The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Gbadegesin

  • Hopelessness

    Hopelessness

    Opalaba wondered why my writings have turned gloomy recently: “You used to be the optimist. What’s the matter?”

    “I have always focused on the fundamental issues of our national existence. And if you think that I have changed, it is not deliberate”, I replied.

    “You may deny as much as you want, it would not change what everybody has observed. If you have not seen the comments, be sure they are coming. As your friend, it is my responsibility to alert you.”

    “Friend, indeed!” I intoned.

    “Look, all I am suggesting is that you should lighten up and give people hope. It is not as bad as many opinion makers such as you make it look like. You cannot honestly tell me that we are not better off than we were eighteen years ago. The 90s were the dark days of the republic, don’t you remember?”

    “Darker than the 80s?” I asked.

    “Of course”, my friend replied. The 80s at least witnessed a modicum of democratic governance. The 90s were completely militarised.”

    “So, darkness or lightness is a function of dictatorial or democratic governance?” I asked. ”What kind of logic is that?”

    “Your logic, my dear friend” Opalaba mockingly replied. “Remember your tirades against military dictatorship? You used to tell us that the worst democratic systems is better than the most benevolent dictatorship. Are you now trying to deny that?”

    “I am not trying to deny anything. But when you deliberately twist my position to make a wicked accusation, I have a duty to correct you. Surely, democracy is head and shoulder above dictatorship. In the latter, the words, policies and actions of the dictator on behalf of the nation are final. To oppose is to subject yourself to punishment including death. Many suffered that consequence in the 90s. Others escaped by going into exile, criticising and strategising from outside the country. Naturally, they all jubilated and heaved a sigh of relief upon the return to civil rule.

    “But you mischievously missed a point. Two decades after the end of military dictatorship, patriotic citizens who suffered the most atrocious dictatorship have a right to ask: “do we now have democracy or just civil rule?

    “The appeal of a democratic rule is not just that civilians are in charge or that we have civil liberties of speech, association, and religion. It is also, more importantly, that the government they put in place work for their interests, that the representatives they choose act on their behalf.

    “The foremost question for the evaluation of a democratic government is its impact on the bread and butter issues of citizens. Therefore, the Reagan Question, is pertinent: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? That was Reagan’s killer question in the 1979 campaign for the presidency and it killed Jimmy Carter’s hope for a second term.

    “It is the question that we must ask eighteen years after the beginning of civil rule. Ironically, our civil rule has pauperised the majority of citizens. Poverty and hunger is at its highest level in three generations. This did not start two years ago. There has been an increasing neglect of the masses and their affairs since 1999 despite the various anti-poverty initiatives which up enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor.

    “According to figures provided by the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics, in 1980, 17.1 million Nigerians were in poverty. Twelve years later, in 1992, the number rose to 39.2 million. And just after another twelve years, in 2004, it nearly doubled, to 68.7 million. Note that in 2004, we were five years into “democratic” rule. And just six years later, in 2010, when “democracy” was in full bloom, the number of Nigerians in poverty rose to 112.47 million, nearly double the 2004 number.

    “In a nation of about 170 million, about 65% leave in absolute poverty. There is no way to parse this situation other than to see it as a disastrous failure on the part of political leaders. For, in the period under consideration, the economy was in strong shape with oil production at its peak.

    “Of the 35% that are not in absolute poverty, fewer than 5% are in opulence, principally due to having, with impunity, dipped their hands in the national cookie jar. These are the ones who go into governance not to promote the interest of the people, but rather to amass as much wealth for themselves as they possibly can within the shortest time. Of course, they are never satisfied with their loot. So, they keep recycling themselves and crossing proverbial carpet as needed.

    “Ours is a corruption-ridden, development-impeding, poverty-inducing democracy. Unfortunately, to an objective observer, we do not have a firm grip on the situation. We set up agencies to deal with corruption, but they are weak and crippled. The powerful get away with their loot while the anti-corruption net catch only the small fish. Why are we surprised about the level of crime and militancy? Or about the sympathy that a dare devil and “intelligent” kidnapper has received? This is a mentally sick society, no thanks to the brutalisation of the psyche of the masses by rogue leaders.

    “The other day I spoke with a leader of great integrity. He lamented the state of our development compared with our peer countries with which we gained independence. But even without comparison with other countries, we know where we ought to be, say, in terms of infrastructural development. For a landmass of 366 square miles, we know the number and mix of road network that we need. We do not have a tenth of more than 300,000 that we need. And of those that we claim as roads, less than a quarter is motor-able, the others being in various stages of disrepair. Without a good network of roads, or rail transportation, the economy suffers. That is also the case with energy supply.

    “With a united assault against these challenges, they are not insurmountable. It is how other countries have made progress and left us behind. The greatest threat to our survival and progress is the absence of a common unity of efforts. We approach issues from opposing lenses. Where some see corruption, others see avenue for the satisfaction of sectional interests. So they are not ashamed to eulogise looters who escape the grip of the law.

    “Ours is a democracy with unbridgeable division in the body politic. This country fits perfectly John Stuart Mill’s observations on the difficulty of promoting democracy in a diverse population. And to the extent that he is right, ours is a hopeless democracy.

    “Mill believes that a people constitutes a nationality if they are “united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others — which make them co-operate with each other more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively.”

    “There has been no survey of Nigerians that verifies their feelings about their fellow citizens. Should one be undertaken, it will be unsurprisingly earth-shaking. The antipathy toward other groups is not just revealing at the level of the masses. Regrettably, there are ethnic warlords in the leadership rank. Why do we deceive ourselves?

    “Mill suggests that “where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members of the nationality under the same government, and a government to themselves apart. This is merely saying that the question of government ought to be decided by the governed.”

    “Mill is categorical about multi-nationality: “Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist…An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another…The same incidents, the same acts ….affect them in different ways..”

    “A century after amalgamation, this perfectly describes Nigeria!”

    Opalaba did not utter a word.

     

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  • Al-Mustapha and the death of conscience

    Al-Mustapha and the death of conscience

    The story of the Abacha years was that Major Al-Mustapha had the ears of the Master. As the Chief Security Officer of the Security Unit at the Villa, he also had the back of the dictator. He was the overall boss of the Strike Force Unit, a position which he used to terrorise the nation on behalf of the interest of the junta. He deployed the Force on assassination assignments, and as Sergeant Barnabas Jabila Mshiola, aka Sgt. Rogers revealed, it was the Force that silenced Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, among others. However, while a High Court convicted him of the murder, an Appeals Court acquitted him.

    Since his acquittal, the man has yielded no ground to the truth. As a dead conscience would, he equated legal freedom with innocence, forgetting, as our people know so well, that if you shoot an arrow and take cover under a mortal, you may avoid being apprehended by earthlings; but you cannot escape the judgment of the one who sees through the thickest fog of lies.

    Al-Mustapha is back in the news again. About a year ago, he decided to open the wound that he and his ilk inflicted on our national body with a jubilant press announcement of a multi-volume memoir from the devil’s archives. He will not be the first to try to profit from evil. Conscience is supposed to pinch us against moral perversion. But when it is dead, anything goes. So, it has been the case with moral monsters in our midst.

    The freest and fairest election in the history of the nation was annulled and the presumed winner was incarcerated and eventually killed. As the Chief Security Officer to the maximum ruler, the brutal dictator on whose order Abiola was detained, Al-Mustapha had the power to make life miserable for Abiola and he did not pull back. With penchant for occasional mockery and jeers, he made himself a terror to fear. Now, he wants to rewrite history and he seems to have some willing ears and eyes.

    To maintain a presence in the news cycle and keep the book narrative alive, Al-Mustapha has decided to intrude into our thought-space with cock and bull stories that defy commonsense. Since the book is still in the works, he will do us a lot of favor by providing answers to some nagging questions.

    First, Al-Mustapha has told the nation that he knows the cause of the death of both General Abacha and Chief Abiola. In addition to that important revelation, can he also tell us why he has kept this information to himself in the last 19 years, knowing well that human lives were taken away unjustly and the nation needed the answer?

    Second, why did Al-Mustapha fail to provide this information to law enforcement agencies? And why was he not forthcoming with this vital information at the Oputa panel and during his trials? Assume that Al-Mustapha is right and Abacha and Chief Abiola were friends, is keeping sealed lips about the cause of the death of his boss and his friend a manifestation of loyalty or betrayal?

    Third, in view of his strategic position and closeness to General Abacha and his killer squad, it stands to reason that Al-Mustapha would have information not just about the death of his boss but also about all the other killings, including the broad daylight murder of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola 21 years ago. The blood of the innocent will ceaselessly haunt the perpetrators of the heinous acts of cowardice, especially when they have not paid for the crime. Will Al-Mustapha help himself and redeem his soul by coming out clean regarding his role?

    In the public space, there are tapes of the confession of Sergeant Rogers who claimed that Al-Mustapha ordered the assassination of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola and others, two of which failed. The two attempts that failed were those of Chief Alex Ibru and Pa Abraham Adesanya. Informed about the denial of Al-Mustapha, Sergeant Rogers also reasoned that it takes more than the spirit of a man to admit responsibility. Rogers submitted that Al-Mustapha had the power to order anyone from any unit to carry out assassination.

    Of course, he was tried and acquitted of any wrongdoing. But if he escapes the long hands of legal justice, he must be acutely naïve to think that he his soul is not subject to eternal torture should he fail to confess and plead for forgiveness.

    Fourth, contrary to a consensus not only of enlightened opinion on the matter of Abacha loot but also of information from banks and financial institutions through which the funds were siphoned, Al-Mustapha has come out in defense of his late boss. In a May 2016 interview, he came up with a warped reasoning, that when Nigeria was threatened with sanctions by the international community upon the request of some prominent citizens, the Abacha government decided “to allow some money go (sic) to some accounts abroad, so that if the sanction comes, that money would be able to keep Nigeria afloat.” Incredible!

    Pray, if the international community threatened sanction, what sense would it make to give them easy access to Nigeria’s funds stacked in banks located in their territories? And were those funds saved in the name of Nigeria or in the name of Sani Abacha? There is a more relevant question: If there was no Abacha loot, what is the source of the recoveries made since 1999? Who owned the repatriated funds?

    Fifth, Al-Mustafa keeps insulting the intelligence of reasonable people with his allegations of coverup in the death of Chief Abiola. He has accused the leaders of Afenifere of knowingly protecting the killers of Abiola. He has peddled this lie for so long that inquisitive minds should wonder why he would not himself declare to the world who the killers are. If he videotaped the scene where Abiola’s killers gave dollars to Opadokun and others in exchange for their silence, then he obviously knows the killers. And presumably he was not bribed by the killers. So, what prevents Al-Mustapha from unmasking the killers since 1998? Does anyone really find him believable? As an insider in the sordid events in the last days of Abacha and Abiola, Mustapha owes his conscience the truth.

    Sixth, Al-Mustapha claims to have a video coverage of how money exchanged hands inside Aso Rock villa during the visit of Afenifere leaders. Did he have the video during his appearance before the Oputa Panel? Why did he not ask that it be released to the public? He now claims that the video is with the Lagos State High Court which tried him for murder. Since he was acquitted of the crime, why can’t he demand the release of the tape to him so he can show it to the world?

    Seventh, Al-Mustapha wants the world to believe that he loved Abiola and his wife and all he is doing is what a true friend would do in the circumstance. In other words, he cared so much for Abiola that he did not want to leave any stone unturned in unveiling his killers. Therefore, he has accused Chief Opadokun of being silenced by bribe. But how did this true friend protect Abiola when, as Chief Security Officer of the vicious General, he exercised the power of life and death over Abiola? Did he plead Abiola’s case before Abacha? Did Mustapha allow Abiola to receive the medical attention that could have saved his life?

    Eighth, Al-Mustapha has also expressed concern for Yoruba culture and he did not hide his outrage that the Are Ona Kakanfo of the Yoruba nation was killed and Yoruba leaders who visited Aso Rock Villa did not feel sorry for their loss. If this is not a deliberate effort to create confusion and division among the Yoruba leadership and followers, it is hard to know what else it is? What does one really make of a mind so debased? Many have described Al-Mustapha as a pathological liar. I think it is much more than this. This man has an evil mind.

     

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  • Biafra and the rest of us

    Biafra and the rest of us

    After a brief slumber during my transatlantic flight to London for a professional conference, I woke up in the middle of the night on Wednesday and began to jot down my notes for this column on my iPad. My subject is Biafra, which has attained a new level of notoriety since the release of Mazi Kanu. But a couple of hours later, nature demanded its due. I shut down and slept off again.

    Upon landing at Heathrow, I turned on my phone and was greeted by a message from Agbaakin Olu Omodele, the President of Egbe Omo Yoruba, North America. It was a “Joint Position Paper” by a consortium of seven Northern organizations calling on “the authorities…to allow the rebellious Igbo to go their way.” The group also threatened that “in the event the Igbo is not allowed to pull out, the North shall divorce this marriage that has never been convenient to any of the parties.”

    Alarmingly reminiscent of the antecedent event that none likes remembering, the group called “on all Igbos currently residing in any part of Northern Nigeria to relocate within two weeks and northerners in the East should do likewise. It also warned Northern leaders “against further insisting on this union with the Igbo or any other part of Nigeria that is disposed to self-determination.” While the statement ended with “SIGNED”, suggesting that it was not anonymous, there was no signature on the message that I received.

    As I read the release sitting at the back of my cab, I ruminated over this development and its coincidence with the notes for my column that I had begun earlier in the airplane. I got to my hotel and I turned on my iPad again. And there was yet another development on the subject. It was a forwarded message from a distinguished Nigerian and an elder statesman and leader, a.k.a. Pa Integrity.

    The forwarded message, attributed to the Coalition of Northern Youths, CNY, with an AREWA logo, looks like a media report on the first group.  It states that the group “has handed a three-month ultimatum for the Igbo residing in the North to leave the region even as it ordered northerners in the South-East to immediately start returning to their various states.” It gave the name of a representative of the group, “Mallam Abdulazeez Suleiman, who read the statement tagged ‘Kaduna Declaration’ at the end of the meeting.” Of course, the media report veered off the main report and missed some quotations.

    I was alarmed. Are we at the precipice? Is time up for Nigeria as we know it? For, if the release is a true reflection of the Northern position, what prevents a “peaceful negotiated dismantling of Nigeria” now, as the elder statesman suggested in the caption of his forwarded message? Then, I also thought that this may all be fake news! The release may just as well be the work of provocateurs angling for another civil war.

    Yet, I am also reminded that, except for the threat contained in the release, its position is not much different from the that of Northern elders such as Professor Ango Abdullahi and Chief Paul Unongo. On his part, Abdullahi was quoted in Vanguard of May 20 thus: “Yes, if Biafra means negotiation, yes. It’s all a matter of discussion. If it means Igbo want to have a country of their own separate from Nigeria, it means a matter of discussion and we are prepared for the discussion.”

    In the same interview, Abdullahi repeated something that he had said before: “This is all I have been saying that if Nigerians are tired of staying together, they should be prepared to accept divisions instead of remaining in agony and disappointment of one another. We are always talking that the Nigerian state is not working and how can we make it work? And if the best option is to call for separate countries, why not?”

    Both Paul Unongo and Ango Abdullahi are leaders of the Northern Elders Forum. They both talk about not being against restructuring and will be ready to go to the conference table. But while Abdullahi does not mind a breakup of the country if it comes to that, Unongo believes that Nigeria cannot be broken up peacefully and it cannot survive another civil war.

    Political restructuring has been on the boiler plate of the country since the beginning of the military era in 1966. It led to Biafra and the civil war, and the renewed agitation for Biafra means that the demand for restructuring is not going away. We must acknowledge the uniqueness of the Biafra issue. Its persistent and determined advocates believe that they have a cause and they will not give up even if they appear to be against the entire world.

    What fuels this adventure which appeared to have been nipped in the bud almost half a century ago? Another distinguished leader recently sent me a video of Biafra Major-General Philip Effiong formally surrendering to the Federal Military Government and proclaiming that Biafra was no more. That was in 1970. Ikemba Ojukwu himself returned from self-exile to a warm reception by the Shagari administration with a declaration of his full support for the administration and his loyalty to the federal government.

    Queried about his willingness to work with a federal government run by a party with northern leaning considering his people’s experiences with the North, Ojukwu responded with a statement that has stayed with me since: “If I was meant to look back, God will not give me two eyes in the front of my head. Therefore, I will henceforth look forward.” That was in 1982, twelve years after the renouncement of secession and the embrace of the spirit of one Nigeria.

    It is also true, I believe, that since his triumphant return and until his death, Ikemba never reneged on his pledge to the unity of Nigeria. He participated actively in Nigerian politics with his support for the Shagari government. And in 1999, he floated a political party, APGA, which won the support of the majority in the Southeast.

    The question that must be asked and addressed now is this: what has happened since the transition of Ikemba that has fueled the resurgence of the struggle for Biafra? I think there is no mystery about the grievances of the Southeast zone. Whether they are enough to fuel the agitation or whether they are unique to the zone is another matter.

    First, a shot at the presidency has eluded the Igbo since 1979. In a country, which, as Ojukwu once put it, was built on a tripod (North, West, and East), this situation must be painful. In the thick of the June 12 struggle, this was one of the reasons that Ojukwu fought against an Abiola presidency. He made the point and canvassed unwaveringly for the annulment to stand.

    A second issue is the perceived inequity of state creation which resulted in the Southeast as the zone with the least number of states. While this may not have been intentional, it is not difficult for the zone to view it as another case of inequity.

    The third issue is quite different from the previous two. For, while those issues can be verified factually, this third issue is subjective and contestable. Mazi Kanu recently proclaimed that the entire Black Africa is just a huge animal zoo without the Igbo. Therefore, the Igbo must be allowed to bring out the best of itself without being polluted by the animal world.

    With that thinking, you do not need marginalisation and inequity as reasons for wanting out of a space in which you are being reduced to the animal world that your neighbors occupy. I do not know if most of the Igbo share this mindset.

    Nigeria can be saved from disintegration. If the Northern elders are genuinely open to political restructuring, they must initiate the discussion with their counterparts from other zones, including the Igbo. Otherwise, we should all start praying for “a peaceful negotiated dismantling of Nigeria” as the elder stateman urged.

     

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  • Fear in a free world

    Fear in a free world

    There is fear everywhere because the threat of political, religious and racially-motivated violence is alive. It shows on the faces of people who are otherwise cheerful and lively. Persons with a natural endowment of warmth, who ordinarily would open their arms wide for a bear hug, have become unusually reticent. They now wonder who to trust.

    It is a season when God’s children are supposed to bask in the generous warmth of the sun, having fun in the park or around town in tour buses. Now, they must consider and calculate the new risk of becoming an innocent victim of a sidewalk vehicular weapon or a hand-held dagger in the bus.

    A people who consider themselves to be born free, and who resent the chain of law monitored by elected representatives, now find themselves subject to the chain of terror controlled by foreign and domestic agents often beyond the monitoring capacity of any government. How has it come to this?

    The irony is brutal. Political philosophers take great pain to provide a moral justification of the obligation that citizens owe to their government. They contend that losing the absolute freedom of the state of nature, where there is no political authority breathing laws down our throats, is worth it because we will gain limited but tangible freedom under the constraints of the law. For this reason, we feel safe to give up our natural rights to self-protection because the state can protect us more effectively. This is what freedom under the law means.

    We readily agree to let go of our weapons, putting our utmost trust in the state to the dismay of anarchists. However, unfortunately, it turns out that the state is no more the Leviathan that ubiquitously checkmates the intrigues of the crime-inclined, while protecting the innocent. Have we given up absolute freedom only to be enslaved to the whims of the lawless?

    The free world is being victimised by at least three shades of hate and terror: political, racial and religious, none of which can survive thorough moral scrutiny. Needless to add, the perpetrators of terror are moral degenerates who could care less about the verdict of morality. Still, while none of the three is morally defensible, the difficulty of defensiveness increases as we move from terror motivated by politics to one motivated by race to one motivated by religion.

    Political terror is perpetrated by those who harbour a political grievance against the state. They want a territory. Or they seek to overthrow a government. Whatever their objective, they would rather set about achieving it by means of terror and anyone and everyone is target. The immediate aim is to terrorise all. The overriding aim, however, is to realise their goal when everyone would have been exhausted and would have given up the battle.

    That it has never happened that way does not come into the reckoning of the political terrorist. It does not matter to young and upcoming terrorists that their seniors in the business never achieved their overriding goal using the tool of terror. Meanwhile, the arbitrariness of the tactic and the randomness of the victims make free movement in free world a challenge of immense proportion.

    With racial terror, belonging to a different race is the only basis for being a potential victim. Not what you do but who you are and how you appear. It does not matter that you are not responsible for how you appear. Or that your creator gave you your skin colour as he gave your violators theirs. Coming out of the same creative genius of God does not appear to impact the warped reasoning of perpetrators of racial terror.

    With its hateful message of white supremacy, Ku Klux Klan (KKK) emerged as the loathsome racial terrorist in the last century. And while reasonable people thought that enlightenment has taken hold, rationality has prevailed, and the ideology of hate has been buried in shame, it only morphed into something that is subtle but certainly not less sinister as a new White supremacist movement in the 21st century.

    White supremacists have dealt a blow to the proud portrayal of the land of the free where all of God’s children pursue dreams of the good life. This cannot be good for the image that we send out to the world. Concerned about the damage to that image, minority populations have sought to bring the nation back to reason.

    “Black Lives Matter” does not deny that all lives matter. But in the context in which black people are routinely violated and demeaned, they seek to remind the violators that their (Black) lives matter too. It is a message to the New York assassin of a Black homeless man and his ilk. And to the White police officer who killed an unarmed Black driver without provocation.

    Religious terror is most probably the least defensible. A victim is targeted because he or she is of a different faith or of no faith and the perpetrator wants us to believe that he is doing the bidding of God and that there is ample reward for him in the afterlife. This is not a new development as there are ample examples of the same reasoning throughout history. All religions have been equal opportunity offenders at various times. But if we can dismiss past errors as born out of ignorance, how has modernity been different?

    The hate-filled suicide bomber in Manchester, United Kingdom, did not know any of his victims. Many of the dancers at Ariana Grande concert probably have no ideological beliefs. He did not care who they are. Some of them may even share his faith. Some were probably of no faith. They were just out for fun. Teenagers and children were among the victims. They were all God’s creatures. It did not matter to him. They were random collection of souls. Their killer did not profile them. Imbued with a self-conviction about what his “God” demands of him, and a chilling self-righteousness about his action, he blew up innocent souls.

    How possibly can anyone defend that action on religious ground? Does piety obligate the killing of innocent people? In other cases where responsibility for such attacks has been claimed, the motive has been attributed to revenge for the actions of Western forces in Iraq or Syria. But how can you claim a morally-justifiable revenge against innocent people who have not in any way been responsible for harming you? Some of the people killed may have even opposed the involvement of their government in the war effort! The logic of terror justification is curiously distorted.

    In an Oregon commuter train ride, a human creature of God with “Christian” as his last name, stabbed three fellow human creatures, two of them fatally, while a third was sent to the hospital with serious injury. He did not know their faith. But he was enraged that they intervened on behalf of two girls, one wearing hijab, which gave her out as a Muslim. Christian had engaged in angry rants against the girls telling them to go back to Saudi Arabia. The Good Samaritan intervention of the two men ended their lives in a jiffy.

    One of the two who died was a recent college graduate. He was looking to a bright future. The other victim was a family man with a wife and three children. He was a veteran who had served his country for 23 years in the military. What insanity has overtaken the world?

    As tragic as the commuter train gruesome killing was, it also demonstrated to us that humanity can still rescue itself from terror and hate. That was what the intervention of the three men meant. Convinced that the ranting hater did not represent human values, and that innocent women riding a train deserved protection from a White Supremacist terrorist, the three chose the side of virtue. They taught us that when our common humanity is debased, we have a duty to courageously summon the better angels in us. That is how the human race can survive and prosper.

     

     

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  • Another Democracy Day

    Another Democracy Day

    As the nation marks another Democracy Day on Monday, it is an auspicious time for a candid discourse on where we were, where we are and where we could be in the journey to nationhood and true democracy.  Notice my sense of what the nation is about to do on Monday: We will mark, not celebrate.

    It has been built into the national psyche that, on May 29, the workforce in the public and formal private sectors should mark the day with a holiday from work. It is also a fact that millions of citizens in the informal sector, including millions of petty traders, cannot afford that luxury. Working hard seven days a week with little to no improvement in their conditions, a day-off could be economically fatal.

    However, even those who enjoy a day off on Monday will not be celebrating. What is Democracy Day to workers unable to pay their bills or feed their families because they have worked without pay for months? This is a reality of the situation that must not escape us. An economy in doldrums is truly dispiriting.

    Yet as important for our physical survival and material well-being as the economy is, it is not the be-all and end-all of national greatness. Nations have pulled themselves together out of worse economic conditions. From the depth of national malaise that the Great Depression tossed the United States in the first quarter of the 20th century, the New Deal was born and the nation bounced back to life and to an enduring greatness. That feat took leadership courage and knowledge. It also took, significantly, an overwhelming embrace of the national cause by citizens.

    On the part of Nigeria, I have no illusion, of course, that not a few may consider my statement of the challenge a bit pretentious. “Who says that Nigeria is on a journey to nationhood and democracy?” they will ask. And frankly, I have no convincing answer to this overriding question other than refer them to the professions and proclamations made on behalf of scores of millions of citizens by the writers of the constitution.

    First, the document reports that we have all “firmly and solemnly resolved, to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation under God” (my emphasis). Second, it states that “the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State based on the principles of democracy and social justice” (my emphasis).

    Third, the constitution spells out what democracy requires with its declaration that “(a) sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority; (b) the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government; and (c) the participation by the people in their government shall be ensured in accordance with (its) provisions.”

    There have been negative reactions to the declarations contained in the 1999 Constitution. For its apparent evocation of a unanimous authorship of the document, reflective citizens have considered it a “big lie” and a “fraud”. To the extent that it was a military-imposed document, which was hastily approved on the eve of its departure, without a formal referendum that sought the approval of the people for its adoption, these charges cannot be pushed away.

    For comparison, with the 1979 Constitution, at least the military pretended that the people mattered. They made efforts to involve civilians, first, through the appointment of a 49-member Constitution Drafting Committee and second, through a partially elected Constituent Assembly.

    But if the 1999 Constitution was flawed for the reasons adduced, what have we done since civilians took over the reins of governance? The fundamentals of the constitution which was imposed by the military have remained untouched. If the constitution remains a fraud and a big lie, then, it is either because most citizens have no interest in attaining the truth and freeing themselves from the negativity of fraud, or they are too powerless to demand that freedom. A consequence of the truth of this disjunction is that the “big lie” remains the foundation of our compact.

    But not all is lost. Of the three fundamental principles that the constitution identifies, namely nationhood, democracy and social justice, I do not think that the last two are as contentious as the first. Whether we end up as citizens of our various clans, tribes, nationalities, or as one indivisible country, I am sure that everyone still yearns to be part of a governance system that prioritises the principles of democracy and social justice. Complaints of marginalisation across every zone of this country are about the abandonment of democracy and justice.

    The Southwest has been the hotbed of the agitation for a true federal structure for the nation. It has also been the epicentre of sectional agitation for recognition and inclusion by “marginalised minorities” or “sidelined majorities” in states within the zone. Whether it is the Oke-ogun people in Oyo State, or residents of Ajegunle in Ajeromi-Ifelodun Local Government of Lagos State, or Yewa people of Ogun State, what we are seeing is an intra-zonal affirmation of the national agitation of IPOB or MASSOB or Afenifere for restructuring and true federalism.

    One major reason for the near-universal mockery of the constitutionally-declared aspiration for national unity and nationhood then is that the aspiration lacks substance and credibility, and cannot motivate action if the effective drivers and motivators of national unity, namely democracy and social justice, are missing. The agitators are declaring that “we are not ‘one people’ if you deliberately treat one section of a state or one zone of the nation as a door-mat to be used and dumped, and not good enough for leadership of the state or the nation.”

    This is the fundamental issue. Most citizens are not against the country’s aspiration to nationhood. They are not against national integration. But first, they are against the injustice of exploitation and marginalisation in the name of national unity.

    Second, they are against any policy which privileges a uniformity that seeks to obliterate cultural, religious or linguistic diversities. Nigerians still subscribe to the ideal of unity in diversity which animated healthy competition in the areas of education, social welfare and infrastructural development at the beginning of the republic. Third, the demand for political restructuring should be seen in the context of its attraction for economic prosperity and national advancement. Let me elaborate a bit on this last point.

    Unfortunately, some thoughtful citizens, with demonstrable leadership credentials in various capacities, still misconstrue the idea of restructuring. They think wrongly that it is a demand by some zones for the deliberate underdevelopment of other zones. At the same time, they nostalgically recall the quantum of development that Nigeria experienced when she operated a true federal structure. But this is precisely the point of the advocacy of restructuring from our current unitarised federalism to a truly federal structure.

    Due to limitation of space, I can offer just one example of our current tendency toward over-centralisation. On May 14, 2017, Premium Times published its Special Report on the dilapidated state of Federal Government Primary Health Centres (PHCs) across the country. The focus of the report was on the poor state of the PHCs and the need for budgetary allocation to make them function properly.

    However, there are fundamental questions: Should the Federal Government be involved in building, equipping and staffing PHCs across the country? Or should it, through the Federal Ministry of Health (FMH), focus on health policies, such as National Health Insurance and broad guidelines for their implementation, while the states are empowered with resources to provide health facilities for their residents?

    That PHCs are dilapidated is not a surprise. The Second Republic Federal Housing Scheme suffered a similar fate, as most of the buildings became shelters for rats and reptiles. The Federal Government cannot effectively supervise such facilities scattered across the country. States are suffering from stunted growth because a greedy Federal Government has starved them of resources. The surprise is that two years on, a progressive party in power has not recognised the imperative of restructuring for balanced and equitable development.

     

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  • Celebrating a memorable life

    Celebrating a memorable life

    With his transition to the great beyond, General Robert Adeyinka Adebayo has assumed a new title. He became an ancestor, an enviable title that everyone looks forward to. It is the most that humans can become, short of deification.

    Back in the days of ancient warriors, powerful kings and graceful queens, the likes of Oduduwa, Obatala, Ogun, Sango, Oya and Osun, when valour enjoyed recognition and uncommon attributes had an other-worldly character, deification was the loyalists’ answer to the physical loss of the icons of the tribe. It was also an expression of our implicit acceptance of the belief that humans are godlike creatures, participating in varying degrees in the pursuits of the spiritual and physical realms.

    We have since jettisoned deification not because there are no longer worthy candidates. Rather, we no longer deify because, on the one hand, we have come to embrace our humanity and mortality as more germane to our essence than spirituality, and on the other hand because we have accepted the truth of two new religions both of which originated from the Middle East and effectively remind us of our human vanity. Of course, we know that while one of the two religions absolutely condemns deification and symbolic representations, the other rewards human goodness with sainthood, a shade above ancestorship, at death.

    Significantly, our language expresses our outlook on life and the ironic upside of death which elevates us and relieves our human misery: Ni ojo ti a ku laa deere; eniyan ko sunwon laaye (death idolises us; alive, we are less than worthy). And to gain the reward of idolisation, we are counselled to be remain humane, gentle and generous, so that our offspring can proudly give us a befitting burial (Ka rin gbede, ka lee ku pele, komo eni lee fowo gbogboro gbe ni sin.)

    The lesson is obvious. For traditional Yoruba, death is the final arbiter of a life well-lived. How we die is a testimony to how we live. And since we can predict the experience of the other world from the experience of the last days,    a good death is a signal of a good life beyond. The logic of this belief is clear: Live well to die well. Die well and your life beyond is certain to be good.

    We should be thankful to death then, especially when it comes after a life that is memorable and productive. For with such a life, there is an assurance of immortality, which is to live on in the legacy of one’s accomplishments and in the memory of those left behind.

    Death has another role in the being of the living. In the Yoruba worldview, the reward or punishment is not necessarily deferred to the other world. It starts with ojo atisun— the last day on which wickedness, treachery, community betrayal are punished and goodness rewarded. Thus, we are reminded of the death of Gaa, the one-time wicked strongman of Oyo Empire, whose reign of terror ended in infamy as he suffered terribly at death: Boo laya koo sika, boo ranti iku Gaa ki o sooto.

    When, therefore, we are fortunate to celebrate the passing of an icon, who traversed both the traditional and modern facets of our nation, and did so with uncommon bravery, elegance, devotion and grace, we have evidence of a good life. But second, we are witnesses to a good death, which is peaceful in the waiting hands of loving children and family. We must roll out the drums in gratitude to God and the ancestors whom he has joined.

    The contributions of General Adebayo to modern Nigeria are well-known to my generation and those before me. But our younger patriots need to be reminded. First, on the modernity side. Professionally, General Adebayo served the country meritoriously and gallantly as a gentleman and an officer of the Nigerian Army. Commissioned as an officer in 1953, he was one of the first Africans to join the Royal West African Frontier Force. He was also one of the first Nigerian Commissioned Officers of the Nigerian Army, attaining the N7 identity as the seventh Nigerian officer at the end of his Cadet Training in the United Kingdom.

    With the need for further training taking him to the Staff College in Surrey, England and the Imperial Defence College, London, he sometimes found himself the only African among his peers, earning a first in several positions to which he was appointed.

    General Adebayo was the first Nigerian General Staff Officer at the United Nations Headquarters (1961); the first national General Staff Officer Grade 2 at the Nigerian Army Headquarters from 1961 to 1962; the first Nigerian General Staff Officer Grade 1, 1962-63; and the first Nigerian Chief of Staff of the Nigerian Army from 1964 to 1965. It is safe to suggest, therefore, that with his pioneering efforts in his various posts, General Adebayo helped to lay the foundation of a Nigerian Army that was professional and patriotic before it got derailed from its mission.

    It is also significant that when the Army was to derail, General Adebayo was not around because he was on a course in England. Perhaps, if he was around and his counsel was sought, the coup and its aftermath might have been prevented. Just maybe! However, he did offer his counsel against the civil war:

    “I need not tell you what horror, what devastation and what extreme human suffering will attend the use of force. When it is all over and the smoke and dust have lifted, and the dead are buried, we shall find, as other people have found, that it has been futile, entirely futile, in solving the problems we set out to solve.”  How prophetic! For speaking truth to power, even if ineffective for preventing the tragic outcome, he was vindicated. “It has all been futile, entirely futile.”

    In view of his position on the war and his counsel against it, General Gowon used good judgment in appointing General Adebayo as the Chairman of the Committee on the Reconciliation and Integration of the Igbo Back into the Nigerian Polity, at the end of the war. With the resurgence of Biafran sentiment, however, it is doubtless that much still needs to be done and the nation has a long way to go. This is not the responsibility of any individual. Whether we end up as one indivisible nation or many separate entities, is a question for all to answer. General Adebayo did his best as a reconciler.

    In the realm of public administration, General Yakubu Gowon assigned General Adebayo to serve as the second military governor of the Western Region after the assassination of Col. Adekunle Fajuyi in July 1966. He served in this position until 1971 when he was assigned to head the Nigerian Defence Academy. His governorship years were eventful. The West was still reeling from the political crisis of 1965. Division was deep and mutual suspicion was rife. On top of this was the Agbekoya Farmers’ crisis over taxation. It took exemplary act of political leadership and the support of Yoruba political leaders to solve the crisis and for there to be lasting peace.

    General Adebayo retired from the military in 1975, after serving for 22 years. But he soldiered on in civilian outfit, serving his local, regional and national communities, and accumulating numerous accolades in the process. He was Chairman of the Yoruba Council of Elders, a non-partisan group that sought to bridge the divisions created by party politics in Yorubaland.

    There is no doubt that General Adebayo lived a memorable life. He has also earned immortality, having been survived by children whose great achievements he witnessed. A former governor was survived by a former governor! How common is that? More importantly, his proud heirs, among who are the current six governors of the Southwest, are much more than his biological offspring. That he passed on at a time when the Southwest appears to achieve a rare unity of purpose is a divine reward of his pioneering efforts. This is what it means to rest in peace!

     

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  • Tragedy of for-profit shepherding

    Tragedy of for-profit shepherding

    The other day Opalaba called to check on his “true friend”. Whenever he starts a conversation with a flattering gesture such as “my own true friend”, I know he’s up to something sinister. As the elders know so well, you don’t have a tree in your backyard without the ability to predict the fruit it will produce.

    My friend announced to me that he finally made it to Sunday School on the last Sunday of April. I was shocked. The Opalaba I know never cared about Sunday School when we were growing up. Unlike my poor self, he grew up in a home with parents whose religiosity was on the moderate side. His father subscribed to Johnueli Owo’s popular aphorism: a kii se gbagbo da gbese (Christianity should not force one to indebtedness). Therefore, the old man usually ensured that he arrived in church after collections had been taken. He would tell everyone, “mo ba oore-ofe”(at least I was early enough for the benediction).”

    My father, on the other hand, was the extreme opposite. Provided he was well, my old man never missed any church programme on Sundays and weekdays. He was there for Sunday School, for Christian Training Union (CTU), the evening equivalent of Sunday School. He was at Monday morning and Wednesday evening prayer meetings. And if any child of his failed to make it to any of these programmes, the devil in them must be cast out with horse whip. I was subjected to that treatment once and it was unbearable.

    Therefore, the time that I lived in my father’s house, I forced myself to Sunday School. And the habit forcefully stuck with me even after I was on my own. I am therefore one confirmation of the truth of Solomon’s wisdom: Teach a child the path he will take and when he grows up, he will never depart from it. But Opalaba never had to endure Sunday School or even church attendance. The surprise declaration from him therefore also confirms the truth of the song writer’s words: God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. However, I wondered aloud whether, as shocking as his making it to Sunday School was, he had more to tell me.

    “Congratulations, my good friend”, I said. “I am pleasantly surprised. But what more should I know about your adventure?”

    “Sure, it was a pleasant experience”, he replied.

    Now, I had sometimes told Opalaba that, of all services, Sunday School and CTU are the most exciting because they are interactive. If you have a good teacher, he or she will engage the members in the lesson. Besides, these are the only programmes in which members can freely express themselves and ask probing questions. Part of his mission going to Sunday School this time was to confirm the veracity of my claim.

    As Opalaba spoke, I was almost sure what excited him about the Sunday School lesson of April 30. I was at Sunday School that day myself, only 3,000 miles away. The good thing is that we use the same resources provided by the Nigerian Baptist Convention for Sunday School classes.

    ‘The topic of the day was “God’s preserving love”, and it was the story of the good shepherd as told by John, the apostle’, Opalaba recalled. “The lesson addressed the fact that a good shepherd knows his sheep and cares for them. In turn, the sheep recognise the shepherd as their benefactor. Even when thieves steal the sheep from their pen, they are always struggling to be back with their good shepherd”.

    Then my friend quoted verbatim from the lesson a statement that I figured captured his imagination and which he was going to harass me with: “As a representative of the true Shepherd, every shepherd that has been called to lead God’s flock must speak the truth of God’s Word to the people and guide them in the path of righteousness. There are many strangers around who have not been called of God. They are only interested in their personal gains and have come to steal the sheep and exploit them.”

    I asked him what he thought about the quoted passage and what he took away from the lesson.

    “I should ask you, Mr. Know-All” was my friend’s provocative response. “You are the one that is always defending the indefensible, aren’t you?” he kept shouting to the phone. Of course, I was not perturbed. I knew he had something to say.

    “Calm down, Opalaba” I entreated him.

    Then I asked a different question: “How did the Sunday School lesson go?”

    “It went extremely well”, he responded.

    “Did you get a chance to contribute to the discussion”, I asked.

    “You bet I did”, he replied.

    “I trust my friend”, I intoned.

    “Tell me more”, I pleaded.

    “Well, it was a long story. The teacher did not like what I had to say.”

    “How come?” I asked.

    “I told the class that we should bring the lesson to the concrete reality of our time and place”, Opalaba explained. “The challenge about these issues is that our servants of God tend to present them in abstract terms. The parable of the good shepherd is apt. But who is the good shepherd now? In what context does the good shepherd demonstrate his or her essential attributes? These are the questions that must agitate our minds today. Thousands are dying of hunger even in our own country. Poverty is on the rise. Politicians have no clue. Men and women of God are not raising their voices on behalf of their sheep,” Opalaba observed.

    On my end, I nodded in agreement but, of course, Opalaba couldn’t see me. And true to type, he lashed out at me: “You are not listening to me, are you?”

    “I am all ears, my good friend”, I replied.

    “Don’t ‘good friend me!’ Just listen”, he bellowed.

    “I don’t see how the teacher can disagree with your contribution thus far”, I stated.

    “Well, I am not done yet”, he replied.

    Opalaba then asked if I recalled receiving a WhatsApp message sometime ago about higher institutions established by religious bodies in Nigeria. He was not the sender. He had also received the message from a common friend.

    “Yes, of course, I remember and I still have it on my phone”, I replied.

    My friend told me that he brought up that issue. To my question what the relevance of that issue was to the matter of the true shepherd, Opalaba blew so hot I felt the reverberation on my end of the phone.

    “How dare you ask that stupid question?” he shouted. “I knew all along that you are not to be trusted with good critical discourse. You have been indoctrinated not to question the so-called earthly shepherds who are only professionals….,” he continued until I threatened to hang up if he was not going to play the gentleman for once.

    “I asked a simple question. Can you please give me a simple answer as a gentleman?” I replied.

    “Do you remember the old missionaries that brought Christianity to our shores?” he asked.

    “Yes, of course.”

    “And you remember that the first educational institutions, including primary, secondary modern, teacher training colleges, and high schools, were established by them?”

    “Yes, indeed. You and I benefited from those institutions”, I replied.

    “And so did many of the modern representatives of the true Shepherd”, Opalaba added. “We were all beneficiaries of the large heart of the missionaries and their home churches who took seriously their calling as representatives of the true Shepherd. They tried to feed His sheep with knowledge.”

    “Now, what is our reality”, Opalaba reasoned. “We have higher institutions established by our local representatives of the true Shepherd and many of the sheep they are called upon to tend have no access to those institutions because they are too poor to afford the exorbitant fees. Yet the institutions were established with collections in various forms from these poor sheep. This is the unfortunate tragedy of for-profit shepherding”, my friend concluded.

    On my end, it was mum.

     

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  • Thinking aloud

    Thinking aloud

    How did we start? What have we become and why? These are questions that challenge the mind.

    Up to 1962, especially in the Southwest, we still had a very good educational, political, economic and moral value system due in large part to the vision of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his group. The development of the human being was the driver of social policy. It mattered a lot that they focused on education and social development. The foundation of the Southwest was laid in those years.

    The unfortunate negative transformation started from the time Awolowo left the Western Region. It was good to have an alliance with others, but they went about it in a way that jeopardised what was already working. The Action Group as a political party was working and everything was moving in the right direction. Then we opted for a mainstream approach because we saw others sharing the national cake from which we were left out.

    But even before independence, the West was doing much better than other regions and that was because of the vision of Chief Awolowo. And, of course, as they say, the rest is history. The gamble led to the collapse of the First Republic and we have never recovered from that.

    Now, why does this matter? It matters because, that was the beginning of the abandonment of a true federal structure. When the military came, it reverted to a unitary system that effectively destroyed the federal system. And when in 1979 the civilian government came back, it was never the same again. The Shagari administration even initiated the appointment of Presidential Liaison Officers (PLO) for states.

    It is incredible that a country of our complexity does not allow true federalism to work because of the interest of some particular groups. How can right thinking people, with all the economic and political indices that show that it is the best option for this country of diverse people, jettison the practice of federalism?

    It is simply mind boggling and unless we get that straight, even with a strong two party system, we will still be wandering in the political wilderness. We are certainly far from where we ought to be; and we are not making progress towards that end. The structure is the most important thing. If we get the structure right, everything will follow. If we don’t get the structure right, we are doomed.

    One of our major challenges is for those who accept positions of responsibility to carry out the requirements of those positions. Whether it is the president of a voluntary organisation, a director of a state-owned company, the governor of a state, or the president of a country, an occupant of any position of responsibility must constantly ask himself or herself: what can I do better? What will be my legacy? And in asking those questions, he or she will be challenged to do better. This has always been my own approach to the responsibilities that I have been saddled with, whether as president of Egbe Isokan Yoruba or Egbe Omo Yoruba, USA, as teacher, chair of an academic department or as dean of a college.

    Our values come from various sources: family, religious institutions and educational institutions. My generation can boast of strict parental discipline. Our parents were sticklers to values. They introduced us to the importance of being responsible in whatever position we find ourselves. We must now reflect on our own legacy. Have we passed on those values to our children? Or are we giving them a new orientation to the negative values that ruin individuals and nations?

    Moderation, which has not been a strong value that many people hold dear, is important in everything we do, especially in the area of material possession. The craze for material possession is driving us to the precipice in this country. How much can anyone expect to own and what does one make of it in the end?

    Again, we can all relate to the moderation of our parents in terms of material possession. The most they left us is investment in our education. I can never forget that. I don’t have material possession to leave for my children, but they have good education and they will make it with divine assistance. Why does one need to jettison values to accumulate illegally in order for children to have material inheritance? Will those children be able to stand on their own? What will be their value system?

    That is one of the drivers of the craze for the corrupt material accumulation that we are spending useful time combating: “My children and my grandchildren must not suffer. My great-grandchildren must not suffer, etc.” Why don’t you give your children the educational resources they need to work on their own? Then, equipped with such values, they can be in a good position to live their lives the way they would like it to be.

    I do not want to belittle the importance of wealth. The fact that I don’t have it doesn’t mean that it is not good. My emphasis here, however, is in terms of the development of children. They need to be imbued with the value of hard work. Every child needs to work hard to make things for him or herself and the nation would be a lot better off.

    I applaud wealthy individuals abroad, especially those who give out their money to charity because they would like their children to work hard and create their own wealth. Therefore, these philanthropists make contributions that benefit needy people who do not have the background that the children of the wealthy have. So, if you are a child of a wealthy person, your education will be invested in and that gives you a head start, and that’s all anyone needs.

    As it is with individuals, it is with society. We missed the point initially and that is why we are suffering now.  When Chief Awolowo asked the nation to invest in human capital from the national bounty, he made sense. But the authorities did not take him seriously. If we had invested our national resources in good educational structures, if we had built up our educational institutions when we had the means, we should now be way ahead. We will not now worry about cultists in our universities and in secondary schools. But we missed that opportunity; and now we are paying dearly for it.

    There used to be a time when oil sold for more than $100 per barrel. Now it is about $50 and we are still having many children born on a daily basis, minute by minute. So we compound issues because first, we don’t invest wisely, and second, we have not taken seriously the need to control our population.

    You cannot miss the sea of heads on our street corners, markets and airport lobbies, for whom we don’t make provisions. But have you ever wondered when this ticking bomb will blow up in our faces? I hope that we will get it right before a violent revolution erupts like a volcano and consumes all of us. How is it that we bring children into the world and we don’t care for them as a nation? And what do we expect of them? We condemn militancy; but do we ever pay attention to the common saying that the devil finds job for idle hands? What do we expect hopelessness to breed?

    All Progressives Congress (APC) appealed to everyone as a party of change, but APC now needs to change. Change should mean more than just replacing an inept government with a new government if that new government also becomes inept.  There is still a chance for APC to reboot. But I wonder whether the spirit is there for rebooting or whether it’s just the competition for material accumulation and for selfish aggrandisement that is driving the party hierarchy. Thinking about these things is depressing. Is this the change that drained everybody’s emotional and material resources?

     

    • This is a revised version of excerpts of an old but relevant interview with The News.

     

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  • Sunset at DAWN!

    Sunset at DAWN!

    Is it feasible for the sun to set at the time it is projected to rise? Not, unless there is a total solar eclipse, a meteorological incident of extraordinary proportion. It is the biological equivalent of total eclipse that just intruded our national space a week ago today.

    The dawn of Dipo Famakinwa has just been darkened. His sun has just set when it was supposed to rise. How does one even begin to deal with the enigma that is death? It strikes arbitrarily and randomly with impunity. The agency of death is without rhyme or reason. When, as in this case, we are helplessly confounded, we give up on rationality. We implicate the creator. But how can the one who created responsibly kill at the dawn of existence?

    Barely 50, a whole lifetime was ahead of Dipo! Death is cruel! It is not supposed to be like this. It is not rational that the one at the back of the line is the first to be taken away. It is unfair that a parent must mourn a child.

    Having made the lives of innocent mourners miserable since its creation, death itself is a suitable candidate for death. Death must die! Unfortunately, death will not be an adequate punishment for the innumerable infractions of this hater of humankind. Death has overstayed its time on Mother Earth.

    In recent times, our land has suffered the loss of eminent people of character. Many, like Dipo, have passed on at very tender ages. But why, in the name of the good creator, should a loving wife, also in her tender years, and little children, tearfully contemplate an uncertain future, without their husband and father, in a clime where promises of support are as fleeting as the passing shadow?

    However, we must now rely on the promises of the one that never fails. We have a merciful creator, who knows the heart of his creatures, and who is acutely aware of Dipo’s unwavering dedication to the elimination of hunger and poverty from his homeland. Surely, He will not leave Dipo’s widow and children to suffer indignity. The one who promised to never leave us alone, will always stand with the family Dipo left behind even as He welcomes him to His bosom to rest in perfect peace.

    As we reflect on the untimely death of Dipo, we must focus our mind on the interrogation of the inadequacies of our society. Every passing day only now draws us closer to the brink of hopelessness. We are not making progress in the areas that matter to the good life of individuals. And it does not appear that we have the sense of shame that strikes at the core of our conscience and makes us correct the shortcomings around us. We are too willing to give up on the need for change even before we get started.

    Look at the medical facilities that we used to boast about in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s: University College Hospital, Ibadan (UCH), Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex, Ile Ife (OAUTH). Compare the services then and now. We still have great physicians, pharmacists and medical technologists around. But do they have the resources they need to save lives?

    If they do, we will not need to engage in medical tourism. But we also know that medical tourism is a choice available only to a tiny minority of our teeming population. Do we care about the multiple millions who die annually because they do not get the treatment, sometimes very simple, that they need to stay alive? Indeed, many of the ailments that afflict our people can be prevented with basic health facilities if they were available throughout the country. For that to be the case, we need to reorder our priorities. Dipo did not have to die from the ailment that killed him.

    In the passing of Dipo, there is a double tragedy of his death and the sunset at DAWN. As his sun sets, there is also a threat to the survival of the organisation for which he selflessly abandoned a thriving business to incubate. Who can replace his pioneering efforts so brilliantly demonstrated?

    At the inauguration of Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) in 2013, there was palpable excitement across the length and breadth of the Southwest zone. Something great was happening. The old Wild West was set for renewal and development. Despite their partisan differences, the new political leaders of the region embraced regional integration as the effective means to the development of their various states.

    But there was also the anxiety about the unknown. Do we have the requisite personnel? Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), the group that initiated the idea was acknowledged as a group of visionaries with bubbling ideas. And we also knew that they had some of the smartest and most dedicated patriots who can deliver if they put their minds to it. But many of them had their own businesses and many more were gainfully employed. Who will be ready to step in and pick up the challenge to lead DAWN?

    Dipo stepped up to the plate, rolled up his sleeves, and set the ball rolling to the delight of patriots. And before our very eyes, the mustard was becoming an established oak. As he would say, it is the doing of the Lord, and it is marvellous in our eyes.

    In November 2016, the six governors of the zone, in a show of bipartisanship that has never been seen before, rallied round DAWN and embraced regional integration with the combined strength of their offices. As I observed in my piece, “Hope Rising for the West”, on November 25, the communiqué after the meeting was truly encouraging. The governors maintained that:

    “the optimum interest of the Yoruba people should be the prime focus of the six state governments at all times, and that all politics within the region must henceforth be guided by the philosophy of politics of development.”

     “the prosperity of any constituent part of the Region is ultimately negated if other parts are not similarly prosperous.

    “political differences should no longer be a barrier to the economic development of the Region where the aggregate welfare of Yoruba people is concerned. All the States consequently agreed to work together within the framework of a people-centred development strategy.

    “A regime of continuity, regularity and urgency of interaction was canvassed and agreed upon by the meeting. The present crop of governors therefore agreed to bequeath to their people a good legacy reflective of the visions of our founding fathers and common ancestors.”

    Significantly, the governors assigned the responsibility for implementing their vision to DAWN:

    “DAWN Commission shall consequently develop programmes and activities along the identified areas of cooperation and bring them up for cooperative implementation.”

    And I ended my piece with the statement “The ball is now in the court of DAWN!”

    Now this! The leading light of DAWN Commission has just been extinguished and we move from hope rising to dispiriting reminiscences about the curse of Aole.

    But now is the time to perish the thought of despair. Now, we must reject the myth of a curse of which we are innocent. If Aole truly cursed, its effect should lapse with the conspirators that he targeted.

    As we mourn the untimely passing of Dipo Famakinwa, we must remain focused on the struggle which he embraced and led for the development of our land and the pride of our heritage.

    We must stand for dignity and respect which does not come from material acquisition and possessive individualism. Our culture is being undermined before our very eyes. The custodians of our tradition are being abducted, kidnapped and detained by militants who disrespect us and are contemptuous of our inheritance.

    Dipo rose to the challenge and refused to give up until the cold hands of death snatched him from us.

    In this moment of grief, we must remind ourselves that there is much to do and brace up for the task ahead. He is already resting in peace.

  • Understanding secession struggles

    Understanding secession struggles

    A crucial premise of the world political order is that it is normatively justified. Otherwise, it makes little sense to defend an unjust system with the might of the state and the international community. Secessionists challenge this premise.

    A system, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. For secessionists, what they see in the states whose legitimacy they challenge does not measure up to their standard of justice. Hence the grave decision to confront a vicious Leviathan even when doing so risks a certain danger of deadly civil war, and an uncertain outcome that includes ignoble defeat.

    Surely, in this, as in other spheres of activities, the advice to keep trying until you succeed at your chosen task is a sound one. One cannot justifiably blame a group that persists against all odds based on the perceived justice of its cause. The commitment of politically aware and morally concerned activists in pursuit of their dream of a just ordering of the world political order is worth paying attention to.

    Therefore, today, I choose to look at three such efforts out of a plethora of cases that have emerged in recent times. The focus of each group with its justification for its position and the reaction of its larger political community, a.k.a. the state, provides a powerful insight not only to the sociology of the different states, but also their normative credentials.

    Scotland has been an integral part of the United Kingdom since 1707 when the Act of the Union ratified the treaty of 1706. The treaty had unified the kingdoms of England and Scotland under one Kingdom of Great Britain. Before then, there had been cultural and blood ties. James VI of Scotland who was the great grandson of James IV, King of Scotland, and Margaret Tudor, daughter of the King of England, became the acceptable successor to Elizabeth I, Queen of England.  That was around 1603 and the prospect for a common crown and a common parliament was bright.

    A common crown did not occur because of ingrained cultural differences and resentment. This was what the treaty of 1706 accomplished. Or did it? Even before the recent resurgence of nationalistic sentiment in Scotland, the treaty and act of unification were not a shoe-in but for the dire financial situation in which Scotland found itself. Ever since, the Union has only alienated many Scots, fuelling the demand for independence, a demand which Brexit has only just intensified.

    What has been the reaction of Westminster? With gentle persuasion, a strategy of divide and rule, and a dose of concessions, including devolution, the secession movement has been managed. In the 2014 referendum, 55 per cent voted against independence, while 44 per cent voted in favour. The Scottish National Party has now demanded another referendum vote over the decision of the English people to exit the EU. Time will tell.

    Significantly, government response does not include arrests, detention, or jail time for the leaders of the movement for Scottish independence.

    An unusual secessionist movement out of California in the United States just disappeared without the United States government lifting a finger. California and Texas, two of the biggest states that couldn’t be more disparate in outlook and political leaning, have shared a common interest in moving for secession whenever they do not like the result of a presidential election. Between 2008 and 2016, it was Texas that wanted an exit. Since January until this week, it is California.

    Based on its assets in population and financial muscle as the sixth-largest economy in the world, California can undeniably prosper as a nation-state. This plus the resentment of a federal government that is completely under the control of a conservative ideology which negates everything that many Californians espouse have driven the Golden State to the edge. Interestingly, the state itself is ideologically divided between the north and the south and as soon as it succeeds, if it does, California Republic will confront a new reality of assuaging a minority within the new nation.

    We may ask: what has been the reaction of the United States government to the threat of secession by one of its states? Silence!

    This is understandable. There is a constitutional provision for dealing with such cases. The movement leaders know they must cross a threshold. They must secure requisite signatures to place the initiative on the ballot. To organise signatures, they must raise funds. More than six months after they floated the idea, the California secessionists had not raised up to one quarter of what they need to put the question on the ballot for 2018. Amidst this, there was the bad press about the link of one of the leaders of the movement with Russia where he teaches English! The initiative was expectedly called off this week.

    Back home, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) declared a new Republic of Biafra a couple of years ago. This was after the election of 2015, but it was not altogether a completely new movement. Years earlier, the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) had taken the nation by storm. Both movements boast of massive support from Ndigbo, especially the young generation, and both Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and Chief Ralph Uwazuruike became instant celebrities.

    The reason for the support that the two gentlemen receive from youths and adults alike is not far-fetched. Biafra war-experience shocked the conscience of many people around the world mainly because of the effective propaganda machine of the seceding region. The troubling pictures of malnourished children, the famished figures of the elderly, and the account of genocidal activities against the Igbo before the secession move were too gruesome for many.

    But hostilities had ceased for more than 40 years and normalcy had been restored. Yet, emotions still run high and a new generation of Igbo, including many who were not born at the time of hostilities, now lead the new movement.

    Alas, the last paragraph is only half-true! Hostilities only ceased on the battle field. For many Igbo, there is still a feeling of alienation from the larger society. Though, they have participated at the highest levels of governance, including the presidency, they have only served as Number 2 while the Number 1 position has still eluded them. They feel short-changed in the allocation of states per zone. And with an impressive record of educational achievements, they feel that their potentials have not been and cannot be fully realised in the Nigerian landscape with its contradictions.

    Furthermore, it is also the case that the movement attracts, not just a new generation, but also the old and well-established political and intellectual figures. Only recently, the prestigious Eastern Consultative Assembly elected Mazi Kanu as its new President. If that is not an endorsement of his position by the Igbo establishment, what can qualify as such? The governors of the Southeast and the business and professional class have also called for Kanu’s release.

    This raises the question: what was the reason for Kanu’s detention in the first place? Per government, he led a movement for secession and this is a crime against the Nigerian state. But for Kanu, the legitimacy of the state is the issue.

    A further question is raised: Can this crisis be effectively resolved through the legal system or through a thoughtful process, which takes account of the political context in which the crime is committed and addresses the fundamental issues it raises?

    That was why Great Britain tried to deal with the Scottish movement with devolution before the English ventured again into Brexit crisis. On the other hand, the California and Texas movements are largely ignored by the government because they have no oxygen to sustain them.

    It is instructive to note that the Eastern Consultative Assembly has restated one more time the grievances that occasioned the agitation for secession. The group identified the perceived injustice of “oppressive census figures”, “asphyxiation through state and local government creation, and “opposition of the Nigerian government to peaceful restructuring.

    The implication is that once these grievances are addressed, the agitation will cease. Can we give political solution a chance?

     

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