The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Obasanjo’s misread condolence

    Obasanjo’s misread condolence

    By Emeka Omeihe

    Those criticizing Nigeria’s former President, Olusegun Obasanjo for his supposedly uncomplimentary condolence message on the death of Senator Buruji Kashamu do not seem to understand the wider context in which he wrote. Much of the attacks are propelled by a ‘tradition’ that seemingly abhors talking ill of the dead than the substance and heuristic value of his message. At issue also, was the perception of the messenger by his critics.

    It was not surprising that emotions ran high when Obasanjo wrote of Kashamu in a manner that does not seem in conformity with this norm. Even then, he seemed to have anticipated adverse reactions when he entered a caveat to the effect that the life and history of the departed have lessons for all of us on this side of the veil. That is the context in which he wrote.

    Obasanjo then proceeded among others, to write, “Buruji  Kashamu in his lifetime used the manoeuvre of law and politics to escape from facing justice on alleged criminal offence in Nigeria and outside Nigeria. But no legal, political, cultural, social or even medical manoeuvre could stop the cold hand of death when the Creator of all of us decides that the time is up”. This is the aspect of his condolence message that turned out contentious.

    The issue is whether these statements (as unkind as they seem) amounted to speaking ill of the dead? Even then, what should constitute the right messages to be conveyed during such condolences? And is humanity better served by the manner Obasanjo couched his condolence message on Kashamu’s death?

    Much of the grouse of those offended by Obasanjo’s condolence message is that it is against tradition to speak ill of the dead; he was on a voyage to settle old political scores when the deceased is no longer in a position to respond and that he was being vindictive even to the dead. No less a person than former Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose launched a verbal attack on Obasanjo accusing him of making uncomplimentary remarks against the deceased when he can no longer join issues with him. He accused Obasanjo of collaborating with Kashamu in some of the things he did politically at some point urging him to stop pretending as a saint which he is not.

    Many other Nigerians have in their condolences harped on some other attributes of late Kashamu such as his generosity, philanthropy and doggedness. He was also described as a good-spirited man who placed high premium on the welfare of his community and similar kind expressions. The point of divergence between these views and what Obasanjo said is that they portrayed the deceased very charitably while the reverse seemed to be the case with the latter. They are testimonies representing two sides of the same man.

    Ordinarily, they ought to counterbalance the other. They denote the good, the bad and the ugly pasts of the dead man. Conceived this way, the hullabaloo over the manner Obasanjo chose to present his message would have been unnecessary but for our attachment to not speaking ill of the dead. It is also very contentious if that tradition has anything positive for humanity-a rule that only praises and eulogizes while covering up the weaknesses and evil deeds of the dead. Is there any positive lessons for the living such a tendency stands to serve? That is the issue to contend with.

    Was Obasanjo actually unkind to the dead? Did he go out of his way to invent spurious and non-existing allegations to discredit a dead man when he can no longer defend himself? Did he invade his private life at death? Were the things he wrote of Kashamu new or issues that had long been in public view? These posers are germane for us to contextualize the issues that have been traded on the seemingly controversial condolence message.

    Yes, Obasanjo has been accused of nursing ill political feelings against Kashamu.  That is not in doubt. But it is nothing new. In 2014, he made such feeling public in a letter he wrote to the then National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur. He had then deprecated the prominence being accorded Kashamu who he alleged was “a wanted habitual criminal being installed as my zonal leader in the party”. He had also said he was considering withdrawing his membership from the party if the anomalous situation was not corrected.

    But Kashumu, in his response accused him of ill agenda after using him to fight former governor of Ogun State, Gbenga Daniel from whom he wrestled the structures of the party and handed them over to his accuser. He also claimed that in the past, he dined and wined with Obasanjo who on many occasions extolled his sterling qualities and introduced him to a good number of prominent leaders of the PDP in the southwest.

    Kashamu wondered why after all these, Obasanjo was now calling him names blaming the presidency for condoning him and asked: “Is it because I did not allow him to hijack the party structures and use it for his devious motives? He was later to institute a libel suit against Obasanjo.

    It is thus not in doubt that Obasanjo had issues with Kashamu. They have also had some form of mutually beneficial association. But Obasanjo had while Kashamu was alive said uncomplimentary things about him.  And some of the things said in the condolence message have been in public domain for quite some years now. You may quarrel with the way he couched his message. You may pick holes with the fact that Obasanjo had also taken advantage of his association with Kashamu in the past.

    The issue to determine is, were the things written factual or fabrication to paint the dead man black? If they are factual, does it serve societal good to conceal them only to present the glowing attributes of the dead? What lessons do we intend to serve humanity by the choices we make in the presentation of condolence messages. These are the searing posers. And they go far beyond Kashamu.

    Obasanjo seemed to have provided answers to this tangle in his response to criticisms on his condolence message. Hear him: “When I was growing up in our community, when anyone known with bad character died, we usually only mourn him and bury him. No eulogy; no praise singing. We must learn from such a passage. There will be good lessons, there will be bad lessons. We should not cover up bad histories and conducts so that the right lesson can be learnt”.

    He has said it all. He even went further to dare people to write whatever they like about him when he transits. That is a show of good faith. The issue is not whether Obasanjo is a saint after all. Neither is it a matter of nursing some differences with the deceased. We are concerned with his message and what future it holds for humanity.

    His message is futuristic and ambitious given the decadence in our societal values- a degeneration that has been responsible for many of the woes that afflict the entire gamut of our national life. The message is intended to open up a new direction in the way we look at condolence messages. It is intended to correct stereotypes that have failed to serve us. And we should all rise and embrace the new direction.

    The issue is not just about Kashamu. He is already dead and has no way of knowing what Obasanjo wrote of him. Therefore, he is not the target. The message is for all those alive who behave as if the inevitable end will not come. They are the people that should worry about damning testaments when they pass away. And if the fear of such unfavourable verdicts gets them to turn a new leaf, the nation would be better for it. Then also, Obasanjo would have invaluably upped the ante in national moral renaissance.

    The development should serve a lesson to all who have scant regard for the consequences of their actions in public life. And they are legion. There are many of them in public places who bestrode the landscape like colossus even with putrid skeletons in their cupboards. They are the people to worry that the verdict of their life will be put the way it is when they are no more. That should be the new direction. If it gets people to part ways with their dubious and inglorious pasts that accentuate all manner of immoral conduct, we are all better for it.

  • Hushmummy

    Hushmummy

    By Sam Omatseye

    Many would have preferred her on the hush.

    But this mummy is too feisty to keep mum.

    On social media, was it on twitter, Facebook, Instagram, she regained her buzz!

    She was not oil minister here, or a commissioner that fled to the Caribbean. She opted to play moral teacher, a sort of secular priest preaching to the young. She wanted them not to err, not to be corrupt, to focus on the heroic and virtuous life. She did not want them to ape the ways of the yahoo boys. It was cheery not just to see the beauty back to her elegant ways, but alive and well. In her low-cut and with lucid words out of her piquant tongue, we felt assured cancer was behind her. No more the shaved head and lean face. Some of her puff of spirit and frutescent cheeks were back. She may have lost her meridian glow, but her charms retain much of her lustre.

    Even for those who saw the cancer tale as a sort of Canterbury tale, no one should begrudge her right to health and cure.

    But who would not want to hear from Diezani Alison-Madueke, a former oil minister who turned into something bigger, or shall we say scarier, than oil. The one who did not bore us when she was minister. Her first act was tears. On Ore road, as works minister, she was like one of us, weeping in public over the crater-infested highway. We did not expect her to translate tears into cheers for fixing the road. We just saw her as a naïve former oil staff too pampered to know the task ahead of her.

    What many did not understand was how those who invited her thought she was the right person to play nun only a few years after she was spun out of office.

    She was, in a sense, canonising her time in office. She was anointing her generation. She was making herself a heroine of governance. Some, especially in the social media, thought her tongue was unfair to its host. She was unfair to her host, a group of Ijaw youths. She just came off an administration inundated with corruption charges. She, too, has a case to answer amounting to billions of dollars. Once Buhari accompanied some former governors to the US under Obama, her name was associated with billions of opaque transfers. We know of the other stories, like the upstarts of ONSA. Some of the persons in the regime have been in and out of detention, and investigations are afire.

    She is not here to answer. She is preaching. That is why her reference to yahoo boys seemed out of place.  Hence, someone called her Hushmummy. It was a parody of a fellow from another generation, Hushpuppi, now wallowing in an American cell.

    Both Diezani and Hushpuppi dramatise two generations. Hushpuppi’s is showy, Diezani’s cocky. But both are not ashamed to advertise themselves. They periscope two failed generations, coming after that of Soyinka’s wasted generation.

    They tell the tales of three generations that have found warmth in the sty. Her generation, which is also mine, started with a lot of zest. We began in the student union days. I recall when we made bonfire on the streets, broke down the Bastille of false democrats, eyeballed the army into fear and trembling, digested revolutionary literature, slurped Marx, recited Engel, quoted Castro.

    At Ife, we could not wait to save the nation, to salvage progress from the plunder in progress. I saw the generation, mine, born in the 1960’s, who had the last set of good education, descend into the corruption of their fathers. Whether as fathers and mothers, they gave the wrong lessons. They encourage their children to either leave the country with stolen funds to attend schools. They bring them back to cradle positions over their Nigerian mates who schooled here. Or when they could not afford them to go abroad, they presided over miracle centres. As CEOs, they ran big firms into the sewer. As bureaucrats, they perpetuated bastions of corruption and kafka’s slog. They have built few landmarks and tarnished many.

    So, the children saw their parents lie, steal and plunder. They defy the rule of law, jail the innocent, kill the just, torpedo the federalist ethos, become ethnic titans, and enshrine the ethic of an oligarchy.  The generation also gave us militancy and justified it. They created the environment to hate the other, as we have seen in the flourishing of herdsmen. Of course, Boko Haram.

    It is the same generation that is giving us the topsy-turvy of the NDDC, where billions of our money is flowing into private pockets though  clinics are absent and fishes die in rivers. The result: the yahoo boys. I thought of the Nobel Prize-winning novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I saw it as a Nigerian story where a group of young people deserted on an island become cheats, turncoats, intriguers and murderers. A lush environment becomes an elaborate jungle of barbarism. We ruined a boon given us on a platter.

    I blend the generation of those born in the 1960s with those in the 1950’s. If Soyinka’s generation gave us a war. The following generation denied us democracy. The Yahoo boys’ generation cemented a graveyard of bad values. Soyinka’s generation stole 10 percent of contracts, and Nzeogwu was outraged to foment a coup. Today, the contracts, just like EFCC testifies and NDDC, too, are not even done. Then they ask for variation and start over again and again.

    That is why we have moved from a nation where the Naira was shoulder-to-shoulder with the British Pound to over 500. This is the sort of nation Soyinka predicted in his best play, A Dance of the Forest.

    Maybe the generation of the Ikorodu Bois will yet save this nation. We are seeing that the offspring of the yahoo boys may be rejecting their parents’ values. A parricide of values, an Oedipal rescue. They seem to follow a radical pattern of salvation through industry and creative experimentation.

    We have seen quite a few in that generation. We have two of them, Anthony Madu and Olamide Olawale in an unusual field of ballet, who were mocked by their friends but have worn international recognition. They belong to a low-budget school owned by Daniel Ajala. The joy leaps without standard  arena captured millions across the world. One Emmanuela Mayaki is teaching afterschool coding in the UK. More of such stories are emerging.

    Maybe rather than the dystopic nightmare of Golding’s Lord of the Flies that fictionalised the world of Hitler, Musolini and the despair that followed, maybe we should follow a true story captured by Rutger Bregman about a crop of young people in 1960’s lost in an island near Tonga with a pledge never to hurt each other. They did over a year until help came. Maybe they will save  a nation adrift.

  • Insecurity and security

    Insecurity and security

    Femi Macaulay

    It is unclear how and when President Muhammadu Buhari would redesign the country’s problematic security architecture, but his publicised intention to do so draws attention to his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.

    National Security Adviser Babagana Monguno told journalists on August 4 that the president was concerned about the performance of the service chiefs: “The president is angry over the declining security situation…What he said today is virtually a reaffirmation of what he said the first time. Yes Mr President said you are doing your best, as far as I’m concerned, but there’s still a lot more to be done. I’m more concerned about the promise we made to the larger Nigerian society and I am ordering an immediate re-engineering of the entire security apparatus.”

    The service chiefs, appointed in July 2015 by the president, have been targets of criticism following escalating insecurity in the country. The targets are Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Abayomi Olonisakin; Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai; Chief of Naval Staff Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ekwe Ibas and Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar.

    A report by SBM Intelligence said an estimated 2,732 people were killed in Nigeria between April and June 2020. An earlier report said nearly 1,000 people were killed in the country between January and March 2020. According to the latest report, ‘Media reported killings in Nigeria Q2 2020,’ 221 security personnel including 173 soldiers, 39 police officers, three civil defence officers, and six vigilantes were killed in the three months.

    The jolting attack on the convoy of Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum on July 29 highlighted the magnitude of the security crisis. The governor was on his way to Monguno and Baga towns to distribute food to internally displaced persons (IDPs).

    “You have been here for over one year now, there are 1,181 soldiers here.  If you cannot take over Baga which is less than 5km from your base, then we should forget about Baga.” Zulum was quoted as saying to the army’s commanding officer in Mile 4 after the attack.

    Significantly, the governor later described the attack as “a complete sabotage, adding, “As far as I am concerned, there was no Boko Haram… It was a serious shooting by the Nigerian armed forces while ‘residing’ in Baga. The situation is very embarrassing.” The army said it was investigating the attack.

    In reaction to the disturbing incident, the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) observed:  “This is one unwarranted attack too many. It epitomises our collective vulnerability and the fragility of the country’s security architecture.” It condemned “the worsening security situation in the country generally, in spite of all the efforts of the government to end it” and the “worrisome and rapidly degenerating situation.”

    It is noteworthy that, about a week before the Borno incident, the Senate had asked the country’s military chiefs to ‘step aside’ so that new leaders could bring new ideas to tackle insecurity across the country. This was, according to a report, “barely 48 hours after an ambush by suspected bandits in Katsina State left at least 16 soldiers and officers dead and 28 others wounded.”

    In January, federal lawmakers had asked President Buhari to sack the service chiefs and appoint new ones “after a four-hour deliberation on a motion on national security challenges and the need to restructure the nation’s security architecture.”

    President Buhari appointed the service chiefs, and he can fire them. But he has been unwilling to relieve them of their positions. It is puzzling that he claims to want to minimise insecurity but also wants to keep service chiefs who have been unable to minimise insecurity.

    However, beyond the president’s inconsistency on this issue, there is the critical question of whether the service chiefs are occupying their positions lawfully.  “The tenures of the defence and service chiefs, according to the Armed Forces Terms and Conditions of Service, expired on July 13, 2017,” a report said, citing Section 8 of the public service rules which stipulates that the compulsory retirement age for all grades in the service shall be 60 years or 35 years of pensionable service, whichever is earlier.

    Also, the report cited Section 4 of the harmonised terms and conditions of service officers (2017) which states that military service of an officer is a period of unbroken service in the armed forces of Nigeria from the date of commission to the date of retirement from service.

    “This covers the date of enlistment into service as soldiers or ratings or airmen for regular commission, short service commission, direct short service commission, direct regular commission, executive commission officers, including other commissions.

    “Each of the service chiefs has, however, spent above the stipulated service years. Olonisakin, 57, has spent 38 years in service. Buratai and Ibas, both 59, have been in service for 36 years. Abubakar, 59, has spent 40 years in service.”  The report was published on February 10, 2020.

    Interestingly, a former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade (retd.) was quoted as saying recently, “A service chief can resign but sacking them is at the discretion of the President. When you get to that position, you are serving at the discretion of the President.”

    He argued against the application of the cited rule concerning this context, saying “The civil service rule which has been extended to the forces now; that if you have served for 35 years, you should leave. I don’t particularly think this is a good idea because somebody can serve for 35 years and he or she is only 56 years old, has such a person reached the climax of their productive life?

    “If the person is doing well, are we going to just kick out such a person because they have served for 35 years?  These are matters which we have installed in our system but which are not necessarily productive at some points.” There is no clarity, and the situation needs to be officially clarified.

    There is no guarantee that new service chiefs will improve the security situation, but there is also no guarantee that the current ones can do better than they have done.  The point is that the fight against insecurity needs new ideas, and changing the service chiefs should reinvigorate the fight against insecurity.

    Fundamentally, the presidency also needs new ideas to tackle the socio-economic conditions that fuel insecurity.

  • Sanwo-Olu’s reprieve

    Sanwo-Olu’s reprieve

    By Emeka Omeihe

    Those who have been grieving over the astronomical hike in the cost of Land Use Charge by the Lagos State government, now have cause to smile. The administration of Babajide Sanwo-Olu has taken another look at the land tax regime with approvals and concessions that consigned the old order to the dustbin of history. By the terms of the new regime announced by the Commissioner of Finance Dr. Rabiu Olowo, the state government cancelled the 2018 Land Use Charge Law and reverted to the pre-2018 rates. It however, upheld the 2018 method of evaluation.

    Under the new order, penal fees for 2017, 2018 and 2019 which translates to N5.7 billion expected revenue earnings were waived. The law now defines pensioners to include “retirees from public and private institutions in the state or any person that has attained the age of 60 years and has ceased to be actively engaged in activity or business for remunerations”, exempting their properties from paying land use charge.

    In addition to other wide range of concessions which affected even the agricultural sector, was the reintroduction of the 15 per cent early payment discount and additional COVID-19 incentive of 10 per cent to be granted on the total amount payable.

    The new law is said to be product of series of consultations and meetings by the government to accommodate the agitations of residents and reduce the financial pressure on citizens as it relates to the rates. This is a heart-warming gesture that is bound to ameliorate the sufferings of residents of the state consequent upon the introduction of the suffocating land use charges by the former administration of Governor Akinwumi Ambode.

    During the immediate past regime, land use charges were hiked by as much and 400 per cent. That was in addition to other forms of taxes that experienced the same increase. Following the exorbitant increases, there were widespread protests as the measure was generally viewed to be inconsistent with the prevailing economic conditions of the time.  Perhaps, the weight of public disenchantment with the increase was underscored by a public demonstration by the Nigerian Bar Association NBA and other civil society groups. The demonstrations which kicked off at the expiration of a seven day ultimatum for the government to reverse the increase, started from the NBA secretariat in Ikeja and took the protesters to the Lagos State governor’s office and the state House of Assembly.

    The contention then was that the hike in taxes would spiral hyperinflation, lead to job losses and increase unemployment with deleterious effects on crime rate increase and insecurity. Despite these protests, the last administration maintained its stand arguing that the overall aim was to increase the revenue base of the state government so as to be able to provide public goods and services more efficiently.

    So it was that the increase came to stay. But the reality of it all was that it neither went down well with the people nor was there demonstrable willingness on the part of the people to pay. Unofficial estimates have it the state government had barely 50 per cent compliance in the payment of the new rates.  Matters were not helped by the reality that the hike came at a time the Nigerian economy was just recovering from the last economic recession. The new rates were therefore considered high-handed and very unrealistic coming from a government that parades itself in a progressive garb.

    The dust created by that policy did not quite settle till the Sanwo-Olu regime came into power. It would therefore seem the new measures are primarily targeted at tidying up the contentious aspects of that suffocating land tax regime that had been a nightmare for both property owners and tenants. It is good a thing the state government has reverted to the pre-2018 rates which are considered more realistic. This is a demonstration of the responsiveness of the government to the yearnings and feelings of its people and must be commended.

    Equally very significant was the redefinition of the categories of persons that qualify as pensioners to include retirees from private institutions in the state or any person of 60 years old not actively engaged in any business for remuneration. The new order exempts properties owned by such pensioners from land use charge. This is a very welcome news for senior citizens in the state especially those that worked in private institutions.

    Before now, little or no attention was accorded retirees from the private sector, many of who do not have any known pension regime. Many of such citizens have had to be exposed to untold hardship compared to their counterparts from the public sector. It is a well thought-out idea for the government to have factored this category of retirees as beneficiaries of the incentives that were hitherto available only to those who served in the public sector.

    An indication that the measures were meant to align with the mood of the times was the additional introduction of a COVID-19 incentive of 10 per cent to be granted on total amounts payable by property owners. Overall, the Lagos State government has done well by giving a human face to land tax regime not only by reverting to the pre-2018 order but through the number of incentives and exemptions approved.

    The new measures are populist and futuristic especially given the wider repercussions of excessive property taxes on the general economy of the state. The reality of the situation is that the burden of such tax increases is generally borne by the masses either in the form of increase in rent or as higher prices of goods and services. And for an economy that is still battling for survival; where many of our industries have had to relocate to neighbouring countries on account of the dearth of social infrastructure, high tax regime will further drive such industries to the precipice.

    It is therefore in the overall interest of governments (state and federal) that they are more circumspect in the rash of tax hikes that have become a fad in recent times. In as much as governments derive their revenue through taxes, care must be taken not to drive the rest of us out of existence through unrealistic tax regime.

    Of late, the federal government has embarked on a bazaar of tax increases without consideration to their effects on the suffering people of this country. There is a hike on Value Added Tax VAT. There is an increase in the price of fuel. We also hear of the re-introduction of tolls on our major highways. These are just a few in the list of tax hikes.

    The way things are going in the petroleum industry, it will not take long before the so-called fuel subsidy is eventually yanked off. The reductions and subsequent increases we have seen in the last couple of months seem a prelude to the hiking of fuel price far beyond what we had seen the moment oil price in the world market improves substantially. In introducing and increasing this array of taxes, the ability of the payers must be a serious factor. People have to live before they pay taxes.

    But much of the difficulty governments encounter in getting citizens pay taxes as at when due, hinges on mistrust in the capacity of our leaders to judiciously manage public funds. With the high level of corruption in public offices, there is lack of trust that whatever funds realized would be effectively deployed for public good. That is why the war on corruption must not only be fought with greater vigour but must be seen to be achieving the desired objective. Ironically, facts on the ground especially given recent events in that direction do not give much hope.

    Overall, the Lagos State government has done well by the approvals and waivers in the land tax regime. It is incumbent on property owners to reciprocate the gesture through prompt payment of the land use charges and other forms of taxes. This will aid the government in fulfilling its obligations to the citizenry and serve as a measure of good faith.

  • Sokugo Assembly

    Sokugo Assembly

    Sam Omatseye

     

    ‘Do not think you are better than you really are’ – St. Paul

     

    EDO is an infinite jest just now.

    And it is a test, another quest of this rambunctious democracy.

    It is in turmoil, but the rest of the story is yet to unveil itself.

    Soon we shall know where and when it will rest.

    Meanwhile, the jest is on us, as the story takes on all the varieties of drama.  We have seen the comedy in the form of an arithmetical summersault where five or seven claims to be greater than 17. It is a farce when the courts assent. Even more farcical it is when we realise that the law judge and the lawmaker are in cahoots to subvert the law. As Henry Thoreau said: “The law never made anyone a whit more just.” It is bad if the act is against the law, but it is worse when it is legal.

    We cannot avoid the theatre when a governor suddenly realises that there is fire on his own roof. That is, his political roof.  But rather than take care of that incendiary hour and invite the political fireman and gravels and hose and the gallons of water, he mistakes the one roof for another. He sends minions to hire the crane and its workers to pull down another roof. That is, the roof of the House of Assembly. There he waxes into an illusionist; he sees a leak, where there is no rain. He sees a crack and, through it, he even ogles the moon though in broad daylight. He becomes a fabulist like Don Quixote the character of the novel of that name – the best novel ever written – who makes himself a knight-errant. He mistakes a flock of sheep for giants of villainy and delights himself as he chases them, sword in hand and on horseback, like a hero that he is not.

    The minions obey Godwin Obaseki. Suddenly he assigns money, and the roof goes for another to come. He who does not do so well with infrastructure work has become an emergency governor of works, or a governor of roof-making. But after fixing the roof, the fire still blazes. You cannot put out the molten magma of political heat with a crane, gravels and thousand jack hammers.

    Remember the case of a lawmaker who hurries to be sworn-in in shorts because he is probably playing when he is told that Obaseki has issued a secret letter of proclamation. He will not be counted if he goes home to wear his Edo regalia complete with head gear. His profile in shorts as a ceremonial clothing is a sartorial laugh, like Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

    Above all, Governor Obaseki turned lawmakers into a sort of mock epic. The lawmakers are not only a source of infinite jest, but a species stung by a wandering disease. In Cyprian Ekwensi’s novel,  The Burning Grass, he designates it sokugo, the wandering disease.  No one can say where the law makers’ house is. They can be everywhere. It could be in Ogbe Stadium unless it rains. It could be Governor’s club house, or state house. It could be, like a secret society, in a dark room in a fabled forest beyond Ikpoba Hill.

    So, the number of his law makers, whether seven or five or eight, fail to pass into majority. But it is the same number that makes him sane, that endorses his cabinet, sanctifies his budget, nods at his actions, and massages him in his sorest and sorriest place: his ego.

    Last week, we saw the number turn scary. The lawmakers made itinerant by His Excellency, met and kicked out a deputy speaker of the minority. The farce extends for Obaseki: Minority is majority, white is black, just as a good roof is a bad roof. Just because its deputy speaker swivels to Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, with four others, he becomes a sinner and should be impeached. About half a dozen sit and decide the fate without others who were voted into office by the good people of Edo State. Shakespeare said: “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” This essayist wonders, “Is something rotten in the state of mathematics in Edo State?” Edo State of the high scores at WAEC and many a storied scientist? One of their daughters is teaching white kids coding in the United Kingdom. To imagine that the man at the helm was a stock broker! Math is broken at Edo rooftop.

    That is why 17 lawmakers are not majority and he had to make a broadcast referring to a court decision that undermines arithmetic, reason and republic. He latches on to a court in these days of manufactured verdicts and an era of tax collectors, as Wike said. He made the lawmakers into the mock epic just as in V.S. Naipaul’s Nobel Prize winning novel, A House for Mr. Biswas, where a character moves from house to house, never happy and always looking for a better place but never getting there. It is a metaphor for the average Nigerian who does not have his own roof over his head. This fulfills the existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s view that everything humans do is in quest of a home. The average Nigerian has to save in vain, dodge his landlord when he cannot pay or pay through his nose when he can. Obaseki’s roof repair job and the lawmaker’s homeless state typify the rootless state of governance under the former stock broker.

    What all this indicates is that Edo State is on the cusp of decision. It is not going to be decided by the National Assembly that tried to make Obaseki yield to republican virtue. He would not allow all those elected by the Edo people to have their place under the legitimate House of Assembly. It is not Adams Oshiomhole’s vote alone, although Adams stormed Oba Market recently to an uproar of popular ecstasy as he walked through the entrails of the place.

    It is the people who hold the ace, not those who stole the mace, that will have their way. It is not the gravels the make the roof, or the gavel of a few. The Edo navel is the people.

    But the question, as the campaigns kick off, is: Will it be a return to the status quo, or are the people going to look at their state like a deflowered maiden in Roman times when a king’s son raped the rosy damsel Lucretia. It forced the people to seize their destiny and, under Brutus, turned Rome from a monarchy to a republic? What we see now in Edo are the trappings of an aspiring monarch in a republican toga. After all, he did not put off his cap recently in the presence of the Oba of Benin. Isn’t that royal impunity? A subversive cap? Was he trying to pitch his cap against the crown? I can hear voices in Edo cry, “the gods forbid.”

     

    Blue murder

     

    SHE is black. She is beautiful. She is from Kwara State. Biology enshrines her face. But her husband forbids it. Risikat Azeez has blue eyes. Nature has replicated her gifts in her two beautiful girls.

    The husband married her, and the girls Azeez bore have same blue eyes. He was with her at the first birth. And second. He started listening to his parents and suddenly decided to reject his own. Now, she and her two daughters no longer have a man they can call their father, even though he breathes and moves and has his being.

    Sometimes when writers turn imagination into novel, few understand the power they wield. As though she saw the faux pas of a Kwara son, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eye, about a black American girl who wants desperately to have blue eyes like her white mates.

    Omo-Dada, the husband, is a victim of ignorance, but also of the overarching influence of parents and culture over families in this country. He loved her enough to woo, to wed, to care and have two children. Suddenly, her blue delicacy turned into a monster. It is an irony, as in Morrison’s novel, that in other places, the eye is a model marvel. It is the eye of royalty in the west, falsely seen as superior to brown, green or even hazel. In England, the country made hoolpa out of a brown-eyed royal in Prince George, even though the parents are blue-eyed. They would envy Azeez’s eyes for the royal socket of their heir.

    Yet, here it is forbidden for Azeez. Thanks to Kwara State first lady Olufolake Abdulrazaq for intervening. If the father does not want to take the girls to school, Kwara should. The girls were born assets. The father may see witchcraft, while we see pearls. The world knows it and should bless it in those girls and their mother. The point must be made though that whether brown, green, hazel or blue, first they are human. The eye colour does not make a royal or pariah. This is not the age of Mary Slessor and the slaughter of twins. We are all equal.

     

  • Mamman Daura is right…

    Mamman Daura is right…

    By Emeka Omeihe

    Criticisms trailing the call by Mamman Daura, nephew to President Buhari for the jettisoning of rotational presidency for merit are not as much with the validity of what he said. Before now, that view had been copiously canvassed by a number of serious-minded Nigerians with varying degrees of persuasion.

    The furore over his suggestion has more to do with the quarters it is emanating from rather than the substance and weight of the issue that was raised.  Ironically, the issue is also at the heart of the contradictions of the federal contraption this country has had to operate overtime – an arrangement that has sacrificed merit for political exigency.

    Thus, when Daura sought to canvass a departure from a system which his ethnic group had championed and benefitted from in the last couple of years, he was bound to be viewed with utmost suspicion. Matters are not remedied by the fact that his blood relation is currently at the helm of affairs of this country courtesy of the same arrangement he seeks to fault.

    Daura had while speaking on the BBC Hausa service said: “this turn-by- turn, it was done once, it was done twice, and was done thrice…it should be for the most competent and not for someone who comes from somewhere…”

    He dismissed the clamour for power shift contending that it was time for the country to unite and go for the most competent person. According to him, since Nigerians have tried rotational presidency about thrice, it would be better to go for the most qualified candidate in 2023 irrespective of whether he comes from the north or south.

    Ordinarily, the logic of Daura’s presentation would seem unassailable. The place of competence and merit in guaranteeing effective and purposeful leadership has long been established. That is the concept of the philosopher king espoused by Plato. For Plato, a philosopher king is a ruler who possesses both a love of wisdom, as well as intelligence, reliability and willingness to live a simple life. If that is what Daura refers to as merit and competence which should take precedence over and above where one comes from, he is not saying anything strange. In the absence of intelligence and knowledge, what you get is incompetence in statecraft which is a recipe for leadership failure.

    So if we are now being told that merit should take precedence over other mundane considerations in determining who occupies the highest political office in the country, it should ordinarily not ruffle shoulders. But the avalanche of criticisms that have trailed this singular call, would suggest there is more to it than ordinarily meets the eyes.

    Those who have axe to grind with the suggestion are not as much quarrelling with the place of merit in guaranteeing the right leadership, as the timing and quarters from which it is emanating. It is a vote of no confidence on the messenger but not the message. It is a product of the pairing of events of our recent past and how the new idea conflicts with the real forces and variables that influenced the 2015 elections.

    If after such gory events that featured threats of fire and brimstone; where foxes and lions were to be soaked in blood if election outcome did not go a particular way, we are now being told where the president comes from no longer matters, serious suspicion is bound to arise. That is why the suggestion has been largely interpreted as a subterfuge to have power retained in the north after Buhari would have completed his tenure.

    Those who oppose the suggestion do not discountenance the place of merit and competence in guaranteeing effective and purposeful leadership. They have quarrel with inherent duplicity of the suggestion. After all, very competent persons can be found in all the geo-political divides of the country. There is nothing preventing those in the area the presidency is zoned from throwing up the best within them using the power rotation formula.

    So no one is opposed to merit or competence per se. But those possessing such leadership attributes must be thrown up within the power rotation formula. Merit and competence are not at cross purposes with power rotation if vested interests allow the right things to be done. The issue to contend with is why even with rotation, the various geo-political zones have not been able to throw up leaders with the requisite capacity to effectively steer the ship of this country? It has more to do with the capturing and devious deployment of state apparatus by those privileged to have ruled this country at one time or the other. Of the three times this rotation experiment was conducted, two of those who emerged as presidents were former military leaders of this country.

    Even in the case of late President Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, they were handpicked by Obasanjo. They may not have emerged as candidates of their parties were there to be free and fair primaries. Having been so picked, every resource available to the state had to be deployed to deliver them at the polls.  Even in the case of Buhari, power shift was the propelling imperative rather than merit and competence. The proper thing is for vested interests to allow zoning to throw up competent people.

    With manifest evidence of the subversion of the will of the electorate during elections, scrapping zoning will dovetail to power monopoly by the section of the country that currently occupies that high office. That will lead to domination and corruption of power. For a country that is still largely assailed by nepotism, where ascendancy to political office is determined by ethnic, religious and some other parochial considerations, rotation is still the way to go. It is not rotation that compromises competence but the vaulting ambition of those who have tested power and are bent on still clinging unto it despite the existing pool of more competent people from across the country.

    If rotation failed us thrice as Daura claimed, that failure is of individuals the system threw up than the principle. Those who have led the nation in those three occasions are by no means the most competent those regions could produce. The same contradictions that propelled Daura’s new proposition could not allow the proper thing to be done. And if Buhari’s skewed deployed of the power of appointments to critical institutions and commanding heights of the military is anything to go by, then the case for power shift is further reinforced.

    Let other sections take a shot at the residency in keeping with the high-minded vision of the political parties. Let them also savour the prebendal trappings of the control of power. By the time power rotation has gone round, we shall then sit down to consider the propriety or otherwise of merit and competence. But who says the fourth trial could not make the difference since one of the arms on which the foundation of the county was erected is yet to have a shot at that office.

    Or is there no merit in the proposition that the forgotten stone could turn out a stabilizing force in the much elusive quest for national stability, cohesion and development? There is the need to go it the fourth time and even more using Daura’s language since we cannot change the goal post at the middle of the game.

    More fundamentally, Daura stirred the hornets’ nest given that his advocacy is in sharp contrast with extant national policies to forge national inclusiveness irrespective of the incalculable injustice they have wrought on innocent citizens. Here we have in mind such policies as quota system, educationally disadvantaged states, catchment areas and similar policies that sacrifice merit for political considerations.

    Such policies have been deployed to deny very qualified children from many states of the south admission into federal institutions in favour of less qualified ones. Why Daura is not concerned about the injustice of this nature is at the heart of the suspicion of duplicity that is the mortal fate of his suggestion. If one admits affirmative action as a recognized balancing process even in the United States of America US, then rotation is a desideratum for power balance, peace and stability of this unity in diversity.

  • Calm down

    Calm down

    By Sam Omatseye

    Serenity came by way of a governor’s voice.

    The plea leapt out first from a child in anguish.

    Governor and boy enriched a vocabulary for peace.

    “Mummy, calm down,” the boy petitioned, his face flushed with pain, in his florid tee-shirt and whitish short.

    It was an act of beggary audacity, the boy demonstrating with both hands how mama should calm down as though waving down a car on top speed. He also sat on a chair in repose as example for her, a gesture that provoked her even more.

    Mama’s tone bore the augury of a whiplash. Boy knew mother’s wasp and whip, her executioner’s routine, when she was angry. He apparently was witness and victim, and would not go through that Golgotha again, not in the season of Sallah, a time of sacrifice and atonement.

    “Calm down” is the homily of the hour. Boy popped it. Governor popularised it. Language telegraphed a message between generations, one of the Governor of Lagos, and the other of the boy. The BOS of Lagos connected. He took the phrase all the way from a little room to the platform of a national chant.

    It is not only the power of words, but also the ardor of technology. A domestic incident transformed into a sort of cause celebre, thanks to social media. The Orwellian big brother will not always chide us. Here he ennobles us, brings empathy from a closet to a teary-eyed public square and gubernatorial rhetoric.

    And entertainment, too. We all, at once, laugh and gripe in a moment of pain for a small boy. We were deprived an ending. Did the mother whip? Did the boy weep at last? Or did she give? Only then can we forgive.  But mother says it was no abuse but a snapshot of the boy’s intelligent strategy to wade out of the cane when punishment looms.

    Again, it is a moment of humility for Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who picked up the phrase “CALM DOWN” from a little boy, Oreoluwa Lawal-Babalola. “Out of the mouth of babes and suckling, God has ordained strength,” said the Psalmist in scriptures.

    When Governor Sanwo-Olu asked all to calm down, one cannot but go back to the emblematic hour that gave birth to the season, the story of Ibrahim and Ishaaq, or as Judeo-Christians say, Abraham and Isaac. It was what the Almighty says to father when he takes son to slaughter slab. He stops the human sacrifice, and gives him a ram instead. He asks father to calm down. He has seen his faith.

    It shows God loathes humans as sacrifice. The irony though is that here in Nigeria, we have been sacrificing ourselves. We have abandoned love and kindness to butchery of our kind. That explains why as a country, we are not doing well, apology to Mr. Macaroni, a skits comedian and another word enricher.

    We did not do well when we met at the battlefield for 30 months in the Civil war. We did not do well in the Cement Armada, a corruption scandal that rocked the ports in the Gowon era. Or the splurging of our oil reserves. Not in the Shagari era when we slurped our country’s wealth like drunkards.

    Not with the military interventions that gave us tyranny instead of redemption. Nor with the agbada men who subverted the vision of a young nation.

    Today it is worse; we are not showing that we understand the importance of sacrifice. Those in office offend us rather than fix things. In his Sallah interview, President Muhammadu Buhari noted that those who were entrusted in office in the NDDC have fallen short. With huge sums carted away, they have exploited our sacred trust.

    Where was the sense of sacrifice when they ogled our billions of dollars without an eye of innocence? The Minister of Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio, unveiled names of persons in the National Assembly that he claimed had signed multiple contracts. They were mainly in the Senate. He said it was 60 percent of the contracts. It turned out even in his testimony he may have perjured since the contracts were far less than that percentage. Yet, he made grave allegations against some persons who are lashing back.

    The former Akwa Ibom governor has pushed the ball to the legislative court, but the nation is aware that NDDC’s former managing director Joi Nunieh has exposed a dirty pond. Akpabio’s face and acting MD Pondei’s fainting fits are in its reflected pool. Billions of Naira has been allegedly diverted, and the Senate says there are more. That, perhaps, is why House Speaker Gbajabiamila, always calm, has a reason to question the minister to vouchsafe his charges to facts. In the House, no such records of individual contract as yet. Only one constituency project.

    We wait for the president who promises to get to the bottom of the matter. And we await it with baited breath, while wondering while the Bernard Okumagba-led management his government nominated still remains in abeyance.

    The EFCC is not a good story either. How is it that both prosecutor and prosecuted are tainted? As I have often quoted on this page, if correction lies in the hand that committed wrong, to whom shall we complain? Hence, the president’s promise bears weight, and it should not end in anticlimax.

    Corruption is costing us human sacrifices. Many die from poverty, ignorance and disease in the Niger Delta when the money could provide schools, clinics and job opportunities for all. It is the humans that die. That is not what God intended.

    We saw another instance in Borno State recently with the ambush of Governor Babagana Zulum. He says it was the Nigerian army that sabotaged. He has been throwing barbs at them for months for failing the people. Even the Shehu of Borno lamented that his people are not safe. In spite of the money sacrificed for security, it is humans that are dying. In Southern Kaduna, Governor El Rufai is under fire because the people are under fire and rolling in blood for his negligence.

    The sacrifice we need is not even animals. Many who eat rams still kill, still lie, still steal. It is not the sacrifice, it is the obedience. “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.” The Isaacs or Ishaaqs are going to the slaughter while the rams run into the bush.

    The spirit of the sacrifice is more important than the sacrifice. The ram we can eat, but we just stuff ourselves and are merry, if the next day we lie. The animal is not guilty, just as the goat Djali in Victor Hugo’s classic novel, The Hunch man of Notre Dame. Djali means “free.” In Soyinka’s Death and King’s Horseman, human life prevails over sacrifice.

    In the United States, presidents follow a ritual of forgiving a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. In every faith are rituals but they are not to be taken in isolation. They show who we are. If we sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake, we pretend to fulfill what we are asked to do, which is the law and institutions. But we don’t love it, which is what is called “rational choice.” Laws are meaningless unless fulfilled. That is where rational choice confirms institutionalism.

    In Nigeria, we love to pretend to love traditions and not authenticity. Ritual has become an end in itself. Which is the fear of such sociologists like Emile Durkheim in his idea of “collective consciousness.” We hail the rule of law, but we mock it in deed. Jesus said we have “out of our traditions made the word of God of no effect.”

    Jesus died so men should not die. The ram was given for the same reason. But it is not about the blood Jesus shed, or the ram Ibrahim slaughtered, it is about our nobility. If we continue to plunder and destroy our nation’s resources and our people suffer and die, we mock God and we enact a nation of hypocrites.

    As St. Paul noted, even though the Jews were asked to circumcise, it is of no effect if they do not remove the “foreskins of their hearts.” Back to Governor Sanwo-Olu and the little boy, we ought to calm down and do the right thing.

  • SON and value of standards

    SON and value of standards

    By Femi Macaulay

    Standards are significant and sacrosanct.  The role of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) is noteworthy as the coronavirus continues its worldwide attack.

    In June, as efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic continued across the world, SON announced that it was harmonising the production of ventilators across the country to ensure that they conform to international standards.

    SON Director-General Osita Aboloma said, following the unveiling of a locally manufactured ventilator by Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, Ogun State:  “In our efforts to address the ongoing pandemic, we have diligently assigned officers to inspect the ventilators and alcohol-based hand sanitisers under production.

    “We have one common standard for each product. We want to ensure that what we are producing meets the standard and once it does, we will certify it. We will also continue to monitor activities so that they do not rest on their oars in producing quality goods.”

    According to him, “SON is ready to partner with all technical institutions, especially those involved in the production of life-saving equipment and materials at this time.

    “This is so that their products will meet minimum requirements of the relevant Nigerian Industrial Standards (NIS), and undergo certification under the Mandatory Conformity Assessment Programme (MANCAP).”

    Rector of the polytechnic Olusegun Aluko said “the materials for manufacturing the ventilator were sourced locally,” adding that local production “will make it more accessible and cheaper compared with imported ones which are scarce, costly and would take longer to deliver.”

    The rector explained that a team of engineers at the polytechnic designed a functional ventilator with less than one million naira.  “It took us one week through trial and error… If we can produce this within one week, with all the research, that means in a matter of two days we should be able to produce one,” he said.

    It is noteworthy that Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi State, has also developed a ventilator. The University of Lagos, University of Benin and University of Ilorin have also produced hand sanitisers in response to the coronavirus pandemic; and Abia State University, Uturu, developed a COVID-19 tracking system.

    Local production of standard ventilators, air purifiers and hand sanitiser machines is expected to save the country’s foreign exchange spent on importation of such items in the fight against COVID-19.  It will also improve the country’s image.

    In May, the U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Leonard, told journalists that President Muhammadu Buhari had requested ventilators from American President Donald Trump. “We already have a very robust U.S. government financial and tactical response to COVID, the two presidents talked in particular about what other equipment needs we might be able to address,” she said. “In particular there is a talk about ventilators, and so there is a national security council and USAID group back in Washington that is working on fulfilling that request.”

    Minister of Health Osagie Ehanire had admitted that the country did not have enough ventilators, which triggered public alarm amid the coronavirus crisis.  A ventilator pumps air in and out of the lungs, and is required to assist patients who are unable to breathe, or breathing insufficiently. It is attached to a tube inserted in the patient’s airway to deliver air into the lungs. COVID-19 affects the respiratory system, and the number of patients needing breathing assistance may increase, thereby increasing the necessity for the machine.

    “For ventilators, we can say we don’t have enough,” Ehanire had told journalists at a national briefing of the Presidential Task Force in Abuja.

    “What we have done beyond taking inventory of the ventilators in government hospitals, we have gone far to take inventory of what is in private hospitals and they are ready to make them available to us.

    ”We have an arrangement that makes it possible that if you need more ventilators in Abuja we can send them from Lagos.

    “If Lagos needs more ventilators, we can bring them from Enugu or anywhere so that we can be able to meet our needs as they are.”

    Against this background, it is obvious that local production of ventilators will help greatly. But such machines, and other items produced locally in response to the coronavirus crisis, need to meet set standards, which is where SON comes in.  According to Aboloma, SON has also been providing technical quality assurance support to local manufacturers producing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) used in the fight against COVID-19.

    Importantly, SON introduced the Mandatory Conformity Assessment Programme (MANCAP) in 2006 “to ensure that all manufactured products conform to the relevant Nigerian Industrial Standards (NIS) prior to sales in the markets or export.”

    MANCAP is meant to “protect genuine manufacturers against unhealthy practices such as production of sub-standard products, faking and counterfeiting as well as unfair competition in trade. It provides consumers with confidence that products manufactured in the country are fit, safe and meet the intended use. It also ensures that the environment is free from unnecessary wastes and pollution. Products that are qualified under the scheme are issued with MANCAP certificates and NIS logos with unique identification numbers.”

    Significantly, in June SON governing council approved 168 new standards “for publication and dissemination to various sectors of the economy…in furtherance of the federal government’s economic diversification policy.” It also endorsed the first-ever Nigerian National Standardisation Strategy (NNSS) 2020 – 2022, developed by SON under Aboloma, to identify crucial areas to focus on, based on national needs assessment.

    The NNSS identified 658 standardisation projects in key areas highlighted in the Federal Government’s Economic Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP), the Nigerian Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP) and related national strategic plans.

    The SON chief executive listed the newly approved 168 Nigerian Industrial Standards, including 64 for Electrical/Electronic products; 53 for Chemical Technology; 47 for Food and Agricultural products; three for Civil/Building Technology products as well as the reviewed standard for Hotel and Serviced Accommodation Management System and Rating – Requirements and Guidance for Use.

    The challenge of ensuring that only products which meet necessary quality standards are on the market in the country puts a burden of performance on SON.

  • Amotekun and amputation

    Amotekun and amputation

    By Femi Macaulay

    From the look of things, local hunters may have been excluded from Operation Amotekun, contrary to the initial plan of the founders.

    Operation Amotekun was launched in January by the governors of the six states in the country’s Southwest – Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Ekiti states – “to ensure an end to insecurity in the South Western, Nigerian region.”   It is the country’s “first regional security outfit initiated by a geopolitical zone.”

    Members of the security outfit are supposed to include local hunters, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), Agbekoya, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and vigilante groups.

    But the publicised process of recruitment into the Amotekun Corps in Oyo State suggests that the state government failed to take local hunters into consideration.

    The Oyo State Government has opened an online application site for those interested in joining the security outfit.

    “The online form, which was uploaded on the official website of the state, indicated that the form is free and not for sale,” according to a report.

    ”The form contains three pages… The first page, which is for bio-data, asks among other things, for special skills or trade, security-related experiences and occupation of the applicants, while the second page asks every applicant to present medical reports on their health status, including hepatitis, random blood sugar, PCV, and vital signs.

    “The medical reports, according to the form, must be obtained from Oyo State Government hospital, which must carry the signature, date and stamp of the hospital.

    Also, the medical doctor that administered the tests must also sign that he has found the applicant medically fit for recruitment into the Amotekun Corps.”

    ”The third page of the form,” the report said, “requests two guarantors for each of the applicants, who must be their village heads and the lawmakers representing their constituencies in the Oyo State House of Assembly.

    The two guarantors of each applicant must also attest that they know the applicant and that they have found him, or her suitable for selection for the corps, and they must also attest to the applicant’s conduct and character.

    “They must also sign on the form that they are the ones recommending the applicant for selection and they should be held liable if the applicant is found wanting in character or other vices. The guarantors must sign and right thumbprint on the form.”

    The report added: “The applicants have also been told to print out their slips after filling and submission of the forms online, and they must provide the slips during the screening exercise that would be made known to them.”

    However, the Soludero Hunters Association, a group of local hunters in Oyo State, says its members will not register online to join the Amotekun Corps in the state.

    The chairman of the association, Oba Nureni Ajijola-Anabi, was reported saying recruitment into the Amotekun Corps should not be based on paper qualifications.

    He said: “We told them to focus more on the local people, who know the terrain, including the forests, but they told us to go and register online.

    “What does online registration have to do with providing security for the people? If they insist on this, we will back out of the exercise…We are hunters; we are familiar with all forests in the zone.”

    Considering how the outfit is expected to operate, it is understandable that the Soludero Hunters Association is opposed to recruitment through online registration.

    This is the picture:  “The operatives of the security outfit will assist police, other security agencies and traditional rulers in combating terrorism, banditry, armed robbery, kidnapping and also help in settling herdsmen and farmers contentions in the region.”

    Obviously, the outfit needs people who have practical security experience, which is a more important and useful qualification than familiarity with the ways of “the digital age.”

    It is the responsibility of the outfit to ensure that local hunters, for instance, are not discouraged by a burdensome recruitment process.

    In particular, it is unrealistic to ask local hunters who want to join the outfit to apply online, which is alienating, considering their background.  Is this a covert move to turn the security outfit into an elitist outfit?

    It is said that we live in “the digital age.” But it is obvious that this does not apply to everybody. There are many people who still live in a pre-digital age, and this does not apply to local hunters alone.

    The point is that the leadership of the outfit in Oyo State needs to simplify the registration process to accommodate local hunters and others like them. This also applies to the other states involved in the security operation.

    Local hunters are relevant to the operation of the security outfit because, according to the Commandant of Ekiti State Security Network codenamed Amotekun, Brigadier-General Joe Komolafe (retd), “We want people that can enter the bush and give us native intelligence about criminal hideouts.”

    During a tour of Ekiti West, Efon Alaaye and Ijero local government areas of the state, the Corps Commandant was reported to have “explained that the security outfit would employ ancient Yoruba tactics of securing territories and fishing out criminals from their hideouts”; and “charged traditional rulers to deploy their supernatural prowess to secure lives and properties of people in their domains.”

    He observed that “the neglect of local and ancient patterns of exposing criminals was one of the factors responsible for the rising wave of crimes in the region.”

    It is interesting that the security boss referred to the use of mystical powers for security purposes. This is the turf of local hunters.

    They are credited with supernatural powers which they use in their adventures in the forests. This is the unique value that they are expected to bring to the security outfit.

    The envisaged collaboration between local hunters, armed with ancient mystical powers, and modern security agents, represents a useful combination of forces to fight insecurity in the region.

    It is noteworthy that Amotekun is a Yoruba word for Leopard. Excluding local hunters from Operation Amotekun, one way or another, is like amputating a leopard’s limb.

    Such a leopard would be disabled, and cannot be expected to perform maximally.

  • He set forth at dawn

    He set forth at dawn

    Sam Omatseye

     

    HE was just 25 but an icon in a protest of global proportions in the early 1960s. It was not in Nigeria but in faraway Athens, known glibly as the birthplace of western civilisation. That was not the beginning of being first in his life.

    That age marked the rage of the young. They fulminated against injustice. The thirst of democracy, or at least cooperative government, was hitting its stride. Paris stunned the haughty Charles De Gaulle and echoed the French Revolution, if not as savage. They didn’t need an English Poet like William Wordsworth to praise the protests as he did the event in 1789: “Bliss it was that dawn to be alive.”

    London bowed to the unruly youngsters. New York boiled. The students of the world chose Greece that day, and a Nigerian, Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi, painted the front row African. The media, in their racist impulse, wondered who the hell was that black man to teach them about democracy. Adelusi-Adeluyi had to polish his Greece to understand the impudence.

    He became the secretary general of the worldwide students body, and he hopped on the plane every week, building coalitions, learning about the world, breathing in different climates, absorbing cultures, hearing accents, confronting habits, teaching the world about him and his race. He logged over 100 countries from Asia to Europe to the Americas. On the eve of one of such trips, he just finished his exam at Ife. He was full of the sap of his years. And as he turns 80 in a few days, he acknowledges it was a time for ferment. As Plato wrote, “Youth is the time for any extraordinary toil.”

    But even today, he is not the dynamo at 25, but he will not yield to the Chinese proverb that says, “When I was young I did not have the wisdom; when I was old I did not have the strength.” He set forth at dawn, apologies to Wole Soyinka. In his interview with me on TVC, he attributes it, the way all the modest do, to the grace of God. But it was that and more.

    Adelusi-Adeluyi is known as the owner of Juli Pharmacy. It oversimplifies him. The Ekiti prince’s biography is packed like his compound name. Few who saw him at 25 probably thought he was a student of history, or philosophy or literature. But he chose pharmacy as a course of study, just as he had chosen language studies before he was 17 and was not admitted at Ibadan because he was too young. Before he became a pioneer student at Ife – now Obafemi Awolowo University –  he was a broadcaster with the first broadcasting firm in Africa – WNBS-WNTV.

    Throughout his life, he has been what commentators call a renaissance man. He is good at many things. He can do everything, an amoebic talent. The term originates from the time after the Middle Ages in Europe when the world hatched itself out of the chokehold of the Holy Roman Empire. The man of that age was Leonardo Dan Vinci. At Ife, my teacher, Professor Femi Omosini, described him as “the universal man of the Renaissance, a veritable jack of all trades and master of many.” He was everywhere: painting, philosophy, engineering, biology, physics, etc. We remember him mostly for his painting, especially Mona Lisa’s smile. That is the way with renaissance men in history like Michelangelo, Cicero, Benjamin Franklin, Galileo, Thomas Jefferson.

    Adelusi-Adeluyi belongs to the Nigerian offering of the renaissance man. He is a writer, a humanist, an administrator, an entrepreneur, a teacher, a lawyer, journalist, philanthropist, democrat, student activist.  He was a singer at church and teacher of the gospel, and was called oga dancer for his dancing prowess. But like all renaissance men and women, Adelusi-Adeluyi compressed his doings into one ensign: pharmacy. Just as Leonardo did his for painting. In his biography of Leonardo, former Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson says such persons “marry observation and imagination.” So he brought all his talents in engineering, philosophy and biology into that enigma of the Mona Lisa smile, and other paintings like Jesus.

    We have had quite a few of such men from Adelusi-Adeluyi’s generation. Soyinka – writer, activist, actor, democrat. Rasheed Gbadamosi – entrepreneur, activist, playwright, philanthropist. Beko Ransome-Kuti – medic, philanthropist, activist. Mamman Vatsa – soldier, poet, statesman.

    Few know – or remember – that Adelusi-Adeluyi made headlines as the first pharmacist to clock the first position in law school final exam. Or that he was the first Nigerian to own a company listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Or that he was the first governor of Rotary Club all over Nigeria and much of West Africa. First, he was in the position of secretay general of the International Students Conference in the Hague.

    He was in sense a political economist, earning the position once as chairman of Oodua Investments. He was also the first president of the West African Pharmacy Federation. He was the first pharmacist to be made minister of Health. He laments that he has not had company, since no pharmacist has risen to such a posh state since he ascended it. He also launched forays into international commerce; hence he became the national president of the Nigerian American Chamber of Commerce.

    When Nigeria became independent, he was a boy. Sixty years after, he witnessed Nigeria in its ante-bellum maelstrom and become a maestro like quite a few. But he is evidence of some of the few fine men who did their bit. But his bit, like Soyinka, Achebe, J. P. Clark, Awolowo, Sam Amuka, Peter Enahoro and Anthony Enahoro, was big. The individual is important, but the nation still is a rot, because you have to harness the talent.

    Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his famous essay, Civilisation, noted that “Each nation grows after its own genius.” He said “there is properly no history but the biographies of great men.” That is the opposite of Tolstoy’s collective view of the past. The nation has geniuses as individuals but not as a soul. Here the individual genius has been alienated from the nation’s soul. Adelusi-Adeluyi, in the words of Emerson again, “hitched his wagon to a star.” He waxed into a star. Not his country. So while Soyinka calls that era “a wasted generation,” he can pick quite a few Adelusi-Adeluyis who hitched their wagons to a star. They did well for themselves, but the society has not done well for us through them.

     

     

    Funtua: the glorious contradiction

     

    HE drove himself on his fatal hour. His chest was choking him, and he called his doctor. His heart condition did not deter him from sitting behind the wheels as was his wont. His driver was beside him. That hour emblematised the man, Ismaila Isa Funtua, who passed on in the hospital. He took his last breath after his last drive. He was tall, looked ascetic and spoke as from a throne. But he allowed himself to drive and, at prayer, he invited the big and small. He had the airs of Kaduna Mafia or what some now call The Cabal. He also craved the common touch. He had money and was willing to share.

    Funtua

    Each time we spoke on phone, he would say, “Eko nko o.” ( How is Lagos?). He had strong views but he was ready for intellectual battle, as in the case of my argument with him over Sowore. I didn’t agree with him but later I was pleased that his position softened. He mocked the idea of being called “a cabal.” Never to deny anything, he discussed it with me, and he told me about his apprenticeship into that vortex of power. He spoke about how he was the scribe. They held meetings in secret, he said. He was like a little boy in the group of the shadowy men of power in the North in those days. They went alone, not even the drivers were permitted to accompany them to the place. They ate together and played games like Ludo together and held meetings late into the night and even into the mornings. It was my longest conversation with him over the phone.

    He spoke with the same gusto about his fight for June 12, and how he dared Abacha and the northern power bloc that resisted Abiola’s mandate. His was Abiola’s deputy as chairman of Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria. He was a contradiction as a patrician who fought for the commoner, a prince and a pauper. He was free with other ethnic groups. He told me Sam Amuka was his best friend and called him my brother from another mother. Amuka, tongue in cheek, retorted by asking whether I knew of an Itsekiri man who bore Funta’s name. It is often a potent statement to see him walk beside Amuka, his head in the sky, Amuka not far beneath his shoulder. I saw him smile in a phone dialogue with Amuka and looked like a little boy. He was a good prince, sometimes misunderstood, but his heart was in the right place. He is a perfect example of the patrician who embraced the commoner.