The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Ministerial screening

    With the unveiling of the first batch of ministerial nominees by the Senate, speculations on those who made the list have been laid to rest. Discussions now centre round the suitability of some of the prospective ministers; the rationale for the long period it took to put the team together and the inability of President Buhari to submit a full list despite promises to keep to the September deadline he had set.

    A perusal of the list shows some well known names such as former governors, politicians, other former public office holders and some relatively new entrants. Not unexpectedly, issues have been raised on the justification for the long period it took the president to compile the list given that a good number of the names had at one time or the other been in government or its related agencies.

    Even then, the list fell short of the constitutional requirement that a minister should come from each state including the Federal Capital Territory. The fact of this coupled with its submission on the last day of September seemed to tally with earlier fears that the president was not really certain of his direction in those appointments. Or is to be presumed that the rigour that went into the screening exercise was responsible for the delay? That could as well be.  But many of those listed have been around and information on them should not have taken that long.

    The excuse then was that the president needed time to determine those to work with given his commitment to the war against corruption. The delay it was further argued was for him to set his priorities and then determine those whose conduct, temperament and professional competence tally with that needed to deliver on the change he had promised the nation.

    But some of the names in the list, the manner in which it was delivered to beat set deadline and the incompleteness of that assignment, have raised further questions on the admissibility of these excuses. It would seem there is not much in the list to justify the long delay especially given the adverse toll it has taken in the effective functioning of the government. The expectation was that those who make the list would be a sharp departure from the recycling of the past; people who have no allegations or controversies hanging around their necks and whose professional competences are not in doubt. We were desirous of seeing a new corps of leaders, a new direction; a new roadmap for the war against corruption. One is afraid the list of nominees fell short of that. What is palpable is an attempt to compensate and reward politicians and others in the fringes that helped the party to victory.

    Ordinarily, there would have been nothing wrong with this as those who worked very hard for the party are expected to share in its spoils. But this is a government that told whoever cares to hear that it is on a rescue mission to put right all the wrongs of the past. It is a government that promised to reinvent Nigeria by killing corruption and building strong institutions. Such a government must be seen to be departing sharply from the old ways of statecraft. The scriptures captured this sentiment very succinctly when it said you cannot put an old wineskin into a new wineskin and expect a good outcome. That is the uncanny dialectics at play.

    That is the problem we run into when leaders set very high moral standards of conduct without taking into serious account, other systemic variables at play. This is by no means a vote of no confidence on all those that have been short listed. It is still possible that some of the nominees deemed unfit for the prosecution of the corruption war, can still turn a new leaf. Such born again former public office holders may turn out the armour bearers of the war against corruption with a leadership of example and direction in place. But they must be seen to have purged themselves of their old ways.

    More than anything, the situation has highlighted the reality that in whatever changes we intend to make, we still have to rely on Nigerians to see them through. If we are all corrupt, it is either there is a new resolve for everybody to fight and kill corruption or corruption will kill us all. We cannot go to the moon to import people to effect that change. We will still have to rely on what we have.  What is important is to build very strong institutions; set the ground norms to decisively discourage corruption and corrupt practices in all their ramifications. There is hardly any former public office holder in this clime that we cannot discover one form of misdemeanour or the other when properly subjected to public scrutiny. It is even safer to conclude that a public officer in this country will steal public funds than the other way round.

    That is the point against the undue focus in recovering monies stolen by former public office holders. Prosecuting and recovering looting monies, as desirable as they are, do not have all it takes to stamp out corruption. The reason is that it focuses on symptoms rather than the real cause of the ailment. It focuses on people when they have already committed the offence rather than building the appropriate institutional framework to stop them from committing the act. The latter is what is direly required now.

    Beyond these however, are issues of serious repercussions for our democracy the handling of the ministerial nominee is bound to throw up. The list is now with the Senate. Its president, Bukola Saraki has promised screening next week. But, feelers show the screening exercise will no longer be business as usual. Indications are of plans to involve some anti-graft agencies in the screening exercise. As one senator succinctly put it: “the days of take-a- bow are over”. They have promised to stick to the rules and the constitution in carrying out the exercise.

    Ostensibly, this is to further the momentum for the war against corruption. If these are anything to repose hope on, then nominees are going to face difficult hurdles before confirmation. We should also expect delays in the confirmation and Buhari may still have to work for some time without ministers.  There are insinuations that the Senate may be rooting to get even with President Buhari given the arraignment of Saraki at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) which he is alleged to have influenced.

    Saraki had said before the tribunal and the senate that he is on trial because he is the Senate President. He may therefore in concert with his colleagues who have passed a vote of confidence in him not spare any nominee with any skeleton to hide to prove the point that the graft war should go round.

    Just as justice should run its full course in the case of the trial of Saraki, the Senate would be on its right to insist that only people of integrity and impeccable character are confirmed as ministers. It cannot do any less. For, to ignore this issue will amount to lending credence to accusations that the chamber is a sore finger in the war against corruption. It could well be that the overall intention is to settle scores. That would be neither here nor there.

    The senate will not be expected to approve nominees who have serious cases of corruption allegation standing against them. They ought to clear themselves. That way, we would be discouraging the looting of public funds by rampaging public office holders. So it is still in the overall interest of this country that the senate fully sticks to the rules guiding the approval of ministerial nominees.

    The issue is not whether there are some ulterior motives for sticking to rules and due process. Rules are made and standards set to promote public good. That such rules have been observed in their breach may account for why little or no progress has been made in this country. It is good a thing both the executive and the legislature appear to be singing the same tune in the fight against sleaze. The heuristic value of such a synergy holds very promising prospects for the country.

  • No winner, no money

    When writers don’t get it right, they get it wrong. Apart from a failure of craft and art, it was a poor outing for 109 writers who had their eyes on the 2015 Nigeria Prize for Literature (NPL) sponsored by Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG). None of them was considered worthy of the $100,000 prize money for children’s literature, the focus of the contest this year.

    According to the jury at a September 25 press conference in Lagos, “Language plays a major role in literary production. Creative writers are normally expected to pay special attention to the use of language and aesthetics. The Prize demands stylistic excellence as manifested through an original and authoritative voice, narrative coherence and technically accurate writing.”

    The judgement:  “Unfortunately, the entries this year fall short of this expectation as each book was found to manifest incompetence in the use of language. Many of them showed very little or no evidence of good editing.” The event proved to be a non-event.

    The head of the panel of judges, Prof. Uwemedimo Enobong Iwoketok, said 89 entries failed from the beginning of the assessment process. According to her, “A disturbingly large number of entries were dropped at the initial stage of short-listing because of grave editing and publishing errors.”

    The international consultant for the prize, Prof. Kim Reynolds of the Newcastle University, United Kingdom, said: “The entries lack the lyricism, vision, and authority to become classics that will be handed down from generation to generation and that have the potential to reach out across cultures.”

    It is interesting that the organisers interpreted the anticlimax as the result of what may be described as a knowledge issue. In other words, Nigerian writers of children’s literature who participated in the literary competition were perceived as literary illiterates who don’t understand the particular form and don’t know how to create it.

    Also interesting is the response by the organisers. The General Manager, External Relations, Nigeria LNG, Dr. Kudo Eresia-Eke, reportedly spoke about the organisation’s plans to invest in a capacity-building workshop on children’s literature. He said: “NLNG is determined to promote excellence by investing the prize money, which would have been won, back into the process for a creative writing workshop for Nigerian writers of children’s literature. The proceedings would be collated, published for reference and guidance.”

    It sounds simplistic. The magic bullet is not magical. In the circumstances, a workshop may be useful and helpful, but the work required is wider. In Unless It Moves the Human Heart, an eye-opening 2011 book about teaching writing and learning writing, Roger Rosenblatt made a striking observation about writing programmes in America. Rosenblatt said: “Since 1975, the number of creative writing programs has increased 800 percent. It is amazing… all over America, students ranging in age from their early twenties to their eighties hunker down at seminar tables like this one  in Iowa, California, Texas, Massachusetts, New York, and hundreds of places, avid to join a profession that practically guarantees them rejection, poverty and failure.”

    How many creative writing programmes are available in Nigeria? How many would-be writers in the country would be interested in such programmes? What about the cost of learning? What about the cost of teaching? These costs may not necessarily be monetary, though money may be a factor.

    Talking of money, a report quoted an “Enugu-based literary activist,” Adaobi Nwoye: “We have been complaining about the dearth of qualitative writing in Nigeria for a while now. This is the result. Nowadays many people are not writing because they are passionate about literature. Instead, they are writing because they want to make money. I think this is one of the reasons why none of the entries for the 2015 Nigeria Prize for Literature failed to win.” Her observation deserves contemplation.

    A thought-provoking excerpt is relevant, especially considering the context of children’s literature.    It is from a 2015 book by Brian Grazer, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. The writer in focus:  Theodor Seuss Geisel, an American writer and illustrator who authored popular children’s books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. Dramatically, his first book was published after 27 publishers had rejected the manuscript.

    Grazer wrote:  ”Being determined in the face of obstacles is vital. Theodor Geisel, Dr. Seuss, is a great example of that himself. Many of his forty-four books remain wild bestsellers. In 2013, Green Eggs and Ham sold more than 700,000 copies in the United States (more than Goodnight Moon); The Cat in the Hat sold more than 500,000 copies, as did Oh, the Places You’ll Go! and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. And five more Dr. Seuss books each sold more than 250,000 copies. That’s eight books, with total sales of more than 3.5 million copies, in one year (another eight Seuss titles sold 100,000 copies or more). Theodor Geisel is selling 11,000 Dr. Seuss books every day of the year, in the United States alone, twenty-four years after he died. He has sold 600 million books worldwide since his first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was published in 1937. And as inevitable as Dr. Seuss’s appeal seems now, Mulberry Street was rejected by twenty-seven publishers before being accepted by Vanguard Press…”

    He continued:”The story of Geisel being rejected twenty-seven times before his first book was published is often repeated, but the details are worth relating. Geisel says he was walking home, stinging from the book’s twenty-seventh rejection, with the manuscript and drawings for Mulberry Street under his arm, when an acquaintance from his student days at Dartmouth College bumped into him on the sidewalk on Madison Avenue in New York City. Mike McClintock asked what Geisel was carrying. ‘That’s a book no one will publish,’ said Geisel. ‘I’m lugging it home to burn.’ McClintock had just that morning been made editor of children’s books at Vanguard; he invited Geisel up to his office, and McClintock and his publisher bought Mulberry Street that day. When the book came out, the legendary book reviewer for the New Yorker, Clifton Fadiman, captured it in a single sentence: ‘They say it’s for children, but better get a copy for yourself and marvel at the good Dr. Seuss’s impossible pictures and the moral tale of the little boy who exaggerated not wisely but too well.’ Geisel would later say of meeting McClintock on the street, ‘[I]f I’d been going down the other side of Madison Avenue, I’d be in the dry-cleaning business today…’

    This is not only a story of literary success but also of literary failure. Twenty-seven rejections cannot be a laughing matter. Twenty-seven rejections must be a mirthless matter. Concerning the writers who suffered rejection in the NLNG 2015 literary contest, isn’t it possible that their rejected books may be redeemed elsewhere? Or are these rejected books irredeemably defective?

  • Belle of oil

    Belle of oil

    Her arrest, at least, lay to rest the ghost of cancer. The civility and decency of the British criminal justice system would not whisk a dying woman from the omen of a hospital bed.

    The good news is that Diezani Alison-Madueke was not in the lethal stage of cancer. She was not numb under the knife, nor writhing with despair. Since she did not, at the time of arrest, crouch under the spell of carcinogen, then two things might have happened.

    One, she elbowed her way out of the hold of cancer in a miracle. Or two, the story of the affliction was all a lie to impugn the flawless physiognomy of the former belle of oil.

    Or shall we add a third: she and her people had concocted a fiction to whip up sympathy. Whatever her iniquity, it made no sense to wish such calamity, that voracious flesh eater called cancer, on a fellow human.

    Or a fourth? That her affliction had reduced to a benign status and she could bear her legal travail while her pain hummed in the background.

    Whatever the story, that modern blight of a flesh-eater is no stumbliong block to her trial. She can clear her name even if the hammer of cancer looms above her head. If she is not an oil thief, cancer will not stand between her and her plea of innocence.

    Since the Buhari administration initiated its anti-corruption war, eyes have rolled Madueke’s way. In the early days, she fed us with pictures of the lowly Diezani. We witnessed the fashion of humility and mien of capitulation. In her hijab, she bowed before General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who was relishing his new role as a power broker in the Buhari vortex. She also soared with Buhari, sharing a row with him on British Airways.

    They sat within each other’s breaths and eyeballs, her eyeballs obviously bigger and humbler. This coincidence of ambience generated the first scandal in Buhari’s inner circle. The story was that she stage-managed it with the aid of a Buhari aide, and the man was fired.

    They were pictures of humility in a drama of humiliations. She was the same personage who pooh-poohed major newspaper interview requests. But in the heat of her travails, she scrambled to respond to a report by the Osun Defender – no knock on the lowly newspaper. She was the one who waltzed into public functions and mounted every dais with a bored and superior mien.

    Yet, Madueke did worse. She had ranted that NNPC accounted to no one as a peacock institution. She huffed and puffed that no one told her what to do. We had a democracy, but she ran oil. She screeched with those words in Jonathan’s high noon, and commentators let her slippery venom flow under the earth like crude oil. Yours truly, however, remonstrated in vain. She snubbed the National Assembly when summoned to answer queries about billions of Naira she spent on private jet travels. Her boss and friend Jonathan defended her in his characteristic drawl and obtuse syntax.

    When CBN chief Sanusi cried over missing billions, she strutted about with the hauteur of a princess. She was the great woman of reserve. She neither erred nor stumbled. Was it not the same Diezani that United States Secretary of State John Kerry referred to when he and President Obama met Buhari and his team? He said she was involved in as much as six billion dollars in money in western vaults.

    When Jonathan was putting together his cabinet list, Madueke had not only told the former president he craved oil, he warned that she loathed to be assisted by an ancillary called minister of state. When the ministerial list was unveiled, voila! She was the lone Iroko of oil.

    But she did not always spread her wings like an eagle. Her first public spotlight was on the road. Her large eyes cringed in tears on Lagos-Ore Expressway. She lamented the portents of potholes and gullies. The road was journey as death. Its jaws snapped cars and trailers and human flesh. It dipped its pen in blood and retold the profiles and families in tragedies and graveyards.

    Madueke’s heart dropped, her visage fell and her tear duct dissolved. With her big, bold eyes, imperious carriage and poetic gait, she was a beauty with a human touch. The Nigerian heart tolled with the ministerial belle. She was a beauty after our heart.

    Then she evolved into an ice queen, good to behold, but beholden to no one. She became the character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. The character is the belle in a place called Macondo. She freezes every eye with her physical charms. Her name is Remedios the Beauty. Every male pines for her flesh. They dig holes in her bathroom so they can ogle while water swishes over her naked body. She, however, never responds to the clamour of lust from the disoriented men. No one attracts her. She even walks about naked at home and on the streets.

    A certain peeping tom crashes from the bathroom roof after his eyes lose coordination with his limbs. Others have cracked their heads in such giddy falls. She often is indifferent. But this peeping tom survives and all Remedios the beauty does is ask him to scrub her back.

    Marquez was reflecting on the vanity of beauty, among other themes like fatuous divinity of Holy Mary.

    When the cancer story broke, I was scandalised by the lack of sympathy by many Nigerians. They believed the story with dry eyes. They did not see beauty. They saw corruption. If you see Miss Nigeria, and her toe suddenly turns maggoty, your eyes will rest only on the sore.

    Madueke grew to love power and glamour, and started to see the rest of us as commoners. She was like Livia, wife of Roman emperor Augustus, who saw Roman citizens as “rabble and slaves.” Historian Tacitus saw her as a manipulator of the emperor, and novelist Robert Graves portrays her as Machiavellian in his novel, I Claudius.

    If her cancer story was a miracle, she must wish for another one. She must be an apostle of Russian writer Dostoyevsky in his Brothers Karamazov, when he says: “In a realist, faith is not borne out of miracles, but miracles out of faith.” With EFCC and the British zeroeing in on her, she must believe that a cancer survivor will triumph over any charge, even if her sins led to the misery of millions of fellow humans.

  • On Boko Haram sponsors

    Those awaiting the conclusion of the war against Boko Haram insurgency by the end of this year, have cause to be apprehensive of the reality of that deadline. Two events within the last one week have added up to dim the prospects of that date which President Buhari handed down to the military.

    With barely two months to go and despite copious assurances by the military on their successful efforts to weaken the fighting capacity of the insurgents, there are emerging signals that Boko Haram is not about to peter out very shortly. Not with its coordinated and successful attack on a detention camp of the Directorate of Security Services DSS in Lokoja, Kogi State. In that surprising and largely successful attack, about 30 detainees were freed even as it left in its trail four people dead, one of them a policeman. The heavily armed insurgents who overpowered operatives of the DSS were only subdued after a combined team of soldiers and policemen were drafted to scene.

    Within the same week also, the Nigerian Army seemed to have erased whatever remained of this optimism when it alerted that certain individuals were working to reverse the gains made and scuttle efforts at achieving the presidential directive to defeat Boko Haram terrorists within three months. Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Col. Sani Usman in a statement sent “a very strong and serious final warning to some prominent individuals and political groups who hail from Borno State in particular and north-east generally, that there is information of plans by some highly placed individuals and political groups to undermine and scuttle the fight against terrorism and insurgency in this country”.

    A common string holds the two incidents together. Both are united in casting a slur on the prospects of a quick conclusion of the war on terrorism. Before now, we have been fed with sundry accounts of the escapades of the military in freeing people kidnapped by the sect, the capturing of arms and ammunitions; general disenchantment within the rank and file of the insurgents resulting in low morale and cases of surrender. All these had raised hopes that the insurgents are living on borrowed time as the presidential deadline approached.  But this optimism pales into insignificance in the face of the successful attack on the DSS detention facility in Kogi State and the shocking alarm from the army. There are now genuine fears that if the insurgents could still muster such a sophistication that saw to the assault on the DSS facility, then much has not really changed.

    Especially at a time the current regime has indicated interest to negotiate with the sect. If the insurgents are interested in such negotiations or those being talked to are their real leaders, they would not have been in a hurry to launch attacks to free their detained members. The fact of this goes to reinforce the reservations of those opposed to negotiations with the group. It also raises questions on the propriety of the high number of terrorists that have been released from custody in the last two or three months.

    This reservation is further reinforced by revelation from the presidency that one of the conditions given by the terrorists for the release of the Chibok girls was the freeing of one of their detained members who specialized in making improvised explosives. They could not have been demanding for his release if they had no immediate need for his services. Of course, that demand was rebuffed.

    The planning, execution and eventual success of the attack have also brought to the public domain the vulnerability of detaining terrorism suspects in facilities that are not well fortified. If they could overpower a DSS facility located in a state capital, it remains to be imagined what could have been the situation if the suspects were held in prisons located in the hinterlands. That was the point that was stridently canvassed when Boko Haram suspects were brought to a rural prison in Ekwulobia,  Aguata local government area of Anambra State.

    But by far of greater consequence to the conclusion of the war was the alarm by the army of plans by some prominent politicians and groups in Borno State and the north-east to sabotage the efforts of the military. This matter is as instructive as it is serious and weighty. And in it we may locate factors that have been responsible for the festering insurgency.

    Before now, the sponsorship of the Boko Haram insurgency has been a subject of serious debate, buck-passing and acrimony. In the build up to the last elections, key political parties made strident efforts to accuse opponents of culpability in giving behind-the-scene support to the festering malaise. Attempts were made to establish a linkage between the unfolding political competition and the rising tempo of the insurgency onslaught. Boko Haram was seen in some circles as bottled up political anger seeking expression through a religious garb.

    It cannot be forgotten in a hurry the acerbic and outlandish allegations by then governor of Adamawa State, Muritala Nyako. He had in a letter to the northern governors at the heat of the ravaging insurgency titled “on-going full scale genocide in northern Nigeria,” accused the federal government of killing the citizens and attributing the killings to “the so-called Boko Haram”. The thematic essence of his allegation was that Boko Haram was a contrivance of the Jonathan regime to depopulate the north.

    He was not alone in this line of thought. Before his letter, the Northern Elders Forum had in a statement alleged that most of the “conflicts in the north are being engineered to weaken the north both economically and politically by interests who are intent to exploit such weaknesses for political advantage”. These two instances are instructive given the alarm by the army that key politicians and influential groups in Borno State and the northeast are sabotaging the efforts to end the war on insurgency. What is evident from this is that northerners may after all, be the greatest enemies to themselves in the matter of Boko Haram insurgency.

    There is no reason to disbelieve the army. If they have no idea of who the culprits are, they would not have confined their identified sponsors within the north-east zone and Borno State in particular. By that, they have narrowed the confines of those who aid and abet the Boko Haram insurgency. We cannot afford to gloss over the wider dimensions of this.

    More fundamentally, the revelation has put to task the claims of the likes of Nyako and the Northern Elders Forum. They should now begin to reconcile their earlier allegations with the alarm by the army. They should be made to tell the nation the sponsors of the continuing “genocide” aimed at depopulating the north.

    This point has to be made given that such sweeping allegations did incurable damage to the morale of the fighting soldiers and may have been largely responsible for the indiscipline that was then rampant.

    At that time, it was convenient to sell such a damaging dummy because there was “a common enemy”. Now that enemy is no longer in sight, the game is up. There is no further deceit or primordial sentiment to play up.  We should place the blame squarely at the door steps of those who by acts of omission or commission have encouraged this war.

    The army should therefore, deploy the facts at their disposal to apprehend all sponsors and collaborators of the insurgency sect who hide under the cover of the nation’s fault lines to levy war on us all.

  • One kidnapping, too many

    Many were shocked to the marrows when news filtered last Monday that former Secretary to the Federal Government SGF and elder statesman, Chief Olu Falae had been kidnapped by suspected Fulani herdsmen who invaded his farm. The upset is neither because kidnapping is new in this country nor the first time high profile people will fall prey to the devilish machinations of sundry kidnap rings.

    For, hardly does any day pass-by without reports of the malfeasance in one part of the country or the other. In the last three weeks, the crime took a dangerous dimension with the kidnap of two women; a columnist of the Vanguard Newspapers and the wife of the deputy managing director of The Sun newspapers. Both women spent several days in the den of the criminals before they were released. These are just a tip of the iceberg.

    However, there is something striking and unusual in the circumstances surrounding the kidnap of Falae from his farm in Ilado village, Akure North, Ondo state allegedly by Fulani herdsmen. The elder statesman was said to have been beaten up by his assailants and dragged to the ground before being whisked away.

    Before now, Fulani herdsman were said to be having issues with his workers  over the invasion of their farm by grazing cows and the attendant destruction of their crops. Curiously also, the kidnappers contacted the family demanding N100 million ransom before their victim could be released.

    By demanding ransom, new complications were added to the episode. The Ondo State Police Command admitted that much when it claimed that a kidnapping ring may have hijacked the process initiated by the herdsmen. This suggestion is seen as a veiled attempt to exculpate the herdsmen from the ransom demand since it has not been in their character to kidnap let alone demand for ransom. But that argument cannot be taken too far without running into more problems. The same police command that admitted from the onset that the attack was perpetrated by Fulani herdsmen is now floating a questionable theory of professional kidnappers hijacking the process to make money. This theory cannot fly for two basic reasons.

    First, it is a fact that Falae and his workers were attacked by Fulani herdsmen. This is not in doubt. Secondly, the same assailants also took him away when they were fleeing. Therefore, if there is any harm that comes the way of their captive, the responsibility for it squarely rests on the shoulders of his attackers. In this case, the Fulani herdsmen will take responsibility for whatever happens to the old man.

    If we admit the theory of a hijack, the hijackers could not have been doing the bidding of any other group than those who whisked Falae away from his own farm. The police may have been forced into this rationalization given that Fulani herdsmen have not been known for kidnapping and demanding for ransom. But it will be naïve to completely rule out this possibility. It could well be a new dimension to the recurring clashes between farmers and the herdsmen in parts of the country. We needed more time to study the new development. The police was therefore in a hurry to have seemingly exculpated the herdsmen from the consequences of an action they planned and effectively executed.

    It is not surprising that the people of the South-west did not take the matter lightly. The Oodua Peoples’ Congress OPC has threatened reprisals while farmers in Ondo State also threatened to wage a war against Fulani herdsmen that will have national impact, if the federal government failed to heed their ultimatum of effecting Falae’s release within one week. Such was the level of emotions and outrage.

    It is largely seen as an affront on the people of the South-west for Fulani herdsmen to have attacked and abducted such a personage as Falae in his homeland. If this could happen to him, then all small farmers in the state are at the mercy of the herdsmen. That is why the incident should not be treated lightly by the authorities. It may be for the same reason that President Buhari directed the Inspector General of Police and all security agencies to do all within their powers to free the senior citizen. Good thing, Falae has eventually regained freedom after four days in captivity. Whether his release was a consequence of the high interest shown by the president or threats from the South-west, the nation has been saved the trouble of any harm that would have followed his continued incarceration or possible death.

    In verity, this is the first time we are hearing of herdsmen kidnapping people for ransom. Yes, Fulani herdsmen have been notorious for attacking, killing and maiming people over disagreements on grazing lands for their cows and cattle rustling. Such incidents have been a recurring decimal. They came to an all time high in the last couple of years especially since the Boko Haram insurgency. The level of havoc wreaked by the herdsmen in parts of the country especially in Benue State was such that generated heated controversy as to whether they had the capacity and sophistication of the unmitigated calamity they wrought on several villages.

    In one of such invasions, herdsmen attacked Ise Aekenyi in the Guma local government of Benue State destroying 72 villages even as 25 residents lost their lives with over 50,000 displaced. The governor of the state then, Gabriel Suswam who went to the area to assess the level of damage, escaped by whiskers as his convoy equally came under serious gun attack from the herdsmen.

    The destruction was so much so that Senator Barnabas Gemade who then represented the area in the senate, raised alarm on the possible annihilation of the Idoma and Tiv ethnic groups by the herdsmen, warning that the development could destabilize the country if not checked. He also alleged that the attackers were not herdsmen but hirelings from Chad, Niger and Cameroun with the intent of causing internal crisis or war in the Middle-belt.

    The allegation bears some semblance with the suggestion by the police in the case of Falae’s kidnap that those who were demanding N100 million ransom could be professional kidnappers who hijacked the incident for some gain. Whether the hirelings are from neighboring countries or are professional kidnappers make no difference. The key thing is that they were doing the bidding of those who had scores to settle. They are therefore, as culpable as those for whom they were doing their bidding. That is the real issue.

    More fundamentally, the predicament of Falae has brought to the fore two serious security concerns which the current regime has to confront. They are the twin issues of clashes between Fulani herdsmen and farmers over grazing lands and kidnapping. These are extant challenges the attack on Falae has raised for attention.

    These two security concerns are loaded with frightening prospects of destabilizing this country. The increasing resort by sundry rings to kidnapping for scores’ settling portends danger for this country. Our security agencies must rise to this challenge and tame the monster. It is equally important to take a serious view of the threat to national security which clashes between Fulani herdsmen and farmers across the country have become.

    It is obvious from these recurring clashes that nomadic rearing of cows can neither endure nor is the suggestion for the mapping out of grazing areas in the six geo-political zones a viable alternative.  The solution lies in embracing modern trends in animal husbandry.

  • Understanding Saraki’s misunderstandings

    When understanding collides with misunderstanding, the collision needs to be understood.  Is Senate President Bukola Saraki misunderstood?  In other words, is he a victim of misunderstanding? Or is he the one who needs to demonstrate understanding? Does he have the understanding needed to avoid misunderstanding his situation?

    Where is this train of thought going? Or where is it coming from? Well, Saraki prompted a contemplation of understanding and misunderstanding by his word choice on September 22 when he was docked by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT). In an unexpected and unprocedural seizure of the moment, Saraki reportedly said to Tribunal Chairman Justice Danladi Umar: “Mr. Chairman, I just want to make this point for you to understand that, as a layman, I am puzzled why I should be before the tribunal.” Saraki continued: “We are all before the world and not just before Nigeria and we ought to be seen how we conform to due process.”

    It is puzzling that Saraki claimed to be puzzled. Even more puzzling was a statement signed by him after his performance in the dock. He said: “I reiterate my belief that the only reason why I am going through this is because I am Senate President. If I were to be just a Senator, I doubt if anybody will be interested in the assets declaration form I filled over twelve years ago.”

    It is not understandable: Saraki doesn’t understand that it is precisely because of his status as Senate President that he deserves whatever he is going through. The country certainly doesn’t deserve a legislative commander that not only emerged controversially, but whose emergence was also coloured by a colourless subversion of his party’s position.

    Only a dysfunctional decoding of the concept of party supremacy could have encouraged the circumstances that brought him to the helm of affairs at the Senate, an ascendancy he actualised through an unapologetic defiance of his party’s desire and decision. It is noteworthy that the same warped twist resulted in a queer combination and cohabitation at the helm of the Senate: Saraki of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), a party elected to power on the premise of progressivism, and Deputy Senate President Ike Enweremadu of the unprogressive Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Saraki made matters worse by subsequently rubbishing his party’s list for Senate leadership posts.

    It is understandable that a functional interpretation of party supremacy must be informed by the logic of supremacy. Supremacy is supreme. For the purpose of clarification, supremacy doesn’t mean infallibility. So the party can err. It does not guarantee fairness. So the party can be unfair. The essence of party supremacy is its conclusive collective voice.

    Saraki is a figure that emerged without an understanding of party supremacy, a development that has helped to fuel a crisis of individualism in the APC. In his rise to the preeminent legislative position, he demonstrated a misunderstanding of the party’s “due process”, and he did so without any care whether a watching world understood his lack of understanding. It is not understandable: Saraki now wants the public to understand so-called conformity to due process only in the context of his ongoing troubles. Obviously, he brought trouble upon himself and should understand that it may be harvest time for him.

    It should be understood that this political drama is taking place on the stage of realpolitik. Saraki’s anti-party manoeuvres that gave him the Senate crown were guided by realpolitik. His defenders and supporters have attributed his tribunal trial to the power and influence of alleged political antagonists, without understanding that Saraki doesn’t have a monopoly on realpolitik.

    Perhaps unfortunately for Saraki, there may be evidence of minuses exploitable by the opposing side. Considering the internal logic of party supremacy, it is understandable that   internal politicking in a political party may give an advantage to certain interests such that they enjoy leadership influence. But this is no reason for the disadvantaged to bellyache to the point of belligerence and centrifugal conduct as manifested by Saraki in the pursuit of his desperate ambition to lead the Senate.

    Clearly, Saraki wants his party to accept his contentious crowning as a fait accompli, which is not understandable. In building scenarios following his untidy enthronement, it would appear that Saraki didn’t understand that APC supremos were likely to make moves to  save party supremacy, and that  they were likely to find their own way of doing so. He probably didn’t understand the consequences of his rebellion and how far the party may be prepared to go in exploring a plurality of possibilities to checkmate him.

    Saraki didn’t understand that the early sign of his disruptive behaviour was likely to be seen as a danger to party supremacy by party hierarchs particularly. He didn’t understand that his party would not encourage him to perform even more daring stunts to disgrace party supremacy by allowing him to get away with his initial misbehaviour.  It is understandable if the party decides to follow the path that leads to restoration and reinforcement of party supremacy based on party discipline, party cohesion and party integrity.

    The conflict is nothing short of a domestic war of sorts. It is not for the faint-hearted. On Saraki’s side in particular, he will need a capacity to endure a war of attrition. Saraki must understand that in attrition warfare, the fundamental strategy is “to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses”. He should understand what he is facing, or perhaps more aptly, the force of the forces ranged against him: “one can be said to pursue a strategy of attrition when one makes it the main goal to cause gradual attrition to the opponent eventually amounting to unacceptable or unsustainable levels for the opponent while limiting one’s own gradual losses to acceptable and sustainable levels.”

    There is no doubt that Saraki has only himself to blame for being on the receiving end of attritional methods, and not without reasonable justification. When will Saraki understand that he is fighting a losing battle?

  • Oloye Eleyinmi

    Oloye Eleyinmi

    In his earlier incarnation, Eleyinmi hid his hands under a voluminous agbada. It was a display of a sort of royal extravagance. His face skewed with disdain, his carriage lofty like a peacock, he spoke from a high pedestal. His voice, with its peculiar polish, played out of a palatial voice box. He walked not on earth but above it, above all who thought they were on the same soil. He is, after all, called Oloye, and an Oloye does not belong to the pedestrian promenade.

    He abided the sort of illusion that former American President Abraham Lincoln inspired in blacks when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed blacks. One famous quote of that era came from a legend. A black man was reported as saying in his poetic pidgin “Massa Linkum, he be ebery whai; he know ebery ting; he walk the earf like de lord.” Translation: “Master Lincoln, he is everywhere; he knows everything; he walks the earth like the Lord.” The sentiment was exaggerated, but the awe was genuine. The blacks breathed liberty after over a century of chains and shame.

    Oloye Eleyinmi might have lived that delusion of grandeur, and thought words like that came from his fawning followers. He probably heard them.

    But the present Eleyinmi saw what he had not seen, felt what had not touched him, and ran away from what had always run away from him. So, Eleyinmi was used to hiding his hands as a flourish of royal joy. But last week, when he was asked to appear before the Code of Conduct Tribunal, he ducked before he was docked. This time, he was not just hiding the hand, he was hiding the whole massive fabric of royalty. They sought him in court, and he was not found. Oloye was royalty. Royalty is court. How dare anyone redefine royalty by subjecting it to the logic of obedience? That was probably the refrain of his thought.

    Suddenly though, we saw that Eleyinmi could not hide anything, not agbada, not hand, and he appeared in the court. Even at that, his self-image was not vitiated. He still affected the superior gaze of the palace. His band of adoring followers, in regalia and dance and court flattery, trailed him like a boisterous wave.

    He at one moment wanted to play Awolowo on the dock. He looked back at another royalty, a genuine one not built on bloodline but on industry and time-tested wisdom. He thought he was an Awolowo and in his peroration after his treasonable felony trial. But Oloye Bukola Saraki was not Awolowo, and he had taken advantage of judge’s magnanimity in allowing him to say a word, and he turned it into a political platform for tirades.

    He and his folks say it is political persecution, and so the matter should be allowed to lie. That was a lie. The Oloye was at work. He does not know that this is no royalty but democracy. And in democracy, it is the rule of law, and not the sentiment of the big man. He was part of the change mantra and he is about to be a victim of a tiger he let out of the zoo.

    By the way, his is no royalty in a traditional sense, but in a contrivance of our big man politics. He inherited it from his father, and he has been adept at it in a small pond in Kwara State. In the ocean, however, the tilapia discovers he is not master but in contention with larger jaws and deft swimmers. Tilapia is about to end up in a jaw he pooh-poohed.

    In democracy, law enforces liberty. The individual is subsumed in what French philosopher Jean Jacque Rousseau termed “the collective will.” When he appeared in court, he must have realised that his royalty was a ruse. That accounts for his charge that he was a victim of persecution. That charge is neither here nor there. There are specific charges. He should account for himself and not hide under victimhood the way he hides his hands under his massive agbada.

    His supporters are also appealing to pity by referring to an earlier case, and saying that his example of persecution was akin to that of Asiwaju Tinubu during the era of Goodluck Jonathan. Are they kidding? His was about an account he operated before he became governor, and certain other facts were clear. It was dud because even the bank wrote him to show the account was closed. Again Tinubu did not hide like Oloye. He did not say he was above the law. He had even earlier won a case against Ribadu’s EFCC with a N10 million damage awarded to him. He said in a release after he was acquitted: “I was ready to defend my name and most importantly blunt the dangling sword of Damocles over my head. Then I challenged them to go to court and maintained that those who allege must prove. I am glad that the Code of Conduct Tribunal, consistent with the laws of the land and after painstaking trial, have dispensed of my case.”

    Oloye should not have ducked. He suffered the humiliation of appearing in the box of the accused. What we are seeing is the architecture of political disgrace. In 2002, the U.S. Senate Leader and equivalent of Senate President in Nigeria, Trent Lott, fell into scandal. He had uttered a statement that affirmed he was a racist. He said he voted for Strum Thurmond, a self-confessed segregationist, who hated freedom for blacks. Lott asserted in the man’s 100th birthday that he supported him still. The statement triggered a windstorm that swept him out of office as the top legislator in the land.

    The world has seen quite of few scandals. In Nigeria, scandal often is associated with murder and financial fraud. In other lands, it adds a steamy context: sex. John Edwards loft his prestige and ended his quest to be U.S. president when he was caught in an affair, especially when his wife was dying of cancer. We know of the Keating Five about lobbying corruption, and it involved five U.S. senators. In Italy, we know of Silvio Berlusconi, playboy, pedophile, gangster, fraud and swindler and his famous party for nubile girls called bunga bunga. Lott resigned when the American public frowned. But here we want a way out. Well, Eleyinmi would have to confront the bear ahead. Already his friends are shopping for his replacement. He is literally and metaphorically in a box. Who will help Eleyinmi?

  • On Professor vincent

    On Professor vincent

    I received an outpouring of emotions from some Nigerians over last week’s column. A few have offered to help. Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), former governor of Lagos, called with example. He has committed N1million. A few others have pledged some sort of support. I am still working on how to get the family of Vincent involved in a transparent arrangement for help.

  • Northern or National Conference?

    Despite pretensions in some quarters, Nigeria is really sick and would require a dose of varying therapies to recover. No matter how we try to paper over the endemic malaise, the foreboding realities are manifest in increasing evidence of disenchantment by the component units with what the federation holds for them.

    There are palpable feelings that the government at the centre has proved innately deficient in delivering equitably. This is not entirely new. Such feelings have been the motivating force for agitations for national conference or its sovereign variant. They also account for the resurgence of ethnic-nationalism and religion-induced strife. Ironically, at each stage a conference was about to be convened, you will find sections still opposing it for one reason or the other. That was the experience of the National Conference organized by the last administration.

    Since the Buhari regime, we have witnessed discordant tones regarding what his government should make of the recommendations of that outing. While some have called for its implementation, others especially from the north want that document thrown into the dustbin. There are some others who would want Buhari to take a dispassionate look at the document with a view to adopting its recommendations with higher prospects of moving the country forward. Such has been the level of dissonance.

    But a new dimension was introduced into the matter last week when a group of northern leaders under the name, Northern Re-awakening Group (NRG) came out boldly to call for another national conference to specifically address problems of the north-east zone that has been the epicentre of the Boko Haram insurgency and other parts of the north. Not only do they want another national conference, they would have nothing to do with the one convened by Jonathan on the ground that he had a different agenda for setting it up. Ironically also, many of the prime movers of the NRG were participants in that conference.

    In a communiqué after their summit and retreat with the theme “Rebuilding a safe, secure and economically inclusive Northern Nigeria”, the NRG sought to justify its demand on the alleged marginalization of the north with statistics of the disparities in development levels of the north and the south.

    According to them, while the north has the highest number of people below $2 per day, a 2013 World Bank Report showed that poverty in 16 out of the 19 northern states doubled since 1980. They said that the north has the lowest literacy rate in the country and while Lagos posted 92 per cent, Kano has 49 and Borno trailing with less 15 per cent. In terms of the number of boys and girls that are out of school, they said 65 per cent northern boys and 53 of the girls are not in school as against 20 per cent for the South-east.

    Ostensibly, the bandied disparities in development indices are meant to persuade the public to the desirability of convoking another national conference to specifically address the marginalization of the north. The NRG is within its rights to highlight the problems of the north and seek solutions to them. That was the purpose of the retreat. And it accounted for the dignified attendance it attracted including the presence of Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo and no less than five northern governors among others.

    Their resolve for a national conference is an admission that all is not well with the country and some fundamental changes are imperative to effectively tap into the innate potentials of its disparate peoples. That point cannot be discounted. But the advocacy for another national conference and the reasons adduced for it are flawed on many grounds.

    First, it is not clear whether what the group wants is a northern conference or a national conference. A proper reading of their presentation, suggests they want a conference attended by all sections of the country to solely address challenges from the north. Conceived this way, it is a northern conference that will draw the participation of other Nigerians. That is where the problem lies. The failure to resolve this conceptual lacuna did incurable damage to whatever they intended to achieve by their call. It is patently childish and amateurish to conceive of a national conference that will set out solely to address problems of a section of the country to the exclusion of others. Such a weird advocacy is a recipe for confusion and unmitigated disaster.

    Secondly, there is no problem that is found in one part of the country that has no variant in other parts. One is therefore at a loss to fathom how any person in his right senses would ignore a holistic perspective to national problems in preference to a sectional handle that stands dead even before it takes off.

    Thirdly, the entire idea is again flawed by the same arguments they raised against the last conference whose recommendations are with the current regime. If they do not trust the former because Jonathan put it together, what in their imagination gave them the comfort that a sectional conference sponsored with taxpayers’ money will not draw this country closer to the precipice? Or is it a veiled attempt to appropriate the current leadership of the country to do the bidding of the north?

    Again, the last conference was attended by the north and many of the issues confronting this country were exhaustively addressed. A group that is not propelled by parochial and sectional lure will not be in a hurry to embark on a hazardous and wasteful journey to another conference. One may not even bother about cost if embarking on another conference is all it will take to see this country through. Before then, we needed to tell Nigerians why the recommendations of the previous conference are deficient in tackling identified challenges. That is the real issue to confront rather than resort to theatre tactics.

    It is also not enough to bandy statistics on the development disparities of sections of the country without accounting for the factors that brought them about. The group erred woefully for failing to show why the north lacked behind in those human development indices. We needed to know whether the progress in education and income per capita in the south was due to special attention by the federal government or a product of the survival instincts and initiative of their peoples.

    The presentation of those figures conveyed the unmistakable impression that either the south is responsible for the fate of the north or the federal government aided the development of the south against the north. None of the two propositions holds water. On the contrary, we do know of the existence of such principles as quota system and educationally disadvantaged states that were designed to get some states catch up. The north has been the major beneficiary of both discriminatory policies. It is a matter of regret that the southern states which are being referenced upon have been the ones bearing the brunt of such discriminatory educational policies over the years. Yet, we are still in a hurry to flaunt disparities in human development statistics to further perpetuate the inequities of extant order.

    The challenge before the north is to find out how these states moved fast in the literacy ladder and other human development indicators and tap unto them. It is good a thing they are worried by the abysmal conditions of their people in the face of plenty. They should rise to the challenges of the socio-cultural and institutional hiccups that hold down their people and frontally dismantle them.

    Before then, the exhortations of Osinbajo in his address at the opening ceremony blaming the present crop of northern leaders for the backwardness of the region due to selfishness and personal aggrandizement, should serve a sufficient food for thought.

  • Attractions made unattractive

    CERTAIN things about the past speak to the present in the presence of the future. Such is the case with the September 2 news of the dating of an 11, 000-year old moat at Sugbon Eredo in Oke Eri. Prof. David Aremu of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan, said in a statement: “The research in Sugbon Eredo, Oke Eri, is aimed at examining the structure, component, technology and functions of Sugbon Eredo Moat, which is 165 kilometres surrounding the former Ijebu kingdom. It also throws more light on the history of the people who built the embankment and how they adapted to their forest environment.”

    According to a report, Prof. Aremu said “the moat covered Ijebu kingdom up to Epe in the south, Ago-Iwoye in the north, Eredo in the west and the area towards Ore, Ondo State, in the east.” The researchers, led by Prof Aremu, said different charcoal samples from the moat analysed in a U.S. laboratory gave dates of 11, 000 years and 4, 900 years.  These results have been interpreted to mean that human presence in Ijebu land dates back to a time beyond the scope of oral history. “These findings pose a lot of questions, which we may not be able to answer now about the establishment of the Yoruba in Southwest Nigeria,” Prof. Aremu said.

    The statement also said: “The chronology of the site provides information beyond the myth of the Queen of Sheba and her possible influence in Nigeria and the Middle East. In the narrative of the Ijebu, the building of Eredo moat was organised by a powerful influential woman called Bilikisu Sungbo (that is, Queen of Sheba), who travelled to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem.”

    The don reportedly “advised the Ogun State government to convert Eredo moat to an international tourist site, stressing that foreigners had shown interest in it.” Of course, this is easier said than done. The reality is that in Nigeria tourism promotion is little more than lip service. At the governmental level, the latest report on the antiquity of Sungbo Eredo Moat, and the historical and social implications of the research results, may well pass unnoticed, not to say ignored.

    Over a decade ago, I couldn’t resist the attraction and decided to go and see the 8,000-year-old Dufuna Canoe in Damaturu, Yobe State, from my base in Lagos.  Billed as “Africa’s oldest known boat,” it was discovered in May 1987 by an obscure Fulani herdsman, Mallam Yau, who had struck the dugout canoe buried in the earth while digging a well on the outskirts of Dufuna village.  News of this discovery travelled fast and reached the government of the old Borno State, which at the time included Dufuna, now part of Yobe State in northeastern Nigeria.

    “Then I came in,” said Abubakar Garba, who was an Associate Professor at the Centre for Trans-Saharan Studies, University of Maiduguri, Borno State, when I first interviewed him in 2001. He recalled:  “I was contacted to make a full investigation as an archaeologist.  I knew at the time that I was making a breakthrough in my field.  I got a chip sample from the canoe, which I sent to a laboratory in Germany.  They were fascinated by the first date.”  Radiocarbon dating put the age of the chip at over 8,000 years. Two separate tests on chips taken from different parts of the canoe, carried out at different times at Kiel and Cologne universities in Germany, gave similar dates of over 8,000 years.

    “There is no reason to doubt the broad date of the boat,” according to Peter Breunig, an archaeologist involved in its excavation on the platform of the University of Frankfurt, Germany. On the boat’s period, Breunig said in a statement, “In archaeological terms it is described as an early phase of the Later Stone Age, which began rather more than 12,000 years ago and ended with the appearance of pottery, probably more than 7,000 years ago.”  An initial trial excavation sponsored by the University of Maiduguri led to collaboration on the canoe project with the University of Frankfurt.

    The lab results redefined the prehistory of African water transport, ranking the Dufuna Canoe as the world’s third oldest known dugout.  Older than it are the dugouts from Pesse, Netherlands, and Noyen-sur-Seine, France.  But evidence of an 8,000-year-old tradition of boat building in Africa throws cold water on the assumption that maritime transport developed much later there in comparison with Europe.  Breunig said the canoe’s age “forces a reconsideration of Africa’s role in the history of water transport”.  It shows, he added, “that the cultural history of Africa was not determined by Near Eastern and European influences but took its own, in many cases, parallel course”.

    The canoe was eventually lifted out of the earth in March 1998, over a decade after its discovery.  “Some educated people wanted the canoe to be left in the earth”, Garba recalled, adding that it was a battle to get the then military administration to build a conservation site for what was regarded as “just a piece of wood.”

    Garba recounted his excavation experience: “To uncover the canoe involved up to 50 labourers, who took about two weeks to accomplish this task.  About five metres down inside the museum, the archaeologists had to use mechanical means to evacuate the water, which kept oozing back continuously.”  The Dufuna Canoe was found, he said, “water-logged, on a sandy base with intermittent intervals of clay, and inaccessible to oxygen; circumstances most favourable for most organic materials”.  Other objects that surfaced at the excavation site were of little archaeological value.

    “It has a length of 8.40 metres and maximum breadth and height of around 0.5 metres.  The sides are barely more than 5 centimetres thick,” Breunig described the canoe, adding that it even outranks in style European finds of similar age.   To go by its stylistic sophistication, he reasoned, “It is highly probable that the Dufuna boat does not represent the beginning of a tradition, but had already undergone a long development, and that the origins of water transport in Africa lie even further back in time.”

    Contemplating the discovery is like sailing on a sea of puzzles.  Garba wondered, for instance: “What could have been the Dufuna environment and adjacent areas at the time the canoe was in use?  If the vegetation was more luxuriant and denser, what might have led to its deterioration?  What types of prehistoric populations were present at the settlement?  Could they have any link with the present population or adjacent groups?  Could it have been possible that the mega-Chad extended up to this area or could it have been transported from elsewhere to this area. What was it for?”

    Today, 17 years after its excavation, the famous Dufuna Canoe is still being kept out of public view to the public’s chagrin. At the time I tried to see the canoe in 2001, it was out of view within a circular fortress in Damaturu, the Yobe State capital.  A notice on the building’s wall pointed out that the canoe was “Under Conservation”.  Scary skulls and crossbones gave bite to two warnings: “Keep Off”; “Beware of Corrosive Chemicals”.

    Attractions can be made unattractive, which probably explains why official performance in the business of attracting domestic and international tourists to attractions across the country has not attracted public attention in any impressive way.