The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Political flattery

    It was self-flattery when the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), made up of All Progressives Congress (APC) governors, presented awards to President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on May 10 at the Presidential Villa.  The theme of the event: “Moving Nigeria’s Democracy to the Next Level.”  Buhari was honoured for his outstanding leadership qualities, according to the organisers.

    Whose idea was it? The organisers were overenthusiastic.  Seven APC governors received accolades at the event:   Rochas Okorocha (Imo State); Alhaji Kashim Shettima (Borno State); Tanko Al-Makura (Nasarawa State); Ibikunle Amosun (Ogun State); Abiola Ajimobi (Oyo State); Ibrahim Giadam (Yobe State); and Abdulaziz Yari (Zamfara State). A former Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, was also honoured. They were honoured for their leadership qualities and services to the APC since its formation in 2013.

    Of course, it was a time to further celebrate Buhari’s re-election for another four-year term. PGF Chairman and Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha said in his address:  ”Mr President, let me be personal with you this morning, the truth is, and you may not know, that you are a God-given asset to this nation. I am not saying so for purpose of flattery or praise-singing. I have observed all categories of leaders in this country, but you seem to have distinguished yourself. Most of the leaders in this country are those who either buy their love, fame or political position, but in your own case you don’t spend one naira and you have love come your way and you have leadership come your way. That is the only judgement I have to say that you are destined by God to govern this country.” If this wasn’t flattery, it was flattering.  The Buhari award event organised by the PGF under Okorocha made those involved look small. It was an example of vainglory.

    Predictably, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which had disputed Buhari’s electoral victory, and is in court over the issue, came down on the ruling party. The opposition party’s reaction dampened the APC’s celebration. A statement by the PDP’s spokesman described the Buhari  award as “image laundering,” adding that the Buhari administration had failed to find a solution to ”the killings and kidnappings in Zamfara, Borno, Yobe, Taraba, Adamawa, Kaduna, Katsina and other states of the federation.”

    It is true that insecurity still poses a major threat to Nigeria. Indeed, the Federal Government needs to tackle the security crisis with a sense of urgency. The celebrators should have been guided by the reality of insecurity. Giving an award to the Commander-in-chief when the war has not been won is strange and sycophantic.

    Obviously, it isn’t enough for the Buhari administration to declare that it is fighting corruption and tackling insecurity when the results of the efforts are insignificant. The country’s corruption crisis and security crisis are of epic proportions. Solutions are needed, not a sycophantic celebration.

    It is interesting that Okorocha, who presented the award to Buhari, was among the applauded governors.  Governor Tanko Al-Makura of Nasarawa State presented Osinbajo’s award to him. Three days earlier, Okorocha had lamented to journalists in Abuja:  ”The evil I feared in the PDP has befallen me 10 times in the APC. Last week, I wrote a letter to INEC for the first time informing them of their wrongdoings and illegal actions to withhold my certificate on mere allegation of duress which was never founded, neither was there any committee set up to investigate the matter.”

    The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had refused to give Okorocha a certificate of return validating his victory in the February 23 senatorial election, following an allegation by the Returning Officer, Prof Francis Ibeawuchi, that he had announced the outgoing governor as winner under duress. Okorocha, who has taken the matter to court, was quoted as saying he did not want to bother President Buhari by asking for his intervention.

    In a display of crude godfatherism, Okorocha and Ogun State Governor Ibikunle Amosun had shamelessly supported the governorship candidates of political parties different from theirs in the March 9 governorship election.

    Okorocha and Amosun of the APC had clearly carried godfatherism too far. It wasn’t surprising that their party decided to punish them. It was surprising that the party delayed the punishment till March 1 when its National Working Committee (NWC) suspended the governors “for anti-party activities.” In a statement, the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, said the NWC “has also taken a decision to recommend the expulsion of the suspended individuals to the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party.”

    The APC statement stated that “the NWC had earlier written to the suspended governors on their anti-party activities, and several other steps were taken to ensure they desist from taking actions that are inimical to the interests of our party and candidates. Notably, these individuals have not shown any remorse and actually stepped up their actions.”  The party accused the suspended governors of “serial anti-party activities,” and “noted how the suspended members have continued to campaign openly for other parties and candidates that are unknown to our great party. They have in fact constituted themselves as opposition to APC candidates in their respective states.”

    It is strange that Okorocha and Amosun were honoured for their services to the APC. It reflected the flattery that characterised the PGF event. Having both been elected to the senate, if Okorocha wins his case, it is a cause for concern that they will sit in the Red Chamber pretending to be men of honour.

    When Osinbajo said Okorocha was “extremely commendable,” on May 17, while inaugurating the state government’s projects in Imo State, it was another instance of flattery. The Vice President said: “As a matter of fact, on one occasion, we went to see one of the universities that he had just completed. When I went round that university complex, I realised that there is simply no other university that has the kind of physical facilities that university has, at least in the history of Nigeria.”

    Osinbajo added: “I’ve always found him very strange. I must say so because he’s otherwise someone who is not quiet but decided to keep quiet about his achievements. I’ve not been able to understand that because anybody who knows him will not say he’s a quiet man. I want to say that he has done extremely well in this past eight years and sometimes his contemporaries will choose to make loud noise for very few they have achieved.” This portrait of Okorocha is too good to be true.

    When politicians publicly indulge in self-praise and flattery, they must not forget that the attentive public is watching.

  • Another season of blames

    The times are indeed hard. And it would seem we have inevitably been boxed to a corner by the challenging times. The dire straits the country finds itself, may account for the avalanche of allegations and recriminations that have of recent, assailed the political space with no visible signs of abating.

    In the last couple of days or so, officials of the government including top ranking security personnel have found themselves raising alarm and accusing individuals, faceless groups and unnamed politicians of fanning the embers of the escalating insecurity in the country.

    In one instance, a phoney group was alleged to have circulated a document calling on the military to overthrow the democratically elected government in the country. The dust raised by the purported circulation of that illegal document was such that the military high command had to issue a statement, condemning the act with a promise to fish out the culprits to face the raw teeth of our laws. For the military to come public and deprecate the said illegally circulated document, underscores the weight they attached to the matter even as the source of that document and how it was circulated remain largely cloudy.

    Before the dust raised by that action could settle down, the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed came up again to accuse the Peoples Democratic Party PDP and its candidate in the last elections, Atiku Abubakar of desperation for power as exemplified by what he called “unpatriotic” utterances with a warning that “such dead-end opposition could be toxic for the nation’s democracy, if left unchecked”.

    Mohammed went further to remind Nigerians of a pre-election statement credited to the former vice president in which he allegedly said if Nigerians did not vote out the APC administration, “killings by herdsmen would continue and ultimately spark off a series of ethno-religious crises that would be irreversible”.

    Atiku has denied all these allegations describing them as tissues of lies. But the PDP saw the statement as the hauling of insults, misplaced accusations and threats against their party and presidential candidate. The party urged the government to tackle the security challenges confronting it instead of taking shelter in shifting blames.

    The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai appeared to have upped the ante when he also alleged that the army has strong evidence against politicians sponsoring bandits, kidnapping and other forms of criminality in the country. According to him,” the myriad of security challenges we are facing right now in the northwest, north central and other parts of the country, I want to believe and rightly so, that it is a fallout of the just concluded general elections”.

    Buratai claimed that politicians who saw their defeat as a way of trying to revenge were sponsoring these criminal activities including banditry, herders and farmers clashes. The issues raised here are very weighty though this is not the first time officials of the government and the military have accused unnamed individuals, groups and international organizations of sabotage in their war to rid the country of all forms of criminality.

    Yet, that cannot diminish the gravity of the issues traded by Mohammed and Buratai. Given their positions within the scheme of our national affairs, it would amount to a grave risk to suggest that the allegations are mere cover-ups targeted to get even with foes. They may have their facts especially as the authors of the alleged criminal document are yet to be unmasked.

    But a critical appraisal of the statement which Mohammed claimed Atiku made during the last electioneering campaigns may not readily lend it to the exact interpretation he (Mohammed) wants to ascribe to it now. By reminding us of that statement, Mohammed would want us to believe there is a positive correlation between the rising insecurity in parts of the country and the statement ascribed to Atiku.

    By extrapolation, he is implying that Atiku should know something about the rising insecurity in the country having warned that if Nigerians did not vote out the APC, Killings by herdsmen will continue and spiral to a series of ethno-religious crises. And with the rising insecurity after the elections, Mohammed wants us to believe that Atiku may actually have some information on it given that his warning has come through. It could be a possible dimension to the statement, its remoteness notwithstanding.

    But that is not the only angle to the statement as there are other equally persuasive interpretations. And since insecurity was very palpable before and during the election campaigns with the government seemingly helpless in taming the monster, Atiku could have been saying that such a government cannot be trusted to secure the lives of Nigerians and therefore should not be voted into power. Its corollary is that insecurity is likely to increase if a government that has not shown capacity to tame the scourge is returned to power. That is the nature of campaign rhetoric and it is difficult to fault.

    This angle seems a more rational interpretation of the warning especially given that the worsening security situation was a major campaign issue during that election. It was a major rhetoric in the campaigns of both the government and the opposition. Even then, both former President Obasanjo and former Chief of Army staff Lt Gen. Theophilus Danjuma had at various times before that election, accused the government and the military of complicity in herders-farmers crisis. The grave issues they raised cannot be glossed over in contextualizing the statement credited to Atiku.

    Emerging events would rather appear an actual confirmation of the warning by Atiku. The attempt to confer other colorations to it would seem patently diversionary. Yes, there has been an upsurge in insecurity in parts of the country since after the election with no visible signs of abating. From Kaduna to Katsina, Borno to Benue and Zamfara, the story is the same. It has been a sad tale of insurgency, armed robbery, kidnappings and banditry even as reports are rife that indigenes of Katsina State are now taking up residency in neighbouring Niger Republic for fear of their lives.

    The issue to contend with is not as much with the opinions people express on the worsening insecurity as the therapeutic responses of the government to that social malady. It is not enough to finger politicians who lost elections as the brains behind herders-farmers clashes and resurging banditry. These malfeasances had long been with us before the elections.

    If politicians who lost elections are behind all these because they want to get even with their opponents, on whose door steps do we lay the blame for all the killings and destruction of property that reduced life in parts of the country to a verity of the Hobbesian state of nature before the elections? The way this poser is answered will be a litmus test for the level of credibility to be accorded some of the emerging theories on the escalating insecurity in the country.

    But we run the risk of reductionism by attempting to give a mono causal explanation for the complex sociological and economic issues that give rise to crimes and criminal activities. In attempting to make political capital of the matter, we wittingly or unwittingly gloss over the right things to do to put the spectre of insecurity behind us. Dispositions bordering on buck-passing and outright shadow chasing may explain why we have been serially unable to find a lasting handle to the cankerworm.

    More seriously, it is the prime duty of government to maintain law and order. A government; any government loses legitimacy if it is unable to live up to the raison d’être for its existence. It is somewhat discouraging each time the government or its functionaries come up to blame their inability to maintain law and order on phoney enemies.

    If the government is really privy to the activities of politicians behind the insecurity, they should arrest them provided it is not another subterfuge to get even with and hound political foes. Overall, the solution lies in effective therapeutic responses rather than tiring voyage in mutual recrimination.

  • A tale of two governors

    On a walkway in front of Ali Modu Sherriff Primary School, a girl of about nine appeared. Fatimatu, a Boko Haram orphan, frail and cherubic, stepped into the presence of Kashim Shetima, the Governor of Borno State.

    She was not attending the school, which was overlooking the street. Shettima named the institution after a man who boasted that his people, including kids like Fatimatu, could never know he was a failed leader because they did not read newspapers.

    It is time to muse on that man, and how the biography of one man can make a difference, for good and ill.

    Borno then was not what Borno is. The signs sang in low register, but the omen was stark. Ali Modu Sherriff was governor, and took his position as shepherd like a peacock. He belongs to the class of cynical men who want to lead in order to diminish. He had no joy for posterity. He had no plan for it. So he disdained prosperity.  It is not too clear today if his cynicism came from breeding or from a contrived sense of contempt.

    But Sherriff loved to be sheriff, and that meant he was both cop and governor. He had to be a democrat. He did not love that. He embraced tyranny. He was no hypocrite. He is like the hawk in Ted Hughes poem, Hawk Roosting, in which the hawk has no penitence about preys. Except that Sherriff’s lack of hypocrisy opened him up to the sort of hubris that would have sainted him if he were a pretender.

    Such persons are a metaphor of leaders as crisis. Sherriff was a crisis as governor, and it began to show not when Yusuf, the licenser of Boko Haram, was murdered. That happened later. It was when he said that he did not care what the newspapers wrote about him because his people were illiterates.

    He took refuge in ignorance. He knew, so his people didn’t. Prophet Amos said “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Sherriff did not care because he thought they would remain so forever. He probably wanted to fulfil the wrong intent of Prophet Isaiah’s lament: “The leaders of these people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.” He wanted to be like the Roman emperor Nero, who wanted to wipe out all Christians. When asked what history would say of him, he replied, “By the time I have finished with them, history would not be sure if they ever existed.”

    At least Nero counted on a literate world in future. For Sherriff, history did not count. Not long after, the unlearned boys crystallised Sherriff’s idea, and so Boko Haram was born. They said Western education is sin, or haram. Sherriff’s idea had taken root. The army of the ignorant had been unleashed. He was the philosopher as portent, the prophet of mayhem and disaster in the land.

    The young who could not read looked for family. Yusuf gave them. Those who had no roof over their heads, he gave shelter. Those who were hungry, he gave food. Those whose libido burned around their loins, he gave wives. He created an alternative society. He had formed a mini-theocracy, an army of the Almighty. It was a coalescence of the underclass. His crusading ardour paid off with Boko Haram.

    Sherriff had degraded Borno into a failed state. It failed because of many things. Principally it failed because he made himself into a feudalist in a democracy, and because he did not think his people deserved to be enlightened. Awolowo’s free education, a generation earlier, shed light on youth. Sherriff afflicted his people with moth-eaten minds.

    While Awo’s seed fattened the west with prosperity, Sherriff’s bred a colony of monsters with killings, rapes and rapines. His successor Kashim Shettima served as Zenith Bank’s general manager and posted the most transaction – of up to one billion naira a day – in any bank branch in the country. It was now the wasteland. A wasted mind gave us a wasteland.

    That gives us an irony. The same Shettima became governor, and recently named a primary school after Ali Modu Sherriff in Maiduguri. It was, also for irony, when he was inspecting the school that Fatimatu came along and Governor Shettima insisted to his commissioner of education that she must be admitted to the school. Fatimatu is now a Boko Haram orphan of hope.

    Who knows, from that seed of an hour, Shettima just planted an eternity of potential geniuses. Fatimatu can be a Marie Curie, the famed physicist, or Chimamanda, or Yaa Asantewa, or Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, or Benazir Bhutto or Margaret Ekpo. In the school, a Fatimatu would not want for breakfast, or a soap to wash her body, or a bed to sleep on or a notebook to solve a maths problem or stroke out a thoughtful essay or an electric light to study at night. She will not suffocate in a sweltering weather. She would not fear for VVF or assault from oversexed adults or a prospect of premature betrothal.  A boarding school with modern amenities will nurture, comfort and protect her.

    The kind of Borno State that Shettima is bequeathing is a state of renewal. In spite of the smouldering zeal of Boko Haram, the state is in its best ferment. It is now a state of a new adventure. It reminds one of Joseph Conrad’s graphic capture of England in its age of adventure. In his Heart of Darkness, he described the men as “hunters of gold, or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of the spark from the sacred fire.”

    Fatimatu was like the girl in Jim Crow America, who was guided to school in the 1960’s because American racism forbade anyone to illumine the black mind. In Fatimatu’s case, it is a culture epitomised by Sherriff and his fellow travellers on a Neanderthal boat.

    But unknown to him, men like Shettima had already been unfurled in Borno, and the same democracy we lament will ensure that girls like Fatimatu will bloom in season, and this is the season. And she will fulfil what Conrad wondered when he wrote, “What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! … the dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.”

    So, from the ebb, the Fatimatus will float to a great unknown. Even as Shettima is about to bow out, his successor, the tall, self-effacing work horse of a professor who sold firewood and drove taxi to fund his education, will take that task to the next step. Babagana Umara Zulum, the Marshal Plan Governor-elect, will now ensure that the Fatimatus will not be what Conrad calls “a lurid glare under the stars.”

    Sherriff represents all that is wrong in the north and Nigeria. Shettima lights up the antidote. The choice is ours. Emerson said, “There is properly no history, but the biography of great men.” Whose biography beckons us?

     

    For Omo-Agege

    The air is still frenetic in Abuja, especially now that the battle for the leadership of the Senate absorbs the nation. One of the positions taking prime spot is that of deputy senate president, and it looks good for Senator Ovie Omo-Agege. He should get it as the top person from the South-south. He has been around, and his recent victory at the Court of Appeal affirms his legitimacy. This caps a second victory, the first being his tiff with the Senate leadership under Bukola “Eleyinmi” Saraki over some rowdy men in the Senate, especially when they had no evidence against him. They were trying to blame a security lapse on a man who walked in at the same time.

    Senator Omo-Agege

    We need a Senate of responsible engagement with the presidency, not an adversarial one. The Saraki Senate has been an impulsive hawk, seeing enmity first before progress. It was fight for fight’s sake, and Omo-Agege has been a contrarian voice against that mind-set of instinctive pugilism. We don’t want doves for doves’ sake as lawmaker, but we want the people first.

  • Ajimobi and Tech-U

    First Technical University (Tech-U), Ibadan, Oyo State, is a visionary‘s idea. The institution’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ayobami Salami, acknowledged the innovative inspiration of Governor Abiola Ajimobi, who leaves office this month after two pacesetting terms.

    Salami said:  ”I must give credit to the Visitor to this university, His Excellency, Senator Abiola Ajimobi, who conceived the idea. I keep on saying that he’s the dreamer and visioner, I’m just the interpreter of that dream. When we started, not too many people gave us a chance. People thought it was not going to work. We came at a point when the economy wasn’t too good. People wondered and asked how we were going to pay salaries, get students and all.”

    The university’s story is a study in focus and self-belief.  Salami was appointed in May 2017. Three months later, the National Universities Commission (NUC) approved 15 programmes for the university. The university’s first set of students started their studies within six months after the NUC’s verification. Its first matriculation in January 2018 involved 190 students.   Courses available at Tech-U include Mechatronics Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Food Sciences and Technology, Cyber Security, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Physics with Electronics, Petroleum Engineering, Industrial Chemistry and Statistics.

    Obviously, the university’s courses have a 21st century character. Tech-U is designed to produce entrepreneurial techies.  French is compulsory for every student, which says something about the university’s international outlook. In addition, every student is required to take two skills in any field of artisanship along with any course of their choice, and must be certified in such skills before they graduate. This blend of academic, entrepreneurial and vocational education is expected to prepare the university’s graduates for the challenges of the 21st century.

     The university’s programmes show that it is on course concerning its orientation. Tech-U has demonstrated that it understands the meaning of specialisation.  This is a lesson in a country where specialised universities are known to have gotten off track.  Two years ago, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, said: “Some of these specialised institutions include universities such as Universities of Agriculture, Universities of Technologies, Universities of Medicine, amongst others. The Federal government has observed that these institutions have derailed from their statutory responsibilities, thereby running programmes that are antithetical to their mandates.”

    Adamu added: “The government notes the unfortunate situation where Universities of Agriculture offer programmes in Law, Management courses such as Accounting, Banking and Finance, Business Administration, among others. As if that was not enough, some institutions change the nomenclature of some of the courses to read, for instance, Banking Engineering, Accounting Technology, among other names. This is an aberration and should be stopped with immediate effect.”

    Deviation from specialisation has been attributed to funding challenges. On the issue of funding, Tech-U, according to Salami, has pioneered “a new model of tertiary institution entirely. This university is today the only self-sustaining public university in Nigeria.”

    Salami explained:  ”This is a university that was established from the word go to be self-sustaining; a public university with private-sector orientation. So with that, except the law is changed, I do not see any problem with that. Let me say clearly that this university is not running on government subvention. What government gave us is the take-off grant; apart from the take-off grant, we are supposed to really, you know, generate resources to actually forge ahead while the government takes care of infrastructural development and that’s what we have been doing in the last one year. We have been partnering with so many agencies and we have been running the university smoothly.”

    Governor Ajimobi had emphasised Tech-U’s public-private partnership model at an event last year:  ”The commitment of government is to provide resources for its takeoff; after this, you pay your bills. While government will honor its commitment in this regard, it is imperative that the university begins to look out for partnerships that would make it attain full financial autonomy as a self-sustaining university.”

    There is no doubt that the Tech-U model calls for creative thinking on the part of the institution’s management. It is a model that deserves to be emulated by tertiary institutions in the country that continue to cry about poor funding. Salami’s words: “We are supposed to solve problems and we can’t solve problems without having resources. We don’t depend solely on government subvention. Yes, government has a responsibility to support education but what we are saying is that we are not going the way of other public universities that rely solely on government. We are able to survive because we do not depend solely on government.”

    A particular arrangement highlights Tech-U’s internationalism. “We are focusing on the international – in terms of research, staff, content, faculty,” Salami said. “ To that effect, within the first one year, we have gone into collaborative arrangement with Texas Tech University, in America… we are signing ‘4 plus 1 X’ arrangement which allows our students to spend 4 years here if you have come for a 5-year programme. And once you can afford it, you spend the next one year in Texas Tech University and come back here to earn our degree and use that our degree to have automatic admission for master’s degree programme in Texas Tech in the U.S. This means that our curriculum (with what is going on in Texas) is comparable, and that means we can exchange our staff. We want to create an environment whereby our students can be here and get instructional materials from Texas Tech and then our staff will go into joint research partnership with the staff over there so that we look at the Nigerian environment and the challenges; and then we take advantage of the findings we have there to really deal with our local problem in the country.”

    Tech-U is for brilliant students, irrespective of their socio-economic context. Its scholarship basket, which attracts contributions from government and the private sector, had over half a billion naira in less than one year. “Those who ordinarily wouldn’t have seen the four walls of the university, even a public university, are now being brought to a university like this through scholarship and they are embracing it with both arms. They are very happy about it from the feedback we have,” Salami remarked.

    Governor Ajimobi’s Tech-U idea is the stuff of legacy. It should inspire forward-thinking governance.

  • Forest of thousand demons

    It is time to think about a penance for oil. A time to say sorry, and genuflect for the evil we have done to black gold. It was first the victim. Now, it is no longer just the black gold. It is now a god, a sort of wild, mighty and vengeful deity haunting us.

    It is not like the African ancestor, like Ogun or Oya, or some of the goddesses of the sea in African and ancient myths. Not Poseid on the ferocious Greek sea god who raked up storms and tossed martial ships. Our oil is a god that will not wait to be an ancestor before showing fangs.

    It is mocking with mordant joy our lack of fidelity to the federal idea. We decided to draw up the exclusive list in our grundnorm and made minerals a privilege of the centre. The power elite did not want oil for the Niger Delta owners. For rape mineral, oil, they dwarfed the rest.

    Oil was king, and it had to be beheaded. It was queen, it had to be raped. But no one knew it was a god. They killed it before they worshipped it. Oil also raped the budget. So, all other minerals were left. We scavenged black gold, even though we had the real gold in a number places in huge deposits, including in Osun State and the blood-gurgling effervescence of Zamfara. We had – and still have – bauxite, limestone, kaolin, silica sand, quartz, iron ore, red clay, bitumen, asbestos, marble, gemstone, glass, ball clay, etc. in every local government area.

    But we ravished the imitation of gold. Black man, black gold, black god. The black man in Nigeria plays black god to black gold. We punished the locals who embowelled it. Their farms, their pristine fishing waters, their trees, all defiled like the oil. The licensees and licensers were not local giants but greedy trespassers.

    No, the black gold was easy and they conquered it. They built corrupt empires of personal palaces, home and abroad, or rode in posh cars and corralled concubines or harangued harems. They left the Niger Delta poor and broken, of course not without local quislings.

    Now the god is angry. It has sent its curse all over the land. We are seeing it now in the north where the young are taking over the orgy of rape. It is the tale of two banditries or barbarians. The first banditry was stylised like a bejewelled beast. They asked the white man to come. The idea was hatched in ties and suits and babaringas and agbadas, et al. Officials sanctioned it with soldiers and police. Courts and government agencies anointed it. People went to school to fortify this. Churches and mosques sanctified it and blessed the carpet baggers. They spoke good English, flaunted outlandish accents. It is banditry as refinement and refinement as banditry.

    The other barbarians are howling or shrieking, or dressed in half-torn tops, their faces dripping with grubby perspiration, their biceps greasy with soot. Now, in Zamfara, and along the axis of bandits, we have a good number of them, running rampant. They mine as though entitled. It has taken the bandits for us to know that this thing called mineral wealth is rampant in the land. They say they serve god and brandish the holy book, but they serve gold more. All those who enjoyed the flamboyance of oil wealth cannot even travel without trepidation around the north.

    The bandits now are like the tenants of Fagunwa’s Forests of a thousand daemons. These are not daemons, though, but demons. They are operating from forests and the list of the forests is like an apparition. Kamuku, Kuyambana, Kagara, Gando, Fankama, Fete, Dumburum, et al. in other places, forests are an asset for wealth and glory. Here forests hoist blood and gore. They are ambushing the rich and powerful.

    If oil was left to locals in the spirit of true federalism, all the minerals would have enjoyed the same status. And state governments would have developed the minerals in their own way, enriching their peoples aplenty rather than leaving them to a federal government that only understood how to drill. In Plateau State alone, Governor Simon Lalong told of a man who earned more from mining the state than the state’s total revenue every month. Yet the president said the Nigerian structure is all right.

    When many called for restructuring, some thought they were immune in a state of injustice. They are now victims. Frankenstein monster. The foraging of minerals, especially in states like Zamfara and Niger, is only just beginning. The eruption of young men who could acquire jobs and run quiet families is also about to envelope us.

    The barbarians of refinement gave birth to the barbarians of savage revolt. It is a tale of barbarians versus barbarians. Who is worse? It is hard to say. The word barbarian has been bastardised over the ages.

    We may say they are barbarians. Attila the Hun did not see himself as barbarian, nor did the Norsemen or Magyars in Europe, nor did our ancestors who were displaced and defiled by the colonial overlords.  Nor were the Berbers of North Africa whose name was mangled. Definitions may accuse us, just as Nobel Laureate Coetzee showed in his novel “Waiting for the Barbarians,” where the barbarian is more ambiguous in the story of the locals versus colonialists. Or in Soyinka’s Madmen and Specialists.

    The best evangelists of restructuring are the bandits in the north. They are not wearing cassocks or wielding tesbiu. They are calling for it by banning the rich from taking ostrich rides on Abuja-Kaduna highway, by kidnapping the wealthy, by taxing farmers and rustling cattle, and ripping open the earth for minerals.

     

    El Rufai’s Napoleon complex

    Far be it from me to dabble into definitions of Malam El Rufai as a short man driven by fear. I will not denigrate his gubernatorial “briefness” as OBJ did in his book, My Watch, where he ran the man down with a rhetoric of contempt. I will not compare him to Oscar, the dwarf in Gunter Grass’ novel Tin Drum, who crashed everything in sight by screaming. A public desperado banging his shoes to gain attention.

    I met him the other day at Eko Hotel, and he called me a “journalistic terrorist.” I shot back and said he was a “gubernatorial terrorist.” And I am right. But first, a short history of betrayal. He is the serial genuflector, who knows how to bow and betray. First, it was Atiku Abubakar, who could do no wrong. Done with him, he swivelled to Obj on his knees. His “royal briefness” did same to Yar’Adua. His great mentor is now Buhari, who tolerates him like a worshipful pest. He said he retired four godfathers but is too cowardly to name them. He knows his claim is apocryphal. I don’t know of any godfather in Kaduna. We know of Kaduna mafia, but that was a metaphor for northern military oligarchy now expired.

    El Rufai
    El-Rufai

    He said he wanted men of the Bridge Club to amass cash to unseat Lagos godfather after a tendentious question from his fellow traveller Muiz Banire. He said he would encourage his folks to woo two million of the five million on the voter register who didn’t vote and win them over. Really? In Kaduna where he earned about one million votes, over 3.9 million persons were on the register, and over 1.5 million did not vote, more than his votes. How could he determine that if they voted, he could not be a former governor today?

    He spoke as though Lagosians are morons. There is a reason why they vote the way they do. Is Lagos not ahead of Kaduna in development, far and away? Other than bulldoze his foe’s houses and deploy statistics to divide Christians against Fulanis, he has not made glorious headlines. He was one of the few who quietly plotted to push his presidential candidacy when Buhari was ill. Here is a man who spent fewer times praying for his mentor when he was ill than he spent plotting to replace him. And did I not see him many a time at Bourdillon and Freedom House in Lagos where he paid obeisance to Tinubu, because he wanted something. Now, the same man who paved the way for a platform for him to be governor is now a sinner? He knelt under Buhari, who reached down to raise his hand. Buhari should watch out. Someone he is feeding might bite his fingers.

  • The trouble with sexuality

    For a week in April, a selected group of six journalists and five lawyers participated in the 2019 edition of the Bisi Alimi Foundation (BAF) Media and Justice Fellowship held at a hotel on Victoria Island, Lagos. The fellowship is in its third year. UK-based gay rights activist Alimi is Nigeria’s most visible homosexual, and BAF is a vehicle to “accelerate social acceptance of LGBT people in Nigeria.” LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

    A participant said: “The fellowship had sessions involving Bisi Alimi himself, who shared his story of being gay and HIV positive; and two lawyers – a British lawyer who talked about the struggles of being an LGBT person in the UK and a Sri Lankan lawyer who talked about how India decriminalised gay rights. It also examined how the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act in Nigeria was passed by former President Goodluck Jonathan as a political tool to satisfy the masses.”

    According to the foundation, “The Media and Justice Fellowship is an initiative designed to train and support Nigerian journalists to report on LGBT issues in a balanced and fair way.”  The organisation campaigns for “the rights and dignity of LGBT people in Nigeria.”

    BAF is faced with daunting challenges because LGBT people in Nigeria are viewed unfavourably.  The disapproving, if not hostile, reaction to LGBT people in Nigeria is symbolised by the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill 2013, signed into law by former President Goodluck Jonathan.  According to the law, which criminalised homosexuality, anyone in a same-sex marriage or union could face up to 14 years in prison. Also, it is illegal for anyone to operate or participate in gay clubs, societies and organisations, or to officiate, witness, abet or aid the solemnisation of same-sex marriage, which attracts a 10-year jail term. In addition, such gay partnerships concretised overseas are considered invalid in Nigeria.  The law states that “Only a marriage contract between a man and a woman shall be recognised in Nigeria.”

    Nigeria’s LGBT community has not known peace since the law came into effect. A report described what happened when the police raided a gay club:  ”In July 2017, at club Owode in Lagos, 70 men and boys were arrested by police. The area had been on alert after a spate of violence. According to Daniel Okoye, a paralegal helping LGBTQ people in Nigeria, the police saw the arrests as an easy way of extorting money. ”In the majority of these cases the police extort funds from them, knowing that any court case will out their sexuality,” says Okoye. “For most of them, their single wish is to pay and get out, and the police use it against them.”

    Blackmail, prejudice and persecution have forced members of the LGBT community to go underground, and even flee the country.  The point is that the anti-gay law hasn’t succeeded in preventing people of homosexual orientation from expressing their sexuality because they cannot behave otherwise. Central to the issue is the nature of homosexual desire in human beings. Is it biologically driven or socially acquired? Interestingly, there is reported evidence of homosexual behaviour in certain animals, including mammals, birds and fish. According to modern research, homosexuality relates to all sexual behaviour between animals of the same sex, that is to say, “copulation, genital stimulation, mating games and sexual display behaviour.” It is curious that there is a greater focus on males than females in this matter, for lesbians have relationships too.

    However, it is noteworthy that lesbians and gays are not the only victims of social intolerance in Nigeria. Bisexuals also suffer for their sexual orientation. A case in point is the experience of one Osaze Osayande, a Nigerian who was forced to leave the country because of his bisexuality. He was a member of a secret gay/bisexual group in Lagos. In December 2016, members of the group got information that the police had declared them wanted.  The following month, the police raided their rendezvous, the residence of one Samson Ndem. Osayande, who was living at Ndem’s place with some other members at the time, managed to escape arrest. He took refuge in the home of his cousin, who was also bisexual.

    At this point, Osayande experienced a higher level of stigmatisation. His parents disowned him, his family and friends rejected him. He became depressed.  He nearly lost his life in an incident; he was mobbed by antagonists because of his bisexuality. Then he took the decision to leave Nigeria in May 2017, for personal safety reasons. Lesbians, gays and bisexuals caught in the act attract mob justice in Nigeria. Two months after his exit, the police raided Ndem’s residence again and arrested several LGBT people.

    Osayande’s story shows that being LGBT is a huge burden in Nigeria. It is noteworthy that a 2017 survey indicated that the acceptance rate of lesbians, gays and bisexuals among Nigerians was on the rise. The survey, conducted by NOIPolls, an organisation for country specific polling services in West Africa, was commissioned by The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs), a non-profit organisation working to protect the rights of sexual minorities.

    The Social Perception Survey on Lesbian, Gays and Bisexual Rights report indicated a rise in family acceptance from 11 per cent in 2015 to 13 per cent in 2017. A 2015 survey conducted by NOIPolls had showed that a majority of adult Nigerians, 87 per cent, supported the anti-gay law. The 2013 survey had showed that 92 per cent supported the bill.

    According to NOIPoll’s 2017 findings, 39 per cent of Nigerians said LGBT people should be allowed to have access to public services, a 9 per cent increase from 30 per cent of respondents in 2015. The report highlighted the finding that 17 per cent of respondents answered in the affirmative when asked if they knew someone who was lesbian, gay or bisexual- a family member, friend, or someone within their locality. Participants in the survey were selected from the country’s six geo-political zones through a proportionate stratified random sample design. The survey method involved a random nationwide sampling of 2,000 respondents whose views were obtained through telephone interviews.

    In the final analysis, LGBT rights are still intensely controversial in the country, and LGBT people have no peace of mind. The trouble with sexuality in Nigeria is that the heterosexual imagination doesn’t accommodate the possibility of other orientations.

  • Waging the peace

    The young man up north is potentially a keg of gunpowder. And it is not his fault. The girl up north, on the other hand, is dangerous just because she is powerless.  The girl child harms by doing nothing just as the boy harms by doing everything.

    The girl does not go to school, does not fight on the streets, does not wield a gun, or even rail at a devious parent.  Yet, she marries before she falls in love; she weans a child before her womb is ready, understands rebellion but cannot read. She is the anti-hero who must watch and suffer tyranny and even dare to enjoy it. She is a victim by being the bait and bearer of suicide bombs.  She is an unwilling serpent; he a battering ram.

    The boy is testosterone. He is a vascular boil. His veins run fire and fury, even cold fire. He is angry and lets the world know it. The girl child recalibrates her rage into acts of obedience. She achieves a sort of loss of memory through work of obedience. Hers is a revolution of obedience. The young men are revolutionaries of rebellion. They hold the gun; they slash machetes in the air and through throats. They have no relationship with remorse.

    The north is witnessing a generation of angry young men. England had such a generation once, in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and they did not tear away into orgies of primitive slaughter. They were Promethean in nature, and they fought in words and turned the society into self-awareness. One of the writers who embodied that movement of angry young men was John Osborne, who wrote a scathing play called Look Back in Anger, set symbolically in the life of a couple who must implode because of what they knew about themselves and their pasts.

    In the north, the rage has a strange physiognomy. They have faith and murder on one side. On the other, they have mammon, or material greed. Also with murder. It is a rebellion of god and mammon, where both are demons in solidarity. While in the northeast, we see the use of religion as a platform for dissent, in Zamfara, it is gold. It is even a corruption of the fight for justice. It is like Mr Gould in Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, where a search for social justice is subverted in a banana republic style by some men who seem sold to the devil. Gould is a corruption of gold.

    So, the protest is half god, half goods. So, god and mammon become the canvas to overturn all that is spiritual and temporal. They do that by pillaging for the seductions of temporary delights. That is why some of the roads up north that used to be easy passages are now infested with kidnappers. Human beings of the high class now have to surrender some of their loot for freedom. Henry James in his great novel, The Portrait of a Lady, defines wealth as the ability to exercise freedom. The kidnappers abduct the rich so they can use it to gain freedom. It is a contradiction the goons can live with.  The flame is hotter than ever with bandits having their run, and the government triumphing more in rhetoric than on the ground.

    On the god side, they have changed the narrative of the Koran to fit their sense of history and their line to enlightenment. Peace is now violence. Submission is now subversion. Love is now hate, like in the scene in Romeo and Juliet where one of the love birds say, “my only love is my only hate.” Or in the words of Satan, once an archangel, forswears righteousness and proclaims, “all good to me is lost.”

    Those who want gold want it for themselves. It’s an age of talakawa awareness. But the danger of the approach so far by the Federal Government is that we think the answer to violence is violence. We have been spending billions on war, but we cannot gain peace by war. We can only gain it by love.

    Love is the scarce commodity in this narrative. Not love in the mere sentimental sense. It is love as work. The great example of that is actually going on in Borno State, where Governor Kashim Shettima has unleashed a great legacy of wooing the poor and disenfranchised. His weapon is education. Recently when Bill Gates visited Nigeria, he noted that education and health care are the pillars of development. Historian Tacitus noted this centuries ago.

    Shettima has been at work. He has done that especially well in the building of primary schools. A visit to some of them open the eyes to what a governor can do even with limited resources and, especially, in times of war. The schools occupy large expanse of land, each classroom is air-conditioned. They have boarding houses. The issue of boarding houses go straight to the heart of the crisis. The boarding facilities command the envy of even first-class universities anywhere. Some of the students, especially girls, are Boko Haram orphans. The boarding houses are not just for school time, but even on holiday periods. Since they have no parents, the child’s home is also the school.

    In one of the schools, the quote from Malala heralds you: “With a gun, you kill a terrorist. With education, you kill terrorism.” Just as Governor Shettima inspects one of the schools, a girl walks around, and the governor holds her. She is probably eight or nine. She is a Boko Haram orphan. Her name is Fatimatu. The governor calls the education commissioner and says the girl must be accommodated in one of the schools.

    “If the girl is not in school, very soon somebody will set her up for marriage,” lamented Shettima. That is the sort of danger the girl child faces. The schools are not all the governor has done. In a two-part series titled:Borno Diaries, I had recorded is transformative work in all sectors. Yet after spending about seven hours inspecting his doings over a year later, I saw an explosion of brand new work I did not include in my earlier instalment, including the schools named after Kingibe, Modu Sheriff, Buhari, Kachallah, etc. Massive models of learning.

    Is it the utility factory that produces everything from yarns to bags, to pipes? Or is the hospital that has the best diagnostic equipment for MRI in West Africa, and the biggest for breast cancer diagnostics? Or is it the green house that is setting the stage for disruptive agriculture? And Shettima was once a lecturer in agriculture.

    The schools are models for anywhere in the country, and each of them occupies thousands of pupils. They are fed in the schools. He even built a school for the Bororo Fulani. It met resistance initially, but now it is getting oversubscribed. The schools have a teaching technology called Kayan. It turns the teaching board into a sort of computer, and it helps the teacher convey knowledge. It is novel and ground-breaking.

    That is how to turn violence into opportunity. It is not by piling up a contractor’s dollars in a babaringa. Shettima is no doubt a star of his generation, and he has done this in defiance of a rage of young men. Shettima’s war is a revolution of peace. We have been spending billions on war, with tales of corruption and diversion of funds. Recently a video went virile of soldiers served rice without meat or fish. We buy aircraft and we multiply deaths. Knowledge is the game changer just as the movable type unfurled the industrial revolution, the Renaissance, Reformation, rise of cities, the burst of mass newspapers and ultimately the revolutions that began with the French. Knowledge brings trouble before it brings peace.

    The novelist of the absurd, Albert Camus, once wrote that “peace is the only war worth waging.” That is Shettima’s legacy.

     

    Lifeline for Chairman Chukwu

    It was not easy for me to see Christian Chukwu in a picture last week. He is reportedly ill. He is a Nigerian hero, and he brought pride and glory to his country and also his club Enugu Rangers in his prime. Such persons ought to be nurtured and preserved. It was cheering though that Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi rallied support for him

    Christian Chukwu

    and enabled Chukwu’s friends to render support. He also gave him a job in the management of the Rangers International just as Fashola did for best of them all, Haruna Ilerika. Efforts like that opened the way for Femi Otedola to donate $50,000 thousand to enable him travel abroad. We still need you, Chairman Chukwu, one of the most charismatic defenders we ever had and an all-round gentleman.

  • Citizen Zainab Aliyu

    Ecstasy that trailed the release of Nigerian student, Zainab Aliyu, arrested for drug related offence in Saudi Arabia, is perhaps, a mark of satisfaction with the responsiveness of the government to the plight of its citizen. This conclusion is given fillip by the additional disclosure that one Ibrahim Abubakar, arrested for similar drug-related offence was also given the nod to be released.

    It seems the first time in recent memory the government successfully got involved in high wire diplomacy that culminated in the freeing of two of its citizens facing capital punishment in foreign lands. The heightened euphoria over this seeming feat is to be understood irrespective of the attempt to trivialize it by some officials of the government scrambling to appropriate responsibility and credit for the release.

    The wrangling between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora over which of them should take responsibility for the freeing of Zainab, depicts all that is wrong with the way governmental affairs are conducted in this country . What makes sense is that the government acted swiftly to save two of its citizens that stood to be executed for offences they are innocent of. That is something to cheer especially given the tepid manner governments on these shores hitherto attended to issues of this nature.

    The successful outcome of diplomatic negotiations that saw to the freeing of the suspects is what should be of interest and not which agency of the government to take credit. But even as we concede credit to the government for the intervention, there are other equally potent issues thrown up by the circumstance of the two cases. We shall return to these shortly.

    What are the issues?  Zainab, a student of Maitama Sule University, Kano had travelled for the Lesser-Hajj in December 2018 in company of her mother and sister but was arrested in Saudi Arabia on arrival for drug-related offence. Story had it that a bag bearing her name tag was discovered to contain a banned drug even when she knew nothing about the illicit substance in it. The case of Ibrahim is still somewhat cloudy. When he travelled, how long he has been in detention and the circumstances of his arrest are not very clear. But we are told they bear similarities with that of Zainab.

    Rattled by the strange development, the father of Zainab was said to have petitioned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs protesting that his daughter knew nothing about the illicit drug. Based on the protest, investigations were conducted at the point of departure- Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano where it was discovered that a cartel that specialized in planting illegal drugs in the bags of unsuspecting travelers was behind it all.

    According to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mustapha Sulaiman, Investigations by the Nigerian authorities revealed that a “drug cartel in Nigeria packaged drugs in her baggage, which led to her arrest The culprits have since been arrested and will be facing the raw teeth of the law”.

    It was based on the circumstantial evidence exonerating Zainab that the matter was brought to the attention of President Buhari who promptly directed the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami to intervene in the case and similar ones. And in less than 48 hours of the president’s directive, Zainab and Ibrahim regained their freedom. The development is heart-warming even as it highlights the deft diplomatic efforts that had been on by the relevant ministry and agencies to secure the release of the innocent girl.

    From all indications, all the relevant paper works and consultations had been at advanced stage before the intervention of the president. That accounts for why just a few hours after the president’s directive to Malami to intervene, the effort yielded very quick results. This point is being stretched to underscore the needless efforts some officials have been making to appropriate credit for the release of the suspects. Curiously those striving to take credit for Zainab’s release have not been forthcoming on what and what they also did that saw to the freedom of Ibrahim. We are yet to be told whether drugs were also smuggled into his luggage and under what circumstance.

    All the same, it is heart-refreshing that the two have regained their freedom and saved from the hangman’s noose.  But for the intervention of the government, the story would have been quite different given that such infractions attract death penalty in that country. More seriously, their release has rekindled hope that the government is taking more than a passing interest in cases of its citizens incarcerated in foreign lands for one alleged offence or the other.

    A couple of weeks ago, about 25 Nigerians were listed to be facing drug related offences in the Saudi Arabia even as many others are serving jails terms in their prisons. Before that publication, a Nigerian lady was executed in that country in circumstances that nearly trigged off diplomatic row between the two countries. The circumstance of that killing prompted authorities of that country explaining that due process was followed before conviction and eventual execution. However, records have it that incident brought to eight the number of Nigerians executed in Saudi Arabia in the last three years.

    Both Zainab and Ibrahim may have suffered the same fate but for the intervention of the Nigerian government. If the government had not wadded in, the Saudi authorities would not have been availed of the entire circumstances of the cases. Thus, they would have been at liberty to apply the laws of their country as they relate to drug trafficking. And if that happened, it would have been wrong to blame them for having the laws of their country run their full course irrespective of our views on capital punishment.

    Even as we applaud the government for the quick intervention that saw to the release of the two suspects, it would appear the main focus was on Zainab probably because of the pressure mounted by her family. This writer has no idea of the family background of Zainab. But since we have been told she travelled with her mother and sister for the Lesser-Hajj, the very least we can make of it is that she is from a well placed family.

    A Nigerian family that could afford to sponsor three of their members to that religious obligation should be placed above average within the income ladder. That could perhaps, account for why the voice of Zainab’s father was heard. That could also be the reason the president’s attention was drawn to it and he acted very promptly.

    Had the reverse been the case, the little girl may have gone the way of those who have nobody to speak on their behalf. That is the uncanny irony. And there is everything to suspect that many innocent people may have been killed in that country and others for drug related offences they knew nothing about. It is hoped the government will henceforth begin to take more interest in such cases irrespective of whom the suspects are and where they come from.

    Many of us are hearing for the first time that there is a drug syndicate at airports that specializes in incriminating innocent travelers by inserting banned substances into their travelling bags. Why that piece of information is being brought to the public domain because of the instant case, remains largely curious. All the same, it is good a thing that they are coming up now. Who knows how many people have gone to jail or killed because of the devious activities of these criminals at the airports?

    But we need to go beyond that disclosure to explore the motive for the action of the cartel. There are two possibilities: they do so just to incriminate and punish innocent travelers. In this case, the cartel is portrayed as a bunch of sadists and evil men who derive pleasure by putting innocent people in harm’s way. That theory looks unbelievable. The other is that they export such substances for monetary gains. This appears more plausible. Then, it raises the issue of accomplices. There must be somebody there at the arrival point to collect the banned substance.

    So if members of the cartel have been arrested, their interrogators should go the whole hog and have them reveal their collaborators in Saudi Arabia. That is the way to prove very conclusively that the cartel exists and their motive is pecuniary gain. Such disclosures and subsequent arrests will give credibility to the existence of such cartels at our airports. They will make for better understanding of government’s position in instant case.

  • The castle

    IT is an emblem of what northern Nigeria is becoming. Kajuru, a few months ago, was alien to many people. But it has registered its name in blood and fear. We know it for its many predations, of herdsmen versus Christian neighbours, of vain recriminations, of government impotence. Machetes slash, guns blare and huts burn. In the aftermath, human flesh roasts like forbidden suya.

    It is a narrative where whodunit is not as important as who won? The answer is: My people, or your people. But all of them are supposed to be our people. That is, Nigerians, fellow Nigerians. Yet, what put the whole matter in telling potency was the recent tragedy in a castle.

    The Kajuru Castle is a tourist fascination, with its towers, medieval architecture of breath-taking archways and quaint rooms. It nestles on a rocky hill and offers a guest a view of its scenic efflorescence of gleaming pools and verdure. But last week, blood spilled and stained its ancient name, its warm air and memories, its rocks and pristine facades. Mooney Faye, a white woman who worked with an NGO as well as Matthew Ogwuche, were the two souls who fell from the brazen bullets of bandits.

    Yet, what happened in Kajuru Castle is not merely about the loss of a tourist potential, or the deaths of two precious lives. Our tears for them. It is not just another tale about the frigid air of unease enveloping a northern state now increasingly prostrate from the marauding goons. It is more about a changing north, about a class struggle, about the denial of the incremental meltdown of a feudal rampart, of the passing of the torch from the old guard. But to whom? It is a north that has to come to terms with the fortitude of a new and anarchical generation of young men who would not take no for an answer, and whose only voice for such insurgency is not in turenchi or the white man’s language of oppression, or even in Hausa or Fulfulde, or in the literature of familiar northern journalism, or in the radio that is the popular agency of mass communication.

    It is a new rally of a revolutionary hue, a cry of blood and guns and machete. It taps into the root of faith and history, and it gets there and distorts and it is happy for the mangling. It is not happy with memory and so it changes it and turns it into dark chapters that inspire the young.

    Its enemies are the present leaders of the north from the monarchs to the political class. If we say, Zamfara State has refused to chill, it is because there is a mordant rage against class. They want gold and they must have it. They are no longer content with the upper class taking away all the riches and making most of them al majiris and allowing them to age as mai guards and cooks and cleaners, et al. They saw their fathers die poor, their grandfathers fade as beggars. They want the castle.

    They want the soft comfort of its settee. They want the five wives around the pool, and their children not as girls of VVF but scholars from Harvard and Oxford, who will return to the luxuries of cars, designer clothes and shoes after landing the footloose perquisites of a government agency. Not al majiris who, bowl in hand, prowl the streets for today’s crumbs of life.

    Boko Haram is part of that narrative. The rash of abductions of the rich as well as the insecurities on the highways, they all point to a new and quiet rumble. They want their own castle. From Kano to Kaduna to Sokoto to Katsina to Maiduguri. As Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima often says, “if we don’t take care of them now, 10 years down the road they will take care of us. They are the Frankenstein monster that will consume all of us.”  Hence he has responded with a suite of schools and road and housing infrastructure to set the tone for a revival.

    The castle is a medieval signature. Not only in Africa but also in Europe and Asia, that ancient architecture is the symbol of oppression but also of alienation, of the cocky comfort of medieval lords.

    So, when the goons struck the castle, they might not have known the symbolic meaning of their barbarity. The north, for one, is now running short of the big men of feudal stature who held the talakawas captive. Since the Sardauna, the men have come in smaller packages, in the form of Shagaris, Umaru Dikkos, el Rufai, Yakassai,et al. We have never had any until the rise of Muhammadu Buhari, who seemed to embody the resurgence of charisma in the quintessence of the northern sheik. Buhari was hailed and worshipped for many years.

    The 2015 election was an affirmation of the 2011 drive of the northern poor for a man of absolute charisma. But Buhari became president and had the opportunity to turn around their lots. The last election while, for any other election, would have been a commanding showing, it became a sort of let-down by comparison. Places like Sokoto and Kano and Bauchi where he rode as though a monopoly, his numbers fell precipitously.

    His myth has diminished if he is still the reigning king. His charisma has been reined in. He has four years to undo that stature. But more significantly, the exit of Buhari in four years promises no northern successor of such commanding presence. So, there is not one, no force to pass on the torch. Feudalism never passes the torch. It collapses on its two knees.

    So, the north is at a crossroads. The young are now exposed to what the west has offered, an internet and a knowledge base that do not need a college certificate. They know the oppression and they are bursting in rebellion.

    They cannot articulate what they want. They can get everyone’s presence. Will they pull down the castle? They are anarchists, but cannot spell the word. They are the feisty version of the anarchist in Ivan Turgenev’s novel Father and Son, who was asked when he said all he wanted was to pull down the system: what would you replace it with? He said, let it come down first.

    Or are they in a futile zest like the character in Kafka’s The Castle, who wanted to get inside the castle but spent all his life trying  in vain to get in. He died trying. But these northern young men have no Kafkaesque self-restraint. They would, like the young men of the French revolution, take the Bastille.

    In northern Nigeria, they are taking it down one shooting, one kidnap,  one village at a time. The signs are writ large. And scary. 2023 will tell.

     

    An Elder and metaphor

    He calls himself an elder, but did not write as one. His first name is Solomon, but he showed none of those lofty things for which that wise man was known. He was made a SAN, and he was guilty of what lawyers call red herring. His is what is called logical red herring. Strange for a SAN because when Solomon, sorry Elder Solomon Asemota, replied my column, he ran out of bounds writing about what I did not address. I pointed out that he contradicted himself by saying that CAN should wait till court verdict before congratulating Buhari. At the same time, he congratulated Atiku by showing disdain for Buhari. His elders’ forum lost their soul by seeming impartial first and taking sides later. He failed as SAN in this rejoinder, and has failed as a senior advocate of the faith. He is just like the fellow from Benue, who wrote that I erred by saying that Benue and Plateau were neighbours. Do you have to share a border to be neighbours? Are we not neighbours with Ghana? do we share borders? And I said the two states come “together without a joint.” He does not understand figure of speech and yet he is spokesperson. Hence, he is peddling falsehood about a failing governor.

  • Legislating on burials

    Anambra State was in the news a couple of days back, but for a good reason. The state House of Assembly, worried by the high cost of burials and sundry cultural practices that impose serious financial hardship on the bereaved, just passed a bill to control expensive burial and funeral ceremonies.

    Titled: Anambra State Burial and Funeral Ceremony Activities Bill, the piece of legislation seeks to peg the cost of burials in the state by curtailing some of the practices that escalate financial burden on the bereaved. It also provides for monitoring and punishment of offenders.

    The new legislation which is said to be awaiting the assent of the state governor, pegged the duration of burials to one day. It stipulates that during burial ceremony, the family of the deceased shall provide entertainment to their kindred, relatives and other sympathizers at their own discretion, while banning the destruction of property, gunshots, praise singing, blocking of roads and streets.

    Other provisions of the law are that no person shall subject any relation of the deceased person to a mourning period more than one week from the date of the burial and that depositing of corpses in the morgue shall not exceed two months.

    The legislation, though well intended, is bound to be received with mixed feelings. Even as it seeks to tackle some of our cultural practices (both old and new) that have rendered the burial of the dead especially in the southern parts of the country a nightmare to many a family, it is still bound to be received with some reservations in some quarters. This is especially so given that aspects of what that piece of legislation seeks to regulate, hinges on our cultural practices and values.

    There is therefore bound to be issues on the extent the government can really go in making laws that impinge on some of our traditions and cultural practices without eroding the norms and precepts on which the foundation of our society was erected. Such a conflict of interest is bound to surface in the instant case. But that clash cannot substantially whittle down the overriding objective or the propelling factors that gave rise to that legislation.

    No doubt, the cost of burial ceremonies and associated activities especially in the south-eastern part of the country has for some time now, become a major issue of serious concern. Not only have such expenses become too prohibitive for people to bear, some of the cultural practices have also come into serious conflict with the realities of modern day life. In most cases, the bereaved have had to even sell landed properties or even borrow huge sums of money to meet up the huge expenses involved.

    Given the increasing conflict of these practices with the realities of life, it is little wonder that those who have had to bury their loved ones, have most often come out with sordid tales of the unbearable demands they faced in the hands of relatives, friends, religious and cultural organizations and motley of sympathizers. Definitely something would have to give way at some point, given the increasing inability of the bereaved to cope with the rising demands of burial ceremonies.

    Matters are not remedied by artificial display of affluence coloration which burials in that part of the country have come to assume. Sometimes, one begins to wonder what point is meant to be achieved by families and relations who roll out elaborate and expensive burial programs for people who could hardly afford two square meals a day while they lived. Yet, there abound other instances children and relatives of the dead who could ill afford to send them to good hospitals while they were sick, are compelled to borrow huge sums of money to satisfy the yawning and showy appetite of our people during burial ceremonies.

    It is good a thing Anambra State House of Assembly has been sufficiently worried by the increasing hardship and incontinences suffered by the bereaved that it is seeking a way out through the new legislation. That is the way it should be. In the view of the state House of Assembly, the new legislation will substantially reduce burial costs and other ancillary practices that impose serious inconveniences, some with life threatening consequences.

    That is the rationale behind confining all burial activities to one day, putting seal of two months for the deposition of corpses at the morgue and making it mandatory for bereaved families to entertain and serve their guests according to their capabilities. These will undoubtedly save cost and free the bereaved from menacing demands and manipulations of sundry groups and organizations that see burials as avenues to feed fat at the expense of the bereaved.

    The law is futuristic and visionary in banning the destruction of properties during burials as well as the blocking of roads and streets. But these are not the only cost components of burials which relatives of the deceased have to contend with. There are sundry fees, levies and demands emanating from social groups, cultural and religious associations that contribute to the high cost of the burials. There are also issues with the sewing of sundry uniforms by family members and groups, printing of brochures and other customized gift items.

    The inability of the new legislation to target these areas, expose the limits of such legislations in providing wholesale solutions to the complex issues involved in legislating on cultural matters. And that is where the new legislation is bound to run into troubled waters. The law went too far in banning all manner of gunshots and praise singing. While firing of symbolic gunshots can be regulated to avoid the dangers associated with it, outright ban encroaches substantially on some of our cultural practices.

    Utmost discretion ought to have been called into action in these areas. It also remains to be conjectured, what the law is meant to achieve by banning praise singing. Though some of these praise singers could constitute some nuisance to visitors, their nuisance value constitutes some of the attractions without which burial ceremonies will become dull and boring. There is no need banning them since patronage remains at the discretion of the individual.

    There is ample justification for restricting mourners especially widows and widowers to a mourning period of not more than one week. The old practice which entailed months or weeks of confinement and inactivity has become obsolete in the face of modern realities. Many of the bereaved are bread winners of their families. They have to go back to their places of work or businesses for them to take care of their immediate responsibilities. Confining them too long will amount to further punishment. Even then, those in gainful employment will not have the luxury of time for such confinements as they risk loss of their jobs. So it makes ample sense to do away with such confinements. Nothing bars those who wish to stay longer from doing so as it within their individual rights.

    More fundamentally, these measures will pale into insignificance if we do not address the attitudinal issues and dispositions of our people that propel and sustain ostentation both in our normal lives and at burials. That is the real challenge to contend with and the success of any legislation will bear very positive correlation with our ability and willingness to imbibe attitudes that conduce for modest living.

    Most of the ills of our society today including the complex web of insecurity that now hold the nation on the throat, stem in the main from wrong societal values that promote get-rich-quick and ostentatious living. Ironically, lavish burial rites and expensive spending during such events contribute to and reinforce such unwholesome societal tendencies.

    It will therefore entail serious and well thought out general reorientation programs to change the general attitude of our people to life generally. So much has gone wrong with the psyche of our people that legislation without moral suasion and positive attitudinal change may prove ineffectual in addressing some of these ills. The government, churches, traditional institutions and all socialization agencies have serious roles to play here. Overall, it is a contradiction of sorts to retain burial practices that tend to suffocate the living to death.