemed to be above the law of the land by influence. The very best that anybody who is well familiar with Nigerian factor can expect is ‘playing for time’.

    Meanwhile, having waited for over five months for your rescue without hope, some of your parents have given up on you saying they have accepted their fate and considered your plight as their own sacrifice to a nation in which they have no belief. But there is nothing too difficult for God to achieve. The same God who rescued Prophet Yunus (Jonah) from the belly of a whale after several months can still rescue you miraculously. He never sleeps nor slumbers and He is ever mindful of any prayer offered to Him. By the grace of God you shall be out of that evil gulag. Just continue to believe that in all these “THERE IS GOD OOOOO!”