The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Northern agenda and 2015

    Within the last one week or so, a number of actions have been initiated from so many fronts to giver a glimmer of events to follow as we approach the 2015 elections. Not unexpectedly, these have raised the stakes which the various sections attach to that election.

    Primordial and sectional coloration seem to dominate perception and attitudes towards unfolding political events. The way political persons and sundry actors react to events tend to reinforce some of the scepticisms regarding the capacity of the Nigerian state to withstand extant systemic stress beyond 2015.

    Political stakes are so high and some of the problems that have dogged this country are beginning to find explanation around events leading to that election. Whether people pose as concerned citizens on the lingering insurgency or the conscience of their zones in ensuring that the constitution is not subverted, these tendencies are easily perceptible.

    These seemingly damning assertions fit into the ultimatum issued by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) to President Jonathan on the insecurity in the country. They also relate to the reaction of northern delegates to the national conference on what they purported to be an attempt to smuggle a draft constitution into their deliberations with a view to securing a third term agenda for Jonathan. The latter has been laid to rest after a mere change of title of volume three of the national conference deliberations.

    In that curious statement credited to Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed and Solomon Dalung, the NEF tasked Jonathan to secure the release of the Chibok girls and end the insecurity in the country before the end of October or forfeit his right to contest the 2015 elections.

    They said “indeed most of the conflicts in the north are being engineered to weaken the north both economically and politically by interests who intend to exploit such weaknesses for electoral benefits”

    “In the event the president fails to do this, Nigerians will be left with only one conclusion that he has forfeited his right to ask for our mandate beyond 2015” they asserted.

    Though it was not stated in what capacities Ahmed and Dalung endorsed the contentious statement, the fact that nobody has come out from within that forum to disown them suggests they had their mandate to issue it. We are thus, at liberty to presume that the views so expressed represent those of the forum.

    No doubt, the forum is within its rights to speak out on issues affecting the running of the country. This is more so when it speaks for a large segment of the country’s population.  It views on matters affection the running of the country should therefore be taken very seriously.

    But its position on the raging insecurity in the country and the timeframe for its final resolution, are bound to attract diverse reactions.

    Their ultimatum to the President on when to end the lingering insurgency should be seen as a desperate recommendation to a desperate problem. They have a right to be worried by the larger consequences of the devastation wrought to their region by the hydra-headed insurgency.

    It is however one thing to have a right and a different kettle of fish how such a right is used. It would seem the NEF went beyond bounds when it directed Jonathan to end the insurgency by the end of this October. Not only is such an ultimatum unrealistic and unfeasible, it gives out the forum as a bunch of people nursing a hidden political agenda.

    That agenda was further reinforced when the NEF embarked on the very hazardous journey of constructing a positive linkage between the insurgency in the north and the inalienable right of Jonathan to seek political offices either in 2015 or beyond. It is rather curious that such a retrogressive demand is coming from such a body.

    Beyond that however, the ultimatum has brought to the fore some of the suspicions on the unending blood-letting and sundry atrocities of the Boko Haram insurgents. It has also brought to public domain the perceived reluctance of sections of the northern political elite to come out openly against the unmitigated madness which the insurgency represents.

    Before now, suspicions have been high that Boko Haram is nothing but political grievances seeking expression through violent and weird fundamentalist religious ideology. Not a few Nigerians hold this view. Security officials have often spoken of local and international dimensions to resurging terrorism in terms of its financing. They have also been working hard to unmask their local sponsors. It is a matter of great regret that the NEF has just lent credence to the suspicion that politics is the leitmotif for the festering insurgency and northern political and religious elite may hold the ace to it.

    So it is not enough to heap the blame on the doorsteps of Jonathan. It is not enough to issue meaningless ultimatums. Those who host this insurgency within their regions have a higher responsibility to bring it to an end. Those who finance the terrorists; wire young girls with explosives for suicide expeditions have greater stakes in bringing the madness to an end. It is curious why the NEF went silent on this category of people.

    But the hypocrisy of the forum was further reinforced when it argued shamelessly that most of the conflicts in the north are engineered by those who want to weaken the region economically and politically for electoral advantage. This is not the first time we are hearing this from the north. But the proposition is not borne out of facts especially if the impression is conveyed that the conflicts are sponsored from outside the north. The Maitatsine uprisings of the 80s, the recurring religious riots in Kano, Kaduna and Zaria that killed many southerners and destroyed their properties were all internally engineered. The dastardly beheading of Gideon Akaluka did not come from outside. It is also of note that northern religious fanatics have severally taken laws into their hands killing and maiming on the guise of a cartoon or events outside the country they considered irreverent to their faith. How these fit into the assertions of the NEF remains largely illusory. The history of Boko Haram is very well known and northerners are to blame.

    The impression one gets from the unfolding events is that the north is desperate to stop Jonathan from the 2015 election by all means and through the back door. It is also getting clearer that Boko Haram may have been turned into a tool of blackmail for the north to realize the presidency come 2015. These feelings are quite scary. If insurgency and the continued incarceration of the Chibok girls are enough to deny Jonathan his right to seek political office, then elections may as well not hold until we get a final handle to them. That is the incongruity in stretching that argument further. That is the danger which the forum has brought to bear to the coming elections, all in a bid to satisfy sectional desires. Nothing can be more self-serving and unpatriotic.

  • Limits of force

    Limits of force

    Two events happened recently to serve as a parable of caution. They included the people’s victory in the recently concluded election that lofted Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola for a second term as governor of Osun State.

    The second was Nasarawa State Governor Tanko Al-Makura’s humiliation of the House of Assembly in the bid to install the hangman’s noose called impeachment.

    Both victories are a cautionary tale. They warn that the people should not be taken for granted. In both instances, two trends were halted. In the case of Osun State, Ogbeni’s victory rolled back the PDP’s machine of rigging and brigandage. In Nasarawa State, Al-Makura’s steadfast cunning and the people’s resistance reined in the contagion of occupation by impeachment. Both weapons by Dr. Jonathan’s PDP took the country with a force of defiance. They hid under the law, even when it was obvious that they acted like gangsters.

    The tragedy was that they used the law to foist their iniquity on the people. It is like T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral.

    In Osun State, they mobilised all the armed forces. The military has chafed under the rogue firepower and unremitting onslaughts of Boko Haram. But against a vulnerable citizenry, they acted like class bullies. They did it in Ekiti State and went away with it. Buoyed by their victory, they beat their chests and rolled into Osun State. The idea was to rig by fear. But the people had not guns, but guts. However, they had the volley of vote. They were vigilant and set their eyes against any evidence of manipulation.

    The soldiers arrested chieftains of the APC and could not even exercise a veneer of pretence with token arrests of some PDP men. They lacked the tact and subterfuge of a clever cheat. We heard their muscles crackle as they bared their hairy chests.

    Yet, in Iyiola Omisore’s stronghold of Ife, the soldiers, including our hooded guests of barbaric honour, drove the agents of the APC out of town. We are left with the figures that they presented to the world. We may never know, given the number he reportedly polled, whether Omisore was that popular. If he was, the military has lost the moral authority to stamp it as truth, if as fact.

    In spite of their moves, the people’s vigilance made the point. The lesson from the Osun State election is that when the people stand by you, no level of institutional force can hold sway and legitimate law by terror.

    Some commentators have wondered whether President Jonathan can have that much hauteur to inundate all states with soldiers in 2015. In Osun and Ekiti states, it was easy to overwhelm the people with forces. There was massive army recruitment across the country. Some said it was against the terror of Boko Haram. Could that also by a vicarious preparation for military saturation of the country for 2015? Killing two birds with an army shot? Could it be a case of concentrating the forces in the strategic electoral terrain in the country for mega-votes? Time will tell.

    Questions still abound. What if the difference between the winner and loser is marginal, how can we trust the result if it is rigged in favour of the loser? That explodes the often referenced point that you cannot rig where you are not popular. It is only when your heart throbs as one with the vast majority that rigging is mincemeat. Even at that, it is possible when the voters are quiescent. In a Nigeria of cynical citizenry, that still poses a challenge.

    In Nassarawa State, it was a case of the governor and the people versus the lawmakers. They set a machinery in process and retreated shamefully. They claimed that the panel set up by the chief judge was compromised because two of the panelists were card-carrying members of the law-makers’ party, the PDP. So they railed against the constitution. As lawmakers, why did they not believe in the law and go to court? They became lawless men of law, subversive, servile to a poor conscience, trying to torpedo the very essence of their existence.

    The people flew into a ferment of rage and made no mistake as to whose side they pitched their tent. In this rent-a-crowd generation, the spontaneous fervor of the Nasarawa street reignited hope of an innocent crowd.

    The PDP said they had nothing to do with it. Yet in statement after statement, they backed the lawmakers. Hypocrisy? Yes. Impunity? Bigger Yes. They had done it in Rivers State and Governor Rotimi Amaechi was in tune with the lawmakers. What we have is a minority of law-makers who want to fetter the law by impeaching with a measly numbers. Sleight of hand failed. Stealth went sour. The heavy hand of the centre scented the state with unrest. Recently, Governor Amaechi’s tour to the contentious Obio/Akpor Local Government Area melted into a maelstrom of melee, leading to filicidal and patricidal bloodbath; father and sons waging war to the death.

    I think of Samuel Beckett, the playwright and poet of spare and rare genius. Among other masterpieces, he wrote Waiting For Godot and End Game, two plays that the PDP thinkers might need to read, if they have not. This Nobel-prize winning works show that the powerful can get into a fruitless rigmarole in their push to win. And their end game is futile, and like the characters of the play, they will become crippled, blind, either unable to sit or unable to stand. That is what the impeachment contagion and the rigging mania have shown. The PDP suddenly became handicapped. They should turn to the people as Ogbeni, Al-Makura and Amaechi. Not in the perversion of the law.

  • It’s a draw

    It’s a draw

    Shall we say, we had a miracle, we have love, we have a free and fair election, and we have reached the land of peace and promise? We cannot say so even if the All Progressives Congress (APC) rejoices over its victory and the virtue of the Osun masses exult in vindication.

    I warned last week that the election was neither about Otunba Iyiola Omisore nor Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, neither was it about the APC nor the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). It was a Nigerian vote and I warned the president and his party to beware of turning a ritual of democracy into a rite of blood. The president though deserves praise for not pushing the tension over the brink. Also the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for bowing to an inevitable mass will. We peered the precipice, but peace prevailed.

    Some lessons were not learned. Prior to the election, we saw a repeat of the Ekiti impunity. Some party apparatchiks of the APC were hounded into detention. Exit town crier Lai Mohammed. Exit Sunday Dare, etc. One prominent lawmaker hid in the bush. The charges? Still unclear. Ambiguity. Impunity. Fear. In Ife, gunshots tore through the dust motes of the ancient city. Hooded men, sometimes identified as hoodlums, sometimes as government troops, sent terror by their sartorial ill grace. Hoods, doubtful uniforms, guns. Democracy as enchanted battlefield.

    The virtue of the people spoke. They defied the gun and the minatory ferocity of their presences. On some occasions, reports had it that while shots rang to the heavens, denizens of the state hailed them in irony. The weapons of the weak: satire. The guns lost their bullets of fatality in the mockery of the folks.

    But victory came, not because of the innocence of INEC, or because of the willful integrity of the party at the centre. It came because of the vigilance and tenacity of the people. As playwright Maxim Gorky said, the only people who deserve freedom are those ready to fight for it everyday.

    The masses are not always innocent. Stalin once derided Lenin for putting too much trust in the proletariat, and it failed him. That was why he retraced his steps from Marxian dictatorship of the proletariat to what became an elite-driven New Economic Policy.

    After the Ekiti poll, I noted that the masses vote according to the template and issues presented by the elite. The competing elite battle for the mind of the common man. Who wins won the argument. It does not mean the winner had the truth. The masses have many times had remorse when they voted for a particular idea and got another thing later. The French and British had voter remorse when they voted back Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill. That is the omen that may await the Ekiti electorate if Ayodele Fayose turns out to have turned a folksy image to con votes out of a suspecting electorate. Are the Nigerian masses an excellent sheep, obedient even unto death? Time shall tell.

    But in the case of Osun, Ogbeni had from the beginning held the issues in his palm. Whether it was his tablet of knowledge, school feeding programme, jobs and uniforms, or the issue of whether his priestly beard should anchor his being or cause rancour in his detractors.

    Most importantly, his signature project was education. His reclassification agenda, for all its beauty and promise, became a matter his detractors wanted to take from him. They turned it away from an educational agenda, to make schools accessible and cheap and raise standards. They turned it into a fight between the two heavens, that of Jesus and Mohammed. It became the defining controversy of his first term.

    Even prior to the election, in spite of the soothing voices of notable Christian clerics about his good intentions, speculations still danced about the Osun horizon. Some said a sort of block votes from some Christian bodies would tilt the scale against him. Some people were gazing skywards even though the rain had stopped falling. Their heads dry, they did not know their feet were wet. The matter was not in heaven but here on earth. It was politics as religious vanity, as pious manipulation.

    The Ogbeni did not have any qualms fighting back, reconciling here and there, and pushing the integrity of the message. The result shows he did not quilt and he won the virtue of the people to his side. He will have to continue this message, with fervour and with deliberate interaction with that part of the society.

    But this election has proved that programmes are important. Those who hail the hailstorms of stomach infrastructure did not get this from Ogbeni. But politics is not always about programmes. It is about connection, and if you want to see that, go to any rally where Aregbesola is a speaker. By my account, in my life time, I have never seen anybody who can beat him in working a crowd. His is at once the ultimate impresario as folk and folk as impresario. He walks on the stage like a teenager, the broom twirling like a thousand strands of light. With his beard as lead, his feet stamping in rhythm, his waist wiggling in a half-erotic dance, his tiny body waxes like an apparition hiding a larger frame. That tiny speck of a body explodes into a voice that seems to come from a big, muscular cousin. His diction, his dances, his songs work the crowd out of a political reverie. It could have been a religious fiesta, a new year party or a festival. The crowd loses itself in the ecstasy of the man. Some have said he is not gubernatorial when he is on stage. I disagree. He is never less gubernatorial. He bows in order to soar. He is folksy for the vote.

    That is Aregbesola’s virtue. That is Osun virtue, and that is why he earned their votes last weekend.

    It is also an APC victory, but it is no time to gloat. The PDP was not crushed. With over 292,000 votes, Omisore showed a strong foothold on the state. It shows that the PDP is not yet a pushover in the Southwest. With Ekiti to PDP, and Osun to APC, it is in sports language, 1-1. A draw. It is time to go back to the drawing board. Last week’s victory is more an Ogbeni victory than an APC swagger. The Southwest folks want to be convinced. They have said, they are not for the taking. That is why the battle for the APC in Oyo and Ogun states must not be taken with the same sense of accomplishment as the one in Osun. There is a lot of work to be done.

    We can do road, we can do schools, we can do hospitals, but we should do the heart. Loyalty to a cause often transcends the loyalty to material gains. Money is good. Stomachs will rumble. But the grumble of the humble come more from a sense of understanding, a belief that you feel my pain and you are not here to con me.

    If the APC wants to build on this momentum, it has to follow the Ogbeni style. Not all of it. But his sense of folksy virtue, his animal enthusiasm for work. The other governor that shows an open animal joy for work is a PDP man, the Akwa Ibom governor, Godswill Akpabio, who speaks about his work as though an amorous affair. But he has evidence to prove his doings, in massive infrastructure, especially.

    When he became governor, Ogbeni promised an unusual reign. He delivered in the way he performed and in the way he won last week. It should not be different in the next four years.

  • Ebola and myopia

    Perhaps the most striking and fascinating preventive calculation in the Ebola battle is the informal restriction of Prophet Temitope Joshua of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN), Lagos, who has been told  to limit his faith-healing activities to cases other than the deadly Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). Although the Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris, who led a team that visited Joshua in his church, played down what amounted to a governmental interference, there were no questions about the import and the desired effect of the move.  Interestingly, his explanation that the visit was an extension of the state government’s enlightenment campaign prompted by the international colour of the church’s flock and Joshua’s image as a magnetic faith healer sounded like an unwitting endorsement.

    Idris said diplomatically to Joshua: “We have our strategies that we intend to share with you. Again, we need to know the resources you have here because whether it is one or two cases, if they are allowed to get out, it is a major problem. We are here to work together on how to contain this disease.” For the avoidance of doubt, it was another member of the delegation and Director, Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Prof. Abdulahi Nasidi, who expressed in more precise and enlightening terms just how Joshua is perceived even by the scientifically minded among the visitors. Nasidi, an epidemiologist and a virologist, described the meeting as a “positive engagement mission.” He told Joshua: “We are here to engage you positively. We know the powers of this House and your powers, and we are duty-bound to protect you and your congregation. We have no doubt the power God has given you; we can’t do that, but we want to help and make it stronger.” It is unclear what he meant by helping to reinforce Joshua’s capacity, but he provided food for thought about the possibility of a working and winning partnership between science and religion.

    In a profound sense, this event could be interpreted as a potent publicity plus for both Joshua and SCOAN, and it is likely that those who have been suspicious of the faith-healing reports emanating from the church must be wondering why the government, maybe unintentionally, seemed to have lent credence to the prophet’s claimed spiritual healing power. Unsurprisingly, Joshua took advantage of the promotional value of the event and implied acknowledgment of his supposed healing ability by assuring the delegation that he would take preventive measures to arrest the spread of EVD in the country. In particular, and understandably with an eye on glory, he explained  that he would not entertain visits by foreigners who may come to the country seeking healing for EVD, and added that he would instead visit countries affected by EVD  for the purpose of  miracle healing. He was quoted as saying to members of the team: “I am ready to work with you. I love my country and I will be ready to work with you.”

    The questions must be asked: How many more churches and faith healers will the group visit in furtherance of the campaign, and how will these be determined? What about mosques and indigenous religion temples, which are also places where people usually look for divine intervention in health-related cases?  If Joshua turns out to be a solitary and singular instance, it will further make the group’s operation opaque.

    More importantly, the suggested denial of the possibility of spiritual healing in EVD cases, which may be appealing in certain quarters, could actually represent an ignorant narrow view. The discernible truth is that although we live in a world of extraordinary advances in the realm of science, we cannot afford to be slaves of scientism. If, for example, it is accepted that Joshua is possibly effective as a faith healer regarding other health conditions, including life-threatening ones, why is he being doubted in the Ebola drama? Of course, this poser is not to suggest that Joshua’s healing claims are for real, but to stress that faith healing could be real.

    It is significant that medical science, despite its touted and demonstrable efficacy, is far from a solution to Ebola. Considering that the virus, which causes a haemorrhagic fever that can kill infected people in a week, first appeared in Zaire in 1976, the continuing search for a cure demonstrates the scale of the scientific challenge. It is noteworthy that the United States is expected to launch an early-stage trial of an experimental vaccine against Ebola in September, and if successful such vaccine might be available in 2015 for health workers who are exposed to extreme risk in the treatment of Ebola patients.

    Also important is the work of a six-man committee set up by the Federal Ministry of Health to carry out research into the Ebola virus and possible treatment of EVD. It is interesting that this body includes Prof. Maurice Iwu who in 1999 was involved in a study of Ebola with American researchers concerning the use of bitter kola as a curative fruit. In this connection, the observation by the Health Minister, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, is instructive because it tends to hint at the idea that the route to a solution remains an open question. He said: “There is no scientific proof yet to suggest that if you eat bitter kola you will prevent the disease or where you have it, it will help to cure it.”  The positive implication of his statement is that there is a possibility of potency, even if there is no proof as yet.

    Current knowledge indicates that the animal-borne virus can infect humans through contact with or consumption of the host animal; this is apart from the possibility of infection from the blood or bodily fluids and secretions of people who have the virus.

    It is alarming, to say the least, that the Ebola virus has officially found its way into the country; and the horrifying news of the July 25  death of Patrick Sawyer, a naturalised American of Liberian origin, from EVD at First Consultant Medical Centre in Obalende, Lagos, was a wake-up call. The subsequent death of a Nigerian female nurse who treated him, the  first known Nigerian to die of the disease, and the confirmed infection of five other health workers who had primary contact with the late Sawyer, have raised the frightening possibility of a local epidemic if swift  action is not taken to arrest the spread of the virus.

    Of relevance are startling figures released by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which indicate that so far, related to the current outbreak in West Africa, mostly affecting Guinea, Liberia and Sierra-Leone, 932 people have died. The degree of the problem, which has thrown the West African sub-region into reasonable apprehension, is highlighted by the fact that a WHO  emergency committee is expected to determine whether it constitutes a public health crisis of international concern and to recommend measures to tackle it.

    This latest outbreak of Ebola, regarded as the worst since the virus first surfaced, will most likely require lateral thinking in the search for a lasting remedy; and myopia will not help matters.

  • Faith healers and Ebola

    Perhaps, the death of a Liberian diplomat Patrick Sawyer, in Lagos shortly after he came into the country, was all that was needed to draw the consciousness of Nigerians to the mortal danger posed by the Ebola pandemic. Since then, discussions in all quarters have centred on the disease, its mode of transmission and what it portends for an illiterate, poor and undeveloped country as ours.

    Not unexpectedly, discussions have ranged from the most informed as evidenced from the welter of public enlightenment information from governments to the cynical and most absurd. The latter plank is denoted by the claim by one of the overseers of a new generation church that he has powers to cure the disease even when the reality of it is yet to be fully internalized by our people.

    Such a claim at a time the governments are striving to sensitize the public on the symptoms of the disease, it carriers and mode of transmission was no doubt, a serious set back to the efforts to ensure that our people are not annihilated by the outbreak. This is especially so as the disease is rated to have about 90 per cent mortality rate.

    With the penchant of the largely poor and illiterate population to patronize the quack, such unguarded claims were bound to render a nullity all efforts to stem the spread of the disease. This is a country were all manner of churches and sundry religious houses lay claim to divine healing. And with the ravaging poverty, illiteracy and the cost of medical attention beyond the reach of a vast majority, these faith-based organizations have come to fill in the gap. They preach prosperity; lay claims to healing powers over sundry diseases. They have harvested plentifully from the failings of the governments to make adequate medical care accessible and affordable to the generality of the people. Little wonder the high patronage these faith healing churches receive.

    Perhaps, the federal and Lagos State governments were moved by the danger which such claims pose in the efforts to contain the spread of the Ebola virus when they paid a sensitization visit to the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos. They had during their interaction pleaded with its General Overseer Prophet Temitope Joshua to ensure that Ebola victims are not brought to his church for healing. Jide Idris, Lagos State commissioner for health told Joshua that the visit was in recognition that people all over the world including the West African countries affected by the disease heavily congregated in his church. Another member of the delegation and Director General, Centre for Disease Control (CDC) Prof. Abdulsalami Nasidi told Joshua: “We are here to engage you positively. We know the powers of this House and your powers and we are duty-bound to protect you and your congregation. We do not doubt the powers God has given you, but we want to help you and make it work stronger”.

    He promised government would provide technical assistance; expertise and work underground with synagogue laboratories to enable it diagnose and deal with suspected Ebola cases.

    The very receptive Joshua promised to work with the government to ensure that the disease does not spread into the country. To this effect, he would put in place measures to bar people from affected countries from entering his church, in addition to suspending some of their healing programmes.

    This singular initiative from both the Lagos State and federal governments is worthy of commendation. This is more so given the dangers which the spread of the Ebola virus portends for our gullible, illiterate and poor population that throngs to sundry churches and healing houses for solutions to their health challenges.

    Given what we have been told about its mode of spread, there is no doubt we face unmitigated disaster in this country if these healing houses are not carried along in the campaign to halt the spread of the virus. Matters are not helped by recent disclosure by the Minister of Health Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu that a female doctor who took part in the treatment of Sawyer has been infected by the virus.

    There is therefore every reason to fear that if faith healers are not adequately sensitized on the potent dangers of undertaking to heal those with the virus, they will put the health of their congregation at grave risk. They also stand the risk of even annihilating their members. It is therefore in the collective interest of these churches to imbibe the message of the government and take adequate precautions to save the lives of their members.

    The stark reality of the challenge is underscored by disclosures that initial symptoms of the disease have semblance with common illnesses. The implication of this is that it is very difficult to determine an infected person at the early stages of the virus. We are therefore at grave risk given some of our practices.

    The sensitization programme should not end at the Synagogue. The nation plays host to many of such healing centres. Other churches and healing houses must be identified and cued in on this programme. It was quite revealing that the synagogue even has laboratories. What this means is that it combines faith healing with modern medical practices. Perhaps, that was why Joshua did not have much problem in accepting the message of his visitors. The situation may likely differ in some others that reap from claims to sundry healing powers scattered all over the country. The danger of this virus was further illustrated by the uproar generated by the two corpses that arrived Anambra and Imo states ostensibly from the west countries where the outbreak of the virus has been most rampant. The mortuaries where they were deposited had to be sealed off. Tests conducted by the federal ministry of health cleared one of virus infection while the other is still being investigated.

    With extant practices in matters relating to the burying of our dead loved ones, the stigmatization which now comes with Ebola virus is bound to pose new challenges for our people. In most parts of the country, people are buried in their ancestral homes irrespective of where they die. Now that we have been told that a dead Ebola victim’s corpse is more dangerous than a living victim, such practices will at once, come into conflict with the new reality.

    There is the problem of where to bury such people and how to convey them home since fluids from their bodies are as deadly as the dead victim. It is said that cremation is the best option in such cases. The federal authorities had to secure the consent of the family of Sawyer to cremate him.

    It not certain what will be the reaction of Nigerians to cremation given subsisting cultural practices. It is however, pertinent to note that such practices will be jolted by the plethora of challenges that are bound to come with the Ebola pandemic.

    It is therefore incumbent on the various governments to put on their thinking caps; come out with measures to cope with the new challenges that have come with the Ebola virus. The interaction with Joshua, good as it was, is just one of such positive responses to this debilitating virus.

  • The blood theatre ahead

    The blood theatre ahead

    Sometimes it pays to compare politics with children at play. Yet when children play, their innocence can tease them into the province of danger. Hence a child can fall from a roof, stab his best friend, swallow poison, burn down a house and kill all that he or she holds dear, including the parents. If the child survives, he or she might utter the first cry, in his innocence, for the help of daddy or mummy. But the parents are now smouldering, without recall, in the oblivion of death.

    The difference between child’s play and political fray, especially Nigerian style, is that one understands his absence of innocence and the other knows nothing but the sweet naivety of action, what playwright Tennessee Williams calls the sweet bird of youth. The sweet naivety of kids with its portent for calamity is well documented in the Nobel-prize winning novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding.

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), under the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan, is providing material for fiction writers, especially in these parts, for a script on the adult version. We saw the play in Adamawa a few weeks ago. Now, the theatre has moved with a new ensemble to Lafiagi, in Nassarawa State. We have seen that the lawmakers do not pretend to be nice guys. They are not hiding behind any moral niceties. They are not laying any claim to the principles of democratic grandeur. They want Governor Tanko Al-Makura’s head. This is Isi-ewu as politics.

    The people rose in the streets, in a Kaboom of rage, against what they saw as the low ebb of politics in the cabal to overthrow an apparently popular chief executive. But this is politics as theatre. The lawmakers said they wanted the governor out. The governor said he did no wrong. They started a process in the legislature and that seemed quite in order, and the House of Assembly mustered the numbers to call for the Chief Judge to set up an impeachment panel. That itself reflected a fidelity to law and order.

    The Chief Judge, Suleiman Dikko, unveiled the panel and suddenly, the lawmakers do not like him. They said he should reconstitute the panel. Now, is that not foul play? It becomes a farce. They seemed to like the rule of law when it suited their devious designs. When they felt the process would not produce their grand design, they cried foul. It is like the youth in a soccer game who hacks a player down, but falls down himself and cries foul so the referee would not mark him down for infringement. It is the dangerous irony of our politics today. The lawmakers do not believe in the law, if it is not the law of the jungle. That is what is at play in Nassarawa state.

    This is the nature of comedy. And comedy is sometimes more dreary than tragedy. As film director and screenwriter Mel Brooks says, “tragedy is when I cut my finger…comedy is when you fall into a sewer and die.” The Nassarawa lawmakers want to throw democracy into the sewer, so it can die.

    When the impeachment panel was set up in Adamawa State, because they had the judge where they had him, the PDP power vortex deployed the security forces to protect the judge. In the way the politics goes, the PDP high command violates everything it touches. If it is the law, they turn into an instrument of revenge. If it is the soldiers, they do not protect the law but advance impunity. If it’s the due process, they make it a procession for doom. What is impeached is not a person, not an officer of the law, but the law itself, and the institutions set in place to ennoble it.

    As I stated last week, the Jonathan presidency must realise that it owes this country the obligation not to turn it into a theatre of the blood in the name of ambition. Ambition is made of sterner stuff, said Shakespeare. But let the corporate dreams of Nigeria dwarf the puny egotism of one man’s or one group’s design.

    But what is going on in Nassarawa State is the witch-hunt of the lawmaker. When Al-Makura became governor, he was on the platform of the Congress for Progressives Change (CPC). From the outset, he was set off against a group of lawmakers from the PDP on the revenge. They were angry they did not have one of their own on the throne.

    But a certain uneasy calm had predominated until the Ides of 2015 reared itself. Now, the party at the centre in Abuja had begun what it sees as the impeachment cyclone as a weapon to oust “troublesome” governors. Its eyes are also on Rivers and Edo states. So far they have stumbled. Just as in Nassarawa State, their first goal is to impeach. If they cannot unseat the governor as in Adamawa State, they intend to keep the state on the partisan boil ahead of the next election so as to prime the polity for a giddy electoral process. They can then cash in and install whom they want in the state and make it ripe to secure the numbers of votes the president would need to win the presidency in 2015.

    This is ordinarily funny, if it is not heavy with implications for our democratic survival. Now, it is Nassarawa State, and the option is whether to do good or evil. Russian poet Derzhavin said: “I am tormented by the desire to do honour/ I hear the sound of glory calling.” Do the Nassarawa lawmakers recognise a glory call when they hear it? Not yet.

    Rather they have chosen the path of folly. They have the people to answer to, if they defy law, decency and due process.

  • Osun: Between heroism and histrionics

    It is telling that a radio debate organised for the candidates in the Osun State governorship election on August 9 turned out to be a one-man show after all. A statement by the Director of Publicity, Research and Strategy of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state, Mr. Kunle Oyatomi, painted a picture of the event sponsored by the International Republican Institute, which is based in America. He said: “But it turned out to be almost an interview and not a debate because Omisore ran away.”   In other words, Senator Iyiola Omisore, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the main challenger of the incumbent governor who is seeking re-election for another four years, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, was not present at the debate, which was billed to be broadcast live on July 26 by the Osun State Broadcasting Corporation, Osogbo. Against the background that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) released a list of the 20 political parties and governorship candidates that will be contesting in the poll, Aregbesola’s sole participation in the radio programme was symbolic of the weakness of his opponents.

    It is curious that Omisore failed to take advantage of this obvious opportunity to further promote his candidacy and sell the election manifesto he has presumably been busy projecting during electioneering. Ordinarily, he was expected to use the platform, which provided a chance for a frontal interaction with Aregbesola, to demonstrate that he had a competitive edge and should be elected to take his place. In particular, it was an occasion that he could have seized to drive his point home about the alleged unsuitability of Aregbesola.

    Oyatomi observed: “Osun citizens had waited with bated breath to hear Omisore articulate his accusations against the governor on such issues as the debt profile of the state, the school reform programme and the vexed issue of capital flight.”  His non-attendance was, therefore, bewildering and suggestive of the possibility that he himself did not believe his criticisms of Aregbesola. Perhaps more importantly, he probably realised that the forum would have exposed his fakery.  So, it would appear that his non-participation was tactical; but it was ultimately tactless as the people are unlikely to be fooled.

    Omisore’s trickery was evident from the laughable excuse he offered for his absence, after having agreed initially to be on the show.  Listen to him: “How can I be afraid of engaging him in a debate? But when argument is being drawn between two unequal parties, the weaker of the two may resort to physical assault and harassment. We don’t want this to happen…So, we need an assurance that Ogbeni will not resort to physical assault if he is confronted with hard facts, with evidence.”   Considering the apparent conviction with which he pushed this position, it may not be out of place to suspect that Omisore must be living with GD, that is, grandiose delusions.

    Ironically, he appeared to be correct in recognising the fact of “two unequal parties”, but was pitiably confused about the identity of “the weaker of the two”.  Similarly, he was mistaken in thinking that his own standard of decent conduct is appealing to others. Speaking of thuggish behaviour, perhaps Omisore needs to be reminded of his publicised crudeness in a recent encounter with Isiaka Adeleke, a former governor of Osun State, in the context of an intra-party struggle for the candidature.   The portrait of behind-the-scenes bestiality painted by Adeleke was damning and disqualifying.  He alleged that he was dangerously manhandled by Omisore and Minister of Police Affairs Jelili Adesiyan, possibly to discourage him, and described his attackers as “unfit to live in a civilised society.”

    In an unwitting self-endorsement of this characterisation, Omisore subsequently terrorised the populace, at least psychologically, by the alarming use of a masked and armed security guard during his election campaign. By a creative interpretation, it is possible that the presence of the masked protector was nothing more than a publicity stunt by a candidate who is under pressure to be noticed. If that was the case, the trick worked, given the attention he received on account of the oddity. However, it was a desperately short-sighted promotional approach because it was overloaded with negativity. Certainly, there was no need to introduce a mask, with all the rattling implications, except there was a hidden motive, which is imaginable. No doubt, a power-seeking individual who is not personally repulsed by the very thought of a mask-wearing defender ought to be viewed with suspicion, if not trepidation. It represented a dangerous signal not only about his personality, but also about his values.

    Still on masks, now consider the import of the report that the masked musician Lagbaja rejected in strong terms an offer by Omisore’s campaign organisation to perform at his final rally in Osogbo, which is expected to be witnessed by President Goodluck Jonathan who is a member of the same political party. Lagbaja was quoted as saying in response to the invitation: “Though the court of the land discharged and acquitted you (Omisore) in the murder case against the former Minister of Justice in Nigeria, the late Cicero of Esa-Oke and foremost nationalist, Chief Bola Ige, I have deep-rooted innermost conviction that you are culpable in the death of my mentor and benefactor. If you offer me all the allocation of Osun State during your four-year-tenure peradventure you win (which I seriously doubt), I will not perform for Iyiola Omisore governorship election.”

    Clearly, anyone who is looking for instances of ridiculous but thought-provoking staginess in Omisore’s campaign will find them in abundance. Perhaps the most inane are the images of him as a passenger on a commercial motorcycle, popularly called Okada, and of him eating roasted corn in a campaign convoy, all in a futile effort to convince the people that he is a grassroots politician. Considering the fact that he was a deputy governor of Osun State from 1999 to 2003 and two-term senator from 2003 to 2007 and 2007 to 2011, it is enlightening that he is still struggling, albeit clownishly, to connect with the people.

    To go by the latest opinion poll on the coming election conducted by TSN-RSM, his histrionics have not swayed the electorate. The research firm, a member of Gallup International, said: “The APC continues to dominate the political landscape in Osun State, judging by its performance on key indicators evaluated. It scored highest and increased in rating on first mention, sympathy and voting intention.”

    Of course, the heroes of this political battle will be the  majority of the electorate, who will expectedly vote against the opposite of heroism, and hopefully defend the decision.

  • The Osun Battle

    The election on Saturday is a battle between good and evil. For those who think that the way to win is to seek violence, manipulate elections and turn the state into a platform for contagion, they should beware. The signs are bad. What is at stake is not Omisore, or Aregbesola. What is at stake is not PDP or APC, or stomach infrastructure. What is at stake is the honour and survival of this democracy. Those who want to sacrifice their state and the high horse of integrity should not conflate their private estate with the vast and variegated behemoth of Nigeria. Power is an aphrodisiac. It elevates before it destroys. The tragedy is that when it destroys, it sometimes does not destroy the source of calamity. It throws its power on the innocent. The people of Osun must be ready to defend their votes and not yield to the intimidation of the military.

    There is life after election. But to those who seek power by all means, they have no life if they don’t win. They have no right to impose that on the rest of us. The good is a free and fair poll. The evil is rigging. The choice is clear!

  • Now, female suicide bombers

    From all indications, the terrorism that has for some years now held this nation to its knees appears for the worse. In spite of concerted efforts at stemming it, pleas and condemnations from all divide; respite does not appear in sight.

    Each time there are serious moves to combat the scourge, it rebounds with a new face, tactics and such lethal sophistication that dims hope on a permanent handle to it.

    Or, how else do we explain the new complication which the phenomenon of lone female suicide bombers has now added to the war against terrorism? Just last week and in Kano State alone, four lone female suicide bombers wreaked havoc on defenceless people killing and injuring many.

    In the first incident, a female suicide bomber who had queued up with local women waiting to buy kerosene at a petrol station was blown up killing and injuring some of those around the scene. The second took place at the Kano Trade Fair Complex as another was shattered while mingling with the crowd. Four people including two policemen were injured.

    Before these, another had occurred at a private university gate when a female, wired with explosives, approached the police men on duty apparently to invite them to the last Eid-el-Fitri festival in her house. Suspecting the motive of the young girl, the police men took to their heels. She pursued them and was blown up in the process. The list is endless. Reports gave the estimated age of the girls between 16 and 19 years old.

    Since then, fear and anxiety have gripped people in the state and beyond as the issue has added a new dimension to the terrorism scourge.

    The apprehension is quite understandable given the deadly challenges that have come with the new tactics. There is the difficulty in determining who a female suicide bomber is. Not unexpectedly, this will lead to the profiling and harassment of the female folk with the attendant inconveniences. Even then, it comes with the problem of screening. How do you screen them, at what point and who will do that? The dilemma in getting a quick handle to lone female suicide bombers was underscored most poignantly by the reaction of the police men who took to their heels on suspicion of the woman’s mission. Had they waited or attempted to search her, they would have been killed by the explosives when they detonated. Such is the mortal danger posed by the new tactics of the terrorists.

    Before the rise of Boko Haram, it was deemed inconceivable that terrorism would find accommodation on these shores. This view was reinforced when Nigeria was adjudged the happiest people in the world despite the debilitating poverty and squeezing challenges of development facing its people. It was therefore thought that such a happy people were less likely to take to violent activities as denoted by acts of terrorism.

    But Boko Haram has brought to naught all that optimism. Matters are not remedied by the new scourge of lone female suicide bombers. It is very curious that women, considered the most vulnerable in crisis times can undertake to bring unto themselves unmitigated harm in the name of suicide bombing.

    Just recently, the nation went sorrowful when some 200 school girls were abducted at Chibok, Borno state. The furore the abduction generated was largely on account of the sex of the victims. Vigorous campaigns have been mounted and an international coalition assembled to secure the release of the girls. Sympathy for the Chibok girls may pale into insignificance in the face of the volunteer by young girls to terminate their lives prematurely through suicide bombing.

    In effect, lone female suicide bombers may become our greatest challenge in the current war against the Boko Haram insurgency.

    The impression one gets from the resilience and changing face of terrorism is that whatever grievances that spurred its initial purveyors are still potent in the different dimensions the malfeasance has continued to find expression. Or put differently, there is yet to be a change of heart by those who sponsor these acts of terrorism. That is why everything must be done to decisively tame this monster.

    What do the Boko Haram insurgents really demand from the Nigerian state that they will not allow peace? This poser is apposite given some of the excuses and rationalization that have come from certain quarters. It is more compelling when juxtaposed against the initial reasons the sect gave for taking up arms against the Nigerian state.

    Then, they had proclaimed religious and sectional reasons as the leitmotif for action. They were against western education; they wanted a theocratic state that would see non-Muslims and southerners fleeing the north. Those were their known reasons and they did show them in their initial selection of targets and mode of operation.

    Soon, apologists began to throw up such obtuse variables as ignorance, poverty and negligence. Some others viewed it as a product of ideology built on falsehood. Yet, there were others who saw the perpetrators as not true Muslims since that religion abhors the type of senseless killings that have been associated with them.

    Others have continued to read political motive to it. The conduct of politicians has not helped this dimension. Blames have been traded, and accusing fingers pointed right, left and centre. It is likely to get more complex with the elections lurking around the corner.

    A recent security opinion poll on likely reasons for the festering malaise threw up political interests relating to election matters and poverty as the key factors.

    Poverty may have a role in breeding ready recruits for the sponsors but it is getting clearer that Boko Haram is largely propelled and influenced by the twin issues of religion and politics. We can continue to trivialize these facts at the detriment of the country. It is this equivocation, insincerity and glaring refusal to admit the obvious that has brought complications in the war against insurgency. It smacks of self deceit to contend that no true Muslim will venture into the killings associated with Boko Haram simply because Islam abhors that. Or no real Christian will commit murder as it runs contrary to its doctrines. Who a true Muslim or Christian is, is value-laden and therefore of questionable empirical appeal.  May be, we shall turn to the declining tribe of pagans and animists for all our societal ills. Ironically, the same people who refuse to accept the religious and political dimensions are angling to take advantage of their fallouts.

    The nation is sliding to the precipice and a slight error of omission or commission on the choice of targets could be the last straw. We saw it nearly coming with the bomb attacks on former military Head of State Muhammad Buhari and Sheikh Bauchi. We saw attempts to politicize the matter.

    Those who sponsor this insurgency know the fault lines of our national existence and are likely to exploit them to achieve their selfish aims. These are the issues to watch.

  • Time for statesmen

    Time for statesmen

    Let us not kid ourselves, our country is in danger. We live under a storm cloud, even if we carry on with the routine optimism of the unwary. This is not a time for the mere blossom of rhetoric or the grandstanding of a political virtuoso. It is time for home truths, and we seem to suffer parsimony in that regard.

    What are at stake? The survival of Nigeria and the security of the lives of our citizens. We seem to be living in denial. Both major political parties are at each other’s throats. The tribes do not trust each other and the religions see themselves as God’s and the others as the devil’s. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is in power and it is accused of using the military and the impeachment weapon to cow the opposition. The PDP, in its recriminatory wisdom, is also accusing the opposition as the mastermind of the Boko Haram insurgency, employing public relations firms to launder its ineptitude in the world. The opposition, the All Progressives Congress (APC), fresh from what some have characterised as a contentious convention, has, however, had its national executive, and has accused the PDP of failure.

    Yet three things haunt us today. One, the remorseless raids and rapine of Boko Haram; the deployment of soldiers as an arm of the ruling party; the fury and flurry of the impeachment saga and the fear that the whole country is in the throes of an imperial presidency. All of this is happening amidst poverty, a collapsing infrastructure and absence of it, educational crisis and youth unemployment.

    Everything is directed clearly at victory in 2015. But how are we sure that violence will not torpedo the trek to that date? How are we sure that we are not on the edge of a civil war? Politicians on both sides are not speaking to each other. Rather they are lobbing words at each other.  With Adamawa down, the agony lingers. With Nassarawa in the crosswind, the polity aches with fear. In Rivers State, Edo State, and even a hint in Oyo State, we have seen the primitive dust of distrust and mayhem. Meanwhile, we see a leadership at odds with an answer to the violent impunity of an insurgent militia, the latest victim being the convoy of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari.

    We don’t have a history to fall back on in this instance. Our past never had the convoluted skein of today’s narrative. We have had religious angst in the past, but not this sanguinary. We cannot think of Maitatsine riots in the same bloody register as Boko Haram. Religion was always a factor in our politics, but there was no time we saw clerics line up publicly in defence of their faithful as candidate and spewed hate words about the other faith like we have today. People did not insist on a Muslim or Christian candidate. We had the Abiola-Kingibe ticket on this land once, and religious murmur purred into silence.

    We have had impeachments in the past, not even the Balarabe Musa story carried the omen of a national catastrophe as we feel today. Obasanjo’s impeachments were projects of revenge and humiliation. But they did not threaten the fabric of the nation on the present scale. The impeachments flattered Obasanjo’s pride and we spoke of a heated polity. We did not express fears about the fragile temper of the whole country in this apocalyptic mood.

    So, this is the time to put away party differences and realise that whoever wins may resemble that of the Roman General Pyrrus who conquered and conquered and conquered and lamented, “ one more victory and we are finished.” That is the origin of the phrase, Pyrrhic victory.

    But this is the time for statesmen. The tragedy is that I cannot see anyone in the country who can serve as an arbiter in this battle to the death between the parties. Maybe I have not searched well. I see no one. The closest is Wole Soyinka, but he has spoken himself hoarse over the malady that his melody is heard without its prosody. Soyinka is a critic as a statesman. We want a soul who is a political figure. But they are either compromised into partisanship or bought with filthy lucre. “In our times,” wrote poet Alexander Pushkin, “man, whatever his element, was a murderer, a traitor or thief.” That is the pass today.

    All institutions have been abused. The word is tainted, the money is adulterated, the pulpit bastardised, the gun does not protect but the criminal. Fear belongs to the strong and confidence to the harlot. Truth is only perceived because no one can pluck it like a fruit because it does not hang low. We have the council of state, but what we want is a council of statesmen. That council has not spoken truth to power because no one has risen to a moral stature that would lend him an unimpeachable voice.

    In the past when the leaders erred we had men who spoke and they shook the moral moorings of the land. One of them was Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. Because he did not rise up to the substance of his rhetoric when he became president, he has not retreated into the high cheer of a statesman. He is seen as a contributor to the crisis rather than a voice out of the void.

    Shehu Shagari is insistently quiet because he was never a moral force, either as president or ex-president. Ibrahim Babangida left office in murky ways and his doings show he belongs to one side of the divide. Buhari is an APC chieftain and the weight of his recent warning is lightened by his partisan cloud.

    In other countries, we have seen men show moral gravitas in times of crisis. U.S. presidents perennially comment on crisis and their voices are taken seriously. This began with the grandeur of their first president George Washington, who thankfully would not turn the position into a regal one as life president. He had the opportunity. That made him a statesman and he intervened in feuds after he left office, including when Thomas Jefferson was president.

    Nelson Mandela played a key father-figure role after he vacated office. His voice kept the system in calm waters. We want the sort of leader Max Weber designated as the charismatic figure. Such are rare these days because technology and easy access to information take away the myth of leaders. That raises the stakes of leadership. Or are we victims of technology that subdues the greatness of men?

    If we don’t have men on top, the other alternative is the mass. But the crowd has been compromised in today’s world. Crowds can be conjured by politicians for any cause these days. A scoundrel can buy a crowd and claim to be the people’s hero. The crowd has lost its innocence. In his Crowds And Power, Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti shows how the crowd can emerge for just any purpose, for feast, for god, for the devil, for reversals. We cannot count on the crowd to save us because the Nigerian masses do not trust them anymore. Each crowd suffers from solitude in the logic of David Reisman, who wrote a book titled “The Lonely Crowd”.

    If the crowd that should represent the masses cannot help us, and the charismatic leader is lost in the Nigerian sea, to whom shall we turn? That is the question that can stand between peace and disaster for Nigeria in the coming months. This is not an APC or PDP matter. It is a Nigerian matter, and the political class cannot be saved from blame if Nigeria lapses into collapse with division and bloodshed.