The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • A dishonour to Crowther at home

    It is two years since the Bishop Ajayi Crowther Diocese in Iseyin, Oyo State, organised a fundraiser on October 26, 2013, for the completion of a new church building for the Bishop Ajayi Crowther Memorial Anglican Church in Osoogun, the birthplace of the illustrious 19th century cleric who in 1864 was ordained as the first African bishop of the Anglican Church at a ceremony in England. It is a testimony to Crowther’s quality that in the same year he was also given a Doctorate of Divinity by the prestigious University of Oxford.

    It was in Osoogun, in present-day Iseyin Local Government, Oyo State, that his life began as well as the story of his life.  It was in his village, Osoogun, that Fulani slave raiders seized him in 1821. He was eventually sold to Portuguese slave traders at the age of 12. The young Ajayi of Yoruba ancestry was rescued by the British navy and taken to Freetown, Sierra Leone.

    Crowther later described his initial enslavement as “the unhappy, but which I am now taught in other respects to call blessed day, which I shall never forget in my life.” In his progression to priestly prominence, he took an unlikely path carved by unlikely destiny helpers. For him, slavery turned out to be a springboard to celebrity.

    In Osoogun, there stands a storied tree. It is said that Crowther and other captives were tied to this tree before they were sold into slavery.  Nearby, there are ruins of a place said to be Crowther’s home, where he was enslaved. There is no architecture in the ruins. A signpost said to have been erected by the Iseyin L. G. to indicate touristic intentions, has no visible inscription.  Crowther’s statue stands in an open space at the centre of the village. Approaching Osoogun, the sight and state of a secondary school named Bishop Ajayi Crowther Memorial High School, signified official neglect.

    Osoogun looked abandoned on October 3, when I attended a Thanksgiving/Holy Communion Service in the village to mark Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther Day Celebration 2015. In particular, the new church building, which was started in 1992, and the reason for the October 2013 fundraiser, looked like an abandoned project.

    The special service took place at the church, which is still under construction more than two decades after construction commenced. To paint a picture of the unpicturesque church building, or more specifically, the church building in progress, or in the process of progress, it is sufficient to say that the structure is a dishonour to Crowther.  The building lacked a roof, doors and windows; and palm fronds were used to cover areas of congregational presence. It was unbelievable that building a decent new church to honour Crowther could be so difficult. The old church, built between 1958 and 1960, is in a dishonourable state.

    The 2013 fundraiser had a target of N10 million, which may be inadequate today. Whatever is adequate for completing the new Bishop Ajayi Crowther Memorial Anglican Church, Osoogun, can be conveniently provided by, for instance, the Oyo State Government, the Iseyin L. G., telecom players MTN and Airtel whose giant masts tower above the village, and the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, which has declared October 3 as an annual Crowther Remembrance Day. For how much longer will the special day be celebrated in such undignified circumstances right in Crowther’s hometown?

    Crowther’s stature was strikingly defined by a  June 30 ‘thanksgiving and repentance service’ in England, where none other than the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, publicly expressed remorse for the sin against him.   Welby is the most important leader of the Church of England and the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion. His apology on behalf of the Anglican Church was a testimony to institutional regret.

    The Church of England demonstrated a capacity for self-examination and re-examination that deserves attention. The historic admission of guilt highlighted the long history of racism and the scope of racially inspired but misguided chauvinism. It was also a lesson in injustice of a colonial colour.

    Welby’s words concerning Crowther, who is regarded as the father of Anglicanism in Nigeria: “We in the Church of England need to say sorry that someone was properly and rightly consecrated Bishop and then betrayed and let down and undermined. It was wrong.”  He also said in his sermon: “In spite of immense hardship and despite the racism of many whites, he evangelised so effectively that he was eventually ordained Bishop, over much protest. He led his missionary diocese brilliantly, but was in the end falsely accused and had to resign, not long before his death.” It is relevant to observe that Crowther died of a stroke in Lagos in 1891, which was possibly connected with his desolation.

    It is noteworthy that Welby said: “We are sorry for his suffering at the hands of Anglicans in this country. Learning from their foolishness and from his heroism, we seek to be a church that does not again exclude those whom God is calling. We seek new apostles, and the grace to recognise them when they come.”

    Crowther, described as “extraordinary”, played an undeniably effective role in evangelism in the early days of Christianity in Nigeria. “Today, well over 70 million Christians in Nigeria are his spiritual heirs,” Welby said in tribute to his pioneering efforts.

    Crowther’s achievements are remarkable, considering his unremarkable beginnings. Following his conversion to Christianity and his baptism in 1825, he adopted the name of a visible British clergyman of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS). He studied in England and attended the Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone, where he advanced his exceptional interest in languages, which became of immense use in evangelism.  Crowther made history when he was ordained as the first African bishop of the Anglican Church.

    To his credit, Crowther’s language skills produced the first Yoruba translation of the Bible, which was completed in the 1880s, and a Yoruba version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. These projects illustrate how seriously Crowther took his Christianity. He also produced primers for the Igbo language and the Nupe language.  Something should be done without delay by those who have power and resources to ensure the completion of the monument to Crowther in Osoogun. It is good for Crowther’s name.

     

    First published in October 2015

  • Rising costs and the poor

    John Hembe works in one of the service providing companies in Lagos. He recently rented an apartment in the suburb and was gradually sourcing furniture and other household appliances to make it comfortable for living.

    In the course of this, he had visited some electronic showrooms to window shop in the hope that as soon as he received his next salary, he will make up his mind as to whether to purchase a television set or not. In some of the places he visited, he was attracted by the price tags on some of the plasma television sets such that he had concluded that his dream for one will become a reality at the end of the month.

    And as soon as he received his pay, he did not waste time to rush to that showroom with the hope of returning home the same day with one. But that hope turned out a mirage. He was taken aback that prices of the items he had seen the previous week had been jerked up by as much as 30 per cent. Unable to believe what he had seen, he approached one of the showroom managers and the following conversation ensued.

    “Sir, I was here last week to look at the prices of your plasma television sets. But now, I just discovered they have gone up. It looks like it is because of the Christmas that you have just suddenly hiked the prices”

    Manager, “Sorry sir, it is true our prices have gone up but they have nothing to do with the yuletide. I am sure you know of the exchange rate situation. We import these items and their prices depend on what the dollar sells”

    “But there has not been any significant change in the exchange rate in the last one week retorted Hembe in utter disappointment. Well I have to leave since the amount I have can no longer buy the type of plasma television I want”

    With a sorry for the inconvenience from the manager, Hembe eventually left the showroom without purchasing a television set.

    The above captures very vividly the lot of many Nigerians in the last one month or so. The price of everything has substantially increased making life a lot more difficult for many. Not only are jobs being lost on virtually regular basis, state governors have threatened to cut salaries and allowances or in the alternative reduce their workforce. Before now, the rate of unemployment has been at an all time high.

    When you juxtapose the high rate of extant unemployment; the job losses that are now on the increase against the rising cost of goods and services, you can figure out the debilitating economic situation in which many Nigerians have inevitably been entangled. The matter is not remedied given that for every Nigerian that is gainfully employed, he has about five other mouths that feed from his meager salary. The current pass has been largely blamed on two factors.

    The first is the fall in oil price to an all time low. For the first time in so many years, oil price in the international market has fallen below S40 per barrel. And since our governments depend on a mono cultural economy to funds their activities, the drop has resulted in serious policy dislocations on account of their inability to provide public goods and services. The state governments were so mired in a seemingly irretrievable mess a few months back that the federal government had to lend them money to offset salaries and allowances. Despite this, the situation is far from being over.

    The next factor fingered is the alleged mismanagement of the economy by the regime of President Jonathan. The revelation of billions of Naira that were alleged to have gone out of our common till illegally is said to be part of the unwholesome practices that put this country into the current predicament. The argument is that if those monies had been meaningfully deployed to service the people of this country, some substantial progress would have been recorded. This argument is plausible since development is all about availability of resources and their effective utilization and deployment.

    There is little doubt that one of the issues that have held this country down over the years has been the mismanagement of our common patrimony by some rampaging buccaneers masquerading as leaders. For so many years, this country was in plenty in terms of the monies that accrued to it from oil sales. For many years, this country was yearning for visionary and purposeful leadership to husband its resources and guarantee the future. But for those numbers of years, the locusts were really on rampage. What we witnessed instead was the unbridled looting of those resources by the ruling elite such that has prevented any meaningful development from taking root. Our leaders reveled in mindless ostentation and insatiable acquisition for wealth.

    They have had to carry on as if the oil in our shores is inexhaustible. But suddenly, the tea party is over. We now hear of threats to cut down on the minimum wage, reduction of the labour force and all that. We also hear new tunes on the issue of fuel subsidy removal. We are now being plainly told that the so-called subsidy will have to go and Nigerians will have to pay more. They are already paying as much as N150 per litre of fuel in many parts of the country including parts of Lagos. Even those who had been in strident opposition to fuel subsidy removal are now singing a different song. And one begins to wonder what has suddenly gone awry.

    There is also the issue of electricity tariff. The last time I checked, the Nigerian Labour Congress NLC was protesting the hike in electricity tariff which it put at 45 per cent. Though the regulatory body had indicated its intention to adjust the tariff, it made so much noise convincing the people it has abolished the fixed charge of N750 per month. It spoke so much on the abrogation of the fixed charge that many electricity consumers did not realize they were going to pay as much as 45 per cent more.

    Given the prime role fuel and electricity play in every economy, a hike in their prices will lead to a corresponding increase in the prices of goods and services. Governments are also talking of raising their internally generated revenue to stay afloat. This is okay provided they are not such that will lead to strangulating taxes on the people. For now, it is difficult to fathom which other public goods and services will be affected by price increase. Every indication points to harder times ahead.

    The new regime promised change. It has said it loud and clear that it intends to turn around the economy to deliver on its mandate to the people. It has moved on to get all those alleged to have fleeced this country dry to face the wrath of the law. It also intends to engage 500, 000 teachers nationwide and pay some allowance to unemployed post NYSC members. Ostensibly, all these are targeted at ameliorating the debilitating hardship ravaging the country.

    But the soothing effect of these measures will pale into insignificance in the face of the biting inflation and the jerking up of the prices of the goods and services provided by the government. It would appear Buhari is in a hurry to get efficient pricing for goods and services provided by the governments. That may well be. But in doing this, it will amount to a monumental risk to put the lives of the toiling masses at great jeopardy.

    If this economy has been mismanaged, the common man is not the cause. There is a tolerable limit the common man can be stretched all in the effort to have a quick fix to years of mindless plundering, misrule and looting by those Vilfredo Pareto called circulating elite. In verity, this country needs to part way with its decadent past. It needs to gets things alright so that the future of this country can be guaranteed. We need change. But change can be both negative and positive. The kind of change we desire is not one that comes with the notion that we can pay for all the sins of the past in one day. Those for whom the change is designed must be alive to savor its benefits. It must go with a human face.

     

  • Mustard Seed

    Mustard Seed

    Not many Nigerians have heard about her. But everyone should absorb the heroics of Maggie Doyne, a 28-year-old woman from a little town in New Jersey, United States. She has dramatised, in this age of subversive youth, that we can raise the young on love and not on guns.

    Her story also should instruct the wealthy among us as well as our flowery churches that money does not have to be much to do much. Doyne started as a regular American who wanted to excel in life and soar to success as defined by folks around her. Go to university, get a good job, get married and have children, retire and die. She thought all that was all fluff as glitz. She abhorred routine glory.

    One morning, she unbuttoned her dreams to her parents that she did not want to go to the university. She took a year off to see the world. On the wings of a programme known as LeapNow, she travelled to India. After much fun around the country, she wanted to volunteer for children. She heard of a home in northeast India. She helped take care of the kids on behalf of an absentee manager. But then her eyes opened to a developing nightmare. Children mushroomed into India from a neighbouring country called Nepal where a civil war raged. The children were specimens of tragedy: hungry, wiry, skeletal, illiterate, parentless. But their faces painted vistas of cherubic pleas. They needed help. Fate planted her from America, a velvet of opulence, onto a monochrome of want. She had to rise to the occasion.

    But for the kids, merely arriving northern India, away from the turbulence and offal of war, amounted to salvation. Not for Doyne, who had befriended a Nepali woman. She accompanied her to Nepal during a ceasefire, and that was when her story of philanthropy began.

    She observed a young girl among several who broke stones for a few rupees, about a dollar a day. Her humanity beckoned her. She had to help, and she adopted her and put her in a school. For all its breath-taking topography, mountains, valleys, lands of picturesque diversity, its children squeaked. Her soul squeaked with them. She came upon a land for sale, and she remembered that she had saved $5,000 in the U.S. as a babysitter. She called her parents to wire the money to her, and she bought the land. She wanted to build a home. She could not go far with the resources in her hands. She returned to New Jersey to work as baby sitter, so she could make enough to complete the home. She duelled in the summer but the money she made was barely enough. She organised a garage sale by picking up junk not only from her home but also from neighbours. She wanted to make $1300. She hit the target and completed the home for 50 children, although it started with 44 in 2008.

    The place is called Kopila Valley Children’s Home. She cares for all of them. They are orphans and children of the abandoned. Her story resonated around northeast U.S. Some newspapers reported her heroics. Different persons and groups in the U.S. donated to her cause.

    With donations, she started a primary school known as Kopila Valley Primary School. The school took on 220 students, basically of children who were either orphaned or destitute. Most of them were the first in their families to enjoy the virtue of an education. The school provided a meal a day and free healthcare. That is why the idea that Governor Ambode is about to start in Lagos with a meal a day in schools should gain traction here. Governor Rauf Aregbesola has been at it. But for it to start in Lagos with its massive population and expense will make it a flagship for education around the country. The Buhari administration will be a co-sponsor but the states will bear the torch and burden.

    Doyne’s school children are totally bilingual. They learn in English and Nepali, and they benefit from a creative approach to education. Apart from the basic classes, they are awash in literature, art, poetry, theatre, music and sports. The primary school is a first-rate school in the country today. In 2012-2013 when its 8th grade students wrote their first national exam, all the students were in the top 10 per cent, while 50 per cent of them were in the top one per cent. It ranks first in the region.

    Every year, an avalanche of applicants seeks rooms in her school, a testament to quality and fidelity to standards. Above all, it is a deference to her humanism. She came from elsewhere to breathe joy and life to a scorched and tormented landscape. She lifted the children, healed their bones, nourished their minds and watered their path to the future.

    She is not rich, only her soul is rich. She, a foreigner, turned suffering into an alien for many. She planted a mustard seed in a place called Kopila Valley. Kopila means bud. The children are in bloom.

    This contrasts with billionaires in this country who care only for family and more billions. It is not like the flamboyant churches who build schools for the rich or charge fees that crack the backs of the poor. In the beginning there was nothing. Today, Kopila Valley is a landscape of love bearing tomorrow’s genius.

    We should not underestimate where good can come from. Doyne had parents who encouraged her sense of humanistic adventure. They disdained friends who wondered why they allowed their daughter to move 8,000 miles away. Today, she has raised money from different sources. When those over 350 kids eat, think, play and laugh, there is no question how it started. She, a muscular Mother Theresa in bud, saw a need and fulfilled it.

    In his short fiction titled Model Millionaire, Oscar Wilde recounts the story of a millionaire who dressed like a beggar so an artist could draw him. A certain man who saw him took pity on him, and gave him the last money he had. The millionaire was impressed and learned later that the benefactor was poor and could not afford even his upcoming wedding. The millionaire surprised him by bankrolling his wedding with extra to start a life. There is a lot of wealth lying inside rags, like Kopila Valley. “Millionaire models are rare enough,” wrote Wilde, “but, by jove, model millionaires are rarer still.” We want model millionaires now in Nigeria. Too many poor sulk today. Let us take advantage of this season to start again, for good.

  • Junaid Mohammed’s tribal rant

    Junaid Mohammed, self acclaimed convener of the coalition of northern politicians, academics, professionals and businessmen is fast acquiring notoriety for reckless and incendiary statements against the Igbo race. Because his provocative rant has somehow, been largely ignored, he comes up often, talking down on the entire Igbo race as if he would want them disappear from the face of the earth.

    What he thinks of himself, what it is that prompts him or those he purports to represent may not be of much relevance here.  The objective of such irrational and sectional diatribe and what they portend for the overall peace of this country are issues we can continue to ignore at great peril. At each point he gets media mention, he is either hauling invectives on the Igbo or displaying crass preference for war as a quick-fix to festering national challenges.

    His inordinate urge for war, conjures the impression that either the military will always act in the direction of his mindset, he is certain about what they will do in each circumstance or both. Often, he speaks with such a certainty that leads to the conclusion that those on whose behest he speaks, are in control of the military and capable of using them to achieve their goals. That was the essence of his classifying non-violent agitations for self-determination by pro-Biafra movements as terrorism. Yet, when the real terrorists were on rampage in the North-east, he was ambivalent in condemning their murderous escapades. That is Junaid for you.

    In 2013 when agitations for a sovereign national conference were on high gear, he had said that its supporters were asking for civil war. Again, following complaints against non-inclusion of the South-east in Buhari’s appointments, he said, “If the Igbo don’t like it, they can attempt secession again. If they do it, they must be prepared to live with the consequences”.

    And in a recent interview in a national daily, he not only spoke of the Igbo race in disparaging and irreverent manner but even averred with certainty that Obasanjo would have been “overthrown if he was caught in the tribal thing” during his last regime. It is not clear if he speaks for himself, the nebulous northern amalgam he purports to lead, or some other unseen hands. But he speaks with such arrogance and finality that suggests this country is the personal fiefdom of whatever interest he purports to represent.

    That was my reading when he recklessly averred that the Igbo have always misbehaved and shown open nepotism each time they are given certain positions and that nepotism in whatever they do is their stock in trade. He cited the tenure of former Chief of Army Staff, General Azubuike Ihejirika and former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim to support his weird logic.

    Accusing Ihejirika of introducing tribalism in recruitment, training and promotions in the Nigerian Army, he labeled him the most corrupt army chief this country has ever had. His grouse with Anyim is that each time there was vacancy in parastatals under his office, he made sure an Igbo man occupied it. He singled out the case of the National Population Commission.

    His allegation against Ihejirika bears the imprimatur of the blackmail from fifth columnists sometime in his tenure especially when intense heat was brought to wrestle the Boko Haram insurgents to the ground.

    A faceless group had circulated documents alleging that at the recruitment in the Nigerian Army Depot in Zaria, Kaduna state; Abia state with a population of 2.8 million people had 450 recruits while Ebonyi with 2.2 million people had 377 recruits. In contrast, Kano, Kaduna and Lagos states that have populations of 9.3million, 9 million and 9 million respectively only got 258, 382 and 255. According to his traducers, this represented part of the plan to “Igbonize” the Nigerian army. The activities of this group may have had a direct link with the embarrassing indiscipline within the army at that time.

    As this writer contended then, the group simply bandied figures that were lacking in real statistical value for their failure to show the entire staff disposition of the Nigerian army. Singling out one recruitment and promotion exercise to sustain the allegation of ‘Igbonization’ of Nigerian army is not only guilty of the fallacy of hasty generalization but exposes the mindset of its peddlers as a bunch of ethnic bigots unable to come to terms with the reality of an Igbo man occupying that position for the first time since after the civil war. It will not be surprising if Junaid is part and parcel of the waning tribe of these ethnic jingoists. Had they availed the public the staff disposition of the entire armed forces, state by state, they may have discovered that if Abia and Ebonyi states had an edge in that singular recruitment, it may have been part of efforts to redress the inequities of past recruitments under the supervision of Junaid’s kinsmen.

    This point finds ample credence in events during the tenure of Lt Gen. Abdulraman Bello Dambazzau as Chief of Army Staff. Insider Weekly Magazine had in its June 2009 edition, reported that soldiers were grumbling over “parochial and unbalanced’ deployment in the army, wondering whether he “is building a Nigerian army, a Kano army or a northern army”. The magazine alleged that of the 32 key appointments, Dambazzau gave 27 to the north, the south-east three, south-west two and none to south-south. Yet, the tribal warlords saw nothing wrong with it and said nothing because “fouling the air is only good when it comes from the proverbial tortoise”.

    The same jaundiced perceptions that smack of pathological hatred for the Igbo led Junaid in another occasion to assert that the Igbo “have also grabbed most of the land especially for estates in Abuja where they do not have any historical claims or other logical claim to even one square foot of land”.

    This assertion is astonishing. It impliedly seeks to deny the Igbo or any other group, their rights to acquire legitimate property in any place of their choice including foreign countries. Grabbing most of the land in Abuja for estates connotes the impression that the lands in question were dispossessed from their rightful owners through unwholesome means.

    If most of the lands in Abuja have been acquired by Igbo developers, it is by dint of their hard work, industry and enterprise.  What right has anybody to deny them the fruit of their labour? Or when has it become a crime for any Nigerian or foreigner to invest his money in any part of the country?  Perhaps, he would also need the all powerful Nigerian state to decree quota system in private land acquisition for those he represents to have fair share in Abuja.

    The same parochialism blindfolded him to the point of asserting that without Nigeria, the Igbo presently living in neighbouring African countries will not be allowed to be there. The simple answer to this is that the Igbo nation predates the Nigerian nation. Nigeria came into being through the amalgamation of subsisting ethnic units.

    If these units existed before Nigeria, there is nothing to suggest that without this political contraption, they will disappear from the face of the earth. Practically nothing! Moreover, some of the countries where he said the Igbo are living courtesy of their Nigerian citizenship are of little economic and political significance in comparison with the states where the Igbo are presently domiciled. It does not take a genius to work out the logical dynamics of this analogy.

    We can go on to demonstrate the calamity which the views of Junaid have been to efforts at nation-building. Suffice it to say that the Igbo do not owe their existence to anybody. They are also not begging anybody for any favour. They only ask for their rights and equal opportunities as a key member of this unity in diversity. They have suffered and continue to suffer monumental losses in lives and property from the part of the country where Junaid comes. They need to be saved from the atavism of the likes of Junaid.

  • One year of motherlessness

    Perhaps the ultimate tribute to motherhood came from Pope John Paul 1 who said at a prayer session on September 10, 1978; ”We are the objects of undying love on the part of God. We know: he has always his eyes open on us, even when it seems to be dark. He is our father; even more he is our mother.”

    The idea that God is even more our mother came to mind as I reflected on the ultimate event of December 15, 2014. It was nightfall. I received a phone call from my wife who informed me that she was in my company’s car park with my maternal uncle. I was just ending my business at a watering hole not far from my office when the information came. I returned to my workplace.

    There was nothing unusual about my wife and my driver coming to take me home at the end of the working day. I wondered briefly why my uncle came with them, and thought it must be connected with route calculations. Although my mother was terribly ill, it never crossed my mind that something terrible had happened.

    “Femi, it has happened,” were my uncle’s first words when I got close to him in the car park. I recoiled with an exclamation. I took a few steps back and walked to another space where I stood gazing at nothing for a few minutes before I went to pack my things for a journey I had never experienced before then and will never experience again.

    It was when I got inside my office that the impact of the development hit me with a devastating force. When I sat down, a crushing pain overwhelmed me and uncontrollable tears streamed from my eyes. “Why?” I asked continuously as my body shook from the blow of fate.  No one could provide an answer. The question was unanswerable.

    There were three colleagues with me at that piercing point of truth: Lekan Otufodunrin, Joe Agbro Jnr, Sherrif Atanda. They must have been unsettled by my unsettlement. They offered soothing words. Then it was time to wipe my tears.

    That night, as we drove to the hospital to move my mother’s body to the morgue, it was a time for the choreography of memory. What can I remember? What do I remember? What do I want to remember? For over five decades, Eleanor Bodunrin Macaulay (nee Williams) was a constant and consistent parental presence. Even now, the shadow of her presence remains, suggesting a deathless physicality. As her first-born, I bonded with her beyond the restrictive ephemerality of earthly life. Genetically and by socialisation, she will always be with me.

    Her modesty was magical and magnetic, particularly in a world of vain noisiness. Her younger brother, Mr. Bankole Williams, said of her: “She disliked anything flamboyant and believed in modesty.”  One of her favourite sayings, “Little drops of water make a mighty ocean,” provided an insight into her sense of organic development and increase, which was reflected in the way she lived and projected herself.

    Hers was a life of meticulous attention to order and propriety. As a working mother with four children, three boys and a girl, she had to strike a balance between her workplace and her home, which she did with remarkable aplomb. Apart from her incalculable contribution domestically, she was able to hold down a job in a bank for 30 years. During the period, starting from July 1955, she held secretarial positions at the Barclays Bank (DCO), and later at the Union Bank following a business-name change, and retired in 1985. She was awarded certificates for “loyal and faithful service” to mark her 10th, 20th and 30th service years.

    Bodunrin Macaulay was dependable and consistent, and had long-term money-keeping responsibilities in the Shotan Williams family union as well as her society at the First Baptist, Church, Broad Street, Lagos. She was also a fascinating stickler for time. By Saturday afternoon, she was already prepared for church service the next day, with her clothes and accessories chosen and ready. Also, when she had to attend a special event, she would start planning for it at least a week or two ahead. She was impressively time-conscious and her punctuality was a timeless lesson.

    It is food for thought that as she lay dying, she was sufficiently conscious of her commitments, and a particular demonstration of her sense of duty was noteworthy. She sent her monetary contribution to the Women Missionary Union (WMU) through a family member, despite her infirmity and the distraction it represented.

    Bodunrin Macaulay was born in Forcados, a riverine area in the present-day Delta State, on January 5, 1935. She was the fifth of the eight children of the late Pa Joseph Latunji Williams (alias J.L.), who was a marine engineer with the Nigerian Marine, now Nigeria Ports Authority. Her mother, Omare Edudun (known as Nene) from Isie, Warri, was of Itsekiri stock. In the mid-forties, her father was transferred back to Lagos and lived with his family at No. 29 Odunlami Street, Lagos Island.

    In 1960, she got married to Frank Olusola Macaulay (of blessed memory), a grandnephew of Herbert Macaulay, the famous Nigerian nationalist. Their wedding, which followed a considerably long courtship, took place at Ereko Methodist Church, Lagos. They were married for 53 years and were only separated by the death of her husband in August 2013. It is worth mentioning that in a moment of candid expressiveness in the 1980s, Olusola Macaulay advised his first and second sons, me and my younger brother, who were then undergraduates, to go for women who would be like their mother when they were ready for wedlock.

    Bodunrin Macaulay would have been 80 on January 5, 2015, but she didn’t wait for the celebration. Three weeks to the milestone, on December 15, 2014, her mortality intervened. At this time of remembrance, the words of John Paul 1 prompt my reflection on the godlike aspects of motherhood and the motherly aspects of God.

  • FloodGate!

    FloodGate!

    While the controversy festers over Sambo Dasuki and our so-called security money, I ponder the lives of Boko Haram victims. Those who lost limbs. Those who lost sons and daughters. Families hived and harried. The raided and raped. In the different camps of the internally displaced persons, or IDPs, hordes huddle in misery.

    Last week, a news report had it that the IDPs are fertility clinics running rampant. Babies are bouncing out of wombs like ants out of hill. It may seem good news. Little miracles in the midst of misery. But it is the fruit of boredom, of lassitude and solitude.

    It is also the lassitude of latitude, the fecund indolence of freedom. As novelist Scott F. Fitzgerald wrote: “The rich get richer, the poor get children.” It is even more tragic when the rich are fattening at the expense of the poor.

    That’s DasukiGate. As I noted elsewhere, it is not DasukiGate, it is a floodgate. The roar and rush of the scandal are not discriminating. It carries the cargoes of big men. Big men in media, in politics, in business. It moves with a democratic quality of ferocity, treating no one with respect whether the arm of a tycoon or the belly of a former governor.

    But they were stealing and storing our resources while individuals toiled and died. While on a daily basis, we lamented Boko Haram scorch earth after earth. Fathers fell. Sons either died or joined them. Daughters fell prey to their distorted vision of the marital bed. If, that is, they did not lose their virginal pride instantly. The Chibok girls, the other schools turned into vast slaughter slabs from stabbings and beheadings, whole villages sacked, their theocratic flags hoisted haughtily.

    The scandal men fuelled the tragedy, so they could feather their nests. The horror brings to mind the work of Svetlana Alexievich who won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature. She dedicated her life’s career writing about how ordinary people suffer while leaders mint money and enjoy the luxury of high office. She is the first journalist to win the big prize, but her work is not mere journalism. Hers probe beneath the layer of reporting. She probes, in her books, the depth of angst, desolation and tortured alienation during disasters in the old Soviet Union. She writes about the Second World, the Soviet-Afghan War, the Chenobyl disaster. She is a raconteur of the emotional abyss of pain and loss. Which is no different from the story of the Boko Haram tragedy.

    So, while we spoke about billions, they might have averted the dismembered hand, the kidnapped belle, incinerated home, the disoriented family, the devout sublimity of the boy now recruited into the circle of an apocalyptic belief. There are many individual stories, a thing not well documented yet about the tragedy whose flames are happily on the ruin. Each story is a deep wound, and that was the project of Alexievich. “Each substance of a grief has twenty shadows,” said Bushy in Shakespeare’s Richard II, demonstrating that if many had griefs in northern Nigeria, we had a million shadows. Let’s go beyond the statistic into the emotion. “One million deaths is a statistic,” warned Josef Stalin who was never squeamish about a dying mother, “One death is a tragedy.”

    The FloodGate is indeed telling. What bothers is the place of due process. The military operated the way the politicians acted. In carting away the money, they respected no due process or decency. The same way the Chibok girls were taken away without due process or decency. We saw the barbarity of high office executed by the barbarians at the Chibok gate.

    In the NSA’s office, money came there via the Central Bank without respect to protocol. They took raw cash, bags of dollars crackled through the CBN portal. They came one after the other once it had settled at the ONSA vault. Dokpesi came. Bafarawa materialised. Obaigbena waltzed in. Etc. As they came in, our money flew out. It was a sleek and extravagant comedy. Enter with false dignity. Sign on a sheet of paper. The paper could say media embed, or energy or spiritual work, or whatever. Not arms or uniforms or food for the boys then awaiting court martial. Somebody heaves out and counts the stack of dollars, arranges them daintily in a bag. The dignitary receives in a flourish. Nods to the NSA. Smiles to the gate. Car takes him either to the hotel or Abuja palace or private jet when fleeing out of town.  Our police, in short supply to protect the vulnerable, are gun-happy beside them as they sashay away.

    That was the due process. Not your business BPE, or Senate. Contempt for open bidding. No respect for such things as certificate of incorporation, tax papers. That is suffocating protocol. Speak to the president, get his approval, walk to Dasuki, pick your loot and flee. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Go and enjoy yourself.

    But the military operated no differently. Recently the report had it that over a hundred soldiers were buried in a mass grave. The army denied it. I ask, when was the last time they reported any dead Nigerian hero? In the United States, once a soldier dies, he is buried in dignified ceremony. His family is notified in a special visit. In the killings in Paris, all the victims of the recent tragedy were not only noted, they had their families notified. Later, they announced to the public with pictures and biographies. It is a ritual of respect, a homage to patriotism.

    It is when we lack this protocol of dignity that our army runs the gauntlet of accusations of human rights abuse. No such deference for order. Hence many soldiers were paraded for court martial. Femi Falana, SAN, led the agitation for respect of those who fought for us. Barely a year ago, I wrote a column on Citizen Fahat Fahat, who enthused into battlefield and posted many gung-ho Facebook messages about his desire to despatch Boko Haram goons.

    Yet many felt sorry when he posted he was being court-martialled for not fighting when no one stocked him with military hardware. I hope he is one of those set free by the military court. Alexievich laments this nightmarish paradox of service attracting punishment in her moving book, Zinky Boys, about soldiers brought home in zinc coffins.

    The media fell prey to the same lack of due process. The newspaper proprietors collected drafts. No one asked for the cheques from the federal government. No one asked, why drafts and not NPAN cheques? No one asked for any official memo from the federal government on the agreement. No due process.

    The newspaper proprietors were guilty of naivety, especially in an ambience of financial putrefaction. It is an excuse not of nobility, but of inexcusable innocence. Yet, they were robed in. Their hands were not soiled but boiled, but they were numb hands. They did not know how hot the water was.

    So, they story was messy. No due process in government. No due process with Boko Haram. It was an epidemic of impunity from the tony majesty of Aso Rock to the scalding heat Sambisa Forest. Boko Haram and the Jonathan government had two things in common: impunity, oppressing the average citizen. The Boko Haram leaders also lived large, with money, women and barbarian glamour. So did the Jonathan’s men.

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  • Don’t bribe God

    Don’t bribe God

    The story had it that Attahiru Bafarawa clucked with N4.6 billion for spiritual purposes. Quite a hefty sum for God, I thought. But it may have made sense if Jonathan won the election. Bafawara could have aped his Christian friends and yelled, To Allah be the glory. But the electoral loss means we could have spent the money well.

    Look, for instance, at Lagos. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode spent N4.7 billion to protect 16 million Nigerians. He invested it in a series of helicopters, gunboats, fleet of cars and motorbikes as well as communication gadgets. We are feeling the impact in Lagos now. The devout will say Ambode spent his money on mammon while Bafarawa and Jonathan spent on God.

    Mammon seems well now that their project has failed with Jonathan’s loss. The 16 million Lagosians will appreciate the money more than marabouts and other places where the money might have gone. Lesson: don’t’ bribe God. When the people rejoice, N4.6 billion as offering meets brick wall of heaven.

  • Kogi, Bayelsa elections

    Given that the governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states marked the first set under President Buhari and the new INEC chairman, their outcome was bound to attract considerable public interest. This is more so with the peaceful transition of the last general election. Before that election, fears were high that its outcome could dismember this country as sharp cleavages with religious and ethnic tinge dominated the language of political discourse.

    But that gloomy political atmosphere was to peter out when the election (though not without its shortfalls) came out largely successful culminating in the epochal defeat of a sitting president. The significance of that landmark event for democracy in Nigeria has since been chronicled by world leaders. With that success, expectations have been high that free and fair electoral conduct which had been the albatross of this country is beginning to take root.

    As both elections approached early in the life of the Buhari regime, public expectations were high that the mileage gained from the last general election would lead to a seamless outcome. Ironically, that expectation has failed to materialize as events from both polls have unmistakably shown. Both were declared inconclusiveness on account of electoral violence and sundry malpractices which prevented voting in some of the areas.

    In Kogi, elections did not hold in 91 polling units of 18 local government areas due to electoral infractions ranging from vandalism, snatching of electoral materials and outright violence. Though the APC was clearly leading the PDP with a margin of 41,253 votes, INEC declared the election inconclusive on the ground that the total number of registered voters in those polling units which stood at 49,953 was higher than that with which the APC led its rival. In its calculations, the remaining votes could still alter the pattern of electoral victory. It was for this reason which is in keeping with aspects of the electoral law that saw to the declaration of the election inconclusive.

    Opinions were sharply divided on the position of the electoral body. This is more so given that the universally accepted ratio of the actual votes cast vis-à-vis the total number of registered voters is put at about one third. What this implies is that the remaining votes may not substantially alter the winning pattern. And this came to pass when the final results of the re-run were put together. The APC had 6,885 of the votes while the PDP garnered 5,365. This figure is even less than one third of the remaining votes for which the election was declared inconclusive.

    The issue here is, had the election proceeded without hitches, the results would have been announced as a clear winner had emerged. By the same extrapolation, the complications and litigations that arose even within the APC fold, would have been staved off, the death of its governorship candidate, Abubakar Audu notwithstanding.

    Events of the botched elections in those polling units were to become the albatross of the Kogi election. INEC has been blamed for the pass in the Kogi polls on two fronts. It takes liability for observed shoddy preparations and for not declaring the result of the election when it was clear that the remaining votes cannot substantially turn the tide against the winning party.

    Even then, it would also appear the electoral body was playing safe given the penchant by our politicians to take advantage of any error of omission or commission to accuse it of skewing the process to the advantage of the ruling party. It is obvious it ordered the re-run to fulfill all righteousness. This point cannot also be discounted as there is precedence to back it up.

    But the violence and bad management of the election in Kogi is just a child’s play when paired with events of the governorship election in Bayelsa State. Reports spoke of sporadic shooting by armed militias in some areas especially in the southern Ijaw local government resulting in the killing of about five people. As a result, elections could not hold there. Curiously despite informed advice not to hold the election the following day because of the level of violence of the previous day, INEC went ahead with the election.

    The outcome of that error of judgment turned out disastrous. The electoral body had to cancel the election much later on the ground that it was substantially marred by violence, ballot snatching, intimidation and other irregularities. But that was after protests had erupted in the state capital accusing it of trying to manipulate the exercise taking advantage of the high level of insecurity in the area. How the electoral body and the security agencies came to the conclusion that free and fair elections were possible under that high level of insecurity in a state notorious for deadly militants, remains curious. But events have proved their decision futile.

    Not unexpectedly, that judgmental error has been largely responsible for the recrimination going on between the APC and the PDP with each seemingly claiming victory. The PDP said, having won in six out of the seven local governments where results have been declared, it has satisfied the requirements for electoral victory. The APC on its own says it has also obtained 25 per cent of the votes in two thirds of the local governments and wants the results of southern Ijaw which it expects to turn the tide in its favour to be declared.

    What the position of the APC implies is that if the result of the southern Ijaw council was declared, it would have garnered substantial votes to turn electoral victory in its favour. We shall demonstrate the possibility of this claim by critically appraising the pattern of votes scored by the parties in the seven local governments that have been so far declared.

    In Brass, APC had 21,755 votes against 6,516 by the PDP while in Sagbama PDP had 28,934 as against 5,382 by the APC.  In Yenegoa, PDP scored 24,258 while the APC had 14,563. These three local governments recorded the highest number of votes in the election. In the remaining four local governments, the margin was narrow even as the PDP led in all of them.

    But the wide margin of votes in Brass and Sagbama can be understood. The APC candidate hails from Brass while that of PDP is from Sagbama. Going by the votes in the two local governments of the candidates, whereas the PDP got nearly one third of the votes in Brass, the APC could not secure that in Sagbama.

    If this statistics does not clearly underscore the relative strengths of the parties, the case of Yenagoa where the cumulative votes of the two parties stood at 39,821 despite its voting strength of 132,025 says it all. The total score of the two parties represents barely one third of the total number of registered voters.

    Southern Ijaw which has a voting strength of 120,827 comes second after Yenagoa.  With barely one third of the total voting strength taking part in the Yenagoa poll and the margin of votes recorded in the other local governments, it stands to be imagined the kind of difference the southern Ijaw poll will make in the overall calculations of the final results. It will be a huge surprise if it turns the tide of the election outcome.

    So it is not just a matter of bandying claims to electoral victory. The facts on the ground speak for themselves. INEC should move fast and set a new date for election to be held in southern Ijaw after adequate security to guarantee free and fair polls have been put in place.

    Beyond these, INEC has disappointed the nation in its handling of the two elections. If it could perform so abysmally in two isolated elections, we shudder at what the situation will turn out during general elections. But the role of security agencies during elections and the desperation of politicians to win at all costs have become serious issues that will make or mar our attempts to institutionalize democracy on these shores.

  • To spoil a poll

    To spoil a poll

    The Bayelsa State guber poll conjured the image of the red-blooded male. He is not distinguished by height or girth, although it helps. His distinction lies in the journey of his muscles. When shirtless, his torso is a work of art, as well as his abdominal region. For the well-fed and well-exercised, the red-blooded male presents a picture of primitive warior. Regions of his skin line up like boxes that some call six packs. Each pack tics, throbs and crackles.

    Above that vista of masculine ardour stands an unpredictable visage. It might look coy, retiring, menacing. The eyes may blaze or look fazed. The muscular message below tells the onlooker that the face may be deceptive and, like Shakespeare noted, “there is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.” Some have faces that explode with violence and the muscles act it. Some have satiny looks but hoist blood and death, and you do not know such men until they are in charge of things.

    Unlike the puny case of Kogi State, you had to be a man in the electoral trenches of Bayelsa. But muscles were not enough. Guns. Bombs. Boats. They fed the red blood.

    They may be cocks, well feathered, cawing in primal rhythms and glowing with machismo. But without weapons, such men are effeminate in the electoral wars of the “Glory of all Lands.”

    When APC candidate Timipre Sylva gave a press briefing last week over the cancelled poll in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area, he gave a hint of the boil in the Bayelsa waters. He said on a number of times, he had to place calls to the security forces to counter the goons ferrying ballot papers and unleashing mayhem. Waxing poetic, he said some of his calls died “like a candle in the wind.” His claim has not been denied. In Ekeremor, the Minister of State for Agriculture, Heineken Lokpobri, had to be rescued by security forces when thugs, apparently for the opposing PDP, barreled into his compound with guns and bombs.

    When the results of Ekeremor Local Government were announced, an APC member rose to protest on live television. The INEC officer motioned him to sit. At the same time the PDP representative also made a counter-claim of violence. The INEC man noted on live television that there was another forum for complaint.

    So, why did the INEC cancel the Southern Ijaw poll, and not Ekeremor, or Nembe or Sagbama? The law of course says an election can be cancelled in cases of violence and over-voting. If the election was cancelled on violence ground in Southern Ijaw, it was unfair to violence to respect it in one place and disrespect it in another. In the law, all violence is created equal, and should be punished accordingly. The law did not prescribe scale of violence.

    The poll also provided a clear irony. The PDP – and Seriake Dickson – was ahead in six of the seven local government results, but he manifested not only anxiety but lawlessness. The snag was that Southern Ijaw could wipe out his lead and give the victory to his opponent, Sylva. He committed two wrongs that, in a normal society, he should have stepped out of the race or/ and be disqualified from the contest.

    One, he visited Southern Ijaw’s capital and also the INEC office. The army, in its press briefing on Saturday, alluded to it, and claimed that his presence ratcheted up the violence in Southern Ijaw. The governor had no problem with the elections holding in his strongholds. When it got to Southern Ijaw, he quilted and turned into a lawless man in government house. He became a retailer of violence.

    Two, the governor also went live on Bayelsa Radio to incite the people of the state against the Federal Government. If Nnamdi Kanu can be called a subversive for invoking Biafra, Seriake Dickson with his imperial swagger and walking stick, was Kanu’s counterpart in government. He provoked tribe, calling the Ijaw nation to rise against the plot by the centre to disenfranchise them. Indeed some people responded and came to the street, especially some women in the colour of mourning clothes. The police had to caution him and remind the people of the state that such a rally contravened the electoral law.

    If Dickson were charged to court today, he would not escape the law. What he did was criminal and in contempt of the tranquil principle of society and the dictates of the Nigerian constitution. He acted the alpha male, the red-blooded goon in official toga. He exhibited the Neanderthal spirit of the ruffian in office. He was a governor as caveman.

    Southern Ijaw, according to the APC, was their stronghold. Sylva claims he has won the election because he believes the votes from that densely populated area could wipe out about 30,000 votes that Dickson had over him in other local governments. In the United States, anytime a Democrat wins a presidential election, he often lags until the California numbers come in. That state can wipe out aggregate votes from the south. That was the scenario APC thought was emerging with Southern Ijaw. Why did the Resident Electoral Officer announce the cancellation instead of the returning officer? The returning officer was not reported sick, captured or fired.

    The new INEC boss must avoid the image incompetent and bumbling umpire with inconclusive elections.

    Elections are not supposed to be deathbeds of innocence or the celebration of red-blooded males. It does no glory to Bayelsa nor to Nigeria that in the 20th century, it’s not the vote of the hand but the hand of violence that determines the victor. It is even worse when the umpire presents itself without evenhandedness. Democracy is not for Thomas Hobbes’ state of nature, or for Nietzsche’s superman. It is for John Locke’s spirit of equity.

    The red-blooded men are good when they guard us and foster our virtues with their strength. “Only the weak are cruel,” noted Leo  Buscaglia, also know as Dr. Love. “Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.” They are not strong when they bully. Playwright Aristophanes moaned the Peloponnesian War and wrote a play in which the women withdrew sexual favours from their men in order to force them to stop violence. The play known as Lysistrata is not only good for Bayelsa but for Nigeria. To rein in the red-blooded male, take away his libido. It worked in Aristophanes in triggering negotiations about war. When a man needs weapons rather than words, he admits he has lost the argument.

    In Bound to Violence, Yambo Ouologuem laments in his novel Africa’s fascination with waste and spoils. In his play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams turns red-blooded Stanley into a mutant soul and rapist. We don’t want that in our election. But fair is fair. If INEC cancels the polls in one place, it has to do same elsewhere. If it tolerates it in one place as it has done in Yenagoa, Nembe and Ekeremor, its conscience should allow it accept the polls raked in at Southern Ijaw. Democracy fails when it is not fair.

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  • Weakness of the watchdog

    Although the story is still developing, it is unflattering  that two major media players are facing  weighty corruption-related allegations: Raymond Dokpesi, founder of DAAR Communications Plc, owners of African Independent Television (AIT) and Ray Power; and Thisday publisher Nduka Obaigbena.

    Corruption is no respecter of persons or institutions. It only respects self-respect, which may act as armour against corrupting influences. The two politically exposed media owners enmeshed in the outrageous corruption narrative that has demystified the office of National Security Adviser (NSA) have only demonstrated the weakness of the watchdog.  The troubles of the prominent media proprietors named in the unfolding corruption scandal involving the former NSA in the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, Sambo Dasuki, teach useful lessons about the media’s vulnerabilities.

    The media’s watchdog role does not mean it is invulnerable to corruption. Ironically, the media’s responsibility means it is open to corruption. For instance, it goes without saying that the media’s customary investigation of official corruption comes with possibilities, including the corruption of the investigator. The likelihood of media corruption is even greater when media owners are more power-friendly than people-friendly.

    What was deployed in defence of Dokpesi Snr had an opposite effect. A statement by Raymond Dokpesi Jnr said his father’s accusers were mistaken. According to him, the media chief received N2.1 billion from Dasuki, but it was payment for media services “to promote and project the achievements and highlight the challenges of the Jonathan administration whilst demystifying false information gleefully circulated by the propaganda machinery of the then opposition party.” He added curiously: “We must further emphasise that the proposal had absolutely nothing to do with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), nor the Presidential Campaign Council (PCC).”  It was an absurd effort to separate Jonathan and his reelection campaign from his party.

    The family’s statement may well be correct in claiming that the Jonathan administration structurally allowed the office of the NSA to accommodate “multiple budgetary sub-heads including for communication and information”.  In other words, the payment to Dopkesi from the NSA’s coffers may not necessarily be described as a fraudulent diversion of funds meant to fight terrorism.

    However, beyond the question of its appropriateness, the structure that facilitated such suspicious payment to Dokpesi leaves several questions unanswered.  A report quoted a source at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC): “Our investigators have isolated these areas of probe: Were the funds budgeted for? If not, what informed extra-budgetary expenses? How much was actually voted for arms procurement? How were the funds sourced? Who or which agency awarded all the contracts? Who were the contractors? Was there any evidence of delivery of equipment?”

    The evidence of a fluid context where alleged media services are difficult to separate from anti-terror activities is the reason Dokpesi has questions to answer. It is also the reason Obaigbena issued a defensive statement from the US, saying: “We have never received any suspicious funds from the Office of the National Security Adviser. All funds received from the Office of the National Security Adviser were payments for compensation…”

    Obaigbena said he got N550 million as compensation for the Boko Haram bombings of his newspaper’s offices in Abuja and Kaduna in April 2012. He added that as President of the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), he got N120 million as compensation for 12 newspaper companies whose copies were seized by soldiers in June 2014. It is curious that investigators said these payments were made to General Hydrocarbons Limited controlled by Obaigbena for “energy consulting”. Even stranger are denials by some of the affected newspapers whose officials claimed they never received any payment for compensation.

    It is ironic that media players have found themselves at the centre of a multi-billion arms scam. It was an open secret in the Jonathan presidential era that people in power ironically fuelled the Boko Haram insurgency by fraudulent acts. The anti-terror war became a pro-terror effort because of the weakening of state-capacity by government officials expected to win the war.

    Under the Jonathan administration, of all the arguments to redeem the image of the Nigerian military as it battled unimpressively and unconvincingly against terrorism, the most mystifying was the illogic that blamed media treatment of the anti-terror war for the continuing demystification of the country’s armed forces. The signs of a possible prolongation of the already protracted defiance of state capacity by the Islamist militia Boko Haram were observable, despite oft-repeated assurances from official quarters that the insurrectionists were doomed.

    It is unclear to what extent the extension of the anti-terror war was due to fraud-related factors. With the allegations against Dokpesi and Obaigbena, it would appear that media players helped to create an enabling environment for terrorists, wittingly or unwittingly. This is because, in the last analysis, fraud-related activities that made nonsense of the anti-terror campaign cannot be a plus for the media.

    It is noteworthy that the print and electronic media are represented in this drama, showing that corruption has no boundaries. The media’s watchdog role should position it on the side of the people. When the media betrays its essence by taking sides with unprogressive structures of power, it defeats the purpose of having a watchdog in the society.

    The media must demonstrate an understanding of its responsibility and appreciate its burden of truth. At bottom, the allegations against Dokpesi and Obaigbena show not only the corrupting influence of power but also the powerful influence of corruption.