The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Recurring flood disasters

    Declaration by the federal government of flooding in four states as national disasters has again elevated to the fore the perennial problem of flood control and management on these shores.

    The Director-General of the National Emergency Management Agency NEMA, Mustapha Maihaja while declaring Kogi, Niger, Delta and Anambra states as national disasters at the behest of the government, also placed eight other states on the agency’s watch list. The measures followed warnings by the Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency that rivers Benue and Niger had almost reached levels that resulted in flooding in 2012.

    In the 2012 incident according to NEMA sources, flooding affected about 30 states with more than 300 deaths resulting in the displacement of more than two million people. NEMA said it has also inaugurated five emergency operation centres to facilitate prompt search and rescue services as well as humanitarian support in states worst hit by the scourge.

    The agency has also advised seven flood prone communities in the Ohaji/Egbema Local Government Area of Imo State to quit their homes to avert impending calamity. Head of the Imo/Anambra operations office of NEMA, Evans Ugoh said the order became necessary because the Orashi River and Oguta Lake had risen above their normal levels and that farmlands in the seven communities had been submerged by the over-flowing river.

    Barely two months back, a heavy down pour in Katsina State killed about 50 people destroying 500 houses with thousands of others displaced. These represent a hint of the more complex dimension of the ravages of flood throughout the length and breadth of the country. Flooding has become so endemic that no responsible government can afford to fold its arms while the scourge continues to wrought sorrow and awe on the very vulnerable segments of the population.

    It is thus noteworthy that NEMA took the very proactive steps of declaring flood menace in the worst affected states as national disasters. By placing eight others on its watch list and creating five emergency services operation centres for search and rescue, the agency has demonstrated its commitment to mitigate losses in both human and material capital that are often associated with flood menace in this country.

    And to give further fillip to ameliorating the hardship arising from such disasters, the federal government also released N3billion for emergency responses and in aid of victims. That should be something to cheer especially if the funds really get into the hands of those affected by the rampaging flood.

    Unfortunately, we live in a clime where the privileged few prey on any and every opportunity to provide succour to the less unfortunate ones in our society. Chances are therefore very high that if adequate measures are not taken, much of the funds may end up diverted to uses other than that for which they were released. When this happens, the overall objective for government’s intervention would not only be compromised but sabotaged.

    Our experiences with the diversion of relief materials and sabotaging of contracts designed to mitigate the sufferings of Internally Displaced Persons in the northeast ravaged by the Boko Haram insurgency should draw the point most poignantly closer. It is therefore not sufficient to release funds for the alleviation of the plights of victims of flood disasters. Concrete and foolproof measures must be put in place to stave off the propensity of abuse by rogue officials that often pander to the lure of their pockets. That way, the objective of the funds will neither be abused nor compromised.

    More fundamentally, these measures are essentially ad hoc responses with limited scope in providing lasting therapies to the menace of flooding. Though the major causes of flooding vary, much of the deadly flooding we have witnessed in this clime, arise when the rivers overflow their banks as we have in instant cases. The current flooding challenges are consequent upon our major rivers rising well above their normal levels and spilling over to neighbouring communities and farmlands.

    That is the situation with the four worst hit states and the eight others that are on NEMA watch list. The same is no less correct of the seven communities that have been asked to quit their homes in Imo State. Given the above, it is obvious that doling out huge sums of money for emergency responses and in aid of victims is at best, ad hoc in nature and incapable of providing lasting and permanent solutions to the perennial national flooding challenges.

    The measures are curative rather than preventive and therefore of limited value in permanently addressing the recurring challenges of flooding together with the attendant losses both in human and material capital. We cannot just sit by and wait for these disasters to happen only to dole out humongous sums of money for emergency responses and in aid of victims.

    The way to go is to earmark and deploy such monies to the construction of flood preventing structures. In this regard, we must embrace such international practices as the construction of Dikes and levees. These are flood control structures to fight river flooding and water surges. They restrain rivers during floods by providing artificial water channels that prevent runoffs from bursting floodplains.

    Since the current flooding challenges stem largely from river overflow, it is only rational that a more enduring way of averting a repeat of extant challenges, is to prevent them from happening. Failure in this regard will live us with the recurring decimal of constantly overwhelmed by the rampaging scourge. This will post a profile of a government incapable of providing lasting solutions to nagging national challenges.

    Aside these measures that are in the main, designed to check the overflow of our rivers, other control devices as reforestation, construction of dams and reservoirs have also proved very helpful in fighting the scourge of flooding. It is needless to emphasize the indispensability of effective planning in this regard.

    There is also the imperative of educating the citizenry and inculcating in them the culture of maintaining their environment by constantly clearing drainages and gutters especially before the rains set in. For, one major source of flooding especially in urban centres is the indiscriminate dumping of refuse in gutters, drainage channels and canals. Such ruinous attitudes must be drastically curtailed if we must find a handle to the perennial flooding in some of our urban centres.

    Here, the good example shown recently by officers and soldiers of the 14 Field Engineer Regiment, Onitsha in defying a heavy downpour to clear a 10-year old blocked erosion drainage system at Park Lane GRA cues in very aptly. Lt. Col. Mohammed Momoh who led the operation with over 40 NYSC members, captured the scene very succinctly when he said “it was a disaster management exercise to curb flood in Onitsha and its environs”.

    That is the way to go and we commend the military for that visionary intervention to stem the tide of flood in and around Onitsha. We commend this to other military formations, security agencies and corporate bodies as it represents a rare display of corporate responsibility.

  • Directed primaries

    It is the best of ideas. It is the worst of ideas. Whatever it becomes, depends on whether the best or the worst of us triumphs. I prefer the concept of direct primaries to what is now called the indirect primaries.

    The concept of the direct primary comes with all that we desire in a contest of unequal people, especially when we want the best. Contests don’t always give us the best, but they hand us a result, depending on who the judges are and what they like. Merit is not always king, even though we should covet it. The direct primary should give us merit – though it might not – , but it is the best option of popular persuasion. That is why it is the best of all options.

    The indirect primary is called the caucus option in the United States. In that case, a few well-organised persons or groups, or sometimes a mighty individual, stirs a select few to pick a candidate. Even in the United States, only a few states follow that option and they include Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, et al. Obama edged out Hillary because of his sway over the caucus system in some key states.  Here in Nigeria, the indirect primary holds on to the thesis that the delegates represent everyone, and they vote to represent the will of the majority of the party.

    It calls to mind the concept of indirect rule introduced by the British to characterise their system. History teachers have taught it for many years. But in my class at Ife, Professor Tunji Oloruntimehin blew it to shreds.  If you are at the top of the hierarchy, and you appoint those at the various levels to make decisions as agencies of your architecture of governance, does that make it an indirect rule? That will make a CEO an indirect boss of the cleaner. The British tried to purify themselves by differentiating their style from the French assimilation policy.

    The term was a dubious language of self-exculpation. The British did not want to take responsibility for their tyrannous follies. In the East, they appointed warrant chiefs who could do their biddings. They accepted the chiefs and kings around the country that did their biddings and flushed out those who did not. The phrase indirect rule calls to mind what philosophers, especially literary thinkers, called rhetoric of discourse. The French man Michell Foucault led the gang of those who warned of this linguistic treachery, especially in his classic work, Madness and Civilisation.

    Language is the source of strength, deception, ambition, failure, the rise and fall of civilisations. Some leaders have chosen words that healed a nation and ruined them. Churchill mobilised the English language to battle. Hitler turned the German into the blood and thunder of Jewish pogrom. The Roman Emperor Nero swept crowds of Christians into inferno. US President Roosevelt stirred the hopes of his country during the Second World War when he said the only thing they should fear was fear itself. Bill Clinton’s words, “I feel your pain,” turned the tide of his polls fortunes. Jonathan’s shoe comment revved up pathos of electoral finality.

    Indirect primary is the wrong use of language. When they say indirect, they are saying the majority of the people are voting indirectly through the few. It is one of the great deceptions of democracy. Just like when a people are asked to vote lawmakers who represent them in the parliament. The few become oligarchs. They come as refined, but they are like a bear in a beauty queen’s gown. In Nigeria, the indirect primary is often the diktat of one man. They sometimes swear them to oaths, and some of them bring it into a mystical realm, with broths and rites of juju coming into the fray. Where were the majority when the occult darkness was playing out? They should not be called indirect primaries but directed primaries.

    Not that the direct primary is altogether innocent. But it is less prone to individual manipulation. The one who will turn the majority vote will have to use more subtle vibes. The master in this age is Donald Trump. He has revived through the twitter handle the old ways of the political crowd. Political historians have argued that the death of the industrial age had cancelled the concept of political charisma. In those days, a man could mount the podium like Cicero, Hitler or even Churchill, and touch the popular breast with the blue flame of his rhetoric. With technology, television and radio, it was thought that the era was buried. Even Internet, with its capacity to demystify, worsened the prospect of the demagogue. But Trump tweeted himself into Neanderthal charm. Duterte, Erdogan, Orban, and even the provocateurs of BREXIT brought back the 19th century with its screaming crowds and lusts. We only hear the mute hollers on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. In those days, we had charisma in flesh and blood. Today, charisma is digital. The former yielded Hitler and Mussolini, the saw-dust Caesar. The digital one has given us Trump, et al. The crowd, whether online or offline, is the same through the ages, neither wise nor foolish, but subject to the impulses of a few powerful men.

    German political theorist Hannah Arendt said representation would not happen again after the Greek era when politicians spoke direct, without even the microphone filter, to crowds and achieved the closest to heart-to-heart connection.  Arendt, the author of the Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition, did not acknowledge that even the Greeks thrived on slavery and women lacked the franchise.

    In the so-called indirect primary, the strong man holds unquestioned sway. Imo State APC is a good example with Okorocha. In the direct primary, the strong man has to show extraordinary acumen and must flatter the secret hopes of the majority to prevail. The options are clear.

    The good news is that we have begun the conversation, and it augurs well for our battle against the strong man in our politics.

     

    Loss

    I lost her, forever. I remember the song from years ago, Sweet Mother. I hear it now, its haunting, undying notes. I just returned from vacation, and it is the sour taste of her death that overshadows me. Salome Omotemevo Omatseye, passed on at a young age of 75. She died because of medical negligence. Her state worsened suddenly even though she had complained of some pains a few months back. It turned out they had been treating her for something else. When it was detected as cancer it had metastasised and was irreversible. Even a medical hospital she was rushed to while I was away had no bed, and they treated her in a car. She was moved to another prominent hospital more interested in excuses to collect tons of money than treatment. She died in a third that found the same result charging less than a tenth of the second hospital. I don’t want to name a hospital because the practice is universal in the country. Remember Gani was misdiagnosed by the best hospital money can afford in Nigeria.

    Salome was not perfect, but she raised me. When I was in Government College, Ughelli she accompanied me every year from Ibadan to Orogun, her home village, and escaped death on her return in a fatal accident near Ore. At one time when I was ill, we arrived the old Bendel State at night in a squall of rain, and the roads were so bad, the transporter dropped us in the middle of nowhere. I can still hear the panic in her voice as we walked miles on marshy roads near midnight to find a village to pass the night. She feared I would expire that night. It was from her I learned the abc and 123 when she was a seamstress during the civil war.

    May the Lord bless her spirit!

  • Doomsday predictions

    Emerging predictions on the dire outcome of events after the 2019 elections in Nigeria are bound to ruffle sensibilities within government circles. We do not expect any less especially given the gloomy picture they portray on the economic and political health of the country.

    Three international bodies: the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research unit of The Economist magazine and HSBC, a multinational banking and financial services company had in their various reports painted frightening scenarios of the implications of re-electing President Mohammed Buhari in the coming national elections.

    The Economist appraised Buhari’s regime against his three-pronged campaign promises: to end the jihadist insurgency, diversify the economy and reduce corruption with the conclusion that the government has not been able to meet public expectations on them. In very specific terms, the magazine observed that though Buhari made some gains against the jihadists in his first few months in office, it has since been bogged down as soldiers patrol the roads but the insurgents still rule the countryside.

    The report also assessed the performance profile of the war against corruption with a verdict that voters are angry that Buhari “appears to have made slow progress in curbing corruption”.

    While the magazine was very emphatic that the 2019 elections will be a close contest between the ruling APC and PDP and it expects the PDP presidential candidate to win, HSBC came out provisional as it said Nigeria’s current economic struggles look set to continue if Buhari wins a second term in office. It is also noteworthy that though the magazine predicted victory for the opposition, it expects the “next administration to flounder against the same problems as the incumbent one”.

    The Nigerian government is yet to react to these reports. But the ruling party, the APC was quick to dismiss them as the handiwork of doomsday prophets. While urging Nigerians to disregard the reports, APC’s acting National Publicity Secretary, Yekini Nabena described them as the usual doomsday prophesies about the Nigerian nation which had proved false, deceptive and unreliable several times.

    He recalled it was predicted that the Nigerian federation would fail in 2015 resulting in some ethnic nationalities going their separate ways but “here we are; nearly four years after the doomsday prophesy, the Nigerian federation rather than collapse, is waxing stronger with President Buhari’s administration striving to unite the country and consolidate positively on the strength of our diversity”.

    The quick response of the APC is to be expected especially given the implications of the prediction on the electoral fortunes of the party. And with the 2019 around the corner, the effects of such predictions in swaying popular support cannot be underestimated. But they remain speculations that will have to contend with some other factors.

    The salient point here is that though the Economist predicted a slight margin of victory for the opposition, it was quick to add that that regime will still flounder under the same problems that buffeted the current one. That is the real issue to worry about. Again, even as HSBC was provisional on the swing of the 2019 electoral victory, it envisages the current economic struggles to continue if Buhari emerges victorious.

    The obvious deduction from the two positions is that Nigeria will not fare better either way. That is something to worry. Before now, such views have been expressed by not a few Nigerians. In his controversial open letter to Buhari not to run for the coming elections, former President Olusegun Obasanjo had thumbed down the two leading parties as incapable of providing the type of leadership that will lead the country aright.

    He had canvassed the idea of generational shift culminating in the emergence of a third force. For him, extant order denoted in the leadership of the two leading political parties has become stale and incapable of serving the collective future interests of the country. The solution lies in the emergence of a new corps of leadership, a group of patriotic and selfless Nigerians with the requisite skills and abiding commitment to re-inventing the country.

    But the consummation of that idea is yet to take real shape. This however, does not in any way whittle down the thesis of Obasanjo’s presentation. Rather, it is reinforced by the Economist and HSBC in their views on the future health of Nigerian economy if the election goes either way. That to me is the issue to contend with rather than the indecent haste with which the APC sought to dismiss the predictions.

    Even if we quarrel with their position on the direction of electoral victory, it is difficult to fault their verdicts on the war against the Boko Haram insurgency and corruption in our public life. They said Buhari made some progress in the fight against the Jihadist insurgency in the first few months of his regime and that progress has been bogged down. That is correct.

    Not only was the government unable to meet the ambitious deadline it set to conclude the war, its assessment of the overall progress has been at utter variance with facts on the ground. We had been told that the insurgents have been decimated and degraded such they can no longer muster the capacity to engage the military or military formations. There is also the narrative that they no longer occupy our territory and can only attack soft targets. Yet, we are beginning to witness another phase in the resilience and dexterity of the insurgents as they regularly engage our military with casualties on both sides.

    The rising capacity of the insurgents to confront the military as the national elections draw nearer, has miserably thrown up a complex web of theories reminiscent of what we had prior to the 2015 general elections. While some people in the north believed then that the Jonathan regime was behind the insurgency, there were widely held views that Boko Haram was nothing but political grievances masquerading under religious garb.

    Sadly, the undue politicization of the war is what has left us with the current pass. No doubt, the state of that war will count seriously in the unfolding electioneering campaigns. The signs are already in the public space. The question is, will Buhari again factor it into his campaign promise given the claim that the war had already been won? What this poser underscores is the inappropriateness in dismissing with a wave of the hand some of the conclusions of these foreign bodies.

    We can neither fault their conclusion that Buhari’s popularity has dipped nor the fact that he has made slow progress in curbing corruption. When some time ago the president received Catholic Bishops in audience, they told him clearly that the popularity with which he easily sailed into office had waned considerably. Even then, the spate of defections from the party, says much about the personality of the president irrespective of strident efforts by his media aides to shield him from the implosion.

    It is also difficult to dismiss their conclusion that “without collective resolve, it would prove impossible to bring permanent peace to large parts of the country hit variously by an Islamist insurgency in the north, ethno-nationalism and piracy in the oil producing regions, secessionism in Biafra region and disputes over land access across the centre of the country”.  At the centre of it all, is the vexed issue of an equitable federal order. But the collective resolve to address these nagging national questions cannot emerge with the discordant voices and equivocation of the government on restructuring.

    It is not enough to dismiss these predictions. Neither does it suffice that earlier prediction that Nigeria will be a failed state by 2015 has failed to materialize. That Nigeria is more divided and factionalized along ethnic, religious and other primordial cleavages now than ever before, is in sync with the prediction. The solution lies in initiating credible and reassuring measures to address these nagging questions to obviate the dynamics and verdict of self-fulfilling prophesy.

  • Clark’s house search

    It is not in doubt that the police conducted a search at the Abuja residence of elder statesman, Chief Edwin Clark. What seems to be in dispute is the source of the authorization for the search.

    Reports had it that a contingent of the Nigerian Police stormed the Abuja residence of Clark armed with a warrant to search his house. The policemen, who met the 91-year old statesman at home, were said to be acting on information that he stored a cache of arms and ammunition within the premises.

    The alleged arms were meant for Niger Delta militants who had recently threatened to resume attacks on oil facilities and installations. After the gruesome search that lasted over two hours, nothing incriminating was found in and around the premises.

    Expectedly, there were concerns regarding who authorized the search and the real motive for it. But the Inspector General of Police, IGP Idris Abubakar denied knowledge of the search. Apparently to demonstrate this, he asked for the arrest and detention of the policemen who conducted the search as well as their informant.

    The police authorities went further to parade the informant before the media to disabuse the minds of the public that there were hidden motives behind the search. This was apparently in reaction to raging views that the aim was to silence a critical opposition figure to the government. Clark has been at the apex leadership of ethnic nationalities stridently agitating for an equitable federal order.

    Clark is also of the opinion that the search was directly connected with his views which the authorities may not have found palatable and vowed that neither the search nor intimidation will stop him from speaking up on burning national issues. He raised sentiments when he said the humiliating search was because of where he comes from querying if elder statesmen of his age from the north could be subjected to such under the circumstance.

    Apparently because of the bungle which the search turned out to be, the police high command raised a high powered team to apologize to Clark. The parade of the alleged informant, one Ismail Yakubu, an indigene of the federal capital territory was also to demonstrate that the claim of the police that it was acting on information was not a ruse. The action of the police became compelling given their reference in their first statement to the vitality of information to crime detection and prevention.

    Since they relied heavily on the false information provided by Yakubu, it was only proper to parade him to underscore the point that they had genuine grounds for the search. This purpose appears to have been served by the parade. We have no reason to disbelieve that the man paraded actually provided the fake information that led to the search. It is also not in doubt that all the narratives are from the police.

    We are therefore left to believe or not, the account of the entire saga as provided by the police. It is possible insinuations that the search was on account of opposing views held by the elder statesman could hold water. All these are still matters of individual conjecture and perception.

    Beyond this however, there are issues in the narrative of the police that should not escape the searing eyes of any careful observer. Idris claimed he had no prior information before the search. We have no reason to disbelieve him. The steps he has taken to reassure Clark of no ill-motive, the arrest of the police officers involved and the parade of the alleged informant fit into confidence building measures. They have gone further to sack three of the policemen while their leader is facing disciplinary action that may culminate in dismissal.

    In spite of these, there subsist nagging questions that tend to cast some slur on all we are being made to believe. We require some explanation on the processes leading to the police applying for and obtaining a warrant to search someone’s premises. At what level of authority does the power to authorize such application rest especially in a very serious issue that could compromise national security? The answer to this poser is vital given the claim that the police officers who conducted the controversial search were acting on their own.

    This also brings to the fore the level of scrutiny informants’ accounts are subjected to before far-reaching decisions are taken based on such information. The hollowness evident in instant case underscores the level of incompetence that surrounds the deployment of raw information made available to the police. One would have expected that such information would have been very critically processed and analyzed before action is take on them especially on serious security matters.

    Yakubu’s account of the source of his misinformation is not only childish but stupid.  He claimed during his parade that a taxi driver told him that a sealed Toyota Hilux was conveying arms and ammunition into Asokoro, Abuja residence of the Niger Delta leader, Chief Clark. This prompted him to alert the IGP’s Special Tactical Force which conducted the search. If that was the information he gave the police and we are now left with the turn of events, then we are in a deep mess.

    It betrays the level of incompetence with which some of those entrusted with the security of this country carry out their duties. Little wonder the gruesome experience of our citizens in the hands of some of our security personnel. One would have expected the officers to process the information before action. And if in that process there are issues not clear to them, they have their superior officers to share them with.

    In this case, they did not. Neither did they follow subsisting procedure for obtaining a search warrant as we have been made to know by their superiors. Too bad! Even from the account of the informant, it is very clear to even a novice that his so-called information was a mere hearsay, if at all he heard anything from a phoney taxi driver. The story lacked substance. He said a taxi driver told him. A diligent police should have asked for that driver to corroborate the story. Nothing of such happened and they swallowed the concoctions of the so-called informant hook, line and sinker.

    Both the informant and those who acted on his misleading story are culpable. It is good the police have queried the senior officer that led the ill-fated operation and arraigned Yakubu for false information. But the police leadership cannot be exculpated from this national embarrassment. If a serious national security issue could be so bungled in this amateurish manner, then a lot of work is left to be done within that institution. It is possible the turn of events is because of Clark’s personality. The situation may have been entirely different if the same fate were to have befallen some other innocuous persons.

    But the rising tendency with which vocal opponents of the governments are being accused of criminality associated with arms supply and stockpiling is beginning to strike as a serious cause for worry. If it is not Dino Malaye being accused of supplying arms to criminal suspects, it is the senate president, Bukola Saraki allegedly being implicated by armed robbery suspects. Now, we are confronted with the hoax of Clark stockpiling arms and ammunition for distribution to militants.

    These speak volumes and seem to reinforce claims by those at the centre of these allegations that persecution for their political views is at the centre of it all. These views are increasingly gaining currency and have been reinforced by the fiasco that was the raid at Clark’s house. The Nigerian Police should have grown beyond the latest bungle.

  • Ruin of law

    Let’s not get it wrong. President Muhammadu Buhari did not blindside us with the rule of law discharge. From many comments, including the sapient intervention from Professor Wole Soyinka, the president emerged as though plotting a stealth outburst of cannonades on human rights.

    We don’t have to look to see that we have been bleeding inside our bones. We don’t need to expect another blow. In the words of a character in Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, we can “see it feelingly.” If it happens later, it is not because we needed an ominous reassurance of the coming reign of terror. Buhari is not a stealth bomber. He is a B-2 Bomber, telegraphing the doom ahead of its evil hour. If you don’t see, it is because you are not looking, or you are not hearing.

    When he remarked that the national interest superseded the rule of law, he was speaking from an instinct. He was echoing what he was already doing and what he understood by the rule of law. He was not asking anyone to agree or disagree. He was not throwing the matter open for debate. He was just making what he saw as a routine affirmation of tested truth.

    It was a written speech. So, it was no accidental discharge. His intellectually vacant attorney general must have seen that cave man’s justice in a presidential speech of the 21st century, and he let it go.

    The tested truth Buhari learned when he was in the army. The Nigerian Army, rooted in the old hierarchy of colonial logic, saw the state as the first estate. The state made the laws, and the laws were subject to the state. He served in the army cut out of the Prussian era of the 19th century. It was an army with a state and not a state with an army. The army saw itself as the creator of the state, and the state then created the laws. How could the national interest of such a state be subject to the rule of law when the rule of law was the baby of a cabal in power?

    Nor is Buhari alone. Our political elite is not innocent. The APC at the moment is in the grips of a philosophical crisis as to whether to adopt direct or indirect primaries. Our elite find it difficult to form a consensus on what values should undergird our laws. So, how could they agree on a law or set of rules? Laws for our leaders are not essentially about values, but interests. In such a scenario, rule of law, or the law of rules, will matter only to the extent that they fondle their interests.

    Buhari comes from two traditions that make such a contempt for the rule of law feel like a force of nature. Apart from the army, it is the feudal background. In such cases, it is easy to understand that he sees the supremacy of what he calls national interest as preceding the law. It has always been so in this country, even under our so-called democratic presidents. John Adams described the America as a nation of laws and not of men. His world view is the opposite, just like most of our political elite.

    Obj did that when he was president. Jonathan did so when he was president. Buhari is doing so now. They define national interest in their own rights.  They privatised the definition of the interest, and go ahead and act with force. They don’t see it as impunity but the anguished majesty of the law.

    In the case of Sambo Dasuki, whatever he has done wrong, is perceived as against the nation’s interest. If the law courts are disobeyed, it is because the law is foolish, and they who made the law are wiser.  If El Zak Zaki remains under lock and key, it is because John Locke’s concept of law and liberty make no sense except in the English or European provenance where the philosopher conceived it.

    We need to free our democracy for democracy’s sake. We have not understood the power of law over individuals, even if that individual is the president. That is what is still malignant in this democracy. The strong man edges out the small man because he contains the law. The law was made for the big man and not the big man for the law.

    History has recorded cases where the law was abandoned in democracies. One of such was during the Second World War in the United States. Under President Franklin Roosevelt, Japanese Americans were swept into camps because the United States was at war with Japan. But the Japanese were citizens like any other Caucasian. But Roosevelt saw it differently. The nation was largely quiet. It was a gross violation of individual liberty and the sovereignty of human rights. Today, the Caucasians conveniently lament that episode. The second was during the American Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln suspended the habeas corpus. Habeas corpus is a writ that requires a person who has been arrested to be brought before the court. Lincoln saw this as a luxury in war just as the fear in Roosevelt prompted him to intern the Japanese Americans.

    The difference between what Buhari is doing and what Lincoln did was that Honest Abe sought Congressional approval. Roosevelt invoked his executive order, and put over 110,000 persons in concentration camps.

    It shows that democracy is very fragile and one man can amass coercive powers and it could seem legitimate. In the 1960’s, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger called it “the imperial presidency,” but it dates back to the age of President Andrew Jackson, the role model of Trump in his fever of xenophobia and white supremacy.  Such powers are in vogue these days from Donald trump in the United States to Duterte in the Philippines. It is nothing new today, but it has taken over the psyche of desperate masses in what Yale professor David Runciman describes as “zombie electorate” in his new book, How Democracy Ends. Law is in danger of the mob today because a popular leader can suspend a law and the people will follow.

    This undearmines the purpose of the rule of law. On the surface, the argument is that the law belongs to the people, and if the majority agree with the suspension of a law or a roguish update of its meaning, then actions taken by the new interpretation are legal. Especially if you get judges to back you up. Clever dictators don’t undermine the law, they remake them. That is what is dangerous. From the preventive detention act of the first republic and in several African countries in the 1960’s to decree two. When Buhari said, “the press? I will tamper with it,” he found a law to justify it. Rule of law is great, but whose rule of law before we ruin it?

    Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, even apartheid had what you may call popular governments, and their laws, however savage, trumped all common-sense approaches. That is why some political philosophers have called for what is termed epistocracy, which is system based on knowledge. But who determines when the electorate is wise or foolish? John Stuart Mill believed in this, but modern democracies are not fuelled by logic but sentiment. Is it a death knell for democracy, or it is just a puff that will pass away? It is good to fight for the rule of law, but let us know the law first. As Thoreau said, “the law never made anyone a whit more just,”

    Our own democracy is looking more like a “dumbocracy” than an epistocracy, and in that sense we are no different from what is prevailing in the world. Poverty is playing a big role in this, and our politicians are exploiting this cynical feast.

     

     

    Lalong vs Dalung

    The names sound almost the same. They have two phonemes.  One starts with an L and the other with a D. In the second part of the name, they sound the same, except that one is spelt with an O and the other with a U. They hail from Plateau State, and they are both politicians. Both are as far apart as their names are close. The first is Simon Lalong, Plateau State Governor. The other is Solomon Dalung, sports minister.

    But it is Dalung that is long on foolishness. It beats me why Buhari has not fired this disgrace in the Federal Executive Council. This is the man who has disgraced Nigerian football, disdained the rule of law, flouted the codes of international soccer and FIFA and thrown soccer in chaos. As if that is not enough, he has the shameless boldness to speak on violence in Plateau, stoking the blame on his not-namesake.

    Quite a few days before the rise of violence, the state warned that some people were trying to revive violence for political reasons, and we saw the series of killings afterwards. What is Dalung doing in the centre stoking the flames in his own state by throwing rhetorical flames at Gov. Lalong? The violence ought to be handled by the Federal Government of which he is a part, and if politics is in the heart of it, he should be part of the solution. Shame indeed.

     

  • National interest and rule of law

    It is not for nothing that President Buhari’s attempt to subjugate the rule of law to national security interests has drawn the ire of many. There are two strands of the president’s postulation.

    The first is that,” the rule of law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest”. In the other, he claimed it is now a matter of judicial recognition that “where national security and public interest are threatened or there is a likelihood of their being threatened; the individual rights of those allegedly responsible must take a second place in favor of the greater good of the society”.

    Though a similar view by the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami had passed seemingly innocuously, the deluge of resentment to the president’s speech can be explained on three grounds. The first is his choice of venue for his message – the annual national conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). If there is any group that should be worried about the overall implications of that statement on the society and their profession, it is the lawyers.

    Indignation is also reinforced because the subject matter has direct bearing on the conduct of the president in his current office and could be a subterfuge for rationalizing some of the infractions on the rule of law for which his regime has been criticized. We may begin to witness crass abridgment of individual freedoms and personal liberty taking refuge under such nebulous concepts as nation’s security and national interest. When that happens, descent into dictatorship and arbitrariness would have become a fait accompli.

    It may be apposite to explicate the key concepts in the discussion to aid proper understanding. They are: rule of law, national interest and national security. The rule of law, popularized by A V Dicey is a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions, entities public and private including the state itself are subject and accountable to laws publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated.

    This further finds expression in the doctrine of separation of powers and its concomitant checks and balances. Baron Montesquieu and John Locke hinged this theory on the tendency of man to abuse powers. They argued for separation of powers and functions between the three arms of the government with each acting a check on the other. These thoughts find expression in the organization of modern governance framework.

    National interest is often referred to in French expression as raison d’état (reason of state). It denotes a country’s goals, aspirations and ambitions while national security refers to the ability of a country to protect itself from threats of violence and attacks- economic, political etc. Here, reason of state refers to the basis for the existence of the state. And the basis for the existence of states; their goals, aspirations and ambitions are usually codified in their constitutions.

    The constitution represents the supreme body of laws under which a state or government derives its powers and finds justification for existence. It does not permit of a government that operates outside the laws setting it up. Social contract account of the theory of state further amplifies this position. The convergence in the thoughts of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Rousseau is that men created government for the purpose of securing their pre-existing rights- that their rights come first and government is created to protect these rights.

    The key message of social contract theory is that of the supremacy of the people in statecraft, encouragement of the growth of democracy and deterrence to arbitrariness of power. How do these address the controversy raised by the president’s statement? And where do we locate sovereignty or who is the ultimate sovereign?

    These posers highlight the huge contradiction in the attempt by the president to subject the rule of law to the supremacy of national security interest. The primacy of the rule of law and the subjugation of all persons, institutions including the state to it is the lynchpin on which modern governance frameworks revolves. If conduct of the state is regulated by law, the same state cannot subject the supreme laws of the land to interpretations that suit its whims and caprices without destroying the very foundation for its legitimacy.

    In effect, the rule of law recognizes separation of powers, checks and balances and vests the interpretation of the law on the judiciary. It also accommodates national and security interests. If national and security interests were to override the rule of law, the power to interpret when they have been breached will ipso facto be that of the executive to determine.

    When that happens, we would be left with a scenario where the executive combines its powers with judicial functions. That would amount to abuse and arbitrary use of power and inconsistent with tenets of democratic engagement. The danger in this was aptly illustrated by Lord Acton when he warned “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…”

    Implicit in this is the incongruity in having the executive combine its spheres of power with judicial functions. There is the added risk of those in power displacing national or security interests with their self-serving interests. Faced with such situation, both the rule of law and national interest are compromised. It is true that some jurists consider national interest incompatible with the rule of law but as Antonino Trojaniello argued, “national interest and a state subject to the rule of law are not absolutely incompatible”.

    Admittedly in war situations and national emergencies, individual rights may be abridged. But those are exceptional situations dictated by the exigencies of the period. It is for the same reason that military regimes suspend national constitutions on taking over governance. Since such regimes do not lay claim to democracy, they quickly put aside the supreme laws of the land so as to have unfettered latitude for dictatorship. But not in a democracy!

    This brings us to the second strand of the president’s argument that where national security and public interest are threatened, the individual rights of those allegedly responsible must take a second place in favour of the greater good of the society. This sounds less contentious as it follows the normal course of events in democratic organizations. It accounts for why law enforcement agencies deprive some suspects their rights as guaranteed by law.

    The law allows that for a limited timeframe to enable the authorities bring such persons before the courts. The intent cannot be for indeterminate detention of suspects. Even in such instances, the final authority to determine when national and security interests should take precedence over and above individual rights and personal liberty is still the judiciary.

    The president’s position may have stemmed from mounting criticisms over the continued detention of former national security adviser, Sambo Dasuki and the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky who in spite of several court orders have remained in the custody of the executive apparently hiding under national security interest. But after years of incarceration, whatever infractions that impinged on national security for which their release is being defied should have been brought before courts of competent jurisdiction for adjudication and determination.

    This illustrates the dangers in allowing the kind of scenario Buhari is seeking to foist on the country.  As the national elections draw nearer, such disposition could become a ploy to hound opposition to further objectives of very partisan and self-serving hue. We shudder at its prospects.

  • One fell blow

    It was a sort of tempest in a dark place. Bellwether minister was angry, and he went out of his mould of quiet cunning, and came down on his target with the unsubtle severity of a cat. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) would not let a certain Sunday Oduntan get away with it.

    Fashola’s source of fury was a spokesman of a body the minister would not deal with because it had no place in law. It was The Association of Electricity Distribution of Nigeria. This was over a month ago, and it was a measure of the friction between the minister and the DISCOs, who distribute power to all of us in offices and homes.

    With his hair famously waving farewell to its dark sheen, he now looks more hoary than his age. It is a marker of his jobs, as three-in-one minister. But power is the most demanding, and the most public of his worries.

    Just as his job is a trinity, so the power sector. Yet of the generation, transmission and distribution, the area with the most challenge has been distribution. Ordinarily, we would expect it to be generation. But we generate more than we enjoy. So power is both tangible and in tangible. That is one of the drawbacks and most suffocating of the challenges.

    The problems go back to the Jonathan era when the investors of the power sector, especially the DISCOs rushed into investment. They did it with enthusiasm. They took loans. They set up companies. They joyed over a goldmine. With about N11 trillion in debt, they now see theirs is more of a landmine. Some of them have lost arm and legs. They have threatened to part with the investment. With arms and legs gone, how do you run even if you should? To paraphrase American novelist Ernest Hemmingway, they cannot be strong in broken places.

    It has been said over and over that the due diligence was not one of the jewels of the process of taking over the distribution arm by the DISCO owners. They have denied it and said they did it based on what was available. They physically and metaphorically leapt in the dark. The result is debts and their inability to pay.

    Yet one of the fundamental problems is that power is expensive, and DISCOs have seen that their ends cannot meet. Government agencies are owing  a whole lot, while the DISCOs are owing the NBET, or National Bulk Electricity Trading Company.

    They cannot win if fight is their option with the minister. The minister also knows that fight is  maliase when what is at stake is a big, lumbering fight against the prevalence of darkness. That means a nation at the nether of development. That means more unemployment, more frustration among youth and families, more militancy, more failure of state.

    One of the major  frustrations is the inability of the DISCOs to make ends meet. The federal agencies are owing a lot of money. Yet the DISCOs are owing the body that channels power to the 11 DISCOs, the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company (NBET).  Every day, every hour debts mount. Payment cannot catch up with the payload. They put that debt profile at N800 billion, but the minister says they are playing clever with the math. Yet the sum is staggering.

    Yet the more difficult part has been the question that has worried both minister and DISCOs, and that is how do we pay for power? Do the tariffs reflect the investment. The DISCOs and some analysts say, for every N80 invested, the consumer pays about N30. The shortfall is a burden on the DISCOs.

    This has been addressed by the proposals in the minister’s power sector recovery programme, or PSRP, that the federal executive council has approved but needs to implement with greater vigour. This sets out ways to help the power sector with metres, and also with cushioning the debt burdens of the DISCOs and pare the insolvency of the sector. But the Buhari Administration has to do more, and help the minister at the level of the federal executive council to implement the PSRP. The World Bank, IFC and even the African Development Bank have promised to furnish the sector with close to $ 5 billion dollars. They are waiting.

    Also at bottom is the chicken and egg conundrum. Are we ready to pay for power in Nigeria? Power is not cheap. Our people avidly buy so much data a day on frivolous calls on our cell phones. It costs as much to pay for power. It is also said that if the federal government puts the required funding in place and power is suppled regularly, will the poor pay? It is an uncharted territory. But the federal government and National Assembly have to help the minister.

    The DISCOs have not helped matters when they cherry pick who to supply power, leading to eruptions of protests of late. What is needed now is a robust dialogue that allows the bellwether minister enough leeway to make the foreign funding come in.

    The bellwether minister must be smacking his lips these days. He must also be besides himself with fury. These antipodal emotions are not altogether out of place, if you consider the fortunes of the power sector since he mounted the saddle of darkness.

    First, he met the power situation in a whirligig. DISCOS were dancing into a tailspin with complaints. Consumers wanted many things and seemed to get nothing. They wanted meters, and they had excuses. They cried out against excuses, and they had more excuses.

    Yet the minister has recorded success. Power sparked from a measly 3000 megawatts to an unprecedented 7000. It was not always there but it was mostly in that neighbourhood. This good news meant more supply.

    The NBET is owed too much. The DISCOs are owing too much just like the federal agencies. It shows that quite a lot of money is needed. The DISCOs have made their mistake. History of mistakes should be a source of rumination, not ruination. The minister’s heart is in the right place, but he needs a president that must take the matter as such. If we have a federal government that says power is the only thing it wants to do, it will solve education, infrastructure, jobs, et al with one fell blow.

    No government till date has showed more enthusiasm and methodical approach to power as the Buhari administration. Yet a lot has to happen and it involves creating  a meeting of minds.

  • When Nobel Prize winner Naipaul visited Nigeria

    The world woke up last Saturday to the news of the death of Trinidad-born British author, V.S. Naipaul. The Nobel Prize winner passed on at his London home at the age of 85. About 10 years ago, the controversial writer and his wife, Nadira were guests of the Chairman of the board of The Nation Newspaper, Mr. Wale Edun, where the Chairman of the editorial board of the newspaper had a rare interview with him. Excerpts from the rare encounter are reproduced below.

    ONCE in a rare while, a journalist comes upon a scoop, a delightfully subversive editorial idea, or a personage of earthquake proportions. Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul came to Nigeria in the form of a genius and SAM OMATSEYE, editorial board chairman of The Nation, engaged him for about an hour and a half. Naipaul, winner of the Booker Prize and Nobel Prize for literature among several others, is a treasure some critics have described as the greatest novelist in English writing today.

    This treasure arrived in a Mercedes Benz car in the broad verdantly lush and ornate Ikoyi residence of Wale Edun, former Lagos State Finance Commissioner and Chairman of the board of The Nation Newspaper. Treasures are rare, but few are laden with so much great narratives, pithy prose, range of vision, panoply of genres and, of course, controversy as V. S Naipaul.

    He alighted from the car into the mellow Ikoyi morning air, betraying some of the unkindness of age. The over 74-year-old, in a jacket – a T-shirt underneath – was helped out of the car by his wife, both of them exuding instant bonhomie as they walked with Edun and Omatseye, a few metres into Edun’s library that Naipaul, who has gulped many a tome, described as impressive.

    With tea, coffee, tables and the ambience of books, Omatseye set out to propound questions about his writings, his reason for visiting Nigeria, his views on African writers and writing, his poetics, his preliminary impressions of Nigeria, his Nobel prize, and of course his controversies. He raked up a few in this interview, not least the piece about Nigeria’s prose doyen, Chinua Achebe.

    His wife, Nadira, also chipped in some brilliant words during the conversation, showing her fervor for her husband’s activity. She sometimes evinced her awe about the writer’s accomplishments and genius. On Achebe, Naipaul made it clear prior to the questioning that if Achebe had made comments about him in the past, he had not. This interview is his first comment on Achebe’s writings. He tried to restrain his words, but his irrepressible instinct to express himself left out some comments that are published in this interview. But the Naipaul that emerges is a thinking, engaged mind, ever ready to spar, deploying the sparkles resources of a genius. Excerpts

     

    Sir, it is my pleasure to have this interview with you, could you tell us why you are here and your impression of Nigeria?

    Naipaul: I am here to see what I can find and have to write about for a chapter of a book I am writing about Africa. I am being selective about the countries. I am not going everywhere. I have already done a piece about Uganda, the first chapter, quite long. I’d like to do an equivalent thing about Nigeria. That requires finding material which should carry on from what I have done in Uganda and not repeat it.

    Is it fiction or non-fiction?

    Naipaul: It can’t be fiction. I just arrived. How can I make things up?

    Some people have had to research for novels and you have had to do that quite a bit. You travelled to the Congo and Asia…

    I went to Congo in 1975. I went for the simple reason it would be safe to go there. Let me go back a little bit. I came from a very small place, the island of Trinidad where I was born and spent my early life. It’s 1800 square miles, nothing to compare to Nigeria. I have always been fascinated by size. One of the first things I did when I left Trinidad was to make long journeys in the same country, and in those days it meant travelling from Paris to Barcelona. That was a pretty long journey. Later that ambition grew, and later I wanted to see big rivers and Congo was big river…. That is the start of that. And I went and did a piece for the New York Review of Books. You know if you are a writer and you are living by your writing, you need people to back what you do. That was an article… the material later resulted in A Bend in The River.

    And In a Free State

    Naipaul: In a Free State was much earlier. It was a book about a people without a place. A people losing their place, about placelessness. It was a very big subject to me at the time I began it in 1969. And it hadn’t been explored by other writers. And the idea of doing this sequence about people who had lost their place came to me and at the heart was a novel was about a place like Uganda, Rwanda, a little bit of Kenya. When the book fortunately won the Booker Prize in 1971, it was an early Booker. It was before the Booker became very commercial. In those days when the Booker began in 1969, it was to acknowledge those books that were of quality that had been overlooked. It was not meant to create commercial sellers. So, I crept in under that banner. I think the very fact that it was so ambitious in that way, with different pieces, with different countries adding up t the point about people without a place.

    It disadvantaged the book.

    Nadira: Yes, disadvantaged the book. So, we have now removed the preceding stories and we have now reintroduced the novel, In a Free State. It’s a very powerful book. The other stories, too.

    Yes, it is. There was the story about the tramp.

    Nadira: Yes.

    Now, the impression you have about Nigeria so far.

    Naipaul: You mustn’t go by what I say. What will happen is that I will think a lot more about what I’ve seen and reflect, and I will know more clearly in about a month or so while working on it.

    What are your preliminary impressions?

    Naipaul: It’s unlike other colonial places; that should be said. And an important thing is its size. Size matters. We see in the news about small countries. They don’t have proper leaders because in our global world, talents go away to bigger countries, to Harvard or places like that. They leave there to their home bases…the difference in size matters. It is as people say about, eh, you know Gulliver’s Travels?

    Yes

    Naipaul: When it began small and the grass is a particular height (Jonathan) Swift doesn’t make the grass smaller. So, size matters and increasingly this will become a problem for small places. Absence of talent, the diminution of talent, the training of talent and then goes away. I don’t think that will be your problem here. Nigeria is a big country and it should be treated by its people as a big country. It should not be treated like a village. It is hard sometimes not to do so. Like in India, many politicians sometimes treat India as though it is a village. So they miss the point about the country. That’s the main point about Nigeria. There is another important point, too, is that they (Nigerians) are a very urbane people.

    (Laughter)

    Nadira: Why do you laugh?

    Naipaul: Because he is very urbane

    I can say that for myself

    Naipaul: they have a wonderful sense of humour and urbanity is a marvelous quality to have as a people. It will see you through. The rest I don’t know the economics and things like that. These will come.

    What other countries are you visiting for this book?

    Naipaul: I’ve gone to Uganda, I spent six weeks there. I will spend a little less here. There are special reason for that. I want to go to Ghana, to go to the Ivory Coast. I wanted to check what has happened to Houphet Boigny’s capital, Yamasoukro. This is a man who has made up a religion for himself.  He built a palace with its rituals, he built a moat and filled it with crocodiles and turtles and he had them fed by a man with a long white gown from Morocco every afternoon. He also built great buildings and great roads. I also wanted to go to Senegal briefly. I went to Senegal though for a short time. I have forgotten the year now to consider the nature of their religion. But it was not interesting enough at the time to persevere with the theme and now something else has come up. I think I will go to Gabon (Libreville). After that I will go to the Congo, after that South Africa. I will also go to Swaziland. That’s my itinerary. It’s amazing how much of Africa I’ve been to. I went to Mozambique on which I wrote Half a Life.

    How long will all of these take?

    Naipaul: I am writing in between the segments of my travels. But I would like to give the publisher the book by the end of next year. The book will come out at 2010.

    Some people said you won the Nobel Price many years after you should have won it. Why do you think that was the case?

    Naipaul: Because there are lots of people who think I don’t write optimistically enough and there are a lot of people from the left who thought that for a modern world this was not the kind of writing. I never think like that. I tend to write what I see. And that early novel we talked about in 1969 (Miguel Street) and 1971, In a Free State, is about a colonial country considering the expatriate. You can write that today. Now you have to write from an African point of view, which will require another kind of angle. Many people require you go against what your eyes tell you. You outline a very terrible situation and the last paragraph you say yes there is hope. It (Nobel Prize) came much later than it should, but that’s good for me because it didn’t affect me. I think it might have affected me if it had come when I was 45.

    Wole Soyinka has been writing a lot of non-fiction after the Nobel Prize. Is there something about the prize that say it’s time to concentrate on non-fiction?

    Naipaul: I consider my non-fiction became a lot long time ago an important part of my work.  I think the idea has built up in the last hundred years that writing is writing fiction.  That means making up a narrative as though that’s the only type of writing. It’s only one kind of writing and I think it’s been overplayed now.  It’s now time for other sides of writing. There is philosophy, history, biography.  There are very important disciplines and important for us to understand the world in which we live. I began of course, wishing to write because I had a talent for it because it was what was presented to me as being a writer. But because of my background, my Trinidad background, a very small background.  I came to the end of my material very quickly. I couldn’t just repeat what I had done because I had the mind.  Because I had lived a long time in England and I had travelled and I had also been to India and places like that and Africa, I used the non-fiction form to ex myself, to extend my vision. It wasn’t means of short-changing the reader or the publisher. You asked at the beginning if I was going to write fiction about Nigerian and I had to say very quickly I had just arrived, how I could do it, because you write fiction about places you know very, very well. You know people and read people your way. To do non-fiction is not to do it lesser thing because every art, including literature, is dynamic. It develops, it changes. If it doesn’t do that, it’s dead. I’ll tell you this story. Wordsworth became the poet laureate of England for many years.  He was writing wonderful little poems, the lyrical ballads, little stories in verse. Beautiful, very beautiful. Somebody said you can’t do much with this these days. There is a young man called Dickens who is writing these other books. That’s what people want to read. Before Dickens them was Wordsworth, and before him there was restoration comedy.

    There was epic poem

    Naipaul: Exactly, and Shakespeare and Marlowe and all of that. So, it’s always moving on, I think what people should do is try to see what writers are arriving at after the novel. The novel has been around too long. Everybody writes the novel. There are schools to teach you how to write the novel. I can’t imagine Dickens going to such a school.  He did it out of his own brain.  What will be the new direction? Some people think there will be no new directions. Maybe biography or writing for the films. So, there are many possibilities.

    What are the limitations of the novel? You have grappled with the idea of stopping writing the novel.  You would say this is my last and then, here is another book?

    Nadira: This is the last book on Africa

    Naipaul: Yes, that is genuinely felt because every book is exhausting to write. One gives it so much.  One has to feel that after this there can be no more.

    What is the limitation of the novel?

    Naipaul: It’s all been done before.

    You didn’t have good thing to say about the following writers: Conrad, Flaubert

    Naipau: I had few good things to say about Flaubert.

    What of Joyce, Steadhal and Proust?

    Naipaul: They so are so the European civilization. It’s so much about social ambition in that setting. It can’t have no meaning for me I have never lived in that world.  Other people have lived in that world.  They can feel moved by it. They can be informed or entertained by it, but it is too far away for me.  I think Proust (The remembrance of things Past) is too self-indulgent for way it is written. It goes on and on.

    But you have good things to say about Dickens?

    Naipaul: Early Dickens. Dickens’ carefully exemplifies the difficult of the novel. He began in 1836 with the Pickwick Papers and before that he was a reporter and writing articles…. Everything is brand new and vigour and the freshness of vision.  That makes his work much memorable.  Then very quickly he becomes very tired, he begins to copy, he begins to parody himself. And that is what people are doing most of the time with the novel.  They read the novel and try to write one like that too. They don’t write one like that too.

    Just formalistic?

    Naipaul: Yes, yes

    I think with a certain amount of pain when I began reading Dombey and son…

    Nadira: Unreadable. And Hard Times too

    Naipaul: Yes

    Nadira: Hard Times is really bad. In fact the novel killed Dickens.

    Naipaul: That’s what I said. Dickens died early. He was killed by Dickensian novel.

    That’s suicide

    Nadira: He was worn out. He died very young

    He was 58 years old.

    Naipaul: Yes Nadira: He wrote such books as David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickelby and then he ran out of material.

     

    Some people said your condemnation of those books coincide with the View that modernism is dead, so what we have now is post-modernism. This means you have to dismantle the concept of the novel as you know it today.

    Naipaul: I don’t think that will work. They tried it. The French Rob Grier tried it. They began in the 50’s I reviewed an earl Rob Grier for The Statesman, in which I made a joke, one of the many jokes people hold against me. It’s a novel so called about a man making a journey to visit his former mistress and ends in the south of France. He is in this train, stopping, yanking doors. It would be of interest if no one had been on a train before. I don’t think there is any that says we must avoid the narrative. I think the art of fiction has done its work, terrific amount of work. But literature has to move on. I mean we should set aside narrative. Everything is narrative. Without narrative there is no writing. You can’t have a string at unrelated thoughts and ideas. They have to be connected to something one way. There is no new kind of novel, it’s all been done. If you go into the classical world, the Roman world, you know there are things like novels, which come down to us. They are pretty much like novels written today.

    Let us speak about African literature.

    Naipaul: I am not an expert. I’ll talk about it nonetheless.

    We have writers like Soyinka, Achebe, and Coetzee

    Naipaul: You are bringing South Africa.

    Do you think the continent has underachieved?

    Naipaul: I am not making any judgment of their writers. You might mention Nadine Gordimer as well. The thing about writing is that it happens when they have to happen. There is little point in trying to force them. When I was in Congo or Zaire it was called in 1975, Mobutu was trying to get a novel off the ground for a celebration in Lagos.

    It was Festac in 1977

    Naipaul: He said that why can’t we get one off? You know, novels are not written like that.

    The Soviets used to commission novels

    Naipaul: Exactly.

    Would you comment on individual writers like Achebe and Soyinka?

    Naipaul: (A long pause) I think Achebe should have done more. I think he had been too tempted by the American universities. He spent too much time away from Africa. He probably has good reasons for that. I don’t know the circumstances. I last saw him during the Biafran conflicts.

    That was a long time ago.

    Naipaul: I think I saw him in New York.

    He said your writings are not really true about Africa.

    Naipaul: I won’t fight anybody who says anything like that. I can’t do it. I do what I do. If it’s untrue. I am very sorry.

    Nadira: I like his Things Fall Apart. That is the book that put Achebe on the map. After that, there is no book. We celebrated that book. You should be very grateful, Africa. That book was recommended. We had to study it.

    Naipaul: But again, it was a book about the customs of a particular people. And he had all the customs, birth, marriage, and dance, everything else. So, in a way, he had exhausted his subject. Just like Indian writers who have come out in the last 20 years or so, have grown to feel that their subjects have to be their family history. If you have written your family history, you can go home and eat your rice and stew to your heart’s content.

    Somebody once wrote that there are three things to great writing: perception, observation and language. Some are good in language like Joyce, but not so much in observation. Where would you put yourself?

    Naipaul: Observation and language. I wouldn’t claim perception because what is there is there. Language is important. Language clarifies your thought because it tells you what you feel about everything. As said, I would be sure about what I feel about Nigeria when I am writing. That is the effect of language. It requires precision. I also like to award big words. I like to reduce important ideas into very small pieces, small words and that’s a great help in clarifying ideas.

    Talking about language and precision, yon have always been compared to Joseph Conrad in other areas. Would you comment on that, because I know that Joseph Conrad used a lot of big words? Conrad used big words and some critics have accused him of a lack of restraint in the way he wrote. But then you have had similar trajectories. He was from a small country, just like you. He went to England, just like you. He also went and wrote about the Congo and Asia, just like you.

    Naipaul: I’ll tell you how all of these things began. Conrad died in 1924. He died in the University of Kent. They asked me to write a long essay about Conrad, so I read as much as I could before writing the piece (1974). And that has encouraged this idea that I am related to Conrad. In fact, the essay I wrote was full of admiration but it said the trouble I had approaching Conrad because of what it talked about.

    Nadira: Lack of restraint

    Naipaul: Lack of restraint, the wordiness, until I had grown older. I think all these things are really admirable. If you read his first novel, if someone reads it…

    Almayer’s Folly Naipaul: Yes, you can begin to see what he is doing, you can be in to feel the weather, you begin to feel the river, see the colour, see it, and he doesn’t want to let anything go. And so, that matters a lot more to me now. When I was young, it was painful. As l said that, that is what l said and I told them about his virtues, his analysis of revolutionaries 1 since heard or learnt, I just hope it is not true that as at the time he wrote that (The Secret Agent), he had not met any revolutionary. (Laughter) he had made them up in his head, and there is a very beautiful thing he did. He did a criminal revolutionary, a very fad man who he called Michaelis

    Naipaul: He gave Michaelis a patroness. What is this aristocratic lady doing with this evil who wants to blow the world up? And he worked it out. He says, she behaves that there was too much a compound of the plutocracy in the social setting and a little bomb would blow it all away and possibly her unscathed. And so, he worked that out. And one of the things I also wrote about is his gift as a middle-aged man, writing in middle age, of summing up great truths like a middle-aged man. Not the way a young man can do it. Young men don’t have the experience. I quoted a lot of it, about five or six from different books. And the one that struck me at that time because there was a kind of crisis in my own life. ‘A man to whom love comes late not as the most precious of illusions, but as an enlightening and priceless misfortune.’

    Beautiful!

    Naipaul: Conrad at that age. He would have had his up and downs. He married a Simple woman, Jessie Conrad. Her father was a warehouse man. So the great writer, his private life had one rather low. But no matter. Something else happened to her. One day, she went out shopping in the winter. The place was so frozen, she slipped and damaged her back irretrievably and she became immense. She was this elegant figure.

    That was a favourite Conrad word, immense.

    Naipaul: (Laughter) He was landed with this very big cripple and he would pretend when they went out together for their holidays or something that he had nothing to do with her (laughter)

    Naipaul: And his children, two boys, did nothing.

    The idea of priceless misfortune. That is a beautiful one

    Naipaul: Enlightening. Priceless misfortune, enlightening. To describe an affair of the heart like that, it is marvelous. No other writer has done that before in the world.

    In fact, when he was writing, in his introduction to The Secret Agent, he also reflected on how difficult it was for him. He said it was like moving from a forest into a plain. He said there is a lot of light but there is not much to see.

    Naipaul: And that led him to an act of plagiarism actually. A very early piece of writing he did. The second story he wrote. The first was called an “An Outpost of Progress” which remains a classic. A little bit overdone at the end but a classic. And then, he wrote something that tormented him called The Return. He set it in England, in London. And the story is like this: a man comes home from the railway station one day…But in that description of people getting off the train, he has inched something from Flaubert. Flaubert is writing something about the French aristocracy in the country who how an easy dominion over animals and women. And something else among the furniture… Conrad lifted that and put it in English in The Return.

    Naipaul: So that was the one thing I spotted and wrote a little piece about it in the New York Review of Books

    Conrad fascinated me at one time in my life. I read nothing but Conrad. I had to really cut myself away from him…

    Naipaul: Yes, you have to look after yourself.

    Alright, thank you very much, sir

    Naipaul: Thank you. You asked very wonderful questions. It’s been very stimulating for me.

  • The monsters we create

    Those conversant with the outcome of last week’s security meeting between President Buhari and service chiefs, would have been struck by emerging narratives on the country’s security situation

    Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali who briefed journalists after the meeting said they noted a lot of improvement in the security situation in the country more especially in “Zamfara and Benue and in Niger Delta”. In the Northeast, he said “we are having worrisome report, we have looked into it critically and we have taken absolute decision”.

    The disclosure came as a mixed-grill of hope and disappointment. Hope because killings by herdsmen in Benue and other parts of the Middle Belt had for long appeared insoluble. Not only was the nation’s security found grossly wanting in stemming the tide of mindless killings and destruction of properties, their inaction had conferred on the killer herdsmen the miserable toga of invincibility.

    Native farmers and villagers were left to bear the brunt of the mindless killings and despoliation of communities by very heartless and animalistic insurgents masquerading as herdsmen. The situation was not helped by views held in government circles regarding the causes of the conflicts and dramatis personae behind the killings. We were treated to such puerile and trite tales as the killer herdsmen are foreigners from ECOWAS countries to the ridiculous rationalization that armed militias trained by late Gadaffi are to blame for the escalating killings.

    With such official mindset and seeming inexplicable helplessness by our security agencies, it was not surprising that accusation of complicity on the part of the government had since gained considerable traction. It is therefore heart-refreshing that there is now a lot of improvement in the security situation in Benue State in particular. The emphasis on Benue is instructive given that the overall dimension of the security challenges of that state are substantially different from events in Zamfara and Niger Delta.

    But it remains curious why it is only in Benue among states of the Middle Belt faced with the insurgency of herdsmen that substantial improvement has reportedly been recorded. We needed to be told the situation in Plateau and Taraba states that have also been at the receiving end of the same mindless killing index.

    Perhaps, corroborative of the disclosure by Dan-Ali was the report of the killing of 15 armed herdsmen along Gbagimba-Akor-Tomatar axis of Guma Local Government Area that had in the past, been the unmistakable theatre of the mindless slaughtering of humans in Benue State. Force Commander, Operation Whirl Stroke, Major General Adeyemi Yekini said the armed herdsmen were neutralized with rocket fire from a Mi35 helicopter while fleeing in motorcycles towards neighboring Nassarawa State. We also hear the deployment of air power contributed to the flushing out of armed militias and bandits from Zamfara forests.

    This would seem a new strategy in the fight against insurgency of herdsmen rated by Global Terrorism Index as the fourth most deadly terrorist group in the world. Had this collaborative strategy been called to action all this while, we would have been saved the orgy of mindless killings that had in no small measure, ruffled the fragile peace of the country. All the same, it is better late than the late. It is only hoped whatever strategy that led to security improvement in these states should be sustained and reinforced to neutralize all vestiges of insecurity in Benue, Plateau and Nassarawa states and indeed all flashpoints of insecurity across the country.

    If the story from Benue, Zamfara and Niger Delta came with hope, that of the Northeast strikes as a weird contradiction. This is perhaps, the first time in more than three years the government has come out to admit handicap in confronting the Boko Haram insurgency. President Buhari had set December 2015 to consign the insurgency in that region to the dustbin of history. When that deadline approached, he was quick to announce to the expectant world that Boko Haram had been technically defeated and that the war had indeed, been won.

    When events appeared proving wrong that claim with the insurgents’ continued onslaughts, the narrative suddenly changed. Then, we were assailed with such stories as: the insurgents no longer occupied any of the country’s territories; their capacity to attack military formations or engage the military in armed confrontation had been demobilized and severely degraded, they can only attack soft targets and similar escapist rationalizations.

    But the reality on the ground is that though the military had made substantial sacrifice and progress in the fight against the herculean asymmetrical warfare, the government had been dishing out exaggerated information on the state of that war. The exact state of the war thus became a victim of disinformation, misinformation and outright suppression of extant information. With inability of the media to access the theatres of the war, we were left with whatever information the government considered fit for public consumption.

    Little wonder major confrontations between the insurgents and our security forces were either played down or totally blocked from public view save when some foreign media organizations stumbled on such information. But there have been many of such confrontations involving the insurgents and our security forces with the former inflicting collateral damage on the military and civilian populations as well.

    A couple of weeks ago, the insurgents attacked a military camp in Yobe State taking newly deployed soldiers unawares. Reports on the level of causalities are still within the realm of speculation. Before then, they had ambushed and attacked our soldiers along some routes. The list of such confrontations is endless, but underscores poignantly the fact that the capacity of the insurgents to confront military and civilian populations and wreak havoc had never been in doubt. Yet, the war was won nearly three years ago.

    There was also the Dapchi abduction of over a hundred school girls. Though that singular incident was marred in controversy, it nonetheless demonstrated very unambiguously that Boko Haram still occupies our territorial space and still possesses the capacity for collateral damage. Government’s reluctance to admit the reality of the continuing war is not hard to figure out.

    It hinged substantially on political rhetoric of the Boko Haram war before the current regime assumed power. There was so much propaganda and politicization of the war especially by politicians of northern extraction that it was nigh impossible to secure national consensus on its direction and execution. Those who sought to make political capital of it read sinister meanings in any and every step taken to fight the insurgents.

    A classic case was former governor of Adamawa State, Muritala Nyako who in his controversial letter to northern governors alleged that Boko Haram was a contrivance by the Jonathan regime to depopulate the north. Though he also bandied other tendentious, inflammatory and vile allegations on the war, none of his colleagues was known to have called him to order. This contributed largely to complications in executing the war and the eventual electoral misfortune of Jonathan.

    It was no mere coincidence that as soon as Buhari came on board, he hurriedly set a short deadline for concluding the war to ostensibly prove the touted incompetence and bias of Jonathan in that regard. But all that have since proved a tall order, an exercise in wishful thinking. Not surprisingly, the yawning gap between this promise and its fulfillment has been at the centre of the changing narratives on the state of war against Boko Haram.

    It has been a typical case of the monsters we created turning round to haunt us. All the same, it is good we have come to admit three years after; the security situation in the Northeast is still worrisome. Next time around, political chicanery should be exorcised from trying national security challenges to aid quick building of national consensus that is a sine qua non for collective success. The war in the Northeast should serve as a veritable thought for food to our leaders.

     

  • Birds of praise

    I like to think we are in a dream, and waking is not permitted. For barely a month, I have hardly heard of a herdsman rampage. Or is it that no dying man is crying, no daggers flying, no widows have found funeral clothes, or are the predators acting by stealth?

    No Miyetti Allah caper. No smokes signalling a barbarian bonfire in a remote hamlet. Or are we witnessing a recess, a holiday from the familiar rhythms of slaughter? I like to know. We have not seen what in proper conflict is called an armistice, an agreement to lay down arms, to renegotiate brotherhood.

    We hear of a skirmish here and there. But even journalists, now immune to fire and fury, will admit to a lack of primitive excitement to write about. Such little fights are called low-intensity conflict. I heard this phrase for the first time in a literature class at the University of Toronto, and the professor said it referred to fights of relatively fewer casualties. I asked further, is it low-intensity conflict to the families whose hamlet is washed into oblivion? He chuckled and said it would be their holocaust. I also wondered when a history class at Ife was designated the “far east.” Is it far to those who live there? Many Nigerian families have witnessed private holocausts.

    Such designation was condemned by French philosopher Michel Foucault, who wondered why humans use language to oppress others. Yet, we cannot but say that even in Zamfara, the conflict is no longer high-intensity. Taraba, Benue, Nasarawa, Adamawa, Plateau et al. This is a bout of good fortune, it seems. If it is an armistice, let’s keep all arms at ease.

    It is clear though that no negotiation happened. No summit cooled the landscape. It was the power of arms. It is hard to simplify why a horde of barbarians go down in silence. But it is easy to say, we have used a modern-day answer to the human beast: the air force. The answer is a massive machine from the Russian deadly bouquet: it is called Mi 35.

    We have had this when many were crying for he federal government to stop the killings. We had this when they rammed into Benue and led to a mass burial and a venal outcry. We had it when Mambila wept. It was a quiet monster when Zamfara governor symbolically dropped his position as chief security officer. When Plateau crawled with blood. We had it as IDP camps swirled. We did nothing. We had it when the police chief disobeyed the president and got away with it, or when the president asked his visitors to abide with its neighbours.

    We had it when we were complaining about the failure of intelligence when Daura was more interested in settling political scores. Edmund Burke, an arch philosopher of conservatism who resisted the French Revolution, shunned inaction and said “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

    Even conservatives want change, if it brings peace. The government did nothing. It dithered. But Buhari started to deploy the Russian air machine, the landscape of horror fell silent. The landscape, with its trees and bare stretches, with ponds and huts and rolling and undulating menaces, were tapestries of swagger for the so-called herdsman. Now, they can hardly ride on their motorcycles because of a bird of prey. The military aircraft is the metaphor for the bird of prey. It is the greatest fighting machine in the modern era. The so-called marauder, or what we call herdsman, has no answer to them. No matter what AK 47 they wield or if they run like a rat, they cannot escape the revanchist rat-tat-tat of the gunship. The Mi 35 is one of the world deadliest war helicopters. Not as nimble as the American Apache, but the Mi 35 is an upgrade of the  forbear, the Mi 24, and Russian soldiers call it the flying tank, or the crocodile because of its camouflage quality. If the killer squads want to attack either under the benevolent light of day or the night blanket, the Mi 35 has eyes like the owl and swoop into play. Like the eagle that kills even the earthbound predator like the cheetah, the Mi 35 sees the Nigerian killer squad as mincemeat. Like the Ted Hughes’ poem Hawk Roosting, the M1 35 can boast like the hawk that “I kill where I please because all is mine/there is no sophistry in my body.” It is equipped to vanquish army tanks and formations. If a horde of two hundred killers on motorcycles or on foot go after a village, it is little pickings for the machine. As a proverb says, “an eagle does not catch flies.”

    The aircraft does not romanticise its missions. Like Hughes’ hawk, it does not spare. It has precision capacity to kill a single foe or pulverise a squad with its unrelenting cannonade. As the writer James Richardson noted, “birds of prey don’t sing.” Rather they sting.  The Mi 35 is meant for bigger conflict than what has ruffled the polity for over a year now. The helicopter can take off from anywhere in the north or middle belt and its speed is over 300 miles per hour. What marauder can match that on foot, in a van or motorcycle?

    That is why governance is not only about taking the right decision, but also about taking them on time. We would have saved so many lives if we had acted on time, rather than allow the defence minister, in his tendentious ignorance, to argue over trade routes, or Audu Ogbeh to snort over what we have not done for the herdsman, or Buhari bellyaching over the neighbours accommodating each other.

    The machines have come to our rescue because we have decided to use what we have. They are no longer our birds of prey. They are doing well, so we can call them birds of praise. This column had earlier suggested that if these hoodlums were hiding in the forests, the aircraft could wipe them out with ruthless sorties.

    But it is not enough. What we need now is to use intelligence to pick them out, and make them face the full intention of the law. Without that, we have done nothing. They will seek other ways to revive their barbaric schemes, an antediluvian renaissance of the blood. An armistice does not guarantee everlasting peace.

    I said in this column that the goons are no spirit. We just decided not to see.  We who were blind seem now to see. If Buhari was able to take that action and send his generals to battle, he should learn that a stitch in time saves nine. So many wounds to stitch still. But do we know how many lives we have saved in the past few weeks, thanks to the Russian gunship?

    It is no time for complacency, but vigilance. Whether Buhari can sustain the dividends of peace, we shall know. For now, his critics have little say. It is up to him whether to arm his critics or harm the predators.