The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • History, civil war and our haunted house

    History, civil war and our haunted house

    I cannot remember their first names, but they captured my young fancy. Short, articulate with gesticulatory agility, they raised the tempo of their classes to the theatre experience. Since in my teen years I knew little about thespian ecstasy, the two history teachers gave us something close. They were Eshareture and Edeyan. I recall Eshareture’s dissection of the Yoruba Wars and the birth of Liberia. I cannot forget Edeyan’s ability to conjure back the tumble and heroics of the Niger Delta city states. In those days, the greed of England eyed our liquids – not below the earth and not black. They were red and white, and the juice of trees.

    After my days in Government College, Ughelli, I knew I wanted to study history and become a professor in that romantic inquest into the past. Not even my fascination with tales and language enlivened by the classes of Mr. Money and Demas Akpore, former deputy governor of Bendel State, took away the rapture of the past.

    At Ife, two major teachers, Professors Femi Omosini and Tunji Oloruntimehin, heightened my love affair with the subject. Oluruntimehin handled with irony and understated zest West African people’s treacherous tango with freedom and tyranny under colonial thralldom. Omosini, with wit and dramatics, engaged a feudal Europe simultaneously in love with God and mammon. After my certificated years, I have followed history year after year, reading histories all around the world and across epochs.

    Recently, when General Alabi-Isama published his civil war account, The Tragedy of History, I observed an irony. Most secondary schools in the country are doing away with the study of history, and the universities are diluting it, making history major study a lost cause. Now, it has to be history and international relations.

    The Alabi-Isama book, apart from its onslaught on the Obasanjo claims, was an invitation to the past. As the historian E.H. Carr asserts in his classic, What Is History?, it is “an unending dialogue with the past.” What struck me when the Alabi-Isama book came out was how the events of today look so much like the days before the civil war. Secondly, I discovered that our young, even the very bright ones, know little about that period. It is not their fault. Who taught them or guided them into that vault of our souls?

    As much Nigerian history as I know, much of our history is still unknown. How many know the details, for instance, of the most turbulent era of our history? Major Iluyomade narrated in detail, his command of the Ore confrontations during the civil war. Much of this has not been documented until this paper unveiled it. The Ore battle is the most mythologised of all the civil war encounters, but how much of this has been taught or documented in books or studies? So much of the war is wrapped in clouds. The Murtala Muhammed’s blood-laden command of the Niger bridge, the revenge pogrom against Hausa-Fulani in Asaba, the Abagana combustion, the capture of the Central Bank in Benin, the Midwest role, the battles for Owerri, life in Lagos, the minorities in the old Eastern region, the Yoruba relations with the Hausa before the war, etc.

    We have not had also in detail books about Ojukwu as a general, or his handling of the so-called saboteurs from the Midwest, or Gowon either as a weak or necessary commander in chief, Awolowo as the finance mainstay and dynamic of starvation or the stories of the three divisions, their challenges or exploits or limitations. All of these would form major studies in postgraduate schools and provide simplified materials for primary and secondary and undergraduate studies. Studies on most of these are perfunctory at best. I generated discontent in some quarters in a recent article on Alabi-Isama’s book, especially my assertions of Gowon as a weak commander in chief. Gowon was a nice man. Commander in chiefs are not supposed to be gentlemen alone, but officers and gentlemen. Gowon became too much of a gentleman to become an officer. If he became supreme commander as a compromise, he took it too lamely. He was a Christian to douse the southern suspicions of Hausa-Fulani hegemony, and he was a northerner to restrain northern hubris. He would not rein in Shuwa or Muhammed because he feared for his survival. Frankly, if he was rash with the two men, they might have ousted him and complicated the ethnic and political fragility of the country. But both men were killing Nigerians and Biafrans in avoidable bloodbaths. Gowon did not have cunning and statecraft like Lincoln, and he sacrificed his survival for a prolonged war. Murtala was on a tear pillaging his own men. Shuwa did not know the difference between strategy and tactics, and moved from village to village as Igbo ran away from their villages, fuelling the charge of pogrom, which was hard to deny. What of the last days of the war? Achuzia claimed he never went to Akinrinade to surrender. I would want to know if he went to him in the thick of night for a picnic. And why did Ojukwu run away? Or was Effiong then a traitor? Even a book on Air Raid will be a good document of that era. Madiebo said he lied about being at the Abagana massacre.

    A century after the conflicts, books roll out each year on the United States civil war. Abraham Lincoln’s role inspires books every year. The First and Second World Wars enjoy the chronicles of historians, novelists, memoirists, and they visit various parts, whether it is Operation Barbaroosa, or the Battle of the Bulge, or the battle of Britain, or the detention at Auschwitz or Sobribo or Hitler or Churchill, or the French resistance and General de Gaulle, or Musolini also known as the Sawdust Caesar, etc.

    If our young know history, they know their country. Tragically, the old, including our leaders, know little about our past, except the ones they experienced. If they know our history, they would know that some things happening today hark back to our past. The Rivers State crisis reechoes the rumbles of the Western region crisis. The killings of the North reverberate with the scatological details of the pogrom of the 1960s. The forming of the APC as a party harks back to NNA versus UPGA in the First Republic, PPA versus NPN in Second Republic and, under IBB, SDP versus NRC. Hence philosopher Nietzsche wrote about the theory of eternal return. The past makes us tenants of a haunted house.

    A few topics have engaged writers like the coup led by Nzeogwu and the countercoup. Even at that, the accounts come less from detached writers than memoirists whose stories stand on personal prejudice. The reason for this is the failure and decline of our education, and the philistinism of a society that would not read. Where are the equivalents of Alan Bullock’s Hitler: A study in tyranny, AJP Taylor’s The Second World War, or Albert Carrie’s enquiry into the same subject, or William Shirer’s tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, or E.H Carr’s engagement with Bolsheviks Revolution?

    History is what we should honour and mourn, to paraphrase the classic Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. To honour the heroes by telling their story, and mourn what we lost with a view to pursuing paradise anew. History is never boring, it is our engagement for renewal. The other day, I asked a student who Bukar Dimka was? He didn’t know. He was in his last year in the university.

    When we study history, we engage the present. We look at then to see now. A new movie, The Great Gatsby, is now running in theatres around the world, lashes at wealth from false values. It is based on a novel of the same title. Many critics say the revisit of the film is inspired by the recent economic crash just like the one that happened at the time Scott F. Fitzgerald wrote. They were right, but that book prophesied the power of history with the following lines: “So we beat on, boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

  • And father beheads son

    It is increasingly getting clearer by the day that Nigeria is home to all manner of crimes considered taboos in our traditional African societies. Hardly does any day pass by without reports of sundry blood-chilling crimes in parts of the country. Even societies that ordinarily should be expected to maintain some level of moral decorum are turning out the worst culprits.

    Or how do we explain the recent report of the beheading of a five-year-old boy in Adamawa State by his father for money? The man identified by the police simply as Bappah allegedly beheaded his son Buba Bappah with the intent of selling the head to a ritualist just for N1million. Having struck a deal with a ritualist, the man lured his son out to the farm ostensibly as a helping hand. While in the farm, he beheaded the poor boy and returned home having concealed his decapitated head.

    The grand father of the boy, worried by the inability of Bappah to return with him inquired on his whereabouts. He was told that the boy was still at the farm. Suspecting something amiss, he raised a search team to the farm which discovered to their astonishment the beheaded boy lying in a pool of his blood. Subsequently the grandfather reported the matter to the police which led to the arrest of the suspect.

    On interrogation, he confessed he intended to sell the head for N1million and use the money to buy cattle and take care of his aged parents. Ironically, it is the same parents that handed him over to the police. The above incident underscores very clearly, the degenerate level our society has sunk. As despicable, callous and inhuman as the action is, it has more than anything else shown the extent people can go to make quick money.

    Or how do we explain a 24-year old man beheading his own son with the sole aim of raising money to buy cattle and take ‘care of his aged parents’. If his confessions are anything to repose hope on, the life of his son is not worth that of cattle. For this, the boy had to die in the cruelest manner so that his father can buy cattle.

    Yet, we all know that the human being is the greatest gift God gave to the earth. He is undoubtedly the greatest asset on earth and the key to all productive activities. All these were lost on this obviously morally depraved man. Nothing can be more asinine than this. Even his other alibi of using the proceeds from his demented action to take care of his aged parents is not only puerile but very laughable.

    Though the lives of his aged parents are equally important, it is an abomination to kill anybody not to talk of ones own son just to make money. The urge to buy cattle or take care of one’s own parents cannot be a ground for this bestial and very reprehensible conduct. Children are considered very great assets to their parents. That is why parents toil day and night in order to cater for their children who will in turn take care of them at old age. It is not envisaged that a man will kill his son under any guise how much less on the grounds confessed by the suspect. The fact that it is the same parents he claimed he will use part of the money to take care of that handed him over to the police, shows the abnormality of his inhuman action.

    Sociologist and criminologists have extensively identified the various reasons and factors that can lead people to crime. But the willful beheading of a son by his father just for monetary reward will obviously strike them as a big puzzle especially in a society as ours where morals still occupy a prime position in people’s daily conduct.

    It is true that urbanization and sophistication in life activities have brought with them a variety of crimes that were hitherto considered alien on these shores. But in most of those criminal engagements, those who indulge in them do so mainly to take care of themselves and their immediate families.

    And in the consideration of this immediate family, ones children, wife or husband come into prime focus.

    It therefore runs contrary to the normal course of events for a man to kill his son for the purpose of raising money to take care of aged parents. Children are the greatest assets any parent can boast of. All parents treasure their children and expect that with them, their families will not be cut off the face of the earth. They also envision that at death, it is their children that will ensure they are given a befitting burial. In most parts of the country, it is considered an abnormality for a child to die before his parents. In some of those cultures, parents are not even allowed to see the corpses of their children.

    The point here is that we attach so much value on our children that it is neigh inconceivable for a father to harm his son. And this man had the courage to lure out and behead his son just for money to buy cattle and cater for his old parents who may be nearing their graves on account of age. If a man could kill his son for money, then such a person is a great danger to the society. He has no value for human life and therefore ought not to live.

    The law enforcement agencies should thoroughly investigate this man further. It is possible this is not the first time he is getting involved in this devilish act. A man, who kills his own son just for that amount, is a very potent danger to the society. Who knows the number of those who have fallen prey to his craze for money before he opted for the life of his own son?

    After investigations to ascertain whether he has been on ritual business before now, he should be promptly arraigned at a court of competent jurisdiction together with the person who offered money for the boy’s head. They should be made to account for their misdeeds. Perhaps, had the man not offered to buy the head, Bappah would not have been tempted to kill his son.

    It is to be imagined the type of scenario that played out as this man lifted his knife to kill the poor boy. I can see the boy confused at the first instance wondering whether it was a play. I can also see the poor boy holding his father and begging him to spare his life. But despite all cries and entreaties the devil that was Bappah refused to be moved and had to cut off the head of the poor boy. What an extreme act of callousness! Nothing can be more blood chilling than this.

    But beyond this, the law enforcement agencies must investigate the veracity of the claim that people use human heads and vital organs of the body for ritual purposes. The common belief here is that human parts are used by native doctors and sundry occultist persons to make money or gain power. The ever rising rate of murders involving the severance of vital organs of victims that dot the entire gamut of the country are attributed to the thriving mill of ritual activities. It is high time we got at the root of these senseless killings and utter disregard for the sanctity of the human life.

  • As APC comes on board

    Those truly committed to the survival of democracy in this country must have heaved a heavy sigh of relief at the registration by the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Announcing the registration of the new party which is a coalition of three registered political parties, INEC anchored its decision on the fact that they complied with all the statutory requirements for the merger. It therefore approved the withdrawal of the registration certificates of the three parties and will in turn issue them with a single one for the APC

    Expectedly, many well-meaning Nigerians have been showering encomiums on both the INEC and the merging parties for what is largely seen as the opening up of the political space for the electorate. This is more so given the dominance of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party PDP and fears of a slide to a one party state. The current acrimony and tension in that party resulting from the ambition of contending interests is largely because of its dominance in the political affairs of the country in the absence of a strong alternative party that could pull a serious challenge at the national level.

    On account of this, internal democracy and sovereignty of the electorate have been relegated to backdoor. Though there are many registered parties, some cannot even field candidates during elections and where they manage to do so, the impact is almost zero. The very relatively strong ones have their strengths largely confined to their zones. Thus, we had been left with the PDP as the only party with the strength to prosecute national elections; deploying the power of incumbency to advantage. The matter was not helped by the continuous registration of all manner of parties seen in some quarters as a deliberate ploy to weaken the emergence of a formidable opposition to confront the ruling PDP. But all that has been substantially altered with the registration of the APC. This should be something to cheer for all those who have had their ambitions shattered by lack of accommodation in the ruling party in the absence of a viable and broad based alternative platform. There is also the higher danger posed to democracy through the dominance of the political horizon by a single party. Apart from denying the electorate the right to choice both in terms of candidates and programs, a one party state stifles new ideas and innovation. In fact, it is another name for dictatorship. And we have seen these features play out since our return to democracy. That was why the PDP had the temerity to dare Nigerians with the trash that it will rule the country for as long as it pleases them. Such a statement given the performance profile of that party must be a serious insult to the sensibilities of the electorate. But the PDP had its reasons for so doing. Then was the time when some of the parties had no visible structures in many parts of the country. And at elections, the PDP had a field day doing whatever pleases it given the absence of representatives of some parties at the polling booths. This has become a thing of the past.

    Given the way APC emerged and the political figures driving it, there is no doubt that we are in for a serious competition between the two parties.

    In the days ahead, we expect to see the PDP making frantic efforts to mend its tattered umbrella. At present, the party is deeply embroiled in serious crises with many futile efforts to resolve them. Even the most recent effort at reconciliation, has again run into serious hitch because the issues at stake are largely irreconcilable.

    Thus, the APC enjoys a lot of goodwill which must be put to advantage. The sacrifice all its promoters made to see the new party to fruition must be commended even by the most incurable antagonist.

    As heart-warming as the development is, there is a lot of work awaiting the new party. Happily, the merger arose as a protest against the undemocratic tendencies of the PDP and the desire to give the electorate an alternative platform for political action and choice.

    Every effort must be made to live up to this bidding. There have been predictions by the opposition that the new party will soon rupture on account of disputations when sharing offices. This must not be allowed to happen. Like in every human organization, there are bound to be those posturing to take advantage of the new party without due regard to all the interests in the coalition. There are some others waiting in the wings to capture its structures for their selfish interests. These must not be allowed to happen as the new party cannot afford to commence this journey with disenchantment and schism in some of its chapters. Political recruitment must be broad based and all inclusive.

    There are also critical issues of our national being that the new party must as a matter of deliberate policy balance. There is the need to reassure the various geo-political zones that their interests and sensibilities will be accommodated and protected in the new arrangement. This is pertinent in view of the raging crisis in the ruling party on which of the geo-political zones will produce the president come 2015. The APC must come out clearly on the way power has to rotate among the contending blocks in this country.

    As at now, that of the PDP has run into mud waters and stuck. The APC must reassure Nigerians that the presidency is not the exclusive preserve of any body or any part of the country as all Nigerians and sections have inalienable right to that office. It must ensure that the sensibilities and interests of all sections are placed on the table and accommodated at this initial stage of its coming into being and learn from the mistakes of the PDP. It must be seen from its actions and programs as the real alternative to the ruling party. Some of the issues that are increasingly playing up in this country and which may shape the unfolding competition are the twin issues of religion and geo-politics.

    They must be handled very carefully so as not to injure the feelings of any group or section. Happily, we are in a secular state. That secularity must not only be upheld but must be seen to be so. These are the issues the people will be looking out for and the way they are piloted in the days ahead will make the difference.

    It is therefore good a thing that the APC has come on stream despite the efforts of some phony groups to lay claim to its acronym. Those promoting all manner of groups, inventing acronyms that are similar to that of the APC were obviously at mischief. The target was to frustrate this bold and high-minded effort by three registered parties to coalesce into a single political party. The merger strikes as a landmark event in the annals of this country.

    Those who sought to frustrate it were people benefiting from the subsisting but decadent order. They must hide their faces in shame. Why the interest in the acronym APC? If they are that serious, let them pursue their vaulting ambition for national recognition through another name. After all, it is not the acronym that will win election when the time comes. All said, the registration of the APC is a thing whose time has come.

  • Peter Obi’s opera

    Peter Obi’s opera

    A few days earlier in Dakar, the humble capital of Senegal, on the seaside tranquility of one of its tony hotels, I contemplated Camara Laye, the under-song author of Africa’s most realised novel, Radiance of King. The book is a localised rendition of Kafka’s mad work of genius, The Castle. There the German Jew tackles the epic emptiness of search.

    I had not resettled here in Nigeria on my return when I picked up the rumble between Lagos State and Anambra State, and I could not but take another journey – mental this time – to Senegal. I recalled another author, Aminata Sow Fall, who wrote an African classic titled, The Beggar’s Strike.

    Governor Peter Obi, the feminine-voiced matador of Anambra State, should read that book, if he has not. If he has, he should read it again. It is the story of the revenge of beggars against the patriarchal art of oppression in Africa. In 2011, Gov. Obi did not show much empathy for the mendicant profession. The beggars came from Akwa Ibom State, and Obi did not like them. He ordered, according to the reports, about 29 of them out of the streets of Awka and Onitsha.

    Unknown to him, the wraiths and spirits of the beggars would haunt him, just as the beggars stalked the government bullies in Sow Fall’s novella. The alternative title Fall gave her book is Dregs of Society.

    Fast forward to 2013. The Lagos State Government of the governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, ordered the repatriation of 14 destitute persons to Anambra State, and Obi is crying foul. The beggars have come home to roost!

    No hoopla attended the Akwa Ibom incident from Godswill Akpabio, the ebullient governor of the state. This author does not know if Obi wrote Akpabio and handed the beggars to a government person. The Anambra State Government has not, as Lagos has shown, demonstrated in public any exchange of correspondence with the other government before the repatriation order.

    But as documents have evinced, the Lagos State government rescued the Anambra State citizens from the streets. They were not just lunatics but destitute. They were not child beggars as in the case of Anambra State, but adults. Unlike in Anambra State, the destitute received humane treatment. They enjoyed relocation from the severity of the streets to the serenity and comfort of shelter, food and medical treatment. The Lagos State Government also wrote the Anambra State liaison office to inform them that they had the persons under their care and wanted to relocate them. The State replied asking for details of the persons, and Lagos provided the facts. According to the state, the care was costing the state. So a plan was put in place with the knowledge of the state to repatriate the persons.

    Officials of the Anambra State Government were, according to the arrangement, to wait on the Anambra end of the Niger Bridge. But when the Lagos State bearers of the destitute persons arrived, the Anambra State Government representatives did not show up. The persons were then handed to a government office nearby. This negates the claim by Obi and some of the mischief makers that the persons were dumped at the bridge. I would concede that the Lagos State officials should have consulted Lagos and should have returned the fellows to Lagos.

    But this does not mean that the Lagos officials erred. Any government office ought to have taken custody of them and reported to the appropriate authority. What this shows is that Obi was probably not duly informed of the proceedings up to that point by his officers in Lagos and Awka, or the whispering, solemn-faced governor was doing havoc with the situation.

    The issuance of letters from Fashola’s government to Obi’s liaison office reflected earnestness and respect not only for the government of Anambra State but also for the persons involved.

    That explains why some Nigerians have expressed dismay at Obi’s irritability and emotive recklessness in his letter to the President as though Fashola had declared war on the people of Anambra State. It shows that Obi and his government do not operate on Fashola’s due process style. A letter from a government to another is sacrosanct, and a governor should not shout hoarse, and Obi cannot shout if he tried. But the virus of accusation has been read in many quarters as opportunistic and defensive.

    In the atmosphere of the registration of All Progressives Congress, Obi should be wary not to conflate an innocuous matter into an ethnic virus. This is dangerous and reckless. The Igbo form a significant population in Lagos, and the record shows that the Igbo have enjoyed warm reception in the state. They do business without let, and have earned rights in the state like any other group. It can be argued that other than Yoruba, the Igbo are the most favoured. They also play roles in government that Obi has not given any outsider in Anambra.

    In these days of ethnic rage, we do not expect a man like Obi to be what the Bible calls, “the accuser of our brethren.” In spite of evidence of letters, Obi lied that Lagos State did not communicate with the authorities of Anambra State.

    As Fashola has noted, why did Obi not call Fashola before escalating the matter into a potential Igbo versus Yoruba matter. Obi’s eyes are also set on the battle for Anambra State governor polls scheduled for November 16. He wants to pour venom into the relationship between former governor Ngige and his people by tagging him with the brush of the friend of the enemy, or the friend of the Yoruba.

    Akwa Ibom recently sent two destitute persons to Lagos, and Lagos did not raise any hubbub over it. The letters between both states also tell the decorum between both states. The use of the word deportation is not only wrong but tendentious. This is a federation, and the relationship between Lagos and Anambra is not between nations but parts of a nation.

    It is wrong and wrong-headed to exploit the destitute. The destitute is the worst any human can get materially. If Obi reads the Russian classic Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyvsky, he would accompany the old drunk who distinguished the destitute from the poor. The poor may have a little, and survive. The destitute person is like an empty well.

    But Obi should be careful not to fall into what is worse than material destitution. That is moral destitution. That wreaks of dishonor, and that was what I saw in a play titled, Three Penny Opera written by German playwright Bertolt Brecht. It is the story of a leader of a beggar’s colony who wants to take advantage of them for profit. He lost the pride of his daughter to the bargain.

    Obi should not prostitute the pride of Anambra State on the platform of political and ethnic opportunism.

  • Don’t marry that girl

    Don’t marry that girl

    Former Zamfara State Governor Sani Yerima has become a metaphor for the wrong thing. Some politicians pray and strive to be statesmen. Others want to go down in history for planting the green, bright light of hope on the wilderness of despair. Some want to tackle education, healthcare, infrastructure, the rule of law, peace and stability. Alhaji Shehu Shagari was a naïve, irreparable bumbler as president, but he, at least, posted himself as the president of peace and stability. He never had violence to tackle although he did violence to the word by misusing it. However, he had to celebrate something, if it amounted to glorious vanity.

    But Yerima wants a company all his own. He wants to be a poster child for tackling children for romance. Not the girl child for education, or the sanctity of fidelity, or the nourishment of the mother for maternity. His struggle, lofty in his eyes, is that any man worth his macho pride, with his hubris in high gear, can marry any girl once, according to him, she starts menstruating.

    That is the education of Yerima. As our comedy turned farce of a political society has it, the matter came up for debate in the Senate, and the scores are out: Yerima one, Nigeria zero.

    They deployed the law, while deliberating over citizenship and marriage and how anyone can renounce their citizenship of Nigeria. The lawmakers enjoyed temporary sanity when they expunged from the law a clause that said, “any woman who married shall be deemed to be of full age.” That was Section 29 (4) (b) of the constitution of Nigeria. Ordinarily the existence of that phrase would have made no sense and caused no stir because of the specification in earlier clauses in the constitution that pegs the minimum age of marriage at 18. But Section 29 (4) (b) had already inspired a special interpretation by minds with tendency to pedophilia. So, as the men take away the innocence of the small girls, they also take away the innocence of the phrase. The only way to sanity lay in deleting that line. How did the lawmakers lose their assured brilliance of expunging it? How did they yield, like the little girl, to the hectoring logic of the pedophile?

    Senate President David Mark’s circumlocutions to a group of indignant women that included Maryam Uwais, Chidi Odinkalu and Oby Ezekwesili, reflect two things: one, we live in a man’s world that does not understand that the muscular cave man’s will does not enshrine wisdom and manliness. Two, that our lawmakers are still out of touch with the preliminary responsibility of the legislature.

    We also cannot forget, if we would, the comedy from Ondo. Senator Ayo Akinyelure prostrated and waxed apologetic for appending his lawmaker’s imprint in that inglorious hour. He knew, unlike Yerima, that dire consequences awaited his legislative foolishness.

    But that is the point. In spite of the hoopla in the media, especially in the South, the North has advanced a conspiratorial silence. Hardly a role model from the North has lifted a finger, or encouraged institutional umbrage against the pedophilia of one of their own. He, like many of his types in the North, do not understand that marrying a 13-year-old, is rape. To them, it is a brilliant catch, the downing of a sweet nubile bird from the virgin tree of life. They think God gave men the female folk for plaything, to scavenge, to toy with, to torpedo. It is all right to cut off the hand of thief; it is also right to defile a girl of nine.

    What people like Yerima want the world to understand is that it is in accordance the law of Islam. There is no evidence in the Islamic law that encourages pedophilia. Islam calls for the dignity of women. What he and others like him are doing belong to a culture rooted in African male chauvinism. This practice existed in other parts of Nigeria in the past. But we all know that the law has criminalised any betrothal to a female below the age of 18.

    We still see in all parts of Nigeria the abuse of childhood. We still see underage peddling wares in the Southwest, and East, and in the rural areas, gifted young girls are clobbered to death as witches. In Akwa Ibom State, Governor Godswill Akpabio is still waging war against the retrograde virus in our southern soul.

    Yerima married a 13-year-old. He even had patience. Many have married girls below that age, even taking to wife girls of about nine years of age. A medical condition has resulted from this, and that is what scientists call VVF (Vesico Virginal Fistula), now rampant in the North. It destroys the pelvis and reproductive region of the girl. But the girl has nowhere to go, and so she must live with the inanity of her biological tragedy.

    We must admit that, like the almajiri system now caviled at, the girl child problem in the North has festered for long. So it will take deep structural change to save her. The Boko Haram scourge is beginning to force the Northern elite to rethink the almajiri problem. It will take a generation to fix that. But it has to start now.

    As for the girl child, the tradition has grown for long. The girl child who marries at the age of 12 knows that her daughter will marry at about that age. The men expect that their wives ought to be that young. It is not only enshrined in the culture. It is a psychological reality with the male.

    But we know that the leaders can change this. We know they know how awful the system endangers the girl. The elite no longer give away their daughters to any man who wants to rock the cradle. They rather send them to school. Some of them attend the best high schools and universities around the world. In 2009, Aisha Dalhatu received the United States’ Award for Educational Excellence for her stellar performance in school. President Barack Obama handed her the prize. She hails from Kano, and she could have been any of those girls subjected to the deviant erotica of clueless old men. Many of the girls suffer this and their dreams suffer, too.

    In my year as a youth corps member in Kano, I saw this daily. The apprenticeship into such marital servitude begins when the girls, in as early seven years old, parade the streets hawking trays of wares. They are subjected to the leery eyes and persuading libidos of men who invite them away from the streets.

    The only remedy to this will be by law and support of the elite, not with people like Yerima and Goje. A law should make it punishable to the parents or guardians of any girl that does not complete at least a secondary level education. That will deter anyone to marry any girl and subject her to the lurid imagination of men with uncircumcised minds.

    We have this sort of men everywhere in the world. In the U.S. and Europe, such uncouth men travel to Asia to patronise the market for underage girls. They cannot marry them, but they use them as sex slaves.

    I call this the Lolita Syndrome based on the novel Lolita written by prose spirit Vladimir Nabokov. It has become the story of pedophilia, of an old man debauching a girl and running away with her. Some critics have seen it as metaphor for abuse of power. In a Nigeria of impunity, a Yerima can defend himself in the same way that our political class has thrived on impunity. Marrying a girl before the age of consent is impunity and a metaphor of our disdain for law and decency.

  • Antics of five governors

    Apparently piqued by the worsening political temperament of the country, five governors from the north, last week embarked on consultations with some elder statesmen with a view to stemming the slide. The governors- Aliyu Babangida (Niger) Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Sule Lamido (Jigawa) Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano) and Aliu Wammako (Sokoto) held discussions with Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalam Abubakar, all former military rulers of this country. Feelers from some of those who attended the meetings indicated that top on their agenda were the festering crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the feud in the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) and the political crisis in Rivers State. Also on the table was the marginalization of some PDP governors by both the party and the presidency as well as the hurling of pebbles on the convoy of these governors when they visited their colleague of Rivers State.

    They were equally reported to have said that their main concern is not with where power swings in 2015 but the prospects of the tense political atmosphere derailing that election. For them, the road to the election is strewn with thorns such that the former leaders needed to intervene before things go awry.

    Not much has been heard from those they visited. But Babangida must have been so impressed by the concerns raised by the governors that he did not waste time in describing them as patriots. By that, the impression we get is that they are genuinely concerned and prepared to sacrifice for the peace, unity and progress of this country. That should be good news to all fair-minded people.

    This is not an attempt to diminish Babangida’s assessment of the motive behind the governors’ action.

    This is more so as the issues raised are already in public domain. There is no doubt that recent events in the country, especially the crisis in the ruling PDP, that of the NGF and its manifestation in the show of shame in Rives State have elicited genuine concerns about the fate of democracy. If the five governors were moved by genuine desires to save the country from the slide to the precipice, they may well qualify as patriots as Babangida has labeled them.

    But there are issues that can be raised against their composition and agenda. It is curious why the ‘patriotic’ governors did not include the menace of the Boko Haram insurgency as a very potent destabilizing factor requiring urgent therapeutic response. Boko Haram is even more threatening and devastating to our corporate existence than the items in their agenda. Moreover, most of the issues raised can be encapsulated within the domestic problems of the ruling party. No doubt, they could have wider repercussions for the country but they are the making of the PDP. Boko Haram is of a wider and more destructive dimension. To have left it out of their agenda did considerable harm to the credit which Babangida sought to give them. It is difficult to fathom how their largely skewed agenda can lead to national fame.

    It is not clear how the five governors were selected. But they are all members of the PDP. Incidentally also, they are known to hold views contrary to those of the presidency and the PDP especially on the country’s power equation. They are known sympathizers of Governor Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State who has turned out the anchor point of the opposition to President Jonathan.

    The five governors are entitled to their views. The opinions they currently hold on issues of our national being cannot be circumscribed. In fact, some of them have won the admiration of some people for their principled stance on issues.

    But their inability to attract some of the pro-Jonathan governors in that part of the country to their team lends their motive to suspicion.

    Hard as they try to convince the rest of us that power shift is not at the centre of their self-assigned consultations, it is still hard to believe.

    The problems the governors raised are just symptoms of the innate political sickness afflicting the country. They are all linked to 2015. If Jonathan announces today he will not present himself for the 2015 election, they will fizzle out unilaterally.

    But, that will not be the end of our problems. Sooner or later, they will rear up their ugly heads in other forms as we are yet to tackle the root of them all. And as long as we fail to genuinely address these fundamental distortions, so long will they remain a recurring decimal in our national affairs. Even if power moves back to the north in 2015, it is no guarantee that these systemic frictions will abate. They will not. At best, we would have succeeded in assuaging the feelings of a section of the north albeit temporarily. Within this north and south dichotomy, the fate of the Igbo, one of the tripod on which this country was erected and northern minorities has been relegated to the background. Moving power back to the north has not in any way addressed the grouses of these sections. They will be worse off when this happens given the number of years the north has held that post. With the posturing of the north, it is uncertain the use they intend to put political power when once they get. Key northerners are known to have said that rotation is dead. And when we juxtapose this to recent statements from northern elders and Arewa Consultative Forum that the north has the population to snatch power and retain it as long as it pleases it, then the danger lurking around becomes very manifest.

    It stands to reason that reverting power to the north is not a solution to the centrifugal tendencies that have gained higher momentum in the last couple of years. It will rather reinforce the fears of sections continually shunted out of the commanding heights of key national positions and institutions. These groups will in no distant time, begin to vent their pent up grievances. There is mistrust, suspicion and ill-feelings among the diverse groups on these shores due to inequitable distribution of power and resources. It is on account of these that some people organized themselves to throw stones on the northern governors who were on a legitimate solidarity visit to their colleague in Port Harcourt.

    Some of those who spoke accused Amaechi of wasting their money hosting the northern governors. What money one may wish to ask? Their posters had some unprintable inscriptions that could further fuel embers of discord. That is how bad the mistrust is. But that is their mood. One of the governors succinctly captured this dilemma when he wondered what would have happened in the north had harm come their way.

    It is vital we give deep thought to stemming the recurring frictions that have over the years, stood against national integration. Power shift being a symptom of the larger national disorder cannot effectively address the nagging issues of our federal order. Power is sought desperately in this country because sections want to gain advantage over others. Such a posturing cannot promote fairness, justice, equity and national cohesion. Jonathan may as well vacate office for the north in 2015. But the manner he is being harassed out of the contest may end up swelling a groundswell of public sympathy for him both in the south and the Middle Belt.

     

  • Northerners and power shift

    Ango Abdullahi, secretary to the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) reopened the debate on power shift when he declared last week, that the north was determined to reclaim power come 2015. Exuding incredible confidence on the prospects of the northern project, Abdullahi anchored his optimism on two key planks. The first is the logic of rotation while the other draws impetus from the touted demographic advantage of the region.

    He said the north will rely heavily on the fact that it is its turn to have a shot at that office as was agreed by stakeholders before and during Obasanjo’s regime and in keeping with the constitution of the ruling party. Where this fails to sail through, they will call to action the sheer weight of their numbers to win the ensuing election given the principles of one man one vote.

    Hear him, “the north is determined and insisting that the leadership of the country will rotate to it in 2015 and I am making that very clear to you. If it is on the basis of one man one vote, the demography shows that the north can keep power as long as it wants because it will always win elections”.

    He went on to show how the rotation of power as a way of giving a sense of belonging to the distinct groups in the country was arrived at the 1987 National Political Reforms Conference. Obasanjo became its first beneficiary because of events of the annulled June 12, 1993 elections. According to him, it was supposed to last for four years but later extended due to pleas from Obasanjo to serve for another term since the constitution allows that.

    “With Obasanjo’s eight years and six years of Jonathan come 2015, it would amount to taking the north for granted if Jonathan who was part of this agreement (having signed as number 37 in his capacity as deputy governor of Bayelsa State) puts himself forward for another election”, he would further contend.

    It is difficult not to admit the weighty argument by the north in respect of rotation of power in this country. Obasanjo must have paid heed to it when he manipulated his way to have late Umaru Yar’Adua run as the presidential candidate of the ruling party. He won. But his death after two years in the saddle, unleashed a chain of events that are at the centre of the current crisis of confidence among key political gladiators in this country. The management of his sickness left much to be desired even as contrived obstacles were placed on Jonathan’s way to assuming his constitutional role as acting president until the Senate intervened. All these may have ruffled nerves. We were told by late National Security Adviser, Andrew Azazi that violence in this country peaked following the primaries of the PDP that threw up Jonathan. It would appear security challenges since Jonathan came to power, complicated the disposition of the geo-political zones to the power equation in the country. They also gave rise to palpable fear and apprehension regarding what use the north intends to make of political power. No thanks to the killings of innocent people and destruction of their properties by the Boko Haram sect obsessed with enthroning an Islamic state after the south has been sacked out of the north.

    One mute point here is that, the north intends to realize its power shift project by rotation through the ruling Peoples Democratic Party PDP or where this fails, they will prosecute the same goal through any other party. On the latter, the sheer weight of their population promises to be the game changer. They are saying very unambiguously that power must shift to the north in the next election whether Jonathan runs or not. If the logic of rotation fails and they corner power through their demographic advantage, then it is good by to power shift as they can decide to retain power as long as it pleases them. That is the clear message Abdullahi has sent across which should not be ignored.

    But then the political arithmetic canvassed by Abdullahi is not as simple as it has been put forward. By the 2006 census figures, the north accounts for 52.56 per cent of the population while that of the south is 46.35. Even then, these figures represent the absolute population and not the number of eligible or even registered voters. There is also the misplaced and untenable assumption that all northerners will vote for the northern candidate while all southerners will queue behind a southerner. This is not borne out of our electoral history and strikes as an act of desperation. Moreover, the concept of a monolithic north is by all accounts stale even as Abdullahi would want us to reason to the contrary. Whatever led northern elders to the conclusion that the 2015 election can be fought solely along the north and south divide must be a huge disappointment to the unity of this country. Is it not an uncanny twist of fate that, youths under the umbrella of Northern Youths Network have dissociated themselves from statements credited to NEF and ACF on return of power to the region come 2015? Its president Mallam Alli Kano said those canvassing power shift to the north in 2015 are doing so for selfish reasons as ethnicity, religion and primordial sentiments which the elders had employed to sway choices during elections must be discarded as we prepare for 2015. The elders can as well dismiss this. But such dissenting views were unthinkable in the past.

    There is even a more grave danger in an election that is fought along the lines of the north and south divide. Its outcome given extant realities is loaded with frightening prospects of facilitating the failure of the Nigerian state. Then, earlier predictions from the US would have become a self-fulfilling prophesy. These are the potent dangers in the NEF argument. If the 2015 election is fought and won along these divisions, it will be nigh impossible for the winner to take off as he will not be able to muster the required majority in the National Assembly. The ensuing disputations will quickly catalyze the same disastrous end.

    So Abdullahi and his likes are not doing this nation any good by inventing warped and self-serving arguments all in the desperation to corner power by all means. It would have been of more national appeal if they had argued that where rotation fails, the north will work with fair- minded people from the south to prosecute the same goal. But to give the impression that the north can do away with the south and retain power for ever is the height of deceit and stupidity.

    Even as the logic of rotation is very valid, the posturing of the NEF on the issue of demography brings into focus some of the systemic dysfunctions that are at the root of the festering mistrust and suspicion among our people. Some weeks back, the chairman of the National Population Commission, Festus Odimegwu shocked the nation when he revealed that some of the enumeration centres we have do not exist in reality as some people bought them same way politicians bought voters’ cards to gain advantage. The figures the NEF is bandying may not scale the test of this revelation.

    More fundamentally, the dispute over power shift points to the fact that there some irreducible issues of our federal order we need to reach common agreement on for us to make any progress.

    We need to address more seriously, the inequities and structural imbalances of our national existence contrived to gain advantage over some other sections. Curiously each time the idea of a national conference is canvassed the same north will be the lead opposition.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Obituary

    Obituary

    When former President Olusegun Obasanjo penned his war memoirs, he called it My Command, a cocky title since no one expected anything less than command for a general’s account of his soldiery during the Nigerian Civil War. Again whose command should it have been? Could he have woven the war tales of another general? Readers would have called him presumptuous. Yet, when his fellow combatants read his story, they called him presumptuous. They implied that the earthy man lied through his pen, the man who ran this country twice, once as civilian and the other as soldier, who claimed victory for the war, who affects the air of the soldier as statesman, who even tinkers with the toga of thinker, was not the soldier he claimed. To his credit though, Obasanjo might have claimed to be a soldier but not a gentleman.

    Last week, in the presence of other generals, a new book was launched by a participant and witness. The book, titled The Tragedy of Victory, shot to attention through a series of interviews the author, General Alabi Isama, granted this newspaper.

    At the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, the book, My Command, was ambushed, tackled, shot and killed. It was also buried without fanfare. The command was led by Isama, with a book as counter-narrative. The pictures and maps served as artilleries, the memories and other documents as bullets. But the witnesses who materialised on stage at the launch starred as the bombs. The grenadiers include the urbane General Alani Akinrinade, the fiery General Theophilus Danjuma, the genteel General Yakubu Gowon as well as General Mobolaji Johnson, General Sunday Tuoyo, Col. Oyinlade Iluyomade, aka Hitler, Major Salau. We also had the female testimonies from Mrs. Utuk and Senator Ita-Giwa.

    The witnesses came one after the other to attest to the testimony of Isama. Two truths cannot inhabit one room, since one represents light and the other darkness. With the blast of illumination from Isama’s book, Obasanjo’s My Command slid into an obituary. So My Command, aged 32, was buried in a ceremony of witnesses. Kunle Ajibade, a master book reviewer, brought the book alive for the audience. For irony, a lady named Taiwo Obasanjo, the creator’s ex-wife, said the closing prayers.

    When generals tell war stories they owe us truths. It is a point of view but it ought to be faithful to facts. Hence other generals have written stories like the legendary but brash George Patton who titled his memoirs War As I Knew It.

    My Command told basic stories. One, that he was the true hero of the 3 Marine Commando. Two, all the other generals and subordinates stumbled. Three, that he crafted the strategy that ended the war. That the 3 Marine Commando women operated mainly as flesh comforts for the soldiers. Maps also told the stories. Isama called Obasanjo a blundering general. Obasanjo denied the claims. At the launch, he painted a picture of a fleeing Obasanjo in battle who suffered a bullet in the buttocks.

    Isama’s account made better sense to me because of the authority of the pictures and maps and the consistency of the narrative. Nothing helped this position than the corroboration from Akinrinade and the others.

    Isama’s book told important stories. One, that General Benjamin Adekunle, who commanded the division before Obasanjo took over, gave a good account of himself until the latter part of the hostilities when he became paranoid. According to Isama, and confirmed by Akinrinade, Adekunle plotted an ambush and murder of the two gentlemen. Adekunle, through his son, backed Isama’s accounts. The book also unveils the interconnectedness of the war, Igbo fighting for Nigeria and Nigerians fighting for Biafra. Isama shows pictures of Igbo caught in battle but they signed up to fight for Nigeria. It depicted the war as a meaningless bloodshed of brothers.

    Gowon came across as a bumbling commander in chief who ran a war without a central command. Isama fought shy of that conclusion but it was obvious as General Madiebo affirms in his books. Akinrinade confirmed this in a recent interview with this newspaper. Gowon could not rein in his errant generals. He also has blood of thousands on his hands for not stopping General Murtala Muhammed from forcing his troops across the Niger Bridge. As Akinrinade and also Isama show, it threw soldiers into a suicide dive. Murtala, the erratic general who played hero in his short time as Nigeria’s ruler, gave account of himself as a strategic tragedy, bearing deaths and wounded. He could not escape the charge of genocide in the Igbo-speaking Midwest.

    Also bumbling was General Shuwa, who commanded the First Division. He kept moving from village to village in the East, a thing that forced the Igbo into a rudderless life of impoverished wanderers. Nigeria did not design the war to kill Igbo but to defeat Biafra. His understanding of war, as Akinrinade himself confessed, could have taken the war another ten years. Those who call Shuwa a hero miss the point, and Gowon, the leader, played the politics of survival and let Shuwa and Murtala their tyrannous runs. Gowon became head of state as a Christian, non-Hausa-Fulani compromise in the aftermath of the pogrom that killed Igbo and other southerners who were not Yoruba. Historians should get the facts right. The pogrom was directed at Igbo but killed non-Igbo in huge numbers. That accounted for the preliminary neutrality of Midwest at the beginning of the conflict. No one has accounted for the number of Efiks, Annang and Ibibio slaughtered in the North. The phrase Igbo pogrom understates the fatalities of other ethnic groups.

    Gowon wanted to entrench himself and so would not upset his applecart by expressing authority over two supposedly northern generals. Murtala was from the old Midwest, now Edo, by birth, although he lay claim to the North. Gowon was, therefore, too weak a soldier to craft a grand scheme and implement them. He was lucky Biafra did not pull through Ore. Thanks to soldiers like Iluyomade who held off the numerically superior Biafran troops.

    In Isama’s narrative, the Biafran army blew important opportunities to win the war early. Why did Ojukwu, another bumbler, ask his army to undertake a long trek to Lagos? Why did the army not restrict itself to defend the East, which was the seceding entity? It was Ojukwu’s ego, his rivalry with Gowon but also, ironically, his divided selves as a Biafran who also was instinctively Nigerian all the same. Frederick Forsyth, who worked for Ojukwu, wrote recently that Victor Banjo lost the war. Banjo was an opportunist who hoodwinked Ojukwu but wanted to take over the country in the so-called Third Force. The Ija Ore that resulted led to a disorganised Biafran retreat to the Midwest. Why again did Biafra want to pass through Ibadan? Other routes of surprise existed? Say, for instance, Ilorin. The Ore narrative is still not fully told as yet.

    Why did Biafra recruit many Midwest Igbo officers of sterling records and abilities, and why, according to Isama, were all of them either locked up or killed for being saboteurs? The story begs for details how a whole corps of officers, who exhibited Biafran elan at the outset, became enemies? Was Ojukwu, like Adekunle, not paranoid? Isama said Adekunle wanted to conquer Aba, Owerri and Umuahia (OAU) to make a meeting of the Organisation of African Unity meeting in 1969. He neglected counsels of caution from Isama and Akinrinade about taking Owerri head on.

    Isama argued that Obasanjo took over and wanted to continue Adekunle’s follies. Obasanjo’s first foray was a disaster. He also remained in Port Harcourt and did not know how Akinrinade finished the war but used subterfuge to ensure that other generals like Shuwa, Muhammed, Adekunle did appear at the Biafran surrender ceremony.

    Was it not a statement of Ojukwu’s naivety that he had the best officers but failed because of strategic errors? As Tolstoy shows in his book of love and generals, War and Peace, a war is won not by those who shoot the gunpowder but those who devise the strategy. Ojukwu assumed that his army alone could win the war. Shuwa thought so too. Germany had the strongest army in the world when World War Two began; so did Napoleon in his wars. Weather, more than American prowess or Russian doggedness, humiliated Hitler. Snowed crippled the “little” generals machine.

    From Isama’s account, Biafra succeeded in propaganda to the outside world, but did not win the hearts of the minorities in the present Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Edo and Bayelsa states. They easily signed on to fight for 3 Marine Commando.

    Isama’s book raises many more issues. It is a book written with decency and candour but shows that war never solves anything. Germany rules Europe now without a shot, and all the battles have turned out to be a waste of lives. Isama did not want the fire of hate but healing power of truth. That is what My Command lost. We gained a better story from Isama

  • Danger signals from Rivers

    Rivers State House of Assembly played host to a theatre of the absurd last week. Five errant lawmakers in a 32-member assembly, apparently emboldened by support from ‘above’, hatched a devious plan to impeach the speaker and elect one of theirs as the new speaker. The planned resumption of sittings which the assembly had communicated the Police commissioner and the Army commander to provide adequate security turned out the undoing of the speaker and majority of the law makers.

    Unknown to them, the five dissenting legislators who take orders from Abuja had perfected plans for a showdown by importing ex-militants and thugs into the assembly complex preparatory to acting out a script crafted for them. In arriving at this suicide mission, it never occurred to them that both in terms of numbers and extant constitutional requirements, they were heading for an impossible task. But they trudged on apparently buoyed by recent events at the Nigerian Governors’ Forum election where a minority has since laid claim to its leadership with the full support of the presidency. If the five legislators had come to the conclusion that they could as well pull a surprise despite the heavy encumbrances on their way, it should not surprise any one. Basking on the backing or anticipated indifference of the law enforcement agencies, they made good their plan to stir trouble on the floor of the assembly. Curiously, five of them succeeded in instilling fear into 23 legislators loyal to the Rivers State governor to the extent that they had to scamper for safety. This further spurred them to the point of purportedly electing a new speaker. It took the intervention of Governor Amaechi for order to be restored after the ensuing confrontation. The assembly subsequently sat and approved an amendment to the 2013 budget presented to it by the deputy governor. That amendment was the main purpose for which the speaker summoned the assembly.

    Events in the assembly have generated condemnations from a broad spectrum of the Nigerian people. Not only are they irked by the seeming indifference of the police, accusing fingers, for good reason, have been pointed at the presidency for simulating the crisis in that state. The confrontation is generally viewed as a continuation of the crisis in the NGF since the dramatis personae has not changed. As was the case in the NGF crisis, the presidency has washed its hands off that show of shame. In a tepid statement hurriedly put together following its fingering for tacitly supporting the dissenting lawmakers, its spokesmen put up futile efforts to deny complicity from Abuja. Not many believed them anyway. It was a rehearsal of the same stale denials that hallmarked the crisis in the NGF until Jonathan openly roped himself into the matter by publicly recognizing the losers as winners. So if the same presidency is again denying vicarious culpability in the latest crisis, no body will take it serious. Not with the purported recognition of the so-called new ‘speaker’ by the Peoples Democratic Party PDP. Since it is the same enemy that is involved, the warring five may have come to the conclusion that any thing is possible in this country including an insignificant minority impeaching and having its way over the majority? After all, this will not be the first of it in our recent political past. We saw such a charade in its worst form during the regime of Obasanjo. We are all witnesses to the abduction of former Governor Chris Ngige of Anambra state by a band of marauding buccaneers bent in sucking the state dry.

    Yet, nobody was punished for that odious conduct except perhaps, the AIG of police in charge of Zone 9, late Raphael Ige. The same impunity played out in Bayelsa and Plateau states where officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC used a few lawmakers to impeach the governors in the most kangaroo manner. It was the impeachment of the governor of Bayelsa State where Jonathan was the then deputy that opened the door for his meteoric ascendancy to power.

    So if Jonathan is now seen to be taking the footsteps of his mentor in a very cruel manner, we can understand him. In a previous article in this column titled ‘Jonathan going Obasanjo’s way’ we had drawn attention to the observed inclination of Jonathan to the undemocratic pranks of Obasanjo. We had predicted also that the logic of self preservation will drive him into such frenzy that he may soon become an ardent apostle of those anti-democratic tendencies that marred Obasanjo’s regime.

    Successive events have borne out these predictions. Today, Obasanjo has been effectively sidelined in the PDP in the same manner he did to those who were instrumental to his release from prison and subsequent drafting into that party. Nemesis one may wish to call it!

    More fundamentally, all these anti-democratic tendencies are neither being spurred by public good nor in the interest of our floundering democracy. At the centre of them all, is the lure of primitive accumulation of power, influence and capital. We saw Obasanjo manifest this in his obnoxious third term ambition even as our constitution has no room for such a self-serving contraption. Jonathan’s is manifesting in the desire for another term despite the dire straits the nation is currently passing through. He may be within his rights to desire another term. But his current posturing that seeks to cut down anybody or processes seen to be standing against his ambition is potentially dangerous and may spiral a chain of events with dire repercussions for this country.

    It is very hard to exculpate Jonathan from the chain of embarrassing events that have been the lot of Rivers these past days. It is a big shame that the deputy governor was ambushed and cars in his convoy damaged by hired thugs. Equally inexcusable is the report that teargas canisters were hurled into government house even as soldiers there have been withdrawn together with the armoured personnel carrier. Why these are happening in very quick succession can only find explanation in a subtle attempt to simulate anarchy so as to declare a state of emergency.

    Or how else can we rationalize the effrontery of the five legislators despite their incapacitation on account of numbers? Obviously, they were responding to drum beats from those who control the instruments of coercion?

    If it took Amaechi to personally intervene before order was restored in the assembly, then we can better understand all that has been said about the bias of the commissioner of police, Joseph Mbu. If not for connivance, how on earth can five people intimidate and overpower 23 others to the extent that they had to scamper for safety? These are some of the issues to ponder. Even then, why was the initial screening at the assembly’s gate relaxed such that thugs had to enter with dangerous weapons? This question is pertinent for us to locate what must have spurred the recalcitrant five to take on their colleagues despite the futility in so doing. In all, both the five law makers and Mr. Mbu should take responsibility for the sordid outing of the assembly that day. They prepared for trouble and were the purveyors of the fight that ensued. They stand condemned in very unequivocal manner.

    Mbu has lost the confidence of the Rivers people and must not be allowed a day longer. His continued stay has become a big liability and clear evidence that some body somewhere kept him there for some odd job.

  • Feeding the monster

    Feeding the monster

    The recent news of uproar in the creeks of Delta State reminds me of my days in secondary school. I often looked forward to my holidays with my grandmother in my village in the Niger Delta. I preferred it to Lagos. We had no light, no cars, no pipe-borne water, no paved roads. I thrived on the predictable staple of eba and starch and yam. Lagos offered the glitzy contrast. I bustled with what Americans call jungle fever. My only trepidation as a teenage boy was the prospect of wild beasts, especially snakes. Against them, I had no skill. But I loved the enchantment of the terrain: the arboreal beauty of the forest, the limpid glow of the rivers and the mysterious destiny of streams. They deleted any phobia. In vain, I craved the naïve facility of the country bumpkin. But I shivered with the joy of what South African novelist Peter Abraham called a dumb townie, a city boy out of sync with the primitive sweetness and sensuous peace of the village.

    The city like Lagos where my parents domiciled belonged to the wild impulses of civilisation: armed robbers, political corruption, teenage delinquency, the pull of filthy lucre. In the village, wild meant simple: honesty, unadorned clothing, innocence of lucre. The other wild of the village belonged to the animals that imposed a rhythm of noise and silence to the forests, the pops and serenities of streams, the stir and stillness of the foliage.

    When I taught journalism in the United States, critics of editors often cited a naivety among newspapers that stereotyped rural residents as innocents and the city dwellers as the poison tree of modernity. The rumble of Delta State between the Itsekiri and Ijaw spilled blood on the quiet streams and statuesque beauty of the forests in the region at the time. I cited the far-flung example to my students to show the other side of prejudice. Innocence does not always drape the simple.

    That thought came to me when the news broke of the fight between the two ethnic groups around the Warri North Local Government in Delta State. I must state, as it is obvious from my name, that I am an Itsekiri man, and if that betrays any bias, I take responsibility. But I will state my point as my conscience propels me.

    The reports show that a group known as Egbema Radical Group had been jockeying for some elective positions in the local government, and that matter brewed even as advertisement in newspapers. In the midst of this, some radicals first launched an attack on the house of an Ijaw man. The culprits did not secure the attention they desired. They stepped up the ante, and attacked Itsekiri villages. This gave the incident the flavour of inter-ethnic feud. Newspaper reports also fed this motif, and all over the region and the country, men and women in high and low places worried. They saw the return of the incubus of the old conflict. The mermaid of blood and death had risen out of the waters.

    This writer imbibed that impression until I probed. It became clear from some more critical reporting like the one from our Southsouth regional editor, Shola O’Neil, and conversations with some insiders. It became clear that this was conflict as intimidation. Some boys who had been left out of the amnesty largesse had fought back with a vengeance. These young men wanted to take advantage of the flimsy agitations of the Egbema Radical Group’s call for representation by stoking up a conflict. The ERG wanted to feed off that tragedy to advance its positions.

    Shola O’Neil’s report showed how brutal the killings defaced the villages that had enjoyed peace for close to a decade when the crisis ended. Whole families were wiped out, and ironically the Itsekiri were not the only victims. Some Ijaw also fell. Bullets spill blood but recognise no kin.

    The perpetrators attacked for intimidation. They wanted to railroad the state government and the Federal Government for attention. Hence Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan warned that he would not concede to them and would not act under duress. He noted that the positions the ERG wanted were elective positions and if an Itsekiri won, it was not his doing. The Governor noted he was an Itsekiri man and he understood the sensitivity of the issue. Sources say the boys want to have their own opportunity to bunker oil. They are learning from the futility of the amnesty programme, and they are trying to take advantage of a subdued tension between the two ethnic groups. They betray envy of the big boys fattening on contracts from the president.

    The perpetrators want to follow an old script: levitate selfish and parochial interest by exploiting familiar grudges. This is dangerous, and Governor Uduaghan understands this and he has shown why caving in would amount to feeding a monster. The irony is not lost for most of the beneficiaries of the amnesty programme are Ijaw. We have seen how the Jonathan administration has lifted these former brigands to be caretakers of our patrimony. Now, he should see that the same ethnic group is insatiable. It is a parable of the failure of the amnesty programme. It is the President’s action that made a group to call for an Ijaw region to cover other ethnic groups like Urhobo, Itsekiri, Isoko, etc. This is because, increasingly, Jonathan cannot distinguish his role as an Ijaw man and his position as President of Nigeria.

    He has not addressed why the problem of violence persists. Bayelsa State has witnessed bursts of violence and Governor Seriake Dickson, his son governor, has been weeping impotently in public over the menace. The same groups are terrorising Rivers State to the extent of lobbing teargas into the Government House.

    We all know the bloodletting that the Itsekiri-Ijaw conflict wrought in the region. It changed the landscape, wiped out the ambition of some of the youths for a generation, decimated families, destroyed businesses, and the state, in spite of the long spell of peace, still bears scars of that sanguinary era. Governor Uduaghan ensured peace in the state even before the so-called amnesty. In his new book Transatlantic, Irish author Colum McCann noted that peace is harder than war. Those who want to rekindle the inter-ethnic war are obsessed with “half-remembered fragments of some enormous receding and impossible dream,” apologies to Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. But the Federal Government owes it a task to the country to address the source of the problem. We must replace greed with work and opportunities. We cannot continue to feed the monster, or the Niger Delta will default to its old theatre of blood thirsty goons with flamboyant lifestyles.

     

     

     

    Mimiko: Whitlow of west

    Newspaper correspondents and labour leaders in Ondo State must love Governor Segun Mimiko very much, so much so that they would not report that the man they so gleefully serenaded in the last election has been owing salaries of the civil servants and local government workers for months. Where is the people’s money? In the five fingers that represent five state governors, Mimiko has earned his place as the whitlow of the west. He cannot say his master Jonathan is not paying him allocations, because good lackeys and lapdogs deserve sweet bones. The Iroko should not fatten at the expense of those who give it nutrients.