The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sam Omatseye

  • A royal way to prize

    A royal way to prize

    It was a first and a fest. The Warri Kingdom was feting itself, and it paraded a grandeur of a roll call consisting of some of its prominent sons and daughters.

    Piloting all this was the king himself, Ogiame Atuwatse III, CFR, complete in suave aura and regal charisma, the crown, the regalia, and a train that included two boys.

    One of them is the ofongbo, or horn blower, who heralds his presence.

     The other is the omuda or sword bearer.

    And why not?

    The Ogiame was marking his third year on one of Africa’s most storied thrones. The celebrations strode day after majestic day, including in ancient Ode Itsekiri.

    Its crescendo was in the palace hall, packed with guests and subjects, and afire with the joie de vivre and pride of a glorious paradox: a kingdom flourishing in a democracy. Other than the festal optics, the king was setting a standard in monarchy: a meritocracy.

    So, he set up the Royal Iwere Society (RIS), a platform of civic engagement not only within the Warri and Delta State but going to far-flung reaches in Nigeria and the world.

     He inaugurated the first set of awardees of what is now known as the Royal Order of Iwere (ROI).

    On the list were Sam Amuka, the trailblazing journalist, veteran and grandee of the pen, Amaju Pinnick, OFR, renowned football administrator and NFF veteran, Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, executive vice president NAPIMS and a corporate maven, Dr. Dere Awosika, MFR, a well-known Nigerian technocrat and former permanent secretary in three ministries, Julius Rone, OFR, a mainstay of the gas industry often called the gas king, Omatsola Ogbe, a well-known development expert who heads the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, Ade Mabo, a Harvard-trained entrepreneur and philanthropist, Alfred Temile, an oil and gas giant,  Misan Harriman, a world-renowned photographer and Eworitsewarami Justin Wilbert, a whiz-kid who stunned the academic world as a student of the famous Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja by clutching nine A1s in nine subjects at WAEC.

     Ogbe was not present and his investiture was deferred.

     Ditto Harriman, who had an urgent international assignment.

    Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan received her award virtually.

    The rest were present, clothed in Itsekiri wrapper and top with beads hugging their torsos.

    One after the other they danced before the crowd and king as they were named to receive their honours. Each honoree danced with two other men, including a palace chief who nominated them, and the solemn grace of the Itsekiri dance steps energized an approving audience. Some of the acceptance speeches stood out, including those of Amuka, Amaju, Mabo and Awosika.

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    Amuka took a humble tack on his honour as usual, not referring to his exploits as a professional and a John the Baptist of the profession.

     He rather orated in Itsekiri, manifesting his eloquence and praising Iwere and the king for the honour.

    An elated Amaju Pinnick spoke about his work for Iwere and his enthusiasm to do more, in employment and raising a new generation.

    Temile  says he employs four thousand staff directly.

    Awosika  is the daughter of the First Republic Minister, Okotie-Eboh, but did not allow her father’s pedigree to define her own accomplishments.

    Her husband, Chief Awosika, was there to share in the spotlight.

     Mabo moved the crowd with his biography and the tale of childhood when the mother sold all she had to fund his education.

     He is one of 10 children, the only one she could afford to train. He is paying back as a philanthropist with a deluge of scholarships to children along the Benin River. His mother died of cancer resulting from a medical negligence after a pin was forgotten in her body. Harriman is a world-wide phenom unveiling iconic photos of historic moments and cultural icons from Georgio Amani to Julia Roberts.

    His works have graced exhibitions and attracted aesthetic appreciation.

    He is the son of the great Nigerian real estate pioneer, Chief Hope Harriman, and sister of former House of Representatives member, Temi Harriman.

    The choice of Wilbert is a nod to a coming generation and a counter-narrative to the trend lamented by the Olu about children who now see no value in education.

    Wilbert, now a student at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, had A1s in such subjects as Chemistry, Mathematics , English Language, further mathematics and Economics. He scored 348 out of 400 in JAMB, “placing him in the top 0.01 percent of all candidates.” Addressing how the awardees were selected, effervescent compere Patrick Doyle quoted the Ogiame and said it was “not random or sentimental but deliberate.”

    The Olu enunciated the canvas of the ROI awards saying that, going forward, it will not be restricted to sons and daughters of Iwere land. It will not exceed 10 recipients each year, he announced. The honours were not chieftaincy titles, and do not go through the process and rites of that conferment. This is a purely secular garland, and it is new and even revolutionary in monarchies that fetishise feudal privileges.

     Hear the Ogiame: “For most of our existence, we have celebrated and honoured people by elevating them into the orbits of power, around governance and leadership.  While that has had its merits, we have long overlooked our greatest and most important resource, our common people.”

    The RIS, he promised, would be a platform for engagement with the larger society, giving lectures, colloquiums and other such programmes that will make the RIS a conduit of ideas and civic progress.

     “I make bold to say, that this award will not be restricted solely to Itsekiri recipients.

     Anyone who calls Warri home, by birth, naturalization, association or residence, such a person is also open to being nominated…the Lord has placed us as a force for good in this land called Nigeria.”

     The honours show that you can be chiefly without being a chief. It is an example of a royal way to prize. 

  • Soyinka’s pride, Obidient prejudice

    Soyinka’s pride, Obidient prejudice

     The Obidients are angry with Nigeria’s top bard, and how bad they hate him I knew in my visit to the National Theatre, Iganmu.

    The one we knew was the National Theatre. The one that is coming is Wole Soyinka Theatre, and that explains the firestorm of envy.

     Obidients, come over and see theatre wonder. It is not Carnegie Hall, or any of such world renowned places of entertainment and culture.

    This is Nigeria’s domesticated answer to the world.

    I was told that an impressed Soyinka has undertaken a tour. When the late songbird Onyeka Onwenu took a tour, she looked forward to performing there said one of the guides, Ronke Kuye,  CEO of SANEF, one of the firms working on the renovation.

     How marvelous it would have been to watch the throaty genius strut and stun behind the proscenium of the main bowl or at the banquet hall.

    To quote the poet Shelley’s poem, because of death, the “fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear/No longer will live, to hear or to see” the wonder of Onwenu onstage.

    The tour guide was Ade Laoye, managing partner of ECAD Architects. In a tour that outlasted an hour, I and a few other reporters walked through the ins and outs of what we used to call “fila Gowon” as a child.

    Fila means cap in Yoruba. This was folk metaphor to characterize the façade of the edifice.

     It shows that the concept and beginning was Gowon’s work. It was finished for Festac ’77, an extravaganza and one of the cultural highlights of my childhood.

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    We saw the VIP section, in its beauty and exclusive air. The art works, including the stained glass of Grillo. Artworks finely carved and evocative, including works done by Benin sculptors most of whom are dead.

     Some of the structures remain like the foyer floors, columns and pillars, a testament to the painstaking work in those days. For instance, the main auditorium is benumbing with its tiers from the ground floor to the VIP area to the top layer. It is billed to take 5,000 persons. The stage is now nimble with capacity not just for a coruscation of lights but the technology of gymnastic performance.

    Other than the main hall, there are three cinema halls.

    The backdrop features where the make-up rooms technical prompts. Everything is spick and span, including their showers. We also saw the security, especially against fire outbreaks.

    Two large art exhibition halls are situated near the road leading to the parking area that can take over 250 vehicles. We also walked through the kitchen, a comprehensive offering that will star an international chef.

    The tour guide assured me it will provide egusi soup as well as it can get all sorts of breads.

    A backend row of offices signals its employment potential. We concluded it with the banquet hall, a breathtaking, C-shaped expanse with a stage, grand carpeting and a classic piano that has survived over four decades. It is working. And Sterling Bank chief executive, Abubakar Suleiman, thumped a few keys for emphasis. Imagine Onyeka on that stage.

     It is the work of the Bankers Committee that have deployed money and personnel for this cultural gift.

     It also shows that the best path to development is a partnership of government and private concerns, and that trumps corruption and delay. We are seeing this with NLNG.  So, Obidients, don’t cry. It’s named for Soyinka and, as playwright Goethe wrote, “the likes of thee have never moved my hate.” The same author wrote, “one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.”

    They should accept the theatre in Soyinka’s name. It’s a fait accompli. Or else, it’s their fate to lament.

  • The accused

    The accused

    Once again, Joe is in the news. Joe Ajaero, that is. This time, he has no bloody nose or the scream of the end of the world when a thug gave him a once-over after a once-over across his jaw.

    This time, he is not at war as a minimum wage exponent when he hit us with an anti-climax of a wage. He growled for the moon as a salary for workers but ended up settling for the dust of the earth as pay.

    This time, he is not pleading neutral just as he did not after he was neutered in the Labour Party dispute. This time, it is dead serious, as serious as potentially giving the state an upper cut, a bloody nose for Aso Villa.

     If true, then Ajaero sought to give unto the state what the thugs gave him in Imo State as an interloper in partisan politics.

    As serious as treason. As serious as terrorism funding. As serious as the accused wanting to turn it around and smear the accuser with the guilty charge.

    So, that is where we are today with the NLC president whom the police have tainted with allegedly trying to capsize the state.

    He was merely invited. But the fellow is busy, and why won’t he? He is a labour leader, labouring as a bee. After all, there is plenty of aluta business buzzing between now and August 29, lots of meetings, table thumping, hands across the chest with anthem singing. We just learned about their mellifluous merit in high places.

     They put their throaty gifts to the service of the Villa, and serenaded their archenemy named Bola Tinubu when he underwrote their anti-climax of 70-thousand-naira minimum wage. If they were chummy with him, why can’t NLC trust the police to invite their honcho? I am not saying the charges are true, and that is the point. No one knows if the charges against the labour leader is valid or can tar him with the scarlet letter of a subvert, an enemy of the state.

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    But he ran to his lawyers who quickly intimated the world that the man is actually a busy man. Of course, treason charge can wait, is less important than grinding his affairs with quotidian drudgery, is superior to lounging in his ten-story building contemplating the next strike,  the next power gridlock, the next street march and rumble, the next rage.

     Maybe lolling in his office day after day can lull the charges to sleep. Are we not a nation of amnesia? We can forget it happened. We cannot forget when all these started, though. The police raided its ten-story building. Labour labeled it a raid on their own office. A lie. The police raided a second floor, while they, the ever-lofty labour, were heavenly in their tenth floor. The police denied it many times but true to labour, they would not admit to lying.

     The NLC did not have what philosopher Karl Popper designated as falsifiers, by which he means you must have evidence to prove a thing to be untrue for you to be credible. NLC had no facts.

    It hugged propaganda. But treason has no room for that. He is playing on a populist impulse. Some drivel is now abroad that the police is after him. For what? No reason adduced.

    After all, he and his bushy-haired partner just turned choristers for the number one citizen. Why would he, after they titillated him, want to squelch Ajaero with such monumental accusation? But I think the matter is simple. If his mind is clear, why not appear? Why make a dance of anticipation?

    The Bible says, the wicked man runs when no man pursues him. Is Ajaero acting like an Agbero by not showing up? Or is he guilty? The police say the second floor tenants a person of interest who is a foreigner and involved in terrorism.

    The person is unmistakably an Ajaero tenant. Naturally, there must be communication between landlord and tenant. But the police claim, in that communication, there are questions that they want the NLC chief to answer.

     We don’t know the content of the communication. If the matter is such that he is not guilty, why not show up? Only Ajaero, his lawyers and the police – and, of course, the foreign bandit – know the content. All of us outside know nothing.

    We can therefore not accuse the police of bad faith or of good intention. This is beyond a presumption of innocence for Ajaero by some lawyers and pundits. It is a verdict of guilt on the police without proof. The charge that they want to frame him is plausible, but you cannot frame him in this democracy and get away with it. You need evidence, and the police ought to be aware of this sine qua non. Perhaps that is why they invited him and did not arrest him.

    Or is Ajaero trying to make a histrionic fare with this episode? Do they want to hype it by baiting the police to arrest him? That way, even if he is guilty, the narrative will turn the accused into the victim? Do they want to turn it into a famous 19th century Dreyfus scandal that involved a cover-up, and led French author and novelist Emile Zola to write J’ccuse, meaning “I acuse,” that essay that exposed official hypocrisy? Are they trying to fake a coverup by ratcheting up a cause celebre out of it? It will become more of a drama than a potential threat to the state. It will be the irony of Henrik Ibsen’s play in which the friend of the people is now cast as the people’s enemy and vice versa.

      Caution to both police and the NLC leader and his lawyers that a potentially small matter could mutate from a cause celebre to a curse, or an exaggeration of a cause. The contexts of the so-called hunger protests haunt us.

     National security adviser Nuhu Ribadu said his office trapped over N60 billion and $37 million in cryptocurrency meant to overthrow the state through street protests. We want whoever is involved to be brought to trial, and quickly too.

     The malice of election loss is too deeply felt by the sore losers.

    To be happy, they must exercise the apocalypse of a Samson syndrome to exorcise the Nigerian state. I hope the Ajaero case is not a new window to pursue such a malicious project.  

  • M.K.O’s confidant at 70

    M.K.O’s confidant at 70

     Since this page is about democracy, I shout out to one of Abiola’s confidantes, Chief Olu Akerele, who turns 70 August 29th. He was one of the lieutenants who saw him in jail and may not be alive today if Major Al Mustapha had made good his wish to eliminate him. As Akerele told me, the former Abacha point man said he had “me in his gunsight one night while I was trying to penetrate and reach Chief Abiola in detention house. But something just held him from pulling the trigger to waste me.” This same  Akerele alerted me to two cars, a Jetta and 505 Peugeot, trailing me in those heady days in the nation’s capital when I was Abiola’s newspaper, the Concord, managing editor for Abuja. Akerele’s last conversation with Abiola was an instruction ahead of the fatal visit of the Americans led by Susan Rice, that he should “go get in touch with Kola and our friends to organize the biggest reception in Lagos for my return.”

    There was a reception all right, but the celebrity was, as Akerele put it, in a casket with ice blocks. The hero had a big crowd waiting, but a lugubrious shadow fell over the faithful and upended a dialogue for a future that did not come. He recalled a phone call from now President Tinubu insisting that a proper inquest into his death, including an autopsy, must follow the tragedy and he put his weight and resources towards that struggle. The matter of his death is still wrapped in mystery undermined by a controversy today. Abiola had only a Bible and Koran for reading, but Akerele smuggled in newspapers. “I played this dangerous role until I was arrested,” he said.

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     A curious revelation: Mustapha detained him at the Aso Villa gate to put an eye on him.

    But Akerele wondered, why were many a southwest politician and cultural figure going in and out of the villa? The story of those last days and the politics of NADECO and apologists during that awful time has yet to be fully told.

    Akerele and Abiola’s son Kola were family emissaries to the current president to give national honour and June 12 holiday for the democracy icon. And Tinubu took over the struggle until the spirit of that quest became flesh and blood under Buhari. Meanwhile, Akerele must be thankful that, in spite of his health struggles in recent times, he is a living, breathing man at 70.  

  • Haba Atiku!

    Haba Atiku!

     These days I am full of sympathy for Atiku Abubakar. How else can I feel when a man who is verging on his eighth decade gets so angry, not only angry but bitter, not bitter and angry, but frustrated, and after frustration, we hear him bluster, and when we examine the bluster, it ripples with lies. And what nature of lies? Puerile, perverted and small. Is it the onset of an unknown malady, or is there a peculiar old-age affliction associated with election loss? His series of tirades turned more absurd when he took on the NNPCL over Oando and Tinubu’s son, Seyi. It was not what he wrote that told the story and exposed him but the reply from NNPCL’s Olufemi O. Soneye that turned such an old man into a fuddy-duddy.

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     Lie: that President Tinubu and Wale Tinubu have shares in OVH.

    They have no evidence. The evidence we know is that OANDO has long divested its shares from OVH. If a son of a man has business dealings with the son of another man, does it follow that if both men do a thing, the sons must be involved? It is possible but we don’t assume this until we have proof. Alhaji Atiku, tender your evidence. Stop this babyish rant in public. You are nearing 80.

  • Two men

    Two men

    As he went to bed, peace was the only thing he wanted that night. It was the only thing that eluded him. So, in his underwear, he heard a noise. It jolted him. Before he turned, they had broken into his room. He couldn’t ask a question. He couldn’t dress up. They swept him, underwear and all, from his home onto the back of a truck and zoomed off under that blanket of night.

    He thought the end had come for him. No one knew about the horror except his captors and himself whether they were taking him to a hideout to beat him to pulp and dump him for dead? If that happened, no one would know who did it and why?

    After what seemed an eternity on the truck with only the sky as witness and the wind in ominous whisper, they stopped at a building. A few moments later, he was in a jail cell. What a relief that he was in the company of armed robbers, murderers and other never-do-wells in society. At least, he was not dying that night.

    No one spoke to him. No one told him why he was there. He lived in that sty and suspenseful fear for 48 days. What happened on the 48th day? Gen.  Sani Abacha died. For the goggled tyrant’s death, he had life and freedom.

    This was not in Southern Nigeria, or in the Southwest or Lagos. It happened in Kaduna and to Uba Sani, now governor of the same state where he might have been gaoled to extinction.

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    It was Abacha’s goons, soldiers with cargoes of death and foreboding, who came that night. They hated the June 12 struggle. Uba Sani was a June 12 soldier, and he emblematized the northern dimension of the democracy struggle often ignored and downplayed in the narrative of that era. He also typified what we termed NADECO at home. That part of NADECO was not headlined like the NADECO Abroad, but they kept the firelight and fury alive to defy a soldier elite who forswore any promise of democracy. They brandished the temperament of Bashorun Ga’a, the Old Oyo empire tyrant who equated himself to God on earth until he met his vanquisher. What happened to Governor Sani and he survived was similar to what happened to Bagauda Kaltho, also from the North and a reporter, who did not survive to tell his story.

    This perspective is piquant against the background of the recent protests that have turned out to be the hand of Esau but the voice of Jacob. The two voices that questioned the conscience of the protests were two top-tier figures in government today in the June 12 struggle, the most consequential wave of protests in this generation. They are President Bola Tinubu and Governor Sani. The knit of democracy has bonded both men over the years. It is significant that one is the president and the other is a governor, and they have tried to show that these protests did not represent the lofty and sacrificial spirit for which they could have died.

    The revelation at the Council of State meeting last week tells of $37 million and N60 billion linked with the protests. While we await the facts and the persons in the shadows of this potential treason, the protests reflect what happens when we get a democracy without a proper groundwork.

    We cannot forget that by 1999 when the soldiers abdicated, they gave us a democracy chockful of military apologists. Such persons know nothing but democracy by fiat. At the forefront was the Owu chief, Olusegun Obasanjo, who ran the country with a soldier’s hubris and bred lieutenants who knew no other logic. The third-term agenda and the impunity of electoral heists have continued to haunt the country. Nor was Muhammadu Buhari immune to the rapine of liberty in spite of his advertisement of Pauline conversion to a democrat. In the Niger Delta, we witnessed the mutation of an ethnic war as a recruiting ground for militants as we saw in the Northeast the birth of Boko Haram after an elite created an alternative society to embed a new tribe of militants. Five-year-olds twirled Russian flags even if they could not read or write. They were asked to be the face of hunger when they never knew anything about exchange rates nor went to market to buy anything. That told us that the almajiris became a metaphor for a devious political class that instrumentalized a mob to upturn a democracy they did not, in the first place, believe in. The mob was not the first in this republic. It may not be the last. Ignorance is tinder for tumult. The big men lolling in their plush abodes knew a good tool for a putsch.

    That could have happened if the NADECO group did not turn onlookers when the military apologists took centre stage. When NADECO Abroad held a meeting in London on how to respond to a new era, they dithered and waited while the apologists became the “authentic” voice. They had probably grown war-weary. The current president tried to dissuade them from their somnolence. They prevaricated and temporised. Then Tinubu advanced a sentimental caveat. He said, “Ok, mo fe lori maami.” Translation. “I want to see my mother.” With that excuse, he left London and dived into the trenches at home. It turned out he saw things ahead of the others. He became a lone voice from Lagos trying to set fire to their thatched houses of the so-called new democrats. He might not have done it alone, if they all coalesced while the iron was hot enough to reshape a democratic force for the future. Instead, he had to build it piecemeal.

    The call for a new constitution is a consequence of NADECO pussyfooting. So, if we are going to have a new constitution, on whose authority are we going to pursue it? There is no basis in this constitution to do it. If the president does it, on whose authority other than that of a president who is bound by the 1999 constitution. There is no provision that empowers him to dump the law that made him. To do it will make him a despot.  How will a National Assembly finagle its way between birthing a new document and annulling itself with a referendum? The Patriots may mean well, but how do we overthrow a Constitution to build a new one?  There are three models of constitution-making in the modern era. They are the American, French and British. The French have their fifth constitution, but they have a basis in one constitution to move to another. The British thrive on conventions and will invite anarchy to call for a constitution. The American is over 200 years old, but it has no basis for a new constitution. So, they have 27 amendments already. It is the American model that can work for us. Or else, we court disaster. We lost the opportunity in 1999 and the great elements of NADECO prevaricated away the opportunity to do so. As Henry Thoureau noted, “you can’t kill time without injuring eternity.”

    Some of the so-called NADECO at home had become cosy with the soldiers. This point was made by Governor Sani when he and a few others, including Shehu Sani, looked askance at the soldiers as they tried to implant a new constitution and republican age.

    But nothing is wrong in our constitution that we cannot change with amendments. Or else, we topple democracy and earn chaos. That is why top men in government like the president and Gov. Sani who were in the trenches have seen through the bogus men who, through partisan malice, want to play Samson and bring down the system. They are like the soldiers who came for Sani. They were habitues of the night of our country. Shakespeare in his Hamlet says, they are “doomed for a certain term to walk the night.” That term for the army has long expired, just as Gov. Sani’s 48 days ended.

  • The real protesters

    The real protesters

    You can understand a society by the quality of its protests. When you looked at the talakawa anger in Kano, you could muse on the paradox of boys who could not read and write, but stormed a library. Like rodents in a cathedral, they were not craving a sacrament.

    They did not look for a book by Che Guevera, or Amilcar Cabral or even Lenin. In fact, they saw everything but books. It was Boko Haram on display. They forbade the books but did violence to them by ignoring them. To touch is to read. But the books had a great escape: a bonfire. That would have been a bigger violence. Thank God for book mercies.

    Their eyes played host to more immediate exigencies: material temptations, like chairs, tables, toilet accessories, computers – they can’t operate them but they can sell them. So, you can call it an illiterate uprising. It is in this way we can put the bubble in perspective. Reading would have chastened them like the drunk in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby who turned sober inside a library. The Bible says, much reading is the weariness of the flesh. These boys were not weary. They do not understand anything about the value of the naira against the dollar because they never buy or sell. They carry bowls all day, and it does not matter to them what the value of naira is or the pangs of inflation. When they thrust their bowls, they get their food. It was so yesterday; it was so the day after their street riot and it was so 50 years ago. The hunger they know today is the same hunger that almajiris knew two or three generations before them. Why did they not go to the streets to protest hunger? They are immune to the economy. They are only beholden to those who feed them. Those who they wake up to and in whose shelters they pass the night. They don’t buy food in the market. They don’t pay school fees or rent or live with their parents. They don’t go on vacation or worry about fashion or their threadbare clothing.

    So, when they carry flags, you wonder how a boy who has no money and who has not heard of the name Putin would hoist his flag. They only answer to those who feed them. Feeding is their outlet to life, and the man who shuts the door and opens it is their feeding bottle. So, when they call for military coup, it is not they that speak but their sponsors. You began to understand this when we heard from two key figures in the north. The first is the Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani, who made the point that the boys did not act alone, but they were marionettes of predators in high places. He, an activist, invoked his familiar rhetoric as a man who has fought them in the past.

    The other fellow is the Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed. He addressed protesters as an opportunity to put the world on notice that he wants to run for president in 2027. But the man attacked the president for his wrong policies. What wrong policy? The removal of oil subsidy? This man, Bala Mohammed, is on record in videos circulating on how he condemned the oil subsidy and berated former President Buhari for not removing it outright. He said he was in the committee that x-rayed the hemorrhage of a policy that leeched the economy. He even revealed that one of the beneficiaries had asked the president to stop it because he was tired of cheating the country. So, why is he now complaining? Bala Mohammed is just a pharisee and irresponsible governor who has had his monthly revenue balloon in the past year. If the crowd were literate, they would have stormed him out of his cocky podium. Former House Speaker Yakubu Dogara lashed back, asking him to itemise what he had done for his state in his over five years of stewardship.

    We can glean a perversity of malice from men like Mohammed that the boys were on the streets on behalf of men who have been shut out of their entitled decadence in the centre. They are at war by proxy, the boys being their fronts in this fog of war over the spoils of the country. Somebody up north told me that those fighting are also in cahoots with disgruntled men in the south who are still embittered by an election loss. They have lots of money, he told me, and they are richer than government.

    We should not see the northern imbroglio as just a hunger protest.  It is not the almajiri that are hungry. It is not about those who are hungry but about those who are angry. They are angry not because they can’t eat but because they can’t steal and eat alone anymore.

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    So, those who are theorizing about IMF policies and about the strangulation of policy should understand that it is about the frustration of a primitive class that has seen its privileges of rapine and false splendour snatched from their palaces. The context of IMF policies has been misdiagnosed by many analysts in historical errancy and this essayist will address it in due course as it pertains to Tinubu’s policies. But be it known that these so-called protests, especially in the north, are protests but not by those who are shouting. The technicolour of marches with anger on the streets is an optical illusion. The real protesters did not cry, did not walk, were not maimed or injured and did not die. Nor did they hoist flags or signs. They were in their luxury ambience, lush in their plush palaces.

    It is a paradox that the same forces hijacked the protests from those who wanted to turn it into a “righteous” matter. Righteous in the pharisaic sense. These disgruntled big men instrumentalised boys of rage. The others became spectators in their own game. So, we can say pharisee beat pharisee in a game of phonies. Nonetheless, we know that they are exploiting the pain in the land but not because they love the masses. They are like what Jesus told Judas who urged the ornament be for the poor and should not be on the Lord’s body. The great thing that can come out of this is for the president to tap an elixir out of this disarray. He may recourse to the line of the Poet Homer: “We can give the enemy glory or win it for ourselves.”

  • No Abiku syndrome in Lagos

    No Abiku syndrome in Lagos

    Lagos is where the action is. But the beat did not go on for mischief makers this time. Something quieted their quests. It reminds me of a day in my teenage years when I visited the WAEC office in Yaba to pick up past questions ahead of the almighty WASCE. A much older fellow had demanded deference after I insisted it was my turn to sign a register. He received not deference but defiance. Not in words but through a silence and the disdain of a smirk. My eyes were on him after I had registered. He registered after me, and his eyes were on me. I leaned on a wall overlooking a stairwell. I pretended not to see him looming towards me like a bush cat shadowing a quarry. He was within inches and raised his hand to strike and I ducked. His swing swished the air. Within seconds, he flailed and stumbled through the stairs and landed on his face. It was a comic spectacle if it was not ominous.

    The man invoked age and accused me of throwing an older man. I was not the only fellow there. A police officer saw the humpty-dumpty crash. The fallen fellow, his nose broken and colored with blood and dust, did not have his way when he wanted me arrested. To placate him, the officer asked me to write a statement and dismissed me, not before I grabbed my past questions.

    That is what happened to the #Endgovernance folks.  They thought, like my failed assailant, that they were striking. In the end, they fell flat. But the injury was in the north. The Governor of Lagos, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the BOS of Lagos, handled it with both subtlety and panache. He gave a broadcast. He ensured that it was not going to  happen on his watch again. He did not mobilize people to counter the so-called men of the days of rage. He demobilized the citizenry. No need for grenades on the street. He executed a charm offensive and lobbed bombs of dove. He was a parody of Christ who said, in the world, you have tribulation. But peace I live with you. What we saw on the streets were fragments of the city, disgruntled young men, one of whom was asking the Tinubu government not to give loans to students. He wanted grants. He belongs to the ilk who we must tag “aje butter by fiat.” A poor man who wants to be a rich student. Ask anywhere where people get scholarship on the cheap. Like in the Olympics, you must excel before you exhale with the prize.

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    They bayed for blood. The BOS of Lagos forbade the Abiku syndrome. They were not, like the #EndSars imbrogolio, going to proclaim themselves like in Soyinka’s poem when the elusive character snorted: “I am Abiku, calling for the first and repeated time.” The BOS of Lagos saw that they were looming on the street trying to breach his pavement, or as Soyinka puts it, “I’ll be the/ suppliant snake coiled on the doorstep/Yours the killing cry.” For the BOS of Lagos, J.P. Clark’s Abiku rendition will do as the bard croons, “Do stay out on the baobab tree…if indoors is not enough for you.” Many heard and stayed indoors and carnage was set at bay.

    So, Abiku has a political resonance, as we saw last week when the group only saw the stirrings of an imbroglio up north to understand that it had careened out of their hands just as this essayist warned. They could not guarantee safety. Ben Okri’s Famished Road made the Abiku into a sanguine spirit who would not foment a cycle of tragedy, his Azaro loving their parents too much to let affliction fall on the family a second time. It was a testament to BOS leadership. He did not stop the freedom of expression, but he triumphed over the blood spill. He was not like Metternich, the Austrian despot that poet Lord Byron mocked with the following lines, “He had no objection to true liberty except that it would set them free.” The BOS would rather go with Cicero who wrote, “to stumble twice against the same stone is a proverbial disgrace.”

    As we say, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. He averted shame in our iconic city.

  • Two states

    Two states

    Governor Abba Yusuf is a farce born in Government House in Kano. Before him a man named Barkin Zuwo anointed stealing government money so long as you kept “government money in government house.” Another governor thought Zuwo too local, so he internationalised the tradition. To internationalise is to dollarize. The governor loaded dollar bundle after greenback bundle into his babaringa on the right and left pockets and he might have lamented there were no more pockets and that one could only wear one babaringa at a time. He performed it before anyone saw him. It might have been poor theatre if the whole world didn’t see him since it was a great act because he was not acting. Thanks to an unkind camera man, it was a reality show surpassing the prurient routine of Big Brother Naija. This big brother governor even afforded us the charity worthy of immortality for having his name changed for posterity to signpost that moment of pecuniary extravagance.

    Governor Yusuf opted to be original. If both dramatic predecessors performed inside the government house, his had to be a public theatre. Since he is no hypocrite, he would do his acts for all to see. His first name was Bulldozer, when he didn’t see any building he would not raze down. You could not say his name without hearing a crane roar on a street near you. Then he became a monarchist or anti-monarchist, he would accept whichever you call. If a monarchist, because he thought he was saving the throne. An anti-monarchist because he was flushing out an impostor. Interesting none of these governors ever evoke their ancestor Aminu Kano because they love Aminu’s talakawa but not his ideology. They are reaping where they cannot sow.

    So we saw it last week as Yusuf wanted to pretend to be a democrat and lover of free expression. He urged his people to go to the streets and protest, and even promised to receive and congratulate them in government House. That house again? Except that, true to his style of staying in public, that incident never happened. Rather the streets burned, and hecklers and fighters replaced the so-called peaceful protest. He became a metaphor of the elite, especially in the north, who encouraged anarchy by stealth. A staff of this newspaper was robbed dry, but happily escaped with his life. The same who asked them to protest is now cleaning up after them. Vandals.

    The protests, especially in the north, showcased two types of leaders. Those who have turned a disgruntled feeling into a revenge and those who saw through the chicanery. In states like Borno, Yobe and Gombe, we saw political elites who did nothing as their states erupted into chaos. And we saw Kaduna under Governor Uba Sani contain the rabble . The potentially most volatile state in the north was tranquil, and the others – other than Borno – went berserk. Yet we must admit, in spite of the furore, that the north was quiet for most parts. No chaos in Sokoto, Kebbi, Bauchi, Adamawa. Niger State was unfortunate in spite of Bago’s efforts. Evil sometimes must have its way. My tears for the dead.

    The infamy goes to those who wanted violence but hid under a democratic ethos. Last week I warned the so-called take it Back leaders if they could guarantee peace. They couldn’t. Reports reaching this essayist show that some highfliers in politics and business who fattened on the loose system of official brigandage and corruption feel alienated. They saw their opportunity with this protest.

    Governor Sani said last week that in the north there are so many of them who had bloodlust against the Tinubu administration. His state was a target but they were disappointed. They did some harm, but minimal by comparison to their fantasy of insurrection. Two groups wanted to bring down the state as the most pivotal in the north. One was a group led by an angry fellow who lost out and is being hunted. The other isthe Shiite Group. These two were kindred spirits who wanted to mow down the state. Another group belonging to Sowore were anticipated by the security forces ahead of the day, it was neutered. What was left were miscreants, as the Kaduna State Governor described them.

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    Who would not believe him should consider the following. Some boys moved past an intersection near former President Muhammadu Buhari’s home in Daura and asked the soldiers to come back to power. Now, what does a 10-year-old or 16-year-old who was not born when the army was in power and who cannot utter an English word known  about military rule? Nothing. It shows that they were sponsored, and whoever sponsored them is very naïve, and lacks tact and subtlety. They youth without guidance and thought. As novelist Anthony Burgess writes, “Youths think themselves wise as drunk men think themselves sober.”

    It is obvious that we have an indolent group who have lost power and who can no longer wield influence because of the subsidy removal, collapse of exchange rates and their inability to manipulate the president. They hated him before he became president and the malice deepens. These people ought to be investigated and made to face the law. They are happy in their ominous languor and believe they hurt the government because no reckoning is afoot. The president last year hinted at corruption fighting back and smugglers and rent seekers . Nothing serious has been done to pursue this even as we have seen the effect in the economy and social fabric. Laying down and allow them  to fester betokens danger for this republic. They are the Samsons who would pull down the nation with them. Unlike Samson, though, they have their resources outside the country with their families. The talakawas will suffer as their foot soldiers. These are the vermin and parasites in high places.

    Nor shall we say some of the problems are not self-inflicted. Some of the ministers in late hours began to call for calm. But as this essayist wrote last week, the ministers and agency heads owe President Tinubu the responsibility as his messengers and evangelists. For instance, what has the agriculture minister done to track and let us know who is getting the truckloads of rice? Where are they? Do they have names? How did it affect their communities? It is just inefficiency and official imbecility. Enemies exploit this. It is a factor of the digital age, and we are seeing this in Britain after the Southport knifing tragedy when a 17-year-old killed three children. Rightwing forces, including UKIP leader Nigel Farage, sparked violent protests when they spread false news and gave the guy an Arab name, and tagged the incident a terrorist act, whereas the culprit is from Rwanda, a predominantly Christian country. Information in this age is too important to be left to a spokesman and information minister alone. We cannot rely on one-off press releases and occasional television cameos. As George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

    So, Governor Sani’s caution should be heeded and the Tinubu government, for its own sake and nation’s, should confront the bacilli in high places.                       

  • Free for all

    Free for all

    The so-called #Endbadgovernance protests were a great example of freedom of expression. Just as philosopher Isaiah Berlin argued, everyone tries to be  free to express themselves just as a rapist tries his libido on a fragile nubile, a terrorist on a free-standing building, a robber who stopped The Nation Staff during the protest in Kano and denuded him of all his money. Isn’t free expression a democratic canon, or is it cannon? is it not freedom of expression that made a group not to identify itself, its stakeholders and its source of funding when it names itself Take It Back Movement? Freedom to be opaque, not to be accountable. One of them led a presidential campaign in freedom and expressed his freedom not to account for how he spent their money. Is hypocrisy not a cardinal part of freedom of expression? You can call for Revolution Now, and the revelation is that it is revolution without accountability. They expressed themselves freely when they promised it was going to be peaceful. They were free to lie that no hoodlum would have a field day. Which meant they were free to loot, maim, and the organisers did not care much of another freedom: freedom to be maimed and freedom to die. Pity! They were free to block traffic in Lagos, defy court order in Abuja or detonate an IED in Maiduguri. No innocent citizen had a freedom of expression to drive or move freely, because protesters had a better freedom. Freedom for one and not for another. An Orwellian freedom. Freedom of course comes in hierarchies. Never mind Machiavelli when he said when everyone is free no one is free. The Italian, after all, said the end justifies the means. We saw that last week when they torched tyres and inflamed government buildings. With their tongues, some of them said they wanted the army back.

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    They were wise children of 16 years and younger who were free not to know that they did not know what it was to experience army rule. Maybe they knew. They were in the spirit realm before they were born, some of them born when Yar Adua was president who was joining them in the spirit realm. Some during Jonathan and a few during Obj. They were free to be ignorant. A governor like Abba Yusuf or Habba Yusuf was free to ask them to protest and free to spend government money to issue contract to restore places that were damaged. More security vote to spend after declaring curfew. What a way to spend money and be free. Free to think about what to spend the money on. After all, Henry James wrote, “ I call people rich who can meet the requirements of their imaginations.” What a time to imagine what to do with security vote. Nobel winner Garcia Marquez urged, “freedom to the imagination.” Freedom to Yusuf and cohorts. In Osun, the protesters were free to attack Tinubu but when someone mounted a podium and attacked Adeleke, the crowd exercised its freedom to yank the mic from his hand, and it was because the opposition was free to organize the protests and disguise it and pretend it was only because of hunger pangs on the streets.