The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • The whitlow and quisling

    The whitlow and quisling

    Many lovers of language and metaphors use the word quisling as though an English word in essence and roots. It is, but not like most words. It means traitor, but it was the name of a Norwegian politician. His attitude, so noxious and so aberrant, imposed his name in conversations all over Europe and, later, the rest of the world.

    His full name was Vidkun Quisling, and the Q was written in capital letters. His notoriety arose from the cauldron of the Second World War when the German dictator, Adolf Hitler, rolled his then impregnable military machine from country to country in a bid to lob all of Europe and the world into the fire and fury of a Nazi empire. While resistance flared all over, Vidkun Quisling collaborated with Hitler as a Man Friday to orchestrate Norway’s surrender to the German Reich. He reigned for a while as Hitler’s planting before the Nazi behemoth unravelled and Quisling lost favour and fell into the dunghill of history.

    He became a metaphor for anyone who betrayed his people. Winston Churchill popularised it when he used it in a speech. To quisle, a verb from that name, has fallen out of use. But quisling has remained an irreplaceable word, especially in political dialogue.

    In the Southwest today, quislings abound, but two of them come into sharp focus as conversations stir in Ekiti State as the governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, marks his third year in office. Two persons are bracing themselves to take a battle to him and the people of the state as next year’s election looms.

    The two men are the Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko and a former commissioner in Lagos and member of the House of Representatives, Opeyemi Bamidele. These two men once paraded themselves as progressives, a term that is increasingly losing its pristine beauty because of many comers uninvited.

    What is at play here is not that Governor Fayemi has not done well. They are ambitious and drowsy in search of raw power. If Fayemi is not transforming the infrastructure of the state, if he is not turning the educational system from the rut he met, if he had not revolutionised a sense of belonging in all with his welfare programme, or birthed rule of law in a way that made accountability inevitable, one would have said they wanted to change the government for good.

    When Governor Fayemi was sworn in, I wrote in this column the high road ahead of him, and I wondered how he was going to tackle a state so idealistic yet so forlorn. Within a year and half, I drove through the streets of Ado Ekiti, and I witnessed a transformation at variance with what obtained while I left the city on the day of his swearing-in. The streets narrow, unlit and dust-laden, the houses discloured, the brow of its inhabitants shorn of optimism, Ekiti did not seem, even with its new chaperon’s good intentions, capable of the lift you see in its streets today.

    So why is it that some persons want a change? If it is because a person belongs to another party or group, say the PDP, one would not sense any moral disappointment. Once political cycles come, opponents will fight through creative ways to wrest power from the incumbent, even if the incumbent has performed miracle. Fayemi has not performed miracle. But his miracle is on the make. Even then no one should ask the PDP not to fight. It has the right and the obligation to test its waters.

    But when politics is seen only in Machiavellian terms because one nurses an ambition fuelled by a grudge, the whole principle of leadership is abused. That is what I see in the upstart Bamidele and his ambition to run.

    He is running with confidence given to him by his fellow quisling, Governor Mimiko. When I wrote a column last year, Brother today, gone tomorrow, I witnessed an eruption of choreographed rage from his publicists. None of them pointed out any major achievements except markets that local governments’ funds could build without whimper. They also pointed out a token clinic for mother and child. He should go to Lagos and Delta States where a whole lot has been done in that regard. He is still building a model school up till today.

    He earned in this column the glory of the title, the whitlow of the west. In the five fingers that represent the five states in the Southwest, Mimiko is the quisling. Immediately he won the election, he ran to master Jonathan in Aso Rock for a photo op. We all saw the quisling in full colour during the governor’s forum crisis when he pitched his tent against the progressives and voted for his master’s candidate. None of his loud supporters came out of the vestry of ignominy to defend his role.

    Jonathan with the PDP now see him as a bridgehead to capture the Southwest for the president. It does not matter that it creates a crisis for the PDP mainstays. But for Jonathan, the best PDP chieftain in the Southwest is the impostor, the one who goes about as a Labour Party wheel horse. He would not formally join the PDP because he would be accused of overt betrayal. He also knows how effective the subterranean work can be in politics. He is shooting from the shadows.

    That is why he is backing Bamidele, now overfed from the other side, who now feels the hubris of all those who cannot resist the overweening impulse of ambition. Having served as commissioner for close to three terms in another state, he wanted to be governor of his state. And that was fine. But he acted as though he was fighting for Fayemi while the latter battled in court with the man with the phony Awo cap. But Bamidele already had started building a political infrastructure for himself in the hope that the courts would fail Fayemi and that would default into an opportunity for him to arise and shine.

    Faeyemi won, and a disappointed Bamidele failed again in a Senate bid. Too impatient, he moved over to the other party that he so publicly disdained in words and deeds. Now, it is not about opportunity but opportunism, a pragmatic desperation. So he bivouacs with a quisling and a whitlow, who has the nod of master jonathan. He becomes the lackey of a lackey. He, a lackey of Mimiko, the whitlow, who is Jonathan’s lackey. Bamidele is now servile to the slave of the presidency. It is like what the Argentine writer, Luis Borges, describes as “a mere discipline usurping the place of clear thinking..” The black American author, Edward Jones in his novel, The Known World, recreates the story of black slaves who owned slaves in the age of servitude, a servility within servility.

    One would expect that people want to move to freedom from slavery like Mandela, but Bamidele and his slave-master are doing the opposite. A new movie, titled 12 Years a Slave starring Nigeria’s own Chiwetel Ejiofor, recreates the true story of a man who moved from freedom to slavery. That story is as true then as it is today.

  • The Akotileta syndrome in Edo State

    The Akotileta syndrome in Edo State

    The PDP in Edo State has lost the voice to attack Adams Oshiomhole because of his good deeds. Now, they seem to have found some counterfeit melody accusing the governor of trying to sell the Edo House in Lagos to himself. The courts are now adjudicating the matter because a tenant, who would not pay his rent for close to eight years, had turned it into a profiteering pot. Part of the real estate is now used as hotel facility for slipshod morality called short time. The over N2 billion property costs the state millions yearly and it cannot take possession of what belongs to it. And Lagos State now wants the Edo State government to pay about N50 million a year for land use charge. Yet, the state does not get any rent.

    Now that it is for sale, the convenient thing is to say the governor wants to possess it. Let them present evidence or remain quiet. The man renting the property is not from the state. Now the governor is calling the state citizens to buy, the PDP men are complaining. Would they prefer outsiders to hold on to their treasure? This is the Akotileta syndrome in Yoruba land, where the prodigal son sells family treasures to an outsider and fritters away the money.

  • Fear of the sovereign

    The word sovereign or sovereignty has become the fulcrum of debate on the desirability or otherwise of the envisaged conference of Nigeria’s ethnic nationalities. Most of the agitators for the conference have canvassed the convocation of its sovereign variant even as sceptics centre their reservations largely on this nomenclature. President Jonathan reacted to this dissonance when in his independence speech he referred to it as national conference/ dialogue. He further gave teeth to this seeming conceptual ambivalence when he inaugurated the committee and charged it to come out with the most appropriate name for this “national conversation”.

    Before then and since after, issues have also been raised on the propriety of a sovereign national conference with all democratic institutions in place. It has been variously canvassed that it is anomalous to talk of sovereign national conference when that sovereign power has been vested in elected structures at all levels of government especially the National Assembly.

    The thesis of this argument is that with the National Assembly in place, you cannot have two sovereigns at the same time. Once you constitute such a conference, you have inadvertently thrown to question the authority conferred on these institutions via democratic elections, it is further argued.

    Those who drive this school seem to be drawing strength from the postulations of social contract philosophers such as John Locke, Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes on the origin of modern states.

    These philosophers had characterized life in the state of nature as nasty, short and brutish. Due to the atavism of the state of nature, medieval man had to enter into a contract with a sovereign to whom he surrendered some of his powers and was in return, guaranteed protection. The abstraction recognizes two things at the same time: power belongs to the people; those who exercise power do it on their behalf. This is the philosophical root of the concept- sovereignty. It is an analytic construct to account for the residue of political power in modern governments. Its purpose is to domesticate the locus of political power.

    The idea has found further expression in modern governments through representative democracy. Because modern states can no longer permit of direct democracy as was practiced in ancient Greek City States, the people now exercise this sovereign power through elected representatives. Having elected their representatives, they confer sovereign powers on them to make laws for the good of them all.

    Conceived this way, it is presumed that those elected have now been armed to reflect the wishes and aspirations of their constituents. That is the point antagonists of sovereign national conference seem to be making. And there is some sense in it. But that is not all.

    There are also conditions under which the concept is supposed to operate in its pure form. For this symbiotic relationship to function optimally, these conditions have to be strictly observed and followed.

    The first is that the structures that throw up candidates for elective offices must be democratic enough to truly reflect the will of the people. Here, internal democracy within the political parties comes to mind. The other, closely related to the first is the issue of free and fair elections. Both form the necessary and sufficient conditions for the sovereignty of the people to have full expression. To what extent do those who purport to represent their people satisfy these basic conditions? And if they do not, how much of credibility do we ascribe to the sovereign powers they now purport to exercise on behalf of us all? These are the issues to ponder in the debate over where sovereign power really resides in our peculiar circumstance.

    It would appear that those who fault the convocation of a sovereign national conference on the ground that there is already sovereign power in the national assembly are not saying it all. They seem to have completely lost sight of the fact that what we have here is representative democracy in its most aberrant form. Not only is internal democracy observed in the breach, elections are yet to reflect the will of the people as amply expressed at the ballot box. When we canvass sovereign powers which elected structures or persons purport to possess, we should also call to mind the limitations in stretching this argument too far.

    Besides, it is also possible for those elected to supplant the wishes of their constituents with their personal goals. When we have a situation of goal displacement, our laws provide remedies for the people. That is why we have provisions for the recall process and impeachment. The same elite now parroting the sanctity of sovereign powers conferred on them through elections, are quick to erect obstacle against being impeached or recalled when they have fallen out of favour with their people. Thus, this new found love for the observance of extant regulations cannot stem from altruistic considerations. There must be more to it than the way it has been presented.

    Even then, it is clear that Nigerians desire to engage themselves on issues concerning their common destiny. Signals that things are going awry are very palpable throughout the length and breadth of this country. There are genuine fears that if urgent steps are not taken to stem this tide, the ensuing systemic stress may lead us to more disastrous consequences. Yet, some people are holding on to the issue of sovereignty as if it is an end unto itself rather that a means to an end-public good.

    It may be a mark of the failure of the sovereign powers of elected structures and persons that the country has drifted to the edge even after the various nationalities have co-habited for nearly 100 years. If a marriage can no longer hold after 100, is it not suggestive we have danger in our hands? If bending some of the rules can take us out of the impending doom, does it make any sense to be enslaved to stereotypes that portend dire consequences?

    In effect, the argument that we cannot have a sovereign national conference is neither here nor there. There is nothing so sacrosanct about the elections that produced these structures that they should pose an impediment to genuine efforts to get the architecture of this unity in diversity right. For, the same people vested with inalienable rights to confer sovereign powers on elected representatives can call such powers back when their representatives have become a liability.

    Just recently, something of that nature happened in Egypt when the same people who overwhelmingly voted in Morsi got utterly disenchanted with him after about a year in office. The revolution that saw him out without waiting for his tenure to expire is a classic demonstration of the sovereign will power of the people. This dialectics must not be ignored by those opposing a sovereign national conference.

    The authority of government is created and sustained by the consent of the people who remain the source of all political power. Benjamin Franklin summed up this when he wrote “In all free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns”. If a sovereign national conference is all that is required to pull back the country from the brink, those who oppose it do not believe in the continued existence of the country.

  • Ashes for beauty

    Ashes for beauty

    The tragic death of Olusegun Agagu, former governor of Ondo State, was sad enough news. But what was sadder was not so much that other humans died in a plane crash bearing his remains for final interment. One cannot but recoil at the superstition that draped the story.

    The story now surfs in informal circles, especially in the social media, that the crash happened because the former governor once held the steering at the head of the Aviation sector as minister on the watch of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Rumours sully the living. But it can desecrate the dead.

    Stories like that reflect the shallowness of the average Nigerian who mixes reality with fiction, a mordant fact of our ignorance, including among the educated. No one can gainsay the fact that the Aviation sector, even under Agagu, did not deliver a safe airspace for Nigerians. He goes to the grave with that pitiful legacy.

    But to turn that into a sort of divine answer does not address the fundamental tragedy of the Nigerian condition. In a sense, it exonerates the inefficiencies of today where a minister of Aviation sees performance in the sector in the meretricious adornment of airports. New structures and designs are sprouting in airports. Colour replaces substance.

    See, for instance, what happened once the plane crashed. Fire fighters did not arrive, according to reports, until about 40 minutes after the crash. Was the airport not supposed to have a standby firefighting squad? Is that not standard practice? Reports had it that some of the dead might have survived if the rescue workers arrived on time. One particularly searing example was of a man who struggled to free himself off the wreckage trap but fire caught his trousers and eventually lit him to death. Such inefficiencies did not start with the Jonathan administrative. It has been with us. We witnessed a number of crashes before the Dana crash and its deep tragedies. Not many Nigerians are satisfied that justice has been done to Nigerians by that voluminous loss of blood even of the Dana episode. Yet the Dana fleet, by some legal legerdemain, soars in our airspace still.

    We have had many teams on varying panels, many investigations, lots of corrupt money trailed over the past decade. Yet we still fly the Nigerian airspace with trepidation. Nothing could make one fear more than what I experienced recently in the Murtala Muhammed International Airport on a trip out of the country. After the baggage checks and immigration where heat was more prominent than light, I walked through the corridor to the boarding gate. Just on the corridor, I beheld two buckets that should belong not on that hallway where international travelers passed. They belonged to the bathroom. But as I moved closer, I was shocked to see that the buckets stirred to the sound and rhythm of drops of water from the roof. I took the photo, and I was surprised that no one, not any international traveller, stood to look.

    I asked, with a journalist’s curiosity, whether it was just that day. No, said one of the staff with a sense of irony. “The ting don dey dere for months now. Anytime rain fall, we dey bring buckets outside.” That is the story of Nigeria. Yet, less than a hundred metres away, furious work buzzed over expanding the facility. Such inefficiencies in the Aviation sector bring tragedies.

    It makes no sense to look at the merest pious trifles to explain the tragedy. If the crash paid back Agagu’s follies as Aviation minister, God complicated the story by saving Agagu’s son. The others who died did not commit any crime against Nigerians. They did not play any role in the serial stupidities of our inefficiencies. We must learn as a people to observe, and not delve into mysticism where simple Inquiry will lead to light. We cannot arise and shine as a people until our light comes. We still walk in the dark corridor of lies we weave to cover our lazy minds as a people.

    As I write this column, the Port Harcourt International Airport has been abandoned. Why? Politics. The Aviation Ministry is working in Lagos, Benin, Enugu and a few others. The airports look beautiful. But beauty is not safety. We had these beauties when human beings became ashes. The new trend is giving us ashes for beauty. Beauty makes no sense without truth. Hence, poet John Keats wrote that beauty is truth and truth beauty. When beauty lacks truth, we experience the sort of horror of the air crash.

    It does not make sense in the Aviation industry. The same lack of rigour abounds everywhere. We are experiencing it-in-education. If we continue to trifle with education, are we not going to produce half-done pilots?

    We fail to understand, as novelist Leo Tolstoy shows in his War and Peace, that so many factors lead to a certain historical fact, and we have to examine them critically and piece them together. That is the way we can turn ourselves to the glories of science.

    Science does not, in my view, necessarily forbid the spiritual. But many shallow “spirituals” hide under God to propagate lazy ideas. Laziness of mind is the major culprit of our system. God helps those who help themselves. We do want to help God, so he can help us.

    When we have such lazy minds, we witness the tragedy that befell Agagu and others. It contrasts the novel, The Great Gatsby, where a man, who grew rich and threw parties to everyone in the city and showed great generosity, died alone and was buried alone. His acquaintance called everyone who enjoyed his largesse to his funeral. No one came. Yet in Agagu’s case, many wanted to come, but some of them died who wanted to mourn.

    That is the sort of sad and twisted story that Nigeria can spurn through inefficiency. It is the lugubrious strain in Fela’s song that “dead body get accident.”

    It is time for us as a people to remember that the Nigerian tragedy happens everywhere, in hospitals, in schools, in homes, in the streets. And most of them come from a system that lacks standards. So many ingredients spoil the Nigerian soup. Blame the minister and other factors associated with flying in the country. We should not rush to bring the superstitious. It makes us not better than the one who steals the money allocated to buy security equipment or hospital drugs but says God will save them. He then buys a private jet and a Dubai mansion.

    We don’t have a minimum standard. We just allow things happen because we believe God will take care of things. To paraphrase the Poet Niyi Osundare, they say the stars made it.

    “With their backs to the sunrise, they worship the night.” Robert Ingersoll did not think of Nigeria when he penned those lines. We should not let that quote, in its malignant irony, to haunt us still.

  • Agreement or no agreement

    Even with categorical clarification by President Jonathan that he did not sign any agreement with anybody to serve one term, the controversy has refused to die down. The president had in a media chat last week, said no such agreement exists. He challenged those who have been peddling the claim to produce the agreement for public perusal.

    And for those who claimed he also confirmed his intention not to run in Addis Ababa, he had this to say: “I did not say I will not contest in 2015”. According to him, what he said when he canvassed a single term of seven years was that if Nigerians agreed to that, he may not be involved adding he never said he will contest or not.

    But the Baraje faction of the PDP would not let go. They have since after these clarifications continued to insist that Jonathan actually said he would not contest in 2015. They claimed while interacting with Nigerians and diplomats at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union in Ankara, Turkey in 2011, Jonathan had said he would work towards Nigerians in the Diaspora voting during the 2015 election though he will not be running for election. They also bandied another claim that an agreement was signed during the tenure of Okwesilieze Nwodo that he will serve for only four years. For these, they promised to expose him at the appropriate time.

    Incidentally, Jonathan has challenged all those with evidence he promised to run for one term, to come up with such.

    Why wait now he has thrown the challenge to those privy to the agreement to produce it? The appropriate time the Baraje faction alluded to is now. Jonathan has said no such agreement exists and we should believe him until evidence to the contrary has been produced. The burden of proof is now on the shoulders of those who have been parroting the existence of such agreement as the basis for dissuading him from running in the coming elections.

    If nobody is able to produce such a document now, then the likes of Babangida Aliyu of Niger State must have told the nation a lie. He was the person who challenged Jonathan to respect the spirits of that agreement. What has happened to that key document if it does exist? And as we raise this question, there have been speculations in some sections of the media that the document is with a South-south governor who has sympathy for Jonathan. The motive of this dummy is to convey the impression that the document may not see the light of the day as the said governor is unlikely to produce it in deference to the president. Then, Jonathan would have become an accused who must produce all the evidence the prosecution needs to prove its case. What an irony of sorts?

    It remains a puzzle how such a vital document will be left with Jonathan’s sympathizer when in fact it was the north that extracted the agreement from him. Is it not curious that the same north could not lay hands on a document it must have cajoled Jonathan to sign before supporting him in the last election? Is it possible for Jonathan to sign an agreement for the north without the beneficiary having a copy? We have raised these posers to underscore the incongruity in the latest speculation. It is nothing but a figment of the imagination of those who want to keep the controversy going.

    But then what is all this fuzz about the said agreement with Jonathan? Why is his ambition a big issue for members of the PDP even now that the party has split into two factions?

    Opponents of Jonathan cite this agreement because they do not want him to run. They want power to revert to the north. With Jonathan running, they envisage very slim possibility of realizing that ambition since the PDP has boasted it will rule for 100 years uninterrupted. They are all sold to the warped idea of the invincibility of the PDP in electoral matters. Being in control of the central government, its enormous resources and coercive apparatus of the state, they desire to deploy these to advantage. That is the first lure for the prime movers of the argument.

    Secondly, if it is proven that Jonathan actually signed such an agreement, reneging on it will count as evidence that he cannot be trusted. Having signed an agreement or made promises to its effect, it is to be expected that any president worth his salt will not toy with it. If for any reason the contrary happens, Jonathan would be courting the image of an unreliable person. This could also do irredeemable damage to whatever ambition he now nurses, the argument further goes. These points can be conceded.

    But he has come out to say he neither signed any agreement nor made any promise that he will not run in 2015. He deserves the benefit of doubt since nobody has produced any concrete evidence to the contrary. The minimum expectation given the open challenge by him is for all those who have been canvassing these issues to show evidence of them. That will form the basis for determining whether Jonathan is lying to the nation or not. Nothing of sort seems to be happening. Instead, the Baraje faction is still talking of exposing him at the appropriate time. That time has come and it is either they join the fray now or keep quiet forever.

    But, is it out of religious zeal or self-serving motivations that the issue of keeping faith with agreements has assumed the dimension it has currently taken within the nation’s political space? What of those championing the campaign? Can they say with every degree of sincerity that they have kept all the agreements they entered into including their contract with the electorate? If so, why are we buffeted by the spectre of unfulfilled promises that has held this nation on its knees? To what extent have our politicians including the ones seeking to discredit Jonathan kept faith with their own agreements and promises especially with those that voted them into power? This poser is at the heart of the hullabaloo about agreement or no agreement with Jonathan. If it is proven that the key promoters of this argument have not kept faith with some of their promises with the people, they do not stand on sound moral grounds to make noise on the matter. It is a legal maxim that those who go for equity must come with clean hands.

    In effect therefore, while one is not averse to the sanctity of agreements (written or oral) it would appear that repudiation of agreements on these shores is no big deal. Our people are known more for defaulting than keeping agreements. They also have an uncanny penchant for disregarding rules. These are not in doubt. If Jonathan defaults or even repudiates an agreement on such a mater, he will not be the first of its kind.

    So, renewed interest on this unproven agreement is neither guided by religiosity nor a culture of strict adherence to principles. If these pristine values were to be at play, the social decay that has stunted our development despite our enormous resources would have been mitigated. Selfishness is at its best when a small band of politicians extract agreement with a sitting president to revert power to them without caring for the overall interests of other sections that no less deserve the same power. That is the folly of all the argument about agreement or lack of with Jonathan.

    Now a panel has been raised to fashion out modalities for a national conference, the matter can no longer fly. All issues giving rise to it are better thrashed out in a conference of all nationalities in a more lasting and equitable manner. That should be the path of all those who wish this country well.

  • Probing Abuja killings

    By all indications, Nigeria is going through very dire straits. Things are not normal in many aspects of our national life. Suspicion and mutual distrust among the various cleavages are at an all time high and exert tremendous influence on perceptions and actions. This is a sad commentary for a country that is about to mark 53years of independence in a couple of hours from now.

    Under this circumstance, it is the minimum expectation that those in authority should be alive to extant sensibilities and refrain from actions that could give vent to blackmail, anger and frustration.

    In an environment where people have been sensitized to think in very self-serving and particularistic manner, actions or inactions of public officers that should ordinarily have been given the benefit of doubt are subjected to very serious scrutiny. The overall aim is to find excuses to get even with perceived adversaries. That is what you find where people are aggrieved for one reason or the other. And it sums up the current mood of the country.

    These sensibilities were evoked last week when officials of the State Security Services (SSS) announced their encounter with suspected Boko Haram members at an uncompleted building in the Apo area of Abuja in which nine of these suspects were killed and many injured. Deputy Director, Public Affairs of the SSS, Marilyn Ogar gave account of what transpired. According to her, some suspected Boko Haram members in their custody had disclosed that some arms were buried within the premises of the building which provided a meeting point for their members. Based on this information, a combined operation of the SSS and the Army stormed the building at night and as they were digging the ground for the arms, they came under the gun attack of the insurgents.

    Their counter response led to the dead and injured. But this account has been disputed by some of the residents who said they are migrant workers and less-privileged people who paid some token to the security man in charge of the building to sleep there. They also claimed the owner of the building, said to be a military officer, had given them notice to quit the place and that the allegation was part of the plan to call a dog a bad name in order to hang it.

    Expectedly, the turn of events has elicited resentment and anger from a large segment of the society. The feeling is that there seems to be more to the issue than ordinarily meets the eyes. There is the feeling that the account of the encounter presented by the SSS did not tie up. To add to this air of suspicion, the police have said they were not put on notice before the attack. Both the Senate and the Police have responded to this outcry by stepping up investigations to get at the root of the matter. But the SSS insists its account is a true representation of the matter. The Army also corroborates SSS account as its position on the matter. Ogar has made spirited efforts to persuade the public that the attack followed rules of engagement and the services stand to gain nothing by killing innocent people. She said their action was based on credible security reports at their disposal and would therefore want the public to believe their account of the circumstances of the encounter.

    Ordinarily, there would have been the temptation to reason along with the SSS. This is more so as the service is not known to post shoddy records in handling issues of this nature. Again, the very sensitive and difficult nature of the fight against terrorism ought to count in their favour in resolving the misunderstanding arising from the incident.

    Yet, there are issues that have been brought to the front burner by the killings that cannot be allowed to be swept under the carpet. And they account for the outcry.

    Much of the suspicion is informed in part by the handling of the matter by the SSS both before the encounter and after the subsequent killings. There are yawning gaps to be filled. There are also questions to be answered. Though one cannot claim expertise in the rules of military warfare and strategy, there are commonsensical procedural flaws in the SSS account of the encounter. And much of the crisis of confidence they are now battling with, stem largely from these. The immediate impression one gets is that the first thing they did on getting to the building was to commence the digging of the ground for the arms their informant said were buried under ground. As they were digging the ground, they came under the gun fire of the terrorists and had to respond in self-defence culminating in the casualty figure.

    Now, the searing posers: if the SSS and the Army detachment were detailed to hunt Boko Haram suspects in the building, what should constitute the standard entry behaviour on getting to their target? Is it not a standard safety rule that they should anticipate some resistance and prepare well ahead of time for that eventuality? This is more so when they had prior information that some arms were buried there. Should they not have cordoned off the area and then selectively commence arresting those they suspect to have links with Boko Haram? These questions arise because, the immediate impression we get from the SSS account is that as soon as the security agencies got to the site they commenced the digging of the ground for the supposedly buried arms. By this account, it was as they were digging that they came under the heavy gun fire of the insurgents and had to counter resulting to the killings. This account looks somewhat untidy and unprofessional. The minimum expectation is that all those living in the building should first have been under the safe custody of the security operatives. Having done that, the entire premises will then be searched before the digging to recover whatever arms were supposedly hidden there. Had this precautionary measure been adhered to, perhaps those who supposedly shot at the security operatives would have been apprehended earlier and disarmed. And where that proves difficult, the agencies would then consider maximum force such that led to the high death toll.

    Again, the case of the SSS is not remedied by their inability to show evidence of the digging, the arms recovered and possible victims of the attack on their side. By just bandying claims without substantive evidence to corroborate them, they left room for the raging suspicion that has become the lot of the ill-fated encounter.

    Matters are not helped by the testimonies of some of the injured. The allegation that the incident was a subterfuge to get the squatters out of the building since the owner had become uncomfortable with them is another issue. Even as the SSS would want us to resolve the doubts created by these lapses in their favour, it will be difficult to do so under the foregoing circumstances.

    Admittedly, the war on terrorism is a very daunting and risky one that has cost the lives of security operatives and civilians alike. Even at that, no room should be left for doubts to creep into the enormous sacrifice that has been the fate of the war against terrorism. Neither should the fight constitute an alibi for extra judicial killings. It is a very critical and sensitive challenge that must be handled in the most professional manner. Boko Haram has some support from within. And no room should be given to these anarchists to ridicule the war against terror. The current probes must get at the root of the matter. It is in the overall good of the continuing struggles to tame the scourge.

  • Between bread and God

    Between bread and God

    Hooded and defiant, Kelvin Oniara held a community down below his knees and swagger. For those who knew him or knew of him, he was identified simply as Kelvin. There was an innocuous quality to this identification. He did not carry such names with frightening cacophonies or onomatopoeia, or the metaphor of a bellowing cat, or the sort of Niger Delta aliases that invoked the fear of the Maker.

    But Kelvin was all Kelvin needed to strike terror. He knew all dreaded him. He knew he could kidnap anyone. He knew he could slay any police officer or maim a soldier on the run. He knew he could cuckold any man, or best any village belle. He knew he could threaten President Goodluck Jonathan with an ultimatum. Until barely a week ago, when he knew he could not. There in Port Harcourt, where he was nesting, he fell into the trap of the security forces.

    Barely three days after, Kelvin, the gun-toting lord unto himself, reminds all of us of a coward barely two decades ago called Anini, who embarrassed a military president and an inspector general of police. Kelvin is now begging for his life and pleading with the authorities not to kill him. That falls into the stereotype of tyrants documented in literature, folklore and literature: that they are ultimately cowards projecting their fears in savagery, bloodletting and terror.

    But that is not what obsesses one about the recent development. It is that the man, with his gang, came outside in a parade to issue an ultimatum. He had children and old women surrounding him, and had them speak on his behalf, too, as though he was the new folk hero of Nigeria. They made him into a rustic Adaka Boro new-minted in the sultry quiet of Kokori village in Delta State.

    What should bother us is the possibility that a man like that could be a hero of sorts. But that is the reality where a never-do-well can abduct a rich man, especially a government type, extort at least N10 million, retreat to a backwoods society, buy more guns, and lord it over the village of poor people. He enwraps the village with a cocktail of threats and largesse. He could buy them food, pay the school fees of some of their wards, ply the old and vulnerable with medication, provide them with security. He wins their love instantly. He, a benevolent brute, becomes their provider and protector. So anyone who dares challenge him or blows the whistle is violating the integrity of their new welfare system. He or she becomes a traitor, especially when Kelvin enlists the support of a juju priest, whose first name Michael loses its irony in their soul. Michael Omonigho, the priest, could not save the hero. The gods may be to blame for losing the charm of prophesy to anticipate the arrest, or do we blame the priest, who bears the name of the angel of another deity, the God of the Bible? Michael means “like God.”

    The spiritual component of Kelvin’s system may be real, but the power of the man lay in guns and bread, fear and food. The twin worked well among the vulnerable in history. Food fuels artificial love.

    But this contrasts with another folk person in recent Nigerian history, the author and founder of the Boko Haram sect. When government failed, he provided what sociologists call the alternative society. He gave the young and vulnerable what the government could not provide. He gave them food, shelter, medication, wives and security. He became their god representative on earth when he gave them school. He gave them not the schooling of the Western world but the one inspired from heaven. That was the difference between Yusuf’s welfare society and that of persons like Kelvin.

    Very soon, when the largesse and physical security of Kevin fade, the people can return to the humility of their deprivation. But when Yusuf left, and because he left, the followers grew more potent. The followers latch on to the intangible, the something no one can hold and destroy, the something called faith. They had God.

    Men like Kelvin are gods that are earthy, evanescent and vain. But let us not think that this phenomenon began today. Persons like Yusuf and kelvin were created by a failure of government that has been with us for too long. If we can remember when self-help replaced government help, we can make sense of the origins of the Kelvins and Yusufs. When did we start to arrange vigilantes for security, buy generators for electricity, arrange sands to make our roads hold cars and feet, consult herbalists instead of pharmacists, dig boreholes for water, bribe to get passports, redefine miracles for success of our children by inventing fraudulent exam breakthroughs, etc?

    So the Yusufs and Kelvins only tapped into a tradition of dubious self-help, reflecting a perverted society lost to its mock genius. The individual has come to terms with the alternative society that filled the vacuum of government.

    So the Kelvin and Yusuf stories leave us the question as to what is stronger, God or bread? Kelvin gave bread but Yusuf gave the bread of life, according to the receivers. One illusion outlasts the other. The SSS, in collaboration with Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, who has quietly and openly griped over the scourge of kidnap with significant success in Delta State with consistent onslaught on the distraction, has dislodged Kelvin. He must get the plaudits for Kelvin’s ouster and preserves one of his legacies of security.

    But the issue of the other giver of bread of life remains. Boko Haram, that is. The question has been asked whether poverty is enough to trigger such relentless massacres that we see in the Northeast. The answer is simple: No. But without poverty, it cannot stand for long. The rich and powerful with perverse education exploit and indoctrinate the poor. Nowhere in the opulent world do we see such sustained attack fuelled by belief. In Spain, we had the Basque separatists. We also had the case of Northern Ireland, but they were fuelled by the rich but they were purely political. They yielded to political settlements. But where politics masks faith, like in the Middle East, settlement cannot come from the genius of man.

    That is why the hardest gift to erase is what the takers see as the bread of life. It is hard to recruit a well-fed man to fight for a cause. To recruit, give the poor bread, and to sustain them, give them bread of life.

    The horror they inflict with deaths and fear reminds one of the short line of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl about the place of God in all of this human suffering, which he experienced during the First World War. He wrote, “The silence of God/ I drink from spring in the forest.”

    My question is, shall we eat bread to live or the bread of life to die?

  • Now, Mark has spoken

    Before the disclaimer by the Baraje faction of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP of speculated agreement with President Goodluck Jonathan, events had pointed at that grim direction despite claims from supporters of the president. Early indication came when the Tukur-led executive set up a caretaker committee for the Kano State chapter of the party. If there were some agreement, the Baraje faction would have been taken into confidence on the matter or it would have pended till the resumption of talks presumably in the first week of October.

    But Tukur went ahead even as both factions are still embroiled in power struggle over the soul of the party. Of course, the Kano state government did not waste time to denounce it citing the party constitution that has no room for such contraption. The other signal which also came in quick succession was the visit by the Baraje group to the leadership of both chambers of the National Assembly to brief them on their grievances.

    During both visits, the group tabled all the issues they hitherto purportedly reached agreement with the president including the demand that he should not be allowed to go for another term. To underscore the deadlock this time around, they referred to the purported ambition of Jonathan to run in 2015 as a third term agenda.

    The purport of this terminology should not be lost on any discerning person. If anything, it underscores how hard the mind of the group has stiffened on that project and their irrevocable commitment to oppose it with their last blood. Their new disposition may have been fallout of speculations that the president pointedly told them he never told anybody he will not run for another term. This could have been extrapolated as clear indication that Jonathan has made up his mind to run. And it could be logically so deduced.

    The third term coinage has therefore left no one in doubt as to the sequence of events to follow.

    Their engagement with the Senate President, David Mark was orderly. Mark never left them with any shred of doubt that he stood for a united PDP. But their encounter with the speaker of the House of Representatives turned out rowdy. There was fracas as the anti- and pro-Baraje factions engaged each other in shouting bout and subsequent fisticuffs. The battle line was very clear and indicated very glaringly that harder times await the nation as the crises within the ruling party plays out in the days ahead.

    Before the visit, Mark had succinctly captured the mood of the nation when he said at the reconvening of the Senate that he has seen the imperative for a national conference. According to him, steps should be taken to convene a national conference of ethnic nationalities to confront the “perceived or alleged structural distortions which have bred discontent and alienation in some quarters”. Such a conference in the thinking of the senate president could find accommodation in extant provisions of the constitution that guarantee freedom of expression and association.

    Mark however put forward two caveats. The first is that it will be unconstitutional to clothe such a conference with constituent or sovereign powers. The other is that discussions on dismembering the country should be a no-go area. These aside, Mark believes every other question should be open for discussions as the resolutions of the ethnic nationalities called under the auspices of the federal government will carry tremendous weight.

    No doubt, the senate president’s backing for the convocation of a national conference of Nigeria’s estimated 390 ethnic nationalities is a very positive development for the country. It is also in line with the feelings of those who had before now, seen the conference as the only way out of the multifarious challenges facing the country. These challenges have been so much so that doubts have been expressed on the capacity of the country to withstand recurring systemic stress. Things are not helped by prediction from the United States of America, US that Nigeria might go the way of a failed state come 2015.

    Though this predication had been roundly denounced in official quarters, events as 2015 inches nearer, show increasing signals that we may be in for a self-fulfilling prophecy. In order to stave off the prospects of this looming danger, several well meaning Nigerians and interest groups have recommended the convocation of the conference. But the greatest opposition to that idea had come from the National Assembly basking on the powers which the1999 constitution appeared to have conferred on it.

    Now Mark has spoken, it would appear that a major stumbling block to the imperative of a national conference has given way. He believes that the National Assembly though constitutionally not bound by the resolutions of such a conference, will be hard put to ignore them in the current constitution amendment process. In effect, Mark would want the conference to go hand in hand with the ongoing constitution amendment process. He would want the Nigerian people to come up with resolutions on how they desire the nation’s affairs to be conducted. When such resolutions have been crystallized, the National Assembly will then incorporate them as part of the ground norms for running this country. That could be a way out provided the resolutions of the nationalities will not be subjected to another round of debate by the lawmakers. This may not be as simplistic as has been presented. All the same, the key thing is the admission that we need to sit down and discuss issues affecting the constituent units.

    The issue of structure and composition should pose no serious problem when it is understood that the overall goal is to save the country from going asunder. This objective weighs more than anything else. No sacrifice will be too much in its pursuit. In the same vein, fears on the possible fallouts of a sovereign or constituent variant can be taken care of, if all are genuinely committed to the overall unity and progress of the country. After all, the National Assembly derives its powers from the people and cannot possibly be above the ultimate sovereign power- the people.

    Signals emanating from sections of the country, increasingly speak of an increasing pull towards centrifugalism. And at the root of these are increasing feelings of alienation, marginalization and the inability of the central government to equitably cater for the component units. There are also several structural and systemic distortions that have stood on the way of the citizens realizing their potentials to the fullest. They are loaded with frightening prospects for system collapse and failure. It is more profitable to address than allow them weigh down the country.

    It is gladdening that President Jonathan and Mark are buying into this visionary and futuristic idea. What is required now is for the necessary machinery to be set in motion for the immediate convocation of the conference. It is possible. All obstacles that have been raised are human including aspects of the constitution. Being human issues, they can be redirected to serve humanity better.

    But, we need to hear the position of the factional PDP led by Baraje on the propriety of a national conference. We also need to hear from the Arewa Consultative Forum, Northern Elders Forum and others that have been vocal on power shift. This will help sift those genuinely for the peace, progress and stability of this country and others seeking power to perpetuate the glaring inequities of the decadent order that has led to this pass.

  • Who is the boss?

    Who is the boss?

    The governors were right, and the governors were not so right. They said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the dame of the economy, should resign. The reason? Nigeria’s business of Naira and kobo – well, who talks of kobo these days except on paper? – has spun out of control. Now, as the debate rang through the economic and political corridors, I saw a big elephant, a beautiful, bespectacled, often defiant elephant.

    Her name is Diezani Alison-Madueke, the minister of Petroleum who would not brook a minister of state because, as an elephant, she would choke any competition out of the room and out of oil. That was why I chuckled as the governors, especially Rivers State Governor, the right honourable Rotimi Amaechi, called for the head of the dame.

    When she was appointed minister of Finance, her boss Goodluck Jonathan felt, as the other elephant in the administration, Okonjo-Iweala should not be hemmed in by finance. So, he designated her, without legislative backing, the coordinating minister of the Economy. I learned that so besotted was the dame about the title that she hardly honoured any petition or request that did not invest her with that grandiloquent honour.

    So, whenever anyone had a trouble with the economy, we pointed straight at the person in charge, presumably. So when the governors like the hard-charging Amaechi threw the bait, the ego of the dame of the economy could not escape.

    But further investigation would show that the woman holds that position more as a cipher than in reality. That is where the first elephant in the room, the elegant one, was ignored. Alison-Madueke, who speaks to any audience with a bored, superior air of a peacock, has escaped the jibe, except for the accusation pelted at her by some politicians.

    Okonjo-Iweala coordinates the economy only in part. She coordinates such areas as Customs, NIMASA, immigration, FIIRs, agriculture, power, etc. To that extent, we can say that she is a coordinating minister of the economy. But she is an outsider with regards to the jugular of the economy. That is, oil. She does not control the oil revenue. That was the point the Delta State Governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, made when he said all eyes should point to the pot of the Nigerian economy, that is, the NNPC.

    Now, Okonjo-Iweala responded to the charge for her to resign with some hauteur, echoing her former boss Obasanjo’s words: I dey kampe. I don’t think the governors who called for her to resign expected her to cave in. They knew that the woman, a sure foot in Jonathan’s administration, would not stir at the gloomy predictions of her adversaries.

    So, what concerns this column is why does the coordinating minister of the Economy not own up to her limitations in the system. Why would she not admit that, powerful as she is, she has another woman even more assertive and defiant, and who enjoys better favours from the boss? Why would she not admit that, the elegant Allison-Madueke, whose office was accused of jetting around the world on a N2 billion bill, coordinates the economy more than the coordinator of the economy?

    The office is important, but the person can overwhelm the office or the office can swallow the person. In this instance, the office has half-swallowed Okonjo-Iweala. As for the elegant peacock of the oil ministry, the office is smaller than the woman who occupies it.

    The thing about the oil minister that riles those who oppose her derives from her royal pretensions. Was she not the one who stopped at Ore not many years ago and wept at the plebian sore, the purulent series of death traps, gullies, pot holes and craters that became routine thoroughfares of fatal destiny for the poor?

    Can we reconcile that lachrymose lady with the bespectacled, bored, superior, powerful supervisor of the fluid that holds the Nigerian vein? We can call her the model of the economy. Fashion critics have noted that upscale models in the top runways of the world execute their catwalks with often serious mien. They hardly light up. The upper crust hold in their joy, they do not fall for little excitements. They have seen too many joys, too many triumphs, so much so that they have to manufacture joys and triumphs in order to gratify their own pride. So, as sociologist Thorstein Veblen notes, they create their own artificial joys. That is why we have golf, polo, country clubs, etc.

    The low-brow model cannot but be excited so she smiles. She abides in the natural, and smiles and giggles sweeten the ambience of the poor. Alison-Madueke often loves the world of the ascetic face of the well-heeled. So, how can we imagine her fix an appointment to see Okonjo-Iweala in order to brief her as the superior officer? Can anyone imagine Okonjo-Iweala summon Alison-Madueke?

    It is quite clear that the economy is divided into two orbits. Okonjo-Iweala holds sway in one, while Madueke rules the roost in the other. But whose empire is bigger? Of course, Madueke’s. the NNPC reports to her, and she in turn reports to the president. We can see that there is no coordination in the economy.

    I wonder why the governors did not call for her to resign, although I would want both to quit, for neither of their stewardships helps us. But what is at stake at the moment is that the state governments have not had allocations in the past few months. A depleted state purse will mean many civil servants across the country, including the oil-rich ones, may have problems paying their salaries. Is another strike looming? Governor Amaechi complained last week about his inability to execute major contracts as he has had to rely on internally generated revenue since July.

    So, what is happening to the NNPC? If the Central Bank of Nigeria says it received $4 billion, why would NNPC report $700 million. That is why Governor Uduaghan shone his spotlight on that humungous pot.

  • Amaechi at barricade: a witness account

    Amaechi at barricade: a witness account

    Dusk amassed over the old GRA in Port Harcourt, but it preceded a darkness more profound and virulent. I was in a bus in a convoy of the Rivers State governor along with speakers of state houses of assembly across the country from 1979. One hundred and two of them rode in the convoy.

    It had been a grueling day, and my mission was to assess for myself the average day of Governor Rotimi Amaechi amidst the turmoil of today’s politics. The theatre has taken its toll on a discomfited nation. Jonathan versus Amaechi. Dame Jonathan versus Amaechi. Northern governors had visited Amaechi and hoodlums threw stones and cracked windows. APC versus PDP. New PDP versus PDP. State assembly imbroglio with an upstart and subversive minority soiling the dignity of a quorum by attempting to oust the legitimate speaker. Kidnap of a cleric. Reports of a city losing its halcyon ego to the barbarities of militants when Amaechi took office.

    I visited to understand how Port Harcourt, Rivers State and its governor held their own against this brimstone. The things I saw I did not prepare for. I did not know the governor had invited former speakers, he being an alumnus. I wanted to see if he still governed and how, or was I going to write in this column about paralysis in Rivers State?

    Once I arrived, I was poised to observe. So I joined the convoy at a model primary school. That tour took us several hours through his marquee projects from the morning until our return to the city and to another development I did not expect: the blockade at dusk.

    After spending a whole day hopping off and on the bus, climbing, walking, standing, taking notes, propounding questions, interrogating answers, studying the body language of the governor, and interacting with the right honourables, the last anyone expected was a blockade by the police. It began when the whole convoy made a precipitous stop at an interception.

    Initially, I chalked it up to a few snafus like a security breach by an unguarded civilian. But when it tarried, the reporter in me woke up, and I left the bus and walked about 50 metres to the front of the convoy. Then I learned that the police had sealed off the road, the governor’s favourite entrance to the Government House.

    I also learned that the New PDP secretariat was located on that road and it had been sealed off earlier on a court order. So, I wondered aloud, if you seal off a building, what has that got to do with the road? The road did not only accommodate the secretariat, but also residences of many private persons, including some expatriates, who were seen walking through the barricade having abandoned their vehicles. It also hemmed in denizens of the Port Harcourt Club and, more importantly, the state’s general hospital known as Braithwaite Memorial Specialist Hospital, and I wondered what happened in the case of an emergency.

    I walked to the barricade and I saw three police pickup vans parked end to end across the road. I saw aides of the governor trying to persuade the police officers at the post to open the road for the governor. We had spent close to 20 minutes at the spot. Suddenly, one of the police officers flared up, and said, “How can I take orders from a civilian? I cannot take orders from a civilian.”

    It became obvious that the men would not budge. A few minutes later, Governor Amaechi walked to the scene and since the officers recoiled from engaging him, he told a press corps, “You can see for yourselves. They don’t want me to enter the Government House on the instruction of the president and the commissioner of police.” He strode off to one of the buses and the convoy made a detour to the other entrance to the Government House.

    It was a frenzied evening, putting in perspective the crisis between the governor and the president. Ironically, the governor had received the president at the airport and had told me he planned to see him later in the day. I doubt if it happened. After the incident, I asked the governor if the commissioner of police had called him or if he had any conversation with him on the barricade. He said no.

    How come the chief security officer of the state fell in the dark about the barricade of his own road by the security forces in the state! That is the savage irony of the crisis, and all the shameless denials from the PDP offices cannot blot out what I saw.

    If they wanted to seal off a building, it was fine. But why the road? The military never lapsed to this primitive level. They sealed off many buildings in their draconian days, including my newspaper house. But the roads remained inviolate.

    Senator Olorunimbe Mamora, also an alumnus, summed it up when I spoke to him in the Government House: “It is the height of impunity and overzealousness.” Enough said.