The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Gbadegesin

Riding out the gathering storm (1)

In the past week, I received numerous messages in my inbox, all about the forthcoming elections. These range from the clearly well-conceived and well-articulated State of the Nation Broadcast of Pastor Tunde Bakare, the passionate shepherd of The Latter Rain Assembly End-Time Church, to the confused partisan and jingoistic rants of some desperate defenders of the status quo. This latter group would have us remember past alignments and affiliations in which some groups, especially the Yoruba, were embarrassed and harassed and cheated out of their entitlement. But they thought they were being clever because they failed to point out that they were co-conspirators in the so-called humiliation of the Southwest. I defer discussion on this till next week. Today I would like to focus on the gathering storm and why and how we must ride it out.

Let me start by expressing my profound respect for Pastor Bakare. He has demonstrated his patriotism beyond doubt or reproach. He has been consistent in his advocacy for true democracy and transparency in government. He has more than any clergy in Nigeria today spoken true to power. When some others cringe or move near the table inside the Rock for the crumbs that soil their mission and ministry, he remains steadfast. And when he was called upon to run for the second highest office in the land, he did not refuse because of the religion of the man whose ticket he complemented. And today, even when he is not on the ticket, he has openly endorsed that same man. That is consistency of the highest premium. Therefore when Pastor Bakare speaks, we know that it is out of the greatest concern for the good of the nation. And we are bound to examine the basis of his apprehension as dispassionately as possible.

It is probably not a coincidence that The Washington Post ran an editorial on Wednesday January 7, 2015 with the title “Nigeria on edge”, in which the paper expressed the same fear that has triggered the address of Pastor Bakare. According to the Post, “Africa’s most populous nation (i.e. Nigeria) may be careering toward trouble.” And it goes on to suggest that “the most immediate threats to the country’s stability are not bullets from Islamic militants, but ballots.”

It is as interesting as it is frustrating for the theory and practice of democracy that Nigeria now faces a threat to its stability because it is in fact becoming more democratic. Why, in the name of decency, should the probability of a change of leadership at the centre constitute such a headache for a democratic system? In the past 16 years, one party has controlled the centre. The Post observes that this time around, “the contest will be close.” This is because, “the APC, formed last year from a coalition of opposition parties, threatens its dominance.” And the paper goes on to note that “This is a sea change in a political landscape already inflamed by north-south tensions, an overly militarised political culture and pressure on the economy due to falling oil prices.”

In both interventions-from Pastor Bakare and from The Washington Post– I see a genuine concern for the good of the nation. And while the Post doesn’t go as far as Pastor Bakare to suggest a postponement of the elections, it is clear that the concern for peace and stability is there.

I cannot match Pastor Bakare’s mastery of the scripture. Indeed, the passage he used has always been an enigmatic one for me. The fact that Paul was sent to Rome is not a mystery. He appealed to the Emperor even before Governor Festus could render a verdict. Therefore to Rome he must go. Then they had to ship for Italy knowing full well the time of the year with its weather hazards. From Cyprus, the winds did not favour them; the sailors did their best under the circumstance, slowing down and taking a different route until they got to Fair Havens. That is what sailors do; they must make the best of the wind that nature throws at them. There is a lesson there for us as well, I surmise.

Fair Havens sounds like a good place to relax and reflect on the journey ahead, especially if there was a way of knowing or forecasting what the journey ahead might look like. Pastor Bakare did not fail to get us to understand the symbolism of it all. The passage reads that “it (Fair Havens) was not a commodious haven to winter in”; or as Pastor Bakare puts it, “the harbour was not suitable to winter in.” Though the name Fair Havens implies a peasant environment, it was unsuitable at that time of the year. It was not safe for them. They would be exposed to the weather which they were not prepared for. Is Nigeria’s present Fair Havens really commodious to winter in?

Besides, there is something to the reasoning that “even if it is pleasant and fair, this is not our destination; and we must make haste to depart. We must run and make it to the destination that we desire.” And though Paul volunteered the information revealed to him, it was not persuasive to the centurion and the ship owner. The relevant point here is that it was a civil discourse with even a prisoner of the state being given a say in the matter of when to set sail. Let everyone have a say in the matter of sailing forth in our present harbour of relaxation. The way to have a say is to have an election!

Is Nigeria at a Fair Havens? Should she set sail and ride out the gathering storm? Or must she winter in at the harbour?

Several arguments have been advanced for the need to winter in where we are instead of setting sail. I will try and tease out each of them.

The major concern is that there is a gathering storm ahead, or as The Post puts it, Nigeria is on edge because there is (i) a North-South tension in the polity; (ii) a geopolitical monstrosity; (iii) a perilous economic structure; (iv) an anomalous constitution and (v) an ill-prepared electoral umpire. I think that (i) – (iv) go together because the tension noted in (i) is driven largely by the anomalies noted in (ii)-(iv).

The North-South tension is nothing new and it is not going away anytime soon. It was planted there from the beginning of the republic by the colonisers who were convinced that it was how they can continue to dominate the country. This is why we have always had a geopolitical monstrosity, a perilous economic structure, and an anomalous constitution. The tension was certainly there at the 2014 Confab and didn’t end with that gathering of eminent and rational Nigerians. The tension remains there because it works for the political elite at whose beck and call the masses react. But the proverbial falcon may now be ignoring the voice of the falconer as the masses are seeing through the peeping Tom. Did MEND just endorse Buhari for the presidency?

One possible solution has been suggested by an egg-head and a good friend: “Let the two major parties pick their candidates from the same zone”, he says. “And the tension would be over.” This is a fascinating approach to zoning. But will it still be a national presidential election, though? Besides, I predict that if we go for this, it will sooner than later become clear that the tension has never been about North or South but about the brigandage of the partisan elite. For the parties will then show that they are the real problem, not the ethnics. This is nothing out of the ordinary. Politicians pursue their interests with a vengeance. This is why primaries are fought as if they were the main elections. If the two presidential candidates of the major parties were to come from the same town, not to talk of the same zone, it would not lessen the tension between the parties.

(To be continued)

January 9, 2015
Will negative attack work?

Finally, 2015 is here and Nigerians are ready to make their most important decision as a collective. Will it be for change or for the status quo? And candidates, canvassing for votes, also have a choice of campaign strategies. They may choose the moral high ground, be positive, and persuade the voters that they have viable programmes to solve the problems facing the nation. Or they may choose the path of infamy, personalise issues, and resort to negative attack that demonises their opponent.

A strategy of negative campaign can be understood in various ways. First, it works if you try to define your opponent negatively and he or his campaign is always put in the defensive position. Second, as a result, the candidate who is so effectively baited spends an undue amount of time correcting his rival’s definition of him with little or no time to put out his programmes and agenda. Third, to the extent that the attack is effective and the negative portrayal sticks with the opponent, voters may come to wonder if he is up to the task.

But all is not positive for the negative campaigner. Voters are neither ignorant nor naïve and there is a limit to how anyone can take them for a ride. On the flip side of negative campaign is that a candidate who indulges in it exposes himself to the charge that it is the last resort for him because he has nothing else to run on. After all, it is well known that candidates turn negative when the issues are hostile to their campaign.

Thus, if a candidate cannot run on his record and he or his campaign chooses to demonise his opponent, voters are capable of seeing through the ploy. If a candidate has no clue as to the yearnings and aspirations of voters, he may try to scare his opponent by making a monster of him and confusing voters as to the qualities and qualification of his opponent.

Negativism has emerged as the main campaign strategy of the ruling party as soon as General Muhammadu Buhari emerged as the standard-bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Professor Yemi Osinbajo as his running mate. But it is quite capable of harming instead of helping President Goodluck Jonathan’s reelection bid. The reason is simple. The tactic of the campaign is to exploit the fault lines of religion and ethnicity. It was done successfully in previous elections, especially in the first and second republics. In 1983, especially, the National Party of (NPN) made religion and ethnicity the joker of its campaign. It appealed to raw emotions of its supporters, among other infamous calculations, referring to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the Christian candidate of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and his supporters as the Kaffir even when the chairman of the NPN was a practising Christian.

The tactic was immoral then and its architects were shameless. We cannot be sure how effective it was then because though the NPN was declared the winner; there was an undeniable massive rigging across the land, the fallout of which ended the Second Republic. Now the descendants of the tacticians of that era are the new negativists of this and they are no less unethical. Surely the offspring of the cobra cannot be anything but poison. And true to their nature, they can only poison the well of democratic elections. That is, if they are allowed to.

Thankfully, there is a big difference between 1983 and 2015. In 1983, the political party system was pathetically ethnicised with the NPN controlling most of the North, the UPN the West, and the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) the East. Thanks to the formation of the APC, we now have two major political parties with a national spread. And though, the negativists will try because it is the only game they know, they cannot truthfully and fairly categorise the parties in ethnic or religious language.

And try they have! What, I ask, has the metaphor of light and darkness to do with the election of a president? Is it that one party is the party of light and the other is the party of darkness? Or that one of the candidates belongs to the light while the other belongs to darkness? The imagery cannot be starker. But what does it connote? And how does it come to this? When you start dichotomising so arbitrarily and characterising so pejoratively, without any basis in fact, you invariably expose your own dark instincts. And people are intelligent enough to see through.

We are told that one candidate is a semi-literate “jack-boot” and the other is a super-literate with a Ph.D. Assume for the purpose of argument that the facts are not in conflict with the demeaning characterisation. The question that follows is not original with me. It was nicely stated by online commentators with different styles: “And so what?” they asked. How has the “super-literate” Ph.D. performed in office? And how has his paper qualification impacted the lives of Nigerians? We are told that Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa. How has this “fact” transformed the lives of citizens?

The question does not escape the analysts of the World Bank Nigeria Economic Report who raised the question why a country the size and wealth of Nigeria can have such a huge poverty rate. An answer is not far-fetched. The wealth is not distributed equitably. PDP claimed that it has made many millionaires and billionaires and it is true as was seen in the in-your-face display at the recent fundraiser for its presidential campaign. Has it percolated down to the masses? If it did, the rate of poverty would be considerably lower.

We have depended on the sale of crude oil and importation of refined oil for the better part of the new civilian dispensation. Now that the United States has abandoned our crude oil, and the world price of crude has plummeted to less than $60 a barrel, there is no doubt that our poor are going to become even poorer and the rich is going to get richer on the back of the poor. What has a Ph.D. got to do with it if a leader is bereft of ideas?

True to their nature, negativists are not perturbed when they are caught in obvious contradictions and inconsistencies. They are proud of their academic qualifications but unashamed when they make a mockery of the same. Thus one who bellyached at the prospect of a Muslim/Muslim ticket (after once suggesting an El-Rufai/Fashola ticket), and claimed credit for nudging the APC against such “insensitivity” cannot now see why there should be a Muslim/Christian ticket when the APC has opted for it. How do you even start reasoning with a person when consistency, which is the very presupposition of reasoning, is compromised?

We are now asked to dismiss Yemi Osinbajo as a pseudo Christian because, after careful and prayerful reflection, he has chosen to share with Muhammadu Buhari a promising ticket to salvage the country. And once again, we are reminded of the metaphor of light and darkness, which now appears to be a talking point of the campaign. We have entered again that dangerous realm where serious issues of national importance are deliberately shunned aside while peripheral issues are amplified with sentiments and emotions. If the opposition spends time responding to negative attacks, it has little or no time to present its well-thought agenda to the people.

It is certainly legitimate to ask questions about the performance of a candidate in previous office(s), and it is incumbent and respectful to voters for him to come clean. But if a simple courtesy is not extended to a candidate to address those issues and critics start making pronouncements and judgments concerning who and what he is, and proclaiming him guilty in lieu of trial, then we would have been unfair not only to the candidate but to the electorate who deserve to have an open mind to make their voting decisions. In the final analysis, the voters will decide if they prefer the status quo or they desire change in their circumstances.

Happy New Year!

January 2, 2015
APC: Championing the change we need

As a long-distance witness of the process and outcome of the nomination of the candidate and running mate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the February 2015 presidential elections, I find it incredibly invigorating, morale-boosting and spirit-uplifting. For those who were not just witnesses but also active participants in this remarkable experience, they have a right to see themselves as heroes in the national journey that started 15 years ago.

Nigerian citizens and patriots, no matter their party affiliations, must be justly proud of where we are with these results, and where we could be if we persist in this struggle for emancipation. It is not surprising therefore that major commentaries have been positive and congratulatory. It is a refreshing converse of the sordid experience of gangster democracy that we have been exposed to since 1999.

I was one of those who hailed the formation of the APC. In “A big Deal” in August 2013, I observed that it was a big step for democracy. And Opalaba, an otherwise apolitical professional, was upbeat. But he was also cautionary, especially about possible bottlenecks and organisational hiccups. Here was his thoughtful remark then: “But it’s just the beginning, and the end is most definitely important. My only hope is that this beginning is not thwarted; that the leadership of the new party learns from experience; that internal democracy is their watchword; that they are sensitive to the presentation of a uniquely democratic alternative to the electorate because in the final analysis, it is what matters most. It’s a game of numbers”.

Yes, we were all concerned about thwarting the beginning, not learning from past experience, not paying attention to internal democracy and about insensitivity to the interest of the masses. And, of course, the ruling party wasted no time in its determination to define the new party even before it could settle down to business. “It is one man’s party”, they stated. “It is an assembly of tired politicians”, they claimed. “It is a group of terrorists”, they cried. And to some extent, the ugly propaganda war worked, as a few of the original collaborators defected and old dogs went back to their mess. But the lion hearts and insuperable optimists stayed put bolstered by the strength of their convictions.

The issue of the process for the emergence of the party’s standard-bearer did not perturb its devoted leadership, as they reassured the membership that absolute transparency was their mandate. And they delivered to the disappointment of their opponents. The process was not only democratic; it was transparently so.

Why is this important? It was clear that the process was transparently democratic, with each candidate canvassing for the votes of delegates by promoting their personalities, past records of achievements, and proposals for the restoration of the country. Assume, however, that that was not the case. Then the outcome wouldn’t have been widely accepted and lauded as it has been. If a consensus had been reached behind closed doors, it would have been insinuated by detractors that some candidates were forced to step down. The fact that a primary election was conducted in the open market place of high-wired politics lent credibility to the democratic credentials that APC has hitherto laid claim to.

The outcome is therefore good in part because the process was democratic. But it also turned out that a democratic process actually was capable of yielding a substantively good outcome. There is no denying the fact that a substantial majority of party members and neutral Nigerians had expressed a preference for the candidacy of General Muhammadu Buhari for reason of his wide acceptability among the masses based on his previous record as former Head of State, his puritan and spartan lifestyle and intolerance for corruption, as well as his proven ability to secure the nation.

General Buhari’s credentials are incontrovertible. If there is anyone with a proven ability to turn things around, it is he. His concern for security is not in doubt. He did it as GOC for the Jos Command in 1982 when he confronted the Chadians, who decided to bite the Nigerian fingers that were feeding them. And in 1984, as Head of State, he dealt decisively with the Maitatsine sect. Some detractors have expressed concern about Buhari’s alleged stiffness and adherence to principles. Indeed, given our present predicament, there is nothing worse than having a leader with an outwardly pleasant personality combined with a closet predilection for mischief and a compromised value system.

Knowing where a leader stands is important. We have a pretty good idea about where Buhari stands on the pressing issues of our time and space, be it security or corruption or religious fanaticism. It is also important to know that where a leader stands is good for the nation. And on all counts, we know also that this is the case with Buhari.

The matter of the choice of a running mate was apparently the last weapon that the opposition had in its arsenal. Therefore, along with a section of the media, it sensationalised the issue beyond the realm of reason. Religion, always the exploited institution by political opportunists, was once again summoned. It did not matter that we have had a religiously balanced presidency since 1999 and our economic, political, and security conditions have failed to improve. It remains to see when we are going to grow up and reject the shortsightedness and selfishness of political jobbers. Thankfully, with the uncommon political maturity of its leadership, APC has demonstrated its ability to transcend sentiments and emotions and to arrive at a resolution that is acceptable to its supporters and Nigerians as a whole.

The choice of Prof. Yemi Osinbajo as the Vice Presidential candidate by General Buhari is a smart move that has confounded the cabal, which has held Nigeria hostage for far too long. They will have to manufacture some other red meat beside religion. The educational, professional, spiritual and ethical qualifications and qualities of Prof. Osinbajo can only be doubted by the most ignorant or incurably prejudiced person.

Osinbajo’s achievements in the service of Lagos State as Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice where he made equal access to justice and human rights his defining achievements are there for the blind to see. The fact that he has not been a professional politician is an enduring asset that should endear him to independent thinkers, whose desire is the restoration of the glory of motherland.

The party chairman and the executive, the governors, candidates, and party functionaries are to be commended for this outcome. Governor Babatunde Fashola deserves special commendation for his sound judgment and patriotism for pulling himself out of consideration as a running mate, citing fatigue, to avoid complicating matters for the candidate and the party.

Without a doubt, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is the super hero of the success of the formation of APC, its presidential primary and the outcome of the party’s search for a running mate. It is very easy to cast aspersion on a person’s character. It is impossible to take away his honour and dignity.

No one can truthfully deny Tinubu’s frontline struggle and sacrifice for the formation of a virile opposition party that is capable of competing on the national level. At the time he was fighting this good cause and getting disappointment even from those who stood to benefit from it, he did not think of what position he might have.

Tinubu was concerned that democracy cannot grow with a dominant single party and a splintering of mushroom parties. He put into the struggle his mental, material and physical resources to the point of endangering his health. In the end, he considered the good of the nation and pulled himself out of consideration for a slot on the ticket.

This is the mark of statesmanship and APC owes Asiwaju a deep sense of gratitude. As a man of his words, I have no doubt that he will work assiduously for the success of the party in February to the disappointment of his traducers.

December 19, 2014
Decision 2015: Issues at stake

In the midst of all the chaos and uncertainties that life has cruelly thrown at them, Nigerians are incurable optimists. Of course, I am not referring to the multi-billionaires or trillionaires who through hard work, or as political pirates and economic leeches, have no idea what it is to be in the dungeon of life. The downtrodden earn my respect as they look forward to a tomorrow that they believe will be better than a today. And so, even in the most confusing scenario of the nation’s political development, they keep hope alive.

I think that they have a good reason for their cheery outlook. It’s been 15 years since the end of the brutal dictatorship of the 1990s. We have come a long way in the journey of democracy. No one now expects a military comeback, as all stakeholders in Project Nigeria look forward to the general elections of 2015. Whether this democracy is a sham or pseudo, the masses believe that we have turned a corner in our national democratic journey. They participate without being forced. They exercise their constitutional right to determine who will govern them from local government to state and federal levels. We have a reason to be thankful.

In spite of our federal system, however, no election is considered as important as the one that gives us a new president of the federation. While former Speaker O’Neil’s dictum remains true that all politics is local, the presidency of a country is in a league of its own and in our case, which appears to be federal in name only the reality is not lost on us.

We have a constitution that prioritises the central government, giving it control over our national resources and the ability to control what amount of the statutory allocations accruable to states and local governments get to them and when. The centre is disproportionally benefitted in our revenue allocation formula. And it doesn’t appear that this will change in the foreseeable future because the party that controls the centre and benefits from the lopsidedness is not necessarily in a hurry to change the system.

Now that General Muhammadu Buhari and President Goodluck Jonathan have emerged as the candidates of the major political parties—All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), we must expect a vigorous campaign from the candidates, not only to sell the manifestoes of their parties to the electorate, but to canvass their personal positions on the issues at stake in this election and how they intend to resolve them. In addition, the masses do not expect serious candidates to dwell on issues that are irrelevant to taking the poor and the middle class from the dungeon of existence to the palace of their full potentials.

In this regard, we can simply eliminate a couple of red herrings. Religion has been used and abused since the beginning of the republic. It may not be the opium that Marx identified with it; but it surely is a dangerous elixir, which when indulged can be life-threatening to nationhood. It is understandable that when nothing else is available to them, political blood-suckers in their desperation exploit people’s religious sensibilities. It is therefore imperative for candidates who want to govern Nigeria to stay clear of religious politics and for the electorate to send them a strong message that they will not be hoodwinked by religious demagoguery on the part of any candidate.

The second item on the list of irrelevancies is ethnicity. This is a lot easier said than done because of how the country started and the long reign of ethnic politics. The constitution itself lends credence to this anomaly in various ways, the federal character clause being the most significant. It may be argued that with the multi-national status of the country, it is unrealistic to expect that ethnicity will not creep into its political discourse. But the constitution also provides for the ideal of a nation that is not limited by the many tongues and tribes that it encircles. If we still believe in that ideal, it behooves those who would aspire to the highest political office in the land, then, to refrain from stoking the dangerous embers of ethnicity and nationality. It is not just counter-productive but also grossly irresponsible.

What then are the issues at stake in this election? For me there are three, namely, insecurity, corruption and the economy, for which a candidate must not only provide the electorate with his plans for their resolution, but also a track record of how he has dealt with them as an office holder.

Nigeria has not had its worse with regard to insecurity of lives and property. Yet, security is the basic minimum that a citizen must expect his country to provide for the simple reason that it is the state that has the monopoly of power to tackle the forces of evil that threaten citizens. We do not give citizens the right to carry weapons in self-defence. We do not allow the raising of private police or military.

Citizens contribute their resources in the form of taxes for the state to secure them. But what do they get in return? Not just militants and insurgents that the police and the military are unable to degrade or destroy, but to their horror, citizens become the victims of police and military brutality. A recent case was reported in the media of a young couple brutally attacked by a policeman in Lekki simply because they dare express their right not to be harassed. And there was no recourse for them as the DPO for the area approved her officer’s action.

What has each of the candidates done to deserve citizens’ confidence in his ability to keep them safe from internal and external attacks and hence to receive their vote?

Corruption is the cancer that has perforated the internal organs of the nation and has made it a sleeping giant. It is at the center of our national affliction, impacting the ability to secure us and the capacity to grow and develop. Even if adequate provision of resources to fight Boko Haram was made, there can be no success or victory if the resources do not get to the battle front. Why is it that the militants have more superior weapon than our national armed forces? Could it be that Boko Haram has access to more funds than Nigeria? This is a question that begs for answer but that answer is blowing in the wind of corrupt practices. Replicate this throughout the branches and levels of government and you can see why we are where we are.

How has the present government dealt with corruption? What can Dr. Jonathan expect to do now that he has not been able to do in four years? What is the track record of General Buhari?

Finally, the economy is in tatters and we are playing the ostrich. The politics of centering or mainstreaming is slowly blowing up in the face of its advocates. We are asked to join the majority party so that our zones may be benefitted from the bountiful flow of petrodollar. That flow turned into a national curse when we chose to abandon agriculture and other national economic strengths without investing our petrodollar in viable economic ventures. We even abandoned the refineries because selling our crude and importing refined products feeds our corrupt appetite more effectively. Now that the world has abandoned our oil, and we have had to devalue the naira even with infrastructure decay that requires fixing, what are we going to do?

What rabbit does President Jonathan have in his hat that he has not brought out in the open corridor of performance in the last four years? How has General Buhari performed in the economic sphere in his former positions?

These are the questions that intelligent people need to ask of the candidates and insist on satisfactory answers. The die is cast. Let the campaign begin and let us pay close attention to the speeches and body languages as well as to the past which is always a good guide for the future.

December 12, 2014
Unwilling or unable?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 5, 2014
The face of a pseudo democracy

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

So what?

“It is a counterfeit pretending to be original.”

Yes? What else?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

November 28, 2014
A straight tree is felled

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 21, 2014
Oke-Ogun matters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 14, 2014
Practising progress

More than the conceptualisation of the idea of progress, the practical implementation of the idea and the fulfillment of its promise in the lives of citizens is the distinguishing mark of a progressive party. While it is true that practice without a thoughtful conceptualisation is blind; it is also true that thoughtful conceptualisation without practice is empty.

The purpose of governance, its raison d’etre is first and foremost the security of the lives and property of citizens. Next in the order of importance is the enhancement of their freedom and liberty; and finally, there is the welfare function of promoting equal opportunities and happiness for all.

In these areas to which a purposive government is required to pay attention and work effectively, Nigerians have been shortchanged in the last 15 years. Surely, some very important personalities have fared a lot better than the majority of ordinary citizens. Some others have taken advantage of and exploited the atmosphere of lawlessness and gross indiscipline to make way for their interests. Those at the short end of the stick of insecurity and unfreedom are the hoi polloi of society; the helpless and hapless masses that a progressive government cannot ignore.

The starting point is the understanding that if an enabling environment is provided for them, our people are resourceful and ingenious. This is why the present syndrome of dependency is distressing because it misrepresents who we are as a people. It’s doubly sad that the syndrome is encouraged, indeed canvassed, by politicians who should know better. The syndrome is at the institutional and individual levels, with states dependent on the federal government, while individuals are dependent on both state and federal governments.

Where does a progressive government begin? What practical actions must it take to procure for the people the goods of security, freedom, equal opportunity and happiness? If security is a foremost item in the contract between the governed and the government, how does the latter deliver on its side of the contract?

No citizen, including those that find themselves in the highest echelon of leadership, can sincerely negate the verdict that Nigeria has been playing an unfair game with the lives of its citizens for many decades. We tend to blame colonialism for everything even more than half a century after independence. But I am not sure that we saw our current level of insecurity in our colonial past. At least I have not come across a documented record of the loss of more than 200 innocent school girls to terrorists between 1900 and 1960. That is not to diminish the evil that colonialism represented. It’s simply to observe that while we have it in our power to make progress in the matter of the security of the lives and properties of citizens, we chose to retrogress.

Progress requires that we move with the times. In the matter of crime prevention and detection, to move with the time is to dismantle the anachronistic system of policing that has proved embarrassingly ineffectual. Before 1966, the crime bursting function of the police was adversely impacted by the politicisation of the force. Party leaders, government officials and traditional rulers abused their positions of authority and used the police against their political enemies.

The military took this aberration as the norm and, since it is unacceptable in a civilised society, the reaction of the armed forces was to centralise the police ostensibly to avoid the evils of politicisation and abuse. This would be a valid argument and a logically sound approach if the new system was an effective and better alternative. But it wasn’t and it still isn’t. Politicisation is still the bane of the Nigeria Police. Ask Governor Amaechi and ordinary citizens who crossed the path of officer Mbu.

A progressive government in a federal system will seek the benefit of community and municipal policing as practiced in the United States. It is baffling to common sense that we consider the American constitution ideal for our situation but judge ourselves immature relative to its approach to law and order.

Assume, however, that immaturity truly describes our condition. A progressive government will lead the inquiry into why this malaise is our lot and design a plan of action to confront it. We came out of colonial rule as a dehumanised lot. It required the foresight of one of the visionaries of our time to proffer a solution with his insistence that human capital development was the indispensable key to the development of a nation.

Chief Awolowo introduced the first universal free primary education system in the nation. Other regions soon followed. Those who still engage in disparaging and badmouthing that singular achievement cannot truthfully identify what else was responsible for the advancement of the region in the late fifties and up to the early eighties when there began a deliberate policy of reversal supervised by the military.

The regional governments of the 1st Republic, in spite of their known deficiencies, ensured that government was responsible to the people. Members of the various regional Houses had their regular jobs for which they were accountable. My first employer in 1961 was Chief I. A. Adelodun, a school Headmaster who was also an elected member of the Western House of Assembly. I just got out of Secondary Modern School. As the Headmaster, he also had his own class, and since his membership of the House affected his ability to regularly attend to his teaching responsibilities, he hired me to teach his class and he paid me from his pocket. No, he had no special constituency allowance. He was paid as a member of the House. It was his sense of responsibility that led him to do the right thing.

An educated citizenry is a vital bulwark against an uncaring and contemptuous government, the kind that we have been forced to endure in the last 15 years. Without a good education, a citizen is at the mercy of those who see him or her as dispensable and exploitable. Ignorant of their rights and ill-equipped for decent jobs, the uneducated become puns on the chessboard of the powerful and wicked. A human being with a good education doesn’t volunteer to become the thug of another. And a caring and compassionate politician with a sense of justice and fairness must feel the pinch of conscience when he or she exploits and takes undue advantage of fellow human beings.

For the foregoing reasons of ethics and social responsibility, a progressive government must initiate a complete reform of our system of public education. Private institutions are not a morally justifiable substitute for public education. Besides the fact that proprietors of private institutions are generally motivated by private profit, a nation that cedes the education of its citizens to private enterprise cannot complain if those citizens end up without a sense of common nationality or patriotic citizenship. A situation in which every other living room has been turned into a private school is an indication of national decline. A party that identifies as progressive and a government that represents it must lead the charge against this embarrassing decline.

The ever-present obstacle to national advancement that a progressive government must confront head-on is the hydra-headed monster of corruption. A major failure of the present administration is its evident shameless rapport with corruption. It appears content with a comatose EFCC and accusation of corruption is a badge of honor which qualifies individuals for leadership of presidential initiatives. Private jets and helicopters deliver campaign dollars to supporters while deals are made with rulers of dark places.

A serious progressive government will confront corruption at its root. It will make the center less attractive and make government accountable to the people. In doing so, it will create the possibility of its own weakness. But, indeed, that is the virtue and strength of progressivism. As a progressive party, the APC must enter into a binding contract with Nigeria to eradicate corruption, invest in the education of the young, create an enabling environment that fosters job creation and entrepreneurship, and restore the confidence of citizens in the nation without abetting religious fanaticism and ethnic jingoism.

October 31, 2014
Thinking progress

Human beings are thinking animals. This is what separates us from other animal species. This is the reason we make progress at various levels and other animals don’t. Between humans and other mammals, there is a huge difference in the thinking capability of humans. Thinking is the activity of the mind; through which it weighs issues, considers the pros and cons, and determines the rightness or wrongness of a particular policy or action.

What issues present themselves to the mind of the progressive? What challenges agitate their mind? In the circumstance of a nation to which they express unflinching loyalty and express an unparalleled affection, what keeps them awake at night? When the morale of the nation is at the lowest, it can be before despair gives way to anarchy, when the level of corruption is sky-high and neck-deep, in an environment of thick social dysfunction occasioned by joblessness and hopelessness on the part of the youth, progressive thinking cannot just be reactive, it must be proactive and deep.

Deep progressive thinking is not new to our clime. It predated the beginning of the republic even in its precolonial monarchical and imperial form. Individuals and tribal groups within each nationality raised questions bordering on the good of the people vis-à-vis the powerful forces that held them hostage. The fundamental issue of communal liberty versus imperial authority was at the basis of the civil wars that ravaged Yorubaland in the 19th century.

It was however in the anti-colonial struggle that progressivism found its clearest expression among the political elite, who had taken advantage of Western education and were exposed to its ideals of liberty, equality and the common good. The buzzword of the era was self-determination and political independence, and the progressive movement was a coalition of forces across the nation. The nationalist leaders of the era focused on self-determination because freedom of the individual in mind, thought and action was considered the most priceless possession. To be denied this vital ingredient of our humanity is to be treated as a slave, a nonentity. This cannot but be embarrassing to the colonisers who had themselves been responsible for the popularisation of the concept of liberty and self-determination.

As volatile as the 1st Republic was, progressive thinking prevailed and triumphed in the various regions, starting, no doubt, with the Western Region. The Action Group (AG) famously made progressivism its ideological fulcrum. Freedom for All, Life More Abundant, was its motto and it got expression in the many actions and policies of the government, including free universal primary education, integrated agricultural development and especially the establishment of the Marketing Board, aggressive housing scheme for the middle class, and higher education scholarship for talented children.

The collapse of the 1st Republic and the horror of the civil war led to a sense of despair and despondency because political degeneration and high level of corruption were the outcomes of these catastrophic events. Of course, progressivism is never out of tune or without a cause. And even in these periods of extraordinary repression, progressives did not relent. And so, in the wake of a brazen militarisation of the nation, the struggle for the ideals of democracy and true federalism did not wane. Indeed, this struggle was responsible for the final death of militarism in the country.

We have now reached another landmark in the journey of the nation. Since 1999, we have been wandering in the wilderness of confusion. Are we going to have one nation, three or six nations (a.k.a. regions) or 36 (nay 57) nations (a.k.a. states)? The unity of the nation is at stake. Besides the usual platitudes and sweet tongues, there has been a lack of leadership from the ruling party. Action speaks louder than words, as the saying goes. But we have only been treated to words, and more words. The body language speaks eloquently in the opposite direction. Progressive thinking is needed and a self-defined progressive party must lead the charge: What must be our understanding of national unity?

Secondly, there is the need for a redefinition of work and industry. My generation grew up learning the popular Yoruba rhyme which has expression in other national languages: work is the cure for poverty. Do we still believe in this? Or does the current environment of wealth without work render that believe false and useless? This is what generations after mine appear to now believe. I was once made to walk more than nine miles to my post-primary school entrance examination because I missed the only lorry that was available in my town. I was only 12. We are now procreating without the responsibility for the upbringing of those children. Rather we depend on stomach infrastructure from government. And the response of one government is to appoint an official for stomach infrastructure! With that imprimatur of His Excellency, why would citizens need to be responsible for their action or inaction?

Thirdly, a progressive party must lead the effort in the renewal of respect for the rule of law. We got rid of the military as a force in national politics. However, there are lingering effects of its bad influence on the respect of the authority for the rule of law. This is why the federal government and the president who swore to protect the constitution and the rule of law can be so contemptuous of the judiciary and the courts. It didn’t start with this government; it is a carry- over from the first administration in the Third Republic. For how else are we to explain the way that the President of the Federal Court of Appeal, Justice Salami, was treated? And how are we to account for the impunity with which judges were treated in Ekiti State and the courts closed to avoid the hearing of the suit against the newly elected governor? What is the thinking of the progressive party on the matter of the rule of law?

I only have space for one more issue: liberty, equality and the common good. This is the traditional focus of all progressives. Freedom under the law is the natural right of every human being. Therefore no one must be rendered unfree without a proper judicial injunction to that effect. However, many are currently rendered unfree simply because of the conditions of their existence. They are not in jail; but they are unable to function as decent human beings due to the precariousness of their condition. The young ones graduated from college as we expect. But they cannot find jobs, and we know the consequence of joblessness. If they are not to become thugs and miscreants, society has a responsibility to create the conditions for their emancipation and genuine freedom.

The common good of all as opposed to the special interest of a few must be the battle cry of a progressive party. In the wake of the political tension in the horizon, in the face of economic inequality, in the climate of religious bigotry and educational decline, this is an opportune time for progressive thinking and action. There are opportunities for national rebirth which only a progressive party can initiate and sustain. The nation cannot wait any longer. But to paraphrase one of my favourite philosophers, action without thought is blind and thought without action is empty. We have dealt here with the thought of progressives. We are going to deal next with the action that must follow the thought.

October 24, 2014