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Category: Monday

First Hausa Bishop

Over the years, some have wondered at the semiotics of his name, especially in the course of ten years when he taught at the Catholic Institute of West Africa (CIWA) in Port Harcourt. Mamman Musa is not supposed to evangelise Christ, administer sacraments or applaud the virtues of the Holy Bible.

It did not matter that his first name is Gerald. He is Hausa and close to 99 percent of them are Muslims. How come he turned out a Christian? Not only that, a priest. Not only that, a cleric with an elite profile, who thrived in the Lord’s vineyard for decades inside Hausaland, survived scorns, shunned alienation, parried persecution even. On December 12, he will make history as the first Hausa man to become a bishop of the Catholic Church not in Lagos or Abia, where he once taught, but in Katsina in Hausaland. The investiture will not just be about renaming a place or person, but a revolution of identity. Like the novel, A New Name, by Jon Fosse who just won the Nobel Prize. Just as Fosse with his writings is Catholic, so is Bishop Musa.

He is 52, which is young in episcopal years. So, he could be a cardinal with a chance not only to select the pontiff but to become one. Monsignor Musa – that is how is addressed now. He is not a bishop yet, but a bishop-elect until the solemnity of his elevation.

The Katsina Diocese is excised from the Sokoto Diocese under the beloved Bishop Matthew Kukah, who broke the news to me casually during a phone dialogue.

“Do you see yourself as a Hausa Bishop?” I asked with some mischief.

“I see myself as a Catholic bishop who has a Hausa background,” he replies, and peps it with a sardonic line. “If I call myself an Igbo priest, or Yoruba priest or Hausa priest, they may mistake me for a traditional Hausa priest,” he adds.

Yet he admits the historic hue of his new posting. “It comes with privilege and corresponding responsibility,” he says with sobriety.

How did he become a priest, or, more poignantly, a Christian? No one proselitised him into the faith. That lot fell on his grandparents when missionaries known as the Society of Missionaries of Africa (SMA) landed northern Nigeria in 1934 in Gobirawa in Argungu district of today’s Kebbi State. Argungu, famous for its hefty fishes and festival, was a spiritual stream for fishers of men. His grandfather was a catch, and his parents inherited the dragnet.

They were minorities in faith. His father, a Hausa man, was named Emmanuel Musa and fell under the arms of the white missionaries after his parents died and he dropped out of school. “The missionaries brought him back to school and he became a Catholic and a teacher.”

Emmanuel Musa became not only literate, he turned torchbearer. He translated the Bible from English to Hausa as well as books of Christian doctrines like the Africa Our Way series by Michael McGrath and Nicole Gregoire. His father who worked in government ministry suffered alienation for his belief. It was a hostile atmosphere for a Christian, said the Bishop. Some routine privileges were out of reach. “No one would give you his daughter to marry,” he noted. Emmanuel was denied promotion in the government ministry if he did not become Muslim. He rebuffed the blackmails. His mother, Christiana Asabe, a nurse, hailed from Shendam in today’s Plateau State, and she descends from a family of converts as well.

The family moved over to Malumfashi in today’s Katsina state. It was there Gerald Mamman Musa grew. He was surrounded with seminarians, was immersed in church activity and fell in love with it. He even was an altar server and presided at mass. In primary two, Rev. Father Lawrence Agu impressed him with the beauty of Catholic mystique in his devotion and zest.

But he attended a public primary school – Tunau Primary School – with over 90 percent Muslims. However, he did not suffer any alienation then. He still has robust friendship with his classmates today, some of them in prominent positions in the state. They bond on a WhatsApp platform. He says that in Malumfashi, Christians enjoyed an atmosphere of religious toleration even if some Muslim clerics stoked fanatic odium for the other faith.

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He attended St. Joseph Minor Seminary in Zaria, St. Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary in Makurdi and St Augustine major Seminary in Jos. He earned his master’s degree from the Pontifical Gregorian University and a doctorate from the School of Journalism and Communication of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He is also a professor as director of the Centre for Studies of African Culture and Communications at the CIWA, Port Harcourt.

Has anyone called him maguzawa? It’s a slur and it means a runaway, a term of contempt for Christians in the north. “Yes,” he says. “I trace the origin to those who care to listen. I tell them Muslims were once not Muslims.” The north did not embrace Islam until the 1804 Jihad, and even then, it was a faith of the official majority only. After a while, many who did not embrace Islam had to flee places like Kano and Katsina further south like today’s Abuja and Nasarawa State where their faiths did not stir resentment. Bishop Musa says, bamaguje is the term for men and bamaguza for female. “I often say, everybody is a bamaguje.”

But he says he has not suffered much persecution. He said he has suffered alienation but “not always persecution.” As a person who attended Catholic institutions and rose amidst seminarians and had shunned secular work, his calling might have cocooned him in a bubble. He admits that pressure forces some Christians to change their names and others to renounce their faith. I recall as a teacher at the Aminu Kano College in Kano, I was stunned that most of the students bore northern names but were from the south and Christian.

Was that why he followed the clerical path? He admits it could make a person make “such unconscious decision.” But he believes it is not the case with him, otherwise he would not thrive or find joy in his calling. His favorite books are The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth for nonfiction. For fiction, he hauls Victor Hugo’s Le Miserable. They all emphasise the suffering of the masses. He said that is where his soul is. It translates to music as well. He thrills to the revolutionary pathos of Bob Marley’s Redemption Songs, War and Exodus.

Is he keen on liberation theology? Yes indeed, quoting its founder Gustavo Guitierrez, the Peruvian priest and philosopher. Musa says the poor must be central to his work, invoking the 19th century Swiss theologian who said, “take your Bible and take your newspaper and read both. But interpret the newspaper from the Bible.” I added that today, he would interface the Bible and social media. Musa defers his views on the feudal north. That is not for now, he restrains himself.

On the last election, he condemned the abuse of religion, although he said faith was deployed as a cloak over ethnicism. “The religious component was just a façade,” he noted, although I disagree. It was as potent. He said, though, that “some religious leaders were bought over.” He insisted that religious leaders should never take sides. On the Pentecostals, he said there was good and bad sides to any brand of faith. The Pentecostals, he lamented, have privileged prosperity over holiness, personality cult over Christ. “Some have pushed it beyond limit.”

He describes Bishop Kukah as a role model, committed to his faith and his episcopal vocation. “We have not seen a cleric of that influence in this society,” he extols, adding he is shorn of ethnic or religious prejudices. On Mbaka, he is less charitable. He said a cleric should “stand at the intersection without taking sides. He has not done that. Sometimes the temptation is to take sides.” He quotes Aristotle that the “virtue is in the middle.” He his not the only Hausa cleric. They have a platform of about 36 priests of varying ranks.

Will he be vocal? Yes, but he will be guided by wisdom that restrains. “You have to know when to speak and when to be silent,” tilting “the strength of silence against the dictatorship of noise.”

December 4, 2023
A Sheriff of restraint

The budgetary tradition in this country is to spend more than the previous year. It is a manic ritual of the spendthrift. If I spent ten naira last year, I should spend fifteen or fifty this year. The excuses are predictable. Inflation, population growth, expanding communities and demands and, of course, ambitious projects. While inflation is one major cause, we might conclude that budgets create double jeopardy. We increase budgets to match inflation, inflation soars to match budget. The other one is ambitious projects. Ego and fraud sometimes meet there on balance sheets. It is therefore a cheer that someone has bucked the trend.

Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori has rolled out a budget less than last year’s by as much N94.9 billion, 12 percent drop from 2023. Last year’s budget was N809.4 billion while this year’s is 714.4. This is in spite of the mammoth infrastructure project for Warri whose groundbreaking took place last week as the first ever contract the state government has had with the German bulwark, Julius Berger. The budget assigns N150 billion for road infrastructure, Warri being one of such ambitious works. The Sheriff is policing the money. This column has looked at it a few weeks ago. It is cheering to see a promise and work go into action in short order. I will monitor it. Warri is the city of my birth and childhood. I still recall my walks through rain and heat from St. Andrews Primary School to our Okumagba Layout abode. But the Warri I saw recently is a city in distress, crying for a lift and the mercy of modernity. A city shouldered by oil wealth but smolders in neglect. Not Warri alone in the state. Happily, work is on as one travels from Warri to Asaba as contractors like Levante and the Chinese firms are turning potholes and craters into express.

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Let Warri rise. Governor Oborewvori has a Warri State of mind. He, as a private citizen, built its Osubi Airport in the military era. Other cities will follow suit. Asaba has enjoyed much. It should not be abandoned but Warri and environs should shout, emilokan!

December 4, 2023
Citizens’ confidence and electoral reforms

The National Assembly Committee on Electoral Reforms last week, organized a Citizens’ Town Hall in conjunction with Yiaga Africa. The event which attracted a broad spectrum of stakeholders was aimed at deepening citizens’ engagement and inclusiveness in the electoral reforms process.

Senate president, Godswill Akpabio set the tone for the discussions: “We are committed not only to go along with the people on the call for reforms to the electoral legal framework…but protect the independence of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and also restore the trust of our people in the electoral process”.

Two key issues are encapsulated in the above statement. The first is the recognition of a welter of public demand for reforms of the electoral legal framework. The second which is a consequence of the imperfections of the first, is the growing loss of public confidence in the electoral process due to its inability to adequately guarantee and reflect the will of the electorate.

These electoral deficits are not entirely new as various attempts have in the past been made to have them reformed. Late President Umaru Yar’Adua had admitted immediately he took over from his predecessor, the shortcomings of the election that brought him to power. That election defied all the rules of free, fair and credible contest leading to loss of confidence in the process.

The disenchantment was so much so that it became inconceivable how people could submit themselves to future contests under that charade. Yar’Adua moved quickly to set up the Mohammed Uwais Electoral Reforms Committee to come up with measures to restore the confidence of the people in the electoral process and deepen democracy.

The high powered committee made far-reaching recommendations to improve the electoral process and environment, strengthen the legal framework and enhance the independence of the electoral body. It also had position on how to improve the performance of various institutions and stakeholders in the election management process such as the legislature, judiciary, executive and political parties.

Yar’Adua accepted most of the recommendations except the transfer of the powers to appoint the board of the INEC from the president to the National Judicial Council, NJC. He was to begin implementing them before he fell ill. His successor Jonathan implemented the policy aspects and forwarded the entire report to the National Assembly for consideration.

During the first and last tenures of the Buhari administration, the National Assembly made strident efforts to amend the Electoral Act to enhance the integrity of elections. Through the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, it sought to give legal teeth to the deployment of technology during voting, collation of results and direct transmission of results from the polling units to the INEC result viewing portals.

At least on three occasions the bill came to Buhari for assent but he declined citing time constraints and raising objections that gave out his discomfort with the reforms. But he succumbed to pressure on the eve of the last elections finally assenting to the deployment of technology and direct transmission of election results from the polling units to the INEC result viewing portal.

That assent did much to restore confidence that the then coming elections would mark a sharp departure from previous ones. Technology and the direct transmission of elections results were envisaged to eliminate ballot box stuffing and snatching, falsification of results and ambush of election materials by desperate politicians and their army of thugs.

That was the setting the last general elections were conducted. Technology went on fairly well at the National Assembly election but things went awry at the presidential polls as the scanned results could not be transmitted due to what INEC was later to identify as glitches. This did not go down well with the citizens as allegations of foul play were freely traded by the political parties.

The inability of the INEC to transmit the results of the presidential election was a major issue in the election petitions by the political parties. Those petitions have been put to rest by the Supreme Court. But what emerged from the Supreme Court ruling is that INEC is not under obligation to compute results from the result viewing portal. That seemed to have rubbished all the optimism on the capacity of direct transmission of election results to guarantee the integrity of our elections.

Public confidence in the electoral process is again at its lowest ebb especially given the outcome of the off-cycle elections in three states. These have again resonated in agitations for the reforms of the electoral process to guarantee its integrity especially as politicians have not shown any change from their old and crooked ways.

When Akpabio spoke of calls for reforms with a promise to restore the trust of the people in the electoral process, he was responding to palpable public disillusionment with the outcome of the last elections. That is the challenge facing the National Assembly. They want to get at it through citizens’ participation and engagement.

But we are not really lacking in what to do to enhance the integrity of elections and deepen democracy. The Uwais committee had far-reaching recommendations that addressed these electoral deficits had the political will for their acceptance and implementation been there. Much of the issues that were canvassed at the town hall had been elaborately dealt with by that committee.

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As should be expected, participants offered suggestions on aspects of our laws that should be tinkered with to enhance the integrity of institutions involved in election management, the credibility of the electoral process and survival of democracy. The first target of such reforms should be an amendment to the Electoral Act mandating INEC to deploy technology in accreditation and voting and computation of election results directly from the figures transmitted from the polling units to the result viewing portal.

Former INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega raised a valid issue when he canvassed the proscription of cross-carpeting for elected officials. He would want them to relinquish their elective positions before decamping to any other party. Jega also wants the appointment of the board of the INEC to be taken away from the president to an independent body to ensure neutrality and impartiality of the officials.

There is merit in both proposals even as they are not entirely novel. As a matter of fact, our constitution made copious provisions to discourage elected officials from decamping to other political parties unless there is division in their parties. But that provision has often been negatively exploited by elected officials to decamp and in most cases to the ruling party.

This tendency is unhealthy for democracy as it encourages the slide to one party state. Matters are not helped by our brand of politics (political culture) that frowns at opposition, constantly evolving devious strategies to emasculate dissent.

So that section of the constitution has to be tinkered with to make it mandatory for elected officials to relinquish their positions before decamping to other political parties. This will not only checkmate the increasing gravitation to the ruling party but more fundamentally ensure the plurality of party politics. Our democracy will be better with virile opposition.

Before now, scholars had argued with varying degrees of plausibility that African tradition and culture loathe opposition. They point to our kingship system to buttress this point. That seems evident from the mad rush to cross-carpeting. It is also evident in the selective reward to those who voted for the winning party to the exclusion of others. It is no less evident in the winner-takes-all syndrome of our politics.

And unless serious efforts are made through legislation to check this tendency, we may wake up one day to the reality of a one party state. One is frightened at such prospects. The divestment of the appointment of the board of INEC and resident electoral commissioners is another issue for urgent resolution. The Uwais committee wants the NJC to exercise that power. There is merit in an independent body taking over such appointments to guarantees the credibility and impartiality of the electoral umpire.

A political party and some civil society groups have taken President Tinubu to court for allegedly appointing party members into such offices. This reinforces the urgency to insulate the presidency from such appointments to guarantee the integrity of an agency already assailed by credibility deficits.

Our books are not lacking in what to do to strengthen and provide fertile ground for democracy to grow and flourish. What has been in short supply is the political will to do the right thing. But it does appear we have no choice if we want democracy in its pristine form. Will President Tinubu make the desired difference in this regard?

December 4, 2023
Rethinking democracy: Why not

It is in the very nature of intellectual tradition to explore new grounds, new ideas with a desire to discover and improve on knowledge. This entails regularly breaking down old ideas to allow new ideas; bigger and better ideas to grow in their place and flourish.

Societal progress and development are inexorably tied to the capacities of humans to constantly interrogate their environment, ideas and precepts with a view to expanding the frontiers of knowledge for public good. That was the foray former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, delved into last week when he grilled western liberal democracy both as an ideological construct and development paradigm.

In his presentation at a consultation on ‘Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy in Africa’, he faulted that ideology for not delivering good governance and development to Africa. Obasanjo chastised western democracy for not factoring in African history and its multi-cultural complexities and in its place, proposed what he called ‘Afro Democracy’.

He is yet to come clear of the essential features of his model of Afro democracy. But he did not quite hide his dissatisfaction with the representative dimension of the western democratic model. It is a “government of a few people over all the people or population and that those few people are representatives of only some of the people and not fully representative of all the people invariably, the majority of the people are wittingly or unwittingly kept out”.

He said those who brought the contraption are questioning its deliverability, its relevance today even as he challenged Nigerians to interrogate western democracy in the countries it originated and here as the inheritors of the concept.

The issues raised are both challenging and profound. They spin around the philosophical and ideological questions embedded in the concept and practice of western democracy. His inquisition is of universal value even as he used Africa as a case study.

But the presidency did not see his contribution from the above prism. Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to President Tinubu on information and strategy was quick to blame him for poorly copying that model during his tenure both as military head of state and civilian president.

He held Obasanjo liable for jettisoning the less expensive parliamentary system which the British colonial masters bequeathed us in preference to the presidential system. “Obasanjo also knows that he copied this presidential system wrongly. He copied the form and structure. But he didn’t copy the spirit of it”, Onanuga contended.

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The presidency may be within their rights to get Obasanjo share part of the blame for copying the American model of the presidential system. He is also unlikely to escape culpability for some of the observed imperfections of western democracy as practiced in this country.

But all that can neither obfuscate nor whittle down the fundamental observations raised by the former president. Neither will they stand as justification for the many pitfalls of western democracy especially as practiced in Africa and Nigeria in particular. It is not all about the messenger but the heuristics of his message. Neither is it just a choice between the presidential and parliamentary systems, as Onanuga would wish to argue.

Even then, our brand of presidential democracy has been found largely deficient for virtually concentrating the powers of life and death at the centre. That has been the basis for agitations for restructuring. But who really listens?

Obasanjo spoke of ‘Afro Democracy’. He said western democracy has not been able to deliver good governance and development to Africa. And that cannot be faulted. He also has serious reservations with representative democracy for shutting out a majority of the people. The evidence is not in doubt.

These are the real issues to interrogate. How accommodative of the history and peculiarities of the African people is western democracy? Are there certain cultural, economic and developmental conditions under which western democracy flourishes that are lacking in our clime? What is the ‘spirit of democracy’ Onanuga alluded to and where do African countries stand on that matrix?

Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba categorized political culture based on one’s level of political participation and came up with three variants-parochial, subject and participant. In the parochial political culture, people have little awareness of the central government and do not play any active role in governmental affairs. This is found largely in the underdeveloped countries of Africa and Asia.

The participant category gives opportunity to all citizens to participate in politics. They are aware of their rights, ability to influence political workings and feel it is their duty to participate. The American system of democracy is associated with this variant. Almond and Verba identified the latter as the political culture best suited for democracy.

What this entails is that the attitudinal support and orientation supportive of effective working of democracy will be found lacking in a clime where the predominant political culture is still parochial. It speaks of dissonance between the political system (democracy) and extant political culture (spirit).

Sadly, that culture of democracy (spirit) has not been allowed to grow by our brand of democracy that is often skewed by self-serving leaders to function in its most aberrant form. Our variant shunts out a majority of the citizens from active roles in the way they are governed. It is characterized by the subversion of the rules of the game and impositions rendering free, fair and credible elections a near impossibility.

Obasanjo spoke the minds of many when he questioned the representative nature of our democracy. Representative democracy as opposed to the direct democracy of the ancient Greek city states derived its justification from the large population of modern states. Because of the small size of the Greek City states, it was possible for people to gather in a square and directly determine how they were governed. But the sheer size of modern states precludes that. Hence, the concept of representative democracy that allows the people to freely elect those they trust to represent their affairs.

The idea is that if people elect those they trust, their interests will be properly reflected in decision making. But how do our representatives actually emerge both at the party primaries and elections proper? How much of the will of the people is reflected in such political recruitment processes?

That was perhaps, the point Obasanjo raised when he grilled the representative nature of representative democracy with a verdict that our democracy is not just working. Our democracy is not working for its serial failure to reflect the collective will of the people to elect their leaders. Those who capture state power do not derive their mandate from the people. They show scant obligation to good governance and development because the electorate has no way to hold them accountable.

Democracy will not thrive with the do-or-die politics in the country. It cannot grow and flourish where all manner of buccaneers are allowed to capture the instruments of state power which they deploy unwholesomely to perpetuate themselves in power. It will not endure in a system where politics is conceived as the quickest source of primitive wealth accumulation.

As long as we are assailed by these systemic dysfunctions, rethinking democracy will continue a recurring decimal. There is nothing sacrosanct about democracy both as a human contraption and governance construct. It can only remain relevant as long as it continues to deliver on its promise.

Of late, there have been challenges to the capacity of the American democracy to deliver on its promise. Former president, Donald Trump had after the last presidential election, questioned the fairness and integrity of the election, alleging among others, that tens of thousands of his votes were stolen and credited to Joe Biden. This exposes some of the weaknesses of western democracy and the imperative to interrogate that system.

Systems atrophy if they no longer serve their need. We are witnesses to the sad fate of a dominant and competing development paradigm-Communism. In a bid to address some of its imperfections, Mikhail Gorbachev came up with the policy of Perestroika and Glasnost that eventually led to the breakdown of the former Soviet Union.

Why not liberal democracy if it can no longer live up to its bidding? The rise of military rule in about four African countries reinforces the imperative for a re-examination of the suitability of the western development model to the African circumstance.

November 27, 2023
Prodigal father

Atiku Abubakar’s plea to foment an opposition is like an old man who just woke up to realise he had children. A macho model who should have known he was a model macho. He is also like the fisherman in Jesus’ miracle who spent all day on the wrong end of the river. Although at the end, the fellow had a mammoth harvest, Atiku is the pathetic character in Hemmingway’s novel The Old Man and Sea whose tumbles on high waves only brought home a fish skeleton.

The Adamawa chieftain is trying to rally the brood home to roost after the doom. Atiku’s chronicle in 2023 is the big, fat prodigal in Nigeria’s electoral history. He saw a blessing but embraced a curse. To borrow from Achebe’s A Man of The People, a sweet morsel was thrust in his mouth but he spat it out.

Why did he not do this in 2022? His PDP did not need a coalition. It was a proteus, a behemoth as big as the APC. It had only to pluck victory like a plum.

Labour Party was not in the equation until Peter Obi, or Pitobi as some call him out of worship or scorn. This man was his deputy not long ago, and his party had a big haul of the southeast and south-south. If it was Kano, the man Kwankwanso was with him until he was against him. Ganduje was a part of a tripod, while the other two parts were within PDP’s grasp. He let it go by clutching Ibrahim Shekarau’s apron strings. Within PDP’s rump, another trio of Wike, Ortom and Makinde formed another splinter with two southeast governors in their shadow. Rather than make peace, Atiku sacrificed them on Ayu’s altar.

Now, he wants them all back. If they come, will they be legitimate children? We know of the story of the prodigal son, but who was prodigal here? Was it not Atiku, who overturned a bible story? Is he not the prodigal who laid waste a boon?

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The story of illegitimate sons also has a northern part. His name is Bayajidda, the eponymous ancestor of the Hausa. His seed gave the north Hausa Bakwai and Banza Bakwai, that is legitimate and illegitimate sons. Even if Bayajidda returns today, will he recognise the cities of his seed, including Kano, Daura and Katsina? Uthman Dan Fodio transformed the cities after his own faith. They worship a different God, wed differently, profit differently and diet on new meals. When Jesus was on earth, he asked, when the son of man cometh, shall he find faith among men? If the parts return, shall they find faith in Atiku?

Is it the case of the prodigal son or prodigal father? Indeed, Wike called him prodigal father during the campaigns. But he never anticipated father Atiku would be begging his sons for pardon after he ran riot with all his blessings. He is under the spell of half of Bayajidda’s ghost. The man had seven legitimate and seven illegitimate sons. All Atiku sons are now illegitimate. Or is it Atiku that is illegitimate for being a prodigal father?

Atiku is too proud to beg. With his billionaire carriage, a patrician air and ramrod stare, he would make his call for a reinvigorated opposition look like a novel and inspired idea. He will not descend to the other parties. He will condescend. That’s what patricians do. But they would all know he is a mendicant at the table, a Lazarus with an ulcerous sore waiting to join the dinner with his disaffected sons. Obi thinks himself a movement. Kwankwaso feels too hurt to bow even as the Supreme Court looms with a verdict. Wike is a lost cause for him.

Atiku may deceive himself as a magnanimous man. Aristotle uses that phrase for morally lofty personages. The Greek philosopher means it in a noble sense, although his sense of magnanimous is akin to Plato who thinks such a being must be above the crowd. But Aristotle’s definition does not fit Atiku because Atiku lacks the cultivation and depth that the philosopher extols.

As Babatunde Fashola (SAN) noted during the hustings, Atiku and his PDP miscalculated. Their math was of subtraction, when the foe was making additions. Even those loud whispers did not coo PDP’s ears. He had Okowa as deputy and believed he would draw the Igbo vote. He was so naïve about the politics of the Igbo in Delta State. They leaned on their Anambra son. Okowa was not Igbo enough. Or he was Igbo lite.

He is like the father in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, who presides over a dysfunctional family. Here is how the author describes him. “A profligate and vicious father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, mocks everything noble and engages in unseemly buffoonery at every opportunity. When his sons were infants, he neglected them not out of malice but simply because he “forgot” them.” Sounds familiar!

It must be his strategy to throw a bait. After certificate and drug fiascoes in Chicago and Supreme Court, his new song is one-party state. His followers are biting. They believe that we are heading there. Was he not part of the party that boasted they would govern for 60 years. They did not even make the next six. What did they mean by totalitarian? Do they know the definition of the word? It is the sort of liberty with precepts that George Orwell skewers in his Politics and the English Language. Today, we use fascism, Bonapartism, tyranny at will, just to demonise.

How many states did APC get before the elections? How many do they have now? Is it because of Plateau? This essayist warned both on TVC and on this page of the danger awaiting the PDP because of the duels of generals. Both Jonah Jang and Jerry Useni split their party like army divisions and went to war while APC watched gloatingly. Now, the harvest comes and they are wailing dictatorship. In Kano, the claim that 165k votes were annulled is stunning on the surface. But an invalid vote is an invalid vote. If it is not signed, how can you validate it? If it is upheld as valid, an open-ended definition of valid votes will result. It can get absurd like the Ondo State of the Agagu era when the pictures of Mike Tyson and even yours truly were counted as valid votes until they were exposed in court. Pray, where were the eyes of NNPP and PDP agents? Why did NNPP votes suffer this misadventure. I leave the issue of clerical error to the Supreme Court. Democracy is nothing without rules. That is what separates it from anarchy. Or mob rule.

November 27, 2023
Soyinka, Pyrates and a new play

I attended the event to see Wole Soyinka’s new play, Wheels of Justice, but it turned out to be part of the anniversary of the Pyrate Confraternity, also known as the Seadogs. Soyinka joined via zoom from the UAE where he performs his new tour as teacher and writer. He baffles even at 89 with his fecundity. He tackled questions before the play animated the stage. The organisers ambushed me to propound a question, but someone else asked an intriguing question afterwards about the image of the group. The questioner did not vocalise it but, at the background of the query, was an incident during the election campaigns. Some young men, decked in black, emoted a song of verbal extremism about the extremities of the then APC candidate, now president. Soyinka had condemned that delinquent theatre.

He did not refer to it at this event but he said the Pyrates had a robust process of dealing with bad eggs among them. I wonder if those involved in that campaign act were punished? I asked him to interrogate the notion that a play is eternal and a novel frozen. Stage production improves a drama. The novel, once published, is finished. I thought it was too blanket a statement. A play can be changed by a director even a year or 10 years later. By the same token, the novel’s own changes can happen not on stage but in the imagination. The reader continues to recast and even distort a novel. I referred to his novel The Interpreters that can enjoy interpretations even a century later. Dan Brown’s Dan Vinci Code is written as fiction but read by many as non-fiction.

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I think Soyinka’s response stuck to the playwright’s advantage in tinkering with his work. I would have wanted to even add that, though rare, novelists have had to change parts of their published novels. Femi Macaulay reminded me of Achebe’s Arrow of God. I also rewrote my Crocodile Girl. Sometimes editors revise aspects of the work. For instance, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has undergone some changes to defrock it of racist tropes. The n-word was expunged in some editions. But Soyinka the bard, as always, did well to raise questions about the literary arts, his forte.

The play, directed with flair by Tunde Awosanmi, traces the origins of the Pyrates as a counter-culture phenom. Striking was the dynamic between the starry-eyed Soyinka as a student and today’s Soyinka the star. It is a bit surreal but the production shies from mirroring some chasm between old and young. Both idealisms remain, the old Soyinka not changed from the young. It is a flawed bildungsroman. It’s Soyinka’s play in which Soyinka is a character, like Tennessee Williams in Glass Menagerie. But the play thrives hilariously as it tracks the birth of the Pyrates with Nigeria’s history up till today, its political trappings, turbulence, chicanery and the class, tribal and religious follies. The play is a pageant of songs, dances and costume, bringing lots of laughs and grimaces, the highlight being castrated justice where a Fayose character with a neck brace appears on a hospital bed wheeled into the courtroom to show why his case cannot be held. It becomes a metaphor for capsized justice in our history. The play is perhaps one of the subtle projects in burnishing a group feared by quite a few Nigerians as a malevolent cult. But here Soyinka makes it a critic of a decadent society.

November 27, 2023
The agbero way

Let us not quibble about this. Joe Ajaero had a black eye from some roughnecks. That was despicable. Why should a labour leader be dragged out like a shoplifter and tossed away to some unknown hovel and beaten black and blue? It is not the path of civilization. It is the register of the brute.

But wait a minute, is that why Joe Ajaero and his labour group should give the nation a black eye, too? Is that not Agbero syndrome, a revenge on the street? Is this activism in pursuit of personal vendetta?

What we are witnessing is not labour activism but the hijacking of a noble idea. It is no nod to the greats, the rebellious majesty of Imoudu or the trenchant sublimity of Sunmonu. It is hysteria as protest and protest as radioactive force. Ajaero has seen the vehicle of protest, especially the deployment of strikes and national shutdown, as a tool and cudgel. He believes if he is angry, he calls for a strike. If he does not like the face of the president, he invokes a shutdown. Strikes have become his propeller, a motor for relevance.

Does he know the value of a shutdown? Does he know that once a nation goes on strike, it is like a human body in coma? The nation literally stops breathing. No light, no water, no jobs, no profit. A nation in paralysis.

That means labour growls because the economy is not working. The strike means the economy is not working. It is fighting poverty with poverty. It is a sterility that Ajaero’s agbero style gives fuel. But the use of strikes signals an end of the imagination for labour. It shows they have no other way of thinking. It is the aggressor’s consolation and avenue.

But this is because strikes have no consequence. If workers know that when they strike, they lose pay because no work means no profit, they will rethink. Recently, the autoworkers in the United States paralysed industry with a protracted strike. It was a coalition of the injured. But they were prepared to lose pay. They saw it as a risk, and they did not lose in the end because they got much of what they wanted. Strike is an investment, not a harvest.

Strikes here have no regard for consequences. It is just a way to browbeat the government. We must see strikes as a mutual risk between government and workers. Or else such persons as Ajaero will happen to us. He is already happening.

He turned labour into a grievance parlour. If you grieve Joe, you offend labour, and labour fumes and jousts. It is not about labour. It is not about fuel subsidy, or worker’s pay, or about lifestyles in decline. It is about a personality cult. He wants to turn himself into a godfather of labour. He has succeeded in corralling Festus Osifo. The TUC guy started with a nuanced and methodical approach. They have somehow convinced him that he should stop acting like a weakling. It is the way the bully convinces the nice guy to punch a friend in the jaw.

Recently Osifo made a point we must not allow slip. He asserted that labour did not need to follow the court order over strike. Their reason? The government does not follow the rule of law. This government is too young to make that claim. It has not done so yet. So, Osifo and his associates are probably referring to the Buhari government. That man had quite a few instances of defying the rule of law and court order.

But do we answer impunity with impunity? Is labour trying to canonize lawlessness. Is its agenda anarchy? If that were the case, is Ajaero not justifying the rough arm that gave him a black eye? What happened to Ajaero is the sort of thing that happens when there is no law, when arbitrary muscle-flexing takes charge over commonsense and law. This same group believe when it flouts the law it is right. When others do, it is wrong. Is that not the autocrat’s logic? I believe Labour wanted to dare the federal government to arrest them, and torpedo the government on charges of fascism. But the administration did not bite. Is it not the path of honour to challenge the matter in court. Agberos like Agbaero know no other way.

Read Also: Ajaero in the eye of storm

In the Buhari era, the most famous act of defiance of the rule of law happened earlier this year over new currency notes. The Buhari government turned its back against the Supreme Court ruling to revert to the old notes. Labour did not go on strike over it. We did not see Ajaero in his offbeat attire and look of morose distress on the streets. No fascination with a shutdown then. The reason was obvious. The labour movement that endorsed Peter Obi saw the crisis as APC shooting itself in the foot. It was a campaign suicide for its candidate. They gloated in secret while workers groaned and moaned. But labour’s voice was a low murmur in those days. The huge uproar came from the APC candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, when he yelled that it was targeted at him. Even that crisis against the worker galvanized the workers against the candidate. It was the intervening voice of former Kaduna State governor El-Rufai that gave credibility to his accusation. Meanwhile, Obi and Abubakar Atiku did not hide their quiet enjoyment while the APC candidate stormed the airwaves with his frustration.

So, why is Labour in arms now with strikes after strikes? We can find this in what I call the Imo formula. When Ajaero went to Imo, he did not present himself as a labour man, but a front man for Peter Obi’s party. That, I believe, is why someone changed the architecture of his face. I don’t support the bully’s sense of aesthetics. Joe’s face is good enough as God made it. I hope the doctors help restore it.

But Ajaero only showed his strikes have been more politics than labour angst. He is angrier against the government than he loves the workers of this country. He is standing on the innocence of the worker to push a political party’s agenda.

Hence Osifo exercised the effrontery to say that labour is above the law. It is a dangerous trend. This set of labour leaders have been accused of ethnicising protest. The word is out there that its leadership is ethnically skewed, and that accounts for its hypocritical belligerence. That is a matter for the entire labour spectrum to look at. They voted them into office, and if they are not satisfied with their conduct, they have to respond. So far, that demographic is mute on that matter for most part. But time shall tell. What is clear is that labour seems beholden to the party that bears its name.

November 20, 2023
Plateau matter again

When Simon Lalong was away in Europe for a Labour Conference as labour minister, the Appeal Court ruled in his favour as senator. Now, the same court has ousted Governor Mutfwang in favour of Nentawe Yilwatda as Plateau State governor. It was a matter that I foreshadowed on the TVC Breakfast show during the hustings, and the matter was simple. Did the PDP conduct a valid primary? Both sides dueled on the Breakfast show with bile and arguments.

Read Also: Court verdict: Police warn against disruption of peace in Plateau

This matter resembles Zamfara State where APC governorship candidate lost his seat. The Appeal Court said this is not a pre-election matter but a post-election, especially since Governor Mutfwang did not emerge from a valid primary. The matter was in court and the party did not comply. It shows that primaries have consequences. But the matter is not over. The Supreme Court still has the final say.

November 20, 2023
Nwabueze and History

Professor Ben Nwabueze was ready to speak even if age forced him to waddle as he walked. In his Isolo, Lagos residence, one question boiled my innards as the TV camera lights defined his face. Why did he say his meeting with Nnamdi Kanu was the best day of his life? The man was livid. “I never said that,” he rebutted, his slow voice rippling with righteous indignation. He had never even met him. He did not even know the news strafed the internet. It turned to be a social media fiction, and I was glad to clear that.

But as the scholar passed on, he brings to mind personages who have mixed legacies and who, in their twilight years, strive to go gentle into that good night. The interview, probably the last major one he conducted before passing, revealed an Nwabueze, who was not only federalist but a nationalist.

Read Also: Nwabueze and his many crusades

Yet, at the background was a man who enabled autocracy with law and rhetoric. He served them with his blood, sweat and never shed a tear. He was a rarefied salesman for tyranny. It was a black eye to a scholar’s integrity. He was front and centre though in lashing out at the impunity of this republic, especially when Obasanjo pursued his rash of impeachments. He wrote with insight and venom against them, especially the ones that defenestrated governors in Plateau, Bayelsa and Ekiti, and brought the rigour of a public intellectual to illuminate that rage.

In my interview, he backed Amotekun, and he spoke that word with peculiar relish as a man who spoke another language. He also asked other regions to follow the West’s shining example. If the lord were to judge his politics, he might be judged a worthy man. But historians are not God. They view all and put everything on a scale, often partial, and by no means definitive. But history is always the last judge. It, however, is not like the Supreme Court. It has not one verdict. For me, he did his part and he left a better man than he started.

November 20, 2023
Ribadu to the rescue

It is heart-refreshing that the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC and the Trade Union Congress, TUC suspended the nationwide strike to protest the attack on NLC president, Joe Ajaero in Imo State earlier this month.

Tommy Etim, deputy national president of the TUC said the unions suspended the strike based on the trust they have on the National Security Adviser, NSA, Nuhu Ribadu. “We also saw that he wasn’t playing politics with our demands and he was ready and promised to follow up with everything”, he had said.

Before the meeting with labour leaders last Wednesday, the NSA had issued a statement in which he strongly condemned the attack on the NLC president. “The NSA regrets the incident and condemns it in its entirety as it was against the rule of law and principles of freedom of association subscribed to by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his administration”.

The statement had also spoken of efforts the government was making to get at the root of the matter. These included a directive to relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate the incident and bring the culprits to book, the arrest of some suspects and a promise to make the findings public.

The NSA had also appealed to the unions to call off the strike and allow the dialogue process underway to be exhausted. It did not come as surprise that after a follow-up meeting the NSA had with the leadership of NLC and TUC, the unions subsequently called off the strike, albeit temporarily.

They gave the credit for the suspension to Ribadu. He fully deserves that credit for unambiguously condemning the attack on the NLC president in Imo State and reaffirming the commitment of the President Tinubu-led federal government to the rule of law, freedom of expression and association.

That should be the minimum expectation from a democratic government given the circumstance of the matter. Anything less would have amounted to according free reign to unmitigated acts of impunity and lawlessness.

Ribadu’s position is reassuring given the way the attack on the NLC president was twisted to convey the impression that he deserved the beating he got. What are the issues?

The NLC president was in Imo State to mobilize workers for an industrial action against the state government for practices they considered anti-labour. But as they were mobilizing on the first day of the strike, pandemonium broke out at the state headquarters of the union in Owerri leading to the arrest of the NLC president.

Accounts of how the fracas erupted vary. But initial reports from the union had it that, thugs allegedly acting at the behest of the Imo State government invaded the premises and attacked all those gathered dispossessing them of their personal effects even as the police watched seemingly helpless. In the midst of the confusion, the police was reported to have whisked away Ajaero to an unknown destination.

Read Also: Ribadu: Security has improved under Tinubu

Ajaero’s whereabouts remained cloudy until late afternoon that fateful day when he surfaced at the hospital with bruises all over one of his eyes. The state police command was later to issue a statement in which it gave account of what transpired. They admitted that the NLC president was in the state as part of the arrangements to mobilize workers for a mega protest.

In the course of planning, the police claimed disagreement arose as to the modality of carrying out the strike leading to scuffles and heated arguments and an eventual attack on the person of the president by a mob. On receiving the report, the police said its operatives swiftly moved to the scene and took the NLC president into protective custody at the state command.

Having ensured the protection of his life and that he was not lynched, they took him to the hospital for medical attention. Such was the account of the incident by the Imo State police command. But they were also quick to draw attention to a subsisting injunction from the National Industrial Court barring the NLC from holding the protest.

But the account of the incident by the NLC president faulted the claims by the state police command. He shocked many when he disclosed that he was arrested by the police and handed over to thugs led by an aide to the state governor who gave him a beating of his life. Ajaero described how he was blindfolded, beaten, his hands tied, dragged on the floor with a threat to kill and dump his body into a river.

He lacked words to properly describe the kind of beating he received from his captors. By providence, he is alive to give a chilling account of his story. His account is bound to ruffle the sensibilities of all decent minds.

That was the setting in which the NLC and TUC issued ultimatum to the federal government to arrest, reprimand and bring to book all the individuals including the security agencies connected with that odious pass. That was the background of the strike that was just called off courtesy of the intervention by Ribadu.

There is a message served by this. If the intervention by the NSA could get the unions call off an ongoing strike, it could have also been possible to nip the strike at the bud had the authorities come up unequivocally on the potent danger the attack constituted to the rights of labour to peaceful protests.

That failed to happen even as the state commissioner of police under whose watch the unwarranted attack occurred had since been redeployed. The seeming conspiracy of silence on the part of the government conveyed wrong signals precipitating the strike with its toll on the struggling national economy. Matters were not helped by the seeming impression that Ajaero deserved what he got. Partisan politics was also woven into the incident with very predictable effects.

The state police command and Governor Hope Uzodimma were quick to draw attention to a subsisting injunction restraining the NLC from going on with the strike. The purpose was to show the illegality of the strike action. That could as well be even as it stood no justification for the attack and body harm inflicted on the NLC president.

Uzodimma raised an issue that should not be allowed to slip by. He said he intervened to prevent the national leadership of the NLC from dissolving the state chapter since their tenure had not expired.

Hear him: “they decided to dissolve them to put in a caretaker. Of course, I’m the Chief Security Officer and I have a responsibility to intervene. I encourage the national leadership not to dissolve a management team that their tenure has not expired and that was what they did”.

This position is as curious as it is confounding. When did it become the duty of a state governor to dabble into how the NLC runs its internal affairs? One needs to be guided on aspects of the constitution that empowers a governor as the chief security officer to stop organized labour from dissolving a state organ if such need arose.

Before then, we should be told how such dissolution is different from the penchant by the leadership of the political parties to dissolve state chapters and institute caretaker committees? Even then, governors find themselves helpless in such circumstances when the state executive of the party loyal to them is replaced with nominees from competitors. Herein is the absurdity in a state governor intervening to prevent the NLC from dissolving a state chapter and appointing in its place a caretaker committee.

By drawing attention to the injunction of the industrial court, they seek to demonstrate the illegality of the strike action. That may also justify the presence of the police at the scene to ensure there is no breakdown of law and order. It could also warrant the arrest of the organizers of the protest.

But that cannot justify the attack by hoodlums apparently acting at the instance of the state government. That cannot empower the police to brutalize the NLC president or even hand him over to some band of thugs for jungle justice.

If the NLC president was found to have disobeyed a court restraining order, it is left to that court to determine the kind of punishment he deserves. It is neither for the police nor that of some unruly mob to resort to jungle justice. The Imo incident was no doubt, a national embarrassment that a democratic government cannot afford. The interest shown by the NSA is most reassuring. He should ensure that all those responsible for that show of shame are made to account for their acts of indiscretion. Overzealous officials should not be allowed to give the government a bad name. Conducts capable of conveying the notion that ours is a system that accords scant regard to the rule of law must be discouraged.

November 20, 2023