The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Nigeria’s unity: beyond precepts

    President Buhari seemed to have stirred the hornet’s nest when he told residents of Abuja onSallah visit that Nigeria’s unity is non-negotiable. Apparently worried by rising agitations for self-determination and sabotage, Buhari had said, “When we were junior officers, we were told by our leaders, by the Head of state which was General Gowon, that to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done. We never thought of oil. What we were after is one Nigeria”.

    By this, he sought to disabuse the minds of people, especially those from oil-bearing states that the foundation of Nigeria was not predicated on oil revenue or what the constituents stood to gain but on the philosophy of the unity and sovereignty of the country.

    But the colonial masters, in amalgamating the country, never lost sight of the potency of the relative economic strengths of the component units for its survival. So, it is incorrect for the president to have conveyed the impression thatthe economic strength and viability of the emergent state was not a serious factor in arriving at that political decision. It was a serious factor.

    That however, is besides the issue. A more contentious matter in the president’s speech is the suggestion that the sovereignty of Nigeria is an end unto itself. That is not correct and cannot possibly be. As a construct, the sovereignty of the Nigerian state remains a means for the pursuit of the common good of the constituents. Its’ appeal and continued justification lie in the capacity of the emergent state to tap and harness the collective energies and resources of the disparate groups for the greatest good of the greatest number.

    That political assemblage is to further the economic benefits and general wellbeing of the various ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious groups that make up the country. So the idea of keeping Nigeria one was relevant to the extent that it was envisaged as the most plausible paradigm to advance and cater for the general interests and wellbeing of the constituents. It was not just one Nigeria for itself but for the common good of all.

    Sadly, 46 years after that unification civil war, we do not seem to have progressed beyond the challenges the nation faced at its budding stages. That is why today, we still talk of the task of keeping Nigeria one as if that is an end unto itself. For the president to be so agitated that he had to recall that civil war slogan in nostalgia is indicative of one or two things. First, it gives the impression that the Nigerian state has over these years been embroiled in a crisis of relevance due to its inability to serve the collective interests of the component units.

    Secondly, it comes with the awful message that not much progress has been made after that war to drum and internalize the import of that unity into the psyche of Nigerians to secure their loyalty through the capacity of the state to do justice, guarantee equity and fairness to all. Those are the unmistakable signals from the president’s message.It also contains a veiled threat to fight another war to keep Nigeria one if it comes to that.

    One can understand the president’s predicament for which he had to remind us that keeping Nigeria one is a task that must be done. Fine! But,for how long shall we continue to fight to keep Nigeria one? And what future is there for a country that has to depend regularly on force to wield its peoples together? These questions are as instructive as they underscore the inevitability of a rethink on the fundamentals of this unity.

    They also instruct that we part ways with stereotypes and fashion out more eclectic and sustainable ways to avoid disintegration. What should concern us more is not this rabid fixation with forced unity but political engineering processes that will allow the idea to be naturally internalized. That is the path to nation building. It involves the psychological reconstruction of the mind to elicit attitudes and dispositions that are supportive of the government. Force has always proved patently defective in this regard.

    By now, we should have been able to pose question and provide answers to why primordial tendencies have of recent, gained high ascendancy despite several years of platitude on the sanctity of the unity and sovereignty of the Nigerian state. It will be nigh impossible to make real progress as a people if we continue to evade the suffocating dynamics of this challenge. And in answering this question and providing durable solutions to it, we must draw a bold line between precepts and examples.

    It is not enough to preach on the desirability and imperative of the unity and indivisibility of the country. It is also not sufficient to rehearse or remind us of those slogans. We have since gone beyond such catchphrases. What is now direly needed is for that entity to prove its relevance through its ability to attend to the yearnings and aspirations of the constituents. And its capacity to deliver quality public goods and services equitably holds the ace for its continued relevance and survival.

    Ironically, the capacity of the Nigerian state for equity and fairness has come into serious question since Buhari came on stead. In both his appointments and other dispositions of government, his inclination to favor the north over and above other sections of the country has not been in any doubt.

    A situation in which the north now occupies 14 out of 17 key national security appointments with the South-east unapologetically and totally excluded cannot but breed feelings of discontent, alienation and self-help.Neither can it conduce for the sustenance of the non-negotiability and indivisibility of the Nigerian state. And as has been seen from recent events, those notions are facing the greatest challenges of our time.

    When this skewed inclination reared its ugly head at the early stages of Buhari’s appointments, the excuses were that more appointment were coming;  they were his personal staff and he had to work with those he trusted. There were some other trite excuses that will collapse woefully when subjected to empirical evidence including the suggestion that the appointments were based on merit.

    More of such appointments have come and the situation has gone for the worse. The festering impression is that Buhari is a northern president.Yet, in spite ofcomplaints for a redress, we trudge on as if important segments of the country count for nothing within the nation’s political matrix.

    A situation where the president is uncomfortable engaging any personal staff from a population of over 50 million people speaks volumes. It not only reinforces agitations for self-determination but stiff competition for the control of the centre to subject its institutions and resources to primordial advantage.

    Buhari should take very seriously the rising complaints of alienation and shutting out of critical segments of the country from the commanding heights of the military and bureaucracy. If he really means business on the unity of this country, he must be seen to be making concerted efforts to run a more inclusive and all embracing government with an abiding commitment torestructure the country. No group wants to belong to a union where they are consigned to playing a second fiddle and where their views and interests count nothing.

    Wole Soyinka aptly summed up these issues when he said, “I am on the side of those who say we must do everything to avoid disintegration. That language I understand. I don’t understand ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s language.I don’t understand President Muhammadu Buhari’s language and all their predecessors, saying the sovereignty of Nigeria is non-negotiable. It’s bloody well negotiable and we had better negotiate it”.

  • The Biafran ghost

    The Biafran ghost

    Like Banquo’s ghost, the past haunts us today, again. Forty nine years after the civil war, we are still fighting the war. Some think the war is over. They are wrong. The war is with us because we are a nation of self-deceit. We lie to and at ourselves. We say peace whereas tribulation lurks and detonates everywhere.

    That is why Boko Haram harangues us in the North. It explains the resurgence of the IPOB and MASSOB and the rumblings of the Niger Delta Avengers and the barbarous entitlement of herdsmen. Even before the past few years, when bombs were literally quiet, tongues exploded between tribes. Rhetoric rattled rhetoric. Tribes and tongues differed by saying tribes and tongues differed. The June 12 excitement was a rebirth of the divisions of the 1960’s.

    We did not solve the problem when it confronted us. When Gowon exploited his name as an acronym of unity, GO ON WITH ONE NIGERIA turned out to be an empty epithet, a feel-good delusion from a victor. Nothing concrete was resolved other than fell the enemy in battle.

    Did we resolve the issue of abandoned properties? Leading up to the war, pogrom lit up the North in incandescent murders. Not only Igbo were killed as many tendentious literature say. Even Adichie’s Half Of The Yellow Sun, for all its strengths, portrayed the single story that the author has campaigned against. The slaughter up North targeted anyone who was not Yoruba, and that included the sweep of minorities in the today’s Niger Delta. Urhobo, Itsekiri, Edo, Efik, Ogoni, etc were mincemeat in the cauldron of death.

    Now, did we have any enquiries into that sanguinary chapter? The northern elite, including political, feudal and military leaders, reportedly encouraged the barbarities. Has anyone been punished or even been officially reprimanded? We have not even officially investigated. We know too that Nzeogwu’s coup was seen as tendentious, and it inspired some Igbo to provoke northerners with their proprietary swagger, boasting that they had taken over the country. Have we looked at that, too? If the swagger was bad, the killings were never justified. But even at that, have we addressed them as a people? Ironsi enacted Decree 34, and some analysts said it was naïve because he did not intend to introduce a unitary system to impose Igbo hegemony. If that act was naïve, what of the second act? He did not want to try the coup plotters. That, according to critics, gave him away as an Igbo jingoist.

    Have we revisited the Aburi meeting, and its aftermath, and how that confab either ossified or laid bare the fissures of our inter-ethnic relations? Were there blames? Where there acts of overreach on both sides? Was the war avoidable? Did the pogrom make war inevitable? How come a region that knew it was tactically and materially inferior to its opponent take the plunge into war?

    So, we also had the war atrocities. We saw what Ojukwu’s army did in the Midwest when Biafra invaded, and the resentment overshadows conversation up till today. We know of the killings of the Igbo in Asaba and how Murtala’s Second Division teased out trusting locals to welcome them and killed them like animals. Gowon, who could not rein in his generals, only had an apology over 40 years after. The apology, however heartfelt, never brought closure.

    So, when hostilities ended, Gowon declared that there was no victor and no vanquished. We know that was as vacuous as GOWON. We just wanted to move on, like a child who walks into a party from a bathroom without cleaning up. The smell and mess linger.

    The ghost has followed us ever since. In education, over whether we should have catchment areas or not. In the Orkar coup. In Saro Wiwa’s murder. In the Matatsine imbroglio. In the meltdown of Fulani and indigenes relations in the plateau. In the June 12 logjam. In the choice of Jonathan as president. In the choice of Buhari as counter president. The list is endless.

    So, when many, including the self-serving Atiku, called for restructuring, it was because the civil war and ghosts of the many dead are still with us, walking the Nigeria earth, apologies to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Developed nations understand the merits of closure. Last week, Britain unveiled the Chilcot report and picked to pieces all the facts of that ignoble chapter of the Iraq War. Tony Blair was exposed, as well as some of the intelligence community and the parliament. The nation looked itself in the mirror, and mea culpa replaced a sense of righteousness.

    On the Iraq war, the New York Times issued a lengthy apology for allowing the emotion of the day sway its professional duties. Next time, both England and United States will think deeper before throwing innocents at the teeth of battle. The crisis of the Balkans is still lapping up its culprits today. Enquiries have dredged up the bad guys and they are subjected to the rule of law. The Hutus and Tutsis have also had theirs and those who inflamed the land to butchery have been exposed and punished. Apartheid in South Africa had its Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

    The Second World War could not be concluded without a clear resolution through the Nuremberg trials. The First World War was concluded without such an enquiry. The victors simply punished Germany and isolated it. The result: a resurgent Germany with the Hitler of hate.

    A people must always learn not to take its injustice for granted. During the Peloponnesian War, Athens fell because it merely slaughtered its best generals who did not pick up its dead at sea as was the custom. The parliament did not reason. The absence of its best brood of soldiers allowed Sparta to crush it.

    So, when Buhari stands accused as nepotist and regionalist in his appointments, it is because he has not transcended the hubris of the civil war. He invokes GOWON but he denies it when his pen signs an appointment. When does a chief of staff to a president become a board member of Nigeria’s choicest corporation? How do we call a truce with the Avengers when the NNPC board is lopsided and has only one name from the oil producing areas?

    The civil war haunts because the hostilities have never really ended. Unnerved on his throne, Macbeth could not exorcise Banquo’s ghost. He said, “Avaunt and quit my sight. Let the earth hide thee, thy bone is marrowless and thy blood is cold.”

    The Biafran ghost still spills cold blood. We may deny it and say our nation is not negotiable, but the past keeps growling and badgering. The more we claim we are together, the more apart we get.

  • A contrived crisis

    It may well be that schemers are at work, or at play, in the unfolding drama in which a high-profile university in the country has been turned into a theatre of theatricalities. The ongoing show at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile Ife, Osun State, is certainly anti-intellectual, which is an intriguing irony in a space where the intellect should be king.

    Trying to understand what is happening at the university is trying to understand what is happening to the rule of law. At the centre of the confusion is the appointment of a new Vice Chancellor for OAU, which ought to be guided by well-defined and unambiguous guidelines.

    It is thought-provoking that members of OAU’s Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and Non- Academic Staff Union (NASU) protested against the selection procedure that produced Professor Ayobami Taofeek Salami. Their disruptive protest attracted the attention of the Federal Government, which also acted disruptively and arbitrarily by dissolving the university’s Governing Council.

    A report said the protesters “took over the University Senate building singing and dancing”, following the puzzling intervention by the authorities. The report continued: “This is a victory for all and one that is well-deserved,” the Chairman of SSANU, Ademola Oketunde, told the workers. “We have seen that President Buhari has a listening ear and we will continue to appreciate him for dissolving the Governing Council. However, we have not won totally as we will stay here till we have an Acting VC who will steer the affairs of the university.”

    This is the crux of the matter. In a reaction to the development, a statement by Concerned Obafemi Awolowo University Community Members said: “The truth is that currently there is neither vacancy in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor nor is there any ongoing process for the appointment of a new Vice-Chancellor in OAU. That process has been completed as far back as June 6, 2016, when the Governing Council at its special meeting considered the report of the Joint Council and Senate Selection Board for the appointment of a new helmsman for the university and decided to appoint Professor Ayobami Taofeek Salami as the 11th Vice-Chancellor of OAU for a term of five years with effect from June 24, 2016.”

    Interestingly, the statement titled “Federal Government’s orders on OAU are wrong”, also said: “To validate the appointment, the Federal Character Commission under the Presidency on June 20 issued a ‘Certificate of Compliance’ to the Registrar of OAU authorising him to ‘issue a letter of appointment to Professor Ayobami Taofeek Salami as the substantive Vice-Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University’. And on June 24, a day after Prof. Bamitale Omole’s five-year tenure ended, Prof. Salami assumed office as the 11th Vice-Chancellor of the university. His address on assumption of office to the university community can be accessed by anybody on the Internet. Prof. Salami’s assumption of office was even widely reported in the media. How the Ministry of Education and the Visitor who were duly notified of the completed process that produced Prof. Salami ignored both that and the media reports on it is perturbing and incredible! Just what makes them think there is an ongoing process for the appointment of a Vice-Chancellor in OAU when in reality that process has been effectively completed?”

    This background suggests that the Federal Government acted in bad faith by dissolving the university’s Governing Council without any legal basis. The law-based concept of university autonomy is not cosmetic, and should not be treated with contempt.

    It is noteworthy that, in a statement, Ademola Oketunde and Wole Odewumi – chairmen of OAU’s SSANU and NASU – replied the opposing group with what they called “the following few facts, lawful and superior arguments on the matter”. They said: “At its meeting of March 8 to 10, 2016, the dissolved council unlawfully developed criteria and used them to score, rank and shortlist applicants for the VC’s post (scoring Prof. A. T. Salami 100%), rather than basing the short listing on whether or not the applicants met the advertised eligibility criteria. The Joint Council and Senate Selection Board (JCSSB) is the only statutory and lawful body empowered to interview, score, and rank VC applicants; and subsequently recommend three “suitable candidate” to Council, with full report of its activities. By this unlawful act, the dissolved Council usurped and hijacked the responsibility of JCSSB and rendered its purposes and functions irrelevant and outright useless.”

    This makes the matter curiouser and curiouser. Where lies the truth?  Indeed, the Federal Government should have been curious enough to get to the bottom of the matter through a thorough investigation before taking a decisive step.  It is unclear how the administration arrived at the decision to dissolve the university’s Governing Council, and why it seeks to invalidate the selection of Prof. Salami as VC. But it is clear that the administration needs clarity on the issue.

    The situation means that the institution is doubly challenged without a Governing Council and a VC, although the administration cannot unlawfully dissolve OAU’s Governing Council, which has the responsibility for lawfully selecting the university’s VC.  Furthermore, the idea of an Acting VC, as conceived by SSANU and NASU, cannot be lawfully concretised by the administration, given the extant legal framework of university autonomy.

    Relevant to the possibility of an Acting VC is a paper on “Appointment and Removal of a Vice Chancellor under Nigerian Law” by Prof. Ehi Oshio.  The Professor of Law argued: “The President/Visitor has no power under the Universities Autonomy Act to appoint even an Acting Vice-Chancellor as a matter of pure law. This is because the Act empowers only the Governing Council to appoint an Acting Vice-Chancellor on the recommendation of the Senate. Section 3(13) & (14) of the Principal Act as amended provides “In any case of a vacancy in the office of the Vice-Chancellor, the Council shall appoint an Acting Vice-Chancellor on recommendation of the Senate” “An Acting Vice-Chancellor in all circumstances shall not be in office for more than 6 months”.

    In other words, where there is no Governing Council, there must be a Governing Council. The Federal Government would do well to immediately reconstitute a Governing Council for OAU, “for the effective functioning of the University”, if it is too far gone to reverse the flawed dissolution.

    When all is said and done, the rule of law should not be the rule of lawlessness.  It is a point to ponder that SSANU and NASU had taken the matter to court, hoping to get a ruling restraining the VC’s selection process, but they have also taken the law into their own hands by forcing a shutdown at the university while the court case is still unresolved. Surely, the Governing Council could not have been expected to restrain itself in the absence of a valid injunction.

    In the final analysis, it would appear that the so-called OAU crisis is a contrivance by internal forces and may well be inspired by ulterior motives. As things stand, the ultimate casualty is the rule of law, and that is tragic indeed.

  • Farewell cruelty

    Quite a few Nigerians have tried to redeem Jonathan out of the dust of infamy. With dewy eyes and longing, they see him as the new pope of Nigerian politics. They might even loft him up as a sort of Christ. The one who descended to the grave, and now he is alive for ever. He holds the key to kitchen and plenty.

    That is the view of quite of few Nigerians who are laden with nostalgia. This do-over of the Otuoke potentate growls beneath formal speeches. They say, in Jonathan’s day, dollar flourished in their pockets. Their food pots flowed over. Their mouths choked with delicacies. They shone with sartorial choices. They could pay their rents. They could travel. They indulged in the familiar Nigerian vanities. And, to top it all, they had their salaries, however abject. Now they seek small mercies called salaries. Instead, they face damnation.

    Today, it is quotidian misery. Their ribs now chill for lack of laughter and the party music now tamed, they act as though in self-imposed peril. So, they ask, why don’t we go back to the Jonathan era and let the good times roll again? Some of them voted for him, and we could see that as self-justification. But others who voted against him now have volte-face.

    That is one example of an about-face. The other pirouette concerns the confab of the Jonathan years. The ebullient Babachir David Lawal, the scribe of the government, tossed aside the call to bring back the reports of the 2014 National Conference. He called it “jobs for the boys.” Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, one of the confab mainstays, ribbed Lawal. How dare he condemn a work that took hours and intellectual rigour with the constellation of role models? Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka also took a swipe at Buhari for pooh-poohing the document, asserting that it surpassed the work of PRONACO years ago.

    Suddenly, Jonathan has a makeover. The shoeless man is bouncing out of a dust-ridden image. For Buhari, a “messiah” wants to go to work but meets a rising tide of the people who think he is no messiah.

    The portrait of a leader can change anytime, and it often depends less on what he did right or wrong, but what people feel at the time, especially about who leads them now. That is why Jonathan, who brought the economy to its knees, who divided the nation on ethnic and religious grounds, who crippled the Northeast with a corruption-ridden war chest, who never completed a landmark project in six years, is now the candidate for sainthood.

    But if we look at the facts, they are seductive. Salaries are hardly forthcoming. The dollar is cascading furiously, many more are homeless and roaming the streets, people are stealing their neighbours’ amala and impiously stalking Ramadan meals. Joining gangs entices boys and harlotry gulps up girls. Queues to flee the country are elongating.

    Suddenly the hero for some is the ineffectual man who created the mess. His image has changed. “There is something fatal about a portrait,” wrote Oscar Wilde in his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel about how a picture changes from winsome to murderous. The same way some people are giving new pictures to Jonathan.

    Was it not Jonathan of the billions of naira scandal, of Dasukigate, of cousins in theft, and friends in spendthrift stealth? Is it not the same Jonathan who wrecked the dollar, who excused a dame who flew with impunity and extravagance, and another dame of BMW saga?

    How come the people now salivating for him cannot make the connection? A witch cried last night, a child dies this morning, says the African proverb. Who does not know the connection?

    The same applies to the confab report. We can say that the report may not be all saintly, but what report is? Hence we can see the sagacity in Soyinka and Akinyemi and others who call for redeeming the project. I know, from sources at the time, that the meeting was called as jobs for the boys, as Lawal said. And we cannot forget the princely allowances. Jonathan’s minders also saw it as a diversion. In spite of that, they had a report and they included a few gems. Shall we forget the gems because of the germs in the hands of the makers? Judas betrayed but redemption resulted.

    But as I have noted before, we need to rake up all our reports since independence. The piles have become files of paralysis. We can even build a museum and stack them and see what catastrophe of ideas has been our trajectory as a nation. Is it about the Niger Delta? Or about education, the army, the civil service, the housing crisis, urban squalor, foreign policy? The files abound. Or it is about our ethnicity or faith clashes? Go to the informal museum. Maybe we should inaugurate the museum as a way of laughing at ourselves as monuments to paralysis.

    The crisis reflects our failure to latch on to a golden era as a nation. Well, we don’t have a golden era. Perhaps in a regional sense, we have, but only in the Southwest and because of Awolowo. The Southwest can look back to the rim-glass hero. But not so in the South-south region, which is an array of people with diverse roots. Nor in the Southeast, except the only soap bubble of Biafra. The North is grappling with its feudal fantasy in a republican age. Leaders like Shettima, Tambuwal and El-Rufai are working hard at it.

    If the past haunts the present, it is the job of the present to exorcise it. That’s the task before the charioteer of change, Buhari. Or else we will look like the post-Napoleonic France that made the historian, Albert Carrie, to write, “Those who looked back to the Napoleonic era, they belonged to the lunatic French.”

    Buhari has to attack the challenges of perception and galvanise a nation. No one but he himself can do that. Or else, the more people will start look back rather than looking forward. They will say, like Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, “Farewell, fair cruelty.”

    One hundred years after

    He was called Mala, as short for his longer Itsekiri name. But as his stature grew and myth gained vigour, everyone called him Nanna, who was fondly and sometimes derisively called Gofune or Gofine, a corruption of the word governor, a position he held in the Niger Delta where he flourished in politics and commerce.

    This week, Nanna’s death will be marked in Itsekiriland and the Niger Delta as one of the great icons of his era and pre-colonial Nigeria. Nanna’s martial spirit and patriotic rage will be marked as candle lights wink, monuments unveiled, speeches soar, his ad hoc soldiery celebrated

    Nana towers today as one of the men of visions and courage we ever had. He ranks with avatars like Sodeke, or Balogun Latosa or Ovonramwen, except that no one put up so stout a resistance to the colonising devilry of the British like Nanna. Where the British saw a servile black, he proved the mettle of sovereignty. He also turned an interregnum into republican swagger.

    He was no democrat. He was no king. He was no general. Yet, he reigned with the glamour of royalty, the groundswell of popular following and strategy that impressed an Alexander or Patton.

    The British needed him in oil trade and made him governor. But they thought they had their slaves. Nanna knew the age of slavery was over. Maybe the English still basked in that era. They broke his staff of office and wanted to trick him out of town into jail. He was on to them. They brought their Army. He mounted a blockade. The English called themselves “mistress of the sea” but got stuck and had to seek reinforcement and the help of local rivals like Numa to break the blockade. He had help moving from place to place and took shelter with his Yoruba friend Seidu Olowu in Lagos before he turned himself in.

    His story reminds us why we should study history in our schools as highlighted by patriarch and author and president of Itsekiri Leaders of Thought, J.O.S. Ayomike, the inspirer of this remembrance.

  • Camps of hunger

    Alarming news from the country’s theatre of terrorism further raised the alarm about the dimensions of torment triggered by the agents of terror. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that nearly 250,000 children were suffering from “severe acute malnutrition” in Borno State as a result of Boko Haram’s terroristic activities.

    UNICEF Nigeria representative Jean Gough was quoted as saying: “We estimate that there will be almost a quarter of a million children under five suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Borno this year. Unless we reach these children with treatment, one in five of them will die. We cannot allow that to happen.” The agency put the required intervention funds at $204 million.

    It is appropriate that the Federal Government has declared a nutrition emergency in Borno State following an emergency meeting with the Borno State government on the malnutrition crisis. Minister of Health Prof. Isaac Adewale said: “We are declaring a nutritional emergency in Borno. We try to put a rapid response team in place following Mr. President’s directive. We had an emergency meeting with the Borno State emergency response team, because more children might die if we don’t do something quickly.”

    The question is: How quickly can the Federal Government do something? According to acting UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria, Munir Safieldin, “While the Nigerian Government and humanitarian organisations have stepped up relief assistance, the situation in these areas requires a much faster and wider response.”

    The conflict in the country’s north-eastern region is said to have displaced 2.4 million people and has stretched food insecurity and malnutrition to emergency levels. Over half a million people require immediate food assistance, and the majority of them are either displaced by the conflict or members of the communities hosting the displaced.

    It is expected that by October, the number of those needing assistance will increase. There is no doubt that additional donor funding will be needed for continued humanitarian response in the region.

    This is why the example of Aliko Dangote deserves emulation. When on May 9 the President of Dangote Group made a donation of N2 billion to internally displaced persons (IDPs), he also made a powerful statement by his example. Apart from being the single largest donation by an individual, what Dangote gave reflected his appreciation of the enormity of the humanitarian crisis caused by terrorism.

    It was a humanitarian gesture that helped to highlight the needs of the people displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency in Borno State as well as the need to help them. It was particularly remarkable because the support came from private pockets and not from the public purse.

    This exemplary humanitarian response was reinforced by Dangote’s presence. It was a demonstration of empathy that communicated the humanity of Nigeria’s and Africa’s richest man. He was touring IDP camps in Dalori and Bakassi in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, when he announced his relief package which he said would be delivered through the Dangote Foundation.

    Dangote said: “This is not the first time I am coming here and it will not be the last. So far, we have expended about N1.2 billion in efforts to alleviate the suffering of IDPs across Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States. The first major challenge is the physiological needs of these people, and food, nutrition rank right on top of that ladder. So we will first make serious effort to ensure that hunger is eliminated from the IDP camps and thereafter, we will begin to make effort to create jobs and boost entrepreneurship.”

    This is a welcome expression of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and it should be emulated by the country’s big private-sector players. Dangote’s action should galvanise others into action, especially considering the picture of inaction painted by no less a person than the Chairman of Northern Traditional Rulers Council and Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, who had observed that funds raised for the sake of the IDP’s had not reached them.

    At the opening of the Council’s second General Assembly in Kaduna in November last year, the Sultan said: “When we go into closed session, we will discuss that thorny issue of displaced persons, mostly in the Northeast. It is a very sad situation; people are suffering. Billions and billions of naira have been collected or put aside for their welfare… It is important that this money be disbursed immediately via the governors.”

    The Sultan added: “We want the governors to take the issue more seriously; take it up with Mr. President and ensure the release of the funds because I was part of the team when this money was collected for the IDPs during the last government. They should find out where that money is and disburse it immediately.”

    What happened to the money? Considering the ongoing revelations of corruption in high places during the tenure of the previous government, it may well be that the funds raised to help the IDPs ended up in corrupt pockets.

    This background helps to further underline the value of Dangote’s charity. The innocent people, who are not only displaced, but also distressed, deserve help. Ultimately, giving back to society, which is the essence of CSR, is a desirable social action. Dangote’s example should serve as a wake-up call.

    In a thought-provoking drama, IDPs in Abuja on July 1 asked for direct donations when members of the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM) visited the New Kuchingoro Camp on a relief mission. Their Chairman, Mr. Philemon Emmanuel was quoted as saying: “We have been here since 2014; we are 1467 persons from Borno State Kozar Local Government Area and 56 from Adamawa. And we have been surviving because of the help of some churches, organisations, mosques and private individuals. We hear many times that people have donated items to assist IDPs in Abuja but don’t get to see the donations. Recently, we heard that Dangote donated items worth millions of Naira to IDPs in Abuja but we are yet to receive the items. We however want to appeal that if some people want to help, they should come through the IDPs camp so we can get the assistance directly. ”

    Of course, it is easy to express concern about the plight of the IDPs who are products of acts of terrorism by the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, which has tormented the country since 2009. It is easy to say something about how these victims of terrorism need help but do nothing to help them. There is such a thing as putting one’s money where one’s mouth is.

    It is lamentable that the country’s terrorism-related internal refugees are hungry and dying while those who can give assistance internally remain onlookers.

  • Between Saraki and Buratai

    Since the last one week or so, no less thanthree key government functionaries have been in public domain for one alleged infraction or the other. The period saw the arraignment of Senate President Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu in court for allegedly forging senate standing rules, 2015.

    Before then, Saraki had been standing trial at the Code of Conduct Bureau(CCB) over allegations of false assets declaration. The duo has since drawn public attention to their plight alleging it was apolitical contrivance to settle old scores by getting them out of their offices.

    They contend that Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Abuja High Court had adjudicated on the matter, affirming that it is an internal affair of the Senate. For this, they view their arraignment not only as an imminent threat to democracy but a declaration of war against the senate.

    But the federal government feels otherwise. It sees the matter as personal to the two presiding officers of the Senate and asked them to bear their cross. The government would even want them resign from their respective offices to allow justice run its full course. In all, their arraignment is rationalized as part of the anti-graft war of the Buhari administration that does not seemingly differentiate between persons, no matter how highly placed.

    At another level also arose controversy over the allegation that the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-GeneralTukurBuratai bought two properties in Dubai estimated at $1.5 million. The allegation which was first published by an online medium with documents to prove drew quick defence from the Nigerian Army. Acting Director of Army Public Relations, Col. Sani Usman admitted the Buratai family had two properties in Dubai but claimed they were bought with personal savings in 2013.

    He saidBuratai had consistently declared the properties along with other properties in his assets declaration forms and described the report as mere smear campaign as the properties were not bought in one single transaction.

    Soon after came another defence from the Defence Minister, Mansur Dan-Ali claiming the allegation was an attempt by some persons to distract the Armed Forces from successful prosecution of the heightened campaign against terrorism in the North-east.

    Apparently following the same line of argument, Buratai claimed that the insurgents and terrorists they defeated on the land have migrated to the cyberspace, internet and other electronic media. “We want to assure them that these terrorists, the Boko Haram terrorists, who have migrated to the cyberspace, we will follow them to that cyberspace and equally defeat them and clear their doubt”.

    By the logic of this argument and the catchphrase of the Buhari government, the general was in effect saying:‘terrorism is fighting back’. By this also, we are being told to ignore the weighty issues that have been raised, part of which have been admitted with the explanation that the assets were properly acquired and declared.

    But then, the role terrorism is being ascribed to in this matter is as confounding as it is unbelievable. It is curious how terrorism could be reasonably factored into allegations that seek to hold a public officer accountable. This is more so, for a government that has sought to build its legitimacy around the war against corruption? Are we now implying that dislodged and defeated terrorists are behindthe allegation so that the war against terrorism will lose steam?It is difficult to fathom the nexus between the two.

    At best, the linkage is guilty of the fallacy of argumentum admisericordiam. It is an argument designed to whip up sentiments with the aim of obfuscating the weighty issues raised against Buratai that ordinarily should require serious investigation. By drawing puerileparallel between the allegation and the successes being recorded against the Boko Haram insurgency, a covert attempt is being made to persuade the public to ignore the allegation.Or is it being suggested that Buratai cannot be subjected to the laws of the land because he is making progress in the war against terrorism?

    We are being told wittingly or otherwise that the fight against insurgency takes higher premium over any other matter including that against corruption. The impression is also being conveyed that the fight is all about Buratai and without him all the gains will be reversed. That is my reading of the issues being bandied on the non-existing correlation between the success in the war against terrorism and corruption allegations.

    There is also the rationalization that the army chief bought the properties with his personal savings; the investments were based on capital market shareholding principles and such other trite explanations. One has no sufficient basis to disprove these claims. But their veracity or otherwise can only be proven through thorough investigations which the situation demands.

    This is more so as the same online medium has literally gone on rampage displaying another list of properties allegedly owned by Buratai in parts of the country. If he really owns these investments, the thing to establish is how he came about them. His salaries are known and the amount of savings he can make out of them can be reasonably computed.

    So it is not sufficient to claim that he bought them with personal savings. It is equally not enough to state that the assets were declared in his assets declaration forms. The purpose of assets’ declaration is for the CCB to match claims with the income of the declaring officer. And where wide discrepancies exist, that officer is made to account for the sources of such assets.

    It will therefore stand as a huge indictment on the CCB if public officers declare assets that are out of tune with their income without such people asked to account for such wealth. If it can arraign people for not declaring some of their assets, it is curious that it could opt to maintain sealed lipsover those who declare in excess of their legitimate income. That renders nugatory the high minded ideas for the setting up of that Bureau.

    Be that as it may, we are here concerned with issues of integrity and probity especially given governments’ commitment to the war against corruption. From the way the two issues are being handled, it is not difficult for oneto establish a case of double standard. The Senate leadership claims that in both the petitions and the recommendations of the police which investigated the forgery allegation, neither Saraki nor Ekweremadu was specifically either mentioned or indicted.

    They therefore query the motive for their arraignment. And since it is a well-known fact that the presidency has not been comfortable with their emergence in the Senate leadership, they may not be completely out place in the way they perceive their current travails. They have also queried what the nation stood to achieve by arraigning them over a matter they considered an internal affairs of the Senate.

    These are some of the issues to ponder. But if the government wants them to step aside for justice to run its full course, no less would have been permissible in the case of the Buratai. Instead, what we get is a cacophony of voices from sundry government quarters each competing to defend and absolve him of the allegations. That alone speaks volumes.

    But hard as they try, the signals are that varying standards exist for treating those accused of one infraction or the other within the corruption ladder. Such a tendency is all that is needed for the corruption battle to lose complete relevance.

  • Ambode’s “Cascade.”

    Ambode’s “Cascade.”

    Twice he wanted to make it not about himself. Twice it inevitably became his show. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s birthday of June 14 was billed as an onslaught on cancer. But it became the effort of a governor. He brought captains of industry and men of charity to buy mobile cancer centres for Lagos. His compassion secured at least four mobile centres. All attempts to make his role beneath the radar failed as he had to walk from table to table to shake the money out of the money bags.

    Last week, it was supposed to be about information commissioner Steve Ayorinde, who presented his book of columns. But all attention went to the governor and his first year in office. Reporter-in-chief Aremo Segun Osoba, who chaired the event serenaded Ambode not only as a doer but as an exemplar of humility. He extolled the virtue of continuity in Lagos. He also praised Ambode’s work in Lekki and roads across the state. Referring to his accessibility, he recounted how he drove to the governor’s office over a complaint and the chief executive wondered why he had to come over to him. He had only to call. The man walked Aremo to his car that was parked far away, opening office door for him as they walked out the building. “I wo na a da rugbo,” he prayed. (You too will grow old.)

    My former oga, Dr. Doyin Abiola said he was prepared for the job. Speaking with verve, she said she had never met him, but his works speak for him. She also commended the governor’s lack of airs, and drew applause when she said some people became unreachable once they became governors. She said there is nothing excellent in such people when they are called “Your Excellency.”

    Professor Pat Utomi asked the audience to close their eyes and imagine the fourth Mainland Bridge, Eko Atlantic, Smart City Lagos, Light Up Lagos. He added that the first few days of unease shows there is time to think, plan and act.

    When he stood, Ambode said the event was not about him. When Ayorinde wrapped up the event, he said it was about the governor. Enough said.

  • Fear of real change

    It is obvious all is not well with this country at the moment. Increasingly, it is getting clearer that fundamental modifications in the structure of the Nigerian state are inevitable to stave off systemic dysfunctions that are at the root of the cycle of crises that have been buffeting this federal contraption.

    Resurging tempo of centrifugalism; a plethora of challenges at the economic level leading in the main, to inability by governments to pay salaries, loss of jobs at the private sector with the banks taking the lead and deteriorating living conditions especially of the poor, are clear evidence that we need to get back to the drawing board to get our bearing right. Though this thinking is not entirely new, for some inexplicable reasons, it has failed to receive the support of some vested interests.

    And for that reason also, whatever gains this country would have harnessedthrough restructuring have continued to elude us. But hard as we try to shy away from it, its imperative continues daily to stare us on the face. That was the uncanny dialectics at play last week when President Buhari told State House workers that it was disgraceful that two thirds of the states of the federation cannot pay salaries to their workers.

    Hear him: “27 out of the 36 states cannot pay salaries. This is a disgrace to Nigeria”. The same contradiction was equally manifest in his comments on the resurging militancy in the Niger Delta region. Again, he had this to say: “Unfortunately, the Niger Delta with their myriads of organizations that are competing over which one can do more damage to the country and the oil wells and oil companies. For how long are we going to do this?”

    The two issues are very fundamental. So also is the question of how long shall we continue to be in this pass?Answer to why states cannot pay salaries can be located in the structure of the federation while the militancy in the Niger Delta will continue as long as people of the area see the organization of the Nigerian state as inequitable and incapable of guaranteeing even development in the area. These are the issues to contend with. And how can we go about addressing themwithout tinkering with the way this country is structured both on political and economic lines?

    Ironically, president Buhari who seeks answers to the posers is opposed to discussions on restructuring the polity. In his recent interview to mark his one year in office, he had in reaction to a question said he had neither read the 2014 National Conference report on how to move the nation forward nor called for a brief on it. He went further to say unequivocally that he would want the ‘report to go into the so-called archives’.

    So when just after a month he came up with the issue of how long we shall continue to live with the inability of states to pay salaries and the militancy in the Niger Delta, he was inadvertently cornered by the contradictions of the unresolved issues of our federal order. Incidentally, much of the solutions to these nagging national challenges were the major concerns of that conference report.

    So if Buhari is serious in finding durable answers to the two challenges, he has to reconcile himself with his averment to consign the conference report to the dustbin of history. In spite of differences in the management styles of state governors andsleaze in public places, the current situation where the states depend solely on hand-outs from the federal government for survival is at the root of their predicament.

    That has been the raison d’etre for calls for fiscal federalism and devolution of powers. The idea here is to whittle down the overwhelming powers of the centre and the concomitant bitter competition for its control that is at the centre of the simmering fission within the polity. States cannot pay salaries because most of them cannot survive on their own as presently constituted. They do not have the capacity to fund themselves because of a convoluted order that has rendered them mere appendages of the centre where life literally begins and ends. States cannot pay when they depend solely on oil revenue which the central government disburses at intervals. They cannot pay when a disproportionate chunk of what should go to their kitty is appropriated by a centre that espouses federal tenets but in reality unitary. And where they manage to pay salaries, other services suffer irretrievably.

    For states to do that and be in a position to discharge their statutory duties very effectively would require the restructuring of the fundamentals of our federal order.It is obviously a political action that seeks to unleash the creative energies and potentials of the component units for rapid development along their designed paths.

    With such action, the discontent that aggravates militancy due to the yawning disparity between the huge resources found at the backyard of the Niger Delta people and their abysmal poor level of development would have been adequately staved off. With it also, complaints bordering on the skewed allocation of oil wells to people almost exclusively outside the zone which the Ijaw Youths Congress has seriously complained about will be redressed.

    Similarly, the inequities that reinforce competition to control the centre and take advantage of its disproportionate resources would have been put at bay. So the answers to the question posed by the president can really be found in restructuring which has been seriously addressed in the document he has curiously relegated to rust in the archives even after the nation had spent stupendously to put it together.

    Had he read it or called for briefs on it, he may have found to his chagrin that in that document lie answers to the poser on why states cannot pay salaries. Ditto the reasons for resurging militancy in the Niger Delta and similar primordial tendencies that have reared up their ugly heads. Perhaps, he may also come to terms with the reality that as long as we trifle with the matter of instituting a true federal order, so long will these challenges be a recurring decimal.

    So when Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara state sought to make a distinction between economic restructuring and its political variant, he was merely referring to two sides of the same coin. He said in a recent interview that restructuring in the past had been based on political exigencies and that is why its economic impact has not been felt. Now, he would want it to be along economic lines. But even when based on political exigencies, its overall benefits are usually felt within the economic realm. For, the difference between politics and economy in this instance is just a very thin one.

    Ahmed however, struck the right chord when he viewed restructuring as the process of reviewing the way we have been doing things and if that has not taken us to the promised land, we seek new ways of getting there. That is the real issue and not this rabid obsession with insinuations that it is a way of dismembering the country. On the contrary, continued opposition to restructuring may facilitate disintegration more quickly as has been shown by resurgent agitations for self-determination and national sabotage.

    It is also evident in the increasing resort to holdingthe nation together through coercive apparatus of the state. But then, for how long shall we continue to hold this country together through the force of arms? Is it not a huge contradiction that 56 years after independence, we still rely overwhelmingly on gunboat diplomacy or the actual deployment of same to compel loyalty for the government?

    It also smacks of educated guess to contend as some have attempted that restructuring and the fight against corruption cannot go together. They can and do go together. For us to fight corruption decisively, we must get at the root of it. And the way to it is by understanding and addressing those negative attitudinal dispositions that starve civic structures of their attendant moral bearing thereby reinforcing corruption. In them, we will find why our society does not frown at people who steal from the coffers of the government, without qualms.  Only then, shall we be able to effect real, lasting change.

  • Governor of infinite jest

    Governor of infinite jest

    Before Ayo Fayose became governor, few Nigerians had heard of the term “stomach infrastructure.” But our politicians chewed the phrase like gum. They knew it and bandied it about sometimes as an act of infinite jest, sometimes to boost their negotiations, to show their relevance, or desperation for contracts or “dividends of democracy.” At the worst, they deployed it to blackmail office holders, like ministers, governors, commissioners, local government chairmen, even presidents.

    But the governor of infinite jest, Ayo Fayose, “chickened” it into common speech. It lost its cultic power and esoteric significance among politicians. He did it when he campaigned for governor of Ekiti State.  As governor, he said he wanted to evince the common touch. He stopped by the road side to buy roasted plantain, or boli, or roasted corn. He cast himself as a master of vernacular conversations. He spoke the people’s lingo. He was a parody of Chinua Achebe’s Chief Nanga in A Man of The People. Ironically, Nanga is a parody of a man of the people. That makes Fayose a parody of a parody. A dark comedian, like a character out of Mark Twain’s novel.

    He demonstrated it at a year’s end and distributed fowls and rice to the people. Never mind that he did not test the birds with any health specialist. The people hurtled to the gifts, in spite of the scrawny necks, dull and balding plumes and thinning thighs. Never mind it was a foul gift. The people were hungry and poor. They had a helluva yuletide.  It is like the cynicism of giving a kwashiorkor fowl as gift to kwashiorkor people, although the Ekiti people were not that poor. But the spirit of the giver was.

    At that time, it seemed Fayose had come to represent the model to govern. Forget roads, schools, hospitals. They belonged to dreamers. Give the people food, splash the cash to them on the streets. That amounted to the common touch.

    So, we did not need philosophers. No need  for London here. We were satisfied with poor teachers. Don’t mess with them. Don’t ask for standards, don’t test them. Let our kid go to school to learn to be a fool. Let the drugs disappear from schools. Healing will descend from prayer schools. Don’t fish out the Methuselahs in civil service who would not retire because, from the prayer schools, their age can never reach the retirement bar. To tamper with that is to touch the forbidden thing.

    No time to dream, but to eat. Send down rice bags and chicken wings. Fayose became the beach head a new “nanny state.” The nanny does not make money. Does not provide, has no imagination for productivity, no sense of managerial adventure. The nanny waits for the provider and provides what she gets to the children. The child falls in love with nanny because, when the father or mother, are not around, it is the nanny that plays the role. So it is possible to love the nanny and hate the daddy.

    So, Fayose played nanny. When the child grows up, he or she will know the nanny’s status. Last week, Ekiti people knew. The veil fell. They no longer called for stomach infrastructure. They had developed cramps. They had stomach upset. The nanny could no longer provide for the children. Rebellion shook the house. So stomach upset made a show in the open as crowds of discontents filled the streets, bearing signs, calling for the probe of their nanny. This is the end of a love story. They are calling for the man to resign.

    It is a pity that democracy can sometimes make a mistake to correct itself. The people of Ekiti State just realised they entered “one chance.” How do they value Fayose now: “as the dead carcasses of unburied men that do corrupt my air,” apology to Shakespeare in Coriolanus, a play of protest.

    The majority has been known to be wrong. Ekitis will not be the last. The United States knows that they created ISIS and today’s recession by voting George W. Bush, who took America pell-mell into Iraq. We are witnessing BREXIT remorse already in England. Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill called the majority foolish.

    What happened last week is what to expect when a Fayose seduces a people, and democracy caves in to delinquency. He cannot pay salary. He takes his comic show to the streets by playing a protester. Now he says Zenith Bank gave him the N4.7 billion. EFCC should probe that allegation. We know bank chiefs have been complicit in some high-level crimes. Is the governor of infinite jest ratting or clowning again? Let’s listen. Good thing that Magu says his agency will soon barrel into the bank vaults. I also think that the EFCC should have sought court permission to freeze his account. The argument that investigation and proceedings are different is still subjective. Let the court give its verdict so it does not appear as witch hunt.

    Fayose is a reason some call for the removal of immunity from governors. But we know that Nigeria is not yet ripe for that. Remove immunity and we shall have a chaos of impunity in court cases distracting governors. The law wants legislatures to check them. But the governors have checked the lawmakers with stomach infrastructure.

    The governor of infinite jest has tarred Buhari as a false charioteer of change. Now he is the physician-comedian who must first heal himself. But it is no laughing matter.

  • A leap of faith

    It is eye-opening news that Fountain University, Osogbo, Osun State, described as “a privately owned Islamic faith-based university”, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) towards research in the Osun Osogbo Grove, a significant ritual ground of Yoruba indigenous religion.

    A report said: “The MoU which was signed at the grove was to enable the university to conduct researches to establish some of the medicinal benefits that can be derived from certain plants and organisms that have been preserved in the sacred grove over the years.”  It quoted the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Bashir Ademola Raji, as saying that a researcher from the university, Dr Afolabi Nusra Balogun, had made certain discoveries in the Osun Osogbo water and some plants in the grove which would contribute to health care delivery when fully developed.

    It is noteworthy that last year the Osun Osogbo Grove’s 10th anniversary as a World Heritage Site made the headlines.  The grove is the site of the Osun Osogbo Festival, a star tourist attraction that draws a high number of domestic and international visitors. Recognised for natural and cultural reasons, the Osun Osogbo Grove is the second of two UNESCO-branded sites in Nigeria, coming after the Sukur Cultural Landscape in Adamawa State, which attained the distinction in 1999.

    Describing the grove, UNESCO World Heritage Centre said: “The dense forest of the Osun Sacred Grove, on the outskirts of the city of Osogbo, is one of the last remnants of primary high forest in southern Nigeria. Regarded as the abode of the goddess of fertility Osun, one of the pantheon of Yoruba gods, the landscape of the grove and its meandering river is dotted with sanctuaries and shrines, sculptures and art works in honour of Osun and other Yoruba deities. The Grove, which is now seen as a symbol of identity for all Yoruba people, is probably the last sacred grove in Yoruba culture.”

    Interestingly, last year’s celebration coincided with the 100th birth anniversary of a central figure connected with the preservation of the grove. It was the centenary of the late Austrian artist and Yoruba-culture champion, Susanne Wenger, who died in Osogbo in January 2009 at age 93.

    The “Susanne Wenger’s Sacred Colloquium 2015? held at the King’s palace in Osogbo featured a paper presented by Yusuf Abdallahi Usman, Director General of NCMM, to mark the two anniversaries. Usman’s paper was titled “Late Madam Susanne Wenger and National Commission for Museums and Monuments as Springboards to the Development of Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove and Enlistment as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”

    Usman described Wenger as “a phenomenal woman of different interpretations.” He added: “She was a great artist, culturalist, spiritualist and naturalist, intellectual, researcher, philosopher and philanthropist who devoted her life to serving nature, culture and people. She championed the beautification, preservation, adoration, conservation and unification of nature and culture in the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove.”

    Preserving the pristine naturalness of the Osun grove was a passionate mission for Wenger.  She regarded the grove as “endangered life” in dire need of protection.  “At the time of my arrival and initial efforts, a contract was ready to be signed giving over to a sawmill the rights to cut down the giant trees of the groves and river-altars,” she recalled. Wenger was “against utilization other than ritual.” She said: “Every tree standing is another witness to our devoted struggle against ruthless destruction.”

    For Wenger, the “holy groves” stood for “a space of devotion to life.” She reportedly once spent a few nights in the grove “to experience nature”. But her various opponents didn’t understand her seeming fuss about what she called the “sacredness of Nature”

    “Oshogbo’s Muslim fanatics’ fire electronically amplified abuses at her more than at all other representatives of the traditional cults,” observed European photojournalist Gert Chesi, who co-authored a book with Wenger, A life with the gods in their Yoruba homeland. Chesi said: “They don’t simply rain curses on the gods, but on the chief fighter in their cause.  Those who seek profits from the groves’ valuable land form the other main group of adversaries. The groves are a battlefield of conflicting interests. She averted schemes to run a roadway through them, and to break-up sacred rocks for house-building material.  When one of her shrines was blown apart five minutes after she left it, she laconically remarked: ‘It was evidently not good enough for orisha, so let’s build a better one’.  Some money came in from somewhere and she did exactly that.  She saved her first Oshogbo shrine by sitting down between a bulldozer and Shoponno’s most ancient, reconstructed altar.”

    Wenger herself spoke about some of the challenges she faced. At one time, she said, “Orisa warned us in an actual way that the Muslims were about to lay the foundation stone for an Islamic cemetery here within four days”. Hunters shot at Wenger in the grove on several occasions, and a gun-wielding fisherman who was violating the sanctity of the river once threatened her.

    The casualties of the battle were often Wenger’s sculptures in the forest, destroyed either by the weather or by vandals.  “Muslim fanatics ganged up with the hunters and those who wanted to build houses here, and they mutilated the images by striking off their arms and sexual organs,” she lamented.

    What did Wenger want?  Well, she defined her cause by stressing what she didn’t want.  “One thing will never happen,” she vowed, “that I will submit to the transformation of the holy groves into an ‘Oshogbo Pleasure Garden’.” At one of the shrines in the grove, according to her, “we actually once discovered a secretly erected notice board to that effect.”

    This background makes it even more fascinating that Fountain University is fascinated by the grove’s resources. The university was established by the Nasrul-Lahi-li Fatih Society of Nigeria (NAFSAT) in 2008, and it is located in Oke Osun, after the Osun Osogbo sacred grove.  Ahead of the university’s convocation two years ago, its Vice Chancellor told reporters: “We are exploring the United Nations Heritage Site, the Osun grove, as a potential source of novel pharmaceutical compounds in Nigeria.” It is constructive that the faith-based university appreciates the possible hidden treasures of the place of worship of a different faith, which is reinforced by the recent MOU with the NCMM.

    It is a testimony to Wenger’s work that the forest is “a protected area”, a national monument established by Decree 77 of 1979, and a World Heritage Site. It is thought-provoking that she was initially demonised, especially by those who belonged to religions different from the one she chose. She remained an unapologetic devotee of Yoruba indigenous faith till the end. Her struggle and the still-unfolding positive results demonstrate the importance of religious freedom and religious tolerance.