The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Is Peter Obi the praying mantis?

    Is Peter Obi the praying mantis?

    Pitobi amused me during Ramadam. First as a feeder of the poor. Second, as a praying mantis. Was he trying to show that he is now a Muslim or that he has sympathy for Muslims? So, when he sat among the small boys to break his fast, two things struck me. First, he was not eating the quality of rice the poor often eat. He tempted the poor with his upscale cuisine. The jollof rice was rich. Its colour could tickle a palate. I don’t know where it came from, but those boys must have been very titillated that evening when they broke their fast. They must invite him again as a good customer. Or he invited them. It was probably from Kitchen Republic or specially prepared by some happy chef. In the next Ramadan, Pitobi should wake up at 5:30 am and join them. Not his evening version of Iftar when no one can verify whether he had ofe nsala for lunch. Two, he did not communicate with the little guys. He was just eating and looking. How could he. He had not long ago showed contempt for them when he rallied his Christian elite in the name of election. He had too much contempt to relate to them. He was just smiling to himself. He was making love to himself.

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    I say praying mantis, because this was the same Pitobi who rallied Christians against Muslims, a pilgrim and crusader, not long ago. He ran as a saviour of the kingdom. He does not have to pray, but show interest. Maybe he would go to Mecca next. But if he must pray, let us know if he will apologise to those Muslims he threw dirt at during the 2023 presidential campaign.

    He is beginning to pray down our democracy though with ignorance. He says democracy is collapsing because he lost the election. He says no one should be elected unless they have over 50 percent of the votes. If we were to follow that, we can have only two parties. His Labour Party would not be in the running last time. This man needs to go and read history and political systems. There is a reason we have parliamentary systems and presidential systems and hybrids, from the United States to France to the United Kingdom to India.

    If he has a humility to learn, he can go to any university in Nigeria, especially now that he has a lot of idle time to cross religious line in journeys of hypocrisy. If he cannot go, I can recommend some books for him to read. He needs light.

  • Fubara’s Samson syndrome

    Fubara’s Samson syndrome

    The battle in the George Nwaeke household epitomises the fever in Rivers State. Rarely does one family unfurl the story of a society and a nation. For such dreams painters brush, novelists fantasise, playwrights dramatise and even biographers recall. They try to weave a social trend through the thread of a home, a family, an incident. For epic poets, history has given a lot of fodder, like Sundiata, Shaka, Ogunmola, Nana of Itsekiri, et al. Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman erupted from a historical moment.

    As the country comes to terms with the state of emergency and its aftermath, the Nwaeke family opened a window. We see the wife Florence in hysteria about a N15 billion blackmail. Around her, persons say nothing but look either in horror or approval, or in mockery of both quiet sentiments.

    She is, at that moment, a desperate wife, a romantic, social activist. To others, she is a Nollywood wannabe, a political hireling, the new face of the Fubara antic. She goes on, against the background of a high-tone furniture, as though she wants to crawl on the floor. But she does not. Her husband, Dr. Nwaeke, and head of service who resigned, has flown to Abuja. He replies his wife in public. This must be a precedent. The family washing its dirty linen in public. It is like the political family of the PDP. Wike and Fubara deny each other.

    The man says he is a former insider of the Fubara political machine. He saw all the workings of the former governor. His details are unflinching. He says the bombing that many saw as the casus belli for declaring a state of emergency was going to be a teaser, the first of many bombings that would turn the state into a sprawl of fire. It would stagnate the state and country. What did he mean? That Fubara wanted to reignite the ‘we tie’ inferno of the First Republic. In the Western Region, there were no oil pipelines. Fires and smoke repainted the streets in death and blood. Fire was mythicized, spat out by the gods. Juju was an oven conjured by babalawos. Streets became ovens. If the Rivers case was to torch oil, juju toasted the cars and houses and political enemies in the wild, wild west. It was wild, wild waste.

    Dr. Nwaeke was saying that Fubara had a Samson psyche. He wanted to pull down the Nigerian state, and possibly make the army come. Nwaeke charged Fubara of treason, of trying to overthrow our democracy. Was that what he meant when he told the youths that they would get instruction at the right time? Was this a case of a man who wanted to pull down the state if the state did not have him?

    No one has had this kind of charge since the treasonable felony against Awo in the First Republic? Fubara is no Awo, not in insights, stature or moral fibre. But Fubara had the resources to do it. The Department of State Security (DSS) ought to look into it. They ought to fight for the facts. Fubara has denied these allegations, and if they are not true, then, Dr. Nwaeke is the culprit.

    Nwaeke relayed his facts like a good raconteur, the late nights, the comings and goings in the state house, the dialogues, the names. We cannot forget graphic details of money, bags of money, in dollars hauled in and out.

    He said Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed came along, and Fubara wanted to back a northerner like him to confront a Tinubu second crack at the presidency. He also spoke of the funding of media and social media influencers to shape the narrative. Of course, we are aware of the television lawyers who were dead from the neck up when Fubara bombed the icon of legislature, the House of Assemby. They were dead from the neck up when he overthrew a branch of government and made four men the lawmakers, and pooh-poohed the constitution and the 27 men who were legitimate. They lost their tongues when he signed a budget in defiance of the law and built a cabinet on nothing. The lawyers goaded him on. PANDEF, especially under Edwin Clark, gave him the ballast while blasting his opponents and FCT Minister Nyesom Wike.

    Was it therefore true that all these persons were just working for money, and they did not believe in the Fubara cause? Look at it. These persons are now silent. No money to bomb pipelines and houses. They are not saying anything anymore. They are not organizing. The only person who dared was Governor Diri of Bayelsa State who posed as representing the Southsouth governors. When did they hold a meeting? Where did they meet? Who was present? Where is the communique? Who signed it? No wonder Edo Governor Monday Okpebholo called him out and he has remained mum.

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    The elders, including Peter Odili, who was an elder in name and age but not as sage, are not saying anything. Is it a confirmation of Dr. Nwaeke’s assertion that it was all fueled by filthy lucre. The words and agitation have quieted because the bags have stopped coming. The man in charge, Vice admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas, has shut the door. If we must hold the elders and the political folks and even the youths and social media responsible, we must not forget the lawyers. Shakespeare asserts, “the first thing we do, let’s kill the lawyers.” I am saying even if it is the last thing, the lawyers are not without guilt in fueling Fubara to fury. They all shooed him off the cliff. Humpty dumpty and what a great fall!All the king’s men…

    But it is an insight to the place of flattery and selfish prodding that men in office go through. They are turned into what Bertolt Brecht painted in his play, The Good Woman of Setzuan. The gods give a poor woman money and she becomes popular and everyone wants something from her. But generosity is becoming a problem, and she takes a disguise of ruthless business man, and that makes her new character unpopular and they want to stone her to death. Fubara is an example of the good woman who cannot turn bad and is wrecked by being “good.” A character says “I’d like to be good but there’s the rent to pay.”

    We have a democracy of rentiers and the rentiers wrecked Fubara through blandishments and favours. There is a place for generosity in a democracy, but not one powered by liars and frauds. The lawyers, elders, media rentiers and politicians steamrolled Rivers State into the state of emergency. They were the bones and muscles and bloodstream in the personality. Fubara just gave the roar, and he roared into perdition.

    Democracy must work with good persons though, in the line of Goethe, “Noble be man, merciful and good.”

    For the state to return to its quiet times of democracy, nobility is the key, not frivolity.

  • It’s all noise

    It’s all noise

    So, they say the president could declare a state of emergency but leave the house members and the governor intact. What does that mean? It means rolling tanks and stamping jackboots on the streets of Port Harcourt. But the house members could go ahead and impeach Governor Sim Fubara?

    But wait! These are the same people that say the house members should not impeach him, and that it would be an act of bad faith and a call to turmoil. What turmoil? Blowing up pipelines and blowing up houses, putting lives of political enemies and innocent civilians in peril. So, the president should send Nuhu Ribadu and his team to look out for those who want to turn the state over to the devil. Meanwhile, those in office still retain the resources and capacity for turbulence?

    It is quite unfortunate that it is reason that is upside down. The state of emergency is to stave off violence, but what if the violence will remain a clear and present omen so long as those who would foment are in their ferment because they have the power and pocket?

    Those who say this and call for constitutionalism were the same persons who prodded Fubara against the law. Against the same constitution, he set up a four-man legislature. They were the same television lawyers and commentators who kept mum when he blew up a legislative monument by way of the House of Assembly building. He also, against the constitution, passed a budget with four men. Also, against the constitution, he defied court order and organized a local government election.

    The same persons, against the constitution, are saying the Supreme Court erred by maintaining that Fubara defied the constitution. If the top court ruled otherwise, then he  would have acted like Obasanjo when he asked a dawn cabal of about six men to impeach a governor. It was the same PDP that did it and hailed it at that time. Obi said nothing then. Atiku was in PDP then. They did not stand up to their guy.

    They also, with intellectual mischief, refer to the Jonathan era when he slammed emergency on three states, Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. For those with truncated sense of the past, Jonathan was set to dismantle the democratic structure. This essayist joined the voices to restrain him. Why? The problem was not the political structure. The governors, including now Vice President Kashim Shettima, were not the fulcrum of the crisis. It was Boko Haram. In fact, Boko Haram menaced the political structure having mowed down and planted flags in local governments in most of the states. The state of emergency was needed to protect the political structures.

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    In the Rivers State case, the threat was the political structure. The players, in both arms, were at loggerheads, and the victim was the common Riverian. The democratic structure was going to overthrow democracy in the state. So, what is the value when it precipitates anarchy?

    The governor and the lawmakers were, in the words of Shakespeare, “both in either’s powers.”

    We are a nation that denies history, even as recent as a month ago, especially if amnesia bestows profit.

    We were witnesses when President Bola Tinubu called the warring parties, Nyesom Wike and Fuabra together with the state elders, and they signed a truce. And, on good authority, I report that the president had spoken to them individually and together many times. But they saw the truce as a piece of paper, a peace on paper and pissed on it. Each side did go rogue when they were not playing to the gallery. Sometimes, going rogue meant playing to the gallery.

    After the Supreme Court verdict, elders, including PANDEF, started looking for ways to avert impeachment. It is naïve to expect that the lawmakers would not want to impeach Fubara. Fubara was acting like a born-again respecter of law when he visited the House to submit his budget. He was stooping to conquer and the lawmakers knew it, so they did not take the bait. If they did, they would have legitimized Fubara. And the same fellows who hailed him for breaking the law would now hail him for obeying it.

    But his obedience was going to be a sacrifice. He would have enmeshed the lawmakers into his scheme, get his allocation, organize his local government elections, take over the state levers of power, cruise into 2027 with victory, and replace the 27 lawmakers with his own, and he would become all in all.

    Wike and his men knew this. At that stage, it was a question of power. Those who expected both sides would tamp down their vitriol and work together did not understand the interstices of power. For them to work together would require what Chinua Achebe describes as “niceties and delicate refinements that belonged elsewhere.” In the same novel, A Man of The People, Achebe posed: “What is modesty but inverted pride.” These guys had no modesty, but they fought for the jugular.

    There was no prospect other than a standoff and a standstill. If they were statesmen, we could expect both sides to wear off their malice and act as civilized men. But mutual suspicion brewed. If one man acted gentle, he would be the other’s fool. Hence, it was a zero-sum game. Novelist Bassie Head called it, “a question of power.” Thomas Hobbes wrote his Leviathan at a time England was a land of turmoil and standoffs. He proclaimed that “man is, by nature, selfish.” He knew that 17th century England did not abide the niceties and delicate refinement, but butchery.

    The first state of emergency in this country, in 1962, is sometimes invoked. The Awolowo part of the Action Group and the Akintola renegades precipitated semblance of a stalemate, not a true stalemate. They wanted Akintola out. They had the numbers. Those who lionize the Awo group over that fraught era do so because Akintola was a traitor to the political society of Egbe Omo Oduduwa and the AG that gave birth to him. For him to continue was seen as asinine, and Akintola’s decency gave way to Machiavellian hubris. AG men enacted what  is called real politik.

    Akintola could have finagled his way into power again and prevented Adegbenro from replacing him. He would rig his way in later. Tafawa Balewa, who had grudges against the Western Region and Awo over many issues, including its model governance, prosperity and the support of the Middle Belt Congress and the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State project, exploited an apparent turmoil to declare a state of emergency. Akintola was voted out with 66 votes out of 117. Akintola’s men would not relent, and were therefore planted by the centre. That state of emergency was an act of Akintola violence to nullify a democratic vote. The Privy Council in London endorsed his ouster. Was emergency a forgone conclusion? No. It was political machismo and machination.

    What the Rivers State players on both sides provided was what historians often restrain themselves from saying: inevitability. Those who say it was hasty, or excessive have not provided any alternative? By definition, in a state of emergency, nothing is sacrosanct. That is why it is so called. Democracies have been known, since the time of Greece, to foment autocracies. We are even witnessing it today. Russia votes a tyrant every election cycle. In the United States, the people voted a convicted felon. Democrats installed a plutocracy. What Rivers State gave is what is called kakistocracy.

    Section 305 reflects what philosophers refer to as hermeneutics, or reader-response theory. Everyone reads it from their own interest. The activist who must oppose government and the opposition will read it the way it likes. Remember they did the same to justify Fubara’s errors. They say, the section does not give the president powers to suspend the elected officers. It does not deny him the powers either. Soyinka responded a little hastily when he said it was “excessive” but he was still going to “go deeper and find out what was going on in Rivers State that led to what I consider an unfortunate step in our federalist journey.” No law covers every scenario. Hence, we have judges. The drafters often presume the good faith of its executors. That good faith was what President Tinubu exercised.

    If a Bokassa was a governor and became an unchecked butcher, or if we had a person like Caligula or Nero as governor, and the people could not stop him, or if a governor starts a secessionist drive as we saw in the 19th century United States, shall we say the structure should remain? Shall we continue with the law so that sin may prevail? God forbid. The law was made for man. Lincoln knew this, hence, in a democracy, he suspended the habeas corpus, and he was supported by Congress. Many called him a despot then. But he needed to save the union first. Democracy must obey necessity.

    Fubara told the youths that at the appropriate time, they would get instruction. A day after the lawmakers sent a misconduct note to Fubara, a pipeline hugged the skies with flames. As we say, a witch cried last night, and a child died this morning. Who does not know the connection? As my father Moses used to tell his children, quoting the scriptures, “If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself, but if thou scornest, thou alone shall bear it.” What happened was a warning this essayist has sounded in the past. It required no prophet, but just commonsense. But like Okonkwo of Things fall Apart and Sophocles’ Oedipus, the players saw the end but yielded to death wish.

  • Ogoni cleanup close-up

    Ogoni cleanup close-up

    It is said that it is easier to destroy than to build or rebuild. This context underscores the actions of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) aimed at rebuilding Ogoni, Rivers State, an environment devastated by oil industry operations. 

    Oil was discovered in commercial quantity in Ogoniland in 1958. Today, it comprises four local government areas, Khana, Gokana, Tai and Eleme, and includes 261 communities. Ironically, the discovery of oil in the place, which made it a source of wealth for Nigeria, also brought tragic consequences. For instance, between 1976 and 1991, a period of 15 years, nearly 3,000 separate oil spills polluted Ogoniland, negatively impacting farming and fishing as well as the health of the locals.   

    Indeed, the issue of environmental degradation and its damaging effects inspired the formation of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), in 1990. The organisation, led by writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, raised public awareness of the dark side of oil exploration and production in the country; and its potent campaign helped to force Shell to suspend production in Ogoniland in 1993.

    Two years later, Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni human rights activists were executed under Nigeria’s military government, which accused them of the murder of four fellow Ogonis over differences regarding the appropriate approach to the fight against the destruction of their environment.

    Notably, in 2008, two massive oil spills happened in the Bodo community, and Shell attributed them to defects in the Trans-Niger Pipeline. In the first case, the leak lasted about four weeks.  

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    In 2009, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), prompted by the Nigerian government, launched a scientific investigation into the impact of contamination from oil across the Ogoni region. UNEP, in 2011, published a report showing that pollution from over 50 years of oil operations in the region had “penetrated further and deeper than many may have supposed.”

    According to UNEP, its team, over a 14-month period, “examined more than 200 locations, surveyed 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way, reviewed more than 5,000 medical records and engaged over 23,000 people at local community meetings.” Also, detailed soil and groundwater contamination investigations were conducted at 69 sites, and more than 4,000 samples were analysed, including water taken from 142 groundwater monitoring wells drilled specifically for the study and soil extracted from 780 boreholes.

    It said the findings were “alarming both in terms of human health protection and environmental protection.”  For instance, in one community, at Nisisioken Ogale, in western Ogoniland, the report said families were drinking water from wells contaminated with benzene – a known carcinogen – at levels over 900 times above World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines.

    UNEP concluded that “The environmental restoration of Ogoniland could prove to be the world’s most wide-ranging and long-term oil cleanup exercise ever undertaken if contaminated drinking water, land, creeks and important ecosystems such as mangroves are to be brought back to full, productive health.” 

    This gave birth to the Ogoni Cleanup, launched by the Nigerian government in 2016. HYPREP, which operates under the Federal Ministry of Environment, has the mandate to “remediate hydrocarbon impacted communities and restore livelihoods in Ogoniland,” based on the 2011 UNEP report on Ogoni Environmental Assessment. HYREP was established in 2012 and commenced operations in Ogoniland in 2016.

    My participation in a tour of remediation projects addressing the negative impact of oil operations in Ogoniland was an eye-opening experience. The tour, organised by Media Voices for Accountability (MVA), involved seasoned journalists and supported a narrative change. Headed by Dr Dakuku Peterside, MVA works to “promote transparency, accountability and dialogue in public affairs.” There was strong evidence of HYPREP’s focused improvement of impacted communities as well as its commitment to sustainable development in the targeted areas.

    The beauty of HYPREP is its value additions beyond UNEP’S recommendations. For instance, we visited the Kporghor/Gio and Barako water schemes, which boast modern water treatment facilities that provide potable water to communities. We also visited the 100-bed Ogoni specialist hospital and the 40-bed Buan cottage hospital, which are nearing completion.

    The high point of the tour was the visit to the grand and ambitious Centre of Excellence for Environmental Restoration (CEER), which is in the last phase of completion. It stands on 28 hectares of land. Designed as an international research centre for environmental issues, it is a statement on continuity of environmental intervention. It is created “to promote learning and benefit other communities impacted by oil contamination in the Niger Delta and elsewhere in the world.”

     These project sites, seen on the first day of the tour, on March 10, provided valuable insights into HYPREP’s impressive and commendable efforts.

    On the second day of the tour, an adventure-filled boat ride to see the results of the mangrove restoration project earned HYPREP more praise. At the Bomu site, in Gokana Local Government Area, it was a delight to see “juvenile mangroves” growing in restored areas. This was an instance of success. The cleanup objective at this site, which is to allow the reintroduction of mangrove, had been achieved. In a symbolic demonstration of support for the cause, the group of visiting journalists participated in a mangrove planting session.

     The stench of contamination was unmistakable at the Kpor site, one of the 34 shoreline remediation sites across five communities in Gokana.    Evidence of the devastating effect of oil spillage and leakage could be seen at the shoreline at Goi. The water was unrecognisable. Vegetation had disappeared. Biodiversity was destroyed. Remediation workers struggled to clean up impacted areas, working with machines, shovels and water hoses. It was a dark picture.  

     Soil and groundwater treatment schemes at Ajeokpori, Ogale, Eleme Local Government Area, told a similar story of contamination resulting from oil operations in Ogoniland. Mountains of excavated soil and vast pits punctuated the site. The removal of contaminants and restoration of the soil is to ensure revegetation. This had been achieved at the Obolo Ebubu site, among others. The visiting journalists saw evidence of soil remediation at this site.      

    The UNEP report recommended a $1billion Environmental Restoration Fund for Ogoniland or Ogoni Restoration Fund (ORF) to be co-funded by the Federal Government, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Ltd and the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) Ltd Joint Venture. The initial capital injection is to cover the first five years of the clean-up project. According to the report, contaminated land areas in Ogoniland can be cleaned up within five years, while the restoration of heavily-impacted mangrove stands and swamplands will take up to 30 years.

     HYPREP should be backed to sustain the ongoing remediation efforts.  The tour showed that the organisation is living up to its responsibility and is on course regarding its mission in Ogoniland: ‘Remediating the environment and restoring livelihood.’

    HYPREP Project Coordinator Prof. Nenibarini Zabbey described the project as “the first of its kind in this part of the world,” adding that it is “work in progress.” During his interaction with the visitors at the organisation’s corporate office in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, he observed that “When the public is not properly informed, they will be misinformed and misled.” That was the essence of the tour. 

  • Opposition politics’ challenge

    Opposition politics’ challenge

    The fate of opposition politics is one great challenge to democratic governance in this country. The phenomenon is not entirely new. But it has assumed a threatening dimension given the crisis of relevance engulfing opposition parties in recent times.

    Virtually all opposition parties that secured governorship and National Assembly seats in the last general elections- the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) are embroiled in one form of crisis or the other, real or contrived. At the centre of it all, is the struggle for power supremacy amongst key leaders.

    Even before these crises, the political atmosphere had been polluted by a rash of cross-carpeting by legislators at both the state and national levels to the parties controlled by the governments in power. Legislators qua legislators have jumped ship, often, rationalising their action on purported division within the parties even when such conditions do not really exist.

    Though the constitution permits such defection only when there is a division in the party, that condition is rarely met, as lawmakers defect at will and retain their seats without consequences. The relative ease and frequency of these defections is a measure of the weakness of the constitutional provisions in this regard. Deepening democracy by guaranteeing virile opposition suffers serious reverses in the face of the inability of the laws of the land to keep such defections at check. Sadly, the judiciary has not been of much help in stemming the tide.

    The net effect is seen in the gale of defections that sometimes defy logic except the allure of the stomach. This has weakened opposition politics both at the state levels and at the National Assembly. Most state assemblies are nothing more than rubber stamps of sitting governors unable to actuate the checks and balances expected of them as the second tier of government.

    Apparently weakened by this rash of unprincipled defections and internal party strife, the political space has been awash with conversations on realignment of forces to build formidable opposition to the ruling party. There are reports of meetings on realignment of forces, possible mergers or the adoption of a political party into which all those committed to providing alternative platforms for virile opposition will empty into.

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    The argument is that with the current state of opposition parties especially the internal crisis they are entangled in, they will be ill-equipped to mount serious opposition as the next elections draw closer. Thus, the need for an alternative platform free from the encumbrances that are currently holding down opposition parties. Not a few Nigerians share the view of possible slide to one party state should opposition parties remain in their current ineffective and disorderly form.

    One politician that has surprisingly become an apostle of this idea is Nasir El-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State and one of the foundation members of the ruing All Progressives Congress (APC).  El-Rufai recently came up strongly against his former party accusing it of orchestrating the crisis rocking the opposition parties.

    “The crisis in the Labour Party is contrived and funded by the government of the day, everyone knows it. Jumping from one court to another is all designed to distract the party leadership from their core functions. The same thing is happening in the PDP and even in the NNPP” he said.

     He has decamped from the APC accusing it of deviating from its core values and promoting personal rather than national interest. He has been beckoning on some other key political figures to empty into his new party to form a formidable force.

    The presidency and the APC leadership have in separate reactions taken a swipe on El-Rufai refuting some of his claims. They accused him of hiding under self-serving interest to bandy sweeping allegations.

    His inability to scale through senate ministerial screening was cited as the real grouse the Kaduna-born politician has with the APC government. But the NNPP took serious exceptions to the claims of El-Rufai especially as they relate to their party. They had in a statement repudiated the claims that the federal government was responsible for the crisis in their party. They rather, blamed it on internal rancour within their leadership.

    Beyond these, the current state of opposition parties will continue to attract serious attention among keen political observers. Given the primacy of virile opposition in any democratic engagement, genuine fears of possible decimation of opposition and recline to one party state cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand. Not with the hallmark antagonistic disposition of African leaders to opposition politics.

    This uncertainty nurtures all kinds of theories; the kind El-Rufai canvassed. Even before he came open to accuse the federal government of sponsoring the crisis in the parties, other key opposition politicians have openly blamed external influences for stoking the series of crisis rocking the opposition.

    When this is juxtaposed with the penchant by elected leaders and politicians of all hue to gravitate towards the government in power, the signals do not leave anyone in comfort. But democracy, the type we copied and purport to be practising is predicated on plurality of views; alternatives and dissent.

    Political parties as agents of interest articulation, ventilation and political education provide alternative views and choices to the electorate before, during and after elections. They present themselves as credible alternatives and keep the government in power at check.

    That culture of virile competition for power has continued to suffer serious reverses in the African context. The intolerance of African leaders to opposition or dissent especially at the budding stages of the new states was legendry. And it was fingered in the rash of military interventions that marked that epoch in Africa. Then also, scholars had noted the pervading culture of intolerance to opposition rooted in the African kingship structure.

    The gale of defections and gravitation of politicians to the government in power, especially at the federal level illustrates this point most poignantly. This lure is neither based on any ennobling principles nor national interest.

    Sadly, all these weaken opposition and depict the political class as a band of opportunists lacking in principles. Benevolent dictatorship as suitable governance construct for the African nations gained considerable traction in the past because of the dissonance between the plurality of choices presented by Western liberal democracy and the marked intolerance of dissent in the African setting. This has raised questions on the propriety of the development systems we copied.

    Even with the unpopularity and anachronism military rule has become, the fact that four African countries are at the moment under that contraption should call for serious introspection. Democracy both as a development paradigm and ideology is governed by the culture of dissent.

    Ironically, some of our leaders are quick to celebrate and eulogise democracy and embellish their credentials with the sacrifices they made to get the military packing and enthrone democracy. But, when it comes to allowing the culture of democracy to flourish, they are found wanting.

    Dissent and alternative choices constitute the fulcrum on which the wheels of democracy revolve. Any attempt to emasculate these principles detracts substantially from the core values that make democracy more preferred than other forms of governance construct.

    It was in view of these imperfections that former president Obasanjo recently grilled western democracy both as an ideological construct and development paradigm. He had at a consultation on “Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy in Africa” faulted the ideology for neither delivering good governance and development to Africa nor factoring in their history and multi-cultural complexities.

    In its place, he had proposed what he called ‘Afro Democracy’ without stating its essential attributes. But he did not leave anyone in doubt of his dissatisfaction with western liberal democracy in the form it manifests in African countries especially for its deficiency in fully reflecting the will of a majority of the people. That is the point.

    The practice of democracy in Nigeria, wittingly or unwittingly shunts out a majority of the people. That questions the relevance of that ideology to truly reflect the collective will of the people. The trend calls for urgent reversal through constitutional amendments that sufficiently guarantees strong opposition. Our laws should be amended to allow defection only on the ground that it will entail loss of elective seat of the incumbent. This will not only halt the rash of defections but ensure credible opposition. It will grow genuine and purposeful opposition and deepen democracy.

  • The first malcontent

    The first malcontent

    It is only in Nigeria that a man like Mallam Nasir El-Rufai can offer a glib lip to the public. In other climes, he will bury his face and weep. After he gave an interview about never joining the PDP, he jumped into an empty shell called the SDP, and he wants the world to shout hurrah.

    Many are looking at his national profile and paying less attention to the effect in his home base of Kaduna. As they say, all politics is local.

    In his home, especially the APC, his defection is seen as a surrender. It is also seen as good riddance. As he left, many are rejoicing while others are calling for accountability. Those not happy include those whose houses he demolished with a bulldozer’s glee. Those he rid of their jobs. Those who want peace but he drove a wedge between Jesus and Mohammed. He coddled the bandits but, on his watch, they plundered, raped and killed.

    What of projects for which billions were allocated but no evidence of work even started? Over 25,000 civil servants retrenched and unpaid? What of chiefdoms taken from people and given over to herdsmen like the Ikulu as Leadership newspaper columnist Simon Musa Reef narrated, or roads neglected like the Kafanchan road where Governor Sani has intervened?

    The markets shut down, and they remained shut down until he left. While he was governor, he demolished shops, and the entrepreneurs are not happy. He sacked teachers, and the mallams of makaranta are not happy, especially after he hired replacement teachers and did not pay them. He gloated openly over the slaughter of Shiites in his state. He did not betray the milk of human sorrow. He could not even pretend. In Southern Kaduna, they accuse him of declaring curfew while the goons rumbled into their homes and huts and grunted afterwards like hyenas of occupation.

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    The local government politicians did not like him. The lawmakers, perhaps except for his son, have nothing but contempt for him. He is perhaps the only governor in the history of this republic that his legislative colleagues instituted a corruption probe on his activities in office. He might call himself a statesman but I don’t give him that flattery. If he accepts the notion that he is a statesman as he deludes himself, then he is a statesman without a state. I had characterized Peter Obi with that epithet once when he lost his party in the state before he lost his state to another party, and he has never gotten it back. PDP is not ruling the roost in Anambra State. Now, as a labour maven, LP is an underling.

    Here is a quote from a press statement by a charity, the Sheikh Dahiru Usman Foundation: “Under El-Rufai’s administration, security forces carried out violent night raids on our Tsangaya schools. They stormed dormitories, brutalized students and staff, and forcibly removed children from their hostels under false pretences. Some of these children remain unaccounted for to this day.” The foundation has given him up to the end of Ramadan to issue an apology. Failing that, they promise to take him to court.

    If El Rufai were an iroko, we would see an earthquake in the state. He left the party like a loner. He is a maverick without a structure. No big-time politician, no crowds cheering him out. No big crowd receiving him into the SDP. Rather the youths of the party have described his coming as the profile of an “undertaker.” They described him as “unfit and morally unqualified.”

    How could he move anything? As governor, he could not deliver Kaduna State for Tinubu. He gulped a mere 29 percent to Atiku’s 40 percent. What did he do for the president to feel entitled to anything in the government? He did not support the incumbent governor, Uba Sani, to be governor, and if the activist did not draw on his own pedigree, his iteration of the APC structure and his grassroots appeal, APC could have lost both gubernatorial and presidential polls in the state. We can see why his leaving did not inspire a squall. There was no comet seen, the ground did not tremble and even the al majiri did not scream or stream the streets.

    Ebenezer Obey sang, “Oyingbo market did not notice that no one came.” In the same token, Kaduna did not notice that anyone left, except for the relief that an irritant is out of their way. They can now sleep without the pesky mosquito on the window sill. He also left as an act of surrender. Having sought the obeisance of the governor and not had it, he accepted that Uba Sani is the numero uno of APC in the state. He had done enough damage. The people have shushed him away like a vagrant goat bleating about in the yard.

    The real noise is grating ears outside Kaduna and on twitter. He has been the nasty bird upsetting the dawn with songs without flavour.  He wants us to forget that he has cases to answer in Kaduna, over his stewardship. He wants us to think he was such a delicious kilishi in the APC. The gourmet meal must be missed. He feels he is such a giant that one has to crane their neck to see him in the room. He is like Nobel Laureate Gunter Grass’ character Oskar, who is small, insecure, peevish and has to scream to be noticed. His screams and all the plates and pictures and furniture have to break, shatter and scatter. He is a public desperado banging his shoes to gain attention. He is Nicodemus except that he believes he has miracles to offer.

    He is not the only disgruntled in the APC. He is just the first to move. He is the first malcontent. He is the Taiwo of defectors. He has been sent to see if the journey is worth it. They will find out, as T.S. Eliot wrote in his A Journey of Magi, that “a hard journey they had of it.” But in Kaduna APC, he is the last malcontent. The party has been disinfected.

    He is a metaphor of a fractious and fractured opposition scrambling for a voice. The thing is, whether it is Obi, or Atiku, or El Rufai, or Kwankwaso and the sundry others clucking in the shadows, they are all wounded men. Rather than heal, they want to fight with their limp hands, groggy feet, bruised eyes. If they come together, we shall have a coalition of the wounded, a battery of the battered. Let’s drink to their health!

  • Mary Slessor’s baby

    Mary Slessor’s baby

    It was my first and last encounter with her. It was virtual, and I wanted the world to see her and hear her before going gentle in that goodnight. Technology abbreviated our connection. The pictures failed, and the voice feeble when it transported across the zoom waves. When it was not feeble, it often tripped off.

    I heard her and took notes, and even recorded some of her sayings. It was good for the notes but not for television. Barely a month after that memorable encounter, Lady Mgbafor Melinda Okereke passed on. She was not a celebrity, but it was because, in Nigeria, we sometimes forget those we should remember and fail to honour those who deserve it. Lady Okereke was a twin, and not just a twin, she belonged to the first generation of twins – or ejima – saved after the scourge of twins that Mary Slessor defined her life by stopping. She was a gentle warrior, a liberator without arms. A paragon of the gospel not as an imperial weapon but as the spirit of the just made perfect.

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    Lady Okereke may be the last of that grateful generation. We can call her the last of Mary Slessor’s babies. Her twin sister Lucy died in 2012. Mgbafor was 94. As she recalled it, when she and lucy were born, Mary Slessor was already dead and buried. She died in 1915. Mgbafor and Lucy were born in 1930, and Slessor’s army of missionaries got wind of them in Arochukwu in today’s Abia State. They were Arnot, McKenneth and Dengham. They quickly rescued them at the Maternity hospital in Arochuckwu and kept them away from the hawks of culture, human birds of twin preys. Achebe captured this in Things fall Apart, but it is a story gaping for champions of narration in literature and history.

    The Scottish women preserved them in hostels and virtually trained them. They only saw their parents during holidays. She attended the Mary Slessor Memorial School, until she finished in standard six. She insisted to me that she did not attend primary school but standard school, which was what they were called until the 1960’s. In gratitude, she and her sister became missionaries and nurses and worked in Kano for a few years but the adventure was discontinued when Nigeria gained independence in 1960. “We were left like sheep without shepherd,” she intoned.

    All the missionaries left the country because they no longer had legitimacy or the permission to operate.

    I asked her if she ever visited Mary Slessor’s grave, she said no, and had no reason for it. She did not know of her rescue until she was 12, and did not know of Slessor until she was 15. As The Nation’s Edozien Udeze reports, fragments of that murderous barbarism still lurk some communities in the country. Mary Slessor is an example of what one person can do to rewrite history. The monuments may exist in schools, hospitals, hostels and churches, the real monument is the transformation of the society from fear to freedom, from bloodthirsty humans to humane.

  • Electricity tariff hike disambiguation

    Electricity tariff hike disambiguation

    Indications from officials of the federal government point to an imminent increase in the price of electricity paid by consumers. The Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Energy, Olu Verheijen was quoted last month as saying that the current power tariff would rise by about two-thirds in order to reflect the cost of supplying it.

    She reportedly told journalists during the Mission 300 Energy Summit in Tanzania that the higher energy tariff is required to fund the maintenance necessary to improve reliability and attract private investors into power generation and transmission.

    She was later to clarify that she was misquoted. According to her, what she said was that following the increase on Band ‘A’ tariffs, the current tariffs now cover about 65 per cent of the actual cost of supplying electricity with the federal government subsidizing the difference.

    But this arithmetic did not just add up. Under the Service-Based Tariff (SBT) scheme, consumers were classified into bands A to E with different tariff’regimes and hours of electricity supply. Those on Band A pay N209 per kilowatt-hour while their Band B counterparts pay N68 per kilowatt-hour for 20 hours and 16 hours of daily electricity supply respectively. Band E customers are supplied only four hours of electricity.

    As at the time the SBT scheme was being sold to the public, the impression conveyed was that Band A tariff was the appropriate price for the commodity supplied to those in that band.  Is Verheijen now saying that the current rate paid by Band A customers represent only 65 per cent cost of the power supplied to them? Or was she referring to consumers in other bands? She needs further clarification on this.

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    But that is really beside the point. The real issue is, increase in electricity tariff is imminent irrespective of how it is framed. The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu toed the same equivocating line last week when he announced plans to ‘regularise’ the country’s electricity tariffs to address the significant disparity in tariff between different consumer bands.  

    The minister shied away from presenting it as tariff hike when he spoke at the public presentation of the National Integrated Electricity Policy (NIEP) in Abuja. “We’ll look at the tariff again. I’m not saying that we’re going to increase the tariff before I’m misquoted. We are going to look at the tariff and see how we can improve upon the modest achievements we made last year”, he said.

     Adebayo pointed out what he saw as the incongruity in differentials in prices paid by Band A and their B counterparts and stressed the need to close such gaps. He finds no justification that Band B which enjoys about 16 hours of electricity daily pays only N68 per kilowatt-hour while those on Band A enjoying about 20 hours pay N209.  He may have a point here. But how come the government is realising this about a year after the Band A billing system took effect? The answer may be located in the current inability of official of the government to come clear on what regularising the electricity billing process is all about.

    In spite of the garb government functionaries have sought to dress the plan, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) sees it for what it is – an attempt to hike the price of electricity supplied to consumers. It has therefore vowed to resist it.

    In a statement issued in Yola, Adamawa State after its National Executive Council meeting, NLC rejected what it called “sham reclassification” of electricity consumers by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission NERC). It accused the minister of power and NERC of attempting to force consumers into higher tariff bands under the pretext of service improvement while in reality deepening economic hardship. Beyond electricity, the NLC also expressed concerns over the recent increase of over 35 per cent in telecommunications tariff.

    Though it acknowledged having reached an agreement with the federal government on the 35 per cent increase instead of 50 per cent earlier floated, it is yet sceptical of the federal government’s commitment to keeping to its words. The concerns of the NLC are not unfounded especially given the manner government officials are packaging and presenting the plan. Their manner of presentation conveys the unmistakable impression that either there is something to hide or they are not comfortable with such plans.

    Verheijen who initially spoke of two-thirds increase, later said she was misrepresented as what she meant was that the current price paid by consumers represented about 65 per cent of the actual cost of supplying electricity while the federal government bears the difference. That clarification came with flaws as pointed out earlier.

    Adelabu would rather speak in very unclear terms. He talked about regularizing the country’s electricity tariff to close the significant disparity in tariff differences between different bands. Yet, he would not want to be quoted as saying there will be a hike in electricity tariff. What else was he talking about if not the imminence of tariff hike?

    So, the scathing remarks and scepticism by the NLC on government’s commitment to keeping to the 35 per cent telecommunications’ tariff agreement are not out of place. But the reason the government does not want to call a spade its rightful name is not hidden to the discerning public. It has to do with the manner the STB scheme was sold to the public last year.

    Then, the policy was presented as discriminatory pricing.  It allowed Distribution Companies (DISCOS) to raise electricity price to N225 per kilowatt-hour from N68 in return for guaranteeing 20 hours of electricity supply per day. NERC said then that Band A customers represented 15 per cent of the population but constituted 40 per cent of electricity users. 

    The government also said the price paid by Band A customers represented the appropriate pricing for the commodity and would allow the DISCOS fully recover efficient cost of operation including a reasonable return on capital invested in the business. Now, it appears to be singing a different song.

    Ironically, this brand of discriminatory monopoly was not necessarily based on the ability to pay or some other social or demographic indicators but on the capacity of the DISCOS to supply at least 20 hours of electricity to the earmarked areas. It is still unclear whether the price regularising scheme will guarantee other bands longer hours of steady electricity supply or how the price adjustments will affect the various bands.

    The prospect of steady power supply to all the bands appears a tall order given the experiences of customers initially graded under the Band A scheme. The DISCOS were soon to find out that they lacked the capacity to maintain the agreed hours of steady electricity supply to their consumers. This saw to the down-grading of customers hitherto in Band A to Band B.

    Band B could not also deliver on promise as epileptic power supplies coupled with national grid breakdowns made a mockery of the scheme. Even then, the total power generation in the country which is still about 5,000 megawatts is still a far cry from the national power supply demand.

    It remains doubtful whether the government can possibly market the regularisation process on the grounds of improved and steady power supply. That will make no sense. Apparently conscious of that contradiction, the new argument is that cost reflective adjustments will improve funding for maintenance and reliable supplies and attract investors into power generation and transmission.

    What this entails is that consumers across all bands will have to pay more before the investments in infrastructural maintenance that will guarantee steady supplies could be attracted. If this interpretation is correct, then electricity consumers must be charged more for services rendered irrespective of their level of efficiency. That seems where we find ourselves now.

    That would appear a negation of the foundation on which the STB scheme was erected. Then, all the rigmarole on nomenclature- STB tariffs, cost-reflective pricing and regularisation of tariff are just subsidy removal from electricity dressed in other garbs. Such policies have been coming in torrents and the government appears scared calling it by its real name for fear of backlash.

  • Lion and the jewel

    Lion and the jewel

    One thing is sure. The history of the Senate, nay, the history of law making in Nigeria will never be written without that compound name: Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan. Some might even add, that that provenance must include the history of Nigerian politics. At least, the history of Nigeria romance, high-profile or low, city or subaltern. The history of man and woman. An inflexion point since that Edenic dawn when Eve slew Adam with her guile – maybe not!

    Some might call it a story of impertinence. The story of rebellion. A legislative equivalent of a gang rape. A penile tale. A servile tale. No one can dispute that it is the story of beauty. A woman, fair, imperious, intelligent, daring, against a powerful man.

    It is understandable that many thought she was suspended because of her sexual harassment charge. That is the power of sex, and beauty. Beauty is a dazzle, an obfuscation. The imagination of the public was entranced into a one-sided verdict, charmed by beauty into a foreordained fable. Steamrolled, henpecked. Beauty will save the world. Dostoyevsky might mean it in other lights. Not in the context of Natasha. Maybe Austrian Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, garlands the right sentiment. Says he: “Beauty is the beginning of terror.” In another place he writes, “an angel is terrible.”

    Senator Godswill Akpabio is a lover of humour who says he would be a comedian, if he comes to this world again. It’s no time for humour.

    First, the people say the Senate “gang-raped” the woman by not giving her fair hearing. Fair hearing? She sat on the wrong seat, against the rule. She wanted a better chair so she could be seen and preen, her vanity toppling the law? She wanted to stand up in the majesty of her resplendence, sash over her dainty locks and head, her eyes bold and her skin aglow. Camera as witness.

    Her accusation was about a public fantasy about a man and a beauty, Soyinka’s Lion and the Jewel, a beauty and a beast. That sort of fantasy can invoke rage. The rage about justice, a powerful man oppressing a fragile creature, a man exploiting patriarchy in a legislature full of red-blooded souls. Also, about envy, about why a man should amass such powers, and not them, why a woman should have such beauty, and not them. It is about opportunity. Time to nail Akpabio, the man who said things they did not like. Like “we are eating.”

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    But the issue is the issue. Did Natasha have proof of her case? Was it because she had been shunted out of the limelight? So, she decided to behead the man at the top? She was given an opportunity to appear before the panel, but she scorned them. She said she has concrete evidence, but no one has seen it. Shall we crucify Akpabio because he is a man, because he is her “boss,” because he can tease and make sexual advances? All men can make sexual advances. It does not mean when a man does it, it is true.

    Beauty is a magnet. It is a snare both for the woman and the man. This is not the first time beauty will subdue headlines. When it erupts, we forget everything. We forget bad governance, tribe and faith. We forget education policy, the slum of Mushin, the billions stolen yesterday, the foibles of tyranny.

    In the military era, a certain beauty known as Jennifer Madueke rocked the nation, a svelte, fair, benumbing vision, captured the imagination. It was a different kind of story. It was during the IBB years.  Names plopped down into the public ears.  From army generals to inspector general of police Oyakhilome to, can you imagine, Beko Ransome-Kuti. Civil rights took back seats to the blights of the flesh. A journalist, now famous, pointed her neck as the centre of her power. Neck like a cake, ramrod like a snake. She was the day’s Delilah. A beauty knocking down the mighty. It was a story of drugs and lust, penis and penance.

    Nor is it new. Even the only man God called his friend in the Bible was in thrall of a beauty naked in the wash, Bathsheba, who birthed a child that birthed many who birthed the holy Jesus. How could we have the Anglican Church today without a beauty. Anne Boleyn captured Henry the Eighth, who admired “her pretty duckies,” who must marry her first and upturn divorce history, and cut off the Catholic Church and form the Anglican. If beauty is the beginning of terror, as Rilke asserts, the king beheaded Boleyn, because of another beauty. Recently IMF chief failed to be French president because of a bubble of perversion with a West Arican immigrant and hotel maid, a tale retold with gusto and bravura in Chimamanda Adiche’s new novel, Dream Count.

    In ancient times, we learned of Cleopatra, who entrapped Antony and slaughtered her brother. Theodora was so beautiful that emperor Justinian of Rome changed the law to marry her , though a whore, a whore who fired male senses more than any seraph. If beauty formed a church and broke another, it touched off the greatest war in the ancient world. It was because Jason married Helen of Troy. Shaka the Zulu fell because of Noliwe, and Thomas Mofolo retells this tale but not as succinctly as Poet Senghor who wrote “the weakness of the heart is holly…” and he killed the beauty in order to “escape doubt.”

    But it is doubt that Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan leaves in the trail of her petition. For two reasons, though. One, she accused the man in his house, and the husband did not hear, and the space between them and the man? We need geographic illumination. It is interesting that the man did not say he heard to buttress his wife. Two, Reno Omokri she accused has proven her wrong in public. Her past has tainted her credibility until she has “concrete evidence.” Many may be enthralled with the witchcraft of her beauty, to paraphrase Shakespeare, but her claim must be proved. As Virginia Woolf writes, “Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.”

  • Adichie counts her dreams

    Adichie counts her dreams

    There is something eternally charming about Chimamanda Adichie’s new novel, Dream Count. One thing struck me. It tenants a quartet. In her case, four women. Two big-name writers precede her. Wole Soyinka with his Interpreters and his latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People in the World. The stories are told from four people’s perspectives. Chigozie Obioma’s latest civil war novel, The Road to the Country, also is about four people. Unlike both novelists, Dream Count is all about  women. Soyinka’s all about  men.

    Adichie’s women are Nigerians and one Guinean. The three Nigerians are Chiamaka, Omelogor and Zikora. The Guinean woman, Kadiatou, is the most compelling personality in the novel. But all four lament their lives in the United States. Chiamaka is a travel writer who dates white men after white men, and is obsessed by the haughty soul and intellectual pretentions of a black American who has nothing but contempt for her. Zikora bears a child for a successful Ghanaian, Kwame, who doesn’t see her again or the child. Omelogor is a disillusioned banker full of brio and cunning intelligence, who leaves banking in Nigeria to study pornography in the U.S.

    The core of the story is Kadiatou, called Kadi for short. It is the most beautiful part of the story. Sometimes she evokes in my mind David Diop’s Beyond the Door of No Return. Adichie rides high with flair and flow that sometimes surpass Americanah and Half of A Yellow Sun. She immerses limpid prose in rural Guinea and Conakry with familiar mastery, sometimes incantatory, sometimes poetic, but often brilliant. Kadi leaves Guinea with her child to the U.S, and she is sexually molested in a New York topline hotel by a VIP, the story inspired by the true-life story of the IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who molested a West African woman. She loses the criminal case even if she reportedly won $6 million in civil settlement. It is a different iteration of older male versus vulnerable female in Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck. Omelogor is fascinating as a confidante of a bank CEO who perches on a chair where peacock billionaires and indolent politicians launder money in uncountable zeroes of naira. She filches a few to play “Robynhood” to indigent women. It is graphic and Adichie writes like an insider. Unforgettable is Zikora’s mother who deceives husband and daughter of failed pregnancies though she has lost her womb after Zikora’s birth.

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    The Economist magazine pans Adichie’s novel for being explicit instead of  implicit, being the hallmark of the craft. Adichie has often said you must show rather than tell. There is something to the Economist critique, but the criticism is probably hurt because Dream Count ribs the West’s pharisaic hubris, and it delights to see Adichie act as today’s Moliere as she tears apart phrases and words the West deploys to assure itself as civilisation’s moral and liberal powerhouse.

    Yet, when the West writes glowingly about the novel’s Nigerian women, we must note that they are all Igbo women, nothing wrong with that.  A tribal trope when Omelogor befriends Hauwa to brandish an air of a liberal while she puts down other Fulani employees as little minds, and cannot confide in Hauwa about her “Robynhood” scheme while her Igbo kin know. The writer seems to tease the audience with a character called Jide. The reader may think, at last a Yoruba character. But Jide is short for Jideofor, who cannot land a Lagos job until he presents his name without the Igbo surname but as Jide Thomas. The men in the book lack moral heft or interior nobility, and the women enact the last verdict, as though a novel from the Elizabeth Cady Stanton. That makes Dream Count’s author a sort of feminist czar. The novel begins slowly, sometimes bullying the reader with didactic lines but it wakes up and runs masterfully.