The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • From Kakadu to Kakaku

    From Kakadu to Kakaku

    Ignoramuses of our history should watch it. Same applies to the hecklers of our unity who extol schism. The visionaries of hate through tribe and religion should go and see. The musical is Kakadu, a rumination of our history in dance and play. A nightclub before and after the civil war is a metaphor of a fallen nation from idealism and hope to a belly-up posture in self-doubt and mutual suspicion. The nightclub is called Kakadu and it means life, or what the French would describe as joie de vivre. Emeka (Ralph Okoro), more idealist than erudite, and Bisi (Sharon Adaeze) are star-crossed lovers, more sanguine than Romeo and Juliet. They pursue their romance before and after the war. Just as Kakadu turns forlorn and profitless during and after the war, so their romance meets the crosswind of family and cultural resistance. They make their point in a wedding euphoria that will confront a new scourge: armed robbery as an archetype of broken peace.

    It is a whirlwind – choreography, songs, throaty charms, raunchy moves, flair of humour, and a trip through the twist dance of the sixties and songs from Bobby Benson to Victor Uwaifo. The stage is devoured by lugubrious scenes of rage, surrender and tears after the civil war, with body counts and pockmarks of war that IPOB should see. The owner of Kakadu bears a phony name Lugard Da Rocha (Ben Ogbeiwi), a dual evocation of a Lagosian identity and the colonial author of our geo-political tension. He turns out to be an easterner who stays behind in Lagos as his tribe folks and relatives flee the city. He might seem a traitor to the east, but he bears the name before the crisis. Is he a true Nigerian who has transcended tribe but now has to apologise for his humanity, for being a person first before a tribesman? Or is he a natural impostor? Is he a prototype for amoebic, protean Lagos? His spasm of tears of self-pity that Ogbeiwi acts with great pathos must challenge us to define what we want: whether to emphasise nation or empathasise with tribe. It also flirts, if timidly, with the issue of who owns Lagos.

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    Written By Uche Nwokedi (SAN) and directed by Kanayo Omo, the musical may have been better shorter. It overromanticizes the pre-civil war relationships among the tribes. This same Lagos where Zik and Awo drew swords, backs were stabbed and tribes twirled machetes even before independence. The last scene of a Yoruba man leading an armed robbery may have twisted the tribal colour of waves of robbery after the war. Unless, of course, it is projected as a metaphor of civil fracture, even that may be controversial.

    This musical ought to be seen by all, especially in a philistine society like ours. Kakadu becomes, in my coinage, Kaka-ku, Ku being Yoruba for die.

  • Cyclist of the year

    Cyclist of the year

    Barely 24 hours into the trip, he had developed a cramp, lost a tyre, gulped five energy drinks, walked three kilometres, been tormented by despair, hugged a rescuer, emptied his purse, slept at 3.30 am in a dingy hotel, pedaled on in the harmattan tyranny of northern Nigeria.

    That was Samuel Erukoghene Okoro, 38, an Urhobo man of Delta State origin who transcended weather, landscape and the verities of human danger on Nigerian roads to make a statement for governance on a bicycle.

    When he stepped foot on pedal, it was not about fear or courage. He was not immune to those sentiments. He was not above them but defied them. It was about the goal, and the goal was his state of origin where governance has been a challenge.

    He said the initial steps of the new governor were promising: infrastructure work across the state, dispensing mercies in a depressed economy and a political tact that brought together even the sympathy of the opposition.

    He had absorbed his biography as a public officer.  So, to encourage him he was going to undertake a 1,200-kilometre trip from his residence in Damaturu, Yobe, to Asaba.

    It was his journey, but it was a social one, too. He had engaged a WhatsApp group of 255 persons as angels over his shoulders. They monitored him as he moved from city to hamlet to village to city, all the way through the Middle Belt until he arrived at  his state where he was received by, not only the Governor, Sheriff Oborevwori and his deputy, but also his wife, kids, mother and uncle, all of whom had waited, at times with fear, at times with despair, as he passed through the breathtaking physiognomy of grasslands, valleys, hills and rocky terrain to his home state for Christmas. His wife and two children left Damaturu by conventional transport to Asaba while he and his moving machine plodded through the adventure.

    The journey began December 9. While he had a map in mind, the journey would impose another. He works for an NGO known as Cooperazione Internationale that works with the World Food Programme, and the job had opened routes for him in northern Nigeria.

    “I had gone through routes in the north to distribute food for Boko Haram victims, so I know where is safe and where is not safe,” said Okoro, who landed the job after he served as a youth Corps member and never returned home, though he graduated in chemistry from Federal Polytechnic, Oko in Anambra State. He married there and has two children.

    “I also asked the security officers and they asked me not to go through Kano and Kaduna. They are not safe too,” he recalled. He secured a clean bill of health from the University Teaching Hospital in Yobe, and he was set to go.

    Between a sleepy town Darazo and Bauchi town, his tyre flattened – precisely 30 kilometres to Bauchi. He trekked for three kilometres with his fallen companion and stopped at a fuel station before calling a friend, Taiwo Ogundipe, who was studying for a master’s degree in town. Ogundipe fed him and arranged for a vulcanizer who said both tyres were bad and he obtained new ones. Ogundipe drove him to the fuel station where they picked him and he continued his trip to Jos.

    Jos was hostile.

    “Between Damaturu and Bauchi, the weather was too hot and my lips went bad,” he complained. In Jos with its joyful weather, it was the people who were inclement. Harangued by bandits, residents thought he was a spy for bandits. So, no one would tell him the way to Lafia, Nasarawa State.

    “I was there for about three hours and frustrated,” he said. kindness came from a pocket of police officers after he explained the reason for his adventure. But he passed the night in a rundown hotel in Jos.

    “It was like ashawo quarters,” he narrated with humour. At this time, he was already broke.

    “My wife was the one sending me money through O Pay,” he said. The wife did not do him charity. He was going to pay back. He left Damaturu with only five thousand naira. Not that he had a bag of cash at home, but he did not want to impress robbers with a cargo of indecent sum.

    The journey seemed free flowing until he arrived at a nodal centre between Akwanga in Nasarawa State and Makurdi in Benue. The village is called Camp Garuba, and there he met a hero’s reception. He was at a bukka when he relayed his story, and the villagers regarded him in the light of a local who had made a similar trip for popstar Davido. When they asked for his tribe, they introduced him to an Isoko man he recalled as Jonah Godspower whose wife – Blessing Oghenekome – made him a plate of yam and fried egg. But he was already filled up. Jonah’s second act of hospitality did not work for him. “Where he gave me to sleep for free was not good,” he said.

    But it was in Camp Garuba that he changed route.

    “They said I could not pass through Enugu because of stay-at-home order, and that it was not safe. They mapped another route through Kogi State,” he said. Meanwhile, at every stop he was feeding his WhatsApp group with pictures and videos of his stops, laments and triumphs. When he lay on the roadside, passed a road sign, looked like he was passing out, where he slept, where his tyre upended the journey, when he trekked beside his bike in a parody of Ebenezar Obey’s song, Ketekete. He saw valleys and hills, bushes and about a dozen snakes crushed to death by vehicle tyres more than twice the size of his bicycle. One slithering beast had a red skin. No wild beast menaced him.

    Between Makurdi and Naka, he saw “hell.”

    “We can’t describe it as a road,” he explained. He could not ride the road, especially through Ankpa. “If rain falls, you can’t pass it.” His vehicle collapsed. And he could not afford okada to the place as they wanted him to pay N1,500. And that was all he had until he explained his story to one of them.

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    “You want to kill yourself,” said one of the men when he reached the repairer’s shop. But he became an instant celebrity as people flocked around him taking selfies. At Ayangba, also in Kogi, soldiers arrested him until he showed them pictures of his trip. Hostility turned to rapture and even roguish compassion. They asked why he was doing it the hard way when they could stop a trailer to deposit him near his state.

    “What’s the honour?” he replied.

    “You get mind o,” replied the soldiers.

    At Okene, he confessed to his WhatsApp group that he was tired. He could not go on. The road was hilly, and ploughing through tasked the last fibre of his strength.

    “It was gallop after gallop,” he recounted. “I would trek a little, ride a little.”

    His WhatsApp group mocked, but he said it was no comedy. He had slept in shacks for hotel, barely ate a standard meal, drew strength from energy drinks, and trudged along with little for money. An incoming trailer barreling down a valley almost threw him off the road over a steep edge. Just before that, a woman had looked quizzically at him at a restaurant. “You dey do this for Nigeria? Dem go remember you?” He had retorted that if they didn’t remember him, at least it would be on record for his children.

    When he was near Auchi, “I had no energy to push on.” He thought his bicycle was dead. When he took okada to a nearby repairer, the joke was on him. “The repairer was an Hausa man. He said he would not cheat me. There was nothing wrong with the bicycle. It was him that was tired. The vehicle only needed oil.”

    His legs were now shaking, as he plodded along to Uromi in Edo State. This was day nine of his trip. Hotel price hit the roof at 12 thousand naira. He told his whatsApp group he had nowhere to sleep. His brother sent him N20,000 and members poured forth in naira donations. He had a fortune of  N33, 000.

    “I said I didn’t know I could get this much from the group. I only had to realise this as the trip was coming to an end.”

    He called the Director of Protocol, Sunday Onoriode, to notify him he would arrive the next day. Onoriode asked him to stay another night at Uromi because Governor Oborevwori was out of town. He should proceed the day after. On day 11, he set out only to hear that the governor was still out of town.

    “I slept at another ashawo quarters at Agbor in Delta State.”

    On Day 12, he arrived in  Asaba, the governor, his family, uncle and mother, all happy to welcome him. He presented the bicycle to the state government.

    To quote T.S. Eliot, a hard trip he had of it. But it is a picaresque challenge of one man, two tyres, a felicity of WhatsApp friends, feet over pedals for over a thousand kilometres to his governor and political elite.

  • Unknown tenant kidnappers

    Unknown tenant kidnappers

    There is a new trend in child kidnapping. And a very dangerous one for that matter! The masterminds take undue advantage of the high poverty rate among the citizenry and the inordinate desire by sundry rent agents for quick commissions without due diligence on the genuineness of their supposed new clients.

    Unless urgent and far-reaching sensitization programs including making it absolutely mandatory for rent agents to obtain credible and authentic data of prospective accommodation seekers, the vulnerability of our innocent children will continue to be exploited by these demented souls.

    In this devilish business are mostly women, who cash in on the innocence and weaknesses of children to abduct them to satisfy whatever devilish needs they want. Their new tactics is to rent a room accommodation in compounds with many children. As soon as they pack in, they begin to endear themselves to their neighbours with an uncommon but pretended love for children. But that should be secured very quickly before their intentions are exposed.

    Once the confidence of the neighbours is secured, they wait for the opportune time to strike by deceiving and luring the children out to buy sweets and biscuits for them. Immediately they get to a safety zone, they zoom off with the children to unknown destinations.

    They plan their criminality and execute them with clinical precision within a few days of their packing in before their identity is uncovered. That is the new trend and a very dangerous angle in child kidnapping.

    In the last one week, two of such incidents have been witnessed: one in Sango Ota, Ogun State and the other in Umuahia, Abia State. In the Sango Ota incident, a yet-to-be identified woman kidnapped two children aged four years each. One of them is her landlord’s son while the other belonged to a neighbour in the same compound.

    The woman who moved into the apartment three days earlier had no known identity as both the rent agent and the landlord did not conduct any profile check before renting the apartment to her. She moved in, surveyed the environment and when it was safe for her evil trade, she quickly made away with the children after luring and enticing them with things they love most.

    As I write, neither the woman nor the innocent children have been seen with their parents left to bear the burden of that calamity.

    If the Sango Ota incident was not enough to drive home the gravity of the emerging challenge, that of Umuahia illustrates very poignantly the imperative in quickly tackling this new trend before it gets out of hand.  Three tenants had four of their children taken away by a new neighbour who just packed in three days earlier.

     The women said in separate interviews that the woman whose identity remains unknown, packed into the building on December 15, with another woman purportedly his sister. When they were packing in, they were only seen with a camp gas, a six-inch small foam, a mat and a little bag purportedly containing clothes.

    Within the first two days of their arrival, they began to endear themselves to the hearts of their neighbours as women who love children by playing with them, buying them gifts and sending them on errands. They also cooked food and gave to the children who would playfully enter their room. That was the profile they displayed apparently waiting for the opportune time to strike.

    So it was till the day of their planned escape with the children. The accomplice was first sighted moving out with a sack bag with clothes. When asked where she was going, she claimed she wanted to buy something at the city centre. But she had told another tenant separately that she was going to give her sister the clothes she bought for her.

    The tenants did not suspect anything. When she left, the main one came out pretending to be playing with the children who rallied round her demanding sweets and biscuits. The mother of one of the children who witnessed that final encounter thought it was the usual show of love for the children and left shortly to fetch water.

    Unknown to her; that was to be the last scene in the script written and acted out by the two demented souls in the last three days of their packing into that room. It was all a decoy to get at the heart of the children and their parents before their evil deed.

    She was to discover on return that four of the children had vamoosed into the thin air with no sign of traces of them available. Frantic searches for the whereabouts of the four children yielded no positive results.

    And when the landlord called the phone number supplied by the rogue tenant, it was switched off. The plight of the women was compounded by their discovery that the landlord did not conduct proper profile check on that tenant. He apparently relied on the supposition that the phone was enough to trace her.

    Such has been the sad fate of these parents. Elsewhere, child kidnapping and abuse have been on the upward scale. A woman who pretended to be organizing lessons for children eloped with five kids in Port Harcourt in circumstances the police blamed their parents for carelessness. And in Borno State around the same period, another woman also made away with three children. It has been a tale of sorrow and awe as children after children disappear in the hands of these evil women.

    Hardly a day passes by without reports of children abducted from homes or schools with some abandoned on dangerous routes. Our children have become endangered species as all manner of evil men and women pry on their vulnerability to satisfy vaulting devilish desires.

    But as parents and guardians are getting more aware of the evil designs of these women child kidnappers, it would appear they are now finding new ways of continuing with their nefarious activities. Renting cheap accommodation in densely populated neighbourhoods largely lived by the poor have become their soft targets.

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    Such vicinities are usually characterized by overcrowding, inadequate room ventilation and absence of modern amenities. In that squalid environment, children live and grow up freely sharing whatever they can get from neighbours. Invariably, the children do not get to be properly monitored or even restrained from accepting gifts including food items from their neighbours.

    It is for similar considerations that rent agents and landlords do not take the pains to profile those who come before them as accommodation seekers. But they got it all wrong as the result has turned out disastrous. The criminal-minded women are now exploiting the looseness of such environments as fertile grounds for child kidnappers. And they have been succeeding.

    But the situation can be quickly put under check if those renting out accommodation take little pains to do background checks on prospective accommodation seekers. It says much about us as a people that someone will just saunter into a rent agent’s office pay for an apartment without seriously being profiled including asked to produce a guarantor.

    That cannot happen in saner climes. There is hardly any job you can secure today without serious profiling including credible guarantors. If those hiring labour require all that, there is no reason someone renting an accommodation where he or she will live with others should not be put to serious security checks.

    The lives of other tenants are put at serious risk when new tenants are admitted without serious profiling. It is high time the government took serious interest in the activities of rent agents and landlords that fuel the spate of child kidnapping witnessed recently.

    All these point inexorably to the degenerate level of moral decay in our society. We appear to have lost our senses of decency and humanity. Ours have become a haven of crime and criminality. Everything hitherto held sacred has been so desecrated as to give the wrong impression that evil ways pay. Imagine women who are supposed to be mothers enmeshed in the business of kidnapping other peoples’ children for sale or money rituals through desperate and devious guises!

    Our leaders share much of the blame for the bad examples the show. The damage has been so much. It will require ethical revolution to return the country to the path of moral rectitude and sanity. But is that going to happen so soon?

  • Illegal miners as banditry sponsors

    Illegal miners as banditry sponsors

    It will be a fatal risk to ignore the new dimension to the festering insecurity exposed by the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake. Not that banditry and terrorism sponsorship is entirely new to this country. It is perhaps, the first time a key official of the federal government would come out very strongly and clearly on the reasons for the festering banditry and terrorism especially as they relate to the mining sector. But the phenomenon is not just limited to the mining sector.

    So, the disclosure may as well serve as a benchmark for understanding the nature and character of the multifarious security infractions that have reduced the country to a verity of the state of nature in the last couple of years. This may open our eyes as to why banditry and terrorism have refused to abate despite the efforts of the government to restore law and order in areas they are most prevalent.

    During his 2024 budget defence at the House of Representatives Committee on Solid Minerals, the minister fingered powerful Nigerians involved in illegal mining for responsibility for other criminal activities and involvement in sponsoring banditry and terrorism.

    “One discovery we have made is that a lot of these insecurities, especially banditry associated with this sector are sponsored by illegal miners. These are not your artisanal miners. They are not the people who pick gold on the ground. These are heavy and powerful individuals in our country. They are Nigerians and not foreigners” he told his audience.

    The issues raised here are as weighty as they are troubling. They indicate very sadly that the menace of banditry and terrorism are not mere happenstances. They are largely contrived and sponsored by men of means for some self-serving economic, religious or political motives. Little surprising that concerted efforts to stem the tide have often proved herculean as the same elite mount sundry obstacles to sabotage the process.

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    The way the minister spoke, there is everything to expect that the government has some idea of who these powerful unpatriotic Nigerians are and the incalculable damage their self-serving activity does to the national economy.

    The suspicion that some powerful individuals must be behind the unceasing insecurity that has stretched the powers of our security agencies to elastic limits has always been there. But the government has not been forthcoming in identifying and unmasking the masterminds. As a matter of fact, the body language of the last administration despite its trumpeted commitment to the war against terrorism had given cause for suspicion regarding its sincerity in the prosecution of that war.

    In 2021, the United Arab Emirate (UAE) named six Nigerians among other nationals as terrorism sponsors. The United States of America, (USA) followed it up by placing the six of them on its terror list for providing financial, material or technological services and support to Boko Haram.

    It is not clear till date what the federal government made of this vital information provided by the UAE. Neither is there evidence of the trial and possible conviction of the suspected terrorism sponsors. The much we got was an evasive statement from the media aide to President Buhari, Femi Adesina that Nigeria was not interested in naming and shaming terrorism sponsors but in ensuring that suspects are brought to book.

    At another occasion, the government through the then minister of information, Lai Mohammed said the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) uncovered 96 financiers of Boko Haram and ISWAP. The unit was credited to have unmasked 424 associates/supporters of the financiers, about 123 companies and 33 Bureau de Change linked with terrorism. But not much has thereafter been heard about the prosecution and possible punishment for these suspects.

     So, it was nothing strange when Alake said some powerful Nigerians are behind the sponsorship of terrorism and banditry in the mining sector. The difference lies in the motive which is to deprive the federal government of the financial revenue which full exploitation of the sector holds for the welfare of the toiling citizens.

    Banditry and terrorism in the mining sector are largely economic. The objective is to keep the mining areas lawless so as to allow the illegal business to go on unhindered. That is the objective and powerful Nigerians profiting from the illegal business will not let go.

    It is now getting clearer the uncommon interest shown by some of the elite each time there is a sustained push to smoke out all manner of bandits and terrorists from these shores. It can now be understood why insinuations of mundane colorations are quickly bandied each time there is a miscalculation from the security forces while engaging the bandits and terrorists.

    The so-called powerful Nigerians will be the very first set of people to give weird meaning and interpretation to any sustained onslaughts against the activities of the sponsored criminal elements. We saw how ethnic, religious and political opportunists cashed in on the mistakes of the army in the Tudun Biri incident to stoke embers of discord.

    But there are other dimensions and motivations for terrorism and banditry. At the budding stages of the Boko Haram insurgency, allegations of connivance and sponsorship featured very prominently. The relative ease with which secondary school children were ferried away; disappearing into the thin air in the northeast had left  with it feelings that there was more to it.

    Then also, the efforts of the federal government to confront the monster had lent itself to misinterpretation by some northern elite. No less a person than the then governor of Adamawa State Muritala Nyako bandied vile and damaging allegations of an agenda to depopulate the north. The allegations were so acerbic and discouraging that they placed serious constraints on the war against Boko Haram.

    Had the terrorists been pursued with the vigour their activities demanded at that time, perhaps, we would have put that issue behind us today. Unfortunately, it appears no lesson has been learnt from that incident as the same old tactics is again being traded by the same vested interests in the miscalculated and unfortunate killings in Kaduna State.

    It would seem the Nigerian military command is not unaware of the constraints in its operations imposed by these unguarded insinuations and contrived conspiracy theories. It has despite the challenges, reaffirmed its commitment to remain focused in the fight to rid the country of insecurity.

    That is the way to approximate recent promise by President Tinubu that he will not lose the battle against the bandits and terrorists. We cannot afford to lose the war against insecurity. But the president should back it up with the political will to address the cascading insecurity according to the peculiarities they present.

    Banditry and terrorism sponsorship is not an exclusive preserve of illegal miners. The sponsors of banditry in Zamfara, Katsina and Kaduna states and elsewhere have different motivations. While some are engaged in kidnapping for ransom, others are involved in cattle rustling and stealing. Yet, some others have interest in establishing their own form of government over the people in their areas, imposing taxes and securing allegiance.

    Before now, the motivation and interests of these bandits as well as their mode of operation had raised questions as to who they really are. Are they terrorists professing some weird religious ideology, herdsmen, rogues or bush guerrilla?

    In his interaction with former Governor Matatalle of Zamfara state after his visits to the forests, fiery Islamic preacher, Ahmad Gumi had said, “In most of the bandits’ and Fulani camps we have visited, I came to understand that what is happening in the state is nothing but insurgency”.

     Buoyed by this, he asked the federal government to enter into negotiations with the bandits and the Fulani and reintegrate them the same way the Niger Delta was settled.

    But one of the bandits’ leaders, Kachalla Turji was reported to have said only reconciliation can stop the killings while accusing the Zamfara people of impoverishing and beating the Fulani on the road. Another complained of constant attack by the military and cattle rustling which denies them their legitimate means of livelihood.

    What seemed to have emerged from this is the difficulty in differentiating between the interests of bandits and that of the herdsmen. It is vital that the military understands the complications imposed by this link in the prosecution of the current war.

  • Father and son

    Father and son

    The duel between Nyesom Wike and Sim Fubara recalls the episode between Napoleon and a Russian envoy. Master craftsman Leo Tolstoy waxed it into a legend in the most ambitious of all novels, War and Peace. Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte dropped a handkerchief in front of the Russian ambassador and expected the envoy to pick it up. In irony, the Russian dropped his own handkerchief beside Napoleon’s and picked his own fabric. The French general stooped, in spite of his fabled swagger of a hat and his imperial majesty, to retrieve his piece of cloth. Fubara thinks his handkerchief is whiter, lacier than Wike’s. But Wike is the haberdasher.

    Fubara is in such a satiric contempt of his former boss and benefactor. In his wry mood, Wike must be wondering why Fubara is in such a wry mood. The drama is unfolding so fast, few have enough time for context. The fight is in several incarnations: between godfather and godson, benefactor and beneficiary, gratitude and disdain, Ijaw versus Wike, FCT versus lawmakers versus executive. In this fight, law has fallen hostage to the sophistry of SANs. Are the defecting assembly men leaping in the dark, or are they lurking to pluck down the governor?

    There may be a failure of definition here. Maybe Fubara was never born as Wike’s son while Wike thought himself a father, an obstetric upheaval, a new oedipal twist. Not like Kwankwaso and Ganduje, Chime and Nnamani, Ibori and Okowa, Akpabio and Emmanuel, Kalu and Orji, et al. Which model is Fubara re-enacting? Psycho-social pundits may classify Fubara’s act. Is it an imitation, adaptation or parody of previous father-son lock-horns? Others have said, it took a year, sometimes three years, before the godson cut off the umbilical cord. Street roar, boardroom brawl, a slap in the face, a menace from hirelings, which?

    Fubara does not fit any model. It is not even Chime versus Nnamani. Before his investiture, Chime had invoked the holy spirit to arrest Enugu State House demons while Nnamani still inhabited the palace. Fubara denies any cord or accord. Fubara model is a parody. If others waited, he had no patience. If Chime threatened, Fubara’s lips were still. Even if it took three months before the blood spill between them, the quarrel must have started three months earlier.

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    Given the gale of resignations, the bulldozer’s rumble, the stealthy coalitions, yaps of protests, we may say Fubara’s is new, a virgin clearing. Even in the perpetual tumult of Rivers State politics, it is a virgin clearing. But each of them is fighting and hurting, and are, in the words of French Poet Baudelaire, “I am the wound and yet the blade.”

    Fubara is denying the Wike DNA. After denying the political bloodline, other links are easy to cut. He can say he is no beneficiary because the people, not Wike, voted him in. His is not disdain because he is now governor and Wike is not. Yes, it is an Ijaw matter because he is the first in the Fourth Republic to mount the chair. Wike gave and he is trying to take it away. This thinking is the making of Fubara’s delusion of grandeur.

    If he has a grudge, there is a right way to be right and a right way to be wrong. His is a wrong way to be right. Even when we are right, we don’t have to be right. That is the life of good breeding and maturity. Fubara lacks it. You don’t blast an edifice costing billions to advertise your piety.

    The issue is that once in power, it is easy to become the power itself. That is the problem with men like Fubara, who played the obsequious buffoon while he followed Wike around during the campaigns. He was bidding his time. That is the cynic at play, the quiet, grasping power monger. He thinks himself a liberator, a revolutionary even. He is the one who is going to bring down the mighty man of valour. He sees himself at once as a hero and rebel, who would, in the words of Albert Camus in The Rebel, “die on one’s feet (rather) than live on one’s knees.”

    What is at stake is not Wike or Fubara, but democracy. At the moment, it is a question of power. Many are saying Fubara is currying the Rivers street by playing the underdog. No one really knows the story. Some say it is money, but no evidence. Wike has denied it. Some say it is control of the state, but Wike says it is about the integrity of his political family. But Fubara has kept mum, and the Rivers street is apt to clutch at the commonplace narrative: that it is a bully hectoring a puppet. The absence of a good open brawl, with Wike jabbering and Fubara swiping back, has left the whole drama a fight without blows. The only idea next to democracy is Wike’s assertion that Fubara is dining with the enemy. In politics that is crime number one. Charles De Gaulle’s close friend and topflight novelist, Andre Malraux once wrote: “If you abandon a certain number of deputies or if they abandon you, that is an incident. If you abandon an idea, that is not an incident, it is a suicide.”

    So, what is Fubara’s idea if not suicide, for he has abandoned the family that enthroned him. Perhaps hence the APC executive was dissolved, and the lawmakers who defected can now take their place in the new party. It is a realignment of forces. Fubara is giving shelter to malcontents, shelter of a leaky roof.

    Some lawyers have said there is no crisis at the national level. They probably forgot that it is because he fought Atiku in the centre that the party in Rivers State was cut into two, with persons like Secondus and Atiku’s cronies on the other side. Major PDP players including governors in the party split the party. Fubara is a product of that maelstrom and Wike is in the centre of it. Let us be wary and let the court takes its course.

    He has probably seen the end, and he may be eyeing the deep end. Illusion is a companion of power. He may see a bad end and may be heading inexorably towards it, like Oedipus. He may think himself a sort of Prometheus who brandishes a revolutionary torch. In his play on Prometheus, Aeschylus quotes him as saying, “No misfortune can fall upon me that I myself have not foreseen.”

    Big events took place of late. One is the continuing raft of resignations. The second is the pulling down of the house legislature. The third is to sign a budget with four lawmakers. The four lawmakers’ scenario is a spillover from the Obj years of impunity. Obj amassed a few men to impeach governors. Fubara used it to commit a governor’s impeachable offence with the budget. He gives the impression of chaos. Fubara believes he is levitating himself as a man of destiny, out on a sacred mission. We saw that in the way he pulled down the house. He thinks he is pulling down a stronghold. But it may show he has no strong hold on power. He is probably thinking like the irreverent philosopher Nietzsche who wrote, “To raise a new sanctuary, a sanctuary must be destroyed. That is the law.” So, with all the trouble going on, he sees his act as what the sawdust Caesar of Italy, Benito Mussolini proclaimed, “the holy religion of anarchy.”  It consumed him. Fubara should not see himself in the mould of Napoleon, who crowned himself and wife Josephine in Rome. He then declared, “God gave me this crown. Let anyone who touches it beware.” He lost it all at Waterloo. His head defiled crown and could not hold it.

    Reno Omokri tweeted that the crisis in Rivers State contrasts that of Ondo State as mirror of cultural differences. He may be right if we take away the Wetie and Agbekoya affairs. But the southwest state has handled it with tact while the Rivers State has been a quicksand.

    The Rivers State crisis also reminds us that political turmoil sometimes does not involve the masses. They look on and take sides. While the streets yelp, the solution lies with democracy’s puppeteers, in the halls of courts and the intrigues of big men. It is a feline hour, and the schemes of men and cat often rhyme. That is what is unfolding.

    So, Fubara should be wary of stacking up impeachable offences. Or else, the bringing down of the house may begin the obsequies of his reign.

  • Not the same numbers

    Not the same numbers

    The BOS of Lagos unveiled a N2.2 trillion  budget last week. It is a reminder that Lagos is a cut above other states in the country. No state has had even a trillion naira except one in the last dispensation which  did it more out self-aggrandisement than a measure of the state purse and ability.

    Some are even eight times lower than Lagos. Some of the other big names are close to a trillion but have not even been able to sniff it. So, Lagos can afford many things the others cannot. The BOS can afford the trains, the sprawl of housing projects and schools. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu announced 50 per cent bonus for the civil servants and political office holders and the money will not be taxed.

    Read Also: Clark to CJN: correct grave anomalies in judiciary 

    It is the power of internally generated revenue, especially since Lagos is not yet an oil state like the Niger Delta colossi. It is a testament to the tradition of governance that has built on the predecessor’s milestone. The BOS has kept faith with this in innovation and enterprise. It brings to mind the song by the late singer Fatai Rolling Dollar, Won kere si number wa. That is, they are no match for our number. Indeed, N2.2 trillion is a big sum. Lagosians are looking forward to a new year of more development from the BOS.

      ·           

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  • Prologue: Person of the year Bola Ahmed Tinubu

    Prologue: Person of the year Bola Ahmed Tinubu

    What a year it was for him, and what a year it was for us as a nation. We were heading towards an election, but we could not move. We had legs, we had cars, and we had time, but we were at a standstill. Standstill was a crossroads.

    Our cash was not our cash because Muhammadu Buhari and Godwin Emefiele held them. Our fuel did not flow to cars. They said they were changing currency. But the caterpillar could not become a butterfly. We were caught in transition. Poverty was defined not by what you had but what you had. A millionaire begged in vain for N5,000. A millionaire queued in vain for a quarter of fuel in his car tank.

    Money failed; mobility stalled; time froze. Not only that. Banks could not dispense money. Courts, including the top court, said to release money. Court failed, too. Yams and plantains rotted in the market. Persons choked and died in bank halls. A swaggering CBN chief defied a Supreme Court.

    The government of the day had the political party of the day. If it failed, its party should fail at the polls. Its candidate hinted and yelled in Abeokuta, his emilokan city. The man said it was an internecine sabotage. Persons in government were working against their candidate. But Asiwaju Bola Tinubu roared like a man with his back to the wall. He screamed, spat, stung. He promised that the foes did not know the way. He was still headed to triumph in spite of the betrayals.

    His foes gloated in silence. The PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar, mumbled an objection before he saw his opportunity. Ditto the Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi. The voter was suffocating, but they were hoping to be victor. They did not flinch to ride the suffering of the commoner to the diaphanous cloud of the throne. A cynical exploitation. In the end, it became a hope against hope. When the presidential election happened, the man for whom the people lacked, and because of whom fuel was unattainable, beat the odds. INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu announced Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu winner of the votes. He would be the nation’s next president.

    But it was the victory before the victory. Tongues were first tied before they wagged. A new storm was in the offing before he could waltz into the office. Tribe, prophecy, politics. Three monsters raised issue over issue. For the tribal titans, it was an abomination. Their man was supposed to win, an ironic adoption of emilokan and unwitting tribute to the man who coined the phrase.

    As for prophecies, they failed in the words of Apostle Paul. They said his case would collapse in court. He would be arrested at Eagle Square during the swearing-in. Some predicted his death. It was hard to distinguish God and mammon. Abuja turned from a nation’s capital into the capital treasure of democracy. They sculpted the super citizen. If you did not get 25 percent in that city, you did not win. Lawyers, pundits, the streets coalesced to sanctify the city. The law took backseat. Others called for the army. It was a Samson syndrome. Win or let hell take over. At the centre was a Tinubu who rarely spoke, watching from the sideline as fury took over sanity in the land.

    The politicians, especially the Obidients, reflected a part of the country that mistook itself for the whole and appropriated the throne on the basis of its minority votes. Death wish was an open clamour, an open clamour like an open sore. If he was quiet, then he was sick. If it lasted, he was dying. They had flown him last night to Germany or Paris. He was on life support. If they saw him, they watched for signs: he was shaky at the feet, his voice was frail, he was graying at the temple, he had bloodstains, he had water stains. He went to the bathroom to change his diapers. A patch in his underarm indicated a coming apocalypse. It was desperation clothed in comedy. They were looking for R.I.P because he ripped them at the polls. In tears, a certain young woman had threatened God with apostacy if Tinubu won.

    Read Also: Tinubu receives ambassadors, mandates them to focus on new investments

    But the uproar was channeled into a new hope: in the judiciary. They said they had enough evidence that Tinubu lost. The Obidients claimed they won. The PDP claimed they won, too. They forgot that both worked together for Tinubu’s gain. At the polls, the fall of Obi, the fall of Atiku meant a windfall for Tinubu. Both vote counts amounted to over 13 million votes. Tinubu had just a little over half of their haul. Though still speculative, analysts say if both worked together, they might have had their day. But history is not about what might have been.

    Campaigns mounted against judges. Threats, insinuations, blackmails. To browbeat judges into a foreordained verdict became a mission. Intellectuals, top politicians, tribal chieftains, pastors, literary lights, professors, media luminaries conjoined to tease the wise men of the court. They even started a campaign saying, All Eyes on The Judiciary. It was a case of intimidation. But the judges did not faze.

    Both at the tribunal and Supreme Court, the justices affirmed Tinubu’s victory. He did not only win at the polls. This is in spite of internationalising the campaigns about certificate and drugs, and he triumphed on all sides. The US courts absolved him of a drug scandal. The Chicago State University proclaimed he was no impostor. The victory buried public opinion as the arbiter of justice.

    For triumphing at the polls, in court and outside the country in a year of storms, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is The Nation’s Person of the Year.

    The runner-up has to be the Nigerian people who suffered in a year of deprivation, hunger and even manipulation. Cash crunch, fuel scarcity, the removal of oil subsidy, the devaluation of the Naira, the attendant inflationary burden combined to challenge not only the livelihood but the resilience of the Nigerian people. In spite of the gale of exodus out of the country, most remain to soldier on in times of crisis. They deserve recognition.

  • Twice betrayed

    Twice betrayed

    Not many young people know Frank Kokori. Not many old acknowledge him. He inhabits the bald region between nostalgia and optimism. So, indifference besieged him when he died last week. His blood turned cold in a country that gave him a cold shoulder. What did not leave him was his courage.

    He was betrayed in death. This essayist warned of this moment. I wrote that we should not rush to his help only after he died. That note was optimistic. His death came like a whimper. He died like a pauper. Shakespeare wrote that “when beggars die, there are no comets seen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.” He lived a prince of virtue but died a beggar of neglect.

    The news flashed his death December 7, and all over the social media and newspaper websites. Journalists did their duty. By the end of the day, only few personages had released any homages. Maybe there were closet tears, but he was no closet icon. Not even the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) mourned until the next day.

    Ajaero or Agbero was suited up in air-conditioned hallways in Dubai, sipping tea at COP28. Festus Osifo was in oblivion. Were they go doolally tap because he pleaded with both unions not to strike but give the Tinubu government “some time to rebuild the country?” Is it malice against the dead?

    They went on strike over a black eye for Ajaero’s partisan drivel. But their eyes did not moist over the death and apotheosis of a genuine hero not only of labour, but of democracy. Even politicians who are benefitting from his heroics heard of his death but they are dead from the neck up. A boo for them.

    This essayist had warned that we should not cry but care and not wait to care for his beloved as a late mea culpa. Maybe they are waiting for his obsequies since any statement now would be afterthought. The first prominent statement came from Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori. In a taped statement before he died, Kokori gushed about his state governor. Kokori thanked him “for showing concern during his stay in the hospital. That he never knew Oborevwori was such a good man.” He said the governor “wasn’t close to him as some people.” The Delta State governor had picked up his bill and demonstrated empathy by paying him a visit. An applause for him.

    The presidency also appreciated him and a statement from President Bola Tinubu showed appreciation of the matador – my words – during the struggle to redeem this nation from the stranglehold of a military gangster – my words.

    But most of those who wrote tributes were not the top men of the society. It is sad indeed. Is it because he was an oil man? Or is it because he was a minority, an Urhobo man? Would he suffer like this if he was Igbo, Hausa-Fulani or Yoruba? If he were some other people, they would have whisked him early to Europe or the US. That might have saved his life even for another half a decade or even longer. Who knows? Not even the oil industry, the treasure of the economy, with its peacock wealth, rallied for him. Nor did his party come to his rescue when he was alive, not in the state or at the national level. Kudos to Femi Otedola, though, for the routine nobility of his charity for ailing. A clap for him.

    Read Also: I remember Frank Kokori

    Kokori was betrayed in death as he was in life. But this betrayal, including his neglect in his dying days, was the second perfidy. The first happened when he was the scribe of the Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG). He was in hiding in the days of Sani Abacha’s demoniac terrors. A goggled brute and impostor with his jackboot on the people’s mandate. Kokori was on the run so the hope of democracy could  not ruin. Somebody Kokori trusted, who had access to his phone number, drew him out of his shadows in Lagos. The junta fumed and feared Kokori. He had made the nation ungovernable for the Abacha street gang of soldiers. He crippled the country by mobilizing oil workers to down tools. To cripple the oil sector was to cripple the country. The man who did it was Kokori. Politicians could not cripple the country as he did. Only workers could. He held the gauntlet, gaunt as he looked. His life was on the line. Abacha’s gulag masters combed the country until they took hold of a man who could lure him out. At that time, Abacha had nabbed Enahoro. So, he was told that Kokori had to be the rallying point. He had to be secure. Aremo Segun Osoba, according to Kokori, had warned him to stay out of sight. Osoba was also taking care of Kokori’s family. Kokori acknowledged that and thanked him. In his memoirs, The Struggle for June 12, Kokori said one Fred Eno, who was Abiola’s aide, aided the SSS to his lair. He called Kokori to come out to obtain certain materials. Kokori obliged and disclosed his location. The goons nabbed him and wanted to throw him in the car. Failing that, they wanted to toss him in the boot. Failing that, they immobilized him with a spray and pushed him in the car. Biceps failed to conquer a scrawny soldier of the people. He said one of the goons uttered Urhobo to him and he ignored him. They had started pounding him until he warned that if they killed him the country would be “set ablaze.” That restrained them. It was then the so-called Urhobo man wafted the sultry car with his folksy air.

    Fred Eno has denied he called Kokori. It was not the age of AI and I wonder why Kokori could have responded if he did not recognise the voice and phone number of his fellow traveler in rebellion. That Kokori survived was a saving grace for Chief Osoba, who had been accused of selling him out. Kokori cleared the veteran journalist and former governor of Ogun State in his book. May our grace not die in the grave. If Kokori did not survive Abacha’s gulag, the wrong would have haunted his name forever. The Roman poet Horace wrote: “A word once let out of the cage cannot be whistled back again.” Osoba had the good fortune of reversing the word to its resting place.

     Kokori was small, but physique did not define him. His name made headlines in the stormy hour of June 12. They sought him everywhere the way they sought some of the titans of the day like Rewane, Soyinka, now President Tinubu, Enahoro, Kaltho, Ubani and some media defiants like Onanuga, Igiebor, Alex Kabba, et al. It was a testy moment. Rewane and Kaltho were slaughtered. It was a period of gallantry and death, treachery and opportunism, manoeuvres and ingenuity, scarcity and perfidy. The streets were empty, except when they bled with protests. Workers did not know when to go to work and when to stay at home. Some grew rich from disloyalty. Democracy turned into an enterprise. It was a quicksand for values. Sometimes it was not clear who was for the country and who wanted to profit. Some who claimed to be for the country fattened and exploited the hour for personal boon. We saw open defections and stealth loyalty. The defections smelled like public defecation. The dark was shelter for imposture. Light was blinding.

    People were getting medals of praise for serving self. In the name of buoying democracy, they were buying sellouts. It is like the soldier in Hemmingway’s novel Farewell to Arms who gets a medal of honour for doing nothing. Same we see in Tolstoy’s opus War and Peace when Prince Andre feels out of sorts for being bemedalled for reporting a phony victory to the emperor. He wants to go back to war in order to deserve the honour even as Napoleon is storming towards the city. In our case, many did not deserve it but feigned applause in fables of heroics. They told their own lies to lie gloriously in their sty.

    The true hero was Kokori; no one more so than he. In the history of labour struggles, I don’t know of a better hero. Not even Imoudu, the eponym of Nigerian labour, grazed death like Kokori. No knock on the patriarch who had brushes with colonial powers, like his deportation from Lagos for years. But his life was not in peril like Imoudu. Not even Zik when he proclaimed Gerald Whitley sought after his life and said, “I go to the bush whence I came. But if it is the will of providence that I should die by the bullet of a European assassin, I go with divine confidence and spiritual satisfaction that I have served mother Africa to the extent of my physical ability.” It was all bluster. No one wanted a hair of Zik’s head. Kokori was under real threat. He ranks like anyone in making democracy what it is today. He died from devastation to his health when the despots took him. He deserves a national monument. It is true, as Senegalese writer David Diop writes in his enthralling new novel about slavery, “the historical monuments of the Senegalese people can be found in their stories…” Yet, physical monuments in form of buildings, streets names, et al, are snapshot tributes for the unwary.

    He went into the gulag a thin man. He came out a gaunt man. He did not lose his guts. He was a tiny dynamo. When Sigmund Freud died, poet W.H. Auden wrote he was “no more a person but a whole climate of opinion.” Kokori was a climate of the struggle.

    He lived a courage, and died one. He himself said he was born so and would die so. In the words of Dylan Thomas, he did not “go gentle into that good night.” He fought to die on his birthday, just as Churchill on his father’s birthday. He is like the elegy of Poet Mayakovski for the Russian legend Vladimir Lenin: “We ‘re burying the earthliest of beings that ever came /to play an earthly part / Earthly, yes; but not the earth-bound kind /who’ll never peer beyond the precincts of their sty. /He took in all the planet at a time, /saw things out of reach for the common eye.”

    Kokori has gone, and he surrendered his flesh and blood. But he left us his spirit.

    Not many young people know Frank Kokori. Not many old acknowledge him. He inhabits the bald region between nostalgia and optimism. So, indifference besieged him when he died last week. His blood turned cold in a country that gave him a cold shoulder. What did not leave him was his courage.

    He was betrayed in death. This essayist warned of this moment. I wrote that we should not rush to his help only after he died. That note was optimistic. His death came like a whimper. He died like a pauper. Shakespeare wrote that “when beggars die, there are no comets seen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.” He lived a prince of virtue but died a beggar of neglect.

    The news flashed his death December 7, and all over the social media and newspaper websites. Journalists did their duty. By the end of the day, only few personages had released any homages. Maybe there were closet tears, but he was no closet icon. Not even the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) mourned until the next day.

    Ajaero or Agbero was suited up in air-conditioned hallways in Dubai, sipping tea at COP28. Festus Osifo was in oblivion. Were they go doolally tap because he pleaded with both unions not to strike but give the Tinubu government “some time to rebuild the country?” Is it malice against the dead?

    They went on strike over a black eye for Ajaero’s partisan drivel. But their eyes did not moist over the death and apotheosis of a genuine hero not only of labour, but of democracy. Even politicians who are benefitting from his heroics heard of his death but they are dead from the neck up. A boo for them.

    This essayist had warned that we should not cry but care and not wait to care for his beloved as a late mea culpa. Maybe they are waiting for his obsequies since any statement now would be afterthought. The first prominent statement came from Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori. In a taped statement before he died, Kokori gushed about his state governor. Kokori thanked him “for showing concern during his stay in the hospital. That he never knew Oborevwori was such a good man.” He said the governor “wasn’t close to him as some people.” The Delta State governor had picked up his bill and demonstrated empathy by paying him a visit. An applause for him.

    The presidency also appreciated him and a statement from President Bola Tinubu showed appreciation of the matador – my words – during the struggle to redeem this nation from the stranglehold of a military gangster – my words.

    But most of those who wrote tributes were not the top men of the society. It is sad indeed. Is it because he was an oil man? Or is it because he was a minority, an Urhobo man? Would he suffer like this if he was Igbo, Hausa-Fulani or Yoruba? If he were some other people, they would have whisked him early to Europe or the US. That might have saved his life even for another half a decade or even longer. Who knows? Not even the oil industry, the treasure of the economy, with its peacock wealth, rallied for him. Nor did his party come to his rescue when he was alive, not in the state or at the national level. Kudos to Femi Otedola, though, for the routine nobility of his charity for ailing. A clap for him.

    Kokori was betrayed in death as he was in life. But this betrayal, including his neglect in his dying days, was the second perfidy. The first happened when he was the scribe of the Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG). He was in hiding in the days of Sani Abacha’s demoniac terrors. A goggled brute and impostor with his jackboot on the people’s mandate. Kokori was on the run so the hope of democracy could  not ruin. Somebody Kokori trusted, who had access to his phone number, drew him out of his shadows in Lagos. The junta fumed and feared Kokori. He had made the nation ungovernable for the Abacha street gang of soldiers. He crippled the country by mobilizing oil workers to down tools. To cripple the oil sector was to cripple the country. The man who did it was Kokori. Politicians could not cripple the country as he did. Only workers could. He held the gauntlet, gaunt as he looked. His life was on the line. Abacha’s gulag masters combed the country until they took hold of a man who could lure him out. At that time, Abacha had nabbed Enahoro. So, he was told that Kokori had to be the rallying point. He had to be secure. Aremo Segun Osoba, according to Kokori, had warned him to stay out of sight. Osoba was also taking care of Kokori’s family. Kokori acknowledged that and thanked him. In his memoirs, The Struggle for June 12, Kokori said one Fred Eno, who was Abiola’s aide, aided the SSS to his lair. He called Kokori to come out to obtain certain materials. Kokori obliged and disclosed his location. The goons nabbed him and wanted to throw him in the car. Failing that, they wanted to toss him in the boot. Failing that, they immobilized him with a spray and pushed him in the car. Biceps failed to conquer a scrawny soldier of the people. He said one of the goons uttered Urhobo to him and he ignored him. They had started pounding him until he warned that if they killed him the country would be “set ablaze.” That restrained them. It was then the so-called Urhobo man wafted the sultry car with his folksy air.

    Fred Eno has denied he called Kokori. It was not the age of AI and I wonder why Kokori could have responded if he did not recognise the voice and phone number of his fellow traveler in rebellion. That Kokori survived was a saving grace for Chief Osoba, who had been accused of selling him out. Kokori cleared the veteran journalist and former governor of Ogun State in his book. May our grace not die in the grave. If Kokori did not survive Abacha’s gulag, the wrong would have haunted his name forever. The Roman poet Horace wrote: “A word once let out of the cage cannot be whistled back again.” Osoba had the good fortune of reversing the word to its resting place.

     Kokori was small, but physique did not define him. His name made headlines in the stormy hour of June 12. They sought him everywhere the way they sought some of the titans of the day like Rewane, Soyinka, now President Tinubu, Enahoro, Kaltho, Ubani and some media defiants like Onanuga, Igiebor, Alex Kabba, et al. It was a testy moment. Rewane and Kaltho were slaughtered. It was a period of gallantry and death, treachery and opportunism, manoeuvres and ingenuity, scarcity and perfidy. The streets were empty, except when they bled with protests. Workers did not know when to go to work and when to stay at home. Some grew rich from disloyalty. Democracy turned into an enterprise. It was a quicksand for values. Sometimes it was not clear who was for the country and who wanted to profit. Some who claimed to be for the country fattened and exploited the hour for personal boon. We saw open defections and stealth loyalty. The defections smelled like public defecation. The dark was shelter for imposture. Light was blinding.

    People were getting medals of praise for serving self. In the name of buoying democracy, they were buying sellouts. It is like the soldier in Hemmingway’s novel Farewell to Arms who gets a medal of honour for doing nothing. Same we see in Tolstoy’s opus War and Peace when Prince Andre feels out of sorts for being bemedalled for reporting a phony victory to the emperor. He wants to go back to war in order to deserve the honour even as Napoleon is storming towards the city. In our case, many did not deserve it but feigned applause in fables of heroics. They told their own lies to lie gloriously in their sty.

    The true hero was Kokori; no one more so than he. In the history of labour struggles, I don’t know of a better hero. Not even Imoudu, the eponym of Nigerian labour, grazed death like Kokori. No knock on the patriarch who had brushes with colonial powers, like his deportation from Lagos for years. But his life was not in peril like Imoudu. Not even Zik when he proclaimed Gerald Whitley sought after his life and said, “I go to the bush whence I came. But if it is the will of providence that I should die by the bullet of a European assassin, I go with divine confidence and spiritual satisfaction that I have served mother Africa to the extent of my physical ability.” It was all bluster. No one wanted a hair of Zik’s head. Kokori was under real threat. He ranks like anyone in making democracy what it is today. He died from devastation to his health when the despots took him. He deserves a national monument. It is true, as Senegalese writer David Diop writes in his enthralling new novel about slavery, “the historical monuments of the Senegalese people can be found in their stories…” Yet, physical monuments in form of buildings, streets names, et al, are snapshot tributes for the unwary.

    He went into the gulag a thin man. He came out a gaunt man. He did not lose his guts. He was a tiny dynamo. When Sigmund Freud died, poet W.H. Auden wrote he was “no more a person but a whole climate of opinion.” Kokori was a climate of the struggle.

    He lived a courage, and died one. He himself said he was born so and would die so. In the words of Dylan Thomas, he did not “go gentle into that good night.” He fought to die on his birthday, just as Churchill on his father’s birthday. He is like the elegy of Poet Mayakovski for the Russian legend Vladimir Lenin: “We ‘re burying the earthliest of beings that ever came /to play an earthly part / Earthly, yes; but not the earth-bound kind /who’ll never peer beyond the precincts of their sty. /He took in all the planet at a time, /saw things out of reach for the common eye.”

    Kokori has gone, and he surrendered his flesh and blood. But he left us his spirit.

  • Tudun Biri’s miscalculated bombs

    Tudun Biri’s miscalculated bombs

    Not a few Nigerians were thrown into suspense when the Nigerian Air Force, (NAF) denied involvement in the bomb attack penultimate Sunday that killed scores of villagers in the Tudun Biri community of Kaduna State. This apprehension was a consequence of public perception of the statutory role of that organization and its record in similar bombing activities in the fight against insecurity that held the country down for some years now.

    Public anxiety was further activated when NAF spokesman, Edward Gabkwet clarified that they were not the only organization operating combat armed drones in the northwest region of the country. Who could then have been responsible for the bomb attacks that killed and wounded dozens of villagers performing their private religious obligations?

    The question remained largely unanswered until the Kaduna State government told the media after a security meeting that troops of the Nigerian Army on routine operation against terrorists dropped the bombs. The sketchy information did not indicate the circumstance of the misadventure and what targets they saw on ground before the attack. 

    The situation remained tense and cloudy until the Chief of Army Staff, (COAS), Lt. Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja visited the scene of the attack last Tuesday. A statement by the army at the end of the visit indicated that troops were carrying out aerial patrols when they observed a group of people wrongly analysed and misinterpreted their pattern of activities to be similar to that of bandits before the drone strike.

    Lagbaja expressed sincere regret and apology for the incident and promised thorough enquiry to identify lapses and deficiencies in the human and artificial intelligence variables to forestall future occurrences. A couple of issues are manifest from the COAS explanations.

    First, the area in question and adjoining villages had been a hotbed of armed banditry.  Secondly, an aerial survey intercepted images of a gathering of people and when it was analysed, it bore semblance of the activities of bandits. Then a drone was dispatched to neutralize the supposed bandits.

    Whatever the images were, they all turned out a fatal error as the event was a religious gathering. It is unclear what semblance the religious gathering had with the pattern of activities of the bandits to warrant the drone attack.

     It was a miscalculation, a failure of intelligence both human and artificial. Human intelligence failed in the analyses and interpretation of data obtained through aerial survey. It also failed for its inability to establish human contact with people on ground before the drone attack.

    For an attack that killed more than 80 people and left several others wounded, it would have made better sense to have established some measure of contact with sister agencies and independent people in and around the area for confirmation before the attack. It does appear nothing of sort happened to crosscheck the information from technology.

    Read Also: Suicide bomber bombs self in Kaduna

    Lapses may have also come from artificial intelligence. The environments in which some of these devices were configured are substantially different from our local situations. Activities and images that easily suggest possible threat to law and order or security compromise in advanced countries may turn out different in our own setting. This should not be surprising given the socio-cultural, religious and developmental disparities they present.

    Lagbaja must have had this in mind when he promised investigations to identify lapses in human and artificial intelligence variables that brought about that sad pass to forestall future occurrences. The imperative of that inquisition cannot be overstated. Good a thing, President Tinubu has ordered full scale probe of the unfortunate incident.

    Perhaps, this is the first time the army is getting involved in miscalculated bombing of innocent civilians. It came as a surprise when the NAF absolved itself of culpability in the incident because much of such accidental bombs have in the past, been traced to that organization. We are now faced with the expansion of organizations operating combat armed drones in the country. It presents new challenges.

    Going forward, it may now be risky to ascribe any and every bomb incident to the NAF as had been the case. Before now, the NAF had borne the responsibility for the serial accidental bombing of wrong coordinates in the war against insecurity across the country leading to avoidable loss of lives.

    In 2017, an air force fighter jet on a mission against Boko Haram extremists mistakenly bombed an Internally Displaced Persons IDP’s camp in Rann, Borno State. More than 100 refugees and aid workers were killed.

    Some soldiers were fatally wounded in the enclave that lies on Nigeria’s border with Cameroun. The scene was so devastating that an international aid agency dubbed it “an emergency within emergency”.

    The military blamed the attack on what they called, ‘lack of appropriate marking’. A fighter jet of the NAF in 2021 bombed Genu town in Niger State. Among the dead were wedding guests in Argida village and a horde of civilians.

     The same year, NAF fighter jet killed many soldiers and civilians after it dropped bombs on ground troops in Mainok, Borno State. The pilot accidentally hit the wrong coordinates while targeting Boko Haram insurgents on military fatigue who had encircled ground troops.

    Yet, NAF bombed Kunkuna village in the Safana Local Government Area of Katsina State killing an unidentified number of villagers. The pilot accidentally hit the wrong coordinates while targeting bandits’ camps. These are just a tip of the iceberg in the miscalculated bombings by the air force in the course of the war against the festering armed insurgency.

    The Kaduna bomb attack is therefore a sad reminder to the unfortunate pattern of accidental bomb attacks that have left sorrow, shock and awe on innocent citizens since the war against insecurity began. Public indignation and condemnation of the latest incident can be understood.

    They stem from loss of patience with the frequency of such error bombings and the avoidable calamity they wrought on helpless and hapless citizens who have been at the mercy of this cycle of insecurity. They remind us of the inability of the military to develop sufficient capacities to protect civilians during and after armed conflicts. Civilian confidence and safety are vital in the war against armed insurgency. The cycle of violence can be broken if the military gains the trust of the local populace.

    But where the communities feel victimized, they may work to obstruct the operations of the military or even show some measure of inclination to rebellion. That is the danger in the recurring error bomb attacks that inflict mortal harm on the civilian population.

    These have left the affected communities suffer double jeopardy. They are victims of attacks from an assortment of armed non-state actors and miscalculated bombs from the military. A situation where the civilian population is wittingly or unwittingly made to suffer for the sins of the insurgents adds complications to the war against insecurity.

    The probe ordered by the presidency may get at the circumstances that led to the accidental bombing. It could also serve as a useful guide to future operations to forestall such mishaps. But it has no way of bringing to life again all those that died on account of the calamity.

    Even as no amount of compensation will atone for a single life lost, the government has to work out some compensation to the families of the bereaved to ameliorate their unfortunate situation. Heads of families and breadwinners have been lost. Many are also in hospitals nursing varying degrees of injuries. The cost of their treatment should be borne by the government.

    The message served by this unfortunate incident is the primacy of civilian protection in any calculations to attack the enemy real or perceived. Credible intelligence from people in and around the scene of the proposed attack is the surest way to avoid future mistakes. We can do with less of these miscalculated bombs.

  • Wage award and callous spoilers

    Wage award and callous spoilers

    By condemnable inaction, most of the state governments in Nigeria continue to contribute to the increasing hardship experienced by people across the country following the controversial removal of fuel subsidy by the Federal Government in May. Out of the 36 states of the federation, 34 are still making excuses for their non-implementation of the N35,000 wage award approved for federal government workers with effect from September, according to an investigative report published last month.

     The state governments were expected to follow the example of the federal authorities, and implement the same wage award to cushion the harsh socio-economic effects of the fuel subsidy withdrawal.    

    The Bola Tinubu presidency had reached an agreement with the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) in October, following the dispute arising from withdrawal of subsidy on the price of premium motor spirit (PMS), and the threat of a nationwide strike by the unions. Based on the agreement, the Tinubu administration approved the payment of a  wage award of N35,000 monthly, for six months, to all federal government workers, starting from September, and “pending when a new national minimum wage is expected to have been signed into law.”

    The Federal Government has started payment of the provisional wage award. Reports said federal workers had received payment for September. But in many states, state government workers are still hoping for succour.  State government officials were quoted as saying they were still considering the financial implication of the wage award, or that they were waiting to “see what obtains in other states,” or that they were in the process of arriving at the appropriate support for workers within the available means of the state.

    For instance, Borno State NLC chairman Yusuf Inuwa was reported saying the governor “complained about a lot of issues, and he pleaded with us to let him contend with them properly before any negotiation on any wage grant.” The Acting Osun State NLC chairperson, Modupe Oyedele, was quoted as saying the state government “promised to look into the request and get back to us. We are still expecting to hear from them.” The secretary of the Zamfara State chapter of the NLC, Abubakar Ahmed, was reported saying, “The governor assured us that he would pay the amount whenever the funds are available. We had a meeting with him where he told us that he was only waiting for the federation account meeting in Abuja.”

    As state government workers in the affected states wait for relief, the state governments should demonstrate a sense of empathy and a sense of urgency. Are the state authorities involved unaware that their workers are still facing the unpleasant effects of fuel subsidy removal, or do they believe their workers are no longer facing the said effects?

    The governments of Oyo and Enugu states were reported to have negotiated the payment of N25,000 to their workers. It remains to be seen whether any of the states would be able or willing to equal the Federal Government’s N35,000 wage award.

    Read Also: Delta NLC and wage award for workers

    According to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s annual inflation rose strikingly in September, reaching its highest level in about two decades at 26.72 percent. The country’s headline inflation rate for October rose to 27.33 percent from 26.72 percent recorded in September. The figure marked the 10th consecutive rise in the country’s inflation rate this year. The result is an alarmingly deteriorating cost-of-living crisis in the country. Economic analysts blame the grim situation mainly on naira depreciation, higher food and energy prices, and logistical costs, among others.

    Predictably, the prevailing socio-economic conditions in the country may well increase the levels of monetary poverty and multidimensional poverty. A year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released a report that said 133 million Nigerians were multidimensionally poor. This figure represented 63 percent of the country’s population of more than 200 million.  Three out of five Nigerians lived in poverty, according to the report.

    The data from Monetary Poverty Measurement (MPM) and Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) called into question the anti-poverty efforts of the Federal Government, and also raised questions about the seriousness of state and local governments in the fight against poverty.  The findings suggested, ironically, that poverty in the country was governance-driven, with high deprivations nationally in healthcare, food security, and housing, among others.

     It is important to ask what state and local governments have done, and what they are doing, to complement the Federal Government’s efforts to cushion the blows resulting from fuel subsidy removal.  They are expected to address the cost-of-living issues in the spaces they govern.   

     Senator Adams Oshiomhole captured the significance of the Federal Government’s wage award at the 8th Quadrennial Delegates Conference of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) in Abuja. He said at the event: ”Now that you have N35,000, there are workers from different states. Are all the state governments implementing it? The answer is no. Why should it be no, and why are they at peace?

    “It should not be a selective application. The N35,000 must affect all workers. It has to go around all workers in Nigeria, whether public or private, that is the logic of nationwide strike.

    “Whether such a worker is working for the federal, state, local government or the private sector, that N35,000 must be paid.”

     Of course, there is the question of the employer’s capability.  The current wage award is a temporary measure tied to a situation that is, hopefully, temporary.  The point is that workers in the country’s public and private sectors deserve a wage award in these hellish times.  It can be negotiated, but should not be negated.

    The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Idris Mohammed, was reported saying the current N30,000 national minimum wage would expire at the end of March 2024, adding, “Certainly, there is a new wage regime that will come in on April 1, 2024.” According to him, “It is in this wage regime that we will now have a proper salary structure for workers across the length and breadth of Nigeria. We expect that the private sector and state governors will also do the same.” Before this happens, Nigerian workers deserve some succour.