The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

Buhari in Boko Haram’s matrix

Keen observers of events will have little difficulty in accepting that the recent peace offer by a group purporting as the dreaded Boko Haram religious sect was destined to die prematurely. For one, the person who announced the supposed deal (one Abdulazeez),the conditions attached to it and the names of those to intercede on behalf of the sect, were issues that at once, cast doubt in the minds of discerning public.

Matters were not equally helped by the inclusion of Gen. Muhammed Buhari, a key opponent of the present regime of Jonathan as the coordinator of the supposed peace talk. His nomination meant so many things to different people. Predictably, Nigerians were torn between those urging Buhari to accept the offer albeit in the overall interest of peace and those who viewed the issue from a contrary perspective.

Buhari was therefore left with two difficult choices: to accept the offer or refuse it. He opted for the latter. Decision theorists are interested in whether the preferred choice of Buhari was the best for him in the circumstance. In other words, was his choice rational; capable of minimizing his losses in the event of the worst outcome? And what were the possible consequences or stakes in reacting either way? We shall return to this later.

Before now, we have been made to believe by key personages in the north that there are at least three faces of the Boko Haram insurgency. By their logic, there is the original Boko Haram which has axe to grind with the government for killing its leader Mohammed Yusuf and several of his followers. This represents the authentic Boko Haram that is intent in installing an Islamic state in the country and doing away with anything western. As at today, the acclaimed leader of that group is one Sheikh Shekau.

There is also the criminal Boko Haram that manifests in the robbing and killing of innocent souls. The fact of this group which has no identified leader is given credence by repeated disclaimers from the Shekau group denouncing some criminal activities undertaken in its name.

The third is a simulated group suspected to be part of the strategy of the government to break the ranks of the real Boko Haram. No less a person than Mallam Shehu Sani, leader of the Northern Civil Society Coalition shares this view. He had in a recent interview, claimed that some of these scams called peace initiatives were “perpetrated by people at the highest levels of government and security” He cited the peace deal which the Minister of Information and the President’s spokesman affirmed to have been held sometime ago in Saudi Arabia but which Shekau denounced as one of such scams in high quarters.

Given the above scenario, what were the options really available to Buhari when one Abdulazeez, purporting to be deputy leader of the sect named him as the coordinator of the supposed peace negotiations? His immediate reaction would be that of suspicion. Suspicion because the name Abdulazeez was for the first time being sold to the public as an authentic representative of the real Boko Haram even when the acclaimed leader Shekau, has not said anything.

Above all, the speed with which the federal government accepted the offer together with the list of all those named to represent the sect were enough to fuel another round of suspicion.

Predictably, Buhari rejected the offer out rightly. He based his reasons on the existence of three shades of Boko Haram. For him, there is the Boko Haram represented by the slain Muhammed Yusuf protesting injustice by the Nigerian state. There is equally a band of criminals cashing in on the insecurity in that part of the country to rob, maim and kill innocent people in its name. Jonathan presidency which has displayed crass inability to tame the monster is seen by Buhari as another manifestation of Boko Haram.

For these, he seemed to be contending that it will be an exercise in self-destruction to accept an offer coming from a very questionable quarter. And he is absolutely right. This is more so when Shekau, the authentic leader of the Muhammed Yusuf group is not known to be in the picture of the latest peace deal.

That apart, accepting such an offer could lend itself to misinterpretation given his position as a key opposition leader in this country. His detractors could capitalize on it as evidence that he has links with a sect that has levied war on the country, killing thousands of innocent citizens, destroying churches and private buildings of inestimable value. For someone who still nurses presidential ambition, that would amount to political suicide on his own part. His political party the CPC rose to this trap when it accused the PDP of contriving to smear Buhari by linking him to the dangerous sect.

It would appear therefore that the most rational choice open to Buhari given the circumstance was to reject the offer emanating from very questionable quarters. Neither the arguments bordering on the imperative of ensuring peace nor the dictates of the roles envisaged of a supposed statesman are enough to mitigate the personal risks which acceptance could expose him to. He had to bow to the logic of self preservation. That is rational calculation; rational choice.

But the federal government did not help matters by aiding this suspicion through its hurried acceptance of the contentious deal. The indecent haste with which it accepted the offer; all those nominated by the group and Saudi Arabia as the venue, will remain largely foggy. This is more so when it is realized that the initial peace negotiations which the same government was said to have held in that same country sometime ago, were roundly spurned by Shekau. And till date, nothing has come out of it. Was that not enough for the government to have smelt a rat if it had no hand in the events that produced this supposed new deal?

We are yet to be told who brokered that botched peace deal in Saudi Arabia and how much of our national funds were put into it. Sani feels that deal was a scam and he may be right. He also thinks the latest one may follow the pattern of the one before it because those purporting to be speaking for the authentic sect are not known to be the real leaders of the group. As someone who has made some attempt to get the matter resolved and who maintains some link with the group, we have no reason not to take Sani seriously.

It is curious why the government would prefer to deal with the Abdulazeez group when the real promoters of the violence that has held this nation prostrate are not part of the calculation. At the point we are, nothing seems to be happening and the supposed peace deal has hit the rocks.

Perhaps, the objective of these spurious peace deals is to give the impression that the government is interested in negotiating with the group. This view further contends that the objective is to stave off accusations that it prefers force to dialogue as a way out of the security challenge. Jonathan has also been accused of not applying the same measure the late Yar’Adua adopted that saw the end to the Niger Delta militancy. All these could be said. But Boko Haram must show it is genuinely desirous of dialogue. For now, there is no serious indication from the Shekau group that they are seriously committed to ending the mass murder that has trailed their activities. And that is the unfortunate thing about these peace talks.

November 19, 2012
Remembering the poor

I have always wondered why wealth faints easily in this country. The custodians, who we call wealthy, come alive, flaunt, swagger and plume themselves in the sunlight of the day. But, like a plant that runs out of its supply of the riches of photosynthesis, they faint and expire.

In this country, prosperity lives and dies just like the poor. They both have a short lifespan. The rich may endure to their hoary years, but not their riches. We have had many who grew rich, soared to fame and glamour. But where are they now? Those who reigned in the 1960’s bowed out with a sigh in the 1970’s. Those who purred with leonine pride in the 1970’s lost their manes of honour the decade after. So it has been, a story of rises and falls, glamour and dolour, plum and prune, acclaim and silence.

The reason is that they make money for themselves because they work only for themselves and their families. They do not work for the society where they blossomed, that gave them both chance and fulfillment. This thought overwhelmed me recently as I contemplated the fundraiser held November 8 in Abuja, where man of means Aliko Dangote spearheaded the drive to help all the lowly and helpless who were tossed out of their homes and heaths by the recent flood.

Many of the rich were there, but not enough of them. What struck me was that Dangote had to go out of his way to persuade the very rich, including the bank chiefs, to consider the poor. The bank heads came off with the excuse that they had to consult their boards first in order to give to the poor. At least, the bank leaders were there, some of them.

But where were the telecoms leaders, who fleece us by the seconds with services? Where were the oil servicing companies? Shell was reported to have donated hefty millions. But where are the others?

Dangote had announced his hefty donations early. But the other companies have swathed themselves in the excuse of officialdom. What boards did they need to consult? The flood did not consult anybody before it swamped on the vulnerable, lapping up their homes and flushing away their memories in tides of tyranny. They huddled up in camps, falling ill, birthing and bearing babies, weeping, lost in the dry ecstasy of sorrow and bemoaning the former simple life they never cherished enough until the cruel epiphany of nature’s visit.

So if the floods had swept many of their branches, would the banks not have held an extraordinary board meeting? Of course, it is because it is a conflict or tragedy of low intensity for the banks that they decided to wait till whenever the next scheduled board meeting to table the matter of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians dislocated by nature’s insensate moment.

This is because the banks were not formed to serve except for the profit of the owners. Their vaults are full of money but empty of love. They contradict what writer Steve Maraboli asserted, that “The bank of love is never bankrupt.”

A fundamental problem is that we do not know the value of money. In the secondary school, one of the cardinal lessons of economics classes was that money was a standard OF VALUE. We were never taught what value was in relation to money, except as a nexus in the exchange of goods and services. That was what the banks have exhibited over the flood victims. Not the banks alone but corporate Nigeria. They have placed a mercantile soul over the somber throbbing of neighbourly love, patriotic giving or even the much-ballyhooed virtue of corporate responsibility.

Let us go over the seas to the United States where a fiercer storm surged. Hurricane Sandy might have taken the country by storm, but not the tender spirit of giving by its companies. I tracked the donations of American companies in the wake of the disaster. Tons of companies had already pledged and donated over $100 million barely a week after it happened. They did not need to consult boards because giving was an integral part of their fount of being.

Nigerian companies do not consider giving of the charitable sort as a defining quality of their existence. They have enough to sponsor sports, Nollywood vanities and other cultural dissipations. Nothing evil in those. But what of the ones you do without the fare of self-aggrandisement where the companies’ billboards will not loom in the background? Francis of Assisi noted that “it is in giving that we receive.” The companies abuse this credo because they see the giving as a cynical indoor, as investment for profit but not for the improvement of lives.

They rather should take in the spirit of Queen Elizabeth’s words that “blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.” Sometimes we forget that the ordinary folks are the great givers. A good percentage of the victims come from oil-producing areas that nest the golden egg of Nigeria. It is the paradox of the giver desiring giving.

The tragedy though is not that we don’t give, but that we don’t know the value of giving. At long last, some of the banks and oil firms and telecom giants may buckle and surrender some funds from their corpulent savings. What we lack is a sense of philanthropy.

There is some charity in this society, but what we need is philanthropy. “Much corporate giving is charitable in nature rather than philanthropic,” noted David Rockefeller. Philanthropy is the habit of giving. Charity is a fleeting show of love. In spite of the billionaire’s quote, America is a great example revealed in all the recent tragedies from Katrina to Sandy.

We have abandoned the African culture. We come from a communal stock. An age ago, we cared for our neighbour’s son when he was not even in danger. Today we look the other way when he is in the throes of death. How did we fall from that grace? Some have cited ethnic differences, but that accounts for little because in the big firms we have persons whose kinsmen were swept off by the floods. It is the fissures of capitalism, with its emphasis on self over others. Individualism emboldens coldhearted indifference to the fortunes of others. Also, the birth of cities breaks down a sense of community. Three, the colonialism created a false centre called government with its bureaucracies and laws and commerce. But the ordinary person does not yet relate to it as part of his own. So when tragedies happen like the flood, it is an “other,” not us. As Jean Paul Sartre wrote, “hell is other people.”

It is the job of leadership to knit this system so that we own it. Even President Jonathan, who should inspire, was ensconced in America without a sense of urgency while water bred tragedy at home. Delta State Governor Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan promptly cut short his trip and returned. Jonathan had more “important” things to do.

Part of the problem with lack of philanthropy is that this is a poor society and those who grow rich still think poor and do not remember the real poor. It means the rich are “poor” in spirit, to parody Christ. “One must be poor to know the luxury of living,” wrote novelist George Elliot. The striking point is that the rich are too busy enjoying the luxury to remember the poverty of others. Dangote is bucking that patrician trend. It is not for nothing that we have the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford foundations. These were created by men who transferred wealth from generation to generation favouring the poor.

It is the job of the elite to snap out of their self-absorption and create by example and self-nurturing the tradition of giving. Winston Churchill struck the right note when he said, “we make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”

To make giving a part of Nigerian life, the rich must remember the poor as a habit

November 18, 2012
The decent society

The one was an infighting within the peacock class. The other was a fury from below. In both instances, we saw a mirror of a people lost from the call of dignity.

The second one happened first, but the first reflected the deeper underbelly of the greed and indecencies of our people.

The second one was a drama in the glare of Goodluck Jonathan. It involved Malam Nuhu Ribadu and Stephen Oronsaye, and the issue was the report of how the oil business has soiled the haughty fingers of the rich and crooked.

The first one was the story of the restriction of motorcycles (okada) riders away from the major arteries of the city of Lagos.

At stake in both cases was the concept of the decent society, the society that sets before itself the ground rules of engagement, the laws, the courtesies, discipline and fiery obedience to the logic of legal retribution to the breach. That inculcates a social contract, a tension of law and punishment, with the capacity to lure the bad to the bosom of the best among us.

Ribadu attracted flak from many, even within the inner sanctum of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), for taking a job under the man he reviled during the presidential campaign. A feisty, stubborn, if at times turbulent soul lurks in his fragile frame. It was an understated physical quality that rattled the seedy elite when he downed one peacock after another as the boss of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). He did not do this job with the flawless temperament of a Rabbi or a Christ or Alfa. With provable charges of selectiveness, his tenure as EFCC boss has remained controversial.

Hence some saw his acceptance of the Jonathan job as a bounty for a loser and the loser gladly accepted. Maybe it was. Maybe Ribadu had a reflex of integrity and turned the bounty from a material gift to a crusading moment by saving his name. So his report unveiled the sleaze of the oil world under the stewardship of Jonathan. To rebuff the bounty, Ribadu probably damned the giver, the President with his report, and became an avenging angel. If that was what Ribadu did, he had his critics to thank for his image rebirth. Ribadu probably had the mischievous grace from the beginning to spite Jonathan before the criticisms raged. But only he knows the truth.

The agony was the spectacle of the older Oronsaye, who played a puppet in a presidential oil game. The man condemned a report even though he was missing in action while Ribadu worked without sitting allowance. He had the shameless boldness to play righteous before the camera and the world. The point has been suggested that Orosanye, once a technocrat with tranquil grandeur and former head of service, became a rhetorical boxer defending a system as decrepit as it was dirty. Before the incident in front of the President, many did not know he had the gallery touch, the air of the bureaucratic impresario.

Jonathan was quietly gloating over this public jousting. The President, in his serpentine style, came to the fore again. Why was Oronsaye doing another engagement that took him away from this all-important task? Why did Jonathan sign up to such distraction? Did Jonathan not see that Oronsaye’s rebellion against the report was capable of suggesting that the man was planted in the committee to cast sufficient doubt on its probity? A classical divide-and-rule tactic. Once that was done, then the government can exercise a right to whittle down the weight of Ribadu’s work and assign the document, after all the hoopla of protest, to the cynical silence that other reports on oil have suffered.

This is a report about corruption, about billions of Naira fleeced without regards to law, bonuses appropriated with brazen fare, about the oil that immiserates the teeming poor in our society, about the lifestyle that furnishes outlandish holiday resorts abroad, cocky boats, soaring soirees, in private jets and palaces as homes.

The Presidency has latched on to the Oronsaye indiscretion to question the report. Ribadu had noted that there was some imperfection in the work, but that did not detract from the basic premise of its conclusion. Why did the President not say, well, we shall extend your time, finish the work? Oil is our wealth, not a partisan matter. It is about our patrimony and prosperity. It is about the future of our children, of our infrastructure and education.

The handling of the matter, above all, reveals our disregard for the basic decencies of civilisation. It is what Conrad calls “the nightmarish parody of administration without justice, without law, without order.”

In Lagos, we saw okada riders take laws into their hands. The law said they should stay off certain areas. They defied the basic meaning of the law. Where in the world do we have bike riders as major transporters? So bad were they that they caused many a death, maimed many too, and impoverished the artisan sector with everyone from plumber to mechanic viewing the trade as a source of quick money. If the people at the top have no regard for law and decency, how do we expect the folks in the plebeian bracket to do same? The National Assembly has looked into many issues, but none has been resolved. No convictions although we all know there were crimes. The power sector is just an example.

The okada question has raised the question of replacement taxis and buses. That did not happen today, and their organisation only paid lip service to the project so long as they could still scoot about legally. With the restriction, they can now settle to the ultimate model for development: a private-public relationship that we have seen with the phasing out of the molue.

Let us not forget the Makoko incident. The floating slum dwellers agreed not to cross a line, but they did. When they were given a 72-hour ultimatum to leave, they turned it into emotional blackmail. The shantytown on stilts is an anomaly, but even at that they want to extend all the filth and danger to environment and health of the entire city by polluting the lagoon.

All of this is corruption. But the root of the problem is far deeper. At an event last week, Professor Wole Soyinka argued that corruption is the cause of the decay around us. Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) saw it differently. Ribadu as EFCC boss noted with statistical dismay how corruption was the source of our bane. The governor, for example, argued that we should look deeper into our culture and our history. He saw corruption as a symptom. I agree. It is the society that creates corruption and not vice versa. As Jesus Christ said: “An evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.” The tragedy though is that we created corruption, but it festered so powerfully that it is recreating us.

I blame all our founding fathers who did not set a ground rule for the nation. Rather, they travelled on ethnic tangents.

We have not created a nation of laws. When the United States started, there was a conflict between President George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who accused the leader of abandoning the revolutionary ideals. Jefferson dreamed of America as a rural paradise. Washington dreamed of a country of big cities and wealth. He hired Alexander Hamilton who crafted the rules by which American civil society operates, centering on the rule of law. Patent protection, the rise of the financial system, stock exchange, the prosperity of the world today derives from the genius of the immigrant trusted by a president who never attended university.

I believe it is our lack of ground rules that has led us to the path of corruption. When men like Oronsaye and the okada riders ignore law and decency personified by a man like Ribadu in the report, we shall continue to plummet in standards of living, have students who cannot read and write well and an ominous future beckons us.

What will rescue us is the shock wisdom that illumines Shylock’s eyes in Shakespeare’s classic, Merchant of Venice. When his impunity is exposed in court, he asks, “is that the law?” Rather, we mock the law.

Until we allow the law nourish order, we shall never have a decent society.

November 12, 2012
Jombo-Ofo: Matters arising

Every stunning scenario played out in Abuja last week at the inauguration of the newly appointed Justices of the Court of Appeal. Following the release of a list of 12 Justices for the ceremony, prospective beneficiaries had come to the venue full of expectations. But the unexpected happened. One of those listed, Justice Ifeoma Jombo-Ofo was not that lucky.

The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Aloma Mukhtar refused to swear her in ostensibly on account of petitions alleging that the state she represents (Abia) is not her state of origin. Justice Jombo-Ofo had served Abia state for many years following her marriage to Mr. Jombo-Ofo, an indigene of the state. But she originally hailed from Anambra state.

Apparently sensing danger, Abia state governor, Theodore Orji was at hand to make a special case for Justice Jombo-Ofo. But all his entreaties came to naught. He was also said to have written to the CJN affirming that Abia state actually nominated Justice Jombo-Ofo and that she is from the state.

Perhaps, unknown to him, the CJN was relying on a subsisting, nay obnoxious policy in the judiciary that prevents married women from reaching the peak of their career in their husbands’ state irrespective of their qualifications and suitability for the post. Curiously, it was the same office that cleared her for the swearing in. For that, the hopes of this eminently qualified and promising Justice were dashed and she had to go home with her admirers and well wishers utterly disappointed.

The fate of Justice Jombo-Ofo has once again highlighted the inadequacies of some of the policies in the nation’s statute books. And in spite of the reasons that originally informed their formulation, some of them have consistently proved counterproductive in elevating our collective aspirations as a people. Instead of merit they have tended to promote mediocrity by placing very qualified candidates into serious disadvantage on account of their state of origin. We are thus faced with irreconcilable contradictions in barring married justices from ascending the peak of their career solely on account of having hailed from a different state before their marriage. Not only is such a policy discriminatory and stale, it is difficult to fathom the purpose it is meant to serve or how it can elevate the job of the judiciary. By preventing married women from reaching the topmost echelons of their professions, the policy no doubt, sacrifices merit for political expediency. Such a policy will be inherently deficient in promoting the cause of an efficient and virile judicial system. What sense is there in discouraging and disqualifying merit on the spurious ground that the woman did not originally hail from that state even when she had been married there for so many years? It is akin to denying married women employment in their husbands’ states because they happened to come from other states. It remains to be seen the type of values we seek to promote by insisting on that obviously very retrogressive policy. Regrettably, such an anachronistic and unprogressive policy has been allowed to stay in our statute books even as it has outlived its usefulness.

One also finds it an uncanny twist of fate that governor Theodore Orji was the person who fought this discriminatory policy without success. His state not long ago, sacked workers in its employ for the simple reason that they are non indigenes. Despite all appeals, he did not budge. He can now appreciate the feelings of those workers he sacked for the very spurious reason that they hailed from other states.

Jombo-Ofo is just one out of the several justices that have suffered incalculably on account of this useless policy. It may have been designed to ensure that top judicial offices meant for states go to their indigenes. That could as well be. But there is everything wrong in the thinking that a woman married in a particular state cannot be regarded as an indigene of that state even as her children are accorded the full rights and privileges of that state. This does not make any sense. It is even more confounding to require such women to get their nominations from their original states. It cannot work that way. What the policy has succeeded in achieving is to place a permanent hurdle on the career prospects of women married in states other than the one they originally hailed from.

Such a policy is out of tune with the realities of the time and ought to be expunged from our statute books without further delay. It is a matter of regret that female judicial officers have had to live with this retrogressive policy for years without drawing public attention to it. They should therefore share in the blame for keeping quiet in the face of a discriminatory and strangulating policy. Above all, the policy has once again drawn attention to such contentious and unresolved issues of our federal structure as residency factor and indigeneship.

It is at this point that the recent intervention of a retired justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Olufunlola Adekeye cues in very appropriately.

In a speech to mark her retirement from the Supreme Court, she had implored the CJN, the Chief Judges of states, the Judicial Service Commission and the National Judicial Council to review the policy barring married women from reaching the peak of their career in their husbands’ states. She noted that complaints of this nature are increasingly rampant in the judiciary and that since married women transfer their services to their husbands’ state, it is logical and in compliance with the tenets of marriage that the two become one. This goes without saying.

The retired Justice further contended that it is “unconstitutional as well as discriminatory to deprive her of her promotion in her acquired state as a citizen of Nigeria by virtue section 42 of 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”

Justice Adekeye has said it all. She has not only exposed the contradictions in the policy but gone a step further to show how that policy is inconsistent with the provisions of the constitution. However, it still remains puzzling why key functionaries as well as the regulating authorities in the judicial system allowed it to hold sway in spite of its negative effects on the moral and career progression of married women. Perhaps, if the women had spoken out before now, the embarrassment suffered by Jombo-Ofo and others before her would have been averted.

Good a thing, the attention of the National Assembly has been drawn to this embarrassing regulation. Obviously piqued by that show of shame, the senate had in a motion voted against the policy and directed the CJN to swear in Jumbo-Ofo without further delay. That is the right thing to do.

Now that the national assembly is in the process of constitutional amendment, it must work to identify all laws and policies that promote discrimination based on sex, marriage, religion or state of origin and expunge them from the ground norms of this country. We need policies that can tap from the best brains in the country irrespective of mundane considerations. We need laws that can pool the creative resources and energies of our various peoples for collective national progress. It is time to discard worn-out and rusty laws and policies from our statute books for those that conform to global best practices.

November 12, 2012
The fog of war

A few years back when I ran a column on 40 years of Biafra, my cell phone crashed from invectives of malicious fury. The overwhelming line from the rage was that I exercised the temerity to address a matter that I should have left in the grove of silence. I had tackled the Nigerian civil war and the opportunities missed for peace instead of the headlong rush to hostilities and I fingered Odumegwu Ojukwu and the genocidal bigots of the North for blame.

Ironically, when Chinua Achebe published his now tempestuous work, There Was A Country, the Yoruba intelligentsia and political elite were up in arms, clobbering him for not keeping silent on issues like his charge of genocide on Obafemi Awolowo.

I welcome this debate. Achebe brought his grand image as role model and Africa’s preeminent novelist to bear in his book. After reading, I discovered a wasted opportunity. His haunting style and limpid prose fell prey to a tendentious logic. Mostly, the book is marked by what he did not say than what he said. For a book that generated storm for its boldness, its lack of virtue derives from well-calibrated silences. For instance, he condemned the absence of the civil war from school curriculums. But he did confront some fundamental issues of the Nigerian crisis of the 1960s.

The first was the pogrom. Igbo died in droves but the circumstances of that dark cloud of our history still loom over us. Nothing even Aburi, where Yakubu Gowon and Ojukwu parleyed like adversaries, tackled them. If important numbers of an ethnic group dissolved in the genocidal savagery from another ethnic group, how did anyone expect the nation to go on without justice being visited on those involved? It was a mercurial moment as Igbo ran away from what they thought was home. Tears, blood with carion flesh was Igbo in their own country. Relatives saw relatives expire just before they too vanished under the prejudice of knives, daggers and guns.

Ojukwu was urged to ask Igbo to return to their various towns and businesses outside Igboland when no one had prosecuted the murderers. They wanted a nation built on a lie. The Igbo decision to go to war was difficult to fault. When the civil war came, there were stories of insensate killings. Federal generals lined up men, women and children and executed them in cold blood. All of these were well-documented. Rape, beatings, arson and other manifestations of abuse became routine parts of the story in eastern Nigeria.

When the war ended, Gowon did not address these issues. He was only interested in bringing Ojukwu to trial, which reinforced the suspicions by historians that the egos of Ojukwu and Gowon overwhelmed any sense of propriety on the eve of the war. Gowon denied ever knowing of the barbarous cruelties of his generals who even defended their actions openly. Why were they never brought to trial? If Ojukwu and his men on the Biafrain side committed offences against the Geneva Convention, why was he also not brought to book on his own show of ruthless hubris?

The militancy in the Niger Delta, the ethno-sectarian blisters in Jos as well as the eruptions of Boko Haram come from a nation that failed to address the fundamental issues that ruptured the nation in the 1960s.

Up till today, all those who committed war crimes or genocide in the Second World War are being tracked around the world and tried. The Balkan crisis of over a decade ago still makes headlines today with the trials of generals like Karadzic. After the Rwandan earth clotted with brotherly blood, the nation could not be reborn without cleansing the past with trials and prosecutions. South Africa had its truth and reconciliation moments.

If Ojukwu’s goal was secession, why did he occupy the neutral Midwest with all the tales of rape, harassment, curfew? Achebe wrote as though he had no evidence. It seemed Ojukwu wanted the Midwest oil? Why was he heading for Lagos?

Achebe’s book has presented us with an opportunity. Too much malice festers in the Nigerian blood for us to look across ethnic aisles as a fraternal brood. We still evince what novelist Sembene Ousmane calls the “perfidy of lies and hypocrisy of rivals.”

It is out of that tainted blood that Achebe churns out what should have been another masterpiece from the storied author. We cannot also address the pogrom without addressing some of the issues that triggered it. Did the Hausa-Fulani fear the ascendancy of the Igbo, and was that the reason for the thirst for Igbo blood? Was the Nzeogwu-led coup an Igbo agenda or the coincidence of more Igbo officers at the prime? Achebe failed to address the issue comprehensively. He did not drop an ink on why it failed in the east.

On Ironsi, he argued that the general repulsed his attackers. But he did not even tackle the other suspicion as to whether the man had a tip-off or was spared by the majors. He merely painted Ironsi as reconciliator. On Decree 34, Achebe did not address the possibility that the law gave the Igbo advantage over other ethnic groups and some saw the decree as anointing that move. Some scholars wondered if Ironsi enacted the law out of hegemonic hubris or naivety. We shall never know. But Achebe feigned ignorance of this naunced perspective.

Columnist Mohammed Haruna recalled a writing of a former New Nigerian head who was confronted after the Nzeogwu-led coup by writer Cyprian Ekwensi and other Igbo who claimed they had come to “take over.” There was no doubt of Igbo dominance of the civil service. If the Hausa-Fulani preened over their dominance, why should another group not try for power? It is the story everywhere. Only in the U.S. today is there a conscious effort to restrain such hegemonic pride. At the time of the Nigerian crisis, America resented voting rights for blacks. It was the extraordinary statecraft of President Lyndon Johnson that compelled Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act against the majority impulses. His Democratic Party has lost the South since.

Even today, Ijaw openly flaunt their position because Jonathan is president. The point is not that a group cannot win, but that everything has to be done by rules agreed upon by all. The Igbo, including Achebe, have shied from admitting the obvious. Achebe claims Igbo are the most progressive people in Nigeria but falls shy of admitting that the Igbo seek to dominate. I would have loved him also to address the issue of Igbo political class that continues to play a game of mercantilist subservience and selling out the whole group for a mess of contracts and sinecure positions.

On genocide, we cannot deny that many Igbo died of starvation. We cannot also deny that Awolowo saw “starvation as a legitimate weapon of war.” His singular move to change currency was, from the federal side, a policy of genius. It was death knell to Biafra. Achebe argued that Awolowo did that to foster his ambition and he wanted to kill many Igbo in order to ensure that. Awolowo’s assertion about starvation and war would have nailed him forever as a sadist of war. But history documents his visit to Biafra, even at the risk of dying in the hands of Adekunle. He returned wondering what happened to all the food sent to Biafra. He discovered that the food probably went to the soldiers. Sad as it was, you cannot feed your enemy soldiers.

Achebe did not tell the story of the economic divide of Biafra. The soldiers and bureaucrats did not starve. This was well-delineated in Chimamanda Adichie’s Half Of The Yellow Sun and other books. Achebe suffers serial dislocations and one’s heart goes out to him as he tells the story of how his family escapes death from a bombing just when his mother reels in her death bed. But the writer does not show he and his family crave for food. He actually has two cars while ordinary Biafrans survive on desperate vegetables and lizards.

Achebe will be veering into psycho-history to show that Awolowo intended to starve ordinary civilians with the currency policy and not to win the war. War policy has consequences. In the war against Iraq, General Colin Powell said: “Our strategy in this war is very simple: first we are going to cut them off, and then we are going to kill them.” Civilians tragically suffered deprivation. In such consequences, we cannot forget the slogan during the American civil war: “Richman’s war, poor man’s fight.” Awolowo wanted to win the war. What ambition did Awo want with Gowon when he was already second in command in the government? If he wanted to be president anointed by Gowon, would he not want the love of Igbo to win the election? Achebe was not clear with prose.

Why did Ojukwu not open the food corridor, a thing that forced an expatriate adviser to resign? Ojukwu was believed by some to have allowed the starvation because it served as a potent propaganda tool? Was that true? Was it true that Awolowo saved all allocations to eastern Nigeria and gave them after the war? Why then did we not see massive rehabilitation in the east after the war? What did Asika do with the money? Was it even enough after all the depredations of war?

The Igbo have remonstrated against the indigenisation decree and have accused Gowon and Awolowo as targeting them. The more this matter is examined, the more one is convinced that the Igbo suffered unfairly from that law. They had lost everything. That law put them at a disadvantage. But it is a credit to the genius of the race that they have bounced back in spite of such disadvantage.

Why did the issue of abandoned properties not go through vigorous trials? That was one of the most vicious parts of the after-war imbecilities of the Gowon administration. Clearly Gowon’s reconciliation efforts were half-hearted.

We did not address many issues and that is why they reincarnate. We can still look back, not in anger but for truth. We have done so without equity or truth. History continues to mean different things to different Nigerians. And we act according to our past. What one group sees in history, another denies. “I met history, but it didn’t recognise me,” wrote poet Derek Walcott. What history recognises the Igbo does not recognise the Yoruba. It is only if we have the courage to convene a body of truth and reconciliation, with the culprits named and victims vindicated, that we can avoid the replay of past eruptions. In future plotters will know that evil has official penalties. It is only then that we can fulfill Elie Wiesel’s words that “for the dead and the living we bear witness.” Or else the dead will continue to haunt the living in the Boko Haram, militants and the human infernos of Jos.

Historian Cornelius Tacitus wrote in The Histories about the civil war that wracked Rome after Nero and how the tissues of its imperial splendour suffered from egos, greed, plunder, malice and lies. One of his epochal lines was, “conversation increases with hope.” Rome lacked that gift of hope. For us, we need conversation with the past. Without it, we cannot guarantee a future without rancour. That is the gift of Achebe’s book.

November 5, 2012
Season of oil well disputes

It will not be out of place to posit that the country is currently entangled in fierce disputes for rights to oil wells among its constituents. From Cross River to Akwa Ibom, Rivers to Bayelsa and Anambra to Kogi, the story is the same. Not unexpectedly, these have pitched the disputant communities against themselves with fears that the smouldering controversy may lead to the break down of law and order. Though the dust of the 76 oil wells which Cross Rivers state was made to cede to its sister state of Akwa Ibom is yet to fully settle, the federal government has in its hands two new serious agitations to grapple with. The first is that between Rivers and Bayelsa states over alleged attempts to annex ancestral lands, communities and oil facilities located in Kalabari land in Rivers to Bayelsa state.

The matter came to a head last week when elders and chiefs under the aegis of the Kalabari National Forum staged protests in Abuja and Port Harcourt to underscore their seriousness on the issue. President Goodluck Jonathan was fingered as the brain behind the attempt to forcefully cede five Rivers oil communities to Bayelsa.

As should be expected, the presidency has denied the allegation accusing its sponsors of nursing a hidden agenda of instigating conflict between the Ijaw people of Nembe and Kalabari in Rivers and Bayelsa states.

Equally, the dispute between Anambra and Kogi states also hinges on the right to oil fields in the just commissioned Orient Oil Refinery built by the Anambra State government. Kogi and Enugu states had soon after the declaration of Anambra as the 10th oil producing state made claims to oil wells servicing the refinery. But the dispute has largely narrowed down to Anambra and Kogi states.

In its reaction, Bayelsa state government came out very strongly laying claims to the oil wells.

While denying the allegation of any attempt to forcefully annex any territory or people into Bayelsa State, it claimed that the 11th edition of the administrative map of Nigeria published in 2000 placed the said communities within the territorial boundaries of state. According to them, “it is very common in the Niger Delta given the manner states were created for communities or clans to be in one state while part of their ancestral land is in another. The family, clan or community does not cease to be traditional owners of such lands, while the state in which the land forms a part exercise administrative control over such land and therefore entitled to derivation”.

But the Rivers state government has countered querying the intention of the Bayelsa State government in singling out the 11th edition of that map while remaining curiously silent on the 1st to the 10th. It accused Bayelsa of concealing vital information in the case as the oil wells had been part and parcel of Rivers state. According to governor Amaechi, even the federal government had admitted in court that the 11th edition being bandied by the Bayelsa State government was an error which is evident from the first to the 10th editions. They said it was wrong to have released monies to Bayelsa State instead of paying them into an escrow account pending the resolution of the boundary dispute as directed by the Supreme Court.

In its own case, Kogi State Governor Idris Wada claimed that the oil wells servicing Orient refinery are located in his state. For that, he said Kogi is major stakeholder in the refinery. But Governor Peter Obi of Anambra disputes this arguing that the land and the wells are within the territorial boundaries of his state. He gave a history of the refinery and the huge investments made on it with the monies of the Anambra people and wondered why the claimants waited for the refinery to come on stream before coming up.

The simmering crises between these states have once again drawn attention to some salient issues that are central to the peace, progress and development of this country. First, they have exposed the inherent weaknesses in our sole reliance on oil as the only source of revenue. Because of this mono-cultural economy and the advantages that accrue to oil bearing states, people are prepared to go to any length to lay claim to lands suspected to have oil deposits. Secondly, they also brought to the fore, the inherent flaws in the way states were created in this country by the military. That is why the Kalabari people have their communities and ancestral lands in Bayelsa even when they are in Rivers State.

It meant that such crucial variables as contiguity, cultural affinity and the need to respect the culture and living patterns of a people were not given due consideration. The right thing would have been for the Kalabari people together with their communities, lands and villages to form part and parcel of Rivers State where they rightly belong. Had it been so, the current fierce dispute between the two states would have not arisen in the first instance. There is definitely something anomalous in having a people belong to one state while their villages and lands are in another.

There is also every thing wrong in allowing such an untidy situation linger for several years after Bayelsa State had been created. What this implies is that the exercise separated the Kalabaris’ from the relics of their identity as a people. Instead of properly delineating boundaries such that they coincide with that of the state in which they form part of, they are split between two states. Its result is now the situation in which they are denied the benefits of what nature has bountifully placed at their back yard. It is inconceivable how the derivation money paid to Bayelsa will be used for the benefit of the Kalabari people who own the land but live in Rivers.

Had there been proper delineation of boundaries, the current recrimination between the two states would not have arisen.

This point can be gleaned from the contention of the Bayelsa State government that by the manner states were created, communities that found themselves in some states had ancestral lands, communities and villages in another. This is anomalous and at the root of the current disputations. It is also a huge puzzle that relevant federal agencies are relying on the so-called 11th edition of the map without reference to the 1st to 10th editions. The interpretation is that by being silent over the position of these editions, they have something to hide. It will be very interesting to know the position of these editions; at what point the map changed and the reasons for it, more so as the President has been fingered in the current imbroglio.

In all therefore, Jonathan has a serious burden to discharge given the consistent accusing fingers being pointed at him by the Rivers people. It is not enough to say that the statutory bodies handling the matter are independent. The Rivers people have been unequivocal in their claim that those bodies are under undue pressure from the presidency. And this should not be a surprise given the way things are handled in this country. Nobody will be surprised that politics may take the centre stage in resolving these issues. But nothing should be done to scuttle the visionary initiative and huge investments of the Anambra people in Orient Refinery, the ambitions of later day claimants notwithstanding.

November 5, 2012
Beneath and above water

We read it in the newspapers and magazines. We saw the spectacles of nightmare on television. We followed the ominous buzz on the internet. We knew a tragedy was upon us. It was not the sort that humans made, but humans had to save.

We could not live down the horrors of the story. Floods came in savage majesty, water levels levitated with the arrogance of height, lapping highways, humbling roofs, topping and toppling trees. Villages succumbed, towns shrank to the size of puny hamlets. Lush vistas ruined by rush of water. People fled, but not always fast enough. Nature is no friend of surrenders, not partial to escapes. Many died in the swash of its cruel journeys. It invaded homes, swept out privacies, pulverised memories.

Memorabilia of ancient remembrances were gone, hostages to the pitiless appetites of watery graves. Water, water everywhere but not a home to save.

Suddenly boundaries shattered. Water did not keep its contracts. River and land collapsed into each other. Where cars glided, canoes tumbled. Where children frolicked, fishes flourished. Where humans slept and sat at dinner, crocodiles and hippos swaggered with jaws. It was the definition of chaos, and an omen for the end of life. Homes of high and low fell. No bodyguard or military hardware could guarantee the integrity of the first private home in Otuoke, nor that of the subaltern farmer in Anambra State. It was a democracy of plunder, the equality of tragedy, the impotence of hierarchy.

Who would not have contemplated apocalypse, when all of a sudden water rushed from its appointed place and came, sheets after sheets, roars after roars, threatening, shattering in endless arrays of conquests. Within 24 hours, we had refugees. This was not the aftermath of the Jos bloodsheds nor the Boko Haram rampages. It was nature, in its unthinking might, coming in incarnations of human disarray. It came not with guns or bombs, not with nozzle to aim or eyes to gloat, but with a malice of its own.

When all of these happened, in as many as 24 states, I had a feeling of surrender. Much has been written about President Goodluck Jonathan’s late response, how he was in New York selling investment to Nigerians who followed him from home.

But the story of flood is that of a failure of Nigerians as a people. We lamented privately, but on the whole we have done too little. As I write, many people cannot go home. Even when the water dries or returns to its natural course, home will not be the old home. Existentialist philosopher Heidegger wrote about home as the ultimate sum of all human effort. These people were dislocated. When they return, they will begin a new search. But this is not the time for philosophy, for abstract sympathy.

African society is noted for its sense of communal empathy. But we have little of that now. Where are the rich among us? Other than Aliko Dangote who rolled out a huge sum of money, I have not seen much from private citizens. This is the time for corporations to show their responsibility to society. In spite of the huge profits of the banks, oil firms, and telecom giants, we see tokenism. They are quick to spend money on Nollywood impresarios, social conceits and concerts of vanity.

Where is all that money politicians pay to help their ambitions and acolytes? It is time to turn the loot to charity. Where are the churches? I observed that they reacted to the refugees from Boko Haram torments with great mobilised materials and money. Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) worked up the brotherly love of members. But the flood had no sectarian friend. The foe was humanity. The churches have done little. They can expend billions in expensive schools built with the poor’s tithes, but they have not risen to the needs of neighbours in various camps and schools in Delta, Anambra, Rivers, Bayelsa, Kogi, etc. A few churches have given some help in the affected areas. But what did their mega pastors in Lagos do, in spite of the massive resources at their command? The Muslim brothers too have not shown any better love.

When hurricane sacked Louisiana in the United States less than a decade ago, America rose up in a flush of cooperative help. Churches, nonprofits, individuals poured into the area. They bore materials and haloes of hope. Our state governments not affected by the tragedies have acted as though grateful for the beneficence of nature for not enlisting them for these apparitions of torture.

The Red Cross and a few other groups have helped. In my conversation with the head of publicity, Nwakpa O. Nwakpa, I learned of the limitations of the body. Of the over 130,000 Nigerians displaced, they have resources to help a small percentage in 10 of the 24 states. The Red Cross needs to be commended for their work of love. Of states affected, two governors have stood out in the work. They include Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State and Peter Obi of Anambra State. They have been mobilising people to bring relief to the displaced. If for its symbolic value, Gov. Uduaghan paddled a canoe. I thought it was quite an amount of risk. In the ambience of crocodiles, I wonder what the presence of guards around him could have mustered if the scaly beast lurked. They operate with stealth and could have surprised from under a canoe. So Uduaghan’s effort was not only symbolic but an exercise in understated gallantry.

When the Bible tells us the story of the first great flood, God provided the ark for Noah. We don’t need a physical ark today. The ark is the love we can give. Why are people not flooding the places with the little they have, a widow’s mite mentality? We don’t have to be wealthy to give, we only need to empathise. Why can’t our musicians mobilise and do concerts in affected camps for free? Americans did the We Are The World concert for the starving children in the Horn of Africa. As Chinua Achebe records in his controversial There was A Country, a concert kindled sympathy for the starving children in Biafra. It is not that we don’t have it. Good leadership can light the quiet candles in our souls.

In a recent visit to Ekiti State, I witnessed the efforts of first lady Bisi Fayemi who extends the Governor Fayemi’s social security programme with a food bank project. You want to see the joy in the faces of the poor as they took possessions of their bags containing food items. I wondered how the trickster would not replace the needy. Mrs. Fayemi assured me that a system of supervision guaranteed its integrity. Fountain of Life Church provides free lunch in a part of Lagos.

Cash nexus and the individual ethos of the city have robbed us of the Noah’s Ark. We need to return to the compassionate society, to revive the village ethic and cooperative élan of our forefathers. We don’t need a flood to remind us. If we are faithful in little things, the national reflex will rise up to big occasions like the present disaster.

October 29, 2012
Mimic day

The anticipation of the governorship election of last Saturday was frenetic, and it was billed by this columnist as the battle of the intellect. I also billed it as a battle of integrity. This is because these are the cardinal impulses at play in the unveiling of the history of the state and that of the Southwest.

As the voting process took place, I began to receive gloating text messages by partisans who thought that a victory for Olusegun Mimiko is a loss for Sam Omatseye. This sort of reading of an event of such far-reaching significance told me that the impulse of the savagely parochial had overtaken the more urbane mentality of the thinker.

From the result released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Sunday, the numbers clearly lofted Mimiko as the winner of the poll. And, according to many text messages of those who celebrated, it was the triumph of the people. If the figures are not wrong, it all points out one thing about democracy.

It is the system of the majority, but not always the ideology of the wise. From the currents of all those who communicated to me, they said they were voting against invasion from the outside, and that Mimiko had performed in the past four years.

I billed the election as the platform for intellectual supremacy in the sense that I expected the people to vote for their own welfare, for the rise in education, for urban renewal and infrastructure development, for the promotion of integrity in office.

If what INEC reported yesterday reflected the spirit of the Ondo people, it shows that the election was not a contest of the mind, but a contest of a sentimentality, of looking the other way when the fundamental outrages of the past term of Mimiko mocked them openly. Is it true that this man did not commission a major road as part of his stewardship? If it is true then my position is right. Is it true that in his four years in office, he only boasted a mother and child hospital, while other humbler states like Lagos and Delta have this phenomenon as routine? Only last week, Governor Babatunde Fashola, (SAN) the governor of example, unveiled eight of such hospitals.

Is it true that he is spending over N600 million on a mega school, and boasted during his outing on the hustings that he would build mega schools in every local government, and the people believed such egregious folly? Is it true that thousands of Caesarian operations took place in his hospital? Does it not bespeak a failed system that such a stunning number of Caesarian surgeries will take place in a system?

So if they say he performed, what are the tangible signatures of this performance? It has been demonstrated in the history of democracy that perception, not performance, is the potent force in democratic elections. It is the power of the spin. The people can be suffering, and be told that their lots are actually blissful. If the right figures are cleverly calibrated and the diction forceful, they would achieve a Goebels-like score, hoodwinking the people with a narrative of their own heroism when, in actual fact, the facts paint a contradictory picture.

Looking at the issue of invasion seems to me more than a little unfair. Is it invasion in Ekiti State, where Governor Kayode Fayemi, in a brief two years, has had impact on poverty alleviation and infrastructure development of both roads and education than Mimiko can imagine in his self-glorification? Or are I am to refer to Rauf Aregbesola’s compassionate state where the education is reborn in a tale that only harks back to the time of Awolowo in terms of fervency of enrollment. Mimiko threw a gratuitous salvo over the thousands of people he has employed in his poverty alleviation programme. Those are 20,000 people removed from the streets of crime and indolence. How many of such can Mimiko boast of? Does he have a comparable figure of human rescue? Shall we refer to the doings of Ibikunle Amosun, with roads he has unveiled with deft measures in tertiary education and efforts to energise for industrial development? What of Abiola Ajimobi’s valiant work in Ibadan already, rescuing the city from the grubby propensity of his bejeweled predecessor as well as the first real efforts to save the state from the tragic routines of floods? Is this what they saw as invasion? If that is invasion, it should have been the invasion of liberation rather than internal servitude.

In terms of integrity, I recalled in this column a few weeks ago when I characterised Mimiko as a pariah in the story of brotherly love. I itemised his serial acts of betrayal and that tells us that integrity should be seen as a factor in leadership. Apparently, that did not matter.

The great thing about democracy is that the people can live to see the consequences of their ill judgment. I recall in my days teaching in the university in the United States, and I warned my students about the portentous errors of George W. Bush, and that he had deceived the majority of Americans, including marquee media establishments like the New York Times. Some of my students thought I was probably supping with the enemy. By the time they knew the effect of their actions, Bush was winding down his second term in office. And one of the students accosted me on campus with a slobbering apologia.

The New York Times published its mea culpa for being complicit in a wave of deception in the country. The media is not always innocent in matters of mass deception. It even happened in Hitler’s Germany, where only the Munich Post stood as the corrective voice in a whirlpool lies.

I only hope that we do not wake up one day to learn that, true to type, Mimiko has dumped his Labour Party and found a new rhythm in a new or familiar crowd of politicians. He should realise that if he did not perform in the first term and got away with it, history that outlives the presentistic follies of newspapers will be less kind if he fails to perform in the second.

October 22, 2012
Achebe’s horde of attackers

Those hurling invectives at Prof. Chinua Achebe for aspects of his latest book which in part, held late elder statesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo responsible for economic blockade of the civil war era and its debilitating effects on the Biafran side should sheathe their swords. This is because much of those criticisms have been propelled by banal sentiments rather than an objective appraisal of the facts of the matter.

Achebe had in his 335-page book, ‘There was a country’ said when Biafra did not capitulate despite the evil machinations against it, the Nigerian government resorted to starving the people through blockade of food supplies, a plan which he said was hatched by the top echelon of the Nigerian government, especially Awolowo. He said that by the beginning of dry season in 1968, Biafran soldiers and civilians were starving. Bodies lay rotting under hot sun by the road side and the flapping wings of scavengers could be seen circling, waiting patiently nearby. The policy which seemed to say “starve them into submission’ left upwards of 50,000 people, mostly children dying of starvation every month, he further wrote.

Since the book became public knowledge, several loyalists and supporters of the late sage have taken up arms against Achebe such that the erroneous impression is being conveyed that the book is all about Awolowo’s role in the economic blockade of the civil war era.

For Femi Fani-Kayode, Achebe was indulging in historical revisionism and ethnic chauvinism for saying that Awolowo played a key role in inventing that policy. He would also want an apology for the Awolowo family and the Yoruba people. Yet, the same Fani-Kayode admitted that Awolowo publicly defended the policy and told the world that it was perfectly legitimate in war time. The same Fani-Kayode went further to support the policy by citing the blockade imposed on Germany, Japan and Italy by Allied Forces during the Second World War.

One is at a loss therefore to fathom the basis for his anger except perhaps, he does not want Awolowo to share in the blame for the intended outcome of that policy- death of millions of Biafran children and soldiers. Nothing can be more dishonest than this line of argument.

Even then, the issues raised by Achebe are not entirely new as they were strenuously canvassed while Awolowo was alive and he had ample time to address them. That the issue resonated decades after that war from such a highly informed personage, illustrates vividly the feelings of those who bore the brunt of that policy. Perhaps, if those calling for Achebe’s head had taken time to study some of Awolowo’s comments on the matter, their current diatribe would have been absolutely unnecessary.

The transcript of a town hall meeting held in Abeokuta by Awolowo during the campaigns for the 1983 elections on his role in the 30-month civil war, (The Nation October 12,) spoke volumes on the vexed issue. He said among others “the ending of the war itself that I’m accused of, accused of starving the Igbo, I did nothing of the sort”. But he went on to say that when he visited Calabar, Enugu and Port Harcourt after their liberation, he was shocked at the terrible sight of kwashiorkor victims and when he enquired, he found out that the food they were sending were being hijacked by soldiers and was not getting to the civilians. And “I said that was a dangerous policy we didn’t intend the food for the soldiers. So I decided to stop sending the food there. In the process, the civilians would suffer, but the soldiers suffered most” He also spoke on how he almost unilaterally changed the Nigerian currency only letting Gowon know of it a day before the change even as he expressed delight that it was the policy of starvation and currency change that Ojukwu admitted defeated him.

There are salient issues that have been brought to the fore by aspects of the transcript as they relate to the thesis of Achebe’s presentation. First, they corroborate very unambiguously, our earlier assertion that the matter is not new as Awolowo was confronted with them while he lived. Secondly, he did not deny he was privy to that policy. And as can be gleaned from the above, he admitted to have stopped sending food there after his visit so that by starving the soldiers they could easily be defeated. And it came to pass as he recounted Ojukwu admitted. He also admitted that civilians would also suffer for that action ostensibly directed at soldiers. It is also very instructive to note his emphasis on the first person. By that emphasis, he left no body in doubt that he wielded and exercised enormous powers on those policies. So what is there in Achebe’s presentation that is substantially different from what Awolowo said on the issue? Nothing except nobody wanted to take responsibility for the resultant deaths. And where is that blasphemy for which Achebe has to render apology not only to the Awolowo family but the entire Yoruba people?

Awolowo was a national figure who played crucial roles in the evolution of the Nigerian state. Thus, his place in history will continue to attract considerable interest and reviews from researchers, students and commentators. We must therefore exorcise from our psyche that stale African mentality of not permitting of an objective appraisal of the policies and programs of dead compatriots. It would appear to me that much of the attacks are not only misguided but equally guilty of elevating sentiments over and above the substantive issues raised in the book.

That could explain why Dr. Fredrick Fasheun had the comfort of mind to call Achebe a frustrated man. A frustrated man for chronicling what he considers Awolowo’s role in that war? We may as well need an apology from Fasheun on behalf of the Achebe family and the Igbo people for denigrating one of their best. Fasheun must have been speaking for himself when he claimed the Igbo no longer care about such lamentations as they are more concerned on how to be relevant in mainstream Nigerian politics. He is saying that the Igbo should forget their past and they can make real progress in this country without the benefit of their travails. That conclusion is patently puerile as it cannot fly in the face of current realities in the country- realities that have reinforced most poignantly the relevance of that past.

And as Achebe wrote “It is for the sake of the future of Nigeria, for our children and grand children that I feel it is important to tell Nigeria’s story, Biafra story, our story, my story”. It is therefore a matter of immense regret that such a veritable work is being denigrated and viewed solely from the prism of how it purportedly recorded inadequately the roles played by Awolowo during that pogrom. If the truth must be told, the views expressed by Achebe represent the feelings of the average Igbo man on the matter. Those talking of revisionism, must first work hard to erase this feeling from the psyche of the Igbo people. And until they achieve this, they remain the ones to be accused of revisionism. Of course, Awolowo was not the head of state during that period. For that, there is a limit beyond which he cannot take responsibility for events of that war. But if copious explanations by Awolowo while he lived could not resolve the matter in his favour, it is a remote possibility that the antagonism of his army of supporters and sympathizers can pull any magic now.

October 15, 2012
Dancing with the people

As the Ondo governorship polls loom, I am sad at the humour of the hour. The irony of comedy is that it accepts the malady of our civilisation more than its triumph. Comedy emerges from the imperfections around us – a stumble, a misspeak, an act of naivety, an inefficient regime, etc. They often, on a higher level, point out the darkness of great vices: murder, betrayal, lies, hypocrisy, theft.

That is why some of the great writers from Shakespeare to Soyinka have deployed humour to squeeze out laughter. After that, we scowl. When Chinua Achebe writes A Man of the People, he drapes his tale with a satiric robe so that when we laugh, we end it with a grimace. That was why playwright Bertolt Bretcht inaugurated a new form of theatre to moderate laughter and tears because, sometimes, we are carried away with the giddy sway of the laugh.

So, if you look at the Southwest today, you will realise how much laughter we have lost. From Ogun State to Ekiti, we have gradually lost that belly laugh that often reminds us of the grotesque. We no longer have the Ibadan episodes with a man who tormented us to mock his beaded vainglory and party flourishes. Nor are we risible at the other governor with a perpetual sad-happy mien who brandished occultism as a brand of political coercion, or the Gestapo man who broke our ribs with his compulsive dalliance with the gulag. Of course, we cannot forget the delusion of grandeur from the one with the phony Awo cap. They all gave a sort of absurd humour. But the humour was not because they made our roads or empowered the feeble or fed the hungry or healed the sick, but because they celebrated a world of impotence in which their feathery bowers and ungainly steps recalled the reign of peacocks without beauty.

The humour came out of sadness, because their kingdoms were founts of oppression. Where things go well, we see few examples of humour. “There is no humour in heaven,” quips Mark Twain, perhaps the foremost satirist in the world of letters.

Ondo’s Mimiko belches out humour because his basic crust is betrayal at every level of a people, the Southwest Yorubas, who are on a train of togetherness based not just on kinship but on the high road of collective empowerment.

It was to support the agenda of togetherness that Dante Alighieri, the Italian poet extraordinaire, noted “That every part to every part may shine/ distributing the light… from race to race, from one blood to another/ beyond resistance to human wisdom.” Dante writes his epic about heaven and hell, and he lists the names of people, great and small, who will find themselves where they belong based on their deeds or misdeeds.

The verse called Divine Comedy is a sad story, emphasising Twain’s reference to humourless heaven. So whether you are governor or senator or president, stewardship is important, and when you fail, you find yourself in hell. Dante is not concerned with Biblical heaven or hell but the judgment of history. Those who misrule go to hell. Abacha, for instance, goes to hell.

One governor who does not want a part of Dante’s poetic inquisition is Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the governor of Ekiti State, who is marking his second year in office. His road to the throne overflowed with thorns. He set out on a battle to win a mandate and turn the state into a model. When he was sworn in two years ago, I noted in this column what an uphill task lay ahead. He had a pedigree not only of a man who had dripped with promises, but who had staked out his personal integrity as an activist. As I left town that evening with a few other journalists, I wondered how he was going to make a difference. Ado Ekiti lay prostrate, dust heralded us from street to street, the houses looked forlorn but the people slobbered with hope. Under Governor Oni, they had the sort of look and life that Dante painted: “without hope, we live in desire.” To have desire for food, good education, infrastructure and jobs without visible prospects of fruition maligns the soul. Hope encourages desire, or else blind desire leads to crimes of fraud and violence that Seneca describes as the sources of all human injuries.

The next day, I spoke to him on phone and he said in his baritone: “I have no choice. We have to fight poverty and eradicate it.”

I visited at his first anniversary, and he had set the tempo. The next time I visited was during his mother’s burial and entered Ado-Ekiti with a friend from the United States. We had problem navigating the city. It was dusk, and everywhere work was going on. “This looks like a construction site,” was the comment of my friend, and that was before we entered the entrails of the city. That was when we knew the extent of work going.

The city was a massive construction site, and I learned in a subsequent visit that it was even more elaborate than I thought, and he had spread the tentacles of development far. I noted in this column that in a phone-in radio programme, some callers wondered why he took on many roads simultaneously. They were afraid he would not complete any. To mark his two years in office, he inaugurated 10 roads of 103 kilometres about the distance between Lagos and Ibadan. This is with the accompaniment of drainage, setbacks and greenery. Those who feared for him did so because they were not used to a furious pace of development. He also commissioned five water treatment plants, one of which I had seen.

He has complained about the frustrations of the elements. Rains have stood in the way, and he has quite some more work going on. But his heart is in the right place.

The Ekiti people have been known for their love of education, and the challenge should be to encourage the people to see education not as an end in itself. They love their books and their PHDs, but that is not the way to go. In the United States, states with the higher levels of education like New York, California, Colorado, North Carolina have the highest levels of prosperity. The problem with us as a people is lack of productivity. That was why Fayemi has fought a few battles. One of them is the battle over teacher tests. He was resisted, but he has stuck to the principle that those who teach must know. And he is winning that battle. Another challenge to education is standards. A private school pupil received a scowl from his teacher the other day in Lagos when he corrected her (the teacher’s) English. That is why Fayemi’s stand is in the right place.

His Ikogosi project is in advanced stage and I visited the place with all the chalets and the warm springs and the business potential. It reminded me of the poet Dryden’s phrase, “Here’s God’s plenty.” It was when we walked down from one set of chalets that we met a group of women, dressed as if from some social event of joy, singing in gratitude for his social security programme. The governor danced with them. The intellectual governor, as some have caricatured him, was in sync with dance and song with the old women.

With such performance, he can dance. Just as Fayemi is dancing, can Mimiko boast such gyrations based on performance? That is the humour of the hour we seek.

October 15, 2012