The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Of facts and fiction

    Facts they say, are sacred but comments free. Perhaps, this universal prism provides the right angle to examine some of the issues thrown up by President Muhammadu Buhari’s 57th independence anniversary speech.

    In that speech, the President made certain claims that should not escape serious scrutiny else unsuspecting members of the public swallow them as nothing but the truth. For him, Nigeria has in the past two years recorded appreciable gains in political freedom: “A political party at the centre losing elections of state governor, National Assembly seat and even state assemblies to opposition parties is new to Nigeria”.

    Though the President did not give specific cases where these elections were won by the opposition since his regime, the re-run governorship election in Rivers State and the very recent senatorial election in Osun State easily come into mind. Whereas the Rivers’ re-run election was marred by large scale irregularities, the circumstances of the Osun senatorial election and the role of imposition of an unpopular candidate in bringing about that pass are too well known. These shortcomings however, did not detract from the fact that the elections were won by candidates from opposition political party.

    But that is beside the real issue. The problem is not as much with the fact that a party different from the one at the centre won the elections as with the claim that opposition parties’ winning elections is ‘new to Nigeria’ and therefore a credit to the current administration. Far from it! The history of Nigeria’s electoral process cannot bear this claim out. Such a conclusion will definitely pale into insignificance when confronted with the weight of evidence to the contrary especially since the return of democracy in 1999. Lagos State, before the current regime, was for 16 years governed by an opposition political party.  During that period, the opposition won the governorship elections four consecutive times.

    In Imo State, the incumbent governor, Rochas Okorocha, flying the flag of a relatively underrated party, APGA, defeated an incumbent PDP governor during the 2011 governorship election. The case of Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State also followed the same pattern. He won the 2012 governorship election on the platform of the Action Congress AC. This writer cannot forget in a hurry the superlative jargons with which political commentators described that feat by Oshiomhole.  Even then, Anambra State has for three consecutive terms been won by APGA.

    If these facts were lost to Buhari, he should not have forgotten in a hurry that flying the banner of his party, the Congress for Progressive Change CPC, Tanko Al-Makura came from an obscure position to win the Nassarawa governorship election in 2011in a contest with an incumbent governor. Or has Buhari forgotten that he owes his current office to the defeat of an incumbent President? So where do we now fit in the purported feat the President wants to take credit of?

    Given the above, it amounts to a falsification of extant facts to have arrived at the incongruous conclusion that opposition parties’ winning elections is a novel achievement which Buhari should take credit of. It is a sad commentary that the President was misled by his speech writers into such a fallacious conclusion.

    Since the issue attracted Buhari’s attention, the sentiments expressed could be taken as an expression of hope and commitment to free and fair elections. Its veracity will definitely come to test during the coming elections. He has the coming governorship elections in some states to prove that he wants to make history in the conduct of free and fair elections. That chance is still open. Opposition parties winning elections on these shores are nothing new.

    The President would also want to assume some credit for guaranteeing the freedom to associate, to hold and disseminate opinion. But he went off tangent in his conclusion that recent calls for restructuring are responsible for agitations in some quarters for the dismemberment of the country. It is exactly the other way round. Restructuring is viewed by many as a therapeutic response to agitations for self-determination especially, in the face of the inability of the government to attend to nagging national questions.

    Agitations for restructuring, true federalism, devolution of powers or resource control predate the current regime. That was why we had the various national conversations during the regimes of Obasanjo and Jonathan. Perhaps, the inability to implement the pristine recommendations of those conferences is part of the reasons the agitations have festered.

    If the agitations are now widespread as we have seen in recent times, they are perhaps an indication of the insensitivity of the current regime to and its manifest inability to take along the sensibilities of the constituents in its governance agenda. It is not enough to blame calls for restructuring for the rising agitations for self-determination. Neither is it helpful disparaging genuine discussions on restructuring on the faulty claim that they emboldened some groups to canvass for the dismembering of the country.

    That suggestion is at best, a clear attempt to blackmail, frighten and intimidate canvassers of genuine conversation on the systemic deficits that have held this country prostrate over the years. The target is to give restructuring a bad name and dampen the momentum of agitations. So what type of political freedom is Buhari talking about in the above circumstance? In dismissing the calls so offhandedly, he left no one in doubt on his serious aversion to genuine discussions on the way forward.

    It is not enough to decree that such talks can only be undertaken at the level of the national and state assemblies. Neither will issues be resolved by placing the blame for the rising agitations on the doorsteps of leaders of communities where the agitations emanate. Both the blame and solution lie on the response of the government to emerging national challenges. And as can be deciphered from the President’s speech, he carries a mind-set that is unhelpful in the circumstance.

    The national and state assemblies where he wants the conversations to take place are also circumscribed by the same systemic and structural debilities. It is not surprising that the same interest group opposed to any form of structural alteration has found them willing tools in spurning genuine efforts to amend sections of the constitution. We have not forgotten in a hurry how the National Assembly recently threw away proposals for devolution for powers and the national outrage that followed it.

    It is obvious Buhari is averse to any form of discussions on vexatious issues of our federal order. He sees such discussions as an attempt to break up the country. By the same inference, he can neither drive any discussions in that regard nor provide the necessary executive prodding that will drive the process. For him, everything is all about security, securing the country and force. Fronting security concerns each time serious national issues arise is in my view, a subterfuge for evading reality.

    But even in the area of his greatest competence- security, is this country better secured today with all the criminalities and threats to life and property? If anything, the recurring deployment of soldiers across the country under operation this or that, to fight social vices attests to upsurge in insecurity in the land. This should instruct that we tinker with undue fixation on extant structures, institutions and processes that have kept the components polar apart and stultified genuine efforts at national development.

    It is time to think outside the box rather than enslaved by a status quo that has at best remained counterproductive. It is high time we democratized the political process by electing civilians into the highest political office in the country. Buhari’s handling of genuine democratic engagements, his preference for force in resolving civil concerns constitute a sad reminder to the years of the locust denoted by military rule. That is the unfortunate signal each time he responds to nagging national challenges. Ironically, force has proved inherently defective in genuinely and permanently addressing some of the issues that confront this country many decades after Independence.

     

  • Awo’s Bu(r)st

    Awo’s Bu(r)st

    During the week, a statue startled. When alpha governor Akinwunmi Ambode unveiled it to the delight of some Awo faithful and family, he probably did not expect such firestorm from the critics. Some loved it as a tribute to an artist’s sense of the avatar. Others embraced his cap, his rimmed glasses, his stately pose.

    Others cavilled at the face. They railed at its lack of statesmanlike poise. They said its neck was too thin, his girth to fat, his shoes a fashion faux pas: Awo did not wear lace-up beneath his buba and sokoto.

    Suddenly, Awo was back again from the grave, just like when he was here in flesh and blood. Some were awestruck, some struck him. While he was god to some, he was Mephistopheles to others. Critics forget, as is often the case with every work of art, that an artist can give a new twist to reality. It can be charmingly bland if you look at it from the familiar. But the artist can defamiliarise to refocus attention on the familiar. The critics had a field day, but remember the words of Finnish violinist, Jean Sibelius: “Pay no attention to what the critics say. A statue has never been erected in honour of a critic.”

    This is not the first statue to rake up dust. They said the Martin Luther King Junior one made him arrogant, the monument to Princess Diana caused an accident, the Peru Jesus made the Lord too flamboyant, many saw the Peter The Great statue in Moscow as bizarre and nothing like the iconic Russian leader. Today, confederate statues are generating raw passion on both sides in the U.S. when Awo’s bust was removed in Ibadan under Alao-Akala, it led his lovers to the genius’s burst of ideas.

    Everyone cherishes their own Awo. Those who want him ugly will condone no Adonis Awo. The one who wants him a god will preserve his shrine. Those want him buried and forgotten will preserve his ashes. The person who turns him into a bigot will violate any other kind of purity. So Awo is handsome, detestable, divine, dystopic, visionary, shepherd, shelter, depending on the court where you declaimed your verdict. All want to breathe their own life into a still Awo. For the sage who tenanted his genius in the west while the rest envied, this is a Pygmalion moment.

    Everyone is entitled to their own view of Awo as a still image as they are of his life. But the flurry of verbal rage only shows how Awo has remained the significant personage in Nigerian history. By unveiling the statue at this time, the Lagos State Governor only unwittingly restored Awo’s stature  on the front burner of the Nigerian debate. Some want to burn him, others want to burnish him. But no one can banish him. In either case, he is aflame in glory. He is the dead, whom Senegalese poet Leopold Senghor wrote, “have always refused to die.”

    Nothing shows this more than the current jaw-jaw over our future. The key word is restructuring. Why is everyone speaking about it? It is because Awo made a pearl of his region. If the West failed in the first trial, few will have any cause to cast back our course. Memory has become refuge because Awo is that memorial. He set the West as a city on the hill. He lit it with free education, lifted its infrastructure, made cocoa into wealth and built a monument, the Cocoa House, as Nigeria’s first such edifice, built an envy of a civil service, instilled a work ethic we crave wistfully, installed a politics that looked inward and shone to the world.

    Hence the recent meeting in Ibadan. Among other things, they called for regionalism. They wanted Awo’s rebirth in the West. They were endorsed by the East and South-south. The East under Zik also aped Awo’s doing with good success, if not up to Awo’s stellar colours. The Midwest was part of the West and, when it came to its own, it still bore the image of its forbears.

    Yet, as Awo’s still figure in Alausa sparks different views, the Ibadan meeting forgot that the Awo that bloomed in the Westminster system believed Nigeria should do away with it. The Ibadan meeting wanted us to go back to the parliamentary system. But Awo hailed the presidential. This point was amply explained by columnist Segun Ayobolu in his analysis of the sage’s book, Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution. We take what we want from our heroes. Awo knew that the parliamentary system was effective before it became effete.

    But it is a system that courts alienation of the people, according to him. Once the parliament is formed, government becomes a collusion of prime minister and his law makers. Awo also witnessed the presidential system, and he lamented it when the NPN routed his UPN and acted like a monarchy and manipulated the courts. His last interventions showed that he did not expect that generation of Nigerians to witness good governance. In Babangida’s time, he said we were involved in a “fruitless search.”

    Awo’s despair about Westminster made him call for the presidential, which also torpedoed our hopes. Our present return to presidential politics has exposed something that many are not willing to address. It is not about the system. It is about us. “No constitution, no document can govern a people if the people are not ready to govern ourselves,” noted former Ghanaian leader Hilla Liman.

    That is the crux. We can call for restructuring. Some Southeast elements can call for Biaxit. But what is at stake is not restructuring, however desirable it might be. It is a sense of values. If we still do not believe in a template of justice, where everyone acts by a moral code and the rule of law, we can restructure the country to the finite detail, but we shall never be content with ourselves.

    It is because we distrust ourselves that we argue over restructuring. One person’s restructuring is another person’s disfiguring. That is the case with Awo. Hence his image will continue to become a source of tweaking. Some see Westminster and forget he had outlived it. Others see his love for economic development. Some forget that if Awo were a creature of the 21st century, he wold not be obsessed with television as with the new frontiers of Apple, Facebook, etc.

    Societies often wake up past heroes to redefine contemporary challenges. Reagan governed in the 1980’s but we still have Reagan Republicans and Reagan Democrats, each defining him their own way. Charles de Gaulle still haunts French politics today. Although the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, it is doubtful if the man who stopped slavery will hug a Donald Trump. President Andrew Jackson, a self-confessed racist who tormented Indians with a trail of tears, is Trump’s hero today. Last week, German polls gave Hitler’s descendants significant seats in parliament and Chancellor Merkel is forced to dialogue with them. When people look back they see different. On addressing the Renaissance and Reformation, historians said “Erasmus laid the egg, and Martin Luther hatched it, but Erasmus said the colour of the feathers was different from the one he intended.” So, is Awo going to accept what the Awoists are saying today?

    Awo was dynamic in life. We expect him not to be static in death. As we seek a new nation, the greatest Nigerian ever tugs us out of our ideological complacency, out of our doctrinaire closets. We could search for him with the optimism of poet Edmund Spenser: “For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.” In doing so, we should find us in him and he in us. Awo is a guide, not a doctrine.

  • The Ambassadors

    The Ambassadors

    A few months ago, some denizens of the Rivers State government characterised NIMASA boss, Dakuku Peterside, as a failure. They did not know what was coming. He proved them wrong without a word. He slammed them with his success story. As the finance minister announced, NIMASA turned billions of naira to the Federation Account, topping in multiple percentage what his predecessors did.

    In millions of dollars, he replied Governor Wike and his men. This doing is also evident in the work of Professor Ishaq Oloyede of JAMB, who turned out a profit of eight billion Naira when his predecessor trickled with three million Naira.

    This is kudos to the two men, but also to President Buhari’s ability to ensure that he ran a country shorn of corruption. The NCC also unveiled a huge sum. We cannot however shout hurrah until we see the full story. For instance, what is NECO’s record?

    The Dakuku and Oloyede deserve the plaudits as ambassadors of accountability.

  • Anniversary thoughts

    Yesterday October 1, marked the 57th anniversary of Nigeria as an independent country. On that day, the Nigerian state was founded. With the foundation of the new state, the expectation was that nation building which involves the construction of a common sense of national consciousness and identity would follow.

    This is more so given that the emerging Nigerian state was an amalgam of disparate ethnic, religious and linguistic nationalities. This background threw up the urgent task of inculcating and imbuing in the federating groups, a common bond that is supportive of co-habitation so that the task of national development and progress can be collectively pursued.

    With this heterogeneity, very conscious and concerted measures needed to be called to action to wield the various peoples together and stave off the disruptive influences of unbridled competition and suspicion among the groups on the one hand and the central authority on the other. Taking into confidence the sensibilities of the disparate groups was a more profitable way for national development to progress unhindered.

    But the political elite soon found themselves entangled in a web of bitter competition for supremacy which took ethnic and religious coloration. This was followed by a military coup, counter coup and a three-year civil war.  The cycle of military dictatorship continued only to be punctured with a brief civilian rule that saw Alhaji Shehu Shagari as the president. With the sacking of his government by the same military expeditors, the dictatorship of the military continued unfettered until 1999 when a new civilian government headed by Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn in.

    It is worthy of note that all the years the military held sway could be aptly tagged as stages in the foundation of the Nigerian state. One thing central to this period in the history is the predominance of military influence or force in its institutionalization. This period is largely concerned with the establishment of institutions, structures and paraphernalia of government. All have no choice than to obey the command of the military. It allows no space for either dissent or alternative persuasions. And in such arrangement hallmarked by arbitrariness, command and control, it would be foolhardy to expect the sensibilities and overall interests of the constituents to find reasonable expression and accommodation.

    The military finally exited governance after 28 years in the political saddle. But that was after they had done a lot of damage; initiating several measures in several fronts with very profound implications for the organization of this unity in diversity. They created states and local governments at will without any objective criteria. They bequeathed a constitution to the democratically elected government without taking inputs from the very people over whom the constitution is meant to govern. They handed over a federal arrangement that is to all intents and purposes a unitary system; concentrating enormous powers on the central authority.

    Not unexpectedly, the arbitrariness of the military in decreeing forms and structures and a constitution for the federation, has since been the greatest source of friction, threatening the very foundation of the country. These systemic defects elicited agitations across the country for a federal arrangement that is fair and equitable to the constituents. There are agitations for whittling down the awesome powers of the central authority so as to stave off the bitter competition for power at that level.  Calls have also been made for more powers and revenue to the states and local government to facilitate development.

    The unbridled corruption and looting spree that hallmark governance on these shores are inexorably linked to the omnipresence and omnipotence of the federal arm which literally controls life and death. These calls have come in the forms of restructuring, true federalism, resource control and devolution of powers. Central to all these is the desideratum of some form of constitutional re-engineering such that would devolve more powers to the federating units and lessen their overdependence on the central authority for hand-outs.

    It is also envisaged with devolution, undue competition for power and its disruptive effects on national progress and stability would be stymied. There have been calls for a return to the arrangement we had with the 1960 and 1963 constitutions during which period the regions made substantial progress based on their competences and comparative advantages.

    That was the period the country had a semblance of a federal structure where the federal government bequeathed more powers to the regions. All these were substantially altered with the advent of the military. But with the return to civil rule in 1999, agitations for a more equitable federal structure resonated. Obasanjo responded by empanelling a constitutional conference. The conference did its work but its recommendations were thrown overboard for fear of his using it as a springboard for his infamous third term game plan.

    Jonathan who took over from Yar’Adua faced similar agitations and came up with the national constitutional conference. The conference concluded its deliberations and made far-reaching recommendations that would aid the country overcome some of the debilitating challenges that stultify national progress and development. They could not be implemented before he lost power.

    But the agitations peaked since Buhari took over, threatening the very foundation on which the country was erected. It has manifested in the various agitations for self-determination- IPOB, MASSOB, Yoruba Liberation Command, Niger Delta Republic, Arewa Youths and Middle Belt. Central to all these, is the perceived inability of extant federal order to provide the enabling ground for the constituents to approximate their full potentials.

    The federal arrangement has to be tinkered with to get the right mix that will unleash the creative energies of the people for even development and self-actualization.  As national leader of the ruling APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu succinctly captured: “it would be better to restructure things to attain the correct balance between our collective purposes on the one hand and our separate grassroots realities on the other”.

    Restructuring envisions a new order that will task and drive productivity in the different regions of the country rather than the old fashioned dependence on revenue sharing that encourages indolence and laziness. The attraction lies in its capacity to shift and focus attention to new wealth creation areas, promote productivity and competition in the bid of the federating units’ struggle for survival. Overall, it will convey development faster to the constituent units.

    Despite being the way forward, restructuring has not been well received by a section of the north ostensibly on suspicion that it may deny them some of the advantages they currently enjoy. Some have raised fears that it will lead to dismembering of the country even as others have sought to disparage the idea hiding under definitional issues. Yet, the issues to restructuring are unambiguous and very compelling.

    At 57, we ought to have stabilized our governance framework such that the task of nation building can commence. It is a sad commentary that we are still contending with such things as the form of structures to adopt, issues that are usually thrashed out during the foundation of states. It is also a huge embarrassment that primordial cleavages are still in very stiff competition with the central authority for the loyalty of the citizens. It is a mark of collective failure in nation building that October 1 appealed to a group of northern youth as a veritable timeline to quit sections of the country from the north and confiscate their property. It is a veritable statement of our progress in national integration.

    It is not enough to rehash the unity, indivisibility and non-negotiability of the country. Neither can the reliance on force to achieve these suffice. The solution lies in constructing the right mix between our collective aspirations and diverse interests of the constituents. Buhari has a chance to write his name in the sands of history or make a hero of his successor as the new momentum can only be delayed. Its alternative could be disastrous.

  • Three wise men

    Three wise men

    The fate of ethnic entrepreneur Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB calls to mind the Greek myth of Icarus, the son of master craftsman Daedalus. Icarus thrilled to his father’s new invention. He gave Icarus a set of feathers and wax to make wings. The prospect of flying amused him, and provided him an escape opportunity from a place of oppression called Crete. It flattered his ambition.

    Icarus was, however, warned. Daedalus his father asked him against what he called hubris, which referred to an over-bloated ego and self-confidence. Icarus saw that the contraption worked. He soared out of the earth and savoured the dizzy heights. He was above his fellow humans, glided with birds and even levitated above them. He forgot himself and started to see himself as a god. He thought, in the words of Shakespeare, that “the world is my oyster.” He was more than a dove or eagle. He was abandoning time and conquering space. If God asked Abraham to claim the earth as long as his eyes could see, Icarus was plumbing space to infinity.

    Hubris became his undoing. He forgot his father’s warning. He flew high towards the sun. The mighty ball of heat melted the wax and the feathers came away from his arms. Icarus tumbled down in a giddy fall and plunged into the sea.

    Kanu should have read about ambitions. He should have read, from his Jewish texts, that Jehovah punished hubris. He should have learned from the failings of the father of Biafra, Emeka Ojukwu. But he would not stop. He would not stop violating bail terms, stop piling invectives and lies, stop ratcheting up venom against other ethnic groups. He mounted a guard of honour, set up uniformed army, called Igbo worshippers fools for submitting to their preferred non-Igbo pastors. As an ethnic entrepreneur, he did not ask Igbo traders to stop doing business with non-Igbos.

    He developed a delusion of grandeur, saw himself as His Excellency, pooh-poohed legitimate southeast governors, threatened boycott of Anambra State polls, mocked the Buhari who returned from illness as an impostor, called everyone not Igbo as zoo animals, called for arms. Like Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, he overstated his power. He had become a sort of political icon of glamour, a signature stride, a sash over his shoulder, his glasses, his measured smile. Like Jesus, a fanatic got healed by touching him. He endowed his followers with catharsis. They kissed his feet, worshiped his halo, danced for him.

    His followers began to believe the impossible. Foolishness overcame them and they started to search for northerners in vehicles. It showed they had no sense of history. They forgot the Igbos doing business in peace In Kano, Kaduna or Sokoto. They forgot the pogrom of the 1960’s and slaughter of many a kinsman.

    From new revelations, Kanu was feeding fat. It was not for nothing I tagged him ethnic entrepreneur. He was gorging on his kinsmen. The army thought he had had enough. Yoruba would say, O ti jeun kanu (He was well fed). It was time for him to plunge like Icarus. Burned by the yellow sun, Kanu splashed head-on into the bight – shall I say bite – of Biafra. Now, in quiet, he would console himself like Satan in Paradise Lost, “solitude sometimes is best society.”

    We have a tranquil country today, and the consequences of Kanu are not combustion and butchery because some men handled the matter with intricacy of wisdom. They are the three wise men of the moment. They are the Sultan of Sokoto, Saad Abubakar 111, Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State and Governor Okezie V. Ikpeazu of Abia State.

    When the state seemed on the boil, Governor Ikpeazu walked a delicate line when he declared curfew. Rash leaders could have bungled it and seen the state descend into chaos. By declaring curfew, he nipped violence. He was, as it were, the host governor of Kanu, and yet he maintained a poise of control that neither portrayed him as supporter of the scoundrel nor as accommodating the excesses of the army’s presence. This is the sort of leadership of balance that is bringing attention to the Abia governor. His signature project about indigenising our taste through enterprise is now known as Made in Aba, a vision the rest of the country will do well to ape. He is Nigeria’s apostle of local content.

    As the chairman of Northern Governors Forum, Gov. Shettima hit on the great idea that northern governors should head east to reassure northern folks living there. Backed by southeast governors like Ikpeazu, Shettima and a few other governors, including Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal, embarked on the trip of the olive branch.

    Shettima has shown great presence as leader of northern governors. His trait has taken centre stage since the fiery day of Boko Haram. He was not rattled by the militants, and he stood with his folks in the furnace of war when over half of his state fell to the brigands. Other than that, he has run his state with cooperative elan, letting Christians and Muslims to embrace in an ambience of mutual respect and benefits. He has also shown great sensitivity to southern tribes and given them positions in his government. It must be noted, too, that Governor Tambuwal has also shown great initiative with the Ohaneze Indigbo in Sokoto and pursued a project of mutual understanding.

    The Sultan’s role has been pivotal. He knew that Friday is fire in the north. Prayer can burn. So, he sent word around the north, reinforced by the emirs, including the Emir of kano, that the messages should emphasise peace, which is the hallmark of Islam. His words percolated the prayer grounds across the north. It made the difference between love and conflict, and averted blood and thunder.

    All three, Shettima, Ikpeazu and the Sultan made the triumph of the triumvirate. The three gave us peace by keeping us in one piece. This is the sort of cooperation that this country is capable of. If we took this serenity of approach to other issues, including the tempestuous bickering over restructuring, we will find that it pays us to live in unity through dialogue and understanding. This quiet did not need a senior advocate or political wheel horse, or the rancour of a debate. It was informal and heartfelt.  The three show that triumvirates are not always bad. In Rome, Caesar ruptured the informal triumvirate with Pompey magnus and Crassus. The second triumvirate fell to Antony’s heart beat for Cleopatra.

    Yet many have been successful, whether in China, India or even in the Bible. The transfiguration had three men. The trinity is three in one, just as in Buddhism. Many will agree that Trump, Ivanka and her husband Kushner form the White House triple pillar. Gov. Ipkeazu, Gov Shettima and the Sultan were each a third of the country, to paraphrase Shakespeare in his play Antony and Cleopatra. They just crafted a model of coexistence for us as a nation.

  • Tourism means business

    Tourism means business

    This year’s World Tourism Day, September 27, is another time to think about Nigeria’s approach to tourism and to rethink. The celebration will focus on “Sustainable Tourism – a Tool for Development.”

    World Tourism Day has been celebrated since 1980, and previous editions have featured topics including Peace and Dialogue, Energy, Accessibility, World Heritage, and Water and Tourism. To mark the occasion, the Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), a specialised agency of the United Nations (UN), Taleb Rifai, said: “Last year alone, 1.235 million travellers crossed international borders in one single year. By 2030, this 1.2 billion will become 1.8 billion. The question, as we celebrate World Tourism Day 2017, is how we can enable this powerful global transformative force, these 1.8 billion opportunities, to contribute to make this world a better place and to advance sustainable development in all its three pillars. This World Tourism Day, whenever you travel, wherever you travel, remember to respect nature, respect culture and respect your host.”

    It is interesting that the theme of the celebration this year underlines the role of tourism in development. If tourism has a development role, then development should have a tourism role. This linkage is not easily grasped by Nigeria’s tourism authorities.

    Perhaps the new Director-General of the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC), Mr. Folorunso Coker, will help to drive a necessary rethinking of tourism. In July, he launched a roadmap designed to develop the tourism industry and contribute to the country’s development. It is called “Destination Nigeria: Tourism Development Roadmap (2017-2021).”

    Coker gave a useful insight into his thinking on tourism, saying: “Tourism is a business of moving people from point A to B and back to A or further up to point C. It is transportation by air, by road, by water. Transportation entails servicing of vehicles, buying of new tyres and all sorts of maintenance issues of consumption, and that is business. It is when the traveller gets to the destination, is it for business, or pleasure? That is business. The hotel where he stays, the food he eats and other things there are business. We want to change the perception that people have always had about tourism that it is just Arts and Culture.”

    He supplied statistics to support his business-oriented approach: “Tourism is responsible for 10 percent of the global GDP; it is about 8 trillion dollars in value; it is responsible for one in eleven jobs, which is more than the oil industry; it is the largest employer of labour in the world, about 292 million people. And strategically, it employs predominantly women and the youth. It is responsible for about 1.4 trillion in foreign exchange; it is responsible for 10 percent of world trade, and responsible for 30 percent of service export.”

    He added: “Now you can see how important the industry is. And for it to make this huge contribution to any economy, it has to be treated as a serious business. It has to be invested in for you to reap the huge values out of it. So tourism must be treated as business not as leisure or pastime activity that it has always been classified as.”

    It may well be that tourism needs a business model. In line with Coker’s business approach, the Minister of State for Environment, Alhaji Ibrahim Jibrin, announced that the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) had approved the partial commercialisation of three national parks as a pilot scheme.  Jibrin said: “Nigerian national parks are faced with numerous challenges which militate against their accelerated development. Prominent among these are: insecurity, inadequate funds for developmental projects, trans-boundary conservation activities and sustainable livelihood options, deterioration of infrastructure, lack of capacity, dearth of manpower and equipment and, above all, absence of strategic partnerships.”

    Jibrin continued: “It is in a bid to reverse the trend and raise the standards of national parks to global best practices that the Federal Government recently unbundled national parks to encourage private participation in their development and management. Already, the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) has approved the partial commercialisation of the service. The council has also approved the immediate commercialisation of the eco-tourism components of three national parks, namely, Gashaka Gumti, Cross River and Kainji Lake national parks as a pilot scheme. In this regard, the management of the National Park Service is working with relevant government agencies to ensure a securer and investment friendly environment in and around the national parks. I therefore urge potential investors to take advantage of this window and invest in national parks.”

    Nigeria can a lesson or two from the official celebrations of World Tourism Day 2017, which will be held in Qatar, as decided by the UNWTO General Assembly. The planned activities demonstrate a serious, business-like approach to tourism: “The event will be structured around two sessions, focused on ‘Tourism as a driver of economic growth,’ and ‘Tourism and the Planet: committed to a greener future.’ In addition, a high-level think tank will be conducted with the aim of opening the debate on the potential of the sector to enhance cultural preservation and mutual understanding. On the Agenda will also be the presentation of the Qatar National Tourism Sector Strategy, which advances sustainable approaches. The initiative is aligned with the Qatar National Vision 2030, which focuses on Economic, Social and Human Development and prioritizes tourism as a catalyst to progress towards a more diversified economy.”

    When will Nigeria move beyond paying lip service to tourism as a tool for development?  It is reassuring that Coker has an action plan and sounds like an action man who means business. As part of the plan, “the corporation will champion the upgrade of beaches and waterfronts in Cross River, Bayelsa and Lagos states to world- class standard, launch the National Tourism Fund as a joint initiative of the private and public sectors, including international donors and agencies, review of the NTDC Act No 81 of 1992 and all tourism laws, licensing rates and fees.”

    Hopefully, the NTDC under Coker will fulfill the early promise and chart a course for development-oriented tourism based on a business model that works.

      

    • This columnist is going on vacation.

  • A harvest of terrorists

    With court declaration that the activities of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra IPOB amounted to acts of terrorism and illegality, the debate on the legality of earlier classification by the military appears to have been foreclosed. Yet, the government tackled the problem from the answer before establishing the processes that would lead to it. Solving a mathematical puzzle from the answer is bound to draw the ire of any examiner.

    The military had declared the IPOB a terrorist organization on allegations of forming a Biafra Secret Service, Biafra National Guard, blocking of public access roads, extortion of money from innocent civilians and possession of weapons (stones, Molotov cocktails, machetes and broken bottles). The classification at once, elicited two sets of criticisms. The first hinged on the right of the military to make such declaration given that our laws have no place for them in the process.

    Perhaps, the most contentious of the criticisms was whether the reasons proffered satisfied both the necessary and sufficient conditions for declaring IPOB a terrorist organization. Even the worst critics of the strategies of the IPOB will hesitate to buy into the argument that these constituted sufficient grounds for them to be labeled a terrorist organization. That is the truth of the matter.

    The proscription of IPOB is a fait accompli even as experts have faulted the court order and the overall competence of the ruling. It is needless dissipating energy on the processes that led to it; whether it was the right option in the circumstance or what interests it is meant to serve. It is also too late to pontificate on the non-violent disposition of the group, the fact that they neither carry arms nor are they known to have attacked targets (hard or soft) inflicting harm on lives and property for impact.

    Their first encounter of throwing stones and blocking road for the enforcement of the on-going Operation Python Dance exercise turned out their greatest undoing, attracting proscription and a terrorist label. Before then, they had largely operated as a very peaceful and non-violent organization. The indecent haste with which the military termed the group a terrorist organization enabling the government to tow the same line raises suspicion. This is more so given the delay and opposition from the north against tagging the Boko Haram insurgents a terrorist group even when they had bombed the UN building in Abuja and many churches killing hundreds of innocent worshippers.

    But the question that agitates the mind especially given IPOB’s focus on self-determination is the efficacy of the proscription and profiling in addressing issues to the agitation. We will also have to contend bias and double standards in the processes and circumstances culminating in the current fate of the group.

    The Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed has of late been bandying all manner of allegations against the group. He has alleged foreign funding; that Kanu was caught in a video in London in 2015 soliciting money for weapons and openly solicits for arms and funds.  He also accused France of being the financial headquarters of IPOB and claimed the UK rebuffed their request to shut down radio Biafra.

    Ironically, much of the statements emanating from Mohammed are laced with high level propaganda. Mohammed is entitled to launder the image of the government in the face of strident criticisms that have dogged the mishandling of the IPOB matter. He is also at liberty to bandy frivolous claims around as is now evident from the reactions of France and UK.

    He can go ahead and heap praises on northern governors for forestalling reprisal attacks in the north. He is free to simulate danger of any magnitude and proportion to the incidents in Port Harcourt, Umuahia and Aba and downplay the ones in Jos, Kaduna and Sokoto. He can pontificate and reel out claims that will justify a non-violent self-determination group as a terrorist organization. He is entitled to his views especially as the end has already justified the means.

    But in overdramatizing the issue, he should not gloss over the fact that this country is home to mindless and unprovoked attacks on lives and property by sundry groups under various guises.  Religion-induced riots that claimed lives and property of inestimable value have been rampant in some parts of the country. There are also the deadly escapades of the Fulani herdsmen. The last time I checked, I could not remember any time there were reprisal attacks from those who lost their loved ones and property from such frequent and unprovoked attacks. Given the minister’s over dramatization of the issue of reprisals, it would appear the enormous sacrifices by sections that have borne the brunt of these attacks are being taken for granted.

    Northern governors are on point for counseling their subjects to refrain from self-help even in the face of provocation. Their delegation has also been in the South-east to build confidence, reassure their indigenes that all is well and save the country from plunging into further crisis. That is commendable.

    All the same, it is wrong to convey the impression that the infraction witnessed in the South-east in the last couple of days compares with the activities of the herdsmen to warrant the treatment they have now received. It is also difficult to fathom how Fulani herdsmen declared by Global Terrorism Index as the fourth deadliest group in the world can escape the tag of a terrorist organization. In this deadly matrix, the herdsmen came after Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab.

    Yet, the Nigerian government sees nothing wrong with their murderous activities. Ironically, the same government that deliberately shut its eyes to the huge danger the herdsmen constitute to the peace and security of the country went into a frenzy to invent all manner of reasons to hound and obliterate all that IPOB stands for irrespective of whatever procedural defects that may have trailed some of their actions. It is also a curious coincidence that the action of the government has met the demands of Arewa youths who wrote to the UN to label IPOB a terrorist organization.

    The same youth group issued the quit order to the Igbo. The government may have decimated the IPOB through the ban. It may have as well driven them underground. Those found with evidence of some form of connection with the group henceforth, stand to face the raw teeth of the law. They also face other severe consequences depending on the circumstances and the agencies that caught them.

    But do the measures remedy the issues that threw up the IPOB? The answer is no. Are they capable of eliciting favorable dispositions and reconstructing the minds of the agitators away from the complaints that compelled them to the discipleship of Kanu? I do not see that happening. If anything, the proscription will further reinforce those fears for which they fell for Kanu’s Biafra option. They will be more inclined to see the high-handedness of the Buhari regime as a further proof that they do not really count in the affairs of this country.

    They will continue to wonder why the same government kept mute while the Fulani herdsmen held the nation hostage. They will begin to nurse the feeling that perhaps, if one of theirs was occupying the highest political office in the country; if they had representation at the highest echelon of the military, their situation would have been different. The ban cannot change the minds of those who believe in what IPOB stands for. It cannot decimate agitations for Biafra until the systemic dysfunctions that gave rise to them are decisively and realistically addressed. At any rate, there are still three other groups professing the same ideas that are not affected by the proscription.

    The government erred by the indecent haste with which it tagged IPOB a terrorist organization. It is one thing to ban the group and entirely another to label it a terrorist organization. The latter goes with serious repercussions. With Boko Haram, the deadly escapades of the Fulani herdsmen and now IPOB, we have made a clear statement in the world terrorism index. We will have to contend with this dialectics.

  • Lawmakers vs Lagos: A law against the law

    The lawmakers in Abuja seem eager to stir trouble. Professor Itse Sagay has put their feet to the fire over their emperor’s salaries. They are still wining over it. Chidi Odinkalu has exposed a tyrant’s law they are cooking over NGOs. This page will address that soon. Now, amidst calls for restructuring, they are trying to interfere with settled law over tourism, and they are duelling Nigeria’s iconic state, Lagos.

    It’s impunity at work when lawmakers want to upturn what the Supreme Court has ruled upon. It has upheld the 2003 and 2009 hotels licensing laws passed by the Lagos State House of Assembly. There are many things wrong with what is going on in the centre. One, the federal agency is trying to eat where it did not sow. Lagos has made money with ingenious tax policy, which is helping to fuel the work alpha Governor Akinwunmi Ambode is doing.

    Two, the licensing law of tourism affects hotels and associated businesses, and it is within the purview of the state to reap what it flowers and protects. Three, the federal tourism agency sued Lagos over this matter, and the Supreme Court ruled in Lagos’ favour. Four, the lawmakers want to torpedo the constitution by making a law against the law. That would be a fakery of a tour de force for tourism. They had seen the real tour de force Lagos has pulled off with its revenue.

    Five, the Supreme Court ruled for federalism, hence Lagos passed the law. The centre is acting against the grain. Six, the constitution distinguishes between exclusive and concurrent lists. Exclusive belongs to Federal. Licensing hotels is concurrent.

    This is illiteracy of impunity and impunity of legalism. It cannot stand.

  • Desecration

    Desecration

    When a Nigerian army calls its operation Python Dance, it may make sense anywhere else in the country but the Southeast. In Igboland, it makes abomination. The army reflected either a disgraceful lack of cultural education or an impunity of desecration.

    The python is a sacred animal in Igboland. To launch an offensive against crime or subversion, the army could have found other metaphors. The long, fat, sly and slithering beast is called Eke believed to be a messenger and agent of the earth goddess, Ala. It is therefore a totem in the east.

    If its army’s python was about soldiers in uniforms starched for combat, tanks poised to roll and the air awaiting orders, then it mocks not IPOB alone but the cultural integrity of the land. It is like pissing on a holy ground, what T.S. Elliot symbolically fleshed out in his play, Murder in the Cathedral. By myth, the Igbo python swallows frogs, not humans. The Nigerian army python has no tailless amphibian in his feral sights. Its nozzles and tanks target Igbos not of the spirit but of the mammalian world. You cannot slaughter a cow in India and make a feast of beef in an open market.

    The military missed the point on the symbolic level. By flexing their superior arms, the soldiers only show a wrong-headed operation. The deployment of the army was one more stumble in handling ethnic entrepreneur Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB. All it achieved was to further mythicise an opportunist.

    The army and Buhari ought to know that Kanu is no hero in the mould that history shows. He is no Nelson Mandela, who conceived and duelled for free blacks in South Africa. He is no Castro camped in bushes and who saw death before he gave his country life. He is no Patrick Henry of the American Revolution who cried, “give me liberty or give me death.” No Amilcar Cabral. No Che. No John Brown of the anti-slavery headiness who torched Harpers Ferry, launched the Pottawatomie Massacre and was hanged for his cause. Some historians credit Brown as the emotional flame thrower that burned the anti-slavery fervour till all slaves breathed freedom.

    Kanu was a mere London vagrant who caught an opportunity for a happy ‘loot’ at the expense of his people. So, Buhari only is making the man bigger than he is and should be. Mere mortals can turn into heroes by the accident of other people’s folly. It is like the character in Jerzy Kosinski Novel Being There where a nobody who knows nothing has by association risen in wisdom that is not his and suddenly is being projected to run for the U.S. president.

    It is such foolishness that has made the government rush to tag IPOB a terrorist group when they have not even accept the herdsmen as such.

    Kanu was first locked up unnecessarily. The government organised a court action to release him on impossible bail terms that the man accepted before challenging. The man broke the rules. So, the government started court proceedings to get him back behind bars. They know the court dilates. So, the less than smart attorney general Malami and his boss Buhari lack political finesse.

    Rather than wait on end for the court to rule on the bail violations, they could have picked up Kanu on fresh violations. The man committed treason my mounting a guard of honour with so-called Biafran soldiers. On that score, he should not only have been picked up but also a special court could start an expedited trial.

    That way, the so-called Operation Python Dance would have had no rhythm in the east. Again, Abia State Governor and the apostle of local content, Okezie Ikpeazu, would have focussed more on galvanising the state over indigenising our taste through enterprise. The state would not have roiled and no curfew declared. By allowing Kanu linger for so long in the east, Buhari attracted turbulence. He deposited Kanu as unrefined honey that attracted the wave of bees in the form of pedestrian devotees flocking in different parts of the Southeast.

    They allowed the man’s ego to soar because the lower class adored him. The elite courted him not out of love or approval but out of sympathy and yearning for order. The crowd of fawning lower-class followers make people think that IPOB is unstoppable. It is a lie. The Biafra sentiment heaves in every Igbo breast. But Biafra does not always mean separatism in Igboland. It is a metaphor for ethnic pride, no more, no less. The Biafra of IPOB fantasy is a corpse. The followers are only copulating the still and decomposing cadaver.

    So the sentiment is strong, even revolutionary. Here is what a master revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin, says: “A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.” Lenin and his folks expected the Marxist revolution to happen first in Germany. Every such revolution requires a revolutionary elite. Kanu and his IPOB don’t have any such credentials.

    Again, the conditions that helped Ojukwu’s Biafra are non-existent today. The business, intellectual, political and bureaucratic classes are out of sync with him. Hence it was naïve that Buhari should give that group the sort of gravitas that belongs elsewhere.

    The Buhari administration created the Kanu hobgoblin. He now has a task to stop it from moving from irritation to a big rash. That is another desecration of the body politic.

  • Show of force

    Unprovoked attack on journalists inside their Umuahia secretariat, Abia State by soldiers of ‘Operation Python Dance’ and the heightened tension sequel to their deployment underscore most poignantly, some of the potent dangers in the exercise.

    Soldiers, ostensibly on a show of force, stormed the secretariat of journalists beating them up and smashing their working equipments including phones and I-pads. They claimed they saw some of them taking pictures of their convoy.

    But we are told it is a show of force. And when you display force in public, is there still anything to hide? If the display of force is for the public to see the readiness of the military to confront any threat to public peace, what difference does it make if such information is further made available to others outside the vicinity of the action by the media? We raise this to highlight the incongruity of the soldiers’ action and the dangers in the current posturing of the military campaign in the South-east.

    Good enough, the army apologized for the excesses of their men even before the September 15 advertised date for the commencement of the exercise. Given that the so-called operation python dance was billed to commence on September 15, what campaigns were the soldiers involved in skirmishes penultimate Sunday at Nnamdi Kanu’s country home and those that attacked journalists last Tuesday prosecuting?

    It is vital for this riddle to be resolved for the public to really appreciate what is really going on in the South-east. Was the action of the military well ahead of the planned Operation Python Dance part of it or a precursor of what to expect? The army has to provide answer to this given conflicting accounts of what transpired at the home of Kanu on that Sunday. The army denied attacking or killing anybody. It claimed suspected IPOB militants blocked the road against troops of 145 Battalion on a show of force along FMC-World Bank Road, Umuahia; insisting they would not pass and started pelting stones. Troops according to them, fired shots in the air to disperse the crowd.

    But the account of the state police commissioner ran thus “what happened was that the military was parading a new armoured carrier and passed through Kanu’s residence. It was while they were passing that some people threw some stones and other things at them”.

    However, video clips on the incident showed a military tank and other vehicles at the residence of Kanu moving back and forth. Several gunshots boomed at the background while some youth, presumably IPOB members with sticks and stones hauled some pebbles at the military tank. A young man seen with deep wound on his leg soaked in blood was being assisted by some youth who claimed he was shot by the army.

    It was not clear whether the shooting preceded the hauling of pebbles or the vice versa. But what seemed apparent was that the skirmish took place in front of the residence of the IPOB leader. And prior to this, there was tranquillity within the area.

    When the military launched the first version of this exercise between November and December last year, it said the objective was to tackle armed robbery, kidnapping, violent crimes, herdsmen-farmers’ clashes and violent agitations. But this time, the word violent was dropped from agitations, thus conveying the impression that even lawful and legitimate agitations were some of the targets of the operation.

    Little wonder the current conduct of the soldiers and public apprehension at the sight of the armada amassed in the South-east. Many have questioned the propriety of deploying sophisticated military arms and ammunition to fight the societal ills for which the military sought to justify the operation. There have also been opinions that our laws do not permit the use of the military for functions that ordinarily should be the statutory responsibility of the police.

    Issues have also been raised as to whether the President has the powers to deploy the military in such a massive way without the approval of the Senate. Even in the case of the Boko Haram insurgents that were clearly waging a military warfare against the Nigerian government, former President Jonathan got the approval of the Senate before declaring the partial state of emergency that enabled him to deploy troops to that area.

    So why are extant rules of organized conduct being observed in their breach even on issues of non violent agitations for self-determination that are still within the competences of the police force? We raise this question because the posturing of the military in the current exercise is loaded with frightening prospects of rupturing peace and escalating tension and clashes between the soldiers and the civil populace.

    Given the temperament of the military as we have seen in the unprovoked attack on journalists, there is everything to expect the situation will degenerate if they continue to show force the way they are going about it. Already, allegations of killings, inhuman treatment, abuse of human rights and scant regard for rules of engagement have been traded. Ethnic clashes and reprisal attacks have also been reported in Rivers, Kaduna and Plateau with Abia and Plateau states declaring dusk to dawn curfew.

    Unless the overall objective is to escalate tension and find excuse for what the army knows best, utmost caution and restraint must be applied in the on-going campaign. It is very delighting the army apologized to journalists attacked by their men with a promise to replace their damaged equipment and punish the offenders. The way things stand, the deployment of troops in the South-east and the conduct of the soldiers have escalated tension and suspicion among the distinct groups that hitherto co-habited resulting to attacks and counter attacks.

    A situation that has compelled law-abiding citizens to nurse genuine fears on the safety of their lives leaves a sour taste in the mouth. The right thing to do in the circumstance is for the soldiers to be withdrawn immediately to enable the police being deployed to the states to maintain the peace.

    The operation has also been queried given what appears its very selective nature. Armed robbery, kidnapping and sundry crimes for which reasons the deployment has been rationalized, are by no means on top of the scale in the South-east. Neither is agitation for self-determination or threats of it limited to that zone. Constant killings, despoliation of communities and raping of women in their farms for which armed Fulani herdsmen are notorious, especially around the North-central have not attracted this manner of military deployment. Yet, they operate with the sophistication of well organized insurgents. This has given cause for suspicion of bias.

    Even then, military checkpoints have since remained a regular feature at the entry and exit points of states in the south-east zone. It would appear the body language of the government is that the new phase of Operation Python Dance is primarily targeted at those agitating for self-determination especially the group led by Kanu. The army has reacted to video clips depicting soldiers dehumanizing IPOB members in the most chilling manner with a promise to investigate the report. It calls for independent investigations.

    Former President Obasanjo had at a recent workshop on “preventing violent extremism” attributed the escalation of the Boko Haram insurgency to a disproportionate use of the ‘stick’ rather than ‘carrot’. And in an interview with the BBC last week, he said Boko Haram started from a position of gross underdevelopment and youth frustration and as such, we must be treating the disease and not the symptom. Buhari should find answers to the objective conditions that propel these agitations and address them rather than muzzle and drive dissent underground.