The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Busola’s equivalent

    Questions will linger, even when it seems the cause celebre is over. No affair of the heart, especially where sex roils, ever fades into the grave. Even when it is only suggested, without a scintilla of proof, it overruns the human imagination. Hence writers and movie directors have steamed movie screens and pages with the forbidden romance between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Why? Because sex is the only deity without a shrine. The shrine, however, is not tactile. You cannot touch. It lurks and frisks in the heart, eluding even the owner of the heart.

    In its name, war theatres have burned, bullies roared, mansions erected, kingdoms rose and fell, dictators trembled, patriarchs bowed, families atrophied, fathers betrayed son and daughter, father defiled daughter, father cuckolded son, son overthrew father. Sex stalked the best tales of history. Josephine and Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars. Anthony and Cleopatra and the Roman epics. Gowon and Edith, Ojukwu and his re-enactments of David and Bathsheba, all in the Nigerian civil war. Even the birth of the holy of holies, the Church of England, was powered by the fiery loins of Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn. Many suicide bombers would be earthly saints if they didn’t fantasize about the many virgins swirling in the hereafter. Even MKO Abiola, our great June 12 hero, was nothing without his pacts with his flesh.

    Even in literature, tales fail where sex does not perspire. Homer’s The Iliad was all about Penelope, Okonkwo’s machismo would fall limp without his escapades, Soyinka’s Death and King’s Horseman will faint if the protagonist did not rethink the lush loins he was vacating. The great writers, Flaubert, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Conrad, Dostoyevsky, Sophocles, Euripides, all paid homage to sex.

    So, when Busola Dakolo added to this human obsession, it only proved that the shrine was all well and good in our country. Some say they believe her. Some say she made it up. Those who believe say her story says it is not only hers but also of others, all those who have erupted into the public space with personal accounts of Pastor Fatoyinbo’s sizzles in the dark. Why, some said, did she set him up? Why did she come down in her night gown with all its prompts and temptation? Why did she drink the Krest? Why did she go to her home after the corruption? Why did she wait for two decades before blabbing? Why give him another opportunity for pelvic explosion on a car bonnet?

    Whatever happened in that alleged dawn of rape and Krest, what her doubters must realise is the pedagogy of the oppressed. That is the education of Busola. A defiled person is not a normal person after the fact. If she was raped, why did she not scream at the time? Remember that this was the man she held in awe, a sort of divine rescuer. He came to replace a deadbeat dad, who was never around. He came as God’s messenger to her life. She also knew the man was a “redeemed cultist” with all the fear and trembling.

    She was not only cowed in body, but also in spirit. She was therefore a dazed person. How was she to confront this defiler? How was it not her fault, she would tell herself. She would, in that subjugated cast of mind, want to seek validation even with her conqueror. She would want him to tell her she was not a bad person. That way she would keep going to him, and not only him but other men. Maybe, somehow, she would realize that it was not her fault.

    That is what her traducers don’t know. Humans bond with their oppressors. They go back for comfort. It is the tyranny of oppression that the oppressor’s greatest asset is not the conquest of the body but of the spirit. According to Busola’s account, the man first conquered her spirit, therefore earning her trust. Conquering her flesh was a forgone conclusion. So, once the spirit submitted, rape was easy, even in the cosy intimacy of her home that he apparently frequented. He knew the comings and goings in the household, so he also plotted his comings and goings. This also happens in marriages, where spousal abuse is routine, but the victim remains trying to redeem themselves with the abuser, hoping they would find absolution. Singer Tina Turner suffered for many years under her husband, and she did not know she had great legs until she was free. It is such freedom that Busola sought and found elusive.

    Her sort of oppression is commonplace in the realm of politics. Donald Trump  is a great modern example. He would not have won, if he did not have the support of women, including suburban and educated ones. They saw protection in a man who has shown open contempt for women in word and deed. In the patriarchal age, who delayed suffrage for women, was it men? NO. it was women in the United States who fought against women’s rights icons like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

    The man, who would soon be United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, or BoJo, has never had a reputation for treating women with respect. Recently, he had a row with his girlfriend and his neighbour had to call the cops. Not long after, he posed on a lawn with the same woman, two of them feigning a smile.

    The Russians have for about a century lived happily under one tyranny after another, but they would go to war to defend their oppressor. Is Kim’s North Korea not an instance of such power of one man over a people for generations? Same applies to Filipino leader Duterte, who jeered, ‘’so long as there are many beautiful women, there will be many rapes, too. Or Brazillian leader Bolsonaro, who mocked a woman that ‘’I would never tape you because you dont deserve it’’.

    Father bequeaths it to son. In Nigeria, have we not seen people vote for the same person over and over even with no example of progress. They weave myths about the personages, and they believe everything they hear and dismiss facts evident before them.

    Eventually such powers fade, but before then, they bow before their oppressors until the light comes. It happens in politics as with the men of God. The men of God use miracles, as though miracles are the real evidence of God’s presence, when the devil also can do miracles. Even Jesus dismissed them as workers of iniquity. If they focus on the weightier matters of the law, they would distinguish the phony from the true.

    The people who suffer avidly under such politicians and prophets are the political and pious equivalents of Busola Dakolo. But like Prometheus in Aeschylus’ play, Prometheus Bound, suffering is for a while. In the Greek sequel, the man seeks freedom by reconciling with Zeus. But centuries later, an English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, rewrote Prometheus Unbound, making the man obtain freedom by rebelling against the gods. That is the recipe Busola is seeking, to rebel against the man who played God in her life, for decades.

    Rousseau had an answer that resonated in the French revolution. He exclaimed, “force them to be free.” That, perhaps, is what Busola is doing for herself.

     

    Roach of democracy

    The last time I wrote about Rochas Okorocha, I described him as seeking to be a post-governor, his own version of a dual mandate, apologies Lord Lugard. Hence, he is still running ads on television about his heroics, as though the baton has not changed hands. If you go to Imo State, you will wonder how the man governed a state with such lack of restraint. Forget about the university he built for himself while in office that looks better than any in the state or region, even though almost completed. Forget about the statue of a failed South Africa leader he erected on the same pedestal with Ojukwu, the Igbo preeminent hero. Also forget a secondary school he called Rochas College of Africa he carted away from the state’s broadcasting corp., or the estate he built or his wife built while he was in office, the poshest in the state. And forget that he erected a hand statue, named Akachi, pointing to heaven beside the estate. Forget that the exco chamber is like a civil war relic, cobwebs and cracks, from neglect and he held his exco in a place that looks like a beer parlour.

    One of the endangered roads

    What I could not get over were some roadworks that endangered his fellow citizens. A few of them had shown deep craters as though bombed. They were built without due process and without proper blocks and rods.  I saw two bridges in Owerri that Governor Emeka Ihedioha has shut off awaiting proper investigation. On one bridge, I met staff of the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) who had warned Okorocha not to toy with Imo lives. Parts of the bridge have dipped under pressure, the hole not revealing any proper rods.

    The man said he had finished the work in Imo State, maybe for himself. And he eyes our presidency. Those who coined the phrase delusion of grandeur had not seen his type. He also built tunnels that many road users are avoiding, because they look like disasters waiting to happen. If the roads and bridges are restored, Gov. Ihedioha would have been saved Okorocha the spiritual consequences of disastrous blood guilt. He confirmed we have Roaches of democracy in this land.

  • Umahi and Ruga narratives

    It is good a thing the federal government has suspended implementing the Ruga policy which seeks to permanently re-settle herders in all parts of the country. With that action, the cloud of uncertainty hovering over the country appears to be clearing, albeit temporarily.  But narratives emerging from the suspended scheme do not imbue much hope that we have seen the last of that controversial exercise.

    Stories from the National Executive Council, NEC, on farmers/herders crisis and officials of the federal and state governments miserably raise doubts as what exactly to believe in respect of that contentious policy. In all, what seems palpable is a conspiracy of some sort not to let the public into what the critical details of the policy are and the real intentions of the government on them.

    Or how else do we explain the discordant tunes from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Governor David Umahi and the president’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu on the Ruga policy? Umahi had while announcing the suspension of the Ruga programme, left no one in doubt that the programme as being implemented by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources is substantially at variance with the recommendations of the NEC on herders /farmers conflicts and the federal government’s approved National Livestock Transformation Plan NLTP.

    According to him, the approved policy had provision for the rehabilitation of Internally Displaced Persons IDPs arising from herders and farmers crisis and the development of ranches in any willing state of the federation. “The NLTP, its beauty is that what NEC and the FG approved is a voluntary programme to all the 36 states who may like to participate. It is not compulsory; it is for any state that is willing. Any state that is interested in this programme is required to bring up development plan in line with our programme that is unique to his state based on its challenges in respect of the crisis” Umahi said.

    But in his reaction to criticisms that trailed the exercise, Garba put up a strong defence for the programme even as he admitted it is not compulsory as only states that indicated interest would take part in it. For him, the advantages of the programme both in stemming crisis between herders/farmers and improving the yield from animal husbandry are so substantial to justify its implementation. He equally claimed that beneficiaries of the Ruga settlement programme will include all persons in animal husbandry and not just only herders.

    Shehu stirred the hornet’s nest when he said “it is true that the government at the centre has gazetted lands in all states of the federation but because the idea is not to force this programme on any one, the government has limited the take-off to the dozen states with valid requests”.

    Apparently piqued by Shehu’s claims on gazetting of lands in all states for the purpose, the Benue State government came out to put a lie to it. It said no land in Benue State was gazetted for grazing routes, grazing reserve, cattle colony or Ruga settlement contrary to claims by the presidency. It challenged the presidency to show evidence of such acquisition, the compensation paid and the endorsement of the state governor who controls and administers lands in the state in trust for the people.

    So, we are left with discordant tunes from the three quarters. Governor Umahi was unequivocal that the recommendations of his committee approved by the federal government were for a comprehensive programme for the re-settlement of IDPs and ranching for willing states.

    The implication is that at no time did the Ruga settlement policy feature either in the recommendations of the council or the approvals of the government on the resolution of the herders/farmers crisis. The question then is at what point did the Ruga policy crop up and which authority made such approval? Could the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources have invented and commenced the implementation of the policy on their own? And if it was entirely their initiative, what accounted for the strident defence of the exercise by the presidency if they were neither the authors of that policy nor privy to its critical details?

    It is obvious we are yet to hear the real story on how the Ruga policy came about. But even in the midst of this seeming confusion or refusal to full disclosure, there seems to be an unseen hand manipulating the entire process. It is increasingly becoming very clear that there are interests that want the recurring conflicts between herders and farmers resolved on terms comfortable for the herders and their sponsors despite the fact that much of the burden of that conflict is borne by the farmers.

    Why nothing was again heard of the plight of the IDPs before the Ruga policy rolled into action is at the root of the raging suspicion that the federal government is on a voyage to fulanize the country. It smacks of insincerity to embark on the re-settlement of herdsmen on the soils of those who continue to suffer immeasurable losses both in human and material capital on account of the conflicts herders largely stoke without giving a thought to how to mitigate the plights of those at the receiving end.

    That is what exactly the authors of the Ruga settlement policy did when they ignored the recommendations for the establishment of ranches by willing states and the re-settlement of IDPs. It shows ample bias in government’s perception of the problem and a deliberate effort to foist pre-conceived agenda on the country. This agenda was given further fillip by the presidency when it claimed that lands have been gazetted in all the states of the federation for that contentious policy. The government was speaking from both sides of the mouth when it claimed Ruga is not only for herdsmen but all those involved in animal husbandry.

    The Land Use Act vests the control of lands on governors. So who approved the lands said to have been gazetted for the Ruga programme? This question must be answered given the confusion that now trails the claim. Benue State has challenged the presidency to provide evidence of such approvals. The onus is on the presidency to rise to that challenge and disabuse the minds of the public that it has not grabbed states’ lands by force in furtherance of a dubious pet policy.

    If lands have truly been gazetted in all the states for re-settling herdsmen and all those involved in animal husbandry under a policy tagged ‘Ruga’, do we need further evidence to sustain suspicions on the fulanisation of the country? The foreboding scenario is one in which separate enclaves will be created for Fulani herdsmen in all states of the federation. Ironically, many of these herdsmen are foreigners fleeing harsh climatic conditions and civil strife in their home countries. It is hard to fathom how such a policy of dispossessing locals of their ancestral lands to re-settle foreigners can possibly stand.

    We need to get at the root of the claims and counter claims on the Ruga re-settlement policy. If there is no deliberate plan to foist a hidden agenda on the people; if the government is seriously committed to lasting solutions in the herders/farmers crisis, it must institute a commission of enquiry on how the Ruga policy came about. We are told Ruga is a Fulani word. How suitable that word is for the purpose is left to be conjectured.

    More seriously, if the Buhari regime is seriously and genuinely committed to lasting solutions to the herders and farmers conflicts, ranching offers the best prospects. Inventing all manner of terms to conceal touted plans for cattle colony will prove counterproductive. The polity is already sensitized to manipulations of the government on this singular issue such that extreme care must be taken not to further overheat the polity.

    But if Ruga policy or cattle colony is implemented in those states that are preponderantly Fulani as the Bauchi State governor claimed, the attraction to export them to other cultural settings will fizzle out unilaterally. So they can have it funded by their state governments.

  • Everyone a Bororo

    So many are antsy. So many are angry. But so few know what RUGA will wreak when it spins into a reality in the South. In the social media, fire and brimstone are flaring daily.

    Facebook is aflame, splitting the nation as Words are now swords. They are cutting tribes and faiths apart to the marrow. Twitter is quiversful with its darts. WhatsApp groups grieve and gang up. The RUGA idea is coming across as a welfare scheme to herdsmen.  Many perceive it as a ploy to give the Fulani a hegemonic edge over the rest of us.

    The federal government says it is voluntary. The Taraba State, by its rhetoric, expresses fears that it is a fiat. Benue State streets are in the early stages of combustion with placards of protests over RUGA settlements in some local government areas. So much is the fury that even the Vice President has had to dissociate his office from the scheme without condemning it.

    The federal ministry of agriculture coiled away from a scheduled press conference. The most apparent silence is from the presidency that would not state in clear terms what it thinks about what the rest of the country is thinking. Suspicion has wired the country. The augury is inauspicious.

    My own take is very simple. I call it a tit-for-tat federalism. If the federal government would unfurl billions of the nation’s resources to help a group set up colonies, or what it sees as autonomous settlements for a group of economic and ethnic adventurers in other lands, let’s democratise the idea.

    You can start from my ethnic group, the Itsekiris in Delta State. We are stately dancers, our language is lyrical, our pride stout. To the best of my knowledge we live in every part of Nigeria. So, every Itsekiri man and woman who lives everywhere ought to be given a parcel of land in very state from Sokoto State to Ogun State. A budget should be assigned to us, so we decide what we want to do with it. Our cuisine is delicate and benumbing, and we can start to evangelise the great and vibrant epaulets of the Itsekiri values. We can teach locals of our proud history, the majesty of our dances, the brilliance of our imagination, build schools dedicated to Dore Numa, Nana and others, revive our architecture and show how that great tribe overwhelmed much of what is called the Niger Delta today. We can proselitise how we dared the British in the 19th century with the genius of our generals, ethos of our nationalist virtues, a mammoth blockade that paralysed the British almost out of their wits. Professor Obaro Ikime, alumnus of Government College Ughelli, where I also attended, will have his book on this subject revived with a special fund to sell this noble heritage of which we are proud.

    Then, of course, the land of Kaaro Ojire will also come up with its template. Although quite a few vocal members of the group have called for a true brand of federalism, they know that people of the Yoruba stock, just like the Fulani, abound not only all over the country, but also around West Africa. They too can ask for their own lands, where some of them can set up factories and industries, from fabric to complete chain of the agricultural process that stretches from farm to factory to the market. Few know that they make Kolanuts.  It is the nut of unity. They make it, the Hausa-Fulani consume it, the Igbos divinise it.He who brings kola brings life. The Yoruba brought Kola, and the life of unity. Why not make it a national treasure with federal funding? The Yoruba, always with imagination, can do a lot to change the flavour of the economy. After all, the Southwest is the wealthiest region in the country. Why not give them the lands by fiat so they can also colonise a few territories and import its commercial wizardry to the benefit even of the citizens in Kano or Kebbi?

    Igbo kwenu! Known for their “trading” tackles, we can use much of their genius in turning two Naira to two billion Naira. They have been doing so without federal dollars. This is the time to take advantage. After the civil war, the Igbos were left to their own devices. No one gave them money to start businesses. They returned to Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, Port Harcourt, and within a few years, businesses whirled into profits.

    Imagine if Governor Ikpeazu’s idea cruises under a national impetus.The Abia State governor has been in the forefront of galvanising anonymous Igbo geniuses in Aba.  He wants to make their inventiveness into cottage industries first, and later flower into bowers of commerce. A lot of federal support can import these youths of promise to every state, so those products that many see as imitation will become the envy of the originals. After all, that was how Japan and Taiwan became Trojans of global commerce.

    We cannot say enough of the Edo. Forget the impunity of its governor with a contrived legislature. The Edos, also a mini-Nigeria, have been a bastion of arts and furniture, an industry also troubled as the herdsmen are troubling us. Imagine all the geniuses in Edo furniture have money to design and carve chairs and upholstery, instead of the millions the elites pay to import. Also the western world swoons over Edo artworks, from Oxford to Berlin to New York.

    The Ijaw, with fishing acumen, ought to enjoy special allocation, so they go all over the country to fish. Even where there are dry lands, we can make artificial lakes. Where the lakes are abandoned, we can revive them in places like Kano, stock them with fish and allow them to grow into fishing centres all over the country, whether in Borno or Benue.

    With this federal arrangement, no one would pitch any hate at the RUGA plan as hegemonic or fulanisation. It will be either mutually assured benefit or destruction between south and north, between tribe and tribe, between faiths. Either an embrace for warmth or suffocation.

    In the north, the sabon gari will have special funding, just as the Hausa quarters like the one near my childhood church in Warri will enjoy same. RUGA as a ploy will become a ruse. This way, we can reinvent the Bororo lifestyle by making every tribe a sort of Bororo.

    Bard as wayfarer

    Since we are in the mood of satire today, let’s refer to a master.  Just before the COZA firestorm, Professor Wole Soyinka spun a tale of a modern-day wayfarer online. In a business class cabin, Soyinka had occupied a seat, before a youngster, described  by oil baron Tonye Cole as all biceps and tattoo, appeared and asked the prof to leave his window seat. The man insisted in spite of pleas. Soyinka rose for him. The picture of Soyinka on the seat with the shadowy face of the impudent fellow is on facebook.

    A fellow claimed he was the one and that he had a charming chat with the bard, and the bard told him he would do the same if he were the young guy. He also reported that he went to research Soyinka, implying he did not know of him, and he claimed to be a teacher at a faceless university abroad. Soyinka responded to Mo Abudu that he had no such exchange with the fellow and they never even spoke. No one is sure if the so-called report and the name are fiction. Some rude fellows applaud the man of biceps, while wise men  and women said he should have shown respect and left the prof there. He is not only Soyinka, he will soon be 85. Here comes the classic. Soyinka turned the episode into a work of art. Here him:

    “I don’t know how much airlines succeed in raising for their charity drives through those envelopes they distribute to passengers into which their captive donors are exhorted to deposit their loose change before disembarking. Such monies are then distributed to worthy causes all over the world, especially in the pursuit of health. What I am convinced of is that they would generate a hundred times more if they were creative. For instance, they could impose a fine on passengers who take the wrong seat on boarding, even for a second. One can only rejoice in the thought of such benefits to humanity in its efforts to eradicate all kinds of diseases, especially malnutrition, and ensure the supply of nutrients that prevent the premature onset of brain impairment.

    Those who permit themselves to be persuaded, even for one second that I, Wole Soyinka, having wrongly identified a seat number like millions of travellers all the time, and all over the world, would then attempt to consolidate the error in any form, through act, word, gesture, qualify to be the first beneficiaries of this vastly improved humanitarian policy.”

    The bard, with a playful self-indictment, mocks all those who have made a storm out of a seat change. Especially the part about “brain impairment.” Kudos Prof. Your words set forth like dawn.

     

     

  • Herdsmen vigilante!

    At the heat of the bloodletting in parts of the country arising from clashes between herders and farmers, prominent northern leaders had protested what they called the wrong profiling of the Fulani race. Their grouse then was with the labeling of herdsmen as Fulani herdsmen.

    The argument was that such profiling connoted the impression that all Fulani people were herdsmen and therefore vicariously liable for clashes between farmers and herders. Some even went extra lengths to posit they knew people of other ethnic groups including the Igbo who are involved in the herding business. Thus, the incongruity of the term Fulani herdsmen as it had no way of capturing other ethnic groups involved in herding business, they argued.

    Their argument drew considerable sympathy resulting in public de-emphasis on the term Fulani herdsmen in preference for herdsmen. It is not for nothing, that much of the references to that group in public discourse had since been left at herdsmen in deference to these sensibilities.

    But that sympathy got a serious jolt last week when leaders of the herders association, the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) spoke at a security summit organized by the Southeast Chamber of Commerce Mines and Agriculture in conjunction with Southeast Governors’ Forum. Their leader let the cart out of the bag when he called for the establishment of Fulani youth vigilante in communities in the southeast to compliment security efforts in the zone.

    Hear him, “the Fulani youth vigilante body will be working with the security, the neighborhood watch or vigilante to ensure security in all communities, as it was done in Enugu State”. For them, establishing Fulani vigilante groups in all communities should be seen as part of the contributions of the Fulani people to the security of lives and property in southeast.

    But what seemed a harmless suggestion was immediately greeted with serious suspicion and virulent opposition. While some pressure groups from the southeast called for the heads of the governors from the zone for allowing MACBAN to get away with that controversial proposition, some others saw the call as reckless, insensitive and a subterfuge for a covert agenda.

    A measure of the distastefulness of the call can be gleaned from the avalanche of opposition it generated across the country. The Afenifere, PANDEF and other interest groups were quick to join their counterparts in the southeast in condemning the suggestion. They were all unequivocal and vehement in their opposition especially given the quarters that suggestion was coming from.

    From the look of things, the mere mention of Fulani youth vigilante was all that was needed to poison the whole idea. The reason for that is not hard to fathom. Before delving into why Fulani youth vigilante cannot sell, MACBAN by that suggestion sadly re-opened the argument as to the propriety of the term Fulani herdsmen. Why that organization was particular that only a vigilante composed of all-Fulani youths was all that was required to secure peace in the southeast remains a moot issue.

    Beneath that proposal however, is the view that Fulani youths have certain skills and technology in security maintenance and enforcement that should be availed to the southeast to guarantee its safety. That is the purport of that suggestion. You cannot give what you do not have. That could as well be.

    But in singling out Fulani youths for that job, MACBAN wittingly or unwittingly raised the bar on the profiling of Fulani people in the recurring security challenges in this country. Why Fulani youth vigilante instead of one that involves other ethnic groups in their state of domicile if we must go that way? Or are there some other things Fulani youths know about the security of the southeast that is not readily available to locals to warrant their involvement?  What is there for them to protect, the ordinary indigenes or their cattle? And what is the population of such youths, some of whom we have been told are even foreigners?

    There is need for full disclosure on the specific skills Fulani youths possess that they must be allowed to secure communities outside their states of origin. We have now been told Fulani youths have special skills in vigilante services. That amounts to the same profiling which some of their leaders have complained about. Now the labeling is coming from within, do we still blame others for seemingly assigning pejorative connotation to such terms? Or is there no link between the skills of those youths in security matters and the rampant killings and destructions that trail conflicts between herders and farmers? These are the searing posers brought to the fore by the contradiction of a Fulani youth vigilante to secure the south east.

    There is also the larger question of the propriety of the Fulani youth vigilante and whether it is all that is needed to secure the southeast. Curiously, most of the states with a predominant population of the Fulani people are currently buffeted by one form of insecurity or the other that has defied efforts of the nation’s security architecture. If Fulani youth vigilante has such a high security enforcement worth to be exported to other zones, they should have been able to tame the embarrassing insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and other criminal activities in their zones. In the absence of that, it is doubtful they would be of value in securing other zones when theirs are burning.

    Since charity ought to start from home, the minimum expectation is that they should have been able to demonstrate that dexterity in crime fighting in their states. But we have seen none of this. The suggestion is therefore nothing but a similitude of the man whose house is on fire, only for him to be pursuing rats fleeing the inferno. There is good reason for the outrage that trailed the suggestion.

    But more seriously, crime fighting is more or less a localized issue. That is why there have been strident agitations for state and local police. This prism has also found ample demonstration in the northeast through the concept of civilian joint task force. The overriding philosophy is that locals understand their security peculiarities more and therefore better positioned to fight crime and criminal activities in such areas.

    It is therefore left to be conjectured the angle the idea of a Fulani youth vigilante for communities in the southeast is coming from. Even then, there is everything wrong with the timing of the proposal. Currently, Fulani herdsmen are not seen as good neighbors given the long drawn crises they have been engaged with farmers. Many of the states in the north-central including the southeast have sad tales of their relationship with the herdsmen.

    That is why opposition has continued to mount against such proposals as grazing routes, grazing reserves and cattle colonies. Of late, we are being inundated with the phraseology of Ruga settlements, whatever that means. But from the outline of what it will entail, it is the same cattle colony now wearing the toga of Ruga settlements. President Buhari said he is committed to finding lasting solutions to clashes between herdsmen and their host communities.

    He should be encouraged to do so. But there is everything wrong in finding that solution on the terms of the herdsmen and their patrons as every indication point to. We are told about 12 states have embraced the cattle colony or Ruga settlement idea. So be it. For those states indigenous people are largely cattle breeders, we do not envisage problems. But the wisdom in deploying huge federal resources to fund businesses that are better left to private hands, call for serious introspection.

    For many of the states that are opposed to this strategy (and they are many) ranching is the way to go. No attempt should be made to coerce them into succumbing to ideas that are at once in conflict with the wishes and aspirations of their peoples. The southeast is vehemently opposed to cattle colonies or any other form in which it is currently masquerading.

    Governor, Dave Umahi said the zone is opposed to Fulani youth vigilante. Good! But we need to be told how the Fulani youth vigilante is currently operating in Enugu State as claimed by their leader. That claim should not be swept under the carpet by the Enugu State government.

  • Babalakin: A vocal visionary

    If the people are ignorant of the government’s responsibility, the government should not be ignorant of its responsibility.  It is interesting that an important observer asserted:  “When we break down the issues, we’ll see that what we are suffering from in this country is very deep level of ignorance.” The speaker, Resort Group Chairman Dr Wale Babalakin (SAN), said this at the June 20 annual lecture of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) in Lagos. He spoke on the theme “Infrastructure Development and Growth in Nigeria: Prospects and Challenges.”

    Babalakin argued: “In the course of the evolution of the country, we got our educational system wrong. So you have a system of education that doesn’t teach people what they should be asking for. They don’t even know what their rights are. You can go through primary, secondary school and university today without knowing that it is important to have a clean environment. You could go through these whole processes and not realise that government owes you anything. You could go through these without knowing that it is fundamental to building a society that we all learn to tell the truth and you say you want to develop infrastructure. Where do you start from?”

    He illustrated the problem with an anecdote: “Last week, I had a meeting somewhere in Surulere on Ajao Street. I got there at about 1:30pm. The water level was about one and a half feet and I saw students returning from school rolling up their trousers and wading through the water. I saw mothers doing the same thing and they were smiling all the way because really, they don’t believe it’s anybody’s responsibility to ensure that the place is drained. They believe it is their lot that they found themselves there and God can by miracle take them out and they would not look back. They would expect the other people too to go and pray to God to take them out of the situation. When you have that level of lack of demand or any form of entitlement, how do you begin to drive the system? How do you start?”

    It is significant that a few days before Babalakin’s lecture, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) had launched an investigation into N900b constituency projects in states. The probe seeks to verify constituency projects executed by immediate past senators and members of the House of Representatives in the 8th National Assembly between 2015 and 2018. The verification will involve 180 key projects in the 36 states, with at least five projects identified for tracking in each state. The first phase will be conducted in 12 states across the six geo-political zones of the country: Kogi and Benue (North-Central); Adamawa and Bauchi (North-East); Sokoto and Kano (North-West); Imo and Enugu (South-East); Lagos and Osun (South-West); and Akwa Ibom and Edo (South-South).

    A report said the commission “will make recoveries on projects/contracts confirmed to have been inflated or in which contractors underperformed or did not perform at all.”  ICPC Chairman Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye said: “The level of implementation of constituency projects in 16 focus states for 2015 is revealing. Out of 436 constituency projects for the year that were tracked, 145 were completed, 77 ongoing while 211 were not executed at all. For 2016, out of a total of 852 constituency projects in 20 states in the 2016 Budget that were tracked, 350 were completed, 118 were ongoing, 41 locations not specified in the budget and 343 not done or performed. In 2017, a total of 1,228 constituency projects in the budget were tracked for performance as at June 2018. Out of these, 478 were completed, 173 in unspecified location, 200 ongoing, 13 abandoned and 364 not started. The level of performance of constituency projects is therefore disputable.”

    In summary, about 2, 516 projects were tracked between 2015 and 2017; 918 were not done, 395 were ongoing and 214 could not be located. Owasanoye added: “Constituency projects are intended to be developmental, such as provision of water, rural electrification, rural clinics, schools, community centres and bursary for indigent students. In the light of annual budgetary allocations to constituency projects and based on actual releases by the government, it is firmly believed that the impact of constituency projects on the lives of ordinary Nigerians ought to be more visible…The concern is that in Nigeria, rather than address the needs of constituents, many constituency projects have become avenues of corruption.”

    This picture highlights the relevance and significance of Babalakin’s observations in his CIBN lecture.  The probe is commendable. But it means that constituency projects before 2015 may never be probed. This is why Babalakin’s conclusion that public ignorance about the government’s responsibility is responsible for the country’s infrastructure deficit deserves attention.  What did affected constituents do about undelivered constituency projects? Could they have done something? If they did nothing, why was that the case?

    A big player in the business world, Babalakin is a big promoter of public-private partnership (PPP), which has helped infrastructure development in other countries.  In 2016, at the Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja,  Babalakin had listed the enemies of public-private partnership in Nigeria: the attitude of the government, lack of respect for sanctity of contracts and the rule of law, lack of investor security, corruption and malice.

    Not surprisingly, in his CIBN lecture, Babalakin shared some of his group’s experiences regarding the Murtala Mohammed Airport Domestic Terminal 2 (MMA2) and the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.  He said MMA2 “was built against the run of play, those who gave us the project did not want the project completed… How do you cope with that?”  He continued: “It’s been 12 years since we completed MMA2 and no government… has done anything comparable. This is because infrastructural development is… about serious commitment and a lot of intellectual rigour.”

    ”The Lagos-Ibadan expressway project is unthinkable,” he said.  ”We signed the contract in 2009 to design, build, operate and transfer… they terminated the concession for lack of performance without disclosing to the public that they had held us down for 22 months.”  Babalakin added: “It is sad that seven years after the project was cancelled, the road is only 40% ready. They are building 40% of what we wanted to build and the project has no design. It is just a repeat resurfacing of the 1977 road. The architecture of that place has changed phenomenally since 1977 and our design accommodated all the changes… Our total cost was N112b. Now, over N350b has been spent on 40% of what we planned to build and they are still at 40%.”

    Babalakin, who turns 59 today, is a vocal visionary. Nigerians need to demand that the government should play its role responsibly.

  • Barbarians in the House

    In the days of the Owu chief, a stink was inaugurated. He endorsed a kangaroo act in the Plateau State House of Assembly in which six out of 24 members of the House impeached a governor. By that farce, the Obasanjo PDP had sanctified a rogue process.

    It told Nigerians a legislative monster of that sort could pass muster. Lawmakers took notice. It signalled the end of a governor and the genesis of turbulence in Plateau State that has taken the coming of Governor Simon Lalong to quell.

    But the stink has already pervaded our politics. We saw it in Anambra State, and Oyo State, ever turbulent, embossed its own signature of impunity before Ajimobi’s era. The trend went national, though. The APC members of betrayal teamed with the minority party to overthrow the party process and worked with the clerk to elect Bukola “Eleyinmi” Saraki as Senate president. The rot continued.

    Like effluent in the sewer, it has remained in our legislative unconscious. Fast forward to June 2019. First in Edo State, the drama of the absurd. Governor Godwin Obaseki canonised a House where nine, some say 11, members out of 24 met and elected a speaker and his deputy.  So absurd was it that one of them came sartorially unprepared in a pair of shorts. A hurried impunity.

    A few days later, Bauchi State caught the contagion. In the case of Edo State, the party was divided against itself. The Bauchi episode replayed the Saraki script. Eight PDP members colluded with two APC men and the sole member of the New Nigeria People’s Party to elect an APC man as speaker and a PDP man as deputy, just as Saraki and Ekweremadu paired in that dawn of Abuja conspiracy. APC in words, PDP indeed. Just like Obaseki, Governor Bala Mohammed inaugurated a house of barbarians.

    The Edo drama has pitched the state governor Obaseki against his anointer and national chairman Adams Oshiomhole. Adams said what happened in Edo ran counter to republican principles. I agree. The Governor defended himself by an appeal to state party supremacy. Speaking through his spokesman, Obaseki said Adams countervailed the principle of natural justice. I laughed at such grandiloquent appeal to high ideals to support a gangster act.

    If Obaseki yielded to party supremacy, he was kowtowing to a hierarchy of miscreants. Was he telling the country and the good citizens of Edo State that democracy is a Hobbesian enclave? He is supping with the devil of tyranny. Has he forgotten that as governor, he is the leader of the party? Why is he hiding under party supremacy of barbarians? Does he not know that he makes himself into a political jellyfish by inaugurating an illegality and hiding under the cover of the people, a raft of party apparatchiks who bow and tremble before him every day because he controls the state’s mammon of unrighteousness? Is he hoodwinking us? Obaseki cannot even have the boldness, however shameless, to take responsibility for his action.

    He has had a lacklustre tenure so far, but if he wants theatre, it better entertain and ennoble us rather than appeal to what theorist of drama call the absurd. Shakespeare, Rotimi, Soyinka have quite a few of them. Bringing such alawada acts into governance does not enshrine republican ideals. It holds it up to mockery.

    Even during the days of Adams as governor in 2014, the Jonathan men split the House because Adams was not playing fool to the mavens of the PDP in Edo State. I called it “presidential meddlesomeness” on Channels Television’s Sunrise show. Today, it is gubernatorial meddlesomeness in Edo. The guilty man is Godwin Obaseki.

    The Bauchi story is a case of a minority governor who wants to use a strong arm to impose his will. Governor Mohammed ought to be careful. He has less than 10 men in the house who want him. He is flirting with impeachment Damocles. He may not know it. The people who made it possible for him to mount the throne cannot stop the legislators from coming down on him. But more importantly, the Bauchi story is about an APC flirting with political self-immolation. The APC, especially kingpins in the centre, did not like the former governor. In plotting his fall, they may have lit the tinder of party implosion. It will be interesting to see how events will unfold in the coming months.

    In Edo and Bauchi, we are witnessing the sore wounds of political malice. And none of it has to do with the high calling of democracy. They are the sort of problems that come from planting the wrong seed. Its contagion is what we have today. In his novel, The Plague, the French writer Albert Camus shows how rottenness can overtake a society that allows the wrong ideas and attitudes  to fester. In Central London in the 1850’s, what became known as the Great Stink overwhelmed the city. The sewer was clogged with human waste and industrial effluent and the tranquil and blue beauty of the River Thames we know today was a miasma of waste that discharged smell and gave the people cholera. The famous scientist Michael Faraday described in a letter to the The Times thus: “”Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface, even in water of this kind. … The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water; it was the same as that which now comes up from the gully-holes in the streets; the whole river was for the time a real sewer.”

    That is the sort of problem that city bore. The parliament was forced to act when the odour choked them in session. The great legislative stink did not start today. In Poland of the Middle Ages, a writer called the parliamentary rabble, “a divinely ordained confusion.”

    A parliament is the church of democracy. It should not become cult of mayhem.

     

    Drones for drones

    AS we contemplate the fire and fury of banditry in the country, an opportunity has presented itself with the election of Simon Lalong as chair of the Northern Governors Forum. He set up a formula for peace in his state that his peers copied. His colleagues will do well to encase it into the battle plan against the hoodlums of gore in the region.

    No plan is perfect, but if he was able to turn it for most part to the good, it calls for optimism. Yet, he needs the centre to help with resources, especially in the area of technology. Technology is the great counterfoil to evil in this age. It is a weapon we can deploy either for war or for peace. Ekiti and Ondo States now use drones to comb the forests. In Ogun State alone, Imoke Forest is as vast as the city of Ibadan, and the Opara forest is three times as big. We cannot flush the brigands out the old way. Yet the forests in the north are more numerous, sometimes vaster and more lethal. So, Gov. Lalong will need modern drones, of the sort that Iran shot down to dare Trump. It will combat the drones of the forests, lazy men hiding under faith and tribe to commit murder. With Lalong’s strategy and Federal-sponsored technology, the brigands will be yesterday’s wound. It is drones against the drones.

     

  • Gorilla, snake allegory

    Belief systems and practices define the culture of a people and their very essence. Countries where superstition and all manners of attachment to weird beliefs and the mundane constitute predominant ways of viewing life, rank low within the development matrix.

    So it is with Nigeria. Our attachment to superstition, occultism and all manner of belief systems has become somehow, a thing of immense concern. We are regularly regaled with news of killings and reprisal attacks by students of our higher educational institutions in the name of cultism. The carnage arising from such killings has become as embarrassing as they appear to have defied solutions.

    But behind all this, is the notion that those involved in such cult activities derive some supernatural powers from it. Little wonder the army of our youths that are increasingly lured to them. Opinions will continue to be divided regarding the benefits that accrue from such weird engagements.

    But the same malady has also permeated the lower rungs of the educational ladder and the larger society. The increasing subscription to such weird belief systems raises questions as to how far-reaching our claims to religiosity and modernity have been. Even with increasing level of education and the quantum of exposure and rationality that go with it, the reality is that many of our people are still embarrassingly attached to these inexplicable and bizarre belief systems. The signs are easily perceptible in our daily lives; in our dealings with others and the ease to rationalize our failings on some unseen forces.

    Read Also: Zoo Gorilla ‘swallows’ N7m; Ajudua ‘swallows’ Bamaiyi’s $8m + Your Responses

    That is why a staff of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board JAMB in Makurdi, Benue State, Philomena Chieshe had the comfort of mind to come up with the claim that a huge snake swallowed a whooping N36 million kept in the vault of that agency. The JAMB sales clerk had told the JAMB registrar and his team on investigations that a sum of N36 million generated from the sale of recharge cards some time ago was swallowed by a huge snake.

    When prodded further, she claimed her housemaid connived with another JAMB staff to ‘spiritually’ through a snake steal the money from the vault in the accounts office. She was arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, just last May after about one year and three months she made the stunning claim.

    But as the EFCC is still battling to unravel the mystery surrounding the rogue snake, another curious story evolved from Kano. This time, it is the narrative of a rogue gorilla. Reports quoting officials of the Kano zoological gardens went viral last week with the startling account of a gorilla that allegedly swallowed N6.8 million belonging to that zoo. According to reports, one huge gorilla sneaked into the office, carried away the money and swallowed it.

    Apparently worried by the uncommon narrative, Governor Abdullahi Gunduje ordered a probe into the claims. But the police suspect theft and have arrested 10 staff including the accounting officer. The position of the police seems amplified by the managing director of the zoo who disclosed though belatedly, that the zoo does not have a gorilla within it. So the story goes. If this later account is true, it is either the gorilla came from somewhere else or those who told the story could not differentiate between that animal species and humans.

    In the days ahead, we expect the police to conclude their findings and possibly have some of the suspects arraigned. But we may not get the full gist of events until the legal process runs its full course. Then and only then shall we get to know whether the stories of the gorilla and the snake were real or figments of the imagination of some rogue officials. Then also shall we begin to construct a positive correlation between our attachments to the normative as opposed to the empirical.

    The fact that such stories are easily peddled presupposes that their purveyors do so in the hope they could be believed. Those who told the story believe in the possibility of snakes and gorillas invading the vaults and swallowing the monies possibly as food. They believed in the persuasive powers of such stories and that it made sense to go that way. This angle was given added fillip by Philomena who claimed her housemaid connived with another JAMB staff to spiritually steal the money through a snake.

    For her, this is quite possible. And she would want us to believe her story. Why not? After all, we are regularly treated with all manner of such stories from sundry predators in the garb of religious, occultist and traditional seers. Last December, the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, had to mount sensitization seminars to disabuse the minds of drivers and road users that there are blood- sucking demons causing accidents on the roads. In a clime replete with all manner of miracle workers laying claims to converting impossibility to possibility; a clime the supernatural is constantly held responsible even for acts of omission and commission of ours, it is not surprising that such fables will continue to trend.

    And as long as you can find those who believe such stories (they are many), so long will they continue to find sympathizers. That is the level at which our society still finds itself. It is telling of our level of attachment to superstition, ignorance and nature and how far removed we are from the path of modernity.

    But we risk glossing over the real import of the narratives on the snake and gorilla if we seek to reason them out in a rational sense. My reading of the matter is that the purveyors of such stories were not talking of the real gorilla and snake. They were merely deploying hyperboles to give effect to the disappearance of the monies. Philomena spoke of the spiritual snake. She said her maid connived with another JAMB staff to spiritually steal the money through a snake. Her maid and the unnamed JAMB staff are mere metaphors for the snake.

    It would appear we all erred in taking her statement in its literal sense. So also was the case of the gorilla that swallowed N6.9 million kept in the vault of the Kano zoological garden. If the allegory of the snake is difficult to appreciate, that of the gorilla should easily strike the right chord. They spoke of a huge gorilla. Incidentally, gorillas look like human beings except for their exceptional ugliness that will be difficult to decipher during the night the animal struck. Because the gorilla has the shape of humans, it is possible the narrator mistook a human being for a gorilla. The only snag there is that gorillas do not feed on pieces of paper and are not also capable of converting the money to buy their choice food.

    So it is not the physical gorilla. It was the human gorilla that was possibly misread as a real gorilla. The gorilla denotes a metaphor for the thief. This characterization was given more credence by the zoo management when they said they do not have any gorilla in that zoo. So we are inexorably left with the human gorilla. That is why perhaps, the police has made arrests of some prime suspects. That also accounted for the setting up of an investigative panel by the Kano State government to unravel who the thief gorillas are. It is hoped they will unmask the characters behind the snake and the gorilla allegory.

    Read Also: Ganduje orders probe of Kano Zoo’s ‘Gorilla swallowed N6.8m’

    More fundamentally, these stories have wider repercussions for us as a country. They demonstrate very unmistakably, the very dangerous dimension corruption has taken on these shores. The two fables have to do with the stealing of monies belonging to the government or its agencies. We need to get at the root of the relative ease with which unscrupulous officials dip their hands into governments till.

    We need to get at the root of the ease with which such infractions are rationalized on some weird and supernatural forces. President Buhari’s government has the fight against corruption as one of its cardinal programmes. It must figure out why the same individual that finds no wrong in looting government money meticulously preserves monies entrusted to his care by his ethnic unions or village meetings.

    The level of progress in this regard will make the difference. But one thing that stands out is that manifestations of corruption are both complex and complicated. Beaming the searchlight just on political enemies will be of little value in the overall success of the fight. We must work to re-direct the psyche of our people against such malfeasance to get a more enduring result.

  • Devotees and identities

    An ambitious idea to promote Yoruba religion and culture was among the highpoints of the 10th Orisa World Congress held at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in Ile-Ife, Osun State, in July 2013. At the opening ceremony in Oduduwa Hall, OAU, the then Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, had declared that July and August would be “Yoruba cultural months” from 2014.  Oba Sijuwade, who died in 2015 after a 35-year reign, was a revered traditional ruler and Grand Patron of the Orisa tradition and religion.

    “I implore all descendants of Oduduwa to return home every year during these months to celebrate our culture and religion,” Oba Sijuwade had said.  Oduduwa, regarded as the progenitor of the Yoruba people, is artistically represented by an imposing wooden sculpture carved by Lamidi Olonade Fakeye, which Oba Sijuwade had unveiled at the front of the university theatre in 1987.

    Oba Sijuwade had clarified the idea of “Yoruba cultural months,” saying, “All my children in Nigeria, Benin Republic, Togo Republic, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Sudan, invite all lovers of Yoruba culture to the homeland during the months of July and August. Celebrate the values, virtues and treasures of our towns and cities. Hold public events, conventions and activities that showcase the invaluable riches of Yoruba culture and religion. These are the treasures that have made Yoruba culture and religion a global heritage of humanity.”

    Ile-Ife, regarded as “the source” and cultural capital of the Yoruba race, was an appropriate setting for deliberations on the challenges of the Orisa way of life, especially in the context of contending faiths. The variegated gathering included participants from the United States of America, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela and Mexico, and demonstrated the appeal of the Yoruba religion beyond its provenance.

    There is no doubt about the international status of Yoruba religion.  The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2005 added the Ifa Divination system to its list of “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.”

    Putting Oba Sijuwade’s idea into action is another matter.  His death should not mean the death of the idea. His successor, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, who is also enthusiastic about promoting Yoruba religion and culture, should make moves to turn this striking idea into reality.

    While Oba Sijuwade’s idea awaits its time, the vehicle he had used to publicize the idea needs to be reactivated.  The 10th edition of Orisa World Congress in Ile-Ife, which focused on “Culture and Global Peace,” was the fourth in the ancient town, starting from the first one nearly four decades ago. Six others have been held in Brazil, USA, Trinidad and Tobago, and Cuba. It is a project of Orisaworld, “an organisation of practitioners and scholars of Orisa tradition, religion and culture,” founded in 1981 by Prof Wande Abimbola, a retired academic and culture exponent. The group has “individual and institutional members from over 50 countries,” and “promotes culture, education and peace in a world where Orisa tradition and culture play a central role in the day-to-day lives of over 100 million people.”

    Abimbola had announced that future congresses would be held in Nigeria, and that the next one would take place in Ile-Ife in 2016. Six years after the last congress, and three years after the next one was expected to take place, it is unclear whether the organisers are planning another congress. It is ironic that a group set up “to revitalise and rejuvenate the Orisa culture and all its traditions” needs to be revitalised and rejuvenated.

    Oba Sijuwade had  declared with poetic overtones, “I hereby make the following proclamation: the religion of Yoruba land; the religion of Oduduwa who descended from Heaven on a chain of iron; the religion of Oranfe who lives in a house of perpetual fire in Heaven; the religion of Ifa, witness of destiny; the religion of Sango, the great warrior and giant, child of Oranmiyan; the religion of Oya nicknamed oriirii, eater of she-goats, the female warrior who wears a sword as part of her outfit; the religion of Osun nicknamed ewuji the greatest mother of all; the religion of Obatala, owner of ancient Iranje; will never perish.”

    Interestingly, the last Orisa World Congress involved discussions on a number of important topics, including “Globalisation and Cultural Identity.” Globalisation has religious implications, including collision of faiths. There have been clashes between devotees of Yoruba traditional religion and Yoruba Christians and Muslims.

    Last year, for instance, following a conflict triggered by the Oro festival, a report said: “Perhaps the height of the growing resentment against the festival came in February 2018 when the Christian Association of Nigeria and the Muslim Community in the Ipokia Local Government Area of Ogun State approached a high court to stop Oro from being held during daytime in the area. The religious bodies claimed that government parastatals, schools, businesses and other public places are usually forced to close down operations as a result of the daytime ‘curfew’ foisted on them by the traditional exercise. While granting their prayers, the court limited the occasion to between 12:00am and 4:00am, a situation that has since brought relief to many in Ipokia and its environs.”

    In another instance, a report said: “In Erinmo Ijesha, Osun State, there is a traditional title, Oodole, which is conferred on a leading member of the community by the council of chiefs. Whoever is chosen to become the Oodole dances around the town, and visits important locations in the town, including the Oba’s palace. The chosen one wears a cap, under which are leaves alleged to have spiritual powers. The installation involves invoking the spirit of the deity; and the ceremony is rounded off with the killing of a sacrificial goat or cow… Those who do not participate in communal rituals, especially Christians and Muslims, are often targets of violent attacks.”

    In August, the two-week Osun-Osogbo Festival will take place in Osogbo, Osun State, with a grand finale in the Osun-Osogbo Grove, a national monument and one of Nigeria’s two UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Osun is a Yoruba water goddess celebrated yearly in a spectacular festival that is a star attraction. The Osun-Osogbo Festival, possibly the country’s pre-eminent traditional religious festival, draws a large number of visitors from within Nigeria as well as the Yoruba diaspora and beyond.

    There are various other traditional activities that sustain the Yoruba religion. The reality of diverse faiths and religious differences should not encourage religious violence.

  • Democracy Day: matters arising

    The week just passed was replete with a flurry of activities of some symbolism for this country. Within that week, the ninth National Assembly was inaugurated and its leadership subsequently elected. It was preceded by similar inaugurations and election of principal officers of states Houses of Assembly.

    It also witnessed for the very first time, the official national celebration of June 12, as Nigeria’s Democracy Day. Hitherto, May 29, was marked as Democracy Day because it was on that day the military handed over power to a democratically elected government in 1999. Before now, some states in the Southwest marked that date with public holidays to keep the annulment of the June 12, election alive.

    With the elevation of that event to a national day and its subsequent celebration, those states that kept the spirit of June 12 alive all these years have been vindicated and their yearnings and aspirations seemingly met. It would appear a befitting reward for their resilience and doggedness in ensuring that events of the June 12 elections are not consigned to the dust bin of history. They must also have had a good sense of fulfillment when President Buhari announced the renaming of the Abuja National Stadium to Moshood Abiola National Stadium.

    The echoes of hilarity that deafened the Eagle Square venue as Buhari announced the renaming of the stadium, says all about how apparently satisfied those who had championed the immortalization of the event felt. But that was not the first time a president of the country attempted to immortalize Abiola. Similar decision by the Jonathan regime to rename the University of Lagos to Moshood Abiola University met strident opposition such that he had to rest the idea. Why that idea met brick wall is a matter for another day.

    Beyond the euphoria of the measures to immortalize Abiola, the real concerns should be what prospects if any, they hold for the country. Of prime interest is the heuristic value of the recognitions and their prospects for Nigeria’s democracy. It is not enough to declare June 12 as democracy day. Neither would the renaming of the Abuja National Stadium provide solutions to the contradiction the June 12, election annulment denotes. The real thing should be in the measures the government takes thereon to ensure that the conditions that gave rise to that annulment and the injustice on which it was erected are systematically and substantially exorcised from the nation’s governance process.

    It would appear President Buhari thought along this line when he said “as part of the process of healing and reconciliation, I approved the recognition of June 12 as Democracy Day and invested the late Chief Abiola and Babagana Kingibe with national honors as I did with the late Gani Fawehinmi. The purpose was to partially atone for the previous damage done in annulling the presidential election of that year”.

    If the above represented a partial atonement for the damage done by the annulment of that election, it would seem the renaming of the Abuja National Stadium to Moshood Abiola National Stadium stood for full atonement. That would amount to an over simplification of the matter. June 12 is neither about the conferment of honors and awards nor renaming national edifices as a mark of recognition of the sacrifices of its principal actors. It is all about systemic and contrived injustice, the sanctity of the electoral process and its capacity to approximate the collective will of the people as expressed at the ballot box.

    June 12 is all about the recognition of the inalienable rights of the consisting units to have unhindered access to the highest political offices in the country. It is a protest against domination and the oligarchy of a section of the country against others. June 12 is all about equity, fairness and inclusiveness in the governance process irrespective of the party in power. It is all about the ascendancy of plurality of interests and views without which it will be nigh impossible to construct an enduring political order.

    It is about nation building; the inculcation of a common sense of national belonging among the disparate and distinct groups that make up this country. It was therefore somewhat disappointing that though President Buhari recognized the imperative of nation building in his address, he appeared noncommittal to its pursuit when the only thing he had to say there was that it takes a long process.

    One had expected the president given the occasion to have unfolded foolproof policies and strategies to fast-track the process of nation building. This is especially so given that the issues surrounding the annulment of the June 12 elections are largely part of the reasons we have failed to record substantial progress in erecting a Nigerian psyche out of the distinct and disparate nationalities in the union.

    It is an irony of sorts that after 59 years of independence we are still rationalizing our inability to make substantial progress on the purported long time it takes to achieve nation building. Curiously, those who constantly seek escapism on time to rationalize the obvious lack of progress in this direction have not been able to tell us how much time we still require to get at that destination.

    Beneath this rationalization is a conspiracy in some quarters to oppose and obstruct the necessary and sufficient conditions that will accelerate the pace of nation building.  The unfortunate situation today is that whatever progress that seemed to have been made in this regard, has in the last few years been reversed as primordial and sectarian cleavages are now at an all time high.

    Schism, rancor and insecurity of all hue have eaten deep into our societal fabric so much so that even ardent apologists of the status quo have openly admitted that Nigeria is today more divided along ethnic and religious lines than any other period in its history. The facts are there. Primordial units have been in a ferocious battle with the central authority for the loyalty of the citizens. It is difficult to expect the dispositions and attitudinal change necessary for nation building to germinate and flourish under the prevailing circumstance.

    President Buhari talked about healing process, reconciliation and righting the wrongs of the past as the raison d’être for immortalizing June 12 and honoring its principal actors. It is no doubt, a right step forward. It is hard to record substantial progress in a milieu infested by widespread discontent among the constituents. And as the president apparently admitted in his speech, injustice is at the very root of all the problems buffeting this country.

    But it remains a thing of immense worry that even as we recognize the desideratum of justice for progress, the actions of the government have failed to give sufficient attention to other manifest and debilitating wrongs. There are wrongs associated with the last general elections that failed to make an improvement on that of 2015. Yet, we pontificate over the celebration of Democracy Day. The standard of conduct of the last elections in keeping with democratic norms should have been the gauge for that atonement.

    You cannot be atoning for an ill committed by another regime only for the same cankerworm to infest the one conducted during your regime. There are also wrongs against some other sections of the country that are easily swept under the carpet. We equally have wrongs arising from the very structure of the Nigerian state.

    These have been manifest in the pattern of appointments into the commanding heights of the military and paramilitary institutions where the Southeast has been serially denied representation ostensibly because they did not cast a majority of their votes for the ruling party. It has again manifested in the sharing of the principal offices of the National Assembly. Yet we talk of justice and the righting of the wrongs of the past.

    It is a verity of the Thrasymacus notion of justice- the interest of the stronger. This concept of ‘justice’ is an antithesis of democratic engagement and therefore of questionable value in ushering in real progress.

  • Abiola’s contempt

    It ennobles the souls of citizens. It does same also to that of our nation. We can look back and pick out a genuine hero and canonise him. Nobody in our history at once encases the paradox of Nigeria and deserves it like Moshood K. Abiola. Flawed he was. Flawed Nigeria is. And flawed the personages who fought and fell for the cause in those heady years.

    Abiola’s daughter carolled the feeling in the tendrils of our hearts. Perhaps the most engaged, but certainly the most cerebral of MKO’s offspring, Hafsat posted a line to President Muhammadu Buhari. She warbled: “if anyone had told the Abiola Family that it is you who would do us this honour, we would never have believed it. You honoured my dad despite the relationship between you and him. You touched my heart. You even apologised for the annulment that you never caused.” She also apologised  to President  Buhari on behalf of her family “for whatever sin he might’ve committed against you and your family. Please forgive him.”

    Even those who watched Abiola run, did not expect him to fight. He was wealthy. He lounged in luxury. He had never fought a battle in his life except for money for himself. So many thought he was a coward with a big pocket. He was no leader. He was going to sell the nation to international capital. In fact, Falana mocked in the beginning of the struggle. He said Abiola voiced out the proverbs of cowardice. You cannot clap with one hand, etc. He was in IBB’s bosom. He loved the soldiers. He was the army’s candidate. He would surrender once the soldiers said so.  He had financed the hurly burly of power. He enabled what Fela called “soldier go, soldier come.”

    But as time boiled on, Abiola morphed gradually from the avatar of the peacock class. He never yielded. He wanted his mandate. Few believed he would last. The man had money to make. Some said he had women to mate. He was a world traveller. His private jets were pining for the skies.

    Even after IBB yielded, and there was some accommodation of Abacha, some said: “you see, we said it. He has capsized.” But they forgot that he wanted to see if they could coax the goggled brute into a democrat. Enter Jakande. Enter Ebino Topsy. Enter Olu Onagoruwa. Some others could not agree on terms and declined to be part, not because they did not want it. It was a strategy that Tony Annenih heard from M.K.O. himself after he had asked Abacha to overthrow Shonekan, who was too coy to stand for June 12. M.K.O. said if you are going to Kano, it does not matter whether you fly or go by road. Proverbs like this sounded like cowardice. But it was Abiola the pragmatic.

    When the experiment failed, Abiola and others who did not enter the government, recalled the progressives from the cabinet. The morsel had melted in their mouths. They would not vacate power. The die became cast.

    Abiola uttered the Epetedo declaration. The battle began that would eventually send many faithful into the trenches. The night battle was fierce, and when lightning flashed in the rain, we saw those who were on the side of the people and those who were not.

    The story of June 12 was a narrative of manoeuvres, of cowards and commanders, of traitors and tyrants. But it was a human story. Hence the story of Abiola and Buhari. Buhari never was an Abiola fan. He never was a June 12 fan. He did not like IBB and he wanted him out of power. When meetings roiled in Ota, when OBJ acted a statesman, Buhari went there and made clear all he wanted was to nudge IBB out of power. Once IBB stepped aside, we never heard from Buhari again until he became a player in Abacha’s regime.

    That was Hafsat’s point. Abiola was on the side of IBB. They were always friends. When Orkar coup threatened, Abiola was one of those who planned to flee the country. But when it failed, he appeared in rosy visage in Dodan Barracks in a solidarity visit. If IBB overthrew Buhari, it was because Abiola, among other factors, was behind him. Buhari could not be happy with such a man who supped with his foe.

    That is why the June 12 holiday came from an unlikely source. Buhari and Abiola are shaking hands across ponds, between the living and dead. While Abiola lived, such warmth was anathema. It is a conversation like the liminal exchanges in the Booker Prize-winning novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. When alive, Abiola thrust his hand from his sheaves of agbada to the khaki men. That spelled him doom. Wisdom, they say, belongs to the dead.

    Abiola became a hero not because he wanted it. Dele Giwa became one in spite of himself. Heroes do not come in neat packages. Churchill is perhaps the greatest British leader of all times, but the cigar-chomping, alcohol-friendly dump of a man with the wit of an angel hated Indians for fighting to be free. He even voiced out a racial slur on the great Ghandhi, describing him as a “half-naked kafir.” He gave empire a bear hug. He didn’t want colonialism to end. “I did not become the Queen’s first minister to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire,” he crooned.

    Thomas Jefferson penned some of the elegant words of the Declaration of Independence. In his homestead, though, all men were not created equal when they were slaves. He even overpowered a black belle, Sally Hemmings, who sired him a child. Even George Washington, perhaps their greatest leader, only wanted his slaves free after he was dead. De Gaulle had hubris, Napoleon was a nepotist. Even civilisations have Achille’s heels. Greece, the ancestor of democracy, embraced slavery. Ditto their modern icon, the United States. Soyinka famously described Ojukwu a fop, but the bearded rebel is Igbo’s preeminent icon. Paul wasted the Church, but he became its greatest exponent.

    “No one’s virtue is complete,” wrote Brecht in his famous play, “the great Galileo loved to eat.” But that was Abiola, the quintessential Nigerian hero. He loved his parties. He loved his money. He clothed himself in the vanity of modern attire. He comforted himself with many women. He even cuckolded “lesser” men. If he was fiery in libido, so was he for justice.

    It took June 12 to let us know that. Real heroes do not prepare for it. That is why I disagree with the words of French diplomat and wit, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. He said, “Love of glory can only create a great hero. Contempt for glory creates a great man.” Abiola was a great hero because he was a great man. True heroes are not idealists of fame. They just want to get things done. Abiola did not want to be a hero. He just wanted to be president. But when he faced the challenge, his principles triumphed over vanity.

    So, were others who fought. Men like Kingibe fell by the way side. Even kola Abiola, who is now voluble, was absent when others like Enahoro, Tinubu, Soyinka, et al sacrificed. Kola should have told us concrete things he did other than “consult.” Where was he when Bagauda kaltho died, when people like Yours Truly were under surveillance for my work for his father’s newspaper, The Concord Press, when men like Alex kabba escaped the gulag and hid in U.S. embassy before fleeing abroad? Kola was too cosy a creature, hence his father did not even, by his own confession, want him involved. What was his contact with NADECO?

    Buhari did not like Abiola, but Buhari hated IBB. He might have allowed hatred to consume him. He didn’t. It might even be that he adopted June 12 to spite IBB. But if IBB is a bigger enemy than Abiola, it is because Abiola was a metaphor of big idea. Here lies Buhari’s big heart. Heroism is never a straightforward tale. Abiola is a hero for his contempt for glory, but weakness for principle.

     

    Kudos to her

     

    Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s place among the dame of Nigeria’s achievers must attract more than cursory attention. Some see her as walking her husband’s coattail. Her great achievement was not just winning a Senate seat three times, but fighting what she called a gentlemen’s club. She has been vocal and engaged. Few know that many an artisan and menial skilled workers in the Lagos and Southwest had free training from her foundation, from cook to mechanic. But for me, her iconic works are for children. One, every year with a festival of songs where, amidst melody, kids eat and drink to drown the year. Of course, the Spelling Bee, an extraordinary score for literacy in the land. Her hall of fame status is kudos to an elegant woman with a heart for gender, the dispossessed and the generation in the bud.