The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Adamu’s twisted argument

    Abdullahi Adamu, chairman of Northern Senators’ Forum obviously played to the gallery when he told his audience why the 2014 recommendations of the National Conference cannot be implemented by the Buhari administration.

    Toeing the line of those who had sought to disparage the report on spurious and self-serving grounds, Adamu said it would be unfair to expect the president to implement the recommendations of a conference convened by the former administration when he was not privy to its underlying philosophy and primary objectives. Hear him, “You cannot compel the president to implement a report he is not part of”.

    He further boasted that those who put their thrust in the report have not even read it even as he claimed the report has nothing radical to offer the country as it does not provide the solution to a restructured Nigeria. Abdullahi who expects the forum to discuss restructuring also queried the legitimacy of the conference in keeping with extant laws of the country.

    He was apparently reacting to resolutions of southern senators who after their recent retreat, urged President Buhari to as a matter of urgency summon a conference to consider the report of the 2014 National Conference. In the communiqué after the meeting, they urged President Buhari to convoke a meeting of the National Assembly leadership, governors and the leadership of the state Houses of Assembly to a brainstorming session to commence implementation of that conference report.

    My reading of the southern senators resolution is a passionate appeal to the president to provide the lead by driving the process to review the recommendations of that conference with a view to adopting salient aspects as may be agreed upon by all the parties to the discussion. It is a patriotic call for a quick commencement of discussions that will culminate in the restructuring of the country using the recommendations of that conference as a working document.

    And in this review, the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly will have the crucial role of determining which items in the report should be given the final nod. The main objective is to fast-track the constitutional amendment process, conserve valuable time and resources that stand to be wasted by an entirely fresh conference. This view seems to draws ample credence from incremental theory as it seeks to work on existing documents to arrive at consensual agreements that will save our federal contraption from the systemic stress into which it is seemingly irretrievably mired.

    If this represents a fair interpretation of the content of the southern senators’ position, then Adamu went off tangent in some of his assertions and conclusions especially if they were directed at the resolutions of his southern colleagues. His contention that Buhari cannot implement the conference report because he is not privy to its underlying philosophy and primary objectives is not only cheap but an indictment on the president.

    For one, it is inconceivable that a former military head of state that thrice made a bid to be elected a civilian president of this country can safely claim ignorance of the issues and wider dynamics of the recurring agitations for a national conference. These issues have been there and constitute both the primary objective and the philosophy for seeking platforms to construct durable framework for the survival of this unity in diversity. It will be a huge disappointment for any person who has led this country or aspires to lead it to feign ignorance of them as Adamu would make us to believe. So that argument does not add up.

    For another, it is not an issue of compelling the president to implement a report he is not part of. Buhari has been part of this system. As at the time the conference was being nurtured, he had an ambition to rule the country. His party, the APC also had restructuring in its manifesto and sought election on that promise. So the same philosophy and principles that made his party promise restructuring, influenced both the 2014 discussions, those before it and extant agitations.

    He must not be a participant at the conference before he understands what it recommendations are all about. That document was handed over to him by his predecessor and the minimum demand of his office is that he ought to go through it irrespective of whatever reservations he may have. Going through it will aid him tap into the temperament of the nation on some of the vexatious issues of our federal order. He could come up with different perspectives on some of the issues. And he would be entitled to them. But to dump such a vital document into the dust bin on grounds of some of the reasons adduced by Adamu would amount to crass insensitivity to the yearnings and aspirations of the people.

    Again, nobody is expecting Buhari to take up the report and decree it into law. He lacks such powers under constitutional democracy. Neither have suggestions been made to that impossible effect. Southern senators were conscious of this reality when they asked him to drive the process by convoking a meeting of all relevant bodies to constitutional amendment with a view to sieving salient aspects of that conference recommendation and passing them into law. That should take care of the issue of legitimacy highlighted by Adamu and those who have hidden under such reservations to sabotage the process.

    Beyond this, we are not doing this country any good dissipating valuable energy finding faults with genuine attempts to fashion out suitable framework to stabilize this country for unhindered development. It is not enough to find faults in genuine attempts by others to move this county forward. If the recommendations of that conference fell short of what the constituents needed to live in harmony, Adamu and his colleagues ought to provide the alternatives instead of this constant relapse into morbid fear for real change.

    It is obvious that some sections are profiting from the convoluted federal order. It is no less a truism that the fear of loss of influence, undue advantage and power is at the heart of the stringent opposition against restructuring. But the system as presently constituted has not fared well. Not only is the defective order at the root of the festering corruption in the land, the acrimonious and deadly competition for the presidency is directly linked to it. The same phenomenon accounts for the rivalry and competition between the central authority and the primordial units for the loyalty of the citizens. Such loyalties denoted by the variegated ethnic and sectional groups are bound to diminish with true federalism both in content and practice. So those opposed to some measure of restructuring are not helping the country. They do so in the knowledge that some of the distortions wrought into this polity by the military are difficult to redress without the consent of those benefiting from them. But there is a limit to the patience of constituents that have been at the receiving end of these convoluted and suffocating structures.

    Those genuinely desirous of the country’s continued existence must come to terms with the reality that we have not fared well with stereotypes that have not served our collective being. And for this country to make real progress, it must be disentangled from those systemic defects that have overtime held it prostrate. The structure of the federation is at the center of it all.

    It is not just a matter of the south intimidating the north or the north being afraid of restructuring as Adamu is inclined to believe. It is a patriotic desire to move the nation forward by dismantling all the imperfections that render national integration and the forging of a common sense of national identity illusory. It is a desire to unleash the creative energies of the constituents for rapid and unhindered development.

    Good a thing, Adamu has admitted that the north will support restructuring provided it “guarantees justice, equity, fairness and the unity of all Nigerians”. That is the essence of the conversation. So let the discussions commence!

  • Father and son

    Father and son

    In the beginning was the father. The son was yet in the womb when a certain Koro was misbegotten by the father Bode George. Many believed that Koro was the legitimate son and had earned the right to the cot to suckle on the milk of childhood.

    But Jimi Agbaje came in from another mother, and wanted to be the son. The father preferred Jimi because he thought he would be the right heir, the soldier he would deploy to do battle to bestow legitimacy on the family. Jimi, he swore, would unseat the dynasty and usher in a new era of father and son, one a soldier, the other a pharmacist. Who did not know that a big chemistry was afoot. The soldier suffers an injury, the pharmacist son dangles the right aid.

    This set off an earthquake for familial combo.  But not quite long after, Koro cried foul over the internecine malice of an intrigue. Legitimacy belonged not to the rules but to the winner. Jimi became the standard bearer of battle.

    So, hubris came early to Jimi, as the story went. Before the election day, Agbaje had started to assert the power of royalty. I am not referring to his threat to mount Igwes on thrones in the megacity. That has turned out to be a sideshow in the embroiling theatre. He would side-line the moustachioed George with his fuddy-duddy crowd. He had been his own prophet, and Agbaje saw that he would be the potentate of PDP in Lagos. He thought he was cruising to victory. Each had pissed in the pond between them, and a classic oedipal rage had swirled in the family.

    To worsen the tale, the family failed to win. Failure has many orphans. Suddenly, everyone knew George had divorced his son, and vice versa. The soldier father had been wounded in battle, and the son, too, had been routed. The pharmacy had no answer for the wound. So the family, in a manner of speaking, bled to death.

    Koro, better known as Musiliu Obanikoro, flailed in vain to restore his place in the family. He had no prayer, so he moved away and was embraced by the winning party. Meanwhile, father and son sulked peevishly in silence, until another warfront erupted in the PDP.

    This is the battle for the chairmanship of the PDP. If they had lost favour in their homestead, they thought they could find traction on a bigger, wider stage. After all, as the Good Lord said, a prophet is not without honour save by his own people.

    Father and son took the battle up there. George saw him as the 21st century Absalom who wanted to overthrow and slay his father. Agbaje saw himself in the innocence of Oedipus. But they both fought, and fierce was the contest. It, however, ended in an anti-climax. Neither father nor son won. They did not only lose, the party decided that their homestead had none of the beauty or majesty required to bedeck the position of party chairman.

    Father was obviously furious. He wanted that position badly. He had been a party bulwark, while he regarded Agbade as a reed. The humiliation was serious. Agbaje quietly retreated from the race. He knew it was over. Father and son, who should help heal each other, waited for their very conquerors to come to them to say, sorry. In the midst of the humiliation, one of the main men of the PDP had spoken with contempt about their homestead, the southwest.

    But George and Agbaje became the metaphor of the oedipal tension in the larger PDP. There, the fathers of the PDP, including Ibrahim Babangida, Goodluck Jonathan and peripatetic rambler Atiku Abubakar, had wanted to decide who should chair the top seat. The sons, who we know as the governors, decided to push the fathers away.

    Unknown to George and Agbaje, they had sown the seed of potential patricide in the party. They poisoned the larger pool of the PDP. The tool of battle is money. A father loses his power over his son, if he does not control the purse string. Agbaje did not rely on George for money to run his campaign for the governor post in Lagos. He relied on Jonathan and the party at the centre. George realised his impotence. He could not fell the son.

    On the bigger PDP canvas, the governors had money. The Wikes and co, had the nest, and the old goons could not match them dollar for dollar. Not even the great Atiku, who learned that the governors had something as potent as money: delegates. In the end, they governor sons prevailed over the fathers like IBB and Jonathan. Jonathan found himself fighting against the so-called “unity list.” In the final hour, united they stood. But for George and Agbaje, divided they fell.

    It is not good when fathers fall. It is worse when sons fall as well. Okonkwo succeeded in order to vitiate the public folly of his father. Abraham had faith enough to gain redemption in the eyes of Isaac. “God shall provide,” he assured his son.

    The Kennedy sons, including John Fitzgerald, saw their father soar in American politics and commerce, and it buoyed their rise. Never mind that his first son Joe, just like Awo’s first son Segun, did not survive to carry the father’s wishes as they envisioned. But father and son parted with each in blessedness of thoughts about the other. J.F.k’s biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger in his book titled A Thousand Days relates the intimacy and spartan discipline between Joe Kennedy snr and his sons.

    That was clear in George Sander’s Booker-winning novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, where the United States 16th president visits limbo to commune with his departed son. Biographers tell of how Lincoln grieved about him. He died of typhus. “That’s my boy who died,” he was quoted as saying when he pointed to his framed picture on the wall as a way of dealing with his grief.

    We might say that Agbaje was the Absalom and he had killed his political father. Whether he will survive like characters of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is yet to be seen. But the more tempting comparison is the story of Russian writer Ivan Turgenev in his novel, Fathers and Sons. He tracks a medical student Basarov who falls from idealist to a craven opportunist. Agbaje has no ideal although he brandished a phony progressive credentials in the past until the true colour pops out of his skin in their iridescent ugliness. Credentials without credence.

    The real issue is whether the PDP has the moral power to look inward and deal with its mammoth contradiction, even as APC still battles with its own existential worms.

     

    Ode to teachers

    The following paragraph disappeared in transit to this page last week, no thanks to the quirks of technology.

    “I want to thank Joe Agbro, a friend and critic of In Touch, who calls every Monday morning to critique my offering. I call him Uncle Joe. Also his nephew Victor Agbro, a friend since 1974. Special thanks also go to Olu Adebayo, a regular and profound commentator on this column, although I have never met him and have spoken to him perhaps twice over the years. Thanks to fiery columnist Louis Odion who featured column with The Sun during my U.S. sojourn, and of course Mike Awoyinfa as editor in chief.”

  • Evergreen evening

    Music of yesteryear took the attendees on a musical voyage. It was an electrifying evening. City People Entertainment, Evergreen Musical Company and Members of Music Icons celebrated “10 Music Legends of Lagos Evolution” at City People Event Centre, Gbagada, Lagos, on December 10. It was a celebration of Apala, Sakara, Juju, Highlife, Fuji, Waka, Folk, Agidigbo, Afrobeat and Were.

    Bimbo Esho of Evergreen Musical Company said: “An event of this nature became very necessary because of the need to document and appreciate our rich musical heritage and the artistic genius of different Nigerian musicians from different ethnicities who have contributed to the development of Lagos music in the past 50 years and also to immortalise the memories and enduring legacies of some Nigerian music icons.”

    Jimi Solanke, 75, shook the hall with his unique baritone and gripping performance. Described as a “legendary folk icon,” he was among the musicians honoured with Recognition Awards. “I’m humbled,” he responded. Theatre legend Hubert Ogunde was resurrected as his son, Bayo, sang the immortal song Onimoto.  Also, E.C. Arinze’s son, Chinezie, sang It’s time for highlife and Nike nike. He came from Port Harcourt to receive his late father’s award.

    Many of the melodies that night were blasts from the past.  They were from a time when things were not what they are now. I wondered: what makes music evergreen? Today’s music will become yesteryear music tomorrow. But evergreen music is not just yesteryear music. Evergreen music means more than yesteryear music. The quality of memorability makes music evergreen.   Muma Gee’s soulful performance of Christy Essiens’ Seun Rere during the event, for instance, got many attendees singing along.  Also, the      Evergreen Band played “the best of Highlife music and Juju Roots” that many attendees were familiar with.

    These sounds of yesterday prompted reflection on the sounds of today. Now, the music is different, the lyrics are different, the musicians are different.

    It was food for thought when Femi Esho, Chairman/CEO of Evergreen Musical Company said: “I started collecting music at the age of 12.” He described Adeolu Akinsanya as “the undisputed greatest composer of highlife music in this country, and in the world.”       

    Bimbo Esho paints a picture of the event: “Also Adeolu Akisanya’s son was around to collect his father’s award as an early pioneer of Agidigbo music. The founder of Sakara music in Nigeria Abibu Oluwa was fully represented by his daughter who is over 82 years old.  Batilu Alake’s son, daughter and granddaughter collected the award for the Waka queen with a short music performance by her granddaughter who was obviously a promising waka singer. Sina Ayinde Bakare received his father’s 45 years posthumous Award. Ayinde Barrister was fully represented also by his Fan club.  Other awardees were Bobby Benson, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Haruna Ishola, who were also fully represented.”

    Arguably, Femi Esho was the star of the night. His company is described as “Africa’s greatest custodian and producer of music of yesteryears.” He was at the centre of the show with his long white beard, doing what he has mastered over the years. He gave insight into the works of the awardees and why they deserved the awards. He displayed impressive knowledge of Nigerian music history.

    When I first met him some months ago at the Lagos residence of his friend, he gave me a valuable collection of the works of Fela Anikulapo Kuti that included “5 Audio CDs, 1 DVD (Live Performances) and 24-Page In-Depth Biography.”  We got talking and he got me thinking. His musical passion was infectious.  I thought about his services to Nigerian music and his enthusiasm. When he gave me his calling card, I was struck by the fascinating quote inscribed on it: “Without music, life would be an error – Friedrich Nietzsche.”

    When I met his daughter, Bimbo, at the Faaji Eko show, there was no question that she had chosen to follow her father’s path.  Weeks before the event, she had sent an invitation to me. She kept reminding me about the event. We had not met, but it looked like we had met. When we met, it was something to think about.

    Her thoughts: “Having spent my formative and adolescent years in Lagos State wining and dining with the Queens and Kings of Nigerian music, I have concluded that there is so much to learn from the songs of some music icons. At different points in time some of them sang that the world will one day forget them and not remember them for the smile and joy they put on different faces. One of such songs is the song of a Highlife music legend Rex Lawson  titled “ Old Friends and New Lovers” where he begged the world to remember him as he has sailed many oceans with his music, survived many storms,  delighted many hearts.”    According to her: “It saddens one that unlike other countries of the world that draw up calendars for different activities to celebrate their famous music legends all year long, we continue to live with the fading memories of our music greats…Music greats from different ethnicities who reached the peak of their career in Lagos and who also have contributed immensely to the social and  cultural development, religious growth, educational growth, political growth of Lagos State through their music are today forgotten.”

    This is where Evergreen Music Heritage Foundation comes in.  Situated in Surulere, Lagos, it is a project “to preserve and safeguard musical heritage… It is a one-stop place for research and documentation of over 10,000 Nigerian musicians…And as part of its core objectives the Foundation will help to create a world-class archival institution to cater for the need of researchers, anthropologists and sociologists the world over.” This effort deserves support.

    When the evening ended, the music did not end. Evergreen Musical Company is doing its bit to ensure that the music lives.

  • Festering terror attacks

    The war against Boko Haram is far from won. Not with their renewed escapades in the north-east that leave in their trail, sorrow and awe. Not with the frequency of such attacks and their high success ratio.

    That these serial killings no longer attract the umbrage associated with them in the early days of the insurgency is a measure of how accustomed the society has become with them. The frequency of these attacks and the high casualty rate they entail including soldiers and civilians, have raised fresh doubts on some of the claims bandied by the government on the state of the war.

    President Buhari had in an interview with BBC two years ago said Boko Haram had been ‘technically defeated’ and that Nigeria had technically won the war. Asked what he meant, he said “my own description is that they can no longer mobilize enough forces to attack police and military barracks and destroy aircraft like they used to do. But they can regroup and go after soft targets”.

    About the same period, Senator Baba Garbai (Borno Central) had, after a visit to his constituency cried out that the insurgents were still present in more than 20 local governments of the state.

    Apparently rattled by this, Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima and Director of Defence information, Brigadier-General Rabe Abubakar made spirited efforts to clarify what they considered the true position of the war. Shettima said they no longer had a situation where Boko Haram used to come in commando style attack, seize and occupy communities, hold hostages and administer territories. For Abubakar, attacks on soft targets do not translate to occupation of territories or some parts of Borno or the north-east.

    In this column then, I had looked at the semantic issues raised by all those who spoke especially the tenuous claim that Boko Haram no longer occupied territories in the areas of their operation. The kernel of my argument was that if Boko Haram no longer occupied territories, how come they were still able to mobilize and attack targets soft or hard? Do they plan and coordinate their attacks from the moon or outside the shores of this country? And if they operated from the outside, why not take them on at the point of entry?

    These posers served to highlight the contradiction in the claim that Boko Haram no longer occupied territories in the north-east even when it has continued to engage the military in fierce military battle. That was then. Two years thereon, it is clear that those positions were really over exaggerated. Not only have the insurgents continued to attack soft targets, they have shown strong capacity for sustained attacks on the military (hard targets).

    Curiously, the same insurgents were said to have entered into an agreement with the government that led to the freeing of 82 Chibok girls with the promise to secure the release of the rest through the same channel. If government’s account of the Chibok girls’ release is anything to repose hope on, if the entire Chibok story is to be disentangled from suspicion, why is there no change of attitude from a group the government entered into agreement culminating in the release of some of its commanders?

    Or are we being made to believe that the released commanders were for the purpose of fortifying the battle line of the insurgents? The general expectation is that a government which engaged the insurgents to the extent of securing the release of that number of school girls, after many years of incarceration, should have inched closer to ending the war.

    But that has failed to happen. Instead, the insurgents have continued to put in all within their powers to prosecute the war with heavy toll on human and material capital. In the last couple of months, the devious escapades of the deadly group have come to an all time high.  This has raised serious doubt on some of the claims that have been bandied by the government on the level of success in the war. Since May this year, suicide bombing and armed attacks on the military have been on the rise with the insurgent group successfully attacking Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.

    Some geologists and other technical staff from the University of Maiduguri on oil exploration were also ambushed at Magumeri by Boko Haram with about 12 soldiers who escorted them and some staff of the NNPC reportedly killed. Elsewhere, suicide bombings have been on the increase. Deploying young female suicide bombers, the deadly group attacked Muna Gari, a suburb of Maiduguri and killed 14.

    They have carried out series of attacks in Yola, Adamawa State. In one instance, they killed 40 people when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a crowded mosque. Yobe State is not left out as a unit commander and about 15 soldiers were killed last month when insurgents attacked a military unit in Sassawa. The list is inexhaustible as what is usually reported represents the amount of information the military is willing to avail the public.

    In its September update, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Activities, OCHA cried out that many people faced the risk of hunger and disease in the hinterlands of Borno due to inaccessibility of their locations because of the activities of the Boko Haram insurgents. The UN body which said there were five suicide bomb attacks in Borno in September alone is worried that with the setting in of the dry season, hostilities will intensify and further exacerbate the displacement trend in Borno.

    It should be admitted that our military have been making enormous sacrifice to contain the insurgency. Many of them have had to pay the supreme sacrifice in the very arduous task of containing the difficult asymmetric warfare. Some measure of success has also been recorded in this regard as the UN body has attested to.

    But it is getting clearer that the war against Boko Haram is a victim of high wire politics. And two major reasons account for this. The first is what can be described as the pre-2015 electioneering campaign politics while the second though closely related, has to do with the electoral campaign promise of President Buhari. In the build up to that election, Boko Haram insurgency was highly politicized.

    Those in the ruling party saw Boko Haram as political grievances masquerading in religious garb. Then governor of Adamawa state, Muritala Nyako, added a dangerous dimension to the matter when in his controversial letter to the northern governors; he alleged that Boko Haram was a contrived agenda to depopulate the north. He believed it only existed in the minds of its creators.

    In that highly inciting and tendentious letter, Nyako left nobody in doubt of his belief that the weird religious group was an agenda of the Jonathan regime to keep the north down. Many key northerners also shared this view and that accounted for their ambivalence in not unequivocally condemning the atrocious proclivities of that murderous group.

    With that blame game, the campaign to tame the monster suffered reverses. The campaign was sabotaged and Boko Haram became larger than life. It was not for nothing that Buhari made the war against insecurity a tripod of his campaign promise. With victory smiling his way, he did not waste time to set quick and unrealistic deadline to tame the monster and prove a point. Thus, the haste with which he announced two years back that the war had been won.

    But that has been his greatest undoing as facts on the ground continue to prove him wrong.  Boko Haram is much alive as we have seen from the limited statistics above and the attestations of the UN body. What seemed to have changed is the paucity of information emanating from the theatre of war. Incidentally, much of that information comes from the same military that is engaged in the fight. What will the likes of Nyako say of the war now?

  • Buhari’s prison experience

    Buhari’s prison experience

    It is unclear why President Muhammadu Buhari went to Kurmawa Prison on December 6 during his two-day visit to Kano State, but his stop at the prison clearly highlighted Nigeria’s awful prison conditions.  Buhari pardoned 500 prisoners and empowered them with some cash.

    A report said: “At the Prison, he said: “I am pleased with this visit and I have learnt a bit more about the conditions of the prisons and inmates. This building in front of us was built since 1910. Rehabilitation of prisoners and training of inmates is very important to us and we would continue to invest more on this. I asked one of the inmates (released) how old he was and he told me he is only 19 years old. If we have people of 18 and 19 years in the prison, and there is no continuous training, then their lives will be completely destroyed. We will invest more in education and vocational training.’’  Buhari is expected to move from words to actions.

    According to the report, “The 500 inmates granted pardon, including men and women, were drawn from various prisons in Kano State, including Kurmawa Prisons, which has 1,398 inmates as opposed to 750, the established capacity.” The difference between the number of prisoners in the prison and the number of prisoners the prison was built to accommodate is alarming.

    Overpopulation has been a major prison problem for a long time, and it will remain problematic if nothing is done about it. Further information from another source gave more insight into the overpopulation problem:  “Our prisons are congested. A facility meant to accommodate less than 600 inmates currently houses over 2,400 inmates. The inmates are mostly those in the ‘awaiting trial’ category.” This disturbing picture of the state of prisons across the country, and the state of Owerri Prison in particular, is a cause for concern.  The Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Owerri branch, Imo State, Lawrence Nwakaeti, who made the observations, said the prisons were in a deplorable state. It is a reason to call for reforms. Nwakaeti focused on “Judicial reforms and sustainable development in a democracy,” in an address at an event to mark the 2017/2018 legal year in the state.

    Corroborating the depiction of the lamentable condition of the country’s prisons, a 2017 study by a not-for-profit organisation, Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE-NIGERIA), showed that 50, 427 or 67 percent of the 74,508 prisoners in Nigeria, are awaiting trial. This figure makes Nigeria “the fifth country with the highest awaiting trial population in Africa, trailing Libya, DRC, Central African Republic and Benin Republic,” according to CURE-Nigeria Executive Director Sylvester Uhaa. Concerning Owerri Prison, CURE-Nigeria statistics indicate: Capacity: 548; Inmates: 2,307; Convicted: 193; Awaiting trial: 2,114.

    It is noteworthy that the organisation found that excessive use of pre-trial detention and low investment in welfare spending are major causes of the prison overpopulation problem. Uhaa observed that when defendants are admitted to bail by a court, but are unable to satisfy the bail conditions, they are remanded in prison custody, thus swelling the population of those awaiting trial. The solution, according to him, is for the federal and state governments to “ensure the release of people who are illegally and innocently held in prison and detention centres throughout the country, and to take steps to ensure that prisons are used only as a last resort.”

    Challenges faced by prosecution agencies and the judiciary are also to blame for prison congestion and a situation where some of the inmates end up spending  more time in prison custody than they would have spent if convicted.  A top prison official was quoted as saying: “The congestion has sadly overstretched the facilities and personnel, thus leading some inmates to leave the prison more hardened than they were before incarceration.”

    Obviously, the country’s justice system is in need of reforms to address issues including overburdened courts, delayed trials and prolonged trials.  The prison system also needs reforms to ensure that there are adequate prisons with adequate living conditions.  In July, the Comptroller-General (CG) of Nigeria Prisons Service (NPS), Ja’afaru Ahmed, announced that “a 3000 capacity ultra-modern prison with all the requirements for successful reformation of inmates will soon come on stream.” He also said “modern cells are being constructed in different locations to replace old and dilapidated cells in order to improve living conditions of inmates.”

    However, the country must avoid a situation where “the new prisons will soon be filled up with awaiting trial inmates and then we will need to build bigger ones, and then bigger ones,” Uhaa argued. Interestingly, he noted: “Research indicates that there is a direct relationship between welfare spending and imprisonment. Countries that spend more of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on welfare have lower prison rates than those who spend less of their GDP on welfare. For example, Denmark, Sweden and Finland spend the highest proportion of their GDP on welfare and have the lowest imprisonment rate in the world. This is why we have continued to advocate more investment in education, health and other social and economic welfare programmes, as these will help reduce crime and other social vices in Nigeria.”

    The argument for socio-economic improvement is the heart of the matter.  When government pursues what is known as “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” and the governed experience the fruits of such pursuit, it should depopulate the prisons.

    “Prison conditions should not be an additional punishment,” says Penal Reform International (PRI), arguing that “States are also obliged to ensure that prisoners are treated humanely. This includes providing adequate accommodation, food and water, sanitation and healthcare, access to light, fresh air and exercise.”   It is the responsibility of government to ensure humane prison conditions.

    In the final analysis, tackling prison problems requires a multipronged approach to reform the criminal justice system, improve the prison system and advance socio-economic conditions.

    Buhari’s observations at Kurmawa Prison should prompt action by the relevant authorities. It is not enough to observe that the country’s prisons need reconditioning.

     

  • The Lalong effect

    The Lalong effect

    A sense of peace crippled me as I boarded the aircraft and left behind the crisp air of Jos. I reflected on the irony first: Jos of firebombs and fleeing feet, of internecine feud, of blood-stained fault lines and arbitrary borders and breach of borders, of prostrate streets and pious hate, of Muslims at the throat of Christians and vice versa, of official impotence, of the loss of innocence.

    Then I recalled what I had learned in three days last week in the city of fabled weather and its cosmic earth, a democratic soil that abides all fruits and vegetation from apple to roses. I had come to deliver the keynote address at the Nigerian Bar Association Week on the topic: Restructuring: A Panacea for National Development and Cohesion.

    On entering the city I had a flush of foreboding. But the genial exchanges of three governors who attended the event mitigated some of my misgivings. They were the host Governor, Simon Bako Lalong, who, in a yet understated electoral triumph, toppled the cocky mainstay in Plateau power, David Jang; Governor Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi State and Sokoto State counterpart and the Matawallen Sokoto, Aminu Tambuwal.

    The striking moment came when Governor Lalong mounted the podium and joked that Tambuwal loved the Jos weather so much that he came a day earlier and he would not mind to stay another day. Tambuwal responded with a ironic smile and interrupted Lalong by thrusting his right hand out of his voluminous babaringa in a hand gesture, indicating he was leaving town that afternoon. The governor was making the point that the three governors were, in varying degrees, products of Jos the beautiful, the literal city on the hill.

    All three were baked in Jos. Yet they belonged to three geopolitical zones. Tambuwal from the northwest, Abubakar from the northeast and Lalong from the north central. All three blossomed as lawyers in Jos. They inhaled the weather, blended with its shrubberies and hugged the people. Their successes in that city predated and even foretold their political ascent.

    Lalong noted that Abubakar was one of a string of Bauchi State governors, including Yuguda, bred in Jos. The chairman of the law week planning committee Barrister Steve Abah said he served in Tambuwal’s chambers. I was to learn later that Tambuwal brought his team to Jos for their retreat recently.

    The point? So beautiful was Jos not just as a place where seed budded but any tribe bloomed. Before I presented my address, all three governors stamped their support for restructuring with Tambuwal reiterating that the north wanted restructuring but it must be preceded by understanding. Abubakar,  who gave a short speech aligned himself with Tambuwal. This was Jos as conduit, as the umbrella of all people, from the Fulani to the Birom to the Afemai to the Yoruba to the Urhobo. It was mini Nigeria in hope and harmony.

    I also recalled, in the midst of that morning air of happy levity, the yarns that television producer Peter Igho had spun to me about how he grew up in Jos and everyone lived together without ethnic interspaces. In his lament, he was puzzled about how that great city stumbled into the arms of bandits.

    Jos has become a metaphor not only of how we fell as a nation of economic promise, but also how we crumbled into malice. Without soliciting comments, residents spoke of how the soul of their beloved city had left them, how hate, bigotry and political egos had truncated the example of the north. They spoke with glum eyes and wistful resignation. But they ended their complaint with natal cheer.

    That quiet cheer I noted when I engaged Governor Lalong. Articulate with a sober grasp of the task ahead, he expressed how he had brought together the 53 ethnic groups in the state to agree to live in peace. He set up the state’s version of truth and reconciliation commission that encompassed representatives from each of the 53 tribes, so that it did not become a case of over-inclusion and exclusion, which would generate another round of suspicion and spilling of blood. The issue of herdsmen and cattle rustling was also resolved with representatives from both sides coming to the table to eke out an agreement.

    Though still fragile like a healing wound, Jos has moved far ahead today beyond the days when it was hard to predict a day. Many people left town, and may not return. But what Governor Lalong has pulled off with the 53-tribe entente is a model for our fractious nation. He said he was working with the Federal Government on establishing a ranch. While ranching is a marvel of an idea, there is already understanding before it comes into being.

    This shows that building institutions is a good idea, but institutions are vacant without trust. As the African proverb says, who would accept a shirt from a naked man? When the ranch comes to Plateau, it will become a technicality. If, that is, the peace holds up among the tribes. It also reifies the power of leadership. That we have ethnic tension on the national scale is the failure of leadership and trust deficit from the people. We don’t have the Lalong effect in the centre.

    Lalong has to sustain this. Jos is not just about a town. It is about its vast array of people. As Ghanaian playwright Ama Ata Aidoo wrote, “humans, not places, make memories.” We are not asking Jos to become the city it lost. We only want it to become the city it can be. “I don’t want to repeat my innocence,” noted a character in Scott F. Fitzgerald’s novel, This Side of Paradise. We can remember the past but as a resource to own the future. We will not lament in the words of the poet, Birago Diop, “If we tell gently, gently all that we shall one day have to tell.”

    Cities have fallen and were reborn. We know of London, Berlin, Paris, Warsaw. The Second World War broke their backs. They came back, reinvigorated.  Those cities lost brick and mortar, Jos’ soul became mortal. Biafra lost structures but its soul survives. The task before Lalong is not just physical rebirth but to give it new life by dismantling forever the infrastructure of prejudice. It is a state I will monitor, especially when other states like Kaduna, Taraba and Benue have sought Lalong’s formula on how he is doing it on the Plateau. The Federal Government can learn a thing or two about how a state with 53 ethnic groups in a small geographic space can wake up from a slumber of bloodshed. It, therefore, can work for the 250 ethnic groups in the country.

  • Ode to teachers (2)

    Some readers thought my last column was my last. It was only marking my thirty years in journalism, and I thought I should pay homage to those who taught me and buoyed me one way or another. In my year as a Gordon Fisher fellow at the University of Toronto in Canada, two professors made quite an impression. Abraham Rotstein, whose class on economic anthropology pried open the bowel of economics. The other, the late Alkis Kontos, who taught political philosophy with a sort of juvenile gusto.

    I remember with relish my lunch with a crop of about half a dozen PHD students at a Chinese restaurant every Friday afternoon outside the University of Toronto campus for the full academic year. I remember Mark and Serge, and we sparred over everything from political theory to diplomacy to literature. Everyone had to be prepared. I still inhale the aroma of the Chinese cuisine airborne with our uproar of debates. Thanks to Kenn Bisio and Jay Brodell for making university lecturer in the U.S.

    Tunji Bello, now Lagos State SSG, I am indebted to as the colleague with whom I have worked with the longest with such great chemistry of friendship and intellectual sparring. He even addressed two of my classes at Denver, Colorado.

    Shall I Not be grateful to all the awards over the years? I thank DAME for endorsing me four times, and NMMA also four times. I won both the same year, and both awards have made me perhaps the most decorated columnist in this country. The Nigerian Academy of Letters looked my way and made me a honorary fellow, an accolade that often goes to those many times older. My grateful thanks. Also thanks for all the awards in Europe, Canada and the United States.

    I must thank Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his immense role in my career, and his large heart and ability to absorb me for who I am when my pen goes wherever it must.

    I also thank her, my other half, for her soulful zest, beauty and integrity over the years. Looking forward to the next 30 years…

     

  • Whistleblowing made tough

    It wasn’t expected to go the way it is going.  The drama began in April with the discovery of mind-boggling cash hidden in an up-scale apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos, by anti-corruption fighters acting on a tip-off. It was expected that by now the whistleblower or whistleblowers in this case would have been rewarded based on the presidency’s whistleblowing policy.

    But the way things are going, the public can’t be sure what to expect. Another development further complicated the case. A report said: “A man, Abdulmunmini  Musa, claiming to be part of those who provided information that led security agents to recover $43.4 million, N23.3  million and 27, 800 Euros from Flat 7, Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, has sought to be included as beneficiary of the compensation to be given to the whistle blowers by the Federal Government.”  It also said:   The suit, filed at the Federal High Court in Abuja, has the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Federal Ministry of Finance and Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice as defendants. Also listed as defendants are Bala Maina, Steven Sunday and Sheriff, who have been pencilled down as beneficiaries of government’s compensation for providing information that led to the recovery of the Ikoyi flat cash. Musa said he wants to be included in the compensation because he worked with Sunday, Maina and Musa to leak information about the Ikoyi cash to security agents. ..”

    The question of who should be paid what is compounded by the question of how much should be paid. The Secretary of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye, was quoted as saying at an event last month: “If you blow the whistle and the government recovers cash, you are entitled to between 2.5 per cent and five per cent. The maximum limit is five per cent. According to the policy, if you blow the whistle and it is below N500m, you get four to five per cent because the higher the amount that is recovered, the lower the percentage that is given. This is the global best practice.”

    Owasanoye provided additional information that showed the public was given inadequate information about the policy when it was launched in December 2016. He explained: “If the recovery is between N500m and N1bn, you get three to four per cent (commission). If it is N1bn and above, it is 2.5 per cent. Indeed, there is a clause that we included in the policy to say that the government may determine the amount to be awarded based on other criteria provided that the amount to be awarded doesn’t exceed five per cent. In other words, the government may actually pay less than 2.5 per cent but nobody can be paid more than five per cent.”

    This belated explanation is inexcusable. It is unsurprising that Yakubu Galadima, a lawyer representing one of the whistleblowers expecting a reward in the Ikoyi Towers case, reportedly insisted on five per cent of the estimated N13 billion found in the expensive flat for his client. He said his client was expecting N860 million and not N325 million from the Federal Government.

    The gripping drama was intensified by a petition to the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) by lawyers representing three claimants,   Abdulmumin Musa, Mr. Stephen Sunday and Mr. Bala Usman.  This petition tells the story from the beginning.  The twists and turns suggest that the story is far from its ending. A report said: “The solicitors noted that “Our clients informed us sometime in December 2016 that three (3) of them voluntarily walked into the office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) at 15A Awolowo Road Ikoyi, Lagos and gave vital information that led to the recovery of over N13 billion at the Ikoyi Towers, Lagos.” The Legal Practitioners further told the AGF that “upon subsequent visit to give a detailed information as required by the commission to raid the tower, they were told if the operation was successful, 5% of the amount recovered will be their take home within 72 hours of recovery, they were also cautioned that if the information happened to be false, then they will definitely be in trouble which the three mentioned above accepted because they were sure of their facts”. The petition continues: “That when the operation was carried out, it was successful but since then they have not received any commendation by the commission, let alone given any reward as stated even though the EFCC have their names and phone numbers”.

    The report added: “The Petitioners said rather than to do the needful, some of the EFCC staff gave them further information that they were not the only people who gave them information on the Ikoyi Towers as others were also involved without mentioning them. Upon various meetings by the three persons mentioned above, they agreed to go back and meet the Head of EFCC operations, Alhaji Samaila Muhammed and were told on their visit that the numbers have increased to nine (9) who made the report urging them to bring the remaining persons.”

    So, how many people played the whistleblower in the Ikoyi Towers case? The public was not expected to know their identities, but three or four names are known to the public and more names may become public. It is obvious that this attention-grabbing case has been badly managed by the authorities. There shouldn’t have been any controversy about who blew the whistle and how much should be paid as reward. There shouldn’t have been any name credited with whistleblowing in the public domain.

    It is noteworthy that Owasanoye was quoted as saying: “As of the end of October, over 5,000 whistles had been blown and about 75 per cent of that came from phone calls. So, you can report on the website, email, text message or phone call. “What are the things that the various communications have covered? Contract inflation, ‘ghost workers’, payment of unapproved funds, embezzlement of salaries, diversion of excess crude funds, improper reduction of financial penalties, diversion of funds meant for people, placing money in a commercial bank, non-remittance of deduction of pensions or NHIS and failure to implement projects.”

    He added:  “Others include embezzlement of funds received from donors, embezzlement of payment meant for personnel emoluments, violation of TSA which is the highest, violation of FIRS regulations, non-procurement of safety equipment, money laundering, illegal sale of government assets, diversion of IGR which is the second largest, financial misappropriation, concealed bailout funds, mismanagement of micro-finance banks and illegal recruitment.”

    The presidency expects more whistleblowing, and there may well be more.  But what will happen to the whistleblowers, considering what is happening in the Ikoyi Towers case?

  • Minimum wage politics

    In the early life of the Buhari administration, state governors had after one of their meetings, canvassed for a reduction of the current minimum wage or in the alternative, they will be compelled to reduce their workforce. They cited the parlous state of the Nigerian economy and the drop in international oil price as their main reasons for wanting a reduction from the current N18, 000 minimum wage regime.

    But they found two dissenting voices in their colleagues who argued to the contrary. The then governor of Edo State; Adams Oshiomhole, apparently because of his labour background, contended that the current wage regime was a product of elaborate discussions and agreement between the various governments and labour and could therefore not be tampered with even as it had become time barred. He found ample and timely support from his colleague, Nyesom Wike of Rivers State.

    We were soon confronted by a scandalous inability of governors and even agencies of the federal government to pay salaries, allowances and pensions. In some cases, workers were owed backlog of salaries and allowance mounting to over 10 months. The federal government had to intervene by advancing some funds to enable governors offset the arrears of salaries and allowances. Even then, there were instances where the funds were diverted to areas other those for which they were meant.

    Some governors and even agencies of the federal government arbitrarily worked out their own formulae of what to pay and how to pay in other to remain afloat. They resorted to paying workers certain percentage of their salaries. And faced with serious challenges of survival, those workers had no alternative than to accept whatever stipend the governments were prepared to pay. Since then, some governors have been paying below the minimum wage hiding under questionable agreements entered into with their workers. Yet, the issue of salary and pension arrears running into several months has remained a recurring decimal.

    The above background comes handy given the inauguration last week of a 30-man tripartite National Minimum Wage Committee to negotiate a new national minimum wage for workers.  President Buhari while inaugurating the committee said it followed the recommendation of a technical committee put in place after the increase in fuel price in 2016 and that the current minimum wage had expired.

    In May 2016 and against all expectations, the government increased the price of fuel from N87 per litre to the current selling price of N145 per litre. Before that regime came into office, its prime movers were at the vanguard of those opposed to any slight upward adjustment in the selling price of the commodity. It was therefore surprising that in one fell swoop, and barely a year after it came into office, it unilaterally hiked up the price of the commodity by that high margin. For some reason, protests did not erupt from any quarter probably because those with the technology for organizing them saw the government as their own.

    That increase brought in its wake a sporadic rise in the prices of goods and services with deleterious effects on the living conditions of the people. Prices of everything skyrocketed given the centrality of fuel to all economic activities. But it led to demands for wage increase with the NLC being its prime mover.

    Instead of wage increase, we were soon to witness an unprecedented layoff of workers, closures and salary cuts. Life was reduced to a similitude of the Hobbesian state of nature – nasty, short and brutish. We were almost immediately entrapped in an economic recession that took a toll on the lives of the people. The price of oil which sold around $40 per barrel in the international market then did not help matters. So we have had to contend with the debilitating realities of the harsh economy in the last two and half years of the current regime with no end in sight.

    Given the above, the inauguration of the national minimum wage committee came with mixed feelings. Not unexpectedly, some people have termed it an attempt to bribe workers as the 2019 elections draw closer. Some others see in it, an exercise in playing with time, doubting the sincerity and commitment of the regime to emplace a new national minimum wage. They cite the delay in setting up of the committee more than one and half years after the debilitating effects of the fuel price increase had taken negative toll on the lives citizens and the trademark inability of governments to pay the current wage.

    And since many of these governments have been finding it difficult to pay extant wage, there is the feeling that increasing the minimum wage would amount to an exercise in futility. What is the sense in an increase the governments cannot pay, the argument further goes. Since the governors are heavily represented in the tripartite committee, there is everything to suggest they will gang up to oppose an increase now.

    So the committee may not come out with anything tangible given that the debilitating economic conditions that forced them to owe are still very much around. But the federal government may be basking on the euphoria of our supposed exit from economic recession which has even failed to translate into improved standard of living for the toiling people of the country.

    It is true prices of some commodities have had a marginal drop. It is also no less correct that the price of oil in the international market now hovers around 60 dollars per barrel. The federal government in its 2017/2018 appropriation bill to the National Assembly also promised increased revenue to state governments next year. All these may have encouraged the government to inaugurate the committee.

    But they remain at best projections. And for a government that banned employment in all its ministries, agencies and departments next year, it appears contradictory it is about to increase wages. Even then, the same government has not kept faith with the current minimum wage regime. Under its N-Power Tech job creation scheme, it pays N30, 000 monthly stipends to graduates. By that policy, it has set the precedent that any employer can pay workers what it desires.

    The same government has been beating its chest regarding the quantum of jobs it claims to have created. But in reality such jobs have turned out as sources of cheap labour for state governments who deploy beneficiaries to schools with no incentives at all. Due to the paltry stipends, beneficiaries refuse to put in their best as it barely covers their transport fares to their places of assignment. If the government found reason to engage these graduates, it should have shown example by going the whole hog to pay them the minimum wage. With the cheap labour offered by this manner of job creation coupled with that of the NYSC members, the federal government has inadvertently shut down the capacity of the state governments to recruit workers.

    Even as wage increase is desirable, the number of those in paid employment peters out in the face of the army of the unemployed and the self-employed. A wage increase that targets the few in paid employment cannot substantially address the rising poverty in the land. Moreover, it will definitely come with its own concomitant problem of a general rise in the prices of goods and services. So we should be prepared for another inflation spiral.

    It would seem despite its allure, wage increase does not offer much prospects now especially given the inability of governments to pay the subsisting wage regime. It is bound to trigger another cycle of inflation and turn out counterproductive unless the government puts in place safety nets to cushion its negative effects on the ordinary people. The solution to the rising poverty lies in massive job creation and the provision of attendant infrastructural facilities to enable people create their own jobs.

  • Ode to teachers

    Ode to teachers

    My neck dripped with sweat when I arrived home that afternoon. Feet fatigued, tongue lolling for water, I had not slumped into the sofa at home when my father, Moses, materialised from his room with a letter.

    “A dispatch man delivered this this morning,” he said as he thrust it toward me, half curious, half ecstatic. “It’s from Newswatch.” I had been about town all day, feet in and out of offices, feet on the streets, the sun presiding, my shoes shedding leather.

    Weariness left me. With alacrity I tore open the letter. I swallowed the contents in what looked like seconds. I knew it was the beginning. My career had been launched. Ray Ekpu, firebrand columnist and editor-in chief of the journalistic lay of the land, The Newswatch magazine, wanted me to see him in his office. He was responding to a personal letter I wrote him about my love of writing and my fruitless wandering in search of a job.

    “I was impressed by the quality of your writing,” he said gravely clutching my letter. I was in his office at Oregun. He showed me the letter with evidence that Dan Agbese and Yakubu Mohammed had appended their encouragement that I should be hired immediately. Agbese was deputy editor-in-chief and Mohammed executive editor. I walked out of Ekpu’s office still awed by a man who benumbed and captured a generation of Nigerians with his pen and judgment.

    Today, it is 30 years. All I want to do is give kudos to those who have made this possible. If Ekpu lit the tinder of my career, it began when I was in primary school. I can see now my teacher, Mrs. Sonoiki at Methodist School Ibadan from whom I learned the tenses. “I go. She goes. We go, etc.” I also recall the pugilistic elegance of Mr. Daramola, who would not let my syntax  stumble even while I played soccer for the school.

    At Government College, Ughelli, there were quite a few. First, the environment of the school that forbade pupil s to err either in the written or spoken word. “Howzat sir” or “how was” were epithets of derision for anyone who decapitated the English language. Prefects watched out for their own mistakes. But we learned writing not only from the English teachers, but from others in the arts, especially the history teachers, Edeyan and Eshareture. Eshareture was a dapper gentleman who spoke and expected polished phrases from us. Edeyan paced the class as though reliving the past, gesticulating and dramatising. But we had English teachers like Ogboduma and the Ghanaian Tieku, who taught us not only the technicality of language but how to marry tenses with elegance. My principal Demas Akpore brought poetry alive when he gathered us in the library and read in his haunting way the poems of Senghor, Diop, etc. Up to this day, I have never heard a person in all my travels animate poetry like Akpore’s tongue.

    But the history teachers especially made us understand that history was not just about the past, and not just about storytelling, but points. Very early, Eshareture and Edeyan dissected Mansa Musa’s exploits as limpidly as the Yoruba Wars.

    I was so haunted by them that while I waited for my admission to the university, I started to write essays every day. My father knew I loved Time and Newsweek magazines, and he decided he was going to buy me copies every week in spite of his lean resources. So, I wrote essays that no one read except myself. No day passed, including Sundays, without dashing off about 800 words. I started to read novels, including African Writers Series and such mainstays as Dickens, Thackeray, Dumas and others as I could pick from my father’s library.  One afternoon, I discovered a programme on NTA with Professor Theo Vincent. He was a master of book reviews and he articulated it. He prepared me for my feisty moments in Ife’s literature in English Department. He was deep, enthused and lyrical.

    Eventually I joined the History Department at Ife, with great zeal for a potpourri of knowledge. Professor Akinjogbin was unforgettable for the boyish way he handled his subjects. We had read him in high school, but to have him as a teacher was priceless. But in part one, all the students were enamoured of Professor Femi Omosini. He never read from notes but reeled off line after perspicacious line in his class on the social and intellectual history of Europe. He was like a star lecturer. Then a year later, Professor Olatunji Oloruntimehin taught us West African history, bringing into the subject an audacity of analysis that broke with tradition. For instance, we learned that the phrase “indirect rule” miscast the story of colonial umbrage. Professor Richard Olaniyan opened the Americas and the United States for me, with his deep insights, especially into the founding fathers and their duels with tyranny.

    A friend and classmate of mine, Osagiatior Ojo, often called me “the eminent literary figure who found himself in the wrong department.” He was referring to my immersion in literature classes. Some of my literature classmates thought I belonged to Literature until I confessed I was history major. But a few lecturers made literature beautiful for me. Dr. Folarin, a female British teacher made things clear early on. But later I was to enjoy the classes of Ropo Sekoni, Chima Anyadike, Biodun Jeyifo and Adebayo Williams. Professor Sekoni had an avuncular presence as he clarified point after point in an unforgettable way.  Professor (also now Chief) Anyadike was noted for the laconic splendour and precision of his teaching. In few words, he made everything clear. Professor Jeyifo brought a “people’s” flavour to literature that was invaluable. Professor Williams brought to teaching a poetry of rendition, and an excitement of phrasing in class and tutorials. Even when we were not assigned to his tutorial class, we wanted to attend. He visibly enjoyed his work and effect on his students. I learned so much from being his student as we met many times to discuss literature and the state of the nation after class.

    After leaving Ife, I knew I was not going to be a university professor. I wanted to be a journalist. Two persons had had a big effect on me while at Ife. The first was Dele Giwa, whose breathtaking columns inspired me and I introduced his column to my father. I recall when Giwa wrote the beautiful lines about Dele Udoh, who died from the police bullets, “Dele Udoh had many plans before his death. Dying was not one of them.” Though his prose soured and declined towards the end of his life, I still adore him as a model. He was embroiled in administration.

    The second person was Roger Rosenblatt, a Time essayist and senior writer. The first piece of him I read was a prologue to the cover story on the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. I knew immediately that he was different. I had not read anyone like him, in the flair and flow of his prose, his insights into history and literature and philosophy, in the intersection of intellectual and quotidian experience. I have had constant relationship with him since 1990 when I visited his office at Time Square, New York.  He has written plays and novels as well.

    In the course of my career, my experience in Newswatch lay a good foundation. From Ekpu I learned how to generate perspectives on stories. From Agbese, I knew the precision of editing. We called him Dan the Butcher, because of his uncanny ability to cut fluff out of a tale. From Mohammed, everyone learned the etiquette of editing. He did it without aura of a bully.

    My time in Newswatch was brief as I was called by Lewis Obi through Babafemi Ojudu to join the African Concord. Obi and his deputy Bayo Onanuga gave me the opportunity to bloom as a writer and it was there I started to write essays for publication. I look back at those years as the time I began to find my voice. I worked with Ojudu and Dele Momodu on many cover stories. The presence of Ohi Alegbe, who joined us from The Guardian was unmistakable as copy editor.

    Not long after, Tunji Bello was to impress on editor-in-chief Dr. Doyin Abiola to move me to the group political desk as deputy political editor. The years have been exciting. Turbulence came, of course. During the June 12 crisis, I was the managing editor of Abuja bureau and a colleague (name withheld) drew my attention to SSS stalking me with a 504 Peugeot and Jetta cars morning and night. I left town before they woke up one morning.

    I also had a gruelling time with the army who beat me for beating their security cordon to see the plane crash site at Ejigbo. I wrote quite a few columns, and I could not tell the story of my life as columnist without kudos to Mike Awoyinfa, who gave me the first opportunity to own a column with the Weekend Concord.

    I cannot forget the angst with my pieces on Awo, Ojukwu, Jonathan, Achebe, Buhari, etc. all these bonfires smoked out of my column In Touch, which still smoulders. I cannot apologise for who I am, because as the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson writes in his Ulysses, “I am a part of all that I have met.” I also hope that those who have been needled by my words understand the wellspring of conviction from which they emanate and accept my right to annoy righteously. As Abraham Lincoln orated when he became US president, I write “with malice towards none.”

    My gratitude goes to all I have worked with in The Nation from the managing director Victor Ifijeh to the gatemen, especially those on the editorial where we engage in friendly affray and sometimes cantankerous bonhomie each Wednesday in order to produce editorials that are the best in the land.

    My sojourn in the United States was also worth the while, especially as a reporter with the Rocky Mountain news and Journalism teacher at Denver. As I taught, so I practised, also privileged to win a few awards. I cannot forget John Enssling and Rebecca Cantwell for all they did to make life and journalism worth the while in the United States.

    I cannot end this piece without thanks to my years in the God’s Kingdom Society, a church where I learned the rigour of the Bible and life. The Bible, of course, the best gift I ever had, as a book not beaten by any for its great divine message and great sayings and stories. It haunts when I write and it is on a plane above Rosenblatt and my favorite novelist Joseph Conrad.

    I also will say that Felix M. Osifo was a mentor just by being within my sights as a model member of the GKS. He rose from humble beginnings to the top of the UACN. His story was a great inspiration for me to do something with my life.

    I shall of course not forget Moses Oghanero Omatseye, my late father, who toiled for me as though his life was a sort of Abrahamic sacrifice for his son. I would be nowhere without him, and of course my mother, Salome, who was always a quiet tower of strength.

    In all, I give glory to Almighty God whose grace and mercy on my life I cannot weigh.  So, I say to my teachers and my God, thank you and accept this ode for the odyssey you gave humble me. The story continues…