The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

Ominous signals

There is a huge cloud hanging over the Nigerian political space. It is evident from the utterances of groups and individuals. It can be seen in their actions or inaction. And the body language of key political personages also betrays this slide to the precipice. At the centre of the heating up of the polity, is the competition for the highest political office in the country-the presidency. Any and every issue sacrosanct for the overall survival of this country is now unduly politicized, trivialized and sabotaged.

Even with two years to the next general elections, statecraft has been relegated to the background as sections are pitched against each other bandying spurious claims and counter claims. Not unexpectedly, these have resulted to threats and counter threats as to what harm awaits the nation should things not go the way of the contending interests.

Much of these threats have come from the North and the South-south for very obvious reasons. But the North has been the greatest culprit in these divisive actions and utterances. It feels it has been badly shortchanged from that elated office given the eight years of Obasanjo; the six years Jonathan would have completed by 2015 and his touted desire to run again despite the purported agreement he signed in 2011 to serve one term. For these, northern leaders feel it is their turn to take a shot at the presidency and nothing can stand on their way. Also to their advantage is the original zoning in the PDP; an arrangement currently shrouded in controversy.

But the South-south feels their son, Jonathan has a constitutional right to a second term and nothing should stop him from availing himself of that right. Their years of neglect even as the source of the nation’s wealth is also cited as a key reason they should be allowed for once, preside over the sharing of the nation’s wealth that is earned from their backyard. They are also piqued that Jonathan has not been allowed to do his job through contrived insurgency from the Boko Haram sect. The senseless killings in some parts of the North and the constant avowals by the insurgents to force Islam on the rest of the country are viewed with serious apprehension. This is more so, with the body language of some northern leaders which tend to lend tacit support to the violence in that part of the country. There are valid issues in the contending viewpoints. But a key point of note is that the two contending paradigms are being sponsored from within the ruling PDP. For a party that has boasted to rule for 100 years irrespective of its performance rating, it is not surprising why it is being seen as the surest way to power. Those threatening fire, lime, and brimstone should Jonathan run and make it or fail to make it, have their eyes on the capacity to manipulate that office to achieve electoral success. If they have faith in the sovereignty of the electorate; if they are firm believers in the sanctity of free and fair elections, their indecent desperation in concentrating all efforts in the PDP would have been needless. Even with the bitterness and hostility in that party that has seen it suspending two governors, its leaders still boast of the successes they intend to record in coming elections. One begins to wonder the source of this optimism if we remove the power of incumbency that has become a euphemism for rigging and falsifying election results. Rather than threats and counter threats, it would have made sense if the aggrieved were exploring other democratic methods of achieving their goals. And these abound in a truly democratic setting.

However, Jonathan has the final decision to make. The success or failure of which will definitely shape the direction of events. There are two scenarios. The first envisages a situation where Jonathan runs and secures the ticket of his party. Going by the threats from the north, he should be prepared for the worst. We should expect civil unrest, escalation of violence and violent activities. After all, we now know that violence in the country peaked after the last primaries of the PDP. It will be worse this time around. These could manifest even before elections and degenerate thereafter as its outcome will be fiercely disputed. And if our experience in such matters is any thing to go by, the incumbent will be hard put to convince the world that he did not manipulate the outcome to personal advantage. Any observed infractions will be latched on to fault and discredit the outcome of that election.

In the event of this, Jonathan, still wielding the instruments of coercion, will come down heavily on the anarchists. But the success or failure of this strategy will depend on the volume of violence that may erupt. Even then, the threats would have become a self-fulfilling prophesy. There is also the possibility of violence erupting from the opposition if the election fails the test of free and fair polls. We may witness a verity of the ‘dogs and baboons soaked in blood’. From both the point of view of the PDP and the opposition, possible sources of violence abound.

The second scenario is a situation where Jonathan declines to run or runs and fails to secure his party’s ticket. This will see a northerner flying the flag of the PDP in 2015. Jonathan’s kinsmen said they will take resort to full blown militancy that can bring this country to its knees. This could commence before the elections or thereafter. If it begins before the election, then that election may not hold. Jonathan will then find himself waging a war against his kinsmen. If it commences after a new president, possibly from the north has been sworn in, the Niger Delta people are in for serious trouble. They may witness the treatment meted out to the Boko Haram sect in an escalated and vengeful proportion. The situation will be worse if the north succeeds in defeating Jonathan at the primaries and eventually wins the election. They could even become very vindictive, using power the way it pleases them.

They will rule for eight years and then hand over to another zone in the north to compensate for their thirst for power. No body in the PDP will have the moral right to challenge them given that zoning in that party has almost been considered dead. But then, that would be another source of conflict within the nation’s body politic. Other sections that have been denied that office will commence another round of agitations. The country will know no peace. And the prediction that the Nigerian state will fail, may inch nearer. The PDP should therefore take the blame for overheating the Nigerian political environment. All the bickering, intolerance and tension are traceable to their doorsteps.

It is getting clearer that the party does not have what it takes to steer the ship of this nation safely. Going by these threats, whichever way the political pendulum swings in that party, is bound to midwife violence of inestimable proportion.

That is the harm champions of regional or sectional causes for the sake of cornering the presidency are doing to this country.

But the big question is, should Jonathan run or not given the foregoing circumstance? Rational calculations instruct that he should run and he will run. What are the issues? He is still allowed another term by our constitution. Two, if he chickens out, he would have been seen to have succumbed to intimidation. Three, he could fathom that he has not been really allowed to fully implement his programs through contrived violence that has held this country down in the past two years or so. Again, he might consider it risky to relinquish power now given the way the north is going after it.

To chicken out, will be at the risk of posting an unenviable record of the worst president this nation ever had.

Jonathan will run; threats of violence notwithstanding. Instead of violence, those aggrieved should explore alternative avenues to vote him out. Happily, there is a coalescing opposition capable of tilting the balance. In it, the various zones may find, a more orderly and rancor-free circulation of power and through it, safely navigate the impending doom.

June 10, 2013
A coroner’s inquest

The issue is less partisan because it is more so. I am referring to the election of the chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum that held a little over a week ago. It is easy to tag it as an opposition versus establishment saga, a grudge match between President Goodluck Jonathan and Governor Rotimi Amaechi, or a signal of the impending battle to the death between the APC and PDP.

It is all that. Who would deny that the opposition did not gloat at Jonathan’s frustration when his candidate, the ex-military officer Jonah Jang, fell dismally in front of his colleagues? This is so especially when they anticipated a coronation but had a coroner for their ambition to take over the governors’ forum. They did not yield ambition to grace.

The first plot was to ask Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi to step down as chairman before the election. That would have brought a vacuum. Then they would have said, let us appoint a caretaker, and one of the 16 who voted for Jang could have taken charge. Then like the last meeting when they did not have the numbers to oust Governor Amaechi in a fair contest, they could have declared that an election should hold at a later date. By that move, they would have accomplished what President Jonathan mandated: oust Amaechi for anyone else.

But Amaechi knew this and said he would not step down but asked the director general of the forum, Asissana Okauru, to conduct the election. Do the governors or president step down because of election?

That was the first indication that the anti-Amaechi forces were nervous. Election is a ritual. They did not want to yield shenanigan to the ritual of democracy. That was the first instance of failure.

The second was when Ondo State Governor Olusegun Mimiko turned himself into an adversary of secret ballot and an evangelist of open ballot. The man, who is unraveling as the quisling of the west to his Ondo State people, knew that he could not trust the so-called 19 whose names were fraudulently listed on an advert in the media. He was clearly one of the 16. The so-called 19 is what I call apocrypha. It was a false document by a false people.

Well, Mimiko failed and the election took place. That was failure number two. The third instance was that they relied on hearsay, since they did not expect the world outside to know what happened in the entrails of the room. They could paint white black and black white, and it would be one person’s word against another.

But the grassroots governor, Rauf Aregbesola, had a joker. It was camera. He captured the story as Okaura first counted all 35 ballots and separated the votes for Jang and Amaechi. The returning officer showed the ballot to the governors to see as he counted.

When he finished, the votes favoured Amaechi. The pro-Jonathan forces were stunned. This was failure number three for the anti-Amaechi forces. Mimiko and company wanted open ballot but secrecy from the outside world, a philosophical contradiction. With his phone, Ogbeni struck a triumph of technology over the luddites.

Those who cannot anticipate technology cannot anticipate the future. The camera phone blindsided them. They are still playing the Luddite. For those who don’t know, luddites were those who opposed new technology at the height of the industrial revolution. Chief among them is the quisling Mimiko who said the tape was manipulated because he was not featured. Only megalomaniacs want to see themselves in every picture.

If they failed in technology, they also failed in mathematics. Suddenly, 16 was 19 and 19 was 16. It reminds one of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic, A man from the Underground, who marveled at how mathematics had been turned on its head by the civilisation. He noted that one plus one was no longer two but the beginning of death. That was what the anti-Amaechi people tried to do. They said because they had 19 endorsements then it meant they had 19 votes. They lost a sense of sequence. Voting is not about a past but the moment.

When Barack Obama trailed John McCain ahead of the polls, Americans knew that it did not count until the day of counting. The pro-Jang men counted their chickens before they were hatched. On hatching day, they brooded over the roost and saw that they were sorely routed. They hurriedly ran an advertisement that showed that some governors who were out of town, like Gaidam of Yobe State, had become spirits that materialised to vote in Abuja. That was failure number five. They failed mathematics. They failed English because they did not understand the simple rules of the game. They failed communications because they lied after it happened, and they failed technology for acting like luddites. So, they failed the exam.

What is NGF? It is actually a pressure group of governors. Other than that, it is nothing. Mimiko said its election in the past was based on consensus. Can he explain how they allowed a former colleague who is now president to throw cat among their pigeons? Was it against their rule for Amaechi to earn a second term? Did Mimiko himself not play quisling to get a second term as governor? When did it become a sin? Yoruba say K’e j’obi gbua gbua. (say it as it is.) Would there have been a tiff if President Jonathan was at peace with Governor Amaechi? Is this not petty politics? The irony is that Jonathan climbed its back to power, and he does not care, in his Machiavellian way, to destroy it now. That is not statesmanship.

As for Jang, he was a sad tool. He capped it by thanking God for giving him a fraud. God of Old Testament would have made him regret. “Because sentence against an evil act is not executed speedily, therefore the hearts of the sons of men are full set in them to do evil.” Ecclesiastes 8:11.

The reason this is less partisan because it is more so is this: it is less partisan because it reveals the maggoty underside of our politics, especially electoral politics, whatever the party. When 35 people in a small room cannot agree on an election that was so transparent, are we not wasting our time with elections involving millions in a wide swath of land? It is because it is so partisan that we saw all of this.

So we know that it is not about NGF but about the man at the top. It is about a man who said he would retain the integrity of governance in Rivers State and not be dictated to from the centre. Was that not the reason Mimiko gave for his so-called principle? Why is he playing slave to a new master?

It is about Amaechi’s stance about Okrika, and his position that the waterside must not remain a slum even if an unconstitutional first lady hectors inelegantly at him. It is about his pursuit of what he sees as his right to defend the oil wells of his state when the president forgets that he is the leader of all of Nigeria and not Bayelsa State. It is about a man who says he must assert his dignity as a man. It reminds one of the classic by Primo Levi titled If This Is A Man, meditating on how he asserted his humanity in the dark, barbarous furnace of the Nazi concentration camp.

But more telling is the story of Sir Thomas More, who stuck to principle when the Tudor King Henry V111, wanted him to renounce his belief because he wanted to change the law to marry a woman. More became a martyr that historian Hugh Trevor Roper described as the “most saintly of humanists and the most human of all saints.” Amaechi is not More, but he acts like a man for all seasons, understands the principle of asserting his manhood without capitulating. That is how to nourish democracy.

June 3, 2013
Whited Sepulchre

If we want to decipher the difference between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and today’s leader, President Goodluck Jonathan, we should examine the style and content of the emergency rule in the three beleaguered states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. When Obasanjo unleashed his, he came across as a bull. He rumbled into town and made it known that he rumbled into town. He flexed his muscles. He defied the law. He acted the soldier ingrained in his DNA. He was like the hawk in Ted Hughes poem, Hawk Roosting, where the bird asserts, My feet are locked upon the rough bark/It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:/Now I hold Creation in my foot.

Jonathan acted the serpent, long, ruthless, devastating, but deceptively unobtrusive. Obasanjo did not exercise power unobtrusively. He let everyone know that the cowboy was in town, rode imperiously on his horse, shot his gun first in the air to daze and intimidate the residents. Afterwards, he gunned down a few for effect and stamp of his superior brow.

Jonathan entered town as though he did not, and he allowed the situation to slide into slime, so he could act on the sly. He could then bring down the hammer, and when the hammer lands, few would realise that he had employed the sledgehammer on a fly.

That is the style of this President. He wants everyone to perceive him as the innocent one, the harassed and the victimised. We can see that in the declaration of the state of emergency. Last week, I asked a question, and the answer is already here. I wondered what the President meant by his assertion that the governors would remain in charge in the meantime. I also asserted that he had no right to exercise powers that he did not have.

But the President played a fast one on the electorate. First, he declared the state of emergency, so he could draw applause. After that, we saw the fine print. He played it also on a naïve National Assembly that succumbed almost as if unaware of the rudiments of the principle of power.

When the terms came out, the serpent’s venom dripped on the Northeast. According to the terms, the President has a right to “provide for the utilisations of the funds of the governors and local government chairmen.” It passed unaltered through the Senate.

The House of Representatives, rather than checkmate it, fell for the ruse by adding that it could be used to “provide for the protection, documentation, return, re-integration, resettlement, rehabilitation, compensation and remuneration of persons affected by this order.”

Can all the job of the state not fall under protection alone? Only that word cedes the whole authority of the state governor and local government to the hands of the president. The damning line in the provision says that the President can give directive to the state governor and any designate. Does the word designate not imply that the President can install a parallel structure of governance in the state and funnel funds through the structure? That designate could be a soldier or a civilian, but it will be a person in whom the President is well pleased. He or she will be the de facto sole administrator obeying the President.

Is this not a backstairs strategy to deligitimise the democratic structures? Is it not a way for the President, who is plotting a strategy to win in 2015, to map up means to mop up the numbers for electoral victory?

But more importantly, this is an imposition of tyranny in the guise of democratic powers. When money flows out of a democratic structure – governor, local government, state assembly -, it means life is out of it. The governor cannot function without the money. The state assembly cannot pass law and the local government is impotent. They will be coerced to beg for their constitutional rights under the constitution.

What the President has done is a familiar terrain in history. He wants to douse democracy by applying false democratic means. Hitler was watched, as though through a trance by his people, as he employed democratic methods to impose Nazism on the country. At some point Germans glowed in its corporatist dawn with a gloating sense of nationalism before it destroyed them. Ditto Francis Franco of Spain. Democracy cannot overthrow democracy.

The emergency law was based on a democratic constitution and its execution fails if it defies the democratic tenet. What is left is tyranny. It is laws like this that have made law and political theorists over the ages to be wary of laws and the need for vigilance. It was not for nothing that Thomas Jefferson called the Law “the tyrant’s will.” And William Lloyd Garrison, who saw years of battle against oppression, declared, “that which is not just is not law.”

With the emergency law in place, what we have in the three states are not democratic structures but white sepulchres. They glitter, exude grandeur, but are like the ceremonies of the dead. The governors, local government chairmen and lawmakers are somnambulists. They are sleeping men and women walking around a palace. They are like mannequins and statues of honour. They can only look and not see, while we look and remember what they represented.

I wrote in this column a few weeks back how the President is gradually amassing dictatorial powers, and this is another feather on that cap. Politics is a game of power, but democratic power does not endorse a game that concentrates power in a man or a cabal. The expression “imperial president” is a fancy way of calling a president a monarch in a republican milieu. It is wrong. We might think that stopping a governor from flying a state-owned jet is nothing even though he was picked out of a many aircraft that violated basic laws. We might think that locking up Leadership newspaper editors is nothing. We might think that slamming a police presence without law on a local government headquarters is nothing. We might think a law that prohibits anyone except the president to fly a jet without members of the family is nothing until the presidential election. But that is the germ of despotism that wipes out the gem of democracy.

With the introduction of the emergency laws, the President has slammed a private tyranny. So, while the Boko Haram insurgents wield class and ethno-religious violence on the citizens, Jonathan wants to impose political violence on the political structure. It is like a snake unleashing venom on a rat. Its muscles tremble and die.

The President, in his style, may not take all the money, but will deliver enough to pay some bills, like civil service salaries, rents, etc. The rest will hide under the pursuit of security and public order, as the law says.

The way out, as the governors concerned have indicated, is to go to court. The executive and legislature have failed. Next to God, it is the judiciary. I hope the court, under an increasingly brilliant and independent Supreme Court Justice, will echo the line of one of its own: “If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.” That was Louis Brandeis who understood the difference between law and tyranny.

Thanks, Gov. Uduaghan

Many years back, I visited the Eku Hospital, near Warri in Delta State. That was my place of birth. I drove through it, wandering in what ward I breathed my first. But I was depressed that the hospital known in the past as a measure of medical excellence had fallen to a morass and decay. I learned that the place is back in structure and facility, thanks to the state Governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan.

May 27, 2013
Silence without peace

How did it happen that when President Goodluck Jonathan announced a state of emergency in three states, we as a collective did not ask if it already existed?

Did we ponder the meaning of the term in law and even in common parlance? Or did we queue behind him simply because we believed that an urgent step was required and so we fell prey to a language that obfuscated the facts?

Did the President take advantage of a fretting people, famished for some kind of final solution to the Boko Haram problem? So, was it a new state of emergency or was it a deft political move to entrap an alienated citizenry in thrall of a ruthless answer couched in theatre?

These are emotional times for Nigeria. Chambers of reason are frying thin from the embers of passion. Before the presidential broadcast, the presupposition was that he would slam the emergency and dislodge the governors. He has not tempered with the democratic structures, although he sounded an ominous note that pundits and the political class have ignored. He said the governors would remain in the meantime. We hope, for the sake of democracy, that he does not extend his now-excited fangs to defy the constitution that grants him no such powers.

So, the only thing the President has done that defines this version of a state of emergency is to increase the troop presence and extend the curfew time. Otherwise, nothing has changed in essence. The Joint Task Force has been as ruthless in hounding the fanatical hoodlums. Now, the intensity has gone up some notches.

So, let us not be hoodwinked by any sort of rhetorical change. What is important in the war against the tyrants of spirits, as I characterise the wayward insurgents, is the primacy of intelligence. Right from the outset of the conflict, we have failed to do two things. One, the Federal Government has never addressed the issue of the killing of the founder of the lethal group, Mohammed Yusuf. Two, and more importantly, the government has failed to put in place, in spite of huge budgets for security, a viable and working intelligence network to root out the vermin at the bottom of the crisis.

The consequence has been serious. If Yusuf was killed, and no court has received and adjudicated on the matter, how do we expect the group, vicious as it is, to feel entitled to justice? In its alienation, it has decided to take justice in its hands. This explains, in part, their primitive rages, although it does not justify it.

Partly related to this is the hysteria of vengeance during the 2011 campaigns when threats hit the air that if a northerner did not win, the nation would know no peace. This has shown a northern elite encouragement, if not complicity, in the sectarian outrage in the past few years. The complicity – of men like Muhammadu Buhari and Adamu Ciroma – has not been proved. But that was the anchor of the reprisal comments from special adviser to the president, Kingsley Kuku, and ex-militant Mujahid Asari-Dokubo. They had warned that if Jonathan did not win, peace would not be guaranteed in the land. The hoary and bemused illogic of E.K. Clark followed with his reference to the northern threat in 2011 as excuse for the rants of the two men. This was a case of foolishness answering to foolishness. Neither side had wisdom, but a rascally display of street urchin thirst for chaos.

The point is we did not as a people address the issue of the northern threat in 2011. Was it a lack of political will, or was it the failure of the President, after assuming power, to address the subterranean malice from the North? President Jonathan failed to do two things. One, he did not attack the threat head on; rather he hid under a horrendous fatalism when he asserted that Boko Haram would disappear someday.

Two, after a self-proclaimed pan-Nigerian mandate, the President did not extend an olive branch to the North. That is the spirit of victory. As Churchill famously asserted, “In war, resolution; in victory, magnanimity.” There was open gloating from Clark and some Jonathan court jesters.

In the intervening period, we saw that monster of violence grow. Rather than act, the Presidency became wrapped in fear, shutting inside Aso rock all ceremonies of symbol and grandeur, including the Independence day celebrations.

All these while, we expected the Presidency to ensure a working intelligence team. We cannot wage a successful war without intelligence. No war, whether between states or between a state and insurgents, ever succeeds without intelligence. In fact, superior intelligence bests superior weapons.

The northern elite kept mum while it grew, hoping it would cripple the Jonathan administration. After a while, they themselves saw that the Frankenstein wonder had morphed into a Frankenstein monster. They, too, were hostage. Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein, produced a more humane monster than this one. The northern elite did not understand that even if the North had power, it needed a country to govern.

Jonathan did not understand that he was not only President, but the commander in chief. It was a lack of vision of his office, a pathetic surrender that allowed the monster to burn churches, slay priests, burn police stations, murder marquee personalities and subaltern citizens.

The President, corralled in Aso Rock, would not travel to the trouble spots. He only did that recently. When he did, he failed to make an inroad into their hearts. A nervous president bullied his hosts. He did not take advantage of the chance to empathise with the disinherited and wounded in the place. Rather, he celebrated improvements in Yobe and Adamawa, two states where he has now slammed the emergency.

This is the story of how the matter degenerated to have ‘warranted’ the declaration of state of emergency. So, whose fault was it that the matter came to this sanguinary pass? While we can blame many forces – the northern elite and politicians, etc – we also know that the leadership was absent or inept while the monster got out of hand. Security is not a governor’s responsibility but the president’s, according to the constitution. He declared the emergency because he had failed. It was a nervous statement of impotence.

The President does not have all the blame, but the greatest chunk of it lies at his doorstep. He it is who should provide intelligence. He has failed there. In the early days of the insurgency, the intelligence community would have played a role in distinguishing the insurgents from the society. They would have befriended the community early. They failed there. Rather, soldiers became another monster, working without knowledge but fear. So they attack innocents and culprits alike. The result is alienation of those who would have helped to provide the right information to the problem.

So, the declaration was, as this paper noted in its editorial, Jonathan’s last card. But he is still working without any improved intelligence. So, what we shall see is force without knowledge. Will that solve the problem or pacify the community, where the majority sees both Boko Haram and the JTF as problems. They see the JTF as neither kin nor kind but kindlers of fear. Boko Haram is kin but unkind.

My fear is that this might achieve quiet without peace. After the state of emergency, shall we find love in that community? Or else, we want the emergency to last forever, which is impossible.

May 19, 2013
Like a thief in the night

A sense of perfidy hits the air. So rather than cavort over the flowering of democracy, we confront the nascent hubris of a dictator. I use the word “nascent” advisedly. We have not seen tyranny in its barefaced and full form.

It is furtive and deceptively tentative, but carries the barbarous aura of the inevitable. Not long ago, the former governor of Zamfara State – no fan of mine – was picked up by the police because he said the APC would stage a peaceful protest if his party was rigged out of the 2015 polls. The Sharia-flaunting lover of nubile flesh did not offend against the law. He exercised a natural instinct of the politician in an ambience of electoral fraud.

Months later, former gun-swinging denizen of the Niger Delta forests, Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, warned that if his kinsman, Goodluck Jonathan, is not tenanted at Aso Rock in 2015, militancy will dissolve the apparent peace in the home region of the president. He merely echoed the sentiment of an officered sympathiser of the militants, Kingsley Kuku, who is special adviser to the president on amnesty. None of them, in spite of the discomfort of the National Assembly, was even called for questioning over clearly subversive threats.

The one threatened peaceful protest and was picked up. The others mouthed apocalyptic prophesies but they spoke back in defiance. Their grandfather and fuddy-duddy of Nigerian politics, rather than intervene in wisdom, played the role of an agent provocateur at over 80 years of age. He joined the delinquency and juvenile ranting and explained that others in the North had said similar things.

In this instance, the office of the inspector general of police iced over with cowardice.

Recently, Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s official aircraft was grounded at Ondo State. The aviation authorities said he had no papers, which the Rivers State Government has challenged. Not long after, the police swooped on a local government headquarters. The excuse was that the governor should not have dissolved the executive, which happened through the state legislature.

This did not only fly in the face of the principle of a federal state, but it violated the principle of the rule of law. If they don’t like what the governor did, why not go to court? It is common knowledge that the battle for Rivers State is the continuation of the friction between President Jonathan and Governor Amaechi by other means. The story, at least in public, can be traced to the open shame of rhetoric from Dame the Vain, first lady Patience Jonathan, in Rivers State during the closing days of Governor Amaechi’s first term. She openly lashed out at the governor over activities in Okrika, where she hails from. Since then, tension has crackled between Port Harcourt and Abuja. What we see today, including the fulminating shallowness of Minister of State for Education Nyesom Wike, represents a proxy war. From his reptilian redoubts in Aso Rock, he is unleashing venoms abroad.

What is going on in Rivers State, with the strong-arm hysteria from Abuja, foreshadows the rough and tumble of 2015. It is the story of a snake trying to encircle his enemies in a jungle where law and order play coy to the logic of the unbridled giant.

We also saw the introduction of a legislation to bar private aircraft owners from carrying what is perceived as passengers. To the undiscerning, it is a clever way of slowing down opponents who would hit the hustings for 2015 election when they compete with him for the meaty prize. It is a legislation for aerial supremacy through monopoly in the air battle of the 2015 campaigns. It is a metaphor of modern warfare. The law seeks to create a no-fly zone for the opposition. So while the president and his team corral the air and unleash the gunfire, the ground battle belongs to the opposition who will lie hobbled below, pinned down and ponderously weak, an army without the aerial sway. President Jonathan can now wield the nimble power of the sky with its lethal ferocity.

As a well-known top politician told me in the aftermath of the Amaechi aircraft saga, no one should take a romantic view of tackling Jonathan and his cohorts in 2015. It came close to journalism recently when two journalists with the Leadership Newspaper were held rather than taken to court. He plots to slam a state of emergency on Borno and Yobe states. By this he is trying to turn his failure to combat terrorism into an advantage for political control against 2015. Our greatest tragedy is the absence of the rule of law. It is in that sewer that tyrants breed.

These are just a few of the signs of what I called nascent tyranny. Because we live in an ostensible democracy, we take those actions for granted. Tyranny comes like a thief in the night. In the early days of Joseph Stalin, complains streamed the news media of a budding tyrant. A prominent New York Times reporter denied it. The evidence of killings, anti-Semitic slayings and concentration camps were regarded as little irritations.

The then well-known critic Edmund Wilson visited from the United States and gave Stalin the thumbs up. Even novelist and essayist Maxim Gorky came from exile and resettled in his home country and lunged at prose spirit Vladimir Nabokov for cynical error for raising a false alarm. Gorky once argued that the only people who deserve freedom are those who are ready to fight for it every day. He ignored his own religion. But he was one of the early victims of Stalin’s purge. Alexander Solzhenitsyn fell into his snare and even fought in his army, before his disillusion and exile. His Gulag Achipelago, One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer War are three masterpieces on the Stalin era that won him the Nobel Prize.

In the early days of the Abacha regime, Ken Saro Wiwa during a BBC interview praised the coup that ushered in the tyrant. I wrote an op-ed piece then in the National Concord cautioning the novelist and playwright. I also noted that he was mistaking his cozy embrace with the general with the general apathy in the land. Saro Wiwa replied that he was cut from a rare gem. Just like Gorky, he became a tragic victim of a tyrant he helped nurture. It is one of the sore memories of my life that he visited me a day before he was arrested. A similar fate almost happened to Wole Soyinka who outgrew his chumminess with the foxy IBB and lived in exile during the Abacha era.

Asari-Dokubo said President Jonathan has performed. He should leave that to voters. He is one man, and his Ijaw nation, whose lives he has not lifted, are one people. When he swept to power in what they gleefully designated as a pan-Nigerian mandate, they should have told him that he ought to rise up to the challenge. Democracy has shown historically that it does not guarantee freedom or well being. It calls for vigilance. That was why right-wing economist – I hate to quote this guy – once asserted that “perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom.” He is Friedrich Von Hayek.

Nascent tyranny thrives on a false perception of leader’s innocence. I recall the novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, where innocent children carry out the worst tyrannies in themselves. The only solution is vigilance, and a fighting conscience from within. That is what Ghandi referred to when he said, “The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.” This tyrant is the counterfoil to the other tyrant.

May 13, 2013
The power to forgive

This is the time for pardon. We see people die daily in this country as though Nigeria is a vast slaughter slab. Woe is us already, and so we should just accept our tragedy as routine blessing from above.

That is why we are calling for amnesty for Boko Haram. All those calling for amnesty are only displaying love. Love for everyone. Love for those who kill and those who die, those who wield the dagger and those whose heads are lopped off. It is equal love. Love, according to the scriptures, works no ill against the neighbour. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. It is love for those who burn the market and those with nothing left to sell. Love for those who are without homes, siblings and parents is the right love so long as we also love all those who created the tragic blessings: that is the murderers.

The logic is straightforward. We cannot live a life in which we have bias or malice against our fellow citizens. Mercy is the quality of faith in Islam. And Jesus also said blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.

If we give mercy to Boko Haram, we should extend the same quality to others. There was a story recently of armed robbers in parts of the country. They are only hungry and want some cash, so we should forgive them. In fact, we should expunge criminality from our constitution and replace it with love. Everything is done out of the love of self.

Who can question that? All men are by nature selfish, said philosopher Thomas Hobbes. The same man said life was brutish, nasty and short. Don’t mind Shakespeare who accused a character in the play Twelfth Night as “sick of self-love.” There is nothing wrong with that. The Bible says we should love our neighbours as ourselves. You ought to love yourself.

We gave amnesty to militants in the Niger Delta, and it was a good thing. They left the creeks, all of them. Recently, there was a report that a dozen policemen died from the bullets of militants. What militants? Those who enjoy pardon don’t fight again. I think it was ghosts that killed the police, not human beings. Those who enjoy pardon often enjoy their lives. Nothing stops them. Ask the guys who now enjoy billion naira contracts, in charge of pipelines and ports in the country.

If you are killing people and blowing up pipelines and kidnapping people, the right reward is pardon. Once you get the pardon, you live in five star hotels, lap up the best food and gurgle the best wine. That is the benefit of forgiveness. If Tompolo can get pardon and become a big man, why should we hesitate to give the same quality to the others? After all, the militants made great sacrifice by leaving the creeks with all their access to big cars and limitless cash as well as melody and romance of mosquitoes. Some of them were generals and heads of state. Now they have become bloody civilians. What better sacrifice is that?

There have been stories of kidnapping. Is it not the best way to take what they did not have? Many do not have jobs, and they give themselves one and become self-employed. Who can beat that? Other than that, they would have no access to anything in the land. They decide to capture the relatives of the rich and the rich themselves. With that, they attempt to equalise wealth. Is that not what we want, for the poor to also be empowered?

After all when they kidnap, they still feed the people. They are only giving the victims small vacation, some rest from the daily grind of work. They feed the victims from their own pockets, and that is an investment. Should they not get their reward? After all, we want entrepreneurs in this economy. Now, we have them. Okay, we still forgive them because we did not bargain for it. But we cannot forget they are taking after the big men in society.

If impunity is the order of the day, they are following a great example. When, from an order from above, the Inspector General of Police can shut down a local government headquarters in Rivers State without the backing of any law, how do we claim moral superiority to those who take over a bank or a bureau de change without recourse to law. Two Leadership newspaper journalists were arrested boorishly for an article rather than a recourse to the rule of law.

The militants and the religious zealots have said they will never forgive Nigeria for committing crimes against them. It reminds me of the historian who asserted that the Nazis will never forgive the Jews for the holocaust. The Nazis claim that the Jews made them into devils. So the Nigerian state made the armed robber a killer and a thief, the kidnapper a snob of freedom, the militant for decades of neglect, etc.

They have seen a governor who stole billions go free in the court. They have seen a person who never enjoyed love in his community become senator term after term. They have seen a loafer with little education and integrity throw a N60 million wedding for his daughter when they were suffocating to secure N60,000 for their daughter’s school fees.

They saw a governor receive pardon over billions stolen when their neighbour who stole a tin of geisha has been languishing in detention without trial for the past five years. So who should forgive whom?

It is the somersault of the hierarchy of forgiveness that bothers me. The people have always forgiven the leaders of this country. They are allowed to stab their ears with sirens, splash mud off their Mercedes Benz and Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) at the poor, announce contracts that never materialise, brandish billions for tea and refreshments at Aso Rock when the ordinary folks look merely for survival.

The political leaders say they have the right to decide who gets forgiveness. They have missed the point. The people own Nigeria, and the leaders occupy positions of authority on trust. They have appropriated the trust. Yet they get pardon.

So the people have forgiven them by their silence. They don’t protest, or foment chaos in the streets in the name of revolutionary angst. They just siddon look, apologies to Bola Ige.

The people forgive the leaders after ruining the lives of the people. Poor education, broken infrastructure, bad hospitals, etc. and they are forgiven. So why not forgive the criminals who want to wipe all law-abiding people off the face of the Nigerian earth? If we cannot abide by the law, let us forgive everyone.

May 6, 2013
The indispensable state

About 200 years ago. This was a coastal town. That was a coastal town.

Both seemed, at first, improbable to soar. This, like that, seemed forever sleepy and clung wearily to joyless traders. But salvation came from outside, from a remorseless greed for strangers. That was an outpost like this one. Because they embraced others, they expanded. Appetite became destiny, and so they grew. As their girths widened, their breadths became so breath-taking that they became cities.

Both bustle with pride, so this is a superpower and that races at a supersonic speed. This is Lagos. That is New York. To pitch these connections was the man in charge of this. That is, Lagos. The journey began for Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, in New York City itself, what its habitués, with a measure of proprietary hubris, call the Big Apple.

The Governor of example was hosted by Goldman Sachs in one of its sessions of a conference it tagged a summit of growth. Governor Fashola was to speak of the other city, the one he shepherds, with its sprawling cityscape, its surging population, its infrastructural demand, cultural mélange, its educational challenges and its ability to turn a fidgety city to a magnet of investment.

Here, the audience was principally non-Nigerian. From his answers to a number of questions posed by the boss of Goldman Sachs who shared the stage with him, the impression is inescapable: where Lagos goes, so goes Nigeria. He spoke about the infrastructural layout of Lagos, the roads, the management of power resources, the environment, financial engineering, water provision, houses being built at furious pace, hospitals, education. From his tone and the audience, the reference to the larger Nigerian canvas seemed implied.

The audience had a sense of the city in which they lived. New York is America’s indispensable city. That was where everything began, from its search for political thralldom to economic prowess, to technology acme to cultural pride. Did Hollywood not start with Edison and company in his days in the Big Apple? So when he spoke of this – that is Lagos – they wanted to know if that is Nigeria. But that was conundrum. He is governor of Lagos.

But it was when Governor Fashola swiveled to the capital, away from that city of lights and money, that he articulated in greater depth the meaning of his assignment as the governor of Lagos. It was at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.

He spoke of one of the great gifts of Lagos: people, especially people from elsewhere. He gave an anecdote about when he was given a diplomatic treatment at the immigration port as he entered the United States. Somebody yelled out, “Why should these visitors go through before me? This is my country.” It was a woman who did not understand that the country she called hers was not supposed to be hers if those who gave birth to her and those who gave birth to those that gave birth to her, etc did not enjoy the accommodation of strangers.

Governor Fashola deployed this example to tell the story about the power of diversity, and why greatness of any country or people cannot come without leveraging the high gifts of others.

He noted that the population of Lagos was about 2 million in the 1970s. Those of New York and London were higher then. But today with a population of about 21 million, Lagos bests the combined figure of the populations of the city of Winston Churchill’s courage and the economic capital of the world. The prosperous countries are those who can keep their immigrant populations, he posited. So where would New York be without its immigrant populations? What would Lagos be without all the throngs of tongues and voices coming from all parts of the country? Lagos is the city of the talented, of the adventurous, of the innovator. It is Nigeria’s hive of progress. The originality of Fela, the fortitude of the Fawehinmi and the mercantile acumen of the Ibru brothers, the track ingenuity of a Mary Onyali and the political pyrotechnics of an Azikiwe, or the organising zeal of an Awolowo. All of these could not have blossomed in any other city. That is why Lagos is Nigeria’s indispensable city.

Yet, it is a beauty and burden simultaneously, especially if you have to steer matters in this city within the constraint of centrifugal negatives from the centre. The governor of example referred to the now familiar theme of a suffocating federalism, where the centre takes a big chunk of 52 percent of the money, while the states and local government scramble over what is left. Yet, he notes that while a state like Lagos has over 6,000 roads, the federal government has far less than 200 in the state, and the states with fewer revenue streams have to do more. Yet the little the centre should do falls in the lap of the generous doer to accomplish while the big, fat centre luxuriates impotently with its largesse.

Of course, questions were asked, and the Nigerians in Diaspora, apparently moved, asked to know what the incentive was to return home. They spoke with latent frustrations over life in God’s Own Country.

“Home,” says Fashola, is the big incentive. They should dare to return and learn to prosper over adversity, and the resources are here to tap but with courage. He said he never had any reason to go abroad while all his nine siblings did. One of the questioners unknowingly embarrassed herself when she said she witnessed a flooding when she visited and was amazed that others walked through it while she struggled. Suppressing his impatience, the governor lectured her on the fact that floods occur everywhere, whether in New York or China, and the important thing is that it drains away when the rains stop, as it happens in Lagos.

The air of Lagos after Fashola was palpable when he spoke about the foundation he built on. “One must not underestimate the power of foundation,” he said. He noted that it is one thing to have a good foundation, and another to do well with it. “It is cold comfort,” he explained, “one must not squander an inheritance.” As a writer, I envied that metaphor. I recall also when his predecessor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, marked his 60th birthday. The Asiwaju was overwhelmed by the tributes of his (Tinubu’s) gargantuan stature in Nigerian politics and government. He took a sober moment in the party at Eko Hotel to note that if Fashola had failed him, a lot that he enjoys would have run into a problem. Nothing frustrates like a wasted foundation. Hence this writer noted at his 60th birthday last year that, perhaps, the greatest decision yet of his public career was backing Fashola as the governor of Lagos and his successor. As for the Asiwaju the future has just begun.

Goodbye to a great woman

She left us but not wholly. Mrs. Funmi Olayinka, the stately woman who Governor Kayode Fayemi described as his co-pilot, was rare in our politics. She was brilliant but not puffy, well-heeled but not extravagant, beautiful but not showy, always showing up without superciliousness. The few years I knew this woman, I always marveled at her comportment and public discipline.
It is sad that death exercises arbitrary wisdom and we are shown to be none the wiser when it picks persons like her and we have nothing to say but accept. Many women with half her gifts scramble for vain glory and superficial headlines. Not Mrs. Olayinka.
Yet I was scandalised that the Presidency could go so low as to bring its malice with Governor Rotimi Amaechi to hallowed area of the dead. His plane was grounded for all of two hours, and it took the wise intervention of Speaker Tambuwal for the plane to be released. Now they have grounded the plane for opportunistic reasons. Politics in an ambience of funeral sobriety? What does that tell us about the desperation of the oga at the top? What desecration. What shame!

April 29, 2013
Amaechi’s many troubles

It has become obvious that Rivers State governor, Chibuike Amaechi is in for serious trouble. Not only is he dogged in a battle of survival to retain his current position as the chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum NGF, the rug is about to be pulled off his feet in respect of his control of PDP party structures in the state.

Already, the PDP has formed its version of the governors’ forum and is assiduously working in concert with the presidency to ensure that Amaechi does not return to his seat when the governors elect their chairman next month. Series of meetings are reportedly being held at the presidency to whittle down the support which Amaechi enjoys not only among PDP governors, but also others from the opposition. As things stand, it will only take a miracle for Amaechi to emerge victorious when that election comes up. As if that is not enough trouble, a high court sitting in Abuja last week sacked the Chief Ake-led state executive committee of the party considered loyal to Amaechi and upheld his rivals led by Felix Obuah as the duly elected state executive committee of the party. Yet the Ake-led executive had emerged victorious at the state congress of the party held about a year and half ago. And immediately after that court decision, the national chairman of the party Alhaji Bamanga Tukur hurriedly inaugurated the rival state PDP executive committee in Abuja.

If there was any shred of doubt regarding those behind that curious court judgment which has been largely spurned by stakeholders in the state, that inauguration gave clue as to where the drum beat was coming from.

And to cap the suspicion that the new executive was on a vengeance mission, no sooner had they arrived Port Harcourt than the new chairman issued an order that they will probe the leadership of the state including all other elected and appointed officers of government. According to them, at the end of the probe, they will issue certificates of clearance to those they find nothing against while the indicted ones will be referred to anti-graft agencies for further investigations and trial.

The same Obuah-led executive is also spoiling for war with governor Amaechi and the state assembly over the sacking of the leadership of the Obio/Akpor local government council. It has issued an ultimatum for the sack order to be rescinded threatening fire, lime and brimstone. As things stand, there is palpable tension and fear of threat to law and order with allegations that some unseen hands are simulating conditions that will precipitate the declaration of a state of emergency in the state.

Curiously, the tension in River state is the making of the ruling PDP. This is a party that has of late, been going round the country preaching peace and reconciliation among its factionalized members. At a time, both Tukur and Anenih the BOT chairman were involved in such parallel peace moves ostensibly because of their genuine desires to repair their umbrella torn by lack of internal democracy and brazen acts of impunity. Incidentally the peace Tukur and Anenih offered with the right hand, they are now taking with the left hand. So who says that the chameleon can ever change colour? That is the PDP for you.

At the centre of the raging crisis is the scant regard by the party to internal democracy. That has been the main source of disenchantment by aggrieved members of the party. Those who have left, have series of stories to tell in this regard. If with all these, the PDP still conducts business as usual, then its avowal to free and fair polls cannot be trusted. What is all the fuss about the control of party structures if the sovereignty of the electorate as expressed in the ballot will be respected? What difference does the control of party structures make if votes will count? These posers have been raised to underscore the point most poignantly that there is yet to be a change of attitude by the PDP to electoral matters. And the crisis in Rivers State is necessary to the extent that it will help the PDP to capture the state come 2015.

The crisis in Rivers is all about 2015. Governor Amaechi is said to be enjoying wide support among his peers. They want him back as the chairman of the governor’s forum. But Jonathan does not want to see that happen. His touted ambition to run as a vice presidential candidate with Sule Lamido of Jigawa state has not gone down well with the presidency and everything must be done to cut him to size and teach him a hard lesson.

The ruling of the Abuja high court that ousted the state executive committee loyal to him is seen as part of the plot to clip his wings. It also fits into the character of the ruling that ousted erstwhile national secretary of the party Olagunsoye Oyinlola and some other leaders of the party in the South-west. Those axed were ace loyalists of former President Obasanjo who was also involved in a battle to control the soul of the party. Since that deadly blow courtesy of the judiciary, not much has again been heard of the all powerful Obasanjo in the calculations of the party. Incidentally also, all these fit into the devious strategy adopted by Obasanjo when he held sway. Off course, the outcomes of elections conducted under that regime were anything but free and fair. It is obvious that Jonathan is going the inglorious path of Obasanjo even with the armada of opposition against his running in 2015.

In all these, the role of the judiciary has been anything but inspiring. The impression is fast gaining ground that the judiciary is increasingly lending itself to ease of use by the executive to settle political scores. And that is the greatest danger to our democracy.

It is issues like this that the US must have taken copious note of when in its 2012 report, it posted very negative verdict on the Nigerian judiciary. The report spoke of monetary inducements and the increasing loss of confidence in the capacity of the judiciary to serve as the last hope of the common man. These are the issues to watch. The judiciary must begin to take a serious view of its increasing perception as being amenable to manipulation by the ruling class in order to settle political scores. For now, that appears to be the reading of events that led to the sacking of the national secretary of that party and the state executive committee of the Rivers State chapter.

Allowing such an impression to fester will be counter productive in our quest for a stable political order. We should be wary of lending the judiciary to Marxian postulation that sees it as part of the structures that exist to serve and sustain the interest of the ruling class. If that happens, the predictions that the Nigerian state will soon fail, would have taken the pattern of that vividly captured by Karl Marx.

The posturing of Obuah since the judiciary armed him with the contentious leadership of the party in that state is something to watch. All of a sudden, he has emerged from the blues to arrogate to himself all manner of powers issuing sundry orders. It is obvious that he is on a vengeance mission which sooner than later will snowball into a crisis of unimaginable proportion in the state.

With the state assembly disowning his so-called leadership and vowing not to have anything to do with him, it is clear that danger is lurking in the air in that state. He must be restrained from turning Rivers state into a battle field.

April 29, 2013
Amnesty and its payoffs

Decision making in the face of uncertainties has been an integral part of the human organization. Confronted with such uncertainties, man in the medieval age, took resort to consulting oracles and sundry soothsayers to predict the future for them. Decisions were therefore taken depending on the perceptions of those concerned and sometimes in conformity with the instructions of the seers.

Though these practices have not completely disappeared, they are increasingly getting irrelevant in modern day calculations that place heavy reliance on science and empirical theory. Science has been able to develop a variety of models not only to analyze, interpret and predict future occurrences but more importantly to aid decision making.

That is the major concern of Decision Theory. Essentially, the theory deals with the principles for making correct decisions. Both in our daily lives and the running of modern governments, leaders face serious challenges of decision making. And the success of such decisions is intricately tied to the level of available information and rational calculations that go into them at the level of formulation. These entail rational calculations, choice, risks and payoffs.

Today, the Jonathan administration is confronted with a serious challenge of decision making in respect of the Boko Haram insurgency. The card on the table is whether to grant amnesty to the deadly religious sect or not. Northern leaders of various shades have been at the vanguard of the campaign for amnesty arguing that it holds the ace for the resolution of the seemingly intractable insecurity in that part of the country. They want the Jonathan regime to give it a trial.

But this idea has been vehemently opposed by the Christian Association of Nigeria CAN and many other well meaning Nigerians who would rather have the war concluded very decisively and culprits punished accordingly. All along, the government has not been swayed by the calls for amnesty or dialogue predicating its reasons on the fact that the group had remained largely faceless. But key northern leaders amongst them, the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar have remained unwavering in their belief that amnesty is the solution to the festering problem.

Apparently succumbing to pressure, Jonathan had a forthnight ago set up a committee to advise the government on the desirability or otherwise of amnesty for the group. But the authentic leader of the sect, Abubakar Shekau scorned the move stating that it was they who are in a position to grant pardon to the federal government. From all Shekau said, proceeding with the amnesty deal for his group is bound to be an exercise in futility. That ought to have been the end to the entire idea. But northern leaders have pressed on urging the president to trudge on with the move. The issue now is the propriety of granting amnesty to a group that has unabashedly repudiated the entire idea. Should the Jonathan regime still proceed with the idea of amnesty despite opposition to it by CAN whose members have suffered incalculable losses; the rejection of same by those for whom it is meant and the not too convincing reasons for placating a largely unprovoked murderous group? That is the hard decision Jonathan has to take. And in this he is left with two options- to grant amnesty to the sect or not to grant. He has proceeded further to set up a 26-man committee to engage the Boko Haram sect. Its terms of reference are to develop a framework for the granting of amnesty; setting up of a framework through which disarmament could take place within a 60-day time frame; development of a comprehensive victims’ support programme and development of the mechanisms to address the underlying causes of insurgency that would help to prevent future occurrences. Even then, two key nominees Dr Datti Ahmed and Mallam Shehu Sani have declined the offer. Both have issues with the composition of the committee and the sincerity of the government. Incidentally, these two personages command the respect of the sect.

Decision theory is concerned with the rational choice open to Jonathan in the face of the conflicting signals on the matter. It also envisages that the option he eventually settles for should be that which will minimize his losses in the event of the worst outcome. Should he still proceed with the exercise despite the conflicting signals from the north? And what are the consequences of aborting the process at this point in time?

Rational calculations instruct that he should still go for the amnesty deal. What are the reasons? Northern leaders in whose domain the insurgency is largely domesticated have said time without number that that is what is needed to stem the tide. Even the two declining leaders share this view. Added to this is the seeming inability to win the war on the battle field. If Jonathan does not yield, there is everything to suggest that the insecurity will continue. It may even assume greater ferocity as some of those at the vanguard of the amnesty campaign could now find reasons to further fuel the insurgency to score the point that it is a consequence of the refusal of the government to buy the idea. This is a foreboding possibility.

But then, there is no guarantee that amnesty is the necessary and sufficient condition to stem Boko Haram insurgency. There is therefore the possibility of policy failure. This could arise either from the discordant tunes from the north; the fact that there are many factions of the Boko Haram insurgents or the absence of facts on the ground to support amnesty as a therapeutic response to terrorism. The latter point is given credence by the fact that terrorism which the sect purveys is a global phenomenon and no where has it been solved through amnesty. Unless ours is substantially propelled by other factors, there are ample reasons for skepticisms regarding it capacity to stem the tide. There is thus the chance of failure. But the government should not be deterred by this. Failure could also arise from the type of package the committee would come up with; how it is received by the sect as well as the victims of their atrocious undertakings. It is therefore clear that the path to the success of the 26-man committee is strewn with dangerous thorns. Even with all these, the idea should be given a trial.

Where whatever recommendations they arrive at fail to stem the tide, the government can now feel safely betrayed by the northern elite. The point would have been sufficiently made that those who have been at the vanguard of this campaign did not have the confidence of the sect. They would have lost any iota of credibility they purport to hold on issues concerning the insurgency and the objective conditions that sustain it. Then, the government can take liberty to do whatever it deems appropriate to stem the slide without apology to anyone.

The northern elite now has a daunting burden to discharge by ensuring that the sect accepts whatever propositions the government may come out with as a solution to the killings in their zone. Fears have been raised about monetary gains being at the center of the amnesty calls. Such fears must be proved wrong. We are all watching!

April 22, 2013
Invisible Nigerians

A piece of news passed last week like a whiff. But I saw it as the whiff that precedes a resounding slap in the face. The finance minister, who likes to be called the coordinating minister of the economy, could not brook criticism. So she fired the so-called erring staff of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) because he accused the boss of ethnic favouritism. We call that tribalism in Nigeria.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala likes to be considered a genius, and she carries a supercilious air of the world’s top economic technocrat. No wonder she wanted to be the top boss of the World Bank, even though she does not know that the Breton Woods institution inspires a philosophy that contradicts a developing nation such as Nigeria. Well, one would expect that having worked in such multicultural setting as the World Bank, she would be the last person to fire a person for exercising his right to self-expression.

She cannot say she is not a politician because we saw her on television sporting a PDP outfit at a rally even if she danced like a nerd. She has, on paper, deferred to the democratic tenet that flourishes in an atmosphere of discordant peace, where everyone can defy because we deify differences.

But that is not the real thrust of this column. She let a man, whose name is Yushau Shuaibu, NEMA’s spokesman, to go because he accused the minister of favouring her ethnic relatives. What strikes me is that a pattern is developing, and I am not interested in throwing blame. The pattern inhabits such names as Rose Uzoma, the former immigration boss, Azubuike Ihejirika, the chief of army staff and Stella Oduah, minister of aviation. All of them, including Okonjo-Iweala, belong to the same ethnic group, and they have been charged with a tribal tunnel vision.

The last of such stories came from the heart of the army when Major-General Ihejirika, the first Igbo soldier to head the army since Ironsi, was petitioned as looking only within his ethnic cocoon for choice positions. It was a tempestuous story, and the army chief blazed out a defence of his stewardship. But it had no such detail as to quiet nerves. He did not reel out statistics. Rather he lashed out at his accusers and imputed motives. The motives may be correct. The accuser was an Hausa-Fulani who was probably in jingoistic fury that his ethnic brothers had lost their prime as the avatars in the nation’s hierarchy.

Not many were satisfied, but the matter quieted. The army chief may have his points, but he did not take the patience to satisfy a variegated nation about the integrity of his stewardship. The aviation minister, Stella Oduah, also fell into the storm. But, in the same fashion as the army chief, her defence lacked the detail and balance that would sate an intellectual curiosity.

Shuaibu’s article excoriating the finance mistress did not give much detail. But the mistress of the economy ought to have acted with grace and not with the hectoring fury of an Amazon. What concerns me is not whether the allegations are out but that a hypocritical nation has allowed the grudges to fester. The fury has sublimated in the courtesies of silence, or what the Senegalese novelist Sembene Ousmane calls the perfidy of lies and hypocrisy of rivals.

We cannot forget that we dwell in a nation riven by ethnic duels today. The crisis in Plateau State between the so-called indigenes and settlers smouldered surreptitiously for years before it moved from community to a cumulus of fear and slaughter. Boko Haram is ostensibly a pious movement but all over it seethes the tribal angst. We cannot forget that the injustice that fomented the senseless killings of the Igbo in the 1960s followed pent-up resentments over what was the domination of the ethnic group in the civil service.

I have no doubt that this is not a nation, as Okoi Arikpo once said. We are a nation state. It is a nation of nations in which individual components pass the years in mutual suspicion. But we have lived together for over five decades and the concept of Nigeria is even a century. Yet we still live in the words of the American writer with the “haunting fear that someone somewhere might be happy” because of one ethnic group or the other’s progress.

If it is true that these allegations resound with facts, then we should not let them go under. Normally such matters ought to be scrutinised with thoroughness by the National Assembly in the fashion of the immigration boss who lost her job because it was true. If they are not true we ought to be satisfied by the report of a disinterested party and not the official line of the accused.

When the Hausa-Fulani held sway, the Igbo spoke vociferously about marginalisation, and this writer on many occasions invested ink in support of giving the Southeast its fair share. It is an irony that the same group should be in that position today.

The Hausa-Fulani did not apologise for holding the nation’s jugular, and we resented that then. Even President Goodluck Jonathan, who rode to power on the southern wave, is inspiring charges of pursuing an Ijaw agenda in the Niger Delta. When these charges are thrown, the cynical response is that it is their time. When will it be the time of fairness for Nigeria?

The United States has fought this prejudice for over a century, and it still rankles the nation in spite of installing a black president in Barack Obama. But we have seen institutional sensitivity in the nation. Charges like these cannot go without thorough investigation.

The Hausa-Fulani swaggered and we fumed. We do not want that to continue because to allow grudges to gather in the sewers of a nation’s subconscious is to postpone the day of duel that often is inevitable.

The Yoruba never complained of marginalisation until recently. They have cried that the present dispensation under Jonathan has pooh-poohed the nation of Kaaro ojire. They have lashed back that the Yoruba had the speaker slot, but how do you choose for a person what he should have. But is the position of speaker sufficient to sate a people with the second largest ethnicity in the land? That chops logic. However, I have often told the Yoruba that they brought marginalisation on themselves because they voted for Jonathan without insisting on the quid pro quo in such democratic investment.

What is clear is that we still live in a nation of idols. To simplify philosopher Plato, we have moulded idols. Here we have idols of the tribe, idols of the faith, and they all add up to idols of hate. Each tribal bigot continues to see, not Nigeria, but Hausa, Ibibio, Itsekiri, Igbo, Yoruba, etc. Others are invisible.

When I read the novel The Invisible Man by the black writer Ralph Ellison about how the black man was invisible in the United States to the white man, I had to witness it myself to appreciate the pithy truths of his narratives. You could enter an office with a white person, and a person who knows you both may greet the other person as though you were not there. I experienced this.

We have this in our country, and we act as though hell is other people, apologies to Jean Paul Sartre. It is time to crash the tunnel wall so we can see who sits on the other side.

April 22, 2013