The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Obiano and Igbo radio

    Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State last week announced his intention to establish a radio station to transmit only in Igbo language. The move is part of his contributions to save the Igbo language from going into extinction.

    In addition, pupils in primary and secondary schools would wear Igbo traditional dresses to school on Wednesdays while folklore would be taught primary school children in the evenings of the same day. The governor harped on the capacity of folklore to build sound and good moral values with a promise to reinvigorate the law compelling everybody in the state to communicate in Igbo language every Wednesday.

    He also intends to liaise with the state House of Assembly to enact a law that would compel every resident of the state to wear Igbo traditional attire on Wednesdays. Before now, the UNESCO had listed Igbo as one of the languages that stood to go extinct unless concerted efforts are made to preserve it.

    Given these fears, the measures enunciated by Obiano especially the ones relating to the setting up of a radio station to broadcast only in Igbo language and the teaching of Igbo folklore in primary schools are right steps targeted at arresting the decline. There is no doubt Igbo language has been passing through serious challenges such that could lead to its abrupt death unless concerted and concrete action is taken to stem the decline.

    The UNESCO had identified a number of factors that could determine the vitality of a language which embodies the totality of a people’s culture, tradition and identity. Among the factors are intergenerational language transmission, absolute number of speakers, availability of materials for language education and literacy. The rest are government and institutional language attitudes and policies, community members’ attitudes to their language and the quantity of documentation available.

    Weighed along these vitality criteria, the intervention by Obiano represents positive action to address some of the factors that stand on the way to the survival of the Igbo language. The measures seek to change the negative attitude of the Igbo people to their language, avail them with materials for language education and literacy through the Igbo radio station. It is also targeted at changing community members’ attitudes such that will encourage them speak their language contrary to their current aversion to it.

    The governor seeks through the measures to reverse the dangerous trend whereby the Igbo people prefer to speak the English language to the detriment of their mother tongue. So Obiano is on the right path.

    But there are issues with his intention to reinvigorate the law to compel every resident in the state to speak Igbo language and wear Igbo attire on Wednesdays. Whereas it may not be out of order to compel employees of the state government to speak Igbo and wear Igbo attire every Wednesday, extending the same measures to every resident irrespective of their mother tongue will create serious problems of implementation.

    It is also bound to infringe on their personal rights. There will be crisis if every state toes the same line just to preserve their language. Before now, the same state government had passed a law on the same matter.

    Tagged “Igbo Language Usage Enforcement Law 2009”, it provided for the enforcement of the learning, teaching and speaking of Igbo language both at home and in the Diaspora and making the study of Igbo language one of the general studies courses in tertiary institutions in the state.

    If the 2009 law is given practical expression together with some of the new measures enunciated by Obiano, the state would have gone at lengths to redressing some of the factors at the root of the decline in the speaking, learning and teaching of the Igbo language. For, much of the problems we encounter in this direction relate to the attitudinal preference of owners of that language to what is foreign.

    This inclination is traceable to the cosmopolitan nature of the Igbo man who can be found in the remotest part of the world. For him to survive and do his business there, he quickly masters the language of his place of domicile. Such has been their experience with the English language bequeathed to us by our colonial masters. If this attitude could be tolerated outside Igbo land, the scandal of children in the remotest villages and urban centres in Igbo states shunning the speaking of the language cannot be pardoned. Parents and the schools are to be held liable for this mess.

    Besides the actions or inaction of the owners of the language that militate against its survival, there also exist external factors that work against the flourishing of the Igbo language. This has to do with the attitude of people of other ethnic groups. Following the events of the last civil war, some people for whatever reasons, have come to treat those identified with that language with some suspicion.

    That accounts for why even people from some Igbo speaking states who are by no means less Igbo than others are regularly seen denying their Igbo identity even when all their names are Igbo. Some have even gone to the extent of inventing English alternatives for their local names. That is what you find in the present Rivers State. That is why you find recent names like Godknows, Godspower etc. If you ask those who go by these names to give you their local alternatives, what you will get is Chukwuma, Ikechukwu etc. Yet, they claim they are not Igbo. And one is tempted to ask, what are they besides the names they, their fathers and grandfathers bear? What are they besides the language they speak, the local dialect notwithstanding?

    Even with this pervading situation, many are still of the view that Igbo language and culture are still very loud and need to be tailored down for its speakers to live harmoniously with their host communities. In an article published in this column at the heels of the last tension-soaked general elections titled “fleeing for their lives”, this writer had looked at the penchant for people to flee to their ancestral homes at the least perception of danger and what such portends for national integration and survival.

    A legal luminary, Adeniyi Akintola SAN had in reaction, proffered solutions to this tendency. For him, “when you assimilate and integrate into the local culture without looking back into your biological origin, you blend easily and become one of the locals. A Yoruba man living in Enugu who takes delight in celebrating the Oro festival is courting trouble. Ditto an Igbo resident who loves celebrating new yam or Ofala festival in Lagos has wittingly set himself apart as stranger for the day of trouble”.

    For him, the antidote is to assimilate with the locals. Eat their food, wear their clothes, imbibe their culture and possibly religion; assume the local names, shun tribal associations and affiliations of ancestral homes. It is difficult to fathom where these fit in within the campaign to save the Igbo language and culture. But they have been highlighted to expose other dimensions of the challenge confronting the survival of the Igbo language and culture.

    Be that as it may, the efforts to save Igbo language and culture must be sustained. The Igbo radio station coming at the heels of plans by the BBC Foreign Service to broadcast in Igbo is most welcome. The survival of the Igbo language and culture is in the hands of the governments and people of the area.

    Through the various sensitization programmes; the teaching and learning of the language in primary and secondary schools, the decline will definitely be arrested. Anambra State must be commended for taking the lead in the campaign to save Igbo language and culture.

  • Our little Castros

    Our little Castros

    For today’s young, the name Fidel Castro sounds like an antique. But for my generation and the one before it, Castro cut a picture larger than life. He was the one that humbled 11 American presidents, almost ignited a nuclear war, overwhelmed several assassination attempts including from a limber beauty, overthrew capitalism, became one-man contagion of revolution around the world, was a lion in the Bay of Pigs invasion, a despot who was both loved and reviled, an exporter of change but whose legacy may be that he refused change when it knocked on his door.

    With his phallic cigar, green fatigue, John the Baptist beard, domed forehead and luminous eyes, Castro was the most important Marxist alive in the 1980’s when I was a student at Ife. Fellow students loved to be called Marxists. Some donned Castro’s beard. A few had fatigues. We had a group called the Alliance of Progressive Students (ALPS), and it throbbed with Marxists. They ate and drank Lenin and Marx. They were fascinated with the Soviet Union, but Russia was a bastion. Yet its personages were bulls. They had force but lacked style. They had charisma but not colour. They had men like Brezhnev, Andropov. Earlier was Nikita Khrushchev, the boor who could not stand up to Kennedy. If the Soviet Union was a shadow of bears, Cuba was a mirror alight with a lone star.

    Castro was the one alive, and he inhabited every romantic philosophy about change. The ALPS students were brilliant, audacious and even contemptuous of those who did not belong. They celebrated lack, canonised collective suffering without knowing it, showed contempt for material acquisition to the point of devaluing the virtue of productivity, acclaimed tyranny in the name of promoting the common touch. They were the mainstay of student unionism. Since Ife propelled student activism of those years, it is arguable that the course of students’ imbroglio roiled from the ideological heart of ALPS. They were fantasists in the league of Don Quixote, a novel by Cervantes and acclaimed the greatest novel ever written. Castro compared himself to Quixote. In his essay on Napoleon, Ralph Waldo Emerson said the French general bred many young clones who were known as little Napoleons. Well, my ALPS friends and some professors were little Castros.

    I had quite a few friends who were ALPS members, and I thought they were the secular equivalent of the religious bigots on campus. They bullied from half-baked knowledge, spewed out cants, quoted history tendentiously, dreamed of communes like some lecturers and other groups who tried but failed capitally. Some of them were still active after their Ife days. I recalled prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, I had a discussion with my editor Lewis Obi at the African Concord about the fall of socialism, and he encouraged me to write it. It was titled “The Last days of Socialism”. I met a few of the old ALPS men at the residence of the late lawyer and human rights avatar, Gani Fawehinmi, for one of those occasions that undermined the IBB regime. Some of them scoffed at my piece and said when the revolution came, I would be in the forefront.

    Castro died last Friday at the ripe age of 90, after about four decades on the throne, the longest person on an executive throne in living memory. Ghaddafi was despatched in disgrace; the Thai leader was ceremonial and so is the queen of England.

    Many wonder why we should celebrate a man who lived for an idea no one wants to use these days. He died without repentance. But that was the world he knew. He fomented his revolution when democracy was still an ideology of doubtful fairness. It was an age of countervailing propaganda, and the success of ideologies was often a matter of whether you wanted equality more or wealth less. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the chain effect in Eastern Europe settled the matter in favour of the Americans and western liberalism. Professor Fukuyama in a famous essay declared the end of history marked by the triumph of liberal ideas.

    Castro understood power and he held on to it aggressively. He banished a Havana of erotic excess, American decadence with all its image of a big, bright Babylon, of bordellos, drugs and deep inequality powered by a corrupt political class.

    Castro was a man of myth and symbolism. At a big hall, the revolution was ushered in with the release of many doves. As he spoke on the podium, one bird flew down and perched on his shoulder. He was not a man of faith but the bird made his image soar into myth. God must be behind him.

    After he left the stage, his country still has an antique architecture, the 1960’s type vehicles and widespread poverty by western standards. But he gave the world two great gifts. Advances in medicine and world-class education. Historian Tacitus quoted Aristotle as saying the mind and body are the two great benefits of governance. The people can do well after that. But you need a riubric to turn them into wealth. Like my ALPS friends and the Soviet Union, a good mind and body needs to be free. That led to the birth of Gorbachev’s Glastnost and Perestroika. The 2008 collapse also told us freedom has its limits. The Bernie Sanders campaign also tells us that we need capitalism but we need to save it from itself by addressing inequality within its rubric, but not the ideas of Marx and Castro.

    Castro’s system could not generate its own prosperity. It relied on money from the Soviets until communism fell. Hugo Chavez also helped. His Venezuela has also fallen.

    The problem with Castro was that he grew up as a rebel but ended up as the establishment man. That is the irony of history. When the world changed and embraced a new sort of economic system, he did not budge. He merely introduced cosmetic reforms until Chavez money and he reversed them. He was an unflinching revolutionary who did not understand that every revolution needs the dynamic thinking of a revolutionary.

    Part of it was his biography. He thought he was the light of the world, he was the Jacob, in the words of The Proverbs. “The Lord sent word to Jacob and it lighted upon Israel.” He saw himself in such egotist terms. He failed as the conduit.

    The lesson was that every leader should know when the ovation is loudest for any idea. He had become a dinosaur but he did not know it. He drew much love but his wine bottle was at its bottom. He insisted on still sipping furiously.

  • Excesses and excuses

    It is ironic that what was designed as a medal of honour is attracting dishonour. After two four-year terms in office and an initial applause, former Edo State governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, and his former deputy, Dr. Pius Odubu, are on the receiving end of applaudable boos. At the heart of the matter is an unfeeling move by the Edo State House of Assembly.

    News that the state’s lawmakers amended the “2007 Pension Rights of the Governor and Deputy Governor Law” to favour Oshiomhole and Odubu was particularly striking because of its curious complexion.  There was only one amendment to the law; but it is an amendment that speaks volumes.

    What the amendment meant was enough to trigger a protest that turned bloody as its supporters and its opponents clashed in Benin, the state capital. The amendment opposers who were members of civil society organisations (CSOs) probably underestimated the muscle of the amendment endorsers who were mightily misguided on the issue.

    A report said: “Members of the CSOs, who were dressed in black attires, were at the House of Assembly at the Oba Ovonramwen Square to show their displeasure at the amendment.” The protest coordinator, Agho Omobude, described what followed their collision with the pro-amendment group: “About 12 of our members have been injured and rushed to the hospital for treatment while three vehicles were destroyed. We don’t know what would have happened if we had not fled.”

    A defiant Omobude was quoted as saying: “No matter the threat to our lives, we would not back down. We are sending a strong message to members of the Assembly and the state government that we would not give up. We shall employ all means to continue the fight and resist the obnoxious policy of government of N200 million and N100 million housing pension to the former governor and his deputy.”

    By the amendment, Oshiomhole and Odubu would have new entitlements. A report said the bill with the subhead titled “provision of a house,” provided for  “a house in a location of choice in Nigeria of the Governor provided that the total cost of building the house shall not be in excess of 200 million naira while 100 million naira for the deputy governor.”

    It is intriguing that those who carried out this amendment feel comfortable with the additional comforts it provides for those concerned.  In the face of loud opposition to the amendment, the Speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly, Justin Okonoboh, defended the indefensible. He was quoted as saying:  ”Some talked about the amount and I think that was quite moderate because the law says any part of the country. If you want to use 200 million naira in Lagos, it probably might just be a grant to them because they need to add money to build a befitting house in Lagos or wherever.”

    It is noteworthy that the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) not only rubbished the amendment but also demanded that Governor Godwin Obaseki should “immediately withdraw the bill, and use the funds to clear the backlog of pension arrears spanning between seven and 45 months.”

    The beauty of democracy is the separation of powers which makes it possible for Obaseki to reject the amendment and refuse to give gubernatorial assent to it. It is unclear whether the bill had an input from Obaseki, but how he responds to it will show where he stands. It does not make sense to pursue extra comforts for Oshiomhole and Odubu at the expense of the people.

    The immediate beneficiaries of the amendment, if it is allowed to stand, are the immediate past governor and the immediate past deputy governor, which suggests that the bill was drafted with them in mind. Although it is expected that there will be other beneficiaries of the amendment, the point that it was probably inspired by a desire to please Oshiomhole and Odubu is something to ponder.

    There were other details that were unamended. A report said: “Other benefits to be enjoyed by former governors in the state are, a pension for life at a rate equivalent to 100 percent of his last annual salary in addition to an officer not above salary grade level 12 as Special Assistant, a personal secretary not below grade level 10 who shall be selected by the former governors from the public service of Edo State. Former governors are also entitled to have two cooks, two armed policemen as security, three vehicles to be bought by the State Government and liable to be replaced every five years, three drivers who shall be selected by the former governor and paid by the state government as well as free medical treatment for the governor and his immediate family.”

    It continued: “Former deputy governors are entitled to 100 percent of their last annual salary as pension, a personal staff not above salary grade level 12 as Special Assistant, a personal secretary not below grade level 09 who shall be selected by the former deputy governor from the public service of the state, a cook, two policemen as security. Two vehicles bought by the state government and liable to be replaced every five years are to be provided, two drivers who shall be selected by former deputy governors and paid by the state government and free medical treatment for them and their immediate family.”

    It may be considered a redeeming feature of the Edo legislative exercise that the other lawful entitlements were unamended. But the considerations that led to the contentious amendment need to be reconsidered. Indeed, it is important to re-examine the thinking that ex-governors and ex- deputy governors are entitled to so much.

    This nonsense is not exclusive to Edo State. A report named eight other states where ex-governors are entitled to excessive benefits:  Akwa Ibom, Gombe, Sokoto, Lagos, Rivers, Kano, Kwara and Zamfara. There is an entitlement complex on the part of the beneficiaries and there is a complex sense of indebtedness on the part of those who make such benefits possible.

    Sooner or later, the excesses and the excuses for them will need to be reviewed in line with the demands of reasonableness rather than unreasonableness.

  • The Lagos imperative

    The Lagos imperative

    In my television show on TVC on Saturday morning, the point was made that everyone everywhere in Nigeria knows someone somewhere in Lagos. It shows that Lagos is Nigeria. Every Nigerian citizen is there either in body or in spirit.

    The Kano rich install palaces, the poor Abakalikian knows a relative, the Warri entrepreneur tracks his wares, the Ogbomosho socialite dances to its maestro.

    That makes Lagos Nigeria’s psycho-social city. Lagos is where we dance, we feed, we move, we fight and we make love as a people. It is our melting pot. It is “our town,” to borrow from the title of one of America’s quintessential plays by Thornton Wilder. The play looks at the town both as an intimate and a stage, just like Lagos. And Lagos is where we fake and play, where we are home and away simultaneously.

    When Nigeria falls, it betrays the first crack. When it rises, it cracks the first smile. It is the John the Baptist of the Nigerian pulse. If it is Nigeria’s special city, so why is Abuja unwilling to make it official?

    When the matter popped up at the Senate, it was dropped. Yet, all of those men in the Senate who railed against it are beneficiaries of Lagos. It is an act of ingratitude, an act of gratuitous politics.

    Let’s look at some facts. One, it provides 60 per cent of our gross domestic product. Two, it is the biggest economy in West Africa. Three, it houses some of the iconic brands and blue-chip companies. Four, it has the biggest port. Five, it has the most vehicles, consumes the most fuel, and the most food. While making a case for its status, the alpha Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, revealed that Lagos consumes N3 billion worth of food everyday, and that makes it over a trillion Naira worth of food a year.

    Six, it has the most complex infrastructure in the country. Seven, it is to this city we have the largest influx in Africa and third in the world. The people move there not to visit or for transitory business but to live.

    No city has this, and yet Abuja recoils from its duty to its most iconic place. When the matter came up for consideration, former Sokoto Governor Wammako said this was not the right time for Lagos to get a special status. For a man who was a governor, it is a shame. He should have explained better because no other time is Lagos more suited for the special place. I had made an argument in this column as though I anticipated the debate on Lagos, in my article, “Burden and glory”.

    This is a time of recession and, during dire economic times; the best place to focus is the big city. Lagos provides that example not only because it is a big city, but because it is a working city. It is the city with a working jobs programme with its N20 billion platform with Ifueko Omoigui. It has embarked on disruptive infrastructure programmes, with works going on at furious pace from the feeder road in Yaba to the mammoth flyover in Abule-Egba. It is Lagos, where other states are still chafing under militancy and kidnapping, that developed a smart programme with vehicles, gadgets and men to tranquilise its highways and the bloodstreams of its felons.

    Lagos has the population, and it has the companies and infrastructures. That is where governments can test their policies. In the last great recession, the United States took advantage of its big cities from Los Angeles to New York. According to the Brookings analysis of Moody’s Analytics data, the big U.S. cities gave America 1.3 million more jobs than before the recession kicked in 2008. History bears that out. The Marshall Plan designed to revive Europe after the devastation of the Second World War worked in cities from Athens to Berlin to London to Paris. It is partly the reason New York is seen as the world economic capital, Paris the city of light, Sydney the city of fireworks, Amsterdam of rivers and tunnels, Athens of history, etc.

    In cities, various people dare. They try things, they are not afraid to fail. It is where everyone wishes to rise above their places. As the Italian writer, Italo Calvino, noted “with cities, it is as with dreams…” The concept of Manifest Destiny coined in the age of Andrew Jackson, for all its ingrained bigotry, was largely a move of genius. It helped remake America into a place of many cities and varied prosperity across North America. According to historian Frederick Merk, it was inspired by “a sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example…”

    Lagos has always that allure. It is the city where you have the accents aplenty, whether north, or south or east, or west, and they mingle in a chemistry of human harmony. Even in fashion, you see the aso oke as well as the Hollandaise, or the kaftan, and all blend into a sartorial statement quintessentially Lagos. Even for those who worship, Lagos is it. The churches do not always start here in Lagos, but once they see the light, they come like Paul of Damascus to the city. It is not for nothing that the anointing leads them to Lagos.

    There we domicile the theatres, the intellectual fests, the festivals, the radicals and the conservatives. Lagos has always been there because Lagos, of all Nigerian cities, is the city that never fails. As I joked with a few friends, while other states are in soup, Lagos is licking soup.

    Governor Ambode has shown not only transnational initiatives, but also international.  His government has shown compassion, contributing to alleviate national crisis as in the case of victims of Boko Haram. It also worked a big agricultural alliance with Kebbi State. Governor Ambode has shown the knack to set Lagos on a high map to battle recession, and the Federal Government just needs to join. Other states are in trouble and their citizens are pouring into Lagos, yet lawmakers like Ekweremadu, who oppose it, do little for their people and hide in the cosy shadows of Abuja power.

    Before the elections in 2015, PMB promised to pay special attention to Lagos. We are going to two years of his stewardship, he has yet to step an official foot on its soil. He still has the opportunity to do so. He should know that helping Governor Ambode in his abode bodes well for all of us. He should help Lagos help everyone. It is not a plea. It is an imperative.

     

    PMB and Onnoghen

    It is strange that Justice Walter Onnoghen is not yet being considered for the substantive job as chief justice. We are not in a crisis. There are no issues as to whether he is being investigated. If he is under probe, he should not even be in an acting capacity. Speculations are high that PMB wants him to play out his time as acting chief justice and the next man will walk in.

    We are hearing nothing on this matter from the presidency. Normally he should send his name to the Senate. It is not as if this is the case of any other job where he has to consider the best on a list. If he is thinking of going outside the Supreme Court, he should let us know in line with democratic practices. If he chooses somebody else, we should know why Onnoghen does not fit. They may have a good reason, but we need to know.

    PMB does not communicate well with us and, because of that, he allows speculations to bloom. It is out of sync with the democratic spirit. If he has something up his sleeves, we shall know in due course. We cannot kill time without injuring eternity, according to Henry David Thoreau.

    Let us know now, the job of CJN is too important a matter for trifles or the intrigues of politics. When PMB wants to do something, he does it in spite of public opinion. We shall know whether what he plans for Onnoghen is fair or out of sync with the spirit of the constitution.

  • A beauty queen’s travails

    A fortnight ago, a lesbian sex video involving Chidinma Okeke, winner of the 2015 edition of Miss Anambra Beauty Pageant went viral in the social media. Before then, the organizers of the event, state owned Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) had a few days to the expiration of her tenure, dethroned and retrieved her official car in very curious circumstances.

    The current edition of the event was also put off apparently because of the contradictions raised by the X-rated sex video for an event that is designed ostensibly to empower Anambra women, promote their culture and heritage. Rather than enhance these objectives, what has emerged from the sex video is an unbridled debasement of womanhood such that has left public sensibilities badly ruffled.

    Accounts of what transpired vary amidst allegations of threats from unknown quarters to harm the dethroned beauty queen should she go public with all that transpired. But in the midst of this silence, the ABS, organizers of the event issued a quick statement seeking to exculpate the organization from issues relating to the sex video scandal.

    The organization condemned the circulation of the video together with its contents and apologized to the government and people of the state, sponsors of the event and supporters for the embarrassment the issue would have caused them.  It would also want to dissociate Miss Anambra Beauty Pageant from any discussions on the matter.

    But the girl in the storm, Chidinma has come out with her side of the story even as she refrained from naming her traducers with a promise to expose them soon. She said when the event was advertised, she made enquiries and one of the organizers encouraged her to apply. On seeing her reluctance, the man insisted she should apply as she might win. He even promised to give her the form free if she applied which he eventually did.

    She was later told that there were certain things to be done before a winner could be declared including the sex video. After much persuasion by the organizers, she later consented. She later went for the contest and was declared winner with a car as star prize.

    But when she went for the car, they brought a contract paper urging her to sign. Chidinma said when she insisted in contacting her lawyer before signing the contract papers, the organizers threatened to release the said video. At that point she was left with no option than to sign. According to her, from that point, she became a slave to the organizers.

    Things however came to a head on October 11, when one of the organizers invited her to his office purportedly to make a presentation. While there, the man excused other people in the same room, showed her the video and asked that the beauty queen should drop the car and the crown.

    She refused the order and contacted her uncle who demanded that the official should leave the car with Chidinma in keeping with the terms of the agreement. Instead, the official forwarded the sex video to her uncle as part of the blackmail. And that was the beginning of the circulation of the sex video. It is not clear who posted the video in the social media. But if the statements of Chidinma are anything to repose confidence on, the last official she had contact with, should be able to account for how the video found itself in the social media.

    From the account of the young lady, it is obvious that the official who asked her to drop her car and crown with threat to make public the sex video if she resisted was the brain behind its eventual release. Even without naming the said official, his complicity in the matter is very obvious.

    And one asks, why has it been difficult for the Anambra State government and the police to wade into this unmitigated scandal? We raise this question given that the event is organized by a government owned broadcasting service. That being the case, the organization cannot feign ignorance of the critical details of all activities leading to the short listing, selection and eventual emergence of the winner. It cannot claim that it is not aware of some of the conditions set for the eventual emergence of the winner.

    It is not enough for that organization to just condemn the sad episode. Neither is it sufficient for its officials to wash their hands off the mess. The ABS owns the beauty pageant. It sets the rules and supervises the contest and therefore should be held accountable for whatever lapses that arise from that contest. And if there are other interests that hijack the beauty contest for some other sinister motives as we have seen from the controversial sex video, it is the duty of the organizers to call them to order.

    The contest being the franchise of the ABS, the organization has the responsibility to ensure that its overriding objectives and philosophy are strictly adhered to. Unfortunately, that has only been observed in its breach as the recent scandal vividly shows. So the ABS cannot shy away from assuming responsibility for the mess. Its attempt to dissociate Miss Anambra Beauty Pageant from any discussions on the matter cannot stand.

    The fact that the current edition has been put off is clear evidence that the show has run into credibility problems. It has lost steam and no self respecting citizen would have anything to do with an event that dehumanizes young girls in the most callous manner depicted in that sex video.

    But then, what purpose do those involved in the video recording want to achieve? Why would a lesbian sex video be a condition before the outcome of the beauty contest would be announced? And who are the brains behind such a dehumanizing and demented recording- the organizers, sponsors or some other party working outside of the knowledge of the two?

    These posers underscore the imperative of very thorough and detailed investigation into the matter. It is curious that Anambra State government has remained silent in the face of the unmitigated embarrassment into which one of its agencies has been entangled. The fact that a government agency is involved demands that the state governor, Willie Obiano rise to the occasion by ensuring detailed inquisition into the matter if anything, to save the face of his government. Chidinma has provided sufficient lead into the scandal and it will not be difficult to get at all those behind that show of shame.

    Sadly, the event bears the imprimatur of the Okija shrine saga where a former governorship candidate in the state was made to swear to an oath of allegiance by a political godfather. Events of that episode are now history. But they exposed the evil practices that went on in that evil shrine forest, eventually culminating to its destruction.

    Today, Anambra is better for it. It is not surprising that all the governments that came since that incident have been able to raise the bar of governance. The state has become a reference point in good and purposeful governance in the South-east.

    It is this excellent record that stands to be tainted by the activities of some evil and demented few in the state as we have seen in the senseless sex video recording.  If the objective is to blackmail winners to drop their crown and car before the expiration of their tenure, that is the most crude an unethical way of going about it.

    But as despicable as the entire episode is, it should serve as a hard lesson to ambitious young girls and boys. Had Chidinma realized the folly in subjecting herself to such a dehumanizing and utterly indecent exposure for whatever motivations, she would not have found herself in her current mess.

  • A killing but no killer

    Can murder happen without a murderer or murderers? This is the question that must be answered by the Kano State justice system concerning the murder of 74-year-old Mrs. Bridget Agbahime, a Christian of Igbo origin, in a Kano market in June following an accusation that she had been blasphemous. Her accusers had decided that she deserved to be killed for her alleged sin, and they wasted no time in actualising the deadly punishment.

    What happened, and how did the woman die? Perhaps the question should be rephrased more precisely: How was the woman murdered? Thanks to a published interview on November 13, disturbing details of the murder that happened on June 2 were provided by the victim’s husband, Pastor Mike Agbahime, who is still crying for justice. He recounted: “On the day my wife was murdered, a call came from one of our church members (who also has a shop in the market) while I was waiting for my wife to leave the shop so that we could go to the church. He told me on phone that some Hausa people were making trouble with my wife…It was then that I quickly packed my wares to go and find out the problem. As this was going on, I met the same man who was with my wife at the market. He said, “Daddy, don’t worry, they have left her (my wife).”

    He continued: “Later, my wife appeared. She told me that it was the same Dauda that did ablutions in the front of her shop. She said that she told Dauda, “Why won’t you allow me to finish packing before you start pouring your water for ablutions in my shop? After telling Dauda this, she told me that he held her hand and asked her, “Mekai fatah?” This phrase means “What did you just say?” My wife asked him, “What right do you have to hold my hand?”  She asked him to leave her hand. She stated that if he did not leave her, that she would use one of the plastic products in the shop to break his head. Immediately Dauda left her, he started shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

    Pastor Agbahime’s eyewitness account deserves to be highlighted for a clarifying picture of the murder. He went on: “I then told my wife that since Dauda had started his trouble again, that we should go and see Alhaji Mustapha, the owner of the shop. Alhaji Mustapha ushered us in. He (Mustapha) told us to go and come back on Saturday, June 4, 2016, so as to speak with Dauda and settle the disagreement. His office was upstairs. But as we were leaving through the staircase, we saw a teeming mob with weapons. Alhaji Mustapha tried to disperse them. He told them in Hausa that he would resolve the matter the next Saturday. They started abusing him, throwing stones at him. They called him kafir, meaning somebody who does not know Allah. When Mustapha saw that the mob was getting more aggressive, he opened his office, told us to go in and locked it. When they saw that Alhaji Mustapha had let us in and locked his office, they continued shouting Allahu Akbar. As they were shouting, many others joined them. It is painful to tell you that Alhaji Mustapha, seeing how aggressive they were, slumped. But before he slumped, he had called the police. The Divisional Police Officer of the area came in with two other policemen. The three could not calm the angry mob. The mob climbed up in their numbers, broke the window, and jumped in.”

    What followed was straight from hell. Pastor Agbahime painted a picture of incredible evil: “We were praying to God to save the situation. When they later entered the office where we were hiding, they hit my wife on the head with very heavy iron objects and she immediately slumped and died. Having completed their mission, they all went back. They did not touch me.”

    At this point, it was expected that lawlessness would be lawfully reversed. It is curious that the Kano State Ministry of Justice ordered the release of five murder suspects standing trial for allegedly killing Mrs. Bridget Agbahime. The alleged killers, Dauda Ahmed, Abdulmumeen Mustafa, Zubairu Abubakar, Abdullahi Abubakar and Musa Abdullahi, had been arraigned before a chief magistrate’s court on a four-count charge. A report said: “The charge sheet also noted that one Salawihu, Ibrahim, Dini, Isiaku, Mallam Sani, Sufiyanu, Yunusa and Mallam Umar, all at large, were part of the mob that carried out the dastardly act.”

    The trial took a strange turn and was terminated following the advice of the office of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), Kano State Ministry of Justice. The state prosecution counsel, Rabiu Yusuf, who informed the court that the state was withdrawing the matter, was quoted as saying: “We received the case diary from the police on June 8, and having gone through it, the attorney- general of Kano State evaluated the facts in accordance with sections 130 and 150 of the criminal procedure code. The legal advice presented to the court, dated June 24, states that there is no case to answer, as the suspects are all innocent and orders the court to discharge all the accused persons.”

    It is intriguing that the accused were declared innocent by the DPP’s office when a trial was supposed to establish their innocence or guilt. It is unclear how the claimed innocence of the accused was established by the DPP’s office outside their trial.

    Now that the five suspects charged to court have been discharged based on the said legal advice, those suspects said to be at large may also have no case to answer. So the question is: Who will answer for the barbaric murder of Citizen Agbahime? Without question, there was a killing, and there must have been a killer or killers.

    Surely, it cannot be enough to simply declare the accused guiltless without further action towards unravelling the identities of those who killed the woman. This is why it is correct that the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is demanding justice in this matter. Indeed, all persons of conscience should demand that the murderers in this case be apprehended and prosecuted.

    Murder, under any pretext, is objectionable and condemnable. Citizen Agbahime’s murder is particularly provocative because it is not an isolated instance. It is noteworthy that CAN observed in a statement: “As it stands today, there is no single prosecution record of any criminal who killed under the pretext of blasphemy in Nigeria despite the number of victims and incontrovertible facts showing that those killings were done in daylight and mostly by persons who live within the communities where these heinous crimes were committed.”

    The failure of law enforcement in Mrs. Agbahime’s specific case is inexcusable; it is a regrettable reflection of incapacity to ensure justice.

  • Maguphobia

    Maguphobia

    In the country’s fight against corruption, anti-corruption fighters should be prepared to experience corrupt politics as well as the politics of corruption. It may well be that the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, underestimated the antagonism he was likely to experience from pro-corruption forces when he was appointed to antagonise them

    By now, however, Magu must be more enlightened about how far the friends of corruption are ready to go to protect their relationship with corruption. His improved understanding was clear enough from a November 3 statement released by the anti-graft agency’s spokesman who spoke on Magu’s behalf, alleging plots to damage Magu’s image. The statement declared: “The plots are already manifesting in clandestine campaigns of misinformation in the social media intended to impugn his integrity and pit him against certain interests both within and outside of government.”

    In addition, the statement observed: “In the last week or so, the social media has been awash with fictitious reports, all painting an uncanny picture of desperation by Magu over his purported non-confirmation as substantive chair of the EFCC, and of stricture within the rank and file of the EFCC workforce leading to resignations.”

    No doubt, there is a problematic situation concerning  the Senate’s puzzling delay in concretising Magu’s appointment, following a July letter from the Presidency seeking that Magu be screened “expeditiously” towards his confirmation as substantive chairman of the EFCC. Magu became acting chair of the EFCC on November 9, 2015, and his acting status over a year later is certainly a cause for concern, considering his applaudable performance in the anti-corruption fight. It would appear that pro-corruption forces are fighting to prevent further applause for Magu.

    It is curious and thought-provoking that the attention-grabbing statement also said: “The EFCC wishes to put it on record that Mr. Magu does not bully anyone, and has not embarked on any mission aimed at blackmailing ‘some highly placed personalities in the country such as Emirs, President Muhammadu Buhari’s appointees’ or any other individual, lowly or highly placed in the society.”  The intriguing statement quoted Magu as saying: “I came to this job with an open mind to do my best for my country. My actions are dictated by my professional instinct and the love for my country. It is not personal and I have no issues with anybody.”

    Interestingly, Magu seems not to get the point by saying he has “no issues with anybody.” The point is that there are people that have issues with him and his anti-corruption involvement. These people have minds that are closed to an open mind and don’t care about doing the best they can for their country for love of country.

    Two months after he became acting EFCC chairman, Magu on January 20 described corruption as “deliberate and calculated wickedness” against the country’s existence, meaning against the people, during a visit to the headquarters of The Nation in Lagos.

    “The impunity is too much,” he declared. Then he painted a picture of personal pain. He said:”Sometimes I shed tears in the morning before I go to the office. It is just unbelievable; the rot is terrible.” When the arrowhead of the anti-corruption agency is overwhelmed to the point of tears by the sheer scale of confirmable corruption, it is a telling statement about the place of conscience in the anti-corruption war. The fight against corruption is ultimately a fight for conscience.

    It is a corroboration of the conscience dimension of the anti-corruption battle that Magu said: ‘We need to let people know that corruption is bad because some people don’t seem to know.” He continued: “What I am saying is that people who know they have stolen our commonwealth should bring it back…They have taken our money and are bold enough to say they are not going to return it. The money belongs to the people; they should return the money quietly; let there be voluntary compliance. Let them voluntarily come out to say ‘this is what I have stolen’ and the government will take it. I think that is the best thing to do.”

    Thanks largely to the efforts of the EFCC, the Federal Government in June publicised a list of recovered corruption-related money.  Also given credit for the recovery of the ill-gotten wealth were the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Department of State Services. A statement by the Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said that the loot was recovered between May 29, 2015 and May 25, 2016.

    The breakdown of the recovered money:  N78, 325,354,631.82; $185,119,584.61; £3,508,355.46 and €11, 250. Based on the official exchange rate of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) at the time, the money amounted to N115, 792,760,499. The Muhammadu Buhari administration also disclosed that cash and assets worth over N1.9tn had been seized separately, but that these were under legal contention. The assets and cash seized under interim forfeiture totalled: $9bn, N126bn, £2.4m and €303,399. Based on the CBN exchange rate at the time, this totalled N1, 918,113,864,063. According to the government, “Recoveries under Interim Forfeiture (cash and assets) during the period totalled: N126, 563,481,095.43; $9,090,243,920.15; £2,484,447.55 and €303,399.17.”

    It is in the country’s interest that, as much as possible, its looted resources are urgently recovered for its benefit. This is why the anti-corruption fight should be treated as a national project, with all hands on deck. This is why Magu, who has been a conscientious fighter in this critical confrontation between anti-corruption forces and pro-corruption forces, deserves to be backed by the full force of law, meaning that he should be confirmed for the official four-year tenure of the EFCC chairmanship without further delay.

    The EFCC is an important factor in the anti-corruption fight, and Magu has demonstrated a desirable capability that only unpatriotic and uneasy compatriots will ignore. It does the Senate no honour to dishonour Magu’s work so far by failure to act promptly and decisively in a matter that concerns the country’s redemption.

    In the country’s fight against corruption, anti-corruption fighters should be prepared to experience corrupt politics as well as the politics of corruption. It may well be that the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, underestimated the antagonism he was likely to experience from pro-corruption forces when he was appointed to antagonise them

    By now, however, Magu must be more enlightened about how far the friends of corruption are ready to go to protect their relationship with corruption. His improved understanding was clear enough from a November 3 statement released by the anti-graft agency’s spokesman who spoke on Magu’s behalf, alleging plots to damage Magu’s image. The statement declared: “The plots are already manifesting in clandestine campaigns of misinformation in the social media intended to impugn his integrity and pit him against certain interests both within and outside of government.”

    In addition, the statement observed: “In the last week or so, the social media has been awash with fictitious reports, all painting an uncanny picture of desperation by Magu over his purported non-confirmation as substantive chair of the EFCC, and of stricture within the rank and file of the EFCC workforce leading to resignations.”

    No doubt, there is a problematic situation concerning  the Senate’s puzzling delay in concretising Magu’s appointment, following a July letter from the Presidency seeking that Magu be screened “expeditiously” towards his confirmation as substantive chairman of the EFCC. Magu became acting chair of the EFCC on November 9, 2015, and his acting status over a year later is certainly a cause for concern, considering his applaudable performance in the anti-corruption fight. It would appear that pro-corruption forces are fighting to prevent further applause for Magu.

    It is curious and thought-provoking that the attention-grabbing statement also said: “The EFCC wishes to put it on record that Mr. Magu does not bully anyone, and has not embarked on any mission aimed at blackmailing ‘some highly placed personalities in the country such as Emirs, President Muhammadu Buhari’s appointees’ or any other individual, lowly or highly placed in the society.”  The intriguing statement quoted Magu as saying: “I came to this job with an open mind to do my best for my country. My actions are dictated by my professional instinct and the love for my country. It is not personal and I have no issues with anybody.”

    Interestingly, Magu seems not to get the point by saying he has “no issues with anybody.” The point is that there are people that have issues with him and his anti-corruption involvement. These people have minds that are closed to an open mind and don’t care about doing the best they can for their country for love of country.

    Two months after he became acting EFCC chairman, Magu on January 20 described corruption as “deliberate and calculated wickedness” against the country’s existence, meaning against the people, during a visit to the headquarters of The Nation in Lagos.

    “The impunity is too much,” he declared. Then he painted a picture of personal pain. He said:”Sometimes I shed tears in the morning before I go to the office. It is just unbelievable; the rot is terrible.” When the arrowhead of the anti-corruption agency is overwhelmed to the point of tears by the sheer scale of confirmable corruption, it is a telling statement about the place of conscience in the anti-corruption war. The fight against corruption is ultimately a fight for conscience.

    It is a corroboration of the conscience dimension of the anti-corruption battle that Magu said: ‘We need to let people know that corruption is bad because some people don’t seem to know.” He continued: “What I am saying is that people who know they have stolen our commonwealth should bring it back…They have taken our money and are bold enough to say they are not going to return it. The money belongs to the people; they should return the money quietly; let there be voluntary compliance. Let them voluntarily come out to say ‘this is what I have stolen’ and the government will take it. I think that is the best thing to do.”

    Thanks largely to the efforts of the EFCC, the Federal Government in June publicised a list of recovered corruption-related money.  Also given credit for the recovery of the ill-gotten wealth were the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Department of State Services. A statement by the Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said that the loot was recovered between May 29, 2015 and May 25, 2016.

    The breakdown of the recovered money:  N78, 325,354,631.82; $185,119,584.61; £3,508,355.46 and €11, 250. Based on the official exchange rate of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) at the time, the money amounted to N115, 792,760,499. The Muhammadu Buhari administration also disclosed that cash and assets worth over N1.9tn had been seized separately, but that these were under legal contention. The assets and cash seized under interim forfeiture totalled: $9bn, N126bn, £2.4m and €303,399. Based on the CBN exchange rate at the time, this totalled N1, 918,113,864,063. According to the government, “Recoveries under Interim Forfeiture (cash and assets) during the period totalled: N126, 563,481,095.43; $9,090,243,920.15; £2,484,447.55 and €303,399.17.”

    It is in the country’s interest that, as much as possible, its looted resources are urgently recovered for its benefit. This is why the anti-corruption fight should be treated as a national project, with all hands on deck. This is why Magu, who has been a conscientious fighter in this critical confrontation between anti-corruption forces and pro-corruption forces, deserves to be backed by the full force of law, meaning that he should be confirmed for the official four-year tenure of the EFCC chairmanship without further delay.

    The EFCC is an important factor in the anti-corruption fight, and Magu has demonstrated a desirable capability that only unpatriotic and uneasy compatriots will ignore. It does the Senate no honour to dishonour Magu’s work so far by failure to act promptly and decisively in a matter that concerns the country’s redemption.

  • Oyedepo’s two cities

    Oyedepo’s two cities

    IT is not quite often statements from religious leaders are subjected to serious public scrutiny. This is especially so on these shores given the sensitive nature of issues that impinge on other peoples’ faith.
    In a clime where fanatical adherents are known to have taken laws into their hands to extract punishment for actions they consider offensive to their religion, the complexity of the matter can be better understood. Unfortunately, sundry religious leaders (both real and fake) have taken licence of this to make bogus claims or justify actions that ordinarily would not have found rational explanation.
    Somehow, we have come to live with this situation. So also the claims of miracles and associated healing shows we are regularly treated to. But if all these could be tolerated for being the private affairs of those who elect to subject themselves to them, it is a different thing altogether when ecclesiastical arguments are deployed to manipulate or justify actions that ordinarily should demand secular or rational explanation.
    Such was the scenario that played out last week when the founder of the Living Faith Church, Bishop David Oyedepo sought to justify the high school fees charged by a private university promoted by his church. He had in a telecast warned those criticizing the high school fees charged by Covenant University to desist so as to avoid incurring the wrath of God
    Oyedepo told the story of one critic who had developed a strange plague of chronic mouth odour over the act but only received spiritual solution following his confession and “my intervention before he was restored to dignity. He said the school fees has God’s approval and is in accordance with the quality of facilities provided by the university in meeting the educational needs of the nation”
    Before his latest outing, Oyedepo had been a strident defender of high school fees paid by private universities in the country. At one time, he had justified that fee regime on the ground that education is expensive and nothing of value is free. At another, he charged those complaining of exorbitant fees to get their priorities right.
    For him, people spend millions of Naira for burials but when it comes to education, they are reluctant to invest in the future of their children. According to him, it is a matter of priority. The implication of this is that if people get their priorities right, they should be able to pay the fees charged by private universities. We shall return to this shortly.
    The issues canvassed by the Bishop in terms of education being expensive and nothing of value is free are trite statements. Even those complaining about the fee regime in the private universities are not unmindful of that reality. Also, there can be found a molecule of merit in the argument that people should set their priorities right and with right prioritizing, some of them may be able to fund the education of their children either in the private or public universities.
    But that is where there is a living income to prioritize. For a greater majority of our people, there is little or nothing to save rendering the idea of prioritizing to meet the educational needs of their children an exercise in futility. For this majority, no amount of priority setting can get them close to the high fee regime charged by private universities; many of them promoted by religious organizations.
    Ironically, much of the funds with which these faith based universities were set up came from the meagre but regular contributions of the very poor members of such religious groups. Those complaining cannot forget in a hurry, their contributions to what the church and its affiliate institutions are today. They nurse with nostalgia, the feeling rightly that they have a stake in what the church is today and that their needs ought to be factored into whatever decision the church takes.
    They feel a sense of loss that their children have been serially shunted out of those universities due to the high school fees they charge. These people are justified to complain. They are right to seek accommodation of their children in schools founded by their churches if anything, to further the faith of their children in what those religious groups stand for. And where the authorities have done nothing to assuage their feelings; they are free to complain, to criticize. The right to complain that the fee regime is high and cannot accommodate their children should neither be abridged nor circumscribed by threats, the kind that emanated from Oydepo last week. It was very surprising hearing the man of God claim that a man that criticized the high fees charged by that university was struck by a strange mouth odour for daring to open his mouth too loud. But for the man’s confession and his healing by the Bishop, perhaps he would have lived with that strange affliction for the rest of his life!
    As indicated earlier, religion is a very sensitive matter on these shores. And since much of the claims canvassed do not lend themselves to empirical validation; it is safer to leave them just at that. But that is not to ignore the increasing danger this country has been mired on account of the purported miraculous prowess of sundry pastors and clergymen. The issue is too common to deserve elaboration.
    However, the recent arrest of some people hired to stage manage miraculous healings in Enugu says it all. According to reports, the people comprising of males and females confessed to the police that they had been in the business of being procured to fake miraculous healings at a fee for sundry religious organizations and pastors. That is how bad the situation is. That is why claims of miracle healings are now increasingly being received with utmost caution.
    But if Oyedepo could be excused on his claim that a man was struck by mouth odour for daring to criticize the high fee regime of that university; if he could be excused on his miraculous healing of the critic, he ran into troubled waters when he claimed the school fees were ordained by God. By that claim, he seemed to have been entangled in a serious contradiction that had engaged the energy of medieval philosophers- the inability to draw a line between the corporeal and ecclesiastical realms.
    He failed to reckon with the dividing line between the state and religion or religion and politics. That is a fatal error. By that, he completely lost sight of the allegory of the two cities as vividly captured by St. Augustine of Hippo- the city of God and the City of man. By deploying religion to justify the exorbitant school fees, he chose to operate in the two cities at the same time. That is where he got it all wrong. By the same argument, if the high school fees were ordained by God, then every action on earth would find justification on the same premise.
    The same mistake was evident in his claim that the man who purportedly contracted a strange mouth odour found himself in that condition because he criticized the high fees charge by the university. Such a claim completely veered off the boundaries of religion.
    The God we all serve is all powerful and most merciful. It is difficult to fathom how he could strike that man with such a disease just for saying that the fees are very high and not affordable. The man’s position is nothing but the truth and God cannot punish the just in a world full of iniquities.
    If the claim is to scare those who criticize the fee regime, one is afraid it is bound to meet a brick wall. It would have made better sense had Oyedepo expanded the other strand of his argument that the fees charged are commensurate with the quality of facilities provided. That could have made for better understanding.
    Even then, such standards and their accessibility must relate to the operating environment. And for a faith based organization, it is least expected to sacrifice the spiritual needs of its members on the altar of financial expediency. That is the point some members are making and in this, they are with the majority.
    Oyedepo must listen to the cries of his members who seek the accommodation of their children in that university. He can do so by way of generous bursaries and scholarships. That is the way to go rather than issuing treats of strange affliction and doom on those who dare to criticize. Such posturing runs at cross purposes with what the church stands for.

  • Trumpquake

    Trumpquake

    Barely two months ago, I had a dinner in New York City with an American journalist, and I cannot forget his view about the presidential election.

    “I don’t care what the polls say, that guy can’t be the president of this country,” he declared, a furrow defining his disgust. His tongue could not lift the name of “that guy.”

    A week later, at lunch in the remodelled Union Station in scenic Colorado, another journalist showed less cheer. She, however, voiced dismay to me at the pro-Trump ascendancy. Both are journalists of over 40 years standing.

    They saw an America that was morphing from an old virtue. An old virtue of civility, of mutual respect.

    That virtue drowned in a resounding splash last week. Donald J. Trump of the swagger held sway, a one-man insurgency spiced by a raw vitality. He put a whiplash on the American pulse and those who doubted him woke up around the world on Wednesday morning to the triumph of a barbaric impulse.

    The White House will indeed be tenanted by a new person in January, and it will not be the first United States woman president, but the man with the toupee, a puffed face and sometimes cartoonish face, a sardonic turn of phrases, with a baseball cap, with a crowd that hoots and jeers gleefully, with a juvenile energy, a billionaire who never respects women nor pays taxes, stiffs investors and employees, mocks a globalising economy but fattens on it, etc.

    So, a day after, many wonder how the strongest and wealthiest nation in human history ended up with such a man as leader. But it is part complacency, and part ignorance. We have idealised America. It is a land that flows with milk and honey, where the good always triumphs over evil, where John Wayne always beats the bad guy, where Tom Hanks shines in a dark plot. They gave us Internet, aeroplane, television, Facebook, google, fast food. They coalesced forces to roast Hitler and other emblems of human backwardness. Coca-cola. Starbucks. Star Wars. How could they now vote a man that condones pugilist Putin, the nuclear-thumping dwarf of North Korea, plots to install a wall, calls Hispanics rapists, shows open contempt for blacks, would initiate mass deportation, etc.

    But as the tallies finally flowed in, we discovered that this was an election in which white America decided to hug their own. But was this not the same country that voted in a black man just eight years ago?  Yes, and that’s very American. It is a country that is at peace with rolling back its earlier chants. Remember Walt Whitman, its poet of democracy? He wrote: “Do I contradict myself? Yes I contradict myself…I am large, I contain multitudes.”

    But a remorse set in quickly after the Obama boon. Mitch McConnell led the Congress Republicans to boast that Obama would never get anything through Congress. They would paralyse. Not long after, a few whites banded together in Washington to inaugurate the Tea Party, a movement that became a launch pad that derailed the Obama years, inspired nativist resurgence and threw up such bigoted heroes as Ted Cruz. They lay the foundation for Trump.

    The Americans who gave Trump victory had clutched the electoral college. Those who lost gave less emphatic gesture: the majority vote. So, the contradiction is in, and we have to live with it. If we go through U.S. history, it is all too familiar. He said he wanted to make America great again, a code phrase for a return to a white America. I see parallel with America of another president, less known to many Americans and even to Nigerians. He is Andrew Jackson. The similarities are striking. Jackson rose on the common-folk white instead of property rights in earlier years. He focused on whites of the Anglo-Saxon stock, just like Trump. In his electoral slugfest against Dukakis of Greek origin, George H. Bush said he belonged to “mainstream America.” Reagan landed in Alabama and proclaimed that he believed in “state rights.” Jackson promoted what historians call “manifest destiny,” that called for setting apart certain areas in the west for the whites to explore and work. He was to the Indians what Trump is to American Hispanics and all immigrants. He railroaded a law that allowed him to sweep all Indians from their residences with whites into reserves, and they packed their all in long walks and travels that left many of them and their children dead. The road has been called a “trail of tears.” He had a trail. Trump promised a wall.

    That part of America rose again in different times in the U.S. history. In the 1960’s, Governor George Wallace of Alabama ran for president and called for segregation today, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.” And another candidate George McGovern’s slogan “Come Home, America” is a precursor of Trump’s disdain for Pax America and the jettisoning of alliances around the world.

    In a text message from the ebullient governor of Borno State, Kashim Shetima, a perceptive point is made. He writes, “by his pronouncements, Trump’s doctrine will rest on isolationism, non-interventionism and protectionism. In essence, other’s problems should be America’s…” He was also right when he wrote that “it was white America striking back…the thumping down of the American spirit and unwinding all the gains of 50 years.”

    But there are other points. While we expect great from America, we should at home muse over our own troubles. The whites fight back but in our local elections, we are no better. Not long ago, we lit with delight as we corralled Ghanaians out of our shores. We vote according to what tribe or religion the candidate professes. We should not be too hard on the Americans. We are no better. In the last Lagos State elections, the Southsouth and Southeast folks gave the impressions they could outvote the indigenous Yoruba and impose their choice. The indigenes coalesced and had their day.

    We are trying to indigenise rice production, the same way Trump wants the jobs back from China. It’s a nativist impulse that arises in any people when they feel threatened. This is the dark side of human impulse, and Trump tapped into it. Demagogues always do.

    A critic has said Trump did not mean his rhetoric. Others took it literally rather seriously. But his followers took it seriously but not literally. I hope so, because that’s how I saw Soyinka’s red card promise. W.S. is a dramatist, and I saw the theatre once he uttered it.

    Trump is a businessman, and many critics have said, he will run a transactional government. He hypes it, calls for the skies, but settles for something acceptable. We hope, in the end and for the love of all, we get something less apocalyptic than we heard on his hustings.

     

  • Ndoma-Egba and Ekere enjoy vindication

    Ndoma-Egba and Ekere enjoy vindication

    Victor Ndoma Egba and Obong Nsima Ekere stories are intriguing and lessons on the topsy-turvy of power. The Jonathan crowd and his ethnic redoubt wanted to put James Manager in the Senate as majority leader. To achieve this, they must clear all obstacles. One was Ndoma-Egba whose rising profile intimidated them after three terms. So, they worked him out and put somebody else there. They also worked against Governor Uduaghan, so Manager won the slot. Now, Jonathan ran out of favour with the people and he could not impose Manager on his colleagues. We hardly hear of him even on the roll call. Ndoma-Egba now chairs NDDC, and gives him not only moral but symbolic triumph. He has opportunity to show himself as a class act unlike the bullish era that Jonathan flaunted.

    Ditto to Ekere who now succeeds as managing director. The estate magnate had played various roles in politics and rose to deputy governor of Akwa Ibom State. Many thought it was over for him when he resigned and his foes had sung his obituary.  He now takes charge as MD, as the inimitable Ibim Semenitari leaves after holding force with poise and competence.

    Both Ndoma-Egba and Ekere will enjoy vindication. Winston Churchill was written off at the age of 51. He became British best prime minister ever.