The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

‘Our president has no shoes’

No one can forget President Goodluck Jonathan’s shoe speech of seduction. We remember it not for its rhetorical distinction. Jonathan has not delivered any speech that stuns except for playing games with facts. But the shoe speech distinguished itself by its bare bones fact, its evocative familiarity. He said he did not have shoes as a little boy and walked barefoot to school.

It was a seduction speech because he tapped the experience of many who grew up in his days, whether in the Niger Delta, in the Southeast, in the Southwest or all parts of the North. In the 1970’s in Warri, we called it “tearing ten toes.”

Most people did not buy shoes. They could not afford it, and it did not seem then like a big deal if you did not have shoes because many did not. That was the point President Jonathan did not make. He was not alone without shoes. He grew up in a generation of shoeless school goers. He was not an isolated poor. We all had that foot deficiency with blisters, petrified soles and toes, limping over wounds coming and going.

He delivered the speech when he declared he wanted to run for president after he survived the plots and ululations of the so-called cabal or kitchen cabinet. Those were the men and woman who would not give him the right to which providence and the law entitled him, and he broke a law on his own called zoning in his party in order to declare his “I did not have a shoe” speech. It was perhaps the most resonant appeal in all speeches declaring a presidential ambition in Nigerian history. I might also say it was the most opportunistic.

But that is not the point today. It is because President Jonathan has spent one hundred days in office and he seemed to bask in false glory in an organised media chat in which he failed to elevate his thoughts. He was incapable of generating an enthusiasm among Nigerians about whether he had a direction. Editors found it hard to cast any good headline because in the two-hour exposure he did not make any meaningful exposition. Not on security, not on the federal question or power or infrastructure development or on the vexing bugbear of education did he utter any succinct line of policy. As a PHD, he did not sound coherent. As a former teacher he did not inspire one to take notes. As a past technocrat, he showed no sign of the policy wonk.

Yet, the nation is in dire pains. Poverty worsens by the hour, and all the challenges we face in the areas of Boko Haram eruptions, the failure of power, the exodus of businesses, the rising illiteracy levels, all show how poverty continues to grow like an ominous monster feeding fat in the sewer.

In all of these, I don’t think he knows the significance of his shoe speech. It was not just an emotive moment. It was a challenge, a potentially inspirational moment. It was a pact with all those who live at the level he lived in the shoeless era. He vowed – if he did not realise it on that incandescent stage that Abuja afternoon – to ensure that those who could not afford shoes in 2011 should be able to afford them by the time he is done in office.

It was a very simple pledge. It was an IOU. It is time to start paying up. But from how he has performed since he took over as a substantive president- though he has been president for over a year now- I see no signal of progress. No one is asking him to set up a shoe factory. That will not cut it. And no one is asking him to go on a charity spree, buy shoes in their millions and distribute them to the poor of subaltern Nigerian or even in the city.

That will be phony. In fact Nigerians have become so adept at second-hand shoes that even the very poor afford threadbare varieties of footwear. What Jonathan should focus on now is to create conditions that will make it easy for the poor to afford shoes. It sounds simplistic. But that is the power he needs to tap for a successful presidency.

Before a boy of school age whose parents cannot afford shoes can afford them, certain things have to happen. The parents have to be able to have enough money, and not just enough to feed, but also for shelter, for school fees, and other essentials. Shoes were seen as luxuries in those days. You had to afford the basics and later go to the level of footwear. Footwear was at the bottom of the list. Shoes are still a luxury today. For the parents to get money, they have to have jobs and jobs do not spring from lumbering economies.

What this means is that Jonathan should make it possible for the poor to rise out of their present state of misery. But for a presidency that has not narrowed its objectives and set a coherent strategy for implementation, the story of all those with shoeless lifestyles remain endangered.

In his first duty as president, which is security, he has proved out of sync. Jos has become a cauldron of weekly and sometimes daily tragedies. In the approach to the Boko Haram eruptions, he is engaging in counterterrorism without intelligence. Nobody wages a war without intelligence. If knowledge is power, how can you fight without knowledge? This is a typical Nigerian paradox.

How can businesses flourish, or education standards rise and infrastructure develop in the absence of security? That is what Nigeria is today.

This is not the time to allow himself to dither. This is not the time to be distracted by the issue of a six-year term. He made it clear it was not six years he was proposing but seven. He said Nigerians presumed he was going to benefit from it. He did not make any categorical statement about whether he was going to exploit it. Not that any such categorical word was going to mean anything. Zoning is an example.

Agriculture is still behind, and Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day. Yet the value of the Naira to the dollar has dropped about N15 in only three months. The banks do not show the real values. Go to the Bureaus de change to find out the truth. The Nigerian is devaluated like our currency and that does not presage good things for those without shoes.

The worse the situation, the more likely it will be for those with shoeless boys and girls to afford shoes. The president ought to take this seriously. How marvelous it would be though if the president does well and at the end of four years, we are able to pick those whose lots have so improved that they can afford shoes for their children to go to school.

If not, that rhetoric of seduction on that gleeful stage of intention would be a big waste, a grandiloquent lie. The president could protest his failure by taking off his shoes. But we cannot have that of our president because people will say our president has no shoes.

•This article, first published on September 19, 2011, was one of four articles with which Omatseye won the NMMA Columnist of the Year.

December 18, 2012
Traveller’s nightmare

I arrived Nigeria only to be reminded I was home on Saturday with items missing from my luggage at our international airport in Lagos. The first sign was that the lock was off. I opened the bag, and found it was without some items. I reported to a young man in charge of such matters and he said the locks were removed by United States security. But when they did such things they put the locks back in the bag. Not in my bag.

Good news though. The thieves may have loved the glitzy stuff but were too illiterate to know the value of books. They left my books intact. Thank God for small mercies.

December 17, 2012
Redeeming Ibadan

A city is a people. More than the village that encases a monolithic world view, a city embraces the world. That is why the village has collapsed as a barometer of a civilisation, especially since the city began its rise on the back of that great idea called capitalism.

But the city has also become a cynosure of disgrace, the repository of filth and psychic decay, where the criminal rumbles and the politician cons and the businessman profiteers and the child expires on the cheap.

The city of London today is celebrated for its order and even beauty, but it once groveled under Hitler’s bombardments. However, it was that same tragedy that threw up the genius of the great Winston Churchill with his speeches of inspirational growl.

Before that, Charles Dickens expended his gifts to depict the squalour of that city, with novels like Oliver Twist and The Great Expectation. The British Prime minister at the time decided to work the city to glory after reading of the terrible want and desperation of the character Oliver Twist.

No city in the world, whether it is London, New York, Tokyo or Paris that did not pass through the foul rhythm of grime and crime before surging to a place of envy.

All of them were inspired by leaders, just like the case of London. New York is on the rise again after a decade of decline.

Lagos fell to such a bad place in the military era. It is a different story today. On this page, I lamented the city of Ibadan where Obafemi Awolowo patented his genius, where the old west preened.

It fell, like unfortunate cities do, on the hands of a bumbler. The man, Alao-Akala, preferred the vanity of his sartorial splendour to the environment. Leaders inspire cities. Alao-Akala committed the extraordinary act of narcissism. He loved himself so much that there was not much love left for the city he governed.

What I lamented was the filth of Ibadan, where at every turn you saw heaps of refuse intimidating traffic into paralysis. Rather than inspire Ibadan, he inspired filth. So bad was the situation that it was declared in 2008 one of the dirtiest cities on God’s green earth. The man did not understand the meaning of green.

In the past year, I have had reasons to visit the city, and it is clear that the city is in the hands of a man who has the wherewithal to inspire it. The evidence abounds of Ibadan as a city on the rebound.

All those places where dirt compounded like natural habitats are gone, and they used to swagger in different colours of green, blue, red, brown. But they were not good green, or colourful brown, or bewitching red. They were mock colours. They were the colours of stench rising with impunity to you, even if you were ensconced in an air-conditioned car.

There is a strategy to Governor Abiola Ajimobi’s approach to the filth and decay of the city. One of his first preoccupations was to keep the flood at bay. This meant attacking the drainage challenges. Ibadan has been a graveyard as floods after floods pummeled during rainy seasons. Homes caved in as lives drowned.

He has built a number of bridges, cleared many a water path so that no stagnant pool accumulates so much dirt that the rains can unleash flood. This is the way to attack the root of the problem. It is still work in progress. They call him the bridge builder.

This is accompanied with regular work by refuse disposal units that cart away bags and drums of refuse. I could have gone with the impression that the people of Ibadan loved filth. But that is not the case. I grew up in Ibadan and recall the images of the city, even during the imperial days of the army. I lived in Oke-Ado.

Ibadan was not what it became under the bejeweled, half-literate chief executive that steered it into the age of unclean.

The third leg of the strategy is the beautification. We cannot appreciate what is clean until we develop what is beautiful inside. To beautify is a painful exercise always, but it is a thing that ought to be done.

Entering Ibadan from Lagos invites you to work already going on beautifying the Iwo Road. The work is not done yet, and for it to be appreciated Governor Ajimobi has promised to expand the road. It is still experiencing traffic discomfort, which though has reduced. It will entail massive demolitions, which he plans to do. But the work has to be done. Beauty cannot be enjoyed when traffic snarls.

But around Ibadan in such places as Ring Road, Dugbe, Bere, Oje roads, the beauty of the city is coming to view in picturesque green projects.

When a city is clean, the people are creative. That was why novelist Dostoyevsky proclaimed that beauty will save the world.

Ajimobi has shown himself equal to the task. We can recall that just a few years ago, Ibadan was a hotbed of violence and insecurity. Partisans of the road workers union terrorised citizens, robbers prowled and the general sense was that of unfathomable devilry.

Things have changed and it is taken for granted. Just as it was taken for granted in Lagos State until a spasm of robbery a few months ago reminded us of what good times had fallen on the country’s most populous city.

The first task of a government is the security of the people. Oyo State has eased out of the vice grip of inept men, and Governor Ajimobi epitomises that liberation with his clever, methodical touch.

With a city vastly more secure and cleaner with better aesthetic outlook, Ibadan and Oyo State can face the larger challenge of attracting more investment. This is an impressive showing in less than two years Ajimobi ascended the throne.

He has also done well with roads, rehabilitating and constructing about 250 roads. He has streamlined the finance, raising the internally generated revenue and paying salary even in the 13th month and engaging 20,000 youths in creative jobs.

In his play Coriolanus, Shakespeare quips, “what’s a city but the people?”

That is the governor’s main task: to set the people away from fear and want. He is on the right track.

December 17, 2012
Media and sustainable democracy

The oldest definition of democracy is one in which it is conceptualized as, government of the people by the people and for the people.

In ancient Greek city states, it was possible for the people to gather in a square and directly take decisions on issues affecting their common wellbeing.

Overtime, the concept of representative democracy evolved in the fashion of the Kuhnian revolution to supplant direct democracy.

Central to this concept is that government is a social contract between the people and the rulers and the people as the ultimate sovereign, exercise the right of control on their elected representatives.

Periodic elections and separation of powers are necessary conditions for democracy. It is through periodic elections and the checks and balances attendant to separation of powers that democracy derives its greatest attraction over other governance forms. Through periodic elections, the people keep a check on leaders’ activities ensuring that the bad ones among them are voted out at the next round.

Almond and Verba in their classification of political socialization identified three variants of political culture: parochial, subject and participant. For them, the political culture of democracy-civic culture is a combination of the three with the participant variant being the most dominant. By way of contrast, the subject political culture in which the individual makes no input into the system but enjoys the benefit of its output is more easily located in totalitarian states. In the participant variant, the individual has some idea of what the political system is and very well disposed to it. He makes inputs into it and enjoys the benefits from it.

One point that has been bought to the fore is that there are ordered attitudes, orientations, dispositions and roles that must be played by the people for democracy to survive. And in these, the media have an indispensable role to play.

The 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in chapter (1) 4(1and 2) vested the legislative powers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the National Assembly which shall have the powers to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the federation or any part thereof.

Section 14 (2a) stated that sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this constitution derives its powers and authority; while (2c) guarantees the participation by the people in their government.

It went further in section 22 to state that the press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media shall at all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people.

One recurring issue so far is that government is an institution of the people and exists in the main, for their collective good. An essential element of representative government is the legislature through which elected leaders make laws for the general wellbeing of the people.

Through periodic elections, the people constantly ensure that those who exercise mandate on their behalf use them for public good. This entails regular monitoring of the activities of elected representatives through reports, write-ups and analysis in the media. Monitoring could also be direct or through other informal means. And in this monitoring and keeping a tab on their activities, the media have a very indispensable role to play. Through the media, the people get to know what their representatives do in the national Assembly; their contributions to debate and how reflective of their wishes and aspirations they are. Through the media also, they are able to articulate their preferences on the conduct of legislative activities thereby contributing to the law making process. Misuse of power is expected to attract reprisals- rejection of that representative at the next round of elections. There is also the power of recall of errant lawmakers which is vested on the people of the constituency. These key powers of the people act as a check against the excesses of law makers and work in the direction of responsible conduct which in turn, strengthens democratic practices. For these to happen, there must be free and unhindered flow of information. That is where the freedom of information Act cues in. For the media to play this role very effectively, it must be driven by public interest. The media could also become an impediment to this role especially if money and muscle power get control over it to the point of becoming an economic exercise rather than driven by public good. It is in this regard that some authorities have come up with the term Media Democracy. The driving idea here is that the media must be independent, plural and democratic in its ownership and role perception for it to effectively discharge these functions without which democracy cannot survive.

Information being the basis for decision-making, there is no doubt that the amount of it available to the people bears direct correlation to their ability to influence legislative outcome. It is a three directional thing involving input, output and feedback. The media convey relevant information on the feelings of the people to the legislature. It also conveys to the general public happenings at the legislature thus increasing their awareness on such events. These in turn, influence action and elicit response from the public which is conveyed back to elected leaders through a feedback system.

Access to information is essential to the health of democracy for at least two basic reasons. First, it ensures that people make responsible, informed decisions rather than act in ignorance or misinformation.

Second, information serves as “checking function” by ensuring that elected representatives uphold their oath of office and carry out the wishes of those who elected them.

In some societies, an antagonistic relationship between the media and the government represents a vital and healthy element of full functioning democracy.

The national assembly through its oversight functions interfaces with other critical institutions of government.

Through it, elected leaders ensure that public institutions are run in the overall public good. Since the new dispensation, we have seen such probe committees as the ones on fuel subsidy scandal and the capital market as well as those on constitutional amendment.

These are responses to concerns by the people on the fraudulent manner fuel subsidy payments and the Capital Market have been managed in this country. The constitutional amendment process is responding to public agitations for a constitution that represents their wishes and aspirations. Most of the issues slated for discussion: state creation, residency clause, State police, local government autonomy and immunity clause have been in the public domain for sometime now.

The essence of the public hearings is to give the people a say in the amendment process given that the 1999 constitution being a product of the military did not have inputs from the people.

In this desire to give the people a say in the constitutional amendment process, the media have a pivotal role in providing the necessary information and education that will aid decision.

But the media must be credible, objective, independent and responsible for it to positively influence public perception and action.

Excerpts from a paper at a UNDP capacity workshop for the press corps of the Senate held in Makurdi, Benue State.

December 17, 2012
Media and terrorism

What should be the role of the media in the fight against terrorism in this country, has of recent been a matter for public scrutiny. In the last couple of days, this relationship has been the major concern of security agencies, the government and the discerning public.

The spokesman of the Joint Taskforce on Terrorism JTF, Col. Sagir Musa was the first to fire the salvo. In a well presented and very engaging article widely published in the media, he made spirited efforts to draw attention to the nexus between regular reportage of acts of terrorism in the media (albeit through sensationalism) and the festering of the malaise.

He contended that publicity is the oxygen of terrorism and that modern terrorists employ media terrorism to oil their dastardly acts. Musa further argued that terrorism makes sense only when it is conspicuous in that targets are selected for maximum propaganda and publicity value.

Also at a security training programme for the media, the Director-General of the State Security Services SSS, Ekpenyong Ita, arguing along the same line said terrorists craved for media attention. Hear him, “when they carry out attacks, they want as much publicity as possible and when the media sensationalize such an attack, the terror groups have achieved their objectives of getting wide publicity which is aimed at intimidating and instilling fear in the people”

The presidency through Doyin Okupe also spoke in a similar vein while reacting to a media report to the effect that nowhere is safe in Nigeria.

The issues raised above would appear novel given our recent experience with the scourge of terrorism. Because we are experiencing it for the first time, there is the temptation to view these concerns as a challenge peculiar to Nigeria. And given the way things are handled in this country, it may not take long before the media are made to take vicarious responsibility for the ravaging insecurity accentuated by the activities of the dreaded Boko Haram sect.

There is a sense in which these arguments could be pursued and the inevitable impression created that the media have become the greatest impediment to the fight against terrorism. This is more so with spirited efforts to construct a link between terrorism and the media seen by our security experts as the oxygen without which the former cannot survive. But this claim cannot find support for the very simple fact that one precedes the other. Terrorism takes place before the media record accounts of its deadly and devastating consequences. There is therefore a limit beyond which we cannot hold the media liable for the festering acts of terrorism. Moreover, it has neither been established nor can it be established that publicity is the driving force for terrorism undertakings. From what we know all over the world, acts of terrorism are largely driven by such societal malaise as injustice, religious fundamentalism, poverty and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, class or religion.

Terrorism is propelled and sustained by perceived grievances. And in all instances of terrorism, these grievances are articulated by its promoters and not difficult to locate. The Boko Haram sect has been very unambiguous in its demands from the Nigerian state. It is opposed to western education and committed to imposing an Islamic state in the country. These are some of their known demands and grouses. It was therefore not surprising that as soon as the government made clear it was not interested in negotiations with them and proceeded to place ransom on the heads of their leaders, they selected targets for maximum impact to demonstrate their capacity for evil. And they succeeded in doing just that.

The bombing of a church right inside Jaji and the assault at the SARS headquarters in Abuja soon after that pronouncement, illustrate this point most poignantly. If the media proceeds to document these occurrences in the interest of the reading public, they are only acting within the confines of their profession calling. It will therefore be incorrect to convey the impression that the media provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for terrorism to thrive as our security chiefs have sought to do.

Even then, the media have not equally fared well in the hands of terrorists. Terrorists have variously targeted and levied maximum harm on media organizations and practitioners. They have been accused of bias in reporting and documenting the activities and views of the terrorists. The bombing of some media houses in Abuja and Kano by terrorists not long ago, was on account of perceived bias on the part of the media against them. They specifically accused the Thisday Newspaper of distorting reports by not publishing some press statements emanating from them.

What this underscores is that the media are at the receiving end both from the point of view of the government and the terrorists. The government would want the media to thread softly in the manner they disseminate information on terrorist activities given that their aim in selecting targets for maximum impact is to get maximum publicity and instill fear in the public. This could as well be. But it is also the responsibility of the same government with the benefit of this strategy at its disposal, to make it impossible for them to reach such sensitive and high impact targets that will make for ‘sensational’ news for the media. If the military authorities and the police echelon could not adequately secure Jaji and SARS headquarters resulting to that unmitigated assault, they should squarely take the blame. If they cannot through surveillance and intelligence gathering nip these tendencies in the bud, they could be the real source of that oxygen for terrorist action. Moreover, the media have a social responsibility in regularly drawing attention to these terrorist acts. They draw the attention of the government to the festering phenomenon with a call for more action and alert the public to the dangers they poses to their lives. If the government wants less of these reports, it must do more to tame the mortal danger terrorism has become on these shores.

Admittedly, there are bound to be some excesses in the manner some sections of the media handle some reports especially given the advent of what is now known as the social media. Their largely unstructured nature gives ample room for abuse. But this affects all spheres of the society and not limited to terrorism. The issues raised by our security chiefs are not entirely novel.

Before now, the role of the media in the fight against terrorism had engaged global attention. P. Wilkinson sees a symbiotic relationship between terrorism and the media.

But the dilemma in this relationship was succinctly captured by C.A Damm when he contended that terrorists are dependent on the publicity they receive and the media acquire from the terrorists that staple in news reporting: an event newsworthy, unexpected and violent which the public is drawn attention to hear. This appears a more apt way of representing the predicament of the media in the reportage terrorism in a country like ours.

December 10, 2012
Democracy is not enough

Few Nigerians know of a place called Providence, even though most citizens grapple with the idea of the word. Providence the idea fascinates us and not Providence the place.

But last week, the providence of Africa was the subject of discussion in the city of Providence, in a state called Rhode Island in the United States. The man at the bottom of this is Chinua Achebe, Africa’s leading novelist, who incidentally touched off a tempest with his flawed new book, There was a Country.

He is a professor at Brown University, a member of the American Ivy league and one of the best schools in the world. He started the Chinua Achebe Colloquium, a talk shop of the world’s top exponents on Africa to chart a new way out of the ennui and tragic turbulence of a people.

It was my first attendance, and it was a feast of ideas, if the menu did not always flatter the mental palate. A wide range of persons spoke, from university professors from such upscale schools as Harvard to institutes like the Centre for Strategic and International Studies to a businessman like Mohammed Ibrahim to men of power like our own Babatunde Raji Fashola(SAN), the governor of example and chief executive of Lagos State.

The presence of two speakers resonated throughout the event, and they were Mo Ibrahim and Governor Fashola, in earnest because of the positions they advanced. Achebe, aplomb in his wheelchair, never uttered a word throughout the conference, maintaining an avuncular aloofness from the friendly affray of the sessions. He did not only not convey what he felt, he did not want his enveloping silence ruffled with interaction. It was an irony of a convener, a magnet that attracted without being touched.

Even when Fashola stirred the hall with incisive comments about his new book, the most Achebe did was the lofty mannerism of touching his eyeglass and a little tic of his face and movement of the head. It seemed, at the hoary age of 82, Achebe was only interested in vocalising through his most potent forte: the written word.

Mo Ibrahim came across, in spite of his wealth and status, with a touching modesty, interacting with everyone as much as he could before he left. He spoke with great passion about the failing of his continent. He noted that for a continent with so much promise, it is failing in all the important indices of governance, which included the rule of law, economic performance, participation and transparency, and gender issues.

His speech was, however, significant for a question he propounded. He wanted the audience to tell him the leaders of Cape Verde, Botswana and Mozambique. Few could answer. But everyone knew who Mobutu, Idi Amin, Abacha and Mugabe were. He lamented that we did not celebrate what good we interred in our African bones. These three countries had great indices.

With due respect to the host, Achebe, Mo Ibrahim said this was no time for poetry, but for facts, for getting our hands dirty to save the continent from the jaws of poverty. He said the conflicts in Africa were about the poor fighting against the poor.

Fashola’s speech was marked by two main positions. One was the workability of the idea of democracy for development. The second was on Achebe’s book, There was a Country. He took on the prose stylist for provoking a debate of old wounds belonging to a passing generation, and how his generation and the future generations should be left to grapple with challenges not fraught with the divisiveness of his book.

He felt as a man brought up on Things Fall Apart as one of the diets of his education, he felt engaged with the author and that was why Achebe should allow ethnic disputes between the Igbo and Yoruba be at ease, so the falcon can hear the falconer.

Going into history, he said both Awo and Ojukwu had moved on, and so should the rest of the country. He argued that some sapient harmonies had been ignored in the tempest. One, the Yoruba did not lay any proprietary claims to abandoned properties after the war. In fact, as somebody pointed out to me as the governor spoke, some Yoruba kept the full rent money for the landlords until the battle field fell silent. Two, that Ojukwu’s property was saved from the grasping lust of the Lagos State military government by the brilliance of a Yoruba lawyer, Tunji Braithwaite. Three, that a Yoruba general married off his daughter to an Igbo. He buttressed this with his family and his uncle who attended school the same day with Ojukwu. Four, that in Lagos State, some of the assets of his administration were Igbo, singling out Ben Akabueze and Joe Igbokwe for mention.

On the value of democracy, he noted that Africans were not grappling with democracy alone but a series of existential distractions that made democracy to appear like an impediment.

With insights into history and law, he argued that Africans had yet to come to terms with the anachronisms of kings and conquerors in a modern world of cooperative living. Yet we cannot ignore our past, and that is where his speech fascinates.

African roots with the traditional obeisance, zest for divinities and the fear to experiment have often killed a greed for the future. Adam Smith had argued centuries ago that societies with big families under a patriarch would always abide with tyrannies.

Our extended family system with the power of one man has reflected in the entire democratic experiments of our people. What complicates it is the inevitability of modernisation: the rise of the city, capitalism, the modern bureaucracy, the clash of culture at the linguistic and social levels. These are breaking down the family structure while we resist them. That is why in one breath we accept democracy and in another resist it.

We cannot look beyond our ethnic cleavages or the big man syndrome in our politics. Democracy will not come a la carte. We must be ready for the sacrifices. So the problem is not that democracy will not work, but it is not enough. We see democracy only as election. It is beyond that. It is about a culture. A culture that is corrupt cannot produce a vibrant democracy.

It is like administering a pill for malaria. You have to use it with the necessary nourishment of food, rest, hydration, room temperature, etc, before the quinine will work. Otherwise, you will keep blaming the drug instead of the man.

“Except a corn of wheat fall to the ground and die, it abideth alone. But when it dies, it bringeth forth new fruits,” said Jesus Christ. What parts of our culture are we ready to let die in order to enjoy the fruits of democracy?

As Mo Ibrahim said, countries like Cape Verde and Botswana are African and they are good models. Why not Nigeria? The fault is not in democracy, but in our culture. It takes leaders to save us from this fixation on kings and predators and fear of opposition when we win. Mo Ibrahim gave an example of a Cape Verde leader who, having no home or money, returned to his mother’s home after losing the election. He organised and won the next time. It is with such leaders that democracy delivers dividends.

December 10, 2012
Quench not the spirit

You might have thought him a teenager, seeing him for the first time that night. Except for his sometimes seamed face, his white-flecked goatee and a pair of eyes deep in the cares and plays of this life. Otherwise, the febrile energy of his hands, eyes, feet and even the easy mobility of his face can pass him off as a partisan of that species still enraptured by the sweet oat of life: the teenager.

But Rauf Aregbesola is no teenager. The Ogbeni only carries the strength of one. The night was last Friday when he engaged his fellow citizens in a programme called Ogbeni Till Daybreak. It was an interactive affair in which questions came from all walks of life: journalists, civil servants, farmers, the jobless, the elite. And the questions streamed forth from different agencies: direct from the variegated audience, through phone calls, Twitter, Facebook, emails, etc.

The questions, propounded sometimes with probing defiance, sometimes with flattering fatuities and sometimes with superficial candour, reflected the range of the anxieties, hopes and befuddlements of the citizens. There were questions about roads not completed, jobs not offered, actions perceived to carry partisan mischief, etc. But at bottom was the sense, even from the most adversarial questioner, that the man fielding the questions was on a high pitch of performance.

Those who asked about roads not completed acknowledged the many roads at work, in virtually all communities in the state. Those who asked about jobs not offered wanted to be part of the new élan of opportunities, especially with the engagement of the youth employment scheme that puts 20,000 young men and women out of the giddy despair of indolence.

He answered with the gusto of a natural politician and the knowledge of a technocrat. He reeled out songs and wiggled with dance moves that infected the crowd, made up of party faithful, journalists, and wide range of citizens. It was a night that was simultaneously sombre and festive. At times so sombre as to be warlike, just like when he answered questions about his predecessors reign of terror and paralysis for seven and half years. He also celebrated when he compared the statistics of performance between them, dwarfing already in two years all that the Oyinlola offered in three quarters of a decade.

He spoke with confidence, and you could not escape the infection. I attended having also gone around the state to see what his story has been about. I came off with a distinct impression of a man in constant wrestle with his dream. He is a man of great enthusiasm, and if it were possible to turn the dream into reality with a span of 24 hours, Ogbeni is a man who would want to accomplish that feat.

That is why he has put in place a system of multipliers. Look at three distinct areas: infrastructure, agriculture and education. For instance, the pupils in class one to four feed every day all across the state. Caterers are employed to cook, and the farmers have to provide the farm produce for the caterer. The multiplier effect is inevitable. The farmer gets a market, the caterer gets employed and the student gets nutrition. Prosperity builds on prosperity. The instant benefits as testified to by the job of the caterer and the farmer. The future enjoys, witness the student who gets nourishment. The other instant benefit is the rush of parents to enroll their kids. Again, the major farms in the state have roads constructed, giving jobs to construction, encouragement to transportation. This is a seamless connection in governance.

A tailor walked up to thank the Ogbeni for keeping his fellow tradesmen engaged. The same multiplier takes place with school uniforms, OYES cadets, etc. The local tailor works and feeds the seller of the threads, etc. It is a gain chain.

His main love is food security as a driver of prosperity. The farms are offered free, for all who are serious from the small farmer to the large-scale entrepreneur.

To set this in motion he followed the Lagos example: financial engineering. He met a mess and the state had to borrow one billion Naira every month just to pay civil servants salaries. He turned this financial desperation into advantage. Now Osun is not broke. By saving money over a period, he turned the fat purse to leverage development. That is the genius of financial stimulation. Having achieved that, he became Keynesian, throwing huge sums of money into developments in various parts of the state, giving jobs, stimulating demand and setting to work an energy that has not been matched in the state. So good was it that he even paid civil servants bonus at the end of the year.

In my drive around, I saw some of the projects. One of them is the road that moves from Gbogan up to Ijebu-Igbo, and the idea is to provide an alternative to the Lagos-Ibadan expressway for those travelling to Osun, Ondo, and even to the Niger Delta and the Southeast. This is the power of thinking. I visited the road that some of the government officials call Hongye, which is the name of the Chinese firm working the 44 kilometre road. I drove about half of the road, which was originally intended as a farm road. It used to be a serpentine monster of a dirt road, dipping, rising, twisting like a reptilian booby trap, narrow with menace and lurking with death, dust-laden, besieged with bushes and imposing shortsightedness to a journey of many miles.

That is what is being salvaged as alternative to a road – Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – that the Federal Government has somersaulted for years without putting it on an even keel of work. As I travelled the road, which has been expanded with shoulders and furniture for about 18 kilometres so far, I saw the work of a dreamer. I spoke to Hongye officials on site and they said they will be done by April next year. The contours and dips have been corrected, with earth work, stone work, etc, and it is wearing, in expanse, feel and ambience the atmosphere of an expressway. It is a great work. Another impressive activity is the road leading from the state to Kwara. In a mark of fortitude, setbacks have been drawn and many structures are coming down, showing a sense of an expressway of the future. One of the questions on Friday night. Compensation for the affected? Ogbeni: all those with documents shall be paid back.

Some of his critics often peddle stories about his lack of restraint. When the people have suffered so poor and deprived for so long, how can a person of enthusiasm not show zeal when opportune to do it? His critics have a staid way of looking at development. To quote Epicurus, “do not spoil what you already have by desiring what you have not, remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

That is a recipe for paralysis. That is the spirit of the conservative of the worst tradition. He just had a dream to change a state, he is going about it, and a few people are shaken out of their torpid lack of ideas. The shock crystalises into fearful, aggressive tirades of criticism.

That is the way of the visionary. “A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of us,” noted the inimitable Oscar Wilde.

They forget as playwright Goethe writes that “what is not started today is not finished tomorrow.” Civilisation as we know it today with cars, television, internet, cell phones did not come without what is called disruptive thinking. It is the sort that multiplies, and it is the multiplier effect that changed man from the hewer of wood and drawer of water to the prosperity of the highway and aircraft and brain surgeon. In his novella, Man from the Underground, Dostoyevsky caviled at a civilisation where one plus one equals one, and he says it is the beginning of death.

That is not the civilisation that transformed the world. It is the multiplier one, the sort Ogbeni is pursuing with boyish zeal. He reminds me of the words of the Canadian musician who travelled West Africa by bicycle and wrote a book, Masked Rider. He noted, “A spirit with a vision is a dream with a mission.”

So, I tell Ogbeni’s critics, quench not the spirit.

December 3, 2012
South-East discord

If you ask the average Nigerian the likely reaction of people of the south-east to any political issue that concerns their common destiny, his most probable answer would be disagreement. In line with this perception, the zone has been constantly portrayed as incapable of reaching consensus on issues affecting them. And sometimes, this contrived dissonance has proved a very convenient excuse to deny them their rights within the larger federal set up.

Not unexpectedly, the actions or inactions of some of those who have been thrown up as their leaders in the last 42 years or so have not helped matters in sustaining this negative ascription to once a very organized and very cohesive group. In the competition among the dominant groups for the spoils of our common being, no body has cared whether this malignant culture is real or imaginary; imposed or part of the social formation of the people of the area.

As the so-called inability or incapacity of people of the south-east to speak with one voice is being elevated beyond reasonable proportions, nobody has given a thought to why this has been so. No body seemed to have realized that it was the same group, armed with bare hands and crude implements that waged a 30-month war against the rest of the federation. If they were such a culturally disorganized group; if they had no leaders and respect for leadership; if dissension is part of their political culture, could they have carried out that feat as a people?

This poser takes us closer to the main thesis of our presentation and it is that the Igbo are not a culturally disorganized or disoriented group as they are being portrayed. They are also not incapable of reaching consensus on issues of their common existence. It will be helpful to locate the source of this conduct and subsequent stigmatization. Put in another way, we need to locate at what point in the relationship between the people of the zone and others this schism set in. Without fear of contradiction, it would appear to me that this stigmatization is of a very recent history; and it is largely an imposition from the outside. It derives it force from events since after the civil war and was deliberately created by Nigerian leaders so that no strong voice could ever rise up again from that zone. It was in the interest and part of the strategy of the Nigerian government to ensure that the people do not easily reach common grounds for fear that cohesion could lend itself to actions supposedly against national unity. This assertion might sound controversial or even absurd or both but it finds ample justification from events since after that civil war.

It started with the appointment of marginal Igbo people into key federal slots meant for the zone during the years the military held sway. These yes members ensured they did the bidding of those who appointed them. They were neither answerable to their people nor did they have compelling reasons to identify with their genuine wishes and aspirations. They were constantly under the prying eyes of their masters who ensured they did their bidding. Any attempt to identify with their people is viewed from the prism of trying to resurrect the memories of the civil war. It became very fashionable for such appointees to take pride in not identifying with their people. In some instances, they openly stood against the collective interests of their people. And who are you to query them?

With the departure of the military, we had thought that such impositions had gone for good. But we were wrong. Obasanjo who became the president in 1999 took serious steps to ensure that this culture of imposition of sundry characters as Igbo leaders continued. Events in Anambra state then were ample testimony to this conclusion. Even though there was a governor elected by the people, Obasanjo raised surrogates who never allowed the governor to rest.

Those thrown up and who overnight became the conscience of the people in a state that had people like Alex Ekwueme, became a source of immense consternation to many.

This charade continued even when Chris Ngige emerged the governor after his predecessor Chinwoke Mbadinuju was refused the ticket of his party by the same powers that be. We cannot forget in a hurry the abduction of Ngige and the unsuccessful attempt to depose him by a band of faceless people. We cannot also forget the criminal assault on the government house Awka and the destructions that followed. Till date, nothing has come out of it and no body to the best of my knowledge has been held culpable for that show of shame and an unmitigated assault on democracy.

But somebody somewhere was stoking that assault and division in that state. Is it not surprising that that act of criminality was very conveniently covered up as if nothing went wrong? Those who traduce the people of the south-east for failing to reach consensus on issues affecting them will soon turn around and cite these sponsored official malfeasance as evidence of their claim. But as proposed earlier, the Anambra case demonstrates very poignantly that these divisions are largely inflamed from outside.

As soon as this institutional interest in keeping the people permanently divided wanes, we will come to realize that the Igbo are not that a disorganized, fragmented and non consensual group. But for the same conspiracy, Ekwueme was sure to emerge as the civilian president in 1999 after he worked tirelessly to build the People’s Democratic Party PDP. Was it the much orchestrated lack of consensus among his people that denied him the fruits of his hard labor? Was he not sidelined and relegated to the background even as some charlatans from his state were constantly beamed to us as genuine leaders of the party? And you want consensus to come out of that madness? That is the real source of the problem and we need to admit it.

The point being raised here is that the much touted discord is a direct consequence of the policies of the federal government of Nigeria towards that zone since after the civil war. It will therefore not be out of place if this policy has some influence on the people on whom it has been applied over these years. Expectedly, sundry characters basking on the enormous influence of outside sponsors have gotten swollen headed; not amenable to group influence and discipline. But that cannot represent the conduct of the majority who are intricately linked to their zone through their various unions and associations.

It will be grossly unfair to stick to this transitory discord as an excuse for constantly denying the zone its due within the larger federation.

Two key issues the zone yearns for among others are: a shot at the presidency and the additional consensual state. No matter how cohesive the zone can be on these issues, they cannot possibly go it alone. They need the cooperation and goodwill of all other groups in the federation to realize them.

Lack of cooperation from other zones rather than the envisaged discord from the south-east is going to be the greatest impediment to the realization of these genuine aspirations. We need to prove this conclusion wrong by appreciating the merits of the demands and giving effect to them rather than focusing on observed shortcomings of the zone.

December 3, 2012
Jonathan, Obasanjo and terrorism

President Goodluck Jonathan and former President Olusegun Obasanjo have been embroiled in some controversy over the appropriate strategy to tame the scourge of terrorism in this country. Obasanjo believes Jonathan’s response to the Boko Haram menace has been rather slow. For him, Boko Haram would have been nipped in the bud if the government had been fast, as according to him, he did in Odi in 1999 when he deployed troops there. But Jonathan disagreed, contending that the deployment of troops in Odi did not solve the problem of militancy in the Niger Delta region. Rather, that exercise resulted in the premature termination of the lives of mainly old men, women and children. He was also very emphatic that none of those militants was killed in that invasion even as it did not succeed in stopping militancy. To him therefore, that exercise did not achieve the desired objective and to that extent was a failure.

Apparently piqued by these assertions, Obasanjo, through his former spokesman Femi Fani-Kayode has come out strongly to justify his invasion of Odi in Bayelsa and Zaki Biam in Benue states arguing that the objective of both operations was to uproot terrorists and discourage their resort to the killing of law enforcement agents. For him, after both exercises, the killing of soldiers and police men diminished in those areas.

But Obasanjo seemed to have contradicted himself when he sought to argue that he never recommended the “Odi treatment” to be adopted to quell the Boko Haram onslaught. He claimed that what he meant was that “a solution ought to have been found or some sort of action ought to have been taken sooner rather than allow the problem fester overtime like a bad wound and get worse”

If that is the new argument, what was the purpose in drawing parallels between his handling of the Odi killings and Jonathan’s handling of the security challenge posed by the Boko Haram insurgency? Why did he not go ahead to say what he had in mind rather than engage in comparisons that have tended to convey the impression that he is recommending the Odi approach to the festering Boko Haram challenge? It would appear to any discerning mind that the latest attempt by Obasanjo to clarify what he had in mind by comparing his approach to the Odi affair with the current handling of the Boko Haram insurgency cannot tie up. It looks more like an attempt to revise himself apparently having realized the incongruity in any attempt to equate one to the other.

The truth of the matter is that the security challenge posed by the killing of policemen and soldiers by the militants is substantially different from the current terrorism levied on the nation by the Boko Haram menace. While the militants were demanding greater share in the resources which nature benevolently bestowed at their backyards and compensation from years of exploitation through pollution, the propelling imperative of Boko Haram is substantially different. Its grouse is with western education even as it intends to impose an Islamic state in this country. In terms of venting their grievances, the approaches of the two are also very different. The militants largely targeted oil installations, facilities and their personnel especially foreigners whom they kidnapped, extracted ransom from and subsequently released. Some of their captives were unlucky as they did not come out alive.

But Boko Haram is a different thing altogether. It is a classic case of a well organized terrorist and fundamentalist religious group pursuing some weird ideology. Its original claim to be pursuing an anti- western agenda has been contradicted by the senseless killing of innocent people through its suicide bomb attacks targeted at churches. Apart from its initial attack on the United Nations building in Abuja which wreaked immense havoc on lives and property, the churches and their worshippers have been the greatest victims of these senseless attacks. This gives the impression that the ultimate agenda of the sect is to impose Islamic religion in this multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious country.

Besides, militancy was largely limited to the creeks in some areas of the Niger Delta region but Boko Haram has its operational base in the northern part of the country even as its activities are more felt in some states than others. I am not well groomed either in military science or military theories. So what can be considered eclectic in handling the challenges posed by the Odi matter and the Boko Haram onslaught is better left to military experts.

But one thing that seems to stand out very distinctly is that the two cannot be handled in a similar fashion as Obsanjo’s comparison would lead us to believe.

Before now, we have been told that one of the factors that fuelled the Boko Haram insurgency was the brutal manner their leader Muhammed Yusuf and his followers were killed in Maiduguri some years back. It was for the same reason that the same Obasanjo had to meet with some leaders of the Yusuf group in a peace deal brokered by the leader of the northern civil society coalition, Mallam Shehu Sani. If the Maiduguri operation which can in some way be compared to the Odi invasion became the leitmotif for the upsurge of the sect’s insurgency, it stands to reason that that strategy proved counterproductive in the circumstance. Instead of stopping the group, it rather reinforced their determination to wage an all out war against the government. It is doubtful given its spread and operational mode, Boko Haram can be wiped out through the type of operation Obasanjo conducted in Odi. But then, that operation as we have been told by Jonathan did not even succeed in uprooting militancy.

Even then, some northern leaders have been crying out against the activities of the Joint Military Taskforce JTF in areas suspected of harboring the insurgents. There have been allegations that each time there is a bomb explosion or an attack on the JTF in an area, their response will be to cordon off that area and raze it down. In such operations, innocent souls suffer immeasurably, they seem to be arguing. The point being canvassed here is that the Odi approach is in a way also playing out in the handling of the Boko Haram sect. The whole idea of razing down hamlets where some insurgents are suspected to be residing is guilty of punishing the innocent for crimes they know nothing about. So if this is the approach Obasanjo had in mind, it is in some sense being applied in the war against Boko Haram. But as events have shown, it has proved unsuccessful in taming the monster.

Moreover, we have also been told that Boko Haram has serious foreign backing as our porous northern boarders have been exploited to their devious benefit. It is therefore very unlikely that given the spread in its activities; agenda, lethal sophistication and doctrinaire motivation, Boko Haram can lend itself to the Odi handle. It possibly cannot.

Again, the fight against terrorism is now a global affair. It may be an exercise in wishful thinking to suggest that an all out war can be a solution to it. And since ours is a very recent development, we need to get at those political, social and developmental issues that are at the root of this insurgency. We also need to get at the root of those sponsoring it for us to overcome the menace. Rather than military action, what has failed us most in this matter has been either the dearth of intelligence information or lack of the political will to confront the little information at our disposal.

November 26, 2012
Six men

The deaths of six men recently concentrated one on the vapour of life, at once immense and fleeting. Chief Hope Harriman. General Shuwa. Olusola Saraki. Lam Adesina. Kayode Esho. May Nzeribe. When great men expire we wonder at the exaggeration of life. Life is not as substantial as we suppose when such personages end as victims of the tyranny of time. They seemed immortal before they were not.

In his play, Richard 11, William Shakespeare, the immortal bard of death, mused over how death eventually overshadows all of human calamities. “Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay,” sang the playwright, “the worst is death, and death will have his day.” It also prosecutes its sting over all human joys.

Death had its way with all of these men. Was it Harriman, the ebullient burly pace setter whose face always lit up with a cheerful glitter? Or Shuwa whose sullen years after the civil war did not dwarf his mythic soldiery? Or Saraki the party wheel horse who redefined dynasty? Or Lam Adesina, who stood like a Trojan when progressive politics was his Troy? Or Kayode Esho whose longevity was an insistent rebuke of the putrefaction of a judiciary? Or Nzeribe whose professional ardour pounded home the integrity of standards? East, Southwest, Southsouth, North, each with their own lugubrious gift as though death was doling out geographic favours. No thanks.

But they all left without enough warning, as though warning often means anything to death. They vanished because everyone has a “dateless bargain” with death, to quote Shakespeare again in his Romeo and Juliet.

These men represented a generation as well as anyone could. This was the generation that Wole Soyinka described as wasted. As an artist, we may excuse the Nigerian bard an access of exaggeration when we look at some of these men. We may not excuse him if we look at the big picture of a remorseless decline that has assailed the nation after independence. But they, all six of them, tell us the story of Nigeria, and how the rain began to beat us to drenching stupor.

Harriman was a pace setter, who began as a real estate valuer and surveyor, and ended an investment omnivore. He represented what is lost in today’s businessman, a knack to bring something out of nothing, to create wealth. To be wealthy for him was to create. This is a contrast to the businessman as contractor today.

To be wealthy for most of that class today is to be a carpet bagger. They wake up with mock sobriety in government house, leave with cheap contracts, party with cheap money at some fancy hotel and arrive home with the smell of alcohol as their John the Baptist.

Harriman helped open some parts of Lagos to Nigerians as important areas in which to settle. He rose to become not only the first president of the association in the country, but was also recognised internationally. Can we produce a Harriman in this age, with his genius for opportunities, the bonhomie that disdains ethnic or religious fidelities, or an energy for work that took him to other areas: oil, rubber, banking, blasting rocks, etc. His foray into politics was not tainted by the desperation for filthy lucre that makes glorious men into public scoundrels. He stood for the progressive idea whether as a supporter of the Unity Party of Nigeria or as an elder espousing Southsouth as a force in a six-region democracy.

Nzeribe came to personify standards in an industry that quickly succumbed to hustlers, opportunists and thieves. That was why he helped pursue it as head of the body guarding advertising in the country. So important was his role that he won international accolade and award, perhaps the highest laurel any Nigerian has acquired in that profession beyond these shores. His insistence on standards mocks what some Americans call the soft bigotry of low expectation common in Nigeria today. Whether it is medicine, law, journalism or teaching, we no longer abide by any sort of minimalism. Hence doctors misdiagnose, judges jail the innocent and teachers teach a lot of nonsense, apologies to Fela.

Saraki’s story is, however, a mixed bag. He brought into politics the idea of the grandeur of family. But it was not democracy that ignited him but a nepotistic dream. We have seen families enrich the ideology. The Kennedys, the Bushes, the Ghandis, the Bhuttos, etc. The idea is to encapsulate in one family the noble array of a society’s virtues: industry, vision, character, a gregarious love of people.

But Saraki subjected the whole state to the zeal of his own fiefdom, where sons and daughters became the princes and princesses of a democracy. Without a doubt, we still run a democracy of big men. The United States had founding founders as the big men, the avatars who turned their personal charms and gifts as sacrifices to foster institutions. George Washington had opportunities to be a Napoleon or king or president for life. But he preferred a great country to a big man. So he instituted and bowed to the rule of law. That is why he became a great man.

They still had foibles then, but they had their eyes on the great prize. Hence John Adams asserted that the country was a “nation of laws and not of men.” This was Adams who had a fight to the literal death with Jefferson, who had to form his own party to confront his foe. We hope we can build institutions which some states are doing.

Adesina fought for democracy, and when he died he was more like victim who had a sort of last hurrah with the enthronement of Abiola Ajimobi, the cool-headed remoulder of Oyo State. Adesina was at the barricade in the struggle for democracy when Abacha’s jackboot crunched about the country. He became governor but also fell prey to a democratic parody when Obasanjo hoodwinked the progressive out of their own pies. But he departed in peace because his eyes beheld the return of the progressives before his last breath. He stood for a counterfoil to the domineering principle that Saraki embodied.

Shuwa was a general, fearless, focused, ruthless. He did not draw any panegyric from Chinua Achebe in his tempestuous book, There was a country. Shuwa led the first army division that pulverised Biafra, his men accused of rape and rapine, and violations of the Geneva Convention. Those who know him call him honourable. He inspired fear and respect from his fellow soldiers, and the story is told of how, armless, he subdued a mutinous army in Kano in the throes of the civil war.

But the exploits of his army cannot but remind us of the locust years of the military in Nigeria, with scores of impunity that our civilian democrats apply without reserve. All the false show of power witnessed at every level comes from the disdain for order and process the army foisted on the Nigerian soul. Our failure to resolve outstanding issues of the war led to the crisis of today.

Esho departs when the nation grapples with the absence of justice at every level, from the classroom to the presidency. He stood as a matador of good versus evil in the psyche of a nation conquered by what Joseph Conrad described as shortsighted in matters of good and evil. He stands against the corruptible legion of judges accused openly of beggarly bribes and surrender to the supine folly of a political class dining voraciously with the devil.

In spite of the prevalence of evil over good in today’s Nigeria, we cannot accuse these men of standing idle. Some patriots would have preferred some of them to redirect their energies. In his novel, Les Miserables, Victor Hugo writes, “it is nothing to die; it is frightful not to live.” They lived according to their own lights. On that note, good night to them all.

November 26, 2012