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Category: Sam Omatseye

  • Hero is not enough

    Hero is not enough

    Irony rattled my bones, hours after I left David Oyelowo at the National Theatre in London a few weeks ago. I had just seen him at his thespian prime performing the role of Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare’s plays. I was walking out of the building and, voila!, there was the actor, casual and in free air in the chilly London night. The embrace was cosy and sincere, and he was glad I was Nigerian. I had just absorbed with a disturbed joy his rendition of one of Shakespeare’s plays  that touched on contemporary politics.

    “I had wanted the play to coincide with the elections,” he said, referring to the British polls. I replied that it actually resonated with Nigerian politics. Coriolanus is a play of leadership and connection, of the highs and foibles of heroes.

    Speaking of foibles. I reminded him of his interview when he ribbed his father for mispronouncing the iconic movie director’s name. Spielberger instead of Spielberg. He chuckled. The Selma star then announced he would be in Nigeria soon for a shooting. He was obviously referring to the limited movie series, Biafra, another project of how and how not to connect. If he was able to connect outside the stage as he did on stage, he was, in the upcoming series, going to connect with his roots. This is what he had said on Biafra:

    “My Nigerian heritage and desire to see African stories told  at the highest level has led to Biafra being one of my most treasured projects. My parents married across the tabooed tribal lines of the Biafran conflict, and it shaped my life, much as it has done to millions of Nigerians. To be able to bring the amazing talents of director Ngozi Onwurah, who I first worked with on Shoot the Messenger, and writer, Bola Agbaje, who I’ve been seeking to work with for quite some time, makes this the definition of a passion project for me.”

    His performance just less than an hour earlier in the role of Coriolanus did not only resonate with the audience. As a Nigerian steeped in politics, crowds and power, its culture of alienation and elite aloofness, I saw Nigeria and its leaders writ large on stage. Ironically, it was a black man, a Nigerian in origin, who choreographed the tale.

    It was, first, a play about hunger, and how the people are grappling, like today’s Nigeria, with the high cost of goods. But inside the hunger, politics of division simmers. Some are pretending to be the heroes of the people and siding with them for their own personal advantages. A character wafts the air with one of Shakespeare’s immortal quotes: “Rather to die than to famish.” Hunger can be manipulated. For instance, the inspector general of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, said the six boys, arraigned over #EndBadGovernance protests who made a scene in court by fainting, were faking it. They fomented their own theatre, a mobile and staged incarnation of the hunger of innocence. One, two, three…six boys going down at once? A poor script, if you asked me.

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    I want to know whether any of them had fainted in detention before the court proceedings. Again, those who say they are malnourished should take a picture of an average al-majiri. While not affirming or denying the claim of food inadequacy, we need to be more wary of the politics of hunger. I am looking to see any evidence to ridicule Egbetokun’s assertion, especially from the medics who treated the boys. Thank God, they did not die, if they were famished.

    The play shows the main character Coriolanus (Oyelowo) as out of touch with the people. He works for the state, and leads the army to defeat the enemies. Ordinarily, he deserves an accolade. He is renamed Coriolanus, and conferred with the office of a consul. But he has to secure the peoples’ votes. That seems routine. But Coriolanus does not get a routine vote. That is the potency of Shakespeare narrative. The people want to see his battle scars. He says the people don’t have to see it before they vote. He would show it in private, not in public. They label him arrogant. His foes manipulate the public who first vote for him to withdraw their votes. His political foes make him into an enemy of the people. So they force him to say bad things about the people. He does not want to bribe the people by displaying his scars. They know it. It is the victory of the soul that matters, not the vanity of a war impresario. Hear him: “it was never my desire to trouble the poor with begging.” When someone says, “You have not indeed loved the common people,” he counters that “I have not been common in my love.”

    This is a strong theme of populism. And it resonates today. When he wins in battle, he receives a hero’s welcome. There is a hint of Christ riding into the city with chants of hallelujah. Only to be followed by “crucify him.” Shakespeare is under the spell of the Bible here. But populism sullies the play as the people see the man. We see it today how, not only in Nigeria, leaders con the people into rabbles of feigned love. Shakespeare says this in Julius Caesar when the streets erupt with Caesar’s worship, “If Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less.” Donald Trump said a similar thing about shooting somebody on a New York avenue. The fanatic overflowed in the last election in Nigeria.

    In Coriolanus, the people wanted him to exercise state over status, but he thought he did that with his heroics. They saw status over state, the state being Romans in the streets. They wanted him to connect, be weak and stoop down. He would not. He is banished and he joins the enemies he has defeated to fight against his homeland. He eventually yields to his mother’s plea to return when the Romans fear he is going to humble them. But he is killed in the end by the same people he defeats. He is a tragic hero, and his basic flaw is hubris.

     Heroics is good, but not enough. In his play, Measure for measure, Shakespeare writes, “Man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority.” To connect, in the modern world, is to relate, to tell them what you do for them, and tell them in the language they understand. Coriolanus hides the battle scar in private. It is not his scar. It is the people’s. He dies with it. The people try in vain to own the wound.

    It is stories like this that made F. Scott Fitzgerald to say, “show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy,” like Sophocles, like Okonkwo, like Napoleon. The French general banned the play because it reminded him of himself. Our political players should read the play and behold themselves in its mirror.

  • Brotherly states

    Brotherly states

    It is what happens when ideas and humans conjoin. It is a pivotal example of brotherly states. Akwa Ibom Governor, Umo Eno came to Lagos for the groundbreaking event of an 18-story building. With him was the BOS of Lagos, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. It is a testament to the vision of the state of Akwa Ibom, and it is testament to the environment of prosperity created by Lagos. Wealth works with fertile minds, and the event only shows how two states can put things together for mutual glory.

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    They are not physical neighbours, but the best neighbours are in the heart, not heath. Governor Eno says he wants to grow the revenue base of his state. He chose right by investing in the gold standard in generating revenue. Governor Sanwo-Olu says, “it will serve as a beacon of alliance between Lagos and Akwa Ibom” in the world of business. This was a better fitting news for the BOS than a rancid rumour about a court case. That bad moment is now outside the radar. When water enters water, none can separate them. so, we don’t only have brotherly states, but more importantly, they are in a brotherly state.

  • An afternoon at Cambridge

    An afternoon at Cambridge

    At first, the Cambridge University African Roundtable wanted me to track President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s rise. It was inspired by my recent book, Beating all Odds: How Bola Tinubu became president. Then they tweaked it, given the turmoil of the economy in the aftermath of his economic reforms. They retitled it: “Nigeria Reforms: Road to redemption or perdition. Conversations with Sam Omatseye.”

    The idea, according to the organisers, was to reconcile biography with policy.

    The afternoon event gave anyone visiting the campus a sense of its tranquil air and quaint and majestic architecture and, above all, an aura this top-tier academy, cresting the world with only a few in the history of enlightenment. Hovering between third and fifth in the world university rankings in the past few years, the University of Cambridge is cosy with Oxford – number one for nine straight years-, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Imperial College, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Stanford, Caltech, et al. The United States still gobbles half of the top 10 and 13 of the top 20.

     Nigeria continues to lag, funding being a major headache and the absence of a reporting fidelity being another.

    It would be the first time I would be giving a talk in a top five university, although I had a given talks as alumnus of the University of Toronto, now ranked 21st.   The event took place at Westminster College, one of 31 colleges at the University of Cambridge. I spoke to a cross section of society, some PHD students, scholars, nationals, and a big Nigerian presence. The moderator was Prof Anthony Kila, who heads the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies and a Jean Monnet professor of strategy and development.

    it was 19th October, so I paid homage to great editor, columnist and avatar for free speech, Dele Giwa, who, 38 years to that day, “opened a letter and extinguished in a cloud of smoke.” I continued with the remark that “I also draw his tale to tell my own story as a marker of the malice and bitter cauldron of the election that ushered in Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the president…I am saying this because I am happy to be alive  to address you today at the University of Cambridge…I wrote an essay titled: Obituary in which I predicted that one of the candidates, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, would lose the election…for close to five months, I was in hiding. That coven of followers was after me…”

    I highlighted a few salient points. One, the nation still roiled from the agony of electoral loss by a section of the people and it reverberated still because more people loathed than loved President Tinubu in the polls. And that accounted for the caterwauling of opponents, such that whether he did right or wrong, he was believed to do wrong. I referred to the fact we were living in a time where followers of Tinubu’s foes were blind to their candidates’ faults and fault lines, especially the Obidients who kept mum about Obi’s certificate scandal, offshore account and investments of official money in Anambra State.

    “When recently I discussed this with an Obidient…the fellow said he had never heard such a thing. It reminds me of Jose Saramago’s novel Blindness, a parable about how a whole people cannot see in broad daylight. In the Bible, it says “darkness shall cover the earth, gross darkness the people.” It is one of the challenges of populism in the 20th century Europe, and we are seeing it today across the world, including in the United States.”

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    I also looked at Tinubu’s biography and I noted he was weaned on a grassroots mother, Chief Abibatu Mogaji, the Iyaloja-General. He also studied accounting and worked in some of the world’s marquee firms, ending up as Mobil’s treasurer. “So, Tinubu inhabits two contradictory worlds: the mass mobiliser and the laissez-faire ideologist. The Poet Walt Whitman once asked: “Do I contradict myself. Yes, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” I Noted in this context, we can see his economist soul working the fuel subsidy removal and exchange rate regimes, while the grassroots person prods the student loans, CNG buses, credit schemes, food palliatives and array of agricultural initiatives with  governors. I hailed the palliatives programme but lamented it requires better institutional organization and a database. The nation was too hungry, though, to await a database. Hunger hates patience.

    The question time took all of two hours, with many asking questions from Tinubu’s grassroots credentials, to the lifestyles of government officials, change of presidential system, youth inclusion, IMF/World Bank tendency, budget accountability and monitoring, chastening the lawmakers’ spendthrift ways, the government’s poor communication strategies, the collapse of values. It got comical when one Obikwu, in a fit of surrender, said we should partner with another country and even revive the house of chiefs. He had asked earlier why President Tinubu was silent throughout the trainwreck of the Buhari years? My words, not his. The same Obikwu wondered why the nation since his days in Unilag in the 1970’s had been hoping for a change that never came. What was absent was any hint of distemper, as the audience never betrayed any partisan bickering. The organisers saw to that. It was Cambridge, not Chatham House. Why didn’t he know, as an APC man, what Buhari had left behind? Why did he not criticise Buhari even if he knew he was wrecking the economy? What sort of man was Tinubu that he still accommodated those who he made but turned against him? Was he going to change his cabinet? A few questions got personal.

    In an air of civilized affray, I answered the questions. A Cambridge PHD student, Great Nnamani, spoke about the World Bank report, and took issues with the President’s IMF ideas. I noted that his policies may seem to be inspired by IMF but they were just a “coincidence of necessity.” It is what some scholars now call the Washington Consensus. It is a coincidence that the policy of deregulation had to come because he had no choice. We could not sustain paying to keep the naira hanging on provision rather than providence. Ditto to fuel subsidy. I referred to Obi, who had no other answer in a recent interview than to borrow, which is to go back to the ancient regime of irresponsible spending. I also said those who wanted us to phase the policy did not understand that economics must work with culture or sociology. I recalled that President Jonathan started it but hit the rock. I also gave example of the CNG policy. If we had started it ahead of subsidy removal, we would continue to print money while waiting for the Godot of Nigerians reconciling with the new system.

    I also explained that Tinubu was not as close to Buhari’s government as people thought, and he played the smart politician by writing private memos to Buhari on policies he had a choice to either accept or reject. He was pressured to leave APC to run against Buhari by elements both within APC and PDP, but he said he would not fight against what he built. I disabused the mind of audience of some misconceptions lost in the melee of news agency. A questioner said the government was in cahoots with the media. I told him that only one newspaper and one television station supported Tinubu during the campaigns and even today. “If you challenge me, I will name them all and how they spin any Tinubu story.”

    It was a fervent exchange but amicable, and for me what haunted the whole afternoon was my concluding paragraph: “The (Nigerian) situation reminds me of story of one of Nigeria’s percipient writers, Chigozie Obioma, in his debut novel The Fisherman. A sibling fight leads to one throwing the other into a well. Nobody knows where the brother is until it is a time of reckoning when the stench and the body shows up to someone who discovers it. Nigeria is at that inflexion point of dealing with its own body in the well. The question is, are we ready to deal with the dead body and clean up the water? Tinubu is going ahead, and redemption beckons.”

  • If you can’t beat him, burn them

    If you can’t beat him, burn them

    Few elections happen here where the incumbent does not determine who succeeds him. Apart from President Tinubu, who Buhari dreaded and schemed against, the only other fellow who pulled it through is Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani. Few know that his predecessor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, did not want him to succeed him. He wanted someone else. Sani, ever a fighter with a dogged biography in civil rights and democracy, fought and bested Malam at the primary. Sani won, Malam zero. Tears for Malam.

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    He proceeded to the main election, Malam starving him of structure and resources. In the end, Sani won, Malam zero. Tears again. Out of office, Malam and his forces’ rage simmered under the table. Governor Sani did nothing to attack the man until he had no choice but to present the books to the public when labour leaders wanted his head over its lean purse. Malam is still under EFCC’s shadow. It is not a battle between Malam and Governor Sani. It is between El Rufai and the people, or, better still, between Malam and probity. The battlefield is still running with blood. Meanwhile, a week ago, his forces worked with the opposition against his “former” party APC at the local government elections. Some sources told me that forces loyal to him spent not less than half a billion naira trying to upend the APC ambition. They backed PDP. But they did not only go overboard with spending, they also tried arson. They were prevented for burning INEC offices in Kaduna, Zaria and Lere local government areas. Is it a case of if you cannot beat them, don’t beat a retreat but burn them? Well, APC cleared the polls. Sani won, Malam yet to score.

  • BOS on the bus

    BOS on the bus

    Lagos is known for many things. It is me, it is you and it is us. It is our universal psyche.

    Every Nigerian can find their place and rhythm in its variegated soul. For the artist and the cultural, Lagos bubbles with stars of the song and stage.

     For the entrepreneurial, money seeps from every street.

    For the political, to be elected is to be human.

    For the young, every hub is a hubbub. It is a city of lights but like the words of the poet Lucy Larcom, “no ray is shining for itself alone.” As it is for the hush in the GRAs, so it is for the rush in Oshodi, as it is for the Omo’onile in Ipaja, so it is for the patrician in Ikoyi.

    The city domes out a big, amoebic tent, a sweet whore for every comer. It is also a city without stop, always heading for the next stop.

    There was no better metaphor of Lagos on the move last week. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the BOS of Lagos, was on the bus at Oyingbo, where the new rail line known as Red Line hooted off. Decked out at once like a proprietor and a staff with a cap, a badged blue  shirt, a red tie and dark trousers, he appeared among some of the big wigs of his government at the iconic station in Lagos.

    At first, he played proprietor, as he summoned all around, regular pedestrians and reporters, to see his new wonder. It is the second of the colour-coded buses, dreamed of since the days of President Bola Tinubu when he was the steward of the state. Before this was the blue line, whose work began with the then governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN). Today, the blue line is taken for granted by those who commute daily, sometimes forgetting that just about a year ago, it was a source of controversial hot air as to whether it was ever going to start. The Red Line provoked the same cynics to banter.

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    The BOS had said its mechanical integrity ought to be ascertained before unleashing it to the people. We don’t want any error, because a little squeak of a spoke here or oil leak there could me a family in mourning clothes. He walked in as guest hedged in front, behind and on his sides by men and women. On his face was the pride and swagger of success as he looked around, his steps slow and dignified. He took his seat as a governor, but also as a special guest but also as a passenger. Others were on the train, including Information Commissioner Gbenga Omotoso and of course Oluwaseun Osiyemi, the Transport Commissioner, also dressed in the casual style of the governor.

     The BOS became a sort of inspector, moving from coach to coach like a ticketer trying to be sure all had paid. In fact, the governor made a joke in that colour as he exchanged pleasantries.

     This was not your dour, querulous conductor who is either uncouth in his jokes or calm as an omen. He was debonair, an example too high for the qualifiers for the job. The train covers a big swath of the city, from Oyingbo to Yaba, to Mushin, to Oshodi to Ikeja, where the governor disembarked.

     The journey took less than 40 minutes all the way to Ikeja, the normal commute in the giddy Lagos roads took hours.

    It is miracle of a shortcut, the marvel of technology. But the train also chugged away towards Agege, Iju and ultimately to Agbado that abuts on neighbouring Ogun State.

     The cost is N1,500 all the way from Oyingbo to Agbado, a subsidized fare, although some have caviled that it is not fair. The governor has said transport is always subsidized. If passengers were to pay for it, it would be much higher. Even then, the governor has not shut the door on the possibility of bringing down the fare.

     Recently, the BOS visited China along with the president and signed a deal for another colour-coded train: Green. One might have wondered why the first one – the Blue line, that is – was not called green, as the first shoot.

     But on a second thought, it might be because the Lekki corridor is the newest subdivision of the city, and so the greenest with new buildings, businesses, institutions and ideas, including the Dangote Refinery, suburbs, infrastructure, seaport and an airport, a hint of the new Lagos. So, green is right. It is also to benefit the Fourth Mainland bridge, a project the governor says is held by finance.

     The fall of the naira has imperiled the ability to crunch the numbers for that project for now. We hope our currency can get back to life and enable us enjoy that all-important bridge. The image of Lagos on the move is not just for commuters but in other aspects of the state. For instance, just as the Red Train roars through the city, the governor announced a spike in minimum wage to N85,000 naira. This is a tough act to most other  states.

     Many will have to come up with some numbers as it is inevitable that they cannot fall below N70,000  in lieu of labour’s agreement with the Federal Government. The government hopes, given its financial robustness, to raise it to N100,000. We must understand this in the context of financial engineering in the state. Its IGR that began its revolution in Tinubu’s time has grown from governor to governor, and BOS is no exception. He has tripled his own budget size since he climbed the saddle in 2019. It is now N2.3 trillion, and it tops 90 percent performance.

    While hoping to close the year’s budge at N2.5 trillion. It is, like the train, hooting towards a N3 trillion mark next year. We have seen what he is doing with food and its Ounje Eko project, its various housing projects. As the food master of the west, he is coordinating efforts of the region to make food available through investments in agriculture. He says the Imota farms will soon start mass production of rice.

     For all its many ins and outs, the road network of the state is undergoing facelifts. As he himself said, work is going on in every local government area. A big-ticket chief executive, he is building a logistics hub in the city that will become where heavy-duty goods can be stored and move around the country. More to come.

  • Soyinka and Christian faith

    Soyinka and Christian faith

    In a recent interview with Larry Madowo of the CNN, Prof Wole Soyinka said many things about his life and poetics, but one thing struck me: his dismissal of Christianity.

    He said he placed Orisha higher than Christianity and Islam.

     “For me it (Orisha worship) was more artistic, creative and also more mysterious. I don’t find much of the mysterious in Christianity and even less in Islam” Segun Ayobolu, ever one to fascinate with ideas, forwarded an essay to me written by one Moses Oludele Idowu. It is titled: Soyinka, Orisha and the Deconstruction of Christianity. I had listened with casual interest in Soyinka’s comment until I read Idowu. Idowu was excusing Soyinka’s lack of understanding of the mystery of Christianity because of the Anglican faith, which he said was denuded of the required mystery. I thought both Soyinka and Idowu got it wrong. Soyinka wrong on mystery and artistry of Christianity, and Idowu on Anglican faith, especially its mission aspect. To say that Christianity has less mystery or art than

    Orisha should address why this same Anglican faith knocked away Orisha into a second fiddle in the land of its birth. When the white man, especially the British, came, they torched the African religion with their light. Since they came, you have more Christians, especially in the Egba area of Soyinka’s birth than those who worship Orisha. Even when they show adherence to Orisha, it is  an afterthought.

    The Christian faith held sway just as they gave the uppercut to similar worships across the country. Without admitting it, Soyinka fell under the Christian spell while translating Fagunwa, whose writing is overwhelmed by Christianity.

     The Anglican faith is the English variant that bouched out of the fight between King Henry 16th and the papacy, and once the church was formed it became part of its colonizing force.

    The British came with the Bible and plough, and conquered society after society. Before we say that it was arms that empowered faith, we must admit that Christianity conquered Europe and rode it.

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     To conquer by arms is fragile, but to conquer the mind you need mystery. Christianity was stronger than British arms.

     Idowu made a good point about the mystery of the faith, referring to the virgin birth, the trinity, the resurrection, et al. But we must not forget the sway it has had since the time of Christ, corralling Judaism.

     Is that not mystery like the Crusades and its triumphal moments. That can be said of Islam as well. Christianity once was persecuted and since it could not be wiped out ,especially under Nero, it rose under Constantine.

    Religions that could not conquer it now bowed to it. Christianity, just like Islam, has been on a syncretic journey from age to age and continent to continent. One of its power is the mystification of the concept of love, hitherto poohpoohed before Christ. Morality was revanchist, an eye for an eye across ages. Artworks of enduring natures have been under Bible power from Dan Vinci to Angelo. Poets and writers have been under its power; Petrarch, Milton, Blake, Dickens. One of such works is Paradise Lost. Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers is an epic of the 20th century. The Bible has been regarded even by those who loathe it as a book of great writers: the Pentateuch, Psalms, Isaiah, the Gospels, and of course, the illuminations of Paul.

     The bard of all bards, William Shakespeare, sometimes almost regurgitated the Bible. Hence Abraham Lincoln, no Christian, could not live it down. Western laws and civilisations issued from Bible tissues. French best-known novelist today Michel Houellebecq has asserted that Europe is failing because it has abandoned its Christian roots.

     Idowu’s claim that the Anglican was not alive and hence birthed the Babalolas and African churches is a contradiction. Without Anglican, where would the African churches or CAC’s have found inspiration? It is the idea of being reborn, a central Chrisian ethic. “Except a corn of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it abides alone. But when it dies, it gives forth much fruit,” says Christ. It is what happens in a dynamic society.

    The one that dies gives birth. It is therefore living in a new form. It is power that Dostoyevsky, another writer under Bible spell, described as mystery, miracle and authority. You need all that to flourish as a faith. Both Christianity and Islam have manifested these. It is from their essential power and mystery that the African churches arose. They exercised cultural and syncretic adaptations. Paul said, the law is “not a school master.”

  • Border for sale

    Border for sale

    If you want to know how Nigerians think little about Nigerians, go to the border. It is the scenario of a dog eating dog. But the barking canine is a Nigerian. And it has everything to do with petrol price and its agonistes.

    Here is what happens. A dealer buys a tanker of the fluid, and he is assigned to supply an Ibadan depot. His profits, going by the current price, is probably  N20  per litre, which is handsome for any child of God. But he knows if moved across the border at Idiroko or Seme, the cash is tempting. So, rather than make a profit of say, five million naira, he knows a 100 times profit is calling him across the border. Is that a choice or an opportunity? Is it destiny in his lap or is he going to yield to the curse of his villagers that he will see a pot of honey but grab the bitter herb known as efirin?

    Why does he play the patriotic fool and not settle for an easy boom? No, the average marketer is above curses. If a Christian, he can invoke Deuteronomy 28. He takes his tanker, and often they have dozens of them, and they abandon their longsuffering customers in the country, and rush for plum. They pray for miracles. They pray both Christian and Muslim prayers. Others could also ask the Babalawo to follow them with their beads and halos.

    That is because they have to meet the law at the border. They are called Customs and Immigration. Customs for things, immigration for persons. The thing and person will meet a species called officers who are on civil service salary. How much is it? That’s the first miracle. The marketers have something the Customs and Immigration  persons don’t have. Dollars.

    If your salary is N200,000 a month, and someone gives you $5,000 just to visit the toilet or pick up a private call from an ailing grandma, why would you not  become an imaginary invalid and soil the loo with an imaginary odour and flush an imaginary defecation for a not-so-imaginary money for just one hour. Grandma will be thankful, if she is still alive, when you send her that medicine for arthritis. And, of course, if bowel evacuation happens by accident, you might even be grateful that nature and necessity coincided with the roaring of tankers through your office neighbourhood.

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    What better way will grandma accept your gift of medicine than that it was God that gave you the money to extend her life on this earth. In her feeble and quaint dance rhythm and her voice of tremulous sweetness, she would thank the God of miracle for doing it once again. As a grandson or granddaughter, you get effusive thanks from mother and father for saving them the pecuniary horror of keeping the old woman in good humour in her village.

    Imagine if they get $5000 a day or every other day for 30 days and another 30 days and …You can imagine why they are the ones who choose blessing over curse and have become the model of the frontiers fighters who always win.

    Meanwhile, the trucks glide across to the various destinations in Africa from Benin all the way to Sudan, when the warring armies are not bombing their tyres. They sell their fuel at far lower price than here at home, and the profits are instant and fabulous. They laugh at the meagre profits of the Customs officers when it is they who are in harmony with the big, fat take-home. They build the palaces here at home and in Dubai and London and southern France, and have their children through the portals of Harvard and Princeton and Cambridge.

    Meanwhile, when the poor customer cries that the fuel is not within reach or within pocket, the blame game goes to NNPCL. This is how we hurt ourselves, in pretence of doing the day’s work at the border.

    Reality is awful. The border officers don uniforms, speak like they are serious, check documents, stop some who should be stopped and arrest quite a few and impound quite a few and announce quite a robust revenue for the country. But that is the efficiency necessary to bend the rules. As I joked once, even if the Comptroller General  wants to stop them, he could stand at the border and not know what is going on. Like the novel, Border District written by Gerald Murnane, whose work has even been nominated for the Nobel Prize. He writes about how a play of light and angles can erase reality before your eyes at an Australian border. Or Bertrand Russell’s definition of philosophy in which he said if you see a square table from a certain angle, you may decide it is no longer square or that perhaps “there is no table at all.”

    Why are the tankers abandoning their Nigerian depot for a foreign one. We may call it greed, or others may call it opportunism, we all call it corruption, but many will agree that it is the human propensity for acquisition, or selfishness. “Man is, by nature, selfish,” wrote philosopher Thomas Hobbes. At the border, we may say it is bribe, the Customs man will go and pay his tithe for the miracle, and pray for more.

    In another development, this reporter learned that the Port Harcourt refinery saw what might be disaster for all but miracle for a few. The refinery had had a plot twist of Samuel Beket’s Waiting for Godot when the NNPCL promised it would start work. It actually started work and suddenly its power shut down, and quite a few gaskets were blown up. It was a major snafu. How did the power blow up, and the gaskets immobilized? It is still a conundrum. I learned the NNPCL folks suspect sabotage but are not speaking. They had to flush out some persons in charge of security from the police and sought DSS trusted folks. If it is sabotage, from where? And for what purpose? After several put-offs, So, that is why existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre say humans are the only species who do things to harm their own interest. If there is any category of that species, they must be called Nigerians. We must humour God with our diabolical sense of humour.

  • A mentor departs

    A mentor departs

    He left at 91. He was Brother Joel Olusola then. Before he passed, he changed his name to Joel Solupeju. He was my spiritual mentor as a youth when I was a member of the God’s Kingdom Society. I saw him as practically taking over from my father Moses in that light. My father spent Saturday mornings after breakfast to teach his kids bible stories and subjected us, in an atmosphere of friendly affray, to quizzes. I looked forward to them, until Brother Solupeju inaugurated regular children’s meetings that opened my eyes to the various ways of interrogating scripture and lit my first fires as a debater. My immersion in Bible rigour, religious history and nuances of doctrine began with that man. He was patient, avuncular, and exercised discipline as though he didn’t. He scolded with a mellow voice, massaged my childhood fancies to higher language and truth, and he gingered me to challenge orthodoxies. Ginger was his favorite word then. My father had a lot to do with this pedagogy, but minister Solupeju also had a major role. In those days, we had a Youth Assembly, and minister Solupeju shaped me to compete in Bible quiz contest  comprising all GKS branches in the country. Although we didn’t win as Ibadan branch, I became

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    the star attraction in Salem City, Warri, the headquarters, after our family moved to Lagos where I led the delegation to back-to back victories. For me, Lagos took the victories, but Solupeju laid the foundation. In my Ife days, he often visited to watch on me and address my concerns. My gratitude to him always for clarifying conundrums in my philosophy class, one of which was about why God did not stop Adam and Eve from committing the sin that brought woe to the world. It was the first time I learned of man as a free moral agent. Always beamy with a laugh like an earthquake, he was one of the most genuine humans I ever met. Principled without subversion, wise without ostentation and friendly but not corny, he did not elicit any surprises when he was appointed the spiritual adviser of the G.K.S., a post he held before his final breath. My dad used to call him Olu.

    The cares and pursuits of life kept us apart for decades until recently when we spoke. He was now in old age without losing any of his sparkle of old. At 91, we can say, in the words of Dylan Thomas, he went “gentle into that good night.”

  • N100 million, one SUV for dummies

    N100 million, one SUV for dummies

    We are, no doubt, living in an age of dunces. We saw that in recently concluded BBNaija with its participants overdoing it. Forget about its prurient dramas and its episodes of vainglorious excesses. You could be all that and still not be an airhead. But these fellows exhibited great ignorance that reminded me of a beauty contest during my Ife days when the contestants could not name the president and chief justice. A generation passeth, and another cometh like a comet. This time in a reality show. They could not say what seven times zero amount to, so no Math sense. They could not identify Awolowo in a

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    currency note, so a poor sense of history. They did not know the full meaning of C.A.C., so bumbling at current affairs. One of them said the judiciary was the lawmaking organ. Columnist and investigative writer Tunji Ololade raised this in his column not long ago. But they were all there, ensconced from the world in a parody of a Joycean island, all because they wanted to win N100 million and an SUV. Great prize, except that it is for dummies.

  • Moneybags up north

    Moneybags up north

    The school was Aminu Kano Commercial College, Goron Dutse, in Kano State, and I was a teacher there during my year as member of the National Youth Service Corps between 1985 and 1986. Most of the students, boys and girls, were from the South, although some of them had blended into the seductive northern culture and borne northern names. And for most of them, you had to inquire to know that they were not Hausa-Fulani.

    Because many indigenes did not go to school, it was easy after about three months as a teacher to know that over 70 percent of the students were from the South or Middle Belt, most of them either Igbo or Yoruba.

    But by far my best student was named Idris  Muhammad Amin. He was an indigene and has some of the physical features of Muhammadu Buhari – tall, slim, taciturn. I taught English language and Literature. Idris was fluent in tongue and pen in language and Literature, and dipped himself in the ins and outs of words and culture.

    I became a sort of mentor to him, and when he was done with high school, he opted to read English at Ife in my own footsteps, although I studied history. I was impressed because in all my years as a student at Ife, the only northerners were not Hausa-Fulani. John K. Galu and the late and ebullient Sam Nda Isaiah, publisher and politician. I felt a thrill when I saw Idris on Ife campus in one of my visits on assignment as a reporter of Newswatch magazine. 

    Idris was one of eight students  out of 88 who graduated in Second Class Upper Division. He had a short stint as graduate assistant at the Department of English, Bayero University Kano; went to University of Lagos (UNILAG) and obtained an M.A. degree in English; got a BBC appointment as a London-based producer (Hausa Service) in 1998; obtained a second MA degree in English from the University College London (UCL). He left BBC and returned to Nigeria in 2015.

    I never saw him or heard from him again until about three decades later. Last year, he called me, and he said he was a business man.

    Idris came to mind when I mused over the aftermath of the floods that swept through parts of the North, especially Maiduguri. I wonder how many Idris’s were washed to death and to beggary, how many geniuses. But it also stoked my sunny heart after I saw the roll call of Northern bigwigs who opened their cavernous wallets to help the weak and helpless. It seems to be a salvation day for the poor, if we seize the chance.

    The donors rolled in. Let us forget the names of the politicians. But the money bags. Enter Aliko Dangote, Aminu Dantata, Abdul Samad Rabiu, Dahiru Mangal, Mukhtar Betara, Abdulsalam Kachala, et al.  It reminds me of a dialogue I had with Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani on TVC before the catastrophe. He was lamenting the state of the North, and he challenged the Northern men of money to invest in the development of their society.

    He remarked that if we counted the richest persons in the country today, at least half of the top-tier would be from the North. Hence it made sense that the men rose to the situation. Yet, it bothers me that all of the billions that made their way to the victims waited till they became victims.

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    It is like the line from the Theban Poet Pindar as quoted in Aristophanes’ play, The Archanians: “What I’d saved to buy a coffin, I must spend to pay a fine.” It is a terrible part of our culture. When a man begs for bread, we look away. When they lose a mother, our purse opens. We have a morbid sense of generosity. When they beg, we say in our minds, “it’s your own funeral”, but when they die, we bankroll their funerals. We fear death more than the living. So, we pretend not to buy the coffins, but we pay the fine when we do not care for the living. As Shakespeare said, the dead have paid all their debts. It’s up to the living to pay our fines.

    That is what Governor Sani meant. The North suffers in virtually all indices. Governor Uba Sani recalled the words of the great Maitama Sule. Hear him. “Twenty years ago or more, Maitama Sule came out and made it clear and every prominent person in Northern Nigeria was aware of that comment…that the educational gap between Northern and Southern Nigeria was …a 30-year gap.”  The governor, who often shows the reflexes of his activism, also referred to the recent UNICEF report that said that of the 18.3 million out-of-school children in Nigeria, 14 million are in the North.

    He is not saying the problem will be solved by the Northern billionaires alone. He said it was a collective effort.  Governors, including the Federal Government, have a role to play. He said it was not enough to bellyache over the anguish and suffering. It is high time to sit on one table and map the path to prosperity.

    The government role is to create an enabling condition. That is, build infrastructure, power, and health care facilities. These are the enablers. We should not wait for floods and disasters to ennoble them. It is charity without family. In the last riots, the overwhelming majority of the protesters were al majiris who know nothing of the economic issues. They don’t buy in the market, don’t pay school fees or rent, don’t buy fuel or travel, and they do not read or write to make them know what is going on.  When they raided a library in Kano, the only precious thing in the building was the only thing that survived. The gods of letters had blinded them to rows of books. They went for ephemeral sop with a lifespan of a soap bubble. Governor Sani said if the boys were engaged in a factory or office, they would not be out there plundering their own patrimonies.

    It only shows the dark side of feudalism. For the North to rise above its educational ennui, its private sector must counter its feudal infrastructure. To do that, it must track it from the ground up. With more educated citizenry, contempt for the feudal structure will gradually raze down its strongholds.

    I recall when now Vice President Kashim Shettima was governor. We had just visited one of the schools he built in Maiduguri. The convoy had hardly hit the road when youths erupted from houses and over the walls and streets. They encircled the convoy and chastened its speed. They were boys as mendicants, a battalion of mercy. They wanted charity. They are part of the Nigerian family. Then Governor Shettima remarked, “If we don’t take care of them now, they will take care of us in the future.”

    Capitalism overthrows feudal ramparts with more capitalism. It happens with enlightened minds. Track Chinese and Hongkong histories. Track the rise of Europe after the medieval rut. Perhaps that is why my former student Mohammed chose business. One good thing from this act of charity is that the feathered class up North are aware of their environment, and they have brought open pathos into it. They are not just cocooned in their mansions. Although, as Henry James describes it in his novel, The Ambassadors, “There is detachment in (his) their zeal,” we can see some “curiosity in their indifference.” That curiosity should translate into action.

    Those who attribute poverty to the sway of banditry and terror in the North may have their point. But poorer communities in the world still live in peace. Poverty does not always beget violence. Something else happens to collapse the culture of tolerance, and anger boils over. The North was always poor without bloodshed before now. Other aspects of society, including cynical politicians, exploitation of religion, cynical religious elite, modernity and alienation, rank among the reasons poverty is used as excuse to foment turmoil.

    That explains why Governor Sani’s admonition makes sense, and why more Idris’s with their brilliant minds should not be allowed to waste. As the novelist Erich Maria Remarque notes in his All Quiet on the Western Front, “When the sun sets for the final time, it sets on the lives they never lived.”  Let it not be so to many geniuses wasting away because of neglect.